Flat Earth or Flatly Fraudulent?

Global Warming in a Few Slides | Power Line:

Here are some charts of data and some other charts of data vs projections. BO has declared it -- this is a case where you MUST believe in projections, even if those projections have not matched actual data to date!

Believe, or you are a "Flat Earther" ... likely to be watched and audited. The freedom you have remaining is the freedom to "get your mind right" or suffer the consequences!

"The One" has spoken. Why is there any discussion??


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Liberals are God

Articles: Why Liberals Kill:

I'm a Christian, so I believe this is a question of ETERNAL life vs simply "this life", but make no mistake, World View is very much a huge question of life and death for millions in THIS LIFE!

If you read this blog regularly, you have been exposed to all these points, but the author expresses them very well, if it is a choice, just ignore my words and go read the link. It is EXCELLENT!!

One caveat, he uses the word "liberal" to mean "statist", not it's original "open minded, accepting of diverse thought, favorable  to individual liberty", which can be confusing.

As Orwell warned us, the left LOVES to take words and change the meanings ... thus changing not just current meanings, but the meaning of history and the memories of older people still living,  thereby seeking to invalidate their life experience. The left seeks to invalidate civilization and life itself in the cause of "progress" toward "heaven on earth". This quest invalidates all other morality -- God, Country, Family, Love, Tradition, etc.

Here are a couple teaser quotes, but PLESE, just read it. It does an EXCELLENT job of covering why "liberals think" the way they do, and why thinking people are in grave danger.

This brings us to a truth about the modern left. Generally speaking, like all relativistic people, liberals don't have principles. 

They have feelings. 

And feelings change with the wind. 

Of course, some have learned the hard way - mostly through debating liberals, only to find they're virtually immune to reason - that the left isn't intellect-oriented but emotion-oriented. But the question is, why do liberals deify their own feelings?

"Liberals" are NOT thinkers ... they are feelers!! Which we ALL are, it is just if we let God or an extreme devotion to something outside ourselves we consider transcendent (eg. The Constitution) help us, we can SLIGHTLY modify that!  "Liberal" thinking is ONLY to rationalize what they FEEL as being ultimate morality and truth! This difference explains why conservatives and liberals have a GREAT deal of difficulty communicating!

I've long pointed out that the most basic difference between the people we today call liberals and traditionalists [conservatives] isn't the apparent ideological divide. It is that the latter tend to believe in Moral Truth whereas liberals are almost universally moral relativists.

This is nothing less than an issue of operating in two completely different universes of reality. When you believe in Truth, morality is something objectively real to you, like matter itself. And most significantly, you view it as what it is: unchanging. This means that your yardstick for morality is the same whether convenient or inconvenient, whether you're out of power - or in power. It is unbending and non-negotiable. Oh, this doesn't mean absolutists can't betray their principles; man is weak and we all falter. But in the aggregate, it serves as a "controlling power upon will and appetite," to quote Edmund Burke, and thus mitigates man's do-what-thou-wilt default.

So liberals are moral relativists, which ends up meaning that each person and how they feel is the ultimate arbiter of morals.

Why should I subordinate my feelings to yours, especially since mine are the only ones truly real to me? This is, mind you, what contributes to the deification of the self. Liberals' feelings do for them what God does for people of faith. They tell them how to behave.

And thus they are god!! If there is no external god, if there is nothing "sacred", then the ultimate authority is **ME**!!!

and thus, "consistency is not an issue" ... ONLY HOW **I** FEEL, that is the only divinity there is!
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Government Healthcare Works in Sweden!

Obamacare in Sweden | National Review Online:

It is hard to read through something like this and even imagine how a PHD could think such thoughts.

Sweden is 3% the size of the US. Uh, lets see ... the technique I use for mailing 3 invitations will work perfectly for 100 (at least THAT scales linearly!).

I had 3 beers, it will be fine if I have 100. We have been managing our 3 person business using Quicken Home, is there any reason to suspect that we will need to make any changes as our business grows to 100 employees?

I'm hoping that SOME PHD economists might look at things a little differently ... or maybe our educational system is even worse than I think.

But as you read through this, it isn't even plain that Nationalized Healthcare does work, even in Sweden, even removing the obvious but unstated scaling fallacy.

Throw out accidental death, and the US has BETTER life expectancy than Sweden ... even as obese as we are.

The point he DOESN"T make is even worse. Consider how good your fire insurance is. You probably think "good", unless you had a recent price increase, because all you have experience with is paying it. A very very small percentage of us ever test it by having a fire.

So when you ask people in any country that has National Health about "how well they like it", because the vast majority of people are healthy, they will say "fine". Something like 70% of people will have little to no experience with it, and since it's cost is buried in taxes, it SEEMS "cheap". So it is "good".

I'm fairly convinced that for a significant percentage of the population (1/3? 40%?) they would really rather die than for there to be "expensive options" and "tough choices" rather than "standard for everyone, no choices possible" healthcare, no matter what the quality. Their views are similar for the economy ... it is more painful for some to excel than it is for the population to be "leveled" so that they need not have any thoughts about "why do I have less" ... even though, for that group, those thoughts always are at least outwardly answered by "because the system is rigged against the little guy", "because I never had a decent shot", "because life is UNFAIR!".

Which from a human perspective it often is! If you believe that is your personal case, please read this, and then reflect on "unfairness" ...  http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/.



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Wishful Warmnism Admits Defeat

Global Warming Hiatus: Where Did the Heat Go | New Republic:

 "The exception proves that the rule is wrong." That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong." Richard Feynman

I'm not going to look up any Karl Popper right now, but you can if you want to ... Feynman is of course right, but it is really even WORSE than that!  NONE of our theories are "provabile", but they are ALL falseifiable! Even E=MC**2!! One "Black Swan" and your theory is not "settled". 

Ah, but you say "that has been repeatedly PROVED true!". Indeed, it is like the guy that jumps off a 100 story building with the theory that he will survive. You ask him how his test is going as he passes the 20th floor and he says "pretty good so far". 

**IF** the warmist models had been right on the money for the past 15 years, or even if they had been right for 100 years, that doesn't "prove" anything. Newton's laws were "laws" from 1687 until the early 20th century when Einstein showed they failed at the very small, the very fast and the very high mass. 

As this article explains, the warmist models HAVE NOT been supported by observation. Even the hard core warmists are forced to admit that now ... so what they have is EXCUSES. "Well, it could be this, or that, or something else ... BUT, you had all damned well quit using carbon ANYWAY!!!" 

That part is just human wishful thinking, desire for power/control, lack of willingness to admit mistakes. There is NOTHING "new" in the "current political climate". When the rule of law and the rules of science are abandoned, this is the kind of thinking that we ALWAYS get ... see back to Lamark, Lord Kelvin talking about the age of the earth, Lysenko in the USSR, "Cold Fusion" ... and on it goes. 

Newtonian Physics was never "settled science" ... and it is very clear that Quantum Mechanics is DEFINITELY not "settled". 

So, all the things that are built on top of the Quantum Universe ... which is EVERYTHING is NOT "settled". 

When this guy talks about "today's political climate" he is completely showing his human vs his scientific stripes. 

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING NEW about folks with "sacred theories" doing a tap-dance about how their theory that doesn't match with OBSERVED RESULTS should be "given a 2nd chance". 2nd chances are for criminals, not scientific theories. 

The warmists, the progressives, the atheists and many more should at least pay heed to what was on Feynman's blackboard when he died: 

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."



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MSM on IRS etc, Get Your Mind Right!

Shifting IRS polls contradict key deposition - CNN.com:

The right message is that the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS was "accidental due to LACK of political interest".

PLEASE, get with the program! Don't be questioning IRS officials that are testifying! Have we not told you enough (wink, wink) so you KNOW what can happen to you if you get the "wrong message". The government keeps a lot of data on you, and if some of those bored $120K a year union employees would start "making mistakes" with it, well, there is really no predicting what kind of "accident" could happen!

Please, please, get your mind right!

BTW, Pravda, the old USSR "news leader", meant "Truth".

See, back when W was president, the administration did a lot of lying ... it was made fun of as "the age of truthiness" by some comics. See, Bush lied, people died. THAT administration could not be trusted. We needed a Special Prosecutor to investigate someone breaking the cover of a lady that drove to CIA headquarters every day ... I mean that is no reason to suspect she worked at the CIA just because she went there. There are LOTS of government workers that drive to buildings every day and pay a lot of union dues for whole careers, but never really "work there". In Washington, we call driving to work at the CIA every day but having it be a state secret that you "work there" to be Deep Cover!

Did I mention that we have a lot of data on you and mistakes are often made?

"Torture" (the kind we do to every one of our own Special Forces guys) NEVER works ... see, we are just wasting our time doing that to our own guys. Nobody would actually do that, because they know it is ineffective -- oh, and our Special Forces? Just bored government workers that have forgotten to stop putting the screws to their charges as part of training. Government changes slowly.

REMEMBER, the little tiny bit of data collection that we do on you foiled FIFTY (50!)+ nefarious terrorist attacks! These days we blow away suspected "terrorists" (er, well, "suspects") with drones. There is no need to ask them any questions ... asking questions never solves anything and can be confusing. Besides, we are closing Gitmo ... "soon". It was going to be day 1 of BO's first term, but it has somehow been held open by evil Republicans that clouded the minds of the patriotic Party Members when we held control of both houses in '09-'10 including the 60 votes in the Senate.  Heil BO! ... oops, strike that ... don't even think that, we would NEVER demand a loyalty oath.

 The "War on Terror" has come to an end! BO won! Personally, single handedly .... just like he killed Obama ... oh, uh, OSama. You can tell it is over because the Boston Marathon thing was a "bombing" and those poor misguided youth were NOT "terrorists". The most likely explanation for that "accident" is that we provide insufficient welfare support to our foreign guests and it is hard for nice Islamic guys to meet friends!

Ft Hood ... just "Workplace Violence" ... the idea that it had ANYTHING to do with "Terrorism" is foolish. It is like looking at the number of murders in Chicago and thinking that Gun Control doesn't work! Are you remembering the part about the data we have and "accidents"? Good.

BO is a guy you can trust!  When he says he only knows what he reads in the papers or sometimes mouths on the teleprompter. HE MEANS IT!! When he says the "War on Terror" is over, HE MEANS IT!

... and if you know what is good for you, you will remember what he tells you!!

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1,350 Weeks of WH Tours

White House defends high bills for Africa trip - Washington Times:

For the BO family trip to their homeland (as presented in "Dreams From My Father"), Americans get to spend $100M.

My thoughts:

• I'm OK with this, AS LONG AS if there ever is another Republican president, they are treated the same. W wasn't ... any sort of vacation, trip, etc was talked about as "wrong in a time of war", expensive, etc. THE SAME STANDARD needs to be applied to all presidents!! 
• However, when a president is claiming that "Sequester has crippled the government", and canceling WH tours because of it, the media needs to point out the hypocrisy of that! They can certainly do the same if an R is talking about "cutting the budget", making specific cuts that are noticed,  and then doing extravagant travel like this. NOT, usual presidential day to day including spending time at a residence, etc ... that is "part of the cost of the job". This is clearly optional, so given the position taken on WH tours, the press ought to be at least pointing out that BO is prioritizing his own stuff higher than things which might be useful to average Americans. 

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Embracing the Multiverse

Why Some Scientists Embrace the 'Multiverse' | RealClearPolitics:

I reference this mostly because it showed up ... and I'm fascinated by physics, especially the quantum stuff and the multiverse theories.

My thinking in this is as follows:

1. One will have faith in either God or in randomness and there will never be a "proof" either way from a material perspective. As this article covers however, to ignore the evidence on the side of intelligence requires a HUGE level of randomness. Note also, that God may well do "creation" through the use of "genetic algorithms" ... directed randomness. It is hard to beat the human hubris of setting up "rules" as to the boundaries in which an all-powerful, eternal and all-knowing God can operate! You WILL have faith ... it is as innate (and I'd say MORE so, because it deals with your spirit) as your heart pumping and breath being drawn.
   
2. Humans are inherently untrustworthy and especially able to fool themselves into thinking they are not  -- maybe because of random evolution, maybe because of a fall to evil ala Genesis, again, no way to know that answer scientifically/philosophically, or to believe it can be "educated away". We DO all believe something, and we act on the basis of those beliefs.
   
3. We arrived where we are today in Western Civilization either because Judaism, Christianity and Greek thought were the ordained design of God to arrive at this point, or because they were the most successful "memes" (genetic and conscious)  relative to human life and civilization. Again, only faith can select.
   
4. Since the west has rejected it's prime roots -- both classical thought and Christianity, it has already committed suicide -- low birth rate, massive debt, soaring suicide rates, exploding corruption, loss of any future direction / shared cultural vision, etc, etc. In my view, whatever happens is STILL "God's Will" ... but if one is an atheist, it would seem a really good time to check the metaphysical compass, because the current results of your belief system are not looking good. 

So every once in awhile, a monkey somewhere in some multiverse randomly plays Beethoven's 5th on a randomly created piano, but even MORE amazing, sometimes Joe Biden utters something that makes sense ... "Gird your loins"!

Where do we go from here? God, guns, gold, canned food?  I think we we need at least a "remnant" that can survive and carry the few worthwhile artifacts of Western Civilization into the future -- AND I believe that God has a definite plan, even when it seems VERY unclear!


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"Skylines" vs Ice

xkcd: Ice Sheets:

This is a great little graphic to put just a TINY smudge on the patina of human hubris. Man, those "skyscrapers" are REALLY something ... er, well, maybe not so really magnificent when compared with the continental ice sheets of a mere 21K years ago ... less than a heartbeat in geological time!

Oh how man's imaginary majesty pales next to even the tiny scale of the earth, let alone an infinite and eternal God!!

No doubt the next glaciation will be W's fault ... although I kinda like "The Gore Ice Age" if future humans have a little better sense of irony and humor!

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Space, The Superpower Frontier

Chinese Astronauts Dock With Tiangong 1 Space Platform | News & Opinion | PCMag.com:

When I was a kid the USSR put Sputnik in orbit as the first manned satellite and people in the US were shocked, outraged, and DEMANDED that we keep pace and exceed the USSR on the "high frontier".

Today? We are barely aware that that the Chinese Space Program is moving forward while we have to hitch rides to the "Dying Western Civilization Station".

We are so out of touch and so in decline that we completely lack any sense at all of our condition.

Sad how quickly a great nation fades from the world stage.

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Yellow Cake, Meaningless Facts, Stained Glass

The WikiLeaks Vindication of George W. Bush - Larry Elder - Page 1:

This article goes through a topic that I've covered before with some new data. Saddam either had WMD, or everyone thought he did. This article says that Yellowcake was acquired and was there -- to which the left will say one of two things; 1). It's a lie 2). It doesn't matter, because it isn't severe enough to go to war (with hindsight).

To which Elder tries to say "But you SAID that talking about Yellowcake WAS the "lie" ... and we had a special prosecutor and everything based on the "proof" that was a lie!"

To which the left replies "Consistency is NOT an issue ... WINNING is the issue and we already WON! BO is in power, we spy on you at will, we target you when we want to for audits or other government harassment! W is long discredited as "Bush lied, people died", the America you fought for is history, SHUT the F UP!!!!

They are "right" in the sense that "might is right". Note how unpopular "speaking truth to power" is now! The rule of law has been destroyed, our poor bankrupt children have been brainwashed to servitude and each day we realize new revelations of how we now live in a new "changed" nation, no longer America. BOville.

We have been running down this road for a century now. First slowly ... "Progressive" became "liberal" because "progressive" was tied to "Socialists" and "National Socialism" didn't turn out very well. Fascism was identified as "right" (as in "libertarian fascists") ... so the people no longer knew the difference between political left and right (statism vs extreme liberty or 'anarchy").

The "New Deal" was the "Raw Deal" for what was America. FICA was a massive assault on future generations by the current -- a time bomb that only now is becoming somewhat visible.  The various government progroms  converted the once great engine of growth into a geriatric nation with hardening arteries and gout. We live today in that sad shadow.

WMD in Iraq is just one more in a long tired litany of these topics. The Alger Hiss / McCarthy smear was a big one -- Watergate was really the left just finally getting around to punishing Nixon for being right. The release of KGB papers after the end of the USSR proved that Hiss WAS a spy and Chambers was right -- but no matter, for 90%+ of Americans, the left still won.

The whole myth of the USSR was a huge left scam. Even in the early '80s I listened to NPR breathlessly describe their "free health care", their "full employment", their "state education" ... to listen to our own Public Media, one would have thought that the USSR was heaven on earth. In the early '80s, Reagan was a MADMAN for ever suggesting that the USSR had ANY potential of ending. By the end of the '80s, the lefty message was that it had been obvious for a long time the USSR was in real trouble, and the foolish Reagan likely slowed their demise with his bellicose posturing.

It **IS** true that the winners write history -- and the left has been writing and re-writing our history for nearly 100 years.

Such is the looking glass world we live in. Acid rain, DDT, impending global starvation, the ozone hole, Japan taking over the world economy and the planet being "out of oil" in the late '70s, an impending global ice age in the early '70s, are all examples of massive "total truths" that one was once a fool to not be in agreement with. What it takes many years to learn is that from the perspective of those that purveyed and believed in those "truths", "deniers" are STILL fools, or at least "weird scary odd ducks".

When your mother asked "If all your friends jumped over a cliff, would you just follow along?", it was a trick question! The right answer is that if it was "the whole school", then YES!!! You are a social animal, and since we have thrown religion and the constitution into "the ash heap of history", a current "smart person" WILL follow the crowd -- and if tomorrow it turns out that the crowd was "wrong", that view will be completely forgotten as if it never happens. It is part of what makes it VERY uncomfortable for members in good standing of the Dominant Party (Democrat / liberal) to even TALK to someone that might bring up heresy ... The Dominant Party Message has replaced both God, the Constitution, and "foolish reality".

It looks pretty obvious from both economic and climate data that two current liberal myths that are not going to survive reality are Progressive Economics and  Global Warming, **BUT** as in the elements above, one needs to realize that DOES NOT mean that "facts, the truth, common sense, reality, etc" are going to "win".

I'm no longer certain that there exists any level of reality breaking through on these people -- we could easily be down to a few thousand people in hemp clothes shivering and starving in a cave somewhere with the onset of the next ice age, blathering away about "Global Warming", "Overpopulation", and "excessive consumption".

It seems that the best we can do is have a nicer cave somewhere with some reactors, hydroponics, connection to the sea for ice fishing and maybe some cloned woolly mammoths on the surface for steaks!  Going to have to have a REALLY good library, computer systems, AND a very nice chapel with a lot of stained glass.

We will have a lot of history to write and re-write.

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IRS, Outing Enemies

The Information-Revealing Service | National Review Online:

For you Non-Dominant Party members out there, this is the sound of the ratchet of tyranny taking a few more clicks.

We have been told what to believe about traditional marriage. The marriage of Christianity, of thousands of years of human culture. The foundation of Western Civilization. Defending traditional marriage is WRONG!

So here we have The National Organization for Marriage (NOM). An organization that already has 501c3 status

Their donor list, taken off their tax form, shows up on the website of a competing organization. There are really only two scenarios outside of space aliens that account for this. Either the IRS just leaked it as an organization, or an IRS employee committed a felony and leaked it.

This is very bad for freedom, but what is WORSE is that it is obvious that the Democrats in congress thought "NOM deserves it" ... they are a "hate organization" after all, right?? By wanting to keep marriage between one man and one woman, they have failed to leap on the current "progressive" train that first left the station in the Netherlands on April 1, 2001. (note, the first thing to go once one goes "progressive" is your sense of irony. April Fools Day in the "NETHERlands" ... "A fool says there is no God")

Marriage was marriage for millennia, then the "progressives" decide that it isn't one fine April Fools Day, and then it is downright evil to not have gotten the new word from the nether regions.

Now it is legitimate for a government agency to actively work to see that you are punished for not having your mind right on this issue.

When I was a kid, Americans discussed how the ACLU protected the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie IL even though in those days, everyone hated the Nazis.The Skokie marches were so well known that they included IL Nazis in the 1980 "Blues Brothers" movie.  The standard "end of the discussion" in those days  was "well, freedom of speech means that the rights of UNpopular speech have to be strongly protected".

People often ask, "how could something like Hitler happen"? It is pretty easy from where we are now.

• Give away power to your government.
  
• Let your government control which groups are "in" and which are "out". It felt "right" ... morally justified to be anti-semetic in 1930's Germany. The Jews had too much money. The Jews had strange religious ideas. The Jews exploited others. The Jews were bad.
  
  In the US today, "the Jews" are "The 1%", "The Religious Right", "The NRA", "Climate Deniers" or in this case "NOM".
  
• Make sure your education, media and popular culture are all "on message". People need to be made to feel uncomfortable about discussing anything that is "off message". Eg, questioning climate change when it is cold out, talking about "scandals" like the IRS, being overtly Christian, owning guns, etc
  
  Probably even MORE important is to make people feel positive, part of the group, "moral and patriotic" when supporting the "proper" policies ... supporting gay "marriage", removing gun rights, sanctioning groups that are not "correctly patriotic" (eg Tea Party)
  
• Increase the dependence on the government for daily life. People need to feel that the government is their only real protector and they need to feel a strong sense of unease if they are not in alignment with the government thought. It is CRITICAL that this be an every day thing -- their food, their medical care, their education, their information. All aspects of their life need to be seen as being tied to the goodness and approval of their benevolent government. 

Be your own judge of where we are at right now. "It can't happen here"?? I'd argue that it already has ... the 2nd Amendment and gun owners being the chief stumbling block to a "final solution".



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Worst Economic Performance in North America!

How Bad Is Obama’s Record on the Economy? This Bad | Power Line:

It is hard to overstate how damning of BO policies the chart in the linked article is. The once great US is underperforming Canada and Mexico!!

What is even harder to take is that like the various BO scandals, the "Dominant Party" absolutely does not care! One doesn't need to listen to very many of them for very long to realize that they are just fine with these results -- providing at least that "The Koch Brothers", "The Rich", "The 1%", the "Bitter Clingers", the "Haters" or whatever the whipping boy of the day "gets hurt the worst"!

It will take real loss of power, water and sewer and some hungry bellies before todays fully indoctrinated Sheeple start to realize that it is time for the people to rise up and throw off the new shackles of Bad King BO!

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Converted to Progressive!!!!

http://www.progressivesuspension.com/metric/gwmonotube/index.html

Well, for front suspension on the Wing that is! I'm a big believer in technologies capability to improve TOOLS, I just think it is absolutely inept and worse than powerless at improving MAN!

Things that make you go "Holy < expletive >"!!! I put the Progressive Monotube cartridges on the Wing, along with the "All Balls" tapered steering bearings http://wingstuff.com/products/21578-all-balls-gold-wing-steering-bearings?context=all_balls and the result is handling heaven!!

2006 Wing, 52K miles on it, tires at "half tread". Night and day on the ride and handling! Turned the the front fork from a sloppy blunt instrument into a precision carving tool. Easy 10mph faster on a 40mph curve, feeling MORE comfortable than the previous slower pace. Better handling at all speeds, better ride at all speeds, INCLUDING over sharp bumps -- no "jiggle, rattle, stutter" over a nasty expansion joint, just a semi-pleasant and confident THUMP. Maybe Scotty was wrong when he said "they canna change the laws of physics"!

I think the All Balls helped, but my guess is that it is mostly the Progressives. At the price though, it seems very unlikely that tapered roller bearings could not help SOME over the stock crap little BBs (My GOD, why would they put that kind of wimpy bearings in a $25K+ bike???

All in all a VERY impressive upgrade! 

Models or Measurements?

Global Warming Alarmism In Twilight | Power Line:

Or, when the territory and the map don't agree, GO WITH THE TERRITORY!!

The chart in the article is pretty definitive relative to ALL the existing climate models. Their projections are not coming to pass, so their chief use is as a "learning exercise". The predictions of the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 have proven to be radically wrong, so now some actual scientists need to build new theories and new models.

They need to, but I'm much less convinced than PL that they will. My view is that we are firmly in Lysenko territory on warmism in the US and West. Much more damage will need to be done before science starts to win out over political power on climate.

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Stone Flavors

Fine Whining | Power Line:

A fun little article from PL poking a little fun at wine review pretensions -- "stone flavors". My suspicion is "stonED flavors" might be more to the point.

Anyway, it brought back memories of my dabbling in "High End Audio" ... sound stage, imaging, tubes, amps and cables better found on arc welders, insanely expensive everything, gigantic speakers with a "Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) of 0.0 ... well, you get the picture.

The two main magazines were "The Absolute Sound (TAS)" and "Stereophile", which we christened "The OBSOLETE Sound" and "Stereo Pile".

TAS would brook no digital -- the sweet sound of vinyl and tubes were the only way to sound NERDvana. Digital and integrated circuits produced "a threadbare mid-range", "an emaciated mid-bass", and "lacked palpable presence".

None of us ever went completely whole hog, although a couple buds had very nice systems and there were certain songs that to this day remind me of us crowding together to try to get in "the sweet spot" ... "Riders on the Storm" by the Doors and "Fast Car" by Tracey Chapman leap to mind ... but there was a lot of Jennifer Warnes, some Pink Floyd and other interesting stuff as well.

Yes, there was pretension and quite a bit just imaginative posturing, but it was a lot of fun!!! Sometimes I think that my friends and I may have "grown up" just a bit too much!!

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Manufacturing Drops–Unexpectedly! | Power Line

Manufacturing Drops–Unexpectedly! | Power Line:

I've very much noticed the "unexpectedly" theme on NPR. When you believe that the BO policies are excellent and that government can solve all problems, how in the world can such a thing happen?? It continues to be AMAZING to these folks.

They were equally surprised when the economy did well after 2001 and during the '80s with Reagan.

How strange. It is like the USSR not turning out to work very well. An ongoing and forever unexplained SHOCK to the wise of the left.

Those of us who are fools see those things as "learning opportunities", the wise of this world see them as creation itself -- "unexplainable random happenings".

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Let's Civilly Murder the NRA

Left-wing journalism professor calls for mass slaughter of NRA | Human Events:

One of many of the common viewpoints of the "civil left", with this one just presented in print.

Those NRA guys are obviously completely nuts to suggest that there is support out there for the government to use violence to target people that make use of their Constitutional Right to Bear Arms. Oh wait, that is exactly what he is espousing -- he just has a very poor understanding of warfare.

One would REALLY think that after the Civil War, Vietnam, Mogadishu, Iraq, Afghanistan and a few others, that even the most daft of the US populace would get the picture that an armed populace is one of the LEAST desirable  things for any military to take on. (Check how well the French did in Indochina or the Soviets in Afghanistan).

My guess is that he would be much less sanguine about an F22 or M1A1 taking out his conservative neighbor if it were to happen, but then folks like him live in some universe that is very hard to capture the quantum shift zenith for.

Note how little we hear about "civility" these days. I actually like that part -- it is like the reprieve from "Global Warming" here in MN this spring. Oh, I know, like mosquitoes  the buzzing will be back, but those of us some small semblance of our own minds as free people need to find our small enjoyments when we can!

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The Ruling Party Punishes On

IRS may have targeted conservatives more broadly | McClatchy:

Could we just all be a tiny bit honest about this as a nation? The ruling party (Democrats) by virtue of owning education, media and government workers Federal, State, and Local, could care less if some "conservatives" suffer because of their views. The official Party position is "they deserve it" -- a lot. Some of them are even standing up and saying "Thanks IRS"!! They believe this is appropriate!!

As Reagan long pointed out, the left feels that "Free Speech" is the right to agree with them in lock step politically and to offend people with any sense of propriety or Christians as much as desired. Naturally, offending Muslims, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, or any other "special group" is "hate speech". Pick on Christians, white males or gun owners if you want to hate somebody legally.

Since BO is Black, the difference between "Political Speech" and "Hate Speech" is especially blurred right now.

There are a lot of very sad stories n the linked article about military veterans that decided to support a conservative cause being targeted, pro-life groups being told how they could speak, etc. For those that believe in the Rule of Law and the Constitution, these things are "chilling".

The MOST "chilling" however is that we now have actual admissions by the IRS that specific groups were targeted on the basis of political views, and the general level of outcry in the American public is minimal. The left is fine with this. The left sees this as "just". The left doesn't want to discuss it and simply labels it as "partisan politics" and a "Republican Issue".

This ought to be an AMERICAN ISSUE, with 80-90% of the population DEMANDING immediate and strong action to find out exactly who is responsible, how high it went, and doing strong prosecution + new government controls to insure this never happens again! This is WAY bigger than any scandal in my lifetime. Watergate was a burglary that really affected nobody. Iran / Contra was internal executive / legislative infighting. Monicagate was only bad in that Slick skated on actions in the workplace that would get anyone else in the country fired.

This is the government attacking American Citizens because of their political views. This is a core attack on the meaning of what America once was.

We have `crossed a line where behavior by government that is very clearly UNAMERICAN in the strongest terms is now completely acceptable to at least half of the population as long as it is "groups on the right" that are attacked by the government. They believe that it is right for them to benefit because of their political views and for others to be punished because of their political views!

This is how things operated relative to the Communist Party in the USSR and the National Socialist Party in Germany! Now we have it here!

THIS is why the 2nd Amendment is worth dying for. We are in extremely dangerous territory.

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Good News Statistics

Charts That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity - Business Insider:

I look through these charts and here are a few things that come to mind:

• A lot of the best trends in these charts were due to the '80s in the US and the end of the USSR in '91. (looking at the Wiki entry with "USSR 1922-1991" still brings a smile to my face! A well deserved trip to the ash heap of history!) 
• We were complete idiots to vote for "change" in '06 and beyond. We as a nation had no clue how good we had it. 
• It is absolutely obvious that the "progressive" fetish with "environmentalism" and "guns" is simply about CONTROL -- the results have been GREAT on both fronts, but that doesn't stop "progressives" from demanding more control. 
• We had it too good for too long and while needs are finite, wants never are. One doesn't need a Gulfstream jet, but one can certainly want one and even feel it is "unfair" that others have one. We killed the goose of productivity that was laying the golden eggs because we demanded more RIGHT NOW!
• The big missing things on these charts are birth rate, single parent families, % getting government assistance, % working and % regular church attendance. Those are all in trouble and they spell our doom.
• In 20 years, those of us still living will be able to look back at '06 as the year that we "chose poorly". Will we be able to talk about it without being incarcerated or worse? 

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Must Read, Solzhenitsyn at Harvard 1978

Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address:

I'd just started at IBM a few days before this address. Fresh out of college, other than a moderate level of Christian faith, a poster child for the materialist decadence Solzhenitsyn calls out.

This was the last time that Harvard allowed anyone that wasn't a "liberal in good standing", and usually an intellectual lightweight as well (this year it is Oprah) to take their "pulpit".  In 1978 the "Iron Information Curtain" fell one more notch after this speech. It continued the trend from "God and Man At Yale"  by Buckley in the '50s, and "The Closing of the American Mind" by Bloom documenting the '60s. The trend that would continue as religion was ever removed from the public square, and the voices of those that would stand for the necessary connection of man to God would be silenced in the academy as the once great America became ever more ruled by "The Party" (D).

This is all WELL worth the 20min it takes to read it. Solzhenitsyn was a prophet. He foresaw that the USSR was so corrupt it would not stand, and he foresaw that the west would lack the courage and conviction to deal with the terrorist/Muslim scourge. He saw the shape of our decline and suspected as I do that the odds against the recovery of civilization, at least without hundreds or thousands of years of a "Dark Age" ruled by evil were very long.

This paragraph is just a teaser. I strongly recommend reading it all!

 "To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections."

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