Let them all talk

As the Republican field of presidential candidates grows literally day by day or at least week by week, Fox News Channel is planning on limiting its first debate to the top 10 contenders as determined by polling data.  That’s a bad idea.  During the 2008 Dope primary, Rush Limbaugh ran what he called “Operation Chaos” where he encouraged Republicans to vote for the Shrilldabeast in states that allowed crossover voting.  As a result the Beast managed to right her tanking campaign to win IN.  So who is to say that Dopes won’t do their own Operation Chaos to boost 2^nd tier Republican candidates into the debate?  You might get squishes like Christie, Pataki and Gramnesty and candidates with no hope of winning like Santorum and Jindal replacing more viable candidates.

OK, now let’s say that you run a 24 hour cable news network like FNC.  You’re Saturday lineup is dominated by financial news, reruns and specials.  Sunday is dominated by doctor shows, and reruns of Legends and Lies. Why not divide the Republican field into groups of five or six and run the debates on weekends to actually make news and liven up your somewhat boring weekend lineup?

Well, Lex, candidates who go first will be aware of the questions and therefore more prepared.  OK don’t ask the questions.  Allow the candidates an opening statement and then proceed to a round robin of questions from the candidates to each other.  The moderator acts as a time keeper and ensures, to the extent possible, that each candidate get equal time. 

I think we’d learn as much about a candidate from the questions they asked and who they asked them to as any of their non-answer answers to questions from the BS media.  I do not understand why Republican candidates continue to think that they will get a fair shake from the media.  That’s any media including Fox who no doubt will be trying to prove that they can be as tough on Republicans as the other guys and even tougher. 

If the Networks won’t allow such an arrangement, the RNC should stage the debates themselves.  They should announce who will be participating, where and when and allow as many credentialed cameras as are interested to cover the event.  The RNC should not allow networks to cherry pick who get to be on stage among its candidates.

You’d think that in a 24 hour news cycle on three different cable news networks, there’d be an hour-and-a-half of slack somewhere to actually make news. I do not understand why these networks wouldn’t take advantage of a crowded Republican field to spice up their programming.

Lawless thugs or newly minted Mensa members?
No doubt these are new Mensa members undergoing some kind of initiation where they must find a Confederate flags in a Wal Mart somewhere.  What else explains such a senseless and brazen act of lawlessness?  Uh, I mean, other than a total breakdown of societal norms.  No doubt we’ll soon be seeing stories where the perps were all on the honor roll of their school and all planning on entering college in the fall.

Speaking of reruns,
The finished product of my letter to Bishop Rhoades follows.  There are some statistical changes, but the main changes are in the last two paragraphs.

Dear Bishop Rhoades:

As country kid who spent his youth bailing hay and camping out down by the creek and most of his adult life trapesing across America’s parks while “camping” with the US Marine Corps, I concur with your thoughts on protecting and respecting the planet’s resources found in the June 28^th edition of Today’s Catholic – with the exception of attributing global warming to manmade greenhouse gasses.

First, the Earth’s climate has been changing since Genesis.  Between 800-1200, long before man started “destroying the environment” with the internal combustion engine, the Vikings were farming in Greenland and Iceland.  Why do “most scientists” choose to ignore that fact when telling us CO₂ is responsible for today’s warming?  Then there was the mini ice age in the 1500s.   The only thing consistent about the Earth’s temperature is that it is always changing (Milankovtich cycles).

Second, relying on “most scientists” or what is often referred to as scientific consensus is folly.  Consensus is how prom queens are elected and has nothing to do with science.  When Al Gore relies on “scientific consensus” to say, “The debate on global warming is over” you know two things are certain; the debate is raging and he’s losing.  An indication of “science” as Gore understands it is that he once told an audience that the temperature of the center of the earth was “several million degrees.”  He was only off by…several million degrees.  The Earth’s core temperature is estimated to be 10,000 degree. 

Then consider the lengths “most scientists” will go to make sure their finding go unchallenged.  They place temperature monitoring equipment on airport runways where the equipment is exposed to jet exhaust, or on roof tops next to air conditioner discharge units, or next to black top parking lots.  Then they pass the garbage data off as science.

Then there are the 2009 e-mails from the East Anglia climate research unit that proves its scientists were willing lie about, make up and/or hide data to ensure nothing contradicted their point of view.

Then there’s Michael Mann’s “hockey stick,” a pivotal piece in the climate warming hysteria.  It was proven to be a statistical fraud in 2003, yet it is still circulated as an accurate portrayal of the Earth’s warming.  Mann, no fool, calls his statistical method his intellectual property and refuses to share or allow others to review his code.  That would be Mann’s version of Al Gore’s “the debate is over” I suppose.

Then there’s NASA’s erroneous claim that 2014 was the hottest year on record.  It wasn’t even close.  That erroneous report occurred after NASA was caught artificially inflating US temperature by .15 degree in 2007.  Scientist Paul Homewood’s findings, using NASA’s own research stations, showed not a rise but a decline in temperature.

Forget the fact that every single prediction made by “most scientist” to date with regard to the Earth’s warming has been wrong in spectacular fashion, why should we accept the word of “most scientists” who admit and have been caught lying about data, making it up and hiding it?  If they are so sure, why not just publish the real data and let the chips fall?  And isn’t odd that even the climate alarmist, such as the ICCP’s Phil Jones, have had to admit that there hasn’t been any warming for nearly 20 years now?  They are calling it a “pause.”  I refer to it as “the cycle.”

Third, the hypocrisy of the “global warming” crowd is stunning.  A chief spokesman for the cause, Al Gore, has gotten very rich off of the global warming hysteria that he stokes.  He lives a life of luxury jetting to and fro aboard a private jet to tell us to stop driving our cars.  He has a fleet of SUVs and a 10,000 square foot home that uses more than 20 times the electricity of a normal home.  Gore claims he offsets his fossil fuel use by buying “carbon credits”…from himself.  In the Marine Corps we referred to such an arrangement as a “self-licking ice cream cone.”  So I guess if I want to show the world how committed I am to saving the planet all really have to do is buy some carbon credits from myself.

The global climate alarmists want the little people to eschew fossil fuels while they all jet into Davos aboard separate private jets, reside in 5 star accommodations and dine on ample samplings of the finest fresh foods and wine all flown in to pamper this elite group who would have the rest of us walking to work, residing in 400 square foot apartments and living on distilled water and an environmentally friendly gruel.  My question is, if the people who actually believe this nonsense are unwilling to curb their own lifestyle to save the planet why should I?

Fourth, what if the planet is warming?  Why is it assumed that a certain temperature is best?  We know that the Earth has warmed and cooled in cycles since day one so who’s to say this +.15 degree is worse than that -.15 degree.  After all, warmer weather historically produces higher farm yields, and wouldn’t warmer winters be welcomed by most?

Fifth, given the power of the sun, volcanos, ocean currents, hurricanes, winds aloft etc. even if one believes man is impacting the climate, his impact since the industrial revolution is less than the eruption of a single volcano, according to Dr. Ian Pilmer of the University of Adelaid.  Man’s contribution to global warming is akin to throwing a bucket of water into the Pacific Ocean when compared to the power of solar flares and other natural phenomenon such as the cooling effect of the totally unpredictable nature of day to day cloud cover across the globe.

I could go on but here’s the point.  I believe that the real goal of the climate alarmists is to destroy capitalism.  Notice the pressure is always on the US and the west to curb fossil fuel use to save the planet.  Over 95% of the Earth’s CO₂ emissions occur naturally.  In the last 10 years the US has reduced its CO₂ emissions by 7%.  By 2030 the US Department of Energy predicts US CO₂ emissions will drop an additional 23% due to hydraulic fracturing and the use of natural gas.  By contrast, in 2004, emissions from developing economies made up 73 per cent of the global growth in emissions.  Also of note, by 2040 China and India will responsible for half the world’s energy use.

To the extent that one believes in man’s role in global warming, the focus should be on under developed countries.  These countries and their citizens are poor, and forced to pollute to survive due to the uneven distribution of capitalism rather than the uneven distribution of capital. So if the church wants to curb world-wide CO₂ emissions and ease poverty, the best way to do so would be to encourage well-regulated capitalism.  I eagerly await that encyclical.

This is the third letter I’ve written to you.  The first was to encourage you to get the diocese out of the Boy Scouts after that organization relented on accepting homosexual Scouts.  I warned that 99.99% of homosexuals have about as much interest in joining the Boy Scouts for purposes other than subverting them as Al Gore and Michael Mann have in learning the truth about man’s effect on the Earth’s climate. I warned that the BSA policy was an untenable one and that the BSA would soon relent and allow homosexual Scout leaders.  Recently, the President of the BSA, Robert Gates, acknowledged as much.  The leftist radical homosexual agenda has little to with acceptance these days.  Its target is Christians in general and Catholics in particular.

The second letter was an effort to encourage the USCCB to reconsider its support for open borders.  A country 18 trillion dollars in debt is not exactly the poster child for a society fit to throw its doors open to all.  I warned that such a policy would soon lead to a one party state and I believe that we are well on our way to the end.  The Supreme Court has just allowed to stand a lower court ruling that prohibits states from compelling would-be voters to prove their citizenship.

Here’s a scenario I believe will occur soon.  Once America becomes a one party state do to its failure to control its own borders, that one party will require that the Catholic Church marry homosexuals or lose its tax exempt status.  (That is if the pope doesn’t have another of his, “who am I to judge” moments and direct priests to marry homosexuals first.)  Do not expect any relief from the politics of the left from the Supreme Court.  SCOTUS is now a political body that changes the plain meaning of words and rarely consults the document it is sworn to uphold to arrive at its politically motivated decisions.

Nor will it make one bit of difference to the leftist running the country that the Church stood with the radicals on open borders insanity and the global warming charade.  The leftist goal is to turn America into a socialist state.  In order to do that the left has mocked, attacked and is in the process of destroying every traditional institution in America.  Marriage, family, sexuality, citizenship, the Boy Scouts, capitalism, the military, privacy, religious freedom, the right of association are all under unrelenting withering political attack from the left with very little push back.  To say anything happening in America today is not political is to ignore the goals of the political left. It is all political. 

I watch the demise of the country in slow motion and wonder if anyone cares.  There is no political opposition.  Opposition politicians and traditional institutions all seem more afraid of being called a “global warming denier” or a racist, or a homophobe than standing against the policies destroying the nation.  I would like to see the USCCB stand opposed to the political movement that would abolish the Catholic Church today if it could, but I am always amazed/disappointed when the church joins forces with a political movement intent on destroying it.     

Alas, I concede that I must be the outlier here.  With the country racing to the bottom a moral and social abyss of raw sewage, I seem to be the only one who does not understand why the pope and the USCCB would chose to use their influence to try to affect our opinions on something as uncertain and politically motivated as global warming.  If every Catholic in America parked their cars and turned off their air conditioners today the effect on global temperatures would be zero over the next 1,000 years.

Please excuse my bluntness.  I fear time is short and that we are hanging by a thread.  

Still with deep respect, yours in Catholicism,