A letter to my Senators

This letter was sent to both Senators Snowe and Collins separately.

Dear Senator Snowe,

There was no "March to Socialism" in your topic list, so I chose "Budget" instead.

Our Federal government HAS to stop this unfettered spending now. The 'stimulus' package currently before the Senate continues to pile burden upon burden on the citizens of Maine, the USA and our children. I disagreed with President Bush's push to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, ostensibly to thaw the credit freeze all while nationalizing segments of our financial system, and I disagree with President Obama's continuation of same. We must let economic Darwinism, ie the markets, to resume their normal workings to weed out those who took unnecessary, greedwagon jumping risk to the detriment of their bottom lines.

Failure has always been a part of the strength of the United States, for it is failure where the greatest lessons are learned. Unfortunately, the mindset of those who administer power in this country is that failure is intolerable and unacceptable. This disturbing paternalism is leading us down roads we have no business traversing.

I fear for the direction we are going, and I must rely on my elected representatives to bring some Maine common sense back to the process. Please stand strong against the astronomical amounts of money being proposed in the name of "economic stimulus." It's all a trillion dollar lie.

Thank you,

Jeff Howe

Today's Comedian

They say things that aren't funny
Yet everyone laughs
They do things that aren't funny
Yet everyone laughs
They take pains to be offensive
And everyone laughs

I don't know if the problem is with them
Or everyone who is laughing

Nancy Pelosi said it...

... in a press conference:

"Every month we don't have an economic recovery package, 500 million Americans lose their jobs."

500 million Americans. lol

More of the Same Old, Same Old

Congress is working on an $825 billion "stimulus" package to be voted on sometime this year, probably February. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has said it could get larger.

Apparently, it's chock full of .... what we used to call pork, now they call earmarks.

As House Minority Leader, John Boehner, said of the bill, "“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?”

For a guy espousing "change", it certainly sounds like business as usual to me.

C'mon America, wake up! Flush Washington clean and start over again.

Everyone Should Read This

It's time to pray for global warming, by John Tomlinson, Flint Journal Columnist

by John Foren | Flint Journal Editor

Monday January 19, 2009, 4:20 AM

Flint Journal's
John Tomlinson

If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.

The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What's more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.

In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger. Just as an aside, do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? But don't worry, we're safe now, that was the nineties.

Dr. Kunihiko, Chancellor of Japan's Institute of Science and Technology said this: "CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other ... every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so." Now why would a learned man say such a crazy thing?

This is where the looney left gets lost. Their mantra is atmospheric CO2 levels are escalating and this is unquestionably causing earth's temperature rise. But ask yourself -- if global temperatures are experiencing the biggest sustained drop in decades, while CO2 levels continue to rise -- how can it be true?

Ironically, in spite of being shown false, we must now pray for it. Because a massive study, just released by the Russian Government, contains overwhelming evidence that earth is on the verge of another Ice Age.

Based on core samples from Russia's Vostok Station in Antarctica, we now know earth's atmosphere and temperature for the last 420,000 years. This evidence suggests that the 12,000 years of warmth we call the Holocene period is over.

Apparently, we're headed into an ice age of about 100,000 years -- give or take. As for CO2 levels, core samples show conclusively they follow the earth's temperature rise, not lead it.

It turns out CO2 fluctuations follow the change in sea temperature. As water temperatures rise, oceans release additional dissolved CO2 -- like opening a warm brewsky.

To think, early last year, liberals suggested we spend 45 trillion dollars and give up five million jobs to fix global warming. But there is good news: now that we don't have to spend any of that money, we can give it all to the banks.

John Tomlinson is a local conservative columnist for The Flint Journal. He lives in the Genesee County area. You can e-mail him. Read more columns by John Tomlinson.

This is Interesting, pt. 2

Beam me up: Scientists left baffled as mysterious columns of coloured light appear in the night skies

By Mail Foreign ServiceLast updated at 11:29 AM on 15th January 2009

These stunning images show mysterious columns of light streaming into the sky above the town of Sigulda in Latvia at the end of last month.

Taken by designer Aigar Truhins with a standard digital camera, the photographs have prompted excited online discussions among amateur astronomists all over the internet.

'My son exclaimed, 'The aliens are coming!'' Truhins was quoted as saying.

Enlarge

Beam me up: Mysterious columns of light stream into the air above the town of Sigulda

The mysterious lights prompted excited discussion on the internet

'It certainly looked that way,' he added.

But experts are agreed there may be a more prosaic explanation - ice crystals in the air.

The air above the town was notably cold and filled with suspended ice crystals.

It is believed that the columns were formed by those reflecting light from the bright streetlamps and other lights on the ground - beaming it back downwards again.

Skies all over Europe have been filled with such natural phenomena during the cold snap of recent weeks.

But finally the experts agreed on one explanation...

The lights were said to be a reflection caused by the light from streetlamps on the ground hitting ice crystals suspended in the cold air

Scientists at the website spaceweather.com said: 'Truhin’s pillars are not the ordinary kind. Even eading experts in atmospheric optics can’t quite figure them out

'These pillars are mysterious. They have unexplained curved tops and even curved arcs coming from their base.

'Arcs in rare displays like these could be from column crystals to give parts of tangent arcs, others could be the enigmatic Moilanan arc or even the recently discovered reflected Parry arc.

'We do not know – so take more photos on cold nights!'

This is Interesting

Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected
By Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
posted: 07 January 2009
04:43 pm ET

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.

Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.

Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.

Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.

But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.

There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission).

In July 2006, the instrument was launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and reached an altitude of about 120,000 feet (36,500 meters), where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted."

Detailed analysis of the signal ruled out primordial stars or any known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy.

Other radio galaxies also can't account for the noise – there just aren't enough of them.

"You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," said study team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.

For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.

"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

And not only has it presented astronomers with a new puzzle, it is obscuring the sought-for signal from the earliest stars. But the cosmic static may itself provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was much younger, less than half its present age. Because the radio waves come from far away, traveling at the speed of light, they therefore represent an earlier time in the universe.

"This is what makes science so exciting," Seiffert said. "You start out on a path to measure something – in this case, the heat from the very first stars – but run into something else entirely, some unexplained."

From: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090107-aas-loud-cosmic-noise.html

As the Leadership Turns....

From an article:

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama is set to speak about deficit-control measures he plans to include in his first budget, due next month, an Obama aide said. The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

I'd like to repeat part of this paragraph for effect.

The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

Again:

The aide stressed that the president-elect is inheriting a fiscal disaster not of his making.

And again:

a fiscal disaster not of his making.

I beg to differ.

Mr. Obama and his colleagues in the Congress are primarily responsible for this fiscal mess we are currently in. It's been documented time and again. They did it for political and financial gain.

It's not all on him, of course. But he was one of the leading recipients of donations from Franklin Raines and Fannie Mae.

Unfortunately, half of this country will refuse to see it or believe it.

Willful ignorance is not pretty.

Hot Stove

Well, the Yankees have dominated the Hot Stove this year by snatching up Sabathia, Burnett and Texiera (Texiera from right under the noses of Boston). There is moaning in Red Sox Nation over that. There is also a sort of forced apathy or cheer from some.

It's the emotionalism of the response to moves like this which keep the game at the forefront. People like to paint Scott Boras (Texiera's agent, as well as the agent for many players) as the devil incarnate. Sites like bostondirtdogs.com help to reinforce that image with photoshopped graphics.

Hey, it's all fun.

But it's all business, too.

What player isn't going to look for the deal that benefits them them most?? The same holds true for management of professional sports teams. Everyone in the business is about bottom line.

Sports is sort of like politics. Spectators (citizens) pay the ticket prices (taxes) to watch the teams and team owners (politicians) do their things. And the spectators are often upset or irritated by it. Then they go home and look to the next game.

The teams (politicians) make promises to the spectators (citizens) throughout the season and the off-season that they are working to get better, often wtih no discernible results.

So, by this line of thinking, it appears that politics is really a spectator sport.

That's too bad. .

Crisp to KC for Ramirez

Coco Crisp, Boston Red Sox center fielder, has been traded to the Kansas City Royals in exchange for relief pitcher Ramon Ramirez.

Crisp was with the Red Sox for three seasons. He will be remembered for breaking his thumb his first year, the fight with Tampa Bay pitcher James Shields, his ten-pitch at bat in the playoffs this year which ended up producing a run. He will also be remembered for his hustle, his defensive skills and his professionalism, especially when informed he'd be sharing his position with Jacoby Ellsbury.

This is what Coco had to say about the trade.

"I know my agent had told me there was a possible trade in the works within this week, and all that waiting and anticipating to see if it even happens kind of keeps you on edge," said Crisp, who was in California and found out about the deal at 7 a.m. PT. "When I finally got the news that I was going to Kansas City, it was exciting."

"It was a learning experience, definitely," Crisp said of his time in Boston. "I had a lot of fun. It's been a great experience for me coming from a contending team like Cleveland to a team that was already in the mix playoff-wise. I've learned on the field and off the field. It's helped me grow.

"The one negative aspect that came out of the whole thing was that I was plagued by nagging injuries, primarily the whole time I was there, with the exception of a month here or a month there and toward the end of this season, when I was fully healed from my hand injury, which I hurt within the first five games of coming over to Boston. It was an up-and-down ride. Most of the time, I enjoyed myself over there, even though it was difficult."

Even facing the prospect of going to the perennial cellar-dwelling Royals, Crisp was positive, professional and good-natured.

Goodbye, Coco Crisp. Your name may sound like a breakfast cereal, but I will always think of you as a consummate baseball player.

You will be missed.

Looking at the Bright Side

At least those insidious campaign commercials are finished!

A New Scam

This is one I hadn't seen before. But I've since received two emails saying the same thing. The scam is as follows:

---

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity
we have determined that you are eligible to receive
a tax refund under section 501(c) (3) of the
Internal Revenue Code. Tax refund value is $120.50.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days
in order to IWP the data received.
If u don't receive your refund within 9 business
days from the original IRS mailing date shown,
you can start a refund trace online.

If you distribute funds to other organization, your records must show wether
they are exempt under section 497 (c) (15). In cases where the recipient org.
is not exempt under section 497 (c) (15), you must have evidence the funds will
be used for section 497 (c) (15) purposes.

If you distribute fund to individuals, you should keep case histories showing
the recipient's name and address; the purpose of the award; the maner of
section; and the realtionship of the recipient to any of your officers, directors,
trustees, members, or major contributors.

To access the form for your tax refund, please click here

This notification has been sent by the Internal Revenue Service,
a bureau of the Department of the Treasury.

---

First, the email was sent to "undisclosed-recipients" which would imply a mass BCC mailing. If the IRS was communicating to me via email, it wouldn't be as a mass mailing.

Second, the 501(c)(3) section of the tax code is a provision granting exemption from the federal income tax to non-profit organizations. It has nothing to do with tax refunds.

Third, I checked out the link provided (without actually clicking on the link and possibly getting directed to a malicious site) and it definitely did not go to the IRS.

So, remember, if someone is emailing you saying that you have money coming to you, there's a 99.999999999% chance it's a scam. If you respond to these scams, you will be one of the reasons they keep propagating.

Be careful out there.

(Please note that I changed the url in the live link portion of the scam email. It will take you nowhere now)