Radioactive Communist Zombies

It's All (Expletive Deleted) Up

I stand by my first post about this whole debt ceiling mess I made on July 13th: it's all (expletive deleted) up. Whatever comes out of the cesspool of Washington D.C. will be so (expletive deleted) up it will simply make matters worse.  The Democrats won't vote for the Republicans' barely acceptable plan and the Republicans (so far) won't vote for the Democrats' let's-go-broke-just-a-little-slower plan.  I don't know what the outcome is going to be, but I know it's going to be (expletive deleted) up.  Oh, and they have until Tuesday.

Obama's Magic Cars

President Obama today announced his new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) rules.  He's apparently backed off of the 56 mile per gallon and reduced it to only 55 mpg by 2025.  As AFP reports:

Obama -- flanked by the heads of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler as well as chiefs of Honda and Toyota -- said the new miles-per-gallon requirements would help people save money, with gas prices now "killing folks at the pump."

"This agreement on fuel standards represents the single most important step we've ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil," the US president said in a speech at a convention center in the nation's capital.

"By 2025, the average fuel economy of their vehicles will nearly double to almost 55 miles per gallon," or 23.4 kilometers per liter, he said.

And, the CAFE rules require 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, or about one production cycle away in the automotive business.

So what will a 2016 model car look like?  I don't know but I bet it will suck.  Actually, I bet this benchmark isn't even achievable.  The only cars currently getting 35.5 mpg or more are (according to fueleconomy.gov)  are the Nissan Leaf 100% electric, the awful Smart ForTwo electric (again, no internal combustion engine), and the very expensive and small Chevrolet Volt (which apparently requires premium gas so tack another 30 cents per gallon onto your fuel costs).

And 55 mpg by 2025 is going to be something magical.  Maybe we can run cars on pixie dust and unicorn milk.  The only cars that meet that criteria are the Leaf and the electric Smart ForTwo (internal combustion engines need not apply).  These are transportation appliances, not cars.  And that's the average car makers have to meet.  So if they have, say, a nice family sedan that gets an amazing (for today) 35 mpg, they have to have a car somewhere that makes 75 mpg.  Pixie dust and unicorn milk, indeed.

I've already stated I think this whole CAFE deal is designed to make you not be able to afford or drive a decent car (or one that will hold a family of more than four people).  It's going to take all the fun out of driving.  It's part of Obama's anti-car, anti-family, and anti-freedom agenda.

I still want to know why Congress has no say in this. 

Blonde Causes Million Dollar Wreck

In Monte Carlo, a blonde woman driving a very expensive car appears to have caused a wreck that damaged $1 million worth of fine automobiles.  The cars damaged include:

• A blue Bentley Azure ($363,000) the blonde was driving
• A white Mercedes-Benz S-Class ($91,000)
• A black Ferrari F430 ($186,000)
• A rare and beautiful Aston Martin Rapide ($228,000)
• A Porsche 911 ($77,000)

This all apparently happened at a roundabout in front of a casino.  I hate roundabouts.  Even more now.  But think about being in Monte Carlo watching the cars go by and a 911 is the cheap one.  Wow.

I hope the blonde (or her sugar daddy) has good insurance.

Polar Bears Aren't Drowning?

Speaking of global warming climate change, the scientist who said polar bears were drowning because of loss of sea ice is under investigation for "scientific misconduct."  According to the AP:

Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement. Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.

The federal agency where he works told him he's being investigated for "integrity issues," but a watchdog group believes it has to do with the 2006 journal article about the bear.

An earlier version of the story quoted on Planet Gore said the investigation was over scientific misconduct "possibly over the veracity of that article."  (AP has a habit of changing articles when they discover they may have written something that is closer to the truth than they'd like to report.)

So if polar bears aren't drowning, there must be plenty of sea ice, I would think.  Which means that the Arctic isn't being turning into the Mojave due to climate change.

This will be another nail in the coffin of global-we're-all-going-to-die warming and will be ignored by global warming true believers (i.e., the MSM, the Democrats, the Greens, and our president).

NASA Data Refutes Global Warming Claims

One thing you have to remember about global warming climate change, is the whole thing is predicated on computer models programed by people who get more money from government if they predict disaster. Yes, temperatures (probably) increased since the 1940s (although that may be an artifact of urban heat islands more than atmospheric phenomena).  And CO₂ increased as well.  But correlation is not causation.  The more fire hydrants there are in a neighborhood, the more likely crime is to take place there.  But no one is arguing that fire hydrants cause crime.

But the predicted future warming (which hasn't happened since about 1999) is all about computer models.  And of course, computers only know what their programmers feed into them.  If the computer is given bad data, it will spit out bad results (garbage in-garbage out)  And now it appears that one of the assumptions the computer programmers used is wrong.  James Taylor (I'm sure not the singer) writes in Forbes (Hat Tip: Instapundit):

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

This has very big implications because if the computer models are wrong, we don't need to devastate our economy (or use toxic pigtail light bulbs) to "save" the planet.  We don't need 62 mpg CAFE standards.  We don't need the EPA to control CO₂ through the Clean Air Act.

The problem is, of course, all these things are not being done to save the planet but to control the economy and control you as much as possible. No facts are going to stop them from their quest to run your lives.  Taylor writes optimistically:

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

But global warming isn't about saving the planet it's about controlling the economy.  And if global warming was completely debunked tomorrow, the greens would have to come up with some new disaster to control your lives.

The Facts of Life

I slept in this morning so I have no idea what's going on.  So instead, here's another brilliant Andrew Klavan video:

 

Destroy the Economy

Someone once said (it may have been Daniel Patrick Moynihan)that if you were a racist and wanted to do as much damage as possible to Blacks, you could hardly have done better then the War on Poverty and the welfare state that grew out of it.  Now I don't think President Johnson and the Congressmen and Senators who put the War on Poverty into place were aware of the unintended consequences it would have and their devastating effect on Black poverty, marriage, and crime. 

Now, if you were an anti-American and wanted to destroy our economy, I don't think you could do better (except maybe an EMP bomb) than the policies of this president and his Democrat allies in Congress.  Do I think Barack Obama is purposely trying to destroy the economy?  Probably not any more than FDR did (I sometimes wonder if he thought he could keep it up we'd go socialist but World War II became a higher priority).  But the polices of the Obama Administration, their refusal to budge in these debt ceiling negotiations (and not having a plan themselves) goes beyond negligence and into malice.  In my more paranoid moments I wonder if he wants the United States economy destroyed so he can remake it in a European-socialist image.  In my more lucid moments, I just think he's an idiot.

I'll leave it an excerise for the reader to decide which thought about him is more kind.

Walnuts are Drugs?

The Food and Drug Administration has declared that walnuts are drugs and can't be sold in the U.S. until they approve them. No, this report did not come from The Onion, but from The New American (links original):

Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.

Is this over-zealous FDA protection or a government agency trying to protect consumers from the truth?  In either case, it's not good news.  Apparently the FDA has also gone after the purveyors of such evils as pomegranate juice and green tea for making (true) health claims.

This is, of course, ridiculous.  The New American claims this is because of crony capitalism (my phrase, not theirs) as big food companies lobby to eliminate healthful competition.  But what ever the cause, it is a government agency treating citizens as if they are too stupid to breathe.  But that's what happens when you give government power: someone will abuse it.

Rednecks Turning Left

People ask why I don't like NASCAR.  And I reply, "It's just rednecks turning left."  So when I saw today's Bizarro cartoon, I had to laugh and share.

The "Poor" in America Have it Pretty Good

How much poverty is there in America?  Well, since the Democrats took over, more and more. At least, that is, as measured by the government.  But how poor are the poor in America?  Robert Rector writing for National Review Online has some facts about the so-called "poor."

The typical poor family has at least two color TVs, a VCR, and a DVD player. One-third have a wide-screen, plasma, or LCD TV. And the typical poor family with children has a video-game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.

What else to the poor own?

• 81.4% own a microwave oven
• 78.3% have air conditioning
• 63.7% have cable or satellite TV
• 54.5% have a cellular phone

But what about the truly poor? Only one in 70 of the poor is homeless.  That would be 0.2% of Americans.

Only 10% of the poor live in trailer houses (I know some middle class families that live in double-wides).  The average poor American has more living space than the average European.

And what about hunger?  Are poor kids going without food?  Not very many:

the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which conducts the nation’s food-consumption and hunger survey, says otherwise. The USDA reports that 988,000 children (or 1.3 percent of all American children) personally experienced very low food security — which means “reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns” — at any point in 2009.

I remember toward the end of the month eating generic macaroni and cheese and turkey hotdogs for a meal that cost about 50 cents.  But we never went hungry.

The poor in America are better off then most of the world's population.  Masses in India would think air conditioning the height of luxury.  And more than three-quarters of America's poor have that luxury.

Maybe it's time for a new definition of "poor."