We Must Do Something!

Let this sink in...

The Divider in Chief was at it once again after the Oregon school shooting yesterday, taking to the airwaves before anything was known about the incident, other than that it was horrific.  Horrific was all he needed to continue driving a wedge to further his divisive and fruitless attempts at undermining the Bill of Rights.

Now we know something about the monster who fostered this tragedy.  Turns out he is a mixed-race madman who has an acute hatred for Christians.  And don't even get me started on the shooter...     

Obama vs. Putin

Remember this from the last presidential election debates?



This takes on new significance now that Russia has begun bombing targets in Syria in defense of Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, we are in Syria too... bombing ISIS. Apparently, Russia demanded we remove our planes, but we refused.

Today, I heard Secretary of State John Kerry use the word "deconflict" when referring to our relationship with Russia in Syria.

In other words, both the US and Russia are in Syria, and we are in conflict!

Thank God Barack Obama is right about everything else, and can at least tell the difference between a hoax suitcase bomb and a clock.   Oh, wait...

Fun with VW Memes

It's really hard to see the silver lining in the cloud enveloping Volkswagon.  They have admitted to cheating on emission tests by using software that deliberately deceived consumers and governments alike.  Their stock has dropped, sales will suffer, and their reputation may never be whole again.  (As if being founded by Hitler wasn't bad enough.)

And in a case of perfect timing, Germany just welcomed up to 800,000 "Syrian refugees" because they were having trouble filling jobs at, among others, Volkswagon plants!  Now they are stuck with the muslim refugees and God knows how many Germans who will be newly unemployed thanks to this mess.   

For all of you socialists  and anti-capitalists screaming, "See, this is what greedy capitalists do! They lie and destroy the environment!", remember that Volkswagon was started by the National Socialists in Germany (The Nazis).  VW converted to private ownership in the 1960s, but by statute they need over 80% to get anything through their board of directors.  To this very day, the government of Lower Saxony, Germany, owns a veto-proof 20.1% interest in Volkswagon.   This gives the government effective override control of the board.     

So, might as well have some fun at their expense, right?

(Updated)

2nd Update:  11/3/15 - Up until yesterday it was just the four cylinder VW TDI engines that were accused of having the "defeat device" software.  VW admitted to as much.  Now the EPA is claiming that the six cylinder models are also cheating their tests.  VW is denying this for the first time in the controversy.  Things are getting interesting...  

I went to a VW dealer to see if they had any new information.  They told me last month was their best month ever in sales!  Thus proving there is no such thing as bad PR.   

We're All Socialists Now

Fun with Clock Memes

Too rich not to share...  

(Update: By now everyone knows Ahmed was up to no good and made a fool out of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, and everyone else who bought into his hoax.  Never one to know when he's been made a fool, Obama is following through on his invite of Ahmed to The White House.)   

(The last one I got from Twitter user @JohnGGalt, the others are mine.)

Behind the Polls - The Alinsky Effect (UPDATED)

Analysts puzzling at the outsider surge in GOP polls may be missing something obvious.  No doubt, everything they’ve said about the reasons for the Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Fiorina momentum is true.  But, there is another way of looking at this that gets to the heart of the matter and sheds light on how other candidates, even establishment ones, can understand and learn from what’s going on.

The key is the Alinsky effect.  For half a century the Left has been studying and internalizing the teachings of Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing.  The Right has largely ignored this development or pooh poohed it outright.  For seven years, Obama used Alinsky tactics with great effect.  The GOP has been unable to thwart any of the Obama juggernaut.   In the last two presidential elections, John McCain and Mitt Romney were both steamrolled by obvious Alinsky tactics but seemed naively unaware of what was being done to them.

The GOP base has watched this slow-motion train wreck and has had enough.  They are not just looking for a candidate this time,  they are looking for a candidate who can turn the tables on the Alinsky tactics.  They want a candidate who is both Alinsky-proof from attack and one who knows how to go on offense.  The four outsiders with momentum, Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Fiorina are, not surprisingly, the ones who can best do this.

Trump probably never heard of Saul Alinsky but seems an intuitive Alinsky-ite himself.   He wrote “The Art of the Deal”, a kind of a businessman’s “Rules for Radicals”.  Attack him, he attacks back. Mock him, he mocks back.  Personalize it, he calls you stupid, ugly, fat, and dumb.  His supporters eat it up.  The press cannot touch him.  Mitt Romney would have made hundreds of apology speeches by now.  Trump hasn’t made one.  It’s pure Alinsky.

Ben Carson went so far as to mention Saul Alinsky in the last debate.  He talks about Alinsky all the time.  He gets it.  He won’t fall for the tactics when they come.  And he is un-Alinsky-able by resume.  If he demonstrates an ability to turn the tables and go on offense, expect his star to continue to rise.

Ted Cruz has already demonstrated a playful ability to turn the tables on the Alinsky tactics used on him by both Democrats and Republicans.  He has surely read Alinsky.  He’s not as good as some of the others at the performance aspect, but his Alinsky bona fides are not a concern.

Carly Fiorina has also likely read Alinsky.  She has been leading the Alinsky assault on Hillary Clinton from the GOP.  She’s been funny, brutal, and unrelenting.  Moreover, she’s done well on defense when attacked by the media and Trump.

The flip side of the Alinsky effect is what’s happening to some of those losing momentum, most notably Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.  No one can question Walker’s resiliency in Wisconsin, but his ability to go on offense seems in question.  Bush is questionable on both fronts.  In addition, both have performance, policy and consistency issues.

I sincerely hope GOP voters have learned their lessons and will not nominate another sheep for the Alinsky slaughter.  Then again, this is only one of the factors being weighed by the electorate.  So far, it seems like an important one to GOP voters.

UPDATE:  The Alinsky effect was on full display at last night's CNN debate:

Fiorina landed an Alinsky punch on Trump's face and, by all indications, won the CNN round.
 
Chris Christie proved, as he has in NJ, that he can play the Alinsky game as well as anyone.  His performance and substance also won high marks.
 
Trump was his usual juvenile self, but his supporters don't seem to care as long as he delivers the Alinsky goods, and he did in spades.
 
Marco Rubio did well among GOP voters, but the Alinsky effect was not a factor.  Rubio is a straight man, and a good one at that, but Saul Alinsky said, "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon...", which does not well suit a straight man.
 
Ben Carson revealed the limits of his experience, performance, and Alinsky offense abilities.  Not his best outing.

Ted Cruz is another straight man, though he is Alinsky ready.  He did well among conservatives, but his performance issues continue to hold him back.

Jeb Bush showed once again that he would be as effective against Alinsky tactics as was Mitt Romney.  In other words, not at all.

Yes, there were others at the debate, but I'm focusing on the ones most affected by the Alinsky effect.            

Hillary Clinton - Rape Expert

My jaw hit the floor when I saw that Hillary Clinton had tweeted the following two gems:

Hillary Clinton ‏ -4 hours ago4 hours ago To every survivor of sexual assault: You have the right to be heard and believed. We're with you.
Hillary Clinton ‏ - 23 hours ago23 hours ago“Rape is a crime—wherever it happens.” —Hillary

She then followed up with several comments furthering her assertion that she is a champion of victims of sexual assault. Even in the vast galaxy of Clinton lies, this one stands out like a supernova. 

Here is a short list of Clinton victims (Bill had the sex while Hillary was in-charge of the cover-up and intimidation campaigns):  

Here is a video I made about this very subject using the NFL "NO MORE" ads as a backdrop:  

Hillary Clinton ‏@HillaryClinton  4h4 hours ago

Hillary to every survivor of sexual assault: You have the right to be heard and believed. We're with you.

Obama's news from the 1700s - The Glaciers are Melting!

Barack Obama is in Alaska and has discovered that the glaciers are melting.  Moreover, he wants you to believe it can be stopped if only you give the federal government vast new powers to tax and regulate you. This is a con.  It's not that glaciers aren't melting, but that it has been happening for a really long time and precedes the industrialization blamed by today's warmists.   

As a kid I remember learning about "the ice age".  As an adult I have come to learn there were probably tens of thousands of ice ages in geologic history spanning billions of years.  (UPDATE:  If scientists are right, earth is 4.5 billion years old.  We now know from ice cores at Vostok and Dome C that there is a major ice age every 100,000 years.  That means there may have been more than 45,000 massive global warmings in earth's history!)  Countless times the earth cooled, and countless times glaciers melted.  

Looking at the tiny speck of recorded history and trying to blame this all on manmade CO2 levels is like looking at a single cell from an elephant and trying to tell what it's great grandfather had for lunch!

Here, in it's entirety, is the piece by Jeff Dunetz who blogs at "The Lid", which spurred this post:  

Obama's Lying About The Alaskan Glaciers They've Been Melting For Three Centuries

Once again this president is lying to promote his global re-distribution of income policy also known as climate change.  Yesterday he visited the glaciers in Alaska (having been there...they are beautiful!).  He claimed that global warming was melting the glaciers---he is lying.  They've been melting since before the American Revolution. (Undiepundit update: they've been melting for over 10,000 years since the last temperature minimum.)  The good news is that the Arctic ice caps are growing:

- President Barack Obama walked down a winding wooded path, past a small brown post marked "1926" and a glacial stream trickling over gravel that eons of ice have scraped off mountain peaks.

He reached another post reading "1951", a marker for the edge of Alaska's Exit Glacier that year, and gazed up toward where the rock-rutted ice mass has since receded, a quarter mile away.

"This is as good a signpost of what we're dealing with on climate change as just about anything," Obama told reporters near the base of the glacier.

Glacial melting is nothing new, they have been receding before this country had a president.  Lets go back in history...take a look at this news article from 1952 which says the glaciers in Alaska had already lost half their size:

OK I hear you--1952 isn't early enough, how about 1923?

You want it even earlier, take a look at the map of Glacier Bay Alaska.  It shows where the glaciers are today vs. where they were up to at various points back to just before the American Revolution.  Unless Gen. Washington let the revolutionary army in SUVs there was no problem with greenhouse gasses back then.  In fact if you look at the map most of the melting took place before the 20th century.  Does Barack Obama really believe Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and melted the glaciers?

Note: the source of the three pictures above is Steven Goddard's Real ScienceBlog

Lets take a look at what's been happening since Obama was elected.  Check that, let's take a look at what's been happening since Bill Clinton was president. To be honest NOTHING.

That's right, the satellite monthly global mean surface temperature  shows no global warming for 18 years 7 months since January 1997 the last time Hillary Clinton was trolling around the White House. Note that yes there was warming before Jan. 97, and thanks to the El Nino there may be warming in the near future (at least until the La Niña starts or the lack of sunspot activity throws us into a mini ice age as some scientists are predicting).

Those claims of the hottest temperatures on record are "sort of"  true also. Firstly they are talking warmest by a hundredth of a degree. Secondly it uses land based temperature readings rather than satellite data. Climate scientists actually preferred the satellite data as being more accurate until it started disproving their global warming hypothesis.  (Undiepundit update: It's been much warmer, even in Earth's recent history.  Vikings farmed Greenland up until 500 years ago, which would not be possible today.  And when they first went to Iceland 1100 years ago, there were no glaciers on that island that is now largely covered by ice!) 

I hate to upset the president but the truth is the ice caps are growing. A July 2015 article in the U.K. Telegraph called "How Arctic ice has made fools of all those poor warmists" reported:

In recent years there has been more polar ice in the world than at any time since satellite records began in 1979. In the very year they had forecast that the Arctic would be “ice free”, its thickness increased by a third. Polar bear numbers are rising, not falling. Temperatures in Greenland have shown no increase for decades.

When the Telegraph talks about more polar ice since 1979, it is really talking about both poles combined as the Antarctic ice cap has been growing more substantially over that period.

The Arctic Ice had a period of melting but as reported in Nature Geoscience:

However, we observe 33% and 25% more ice in autumn 2013 and 2014, respectively, relative to the 2010–2012 seasonal mean, which offset earlier losses. This increase was caused by the retention of thick sea ice northwest of Greenland during 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 5% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred—conditions more typical of the late 1990s. In contrast, springtime Arctic sea ice volume has remained stable. 

In other words if the ice cap could talk it would say, "Baby I'm Back!"   It seems as if the Ice Cap size ebbs and flows for natural reasons and has nothing to do with CO2 in the air. That's why as the carbon in the atmosphere as been growing in the last century we've seen the ice grow, recede, and grow again.

In fact the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is at its highest level in almost13,000 years. Approximately 12,750 years ago before big cars and coal plants CO2 levels were higher than today. And during some past ice ages levels were up to 20x today's levels--ice ages, that's a lot of polar ice that didn't melt.

Obama talked about severe storms yesterday...another lie. No Increase In Hurricanes: A study published in the July 2012 in the journal of the American Meteorological Society concluded unequivocally there is no trend of stronger or more frequent storms, asserting:

We have identified considerable inter-annual variability in the frequency of global hurricane landfalls, but within the resolution of the available data, our evidence does not support the presence of significant long-period global or individual basin linear trends for minor, major, or total hurricanes within the period(s) covered by the available quality data.

Perhaps it's because he thinks news doesn't travel well from Alaska, but Barack Obama is lying about glacier shrinkage, about the ice caps, and about an increase in storms during his first trip to Alaska.

The Fed and Free Markets

Once again The Federal Reserve is stuck in the unenviable position of taking candy from the spoiled brat it created.  They've been jawboning about raising interest rates for so long I've lost track, yet they never fail to find excuses for postponing.  Meanwhile the spoiled brat keeps getting fatter, closer to type II diabetes, and more ill tempered with every passing quarter.

This reminds me of the similarly irresponsible Fed actions of 2005 - 2006.  In that case the Fed didn't just take candy from the brat, they went on to stomp on it's windpipe!  Forgotten in the blur of deceptive history is how the housing bubble, which the Fed helped create, came to collapse so violently and led to the financial crisis of 2008.

From 2005 - 2006 the Fed raised interest rates from 1% to 5.25%.  That was an increase of 425%! Housing prices, being inversely related to mortgage rates, promptly crashed.   It need not have happened that way.  The fed acted irresponsibly.

Now they are being overly cautious and inflating bubbles in equities, real estate, mergers, debt, etc. Much of the risk is once again concentrated in the federal government.  Fannie and Freddie own just about every mortgage written since 2008.  The Federal Reserve now owns over four trillion dollars of interest rate sensitive securities.  Plus, the rising dollar is squeezing exporters which would only get worse if the Fed normalizes.

We've seen what happens when the Fed helps distort and then crushes a big sector of the economy. Now we are seeing what happens when the Fed just keeps distorting.

Remind me again how we've got a free market economy in the U.S.?