Panicked supporters of radical changes to our national economy have for some time pointed to the “startling” decline of the Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica as proof that our oceans are heating us to death! Icebergs! Cracks! The sky is falling, and only Al Gore can save us!
Of course, the stock response to that has been to point over to the other side of the continent, where in the east, the icecap’s been thickening for over a decade. This duality has seen no clear resolution, as global oceanic temperature change should either melt all glaciers, or none.
However new research may resolve this. It turns out there’s a volcano near the Pine Island Glacier, one that erupted so strongly about 2,200 years ago that it broke through all the ice and covered the region in ash. We know this because of radar research, oddly enough, as a plane overhead aims radio signals at the ice below, and uses the echoes to determine what’s underneath and at what depth. The ash was thick enough under the ice that it was mistaken for rock!
From this, researchers have speculated that since the volcano is still there, under the ice, there is some heat there. And that heat, perhaps with some lava now and then even, will melt ice, explaining why this one glacier has the Gilligans in a panic, despite things looking fine on the Other Side of the Island.
As an aside, I find it fascinating that the International Herald Tribune finds it necessary to ask David Vaughan about ocean temperatures also causing ice to melt. Vaughan, who co-wrote the Antarctic volcano article in Nature Geoscience, of course gave them the necessary reassurances. They don’t bother to check his profile, though, which shows how his career depends on that being true! His research focus is on “the role of ice sheets in the Earth system and the societal threat of climate change and rising sea levels.” If the glaciers aren’t melting due to systemic change, then he’s out of a job, so of course he’s going to minimize an inconvenient finding!
Understanding the difference between fact and opinion is critical in analyzing scientific research. And while one study is certainly not enough to draw any firm conclusions, this new research has given us something new to consider. If the oceans are likely to rise as high as the alarmists would have us believe, it would be grossly irresponsible to put on blinders and work only one theory of melting. Further research must be done on polar volcanoes by open-minded scientists, if we are to get satisfactory resolution of this theory.
Via California Yankee, Pravda reports that Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space. According to their article, he was the first to go up, come down, and live, but before him there were three others who tried and died.
I guess that means he’d been their fourth choice to be the Hero of the Soviet Union.
The hounds in the press have been asking us to take Jose Canseco at his word, but but now we find out he’s apparently a blackmailer in addition to everything else we know about him.
And we’re supposed to just take guys like this at their word about steroids? Come on.
RedState-endorsed candidate Eric Egland just had the race to replace John Doolittle get all the harder, as Assemblyman Ted Gaines has endorsed Rico Oller. Gaines, who himself runs on low taxes, controlled spending, tough crime fighting, and an end to illegal immigration, has some very nice things to say about Oller, according to Flash Report:
Rico Oller has that experience in his own small business, and I belive he’ll put that experience to work for hard working California families. Furthermore, I’m confident that Rico will do all he can to stop the out of control pork-barrel Democrat spending addiction and fight to secure our pourous borders.
I believe we need to do all we can in district 4 to ensure that Charlie Brown can’t run against John Doolittle by proxy. We need to make a break from his term of office, and fighting pork and corrupt earmarks would certainly be a way to do that in the eyes of the district’s voters, who lost confidence in Doolittle after the FBI investigation became public, despite supporting other Republicans on the ballot.
I’m still rooting for Egland but, to be honest, I doubt whoever wins this primary will be disliked by conservatives.
For the record, I no longer consider myself a RiNO. I will vote for the nominees of the Republican party* all the way down the ticket automatically. That’s my new policy.
This is a major change for me. I’ve always considered voting for another party to be a reasonable message-sending approach. but I was misguided: my thought processes hinged on the assumption that the Republican party is truly and rightfully Reaganite. But that is not the case, so I have to adapt.
When Ronald Reagan first took prominence in the Republican party, conservatism was a small and unpopular faction in the party. It can be argued that the only reason Senator Goldwater could take the party nomination in 1964, the year of Reagan’s groundbreaking speech to the convention, was that all the more popular Republicans saw no point in running against the ticket of President Johnson and President Kennedy’s Ghost.
Sure enough, the hostility never went away. After Goldwater’s defeat, Reagan had to continue to sell the country and the party on conservatism. Even when he successfully ran for Governor, some California Republicans were so harsh in their attacks on him as a conservative that he coined his 11th Commandment that we know today.
Why did some Rockefeller Republicans hate Reagan so much? I believe it’s because they felt entitled to the party, and to its nominations. Reagan was an outsider, someone who threatened and challenged their views, and so he had to be shouted down. Persuasion went out the window, and so eventually their views went out the window by 1980.
I believe conservatives must not make the same mistake the Rockefeller Republicans made. No matter how many victories we had, no matter how well President Reagan and Speaker Gingrich governed and showed how conservatism works both in politics and in practice, we must not grow entitled. We must not ever let ourselves believe that the party belongs to conservatives, and that our ideas are obviously correct to anyone who’s a real Republican.
We must work, we must persuade, we must argue tirelessly as much with our fellow Republicans as with the Democrats on the merits of our views and our policies. We must put in the thankless work within the party, taking positions within it to keep it functioning, and later lead it. We must show solidarity with other Republicans, and not just the conservatives. All these things are vital in order to show our good faith, so that we can count on other Republicans to join us when we get our next turn at the top.
Even if conservatism is the Republican Party’s Michael Jordan, we must remember that Jordan never won a league championship until he started running an offensive system that let his teammates have their turns with the ball. It’s time for conservatives to stop being ballhogs, too, so that we can win both as a team, and for our own faction.
No more withholding our votes. No more calling people RiNOs or sellouts. No more sitting back and complaining about the establishment without getting involved ourselves. It’s time for Reaganite activism, in his example.
* I take this phrase to exclude people who are not nominated in the usual fashion, so that people who wouldn’t have counted include Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recall election, or David Duke in a Louisiana runoff.
Sega Master System on Wii Virtual Console. It’s about time! I mean, you already want enough money from me right, Nintendo?
The word is that Kosovars are on the verge of declaring formal independence from Serbia with the support of the EU and, apparently, the United States.
Should I cheer? I can’t tell which parties are trustworthy here. On one hand you have Serbia, a country that not too long ago was a party to genocidal activity in Bosnia, and probably has folk who wouldn’t mind some ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo. On the other hand, Christians in Kosovo and their churches have been under attack since the region fell under NATO protection, and there’s the suggestion of Islamic terrorists getting their way here.
Is it even possible for us to come up with a resolution here that one could cheer? I’m open to corrections here on any of my impressions above.
CBO is projecting a growing deficit and a slowing economy, however they project no recession at this time.
What’s interesting is that the projected $219 billion deficit (up from $163 billion last year) does not include the ‘stimulus’ bill the Democrats would like to pass. So we can expect the Democrats to be increasing the deficit by 50% with their coming spending.
Quoting today’s CBO report:
The state of the economy is particularly uncertain at the moment. The pace of economic growth slowed in 2007, and there are strong indications that it will slacken further in 2008. In CBO’s view, the ongoing problems in the housing and financial markets and the high price of oil will curb spending by households and businesses this year and trim the growth of GDP. Although recent data suggest that the probability of a recession in 2008 has increased, CBO does not expect the slowdown in economic growth to be large enough to register as a recession. Economic performance worse than that suggested in CBO’s forecast could significantly decrease projected revenues and increase projected spending. Furthermore, policy changes intended to mitigate the economic slowdown would, by design, tend to increase the budget deficit in the short term.
CBO expects the economy to rebound after 2008, as the negative effects of the turmoil in the housing and financial markets fade. Under the assumptions that govern CBO’s baseline, the budget deficit will amount to 1.5 percent of GDP or less each year from 2009 to 2011. Subsequently, the budget will show a small surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2012 and remain near that level each year through 2018 (the end of the current 10-year projection period).
I find it also helpful that CBO is standing up today and saying there’s no recession. I have no idea actually if CBO projections tend to be accurate or not, but I hope the markets can be fed every bit of good news they can get.
Of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are still projected to grow faster than GDP over the next 10 years. But that’s not news, so nothing will be done.
Update: And the markets finished strongly today, with the Dow Jones Industrials up 298.98 on the day.
…or a failure to democratize?
A portion of the wall between Gaza and Egypt was blown up by Hamas, and Gazans flooded through to get a taste of the Egyptian economy. Says the Washington Times:
Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or in donkey carts to buy cigarettes, fuel, and other items made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Across the coastal strip, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, people pushed into buses and piled into rickety pickup trucks heading to Egypt and a rare opportunity to escape months of isolation.
Police from the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action.
“Freedom is good. We need no border after today,” said unemployed 29-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghazal.
Of course the Hamas agents surely did this to bring weapons in, but the fact that the people of Gaza do not feel free under their tyrants, and do not approve of the policies and their consequences, is apparent.
I hold this up as evidence that Hamas’s public support in Gaza may not be all it’s cracked up to be, and that perhaps they won election through terror, not persuasion.
Bank of America announces 95% earnings cut. Wachovia down 98%.
Federal Reserve announces 75 basis point cuts in federal funds rate and discount rate.
I’m no expert, but all this sounds nuts, but clearly at least the first part was predicted given the world stock market drops yesterday. So we’ll see if the Fed cushioned our own drop much, I suppose.