IMHO 19 March 2007

These photos show how we really treat those who are trying to kill us... says a lot about America... be sure to view all 14...
On the Ground with Charlie Company
Seattle Times 03/19/2007 Great photos http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/photogalleries/nationworld2003623292/1.html

Iraqis: life is getting better

March 18, 2007
MOST Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.

The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month...

...Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the findings pointed to progress. “There is no widespread violence in the four southern provinces and the fact that the picture is more complex than the stereotype usually portrayed is reflected in today’s poll,” she said...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1530762.ece

UAW wants to help Toyota "continue to be a success"
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

3/18/07

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger says his union is still interested in helping to organize workers at Toyota's U.S. facilities, despite having been unsuccessful so far.

In fact, he said he wants to help the world's No. 2 automaker "continue to be a success."

Uh, oh! It's no wonder that Toyota isn't exactly jumping for joy at the prospects. They've done just fine without the UAW, and probably don't need the UAW to come to its "rescue."

Consider what has befallen General Motors, Ford and Chrysler the past few years. The UAW has certainly helped them continue to be successful, hasn't it?

And thanks to the union, GM has given its workers more than $73 billion in benefits over the past 10 years, according to a Newsweek article. Which in turn means has meant $1,200 of every car GM sells goes toward health care costs. In contrast, Toyota's health care costs are about $200 per car.

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=239002&pub=1&div=News

You know what they say... "with friends like that, who needs enemies..."

Gandhi And Fred Thompson
03/19/2007
The former senator and "Law and Order" actor Fred Thompson is being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. Mr. Thompson has said he will keep an open mind about a 2008 campaign.

In a recent interview, he blasted the reputation of Mahatma Gandhi, the most overrated man in the 20th century and one whose name now graces a building at James Madison University.

Sen. Thompson noted that the anti-war group Code Pink had unveiled a giant paper mache model of Gandhi at one of their peace rallies, so gave this bit of history.

"During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife," he said. "They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.

"The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

"Gandhi probably wouldn’t approve, but I can live with that," Thompson said.

Sen. Thompson is an actor who doesn’t need a script to be coherent. He’s intelligent without one. You can’t say that about a lot of people in Hollywood.

http://www.rocktownweekly.com/opinion_details.php?AID=9345&sub=Editorial

Don't forget the revered Gandhi was a male chauvinist of the first order....

United Methodist Church (UMC) bishops out of touch with members, critic says
March 19, 2007
An official with the Institute on Religion and Democracy says the leadership of the United Methodist Church does not represent most of those in the denomination...

...For years, leaders of the UMC been known for promoting liberal social causes, but IRD spokesman Mark Tooley says the denomination's bishops don't represent the core beliefs and values of most UMC members. (Pretty much why they lost me 10 years ago...)

“They represent where the church was, you know, 25 and 30 years ago, but in recent years and decades the church actually has moved away from its many decades of liberal ascendancy,” Tooley says, “and the only growing parts of the church now are the more conservative and evangelical parts.”

Tooley also says he believes the UMC could return to its conservative roots, if new bishops are put in place who believe in the authority of Scripture.

http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/03/umc_bishops_out_of_touch_with_.php

Ethanol: Too Much Hype—and Corn

Ethanol enjoys subsidies from Congress and has upped corn prices. The rush to alternative fuels has been unwisely skewed to this one industry.

The reality remains that ethanol is no magic potion for meaningfully reducing oil dependence and lowering greenhouse gases. The prospect of boosting ethanol production to 35 billion barrels by 2017 will require massive tax subsidies and produce such environmental damage that the plan can be considered little more than a dream.

One problem with ethanol is its cost. It’s subsidized by the U.S. government at a rate of 51 cents per gallon, and federal and state subsidies for the fuel added up to $6 billion last year. As the number of gallons produced multiplies, so will the cost to the taxpayer...

...Taxes aren’t the only burden that will fall on consumers. As ethanol usurps more of the corn crop, the price of corn rises, boosting food prices. Already, about 20% of the corn crop goes toward ethanol production, up from just 3% five years ago. That drove up corn prices 80% in 2006 alone...

...But even if ethanol costs a lot, doesn’t it at least benefit the environment? Not necessarily. Because it’s an oxygenate, ethanol increases levels of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere and causes smog. Researchers are debating the extent to which it reduces greenhouse gases, with some estimates as low as 5%. Also, ethanol lags gasoline in fuel efficiency, and it requires fossil fuels like coal or gas to refine and transport it... http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2007/02/ethanol_too_muc.html

A Tale of Two Houses
(Borrowed and modified from tumblindice on FreeRepublic.com)

Here's a tale of two houses. Read the description of each, and then try to guess who its owner must be.

House #1 :
Situated on a 1600 acre plot of hot, dry prairie land, it's a modest home of 4,000 square feet. Below the home is a network of pipes descending 300 feet into the earth, where the dirt and rock keep a constant temperature of 67 degrees. Pumping this water back up into the home helps to cool it during the summer, and to heat it during the winter. It's a closed network, so the water is simply recycled.

"Passively solar," the home is positioned to allow for maximum absorption of the sun's heat in winter. Thanks to the geothermal system, the home operates on a mere 25% of the electricity it might otherwise require. The geothermal system even heats the home's outdoor pool--so efficiently, in fact, that original plans for additional solar paneling were cancelled.

Various gardens and grounds on the property are irrigated by a greywater system that channels shower, sink, toilet water and rainwater into enormous underground purifying tanks. And as icing on the cake, the walls of the home were built from cheap Luders limestone scrap material, quarried locally, that other homebuilders had thrown away.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more illustrative model for market-driven sustainability. The home is a green utopia, and is so thoroughly off the grid that the green celebrity blog Ecorazzi and the renewable energy website Off-Grid both recently devoted in-depth profiles to it.

Is this home owned by a great environmental leader? A rich scientist, perhaps? Greenpeace, maybe?

House #2
Our second house is the polar opposite. It is a great example of conspicuous consumption and wasted resources. It's a mansion in an upper-class suburb, with just under two dozen rooms and 8 bathrooms. Combined with its guest house, the home consumed 18,000 kWh per month in 2005, over 20x the national average!

This home consumes more energy in 30 days than most US households do in a year and a half. In total, the owners paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for this estate in 2006.

By most accounts, this home is an example of how people in this climate-aware era SHOULD NOT be living. Is it owned by an oil executive, or an energy-company tycoon? Or perhaps it is owned by a cruel industrialists?

THE ANSWER:

House #1, an example of green building and reduced energy consumption, is the western White House in Crawford, Texas. It belongs to President George W Bush.

House #2, guzzling electricity and paying carbon-credit "indulgences" for it, is in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, Tennessee. It belongs to Mr. Al Gorebal-Warming.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1803216/posts?page=34#34

Gorebal-Warming on Mars -- and Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune
3/19/2007

The entire solar system appears to be warming up lately. What's the root cause?

As an update to my story earlier this month on the discovery of gorebal warming on Mars, I thought it appropriate to survey the rest of the solar system. Gorebal warming was detected on Jupiter last year, and the warming is apparently behind the formation of a second red spot. Gorebal warming on Neptune's moon Triton has also been noted, with severe atmospheric changes as a result. And even tiny Pluto has experienced moderate warming in recent years, with temperatures rising a full 3.5 degrees.

The common denominator in all these cases, the Earth included, is of course the Sun, which is in the middle of an extremely active period at present. The last time it was so active was during the Medieval Warm Period of 700 years ago, a period where the Earth was warmer than it is today. Interestingly enough, the period in which it was least active (the Maunder Minimum) corresponds with the Little Ice Age the earth experienced in the 17th century.

Such correlations are causing many scientists to consider the Sun the primary cause of terrestrial climate change. The initial problem with this theory was that the changes in solar flux didn't appear to be enough to account for the warming.

However the research of scientist Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute has provided the missing link. Increased solar activity not only warms the earth directly, it increases the strength of the solar winds. This reduces the amount of cosmic radiation striking the earth, which directly reduces the formation rate of clouds. Less clouds = more warming...

http://www.dailytech.com/Global+Warming+on+Mars++and+Jupiter+Pluto+Neptune/article6544.htm

A lady on Glenn Beck show today make a GREAT point today. She said Al Gorebal-Warming is doing exactly what he so vociferously accused President Bush of:

"HE PLAYED ON OUR FEARS!"

Al Gorebal-Warming Challenged to International TV Debate on Gorebal Warming
Center for Science and Public Policy

3/19/2007

PERTH, Scotland

In a formal invitation sent to former Vice-President Al Gorebal-Warming's Tennessee address and released to the public, Lord Monckton has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Al Gorebal-Warming to what he terms "the Second Great Debate," an internationally televised, head-to-head, nation-unto-nation confrontation on the question, "That our effect on climate is not dangerous." (http://ff.org/centers/csspp/docs/20070316_monckton.html)

Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said, "A careful study of the substantial corpus of peer-reviewed science reveals that Mr. Gorebal-Warming's film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide."

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-19-2007/0004548669&EDATE=
My guess is Al Gorebal-Warming will be a "No-Show"… At least with fakeumentaries and town halls where you choose the audience there is no risk of embarrassment...

Mr. Gorebal-Warming goes (back) to Washington

..."Al Gorebal-Warming put gorebal warming on the map," said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, at a Capitol Hill press conference on Friday. He called "An Inconvenient Truth" the "most politically influencing documentary."

But Lewis added: "Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gorebal-Warming makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong."

Lewis outlines these arguments in a 140-page congressional working paper (http://www.cei.org/pdf/5820.pdf excellent article worth downloading) released Friday, ahead of Gorebal-Warming's trip to Washington, D.C., to provide congressional testimony on gorebal warming...

Here are some questions Al Gorebal-Warming should be asked:

• Mr. Gorebal-Warming: You have said several times that we have 10 years to act to stave off gorebal warming. Was that 10 years from the first time you said that or 10 years from now? We just wanted to get a firm date from you that we can hold you to.

• Mr. Gorebal-Warming: How can you continue to claim that gorebal warming on Earth is primarily caused by mankind when other planets (Mars, Jupiter and Pluto) with no confirmed life forms and certainly no man-made industrial greenhouse gas emissions also show signs of gorebal warming? Wouldn’t it make more sense that the sun is responsible for warming since it is the common denominator?

• Mr. Gorebal-Warming: Joseph Romm, the executive director for the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, has said we must build 700 large nuclear plants to stave off climate change. Where do you stand on the need for nuclear energy?

Gorebal-Warming discussions in schools
March 17, 2007

Some parents question how gorebal warming is taught in schools

In Montpelier earlier this year, Bill Burrell’s sixth-grade students testified before legislative committees about gorebal warming and what Vermont can do about it. The students also are immersed in conservation and alternative energy projects.

In South Burlington recently, a middle school math teacher used a portion of Al Gorebal-Warming’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to illustrate linear equations. An English teacher used the movie to spark opinion writing. Another documentary, “Too Hot Not To Handle,” was shown in a science class during a climate and weather unit to help illustrate the effect that human beings have on the environment, according to Frederick Tuttle Middle School Principal Joe O’Brien.

In Jericho this week, Jericho Elementary School students put on a play about gorebal warming...

...Parents who disagree with the gorebal warming theory, or who chalk it up to environmental alarmists or political hyperbole, are finding that their points of view aren’t given the attention afforded the “other side.”

...Although school officials say the movies were used as a tool to illustrate linear equations and to show how an argument can be presented, Leavens is still concerned that countering theories were not shown...

...Leavens has problems with Al Gorebal-Warming’s movie, and he questions Hollywood’s profits.

“The real question and concern is, are we getting our science curriculum from Hollywood? Because Hollywood is known for a lot of things, but the foundation for science and critical thinking, it’s not.”...

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070317/NEWS01/703170306/1009&theme=
These schools seem to be more interested in creating depressed little activists than in teaching them the 3 R's....

Ethanol's Growing List of Enemies
March 19, 2007
As demand for the alternative fuel drives corn prices up, an unlikely assortment of groups are uniting with the hopes of cutting government support

Paul Hitch has spent his entire life raising cattle and hogs on a stretch of the Oklahoma panhandle he says is "flat as a billiard table." His great-grandfather started the ranch in 1884, before Oklahoma was a state, and now Hitch, 63, is preparing to pass the family business on to his two sons.

But he worries that they'll face mounting pressures in the industry, particularly because of the soaring price for corn, which the business depends on to feed the livestock. In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged...

...The ethanol movement is sprouting a vocal crop of critics. While politicians including President George W. Bush and farmers across the Midwest hope that the U.S. can win its energy independence by turning corn into fuel, Hitch and an unlikely assortment of allies are raising their voices in opposition. The effort is uniting ranchers and environmentalists, hog farmers and hippies, solar-power idealists and free-market pragmatists.

They have different reasons for opposing ethanol. But their common contentions are that the focus on corn-based ethanol has been too hasty, and the government's active involvement—through subsidies for ethanol refiners and high tariffs to keep out alternatives like ethanol made from sugar—is likely to lead to chaos in other sectors of the economy...

...the National Chicken Council, the National Turkey Federation, and the National Pork Producers' Council testified before Congress, calling for the end of corn ethanol subsidies.

Left-leaning economists such as Princeton University's Paul Krugman are joining free-market fundamentalists at the Cato Institute in pointing out the economic pitfalls of ethanol. And green groups worry that aggressive production of corn could have dire consequences for the environment, because of the heavy use of pesticides, fertilizer, and machinery that burns fossil fuels. "There's great concern," says Doug Koplow, who analyzes energy policy for Earth Track, a Boston consultancy...

...More corn for ethanol producers, of course, means less for livestock. Ranchers in wide-open Western states and pig farmers in the rural stretches of the South and Midwest are finding their businesses slammed by policies cooked up in Washington.

Hitch says the feedstock that's primarily made from corn is the single biggest expense for his business. As corn costs have doubled, meat packers and processors like Tyson Foods (TSN) and Smithfield Foods (SFD) have to pay more for the animals they buy...

...If the government is going to play a role in energy markets, there are other players who would like more attention. Supporters of solar and wind energy make the case that if the government is going to hand out subsidies and mandate use, in the name of energy independence, they should get the same kind of treatment as ethanol.

"Why are we supporting ethanol with a mandate, but not wind and solar?" says Randy Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Assn. "There's a lack of consistency in policy."

The economics may be even more attractive for some of the alternatives. Advocates for plug-in hybrid vehicles, including wind and solar producers, as well as utilities, argue that they can produce the electric equivalent of a gallon of gas for less than $1, less than half the cost of ethanol-based fuels.

...ranchers like Hitch are concerned that there hasn't been enough thought given to the unintended consequences of the ethanol boom. He's worried that the U.S. could be developing another addiction with some serious side effects of its own...

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/mar2007/db20070316_016207.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Scientists blame Hollywood for increased fears over gorebal warming
19th March 2007
Leading climate change experts have thrown their weight behind two scientists who hit out at the "Hollywoodisation" of gorebal warming.

Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, criticised fellow scientists they accuse of "overplaying" the message...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=443043&in_page_id=1965

David Bennett <><

http://www.freewill-predestination.com