Savage Republican

Years ago I first heard the term “gigo”. I was in college at the U of M. “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. In other words, you get out what you get in. Put water in the gas tank, the car’s not running or not running well.
I started out taking microbiology for pre-med at the U of M. Chemistry, organic chemistry, calculus, physics. If my data in wasn’t accurate or my observations were flawed, my results would also be flawed. GIGO. Now, if there are widespread data and policy reports based on flawed data, and that laws and mass ecocomic planning were to based on those therefore flawed reports,that would be dangerous. Even unforgivable. And so it is with every single Man Made Global Warming (MMGW) believer and supporter.
Patrick J. Michaels, a Ph.D who is also a senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, has authored an article called “Not So Hot” about the terribly flawed MMGW reports that swamp us. He and Ross McKitrick from Canada’s University of Guelph decided to put to the test the theory that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that urban centers only account for 10% of the observed warming. Now, the basis of any experimentation is the ability to duplicate the results. Well, needless to say that Michaels and McKitrick found that the IPCC overstates warming by at least 100%.
One point: information from North American weather stations are fairly reliable. Information is terribly unreliable from Africa and South America (for instance,he cites that weather stations need to be painted white or the temperature data is too warm. And that the priority to keep a remote station painted white is low on the Need to Do list). They also factored in socioeconomic circumstances.
And Michaels asked “Where is the press?” Nowhere with the exception of a few blogs and one Canadian paper.
Go read the article. Send it off to Amy and Norm and Betty and Hakim and Jim. And remember that ethanol, no oil exploration, the new CAFE standards from the new Anti Energy Bill (all are unconstitutional) are all based on the seriously flawed IPCC. But, the left and many RINOs will still be true believers. They know the truth. The facts therefore become irrelevant.
Oh, and while you’re at it, ask if Al Gore will be returning his Oscar and his Nobel Peace Prize.

Drudge reports that gold has surpassed $850/oz and oil is over $100 bbl. And this is being widely reported as news. The price for crude in 1980 was $37/bbl. In inflation adjusted dollars this is about $99/bbl. So we’ve already been there over a quarter century ago. And again, with the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) stopping any and all domestic oil drilling, India and Red China making significant demand on oil production that weren’t there in 1980, I’m surprised it’s taken this long to get back to these prices.
As for gold, at $850/oz spot, that translates to about $320/oz spot in 1980. In other words, at $850/oz, the current spot price is about 40% of it’s 1980 high point (put another way, gold would have to be at $2270/oz in inflation adjusted dollars to be at the same price in 1980).
Now, the thing about commodity prices, specifically oil, is that production of the commodity makes for fungibility. In other words, if the fools in Congress get out of the way and allow us to develop our own oil reserves, that means we purchase less on the world spot market thereby freeing up production for the rest of the world and easing demand by increasing supply. And our own production is not open to choke points like the Straits of Hormuz and is much more easily defended than Saudi oil fields. Also, remember when the green wienies said that by me filling up my SUV I was pouring money into Al Queada? Well, by drilling our own oil, that problem goes away.
Oh ,and a BTW , if we’d been drilling in ANWR that oil would now be online. So, in effect, Norm Coleman and every single Republican that votes for ethanol, votes against drilling in ANWR and the coastal shelf and in the Gulf of Mexico has sent billions of dollars to Iran, Saudi Arabia and the like. They have cost the American citizens billions in extra costs for nearly everything.
I’ve said it before: the best thing Congress and any President can do for the American economy is to stay the hell out of the way! Leave us alone! We have done and will always do a better job with money and jobs that you people ever could. Ever!

I’ve been asked a number of times my thoughts about the Republican primary race. Ron Paul is the only true strict constructionist in the race. Where he leaves me flat and cold is foreign policy. It appears to me that he fails to fully realize that we smacked the tar baby of entangling foreign relationships in 1917 (those Founding Father guys really knew what they were talking about, huh?). Just another horrible legacy from the early 20th century presidents and Congress. So, Paul is unelectable. Sorry Paulites. Time to breathe real oxygen.
So, I tell people my favored candidate is Fred Thompson. But, his campaign just has not ramped up, caught fire, is a hang fire, whatever.
But today, he has a seventeen minute video that hits all the important points that I find necessary to show people that he is a campaigner of and a leader from the Reagan mold.

Ya know, when Prairie Pravda exhibits deep acumen and wisdom, well, I’ve just got to congratulate them. The top of the online fold reads “Crackdown Turns Around Crime in Minneapolis“. The core of the article reads:”Apprehending the worst offenders and putting more cops on the streets has helped stem violent crime, which spiked last year…” The reporter states that apparently jailing lawbreakers and putting more cops on the streets works in reducing crime! WOW! Who could have known?
So, yah mean having a green roof on City Hall, having an Afro-American Mens Center, jobs training, etc didn’t and doesn’t reduce crime but arresting criminals does? Huh.
Well, welcome to a world where the sky is blue, Mayor Grossly Apparent.
However, there are still those race pimps that want everything their way. “Still, “I don’t think people feel safe in Phillips,” said Clyde Bellecourt, co-chairman of the Police Community Relations Council. “I don’t see people walking alone at night, and more houses seem to have bars on windows.” And yet, Bellecourt and the Police Community Relations Council are suing the Minneapolis Department (story here).
Yup, so the message from Bellecourt and the PCRC is “You’re not doing enough to protect us while we’re suing your butt!!!”
And if that isn’t enough, read this article on Anti-Strib. Then remember how Hizzoner R.T. Rybak went to Governor Pawlenty to beg for more state money to put more cops on the streets of Minneapolis? (Notice how MPR [Marxist Propaganda Radio] spins the article as if the state is to blame for crime in Minneapolis? Your tax money well spent keeping them on the air).
Just a few more in the long list of reasons I don’t and will never live in the sinkhole called Minneapolis.

I took Mom to get her four month surgical review. I was reading the October issue of Mpls/St. Paul magazine and saw a very friendly article about the eco street terrorists called “Critical Mass” who have now arrived in Minneapolis. What impressed me was the cheery, upbeat tone of the Mpls/st.Paul magazine article in light of what’s been reported about these two wheel thugs here in Minneapolis. Here’s my read on this: it’s not a coincidence that radical, liberty hating, left wing anarchy groups are showing up here in Minneapolis and St. Paul. With the national Republican Convention just over nine months away, they are testing the response and resolve of the mayors and police departments in advance to plan maximum disruption of the convention. And they have fertile ground to be encouraged. Read the two linked articles again and see the similarities between the two cities responses. Critical Mass and other fellow travelers are well encouraged and emboldened. Mayors Rybak and Coleman have sown seeds that will bear bitter fruit. And here’s what I find ironic: being the leftists they are, the Mayors of the Twin Cities support radical notions, though publicly distance themselves, by the prosecution that they cut short. The message “Don’t do this or a nasty letter WILL be sent home in your backpack”. Note that the San Francisco motorists and bus riders had had enough. That shows a failure at the city executive level. And shows the incompetence of lefty mayors who are the chief law enforcement officers first and foremost.
I vividly remember the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. A very good friend of mine missed the bus that would have taken him into the center of that mayhem and chaos.
And who, pray tell, was the Mayor of Chicago at the time? One Richard J. Daley. And who became the single man focus for the blame for all the riots that occurred at the Convention? Richard J. Daley. And who will become the foci for any and all riots that occur in September 2008? Mayors Coleman and Rybak.
Watching Coleman and Rybak try to control their left wing friends while trying to keep the limelight on themselves should prove interesting.

I’m a good driver (one chargeable accident in forty years of driving). That being said, it was God’s grace that I was parked in my Mom’s driveway when I heard Mike Huckabee’s suggestion as to how to deal with Iran: Just talk to them. Like we talk to Mom. Like we talk to Dad:”We haven’t had diplomatic relationships with Iran in almost thirty years, most of my entire adult life. And a lot of good it’s done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent, or a sibling, or even a friend, it’s impossible to resolve the differences to move that relationship forward. Well, the same is true for countries. ” (Complete transcript here).
The more I thought of this completely inane statement, I thought “How would Huckabee’s soon to be good buddy President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad respond if his advisors might suggest that Mike Huckabee be given a chance to dialogue ?” And the following scene kept coming to mind (I apologize in advance for the language) :

Yup. That’s how I envision it playing out for Mike Huckabee with the object of his foreign policy attempts.
For another view, Hugh Hewitt and Michael Rubin dissect Huckabee’s comments here.
This comment by Huckabee shows me once again why the MSM loves the guy. He would be a total pushover in any presidential race. Now, instead of a single line through his name as a presidential nominee, I’m putting two.

My Mom has had a rough four months. Hip replacement surgery followed by major back surgery. And we had to put her dog Skipper down before the surgery marathon. With Mom not being able to drive, I’ve been doing double duty for a bit. But, there have been wonderful, and poignant times.
While waiting during Mom’s back surgery, I noticed a little girl looking at the aquarium in the reception/waiting area at Southdale Fairview Hospital. She never said a word. She was so intently watching the fish silently pass by her eyes. And I had to catch this pure innocence with my cheap phone camera:

And I decided to always carry a digital camera to be able to get much better photos than are obtainable with a phone camera.
I never saw her face. She left on her grandfather’s lap as he was pushed to the door in his wheelchair. But, she was the picture of what, besides a relationship with Christ, is important.
A few weeks later my Mom was at a transitional care facility. She asked me if I’d wash one of her favorite outfits as it had taken on the aroma of her former hospital room. Well, I had washed one of her outfits after she had hip replacement surgery and put her lip balm through a thorough cleaning cycle (thankfully rescuing it before I put it through the dryer). Vowing not to do that again, this time I went through her pockets. As I was pulling out her ever present lip balm (this one being new, not reconditioned) and tissues, it occurred to me, that fifty years ago, she would have been going through my jeans pockets before washing them. And here I was doing the very same thing for her a half century later. And it gave me cause for pause as I looked at the tissue and the lip balm that I’d just put aside. It reminded me of a poem Mom gave me a few years back after Dad had died. The author was an older woman getting out of a car. As she opened the door, her adult son reached out to take her hand to help her. And she thought of the time when her son, as a little boy would reach up for her hand as he stepped up on a curb. And now the roles had become reversed. And she was relying on him.
And a tube of lip balm and a few tissues brought that idea home to me for good.

I’ve been sober for over 22 years. Before my tenth anniversary sobriety date I took the time to reflect on what my sobriety has allowed me to learn. A few considerations:

1. Never confuse activity with progress. A dog chasing his tail can cover miles and stay in exactly the same place.
2. Never confuse the truth with honesty. People can tell part of the truth and lead people to believe that which is not true. It’s called deception. And the deceiver walks away with a clear conscience.
   
3. Never confuse education, knowledge and wisdom. What you’ve been taught, what you know and how you apply it can all be neatly separate. I’ve seen people with double PhD’s not be able to some seemingly simple tasks.
   
4. Never, ever confuse being taught the lesson with learning the lesson. “Well, I certainly learned my lesson!” is not accurate. It may very well be that the lesson was indeed taught. However, whether or not it was learned, and how well, will only become evident over time.
   

And as I read the new energy bill, it becomes all to apparent that those with their hands on the levers of power that force you and I to do their bidding have never , ever learned any lessons at all. The best that can be said is that it is an anti-energy bill. The anti-energy bill authors would be the ones who believe they have the power, wisdom and insight that if they can create and pass just the right bill, and that noisy barking dog next door will finally purr like a kitten and the whole neighborhood can finally get some sleep. Omniscient and omnipotent are terms and beliefs they all hold close to their intellectual breasts…and have, to our great and long term detriment, believed them to be true of them.
The Heritage Institute has a great analysis of the anti-energy bill. And instead of pushing failed ethanol , a real push should be oil shale. And Heritage also has a large number of research papers dealing with the huge oil reserves we have here in America that the anti-energy bill prevents us from using (go to the Heritage Foundation, go to the “search” function in the upper right hand corner and type in “oil” and click on any one of the drop down menu items. Incredible!). This anti-energy bill makes about as much sense as a law preventing a home owner from using his own fire extinguisher to put out a fire in his house.

I got a fever! And the only prescription is…

http://www.savagepacer.com/node/5460

(Thanks to Nancy at the Savage Pacer)