by Alex Gimarc                                Monday, June 30 , 2008

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

In this issue:

1. Sea Ice
2. Exxon
3. Obama
4. Countrywide

1. Sea Ice. The latest and greatest scare out of the National Snow and Ice Center at Boulder is that there is a 50% chance that the North Pole will be ice free this summer – a first in recorded history, and more evidence (as if we needed any more) of the looming disaster of manmade global warming. There is so much wrong and demonstrably false about that claim that is difficult to know where to st art. First of, the Arctic Ocean is covered with sea ice to some extent. It is not a solid chunk of ice like a glacier or ice cap. It is a broken covering that tends to increase in coverage when it is cold and decreases in coverage when it is warm. The wind tends to blow it around, opening and closing leads (open water) in the ice. Sailing in the Arctic Ocean is quite exciting, as should the wind change, your boat could get crushed. A US Submarine, the Skate surfaced in the vicinity of the North Pole in March 1959. You can find photos of the event online at some historical Naval web sites. When you do find the photos, note the open water 60 years ago, so open water at the pole is a normal occurrence. As to total ice coverage, 2007 was an interesting year, with prevailing winds pushing the ice pack east toward Greenland, and the coverage this time last year when the global warmists took it up as the latest and greatest Holy Cause, was down a bit. It is a year later, the winds have changed a bit, and we here in Alaska are having one of the cooler summers we’ve had in many a year. The sea ice coverage is up significantly – hardly evidence of melting. You can find tracking and historical data at the University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign – http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ Cryosphere Today website. The site has historical graphs of both polar sea coverages since 1978 when record keeping first st arted. The coverage graph of the Arctic Ocean is interesting and available. Average variation of ice coverage in the Arctic is around 9.5 million kilometers, normally ranging from 5 – 14 million kilometers depending on the season. The variation in 2007 was from 3 – 13.5 million square kilometers, which gave the greens the excuse to run off and do their sky is falling routine. But a combination of cooler temperatures and shift in the wind patterns brought back the coverage nicely, with a peak of 14 million square kilometers last winter – meaning we picked up a million square kilometers of coverage in a single year. The researcher at Boulder is a liar. He is misrepresenting the facts to pursue a political agenda – probably so he can score more federal research dollars. And he and the media outlets for this story are committing yet another fraud on the general public. ADN / AP, Sat.

2. Exxon. The SCOTUS ruled on the appeal of punitive damages falling out of the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, limiting them to the value of the fine levied against the company. The court case was originally tried here in Anchorage in the late 1990s, and awarded more than $5 billion to 32,000 commercial fishermen and Alaska Natives who claimed to be damaged as a result of the oil spill. Exxon disagreed with the notion that they should have to pay such an exorbitant amount and appealed. The Ninth Circus cut the amount in half along the way, and both sides appealed to the SCOTUS, which did a surprisingly sensible thing and based their decision on existing maritime law and precedent. The locals were predictably outraged, for their expected windfall has just been reduced by a factor of five, down to just over $15,000 apiece (before lawyers’ fees have been paid). We have seen a number of letters to the editor in the local fishwrapper (Anchorage Daily News) blaming this on Bush, conservatives, and cheerleading for more leftists on the SCOTUS. None of these clowns want to discuss the fact that the accident was one of the single greatest economic boons to this state in history, as Exxon and the feds dropped billions of dollars in the state from Cordova to Kodiak in cleanup and restitution. They rented every boat they could rent, and the commercial fishermen who normally have to fight for everything they get, had one of the most lucrative financial seasons in history. The fishing sucked, but they made very good money renting out their boats as p art of the cleanup fleet. Of course, this wasn’t enough, so the commercial fishermen and the ambulance chasing lawyers went after Exxon for more money, which they won in front of a jury here in Anchorage. During all that time, Exxon has been more than a little prickly to deal with regarding oil and natural gas exploration and production. Perhaps they will be a bit more agreeable in the near future. The oil spill was a big mess. But it was an accident. It was not a criminal act. It was not intentional. Exxon did the right thing and paid to fix what they broke. They also paid to make everyone involved whole. Interestingly enough, some of the oil cleaned up in Prince William Sound ended up being from oil spills out of storage in Valdez that was destroyed in the Good Friday e arthquake of 1964. ADN, Thurs.

3. Obama. It appears that Senator Barack Obama is trying to preempt all substantive discussions about his policies, experience (or lack thereof), friends and acquaintances by hiding behind his race. Here’s Obama from a Florida fundraiser a week ago:

“The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?"

This technique is called transference, accusing the opposition of doing everything that you are already doing. The only political p arty out there that cares one whit about race is the democrat p arty – which Obama is now the putative presidential nominee. You only have to look at the campaign that both the Clintons and Obama ran against one another to demonstrate that point. For additional proof, look at the anti-Rossi ads the Christine Gregoire democrats are running in Washington State, accusing Rossi (who has an Italian name) of having Sopranos- like mob connections. The Republican establishment is scared to death of battling on the racial battlefield, thus ceding it to charlatans and race hustlers like Obama, Sharpton, Farakahn and Jackson. This is a fight they must not shy away from. As I pointed out last week, the best way to fight this tripe is via humor, taking it right to the race baiting leftists and turning them into laughing stocks, ridiculing their every word. Is the Stupid P arty up to it? Probably not. Are the rest of us up to it? You bet. Hang on for the ride.

4. Countrywide. The Countrywide loan scandal and their VIP Loan program for US Senators is st arting to get a little traction in the drive-by media. The NYT went after Senators Dodd (D, CN) and Conrad (D, ND) over their favorable mortgage terms and their involvement in pushing legislation through the senate to provide taxpayer-funded bailouts for Countrywide’s subprime mortgages. The local papers in Connecticut and North Dakota are really going after these two bought and paid for democrats, much more than the national media. Even the Socialist Worker paper got into the act, noting that Dodd received no closing cost mortgages at 4% and 4.25% for property, while pushing the bailout legislation and claiming that he got no special favors from the Countrywide CEO. Sleaze is as sleaze does, especially where democrats are concerned. It is no surprise that these democrats have used their positions to enrich themselves and pass legislation to take care of people who have taken care of them. It is a surprise that the drive-by media is st arting to notice and st arting to talk about it. My question for the 49 Republicans still sitting in the US Senate: Why is this legislation still moving forward? Isn’t it completely tainted, and a corrupt bailout of the committee chairman (Dodd)?

More later –

"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.