2007 June

The Heartland Inst. Makes the Sun-Times? How’d That Happen?

June 30, 2007 By Bruno Behrend 1 Comment

Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny

In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, “We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth.” Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.

If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.

No kidding! I thought the title of Gore’s new book was autobiographical.

Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.

I don’t know what is more scary. The fact that the left needs to promote lies to remain popular (Michael Moore, Al Gore), or the fact that we as nation have become so atomized, fragmented, and unschooled that large numbers of ostensibly smart people believe their claptrap. Perhaps scariest of all is the fact that the right does not even attempt to compete in the sphere of the full legth ‘documentary.’

Filed Under: Global Warming

Al Gore Cancels 6 Mos. of Speeches – Prepares Predsidential Bid?

June 30, 2007 By Bruno Behrend 3 Comments

From the Taipei Times

Al Gore visit postponed

Former US vice president Al Gore will not be able to make it to Taiwan this September to address the issue of global warming, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (¥Ð¬îÔ») said yesterday. Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore’s speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months. The visit to Taiwan had been postponed to next year, she added. Tien said the reason for the cancelation was that Gore was considering a presidential bid.

Interesting that this hasn’t hit the political punditry yet. For my part, if Al Gore is serious about global warming, he has a duty to run for President. Regardless, it will be fun to watch. He will clearly send the Democrat Party even further left, and he also promises to create a vicious campaign between he and Hillary. This bodes well for Obama, who stands a chance to “Carol Mosley Bruan” himself between two of the most negative campaigners on the planet.

For my part, I hope he runs for the entertainment value alone. Given the Republicans disarray over immigration, a Gore Candidacy can’t come a moment too soon.

Filed Under: Culture & Society

The $cam Behind Global Warming

June 29, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

We all know that Corporations are, by definition, “Greedy.” Afterall, they are designed to make a profit for their shareholders. It is the reason behind their existence. Hence, we all understand why they lobby for less restrictions and taxes. They are created to do so.

What we too often fail to realize, is that the people in large Government Institutions are no less greedy than the most rapcious Corporation or its Executive. Do you think trial lawyers think up the wonderous new theories of liability for the “public good?” Are you really that naive or stupid?

When an entire branch of science is hijacked by funds seeking to reach a pre-ordained conclusion, one has to look at the agenda behind such a rush to curtail debate. It starts with ideologues attempting to gain control over “means of production” now that Marxism is a proven failure. It ends with Corporations and Industries jumping on the bandwagon to profit obscenely off of the stupidy.

We’ve already seen Al Gore’s friends glom onto his seedy side business of “carbon credits”. Now witness the advent of trial lawyers joining the fray.

Such is the fate of anyone stupid enough to substitute their “C” in High School Earth Science for that of a known falsifier of fact too cowardly to debate anyone straight up.
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Don’t like the heat? Try suing: Lawyers anticipate a rising sea of work tied to climate change

Think this global-warming controversy will blow over soon? The lawyers don’t.

Top Dallas firm Thompson & Knight started a dedicated climate-change practice June 4 with 26 lawyers. Today, Dallas’ Vinson & Elkins will unveil its 41-lawyer group, headed by a former senior counsel for the World Bank.

The law firms – and a dozen others nationwide – are getting ready for a predicted explosion of climate-related work tied to government regulation, lawsuits against energy companies and new markets that will trade the rights to emit carbon.

“We’re not here to act as climatologists,” said Thompson & Knight’s climate chief, Scott Deatherage, though he has a degree in marine biology and knows plenty of the science behind global warming. “We’re here to steer our clients through what is likely to be new regulation, and that’s going to have risks and opportunities.”

One potential opportunity is the $30 billion global market for rights to put carbon into the air; if the U.S. comes on board, the market could grow by $100 billion, and the credits are likely to become investments that draw Wall Street attention.

It gets worse…

Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey in Houston has been a pioneer in such litigation. He led the charge this year to force TXU Energy into building fewer coal-fired plants in Texas than it had planned.

Now he’s among several lawyers talking with a group of Inuits in northern Canada who have seen an entire island sink under rising seas from global warming. The tribe is weighing its options, including suing carbon-emitting corporations such as power companies for heating the planet, he said.

I used to be more optimistic, and believed that the freed human mind could solve virtually any problem. But when a group of Inuits can sue Corporations for doing something caused by the sun and cosmic rays, while a poor black woman can’t sue a rich, corrupt school district for failing to educate her son with all the money in the world, then I think the game is up. The momentum of good ideas will carry us a ways further, but Western Civilization’s days are numbered when this many greedy institutions have the support of so many stupid – or willfully ignorant – people.

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Global Warming

More Trickery by the Evil Bush

June 28, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

Federal Deficit Sharply Lower

The federal deficit is running sharply lower through the first eight months of this budget year as growth in revenues continues to outpace the growth in spending.

The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago.

That improvement came even though the deficit in May increased to $67.7 billion, up 57.8 percent from May 2006. However, analysts attributed this big increase to the fact that the Internal Revenue Service was more efficient in processing tax returns this year, meaning more revenue was collected in April with fewer tax collections left to be counted in May.

For the year, revenue and spending are both at record levels. Revenue gains are up 8 percent while outlays are up at a slower pace of 2.5 percent, compared to the same period a year ago. Growth in spending has been slower this year in part because of the absence of last year’s huge outlays for hurricane relief.

Did it ever occur to anyone that the last downturn started when Bill Clinton decided to pay down $250 Billion of the national debt, thus removing it from circulation? (obviously, there were other factors)

Here is the kicker folks, if your net worth and grows faster than your debt, you really ARE doing OK. There may be a day of reckoning, but if you are the world’s only SuperPower with the most stable economy, you can run out the debt string for longer than others.

Is there a limit? Sure. Are we there yet? Apparently not.

As you contemplate this, consider the fact that we send the world pieces of paper called dollars, and they send us cars, flat screens, Appliances and every other sundry item under the sun. What do they do with those dollars? They reinvest them here in the US. (and elsewhere, to be sure)

Should Chinese Government Investment Firms buying up American Companies give us pause to think? Sure. I prefer allowing foreign owned shares to share in the profits, but be prohibited from voting for Board members.

The certitude of some, convinced that it is all going to collapse tomorrow, is unseemly. There are threats, but they are not as dire as made out by the Pied Pipers of doom and gloom (Dobbs, et. al.)

Filed Under: Economics

Bureaucracy – The Only Real Threat America Faces

June 28, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

If you think Radical Islam is a threat, try to use a broken and corrupt education system with $10,000/child to educate a the nation’s children.

Radical Islam, Suitcase Bombs, and Global Warming are nothing (Global Warming is particularlly a nothing, just like it’s biggest promoter) compared to the idiocracy of the DHS, FEMA, ISBE, and just about every other nearly worthless bureaucracy sapping the lifeblood from our culture.

What Prompted this outburst? A Hospital in India, that’s what.

Why Clinical Research in India Outpaces U.S.

“Opportunities to develop cutting edge [medical practices] are fast disappearing in…the United States,” says Dr. Kushagra Katariya, who was born in New Delhi, specialized in New York, and recently returned to India. He says that when it comes to developing a new, improved way to treat patients, he can do it “quicker, develop it better, and have the ingredients to really take it much further” than he could in the same amount of time in the U.S.

…

“Clinical research and translational research is down 70% in the U.S.,” he tells me, laying out two primary explanations:

First, he blames “the lobbies, restrictions, confidentiality problems, insurance companies regulating what needs to be done, what can be done, what cannot be done…the usual ambulance chasing that occurs.” In the U.S. there’s too much red tape.

…(Comment: Like Michael Moore’s and Barack Obama’s Single Payer nonsense will solve that problem)

Another draw for Katariya is that he’ll be providing medical care at a fifth the cost of parallel U.S. treatments. 400,000 Americans get coronary bypass surgery each year paying at least “$30,000 dollars each, with their hospitals paying more.” At Artemis, the surgery costs $5,000.

Watch the Video that belongs to the post.

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Current Affairs, Economics

Updated – They Attack Him Because they are Afraid, Very Afraid.

June 26, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

Democrats fear rise of “new Reagan.”

The Democratic party is so alarmed by the prospect of competing against Fred Thompson, a Republican who portrays himself as a successor to Ronald Reagan, that it is advising campaigners how to attack the former actor and Tennessee senator.

Mr Thompson is not expected to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination until next month, but Democratic strategists fear the combination of his conservatism, southern charm and populist style could make him a hard man to beat in 2008. Some polls have already placed him in the top two Republicans, underlining the weakness of his rivals.

The Democratic National Committee’s campaign focuses on what it regards as the fallacy in Mr Thompson’s portrayal of himself as an outsider ready to shake up Washington.

If you think about it, this is an incredibly weak attack. Being an official who does the bidding of lobbyists isn’t much of a platform from which to criticise a “lobbyist.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Fred Thompson

Homeschooling Isn’t for Everyone…

June 25, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

…but it does expose the wastefulness and weakness of our public schools.

Tales of a Ninth-Grade Fund Manager

Brandon and his crew are hardly the first teenage market junkies to come along, but their story suggests that some child investors are now hitting a new level of sophistication, and, sometimes, obsession. Brandon has taken on many of the conventions of a professional investment fund. He and his staff are raising money from outside investors, developing relationships with companies, and even speaking up at shareholder meetings. He even shorted some stocks right before a February stock-market decline.

Brandon got the idea to start the fund in November when he took a financial-literacy course. As part of the program, he and other students had to develop their own business plans. One student wanted to open a skateboard shop. Brandon, who became interested in markets with a virtual-reality game called Neopets and was setting up mock stock portfolios by the age of 12, wanted to start his own investment fund. “It blew me away,” says Jay Ellis, a regional manager of Washington Mutual in Manhattan and the course instructor.

In six months, Brandon says he has increased the value of his fund — which consists of money he earned fixing neighbors’ computers and contributions from his uncles — by some 30%, to about $5,000.

Meanwhile, an army of metrosexualized fem-bots are making sure your child is afraid of a red magic marker on their paper.

[NOTE: The phenomenon of getting rid of red markers in schools is a litmus test issue. If you are a parent who agrees with the schools - or conversely - is agitating for the schools to abolish red markers for mistakes, then congratulations!! You are an idiot of the highest order! You are turning your child into a future narcissist who will likely end up shooting his/her family someday, out of the mere frustration that the world is no longer the protected little bubble you pushed their narrow little mind into.

GOD how I despise a parent of such low character and intellect. They are worthless and weak, and destroying my civilization.]

Filed Under: Education

What Illinois Republican Party?

June 25, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

About a year and a half or so ago, I wrote a blog post about possible formation of a 3rd Party in Illinois. At the time, I was only agitating for some good policy on the part of the Republican Party, which I have more affinity with than the Democrats.

Little did I know how right I was.

First, last week’s news gave us the stage-managed Andy McKenna Road Show, along with the revelation that McKenna himself donated to Democrats a few years ago. Today’s news is even better.

Kirk Dillard is appearing in Iowa ads touting Barack Obama, while Paul Froelich is bolting the Republican Party for the Democrats.

Let me state right off the bat that there is nothing wrong per se with either of these three men engaging in acts that follow either their conscience or their politcal pragmatism. However, let them at least admit that none of them are following what one might call “republican principles.” Whether they are rats or not, they certainly are deserting a sinking ship – and that ship is the Illinois Republican Party.

When talking to my radio audience, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is appeal to the best principles, and eschew the increasingly pointless party labels. Apparently some “party apparatchiks” feel differently. Some Illinois “republican” bloggers and have gone so far deleted my comments (agreeing with them, mind you) on their websites because I’m insufficiently doctrinaire in my “party loyalty.” They may want to ask themselves why “republicans” are “deleting” themselves from the party instead of trying to enforce “loyalty” to an organization that deserves none.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Republican Party may just be dead in Illinois. Make no mistake, the sentiments behind the party that went to war to end slavery is not dead. The sentiment that gave rise to Teddy Roosevelt’s enlightend ‘progressivism’ is not dead. The sentiment that gave rise to fighting for citizen’s rights over the rights of a privileged and insulated bureaucratic class is not dead. But who in Illinois Republican Party stands for these values. Who in today’s Illinois Republican Party stands for ANY values at all?

If Andy McKenna had a pair, he’d drum Kirk Dillard out of the Party, and rebuild off of the few remaining decent people left in the IRP. Dillard is a coward of the highest proportions, holding on to a party label he cares nothing for while sucking up to an empty suit he thinks will get carried across the finish line by a faked media “love-fest.” At least Froelich is honest enough to pay true obiescance to the people who have been electing him. (Paul, I hope that one day your fealty to Teacher’s Unions is hung around your neck like a stone.)
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Seriously folks!! Dump this party. Dump this label. Take it’s deepest and best principles away from the low class apparatchiks that have been sullying them and start something new. If a new party isn’t your flavor (it isn’t really mine), then at least fight for a delegate seat in a convention that might disempower the corrupt in both “corporate parties.”

In the 1850s, a ragtag anti-immigrant party destroyed itself, and took a the declining Whigs with them. In the ensuing chaos, the Republican Party was born, and held sway over the nation for about 60 years. It’s time for that to happen again. You can’t fix this. Leave it and start anew, keeping faith with the Principles, not the party hacks who have destroyed a good name.

Filed Under: Bankrupting Illinois, Illinois Politics

He’s looking more and more like the Shah Everyday

June 24, 2007 By Bruno Behrend Leave a Comment

Ahmahdinijead is beginning to look more and more like the old Shah of Iran did in 1979. One hopes he can take the Mulluhacracy with him when he goes, but that is probably too much to hope for.

The fact is that Iran stands a VERY good chance of turning the corner and becoming a moderating/reformation force in Islam. Of course, the US, with its “beggar thy opponent” style of GOTCHA politics, may yet find a way to screw this up, but one can hope.

As I’ve posted many times, Iraq was never just about Iraq. Iraq was about destabilizing Saudi Arabia and Iran, both of which are currently fighting each other behind the scenes, and fighting to thwart US policy at the same time.

As even the harshest critics of Bush’s policies should note, our enemies are being forced into ever more harsh measures, even as other forces in Islam are fighting for greater moderation. Of course, one can’t notice such things when in the throes of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) and the fool’s errand of counting bodies and days.

Iran accelerates crackdown on dissent

Iran is in the throes of one of its most ferocious crackdowns on dissent in years, analysts say. with the government focusing on labor leaders, universities, the press, women’s rights advocates, a former nuclear negotiator and Iranian-Americans, three of whom have been in prison for more than six weeks.

The shift is occurring against the backdrop of an economy so stressed that although Iran is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, it is on the verge of rationing gasoline. At the same time, the nuclear standoff with the West threatens to bring new sanctions.

The hard-line administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the analysts said, faces rising pressure for failing to deliver on promises of greater prosperity from soaring oil revenue. It has been using U.S. support for a change in government as well as a possible military attack as the pretext to hound his opposition and its sympathizers.

Some analysts described the government’s reaction as a “cultural revolution,” an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution, when the newly formed Islamic Republic combined religious zeal and anti-imperialist rhetoric to assert itself as a regional leader.

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One hopes falling into the Shah’s tactics leads him to the Shah’s fate. One hopes no on listens to the people who want us to “bomb Iran back to the stone-age,” as that is EXACTLY what would save the current regime.

Filed Under: Iraq/Middle East

Idiotic Media Article of the Day

June 23, 2007 By Bruno Behrend 3 Comments

If there is anything that makes the left and the media look as dumb (or medacious) as they can be, it’s when they argue that the media isn’t biased.

With yet another study showing that reporters donate to the left in huge numbers, one A. Barton Hinkle writes that this doesn’t matter. It’s a ridiculous proposition, particularly from an industry that reams any study or finding that has some “financial interest” behind it.

Reporters Donate to Dems’ Campaigns — but So What?

By A. BARTON HINKLE – TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

A recent investigation by MSNBC into patterns of political giving by reporters found that 87 percent of those who gave donated money to Democrats; 12 percent gave to Republicans. One percent gave to both parties.

This shouldn’t come as a shock. Survey after survey has demonstrated that most of the country’s press corps leans in one direction.

Much of the time, of course, it doesn’t matter. There’s not a conservative way or a liberal way to report on a warehouse fire or a soccer match, or to review a restaurant or movie.

The bolded sentence is nonsense on its face, as any writer could insert a sentence regarding “lack of funding” or “oversight” on any stories like those above (and they often do). Movie Reviews? Do you think USA Today’s frontpage 3.5 star rating of Michael Moore’s swinish new propaganda film isn’t political?

The idea that the press isn’t biased is an idea that is so obviously absurd that those making it are calling either their credibility, or their sense of reality, into question. This is a mental health issue for people in the media. They’ve gone through a college curriculum that tells them their job is to “make the world a better place” while also imbuing them the absurd notion that one can do that while reporting “objectively.”

This creates a built in cognative dissonance that can’t be squared when actual reporting takes place. One need not know too much about social psychology to understand “groupthink.” These reporters work and live in an environment where they all believe nearly the same things about the world (people are generally stupid and they need smarter people like them to run things) , what the solutions are (more taxes, government, regulation), and that anyone who disagrees is a biased, greedy businessman, politician, or idiot.

The 87/12 ratio mentioned in the article is about the same as the ratio of slanted or misleading headlines, poorly written or researched stories, and downright propaganda pieces being passed off as “news.” Of course, those who persist in denying reality here will point to the 12% of headlines that are accurate as proof that the media isn’t biased.

I’m conservative talkshow host. To the extent I have a schtick, it’s letting my callers have their say without interruption, and having as many “liberal” guests/callers that I can get. By any measure, my conservative show is less biased than your average TV or newspaper story. This is a result of my admitting that I’m biased upfront.

Mr. Hinkle’s article is nonsense.

Filed Under: Culture & Society, Current Affairs

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