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 2nd 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 28th
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,
