Burning Oceans/Flaming Clouds update.

Jennifer Marohasy published a very interesting piece on the supposed flow of CO2 from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

The “we’re all going to die” school of thought on global warming^[1] has it that humans produce dangerous quantities of CO2 and this, when introduced into the atmosphere, causes the heat of the sun’s rays to be trapped in the earth’s atmosphere causing global temps to rise, including those in Cleveland.

From studies of the atmospheric transport of carbon-14 from nuclear tests in the 50s and 60s in the northern hemisphere, we know that stuff released into the atmosphere in the north takes about six months to appear in the south. But, given that CO2 in the atmosphere IS increasing, it turns out that it increases in the north and the south simultaneously with no time difference between the two hemispheres. Since 75% of CO2 from fossil fuels released into the atmosphere is released north of latitude 30 [in the north] the conventional view would expect for there to be a disparate concentration in the north and the south.

But there isn’t.

Conclusion? Annual increases in atmospheric C02 “may be coming from a global or equatorial source,” such as El Nino or the Southern Oscillation.

The researcher in question is Tom Quirk, M.S., University of Melbourne, M.A. and Ph.D., University of Oxford.^[2]

For good measure, read where she -- and 115 other scientists -- take Pres. Obama to task for his Chicken Little misstatements on global warming. ^[3]

Notes
^[1] Nka “climate change” to cover up the embarrassing fact that there’s been no global warming for upwards of 10 years.
^[2] "The Available Evidence Does Not Support Fossil Fuels as the Source of Increasing Concentrations of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (Part 1)." By Jennifer Marohasy, jennifermarohasy.com/blog, /3/25/09.
^[3] "Note to President Obama: The Science is Not Settled." By Jennifer Marohasy, jennifermarohasy.com/blog, /3/31/09.

H/t: Right Side News..

President to address Nation.

"Showgirl Topless Revue Closes in Las Vegas, After 49 Years." AP, FOXNews, 3/29/09.

Vox populi.

I think it’s ironic that our Congress has blamed: greedy homeowners, greedy bankers, greedy wall street investors, greedy automaker companies, and occasionally the average american for not spending or borrowing enough, for this economic crisis. Has anyone noticed that no politician (dem or repub) actually accepted responsiblity for their role in this crisis?

Comment by lightning on "The Real AIG Scandal: Forget the Bonuses, Focus on the Banks." By Michael Goodwin, FOXNews.com, 3/30/09.

Economic sense.

"Twelve Reasons Why You Should Support President Obama's Economic Stimulus." By Professor Obama Kurgman, Professor Kurgman, PhD., PhD., PhD., 2/28/09.

Turning off annoying MS Word features.

(12/2/08) Word features are actually instruments of torture. One helpful site on turning them off can be found here:

"How to turn off annoying MS Word Features." Two or three.net, 10/20/06.

Some of the commenters found the advice on getting rid of the unwelcome display of markup did not work. Jim provided this additional tip:

For Word 2003, I find that I can turn off the View Markup in following way: 1. Turn on TRK. 2. Change the View setting to Final. 3. Turn off TRK. 4. Save. The document reopens showing the Final without markup.

H/t: Algona81 who appears to have added helpful screen shots.

UPDATE (3/26/09):

Also see Microsoft support article: "Markup text may reappear when you open or when you save a document of Word."

Don’t hold your breath.

Is President Barack Obama a capitalist? The stock market would probably rally 1,000 points if he made a convincing prime-time speech making the case that he is a capitalist.

In that speech, he could lay out why capitalism is a superior system, why freedom to make lots of money is vital to our nation's relative success, and how socialism gradually diminishes the standard of living. In so doing, Mr. Obama could provide a definition of capitalism for millions of Americans who have forgotten it, but who still happily opine to pollsters about the right course for our financial system.

John Bell, Letter to the Editor on the topic of “Obama, Socialism and the Fairness of Tax Deductions,” Wall Street Journal, 3/23/09.

Our man reads from a different sheet of music.

Here's a rare instance of concentrated political insight that captures what voters wanted and what Mr. Obama's hell bent on "providing," or imposing, if you want to be picky about it:

And hardly anyone is gullible enough to think that socializing the health-insurance business, imposing massive taxes on energy, and increasing the power of unions are going to resolve a crisis that has its origins in the credit markets.

Obama seems to care about the economic crisis only to the extent that it is an impediment to or an instrument for winning support for policies in unrelated areas. It is as if President Bush had responded to 9/11 by launching an all-out campaign for private Social Security accounts.

Obama is president today not because Americans were enamored with his policy proposals but because they were persuaded that he was, by dint of temperament and intellect, the better man to lead the nation in a time of crisis.

Someone made a similar point about Pearl Harbor. FDR didn't approach that catastrophe from the standpoint of how he could exploit it to speed passage of better child labor laws or whatever was at the top of the Democrat Transformational Agenda at that time.

Think about it. What a monumental conceit to think that an endless campaign for the presidency in which the mantra was change necessarily meant change in the direction of European socialism rather than just a fine tuning of an otherwise phenomenally successful governmental and economic model. I might go to the doctor for treatment of a rash and an infected cut but I wouldn't buy the doctor's logic that changing my problematical state beyond applying some ointment and cleaning out the cut necessarily involves chemotherapy, amputation above the knee, and radiation of my alleged brain.

"Please Get Serious, Mr. President." By James Taranto, Best of the Web, Wall Street Journal, 3/13/09.

Task Force Smith II. Only worse.

There's much to be alarmed about in the Chinese military buildup and the "What, me worry?" Obama drive to subordinate military preparedness to midnight basketball and free tummy tucks for senior citizens.

Investors Business Daily sheds a little light on this. Keep in mind as you read that the Chinese are formidable opponents. In subzero temperatures during the Korean War, they sent in their infantry without gloves. Every second man was without a weapon but was expected to pick up one from a fallen comrade. Now they won't be having any such equipment shortfalls:

A recent Congressional Quarterly article warned that China by itself would possess twice as many submarines as the U.S. by 2010, and would likely have a larger fleet by 2015, possibly including at least one carrier of its own.

The capabilities and proficiency of the Chinese submarine fleet [were] demonstrated on Oct. 26, 2006, when another Song-class attack sub surfaced undetected within weapons distance of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the East China Sea off Okinawa.

* * * *

The U.S. Navy, which reached 568 ships in the late 1980s, struggles today to sustain a fleet of 279. The Navy is roughly the size it was on the eve of World War I.

If the reference to Task Force Smith is new to you, you can read about it and the price of unpreparedness here, here, and here.

"Walking Softly Vs. China's Big Stick." Investors Business Daily, 3/5/09 (emphasis added).

Obama's contemptible America.

. . . [W]hatever the correct assessment of Sarah Palin's abilities and limitations, it's impossible to imagine that it would have taken her 20 years of close contact with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to notice that he sincerely believes a number of toxic, lunatic ideas. The thread connecting all of these [ideas] . . . is that America is a wicked, contemptible place . . . .

"The Roots of Liberal Condescension. Snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal-arts major." By William Voegeli, Wall Street Journal (subscription), 3/3/09.

The real source of rage against Vietnam.

Richard Cohen has an interesting piece today that is another look at the "we shall be as gods" conceit of modern man. (See "Cognitive dissonance," below, as another example of this conceit – financial data don't matter if our hearts are pure.)

The older generation of Americans were tougher and expected little from life, says Cohen, and they certainly didn't expect much from the government. The generation that came after thought they were immune from the brutal realities of life. When Vietnam came along and the draft kicked in with a vengeance, this younger generation reacted with rage.

This certainly comports with my recollection of the temper of those times. It amused me no end that when the draft started to bite into the ranks of college kids hitherto able to take advantage of student deferments, that is when the student protests went ballistic and the sacred cause of "peace" in Vietnam inspired many a riot, sit in, teach in, demonstration, or Bill-Ayers-Bernadine-Dohrn wasted life.

Yes. Rage at being forced to confront the demands of reality and being pried loose from comfortable dorms, nice cars, compliant girlfriends, and freedom to come and go at will in perfect security. And, by gosh, was it ever rage when it was no longer just the working class kids and farm boys who were going into the Green Machine, but numero uno his own self.

Solzhenitsyn's "crowbar of events" is even now smashing through the hallway door to open up a new vista on uncontrolled mass immigration; denigration of the bedrock culture (multiculturalism, reckless secularism); contempt for federalism and the constitutional protection of Article I, Section 8, and the Tenth Amendment; off shoring of manufacturing; Thomas Payne's "bastard kind of generosity"; blindness to the mortal peril of Islam; ruinous deficit spending; pusillanimity regarding the Iranian pustulence; the fatuity of nation building; cowardice in confronting black rejectionism; and a U.S. military defending every border in the world except the U.S. southern border. Inter bleeding alia.

For a people who thought there would be no tomorrow, it's, well, "morning in America." We'll see how the lads so enamored of their diamond earrings and 24/7 sports do when it's time to stand guard in the rain. Or time for something a lot worse.

"History Roars Again." By Richard Cohen, Real Clear Politics, 3/3/09.

Cognitive dissonance.

As the following conclusion of the Cato Institute reported in Investors Business Daily makes clear, even a $700 billion infusion of cash wouldn't cover 1% of the amount needed to fix the existing funding problems of Medicare -- an existing health program.

Even if Mr. Obama's plans for expansion of health "insurance" or coverage amounted to "only" $10 million in new expenditures, what sane person could argue that this would be a wise course of action to pursue given the crushing burden that will have to be borne by taxpayers just to keep the existing Medicare program solvent?

To seek to expand health care expenditures under this gigantic debt burden is madness.

On whom will the burden ultimately fall? Answer: on future generations of U.S. taxpayers. And on all citizens now as we witness (1) inflation take off from profligate government borrowing and (2) the American job machine run out of steam from additional taxation.

The hospital insurance portion of Medicare is now paying out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenues. By next year, outlays for all parts of the program will exceed income. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2019.

If nothing changes, Medicaid eventually will have $36 trillion in obligations that it won't be able to pay under the current arrangement. The funding gap in out years gets so big, Congress would have had to deposit $80 trillion in an interest-bearing account last year to meet Medicare's eventual obligations.

The $700 billion Congress spent to bail out the financial institutions wouldn't cover 1% of the amount needed to bail out Medicare, according to Cato Institute calculations.

It's hard to fathom how anyone would suggest that a government that has run a program like Medicare should increase its role in health care.

Isn't one of the first rules of human existence to stop digging when you find yourself in a hole?

Apparently, to the Democrats, there is just no tomorrow and any burden heaped on Americans is justifiable if it but expands Democrat political power over all aspects of American life.

This is what passes for integrity in American political life now. Plunging into the Alice in Wonderland thicket of pure fantasy arithmetic is good and moral if one is "compassionate."

"A 'Down Payment' On Dysfunction?" Investors Business Daily, 2/27/09.

Hollowed out Europe.

European weakness is thus not a passing fad; it appears to be a long-term secular decline from both a strategic and an economic perspective. Their sclerotic global standing is but a result of socialist policies that have helped push the best and brightest away from the region, leaving in their stead a bunch of subsidy grabbers and welfare cheats.

"Utterly pointless Europe." By Chan Akya, Asia Times Online, 8/16/08.

DC specie meets Durban vermin.

[Obama Administration diplomats'] animating conceit is that the world dislikes America merely because the Bush Administration wasn't solicitous enough of world opinion. But Durban II shows that many countries hate us merely for who we are and what we stand for.

"A U.N. Education. There's no reasoning with racism." Wall Street Journal (subscription), 3/2/09.