More rain on the fire

There is no evidence that evidence to the contrary will ever be dispositive for the ignorant who have accepted the global warming nonsense, but here is more data to consider.

Angry White Men

Aspen Times Opinion

In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man

Gary Hubbell
February 9, 2008

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Gary Hubbell is a regular columnist with the Aspen Times Weekly.

Obama the Messiah?

Here is an interesting web site for those who wonder about the Obama phenomenon and want to appreciate the political problem Hillary faces. Republicans have to hope that a fire that burns so brightly will fade fast---at least before the November elections.

Hillary Health

This article is instructive to those who think Hillary is just brilliant for proposing a single payer health care system. The Labour Party in the U.K. decided that the people were right about excessively long wait times in emergency rooms, so they pledged that if they were elected, the wait time would be cut to just 4 hours. Evidently that sounded like a great deal to the voters there. At any rate, we now have a situation where ambulances are left parked outside of the hospital for hours with the patients inside so much of the wait time will not be counted against the Labour pledge. This, folks is what you get when you follow liberals down the road that sounds good.

Another political quiz

It is difficult for a former Professor to give up quizzing, so here is a question for today. "Which minority group does Hillary think is important in the coming Texas primary?"

Tears

So far in this election season, Obama's speeches have brought his listeners to tears. McCain has done the same thing to conservatives, but in a different way. Hillary has simply brought herself to tears. It is all pretty sad.

Crying redux

Since Hillary lost everything on Tuesday, it is fair to say that her crying didn't help this time so we probably won't see that again until the final blow to Clinton term no. 3 is administered.

Obama and the National Anthem

We need to learn more of this response to the National Anthem by Obama as he moves closer and closer to eliminating Hillary from another Clinton term. A campaign against him by McCain could be fun.

Best of plans won't always work out

For the most part, this conservative finds the current political situation fairly depressing. About the only bright spot is the ironic problems facing the dems. They very cleverly attempted to set up rules to grease the slope for Hillary. First, they moved the primaries up where they would be over and thereby let her spend months on the general election campaign. They added super delegates to block another McGovern or Carter nomination, punished Florida and Michigan for their primary decisions, and now all of these actions are biting them in the rear.

The early primaries are mostly helping the Republicans who will have a nominee early and thus more time to try to bring unity to the election. Clinton and Obama are tied and will remain so for a long time, it looks like. The super delegates represent 20% of the total delegates and there is a chance they will be put in the position of going against the wishes of the voters. Clinton wants the delegates from Michigan and Florida counted even though there was no contest in either state and this unbiased observer is hoping the issue winds up in court with the lawyers from the Gore campaign of 2000 getting back in the fray.

Howard Dean says he will impose some resolution on the situation before it becomes serious, and that could be the most delicious of the many bizarre aspects of this election. The Mother of all unintended consequences.

Can this work again?

This is Hillary wiping a tear yesterday; a day when she lost all caucuses and primary elections. Crying must have polled well with women.

Liberals strike out again

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded. The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

Once again, the liberals have failed to move beyond the surface "feels good/sounds right" conclusion and backed something that makes a contrived problem worse. Read it all here.

Climate Change and Common Sense

Canadian scientists are seeking funds to expand their research on their clues that the activity of the sun may be presaging a rather long period of global cooling. Yes, they are deviating from the dogma of such well-respected climatologists as Al Gore and John McCain, but they at least have common sense on their side. The Canadian scientists are wanting to look at the sun for evidence of increased sunspot activity. Solar activity fluctuates in an 11 year cycle, but so far in this cycle the sun has had very little activity. This lack of solar activity could be the signal that we may be starting what is known as the Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century. Such an event last occurred in the 17th century. There was solar inactivity which corresponded to a period of bitter cold starting in about 1650 and lasted, with brief periods of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers led to massive crop failures, famine, and death in Northern Europe.
The Canadians have been using a 60 year old radio telescope to monitor solar activity and want newer instruments to better monitor the sun. Since all of us aren't climate scientists, we need to fall back on our common sense. Here is the question: Which is more likely to have an effect on earth's climate---the sun or man? After you answer that, you need to ask if you really believe that man can do anything to influence in any way that which the sun hath wrought?

This is just a start

Muslim medical students are refusing to obey hygiene rules brought in to stop the spread of deadly superbugs, because they say it is against their religion.

Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam

Universities and NHS trusts fear many more will refuse to co-operate with new Department of Health guidance, introduced this month, which stipulates that all doctors must be "bare below the elbow".

The measure is deemed necessary to stop the spread of infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have killed hundreds.

Minutes of a clinical academics' meeting at Liverpool University revealed that female Muslim students at Alder Hey children's hospital had objected to rolling up their sleeves to wear gowns.

Similar concerns have been raised at Leicester University. Minutes from a medical school committee said that "a number of Muslim females had difficulty in complying with the procedures to roll up sleeves to the elbow for appropriate handwashing".

Sheffield University also reported a case of a Muslim medic who refused to "scrub" as this left her forearms exposed.

Documents from Birmingham University reveal that some students would prefer to quit the course rather than expose their arms, and warn that it could leave trusts open to legal action.

American Politics for Dummies

From P. J. o'Rourk:

Here are some of the better items used by P.J. O'Rourk to explain our politics to Europeans.

The question of race in America is supposed to be a matter of what one looks like. But it is difficult to comprehend how a political interest group that contains both Al Sharpton and Halle Berry could be based on looks.

Mitt Romney is supposed to be my own type of candidate, a true conservative. But Mitt was governor of Massachusetts. This is like applying to be pope and listing your prior job experience as "Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem."

Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a--no offense--European, then whack.

It is getting nasty out there

As is evident from this blog, the dirt on John McCain is out there and according to conventional wisdom the Clinton's will use it. The main claim that McCain is unstable seems most believable and the charge that he cracked while a POW is not too surprising and has been whispered for a long time. My objections to McCain are based on his record, but many voters would be swayed by more tawdry revelations that would help one to overlook the Clinton's slimy past.

A Brilliant Idea

It is not often that something is published in a blog that is as brilliant as the following essay:

A Modest Proposal for Middle East Peace
The U.N. need only take five simple steps.

By Victor Davis Hanson

It can be read here.

Call Al Gore

Three weeks of crippling snow storms across China have inflicted $7.5 billion in damages, the government said Friday, as it announced a $700 million relief fund for farmers.

The freakish weather -- the country's worst in five decades -- has paralyzed China's densely populated central and eastern regions just as tens of millions of travelers were seeking to board trains and buses to return home for this month's Lunar New Year.

The storms have killed at least 60 people, closed roads, disabled the rail system, destroyed crops and exacerbated a coal shortage, forcing power plants to shut down and factories to cut production.

At a news conference to discuss the government's response to the storms, Zou Ming, deputy director of the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said the storms had caused $7.5 billion in damages.

The kiss of death

The biggest worry Obama has right now is that Al Gore will endorse him.

Proposition

I got this from Lucianne.com. There are a lot of witty people out there with Photo Shop, it seems.

More on vouchers for students

This is a pretty comprehensive essay on vouchers as employed in public schools. The whole thing is worth reading, but it depressed me to learn as reported in the following paragraph that we are not seeing the expected improvement in public schools that competition is supposed to provide. Liberals, of course, will take this conclusion and argue that rather than expand vouchers to broaden the positive, we should abandon them, take the money, expand funding for failed programs and teachers, and sink all students equally.

Fifteen years into the most expansive school choice program tried in any urban school district in the country, Milwaukee’s public schools still suffer from low achievement and miserable graduation rates, with test scores flattening in recent years. Violence and disorder throughout the system seem as serious as ever. Most voucher students are still benefiting, true; but no “Milwaukee miracle,” no transformation of the public schools, has taken place. One of the Milwaukee voucher program’s founders, African-American educator Howard Fuller, recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn’t been the deep, wholesale improvement in MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] that we would have thought.” And the lead author of one of the Milwaukee voucher studies, Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, told me: “The research on school choice programs clearly shows that low-income students benefit academically. It’s less clear that the presence of choice in a community motivates public schools to improve.”