Hollywood, America's most egregious Global Warming offender

Yes that's right! You heard it at Tiny's first. I thought it was important that I break this story before the Oscar's this Sunday, when you will surely hear plenty of Hollywood luminaries lecture us on being "green", the catastrophe coming, and how GW denial is sinful.

You might think I'm calling Hollywood a major offender of GW based on how many of the Hollywood elite travel by private jet, or stay in power sucking hotel suites, or own one or more 5000 sq/ft+ power sucking homes, or who while owning a Prius also own several SUV's, luxury sedans or exotics....no, no, it's not because their personal green footprints are enormous...it's because the product they produce, entertainment, is not green friendly at all!

That's right...after all, the entertainment product they produce is a luxury...it in fact requires energy to consume. While food production, construction and transportation all probably have much bigger green footprints than entertainment, they are necessities. The type of entertainment Hollywood produces is not, and lets face it..the vast majority is also crap.

You see, when I was a kid I didn't use much electricity. I mostly played with balls, bats, MatchBox cars, GI Joes, and road my Schwinn Stingray for hours every day. Today my kids use more power in a day by themselves than my entire family did in a day when I was growing up...that's even with the inefficiency of appliances in the 70's and 80's. The number of American families that run one or more TV's for a good 4-6 hours every night, plus one or more cable boxes, plus the home theatre amplifier, etc....is surely close to 100M.

My personal footprint for just consuming Hollywood's product is huge. It's not unusual for me to be watching TV solo in our family room in front of a power sucking home theatre setup that has so many components it's on a dedicated 30 amp circuit. My wife will be watching a TV driven by a cable box in our bedroom, my son playing Xbox (and so running two devices) in his room and my daughter at our kitchen island drawing while watching Sponge Bob (again two devices because of the cable box). During this intellect sucking entertainment orgy my family engages in, I calculated the power usage to be equivalent to burning 45 - 100 watt light bulbs for 6 hours. This explains my PG&E bill each month....probably about the same as the average home mortgage payment in Ohio.

Of course something less indulgent is going on in most American homes each night, but the aggregate power usage is giant. Then don't forget the other major Hollywood product...movies..I don't go to the movies much anymore and instead do the on-demand and DVD thing...but the green footprint of a single 2 hour movie showing is big....all those people driving to the theatre is the biggest component.

This thin investment most, including Hollywood celebs, have in understanding both GW and energy is laughable. Most seem to think electricity is somehow green! Most electricity in this country doesn't come from wind, solar or hydro...it's oil and coal fired generators and a bit of nuclear. The later of which we should really be invested in.

So Hollywood....if you were serious about being green you would tell us all to turn off our TVs, stop listen to are large amp stereo systems, stop going to the movies....stay home and spend time talking to your family and maybe read more books....we would all be better off. Gore's movie will surely win an Oscar or two...not because it contains truth, but because Hollywood likes to show us that they care about the world...and makes them feel better about being hypocrits in their personal life. So remember when you see a star on Sunday pull up to the red carpet in a borrowed electric car, that he/she probably just flew in from Europe on a private jet and that the outlet that car was plugged into earlier in the day isn't green!

Illegal aliens bank of choice

You may have heard that BofA has a program in the LA area where without a social security number you can get a credit card. Coming under fire for the program, and for good reason, the CEO (Kenneth Lewis) got a letter published in yesterdays WSJ in response.

First, it's funny that he tries to pretend its not about making money on illegals when this program is in the LA area only. Then he tries to claim this is just about helping customers (illegals) build a credit history. And he says "we have an obligation to serve all those in our country who are legally eligible to receive services. To do less would be discriminatory and unfair."....really, if they are in your BofA branch signing up for one of these accounts and they are here ILLEGALLY would that meet you standard for "legally eligible"?

Lewis then tries to hide behind the Patriot Act...which apparently weakly allows financial institutions to accept some foreign government forms of identification when opening an account. Well, that's just flat out wrong. Kenneth even makes the statement that the bank needs to "do our part to support the security of our nation's financial systems". Ya, like taking foreign IDs which have little or no integrity to the process in the countries who issue them as a way to establish financial operations in the US...good job Kenneth...ya, you're a real patriot and doing your part for national security and unity.

But best of all is when little Kenny employs the first law of the 2nd grade rules of universe...in describing the credit cards that probably all Al-Qaeda cells in the country use "They are offered at Bank of America and many other financial institutions as a way for customers to build their credit history."

Bank of America is no longer the bank of America in my eyes.

Big discovery, heat can affect a fever!

I can barely contain myself...I want to scream at the lunacy spawned by global warming hysterics. A study, using data from one lowly children's hospital in Australia found that TWO more children under six years old were admitted with fever to that hospital for every 5 degrees of temperature rise. WHAT? Stop the presses.....and this is just from 2001 to 2002!

Could you imagine how many children under 6 would have shown up at a hospital 10,000 years ago, if there was one around then, when in a several year period certain locations on the planet had 30 degree average rises in temperature. Oh, damn that global warming.

You have to hand it to these idiots at the University of Sydney who I'm sure didn't take into account that it might just be how high the temperature in the Australian city where this hospital is which of course is exacerbated by any rise at all. For example, if they looked at a children's hospital where the hottest summer temperature was 75 degrees would that hospital ever see such a correlation when it went from 70 to 75? Hell no.

I know, lets put a children's hospital, or an elderly care center, dead smack in the middle of Death Valley....watch what happens when the summer temperature from one day to the next goes from 115 to 120!

And how about this statement "And now global warming is becoming more apparent, it is highly likely an increasing number of young children will be turning up at hospital departments with these kinds of common illnesses".

I can't even think or write anything useful after reading this idiotic story....we are doomed.

UPDATE: And yet more idiocy....children are worried and having a hard time going to sleep because of the pending doom due to global warming!!!!!! I don't doubt the survey...you know why these kids even know about the looming disaster caused by global warming? Because our K-8th grade teachers are MORONS. They believe this, they see GW and mans roll in it as a liberal/Democrat position and buy it all. They think its an undeniable fact...a fact...it's not even a theory. I experienced this first hand. When my 2nd grader was in first grade (at a private school I might add) his teacher told the class the GW horror story. My son was worried and echoed the lie, his teacher told as fact, to me. I was furious...I talked to the teacher....explained that first this is not a fact but a theory, that there is no consensus and gave her a boat load of links on the Internet to back up that up. I provided data from experts that show a logical and emotionless analysis of the same data used to convict man of causing GW, but instead convict natural cycles and phenomenon the planet goes through whether we are on this planet or not.

Homophibia is your right

I regularly read syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. and also regularly disagree with what he writes. But, he makes interesting and smart arguments that I enjoy trying to rebut. This week Pitts' column makes the argument that Tim Hardaway's blunt declaration that he hates gays will expose the ugliness of homophobia thus setting about a reversal of its acceptance.

Pitts uses the example of Bull Conner who, as a Birmingham Alabama police commissioner in 1963, put attack dogs and high pressure fire hoses on peaceful and unarmed black civil rights marchers. These images surely gave people a sinking feeling in their stomach. I'm sure it did so because this was a physical attack on citizens by police, by fireman, by city workers sworn to protect and serve those citizens...a physical attack that could seriously harm, or even kill, those just exercising their right to assemble and speak their mind.

An ex-NBA player who was fodder for a radio host, a host that clearly baited him into making a "homophobic" statement, is hardly comparable to those sworn to protect and serve deciding to attack a large group of citizens not breaking the law. Hating someones lifestyle is not even on the same planet as the willingness to physically harm someone just because of the color of their skin.

Surely more disturbing to those who may read this is that I don't even think homophobia should go away. Is the argument that I should accept homosexuality as normal? Or just that it's mean to publicly declare my disdain for their lifestyle? As a conservative I don't get that protection from liberals! I suppose some would argue that, like a black, the gay person is born that way, so to even express hate for them is equivalent to racism.

Sorry I don't buy it! I personally don't hate gays, I hate their lifestyle. I hate that they constantly put their agenda, whose goal is to portray gay as "normal", in our faces constantly. I hate bath houses where men have orgies with strangers. I hate that there is apparently far too many gays having unprotected sex. I hate that gays want people to believe a child isn't better off with a mother and a father, as opposed to two fathers or mothers...and so on.

Racism is bad....racism to the point of hurting people is even worse....the idea that homophobia must be wiped out, is bad in my view. I see it as a slippery slope....after all, a pedophile was also born with his sickening desire so is my hatred of that group also misplaced? We either have freedom of thought, and speech, even when you're diametrically opposed to, or even sickened by, it or we are throwing out the bill of rights and we are no longer a republic.

This defines what I see as a fundamental difference between a conservative and a liberal. Aside from the usual differences (less government, personal responsibility, etc.) a conservative believes the whole is more important than the individual. That it's more important to be good than to feel good. That you should approach the big issues with logic and not emotion. That it's not true that if it doesn't harm others, it's OK. That sometimes what is right, isn't fair to everyone.

Does a gay person have hurt feelings if you tell them to their face you hate them? Surely they do, but you wouldn't want the right of a person to express that hate to be stifled would you? Are our freedoms only protected when you agree with ones ideology? And what hurt, or pain, did Hardaway cause anyway? I see political pundits spewing vitriol on conservatives all the time..I'm not hurt, or pained, or calling for liberalism to go the way of racism! Political correctness and accept everyone run amuck!

Immigrants, not Americans, must adapt

I got an email from my dad today, one of those emails that was forwarded from an email fowarded many times....real or not, doesn't matter, I like what it says.

Email:

Think about this: If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone-----YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM !!!!

Will we still be the Country of choice and still be America if we continue to make the changes forced on us by the people from other countries that came to live in America because it is the Country of Choice??????

Think about it! All we have to say is, when will they do something about MY RIGHTS? I celebrate Christmas...........but because it isn't celebrated by everyone.............we can no longer say Merry Christmas. Now it has to be Season's Greetings.

It's not Christmas vacation, it's Winter Break. Isn't it amazing how this winter break ALWAYS occurs over the Christmas holiday?

We've gone so far the other way, bent over backwards to not offend anyone, that I am now being offended. But it seems that no one has a problem with that. This says it all!

This is an editorial written by an American citizen, published in a Tampa, FL Newspaper. He did quite a job; didn't he? Read on, please!

IMMIGRANTS, NOT AMERICANS, MUST ADAPT
I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Americans.

However...... the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the "politically correct! " crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to America. Our population is almost entirely made up of descendants of immigrants. However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand. This idea of America being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity.

As Americans......we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom.

We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish t o become part of our society, learn the language!

"In God We Trust" is our national motto This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan.. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women.......on Christian principles....... founded this nation..... and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools.

If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home.......because God is part of our culture.

If Stars and Stripes offend you, or you don't like Uncle Sam, then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from.

This is OUR COUNTRY, our land, and our lifestyle. Our First Amendment gives every citizen the right to express his opinion and we will allow you every opportunity to do so! But once you are done complaining...... whining..... and griping....... about our flag.......our pledge..... our national motto.......or our way of life I highly encourage you to take advantage of one other Great American Freedom...... THE RIGHT TO LEAVE.

It is Time for America to Speak up

If you agree -- pass this along; if you don't agree -- delete it - You are in the WRONG Country!

Homohumorless

Apparently the Mars candy company is gay, meaning they have no balls, as they caved into pressure from the bath house loving, light in the loafers gay rights groups ,The Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, over their funny Super Bowl commercial for Snickers.

Come on Mars, do you really think Snickers, M&M's and your other dime store candies are popular with the homofood folks? I don't think so...they prefer Jacques Torres, La Maison or those handmade truffles you can get at the shop on Polk Street.

Isn't the gay, homo, free-sex lifestyle crowd big on freedom of speech and expression? Do they want us heterosexual men and women to hide our disgust when we accidentally experience a homomoment? And when your DNA ends up so that you don't want to participate in the natural reproductive methods of your species do you also loose your sense of humor.

Good God homos....get a faggot grip....oh no...do I need to go to counseling now?

99.999999% of us knuckle dragging straight guys would react just like the guys in this commercial.....and yet the reaction of those who really DO NOT believe in the freedoms we enjoy is as unhinged as they come. Check out this site where they think Mars actually meant for this ad to be anti-gay and to promote violence against them!!!!! Their evidence is the Mars family being Republican, the ad itself and the Mars website where you could vote on the best ending to the commercial, the best ending that allowed the two men to feel like men again after their lips met.

Meet the Democrats holy man!

This is amazing...I read on littlegreenfootballs that an Iman who has shown support for Hizballah, Hamas, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Yasser Arafat did the convocation for the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting.

Present at the meeting was a whose-who of Democrats including all those who are expected to make a run for POTUS in 2008. During the convocation opening the meeting the Iman said:

So guide us to the right path. The path of the people you bless, not the path of the people you doom. Help us God to liberate and fill this earth with justice and peace and love and equality. And help us to stop the war and violence, and oppression and occupation.

Apparently none of the Democrats present has an issue with being one of the doomed!

Funny how Democrats can't stand religion, well especially Christians, Catholics and Jews so I guess it should come as no surprise when they finally embrace some religion its Muslim and with a Muslim of questionable reputation.

Global Warming smart guys predict WaterWorld!

The UN board who released their latest opinion on global warming is very impressive. It consists of scientists (or people with some other label) from 113 governments....does that mean they're in the employ of those governments? And just for fun can anybody give me a list of even say 20 countries with a scientific community that contributes to science in significant ways in the last 10 years? And, can you find any significant university with a degree in climatology?

The same science community that misses weather predictions within the same year by a million miles can seemingly predict that we are in fact doomed by the end of century. Funny though, how in the same sentence suggesting our impending doom there's acknowledgment of a similar thing happening 125,000 years ago.

"And when that happened 125,000 years ago, seas rose between 13 and 20 feet. That is looking like a real possibility for the 22nd Century, the report said, though some scientists fear much of it could happen before the end of the century. "

So, it happened before without fossil fuel burning? Without man-made CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere?

And, if this could happen by the end of the century...within 100 years...where's the proof, the computer model, that shows this could be reversed, stopped or just made less catastrophic even if we could shut off man's entire pollutive output this instant?

Who would have guessed all the bad Costner movies are really a sort of predictive weather vane!

UN should do my local weather

Breitbart.com put out a story today with the headline Global temperature set to rise 1.8-4.0 C by 2100: UN panel...so Breitbart thinks this is pretty certain as they said "set to rise". It gets watered down some in the story where they say "The earth's surface temperature will probably rise", and say it's according to a "best estimate".

Have you ever asked yourself why your local weather man/gal doesn't use words like "best estimate" or "probably"? Even though they don't use qualifiers on their forecast we know it's just that, a forecast, and we expect it to only be sort of close to right. Monday this week the local television meteorologist I watch in the morning said I would see close to 65 degrees and partly cloudy sky's today (Thursday)...nope...more like 52 and complete cloud cover. His temperature was off by 20% and just 4 days out.

Meteorologists can't predict weather to single digit precision in a small area but yet we are willing to believe some UN meteorologist and scientists have a model with infinite more precision over hundreds of years? Why? The nature of black holes is universally recognized as a THEORY. That the earth's dinosaurs became extinct due to a prolonged winter caused by a meteor strike is an universally recognized THEORY. But man causing our recent (according to Al Gore since 1940) global warming of about 1 degree C is a CERTAINTY?
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Maybe the UN should start doing our local weather as they have apparently found the holy grail of temperature forecast models unavailable to our average weatherman! Come on people, apply some logic and reason to what's being reported. What is the motivation of those who report theories on both sides? I'm all for alternative energy, lowering fossil fuel dependence and so on. But ask why your pals in D.C. don't want to develop more nuclear energy or harness wind energy off their pretty summer home shores.

Also, I'm reading some material on how the planet has seen warming cycles every 1500 years, and that CO2 levels are at a historic low over the Earth's history, and that the warming each 1500 years shows no correlation to CO2 levels which have been much higher than we have at present. I will post on this later.

F*** YOU William Arkin

Today I read the most un-American illogical asswipe bile I've ever seen in a main stream publication. William Arkin posted an opinion piece on the Washington Post website and I believe it was also printed in the LA Times that has my blood boiling. I can barely contain myself.

The best response to this crap is by Uncle Jimbo at BlackFive, a great milblog you should visit frequently.

You just need to read this stuff...If I try to explain it I'll be typing expletives every other word.

I'll leave with the very first comment little-dick Arkin's post on the Wapo site:

Too much estrogen in your diet Mr. Arkin? Called a pussy too often as a little boy? Little girls tormented you and made you play house? Did you land on your head one to many times as a toddler? The only explanation for such unadulterated crap is Penis envy because he does not have one, and cranialintrarectum from falling on his head.

Proof Global Warming is a NATURAL CYCLE

It's now a daily event.....a media story on global warming being man made! But we might as well not even try as the latest yet-to-be-released study will say the effects of man's influence on warming will last 1000 years. Wow, the sky is really falling!

And even without the release of the study some findings (I love how a study like this contains findings instead of theories...as if everything in it is a certainty) are presented in a biased form. For example one "finding" is that "the last half-century was probably the hottest in at least the past 1,300 years". Of course this is to suggest man's contribution in the last 50 yrs, easily our dirtiest period on earth has caused warming. But why 1,300 years? The supposed "experts" decided to include a 1,300 year window for some reason. It's not that we have accurate temperature measurements for that period...we only have it for about 100 years, so why? Well, it's easy to guess...if you include more time the warming we see in the last 50 yrs looks like NOTHING.

We have had several ice ages on earth...most of which saw nothing you would call a "man" or man made gases or pollution of any kind. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago where very thick ice extended from the north pole down into the middle of our country...AND GUESS WHAT...it warmed up...what caused that? If this study looked at our minuscule rise in average global temperature over the last 50 years as compared to the last 10,000 years it wouldn't make a case for MAN's influence...so they don't!

Most all studies are like this....include and detail only those points to fulfill your original theory. But you see, we have evidence of multiple ice ages that nobody disputes and each time we warmed considerably. That's proof of multiple natural global warming cycles.....the evidence left by the ice is solid, the evidence greenhouse gases are causing warming is not..it's far more theoretical...so tell my why you know a few degrees of warming isn't just part of the continued natural cycle of the warming from the last ice age? I feel like I need to say this every time...this isn't an argument for unchecked polution...it's an argument to stop taking everything your fed at face value!

The Clay Pigeon

Glock26 pointed me to a great article published in print in GQ (very metrosexual of you Mr. Glock) about Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn.

I love this guy....a lone wolf even in his own party.....he's been unaffected by Washington and fights to change the business as usual in D.C. where Democrats and Republicans alike sneak pork into every vote the Congress makes on spending money.

The GQ article is long, but worth the read....near the end you'll learn about the strategy calls "the Clay Pigeon" where he invokes an obscure rule forcing colleagues to debate each item in an amendment. He used this when the Senate was looking at approving $92B of emergency funding for designed to provide assistance to crisis victims (9/11, Katrina, etc.)..ok that's fair enough...but the schmucks in D.C. stuck another $14B of additional projects as pork on this thing. Coburn found the 19 most offensive strips of bacon and filed a nineteen part amendment each designed to remove one earmark. Using the obscure rule to force each of his nineteen parts to be debated on the floor he hoped to expose the idiotic thievery each represented.

Interestingly, most of these earmarks where sponsored by a Republican and yet their inclusion in the emergency funding was approved (by only 1 vote so a victory of sorts) by prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy.

If you think Hillary is somehow different, not part of the Washington bullshit, a beacon of hope for sanity and doing the right thing....you gotta read at least this section of this article and ask yourself why would she vote for you and your great-great-great grandchildren going into more debt for the pork attached to emergency crisis victim funding!

Obama sees in Black & White

Personally I think Barack Obama isn't qualified to be president based on his combined business and political experience. I'm not looking to compare him to any other president, but against my view that they should have substantial experience with large and complex organizations in both private business and in government. I think that's why we often see candidates emerge who have been successful in business along with having been a governor.

I'm also not so sure the majority of the country would vote for a black, or a women, for president....I would vote for either as long as I believe them to be qualified and that I like most of their positions on the issues.

With Obama the central issue will surely be his inexperience and his race...or maybe his racial attitudes. An interesting background piece on Obama came out yesterday on Examiner.com

While each of our personal experiences form our impression of others a true leader needs to rise above the bias and color awareness most of us, including me, have. Yes, I expect my president to be better than me, to be more moral, to be more wise, to be more inclusive, to not prejudge, to be confident, to be strong.

In Obama's first memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” published only a little over 10 years ago he clearly was still wrestling with his blackness and how others saw and treated him, and how he saw and thought about those not like him. I don't blame or fault him for these feelings....it's human and based on his life experiences. But, my president must be better than that. My president must truly be color blind....at least not show this limited and bias view just 10+ short years ago. One could argue this was 10-15 years ago, he has grown....sorry, I'm still judged professionally by what I did 15-20 years ago...it's absolutely relevant.

When I think of myself I don't think of myself as a white...I just think of myself as a man.....it seems to me Obama first thought of his identity is that he is a black man.....and I suspect his first thought upon seeing me is that I am a white man...until he no longer sees in black and white he isn't presidential material.

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Then there's Joe Biden who also sees things as black and white....and apparently he thinks Obama as a black man is anomalous for a black man. Joe's says “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Of course, it could be given Joe's lack of articulation, brightness and good looks that he's impressed with anybody that trumps him in these areas.

Why you shouldn't send your kids to Berkeley

In the SF Bay Area those on both sides of the political spectrum often refer to Berkeley, the city, as the People's Republic of Berkeley. This label is earned not just by the city's politicians but by the fine academic university that also sits within the city. While it's not hard to show the liberal bias from Kindergarten to University graduate programs all throughout this country, the greater Bay Area won the liberal academic lottery with UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and the University of San Francisco.

Colombian artist Francisco Botero was inspired by Seymour Hersch's version of what happened at Abu Ghraib by the hands of Americans. Mind you, facts and credible witnesses to this version of the torture by Americans aren't required. It doesn't really matter what actually happened. Much of the world was happy to hold all of America, not just the soldiers involved, at fault for what was portrayed in the actual photographs. What was in those photographs amounted to grievous crimes against humanity according to many...give me a break.

UC Berkeley was happy to display Botero's Abu Ghraib series of paintings and drawings about which he told the SF Chronicle "The whole world and myself were very shocked that the Americans were torturing prisoners in the same prison as the tyrant they came to remove," he said. "The United States presents itself as a defender of human rights and of course as an artist I was very shocked with this and angry". He says it's not anti-American, I don't agree...but it's art and I'm fine with any university or museum displaying it.....AS LONG AS...they would also display artwork showing Muslim extremists and members of Al Qaeda blowing up children on a bus with a bomb belt, or beheading a journalist, or using women and children as human bombs, and so on....of course they wouldn't show this art exhibition.

Is there even an artist willing to draw such terrible images? Likely not....it's not fashionable...or maybe most famous or talented artists have more respect for their craft. I think art should inspire, it should evoke emotion, including sadness. But in my opinion that is more appropriately done not through obvious political messages. It's easy to draw the obvious...to show a man being humiliated by showing in detail the act of his humiliation. It's much harder to paint just a man....and in his face you read a humiliation that must have fallen upon him...that's true artistry.

Our schools, first and foremost, should teach young minds how to think, how to reason, to analyze and be critical of what they encounter, to come to a truth or align with a theory on their own. Sadly, they are too often given theories as fact and are told what to think.

Gelato consumption enhances suicide risk

Most of the public suffers from reading a book by its cover. If you read that a researcher, a scientist, a medical doctor or academic has done a study and made a conclusion you will assume, like most, that's it's credible and logical.

It's simply not the case...nearly all research is funded on the premise of bias. A theory is put forward in order for those who approve the research to give a nod...or in order to get a grant. Those who give the nod, or write the checks, are addicts and their drug these days is anything Global Warming.

Take for example Global warming possibly linked to an enhanced risk of suicide! While this link is only to the abstract of this study you don't need to purchase the full study to see the absence of the link it claims. The Department of Psychology, University of Cagliari, Italy and the Genneruxi Medical Center also in Cagliari, Italy "sets out to explore the impact of global warming on suicide mortality, using data from Italy." Of course that there is global warming, and not just cyclic weather patterns, is put forward as a certainty. This pseudo linkage is a silly attempt to blame anything bad and terrible to global warming.

We shouldn't question these academics, after all they looked at suicide and temperature data, for Italy, and the "relation between them was investigated using the Gaussian low-pass filter, linear correlation analysis and rank analysis." Oh, very impressive. I'm no statistician, but I was a math major and I was an electrical design engineer early in my career. Gaussian low-pass filters are common in signal processing but not in statistical analysis....I couldn't even find a reference where Gaussian filters, which smooth not so smooth data, are used for statistics.

As for the other methods...sure those are fine....but a statistical correlation of data from two systems doesn't make them linked in reality...it just says there data behaves similarly, when one goes up the other does as well. It could be that Italy sees more summertime suicides because the weather is conducive to people venturing out of doors thus leaving those who are depressed alone more than in the cold of winter. Lot's of things happen in summertime that don't happen in winter, so would you conclude that Gelato consumption also enhances the risk of suicide? You might as well say everything that increases in the summertime is caused by global warming, or by anything else on the list of increasing summertime things! What a joke!

Also interesting....that on Drudge today there's news of a coming U.N. climate report that will "shock the world"....this at the same time that weather news around the globe has winter in full swing just where it should be....with record lows, record snow fall, and so on.

Meet the new Christ

Just when you thought the PR machine around Tom Cruise had thought better of his shortness being overly exposed as part of Scientology we hear he's Scientology's Jesus!

Of course the Scientologist think Tom is the "chosen one" and will spread the word of the evil Xenu and how we all must rid ourselves of thetans. And of course in the future Cruise will be worshiped like Jesus....ya duh, that's all obvious.....I'm just wondering if he has a new movie coming out!

Cruise be with you, and also with you!

Whites not allowed

It's a bit like a boy wanting to join the Girl Scout's! I don't understand why the newly elected Representative from Tennessee, Democrat Stephen I. Cohen who is white, even considered for a moment that he might join the Congressional Black Caucus. But no matter, a white is not welcome to do so. And is there a Congressional White Caucus? Why not?

I received an email a few weeks ago from a friend that was one of those emails people are urged to pass around. This one was about the hypocrisy of many, so called, minorities who have a hypocritical view of what is appropriate for them versus, so called, whites!

I don't believe true racist attitudes are dominate in America...sure there are stereotypes that people hold, but if we call that racism then some of those who claim to be its constant victim need to rethink things.

Why is ok for there to be a United Negro College Fund and not a United Caucasian College Fund? Or how about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, would you be ok with the National Association for the Advancement of Caucasian People? Is ok for me to call blacks "negro" and "colored"?

Why is ok for there to a Black History Month, Black Entertainment Television (BET) or Gay Pride Day? Can we have a White History Month, WET and White Pride Day?

There are all kinds of black, African-American, Hispanic, Asian and other race labeled organizations in every community. But, if there was a Caucasian or white versions of these organizations with the same goals...that is to be advocates for, to advance the standing of, those Caucasians and whites....it would be racist. Apparently only whites are racist.

Fact Nazi - The Global Warming non-debate

Instead of an honest Global Warming debate what we are seeing lately is the equivalent of the Seinfeld show soup Nazi "No Soup For You". Unfortunately most of the general public swallows whole what the media, politicians and entertainers fling at them. Well, let's qualify that....that is if they already agree with the idea being flung. After all, if for whatever reason, you want something to be true why bother considering information that contradicts your "convenient truth".

I can give you many examples of how those on the left suffer from this affliction far more than those on the right. You can find them easily enough if you're willing to be intellectually honest, but I'll stick to global warming for now. People unwilling to do any reading, any research beyond a movie or the last newspaper they read, assume those of us who challenge man's participation in warming don't care about the environment or just want to protect big oil. You know, Bush was in oil, his buddies are in oil, so we are all blindly against anything that might be bad for big oil!

It's funny, the left likes to portray the right as being intolerant...uh, HELLO, anybody paying attention here? This week we saw the unhinged attitude towards debate, and facts, displayed by an intolerant on air personality on the Weather Channel, a Dr. Heidi Cullen. You see Heidi thinks the American Meteorological Society should pull their certification from weatherman "who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe". Note that Heidi's show, The Climate Code, on the Weather Channel is all about global warming. Some good reading on Heidi's intolerant "no facts for you" story, links to official Weather Channel response, and debate are here!

Apparently Al Gore also runs from debate and from considering all the facts. Al's version of "no facts for you" is the omission of facts, as well as exaggeration bordering on fabrication, in his one sided movie. I've read many reviews of Al's movie, and also heard the "moving" reaction to its message from family and friends. Why is it they, you, anybody assumes the movies content is factual? Why is it an indisputable fact and not a theory that human, versus natures, created green house gases have caused warming in the last several decades?

Read the link above...it's not a very long piece...it's just one example of a very reasoned and tolerant skepitism in this debate. If you're not willing to research and refute credible information that conflicts with your position, well then, what kind of position do you have? So instead, those who can't deal with ALL the facts put there blinders on and compare people like me to Holocaust Deniers! Other than Bush-disdainia or big oil=Republican connection I don't see why man's role in global warming is a political issue. But it seems that those on the left are lining up with the side that doesn't want to consider all facts, or have honest debate, or embrace free speech that conflicts with their ideology.

Can Democrat women get away with murder?

Could you imagine the media firestorm if President Bush had initiated an organized work stoppage for himself and a large number of his staff in order to watch a college football game? Or how about if he somehow used the fact that a female Democrat was single and childless as part of an argument that she had less in the game in discussing military matters? Or replace Bush for any Republican in this hypothetical and how would the media react? However, if it's Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer you essentially get a pass from the media.

Pelosi and her fellow "we're not business as usual" Democrats decided the business of the people was less important than a college football game and let themselves off work. I'm sure millions of fireman, policeman, postal workers, auto workers, you, me and every other American would have liked their boss to say "hey, what are you doing here? Hit the nearest bar and watch the BCS championship game on me!". Then there's Pelosi's funny new calendar math. She and her party made a big deal of what they were going to do in the first 100 hours of the new congress, but apparently she's only counting "legislative hours" whatever that means.

Worse was Boxer's pathetic exchange with Secretary of State Rice over the Iraq war during an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Boxer indirectly, but with clear meaning, made the point to Rice that she couldn't understand the price of war being single and childless. There is a 100% certainty that the media and members of the Democratic Party would be in an uproar demanding apologies and resignation if a Republican lawmaker had done this.

And yet, the MSM is relatively silent. Google searches on both of these stories (at the time of my post) shows little coverage and no outrage...the hypocrisy of the media, and of Democrats, to not demand high standards of Democrats is laughable in the wake of the rhetoric in this last election.

Why Jefferson owned a Quran

When I heard newly elected Congressman Keith Ellison was to be sworn in while putting his hand on a Quran, and not a Bible, I wasn't too bothered.

Frankly I don't think this ceremony should involve any religious text...they should probably just raise their right hand and pledge their allegiance to our country and constitution. But today I learned, via an excellent piece by Ted Sampley, that Ellison didn't use his personal copy of the Quran, he used a copy that was owned by Thomas Jefferson which the Library of Congress loaned him for the occasion.

Obviously this was done to try and lessen the eye brow raising caused by Ellison using the book mostly frequently carried and quoted by terrorists the world over. Ellison commented saying he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

But, if Sampley is correct, Ellison while factually correct that Jefferson owned this text to glean wisdom, I suspect he didn't understand Jefferson's motivation for doing so. After declaring our independence from the British we lost the protection of their navy for our trade routes in the Mediterranean. Sampley says American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers"--an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Others in our fledgling government wanted to pay tribute (ransom to free our people and to clear our way) but Jefferson knew there was no negotiating with those who followed the writings in the Quran. He and John Adams had previously met with an ambassador of the Dey of Algiers and asked him why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts. Sampley then tells us that at a meeting with the American Congress the two future Presidents revealed that this Muslim leader answered this question with

Islam was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Jefferson knew that military force was required to solve the problem in the Mediterranean and did just that when he became president. Read Sampley's entire piece...it's worth it. Jefferson's Quran, and the words of the Dey of Algiers ambassador, are likely what led him to the conclusion this was an ideology rooted in hatred and barbarism. Religious devotion so misguided Jefferson knew only war would stifle it. Jefferson owned a Quran to glean wisdom on how to defeat our enemy.

Glock 26 pointed me to a WSJ's OpinionJournal post titled Why They Fight . In it, Peter Wehner, gives an excellent historical overview of Islam and in particular the Shia and Sunni factions. The extremists within these two groups are the bulk of the Islamic problem we must face. It's interesting that in the hundreds of years since Jefferson faced followers of the Quran not much has changed. Wehner reaches the same conclusion as Jefferson, as would any reasonable person in looking at the history. I believe as Wehner does that We will either defeat them, or they will come after us with the unsheathed sword.