Timothy Birdnow

“If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?”

Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Science, February 5, 2010

Brian forwards this:

Interesting backlash…   a revival of State’s Rights.

Fred Fernandez forwarded a version of this to me…  Turns out that it is pretty much all true, as you can see from the “truth or fiction and “snopes” website links”, or just by googling each of the referenced bills.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/o/oklahoma-laws.htm
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/pending/oklahoma.asp

And just in case some idiot tries to confuse the subject; no, the reference to “save your confederate money” doesn’t have anything to do with racism.  It’s about a revival of State’s Rights, and a backlash against an out of control Federal Government.

C. R. Grizzle

An update from Oklahoma :

Oklahoma law passed, 37 to 9, had a few liberals in the mix, an amendment to place the Ten Commandments on the front entrance to the state capitol.  The feds in D.C., along with the ACLU, said it would be a mistake.  Hey this is a conservative state, based on Christian values…!   HB 1330

Guess what………. Oklahoma did it anyway.

Oklahoma recently passed a law in the state to incarcerate all illegal immigrants, and ship them back to where they came from unless they want to get a green card and become an American citizen.  They all scattered.  HB 1804.  Hope we didn’t send any of them to your state.  This was against the advice of the Federal Government, and the ACLU, they said  it would be a mistake.

Guess what………. Oklahoma did it anyway.

Recently we passed a law to include DNA samples from any and all illegals to the Oklahoma database, for criminal investigative purposes.     SB 1102

Several weeks ago, we passed a law, declaring  Oklahoma as a Sovereign state, not under the Federal Government directives.  Joining   Texas , Montana and Utah as the only states to do so.  More states are likely to follow:  Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia , the Carolina’s, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Florida.  Save your confederate money, it appears the South is about to rise up once again.  HJR 1003

The federal Government has made bold steps to take away our guns..  Oklahoma, a week ago, passed a law confirming people in this state have the right to bear arms and transport them in their vehicles.  I’m sure that was a set back for the criminals (and Obamaites).  Liberals didn’t like it –  But ….

Guess what………… Oklahoma did it anyway.

Just this month, the state has voted and passed a law that ALL driver’s license exams will be printed in English, and only English, and no other language.  They have been called racist for doing this, but the fact is that ALL of the road signs are in English only.  If you want to drive in Oklahoma , you must read and write English.  Really simple. Offends a lot of politically correct people…

Guess what….who cares… Oklahoma is doing it anyway.

To Verify:
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-state-capitol-to-display-ten-commandments/article/3370730 ;
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-09-immigcover_N.htm

7lb Dave sent this to me:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who flies around on private planes so as to tell larger numbers of people how they must live their lives in order to save the planet, wrote a column last year on the lack of winter weather in Washington, D.C.http://www.robertfkennedyjr.com/articles/2008_sep_Los_angeles_times.html

“In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

In those days, I recall my uncle, President Kennedy, standing erect as he rode a toboggan in his top coat, never faltering until he slid into the boxwood at the bottom of the hill. Once, my father, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, brought a delegation of visiting Eskimos home from the Justice Department for lunch at our house. They spent the afternoon building a great igloo in the deep snow in our backyard. My brothers and sisters played in the structure for several weeks before it began to melt. On weekend afternoons, we commonly joined hundreds of Georgetown residents for ice skating on Washington’s C&O Canal, which these days rarely freezes enough to safely skate.

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil and its carbon cronies continue to pour money into think tanks whose purpose is to deceive the American public into believing that global warming is a fantasy.”

end excerpt

Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend’s extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK, Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.

by Kyle-Anne Shiver   •   January 28, 2010

(This first appeared at Kyle’s website http://www.kyleanneshiver.com/2010/01/28/who-likes-obamas-plan-to-bring-terrorists-to-our-backyards/)

Anyone who ran a business the way this president runs his administration would have been standing in line at a soup kitchen six months ago. Honestly, watching this president make one brazen decision after another, without so much as asking those who’ll have to do the heavy lifting whether they’re on board, before he goes on record with another speech has been just plain painful.

News came out today that the president has asked the Justice Department to find other possible venues for the 9/11 plotters’ civilian trials. New York’s mayor Bloomberg, the New York governor and just about every Democrat pol in charge up there have finally convinced these incompetent administrators that the people of NYC do not want, nor are they going to stand for the shenanigans of a terror trial blocks away from the 9/11 attacks. Both Republican and Democratic congressmen have mounted a strong effort to refuse funding - predicted to be in the tens of millions — for this foolhardy trial, too.

I’m plum sure cities from coast to coast will be lining up for the honor, aren’t you? Cities fighting 10% and rising unemployment, cities faced with melting revenues, cities already stretched to the max with this president’s foolish economic policies are just going to be jumping at the chance to spend millions they don’t have to put on civilian trials for people who don’t deserve them. Right.

What CEO makes a grandstanding decision like this one without first getting everyone involved fully on board? None.

Which is just another reason why people with postage-stamp sized resumes do not become CEOs.

Now, I wonder how long it’s going to be before the good people of Illinois stand up in open rebellion against this administration’s plan to send Gitmo terrorists to a rural Illinois prison. As much as liberals and their bands of anti-everything-Bush demonstrators have denounced Gitmo, they seem to have utterly failed to understand the realities involved. If one does not have Gitmo, safely separated from the American mainland, then those terrorists have to go somewhere.

And, just like the NYC terror trials are proving to be, closing Gitmo has posed dire problems, evidently completely unanticipated by our teleprompted movie star in the Oval Office. The only way he has been able to get any other country to take handfuls of these terrorists is to bribe them with US aid dollars.

Now, Obama plans to send a couple hundred of these terrorists to rural Illinois, but hasn’t thought through what that will mean for the citizens there. Jack Kemp has a very insightful essay on what kinds of hardships Illinois citizens will soon be facing if this foolhardy plan of the president’s goes through. Like in Israel, whose citizens face this kind of thing every day, American towns will see armed guards on their playgrounds, armed guards in their grocery stores and restaurants, and will face having their homes with round-the-clock bull’s-eyes painted on them, just waiting for the rogue jihadist who wants to shake things up in the little town hosting his imprisoned pals.

Kemp knows all about this kind of life. He spent years in Israel.

Read all about his predictions on what we can expect once Obama brings terrorists to our own backyards. It’s an eye-opening account.

http://www.projectshiningcity.org/fp106.php

Once again, nobody with a grain of common sense thought this harebrained scheme through to its logical conclusion.

Unbelievable.

A bunch of highly educated fools are running this Country. Hold onto your hats and load up on ammunition.

Dana Mathewson

Liberals, of course, will disagree.  This author maintains that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century, and defends his position well.

http://biggovernment.com/bfolsom/2010/02/06/why-was-ronald-reagan-the-greatest-president-of-the-20th-century/

Dana Mathewson

This guy — in the WaPo, no less — dissects the way liberals think.  I don’t think you’ll be totally surprised with the results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020403698_2.html?hpid=opinionsbox1&sub=AR&sid=ST2010020403858

–
“Don’t tell other people your problems.  90% don’t care and the other 10% are glad you have them.” — Bob Popyk  (Note: this doesn’t apply to family!)

Dana Mathewson

Sorry, folks — I flat-out could not resist writing that headline.  But India has pulled out of the UN IPCC, the group headed by its own leading scientist Dr R.K Pachauri (who, as I’m sure you know, is resisting calls to resign).  Instead, India has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming — if it finds them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7157590/India-forms-new-climate-change-body.html

The cookie is crumbling.  If you go to the link above, you will find links to other articles.

Eventually, it may be that the only people left believing in AGW are Al and (maybe) Tipper Gore, plus Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia Obama.  And perhaps those other long-time experts on hot air, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

Dana Mathewson

I think this indicates we must take guns out of the hands… of police detectives.  Fer sherr.

Metropolitan (Wash. D.C.) Police Detective pulls car over, gets out, waves gun, because his car is hit by…

SNOWBALLS — during big blizzard in DC.  That’s right, folks.  The capital city is getting hit big-time with snow, and citizens are having fun throwing snowballs at each other.  (Doubtlessly because no congress-critters are available?)

http://www.nbcwashington.com/weather/stories/Eyewitness_Confirms__Cop_Freaks_Out_Over_Snowball_Fight_Waves_Gun-79729162.html

Guess some of the cops can’t handle the idea!

Timothy Birdnow

Mike H, a friend and pretty sharp guy, dropped me this e-mail, and he makes a case that will appeal to many, although I think it is flawed when analysed more closely.Below is his argument about the national debt and my rather lengthy response:

Is it foolish to be massively in debt? Ask the wealthiest men in America..

The U.S. Congress recently decided to raise our national debt limit by around twelve percent — borrowing almost two trillion dollars to invest in infrastructure, services, and economic development they hope will expand the flagging American economy over the next decade. Is this a good idea? Before you decide, take a look at the debt loads of a few highly profitable enterprises. All data are from Forbes.com 2009 annual reports.

Corporate Debt in Billions:

WalMart:                     172 Billion
Proctor and Gamble:    135 Billion
Microsoft:                     77 Billion
Apple Computer:          53 Billion
Intel:                             53 Billion
Coca-Cola:                  40 Billion
Pepsi:                           38 Billion
McDonalds:                 30 Billion
Best Buy:                     15 Billion

Do these corporations have a plan to eliminate these massive debts? Absolutely not.

The bulk of corporate debt consists of money borrowed from investors by selling stock. Investors earn interest on this debt in the form of quarterly dividends. Far from planning to pay off these enormous debts, successful companies like Walmart and Coca-Cola go further into debt all the time: selling additional shares whenever they need money to build new stores, launch new soft-drinks and fast-food chains, or to finance new factories and technology. This new debt goes on the bottom of the balance sheet and companies pay dividend interest on it forever. They turn a profit on their debt by paying less in dividends than they collect from the activities they funded with the borrowed money. Not only do they not need to pay off this debt, but their creditors don’t even want them to. Their shareholders are all too happy to collect tidy dividends from a successful business for all eternity.

When the government raised the debt limit they authorized the sale of additional Treasury Bills, in essence issuing new shares of stock in America.

The important question to ask now is not whether we are issuing too many shares of America, but rather what will America do with the new capital we have raised. Will we use it like a college student with a new credit card, to buy cafe mocha latte’s and trips to the movies? Or will we invest it like Proctor and Gamble and Coca-Cola to realize returns many times greater than the 4% interest that we pay to our shareholders?

Hi Mike!  Good to hear from you; I was just thinking of dropping you an e-mail.

This is an interesting argument,but is rather mixing apples and oranges.  Joint stock companies are not governments, after all, and their issuing stocks to grow is essentially allowing outsiders to buy into the company, while government issuing bonds more closely resembles a pyramid scheme - think Bernie Madoff with a military force and Congress.  Governments use the money they receive for different purposes and ends, and they do not produce any goods and few services of any value.  Government is about LAW after all, and not service, and feeding government merely feeds a restraining entity in it’s quest to restrain. A government produces by moving money from point a to point b, rather than actually creating. A business cannot expand without outside capital, and that capital comes from people who believe the business asking for the financing will grow and make a profit for them. “Investments” in government are done for a very different reason, namely, that governments control the rate of interest and the money supply, and so it is a safe investment in that a government will simply not default.  Stock investors know they are taking a risk, but they do so because they believe in the company in question.  Businesses are positive entities; they must produce something of value. Governments are largely negative entitites; they are primarily to restrain the citizenry. Oh, I will grant that there are some projects run (horrendously inefficiently) by government, such as road construction, but generally even that is contracted out to private businesses because they can do the work far more efficiently.

Also, private businesses are accountable in many ways to overseers who regularly audit their books and whatnot, and while graft and corruption exists, it is far more restrained than in government where sticky fingers cling to most of the dollars passing to any project. Money earmarked for a given function rarely makes it to that function - the classic example is the Social Security “lockbox” which is filled with money earmarked for SS but then money is removed from said box and placed into general revenue.  People would go to jail for such activity, but it is business as usual for Congress. Consider, too, baseline budgeting; your department is budgeted based on what you spent last year plus adjustment for inflation. No private company could possibly operate in that fashion, yet that is how government works. Naturally, every penny is spent because it is incentivized to do so. A private business would be in receivership.

So the debt serves a different purpose in government than in business. There is no way to stop it, and eventually it will lead to a collapse of the economy. Wiemar Germany proved that point; the German government had to do something, and they ran the printing presses. It took a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread!  The German economy completely stopped, with barter becoming the standard of trade, rather than cash.  Of course, that gave Germany Hitler…

A private company cannot do that. It either sinks or swims based on it’s debt to profit ratio.  There are clear ceilings to corporate debt.

That is precisely why we have a “bubble” in a sector of the economy; debt to profit ratios get out of balance. The tech bubble, for instance, saw computer and internet companies growing via stock investment without actually producing anything. Eventually people realized that these were bad investments and stopped buying, and suddenly the investors were stuck with worthless stock.  We can go back further, to the stock market crash of 1929 and see the same effect.  It is also obvious with the real estate bubble; loans were being made on property that could not secure those loans, because the market was overvalued and to people who could not pay those loans back. This was being driven by 1.the Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie/Freddie pushing subprime loans 2. the aggressive enforcement of “redlining” laws 3.the bursting of the tech bubble leading investors into “safe” investments like mortgages and 4. the Bush Administration policies of a weak dollar and low interest rates to encourage investment. Note that all of these forces were government driven in some fashion. Even the tech bubble can be laid at the feet of government, as it was the antitrust suit against Microsoft that triggered the collapse. That is not to say greed was not a part of the problem, but with huge amounts of money involved the tendency for fingers to exude Elmers tends to become exaserbated.  How much more so does that happen when the money involved is not in the millions but the trillions?  Fannie and Freddie were giving gargantuan amounts of campaign cash to Congresscrooks - especially Chris Dodd (number 1 recipient) and Barack Obama (#2).  John McCain’s snoot was heavily in that trough, too. Fan and Fred could get away with this because they were governmental entities, and could spend years cooking their books.  Congress hid this for them.There are some who think the bubble burst may have been an October Surprise, and there certainly is a case to be made; the collapse may have been eminent, but the timing of the collapse was, uh, most fortunate when one looks at the beneficiary.  Certainly the Republicans had tried to push reforms for Fan and Fred the prior year and were told by Barney Frank and others that these institutions were rock solid and they were engaged in a “lynching” of Fan’s chair Franklin Raines.

The rest of the mortgage industry followed Fan and Fred’s example, as they follow the Fed in setting interest rates.  They don’t HAVE to do it, but they do if they wish to do business with the U.S. government.

The government has no such problems; they know they can make more if they run out of money.

So there really is a difference - and a huge one - between government and private business.  I think this example may seem sensible, but it is ultimately mixing apples and oranges.  Some government debt is acceptable but it went out of control under Bush the W. and has simply exploded into something unsustainable today.  Frankly, Mike, I don’t think there is any way we can dig ourselves out of this.  I would suggest a solid investment - a wheelbarrow.  It will come in handy down the road for making bread runs.

Dana Mathewson

A Turkish girl was buried alive.  Why?  Just because she talked to boys.  Well, I guess that’s one way to keep your kids under control.  (Gag)  http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025540.php

Hey, Obama:  These people didn’t contribute to the development of this country, or the Free / Western World.  Get it through that thick head of yours, and soon!