Liberals, Really?

Tea Party this, Tea Party that. Seriously? Get a grip! It is a battle of ideas necessarily articulated in a convincing way that successfully counters opposing ideas and concepts by defeating them with a logic that resonates with voters.

The perceived facts on the table are that we have, and are continuing to, spend more dollars than we can reasonably derive from the economy. The vast majority of the arguments presented in by Dowd, et al call for greater taxes and cuts in the defense budget - 20% of the budget - as though that will make it all groovy.

This is the polarized thinking of the late 1960's out and really needs revisiting. Social Security is 21% of the budget. Medicare and Medicaid is another 20% with other Income Security another 7%. Some fresh, imaginative thinking is needed on the other roughly 48% of the bugeted spending that is doing more to harm the middle and lower classes by way of inflation than any scheme dreamed up by the ruling class every time the Treasury and the Federal Reserve create more dollars and more debt.

If the Tea Party is anything, it is an amalgation of the frustrated voices of some Americans who have come to believe that they do not have any voice in a government that seemingly works against them at every turn and is unraveling the conception of America that they hold.

Truth be told, much of the elitist, progressive agenda has brushed them off as 'fly overs' and irrelevant. That was and is a tactical mistake. In the rush to achieve liberal/progressive goals, a significant portion of the population has been excluded and is, albeit belatedly, objecting. As they find themselves increasingly priced out of existence, even as they do all the things that are supposed to work, they look for a solution to the question of "Why?".

When searching for a solution one must first discern causes, effects and the outline the proper sequence of steps that will lead to remediation and restoration. Unsurprisingly, they have discovered that beyond taxation the greatest progenitor of their disaffection from their expected reward to be the cruel price inflation caused by the bailing out of everyone but them. The lower classes have their safety net (albeit with inflation diminished results), the upper class has their exoneration from the suffering the consequence of their actions ( much more reduced in their impact) but the working stiff has once again been stiffed. No jobs, higher prices, home values shrunken to a joke. Predictability they are angry. Who in their position wouldn't be?

Yet here we are fretting about higher taxes which we all know invariably result in higher spending rather than spending constraint to a managing and -God forbid! - reducing the debt that is driving the inflation in prices in everything but the value of their prime asset, their home which is going to hell in a hand basket.

Their argument goes, "You don't deserve any more money until you learn to manage the money you are already receiving!" bears some merit. Any reasonably responsible parent would say the same to their child.

Perhaps it would be of value to stop dismissing and objectifying alternative views and pay some attention to what drives their concerns in a constructive way. After all, not everyone lives in Manhattan - or wishes to.

The Actual Choice - Cutting Now or Crashing Later

General - Deficit spending has gone unaddressed for close to forever but definitely for the past 45+ years as if there was no end in sight. Well here we are at the bitter end and we can either whine about what was done or correct the errors, work back the debt in a disciplined way and leave the balance sheet in far better shape than when we inherited it and leave the stewardship issues for the generations that follow.

This will require a determination and vigilance that is usually reserved for states of war. Everyone's ox will get gored and the gravy trains must be derailed and the track bed shredded if it's going to take.

I believe that the free market system will kick in and unforeseen forces will come into play that will offset some of the perceived "pain" that will be required to get us healthy and fit again.

Military (-40%) We have to give up trying to fix the world on the US taxpayer's dime. NATO was one thing following a WWII crushed Europe. The same goes for SEATO and the rest. If we are going to provide security services then either we get paid market rates for it from countries than can well afford it or they can step up and develop their own security forces. We have been played like an addled uncle.

Medicaid (-40%) There has always been a thorn in my side when working people can't afford medical care but those who need/choose to learn how to work the system can get a much higher level of care on the taxpayer's dime. It encourages the 20th century version of slavery.

The desire to have and provide essential medical care to one's family should be part of one's compensation package and be an earned benefit - not a right. Reliance on Mediaid should be limited to episodic care that is either less than or equal to basic compensation based coverage, not superior to it.

I am aware that there are those who believe that they are incapable of working in a traditional 40 hour/5 day structure and they may be correct to a point. I suggest that this is a learned mindset aided by enablers who profit from keeping their client roster popuilated and politicians that need a class dependent on them. Unlike Massa's on the plantation, any robust entrepeanuer will recognize the opportunity here when a significant number of these people can provide minimally time sensitive production from a home based computer.

Open up Medical Insurance Co-ops so small business' can incorporate this as part of a predictable compensation expense.

Medicare (-40%) Means Test 101, Part A. Then roll this back until it's able to be done away with. Medical savings accounts are the wave of the new future that makes personal, employer and corporate responsibility the key to continued coverage. I am not talking about , "a gun to your head" government mandate but a social mandate of what is right, reasonable and acceptable business practice.

Social Security (+/-) Quick test question here. Is Social Security a funded by withholding from both the employer and the employee retirement account or is it a taxpayer funded entitlement? We were sold on the supposition the former state of affairs and labored a lifetime under the assumption that the money taken from our employers and us was being held in an inviolate trust account. That money was then "invested" in government securities so it is now part of the national debt. It's time to get honest and honor the 14th amendment's 4th clause and stop pretending SS is an expenditure from tax revenues. It's a matter of paying back what was already borrowed and spent from our trust fund.

Other (-50%) Run the government on the cheap - just like business has to.

Income Taxes (+8%) I favor the doing away of the tax structure as it stands. All deductions, subsidies, and the rest do not serves the national interest. A flat consumption tax added at each stage of transfer of materials and developed products all the way to the end consumer should take it's place. This should also be applied to imported goods and services with the tax based on the cost were the items originated and completed here.

This could be managed in such a way that it would do away with huge swaths of bureaucracy there to filter special case treatments engendering further cost effective savings.

Payroll Taxes (+8%)

Corp Taxes (+8%)
--------------------------------------------
Deficit neutral in 2012, minimum - $0.5 T in 2014 and up to -$0.75 T years following.

Debt to GDP from 70% in 2012 declining to ~ 22% in 2021

Revenue exceeds spending from 2013 out.
2013 $0.3 T
2014 $0.5 T
2015 $0.6 T
2016 $0.6 T
2017 $0.6 T
2018 $0.7 T
2019 $0.6 T
2020 $0.8 T
2021 $0.7 T

This comes to $5.4 T debt reduction over 9 years. Extended out and with further cuts in the future as social programs are scaled back to zero can put us in a debt neutral position in 25 to 30 years.

$14,653,833,000,000 and counting up at $2.88 BILLION a day is that huge a debt.

Watermelon Anyone?

This one's a keeper. I think it would be a wonderfully teachable moment to give the Baaaa-ma (I'd say Bama but Alabama deserves better) a permanent time out and take away his jets, helicopters, limos and all those mad cool techie toys the POTUS gets to use and get along on his pension that unfortunately we must pay under the 14th amendment and as an unemployed nut deprived "advocate" a la Bill Clinton so he can think he's finally feeling the pain of the disenfranchisement he claims to champion. The only question that remains is if his wife, the black version of Soupy Sales White Fang, will run for the Senate in some socialist stronghold and keep the nightmare alive.

On a related note, I had an interesting moment this evening. One of those little quick mind photos that perfectly encapsulate a much larger issue.

I was driving down the Harlem River Drive at the exchange where it becomes the FDR Drive and there was this very well developed and very physically strong looking black male off on the side of the road selling watermelons holding what appeared to be a length wise quarter section over his head with a sign that stated, "THE AVERAGE WHITE MAN SPENDS TOO MUCH MONEY."

(I'm not making this up - facts are facts and yes, I wish traffic was slow enough to take a picture.)

Seriously? WTF are you saying? WTF are you really about?

Somewhere in this tableau was a perfect depiction of the the incoherent thought process of entitlement based on assumptions of a racist mind. The scenario was finely tuned to guarantee a complete satisfaction of a thesis.

The successful or even slightly successful selling of his inventory to what would be largely white or at a minimum upmarket drivers would signify their agreement that yes, white men do indeed spend too much money because they have an unfair and unearned share of wealth and that the white male owes money to this watermelon seller and in fact all people he designates as deserving of redistribution to.

Failure to turn a reasonable profit on his enterprise supplies clear proof that white men are greedy and undeserving holders of undeserved wealth who have it in for the black man.

This is exactly the tactic that has worked so well for the likes of Jesse "call me Reverend" Jackson, Al "The Reverend" Sharpton and the rest of the race card guilt dealing radicals.

Thankfully we are helping kill the effectiveness of this tactic by showing it for what it is - and by buying our melons at our local grocer supporting our own towns and business people who we freely choose to support.

Who Is The Real Despot?

At some point one has to get honest and look at the facts of history, of modern events, of the polemics presented not merely for the consumption of the 'outside' world stage and for the mass consumption and promulgation of the lazy and complicit western media for their indoctrinated idiots worldwide - but also those much sharper tirades aimed at the adherents they hold as slaves to their control as well.

Israel, a tiny democratic republic fragment on the coast of a huge despotic quasi empire that has taken the riches of their resources for a privileged few while leaving their people in abject poverty and ignorance under the veil of a grand caliphate that somehow honors their version of a god that they can use to retain their utter control of their masses with.

We don't insist on their destruction of Arabs, Palestinians, Persians, Pakistanis, Islamists of any stripe or the rest of the masses arrayed against the rest of the world. If anything, we hope for their elevation into educated and aware individuals who can see past the constructs of those that oppress and enslave them by blaming their poverty on others as they themselves live well beyond any western concept of wealth and riches and certainly beyond any concept of sharing the wealth so popular with the left.

In the meanwhile, peaceful coexistence is not in their vocabulary. Rather, they insist on the destruction of the Jews and (for now at least) the subjugation of the non-believing masses under their utopian dream of a world wide Caliphate. Intellectually compromised and blinded, indoctrinated idiots in the west will miss this a lifetime while they spout platitudes and quote studies of predetermined results performed by likewise intellectually and emotionally biased charlatans that clock themselves as "academicians".

Hopefully there are enough "undereducated" or just plain intelligent and honest informed observers and students of history to stand against the tide of bovine leavings that pass for their intellectual product as they incestuously quote each other, offering their product as food rather than the end product of it's consumption that it is.

At some point an individual needs to either stand on and for - their honor, their principles and what is morally right. Of course those with none of the above will have no such constraint and travel with the herd into the slaughter shed - mooing loudly and self contentedly all the way.

Sunday May 1, 2011

“First, I am really thankful that our troops executed the mission without any injury. I am personally very, very happy that we have finally taken out this sick animal and sent him to his just recompense. We have cause for joy and should savor this moment.

Tonight, I headed over to the WTC site for a bit. It was still a small (for NYC) but full throated celebration with me joining in on the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star Spangled Banner. But my quiet sense of satisfaction and homage at the day’s news didn’t match up well with the exuberance of the crowd.

We have won a victory that is more the winning of a battle of undetermined value than winning the war. It is my sense of things that we must be careful against allowing our joy to transform into smugness. That was the mistake we made following the WTC attack on February 26, 1993 which helped pave the way for 9/11.

The war continues and will continue until the motivation to subjugate others by force to a global Caliphate fades away to the point of becoming a gnat on an elephant’s rump .

Come the morning we will still have work to do and battles to fight and win.”

Pakistani Treachery and Bin Laden's Demise

Pakistan's Prime Minister Gilani is almost utterly correct when he attempts to deflect the glaring fact of his country's complicity when he characterized the intelligence failure as being that of the whole world. No one knew until recently that top Pakistani active and retired military were keeping Bin Laden safe under their wing. As for his own 'plausible deniability' position that may sell in Islamabad or to the ears that wish to hear that kind of tripe. But that dog won't hunt. As for Pakistan's transparent duplicity, on this and how much more we aren't hearing about ... yet, they now stand naked before the world.

It is precisely for that reason that the United States had to take unilateral action. Informing the Pakistani authorities would have resulted in Bin Laden's hasty departure.

As for whether or not he was in fact armed at the moment he was shot it is a moot issue. Once he was told to freeze if he made any motion suggesting non-compliance it was a reasonable assumption that someone who has used suicide bombers, and airplanes would not hesitate to seek to kill the force that sought his capture. Unlike his mislead zealot adherents, Americans do not seek to die for the cause, but are culturally imbued and militarily trained to arrange for the enemies to die for theirs.

Obama's sound decisions - the burial at sea and to withhold the photographs - have presented me the unique experience of finding myself supporting his actions. The many victims worldwide of Bin Laden's bombs and airplanes were denied any kind of proper burial. Explosions, plane crashes and building collapses tend to destroy the possibility any such consideration. He was in fact given much more. He received a proper Muslim funeral with all it's considerations and ceremonies.

His burial at sea was just. As with the withholding of the photographs, it denies his supporters and disciples the shrine they undoubtedly crave just as the families of those he murdered were denied that rest to their souls.

Karma is indeed ... a bitch.

If the reaction of many liberals to yesterday's tragic events in Tuscon wasn't so transparently, knee-jerk stupid it might be amusing. Instead it is a sickening display of emotional immaturity and intellectual dishonesty.

Rather than joining with all people of good will no matter what their political views in repulsion and contempt for the actions of what was apparently a deeply disturbed and sick young man, the rush to place blame politically is it's own mini tsunami of mental and emotional imbalance.

When a child interprets events through the prism of their emotions alone while discounting the emotional reactions of others is understandable and in the words of such progressives it's, "a teachable moment." When adults respond as that child, then a pathology is in play and rather than it being cause for that "teachable moment" it is better addressed by mental health professionals in hopes that therapy might offset their disorder.

A review of the NYT article, "In Attack’s Wake, Political Repercussions" and the comments following the targets for blame have been all their opponents. The Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Republicans, Glenn Beck, Fox News, gun control laws, the State of Arizona, and all sorts of boogeymen that the left hates.

Somehow it is irrelevant, or at least inconvenient and thereby in need of spin, that the shooter was found to have copies of both the "Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kamph" both socialist and both not only the antithesis of the Tea Party agenda but much closer to their own philosophies of state control.

Ignoring the truth that socialists have no such problem with guns, [Mao, one of their own, noted it was his view that, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."] they equate gun control with peace and safety. It is a false comfort?

New York City has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country. What has been the result? Criminals and crazies have no problem getting guns since they could care less about the law.

Is anyone really safer for it? While in recent years gun involved deaths have gone down (2007 496 murders, 397 by gun - 2008 523 murders, 292 by gun) murder by knives, bludgeoning and other means has actually increased. So then is it really safer to be slashed or stabbed to death than shot? Apparently not. It's just quieter up in the ivory towers of denial.

Uh, Hello? TSA, This is For You.

To listen to the “Progressives” and their putative head honcho , George ‘Only Kidding I'm Not Really A Schwartz’ Soros, the great fault is that Obama has failed to properly sell their agenda. From ObamaCare to Arizona to… well… the TSA, they have a point.

I know, I know ... I never thought I would find myself in agreement with them on anything, BUT I have followed The Huffington Post as their front man suggested and find that is the chief complaint registered by the commu, I mean the Progressives. I find myself saying, they have a legitimate complaint and it requires our attention.

Obama has not done a proper job of marketing their concepts and desires under a proper veil of hyperbolic misdirection that Americans have been used to. Granted, his election run-up handlers worked the meaningless, “Change You Can Believe In” brand very effectively going into the 2008 election. The inauguration was a smashing multicultural tear fest born of the joy that we, as Americans, had come so far as to elect a BLACK POTUS. It was, on a gut level, truly AWESOME!

Then came the ruling part. Given overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress there was no longer a need to market the product. The semi-somnolent populace had repudiated the excesses of the Bush II era and wanted change. Power was secured and assured.

Then came the administration's ill considered continuation of the concept of Moral Hazzard, ‘Too Big To Fail’ and the tossing aside of the normal bankruptcy law and process and the displacement of the proper place of bond holders in favor of the unions. It didn’t matter what other lesser, unaffiliated pension plans would suffer, the United Auto Workers were secured and, more accurately, strengthened. 'Taxpayers be damned, just pay a portion of the AFL-CIO bill we owe. We are in power.', was the clear message. Off-putting on it's face but worse was to come.

Next came the ObamaCare legislation. Opposed by well over half to two-thirds (it depends on which poll you favor) of the population and utter disbelief of the promises issued by “The One” regarding the cost savings, the lack of “Death Panels”, the ability to, “keep your doctor”, and the statements of House Speaker Pelosi such as, “We have to pass the bill so that you can see what is in it.”.

Clearly a marketing failure since the outright lies, I mean presentations, were on their face; ridiculous, dismissable and clearly unsustainable. We all know, that in these 'green is all the rage screw the real science.' days, the key selling point is use of the word, “sustainable” it's the pablum for everything adding weight to the presentations for weak, if present at all, minds. Damn poor marketing job there 'O'!

The commu, I mean the Progressives, [damn, I just can't get my vocabulary up to date, can I?] are properly angered that the mid-term elections have been a strong repudiation of their aspirations. Were I them, I would be too! A poor marketing job by the arrogant,elitists! When seeking to undermine a constitutional republic and it's Constitution, it is clearly not the way to go. Silly egoists, naked power grabs must be properly obscured by the raiment of Patriotic sounding marketing lest the King be shown to naked, flabby, weak and despicable. How dare these elitists be so … so ... so nakedly elitist!

Now we come to the autumn of our people's (widely felt) discontent. The TSA has decreed that every single airline passenger be either stripped naked by a scan with dubious levels of radiation despite the established fact that sonar devices used elsewhere are as effective and less intrusive into archives they can’t possibly store, but will nonetheless be readily provided to a federal prosecutor should there be an putatively actionable impropriety, (hat tip to Mr. Chertoff’s profiteering) or fondled by a mass of Federally authorized, just above minimum wage earners ($10.91 an hour? Seriously?), whose morals and proclivities are beyond reproach because the government - which, since they rule and don't have to actually manage a damn thing effectively and typically can’t manage breaking through a wet paper bag - says so, can grope men, women and children – admittedly as young as thirteen but proven younger than that. Remember 13, would you be cool with having your budding breast, or often embarrassing unpredictable genitals be groped? Not to worry. This is in service to the collective I mean society’s security.

Security - more truthfully the illusion of it as it has been propagated since 9/11 - is all about showmanship and has little to do with actual security but everything to do with the stripping away the freedoms we once took for granted. In reality this illusion operates as though we should be convinced that the plotters that demand America’s utter destruction and the death of our citizens aren’t listening and watching while they chuckle and devise new non metallic, body cavity insertable, scan proof devices and celebrate the "death by a thousand cuts" tactic they are employing as we spend billions of dollars on useless preventative measures.

I find my overall sensibilities place me on a more Libertarian than either liberal or conservative footing. So being a huge fan of individual liberty and a realist in that certainly we cannot, or at least should not, surrender complete freedom I suggest the following:

1. Every single passenger arrive at the airport four hours before their flight (bring a picnic lunch) and present themselves for TSA review.
2. That each checkpoint be manned by only stunningly attractive individuals. Keep the obviously unattractive on standby for the odd taste.
3. Allow each passenger the option of which TSA operative can grope them without sexual discrimination. Hetero males would certainly not object to a firm ‘Freedom Pat’ from a hottie female and their wives could – perhaps in retaliation – select the buff, stunning male hard body that their husbands aren’t in the realm of ,"'Fair Play’ you friggin’ jerk!" Or perhaps the males would select a harsh male (against their natural choice) to prove their fidelity (and avoid the unfortunate harsh aftermath of their indiscretion) either way it takes the mind off the intrusive invasion of one’s ultimate privacy itself.
4. Rather than the TSA assigning males to grab young boy’s private parts, mother’s could select a female out of an affinity for materialism and their awareness of the obvious statistic that most pedophiles are male.

You can readily see where ridiculous subjugation of the masses is easily accomplished by the application of the propaganda of behavioral modification in the place of brute force.

Now when Al Quaeda comes up with it’s low cost, loser employed anus bomb we can be ready. Body cavity searches? See above for the sure fire marketing approach. Sonograms? Same as above but add the bonus benefit of a free sonogram available to that doctor you got to keep and we will have kept the terrorists from winning!

If only The Obamessiah had Hillary's balls to regally sell it!

From Inside The Global Warming Debate - A Man Of Integrity

Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal
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Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

I may be just a Homer Simpson as Cass Sunstein posited, but this Homer has a few observations to make. Since voter fraud is going on in many states, aided and abetted by the Obama/Holder DOJ, are the citizens of that state not being defrauded by an illegal dissolution of their vote’s value? As inconvenient as it may be shouldn't we be able to seek peaceful redress through that other inconvenience a.k.a. the Judicial branch?

If so, can we not sue for enforcement of validating a voter’s citizenship? I’d be happy to provide my bona fides such as my birth certificate and my passport and to demand that the registrars demand that of me. I don't think in this post modern world we would object to the same requirement as was common when I got my driver's permit.

I can understand that in decades past this wasn’t done due to the sketchiness of records and abuses practiced against blacks. All well & good. But we are well past thinking of the old century at this stage of the game. I’d even be willing to accept setting a birth year like 1930 as the entry point for proof of citizenship.

Let’s get back on course and ensure the validity of our elections, stop creating incentives like amnesty and control immigration to levels we know we can absorb without impoverishing the people who are already citizens.

You know, it's funny how when we’re exporting jobs we’re schooled on how it’s a global economy but when it comes to illegals coming here and taking jobs we’re being schooled how they vitalize the economy. If that were looked at as a single presentation we would conclude a global economy would not necessitate the need for illegal construction workers at the Colin Powell household since unemployed people already here with at least the same skill set would be more than happy for the work.

With a real unemployment rate of over 21% [not the published 9.8% and definitely not counting the underemployed] and an "official" black unemployment rate of almost 17% which is probably more like 39.5 or higher - isn't is curious that Obama, who enjoys overwhelming support of the black community, is selling them cheap for illegal votes?

I seem to remember something in the oath of office about, preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States. Or has that gone out of fashion lately?

The Cordoba House Cultural Center

Were I to take the Cordoba Initiative's statements at face value, as so many have, I would believe that they are seeking to establish a cultural center in Lower Manhattan which just so happens also has a prayer space. According to their website they are about, "Providing expert knowledge of Islamic Law and other technical subjects for use in the public square." They go on to say that the results of this engagement of the thought process has resulted in, "Raising the bar of Islamic governance in Muslim-majority countries." Nice ambiguous Obama type language. What bar will they be raising?

I take it the community center won't be hosting Sadie Hawkins or Gay Muslim Men dances. But what exactly will they be offering the community? Perhaps some courses in Sharia Law:

Beheading 101 - One Stroke or Two? Skills development seminar.
Stoning 115 - Right Sizing Your Stone Selection to make it last.
Beating Females 267 - Within an inch of their life or go for it? What Would Mohammad Do?
Nose and Ear Bobbing 397 - Keeping your young wives, daughter or sisters in line all the time.
Dancing and Makeup 001 - (For pre-pubescent boys only.) This course explores the essentials of keeping the customers satisfied.
Trans-Generational Marriage 000 - For pre-pubescent girls only. Learn how to keep your 50+ new husband from beating and disfiguring you ... too much.
Neurological Severing 499 - The definitive advanced course in fine tuning that Sharia Standard.

Well, I've got to go now. I want to be off the street before the call to prayer comes blasting through the WTC site ... for the 5th time today.

Cui Bono?

Townhall.com

There is nothing amazing about the flood of illegal Mexican immigration. For Mexico, the Mexican-American War did not end with their signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) nor with their signing of the Protocol of Querétaro (May 26, 1948). To bastardize von Caluswicz, 'it is the continuation of war by other means.'

THE MEXICANS: The interests of the majority of Mexican people here illegally are apparent as are the interests of the more nefarious. The first group is well represented by humanists, one worlders and the rest ... the second by conspiracy theorists, NORML and the rest of that contingent.

What is being studiously ignored is the Mexican government's policy of active encouragement of emigration to the extent they are in a panic that the status quo might change. The benefit to the Mexican government is at least two-fold. First, the least desirable, unemployable bottom layer of their society goes away. It is no longer their problem to feed, clothe, house or provide medical care to the rabble that might otherwise be aroused against the corrupt governments that permeate Mexico's political infrastructure.

The other benefit is the Billions of American dollars that flow in from the emigrants to families back home (est. $10 Billion in 2003); the drug cartels income from the export of controlled substances (est. $39 Billion USDOJ) and of course the U.S. Government's Billions spent or given to Mexico for the "drug war". For Mexico it's a win-win situation all around.

THE EMPLOYERS: Again, nothing new here on the part of the employers themselves. Lower costs equal fatter bottom line. What is a new, and curious, wrinkle is how unions such as SEIU and the AFL-CIO have taken on the role of advocate for the very people who are diluting their member’s wages and work opportunities. You have to ask, "who's paying who for what?"

THE AMERICAN POLITICIANS: As noted above their motivation is also pure greed. They sell amnesties from the law as the Catholic Church did with indulgences before Martin Luther.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: Opposed by the illegal immigrants, passed over by the employers and ignored by the corrupt politicians – the people need to wake up and stay in to game more than part of an election cycle to counter the abuse they are suffering and demand either a restoration of their freedoms and protections from the government and the dilution of those rights caused by the reformation that has been underway in America or, as Jefferson pointed out, dissolve the bands and start the formation of a new republic.

RIGHTS & responsibilities

I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see the old marriage of "Rights & Responsibilities" get back together in the social contract. There was a wonderful coupling if ever there was one.

The marital trouble started back in the 1960's when Rights social esteem rose dramatically while Responsibilities was pushed to the background staying at home taking care of the chores that maintain the American family. It was under the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) administration that many historical wrongs that existed in the order of things were being addressed. While great, deserving strides were made - the overall approach elevated Rights but set the stage for the divorce by not also emphasizing personal and corporate responsibility.

Certainly the liberation radicals were having a field day. As radicals do, they took their cause to an unsustainable extreme. The government, stuck into a morass of it's own creation by dalliance and micro mismanaging of the military in Viet Nam, failed to effectively manage the domestic issues of that day.

Continuing into the Richard Milhouse Nixon (RMN) administration the liberation movement expanded to include the feminists, the homosexuals, and any other group that now defined itself by their perceived disenfranchisement. Still faced with the Viet Nam involvement (to call it a war is a misnomer less for the lack of a formal declaration of war and more because it was never fought as an all out war - more a large police action) the Nixon administration sought to secure the south and turn the fighting over to the South Vietnamese.

While seeking a second term Nixon's people at the RNC were caught running an espionage operation against the DNC which culminated with the Watergate Impeachment Hearings and Nixon stepping down amid his Vice President, Spiro Agnew having been indicted after investigation on of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy. The fact that his hand picked successor, Gerald Ford, granted him a full pardon one month after taking office as POTUS was the last nail in the coffin of confidence in any public official by a large cross section of the population.

This was the final act that that placed personal responsibility in a coma and set RIGHTS on the unmitigated drunken bacchanal that has led to the current sense of victimization and unlimited entitlement. Presidents and politicians, with a rare exception of sorts in Ronald Reagan and a few others, have acted as enablers making excuses and providing the money to keep this self destructive bender from ending in the inevitable consequences and the necessary intervention.

We now find ourselves in a recession, the economic consequence of too much exuberance and without the resources to continue as we have the past 45 or so years. But the intervention has yet to take place. The enablers that have set aside personal and corporate responsibility are still in denial regarding their role in causing it's ongoing comatose state.

There is a reckoning coming. The party will end and very few in authority want to tell the partiers it's gotten late and it's time to call it a day. The current demonstrations demanding even more RIGHTS from the enablers in education, health care, job creation, unemployment coverage will only grow more frequent and - in all likelihood - more violent once the inevitable day dawns.

Doggereletic Diarrhea

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For Mrs. Smith & Her Compatriots

Irene Smith, who lost her son Leon, a firefighter at Ladder Co. 118 in Brooklyn Heights, lays bare a truth that startles me every year at this time. "Throughout the year, I always feel I'm going fine, but as soon as 9/11 comes around, I feel like I'm back to square one. I feel like it was just like yesterday. The families will never forget -- rain, hail, shine, whatever."

Thankfully, I am not in that same group. My daughter-in-law was not at her desk on the 22nd floor of the South Tower that morning. My grandson, a first grader a few blocks north at P.S. 89 on Warren Street was picked up and evacuated by a family friend. My brother-in-law got clear even though he was caught out in the open when the South Tower came down. I made it through and can sit here eight years later and write this piece. Still, each in our own way, we note the day. Each in our own way feel the weight of our own remembrances.

For me each year brings the determination to stoically face it this time. Each year brings the anger. Each year reopens the unhealed wound. Each year brings the flood of unbearable sorrow and the unstoppable tears.

Here it is, September 12th. The two blazing beacons are gone from the night sky. The tears have dried. The alcohol I consumed last night is sufficiently gone from my system that, with a deep exhalation, I will pick up the chores left undone yesterday. The images of sweet faces and hellish horrors recede into the shadows of my mind to wait upon their next calling forth by a date, by a low flying aircraft, by a page of paper floating by on a beautiful cloudless autumn day.

Never gone.

Never forgotten.
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Exactly Whose Pants Are On Fire?

I know this wasn't directed at Joe Wilson alone. The speech was in the can well before his "spontaneous" outburst. We could all benefit from heeding the thoughts expressed by President Obama last night, no matter who wrote them.

"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no ...matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to ...solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."

One of two things appear to be true. Mr. Wilson may well be a temperate, mature fairly accomplished former aide to Strom Thurmond. It is an unfortunate smear on South Carolinians, the United States Army and it's officer corps that he left the first two qualities on the cloakroom floor - again - last night and chose to instead to behave like an ill bred, uneducated, unprincipled, ill manner lout - for the second time in his seven year congressional career.

In 2002 Wilson called Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) "viscerally anti-American" and charged that he had a "hatred of America". He later offered his mea culpa saying he, "didn't intend to insult his colleague".

On the other hand it far more likely that Mr. Wilson, as an experienced litigator, was merely practicing a rudimentary artifice of that craft. Mr. Wilson was Staff Judge Advocate in the South Carolina Army National Guard assigned to the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade until retiring from military service as a Colonel in 2003. As such, he is well aware of the value when seeing the opposition gaining ground to break the flow of the moment by making a statement that though stricken from the record, will not 'unring the bell' in a jury’s mind. It is more than fair to say that the American people were in the jury box in the court of public opinion last night. It beyond belief that a military officer, even a reservist, lacks the discipline to refrain from emotional outbursts.

Be that as it may, it may well be instructive as to the source of all the out poured vitriol when we look over the landscape of the health care debate over the past month or so and see the same feverishly pitched, overly emotionally biased over the top rhetoric. Death panels, red menace, socialistic Nazism, government takeover of citizens rights, government bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor (never mind the insurance company bureaucrat that’s already there) are the red herrings we have all heard ad nauseam all sung to rousing Sousaesque background music replete with waving flags cynically used as cheap props.

It is clear that health care in this country is in dire need of serious reform. That reform will not come from Wall Street which calls the insurer’s tune. It will not come from the Trial Lawyers who benefit from spurious claims over the smallest perceived harm that sucks life's blood leaving behind the necrotic flesh that is the two headed serpent of defensive medicine and the basis for the insurers to jack up malpractice coverage costs. Both drive up costs dramatically. Real reform must come from the laws of the land. Real reform must serve We The People, not those with the deepest pockets who can buy our lives, our liberties and our pursuit of happiness at their whim and at the gain of those who prostitute the sacred trust to attend to, "the people's business" into a quest for personal glory and gain.

What that law should become must be discussed. Name calling should stay in the school yard where the monitors can properly instruct, and correct, the unruly children who make a practice of it. The laws must see to it that at the end of the day, We The People come first and foremost. That is why We The People created the government in the first place.

It is the flag of We The People that our forefathers went to war and died for. It is the flag of We The People that we pledge allegiance to. It is the flag of We The People that I hope to see flying from every window, porch, column, lamp post and antenna tomorrow, Patriot's Day September 11, 2009.