Only a Liberal…

Part of what makes this country great is the institutional freedom of religion. It manifests itself in the phrase, “I’m entitled to my own opinion on god and spirituality and I don’t have to worry about the government.” Many other countries do not allow for this entitlement, whether by laws or societal pressures.

Unfortunately, this entitlement to one’s own religious beliefs has been inappropriately applied to any and all political issues, whether it should or not. Any issue involving public policy or politicians has become “politics” which I find ridiculous. An example of a political issue is how to correctly collect taxes in all forms. It is very hard to be 100% conclusive on the best method, and different logical opinions are acceptable, and I believe individuals are entitled to differing opinions. Another would be the question of when life begins. All rational, open-minded people can agree that an ovum is not a life subject to the laws and protection of the state, but a baby in a delivery room cut from the umbilical cord is a life subject to the laws and protection of the state. In between those two points lies political opinions, which individuals are entitled to.

Absence of evidence

Today, a political issue is anything that Republicans and Democrats argue about. Let me be clear; this is preposterous. Sometimes the Republicans are 100% correct and the Democrats are 100% wrong. Sometimes the Democrats are 100% correct and the Republicans are 100% wrong. The fact that two politicians are fighting over something does not make them entitled to their own “beliefs.” Politics in the strict sense and religion can only be based on beliefs in the absence of evidence.

If you have evidence that directly contradicts your political “belief,” your belief is WRONG. You are entitled to your fantasy, but don’t preach some moral equivalence about everyone being entitled to their beliefs. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but no one is entitled to their facts. If you claim to believe in a lie, you’re either ignorant or a liar. You have no right to announce it uncontested under the veil of “entitlement.”

Example of a belief: “I believe God has a beard.”
Example of an untrue fantasy: “I believe the government is better at reducing costs than the competition of the free market.”

The political arena has degraded so much that the second example is afforded as much credence as the first by tagging them both as “beliefs.” The first example is a belief that cannot be verified or disputed, so it is a legitimate “belief.” The second example is a statement that can be disputed by looking at historical accounts of multiple governments. There is no evidence to support the second statement, but endless data disputing it.

Illustration of competition

Imagine a country where one company sells candy bars. It has decided that a candy bar should cost $5. Let’s say it costs $2 to make it available to the public. Some people think this is too much, but there is nowhere else to get candy bars.

Insert a second company. It finds a way to make that same candy bar for only $1.75, and charges $4.75. Everyone starts buying their candy bar, and to avoid losing all its business, Company #1 starts charging $4.75, but makes less money.

Insert a third company. It also costs them $1.75 to make it, but they decide they don’t need as much profit, so they only charge $4.

Extend this scenario out to hundreds or thousands of companies in hundreds of different industries and you will see why a government monopoly is COMPLETELY incapable of reducing costs as efficiently as a free market. I am open to logical counter-arguments if you can find one.

Believing that a government can reduce costs better is simply wishful thinking that will get you nowhere. All they can do is set prices, not costs. Most likely, people choose to believe it because if it were true, than their ideological goal would be easier to reach. The ends justify the means. The fact that it is false does not concern the ideologue. [By the way, feel free to show me evidence that contradicts my assertion. I welcome facts and logic.]

False compassion of the minimum wage

Another “belief” that seems to be held by most of both political parties is that raising the minimum wage is “compassionate.” A wage is the price of labor, no different than the price of a candy bar or a car. It is worth what it is worth. If licking 100 stamps and placing them on envelopes saves someone $5, that is what it is worth. It is irrelevant if you think someone should be paid $10 for that task. If you force everyone to pay that person $10 when it is only worth $5, no one will be hired to lick stamps. Artificially raising the price of labor with a minimum wage does not change the actual benefit of that labor. It is no different than the disastrous price controls that the government has tried to utilize in the past, causing lines at gas stations. Raising the minimum wage is the opposite of compassionate.

Michigan Democrats are trying to raise the minimum wage in the state from $7 to $10. Any labor worth $8 per hour will not occur, or companies will figure out how to automate it. If it is worth $8, and the employer pays someone $10, he will lose $2. Do that long enough, and he will go out of business, causing the employees  to be unemployed so that no one is making $10 or $8. Again, if you can point out an error or omission in my facts or logic, I welcome it.

Beliefs exist in a vacuum of knowledge or evidence. Once someone shows you evidence that your belief is incorrect, your belief should disappear. Anything less is a state of denial in pursuit of not having to deal with cognitive dissonance. And so this public acceptance of entitlement to beliefs has led to being told never to speak about religion AND politics in polite company. Most issues currently considered politics should not be such, and people should have the utmost comfort discussing them in pursuit of dispelling pernicious myths.

President Obama commented today on the arrest of African-American studies professor, Henry Louis Gates, stating that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly.” So what exactly happened?

Gates arrived at his home and found he couldn’t enter. So he and his driver broke into the house, including using a shoulder to break the door in. Naturally, an observant neighbor called the cops to report a possible break-in. Sergeant James Crowley responded to the call, and according to police reports, observed someone through a window at the front door, and calmly asked to speak with the man, who was Crowley. Let me clarify, at this time, all Crowley knows is that two black men may have broken into this home, and the man in the window was black. When Crowley told Gates he was there investigating a possible break-in, Crowley answered the door and said, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?”

Before I continue the story, I would like to address this nonsense. A white cop approaches the home of a black person, and IMMEDIATELY, the assumption is racism. Aside from the fact that the officer who responded to the call is an expert on racial profiling, appointed by a black police commissioner, this pernicious garbage is the primary reason racism still exists today. Black racism, not white racism. I’m not calling all black people racist, but there is a disturbingly high number of black racists of prominence, namely Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whom are celebrated rather than scorned. I welcome any and all to name a prominent, powerful white racist in America.

Back to the facts of the case… Gates reportedly continued yelling and whining about the racism of Sgt. Crowley. Eventually Gates produced ID confirming he was the owner of the home, at which point, Crowley attempted to end the confrontation. Gates would have nothing of it. Gates continued to yell as he followed Crowley outside. At this point, Crowley warned Gates that he was acting disorderly. Gates ignored him. Crowley took out his handcuffs, and again warned Gates. Gates ignored him and continued to yell, at which point Sgt. Crowley placed Gates under arrest.

It doesn’t matter whether you think a man in his 50s with a cane needs to be handcuffed. People under arrest are always handcuffed for the safety of citizens and police officers. The only reason race became an issue in this instance was due to the preconceived racism that Gates projects to police officers.

President Barack Obama, without knowing all the facts of the case… simply pontificating on the subject based on his cursory knowledge of one version of the story, decided he would comment on a local police matter solely based on the fact that he knew the person arrested, and the race of the parties involved. A police officer did his job, but because he arrested a friend of the President who happens to be black, Obama’s first reaction is to play the race card. What the hell does the arrest rates of blacks and latinos throughout history have to do with this case? Do we have to address historical statistics every time a non-white is arrested?

“Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.” He added later that the incident was “a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

Barack Obama has illustrated, once again, that he is black first, American President second. It was more important to him to quickly comment on the case of a black man being arrested in Cambridge by a white cop than to wait for the facts of the case to be determined, and for local law enforcement to handle the situation. This incident was none of his business, but because it involved race, he was incapable of remaining silent. The problem is race was not made an issue by the officer, but by the arrestee.

Obama’s knee-jerk racist reaction has understandably angered police unions (see story). Personally, I have about as much use for African-American Studies professors as I do white studies professors.  I am so sick of this constant, incessant race card playing by prominent blacks, including the half-black President. Professor Gates acted like a prick in his home, and then in public, and rather than calm down and behave, he decided to continue being disorderly. I submit, as did Rush Limbaugh, that Gates partially wanted to be arrested so he could create this controversy out of thin air. A cop came to make sure Mr. Gates’s home wasn’t being broken into, and Gates repaid him by accusing him of racism. And President Obama reinforced this behavior. It was unpresidential, and more importantly, racist.

Obama keeps talking about how America’s health care costs more than other advanced countries. In his press conference tonight, he said,
“If your neighbor bought the same car as you for $6,000 less than you, you’d be upset.”

Mr. President, the “car” in your analogy that costs $6,000 more is MUCH better than the other car. America’s healthcare is a BMW, while the other “advanced” countries are driving a moped. A big screen TV costs more than a normal TV. Our health care costs more because it is better. We get MRIs faster. We don’t ration care. This nonsensical propaganda he is pushing is laughable.

From the Govt Accountability Office via Hotair.com

“It’s a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

“If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?” asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: “Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy.”

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.”

Currently about half of American electricity is made from coal plants. If you increase the demand for electricity with cars, the pollution will decrease on the streets, but will simply increase at the coal plant. Its hilarious! Environmentalists hatch plans with no concern for the consequences or even a plan of action.

The funniest part is there is a way to decrease the eeevil emissions on the road AND at the coal plant. You mean we create the electricity with wind and solar? Nope, sorry, those won’t get the job done. The solution to the environmentalist dream of electric cars with clean production emissions is NUCLEAR. That’s right. Nuclear power is clean energy, and it can fill the electricity demands of electric cars.

So now environmentalists are in a dilly of a pickle: do they keep pushing for electric cars with evil coal-burned electricity, or do they bite the bullet and abandon their psychotic opposition to nuclear power?

Why not solar and wind? Rush Limbaugh’s Limbaugh Letter addressed the issue in an article about nuclear power.

One reason oil and coal work so well as energy sources is because energy companies can control their use to meet demand in real time. As energy expert William Tucker explain in National Review in March, an energy grid “is not a machine for cranking out electricity, but a highly tuned instrumentl; because electricity travels at the speed of light, it must be consumed as it is generated. If electricity drops more than 5 percent, brownouts or blackouts may occur. If it surges by an equal amount, it can damage electrical equipment.”

Wind and solar are notoriously erratic. Even if wind energy could magically be tamed tomorrow to meet instantaneous demand, notes  Tucker, “Our 345 kilovolt (kV) transmission lines cannot transport electricity more than 300 miles without excessives losses to heat and friction. The only way to reduce line loss is to upgrade to 765 kV. That means building an entirely new national grid… The cost will easily surpass $1 trillion.

The ignorant masses who hold clean energy up on a pedestal have NO CLUE about the physics of electricity. They “know” that we can switch to clean energy at any time… we just have to put our mind to it… its total nonsense. You can’t argue for wind power without having researched the realities of replacing the entire electric grid. Unbelievable.

This story is what Sharpton and Jackson should be angry about. In case my previous posts have left you thinking I’m some sort of closet white supremacist who ignores white racism, I submit this story. It is racist and disgusting.

A group of 60 black children campers were kicked out of a private swim club. According to the article, the camp paid $1900 to use the pool and when they jumped it, reportedly many of the white children left the pool.

“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

John Duesler the racist, enjoy your email and voicemail this month.

Now that I have reported that, I want to address the civil rights, nay, black rights advocates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. When you have a knee-jerk reaction to interaction between whites and blacks, you spit on the memory of Martin Luther King. When a real case of white-on-black racism comes along, like this story from Philadelphia, people are less likely to listen to you, because you have cried wolf so many times before.

My disgust for racism is as colorblind as ever. Kicking children out of a pool that they paid to use because of their skin color is ignorant, hateful nonsense. Assuming one race has less rich experiences than another race is ignorant, hateful nonsense. Assuming one group of kids raped someone with no evidence simply because it helped your cause is ignorant, hateful nonsense. I don’t care who is dishing out the racism. And I’m angry that I had to cover this in the wake of the racism committed against these innocent kids, but it was necessary.

This bullet list will equip you with the knowledge to paint that environmentalist nutjob colleague of yours into a corner. This whole global warming myth is out of control. Gore recently likened “global warming deniers” to Nazis. I will show below that CO2 doesn’t cause temp increases; temp increases cause CO2. Even if you accept that CO2 causes heat, it doesn’t come close to the heat caused by the sun. Even if you believe its more important than the sun, human greenhouse gas emissions don’t even come close to natural emissions. Even if you don’t believe that, CO2 is not the main greenhouse gas: water vapor is, and its vastly more important to the greenhouse effect than CO2. If you lower CO2 emissions, it still doesn’t help because of natural water vapor emissions. Even if you think reducing U.S. greenhouse emissions is a good thing, it won’t work, because we can’t force India and China to do it. And they are infinitely less concerned with the environment than we are. And the only way to solve that last problem is to remove the sovereignty of those countries, i.e., take them over. This whole thing is crazy… read on to equip yourself.

• Al Gore shows a correlation between CO2 and earth’s temperature. He claims the CO2 changes cause the temperature changes. His own data shows the EXACT OPPOSITE. His graph shows the CO2 changes occur 800-1300 years after the temperature changes. Heat causes CO2, not vice versa.
• Solar activity is much more closely correlated to atmospheric temperatures than CO2 (see image below).
• 0.28%. This analysis shows that human activity accounts for 0.28% of earth’s greenhouse effect. Spending trillions of dollars to change that number is INSANE.
• Water vapor accounts for about 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, CO2 only 3%. That’s ALL water vapor and ALL CO2. 97% of CO2 emissions in the world are natural, so humans are only responsible for 3%. So that’s 3% of 3% when you’re talking about man-made CO2.

Rebuttals to what I just said

I have looked for rebuttals to the facts I just cited. I can’t find any on the water vapor argument, but there are a few on the 800 year lag. The most adamant rebuttal states “historical warm-up periods begin via some variable event that starts a warming cycle. This time, the initialization event has been a human induced spike in carbon dioxide concentrations.”

Pay attention now, the global warming alarmists point out a correlation asserting that CO2 causes warming, but when that very correlation is used to show the exact opposite, they claim warming can only be caused by CO2. So by that logic, CO2 caused the warming which caused the CO2. The correlation is REAL, but it shows CO2 follows warming. This is an inescapable fact, but rather than address, they simply ignore it and operate on the original false premise. Its breathtaking.

Huffington Post readers are having trouble dealing with this reality. Some of the rationalizations are hilarious.