no third solution

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Category Archives: American Politics

Climate Scandal: Story of the Century, Ignored by Mainstream News

November 30th, 2009

Today these are all front page news stories: Tiger Woods crashed his car, rumored to be be cheating on his wife. The daughter of a former president is engaged to be married. Black people are disproportionately impacted by the current economic depression. Dubai World is bankrupt. Obama vows to continue war in Afghanistan. Some guy shot and killed a few cops near Seattle.

news front page stories, November 30, 2009

But all of the news outlets are ignoring* the story of the century.

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.

Which is enough, in itself, to cast doubt on every single conclusion drawn from these data. It means there is no way to test them. No way to validate or invalidate them. It doesn’t mean that the conclusions are wrong, it means that we have no evidence to suggest that the conclusions are right. Coupled with the thousands of leaked e-mail correspondences released last week, I think there’s a good case to be made that the researchers were involved in deliberate misrepresentation of their findings.

“Climategate” (did I mention I hate the use of ‘-gate’ as a suffix?) should be the story of the century. One comment at the Times explains:

this global warming email disclosure, and now the incredible loss of raw data relating to science about the alleged destruction of the earth…. should be one of the biggest stories of the last 100 years, bigger than the Pentagon Papers or Watergate or any other…because the entire world was being manipulated into action based on the premise that the world might come to an end on science that was supposed to be unimpeachable

For twenty years or more, the entire world has been duped into action based on faulty, flawed, incomplete, exaggerated or untestable “science”. Governments have enacted policies to combat the “effects” of a phenomena the existence of which has never been proven, and the validity of which has just been destroyed.

But nobody’s talking about it.  They don’t need censorship, just misdirection, distractions.

*In fairness, this story was mentioned on the Fox News homepage. But it was buried, as they say in the print industryy, well “below the fold”.

The Suffix “-Gate” is Not Clever

November 29th, 2009

Fact: adding the suffic “-gate” to any other word(s), to denote political scandal does not make you clever.

This has been bothering me for some time. I think “Climategate” was the last straw, so-to-speak.

The namesake scandal, of course, is the Watergate incident during Nixon’s reign as president. Watergate was the name of the office park where the incident principally occurred, or at least where some participants were caught. “-Gate” as a suffice, appended to every noteworthy incident since then, is totally superfluous and devoid of any etymological meaning, except the colloquial association with the Watergate incident.

It’s like a bad joke that you have to keep explaining. If you have to explain why it’s funny, it’s not funny.

Lewinksygate: fail. Climategate: fail. Whitewatergate: OK, this one is sort of clever.

But none of the rest of them, and the list is very long.

Please stop repeating this inanity. You sound dumb when you say it and you look dumb when you write it.

National Health Care Will Raise Taxes on Middle Class

November 23rd, 2009

You know the Dem’s health care bill is atrocious when when the Teamsters oppose it:

“Any claim that it affects only ‘Cadillac’ plans and thus the wealthy is misleading,” said Teamsters President James P. Hoffa Jr. “This tax will fall on one-third of Americans in 10 years. … The idea that this tax will curtail rising premiums is just dead wrong.”

Hoffa sees through the smokescreen and newspeak—despite the grandiose promises of “affordable care” and “health care for everyone” and “no new taxes on the middle class”, the fact of the matter is that the health care bill will raise taxes:

…17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which [among other things,] places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans.

Democrats said the bill will offer lower health care costs for small businesses

Perhaps, it’s not an intentional lie. This policy is designed to lower the health care associated costs for certain interest groups.

But it is not structured in such a manner that would actually lower the general costs of health care.

Like any subsidy, this is a shell game. Money is taxed from Peter to provide for Paul. It doesn’t actually lower the cost of Paul’s health care (which is likely to increase), it simply lowers his out-of-pocket expenses by taking a portion of them from someone else’s pocket. This is not a viable, long-term solution. It’s a political band-aid, designed to beat the masses into submission.

Serious tax “penalties” for married couples, severe new taxes to be levied on HSAs and flexible spending accounts, all spell DOOM for the middle class.

…Several relatively small tax increases will be aimed at health savings accounts and medical savings accounts. One will change the definitions for medical expenses that qualify as itemized deductions. Another will raise the penalties for withdrawing funds from these vehicles. A third would limit health-related flexible spending arrangements.

This is not in anyone’s interest except for Big Insurance. Heads, they win. Tails, we lose.

no third solution

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