Follow The Money!

Guess who spends the most money in politics to influence (read “bribe”) the legislative process?

Big Oil? (Not even close!)

Wal-Mart? (You are getting colder!)

O.K. – I’ll tell you.

The National Education Association. $56,349,269 total, state and federal!

Second Place goes to PECHANGA BAND OF LUISENO MISSION INDIANS with a total state and federal of $43,960,451.

In fact second place through fourth place goes to gambling establishments.

Fifth Place is President Obama’s favorite union – the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the main public sector union whose president has been the most frequent visitor to the White house according to White House visitor logs.

(The highest ranking Oil and Gas lobby rates #13, and the highest electric utility is #14.)

There is finally a website that aggregates such information

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/top10000.phtml?PHPSESSID=bf0778443f8b8e6b75665d292db52e9b

in cooperation with Open Secrets.com

Suspicion Confirmed

Time Magazine published information that a British Court has confirmed that which we have always suspected: To some, Climate Change is a religion.

“But should a fervent belief in the need to fight climate change be given the same legal protection as an actual religion? A London judge said yes, ruling this week that environmentalism should carry the same legal weight as religion under Britain’s employment laws…. But in a landmark ruling on Nov. 3, Justice Michael Burton found that “a belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of [the 2003 law].”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1936074,00.html#ixzz0YNu2ypKe

Sloppy Science, or Sloppy Scientists?

One of the scientific rules is that claims need to be checkable and replicable – and now we find out why the Climate-Gate e-mails were so stout in their conspiracy to thwart the Freedom of Information requests for the seminal data on Global Warming.

It had been destroyed!

Right now there is no charge that the data was destroyed because it was not dispositive of Global Warming, it is simply known that the data was destroyed.

It cannot be checked. It cannot be replicated.

One can only hope that it exists somewhere else other than the University of East Anglia’s  Climatic Research Unit because they now admit they “dumped” the data.

Let’s hope that their sloppiness is all they were trying to cover-up.

Sloppy scientists, or sloppy science?

Iran Thumbs Its Nose — Again

 Economic sanctions are a bit late, and most would hurt the population where there is plenty of opposition to the Mullahs.

If they had been tightened months ago…but getting international cooperation is slow. (General Rule of Thumb: Any plan that relies on international cooperation is always doomed to failure. )

A major portion of Iran’s refined gasoline comes from an island off the coast (Kharg Island), so their economy (with nine refineries, it must import gasoline and already rations fuel) can be brought to a standstill in a few weeks by a blockage, or seizure of the island and refinery.

Yes, that is an Act of War, but it does not kill innocent civilians and would be bloodless unless the Iranian Army/Navy/AF reacts…in which case the troops we have around the world would not be negatively impacted because our Navy/AF are more than sufficient for the job, and again, few civilian casualties. The Iranian Navy/AF would not last a day.

The problem with this method is that Iran can, by beggaring the population (something at which it is adept), continue to build nuclear devices. It is a matter of will, and their religious will is strong.

Alternately, we could simply call Israel and offer them free and unfettered passage across Iraq, with an escort of US refueling planes. That would be messier, but quicker. Many Arab States would break diplomatic relations with us, and possibly even end oil for a few weeks while thanking us profusely in private. At best, bombing without troops on the ground to destroy what is left can only delay the “Muslim Bomb” by a few years,

Or we could let them build nuclear bombs and sell/give them to first Hamas, and then Al-Queda.

There are no good options. Choose sides, and we all get to play…in fact we all must play.

You get to choose to be the Bomber, of the Bombee.

Climate-Gate

Times of London On-Line:

“SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. ”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

The NY Times Gets It Right

The New York Times editorial today on Middle East diplomacy can be summed up in a single paragraph from it:

“Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever.”

The NYT concludes that the Obama Middle East policy has “unraveled.”

Those Obamabot who believe all is well internationally because of His omnipotence, bowing and scraping, and general “humility,” need to then read the Edward Schumacher-Matos on the NCTimes editorial page – which mirrors the opinion I wrote last night that the Obama State Department is on the wrong side of history in Honduras.

“Unraveling” is something at which this administration is successful.

Obama Backed The Wrong Horse

The State Department has egg on its face — it backed the wrong horse in Honduras.

It backed a leftist President who tried to abrogate the Honduran Constitution, and the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the Army to depose him — so he went into exile but with public US State Department support for his return.

Then the leftist deposed President sneaked back into the country and into a friendly Embassy, hoping for a popular Chavez-type uprising, but his tree fell in the Embassy and no one heard it.

There will be a new election this next month, there is no leftist opposition because there is no leftist support, the US will have to recognize the newly elected Poresident, and the leftist previously US State Department supported idiot will remain in the embassy.

Nice work Obama State Department!

 

 

 

 

Voting Rights

The “One man, One vote” is as disastrous to  human liberty in the U.S. as it is in the U.N. with their “One Nation, One Vote.” At least the UN had to good sense to make two houses, and give the powerful nations the ability to thwart the propensity to redistribute every dime from the successful nations to the unsuccessful ones.

(Nations, like individuals, suffer primarily from self-inflicted wounds.)

With computers, we are technically capable of weighted votes wherein each vote is weighted to reflect the voter’s amount of taxes paid.

Those with the most to lose should have the most votes – and more importantly, those with everything to gain and NOTHING to lose should lose all of their voting influence.

Viewers of Judge Judy understand, although they may not initially agree.

Upon reflection, they may.

An Efficient Governemt Agency? Yep!

We have come a long way from Washington’s men having to wrap their feet in burlap because they did not have shoes for forced marches to position themselves to fight the Hessians. The Hessians had superior equipment and training. (They could fire four precise volleys a minute, compared to the “Rebels” ragged two!)

Today we have an entire Defense Department (DARPA) working with private company efficiency to assist universities and private concerns to give our fighting men an edge.

One of those edges they are working on is to make each unit in the military as self-sufficient as possible, diminishing the need to transport fuel.

Strangely enough, when DARPA decided to get into, for example, bio-fuels, they found the University of North Dakota was a decade ahead of anyone else, so DARPA has concentrated their cooperation there.

DARPA wants each individual soldier in the future to be able to recharge their military electronics (GPS, electronic rangefinder, personal video-surveillance over-the-hill capability, etc) on the spot with mini-solar chargers and even mini-solar wind turbines. Obviously, there is a civilian benefit to this effort toward distributed, individual-generated power.

(Some day, the South and Southwest will sell solar-generated electricity to the Northern states.)

DARPA, working with U. of North Dakota wants armies to be able to grow their own fuel, bio-mass or algae without having long supply lines and already they have replicated JP-8 jet fuel from bio-mass for the use in military jets.

DARPA is a great example of how government should work – and so is the group at U. of N. Dakota. At DARPA, scientists are selected from the best of the universities and private research centers, and employment is ONLY for three or four years – your termination date is stamped on your badge! There is no need for job-protection politics!

The guy who heads the N. Dakota research center with which DARPA now partners will not accept government money that is not generated through competitive bid, calls most government and university researchers “oxygen-suckers” and will not hire people who do not have at least one speeding ticket – because they are too risk-averse!

(My kind of guy!)

 

The Stupak Amendment

As I understand it, the Stupak Amendment only bans private plans that accept public subsidy from participating in abortion funding.

I favor a woman’s right to abort right up to the time when a cognitive brain wave indicates there is a human (as we understand “human”) living inside her.

That is not a legislative determined time, but an individual measurement, woman by woman. A go-no go decision on the spot.

I do not favor public money being used for abortion at any time. Charitable money is fine, and I urge those supporting a woman’s right, to donate to charities to support that.