Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

We live in interesting times - again...

Yesterday's vote on the health care reform bill was the result of political machinations, arm twisting and outright bribery on a scale we didn't expect when Barack Obama was elected to bring "new transparency and bipartisanship to government".

It was a beautifully coordinated series of actions that cut through the time-tested defenses of our Constitution and our long history as a well-intentioned Republic. Those who pulled it off consider it a victory, but it may mark a turning point that will have unexpected results.

I have to feel that somewhere in the Democratic Party, some of those in touch with their constituents are wondering if this has "awakened a sleeping giant" of grassroots rebellion against the excesses of government.

From my perspective as a conservative, but not politically active voter, the giant woke up some time ago but was getting its wits together as ordinary citizens kept meeting and exchanging views while most "mainstream" media figures kept their eyes averted and kept praising almost every move by the Obama Administration.

While media figures of uncertain gender applied racial and sexual epithets to the tea party attendees, the tea parties kept gaining adherents and pulled in potential leaders while remaining essentially conservative, anti-big government, and anti-incumbent. This last characteristic may bring about a major change in the makeup of our Congress and Senate over the next four years.

The thing that makes this more than a remote possibility is the historical fact that a splintered group can be united by an attack by an external force. Our present US government has divorced itself from us taxpayers by behavior as alien to ours as Marie Antoinette's was to French subjects in 1789.

The rumbling in the streets is not tumbrils this time, it is the angry voices of people who have woken up to the fact that they were not watching the shop and the people they elected were partying like there was no tomorrow.

If all goes well, that may be exactly what happens...we will know more in November.

Keep your eye on the Internet because that is where history is captured as it is being made.

Palin shoots and scores - "Death Panels" will be axed from bill

Sarah Palin's notes on her FaceBook page raised so much public awareness that the Senate Finance Committee will drop a controversial provision on consultations for end-of-life care from its proposed healthcare bill.

The committee, which has worked on putting together a bipartisan healthcare reform bill, will drop the controversial provision after being derided as "death panels" to encourage euthanasia by conservatives.

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."

Grassley also said, ""The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants." 

I hope that Chuck Grassley and the other members of the Finance Committee continue their good work and remove any possibility of taxpayer funded health care subsidies for illegal immigrants.

H/T to Michael O'Brien at The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

Sangin, Afghanistan, photo essay from Michael Yon

 Michael Yon sends back photos from Sangin, Afghanistan as he follows the Ghurkas and Brits during another night and day of intense desert heat, IEDs, and other threats to survival.

He captures the essence of life on the front lines in the military and discusses how enlightened self-interest on the part of Afghan civilians will determine the future stability of Afghanistan.

This part of Afghanistan seems to combine primitive living conditions and rare touches of 21st century technology.  If it ever gets stabilized, it will probably become a tourist attraction again for those travelers who yearn to visit more primitive cultures.

His latest despatch is titled Common Sense & Common Thoughts.

Eaten any Slimehead or Toothfish lately?

You might be surprised how good they taste. This fish on the left used to be known as an anglerfish. Now you enjoy it as monkfish.

Overfishing has depleted most of the ocean's fish population. Today's seafood is often yesterday's trash fish.

For at least the past 40 years, fishermen have been harvesting fish that were previously considered undesirable and have been renaming their products to make them more appetizing.

The customer is not being cheated in this regard, it is mainly a matter of giving a product a name that will not induce revulsion. Slimehead and chips does not sound nearly as appetizing as Orange Roughy and chips, but it is the same product.

A slimehead (now called Orange Roughy) is a long-lived fish with the look of a prehistoric fossil. Slimeheads are named for the network of mucus-filled canals riddling their heads. In the 1970's, seafood dealers came up with the name Orange Roughy and the fish started appearing on dinner tables.

Other tasty fish under new names include the Patagonian toothfish which were rechristened "Chilean Sea Bass", Angler fish which were renamed "monkfish", and Snakeheads which are sold as "Channa". In Maine, sea urchins are known as 'whores' eggs' but they appear on your sushi menu as "uni".

Dr Boris Worm,Professor of Marine Biology at the Dow-Hawse University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has recently published a report on the Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services in  Science.

Bloggers and media are busy drawing conclusions and pointing fingers. Some even manage to work in Global Warming as a cause of overfishing.

If you would like a more reader friendly version of the story direct from the source, you might enjoy Mike Adams interview of Dr Worm,

You will find more information on the study of marine biodiversity, its causes, consequences of change, and conservation at the Worm Lab website.

One Question Poll on the economy

Your Chance To Vote On Obama's Performance on the Economy - AT&T/Yahoo Poll

VOTE HERE

Update 8/4/09:

(877,000 994,223 1,456,932 votes have been recorded.)

The percentages are not changing significantly are beginning to change.

H/T Theo Spark

Unintended consequences of appeasement

Gretchen maintains a number of bird feeders on our back deck and these feeders provide us with the pleasure of observing the interactions of 20 different species of birds.

We have recently been plagued by squirrels which will climb up on to the deck and empty a bird feeder in just a few minutes. In my younger days, I would have merely shot a few until the rest learned to keep their distance.

In our new, politically correct "age of reason", I thought I would see how appeasement would work on a local scale. After all, we have politicians who swear by the process in dealing with terrorists and illegal immigrants. Why not see how this would work on a smaller scale?

Since my neighbor Tom King made us a squirrel feeder some time ago, I decided to use it to lure the squirrels away from our bird feeders. I even set out a tray of corn for them with a big sign on it.

Sure enough, the squirrels loved the new sources of food and they played happily on the new feeders for a few days. So, I thought how wrong I have been. I could have been bribing varmints to leave us alone instead of whacking them. The politicians like Jimmy Carter were right. Kindness works!

Unfortunately the squirrels have an entitlement problem. Giving them new stuff did not make up for taking away the bird food they felt they were entitled to. They started climbing on the porch again and I started building barriers and installing mousetraps on their approach paths.

This slowed the squirrel invasion, but the continued availability of free corn in the squirrel feeders attracted a population of raccoons and long-legged squirrels. These long-legged squirrels and raccoons duke it out every night over who gets to empty the squirrel feeder.

Whistling snorts and screeching make it hard to sleep at night. All of this activity is attracting more raccoons and they are now climbing on to the back deck and eating everything in sight.

I have tomatoes ripening in my micro garden and I don't want to lose this year's crop to visiting varmints. It's time to change my policies and enforce the borders of our living space.

No more corn for squirrels or anybody else. Let them forage for themselves and we will maintain friendly relations with them as long as they respect our boundaries. If we find unwanted furry visitors on our deck or in our gardens, we will use increasing levels of force to drive them off or remove them permanently from the scene.

We will see how long it takes to establish a new relationship with the wildlife in our vicinity. I think it should take only a few days if we do it right.

If we don't take effective action soon, we could run the risk of attracting larger predators like coyotes which follow wildlife population shifts.

Anthropogenic Global Warming - a modern Piltdown Man hoax?

The "science" of climate change as expressed by non-scientist Al Gore and his adherents seems remarkably similar to an earlier hoax, the famous Piltdown Man "discovered" in 1912. The staging is remarkably similar. Conclusions are/were based on falsified data, people with important names supported the hoax, and the hoax was perpetrated by individuals seeking publicity and public recognition.

There are other similarities:

Once the Piltdown hoax was accepted by the Geological Society of London, there was great resistance to coming to grips with the truth.  Acceptance of the fact that it was a hoax took over 40 years.

The AGW hoax has been accepted by the UN and our current administration. Scorn is still being cast on those who question authority.  Well, there are a growing number of highly qualified skeptics who are casting light on questionable altering of data by AGW supporters.

Piltdown Man

The fragments of the Piltdown Man were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. It turned out to be a clever hoax by Charles Dawson, who craved recognition and membership in the prestigious Royal Society.

Approximately 1915, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the jaw was from an ape. Similarly, American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape.

In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, had easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took until 1953 for the scientific community to concede that Weidenreich was correct.

Anthropogenic Global Warming

In our modern hoax, the world is heating up, the seas are rising, and the glaciers are MELTING!!!
Only the application of money and suppression of industry will save us.

The few grains of truth are buried in a sea of falsified and altered data which more and more real scientists are exposing. The links to both sides of the argument can easily be found using Google.

Take the matter of glaciers melting. That is actually true as you can see from this chart. They have been melting ever since the 1700's.  Draw your own conclusions. (click to enlarge)
 

For the entire article go to: http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/1/77/2007/tcd-1-77-2007-print.pdf

I think that the sun is the primary driver of climate change and we will see a continuing fall in global temperatures during the decade 2010 - 2020. I am planning to stack away all the firewood I can. If we see a warming trend, I will welcome the longer growing season.

Thanks to The Englishman for the original link.

A New Era of Responsibility

I read this inspiring massage on the White House website:

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A New Era of Responsibility
"The 2010 Budget"
http://www.whitehouse.gov

Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account—to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day—because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
                                              – President Barack Obama

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I agree that this is vital.
Why is it then that I feel we are in this position as taxpayers?

Photo credit: popa.com