by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., May 5, 2008

Interesting Items 5/05 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Elections
2. Cooling
3. FEC
4. Juneau
5. Separatists

1. Elections. Conservatives in Great Britain won a significant victory in local elections last week, managing to turn out 44% of the total vote, as compared with 24% for the ruling p arty, Labor, and the Liberal Democrats with 25%. In these local elections, labor lost an estimated 331 seats, with the conservatives picking up 256. As far as I can tell, this victory was mostly unexpected, with only the latest polling indicating a conservative victory. The socialist, nanny state, intrusive moves by the Labor government were fully supported by British media, and had become increasingly reviled and onerous to the citizenry. Next up are Parliamentary elections, where we will see if this move to the right by the Brits is real or simply a head fake. There may be a lesson here for American conservatives in the run-up to our November elections. Today, there is widespread belief that the country is going to Hell, and conservatives will get wiped out in November. Yet we are witnessing the self-destruction of the democrat p arty at the national level via the endless steel cage death match between Senators Clinton and Obama. The new democrat majority in both houses of congress continues to pander and investigate and place the blame while gasoline, energy and food prices ratchet sharply upwards. While this may be a democrat year, I can’t stop thinking that it is indeed a time for a change, and time to toss the clowns that we installed as congressional majorities in 2006. And I wonder if the elections are going to turn out much, much differently than conventional wisdom is telling us today. The rest of the world is turning right. Can we be far behind?

2. Cooling. AJ Strata’s Strata Sphere Thursday wrote of the latest global warming prediction. This one has global temperatures falling a bit over the course of the next decade due to natural fluctuations in ocean warming and cooling cycles, changes in wind directions, and changes in the strength and flow patterns of ocean currents – none of which, by the way are considered in any of the CO2 is evil / global warming models. The prediction comes out of a German marine sciences institute. If you look at the graph included in the article, it shows that the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 decoupled from temperature change in roughly 2002, when yearly temperatures flattened out while CO2 continued to rise. The far right hand portion of the graph is even more interesting, as it shows a sharp downward temperature turn in 2007. If CO2 is driving global temperatures upwards, then it is not possible to decouple the two lines on the graph. And if natural cycles can mitigate the predicted overall global warming to manmade CO2 production, and can do so for the next decade, isn’t it possible for the same natural cycles to be driving global warming itself? The global warmists have themselves out on a very small limb that is showing signs of breaking. Perhaps we need to provide them with a saw. Personally, I am most concerned about the lack of sunspots. Go to www.spaceweather.com and take a look at the nearly flawless face of the sun. Lack of sunspots means low solar activity which also correlates nicely with historically colder climate. This solar cycle has st arted late, which usually means fewer sunspots. It might be time to think about planning for some extended very cold weather.

3. FEC. Democrats in the Senate have effectively shut down the Federal Election Commission for the course of this campaign season. Their vehicle has been to block all appointments to the Commission so that it no longer has a quorum and can no longer act. In parallel, they are raising money hand over fist in an attempt to elect their presidential candidate and expand their majority in both houses of congress. The last leg of this stool, massive voter fraud was kicked out by the SCOTUS decision on Indiana’s photo ID requirement for voting in elections a couple weeks ago. There are over 30 states without this requirement. Now that the SCOTUS has supported photo IDs for voting, I would expect a number of them to pass legislation to defend their election processes before November.

4. Juneau. This one is another Global Warming story, for if there is Global Warming, you would expect to get less snow. Alaska’s state capitol is Juneau, which is a smallish town located among the fjords of southeast Alaska. Juneau is not connected to the rest of the state, or anywhere else, for that matter, by the road system. Only way in and out of Juneau is via sea or air. It sits on a flat spot on the side of a mountain next to the water, and in the winter, avalanches in and around town are a concern. Juneau is also the most liberal-voting p art of the entire state. Electricity for Juneau comes in via a many miles long transmission line from a small hydroelectric facility – that’s renewables for you greens. In mid-April, an avalanche wiped out over a mile of transmission line from the dam to the city, shutting off all electricity. The electric utility did have some ability to generate based on oil / diesel, but it is expensive. The local electric utility estimates it will take a couple of months for the transmission lines to be restored. The only bad thing about this event is that the legislature was not in session when the lights went out. Greens in Juneau have for years fought all industrial and infrastructure development. Had there been other ways of generating electricity for the city, other ways not as dependent on a single transmission line, this natural event would not have been as disastrous. Had there been a road into Juneau, we could have trucked in propane, diesel, oil, and other fuels on an emergency basis. Trucks are easier to schedule than ships and far less expensive than aircraft. Additionally, Juneau sits on the edge of the Tongass National Forest which was mostly locked up from logging during the Clinton administration with great support and p articipation by Juneau-based green organizations. If you log the local forests on a regular basis, you then have roads, can cut down trees, and burn them for power. Today, the technology exists to produce power via biomass reduction into methane, but such an operation requires a thriving logging industry with lots of logging trash being made available for the operation. So far, nobody has gone after the local greens for their p articipation in making an unfortunate event into a very expensive catastrophe. We will see if that happens. ADN, Weds.

5. Separatists. Race-baiting in Hawaii has produced the expected result, as native Hawaiian separatists broke into the former palace of the Hawaiian Kingdom, turned out everyone, and occupied it. For decades, politicians on both sides of the political divide have been pandering to racialists, Hawaiian separatists, setting up separate but unequal facilities, rights, schools, monies and voting rights. The majority of citizens in the state does not want this pandering and are disgusted by all of it. Unfortunately, years of pandering and writing things into law do tend to set things into motion that move to predictable ends. There is no way that this sort of government-sponsored racial ap artheid can end in anything other than violence. Somebody is going to get badly hurt – likely a lot of somebodies. And should the separatist movement in Hawaii be successful in transferring lots of free money and free property into the hands of a bunch of bozos that have neither earned nor deserve it, there are other bozos out here in the rest of the country that will try the same thing using what is happening in Hawaii as a precedent. All of this is government caused. All of it is government sponsored. Absolutely none of it is necessary. Everybody involved in supporting and tolerating it ought to be sorely ashamed of themselves.

More later –

           - AG

"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.