I have a voice

There are a lot of concepts, concerns and ideas whirling around in my brain.  I’ve heard or read bits of stuff that have struck a chord but most of these bits are so brief they don’t warrant a post of their own.

This week I heard someone say the occupy crowd were children in adult bodies.  That is SO true for a number of reasons.

• If you do an internet search on “occupy violence vagrancy” you’ll get over 35,000 hits.  <wince>  To give you a flavor of why this is significant, the majority of major news outlets support the occupy movement so the reports of incidents of violence include assault, rape, theft and property damage are not carried by the big liberal media.  The reported poor behavior, separate from the flawed ideology being spouted, is an indicator of the lack of sophistication/education/maturity of the movement and its supporters.  This behavior is the complete opposite of the Tea Party rallys.  No violence, no property damage, no crimes against persons.  The “tea baggers” showed respect each other, the constitution and the rule of law.  I don’t think that’s something you can say about the occupy movement.
• CATO’s daily podcast for today is Donald J. Boudreau talking about the 1% and income mobility.  The podcast is well worth listening to.  I think I listened to it four or five times to really let it soak in.  According to Boudreau, the rich don’t stay rich.  The percentage of income increase actually falls as the levels of income and upward mobility for the other classes rise.  It took me a while to understand that, which is why I listened to the podcast so many times.  I’m a visually learner, not an auditory one.  Boudreau also ties income mobility to our free market system.  To translate what I learned from Boudreau into “me” speech, the Occupy movement is uneducated, clueless or deceptive.  At this point I’m going to say, take your pick.  Listen to the podcast and see if you don’t agree.

A lot of the floaty bits are climate related.

• With the launch by Japan of the new CO₂ measuring satellite the carbon tax scheme is crashing like a poorly constructed house of cards.  The satellite proves countries who supposedly produced all the CO₂ actually don’t.  I can hear the anthropogenic warming crowd scrambling to do damage control as we speak.  I’m watching to see how they explain the elevated CO₂ levels over uninhabited and heavily forested bits of the globe as well as the significantly reduced CO2 levels of the industrialized nations.  It should be pretty entertaining to watch the spin.
• The BEST data is another scheme by which climate alarmists are trying to manipulate public opinion.  Of course they won’t release their data until AFTER the IPCC meets.  That prevents the more responsible scientists from dissecting the data.  I’ll bet you lunch at Plaza Jaliscos or the beer of your choice it will come out that the data was manipulated to show it supports man-caused global warming.  Anyone want to take that bet?
• The anthropogenic climate change debates in Australia and England are very hot right now.  It’s like watching kabuki theater.  Politicians seeking to gain power are screaming that Australia will be a dust bowl and it’s all due to man’s evil actions.  Of course this stentorian rhetoric was given just as a tremendous thunder storm rolled in and thoroughly soaks the “dust bowl” area.  Oops.  As they say, timing is everything.
• England’s facing rising energy prices and 1 in 4 families are facing choices in whether they stay warm, drive to work or eat.  This is beyond stupid when England has just discovered a huge reserve of natural gas that could heat their citizenry’s home at a fraction of the current rate.  Instead of leaping on this new find they’re still putting up inefficient and ruinously expensive windmills.  Due to a really poor showing by their government run meteorology office, they’re requested the funds for better computers.  I wonder how much this latest scramble has to do with their abysmal performance when compared to the absolutely brilliant forecasts by Piers Corbyn.
• Changes in CO₂ are proving to not be tied to global temperature, proving the lack of validity of the greenhouse gas effect.  The levels of CO₂ are rising while global temps are dropping.  Can you say “junk science”?
• And one more goody on this front.  I watched somebody explain how the use of windmills actually causes more pollution because the wind is a variable commodity and the power plants have to ramp up and back down constantly to cover the ever changing power deficit.  A defined amount of power must be produced consistently and windmills can’t do that without power plant backup.  If you understand fuel economy you know the harder you step on the gas the more fuel you use to produce the same end result.  If you’re constantly on and off the accelerator you will have really poor gas mileage.  Power plants are no different.  Smooth and even saves fuel and the up and down of wind power actually wastes fuel and causes greater pollution.  I think this is one of those “unintended consequences” we keep hearing about.

And a tiny bit about Greece.  The president of that fine nation (note sarcasm) is a socialist.  That government, has been following socialist tenets and is now facing an identical ending to that of every country governed using that ideology, a heart breaking financial, emotional and political mess.  This is another case of those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.  The question in the case of the leadership of Greece is, was it stupidity or arrogance.  Was the president so arrogant that he felt would work under his leadership despite having never worked before?  Or was he so stupid he couldn’t look at history and understand what happened to other failed socialist nations?  If you are an Occupy sympathizer, you might want to take note.  Aside from being contrary to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, income redistribution and the idea that a job is a right are both socialist tenets.  Socialism has never worked in the past which gives an excellent indicator of how well they would work in the future.

I’m sure there are other bits floating behind my eyeballs but they haven’t fermented long enough.