Aaron says "The Clock is Ticking" and it's a post about what our economy is doing. In this post he makes the same point I have been making for weeks: that the fact that the stock market is rising at the same time gold and other commodities are indicates only the weakening of the dollar, not that the economy is in a recovery.
Aaron expects the dollar market to collapse, and his reasoning is excellent; and the results will be far-reaching indeed:
Once that happens, the “green shoots” and “economic recovery” you’ve been hearing about from the politicians, the media, and academics will be shown to be the fraud that it is. Because of the budget-busting actions taken by the Bush and Obama administrations, we are not speaking of some abstract adverse event on a faceless bank’s balance sheet. We are speaking of a crisis in the government’s ability to finance its daily operating costs, let alone expensive new entitlements and tax schemes like cap-and-trade and health care “reform.” We’re getting a glimpse of what that looks like in many of our states like Arizona, Illinois, New York, and most obviously California.This will mean a lot of things, including inner-city riots which we haven't seen since the Watts days. Only worse, because it'll be everywhere when the government money stops pouring in.
This would play into the hands of anyone in government who is salivating over the emplacement of martial law. (I'm not saying anyone in our sitting government wants that; I don't think any sane politician would.) Widespread civil unrest gives the government an excellent excuse to sent out the troops, posse comitatus be damned.
Aaron theorizes that the impending collapse of the dollar is yet another reason for Democrats to need cap-and-tax and ObamaCare: if it happens, the collapse of the dollar will ruin the Democrat party and any of its aspirations for decades.
(BTW, if the Democrats don't get ObamaCare and the dollar collapses? They'll blame the fact that medical care wasn't socialized. Trust me on this.)
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Then the Curmudgeon Emeritus fires up his text editor and talks about the hacker who leaked the climatologist fraud e-mails:
By now, most of the world knows that England's Hadley Climatic Research Unit has suffered a massive leak of internal documents pertaining to its "research" into Anthropogenic Global Warming / "climate change." As the leaked documents demonstrate that Hadley's "researchers" have been engaged in a massive con job designed to foist totalitarian economic controls on the world in the name of fighting global warming, Hadley and its fellow travelers in the "green machine" are desperately casting about for a way to recoup.I'm going to say it again: if you have to make stuff up to prove your thesis, you're not doing science. Climatologists haven't ever been doing science, so I suppose that guideline is lost on them, but you'd think that they would have picked up that little fact somewhere in one of their other courses.
They will fail. Your Curmudgeon has said it.
They will fail because this is not the first counter-evidence to the AGW / "climate change" thesis, but merely the last (and largest) of a long train of events. Too many AGW "experts" have been caught in self contradictions and outright lies, deliberately distorting meteorological records and other relevant data. Too many have evaded all attempts to debate them. Too many have refused to expose their data, their analytical techniques, or their sacred computer models. Too many have responded to honest inquiries with vilification, slander, and attempts to destroy the inquirer. And far too many private persons have become aware of the immense profits AGW floggers and their acolytes have garnered, from both governmental and corporate coffers, with the AGW thresher.
If you work and conspire to eliminate inconvenient data--rather than adjust your models and theories to accommodate it--you're not using the scientific method. If your theories cannot be modified to match reality, and you decide that reality must be "corrected" to match your theory, then you really don't understand what "science" is.
And if you don't care what "science" is as long as people believe you and continue to give you money, you are not a scientist at all, but a cheap huckster, a snake-oil salesman.
PDB also discusses the issue and provides a link to the actual .ZIP file.
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Then I saw this over at Missourah.com and had to add a couple cents' worth of my own commentary.
The piece makes the point that the media and liberal elites are doing their damnedest to marginalize Sarah Palin, to reinforce an image of her as stupid, ineffectual, out-of-touch, ignorant, and just plain weird...yet the liberals use her for fundraising.
You don't see liberals fundraising by invoking Reagan or Nixon, do you? Not any more; those men are dead. Liberals don't do fundraising by talking about me or any of the countless millions of other unknown conservative bloggers. You don't see fliers or letter or pamphlets screeching about how Joe Republican from Paducah must! be! stopped!
It's because those people don't worry Democrats. All I can do is write about my opinions here; people read or don't, agree or don't, and I don't shape opinions nor can I command much loyalty.
But Sarah Palin has already shown that she has something; her presence on the McCain ticket energized the Republican base. People listen to her.
To make matters worse, she's a conservative woman and she's hot; she combines beauty, intellect, and charisma--which scares the everlovin' stuffing out of the liberals.
All you need to do, to know who our best and brightest are, is to watch whom the liberals try to destroy.
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I played WoW until I couldn't play any more, and I just couldn't quite get Chenal to 28th level. But she's getting there.
With Chenal I took professions as quickly as I could, and it's paying off; she's got the highest cooking skill of any of my characters. Fishing needs a bit of work. Still, it's all good.
I'm also doggedly pursuing every quest I possibly can in human lands, no matter how minor, in an effort to garner rep. Pretty soon I am going to have to find a group which is running Deadmines and the Stockade, because it won't be long before those are the only remaining quests in Elwynn, Westfall, and Duskwood.
Then I have to find the next human settlement--I think Southshore is in the "Stormwind" faction--where I can grind more rep.
The shaman is a pretty fun character class. Totems are useful.