Read the Bill!

Congress Should Take Its Time

You didn’t have the time to read the 1100 page stimulus bill. And neither did members of Congress—by their own choice. Most lawmakers—on both sides of the aisle—were only given 13 hours to read the bill before it was passed.

ReadTheBill.org is a commonsense solution – we want Congress to post all bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. That gives members of Congress – and you – three days to read legislation and consider how it could potentially affect each of us in our daily lives. A 72 hour rule would also give you a chance to let your senators and representative in Congress know what you like, or don’t like, about a bill before they vote.

If no one is taking the time to read these crucial pieces of legislation, then no one knows what’s in them before they are passed.

Please take time to sign the petition and call your congressperson and Senators.

Read the Bill

Context Is Everything

ABC News posted the following article in April, about an event that was trumpeted many places as portending dire consequences:

 

 Parts of the ice shelf now look like shattered panes of glass. (British Antarctic Survey)

The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is in the final stages of collapse and scientists are concerned the event shows climate change is happening faster than previously thought.

An ice bridge, up to 40 kilometres long but at its narrowest just 500 metres wide, was thought to be holding the giant shelf to the Antarctic continent but it recently snapped.

From above, parts of the Wilkins Ice Shelf now look like giant panes of shattered glass.

British Antarctic Survey glaciologist Professor David Vaughan has been monitoring the Wilkins Ice Shelf for some time with the help of satellite imagery.

“The ice shelf has almost exploded into a large number, hundreds of small icebergs,” he said.

“The images on the European Space Agency website show that the ice bridge was relatively stable for the past month or two.

“In fact we visited the ice bridge – we landed on it with an aircraft and put a GPS, a satellite positioning system, onto the ice shelf. And that’s another way we’ve been monitoring its movements over the last few weeks.”

Researchers believe the ice bridge was an important barrier, keeping the rest of the ice shelf in place.

Dr Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado, told ABC Radio National he was concerned.

“The follow on is that large chunks of ice break away from the area that’s become unstable because it’s no longer braced,” he said.

“And we see a retreat to a smaller ice shelf, or perhaps no ice shelf at all. It’s in the last stages. Right now I think about half the Wilkins will remain after this is done.”

The size of the impact on sea levels is still being debated but scientists believe climate change is affecting the Antarctic to a greater extent than previously expected.

Events on the Antarctic peninsula have prompted the US Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, to release a statement saying it “demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing, more rapidly than previously thought, as a consequence of climate change”

 

The Wilkins Ice Shelf can be located in the upper left of the following graphic,between two irregularities along the coast of the peninsula, left of Fossil Bluff.  Unfortunately, it’s not marked.

 

The following video demonstrates 30 years of ice fluctuation between summer and winter, showing the clockwise movement of the ice as it is acted upon by winds and ocean currents.  The videoalso seems to show this is not the first time the Wilkins Ice Field has disintegrated.

Are reports of the ice field’s collapse accurate?  Maybe.  Look at the photo that accompanied the ABC article again – does that look like melting ice, or ice that has been fractured by wind and shifting ocean currents?   

Again, science is being subjugated to political expediency.

Obama and Inconvienient Truths

h/t RedState

Thought from Thomas Sowell

I love reading Thomas Sowell’s columns.  He is brilliant, succinct and occasionally scathing.

His most recent column begins here.  Go to the link to read the full column:

Alice in Medical Care

Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments.

Let’s start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care? The most usual reason given is because its cost is high and rising.

That is certainly true. We were not spending nearly as much on high-tech medical procedures in the past because there were not nearly as many of them, and we were not spending anything at all on some of the new pharmaceutical drugs because they didn’t exist.

This general pattern is not peculiar to medical care. Cars didn’t cost nearly as much in the past, when they didn’t have air-conditioning, power steering and high-tech safety features. Homes were cheaper when they were smaller, had fewer bathrooms and lacked such conveniences as built-in microwave ovens.

We would like to have all these things without the rising costs that come with them. But only with medical care is such wishful thinking taken seriously, with government regarded as a sort of fairy godmother who will give us the benefits without the costs.

A cynic is said to be someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If so, then it is political cynicism to point to other countries that spend less on medical care, including some countries where there is “universal health care” provided “free” by their governments.

Civics Quiz

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.

I only got 94% – see if you can beat me.  At least, beat the average!!  Come back and post your score if you like, we want to admire you! 

CIVICS QUIZ

Bon chance!

The Breaking Point

And in case the video doesn’t show here…  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bkqWaKZVTY&feature=player_embedded

Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the U.S. House to vote at the end of this week on the Waxman-Markey National Energy Tax (House Bill 2454) and we need to defeat it.  Cap and Trade will be a disaster if passed.  When did you call your Congressman or Senator about this?  Really?  Good for you!  Do it again!. Please.

 

Today’s Assigned Reading

What would you think of a book that contained the following quotes?

“The characteristic feature of present-day policies is the trend toward a substitution of government control for free enterprise. Powerful political parties and pressure groups are fervently asking for public control of all economic activities, for thorough government planning, and for the nationalization of business. They aim at full government control of education and at the socialization of the medical profession. There is no sphere of human activity that they would not be prepared to subordinate to regimentation by the authorities. In their eyes, state control is the panacea for all ills.”  (p. 4)

“America is faced with a phenomenon that the framers of the Constitution did not foresee and could not foresee: the voluntary abandonment of congressional rights. Congress has in many instances surrendered the function of legislation to government agencies and commissions, and it has relaxed its budgetary control through the allocation of large appropriations for expenditures, which the Administration has to determine in detail.” (p. 5)

“The political conflicts are no longer seen as struggles between groups of men. They are considered a war between two principles, the good and the bad. The good is embodies in the great god State, the materialization of the eternal idea of morality, and the bad is the ‘rugged individualism’ of selfish men. In this antagonism the State is always right and the individual always wrong. The State is the representative of the commonweal, of justice, civilization, and superior wisdom. The individual is a poor wretch, a vicious fool.” (p. 76)

What would you say if I told you it was written in 1944?  In Austria?*

These quotes are from Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises, a member of the Austrian School of Economics.  He and fellow economist F. A Hayak (The Road To Serfdom) wrote during the time of Hitler, but are drawing wide attention recently among modern readers. 

For further information you may want to check out http://mises.org/.  Better yet, check your local bookstore or online vendor for copies of their books.  They may have been defending capitalism from fascism when they originally wrote their books, but their insights are prescient of current times.

*Contrary to our president’s statement, German is spoken there, not a non-existent language called “Austrian.”

Our Historically Challenged President

Aside from stating that there were 57 states instead of 50; and referring to his Muslim faith when he meant Christian, Victor Hanson lists many things that President Obama says that are not accurate.  Evidently he is not as knowledgable as he wants us to think he is.

Here’s the beginning of the article, check the link to read the whole thing!

Our Historically Challenged President
A list of distortions.

By Victor Davis Hanson

In his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a “student of history.” But despite Barack Obama’s image as an Ivy League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, in areas of both facts and interpretation. This first became apparent during the presidential campaign. Candidate Obama proclaimed then that during World War II his great-uncle had helped liberate Auschwitz, and that his grandfather knew fellow American troops that had entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. Both are impossible. The Americans didn’t free either Nazi death camp. (Regarding Obama’s great uncle’s war experience, the Obama team later said he’d meant the camp at Buchenwald.)

Here’s A Chart You’re Not Likely To See on CNN

From Innocent Bystanders, “The May Unemployment Numbers Are Here, And Worse Than Predicted”

I continue to be amazed at the positive spin President Obama receives from the “mainstream” press, and even more amazed at the number of Americans who are too swept up in their Obamania to see what he is doing to our country. And I wonder, what more has to happen before they wake up?

D-Day, the Sixth of June

 

Because I don’t have great luck with embedding video, here’s the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgawfZAqgiE