What’s All This Then!

Do you sometimes get the feeling that politicians are like teen-aged kids? They’re extremely nice when they want something from you — like your vote — but after they get it, it’s as if they don’t know you any more. If you watched John Stossel’s surprisingly accurate “Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics” last night, you couldn’t be but be angered by this expose of the American political process. If you missed it, here are the links to 10 minute segments of this broadcast but be warned: It’s like being told that there is no Santa. You’re either going to awake up to this fact or keep your head in the sand … just where politicians want you to be.
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Sometimes I wonder about a few of my friends that I hang around with at work. Last week, I listened as several of them talked about why they would choose one candidate over the other. One reason that a few of my genetically tanned friends held as an important criteria surprised me. “Barack Obama is one of us!”, they said. “What? A guy?”, I asked. “No, one of US!”, my dark friend said as he extended his hand and pointed to the back of it. “Oh!”, I said, “You mean that he’s not an amputee. He has all of his fingers and hands.” I knew what they were referring to. I just wondered if someone would say it out loud. They did: “I mean he’s a brotha’. That gets my vote!”

In all the years that I’ve known my friends, I’ve never known them to be racist. And they probably consider their remark to be anything but racist. Yet, as I spoke with more of my melanin-enhanced friends, it seems that it was easier for them to pick someone with similar looks. I have no doubt that some people have chosen John McCain on the same irrational basis.

Personally, I have a feeling that, regardless of who wins the election, we’re all going to lose one way or another. So I was wondering what would happen if Mr. McCain chose someone like Colin Powell to be his running mate. What kind of dilemma would this bring about? What would happen with those people who were using skin color in their election selection process? Would their heads explode? Would everybody wise up and write in “none of the above”? Of course, the bigger question is whether the Republican party is hip enough to let this happen?

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Ah, the 2008 Olympics starts today! Their motto, “Swifter, Higher, Stronger”, describes what athletics must do to win the gold. This phrase also happens to be a strategy in escaping from China as well. Oh sorry, let me start again …

When you think of the Olympics, you think of men and women moving with such energy and vigor that it makes me almost ashamed for getting winded when I take out the trash. For over 100 years, the summer Olympics have given us images of muscular athletics competing under bright, blue skies while deeply breathing fresh, clean air. So what better choice for a host city than smoggy Beijing. It’s one thing to level the playing field. It’s another to have the competitors laying level on the field in the midst of a hacking fit.

But the Olympics is about sportsmanship (and sportswomanship for those of you who like to get your knickers in a twist over such terms). Let everyone train to their very best potential and then let the best man and woman win. Does home field advantage matter? Probably not unless you get your visa revoked by the host government just before travel .

Of course, with all the millions of foreign visitors attending, security is very important. In fact, China has done an excellent job by bugging taxis, installing 300,000 surveillance cameras, and monitoring / restricting Internet usage. No point in allowing evidence of political oppression out, especially when everyone in the world already knows about it.**

So here’s my version of the 2008 Olympic symbol. What do you think?

**Of course, to be fair, 750 people out of 100,000 people in the USA are in prison verses 119 out of 100,000 in China. I guess strong-armed conformity works well in China verses arresting people for victimless crimes here in America.

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Have you heard of the famous greenhouse scientist, Dr. David Evans? If you’re familiar with the environmental movement, you probably have. From 1999 to 2005, he was consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office. Recently, he joined a long list of skeptical scientists who question the global warming hysteria. Two weeks ago, he wrote a bombshell of an article called “No smoking hot spot“. Here’s a snippet:

We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed), but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980).

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

What does this mean for the rest of us???

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After I reported on Subway restaurant’s subtle theft of my money, I began receiving equally disturbing emails and stories from my friends and readers about Subway’s less than ethical practices. So I wondering if any readers here have experienced any similar incidents with Subway?

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