Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC) advocates constantly tell us the scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports the theory of climate change. When phrased this way, they are absolutely correct. No one with more than half a brain would argue that the climate isn’t continuously changing. As the saying goes: The only constant is change. The dispute arises when the know-it-alls say CO2, especially human-produced CO2, is causing it.

There are thousands of credible scientists doing valid research and analysis, the results of which do not support the claims of AGCC.

In fact, much of the case for AGCC is tautologically inferential in nature. What AGCC proponents basically say is:

The climate is changing, therefore the climate is changing. Then they infer the following:

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing. Therefore, CO2 is driving climate change. Further, human industry creates CO2 as a waste gas. We have much more human industry now than there was 150 years ago. Therefore, human industry is the cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Ergo, human activity is driving climate change. From this we get AGCC. Their inferences may or may not be correct, but it sure ain’t settled science. Many others have reached contrary inferences from the same data.

Bear in mind, the term global climate change replaced the term global warming, but it is still global warming that is the concern expressed by the Algorian Doomsayers. These alarmists have postulated numerous calamitous effects of this alleged warming. There are still many of us “deniers” who are not at all convinced that global warming is necessarily a bad thing. Personally, I’m more inclined to believe it would mostly be a good thing.

Two things to consider.

1. It is almost universally accepted that the global climate was markedly warmer 700 years ago and people then seemed to like it that way. Researcher Michael Mann of "hockey stick" graph fame found this to be problematic and apparently massaged his data to hide this warm period on his graph. He then did his best to stonewall anyone that wanted to check his work.

2. AGCC alarmists tell us that, in the last 150 years, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has climbed from 280 parts per million to 380 ppm. So what exactly does this mean?

It means that, as a percentage, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has climbed from 0.028% to 0.038%. If the CO2 concentration as currently reported was doubled, we'd still be talking about less than one tenth of one percent atmospheric concentration. Even as a percentage of atmospheric heat trapping components, a doubled CO2 concentration would still only be about two percent of the whole.

Coincidentally, I recently developed the concept of the "two percent solution." It seems apparent to me that whenever do-gooders decide to attack a "problem" they find objectionable, they almost always go after a "cause" that actually accounts for less than five percent (and is usually 2% or less) of all inputs leading to said "problem." The one common denominator in all this do-gooder activism is that the 2% they go after is always some aspect of human behavior. And their solutions always seem to be inordinately expensive and inevitably require authoritarian restrictions of human liberties.

Beware the attack of the Two Percenters.

 I first heard about Cloward and Piven in 1973 during a ninth-grade civics class. In retrospect, I realize now that the teacher I thought was such a hard-case was only trying to warn us of the threats our constitutional republic was facing. I was too young and naïve to understand. I was apolitical then and remained so for the next 10 years. Why? Because I believed in the Constitution. I didn’t understand that it could be so easily ignored, betrayed, and subverted. I accepted and expected liberty and justice for all because that was what I learned, at a young age, made America great. I couldn’t even imagine how anyone could be against that. It wasn’t until 1983 that I really began to figure it out.

This was fairly early in the “Help the Homeless” movement. Those that used to be considered bums, drifters, winos, vagabonds, and otherwise shiftless, now became the blameless, there but for the grace of God go I, homeless. They were not to be scorned. They were to be pitied, helped, and rescued. It was this sentimentality for the homeless that shook me awake to the real-world politics of a free people gone awry.

Why did this awaken my latent libertarian sentiments? Because I knew these people. I knew who lived on the streets. I dealt with them daily, freely, of my own choosing. And from personal experience I knew, the blameless family dashed on the rocky shores of impersonal decrepitude was the rarest of rare among the ranks of the homeless one would find living on the streets.

Then I went a step further.

Jobs were hard to find in the early 80s and I was among the preferred employables. At 25 years old I had more than 15 years of verifiable work experience with nothing but glowing references to my capability, dedication, responsibility, loyalty and dependability. Even so, I could not find a job and eventually my savings ran out. When I got to two months overdue on my rent, I struck a deal with my landlord. I gave him most of my worldly goods, we called it even, and I left. This was when I voluntarily joined the ranks of the homeless.

For the next two years I roamed the states, finding a way to make a dollar as I could, never once even considering taking government welfare. I’d have starved first. And I had two dogs that followed me all the way. They were real troopers. A few times I turned to the Sally (Salvation Army) for help, though I always tried to pay in labor if they’d let me. Now there’s my idea of a proper, well-run charity. I always respected the Sally before, but once I really got to know’em, I’ve never met any finer. Feed their buckets if you really want to be charitable. They don’t waste it and they don’t coddle drunks and druggies. You’ve got to be sober to get more’n a bowl o’soup.

Now if I knew the streets before, and I did, I really got to know them during my homeless period. And what I said before stands. The vast majority of those living on the streets do it by choice. A Family of four living out of their car is the extreme rarity, and they’re the first to be given help by the likes of the Sally. If you wanted to help yourself there were plenty of organizations eager to help you do it. This was before we got absolutely insane with the government subsidizing machine. Given the money now out there, no one can realistically complain that there isn’t help to be had. Yet they do.

The point of all this is: We are a wealthy and prosperous country that can readily provide employment and comfortable living for all. The vast majority of those not carrying their own weight do it of their own volition. They’re certainly capable. To deny these people a free ride is not cruel, it is just. There is a tremendous difference between someone who will do whatever it takes to make a living, and someone who will take whatever they can to live on the make.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy is designed to destroy the inherent possiblilities, afforded by our constitution, for all to make a decent living for themselves and their families. It thrives by appealing to those who are least inclined to make any serious effort on their own behalf. Those that most of us would say: You made your bed, now sleep on it.

The Cloward-Piven strategy, which I had completely forgotten about, was recently brought back into my consciousness by http://branesmasher.blogtownhall.com/default.aspx.

Now I’m not going to try to illuminate this socialist strategy here because it has already been done far better than I could. What you need to do is read the four-part report beginning at:

http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/?p=1878

Read it. Follow the links. Learn the truth. Absorb it.

This is what is systematically being done to your country.

When you hear democrats say that they’re willing to risk reelection to get one of the current overreaching bills passed, understand, they know that with Obama it is the end game. If they can pass healthcare, cap and trade, and/or any of several other bills now in the works, just one will destroy the dollar and send this country scurrying to the World Bank for succor.

If they pull this off, any democrat who supports it is guaranteed a lifelong position of wealth and authority, and no election will change that. Your Republic, your Constitution is at stake.

The time is now to avoid massive bloodletting. We have but one chance to keep what we have without resorting to armed revolution. If the Obamacrats have their way, there will be carnage because half of America will not sit idly by while it happens. They will go the way of Nathan Hale. I count myself one of them.

 

When skeptics of anthropogenic global warming (or climate change) refer to recent conditions as evidence against AGW, the fanatics are quick to argue that one little blip doesn’t mean anything. For instance, many “deniers” have pointed out that the warming ended in 1998. Tell this to an AGW alarmist and they are quick to counter with the claim that you can’t discount the long-term trend by citing a minor, short-term aberration. To this I would agree. Just because it’s cold today doesn’t mean it’s going to be cold forever.

However, these same AGW enthusiasts regularly cite discrete events as evidence of AGW. How many times have you heard Hurricane Katrina, or fires in California, are proof of global warming?

My favorite example of this goes back to the 1980s when the AGW movement was just getting started. Here in Minnesota, the second half of that decade was marked by a pretty severe drought. It didn’t take long before the entire environmental industry (including both the taxpayer-funded non-profit sector and the tax-payer funded government bureaucracy), began predicting decades of drought. With hand-wringing despair, the propaganda machine went to work pushing for all sorts of projects and programs to deal with this calamity. Preserving wetlands, controlling water use, restricting farm and forestry practices, and numerous other government-growing, liberty-restricting measures were enacted.

Meanwhile, existing dams were still being removed (to environmentalists, dams are evil), and any suggestion that maybe we should build some new reservoirs to preserve some of this scarce water would not even be considered.

They also used this extended low-flow period to conduct numerous studies designed to prove that we the people were seriously degrading water quality in the state. This allowed them to enact even more government-growing, liberty-restricting regulations.

(As an aside: These studies were just like what we see today at IPCC. The Executive Summaries and Recommendations for Policymakers, which is all that lawmakers and journalists ever look at, paint dire pictures and suggest strict, command and control measures. When one takes the time, however, to actually read the full-bodied reports, you find the data do not support the majority of conclusions.)

When the drought began to abate in 1990-91, did they apologize for their alarmism? Don’t be silly. Did they consider relaxing any of the rules they’d created to deal with “decades of drought?” Bite your tongue. These things were already part of the environmentalist agenda before the drought. In fact, they wouldn’t even admit the drought was over until after the flood of 1993. Then they began to use that event for a new round of regulatory remedies. Once again, of course, building dams was not an option. (I mention dams, here and above, only because physical impoundment is the only effective means of dealing with either drought or flood short of packing up and moving away.)

Finally, after several years of predicting “decades of drought,” what do you think they said about the flood of 1993?

You got it: More proof of Global Warming!

One last thing: During this episode, I was actively fighting to stop this juggernaut of government expansionism. At one Open House sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, a representative of the DNR told me: “You know this wonderful quality of life every one talks about? You don’t think that happened by accident do you?”

She was not giving homage to the Creator.

Bread Is Dangerous

Important Warning for those who have been drawn unsuspectingly into the use of bread:

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

5. Bread is made from a substance called "dough." It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!

6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.

7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.

8. Bread is often a "gateway" food item, leading the user to "harder" items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.

9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.

10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.

11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

12. Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

In light of these frightening statistics, we propose the following bread restrictions:

1. No sale of bread to minors.

2. A nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign, complete with celebrity TV spots and bumper stickers.

3. A 300 percent federal tax on all bread to pay for all the societal ills we might associate with bread.

4. No animal or human images, nor any primary colors (which may appeal to children) may be used to promote bread usage.

 

I have been told many times over the years that I get too worked-up over trivial little things. Contrarily, I don’t consider them trivial. I see these “little things” as symptoms of a much greater disease: A cancer infecting the entire body of a once-courageous, now fear-addled, misled culture.

So what is this “trivial little thing” which has me so frothified?

When I was in high school (yes, we did go beyond eighth grade in those days), I was mighty ignorant, especially about politics. More than 200 moons old and I still unabashedly believed what I had learned in grade school. There I had been told that we’re all born free, to live as we choose, and that the United States of America was founded to keep it that way. I was taught that this ingenious “Union of Sovereign States” is a republic in which we all agree, as sovereign individual citizens, to preserve and protect our liberties as set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America; and to accept it as the supreme law of the land. In grade school I learned that the Constitution was so written as to clearly define and severely limit the powers of government in order to protect the rights of individual citizens from government. I learned all this and I believed. I was naive.

By the time I graduated high school, I was becoming pretty confused. I knew there were supposed to be differences between Democrats and Republicans. One was the friend of Big Business, the other fought for the Common Man. Until this point in my life, I had paid so little attention I couldn’t tell you which was which.

What difference does it make? They all have to obey the Constitution don’t they? That’s what I thought.

After I did start paying attention, I was still pretty confused. I was still having a hard time telling them apart. By now I knew which was s’posed to be for what, but I’d listen and they’d all pretty much sound the same. They all wanted to tell me what I could and couldn’t do, how not to do it, when to not do it, and with what I could or must not do it. They all wanted to spend more and more money in order to do more and more things that I didn’t think they had any business meddling with in the first place. Ultimately, I came to realize that for most of them, the Constitution was just something on which to hang their hats. They proclaim their love, devotion, and undying protection of the Constitution, all the while methodically twisting and perverting it all out of shape.

Eventually, albeit slowly, I came to realize why I was so confused. We supposedly have two dominant political parties, Democrats and Republicans, their names identifying their opposing political philosophies. What I finally realized was that they all sound like democrats. One would expect Democrats to promote democracy. By the same token, one would expect Republicans to promote republicanism. They don’t. Instead you hear popular, iconic Republicans, young and old, extolling the virtues of democracy. They bandy about phrases like, “spreading democracy around the world,” and, “preserving our democratic way of life.” These are republicans?

When I figured all this out, and realized there was really no one out there defending our Republic and its Constitution, I became sorely miffed.

“What’s the matter with you people,” I scream. “Are you ashamed of being republican?” (or just ashamed of being a Republican)

Personally, I am more of a mind with the framers of our great Constitution. Like them, I detest democracy.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. (aka mobocracy)
Thomas Jefferson

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
John Adams

Democracy is the most vile form of government… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
James Madison

It [democracy] does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds. (sounds like Jesse Jackson)
Samuel Adams

As a free and sovereign individual living being, I have willingly chosen to support the republic and abide by its Constitution. In this vein, I proudly declare that I am a republican. I’m not ashamed of being republican. I would be ashamed to be a Republican. I wouldn’t even consider becoming a Republican until they quit being ashamed of being republican, quit promoting democracy, start promoting republicanism, and actually demonstrate their determination to restore republican liberty and uphold the Constitution. Further, just for the record, I never have and never will support or endorse Democrats or the democracy that has so foully corrupted our body politic and infected our culture with an epidemic of fear and dependency.

Over the years, whenever I express these sentiments, almost invariably I get asked why I “work up such a lather” over such a trivial little thing.

It’s not a trivial little thing! It is in such trivial little ways, and by such trivial little things, that our clear and concise Constitution has been systematically bent and deformed; usurped by the forces of democracy to the consternation of all true republicans. This is not trivial!

In response to this, the parents, doctors, nurses, and numerous supporters went to work, feverishly struggling to save this poor girl's life.

The parent's pleaded with Cigna and acquired public exposure through the press. Numerous doctors signed a letter to Cigna arguing for doing the transplant. The California Nurses Association, and many other sympathizers, organized protests and marched on Cigna.

The girl's mother is quoted as saying: “My daughter survived two bouts of cancer, and against all odds has been stable even with so many of her organs not working, only to now be told that she can not get the only treatment that will save her life because some administrator in some office thinks it is too expensive.”

The girl had been on the liver transplant list for two weeks before Cigna eventually capitulated. The insurer reportedly notifying the mother that the transplant was approved as she and some 150 nurses and teenagers protested outside Cigna offices. Unfortunately, the girl died hours later. Cigna was too late.

With the girl's death, the protests got even louder and angrier. Cigna was charged with bowing to the public outcry only after it knew it was too late. The family said they would sue the insurer whom they blame for their daughter's death. Their lawyer said that Cigna "maliciously killed her" and that he hopes to press murder or manslaughter charges against Cigna. Retaliation is in the air. So is politics.

The following is from a Dec. 19, 2007 press release issued by the California Nurses Association - National Nurses Organizing Committee.

CIGNA’s refusal of Nataline’s liver transplant—overruling the urgent appeals of an array of doctors and nurses—is indicative of the failures of the new healthcare plan sponsored by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Fabian Nunez. That plan, which is actively supported by CIGNA, requires every single Californian to purchase insurance products from companies like CIGNA, but does not address the problem of denial of care evident in this situation.

ABC News quoted the parent's lawyer as saying:

So let me get this straight.

The doctors who will do the transplant surgery say it's her only chance, slim but worth doing.

There is a liver donor.

SO DO THE TRANSPLANT!!!

Are you waiting for some pencil-pushing bean counter to come in, grab a scalpel, and go to work?

The parents say they want the surgery done but can't afford the $75,000 down payment (not to mention the rest). The doctors won't do the transplant without the money. Tell me again who is responsible for this girl's death?

The parents should be demanding action from the doctors. You insist you’ll find the money any way you can; you tell them you’ll be suing Cigna for it. You tell them you’re going to sell your story for a million bucks. You say whatever it takes…, “Just do the surgery, doc.”

The doctors could do the surgery. They might lose some money on the deal but they have got paid up 'til now. They have this girl's only hope of life in their hands and they do nothing because of money - money they more than likely will be able to collect afterward, anyway?

It seems to me, if the hospital and doctors had simply followed sound, ethical medical/business practices, they could have been heralded as self-sacrificing heroes and still got paid handsomely. Instead they sat on their hands, absolving themselves of all responsibility, and let this girl die.

Meanwhile, Cigna is the evil money-grubbing monster "playing doctor without a license." The monster that, no doubt, has already paid the doctors and nurses and hospitals far more money for this girl's care than her parents have paid Cigna for their family's health insurance.

The people who most ardently proclaim their desire to help people say healthcare costs are too high because insurance companies charge too much. They then villainize insurers for not providing enough coverage. They apparently believe everyone is entitled to unlimited healthcare at a small price; and that it's economically feasible. What's worse, they've managed to get a whole lot of people to believe in such ridiculosity.

All this said, I can't help but wonder: If all these people, parents, nurses, teenagers, etc., really wanted to save this girls life, why weren't they at the hospital chanting and challenging the doctors and hospital, demanding they do the transplant? Why weren't the hospital staff nurses doing a sit-down or something? Why didn't the doctors volunteer their services? Call me cynical ('cause I certainly am), but I believe (aside from the tragic loss of an innocent caught in the fracas) the whole uproar was political and many people were actually glad the girl died when she did.

The goal is universal healthcare and any means are justified in pursuit of such a lofty ideal.

Oh what a sick society.