Random10

The Obama Slaughter Care Gambit

2010-03-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

http://zenpundit.com/?p=3355

The Anglo-American tradition of “rule of law” is distinct from that of continental Europe or Confucianist traditions in Asia, both of which are primarily concerned in different ways with the health of the state. Anglo-American “rule of law” has been an evolutionary - and sometimes revolutionary - march to constrain the exercise of arbitrary power and, eventually, assure an egalitarian access to justice.

Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, a great man to whom much is owed, but who today is largely forgotten, was the great theorist and defender of judicial independence and common law from the whims of a sovereign. Without judicial independence, the rule of law is hardly possible because it is ultimately inseparable from the executive power; Coke was instrumental in moving elite Englishmen’s minds from accepting “Rex lex” (”The King is Law”) to demanding “Lex rex” (”The Law is king”).

The matter was not formally settled with the English Civil War, which came not long after Coke’s death, or even the Glorious Revolution of 1688; nor the American Revolution of 1776 or even at Appomattox Courthouse. “The rule of law” is an ongoing struggle that must be constantly renewed by an active and vigilant citizenry if it is to be sustained.

Wbboei on David Axelrod

2010-01-20T21:59:00.000-08:00

I wonder who owns David Axelrod. How is it that he gets out ahead of his supposed boss and says they will ram health care reform down our throats regardless of how we feel about it, and then a day later his boss comes out and contradicts him completely by saying do not ram it through, pick the best parts. Who owns Axelrod?

There are a number of machines in the Democratic Party. The three most powerful are the Clinton Machine, the Chicago Machine and the Kennedy Machine. Ostensibly, the Clintons are out of politics so their machine is like an army at winter garrison, The Chicago Machine aka the Daley Machine/Illinois Combine is active at this point. It owns the west wing of the White House. They are vile people of the lowest order. The Kennedy Machine is without a leader. Ted died and he tried to make Obama his political heir but that dream ended with the election of Scott Brown. The film critic Roger Ebert, a lifelong democrat, has a posting on his site yesterday saying the Brown victory is a fuck you Teddy, from the voters of Massachusetts.

David Axelrod is a soldier in the Chicago Machine. He was sent to Massachusetts to manage the campaign of Littel Deval and test market the Chicago machine candidate Obama for the job of president. The alliance between those machines dates back to the time of the 1960 election when Daley Sr. threw the state for Kennedy. But that does not mean they are his only boss. He also reports to George Soros, and his group of global money men.

Many assume that Axelrod runs Obama, since most people realize that Obama is a puppet. In this case, however, the puppet contradicts the puppet master. This suggests that other interests are in play.

One of them is the inevitable decline of the leaderless Kennedy Machine. This machine is old and rickety. It aims to control all activity within its geographic area, much like a union or mafia family does. When the machine can no longer control the market it declines. Thus when the surface transportation market was deregulated in 1980, the Teamsters lost their ability to control that market and non union competition drove many of their companies under. Similarly, when Irish gangs in Chicago and Brooklyn encountered a huge influx of Italians between 1890 and 1920, they lost control of the street and the rackets. When 51% of the electorate in Massachusetts becomes Independent, as it has, then the Kennedy Machine can no longer control the politics. The fear factor is gone. The Brown victory drove that point home rather convincingly.

Obama knows his policies are unpopular. He knows his own popularity is declining as well. Now he has figured out that this “anger” among voters is like a river that runs wide and deep. In sum he can get drowned.

Until now his moves have been dictated by the Chicago crew. How do we know that? All we have to do is look at who his closest advisors are and we know this is true. What we do not know is exactly who is pulling their strings. Certainly Soros and his conies are the financial arm and Zbig is involved too. But the fact he stepped up and repudiated Axelrod means that someone else is whispering in his ear now. Most likely it is Bill Clinton. Obama at this point is lost. He does not know what to do. He is in trouble. And so is the country.

I can’t see the future, but …

2010-01-13T16:15:00.000-08:00

Knock, knock. Is it time for a joke? OK.

Ole goes out one day to use the outhouse, and he finds Sven there. Sven has his wallet out, and he's throwing money down into the hole of the outhouse. Ole asks, "Uff da! Sven, watcha doin' there, fella? You're throwing the five dollar bill and the ten dollar bill down into the hole of the outhouse! Whatcha doin' that for?" Sven answers, "Well, when I pulled up my trousers I dropped a nickel down there—and I'm not going down into that mess for just a nickel!"

Problems in Understanding the Validity of Reality

2010-01-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

Learning from Science: 75% anomalous results represents a huge information stream in information-theoretic terms. But it’s mostly noise. So scientists have filters in their minds to deal with it — as do we all (read the rest of the article for a little neuroscience about that). The filters explain why “normal science” can proceed so long in the face of anomalies before a Kuhnian paradigm shift occurs. It’s a perfectly reasonable bias to assume that your existing theory, that has worked in the past, is right and the contradictory evidence is noise. It usually is.

But if the bias of your filters somehow gets set by something else — a political belief, for example — the fact that the filters control so much of what you see can steer you wrong a lot faster than you think.

2010 Food Crisis for Dummies

2009-12-18T00:08:00.000-08:00

2010 Food Crisis for Dummies: The world is blissful unaware that the greatest economic/financial/political crisis ever seen is a few months away. While it is understandable that general public has no knowledge of what is headed their way, that same ignorance on the part of professional analysts, economists, and other highly paid financial "experts” is mind boggling, as it takes only the tiniest bit of research to realize something is going critically wrong in agricultural market.

Wisconsin Farm Bureau: It is so unusual for corn harvest to stretch into December that USDA had no year ago or five-year average harvest progress comparisons. Wet weather has plagued harvest in parts of the Midwest and Great Plains. North Dakota corn harvest stood at just 60 percent, while South Dakota stood at 82 percent and Wisconsin at 85 percent.

Computer Modeling - FAIL

2009-12-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

Another example of trying to define computer modeling as science with disastrous results.

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=2299

No economist influenced the economics profession in the second half of the twentieth century as much as Paul Samuelson, who died Sunday at the age of 94. As the New York Times noted, “Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from one that ruminates about economic issues to one that solves problems, answering questions about cause and effect with mathematical rigor and clarity.”

Unfortunately, Samuelson’s influence was not as positive as the Times would have it. Samuelson turned economics from a social science that tried to figure out how the world worked into an pseudo-science that tried to turn the world into a mathematical model — a model that failed to account for the realities of individual human desires, incentives, and diversity. As a result, by 1960, economists, politicians, and would-be central planners were misled into viewing the economy as a machine that could be controlled by pulling levers, i.e, passing laws, issuing regulations, and setting tax and discount rates.

The economy is not a machine.

Computing is an epic technological advancement. Too many people, however, believe programming always generates correct answers. Reference: http://xkcd.com/676/

Beautiful Central Command China

2009-11-14T19:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Will Waxman-Markey fix this?

Calculating Risk Chat

2009-10-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

Dryfly: (in reply to Whiskey asking: For whom is this inflationary?)

Doesn't effing matter - inflation is a monetary event NOT a price event. Prices are just symptoms of TWO independent factors: [1] money supply & velocity and [2] actual supply/demand of the good.

Sheesh - you'd think people here would eventually get the memo.

Yagij: Calm down.

Remember that the under 35 crowd have never lived through a time of slow velocity of money supply. Credit boom is all they know, and all they know is a (relatively) stable currency that is the world's reserve paper of choice. They got the memo on supply/demand because they have seen it their entire lives (cool shoes, clothes, toys, BFs/GFs). They have never seen "Deflation" in most of their lives, and if they did, it wasn't the "Candy now costs 5 cents and I don't even have that to spend" kind of deflation. Yes or No?

Dryfly: Yes... plus they've never seen the back side of an innovation wave... we were on the up swing from mid-80s on [IT-telecomm-internet] and we are now well into the 'commoditization & consolidation' down side. Couple that with credit collapse and it is like nothing most of us have ever seen before [not this severe anyway - not since the 30s]. Will probably be 15-20 years before the cycle changes again. That's the typical cycle 40 years or so.

Yagij: Woo! Now if I can get you to talk to the 45-55 yo crowd who talk about how bad the 70s were and how it isn't as bad this time and we may start making progress in the "relearning" of America!

Dryfly: The 70s & 80s were worse - LOCALLY - in rust belt. Wasn't too bad in the SE US or West Coast. In that respect today is much harder than the 70s & 80s... its national if not international.

Comrade Kristina: I hear people in their 40's and 50's talking about deflation like it is a good thing. All they know is inflation is bad so the opposite must be good. I try to explain the opposite is much, much worse but they don't seem to get it. They will though, they will.

Dryfly: I see the exact opposite - young people saying deflation is good because they hope to buy houses cheap. They don't realize in a true deflation most people’s wages drop even faster making the cheap house 'expensive'. Few benefit from either deflation or inflation once all factors are evenly weighed. Even fewer realize this.

Hoover's ooover - Timer

2009-09-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Pursing the Eloi Languor

2009-09-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

J. Storrs Hall says: It is the absolute genius of the post-industrial age that we have created a society in which a growing majority of people are doing useless, and in many cases counter-productive work (plus producing luxuries and entertainment), but where we all feel like we’re doing something necessary and important, and that we’re making a difference in the world.

Unlike a century ago, today for everyone who is working on technological progress, there is someone else who thinks that they are saving the planet by stopping them. Has the pace of technological change slowed? It certainly has for technologies that have to run the gauntlet all the way into consumers’ hands and make an obvious difference, because those are the easiest kinds to attack. It has also slowed in areas where scare stories are easy to generate, like nuclear power. In a world of delusional, self-important Eloi, it is much more advantageous to be a screaming coward than to be brave and productive.

There Is Always Soma, Delicious Soma

2009-08-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

NeoNeocon says: As a young teenager of about twelve or thirteen, I read the novels Brave New World and 1984. I was absolutely terrified to the point of nightmares by the latter, but the former seemed more odd than frightening.

Yes, I could see that the society described in Brave New World was a dystopia. But compared to the far more horrific world Orwell’s imagination had created, Huxley’s vision seemed relatively pleasant, with the feelies and the soma and the sex. It was much lighter, and contained a certain amount of humor, an element notably absent from the exceedingly dark 1984

As I grew older, I came to understand that the two books described twin tyrannies, the yin and yang of dystopias (”Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice”). There was Huxley’s clamp of a science-controlled society on the human spirit, and then there was Orwell’s’ brutal stamp of the boot on the human face forever.

Freedom is what’s missing from either vision. Yes, if I was forced to choose, I’d choose Huxley’s world over Orwell’s. But both societies are nightmares. Obamaworld is not like that of 1984 (except for his habit of Orwellian Newspeak); it’s a kinder, gentler universe more like that of Brave New World, where people are ministered to for their own good, soft music plays in the background, and we’ve got sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Meanwhile, liberty is just as dead in that world as in the other.

Sheeple With Doubts

2009-07-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

Gracias xkcd

Leading Indicator Action

2009-06-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Zero Hedge says: California lost more than Michael Jackson on Thursday. They also lost their credit rating as Fitch dropped them to A-minus and even that rating was immediately placed on negative credit watch. California faces a $24 billion-plus budget deficit for the fiscal year that begins Wednesday, rapidly declining sales tax revenues and an impotent legislature that can’t agree on solutions. Faced with the prospect of running out of cash, State Controller John Chiang said Wednesday the state will begin to issue IOUs for all general fund payments other than those categories protected by the state constitution, federal law and court decisions.

Waxman-Markey Government Control Act of 2009

2009-06-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

Mama says: I don't think the average person realizes that much of our current power plant dates from decades ago, that nuclear plants are going to going off line in about a decade due to age, and that we are apparently signing on to something that will raise the basic cost of living in a very substantial way, without actually having any alternatives.

Okay, so in pursuit of a goal that's nonsensical, for a problem that is international and that will not be addressed internationally (India and China, for example, are refusing to starve their people to death), we adopt legislation that either sets up an iron wall of tariffs or drives half the nation into poverty in about 15 years. This is the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in my lifetime. Let's hope it can be stopped in the Senate.

Intrigue Ending

2009-06-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Joe Posnanski says: I can tell you that whenever I went to the swimming pool in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, “Human Nature” was playing on the radio. The opening guitar strains on “Beat It” — Eddie Van Halen, of course — still evoke a trip to the lake I took with high school friends. The sounds of “Off The Wall” can be so powerful, I can almost smell a sunny afternoon in 1981, just as my family had moved, just as I was about to enter high school, when I was afraid of just about everything.

The $134.5 Billion Mystery Chap 2

2009-06-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

Karl Denninger says: This is stuff out of a Tom Clancy novel, and the longer it goes on and the more twisted the "explanations", the less sense it makes. I find it incomprehensible that the Italian government released these two if they were actually caught in a massive counterfeiting operation with $134 billion in fake US Securities.

I find it equally incomprehensible that there was not an immediate indictment out of a US Prosecutor coming from such an event and a demand for extradition back to the United States. And further, I find it equally incomprehensible that if the securities are in fact real, and Treasury is lying, that Italy would not impose the fine.

Only the latter scenario, however, covers what apparently has happened - the two "couriers", whoever they are, have been released and, according to some accounts, they took the allegedly "fake" instruments with them, and there has been no US indictment issued for counterfeiting the instruments. Uh, can we have some truth here folks, because none of what is being reported adds up and my BS detector is ringing off the hook.

Who Switched the Playbooks?

2009-06-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Managing the Dragon says: When I was starting up in China, many experts cautioned me on what I would encounter. “It’s not a free market and there’s no rule of law, they told me. “The government controls the courts, the companies and the banks. Central planners in Beijing, not the marketplace, decide what goods to produce and which companies should produce them.”

“Decisions are made for political, not economic reasons,” they went on to explain. “The heads of China’s state-owned enterprises serve at the pleasure of the Party, the banks are told what loans to make, and making a profit is secondary to ensuring employment. That’s the reason why China’s banks are a mess and full of non-performing loans.”

The $134.5 Billion Mystery

2009-06-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

Contrarian Profits says: For those of you who don’t know, a report surfaced on Monday, June 8, on an obscure Vatican-sponsored news website, AsiaNews.it, that Italy’s financial police (Guardia Italiana di Finanza) had “seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.”

The story has received a lot of coverage in Europe and Asia. But US media outlets have ignored it, despite the fact that it concerns either the biggest ever counterfeiting or the biggest ever smuggling of US bonds. (A third possibility is that the story itself is a fake. Even so, this would merit serious attention as it implies that someone or some state or state agency is interested in destabilizing the value of US debt at a time when it’s most sensitive to destabilization, i.e., when America is issuing most of it.)

Crisis Problems Demand Harsh Remedies

2009-06-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

EarthTimes says: Any person caught using plastic bags in Uganda from early 2010 will be jailed for three years or be fined an equivalent of 1,500 dollars, press reports said Saturday, quoting government environment lawyers. Madison City Council take note.

Don’t Confuse Activity with Revolution

2009-06-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Pamela Geller says: Mousavi positioned himself as a reformer. It was shaping up to be a first-class piece of political theater: the "reformer" would win, and would con the UN and the President while finishing their extensive, comprehensive nuclear weapons program. Not one nuke, not two nukes. Many nukes. The world wants so desperately to be fooled. And so the "new" Iranian President would "engage" in a "new era," "new dialogue," and "diplomacy," to Obama's delight.

It was always a ruse. Mousavi is as establishment as they come. He was Prime Minister of Iran from 1981to 1989, and editor in chief of the official newspaper of the Islamic Republic party. Further, he's cut from the same Nazi cloth as Ahmadinejad: he was one of the founders of Hezb'allah, and also helped construct Iran's murderous intelligence services.

Computers Are Data Recorders

2009-06-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Zero Hedge says: Don't believe the hype. Twitter may be helpful short term, given the ability to create "flash crowds," but absent authentication and stronger organizational tools it is equally useful as a tool of secret police everywhere. The picture of Iranian Twitter operators running around the capital, looking for the next undiscovered internet connection, the secret police hunting for satellite dishes, and the folly of trying to collect news to distribute when your office moves every few hours is not pretty. Will someone please tell them to open an encrypted tunnel to an exile organization in London and Tweet from there?

The only reason the internet is serving the "revolution" at all presently is Iran's ineptitude in putting together the means to control it. Imagine how short lived would be an internet "revolution" if Iran had passed the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 and appointed a Cybersecurity Czar, for instance.

Authorization to Shut Down the Internet?

2009-06-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

The Planet is Safe – Duh!

2009-06-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

Conclusions: 1. The sun puts out more than enough energy to totally roast the earth. It is kept from doing so by the clouds reflecting about a third of the sun’s energy back to space. As near as we can tell, this system of cloud formation to limit temperature rises has never failed.

Yuna Ito - Ima Demo Aitai

2009-01-12T22:39:00.000-08:00

Namie Amuro - Come

2009-01-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

Alan - Ashita e no Sanka

2009-01-10T19:15:00.000-08:00

Ayumi Hamasaki - Dearest

2009-01-09T23:29:00.000-08:00

BoA - Every Heart

2009-01-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Aya Hirano - God Knows

2009-01-07T18:11:00.001-08:00

Ami Suzuki - Bitter

2009-01-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

Ami Suzuki joins S.A. - Bitter...
by lleos

Angela Aki - Again

2009-01-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Capsule - Wicked Plastic

2009-01-04T22:47:00.000-08:00

Translation Plastic Girl

Kanon Wakeshima - Still Doll

2009-01-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

Blagojevich Calls Check

2008-12-30T19:45:00.000-08:00

Hoot! Well played Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D). You don’t achieve high level government positions without knowing how the game is played. Move that Rook forward and call check on the King.

Blagojevich on Tuesday said he is appointing former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to fulfill the last two years of Obama’s Senate term, but Burris is unlikely to actually serve in the seat. Secretary of State Jesse White said he is refusing to co-sign the paperwork, thereby blocking the appointment.

The plea thickened when U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush joined the news conference and thanked God for Blagojevich’s selection of Burris because he is an African American with 40 years of public service. … “I don’t think there’s anyone, any U.S. senator, who’s sitting in the Senate right now, [who] would want to go on record to deny one African American from being seated in the U.S. Senate. I don’t think they want to go on record doing that.”

So the black Knight Jesse White blocks the move and a Pawn is rushed forward. I wonder if Blagojevich has a Bishop covering his Rook. Power, after all, is an ancient game.

What Would Einstein Do?

2008-12-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

2008: The year man-made global warming was disproved.

Two sources start questioning the wisdom of government funding of science. This type of talk will greatly displease the powers that be, but consider, what would Einstein do?

David Evans: Governments have spent over $50 billion on climate research since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence for AGW. So if there is no evidence to support AGW, and the missing hotspot shows that AGW is wrong, why does most of the world still believe in AGW?

Frank Tipler: This is why I am astounded that people, who should know better, like Newt Gingrich, advocate increased government funding for scientific research. We had better science, and a more rapid advance of science, in the early part of the 20th century when there was no centralized government funding for science.

Einstein discovered relativity on his own time, while he was employed as a patent clerk. Where are the Einsteins of today? They would never be able to get a university job --- Einstein's idea that time duration depended on the observer was very much opposed to the "consensus" view of the time. Einstein's idea that light was composed of particles (now called "photons") was also considered crazy by all physicists when he first published the idea. At least then he could publish the idea. Now a refereed journal would never even consider a paper written by a patent clerk, and all 1905 physics referees would agree that relativity and quantum mechanics were nonsense, definitely against the overwhelming consensus view. So journals would reject Einstein's papers if he were to write them today.

Science is an economic good like everything else, and it is very bad for production of high quality goods for the government to control the means of production. Why can't Newt Gingrich understand this? Milton Friedman understood it, and advocated cutting off government funding for science.

Perhaps after the revolution we can take a look at actual return on investment of the billions of tax dollars granted to research, because that review will never happen prior to the uprising.

The Vallejo Precedent

2008-12-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

In the discussion of the bankruptcy of Vallejo, CA comes this Factoid of the Day:

Consider this staggering comparison: State and local public employees comprise approximately 12 percent of the U.S. workforce and have an estimated $800 billion or more of unfunded pension liabilities (not counting other post-employment benefits). By comparison, employees in the private or corporate sector make up about 78 percent of the U.S. workforce with an estimated $450 billion of unfunded liabilities.

I foresee a steaming pile on a beeline towards our primary air circulation driver.

Our Consumer Economy

2008-12-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

A picture is worth a thousand words.

It’s Only Money

2008-12-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

Might as well dream big.

$227,839,800

Perhaps a corollary to the admonishment not to embezzle chump change.

Who's Being Naive

2008-12-15T19:00:00.000-08:00

Oh Kate, if the American people were supposed to know this stuff, the New York Times and the Associated Press would have instructed them. This is just wave making.

Chicago Democrats and The Chicago Mob: Most of America thinks Mayor Daley runs Chicago. Those on the inside know that's not the case. The man who runs Chicago from behind the scenes, since the early 1990's, is Alderman Ed Burke, Chairman of Chicago's Finance Committee. Burke went from being an errand boy for Alderman Roti to the most powerful elected figure in the state of Illinois. In a corrupt state like Illinois, the guy with the most money in his campaign fund is the man at the top. In Illinois, it’s not Chicago's Mayor Daley or Governor Blagojevich but Alderman Burke.

I remember Vince Foster

2008-12-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

wbboei Says: December 14th, 2008 at 9:30 am

Just a thought but if it were my call I would keep the governor under twenty four hour surveillance for his good and the good of the American People. You can believe the murder of the head of the Arkansas Democratic Party who was prepared to lead a pro-Hillary offensive at the Convention was not related to the election but if that is the case the timing and circumstances are to say the least suspicious. Maybe the same thing would not happen here where Obamas claim to the throne is once again at issue but it would be wise to err on the side of caution with full surveillance protection. There are simply too many people a guy like this could bring down.
...

This would be a reference to Democratic Party Governor Rod Blagojevich of Chicago. Bill Gwatney would say this is a creative but merely revengeful conspiracy theory, if ... he was still alive. Make no mistakes about facts. Obama is a practicing politician of the Chicago Way.

Global Warming Kills Beauty

2008-12-13T22:52:00.000-08:00

snowcrystals.com

Good thing man made global warming is only a Democratic Party lie.

Stepping into the Future for Hindsight

2008-12-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

The history of the command and control period of American history can not be fully appreciated without a basic understanding of The Blagojevich-Obama link and the Black Muslims, plus the timely financing of Nadhmi Auchi. All the government approved textbooks here in the future begin: Selfish freedom was leading America farther and farther away from social justice thus creating the need for strong leadership.

Blagojevich

2008-12-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

Blagojevich – You can’t pronounce it but you can pronounce sentence.

Bonus Question: Who is the Sergeant Schultz of Chicago politics?
Hint: I know nothink. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooothink.
Merry Fitzmas!

Red Alert: Gold Backwardation!!!

2008-12-05T18:18:00.000-08:00

I always view gold bugs with a healthy degree of skepticism but Antal E. Fekete lays out a soundly reasoned warning that the global financial system is going to lock up. Soon.

Red Alert: Gold Backwardation!!! In the commodity futures markets the terminus technicus for a positive basis is contango; that for a negative one, backwardation. Contango implies the existence of a healthy supply of the commodity in the warehouses available for immediate delivery, while backwardation implies shortages and conjures up the scraping of the bottom of the barrel.

Gold going to permanent backwardation means that gold is no longer for sale at any price, whether it is quoted in dollars, yens, euros, or Swiss francs. The situation is exactly the same as it has been for years: gold is not for sale at any price quoted in Zimbabwe currency, however high the quote is. To put it differently, all offers to sell gold are being withdrawn, whether it concerns newly mined gold, scrap gold, bullion gold or coined gold.
Negative basis (backwardation) means that people controlling the supply of monetary gold cannot be persuaded to part with it, regardless of the bait. These people are no speculators. They are neither Scrooges nor Shylocks. They are highly capable businessmen with a conservative frame of mind. They are determined to preserve their capital come hell or high water, for saner times, so they can re-deploy it under a saner government and a saner monetary system. Their instrument is the ownership of monetary gold.

They blithely ignore the siren song promising risk-free profits. Indeed, they could sell their physical gold in the spot market and buy it back at a discount in the futures market for delivery in 30 days. In any other commodity, traders controlling supply would jump at the opportunity. The lure of risk-free profits would be irresistible. Not so in the case of gold. Owners refuse to be coaxed out of their gold holdings, however large the bait may be. Why? Well, they don't believe that the physical gold will be there and available for delivery in 30 days' time. They don't want to be stuck with paper gold, which is useless for their purposes of capital preservation.

The full faith and trust in the US government to pay its promises is in question. I have read a challenge to the definition of spot price used in the article but overall it makes a good case that this is an indicator worth watching. If the commodities markets begin saying that gold can not be purchased with US dollars, no matter how many of those dollars are offered, it means a complete breakdown in the trust between nations. Scary stuff. The wave of time is towering over the mountains we know.

Building for the Future

2008-12-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

I have been watching a work crew start building a commercial building. My first thought is hoping they have their financing approved. Since approved financing is time limited, I suppose they needed to start the project before the approval expires lest they lose the claim on all those million of dollars. Planning for the future always contains the hope the future will mostly continue to resemble the present.

The gentleman operating the top of the line Volvo excavator is an artist. There is an old New Yorker cartoon with the punch line: Americans love to move dirt. So true. Trench, trench, backfill, infill, grade. The rebar and concrete guys are all supporting characters to the master excavator. With every three cubic yards of topsoil he transfers into the back of a truck or smoothes along the nascent foundation, I think these are the people that will get us through the coming economic disaster.

Paulson, Bernake, Cash n’ Carry, Thomas Donilon, Wendy Sherman, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Tim Howard and all the rest of the best and brightest could all use some quality time on the labor farm. Chairman Mao inflicted a great deal of evil upon the life of this world but his insistence that intellectuals actually experience impoverished slave labor is one thought I know I should reject, but which still appeals to my sense of justice.

The Best and the Brightest

2008-11-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

Obama's one-trick wizards: One wants to ask the Wall Street wizards who comprise the talent pool for the incoming administration, "If you so smart, how come you ain't rich no more?"

Failed financiers run the Obama transition team. It used to be that the heads of great industrial companies got the top Cabinet posts. Now it is the one-trick wizards. After George W Bush fired former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who had run Alcoa, the last survivor of the species was Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. Obama's bevy of talent comes from finance. American industrialists have become figures of ridicule, like the pathetic chief executive of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, begging for a government loan.

History Lesson

2008-11-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

JC Penney: As Penney later said, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”

In 1959, Penney cast the sole dissenting vote when Penneys board of directors decided to offer credit cards to customers. Penney explained to his fellow board members that he understood the company had to keep up with its competitors, but he did not approve of policies that encouraged customers to go into debt.

If CO2 Traps Heat, How is Cold Beer Possible?

2008-11-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

If carbon dioxide traps heat, then how is cold beer possible?

We will not stop carbon taxation and central government control over business with graphs, databases and algorithms. The scientifically ignorant general population will continue to tune it out and trust the scientists that the authorities deem experts. The way to win a political battle is with political strategies.

The public needs to be convinced by their daily experience that carbon dioxide does not trap heat. If we can make each and every encounter with cold carbonated beverages a reminder that CO2 doesn’t trap heat, then every Coke or Pepsi consumed and every Coors, Bud and Miller advertisement reinforces that message. If heat trapping carbon dioxide becomes a public joke, then the foundation of dangerous man made global warming crumbles in the court of public opinion.

If CO2 Traps Heat, How is Cold Beer Possible?

2008-11-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

Mama says: Last week an EPA appeals board dumped another coal plant, and said the EPA should develop national rules for CO2 emissions. That ruling is widely believed to have placed about one hundred coal plants in jeopardy, at a time when the US is rapidly running out of electricity. Plants in Utah, New Mexico, Kansas and Georgia have all recently been stopped by legal action.

That leaves the US with no new drilling, no new nuclear plants, no new hydro plants and no new coal plants. In short, it leaves us with no real substantial new energy sources except perhaps plants that burn natural gas. Wind and solar will not do it, nor will biodiesel.

Our Foundation of Promises

2008-11-18T17:35:00.000-08:00

Denninger: If you think the stock market is bottoming then you must have some sort of belief that the credit markets are improving. I'm sure you can explain, then, why the IRX (13 week T-Bill) is yielding a whole 1/11th of a percent (annually!) … Barack Obama made the statement that "deficits are not important" on 60 Minutes Sunday.

He is going to get a rude surprise; the President of the United States is subservient to the bond market - specifically, he is subservient to the willingness of foreigners to finance our deficit spending. Embroiled in their own mess this capacity is quickly eroding, and over the last ten years our Treasury has put itself in the unenviable position of shortening the maturity of its outstanding debt (to get lower interest rates) which raises the potential of a rollover funding "emergency".

I have said it before and I'll say it again - President Obama is going to find himself on the wrong end of reality, and be forced into austerity measures that neither he or Americans are going to like one little bit. I wouldn't want his job when he is forced to go on Prime Time TV to tell America that we simply can't finance our profligate spending any more and that serious, real, across-the-board cuts are going to have to be made to our federal budget, entitlements and "promises" - that we simply cannot keep those promises.

Past Performance is the Available Evidence

2008-11-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus: While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it is aggravating seeing Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the cold hard facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.

Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. … Understanding what happened requires understanding two concepts of what makes up the national debt. The national debt is made up of public debt and intergovernmental holdings. The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government. Intergovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.

Notice that while the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intergovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intergovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the lie.

History Lesson

2008-11-14T23:54:00.000-08:00

Read This: You can’t really tell someone that you asked him to lunch to let him know that you don’t think of him as evil. Nor can you tell him that you asked him to lunch because you thought that you could trace the biggest financial crisis in the history of the world back to a decision he had made.

Objects in the Air

2008-11-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Dangerous times are here. Be observant. Be cautious.

Killing the P.I.G.

2008-06-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

The slaughtering was done by the chief cook himself – a former army cook, middle-aged and tough as iron – while Vasily Petrovich helped. It turned out to be not so easy. The enormous, immobile Mashka, who had been overfed on warm greasy kitchen slops till she weighed over 400 pounds, took to flight like a bird when the slaughterers crossed the threshold of her pen. She had evidently guessed what they had come for, even though the chef hid the knife behind his back.

They had a terrible time throwing her. First in turn and then together Vasily Petrovich and the chef sprawled out on the dirty floor boards, trying to get hold of Mashka’s legs. But with an agility inspired by her fear of death, the heavy sow, almost blinded by fat, kept slipping out of their clutching hands and dashing about the pen with heartrending squeals.

Finally they managed to throw her onto her back. The chef took the long knife and, with a neatly calculated movement, plunged the thin, narrow blade under the sow’s left leg and pulled the knife sharply toward himself. - Yury Nagibin

Assertion and Documentation

2008-06-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

From the critical thinking of the right:

How our Marxist faculties got that way: In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon ended the war and Congress ended military conscription. So the Marxist anti-war activists -- activism is now a full-time profession -- had to do something else. Most of them went to work in the real world. But a meaningful number remained in school and opted for academia, especially the humanities and the social sciences. If they got a Ph.D., they might even become university teachers, and many of them did. They then climbed academia's ladder, rising from instructor to assistant professor, from assistant professor to associate professor, and from associate professor to full professor. These last two ranks usually carry tenure, which means a guaranteed job until one decides to retire or is fired for raping little children in the streets.

From the critical thinking of the left:

UW Madison Havens Center: Michael Burawoy has studied industrial workplaces in different parts of the world -- Zambia, Chicago, Hungary and Russia -- through participant observation. … No longer able to work in factories, most recently he has turned to the study of his own workplace – the university – to consider the way sociology itself is produced and then disseminated to diverse publics. Over the course of his research and teaching, he has developed theoretically driven methodologies that allow broad conclusions to be drawn from ethnographic research and case studies. These methodologies are represented in Global Ethnography a book coauthored with 9 graduate students, which shows how globalization can be studied "from below" through participation in the lives of those who experience it. Throughout his sociological career he has engaged with Marxism, seeking to reconstruct it in the light of his research and more broadly in the light of historical challenges of the late 20th and early 21st. centuries.

El cambio verdadero requiere el cambio verdadero

2008-06-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

Usar la misma gente y contar con diversos resultados es insano.

El cambio verdadero requiere el cambio verdadero.

El cambio verdadero requiere dolor verdadero.

Flooded with Lies

2008-06-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

Man made global warming is absolutely wrong. That won’t stop the special interest groups from claiming that every weather event is evidence (not proof) of man made global warming.

Environmental group ties floods to global warming: The disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions by Clean Wisconsin in a January 2007 report.

The report, "Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin," forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall, Clean Wisconsin said in a news release.

Balony. Anthropogenic global warming is predicated on the fact that carbon dioxide can absorb heat. Now is it is true that carbon dioxide can absorb the portion of infrared radiation in the wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm). This, however, is a very small portion of the “heat” the Earth radiates back int0 space from the energy received from the sun each day.

More importantly, retention of heat energy does not contribute anything getting colder. Anytime someone claims that the ability of carbon dioxide to temporarily absorb the infrared wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm) leads to more snowfall and flooding, ask them for the source data. When they can’t provide it, explain to them politely that you don’t believe their undocumented paranoia.

Professor Reid Bryson

2008-06-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

Professor Emeritus Reid Bryson dies today at age 88. Professor Reid Bryson founded the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1948. This is before politics corrupts the practice of science. Two quotes to remember an intelligent and honest man.

‘You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.’

“If Global warming is a 100 story building, the human influence is equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor” - Dr. Bryson

Truth always wins in the end.

Economic Experimentation

2008-06-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve observed that people will pick up a loose quarter while leaving twenty six pennies alone. Please feel free to replicate this experiment and formulate and defend your conclusions.

Elitist Entitlement Whining

2008-06-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

As I’ve said before, money is putting three quarters and a nickel into a vending machine and getting back a pack of peanuts. Getting Goldman Sachs to lend you $600 million dollars to buy a company that “has never posted an annual profit and has lost a total of $194.6 million since it was founded” is finance.

Cash flow through the modern economy is a complex journey through the fusion of market exchange and non-market gifting. What concerns many of us is the size of the grant economy distributing our tax dollars around. Wisconsin is firmly committed to creating a biotechnology economy so it is worth noticing how entitlement mentality develops when government grants prime the pump.

California Scientists Sound Alarms: The California Healthcare Institute (CHI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) today released a report, "The National Institutes of Health: Fueling Healthcare Innovation in California," urging legislators to support increased funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the backbone of the biomedical industry in California, which employs more than 267,000 people in high wage jobs. Without a sustained commitment of funding, scientists, academicians and leaders in the biomedical industry in California profiled in the report fear the biomedical ecosystem in California, made up of universities, research institutions and industry, will lose its capacity to produce the next generation of inventions to treat and cure disease.

However, as the federal deficit soars and legislators pare back discretionary spending, the NIH has come under intense pressure. In the first true budgeted reduction in NIH funding since 1970, the 2007 budget represented a 0.1 percent decrease from 2006

According to the … Supplement Survey, … the competition for peer-reviewed grants is rising and investigators must revise proposals several times in order to receive grants that are oftentimes lower in amount and shorter in duration than requested. Funding constraints prohibit faculty from maintaining sufficiently staffed labs and limit them from hiring qualified younger researchers.

I can imagine the indignant conversions as researchers sip on fine Merlot and sample award winning California cheese. It strikes me that the purpose of taxpayer financing is ultimately not to sustain 267,000 people in high wage jobs until some product emerges that can be sold to Wall Street. It’s also hard to work up tears just because finances get tight and you can’t have every toy you desire and all the minions you want. There are too many people struggling with unnecessarily expensive gasoline and punitive regulatory restrictions to empathize when academic lifestyles are asked to share the social pain.

Third Wave Technologies Purchase Offer

2008-06-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

Madison based Third Wave Technologies, Inc. (TWTI) has agreed to be acquired in whole by Bedford, MA based Hologic Inc. (HOLX) for $580 million dollars. The 180 employees in Wisconsin should be unaffected by the ownership change.

GEN News: Third Wave develops and markets molecular diagnostic reagents for DNA and RNA analysis based on its Invader® chemistry. … The company recently submitted to the FDA PMA applications for two HPV tests.

“Hologic has an established sales and distribution network for women's health as well as extensive relationships with clinical labs and OB/GYN channels,” according to Jack Cumming, chairman and CEO of Hologic. “If and when Third Wave's HPV tests receive FDA approval, which we hope will be in the first half of calendar 2009, we will be well-positioned to take these products quickly and effectively to market.”

Both companies are operating at a loss and Hologic intends to borrow $600 million to finance the acquisition. Because the current market for human papillomavirus (HPV) testing to find the four types of the virus associated with disease is only $200 million annually, someone is convinced this market is going to expand considerably in the very near future. I suspect now that drug giant Merck has an approved vaccine in Gardasil they will continue to market their concern about the need for universal testing. Once you have a preventive treatment, the task becomes finding as many people as possible “at risk”.

Hillary Clinton Suspends Her Campaign

2008-06-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

Obama and McCain consider their plans for the United States economy.

The World Can Be Changed

2008-06-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

Using the same people and expecting different results is insane.

Real Change Requires Real Change.

Real Change Requires Real Pain.

“It’s burdensome”

2008-06-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

Because “progressive” government requires "smart" growth.
Madison grapples with green
Because it takes time for the smart few to outthink the many.

The “Army” Blames the Sun

2008-06-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

There is some internet kvetching going on because someone with The U.S. Army Research Laboratory is claiming the temperature of the earth has to do with the sun. Here is a bit of the pdf file with the comments on Global Climate Models (GCM) and total solar irradiance (TSI).

Is climate sensitive to solar variability?: Modeling TSI variability: Earth’s atmosphere, landmasses, and oceans absorb and redistribute the total solar irradiance (TSI) by means of coupled nonlinear hydrothermal, geochemical, and radiative dynamic processes that produce Earth’s globally averaged temperature at a given time.

The variations in TSI are indicative of the Sun’s turbulent dynamics, as evidenced by changes in the number, duration, and intensity of solar flares and sunspots, and by the intermittency in the time intervals between dark spots and bright faculae. That time variation in TSI induces similar changes in Earth’s average temperature and produces trends that move the global temperature up and down for tens or even hundreds of years. Our conclusions depart from those of the GCM simulations. We maintain that the variations in Earth’s temperature are not noise, but contain substantial information about the source of variability, in particular the variations in TSI.

The true believers that mankind is creating unnatural and dangerous changes are in frenzy because he is not a climate scientist. Well, no. Dr. West is a mathematical physicist. In his own words.

Bruce J. West: I have worked on the applications of discontinuous statistical processes (Levy distributions) to all manner of phenomena including quantum chaos, non-equilibrium statistical physics and the statistics of biomedical time series. Most recently I have worked on the development of the fractional calculus for the study of stochastic processes for which the evolution of the probability density cannot be described by a partial differential equation, but requires a fractional propagation-transport equation.

This is not hard to understand. When a mathematician says the math in the Global Climate Models is wrong, it may be reasonable to doubt the programmed conclusions. CO2 does not equal heat so more CO2 does not mean more heat. Make sense?

The Municipal Socialism Fusion

2008-06-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Two intriguing articles which combined suggest that the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama to the leadership of the far left is the fruition of his long term plan to end run the established patronage based urban Democratic political structures. Ascension made possible by an alliance with the Academic left coveting the voting bloc he brings to the game.

Stanley Kurtz: While in his years as a Chicago organizer and attorney, Obama took care to maintain friendly ties to the Daley administration, in Obama’s campaign for state senate, he specifically avoided asking the mayor or the mayor’s closest allies for support. Obama’s plan was to make an end-run around Chicago’s governing Democratic political network, by building a coalition of left-leaning black churches and radical secular organizations like Acorn (perhaps with de facto help from liberal foundation money as well). This coalition would provide Obama with the flexibility to play out a political career some distance to the left of conventional Illinois democratic politics. And sure enough, Obama’s extremely liberal record in Illinois vindicated his strategy.

Thomas F. Roeser: The Democratic Party elders cannot…and will not…risk the certainty that there will be wholesale defections of blacks-the most predictably massive voting bloc ever to serve in any political party-if Obama is denied. Defections that would not just lose it the presidency (Democrats are inured to that possibility having lost it in 2004, 2000, 1988, 1984 and 1980), but would reduce the Democrats to a minority party in city after city by shrinking the black vote to a tiny margin. Consider what it would do to Chicago and Cook County: these areas would revert to a two-party status again, disastrous for politicians who don’t need the presidency ever to root their snouts in the patronage troughs. --- (h/t Dad29)

I find it highly probable that Academic Marxism, fully aware of the failures of the international and nation state experiments, have intellectually regrouped around the idea that municipal socialism is the ideal operative level. The focus on controlling municipal governments and metropolitan populations {for their own good} fits well with both environmentalist New Urbanism and Black Liberation theory. It’s an alliance with the potential to seize significant nationwide power through a coordinated network of “city-states”. It’s actually a valid historical model and I expect the Academics are quite pleased with the progress thus far.

Bable Rebuilt

2008-06-01T20:29:00.001-07:00

Since I’m not sure that the American Revolution overthrowing British rule is being taught as a positive these days, it is occasionally worth taking a moment to remind people that America was created to be something different from Europe. Taking a hard look at the Old Country in general and Britain is specific is a great way to test whether we American citizen want to continue to reshape ourselves in their image.

A Confusion of Tongues: London is now the most ethnically diverse city in the world—more so, according to United Nations reports, even than New York. And this is not just a matter of a sprinkling of a few people of every race and nation, or of the fructifying cultural effect of foreigners. … A third of London’s residents were born outside Britain, a higher percentage of newcomers than in any other city in the world except Miami, and the percentage continues to rise. Likewise, migration figures for the country as a whole—emigration and immigration—suggest that its population is undergoing swift replacement. Many of the newcomers are from Pakistan, India, and Africa; others are from Eastern Europe and China. If present trends continue, experts predict, in 20 years’ time, between a quarter and a third of the British population will have been born outside it, and at least a fifth of the native population will have emigrated.

But we did not conclude that it was best, then, to have no national, religious, or cultural identity at all. The institutions that allow one to live in peace, freedom, and security require loyalty (not necessarily of a blind variety); and loyalty in turn requires a sense of identification. In a world in which sovereignty must exist, some kind of identification with that sovereignty is also necessary: too rigid a national identity has its dangers, but so does too loose a one. The first results in aggression toward and denigration of others; the second in society’s disintegration from within, which can then provoke authoritarian attempts at repair.

Theodore Dalrymple writing this article for the City Journal wraps some examples within the framework of the plausible truism that the answers to immigration will not be found on the extremes. That’s all well and nice, perhaps even a tad cliché in that optimal is nearly always somewhere in the middle. The problem Dalrymple sees in not in shared values of commerce, but unshared values in terms of violence (e.g. honor killings), family (e.g. polygamy and forced marriage) and multiple bodies of law in a larger sovereignty that recognizes validity in the identity politics of sub-groups.

Carly Fiorina – McCain Campaign Advisor

2008-05-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

Carly Fiorina has been active recently. The chairman of the Republican National Committee's Victory '08 is – as one lefty blogger says – “The CEO who drove Hewlett Packard into the ground? The CEO who alienated her own employees? The CEO the share-holders rode out on a rail? The same Carly Fiorina who's McSame's point woman on economic issues”. He likes the symbolism while others question her raison d’être.

Slate: Democrats frequently need business surrogates and market whisperers: rich, successful people who can reassure the CEO class that the candidate won't threaten them much and that he understands the needs of business and the markets. Republicans traditionally haven't required such ambassadors, but McCain does.

So Fiorina is dutifully making the rounds of the media circuit making the case that McCain has embraced the political correctness of the day and will use the administration to save the planet.

Wired: But secondly to your very first question, unlike George Bush, McCain believes global warming is real. He believes climate change is real. He believes that the US must play a leadership role in addressing this problem. So when he thinks about energy independence, which is a national security issue, an economic security issue, he thinks about it in the context of also environmental protection, and making sure that we're making progress on global warming.

Fiorina repeats McCain’s absolute belief in the need to fight global warming on CNBC this evening just a day after admitting in a Michigan campaign stop that there is still a possibility the whole global warming alarmism may be (glance right, glance left, whisper) ... not true.

WWJ News radio: But the possible John McCain running mate certainly isn't Bushlike in her views on global warming, pointing out that if we fight global warming and it turns out not to be true, "all we will have done is create a bunch of new technologies and a bunch of new jobs," while if we do nothing and it is true, "that would be catastrophic."

On one hand, it’s refreshing to know this is “say what you have to say” politics as usual. On the other hand, it’s the same old politics of justifying increased public sector spending regardless if there are any valid reasons.

A Leading Indicator

2008-05-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

The lesson of American history is drive and thrive. If the Republican Party wants to win the hearts, minds and votes of the majority of American citizens, then they need to aggressively advocate for the ability to own and drive cars.

Globe and Mail: After hundreds of angry drivers shut down highways in England yesterday in protest against green automobile taxes, and drivers and fishermen in France and Spain paralyzed their ports and roads in a fuel-tax protest, politicians began to signal Europe's ambitious emission-control policies may soon have to be abandoned.

While Europe has led the way in using tax incentives to encourage people to buy low-emission cars and to build carbon-neutral houses in order to meet Kyoto targets, it has become increasingly apparent that inflation-battered voters are no longer willing to go along.

Emotionally, there is no greater understanding of personal freedom than the ability to use time to go directly to where you want to go, when you want to go. One proper role of government is to insure the population is free to be productive. Computer programming can create fantasy but experimentally controlled empirical science explains reality. CO2 is harmless to ecosystems constructed from CO2.

Carolyn "Biddy" Martin

2008-05-28T20:49:00.000-07:00

The news is on and I ask Lola: Does it look like the UW hired a Donna Shalala clone? She answers, I was thinking the exact same thing. I wonder if Biddy is picked because she neatly fits into Shalala’s old commencement robe. I refuse to speculate if she can fill Donna’s shoes. Those sort of legacy questions are best left until the actual hiring is confirmed.

The brand new incoming University of Wisconsin -Madison Chancellor is quick to outline her vision for Wisconsin’s world class university.

WKOW: "Domestic partner benefits have become increasingly important and it's the case that faculty do leave universities without them for universities that offer those benefits," says Martin.

Well, at least she is coming for reasons other than filthy lucre.

Capital Times: Martin, who reportedly made more than a half-million dollars in fiscal year 2006, will be taking a pay cut to come to Madison -- although she will make significantly more than Wiley's pay of $327,000 per year. In February, the UW Board of Regents voted to set a pay range of $370,000 to $452,000 for the position in an attempt to attract top candidates for the job.

Robert Earl Keen in St. Louis

2008-05-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Lola and I decide we need a bit of a road trip having not escaped Madison since driving to Champaign to see James McMurtry in the bitter mid-winter cold. Searching for ideas, we discover Robert Earl Keen is playing The Pageant in St. Louis the Saturday night of Memorial Day Weekend, and the destination is settled. Since he doesn’t need to tour outside of Texas, it seems like a fair deal to meet him halfway when he does take the show on the road.

Artist Direct: Among the large contingent of talented songwriters who emerged in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, Robert Earl Keen struck an unusual balance between sensitive story-portraits ("Corpus Christi Bay") and raucous barroom fun ("That Buckin' Song"). These two song types in Keen's output were unified by a mordant sense of humor that strongly influenced the early practitioners of what would become known as alternative country music.

The North Mississippi Allstars open with each band doing 75 minute sets. Lola and I settle into seats on the wing and chat with three couples from childhood friendships who similarly converge on this show from various parts of Missouri. I venture into the stage front crowd when the band plays “the road goes on forever and the party never ends”.

Keen closes with Bob Dylan’s You Ain't Going Nowhere which is first recorded in 1968 by The Byrds on their seminal roots country album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It’s a pleasant surprise and appropriate in that Sweetheart, arguably, is the recording that marks the abrupt about face from the excesses of psychedelia and back towards an appreciation of the music created by American working people.

Hurray for Cold Beer!

2008-05-22T20:26:00.000-07:00

How can beer get cold if carbon dioxide traps heat? This is a good question to ask your celebrity cashier at Bratfest. Don’t, however, expect scientific answers from politicians or media employees.

The Unholy Alliance that manufactured Global Warming: Please understand I am not claiming a conspiracy, but rather a cabal, which is defined as a secret political clique pushing a political agenda; in this case, designed by Maurice Strong.

The unresolved question remains which local publication, The Isthmus or The Wisconsin State Journal will first have the courage to ask why cold beer is possible if carbon dioxide has incendiary super power? My bet is that Marc Eisen of the free weekly will ultimately be the first to admit in print that there are “legitimate doubts” about the ability of CO2 to magically induce ecosystem destroying infernos. I’m thinking his thinking will free up as he realizes that Kathleen Falk’s rising star has peaked. Maybe the epiphany will happen this Memorial Day Weekend. Cheers, fellow citizens!

More Prep Work for Our Future

2008-05-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

“There’s no accountability without accounting”. This remark is a comment on a specific situation in a specific country but it's a phrase with broad applications. (Source)

It seems to me that behind all the anti-capitalist rhetoric, what lurks is a knee-jerk aversion to accounting. The revolution thinks it's below its dignity to work through such grubby concerns as, y'know, whether its economic initiatives cost more than their product is worth.

"Capitalist values!" they'll scream. "The bourgeois fixation with profit!"

These people are revolted by the very thought that a cost and benefit calculus can ever be a basis for action. But, when you think about it, what is profit if not an accounting expression of what happens when the things you produce are worth more than the things you use to produce them with?

What can you expect from people who lionize the principle of indifference to profits other than unchecked waste?

Discipline undoubtedly gets in the way of a good time and there is probably a case to be made that non-profit systems inherently decay into inefficiency. I suppose a corollary is that undisciplined spending can still produce functional results for long periods of time. I suppose a house of cards is stable in stable surroundings.

Backchannel Currents

2008-05-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

A few observations from gazing in the still waters for backchannel currents.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy Peter Spiro, a professional academic, muses that American citizenship should be available to anyone who wants to be an American since America is an idea that people worldwide believe in. The lucid thoughts are in the comment thread.

Earlier this month, Russ Feingold introduces the Senate version of legislation mandating Election Day voter registration for all Federal elections. Mandatory, of course, means no diversity allowed.

The Election Day Registration Act: Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) are introducing legislation to help more Americans register to vote by allowing Election Day registration at polling places for all federal elections.

As citizens, we must continue to learn. The United States is now more of a modern way of life, than some structural remnant left over from antiquated authoritarian obsessions with geographical hegemony. The pursuit of true democracy creates a moral imperative to gather up all the people and record a vote for every warm body.

Its Dusk on Planet Earth

2008-05-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

“All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth”. Oh pleeezzz! Do you know how retarded this sounds to people with eyes and ears? Desperation, from the Latin desperationem, a noun of action from desperare "lose hope", seems to apply to the current position of the environmentalist alarmists. From The Nation, the most recent outburst from NASA paid employee, Jim Hansen.

Earth at 350: A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA's Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued--and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper--"if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points--massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them--that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

Restated: Thirty Five PARTS PER MILLION makes the difference between the planet of life we know and some unexplained but somehow horrible future planet of “irreversible tipping points”. This sounds like the opening offer for the regulatory set points at which the government steps in to command our economy. This also sounds like the negotiating position of those knowing for a fact that experimentally verified scientific truth negates their claims. Carbon dioxide emissions are harmless. Hopefully, the free market side of government demands proof the projections are accurate.

My primary question is which local media source has the courage to publish the truth about the innocence of CO2. After all, The Isthmus and The Wisconsin State Journal both have access to the combined resources of the world wide internet in addition to the UW Madison Departments of Physics and Chemistry. I keep wondering which one will be the first to have the courage to tell the truth.

The Ides of May 2008

2008-05-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

The capitalists view the world as one economy subdivided into regulatory subdivisions. The socialists view the world as one population subdivided into regulatory subdivisions. When I find myself asking why none of our Presidential candidates are talking only in terms about what is good for the citizens of the United States, I force myself back to this truth about the reality of our moment.

The Migrations Continue

2008-05-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

A Mourning Warbler appears in the yard this early evening following the seasonal warming back towards summer homes in the northern woods. This one may settle in the Rice Lake area now that habit has grown back from the extensive logging of a century or so ago. I’ve observed two Common Yellow Throats as the warblers continue to migrate.

A White Breasted Nuthatch joins the groups of Purple Finches and White Crowned Sparrows feeding in the grass and trees then moving elsewhere. In the subsequent stillness I notice a large bird, probably a Marsh Hawk, perched on a low branch. She rests for several minutes then skims off low to the ground heading north.

Pragmatic West Virginia

2008-05-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

West Virginia Democrats know a bit about the practical purpose of unions. The point of organization is to secure fair wages and abolish unfair management practices. They appear to believe that unionism is both collective and local and they vote as if politics is about “Just Us”. Today, the pragmatic Clinton wing of the Democratic Party secures a two to one victory over the global “Justice” of the Obama theorists.

West Virginia's Mine Wars: In response to poor conditions and low wages in the late 1800s, workers in most industries developed unions. Strikes generally focused on a specific problem, lasted short periods of time, and were confined to small areas. During the 1870s and 1880s, there were several attempts to combine local coal mining unions into a national organization. After several unsuccessful efforts, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1890. In its first ten years, the UMWA successfully organized miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Attempts to organize West Virginia failed in 1892, 1894, 1895, and 1897.

In 1902, the UMWA finally achieved some recognition in the Kanawha-New River Coalfield, its first success in West Virginia. … By 1912, the union had lost control of much of the Kanawha-New River Coalfield. That year, UMWA miners on Paint Creek in Kanawha County demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job on April 18, beginning one of the most violent strikes in the nation's history.

By 1912, however, the Model T Ford with its gasoline powered engine has already started a liberation of the working class from local employment captivity. If you don’t have to walk to work, if you don’t have to be delivered en masse to work, if you can go work where you please, then you can optimize your life in America. Individual freedom is the tap root of American exceptionalism and it is a shame watching it being destroyed.

Climate Friendly Commerce

2008-05-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

Sigh. ... We are governed by fools and idiots.

Governor Doyle Signs Climate Change Agreement with United Kingdom: Since coming into office, Governor Doyle has worked to make Wisconsin and the Midwest a leader in renewable energy. Last year, as Chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association, Governor Doyle spearheaded a regional strategy to achieve energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming that culminated with 10 Governors signing the Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord.

The Agreement: (in part) Wisconsin commits to joining the International Carbon Action Partnership and to working with the UK and others in sharing best practice on carbon markets and compatibility of design to facilitate the development of a global carbon market.

We will aim to increase climate-friendly commerce between the United Kingdom and Wisconsin to bolster our respective economic positions while mutually benefiting each partner.

It almost sounds like free market capitalism – “global carbon market” and “climate-friendly commerce” – but it’s not. When Governor Doyle and some hereditary British Aristocrat appoint the panel authorized to designate climate friendly commerce, I hope they set a quota for representatives of Mother Nature. I recommend seating Owls. Owls are wise. I hope they avoid credentialing Cows. Cows are stupid.

SEIU & Obama

2008-05-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Andrew Stern’s Service Employees International Union supports Barack Hussein Obama and Forbes announces SEIU Local 1199 President Dave Regan from Ohio is the Democratic Party superdelegate that should tip the nomination to Obama. As a superdelegate, the fact Clinton won Ohio is a non-factor.

Obama is now open to the wishes of Andy Stern as he attempts to revitalize private sector unionism internationally. In the summer of 2005, Stern takes his union and leaves what he perceives as the stagnation of the AFL-CIO. Since then, his efforts to rebuild unionism have been controversial in the labor community, in large part because of his willingness to partner with business management.

Where Andy Stern is taking the SEIU: Stern has not been shy about this focus on corporate partnerships. On Jan. 22, 2007 he told the Wall Street Journal, "We want to find a 21st century model that is less focused on individual grievances, more focused on industry needs." In 2006, he told the McKinsey Quarterly, "Employers live in a competitive environment and have to meet certain shareholder expectations, and labor can play a role in helping to meet them."

The basis of his thinking is that private sector union membership is so low, that building membership is more important than membership benefits or membership input into decisions. Needless to say, this prioritization has some members upset to the point of open rebellion, in specific, California based United Healthcare Workers (UHW).

Roots of the crisis in the SEIU: The SEIU International contends that the low numbers justify an organize-at-any-cost method that surrenders many members' rights. This method of organizing, which offers concessions and support of pro-business legislation for the employer's blessing to organize, is being challenged by Sal Rosselli, president of the union's second largest local.

Since the Obama arm of the progressive movement is driven by theory, UMass Sociologist Dan Clawson jumps into the conflict to explain the theory behind the actions.

Labor Wars: Any time an individual or organization gets held up as a model of success it invites others to launch criticisms, and that's certainly been the case for SEIU, which may simultaneously be the most admired and the most criticized of all unions today. Those criticisms focus above all on SEIU's top-down staff-driven model, and the consequent lack of democracy, combined with the argument that this sometimes leads SEIU to collaborate with employers.

If our purpose is to build long-term power, one central issue is union density. If 95 percent of an industry is non-union, the 5 percent that is union is very limited in what it can win, because any agreement that involves substantial extra costs to the employer may force the employer into bankruptcy. … On the other hand, if the industry is 95 percent unionized, employers have less worry that a union gain will put them at a competitive disadvantage…. Given this, it might sometimes be sensible for a union to accept a not-very-good contract in order to increase union density, as part of a long-run strategy to raise density in an area, knowing that the greatest gains would come only with high density.

The charge is that in effect, Andy Stern has cut a deal with the employer not to insist on substantial pay raises, in exchange for the right to sign up new members. SEIU nationally responds that UHW is willing to put the interests of current workers ahead of the unorganized, that UHW would cut a deal with the employer for a current pay increase and in exchange accept conditions that made it harder to bring in the unorganized. This, SEIU nationally says, is "just us" unionism (instead of justice unionism), making unions into a narrow interest group concerned about the interests of the small number of people currently in unions, instead of the interests of all workers, including those not yet in a union.

Clever phrasing: “Just Us” unionism vs. “Justice” unionism. The socialism in one state model is perfectly willing to live with the job security of the former, but the theoretical worldwide solution to the woes of labor call for justice, even if justice takes times to reach critical mass. The difference is going to be a very narrow tightrope for Obama to walk. Workers of the World Unite!

Brzezinski: Supranational Jurisdiction

2008-05-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

One of Barack Hussein Obama’s core supporters is Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. It is, therefore, instructive to pay attention to the world view Brzezinski outlines. The reasoning follows from the principle that socialism needs to be international. It requires a “workers of the world unite” foundation. It is telling that the story begins with reflections on sovereignty.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: America today is the world's most sovereign state. To be sure, in our time the concept of sovereignty has been largely drained of content by the reality of increasing interdependence among states. For most states, sovereignty now verges on being a legal fiction.

After all, even the undeniable reality of America as the sovereign power of last resort still begs the question: Sovereignty for what? Doubtless many would answer: for the sake of America's national security. But that reply begs a deeper question: Might not efforts to perpetuate America's unique status as an unconstrained sovereign eventually come to threaten America's national security, and its civil liberty as well?

America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power. The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?

It will require increasingly supranational cooperation, actively promoted by the United States, to compensate for the weakness of nominally sovereign states that in fact are becoming ever less sovereign or even self-sustaining. The nation-state framework has become too narrow for the political solutions, economic remedies and social "depressurization" that a majority of populations urgently need.

The historic paradox of our time is that supranational cooperation toward these major goals is only possible if the lead is taken by the last sovereign state, and joined by the more resilient regional powers willing eventually to subsume their own sovereignty under more effective supranational arrangements.

The most concise way to summarize all of this is that America needs to change to adapt to the world, rather than the world adapting to become more like America. It is the view of people who believe American exceptionalism depends on injustice and should not be emulated.

When I term the Obama wing of the Democratic Party Theorists, is it precisely because they believe the “nation-state framework has become too narrow for the political solutions, economic remedies and social "depressurization" that a majority of populations urgently need”. They see an international set of problems requiring international solutions delivered by international organizations with supranational jurisdiction.

Theorists and Pragmatics

2008-05-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

It is insane to keep electing the same people and expecting different results.

Real Change Requires Real Change.

Observing the tensions within the Democratic Party, it strikes me the fault line is forming between the academic Marxists who understand that socialist theory is and must be international, and the pragmatic socialists who believe that “socialism in one country” is an important and desirable goal.

Barack Hussein Obama is the figurehead of the Marxist academics and their youthful dupes. He has been cleverly selected to attract a large established American voting bloc. Remember, the struggle of the working class in all countries forms the basis for the movement towards Socialism. The needs of the people are not constrained by political boundaries.

The Clintons are the more pragmatic intellectual heirs to the “socialism in one country” theory of Nikolai Bukharin. It is this concept of a national socialism that Joseph Stalin wholeheartedly adopts, and which justifies all the Nanny Statism smothering Europe and growing in America. It is the reasoning that the removal of capitalistic inequalities will not occur in one fell revolutionary swoop, but rather piece by piece as governments are converted.

Converting the single most powerful government on Earth, however, is the change with potential to bring the rest of the First World economies into doctrinaire compliance. Those who believe the role of government is to use power in the best interest of the working population understand the coming Federal election is the best opportunity in decades to make real changes. Both sides of the Democratic Party covet this moment and history is fairly clear that competing socialists really hate each other.

The Voices of Reason Get Louder

2008-05-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

If I ran a community newspaper, I would reprint Stephen Wilde's article in it's entirety on the front page. I would then take credit for breaking the “news” followed by trumpeting a commitment to bringing the truth to the public while also advocating good stewardship of the environment.

Global Warming and Cooling - The Reality: The greenhouse effect, as a whole, may smooth out rises and falls in temperature from other causes but is not itself the determining factor for global temperature. If the heat from the sun declines the global temperature will fall with or without any greenhouse effect and if the heat from the sun increases the global temperature will, of course, rise. The greenhouse effect does not create new heat. All it does is increase the residence time of heat in the atmosphere.

It seems so complex but the global heat balance only comes down to three parameters that swamp all others. Heat from the sun. The fact that 70% of the planet is water covered. Heat, radiating out to a very cold Space.

The planet cannot maintain and does not maintain a constant temperature. It is not even possible to identify a specific current temperature for the whole planet and for present purposes there is no need to do so. All I need to assert at this point is that whatever the Earth’s temperature is at any given moment it will always be in the process of warming or cooling and, of course, the rate of that warming or cooling is highly variable.

The fact is that the solar effect is huge and overwhelming. Other influences can only ever delay or bring forward what would have happened anyway because of the time scales involved with solar changes that tend to develop and intensify over centuries. One must also remember that, the warmer the Earth gets, the faster the radiation of heat to Space because of an enhanced temperature differential so it would be false to propose an ever increasing positive differential as a result of adding any warming effect of man made CO2 to the effect of solar changes.

In any event, since cooling is worse than warming for humanity and most life on the planet, our production of CO2, however large in our puny terms, would be wholly beneficial for life on Earth. CO2 is the least of our problems so our attention and resources should be better directed to a more general concept of sustainability.

This Madison evening, Swainson's and Veery Thrushes show up in the yard, as do Rose Breasted Grosbeaks and a Red Bellied Woodpecker. The coal fired power plants at the heart of FDR’s Rural Electrification Program have failed to extinct these species and there is no physical evidence that carbon dioxide has planetary destructive powers. Public policy can serve both mankind and the natural world. It will best serve both by examining and rejecting false theories, deliberate exaggeration and manipulative lies.

One Hour in AGW News

2008-05-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Anyone doubt there is sophisticated propaganda campaign in the media? Google News me this Batman: Results 1 - 10 of about 27,743 in the last hour for global-warming.

How fossil fuels killed the dinosaurs: … the asteroid hit oil or coal deposits when its impact made the 200km-wide Chicxulub Crater, just west of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. It struck with such force that the buried carbon liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet in soot.

Researchers have previously suggested there were mass extinctions as global forest fires pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause a period of runaway global warming, or they spewed enough soot to block out the sun and kill off the plants on which herbivorous dinosaurs fed, starving the meat-eaters further up the food chain.

Well aerosol particulate COOLING is well understood from documented volcanic explosions. Block the sunshine and things get cold and cold suppresses life. If the dinosaurs, however, were killed by “a period of runaway global warming” we know the mammals survived it. Hey, aren’t we mammals?

Koalas threatened by climate change: "I'm sure we'll see koalas disappearing from their current range even though we don't see any change in tree species or structure of the forests." Prof Hume will present new research at a major science conference in Canberra today showing that increases in CO2 decrease levels of "good" nutrients and increase toxic nutrients in eucalypt leaves.

Hummm… What exactly is a “toxic nutrient”? By the way, how did those ancestral koalas survive that effectively instantaneous combustion generated increase in CO2 referenced above? Maybe they were hyper-fast evolvers with Lamarckian superpowers.

Planet may get too hot for tropical insects, warn scientists: Scientists say insects in the tropics are far more sensitive to temperature rises than those elsewhere. They predict it will be difficult for them to survive temperature rises of up to five degrees predicted by 2100.

OK. Bugs are fragile. Step on one and see how easy it is to extinct it. Still I think bugs may survive nights a few (unspecified) degrees warmer that normal. I’m sure the science writer-journalist of this piece understands the greenhouse effect delays cooling, so the effect produces warmer night time temperatures rather than more daytime heat.

The War on Coal is Wrong

2008-05-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Sierra Club is using every legal and regulatory challenge available to stop any coal fired electricity plants from being built in the United States. They have a chart with all their projects: Stopping the Coal Rush, including “victories” in Wisconsin. Madison based Bruce Nilles explains everything being done is to prevent carbon dioxide from causing global warming.

As evidence mounts that carbon dioxide has virtually no potential to adversely affect air temperature or ecosystem stability, it raises a question conservationists need to consider. How much good could be done if every penny the Sierra Club is spending on legal resistance to coal plants was spent instead on purchasing wildlife habit? The Sierra Club is not a conservationist organization. They are harming the movement.

Rhetoric v Results

2008-05-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

This may be the best thing Isthmus Executive Editor Marc Eisen has written.

When policy trumps results: This earnest but unhelpful committee delved into the abstractions of what distinguishes "equity" from "equality," how the board might commit to equity and what esoteric guidelines could measure that commitment.

If you are already slipping into catatonia from the meaningless rattle of words, that's understandable. This is stuff that appeals to progressive professors at the UW-Madison School of Education and to graduate students who aspire to become progressive professors at the UW-Madison School of Education.

"Equity," the committee announced in its report to the board, "involves opportunity; access; elimination of barriers; distribution of resources; protection of specific groups; recognition and acceptance of differences" and marches on for another 75 words in an act of faux definition.

The lack of discipline in Academic writing is shameful. We have institutions of higher education demanding a magnitude and frequency words on paper, to demonstrate and justify scholarly activity, yet there is no corresponding requirement these words concisely express thoughts and concepts in simple clear understandable terms. This is how gibberish thrives and now we have gibberish masquerading as reasoned public policy.

I can't for the life of me see them rallying around a pompous and abstruse equity policy, especially one that reads like it was formulated by the UW Department of Leftwing Social Engineering.

Marc Eisen is making the point that Madison is saturated with the thinking that creation of policy is the purpose of government, however, this is not counterbalanced by an insistence that real world results of public policy are the standard of final judgment. In the private sector, performance dictates policy which explains why the private sector works for the public more efficiently than government. Especially government, for example, where leadership holds firm to a belief that Inclusionary Zoning works because it works on paper.

Spring Birds 2008

2008-05-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

A Palm Warbler drifts through the back yard this afternoon. It is about a three minute stop but long enough to sight him up with the binoculars for a positive identification. That distinctive chestnut head plumage will be faded when it heads back southward at summers end. Two additional surprise sightings are an Indigo Bunting and a Rufus Sided Towhee.

All day long the yard is filled with birds as the landscape finally frees itself from the prolonged life suppressing cold of winter. A House Wren hops up and down along a rock wall while an Acadian Flycatcher darts between newly budding tree branches. The Cardinals, Crows, Chickadees and Wild Turkeys make appearances, acting like they are natives to the area. A Blue Jay and Hairy Woodpecker show up late in the afternoon.

White Throated Sparrows, with their yellow eye dots, kick up leaf litter as do a pair of Catbirds. Later on one of the Catbirds perches atop a sumac flower picking out the last tasty goodness leftover from last fall. I don’t understand why Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and his environmentalist comrades believe so fervently that people and nature need to be separated. That Palm Warbler has no preconceived idea of what constitutes a natural ecosystem. It just goes where the bugs are plentiful and there are adequate trees for safety and shelter.

May Day Thoughts 2008

2008-05-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

Climate Skeptic: Observe today how little of the discussion is about anything other than climate. There are still many environmental issues in the world that can be improved by the application of man's effort and technology -- unfortunately, climate is the least of these but the issue getting the most attention. Consider how the global warming panic has sucked the oxygen out of the environmental movement. Ten years from now, I predict that true environmentalists will be looking back on the hysteria over trace amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere as a huge setback for real environmental progress.

Maggie's Farm: As readers know, we are old-time Conservationists here. We believe in National Parks, State Parks, nature preserves, farmland protection, habitat protection, species protection, zoning, "open space", clean rivers and waters, unpolluted air, and we do not approve of the government subsidizing real estate developers and urban sprawl by building highways to nowhere.

The Audubon Society came into being to protect Egrets. … At the turn of the century, those breeding-season plumes were all the rage for decorating lady's hats. Thus our egrets - the American and the Snowy in particular - were hunted almost to extinction. That is called "unsustainable use."

The same applied to the market-gunning and netting of waterfowl - and the Passenger Pigeon. Of necessity, we now have hunting laws, hunting seasons, wildlife refuges, and protected species. Thus we are not Libertarian when it comes to land-use and unsustainable and irreversible exploitation of wildlife or wildlife habitat. The Conservation Movement of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt had to become politicized, because laws were required in the presence of competing interests: witness, nowadays, the political conflicts in MA and in Europe around the efforts to enforce sustainable fish harvests. We simply try to be rational about it all.

Don’t Talk Emissions – Talk Beer

2008-04-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal runs one of their well written fact filled commentaries entitled, The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change. This is exactly the type of accurate but meaningless analysis that is going to end up handing Wall Street over to anti-capitalist government oversight. It is “nice” to be well intentioned but it's important to be effective.

This is the sentence that pisses me off. “Begin with the current inventory of carbon dioxide emissions – CO2 being the principal greenhouse gas generated almost entirely by energy use”. Why? Because it accepts the premise that CO2 actually is a “principal greenhouse gas”. Until we understand and make the public aware that carbon dioxide is harmless to the environment, we are trapped into playing with the opponent’s language and to their advantage.

Every response to environmentalist rhetoric needs to demand an explanation of how CO2 can do what they claim. How does CO2 heat the air? By trapping energy? What energy? For how long? How come CO2 doesn’t trap energy in the rest of the world? For example beer. Beer is extremely carbonated and yet even when surrounded by solid matter on all sides, it still gets cold in a refrigerator. Why doesn’t CO2 stop beer from getting cold if CO2 “traps” heat? Isn’t outer space colder than an ice box?

P.S. Thanks for the link Steve: No Runny Eggs

Tropical Troposphere Not Warming

2008-04-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

Authentic science uses computers to analyze observational data. It’s the meticulous adherence to real world measurements that makes science truthful and useful. Luboš Motl picks up on a story Steve McIntyre posts about the lack of observed warming in the upper atmosphere.

Lubos sums the graph up this way: The three complicated colorful lines are the temperature data for the tropical troposphere - where the warming should be most rapid - according to RSS MSU, UAH MSU, and CRU: they seem to almost fully agree with each other. In terms of words, there has been no warming over there since 1980.

MSU: The Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) is a microwave radiometer that flies aboard NOAA's polar orbiting weather satellites. Each day, the MSU observes approximately 80% of the earth's surface, with the orbit shifting slightly each day so that 100% coverage is achieved over a three to four day period. … The air temperature computed directly from channel 2 is representative of the middle-to-upper troposphere (centered about 7 km above the surface).

RSS and UAH are separate research groups using NOAA’s MSU data. The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data is from a British research group of true believers that nothing other than human influence explains the vagaries in our present limited snippet in the long history of our dynamic gas bubble. On a side note: Madison, Wisconsin receives trace amounts of snowfall this afternoon, adding to our record setting snowfall total for 2007-08.

Green Day Spring Day

2008-04-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, NOAA announces they are finishing updating America’s high-tech climate monitoring stations that are improving the historical climatology network. The change is to insure “very high accuracy” in data collection, and corrects misplacement of older monitors in artificially heated areas such as asphalt parking lots in urban centers. Today, the Isthmus Green Day eco-celebration features a speaker on global warming.

Lola and I decide to take a slow drive on back roads down to Oregon, WI, and then a tour through the UW Arboretum before heading home. There is a great deal of melt water everywhere which is consistent with the record snowfall of the preceding winter. Other than that the ecosystem looks pretty normal for this point of the year. I simply don’t see a planet in the need of human salvation and I am reminded of the following thoughts.

Lord Monckton’s address to the Cambridge Union Society: AL GORE says, “I believe this is a moral issue.” So it is. To “announce disasters” or “scary scenarios” or “over-represent factual presentations” in place of adherence to the scientific truth – that is a moral issue.

To let politicians insert data into official scientific documents; to alter those documents so as to contradict scientific findings; to manipulate decimal points so as to engender false headlines by exaggerating tenfold – those are moral issues.

To exaggerate by 2000% not only the atmospheric lifetime of a trace gas but also the effect of that gas on temperature; to reduce the magnitude of its predicted influence on temperature without reducing the predicted temperature itself – those are moral issues.

To claim scientific unanimity where none exists; to assert that catastrophe is likely when most scientists do not; to exalt theoretical computer models over real-world observations; to misstate the conclusions of scientific papers or the meaning of observed data; to overstate the likely future course of climatic phenomena by several orders of magnitude – those are moral issues.

To reverse the sequence of events in the early climate; to repeat that reversal in a propaganda book intended to infect the minds of children; to persist in false denial that past temperatures exceeded today’s; to state that climate events that have not occurred have occurred; to ascribe these non-events as well as specific extreme-weather events unjustifiably to humankind – those are moral issues.

To propose solutions to the non-problem of climate change that would cost many times more than the problem itself, if there were one; to advocate measures to mitigate fancifully-imagined future climatic changes when adaptation would cost far less and achieve far more; to ignore the real problems of resource depletion, energy security, bad Third World government and fatal diseases that kill millions – those are moral issues.

I hope the Isthmus leadership; Marc Eisen, Bill Lueders, V.O and the rest, believe we all want clean air, clean water and vibrant ecosystems. What is unacceptable, however, is scientific fraud advancing political policies that are expensive and unnecessary at best, and ineffective and counterproductive at worst. It is time to stop perpetuating the dangerous man-made global warming lie.

Our Industrial Famine Culture

2008-04-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

I thought the impetus for killing the living to burn for energy was based on the idea that burning rocks doesn’t turn carbon directly back into rocks. I was also under the impression that the MANDATE to use corn derived ethanol was a government dictate. I guess there are other interpretations of the reasons food prices are rising.

John Nichols on The World Food Crisis: The current global food system, which was designed by US-based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the US government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy food for local consumption and regional stability.

“as the Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal observes, that it is time to "stop worshiping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle [that] every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable." As Mittal says, "When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give."

I also did not realize that genetically modified seeds “reduce food production”. If only we could return to the pre-industrial age when all food was locally produced by eco-friendly happy peasants, then hunger would be abolished. Is it true the word famine does not even exist in aboriginal languages?

Metamorphosis with Attitude

2008-04-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

The Isthmus asks a question about the leap of faith Madison’s very old progressive paper is taking. The end of an era: Panicked newspapers seek salvation. Will the Cap Times find it on the web? Written with the empathy of a fellow comrade in the struggle, Marc Eisen writes:

Newspapers won't die off as quickly as slide rules did when calculators were introduced, but the changes under way are so epochal you'd be foolish to believe anyone who speaks confidently of what publishing will be like in 10 years.

The switch from paper to pixels to deliver the news represents far more than a change in transmission. The definition of news itself changes online. This is big stuff, truly a shift in the paradigm.

As the advent of bloggers, listservs and reader comments attest, online news is "less of a lecture, more of a conversation," as media analyst Jay Rosen has put it. This is hard for old-school journalists to accept. They're used to hiding behind either the fig leaf of "objective" reporting or the omniscience of magazine-style journalism. Now stories are picked apart online by citizen commenters and bloggers.

Marc Eisen is exactly right. As long as government allows the public freedom to access and question information, the conversation will push towards the truth. So let’s take a quick look at the first topic the electronic metamorphosis of the Capital Times brings up. Actually, it's not a call for reasoned debate.

Call Congress on climate change: Call the Capitol switchboard today at 202-224-3121 and leave a message for members of the Wisconsin delegation, telling them that their constituents want:
* A moratorium on new coal-burning plants.
* Renewable energy.
* Carbon-neutral buildings.
* Protection for the poor and middle class in the new green economy.

Now it strikes me as strange that the first thing the Capital Times wants as they transform from paper to electricity is a moratorium on coal-burning electricity generating plants. Why call for restrictions on the essential energy we are all depend upon? We all know the reason is because “progressive thinkers” believe carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal is "bad" for our photosynthesis dependent environment. This is exactly why the conversation needs to be brought back to these questions – is there a limit to the CO2 greenhouse effect and when that limit is reached, what exactly is dangerous in a healthy, warm and growing world?

Dr. Jonathan Foley

2008-04-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

The fact the University of Wisconsin pays Dr. Jonathan Foley as a Professor says a great deal about academic science. The Capital Times features his Earth Day report to the State of Wisconsin Natural Resources Board. This is the report of a person well versed in computer modeling. Please, read the whole thing but focus on these specific assertions.

Climate 'out of balance,': A long-term rise of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — mainly due to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas — warmed the Earth, he said. … Those heat-trapping gases multiplied what is a natural greenhouse effect, in which the sun heats the Earth and the Earth in turn gives off radiation in infrared waves. Those waves go into the atmosphere, which absorbs some of that heat and radiates it back down to Earth. … "The Earth is 30 degrees warmer than it would be without that natural greenhouse effect. Without it, life would never have evolved," Foley said. But humans made the greenhouse a little thicker by burning fossil fuels.

First, let’s agree on the fact that the greenhouse effect is necessary for life on Earth. Second, let’s agree that the greenhouse effect is absorption of infrared radiation by a few specific types of atmospheric molecules. The fallacy in everything Dr. Foley asserts after these two points is attributing to carbon dioxide a significant and additive contribution to atmospheric absorption of infrared radiation.

It is well established that CO2 has limited IR absorption frequencies, and if saturation of these absorption bands are demonstrable from satellite data, it is proof that additional CO2 molecules are non-contributory. In other words, once saturation is achieved, as it is in the present 300 ppm range, it is impossible for additional molecules of carbon dioxide to contribute to additional warming.

The question Dr. Foley needs to answer is this: Is there a limit to the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, and if so, then what is that limit? I doubt any UW Professor will answer that more CO2 always means more warming, without end.

Earth Day 2008

2008-04-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

This is the truth that destroys the political hijacking of Gaylord Nelson’s legacy to America.

Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in only three narrow bands of frequencies, which correspond to wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm), respectively. The percentage absorption of all three lines combined can be very generously estimated at about 8% of the whole IR spectrum, which means that 92% of the "heat" passes right through without being absorbed by CO2. If the entire atmosphere were composed of nothing but CO2, i.e., was pure CO2 and nothing else, it would still only be able to absorb no more than 8% of the heat radiating from the earth.

CO2 is currently working at 100% capacity, and neither adding nor subtracting from current levels will change the present temperatures. It is harmless to the environment.

Until this truth is embraced by our leadership the unjustified fears of our carbon footprint, the anti-human drive against cheap and abundant energy and the elitist desire to rule lesser individuals will not be driven from American society. Gaylord Nelson would have understood the slogan: Speak Truth to Power. It is time to do just that.

Did you know ...

2008-04-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

The world's natural wetlands produce more greenhouse gas contributions annually than all human sources combined. --- Source. --- Thank you Horicon Marsh!

Stop the CO2 Scare

2008-04-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

“There is nothing wrong with a fourth grade understanding of science if you are a fourth grader” - Alan Caruba. The big lie of dangerous man-made global warming needs to be stopped, because our politicians are taking all of us in policy directions that will harm humans and harm the environment. Hard questions about the science behind the scare tactics need to be a central focus of the coming elections.

Stop the CO2 scare, before it's too late: The report - Nature Not Human Activity Rules the Climate - presents a devastating analysis of the IPCC's case. Intended for a lay audience and signed by scientists from 15 countries, it takes all the key points of the IPCC's "consensus" case and tears them expertly apart, showing how the Intergovernmental Panel has either exaggerated, distorted or suppressed the evidence available to it, or has imputed much greater certainty to its findings than is justified by the data.

At just the moment when, thanks to the overwhelming pressure generated by the IPCC, the world's politicians, led by the EU, are committing us to spending untold trillions of pounds, dollars and euros on measures to "mitigate" the claimed effects of man-made warming, here is a galaxy of experts producing hard evidence that - if the problem exists at all - the official explanation for it is oriented in wholly the wrong direction.

Nature Not Human Activity Rules the Climate: In conclusion, this NIPCC report falsifies the principal IPCC conclusion that the reported warming (since 1979) is very likely caused by the human emission of greenhouse gases. In other words, increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for current warming. Policies adopted and called for in the name of ‘fighting global warming’ are unnecessary. It is regrettable that the public debate over climate change, fueled by the errors and exaggerations contained in the reports of the IPCC, has strayed so far from scientific truth. It is an embarrassment to science that hype has replaced reason in the global debate over so important an issue.

Basic CO2 Physics

2008-04-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

Next, lets talk about a scientific process called Atomic Absorption Spectrometry. It is a method by which we can measure precisely which wavelengths of radiation a particular gas is capable of absorbing.

In our highly simplified drawing above, a radiation source is beamed through a glass container containing a gas sample. As the radiation passes through, a portion of it is absorbed at particular narrow bandwidths (often more than one ) so the end result are some "missing" sections of the whole spectrum coming from the source, which show up as dark lines. They're missing because they were absorbed by the sample in the chamber. They are called absorption lines, or absorption spectra, and when analyzed by a knowledgeable person, can tell one what the gas or gas mixture is in the sample chamber based on a catalog of known spectra. It's a wonderful tool for analyzing unknown gas samples.

Let's look at a real result, below - the absorption spectrum for pure carbon dioxide plus an amount of water vapor equal to that in our current atmosphere as the sample and infrared radiation from a black body spectrum as the source. This is part of the so-called "greenhouse effect"

As we can see above, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation (IR) in only three narrow bands of frequencies, which correspond to wavelengths of 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µm), respectively. The percentage absorption of all three lines combined can be very generously estimated at about 8% of the whole IR spectrum, which means that 92% of the "heat" passes right through without being absorbed by CO2. In reality, the two smaller peaks don't account for much, since they lie in an energy range that is much smaller than the where the 15 micron peak sits - so 4% or 5% might be closer to reality. If the entire atmosphere were composed of nothing but CO2, i.e., was pure CO2 and nothing else, it would still only be able to absorb no more than 8% of the heat radiating from the earth.

Taken in entirety from James A. Peden.

Greenwashing

2008-04-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

For those of us who believe that environmentalism is faith based rather than fact based, the fact the movement is codifying The Six Sins of Greenwashing supports our view. Greenwashing is when corporations go eco-friendly in their sales claims in an attempt to make profits. Treehugger gives the quick summary.

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: e.g. “Energy-efficient” electronics that contain hazardous materials. 998 products or 57% of all environmental claims committed this Sin.

2. Sin of No Proof: e.g. Shampoos claiming to be “certified organic,” but with no verifiable certification. 454 products and 26% of environmental claims committed this Sin.

3. Sin of Vagueness: e.g. Products claiming to be 100% natural when many naturally-occurring substances are hazardous, like arsenic and formaldehyde. Seen in 196 products or 11% of environmental claims.

4. Sin of Irrelevance: e.g. Products claiming to be CFC-free, even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago. This Sin was seen in 78 products and 4% of environmental claims.

5. Sin of Fibbing: e.g. Products falsely claiming to be certified by an internationally recognized environmental standard like EcoLogo, Energy Star or Green Seal. Found in 10 products or less than 1% of environmental claims.

6. Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: e.g. Organic cigarettes or “environmentally friendly” pesticides, This occurred in 17 products or 1% of environmental claims.

I especially like the original papers discussion about the SIN OF VAGUENESS:

There are some recurring themes within these vague claims. For example:
♦ “Chemical-free”. In fact, nothing is free of chemicals. Water is a chemical. All plants, animals, and humans are made of chemicals as are all of our products.
♦ “Non-toxic”. Everything is toxic in sufficient dosage. Water, oxygen, and salt are all potentially hazardous.
♦ “All Natural”. Arsenic is natural. So are uranium, mercury, and formaldehyde. All are poisonous.
♦ “Green”, “Environmentally friendly”, and “Eco-conscious” (to name just a few) which are utterly meaningless without elaboration.

My favorite, however, is the SIN OF NO PROOF. By this standard, the whole dangerous manmade global warming by carbon dioxide idea is sinful. Unless you believe that computer programming of anecdotal observations constitutes proof.

Disclosure: I believe CO2 is innocent of any and all claims of environmental endangerment. As noted above, all plants, animals and humans are made of chemicals and it all starts when photosynthesis bonds H2O and CO2 into larger molecules.

Because I'm Awesome

2008-04-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

I always tell you how smart you are

It’s cause my brain is really supersized

You’re an academic superstar

Just look at me

“Smart” is the new bullshit word, e.g. its smart to love hybrids, unless hybrid means the offspring of a native and invasive species union. Disclaimer: This message has not been reviewed by government censors.