Gun Free Zones December 21, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Politics.Tags: Free, Gun, Zone
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http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/004255.php
Close Call December 21, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Funny.Tags: dog
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http://i11.tinypic.com/6l3dohc.jpg
Who Are These Kooks? December 19, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Politics.Tags: Chuck Baldwin, freedom, Ron Paul
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http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2007/cbarchive_20071218.html
According to the Associated Press, “Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s supporters raised over $6 million Sunday to boost the 10-term congressman’s campaign for the White House.”
The AP report also said, “The [Paul] campaign’s previous fundraiser brought in $4.2 million.”
According to the Paul campaign website, “In a 24-hour period on December 16, the campaign raised $6.026 million dollars, surpassing the one-day record of $5.7 million held by John Kerry.
“During the day, over 58,000 people contributed to Dr. Paul’s campaign, including 24,940 first-time donors. Over 118,000 Americans have donated to the campaign in the fourth quarter.
“The $6 million one-day total means the campaign has raised over $18 million this quarter, far exceeding its goal of $12 million.”
Now, if one listens to most of the political pundits in the major media, Ron Paul is some kind of “kook,” and his supporters are also a bunch of “kooks.” So, the question must be asked, Just who are these kooks that are supporting him, and why are they giving Ron Paul all this money?
First, let’s take a look at this “kook” who is receiving all this money. Ron Paul was born the third son of Howard and Margaret Paul, and was brought up with a work ethic in which one worked six days a week and went to church on Sunday. His first job was at age 5 helping his uncle wash bottles. He worked all the way through his youth mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, working in a drug store, delivering furniture and laundry, etc.
In high school, Ron was a track star, winning state as a junior in the 220-yard dash and running 2nd in the 440. His time in the 100-yard dash was 9.8. That’s pretty good. I was never able to break 10-flat in the 100. Although, I bet I could have beaten him in the 50-yard dash. He also wrestled in high school. Coincidentally, so did I. But here Ron leaves me: he was president of the student council and an honor student. I never accomplished that. I was just glad to get promoted to the next grade. Even as a senior statesman, Ron Paul keeps himself in terrific shape. Have you seen him lately? He still maintains a rigorous exercise regimen.
Ron’s two brothers are both ministers, and he became a medical doctor. He graduated from Duke University School of Medicine. When the Cuban Missile Crisis arose, Ron became a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force. He also served in the Air National Guard.
As an OB/GYN physician, Dr. Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies, and he and his wife, Carol, have been married for more than 50 years. They have 5 children, 18 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild. Ron Paul is currently in his 10th term as a congressman from Texas.
As a congressman, Ron Paul has never taken a government-paid junket. He is not accepting a government pension. He returns a portion of his office budget every year to the taxpayers. As a member of Congress, he has never voted a raise for himself. Do you know any other member of Congress that can make such a claim? Of course you don’t, because Ron Paul is truly one-of-a-kind.
Former President Ronald Reagan said this about Ron Paul, “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country.”
Perhaps this helps explain why many of the “kooks” supporting Ron Paul are active-duty military personnel. In fact, Ron Paul has received more campaign contributions from active-duty military personnel than any other Presidential candidate from either party.
But who are the other “kooks” supporting Ron Paul? What kind of people give more than $18 million in a quarter-year to a Presidential candidate that is almost universally ignored by the mainstream press? What kind of people give record contributions to a Presidential candidate that is lampooned by his fellow Republican Presidential contenders?
For example, Mike Huckabee recently said he could support any of the other Republican Presidential contenders (including Rudy Giuliani), except Ron Paul. That means, Mike Huckabee would rather support a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control liberal such as Giuliani than support the pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-Second Amendment candidacy of Ron Paul. Why is that?
Furthermore, why are the entire major media and establishment Republican machine either ignoring or lampooning a distinguished Air Force veteran, medical doctor, and ten-term Congressman? What is it about Ron Paul that the elite are so afraid of?
Here is something else: while Ron Paul’s contributions have exploded, Mike Huckabee is all but broke! How can that be? How can a political “front-runner” be out of money, while a man who “doesn’t have a chance” is breaking fundraising records?
So, who are these “kooks” who are sending Ron Paul so much money? And just why are they sending him so much money? I will tell you who they are, because I am one of them. They are rank-and-file, tax-paying citizens who are sick and tired of out-of-control federal spending and deficits. They have had it with an arrogant federal government that runs roughshod over both the Constitution and the liberties of the American people. They are people who have had enough of the IRS, the BATFE, and a thousand other federal agencies that have “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” (Declaration of Independence)
They are people who see through the phony, disingenuous federal politicians who only want to fleece the American citizenry for the purpose of building their own personal fortunes. They have had it with the Military-Industrial complex that desires to build international empires at the expense of the blood and sacrifice of the American people. They have had it with David Rockefeller and his Council on Foreign Relations. They have had it with the arrogance of George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi.
They are sick and tired of paying outlandish taxes for a public education system that produces high school graduates who cannot read and write. They are sick and tired of working for 30 years to pay off a mortgage, only then to be forced to pay extortion money (a.k.a. property taxes) for the rest of their lives to the feudal state. They are sick and tired of the government telling them what they can and cannot do with their own property. They are sick and tired of watching people with food stamps buy T-bone steaks and expensive Nike tennis shoes while they are forced to buy fatty hamburger and cheap sneakers.
They are sick and tired of watching their manufacturing jobs go to China and India. They have had it with money-hungry businessmen who hire illegal Mexicans at slave labor wages. They have had it with labor unions promoting politicians who support NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA. They are sick and tired of being bled dry at the gas pump.
They have had it with this phony “war on terrorism” that sends trillions of dollars to nations throughout the Middle East, but refuses to close our own borders to illegal immigration. They have had it with the “war on drugs” and the “war on terror” being used as excuses to trample people’s freedoms. They have it with Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. They have had it with Bush’s North American Union. They have had it with Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. In short, they have just had it!
They also know that a vote for any other Presidential candidate is a vote for more of the same. Democrat or Republican: it is more of the same. Ron Paul, and Ron Paul alone, will bring a revolution of freedom and independence to America. Believe me, the Ron Paul revolution is bigger than Ron Paul. This is the beginning of a movement.
No matter what ultimately happens to Ron Paul’s candidacy, the fight to return America to its roots of freedom and independence has started. The fire is lit. There is no putting it out. There will be other Ron Pauls, other campaigns, other spokesmen, other fundraising. The people supporting Ron Paul will not be silenced; they will not be ignored; they will not be intimidated. In truth, Ron Paul’s campaign may just be the beginning of the end of the elitist, globalist, stranglehold over America.
As one who is also fed up with the globalist goons that dominate the two major parties, I join the Ron Paul revolution and vow to fight for the rest of my life for the freedom and independence of these United States. This means I will never again support a business-as-usual, millionaires-club, globalist toady from either party ever again! I will only support candidates who are fully committed to restoring constitutional government. If that makes me a kook, so be it.
© Chuck Baldwin
Company Picnic – One Drink Limit. December 18, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Funny.add a comment
http://www.canucklehead.ca/look/company_picnic.html
The UN Climate Change Numbers Hoax December 17, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Educational, Politics.Tags: Change, Climate, global, UN, warming
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http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/968
By Tom Harris: John McLean Friday, December 14, 2007
t’s an assertion repeated by politicians and climate campaigners the world over – ‘2,500 scientists of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agree that humans are causing a climate crisis’.
But it’s not true. And, for the first time ever, the public can now see the extent to which they have been misled. As lies go, it’s a whopper. Here’s the real situation.
Like the three IPCC ‘assessment reports’ before it, the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released during 2007 (upon which the UN climate conference in Bali was based) includes the reports of the IPCC’s three working groups. Working Group I (WG I) is assigned to report on the extent and possible causes of past climate change as well as future ‘projections’. Its report is titled “The Physical Science Basis”. The reports from working groups II and II are titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change” respectively, and since these are based on the results of WG I, it is crucially important that the WG I report stands up to close scrutiny.
There is, of course serious debate among scientists about the actual technical content of the roughly 1,000-page WG I report, especially its politically motivated Summary for Policymakers which is often the only part read by politicians and non-scientists. The technical content can be difficult for non-scientists to follow and so most people simply assume that if that large numbers of scientists agree, they must be right.
Consensus never proves the truth of a scientific claim, but is somehow widely believed to do so for the IPCC reports, so we need to ask how many scientists really did agree with the most important IPCC conclusion, namely that humans are causing significant climate change–in other words the key parts of WG I?
The numbers of scientist reviewers involved in WG I is actually less than a quarter of the whole, a little over 600 in total. The other 1,900 reviewers assessed the other working group reports. They had nothing to say about the causes of climate change or its future trajectory. Still, 600 “scientific expert reviewers” sounds pretty impressive. After all, they submitted their comments to the IPCC editors who assure us that “all substantive government and expert review comments received appropriate consideration.” And since these experts reviewers are all listed in Annex III of the report, they must have endorsed it, right?
Wrong.
For the first time ever, the UN has released on the Web the comments of reviewers who assessed the drafts of the WG I report and the IPCC editors’ responses. This release was almost certainly a result of intense pressure applied by “hockey-stick” co-debunker Steve McIntyre of Toronto and his allies. Unlike the other IPCC working groups, WG I is based in the U.S. and McIntyre had used the robust Freedom of Information legislation to request certain details when the full comments were released.
An examination of reviewers’ comments on the last draft of the WG I report before final report assembly (i.e. the ‘Second Order Revision’ or SOR) completely debunks the illusion of hundreds of experts diligently poring over all the chapters of the report and providing extensive feedback to the editing teams. Here’s the reality.
A total of 308 reviewers commented on the SOR, but only 32 reviewers commented on more than three chapters and only five reviewers commented on all 11 chapters of the report. Only about half the reviewers commented more than one chapter. It is logical that reviewers would generally limit their comments to their areas of expertise but it’s a far cry from the idea of thousands of scientists agreeing to anything.
Compounding this is the fact that IPCC editors could, and often did, ignore reviewers’ comments. Some editor responses were banal and others showed inconsistencies with other comments. Reviewers had to justify their requested changes but the responding editors appear to have been under no such obligation. Reviewers were sometimes flatly told they were wrong but no reasons or reliable references were provided. In other cases reviewers tried to dilute the certainty being expressed and they often provided supporting evidence, but their comments were often flatly rejected. Some comments were rejected on the basis of a lack of space – an incredible assertion in such an important document. The attitude of the editors seemed to be that simple corrections were accepted, requests for improved clarity tolerated but the assertions and interpretations that appear in the text were to be defended against any challenge.
An example of rampant misrepresentation of IPCC reports is the frequent assertion that ‘hundreds of IPCC scientists’ are known to support the following statement, arguably the most important of the WG I report, namely “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.”
In total, only 62 scientists reviewed the chapter in which this statement appears, the critical chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”. Of the comments received from the 62 reviewers of this critical chapter, almost 60% of them were rejected by IPCC editors. And of the 62 expert reviewers of this chapter, 55 had serious vested interest, leaving only seven expert reviewers who appear impartial.
Two of these seven were contacted by NRSP for the purposes of this article – Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand and Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph, Canada. Concerning the “Greenhouse gas forcing …” statement above, Professor McKitrick explained “A categorical summary statement like this is not supported by the evidence in the IPCC WG I report. Evidence shown in the report suggests that other factors play a major role in climate change, and the specific effects expected from greenhouse gases have not been observed.”
Dr. Gray labeled the WG I statement as “Typical IPCC doubletalk” asserting “The text of the IPCC report shows that this is decided by a guess from persons with a conflict of interest, not from a tested model.”
Determining the level of support expressed by reviewers’ comments is subjective but a slightly generous evaluation indicates that just five reviewers endorsed the crucial ninth chapter. Four had vested interests and the other made only a single comment for the entire 11-chapter report. The claim that 2,500 independent scientist reviewers agreed with this, the most important statement of the UN climate reports released this year, or any other statement in the UN climate reports, is nonsense.
“The IPCC owe it to the world to explain who among their expert reviewers actually agree with their conclusions and who don’t,” says Natural Resources Stewardship Project Chair climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball. “Otherwise, their credibility, and the public’s trust of science in general, will be even further eroded.”
That the IPCC have let this deception continue for so long is a disgrace. Secretary General Ban Kai-Moon must instruct the UN climate body to either completely revise their operating procedures, welcoming dissenting input from scientist reviewers and indicating if reviewers have vested interests, or close the agency down completely. Until then, their conclusions, and any reached at the Bali conference based on IPCC conclusions, should be ignored entirely as politically skewed and dishonest.
John McLean is climate data analyst based in Melbourne, Australia. Tom Harris is the Ottawa-based Executive Director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (nrsp.com).
For the birds December 12, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Funny.Tags: bird, parrot, ringtone
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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2629537.html
A Huddersfield man says he’s had to change his ringtone five times – because his parrot keeps copying them.
Stuart McNae says Billy waits until he leaves the room, then mimics the sound of a call – and laughs when he dashes back to answer.
Every time Stuart, 54, changes his ringtone the cheeky blue-fronted Amazon picks up the new one, reports The Sun.
He’s gone through the Nokia theme, Lou Bega’s Mambo Number 5, the BBC Match of the Day tune, Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MGs and Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry.
He said: “I now have the theme from A Fistful of Dollars. Won’t be long before he’s got that, too.
“He waits for me to leave the room before he does it. I’ll rush downstairs to find it’s Billy.”
Word of the Day : Reconnoiter December 9, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Educational.Tags: Reconnoiter
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verb :: To make a preliminary inspection of, especially in order to gather military information.
“‘Gentlemen,’ said Barbicane, ‘we have no time to lose; tomorrow we must obtain horses, and proceed to reconnoiter the country.’” –Verne, Jules
“I decided to come to your restaurant and get some food and you decide to wreck an order!” –Jerry
Headbutting Police Dogs – A ‘PC’ Step Too Far December 7, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Politics.add a comment
http://www.k9magazine.com/viewarticle.php?sid=15&&vid=0&npage=&aid=1588
Nick Mays
You really couldn’t make it up… a Welsh police force is training its dogs to headbutt criminals rather than bite them, because politically correct – ‘PC’ – bosses are afraid that allowing the dogs to bite criminals will infringe their human rights!
The policy, devised by North Wales Police, comes as a result of increased compensation claims from members of the public who have been bitten by police dogs.
Officers say the toothless tactic provides a safer way to tackle uncooperative offenders, and dog squads may soon adopt it across the country. But critics say it is another example of political correctness gone mad – putting the rights and safety of criminals before cutting crime and protecting the public.
Rather than biting suspects, the dogs have instead been trained to disable their targets by leaping at them and delivering a flying ‘head-butt’.
The scheme is being pioneered by North Wales police, which is headed by controversial chief Richard Brunstrom, using the Belgian Shepherd Malinois, which are fast becoming the police dogs of choice in the UK, as they are smaller, more agile and stronger than the traditional German Shepherd.
Under the scheme, the dogs would be muzzled to prevent them from biting. To protect the animals, a metal rod across the front of the muzzle helps absorb the impact of the strike.
‘Instead of biting, the dog is muzzled and launches itself like a missile at the midriff of the target,’ said Deputy Chief Constable of North Wales, Clive Wolfendale.
‘It is one of the additional options open to us to muzzle our dogs and get them to use a head butt,’ added Sgt Ian Massie. ‘We believe it is a safer option for an offender to be head-butted.’
The scheme was launched after the Association of Chief Police Officers published a paper for dog handlers on human rights. In it, police dog handlers in a position where they are considering setting their dog after a suspect should ask are told to ask themselves: ‘Are there human rights issues involved in what I am about to do?’
But retired dog handler John Barrett, who served for 18 years with the Metropolitan Police, is critical of the new tactic and said: ‘This sounds like political correctness. It is very strange – I think the public would laugh at you with a muzzled dog, and it could be counterproductive if people think the dog has to be muzzled because it is dangerous.’
The move comes after a surge in compensation claims from bite victims – including officers. One of the UK’s biggest police forces, Greater Manchester paid out £59,000 in compensation in five years.
But alleged wrongdoers are warned – the dogs have a powerful butt, especially after a long run-up.
The force’s Dog Section Manager Sergeant Gareth Crow, who pioneered the technique, says the flying Malinois head-charge is the equivalent of a baton blow if the dog has a full run-up. Apparently, the technique has been deemed so successful that muzzled dogs are also being used for crowd control at football games. Sgt Crowe said: “People may think a muzzled dog can’t do anything but they are caught out by the power and speed of the tactic.
‘For me, it is a high-level use of force to physically bite a person. We’ve now got a continuum of force that gives us another tactical option to deploy the dog.
‘The ‘conflict management model’ of policing says that any force must be reasonable under the circumstances. It is clearly to gain control, prevent injury to the officer or others, and prevent damage to property.’
Sgt Crow did not say, however, how the dogs would manage to headbutt a suspect in the stomach when they were running away from them and would thus have their backs to the dogs. A headbutt into the suspects’ lumbar region would surely cause greater injury and lead to further compensation claims.
North Wales Police Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom earlier this year faced criticism from within his own ranks for plans to award his officers points for making arrests or handing out fines. Under the scheme, they could receive twice as many for seizing an abandoned car as for making an arrest.
Mr Brunstrom, the Government’s adviser on road safety and speed cameras, has earned himself the nickname the ‘Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taliban’.
In 2003, he called for the number of cameras to be trebled and the following year admitted getting officers to ‘hide behind road signs and walls’ with handheld devices.
His force has also been criticised for its appalling burglary clear up rate and for launching costly inquiries into alleged anti-Welsh comments by Tony Blair and Anne Robinson.
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Creativity :: Horizontally Smarter December 7, 2007
Posted by jerryh8391 in Educational.Tags: Horizontally, Smarter
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A recent study by the Australian National University tested peoples’ problem solving abilities while standing up and lying down. They found that people were slightly better at solving problems while in a horizontal position.
This difference in cognitive ability may come from the varied release of a neurotransmitter called noradrenaline, which is believed to interfere with creative thinking. When you are lying down, your body releases less noradrenaline.
So, if you need to do some serious thinking, lying down may slightly boost your performance.