"The System Worked" Oh, Really?

Napolitano: "The system worked"

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up the Amsterdam-Detroit flight this week demonstrated that "the system worked."

Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who sought to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the flight, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."

Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the bomber] was improperly screened."

And this is the woman who is in charge of Homeland Security? God help us.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), Drunk on Floor of Senate

A man in this condition shouldn't be driving, much less trying to control a major part of the U.S. economy. What a pathetic display.

Is it too much to ask that these people at least be sober while they're screwing up the country? Apparently so.

Merry Christmas, 2009

Christmas is a joyous, but oft bittersweet time. We gather with those we love, but notice the absence of those who have left this this mortal existance. We longingly speak of peace, yet we look around us and find ourselves surrounded by hate, strife and endless war.

The one constant is Him, and faith that He will someday give us peace; peace on earth, and adequate peace within ourselves to deserve it.

For this Christmas Eve, I offer this bit of video -- one of my favorites. Though it is set to Mannheim Steamroller’s “Silent Night”, a traditional Christian Hymn, I would hope that all of us here can share it’s meaning. In our quest for peace, let us never forget there is such a thing as a “just war”; the struggle in which we are involved is one that is truly between good and evil.

May we always find solice with Him, for without Him, we will never know peace.

Merry Christmas, and may God’s purpose always be our own.

Another Step Toward Socialism

The invaluable Mark Steyn has a great post over at The Corner about health care.

The money quote from his piece, from Kim Strassel at WSJ:

So why the stubborn insistence on passing health reform? Think big. The liberal wing of the party—the Barney Franks, the David Obeys—are focused beyond November 2010, to the long-term political prize. They want a health-care program that inevitably leads to a value-added tax and a permanent welfare state. Big government then becomes fact, and another Ronald Reagan becomes impossible. See Continental Europe.

This isn’t about altruism; it’s about making their dreams of permanently socializing the United States a reality, just as is every move that this administration has made.

Newt Gingrich once said that “a culture can be lost in one generation“; we are now living in that generation.

At what point do we reach “the point of no return”, when these massive changes in the innate mechanics of our capitalist system are irrevokable? At what point do these malevolent liberals do such mortal damage to our beloved republic, that the republic, as we know it, ceases to exist?

Is America Awakening?

Whither Afghanistan?

The most important part of the Presidency is the function as CiC and it’s the very part of the job that modern Democrats have ignored. If you are not actively protecting our country, what the hell good are you?

Political calculations should never be a part of decisions made as CiC, and that is exactly what we are seeing. Does it really take 10 months to form a plan for Afghanistan? Of course not, but it does take that long to ascertain which way the political winds are blowing.

As RIX, a commenter on Blogmocray said, “They stand between us and the abyss and to see them misused & disrespected is painful.” They’re being used as pawns on a political chessboard and that’s not only painful; it’s disgraceful.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Victor Davis Hanson’s recent article:

Here are American fatality rates in Afghanistan: 2001: 12; 2002: 49; 2003: 48; 2004: 52; 2005: 99; 2006: 98; 2007: 117; 2008: 155; so far in 2009: 301.

One can twist statistics in all sorts of partisan ways. But I do not think that any fair-minded student could suggest that the Afghan war—in which from 2001 through 2006 no more than 100 Americans died in any given year—was somehow lost—or even a war in the sense of WWII, Korea, or Vietnam.

In 2004, 987 American soldiers died outside of both Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly to accident and illness. This year’s total of 301 fatalities is about the same as all the years’ losses in Afghanistan from 2001-through about half of 2006.
So if one were to define Afghanistan as “lost” by a standard of US fatalities, it surely was not until very recently. More troops, of course , from 2002-6 might have helped subdue the Taliban (and would have increased our own losses), but, nevertheless, I don’t think one can suddenly post hoc say that the Afghan war has been a disaster for years.

So, we have had TWICE the fatalities in Afghanistan under Obama (while he’s been dithering on “his plan”), than we had in the final year of the Bush administration. Were situations reversed, would this not be another “grim milestone” that were so in vogue during that past eight years?

To paraphrase one of my mother’s favorite sayings: Obama wouldn’t make a proper patch on a real President’s ass.

The Myth of "Settled" Climate Science

Science is, by its very nature, a process of continual learning.

Palentologists are still trying to figure out dinosaurs, even with the benefit of a pretty extensive fossil record. In the past, they reassembled bones in an effort to illustrate their appearance. In the past few decades, they have taken those assemblies apart and reassembled them and the picture became very different. First, they were big lizards, then, no they weren't lizards at all. They were more closely related to birds. In the past 30-40 years, our understanding of dinosaurs has radically changed and there is still a great deal that we still do not understand.

"Climate Science" is an incredibly new field of study. Back in the 70s, after a string of particularly harsh winters, we were being told that we may well be on th verge of a new Ice Age.

Many of you are too young to remember, but in 1975 our government pushed "the coming ice age."

Random House dutifully printed "THE WEATHER CONSPIRACY … coming of the New Ice Age." This may be the only book ever written by 18 authors. All 18 lived just a short sled ride from Washington, D.C. Newsweek fell in line and did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported "many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age."

OK, you say, that's media. But what did our rational scientists say?

In 1974, the National Science Board announced: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end…leading into the next ice age."

Now, scarcely 3 decades later, that theory has been reversed 180 degrees. Were the scientists wrong then, or are they wrong now?

We have something like a century or so of hard climate data, and the Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. That, coupled with the fact that the Earth was undergoing radical changes in climate, prior to the arrival of man, makes the AGW theory tenuous, at best

From the same article:

While scientists march to the drumbeat of grant money, at least trees don't lie. Their growth rings show what's happened no matter which philosophy is in power. Tree rings show a mini ice age in Europe about the time Stradivarius crafted his violins. Chilled Alpine Spruce gave him tighter wood so the instruments sang with a new purity. But England had to give up the wines that the Romans cultivated while our globe cooled, switching from grapes to colder weather grains and learning to take comfort with beer, whisky and ales.

Yet many centuries earlier, during a global warming, Greenland was green. And so it stayed and was settled by Vikings for generations until global cooling came along. Leif Ericsson even made it to Newfoundland. His shallow draft boats, perfect for sailing and rowing up rivers to conquer villages, wouldn't have stood a chance against a baby iceberg.

Those sustained temperature swings, all before the evil economic benefits of oil consumption, suggest there are factors at work besides humans.

No rational person can deny the value of "science", on the other hand, how can any rational scientist honestly say the matter is "settled", when the area of study is still in it's infancy?

Medical science, perhaps one of the oldest of the scientific disciplines, is still fairly new and undergoes radical changes on an almost daily basis. One need only look at medical practices 50-60 years ago versus those of today to see the dark ages that was once called "medical science". 50 years ago, the discoverer of the lobotomy won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, today; it is a practice that is shunned by the medical community.

Now, we're told that "the science is settled". No, science is never "settled", science is a journey, not a destination. The nature of science is one of continual learning; placing blocks of knowledge upon blocks of knowledge in an effort to build a better understanding. Often, new discoveries are made that force the removal of some of those blocks thus forcing us to reconsider that understanding and begin again.

"Scientists" who do not understand, or who are unwilling to accept this basic precept of the discipline are not scientists at all; they are either intellectual whores or charlatans.