Monthly Archives: October 2010

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Needed: American Heroes

H/T to an e-mail correspondent for the video:

“And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.
And that law of the land with is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and priviliges, belongs to mankind, and is justifiable before me.
Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren in the church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land:
And as pertaining to to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this cometh of evil.
I, the Lord God, make you free, therefore ye are free indeed; and the law also maketh you free.
Nevertheless, when the wicked rule the people mourn.
Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.”
Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, section 98: 4-10

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Christmas Gift Idea?

Once in awhile something so totally cool comes out that even a father who doesn’t normally know what he’d like for Father’s Day or Christmas would immediately ask for it. Thank you, DeWalt!!! (Not in stock yet at Menard’s or Running’s Farm & Fleet…haven’t tried Gary’s Gun Shop yet.)

New Nail Gun by DeWalt

It can drive a 16-D nail through a 2 X 4 at 200 yards.
This makes construction a breeze; you can sit in your lawn chair and build a fence.

Just get your wife to hold the fence boards in place while you sit back,relax with
a cold drink and when she has the board in the
right place,just fire away.

With the hundred round magazine
you can build the fence with a minimum of reloading.

After a day of fence building with the new
DeWalt Rapid Fire Nail Gun, the wife will not
ask you to build or fix anything else,
probably, ever again.

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Ex-great Britain’s Navy Taking a Dive

Navy aircraft carrier will be sold after three years – and never carry jets

One of the Navy’s new £3 billion aircraft carriers will never carry aircraft and will sail for only three years before being mothballed and possibly sold, ministers will announce on Tuesday. The Government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review will also confirm that Britain will not have an effective “carrier strike” capability – a working aircraft carrier equipped with fighter jets – until 2020.

…and that’s not all:

The Navy’s fleet of warships will drop from 24 to 19 and it will lose 4,000 personnel. Harrier jump-jets will be scrapped next year but no F35 Joint Strike Fighters will be available to replace them until 2020.

Wow…the once great Royal Navy…going down to 19 warships?!

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar which established the superiority of the Royal Navy at least through WW-I a century later.

…and now the Brits are saying “If we need carrier support we can always turn to the…FRENCH??!!! Aside from tradition, what’s wrong with this picture?

Nelson, Churchill, and a whole series of other Naval persons of the once great Britain have got to be turning over in their graves about now.

Nelson’s prayer before the battle:

MAY THE GREAT GOD, whom I worship, grant
to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in
general, a great and glorious victory: and
may no misconduct, in any one, tarnish it: and
may humanity after victory be the predominant
feature in the British fleet.

For myself individually, I commit my life to Him
who made me and may His blessing light upon my
endeavours for serving my Country faithfully.

To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is
entrusted to me to Defend.

Amen, Amen, Amen

His death in victory sealed his testimony. (You may notice from the portarait, that he had previously lost his arm in battle.)

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Pelosi, NRA & Herseth-Sandlin

Cory over at Madville Times, and on the KELO Blog is crowing about the NRA endorsing Stephanie’s re-election. It would be one thing if he thought that this was a positive thing, but the reality is somewhat less (or more, depending on viewpoint) than this.

I know it’s tough to make the leap, but really Cory, no one has given the NRA, or for that matter the GOP itself the right to confer an imprimatur of political orthodoxy for the conservative/libertarian movement. Therefore, exercising my own reformationist judgment, the NRA has proven itself unworthy of support and membership. With my membership up this fall, it will become a thing of the past, in favor of the Gun Owners of America, which is more consistent in it’s analysis of political ramifications, like the support that H-S has faithfully rendered for the Speakership Regime of SanFran Nan Pelosi. That, in and of itself is, IMHO, enough to render Herseth-Sandlin unsatisfactory as South Dakota’s sole Congressional member.

In spite of Cory’s crowing about the NRA endorsement (to attempt to give us a bad moment), and his moaning at other times about H-S making SOME votes that his progressive/liberal sensibility finds distasteful, note that in spite of such occasional discomfort, something, including presumably the prospect of continued support for Pelosi, leads Cory to continue to support H-S’s re-election, in spite of his expressed unhappiness.

For similar reasons, if one opposes the continuation of the Pelosi order of business in the House, then there is no reason to vote for H-S, no matter what occasional gestures she makes towards traditional South Dakota values.

So, Will You be Voting for Nancy Pelosi?

In light of all the recent news about Democrat candidates running as John Birchers, I felt is was finally time to call their bluff. We are in a very good position to take back the House, but there is some polling evidence that some of the red district blue dog frauds are still hanging in there. Keep in mind that there are 70 Dems in R rated districts. A handful of them are doing relatively well because they try to block out their party label, run against the liberal platform, attack their Republican opponent from the right, or tout endorsements from the NRA and Chamber of Commerce.

I think we need to start a campaign to call the offices of these clowns and demand that they go on record whether they would vote for Pelosi or Hoyer to be Speaker….We are sick of these frauds who trash Pelosi at home, but then vote for the liberal leadership, committee chairmen, and Democrat Rules Committee members who ensure passage of all the legislation that they claim to detest. However, if we can get them on record as declining to take a stand (that’s what most will do) we can help their opponents expose their fraudulent claims of being conservative.

From another source, this video shows H-S dodging this issue during an appearance. (H/T to South Dakota War College)

That above header hits the nail on the head. IMHO, that’s a key point to keep in mind when voting, whether early or on election day. Personally, I would no more vote for Pelosi than I would B.O., or for that matter, Herseth-Sandlin.

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Judge: Obamascare Lawsuit Continues

Judge disses Dems’ ‘Alice in Wonderland’ health defense

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday said he will allow some of the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care law to proceed — and criticized Democrats for making an “Alice in Wonderland” argument to defend the law.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson allowed two major counts to proceed: the states’ challenge to the controversial requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance and a required expansion of the Medicaid program.

In his ruling, Vinson criticized Democrats for seeking to have it both ways when it comes to defending the mandate to buy insurance. During the legislative debate, Republicans chastised the proposal as a new tax on the middle class. Obama defended the payment as a penalty and not a tax, but the Justice Department has argued that legally, it’s a tax.

“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check,” he wrote.

Vinson ruled that it’s a penalty, not a tax, and must be defended under the Commerce Clause and not Congress’s taxing authority.

A Dec. 16 trial date is planned in the lawsuit, brought by 20 state attorneys general and governors. Many legal experts expect it to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This could be B.O.’s Schechter case [A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) that poked a stick in the spokes of the NRA (NOT the National Rifle Association!) and effectively gutted the early phase of the so-called New Deal of FDR.]

One can hope for an outcome that would clamp down of B.O.’s latest iteration of the progressive worship of bureaucracy and centralization of power as expressed by Obamascare.

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“…for a mess of pottage?”

This one from the Argus Loser made it onto Drudge.

The right to vote freely is taken as one of the fundamental rights resulting from the fact of birth as a citizen. This is true even more so for those who are Native Americans…which makes this sort of report even sadder than it otherwise would be.

Pairing food, early-vote rallies raises legal risks

Democrats in South Dakota are holding three early-vote rallies on reservations this week that will feature “feeds” to attract potential voters.

That activity continues a long tradition of pairing food with voter rallies in areas of the state where Democrats garner as much as 95 percent of the vote.

The obvious inference is that the Rez vote is for sale for a meal (cheaper than buying other media access no doubt). Sort of brings to mind to mind the Biblical story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage.

UPDATE:
S.D. Republican Party asks for investigation into Democratic early-voting events

Lawyers for the South Dakota Republican Party have asked Attorney General Marty Jackley and U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson to investigate whether early-voting events sponsored by state Democrats on three Indian reservations violate state law.

At issue is whether the events, which includes “feeds,” break a state law that prohibits anyone from offering something of “value” in exchange for voting. Secretary of State Chris Nelson said this week that those events can be legal, if done in the right context.

Republican Chairman Bob Gray accused Democrats of playing “old tricks” to gin up votes. The executive director of the Democratic Party insists the events are not violating state law.

Glowbull Warming, Junk Science

Glowbull Warming and Scientific Decadence

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From his own scientific background and long-standing examination of the pseudo-science of glowbull warming, the Chief has avoided taking membership in the Orthodox Church of Gore-istic Climatics. This is yet another illustration of a decay of scientific quality under the impact of repeated dosages of politically-linked money. It’s also another example of a significant story absent from the US media (and the London Telegraph comes through again).

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Anthony Watts describes it thus:
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

H/W is the start of the letter. Dr. Lewis becomes painfully explicit in explaining his point:

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.

Lewis very specifically lists his problems with the current iteration of the APS, and why it is no longer a worthy representative of science, before going into his concluding statement (go to the linked article for all the Gore-y details).

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

Just in case some envirowackos want to claim that Dr. Lewis is somehow not qualified to offer this slap-down to the APS establishment, his C.V. gives the lie to that concept:

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)

With over a quarter-century of teaching HS sciences, including physics, the APS’ actions smack of the attitude that gave an Italian scientist a very difficult political problem when he went against the orthodoxy of his day. THAT scientist was Galileo Galilei.

Any scientist that is unwilling to allow actively encourage scientific debate is unworthy of the name, and unworthy of the responsibility that he has presumed to take on to expand human knowledge about the universe in which we live.

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B.O.’s Environmental Economic Wrecking Plan

EPA Estimates Its Greenhouse Gas Restrictions Would Reduce Global Temperature by No More Than 0.006 of a Degree in 90 Years

Tough new rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency restricting greenhouse gas emissions would reduce the global mean temperature by only 0.006 to 0.0015 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100, according to the EPA’s analysis.

THAT’s saving the planet?

The authors cite the EPA’s own staff to show that greenhouse gas regulations, which would require major sources of CO2 (carbon dioxide) to obtain permits and limit their output, could seriously harm the economy if implemented.

“It is clear throughout the country, PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) permit issuance would be unable to keep up with the flood of incoming applications, resulting in delays, at the outset, that would be at least a decade or longer, and that would only grow worse over time as each year, the number of new permit applications would exceed permitting authority resources for that year.” the EPA wrote in the Federal Register on June 3.

Lest you think SD would not be seriously and negatively affected since it’s not a heavy industrial state, among other proposed regulatory issues are some that specifically target rural areas (dust standards, animal CO2, etc.)

Other proposed EPA regulations include:
— pending regulations on emissions from industrial and commercial boilers which the Republican staff says are stringent enough to make some factories shutter rather than become compliant, and risking 798,000 jobs;
— higher emissions standards for cement plants, which involves 15,000 jobs;
— and increased National Ambient Air Quality Standards for the amount of ground-level ozone to 60 parts per billion, which the EPA estimates could cost $19 billion to $90 billion to implement.

Top House Republicans have formed the Rural America Solutions Group aimed at working on issue that effect agricultural areas of the country, and held a forum Wednesday on what they termed “the EPA’s Assault on Rural America.”

They heard from witnesses representing the beef and cattle industry, farmers, coal workers, and others affected by the many new and proposed regulations laid out in the report.

At the forum, Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said, “In many instances, the EPA is overreaching its authority. Instead of operating within the law, EPA believes it can dictate to Congress that legislation needs to be passed for more government authority. And if Congress doesn’t act, it threatens to regulate anyway. Every day, the EPA seems to demonstrate how vastly disconnected it is to the folks who feed us.”

Republicans invited EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to attend the forum, but she did not appear, nor did she send a representative.

All this for a alleged small fraction of one degree over a century? There is another issue at play here…and it’s NOT climate change. Can you say P-O-W-E-R, D-O-M-I-N-A-N-C-E, and C-O-N-T-R-O-L?

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D.C. Times Notes SD Race

GOP could take bite out of Blue Dogs

Across the country, Blue Dog Democrats — whose 54 members represent more than one-fifth of their party’s 255-seat majority and many of the country’s most contested swing districts — find themselves squarely in the cross hairs….

The Blue Dogs facing tough re-election fights include three of the coalition’s four-member leadership team: Mr. Shuler; Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, who is co-chairman for administration; and Rep. Baron P. Hill of Indiana, co-chairman for policy.

The fiscal conservatives, many of whom voted against health care reform and Mr. Obama’s $814 billion stimulus program, are running ads distancing themselves from unpopular national party figures, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and the president.

Ads are one thing…the reality is that none have campaigned on a pledge to oppose the re-selection of House Squeaker San Fran Nan Pelosi, noted in the article as an issue being highlighted by Kristi Noem in her reace for South Dakota’s at-large seat:

Another top Blue Dog fighting for her job is South Dakota’s Mrs. Herseth Sandlin, who clings to a slim polling edge over Republican state lawmaker Kristi Noem for the state’s lone House seat after trailing all summer.

Mrs. Herseth Sandlin began pulling ahead of her Republican opponent after airing an ad touting her opposition to the health care legislation.

Ms. Noem does not even mention her opponent by name in many of her campaign spots but goes right after Mrs. Pelosi.

“Unlike my opponent,” she promises voters, “my first vote won’t be to make Nancy Pelosi speaker.”

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Obamanomics Digest

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A number of items all of which are indicative of the underachievement characterizing Obamanomics:

Jobs, jobs, jobs: missing in action.
Private sector sheds 39,000 jobs in September

Private employers unexpectedly cut 39,000 jobs in September after an upwardly revised gain of 10,000 in August, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.

That’s OK. Consumer spending will keep things going…right? Ooops!
Middle Class Slams Brakes on Spending

Middle-class Americans made their deepest spending cuts in more than two decades, slashing spending on such discretionary items as restaurant meals and alcohol during the recession.

Households in the middle fifth of the population sliced their average annual spending to $41,150 in 2009, the Labor Department said Tuesday in its annual spending breakdown. That was down 3.1% from 2007 and 3.5% from 2008, the steepest one-year drop since records began in 1984. The drop came even as those households’ after-tax income remained relatively stable over the two years, at an average $45,199.

Looks like folks thing the prudent thing to do given current conditions is to hold onto more cash for…who knows what the B.O. administration will do next…but that’s OK, the poor are doing better now under Obamanomics. Aren’t they?

Meanwhile, the poorest Americans spent more as prices for necessities like food and rental housing climbed. Spending rose 5.6% from 2007 to 2009 for the poorest fifth of consumers, the most of any other income group, despite a 5.5% drop in after-tax income to an average $9,956 a household. In some cases, elderly people and others with low incomes dipped into savings or relied on credit to get by.

“What you’re looking at here is people at the bottom trying to hang on,” said Timothy Smeeding, public affairs professor and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “You can’t go below a certain level.”

Expenses up, income down. How’d that “Summer of Recovery” thing turn out? Apparently not so hot, which leads to…:

Food Stamp Recipients at Record 41.8 Million Americans in July, U.S. Says

The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a year earlier and increased 1.4 percent from June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 20 straight months.

Unemployment in September may have reached 9.7 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts in advance of the release of last month’s rate on Oct. 8. Unemployment was 9.6 percent in July, near levels last seen in 1983.

A bit of a time lag to compile the stats, but the picture is unmistakable.
But hey, at least the TARP and other bailouts have the big financial guys looking up now…or not.

Goldman Sachs Says U.S. Economy May Be `Fairly Bad’

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the U.S. economy is likely to be “fairly bad” or “very bad” over the next six to nine months.

“We see two main scenarios,” analysts led by Jan Hatzius, the New York-based chief U.S. economist at the company, wrote in an e-mail to clients. “A fairly bad one in which the economy grows at a 1 1/2 percent to 2 percent rate through the middle of next year and the unemployment rate rises moderately to 10 percent, and a very bad one in which the economy returns to an outright recession.”

Doesn’t look like the financial capital of the world will lead us out of the economic mire, either:

New Yorkers’ Income Falls for 1st Time in 70 Years+

The recession put a 3.1 percent dent in the personal incomes of New York state residents, who endured their first full-year decline in more than 70 years, according to a report released Tuesday.

Paychecks or net earnings tumbled 5.4 percent, while dividends, interest and rent slid 8.4 percent, to a grand total of nearly $908 billion, the state comptroller’s report said.

Not only did New Yorkers’ personal incomes fall “almost twice” as much as they did in the nation as a whole, but they have yet to recover to pre-recession levels, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

The drop occurred even though the job-destroying recession was milder in New York than in the rest of the country.

Hmmm 70 years. That goes back to 1940, just before WW-II finally bailed the country out of the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, it’s 27 days until election day….