Truth in Advertising? Not With GM

On a day when the news features an unrepentant FCC chairman declaring, in essence, that the internet will be turned into a "public utility" and subject to future regulation much as telephones and power systems have been, and when Drudge features a report of five students sent home for wearing American flag-intensive apparel on Cinco de Mayo, there's already a lot of red flags waving in the face of your typical Constitution-loving patriot.

But I choose instead to discuss truth in advertising, as in, the lack of truth in advertising from spots being aired by Government Motors and the AARP, which I think now stands for the American Association to Re-elect Progressives, for it certainly has little to do with its traditional senior citizen membership.

Let's tackle the GM ad spots. Ed Whitacre, chairman of Government Motors and a shill for the Regime, as Rush says, announced proudly (in radio and TV spots, as well as a Wall Street Journal article headlined, "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full") that GM has paid off its $6.7 billion in loans from the taxpayers years ahead of schedule.

Well, hot damn, you may say! It's the "Soggy Bottom Boys!" Well, not so fast. There's more to this story, and I have it thanks to columnist Shikha Dalmia writing at Forbes.com.

The GM Bailout, let's remember, included the direct loan of $6.7 billion. It also included $42.8 billion as an equity purchase (stock) of the company by the U.S. government (60.8 percent!) and the Canadian government (11.7 percent!). Together the two governments control 72.5 percent of GM, which is why it is truly Government(s) Motors.

So the Bailout isn't paid back in full. It's not even close.

But the story gets worse. GM has yet to turn a profit under its new management, which is no big surprise. Since when has the U.S. government run anything efficiently? So where did the money come from?

From an escrow account of $13.4 billion of "working capital" that came from the federal bailout!

Now the question is why did this take place at this time. The Forbes article has the answer, which once would've been shocking but it's par-for-the-course in our Obama Nation:

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5%) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government's tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new -- and bigge r-- DOE loan much more feasible.

In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt--not pay it back!

Sadly, it gets worse still. By incurring more debt, GM will be farther away from the day that it turns a profit and, according to the government's plan, it will not sell its equity (stock) in GM until it is profitable and becomes a publicly traded company again.

As Dalmia puts it:

Mr. Whitacre's bailout payback ploy is a desperate attempt to win back the car-buying public deeply disgusted by the spectacle of GM rattling its tin-cup before Uncle Sam. But the fact of the matter is that the company is still deep in the hole. It might claw its way back – or it might not. But surely it's premature for its media boosters to pop open the champagne bottle without getting their story straight?

When I think of GM I think of the lemon I bought for my son to drive, a 2005 Impala that must be "burped" regularly every couple of months in order not to serially overheat. The first GM product I've owned since a wonderful 1957 Chevy that I never should have sold. Now that was a car!

I also think of my poor mother-in-law who invested heavily in GM stock a few months before the government took it over. She used the time honored "buy low, hold and sell it high" rationale to justify her action. The stock is worth less than she paid for it, substantially less. (Yes, she had professional investment advice; those boys were caught flat-footed, just as we all were.)

I think of all the dealers who lost their GM and Chrysler affiliations across the country, of the lost jobs as weird decisions were made as to who won and who lost in the dealership shuffle.

Then I multiply all this sorrow and suffering by many thousands or millions, and it makes me sad.

Then when I hear Ed Whitacre crowing about GM's accomplishments and asking for us to trust the company again, I want to vomit. This is not America. It is not freedom.

Resolved: if and when conservative-minded, freedom loving people control Congress, they should require the administration to divest itself of 100 percent of its interest in Government Motors and any other private business. Businesses should succeed or fail on their own merits. The taxpayers should not be the lenders -- or owners -- of last resort.

(Not) Telling the Truth About Islam's Past

Barack Hussein Obama, as he now refers to himself, is the first president that I have ever feared would cause harm to America through his words to foreign peoples.

I never questioned the patriotism of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, or even Jimmy Carter (not while he was in office, anway). I never thought Bill Clinton was unpatriotic; just occasionally embarrassing.

I'm not so sure about BHO. His "World Apology Tour 2009" continued this week, and a closer examination of his anticipated Cairo Speech is very troubling. He says some things about Islam and its history that simply are not factual. Is this because he is misinformed, or is this a deliberate deception, and for whom is the deception intended if this is the case? For the Muslim world, or for American citizens?

I'm not the only one who is wondering.

Today's National Review Online carries an article entitled "Making Believe: Obama's speech was deep in fable, short on fact" by Contributing Editor Andrew C. McCarthy.

I recommend you read it in its entirety, but I am going to reprint generous portions for discussion:

The oration was called “A New Beginning.” “A Pretend Beginning” would have been a more accurate. ...

[SNIP]

... the speech was warmed-over leftist dogma sprinkled with a fictional accounting of Islam and its history. ... What the president did was promote various fictions about Islam while airbrushing truths that are not merely harsh but are the facts behind the rampage that has victimized us for much of the last three decades. That rampage, moreover, was substantially discounted in a haze of moral equivalence.

It would be bad enough to do this under any circumstances, but it is inexcusable to do it while paying only lip-service to one of the few truths the president did speak: namely, that any “partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t.”

“What it isn’t” is a religion of peace with a legacy so overflowing with achievement in science, philosophy, and the arts that civilization, as President Obama claimed, owes a great “debt to Islam.” In fact, the ledger runs heavily in the other direction.

Islam was spread by the sword — not by the allure of its still problematic message — and many of the cultural achievements within the Muslim world that the president glossed occurred despite Islam (particularly in the areas of literature, art, and music) or are more properly understood as the accomplishments (especially in science and architecture) of better-educated peoples whom Muslims conquered. The president rehearsed the claim that Islam single-handedly “carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is a myth. As Robert Spencer has ably recounted, it is not true that Muslims alone preserved the works of Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates, and other pillars of Western enlightenment. More significantly, arrested development in the Islamic world owes to an anti-intellectualism that persists to this day in enclaves holding that no education beyond the study of the Koran is necessary.

Sullivan recounts the president's de-coupling of Islamic verse to make a point that the Koran does not, in fact, make. I discussed this in a PREVIOUS POST here.

Noting a bowdlerization even this egregious does not do justice to how misleading the president’s tactic was. Though Obama portrayed Islam as having a “proud tradition of tolerance,” it has a far more consequential legacy of intolerance. Islam strives for hegemony, seeking not to co-exist but to make all the world the realm of the Muslims (dar al-Islam) while regarding those parts not under its dominion as the realm of war (dar al-Harb).

Sura 5:33 is far from aberrant, and the “Holy Koran,” quite apart from its several other commands to violence, dehumanizes Jews in several places as the children of monkeys and pigs. It admonishes that Muslims “take not the Jews and the Christians as friends and protectors” (5:51). The hadiths of the prophet are replete with tales of non-Muslims slaughtered, forced into slavery, and reduced to humiliating dhimmitude. Mohammed’s vision of the end of the world foresaw Jesus returning to abolish Christianity and impose Islam, while Jews are killed by Muslims (with the help of trees and stones, which alert the faithful, “Muslim, there is a Jew behind me — come and kill him!”

In fact, even President Obama’s cordial greeting of “assalaamu alaykum” to his Egyptian audience conveys (no doubt unintentionally) something of basic Islamic intolerance. Under sharia (Islamic law), as Spencer explains, “a Muslim may only extend this greeting — Peace be upon you — to a fellow Muslim. To a non-Muslim he is to say, ‘Peace be upon those who are rightly guided,’ i.e., Peace be upon the Muslims.”

This last paragraph is vitally important to understand -- Mr. Obama used the greeting of one Muslim to another, not the non-Muslim greeting to the Muslim. This may have through ignorance or oversight. Or it may have been an intentional signal. More importantly, how did the Muslims who heard the president's speech interpret it?

You may think that I am splitting hairs on this point, but the president, who is engaging in "mass communicatin'" and diplomacy, is representing the people of the United States, not just himself. Islamic scholars in the Middle East do not share the same understanding of constitutional government that we have. There is an Islamic principle that any territory, once ruled by Muslims, is forever Islamic and cannot be legitimately governmented by infidels.

It could be interpreted that if Obama can be considered a Muslim (though perhaps what we Christians would call a "backsliding" one), and he is leader of America, then America becomes Muslim territory, and thus Islamic rule must be consolidated and enhanced through such things as shari'a.

Back to the article:

More to the point, the president takes the risible position (as did his predecessor) that “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.” Islam, however, is palpably a huge part of the problem in combating violent extremism, which is serially committed by Muslims under the influence of notable religious scholars (including more than a few educated at al-Azhar University, the “beacon of Islamic learning” that co-hosted the president’s speech) who invoke some of the many scriptures the president elected not to mention.

It is true enough that Islam must be part of the solution to the promotion of peace, but for two reasons alone. First, while it is possible to ignore Islamic doctrine’s nexus to terrorism, the nexus cannot credibly be denied, and therefore the need to deal with it is unavoidable. Second, and related, there can be no peace unless Islam reforms — unless it purges its savage elements and compellingly condemns the violence committed in its name. This can’t be done as Obama and others would like to do it: by telling Muslims everything is fine, that their religion is wonderful as is, while making believe the bad scriptures don’t exist and radicals are merely a tiny fringe of crazy people. That is a strategy designed by liberals to convince other liberals who don’t need convincing, so desperate are they to believe all is well. It does nothing to discredit the violent fundamentalists in the eyes of other Muslims; in fact, it enhances their credibility because it ignores their doctrinal justifications of terror rather than offering a credible counter-construction.

Worse, assuming there is no credible counter-construction (which may very well be the case), there is an enormous amount of reform to be done — work that can only be done by Muslims. We cannot rouse them to the task by telling them we think Islam, as it currently exists, is promoting peace.

Everyone talks peace, but in seeking it, the question must always be asked: How do we get there from here? You do not travel the road to peace by pretending understandings that do not exist, and by trying to bamboozle your opponent (or your base of support) into thinking fantasy is reality. To do so is to build a peace that will not be peace at all.

Muslims who correctly understand the teachings of their religion have always known that peace comes through victory, not compromise. Compromise would be a repudiation of their faith.

I can understand that, even appreciate it.

I believe that President Obama also understands this about Islam, but for whatever reasons he doesn't want to say it aloud.

That worries me. It should you as well.

It Takes One (Ex) Marxist to Know Another

It's pretty bad when the former Soviet Union's favorite daily newspaper calls America "Marxist."

But that's what an opinion article in Pravda (Russian for "truth") contended recently:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

[SNIP]

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Let's be fair in our analysis. There's a bit of nationalistic garbage in this guy's point of view, but when you take it on the whole, it's pretty accurate.

I love the line about American financial wizards "make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison." It's true. And our new government is putting our financial wizards to shame!

I'm not sure I buy into the bit about Putin warning Obama and Blair "not to follow the path of Marxism, it only leads to disaster." Why would he warn Blair, who is no longer in office?

This next is fascinating reading:

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

How delightfully non-PC!

The writer concludes with the observation that while individual Americans will keep thumping their chests, declaring how "free" they remain, "the rest of the world will only snicker."

I fear he may be correct.

AP: 'Becoming More & More an Obama Economy'

Another Associated Press reporter has gone off the reservation, doing some actual thinking and, in an analysis piece clearly labeled as such (for a change), says that Obama's "recovery plans are sowing some unease."

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama offered his domestic-policy proposals as a "break from a troubled past." But the economic outlook now is more troubled than it was even in January, despite Obama's bold rhetoric and commitment of more trillions of dollars.

And while his personal popularity remains high, some economists and lawmakers are beginning to question whether Obama's agenda of increased government activism is helping, or hurting, by sowing uncertainty among businesses, investors and consumers that could prolong the recession.

Although the administration likes to say it "inherited" the recession and trillion-dollar deficits, the economic wreckage has worsened on Obama's still-young watch.

Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.

Did you catch that last sentence?

Tom Raum notes that of the four million jobs lost since the recession officially began in December 2007, half of the losses have come in the last three months: December, January and February. All since America's businesses learned more about the new president's "plans" for the economy.

Raum sugests that Obama's cavalier attitude toward the stock market, and his suggestion that now might be a good time to put some investment money into it, have backfired.

The president's suggestion that it was a good time for investors with "a long-term perspective" to buy stocks may have been intended to help lift battered markets. But a big sell-off followed.

Presidents usually don't talk about the stock market. But the dynamics are different now.

A higher percentage of people have more direct exposure to stocks — including through 401(k) and other retirement plans — than ever.

So a tumbling stock market is adding to the national angst as households see the value of their investments and homes plunge as job losses keep rising.

The AP report also hints that Americans are catching on to the "jobs lost or saved" rhetoric: that it is merely a ploy to save face if the economy plunges even farther. He quotes U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana:

Even White House claims that its policies will "create" or "save" 3.5 million jobs have been questioned by Democratic supporters.

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, told Geithner last week.

"If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs," Baucus said. "You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

If the Associated Press is starting to fact check you and question the underlying assumptions of your economic policies, you may be in trouble.

Pelosi Loses Plausible Deniability

Thanks to Pope Benedict, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can no longer claim that she understands all the nuances of the Roman Catholic Church's view on abortion. She's heard the truth from its highest authority, and that truth is a smack down of all her previous weasel words.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, underscoring the Vatican's ruling on an issue that divides Americans, told U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Wednesday that Catholic politicians and legislators cannot back abortion rights.

Pelosi, a powerful U.S. politician who is Catholic and pro-choice, has been accused by U.S. bishops in the past of misrepresenting Church teachings on abortion.

"His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural and moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death ..." a Vatican statement said.

It said such teaching "enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men of goodwill in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development," it said.

Pelosi has tried to argue that theologians in the Church have never been able to agree on when life begins. Any mediocre student of Catholic teaching knows that this is not true. But it is the rare mediocre student who has such a vested interest in clinging to an immoral position for political gain.

The pope has informed her conscience for her, and now it is her free will to follow it or ignore it. I don't expect Pelosi to change her story, which is very sad. The consequences, for her and for the country, will be quite tragic.

UPDATE - George Weigel has much the same take as I do, only he says it so much better HERE.

Redefining Conception: Eugenics & Playing God

A story Friday at the BBC News online makes two points abundantly clear for the observant viewer.

First, the eugenics bandwagon is back in a big way, bigger even than in the days of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.

Second, BBC and other media are attempting to re-craft the definition of "conception."

The first baby in the UK tested before conception for a genetic form of breast cancer has been born.

Doctors at University College London said the girl and her mother were doing well following the birth this week. The embryo was screened for the altered BRCA1 gene, which would have meant the girl had a 80% chance of developing breast cancer.

Women in three generations of her husband's family have been diagnosed with the disease in their 20s. Paul Serhal, the fertility expert who treated the couple, said: "This little girl will not face the spectre of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life. The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter.

This all sounds wonderful, doesn't it unless you believe that human life begins at conception (where else could it begin?) and that the little girl would have been destroyed if tests had shown she had the gene. In point of fact, we are not told in the article whether this was the first embryo tested or one of several.

But wait, the BBC helpfully explains how the doctors get around this moral dilemma:

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves taking a cell from an embryo at the eight-cell stage of development, when it is around three-days old, and testing it.

This is before conception - defined as when the embryo is implanted in the womb. (Emphasis: OTB)

Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes to continue the pregnancy, and discard any whose genetic profile points to future problems.

Well, isn't that hunky dory! Even though sperm and egg have united and there is growth of the embryo, these scientists - with BBC approval - are claiming that conception doesn't really take place until implantation. Thus they justify each of their actions, including the deliberate destruction of living human embryos, by redefining a bedrock fact of biology.

Well, saying so doesn't make it so. Implantation is the important docking stage of early life where the embryo establishes its life-support system with its mother. When this process fails naturally it is a miscarriage (and this happens in nature frequently enough, though the mother may not even realize it). When it fails because of birth control pills or by other artificial means it is an abortion, though few people like to think of it this way.

The BBC is not alone in its acceptance of the redefinition of conception. I went to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary and it defines it as "the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation, or both." Oddly it doesn't say "what" is being fertilized or implanted. So the Brave New World'ers have gotten to Old Mr. Webster too.

Words used to mean things, and reporters used to have hard-nosed editors who wouldn't let them get away with shoddy reporting in which doctors should be asked why they have redefined conception. In a few more years there won't be any of us old newspaper curmudgeons left to point this out, and the process of playing God can go on unabated.

Pill Creator sees his Handiwork as Evil

Victor Frankenstein regretted the creation of his "monster."

So does Carl Djerassi.

The fictional Dr. Frankenstein tried to reanimate dead tissue to create life.

Dr. Djerassi, an Austrian chemist, successfully created "the Pill" that prevents life from taking place, or destroys it shortly after its creation.

Eighty-five year-old Carl Djerassi the Austrian chemist who helped invent the contraceptive pill now says that his co-creation has led to a "demographic catastrophe."

In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tonnes of hormones" that had impaired male fertility, The Taiwan Times says.

The assault began with a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard by Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step toward the earliest oral contraceptive pill.

Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction." He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."

Djerassi, co-inventor of Norethisterone, a synthetic progetogen, says that declining birth rates in Austria and other countries are an epidemic "far worse than obesity." Young Austrians who fail to have sufficient numbers of children are "committing national suicide."

Sadly you will not find this article in most daily newspapers whose editorial policies are deeply immersed in the Culture of Death (pro-choice). It is not likely that the Associated Press will waste any of its precious resources covering this story, even though Dr. Djerassi ought to be considered an authoritative voice in this matter. The AP is so heavily invested in promoting Planned Parenthood that it might as well be considered one of its public relations arms.

With a large number of people still believing in the Malthusian nonsense that world population is exploding (in many countries just the opposite is taking place, and the effect is accelerating), and the rest of the "civilized" world self-absorbed in hedonistic pursuits that contribute to a contraceptive mentality (kids are a burden, you know, and should be carefully planned so that they "occur" only when they are "affordable"), it is nearly impossible to get to the truth about the Pill and its social and environmental effects.

Were it not for immigration, the United States would be facing a population implosion. Even with immigration, the implosion will take place in coming years as the big Baby Boom generation ages and dies off. There already are financial problems beginning to show as we see that there will be too few productive citizens left to take care of the aging population. The real nightmare begins but a decade or so from now.

Pope Paul VI tried to warn the world with the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 and got little but universal condemnation for his trouble.

The head of Austria's Catholics, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, told an interviewer that the Vatican had forecast 40 years ago that the pill would lead to a dramatic fall in the birth rate in the west.

"Somebody above suspicion like Carl Djerassi ... is saying that each family has to produce three children to maintain population levels, but we're far away from that," he said.

Schonborn told Austrian TV that when he first read Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical condemning artificial contraception he viewed it negatively as a "cold shower." But he said he had altered his views as, over time, it had proved "prophetic."

In Biblical terms, 40 years is generally considered a generation. Forty years has elapsed. It's time a new generation of people faithful to God reversed this disastrous trend.

The Sociology of Global Warming - Part II

I can't say I didn't expect this.

My son's high school sociology teacher followed up his presentation last week of the Theology of Global Warming by backing it up with an "authoritative" video.

That's right, Archbishop Algore's "Inconvenient Truth."

My son is disgusted. "This is a bigger waste of time than usual," he said this morning. "It's all propaganda, with the same camera shots of glaciers falling into the ocean and video of polar bears swimming."

The irony is that the video had to be interrupted for a day because icy weather canceled classes on Tuesday, something that rarely happens in this part of Oklahoma. (This is becoming known in meteorological circles as the Global Gore Effect.)

The teacher has yet to respond to my son's extensive submission on global warming alternatives. The signs are not encouraging. I was thinking about dropping a note to this teacher, asking for an opportunity to at least present some sort of balancing information, but then I would kind of like my son to get a decent grade in this class so that our auto insurance rates will drop by $100 a month. His GPA is ever so close ...

I know. This is how Satan works in the modern world.

The Sociology of Global Warming?

My youngest recently came to me with a request for help in providing documentation that would refute his sociology teacher's continued Global Warming/Climate Change assault on his students:

"He's driving me nuts, Dad! And when I complained he told me that he wasn't going to shut up about global warming until I could provide him with solid proof that it wasn't happening!"

My first reaction was to ask, "What in hell does global warming have to do with an introductory sociology class at the high school level?" but I immediately realized that it was a stupid question because the vast majority of sociology teachers believe that anything and everything falls within their purvey, especially if it helps them advance their pet liberal causes.

So we sat down and within 10 minutes had used a third of a ream of printer paper documenting merely the highlights of all the actual information out there that contradicts and questions the new global warming religion. We organized it for presentation, fully realizing that it probably wouldn't make a bit of difference in the teacher's mind, but determined to make the attempt.

I told my son, "It is very important that you come across as open-minded if you wish to engage him in actual dialogue. Simply start by asking him if he believes that the pursuit of the truth is the essence of education. If he says yes, then simply say, 'Look, I don't know if global warming is actually taking place, but even the experts disagree right now whether we are warming, cooling, staying the same, and what's causing it.'"

"Then you should say, 'But does it make any sense at all to spend billions, maybe trillions of dollars, money that we don't actually have, on solutions that may not be necessary or might, if we guess wrong, make things worse? Do we have the right to expect everyone in America to radically change their way of life, to surrender some of their individual freedoms, based on science that it most definitely not settled?'"

Thus armed he has turned in his report. I will report back his results. We are not optimistic.

RELATED ITEM - Scientists report that after 200 years of melting, Alaska's glaciers are gaining ice mass again. The reason? The solar wind stream is at a 50-year low and temperatures are falling. Here's a link to an interesting report, and here's another link to a discussion at National Review's Planet Gore blog.

RELATED PHILOSOPHIC QUESTION - Does truth even matter anymore? Should teachers be asked to take some sort of variant on the Hippocratic oath that insists "First, tell no lies" ?