Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, April 2007

1. Chugach. Election results were announced for the Chugach Board Thursday night. The reform candidates, Professor PJ Hill and I got more votes than any past candidate for the position, with the Professor at over 9500 and me at 8800 votes. The union-backed candidates got just over 5200 votes apiece, all out of some 14,700 ballots counted (members voted for two seats) – about a 60-40% split. This election represents a clear repudiation of both the IBEW and the board that has cozied up to them over the past year. The reformers now have a narrow 4-3 majority on the board that will (hopefully) remain for the next year until the next board elections, when half the new majority will be up for reelection. Thank you all for your kind words of support and your interest. We will do everything we can to live up to the expectations and hopes of those that supported this run. In other words – out of the frying pan and into the fire.

2. Glacier Bay. It is always instructive when wild animals are observed in their natural state, doing to one another what comes naturally. This story comes from Southeast Alaska, Glacier Bay National Park. The area has become a favorite location for cruise ships moving up and down the panhandle in Southeast Alaska, as the fjords and glaciers sitting in them are spectacular. As always, greens in and out of the US Parks Service have been fighting the increase in numbers of ships visiting by all means possible. In recent years, the local population of harbor seals has declined by half. In response, greens, who are anti-everything, have blamed it all on the increased cruise ship traffic in the area. Everything from the big boats running down the fast-moving, highly maneuverable animals, which have never been observed, to the wakes of the big ships disturbing the harbor seals and scaring them off ice floes, to illegal dumping of shipboard waste, which gets the occasional boat captain cited and fined in Southeast Alaska – though none in Glacier Bay, to the best of my knowledge, gets the blame. And the obvious solution is to keep all human activity out of the national Park so the harbor seal population can recover. The problem here is that the greens never actually spend enough time in any location in the wild to see, understand and know what is going on, and either does anyone else except the locals, whose observations are universally ignored. When there are no locals present, the greens can simply make it up as they go, which they are well-practiced at doing. Well, last week, our local fishwrapper, the Anchorage Daily News ran a report that large Steller Seal Lions were the likely cause of the harbor seal decline, attacking and eating the harbor sea lions. Since 1995, there have been 13 observed reports of Stellers killing young harbor sea lions. The greens are making great progress toward listing Stellers as endangered along the Aleutians due to a large drop in their local populations. The actual reason for the population change is likely due to changes in the temperature of the North Pacific, p art of a natural cycle, which changes what food is where and when, causing the seals to chase the food from location to location. So if an endangered species (Stellar sea lions) is responsible to creating another endangered species at a location ( Glacier Bay harbor seals), what do you ban? Whose fault is it (outside of the standard leftist observation that it is all Bush’s fault)? We can’t do a thing about one endangered species if it is endangered, so we are once again in the realm of bureaucratic gridlock like the salmon managers at the Bonneville Dam in Washington State. Should be fascinating to watch.

3. Fort Knox. The anti-miners writing for the local fishwrapper (Anchorage Daily News) ran a breathless story about a cyanide seep discovered last winter on the grounds of the Fort Knox mine north of Fairbanks. In this story, the environmental monitoring and mitigation employees of the mine discovered the seep over the winter, identified the source, and have spent over $2.5 million mitigating and cleaning it up. They reported to all the regulators they were supposed to report to at the state and federal levels. Everything has been contained as far as anyone knows, and the system has worked as it was supposed to work. The article noted that over 1,000 water samples downstream from the seep have been taken since it was discovered in December with nothing new found. The square footage given what is essentially an inconsequential story of a problem found and successfully cleared up demonstrates quite nicely the anti-mining jihad underway in the pages of the local fishwrapper. We will hope that it is as obvious to other readers as it is to me.

4. Petraeus. General David Petraeus made the rounds in DC last week, updating the administration and congress on progress in Iraq. The new democrat leadership in congress reacted predictably – either ignoring or discounting what they were told by the commander of forces in the field. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) bloviating in front of the cameras early last week promised to listen to the SITREP, but not to believe the General if reported any progress. House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi (D, SF) went Reid one better and refused to even listen to Petraeus, citing other appointments. Interestingly enough, she had enough time to put her little scarf on, meekly kowtow to the Islamists, travel to Syria and meet with Bashir Assad last month. But meeting with the commanding general of US forces in Iraq was too difficult to schedule. Peolsi’s office did say they spoke via telephone on the subject. How nice. Captain’s Qu arters, Weds.

5. Free Speech. The Washington State Supreme Court tossed an attempt by government leftists to silence talk show commentary on political subjects last week. The case was an attempt to use McCain-Feingold logic as a vehicle to shut up support for an anti-tax ballot initiative a couple years ago. The two talk show hosts were strongly in support of the initiative and pushed it on their shows. Leftists in several local governments filed complaints against the talk show hosts accusing them of in-kind campaign contributions to the ballot initiative, which are limited by state campaign finance laws modeled after McCain-Feingold. During the prosecution of the lawsuits, talk show advocacy stopped and the initiative eventually failed at the ballot box. Make no mistake about it, any attempt to control spending on or in any political campaign is an attempt to shut off one side of the discussion. The ruling was unanimous in support of the right of the talk shows to discuss and advocate whatever they wanted to talk about. Don’t think that this will be the last time leftists will try to use campaign finance laws to shut up their opposition, as the only way they can win a debate is by not allowing one to take place. Malkin, Thurs.

6. Saudis. The Saudis arrested over 170 terrorists last week as they broke up a plot to take down their oil fields. The plotters included trained aircraft pilots and intended to fly aircraft into the Saudi oil fields and processing facilities. The planned series of attacks targeted a wide range of targets including government officials, members of the royal family, oil and financial centers. From the sounds of it, the Islamists / Wahhabis intended a twofer – decapitate the Saudi government while shutting down its oil production. We dodged a bullet on this one. I hope the “debriefings” of the perps goes well and we get some useful information from the Saudis. Captain’s Quarters, Sat.

1. Imus. Limbaugh speculated Monday that the Imus flap was an orchestrated hit by the Clinton machine against one of her harshest critics from the left on radio. Imus hated Hillary, and regularly blasted her on the air, at the same time giving air play to her opponents and harshest critics. Limbaugh believes that the template and tools used against Imus will be used against conservatives on the radio and in the blogs to force them off the air during the upcoming campaign season. The technique is pretty simple: find something they said – anything they said; accuse them of racism / insensitivity / some other tripe; sic the designated race-baiters / race hustlers on them; get their buddies in the drive-by media to create the sort of media firestorm that they did against Imus; and keep it up until the talk show is history. And you keep on moving from opponent to opponent to opponent using this technique until nobody in opposition is left standing or on the air. As evidence for his analysis, Limbaugh noted that if this was only about Imus, it would be done already, as Imus has been off the air for over a week. The fact that it still continues, and that Sharpton and Jackson have promised that Imus was just a st art, is pretty convincing support for his analysis. Expect more of these sorts of events, as the Clintons cannot survive under any criticism. It should be an interesting fight, pitting the Clinton Machine aided and abetted by the race hustlers, drive-by media, unions and big money donors against everyone else.

2. Chugach. An interesting event took place last week in conjunction with the campaign for election to the Chugach Electric Association Board of Directors. Our campaign continues, approaching the end. Ballots are supposed to be received through noon Monday, April 23. They will be counted and the results announced at the annual meeting three days later on Thursday night. We know the IBEW and their campaign have been polling throughout the campaign. We think they are worried, for they decided to slam one and perhaps both of the remaining IBEW labor contracts thru the approval process and get board approval at an emergency Board Meeting Wednesday, the day before the results are to be announced. Chugach management and the union’s supporters on the current board wouldn’t do this sort of last-minute foolishness unless they were worried that they would lose control of the board. It is always a Great Sadness to see grown men, professionals, experts in their chosen fields of endeavor fall all over themselves to the beck and call of a labor union and prostrate themselves in public before that union. If elected, one of my jobs will be to make sure this sort of craven, irresponsible, unprofessional, expensive foolishness never happens again. We will find out come Thursday night.

3. Gonzo. I have watched the manufactured drama surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’ firing of eight US prosecutors for weeks now with little comment, marveling over both his ineptitude in response and the ability of the democrats to make it up as they go. Gonzalez went in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, and got eaten alive by senators on both sides of the aisle. Now I think I know why. There was an article in the Anchorage Daily News this morning about the newly appointed federal prosecutor for Alaska probably losing his job as legislation to repeal a portion of the Patriot Act that allowed the Attorney General to appoint federal prosecutors without getting senate approval. When he was appointed, it was without the advice and consent from our two Republican US senators – they didn’t like it, but didn’t kill it outright. There were some blog comments late in the week about senatorial discretion and p articipation in the nominating process. Apparently, they take it as seriously as appointments to the federal bench. Republican Presidents get to nominate Republican-leaning lawyers, while democrat presidents get to nominate democrat lawyers. The senators play along, as long as they can p articipate, and all nominees are generally confirmed. Gonzalez bypassed the old process, delegating the appointment process to underlings, and appointing people without notification or p articipation of the home state senators involved, and the senate is taking this opportunity to get even with Gonzalez. This is not about firing. It is about hiring and dissing US senators – which nicely explains why Gonzalez is getting little to no support from the Republican side of the aisle.

4. Listing. Greens are on the threshold of getting the Holy Grail of all environmental decisions to shut down industry statewide here in Alaska. They have managed to get the feds to consider listing Cook Inlet beluga whales as an endangered species because of declining numbers in Cook Inlet over the last couple of decades. Belugas are abundant throughout Alaskan waters, but seem to be deciding to go elsewhere in recent years. Nobody know what the real numbers of whales are in Cook Inlet, as the Inlet is as muddy as you would hope it to be. Cook Inlet also sits at the center of nearly 60% of the entire population of the state of Alaska. Local whale hunters are adamant that the feds and greens are deliberately undercounting whales in an attempt to shut them down. Local industries are concerned that a ruling will designate the entire Inlet a protected habitat and be used by the greens as a vehicle to shut down oil platforms in the Inlet, stop shipping into Anchorage, stop commercial fishing, and more. Greens are in a “trust me” mode, saying all the right soothing words. They are lying, of course. Last week, the Alaska delegation got involved. We hope they are successful. The other listing pursued by the greens is an attempt to list the polar bear as an endangered species. Once again, they are purposely undercounting the actual numbers of bears, which are abundant, growing in numbers, and move around throughout the Arctic Ocean. Such a listing will be used as a vehicle to shut down oil and natural gas exploration across the entire Alaska North Slope, putting current and all future production from the Prudhoe Bay and other North Slope oil fields at risk. The Endangered Species Act has become a monster that must be repealed sooner rather than later.

5. Shootings. Yet another evil guy took a couple guns, a few hundred rounds of ammo into a gun free zone last week. This one was a Virginia Tech, and he killed 32 before putting a bullet into his head. He put together a package with photos, a video, and a video taped screed that he mailed to NBC between the first couple shootings at 7 AM and the rest of the shootings a couple hours later in the engineering building across campus. There were heroic acts during the murder spree, with one professor, a 72 year old holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu barricading the classroom door while his students escaped out of a window. NBC’s decision to air this vermin’s self-serving screed was p articularly reprehensible, as it validated the wish of every single other murderous wanabee - that is, if you do this, you will get national coverage for your screed. His rant was anti-Christian, anti American, anti-life, and anti-joy, sounding all the more like the pre-death screeds we hear out of homicide bombers before they send themselves to Hell. It took a couple of days for the gun control argument to st art, with the drive-by media pushing the more gun control is a Good Thing message. Democrats weren’t real quick to embrace that push, as gun control is one of the reasons that ManBearPig (algore) and John F Kerry were not elected president in 2000 and 2004. The VA Tech administration may end up being financially liable for this disaster, as they actively p articipated in an effort to defeat legislation in the VA legislature last year that would have allowed concealed carry permit holders to carry on campus. When guns were plentiful in schools before 1960, we saw very few mass shootings. As the gun laws have become more restrictive and have created more free fire zones for murderers, the more of these events we see. Perhaps it is time to return firearms to the public schools and teach the students how to handle weapons, shoot weapons, and handle themselves in a tight situation.

1. Seals. In a McClatchy article that showed up in the Anchorage Daily News Sunday, we have an excellent example of regulatory lunacy taking place when one endangered species under federal protection is wiping out another species under federal protection. The funny p art is that both are covered under federal law – but they are different laws, enforced by different agencies, and the net result has been disaster for everyone involved. Here’s the setup. Salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest have been crashing since the feds gave preferential access to local tribes in the mid-1980s. The tribes have responded to this unlimited Good Deal like all unregulated humans have, decimating salmon runs throughout the region over the last 20+ years. As a result, the feds are now st arting to shut down commercial and sport fish taking of salmon from California through Washington State. The operative law has been the Endangered Species Act. The other group of animals involved in this little drama is the California Sea Lion, which is managed under the Marine Mammal Protection Act passed in 1972. This Act manages ocean going mammals and regulates their taking. At the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State, they have a growing problem: the sea lions are eating the salmon in ever increasing numbers and nobody can seem to do a bloody thing about it. Over the last decade or so, the sea lions, which are sm art, effective predators, have figured out that salmon pool up at the base of the dam, waiting for their turn up the fish ladder. Pooled salmon are easy to find, can’t run very far, and are easy to catch, kill and eat – which is just what is happening. One telling sentence out of the article notes that prior to the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, few, if any sea lions were sighted in the 140-mile stretch of fresh water between the Pacific Ocean and the dam. This spring, 80-85 of the seals are working the area below the dam, eating an estimated 3,000 king salmon. The Columbia River supports a small run of kings, with around 100,000 getting upstream past the Bonneville dam yearly. Fisheries managers in Washington State want to kill all of the sea lions in the river yearly, and have asked permission to kill 80 every year. Their request is being vigorously opposed by all the Usual Suspects in the environmental community. All salmon and steelhead species in the Pacific Northwest are currently on the endangered species list, and the greens have been using that listing to shut down everything from farming (no irrigation water), to logging (no runoff into the streams) to removal of all the hydroelectric dams from the local rivers (dams chop up salmon), and other environmental scams. This episode demonstrates yet again that local management of fish and game is best left to managers at the state level. It also demonstrates why it will not be kicked back down the food chain until enough people in enough states lose enough liberty, property, jobs and livelihood to force a change in federal law.

2. Newt. Conservative supporters of Newt Gingrich were reminded of his interest in environmental issues midweek when he debated global warming with John Kerry (D, MA). The debate was for the most p art anticlimactic, with Newt agreeing on most of the top-level points Kerry made, but disagreeing on what must be done. For those who forget, while Speaker of the House, Gingrich fought attempts to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, killing revisions that would introduce cost-benefit analysis and property rights back into the discussion. He also killed attempts to require solid, sound, visible research in support of all listings and environmental legislation. Quite often over the last few decades, the feds have hidden the source data upon which they are making their rules and regulations, leading to charges that they are simply making things up to get preordained results like they did with the spotted owl and secondhand smoke. Now that the democrats have retaken Congress, it will be a while before we can fix the Endangered Species, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. In the mid-1990s, Richard Pombo (R, CA) and John Shadegg (R, AZ) proposed some very good rewrites of the Endangered Species Act and similar legislation that were capable of being passed. Newt killed them all. Today, he is simply another kool-aid drinking believer in the notion of manmade global warming, and agrees with Kerry that Something Must Be Done. This all led one blogger last week to note that the Road to Serfdom will be paved with green bricks. And it will if the greens and their lackeys in the democrat party and fools in the Republican P arty have anything to do with it.

3. Diabetes. AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere reported experimental treatment results from Brazil which had 15 sufferers of Type-I Diabetes being injected with adult stem cells from their own bone marrow. The treatment appeared to cure the diabetes, with some of the patients not needing any additional diabetes medicine nearly three years later. This is huge news, as diabetes is one of our deadliest diseases. The fact that it can be treated, even cured completely with injection of bone marrow cells from the patient himself is huge news – and news, by the way, that puts the lie to the current leftist push to st art killing babies so we can harvest their embryonic stem cells (never successfully used to treat anything so far) for experimentation. This is Good News, indeed. Congratulations to the Brazilians if this story is true.

4. Imus. The latest gotcha from the race hustlers and race baiters came with the public lynching of shock-jock wannabee Don Imus. Imus, who is in his mid-60s, gray-headed and white, summoned his best rapper-speak and commented on the Rutgers women’s basketball team in terms that only a rapper would love, calling them “… nappy headed hos …” Two days later, you would have thought that he was the second coming of David Duke, as the artificial outrage crowd decided to bag themselves yet another white guy. You see, in our culture today, only young black guys can say those things about black women. Sponsors pulled their ads from his shows and he was quickly fired from his radio and TV simulcast shows. Imus, like a fool, decided to grovel, getting down on his knees and kissing the ring of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. It didn’t work. Had he straightened up his spine a bit and told them to go straight to Hell and refused to submit like Ann Coulter did when she used the term “faggot”, he would still be employed. The Rutgers team and coach got involved, claiming that his comment took their great season away from them. This may be the best example I can think of about the difference between women’s’ and men’s’ sports. You have a team and coach from Rutgers that has just played for the national championship and lost. They are the second best this year at what they do in the entire nation. What do they do in response to Imus? They whine, cry, snivel, play the victim, and allow this old man to “take away their entire season” from them? Are you kidding me? Are you serious? The typical men’s team at any level of the sport from pickup games thru the NBA would have invited Imus to suit up and play a game or two. It wouldn’t have taken but a couple of picks or a couple trips up and down the court to appropriately get his attention and instruct him upon the error of his ways. The coach of any men’s team at any level would have taken after Imus personally, professionally, discussing his complete lack of legitimate parents, and had a great time doing it. The victimhood culture gets ever more disgusting every day.

5. Nifong. The North Carolina Attorney General dropped all charges against three accused Duke lacrosse team members. In his announcement last week, the Attorney General blistered local prosecutor Nifong for indicting the young men and continuing the prosecution in the face of ever-changing stories from the accuser. He went so far as to say that the guys were innocent of all charges and that Nifong knew it. This sets up an interesting situation in civil court for the families of the lacrosse players, as they now can go after Nifong, 80+ Duke professors that signed letters defaming them; Duke University, and our favorite race-baiters and race hustlers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The NC Bar is looking at disbarring Nifong for his p art in the outrage, where he brought a case against people he knew were innocent, hid information from the defense, and tried his case in the front pages of the local media – all while he was running for reelection as the local prosecutor. The State of NC may or may not bring criminal charges against him. They should bring charges sooner rather than later.

1. Divest. Anyone out there remember the leftist assault on the old South African government via encouraging divestment of all companies that did business with the Afrikaners? Don’t know how well it worked, but it did provide the left a vehicle for putting economic pressure on that government. The idea has taken on a new life, as states are st arting to divest their investment portfolios of any companies that do business with Iran. Captain’s Quarters reported Monday that California was about to join Missouri and several other states considering legislation to pull all investments from their portfolios that do business with Iran. Given that most states have significant retirement pension accounts with some large dollar amounts invested (CALPERS ought to be the largest at over $182 billion), this action has the potential to inflict some serious pain on the thieving Mullahs who have been stealing from their citizens for decades, all in the name of Allah. This effort ought to have far more impact than the mealy-mouthed negotiation routine the striped-pants crowd from the State Dep artment is trying to impose as a solution to Iran. Iran is a weak nation, long on harsh rhetoric, threats and bluster, but very, very short on military and economic strength – which is why they send out the young to blow themselves up and kill the innocent. If your greatest export is young people trained to blow themselves up, you will have a hard time in the worldwide marketplace. Anything we can do to pressure their economy; anything we can do to make it harder for the Mullahs to continue to steal and hide that money from their countrymen, the quicker we will topple that government and allow Iranians to solve their problem without leveling cities. My hat is off to the state legislatures involved. We will hope this will continue to tighten the box the Mullahs have put themselves into.

2. Dhimmi. House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi (D, SF) took a road trip to Syria last week, ostensibly to consult with people who the Bush administration won’t consult with. In her attempt to st art carving out a democrat foreign policy, Pelosi thought visiting one of the five remaining members of the Axis of Evil was a Good Thing to do. Pelosi did her best to fit in to the Baathist culture running Syria, as she covered her head with a scarf in deference to Muslims at a mosque she visited. In doing so, Pelosi demonstrates that she does not understand the enemy at all, and would rather submit to their endless, sniveling demands for submission than stand up. Pelosi paints herself as a Dhimmi to the entire Muslim world, which will embolden the Islamists a bit – which is the bad news. The good news is that emboldened Islamists tend to come boiling out from other their collective rocks before they are ready to do so and are therefore easier to kill.

3. Fox. Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a grand old time going after President Bush’s nominee for US Ambassador to Belgium, Sam Fox over the last couple of week. Fox was significant money contributor to the Swift Boat Veterans fo Truth during the 2004 election cycle. The Swifties outed John Kerry’s fraudulent descriptions of his military service in Vietnam. Sensing an opportunity for payback, Kerry, who sits as a member of the committee, went after Fox with a series of thinly-veiled questions designed to inflict political payback. His democrat buddies chimed right in and blocked the nomination. Fox, who is in his 70s, behaved himself during the questioning, rather than telling the committee that he can bloody well contribute to anything he wants to contribute to, and had Kerry told the truth about his military service, rather than making it up as he went, the Swifties wouldn’t have had anything to say about him during the campaign. Once Congress left for their Easter vacation, President Bush appointed Fox into the position as a recess appointment, prompting screams of outrage from senate democrats involved. Bush has told them that if they want to play, he will play. A number of conservative blogs went on and on about the injustice of the democrats on the committee. I disagree. It is all a game to them. They were testing Bush. Bush slapped them down, just like Clinton did to a Republican senate with the Hormel nomination in 1999.

4. Fish Farming. The Alaska congressional delegation, Governor Palin and the state government are in the midst of a really dumb economic action, as they are opposing the Bush Administration’s plan to open portions of US coastal waters to aquaculture. Commercial fishermen up here have managed to pass legislation that makes it illegal to set up and operate fish farms for all species. This was done as a classic protectionist economic action, shutting down all external competition in hopes that your ever-diminishing piece of a decreasing economic pie will be protected. The problem these guys have is that the rest of the world has embraced aquaculture and are busily beating their brains out in the marketplace. Some do it pretty well. Some don’t. Still, they are getting better over time while we aren’t. Here in the US, ocean based aquaculture is only growing offshore the Hawaiian islands, with a couple companies figuring out how to raise warm-water fish in floating cages. The Bush administration proposal is to grant what amounts to property rights for chunks of water between the three mile limit out to the 200 mile limit to commercial fishermen who want to learn how to grow fish in a controlled manner. Given the rapidly falling stocks of fish off both coasts, this is superb idea. The sooner we can introduce some notion of property rights and ownership into the problems of commercial fishing, the better we will be, and the more money the commercial fishermen will be able to make. They need to st art thinking about how to grow the overall pie rather than fighting for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. Some fish like salmon may be difficult to raise in confined spaces, as they tend to like to roam over large areas in search of food. Others like halibut, cod and Pollock may do quite well in confined spaces. Lobsters, abalone and sea urchins may do wonderfully. We know from experience that catfish and crawdads do very well in controlled growing ponds, as they are being raised commercially in the southern states. It will be up to the marketplace to sort this all out and make the correct decision. Protectionism does little other than make the problem worse.

5. WMD. The Bush Lied, People Died crowd, the CIA and the State Dep artment all claimed to be unable to find missing WMD in Iraq, and are in a perpetual state of outrage about that failure. Unfortunately, the jihadis were more successful, as they popped their ninth chemical weapon in Iraq last week, killing 20 and wounding 30 more. The bomb payload was another truckload of chlorine propelled by high explosives. Chlorine was the same weapon that the Germans st arted out with in World War I as they developed poison gas for military purposes. The truck bomb and Al Qaida driver attacked a residential area in Anbar Province. It appears that the surge has managed to turn the jihadis against their Sunni supporters in Anbar. This is very bad news for Al Qaida in Iraq and the jihadis. Strata-Sphere, Sat.

6. AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere reported Monday that researchers had managed to st art growing he art valve replacements via the use of bone marrow stem cells taken from adults. The experiment regrows he art tissue over collagen substrates, and appears to hold the promise of repairing he art tissue damaged by a variety of insults. Note that none of this once again requires the killing of our young for spare p arts – embryonic stem cell research.

1. War Bonds. Given the craven attempt by congressional democrats to defund the war via timetables, it may be time to dust off an old solution to fundraising for the war effort – the War Bond. Wonder what the congressional twits would do if Bush st arted making the rounds of the nation selling War Bonds. Of course, I don’t think that Bush would have much of a problem defeating congress in this argument if he was regularly in public, on the media going after them hammer and tong.

2. War Bucks. For those of you old enough to remember the Little Orphan Annie comic strip, you also probably remember her father – Daddy Warbucks. At the time the character was first introduced, the notion of someone profiteering from the war was not all that popular and the name was not intended to be a friendly one. Fast forward half a century to the current war and you have yet another Daddy Warbucks. This one happens to be the mega-millionaire husband of Diane Feinstein (D, CA), the so-called sensible democrat from CA. A small leftist California online news organization, MetroActive reported that The Nation, a national left wing publication was about to release a scathing report of Feinstein using her position on the Senate Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee to steer billions of dollars of no-bid contracts to her husband’s construction firms, URS Corp. and Perini Corp. Feinstein abruptly resigned her position on the committee in advance of the article hitting the wires. She is being roundly blasted by leftist bloggers and the nutroots on the left for profiteering from the war. The story has not yet been reported or investigated by her home town paper the SF Chronicle. The story has been picked up by Michelle Malkin, the Jawa Report and Michael Savage. Apparently the Culture of Corruption is back.

3. Taxes. House democrats passed out their budget resolution last week before they slithered out of town on a break. The budget resolution will allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, leading to the largest tax increase on taxpayers in decades. Captains’ Quarters Thursday ran an analysis that taxes would increase by over $1,100 for every taxpayer, and over $4,000 for every small business. This tax increase will jack up capital gains taxes, reinstitute the Death Tax, jack up income tax rates, and allow the spread of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) throughout the upper middle class. The AMT is p articularly insidious, and an example of why stealing from your neighbors via the tax code is always a poor idea. It was instituted in the late 1960s as a way to tax less than 100 wealthy Americans who had figured out a way not to pay any income taxes under the tax code at the time. Congress specifically passed the AMT to nail these guys. Now it is st arting to nail everyone else and House democrats refuse to do anything about it. This gives the tax issue back to Republican candidates in 2008, 2010 and later years. Republicans foolishly squandered the mantle of fiscal conservatives during their last eight years in charge of congress. Today, more Americans trust democrats to take proper care of the nation’s economy than Republicans. Democrats will jettison that newfound (and poorly placed) trust via rapidly raising taxes in a couple years. We will hope conservatives are sm art enough and sufficiently far sighted to take advantage of the upcoming opportunity.

4. Giuliani. Rudy had a rough time last week. He has been making the rounds of the cable shows, attempting to get his message out. As expected, the subject turned quickly to abortion during one interview on CNN. It was not an overly friendly interview, but not overtly hostile either. Giuliani seems to spend a lot of time thinking while he speaks – using the near stream of consciousness words as a way to fully form the thoughts in his head. On the abortion question, he was all over the place. On the one hand, he has come out strongly for strict constructionists on the federal judiciary. On the other, he continues to support abortion as an individual right. Then the stream of consciousness routine took off, with Rudy making statements supporting partial birth abortion as an option, and supporting federal funding of abortion because it was an individual right. There a lot of conservatives giving Giuliani a pass on social issues because of his demonstrated leadership in NYC on 9-11 and its aftermath. Should Giuliani do more of this sort of stuff, conservative support will crater quickly for him as conservatives turn to other nominees like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Now that he sits near the top of the list of preferred candidates for the Republican nomination, you would expect the democrat hatchet job routine to start on his character. To nobody’s surprise, it started last week with an article on Rudy’s business ties with a corporation that does business with people linked to organized crime. This is certainly the sort of stuff that the Clintonoids would have mined from their 1,000+ FBI files in the early 1990s. Expect there to be more little tidbits dropped from the democrat slime database onto Republican candidates. Look carefully, for the one they don’t slime will be the one they figure they can beat next year.

5. Stem Cells. More substantial progress on the use of stem cells was announced last week, as adult bone marrow stem cells were used to regenerate livers damaged by cancer and chemo following the cancer. The progress was made in Germany and announced in the medical journal Radiology’s April issue. Heart attack patients are also getting treated with intravenous stem cell therapy that has been regenerating hearts damaged by heart attacks. This treatment is far enough along that it even has a name – Provacel. Bone marrow stem cells have been used successfully to treat leukemia. Finally, there are vets using stem cell treatments to regenerate cartilage and heal major joint injuries in horses. They believe that a similar type of treatment using adult stem cells can speed up recovery from joint injuries, joint replacements and related injuries. Note that none of these new treatments, al chronicled by AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere, Friday require embryonic stem cells. The longer President Bush manages to hold off congressional approval of funding for embryonic stem cell research, the farther the marketplace and actual science moves away from any need to use them.

6. SCOTUS. Five black-robed Philosopher Kings on SCOTUS opined last week that carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring, not insignificant in percentage or volume, part of the atmosphere was indeed a pollutant, and that the EPA had a duty to regulate emissions of it. The mental gymnastics these bozos had to do in this case gave the states suing the feds standing in federal court. This case was an attempt by the state Attorneys General of 13 northeast states to force the EPA to enforce the unsigned Kyoto Treaty here in the US. Basically, the opinion said that if people were really, really worried and frantic about something, it was important enough for the SCOTUS to wade into and force a solution, regardless of the deliberations and actions of the elected branches of government. Once the SCOTUS wades into junk science as it has with this case, there will be no stopping them from dictating solutions to hotly debated environmental issues for a lot of years to come. The 5-4 opinion was written by Ford appointee John Paul Stevens. The minority included all four conservative members of the Court, and basically argued that not only did the states not have standing to bring this lawsuit, but it was already being addressed by the elected branches of government. I wonder what the Philosopher Kings will do when they realize that oxygen itself is an atmospheric pollutant, not being part of the atmosphere until added by living things over the course of billions of years of emissions. We are one or two conservative SCOTUS appointees away from a reasonable and conservative majority. Either President Bush will get one or the next president will get at least a couple. Elections continue to be important.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

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