STUFF I WANT TO TALK ABOUT

For those of you who don’t see the Facebook SURVIVALIST page, Sharon and I celebrated our 500^th month anniversary on June 19^th.  Sharon and I met the day after Labor Day 1961, were friends who had a first date the day after Thanksgiving in 1964, were engaged on Memorial Day of 1965 and married on October 19^th, 1968.  I got the idea of counting months decades ago and have kept it up.  Sharon’s the most wonderful and prettiest girl in the world or anywhere else and I’m hoping and praying for at least another five hundred and, after that – well, who knows?  So long as we’re together.

By way of celebrating this anniversary, Sharon and I went to the movies.  And, we had fun.  No, we didn’t get to sit in the very back row of a balcony, but we did enjoy the movie.  We saw THE A-TEAM and we loved it!  Funny, exciting, great special effects, respectful of the original series, it was terrifically entertaining and the new guys, led by Liam Neeson as “John Hannibal Smith,” didn’t try to re-invent nor did they try to impersonate the original characters – which is why they came off so faithful to the originals.  If you see it in the movies or wait until you can rent or buy the DVD, be sure to watch all the way through the end titles – the score’s rousing anyway – and you’ll be in for a surprise.  Unlike the TV show, bad guys do get killed, so be prepared.  And, the film lends itself very nicely to the possibility of a sequel or sequels.  Sharon and I’d stand in line for tickets.  If you have a sense of humor, like action and great special effects, you’ll like THE A-TEAM.

We have close friends who went on vacation this week.  Rather than going to Florida beaches, they elected to go to South Carolina, instead, just in case.  It’s a shame.  Not that they are having a well-deserved vacation, but that so many people will likely avoid even the parts of Florida and the rest of the Gulf Coast so far unaffected by the oil situation.  As much as I find the guy living in the White House to be a waste of time, I cannot, in conscience, blame him for the oil situation.  The people comprising the decision-making leadership of British Petroleum, on the other hand, do deserve a lot of blame, if for nothing else than their cavalier attitude toward the destruction of miles of beaches, countless thousands of sea creatures and birds and economic disaster for entire populations.  What I do hold the guy in the White House accountable for is the slow response, the lack of action and interaction concerning BP and general incompetence.  What I can actually commend the guy in the White House for is the potentially expandable twenty billion dollar escrow reserve for claims payment.  It’ll likely go higher. 

America needs leadership that won’t be afraid of shallow water drilling on the Continental Shelf and elsewhere and not allow deep water drilling until a plausible, realistic step-by-step provable methodology is shown for dealing with such disasters.  That done, go for it.  And, we need leadership that is more concerned with the welfare of the American people than the advancement of a social agenda.

Neither Sharon nor I want the guy who lives in the White House and his leftist stooges to bring about fundamental change in America.  If he and his minions in Congress and the bureaucracy want to live in a Communist or Socialist society, fine.  Let them move.  I’ll contribute a few bucks to help get them on their way.  Venezuela is probably lovely this time of year.

The BP gusher is a problem we will be dealing with for years and longer.  The group of wannabe socialists in the government and the idiots who elected them could be a problem that will be our undoing unless we act in the 2010 elections, the 2012 elections and rid ourselves of the last of the leftists in the 2014 elections.  I don’t know about you, but I hope I do.  And Sharon and I don’t want our grandchildren coming of age in an America that is no longer free, one that is run by leftists who hold political success more important than country.

THIRD PARTY, THIRD RAIL – BOTH ARE DEADLY

When Sharon and I were growing up in Chicago, one thing that was held as the popular wisdom had to do with “the third rail,” where supposedly a powerful current was running through, powerful enough to kill you if you stepped on it.  I’m referring, of course, to the elevated and subway train tracks used by “The El.”  And the current is powerful enough to do you in.  Our moms and dads were right.  That electrification system started in Chicago in 1895 and is used to this day.  “Third Rail” is also a political term to describe something best left alone, too dangerous to touch.  Immigration may very well prove to be a “third rail” for a number of politicians.

To me, at this point in time, any kind of a Third Party movement is like a Third Rail, but the kind with the deadly direct current high voltage running through it.  And, I’m not sIamming on the Tea Party.  They’re good people trying to wake up America.  I just hope and pray they don’t form an actual Third Party ticket.  I’ve touched on this before and I’ll be touching on this again until – God willing – the electorate has made the guy in the White House a one term President.  From all I’m able to understand, he’s a decent husband and father.  I very sincerely want him to enjoy life with his family, and I want him to stay out of my life and stop trying to change the USA to match his vision for a European-style social democracy.  That’s not what we are.  Now, the guy in the White House and I have one thing in common politically.  We both have a vision for America. 

My vision for America is to minimize government intervention in our daily lives, minimize taxation, minimize spending and gradually – which is the best we can do – get our nation out of debt to foreign countries.  My vision for America is to foster individual independence, not dependency, to encourage economic growth, not to stifle it, to always stand for what is right, not what’s convenient or popular.   We are the beacon of hope for mankind, the whispered dream for the throngs of humanity who preceded us through the millennia on this planet and lived their lives in the belief that someday mankind’s lot would be better.   The guy in the White House may sincerely believe that socialism – which is lace curtain Communism, calling it what it is – is the way in which life will be better for people.  He may feel he’s doing genuine good. I disagree.   

And, that is why I equate a Third Party with a literal Third Rail.  A Third Party, at this time in our nation’s history, will not take votes away from the Democrats.  A Third Party will only take votes away from the Republicans, thus ensuring another four years for the guy in the White House and his associates to advance their left wing socialist agenda for America.   Now, if you think “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” sounds like a good idea, it’s a line from Karl Marx, the author of “scientific socialism,” better known as Communism.  It’s not original to him.  It was used by Utopian Socialists decades earlier and, whether it’s a health care law or higher taxes for those who are bigger earners or some other scheme, the guy in the White House and his fellow travelers are just re-phrasing it. 

Put your voting power behind a Third Party and you’re helping to put America right on that Third Rail.  Accept the fact that supporting, campaigning and voting for whoever the Republican Presidential candidate will be in the 2012 Election is a vote to save the USA.  And, in 2010, pave the way for undoing the harm the Democrats have already done.  Let’s give the guy in the White House a Republican majority in the House and Senate.

The Train is Coming

F.D.R. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) championed “The New Deal” with his legislative program, while L.B.J. (Lyndon Baines Johnson) pushed for “The Great Society.”  I firmly believe that the legislative agenda being promoted by B.H.O. (the guy who lives in the White House) and so ably abetted by The Speaker of The House and The Senate Majority Leader should be called “The Bum Steer.” 

It seems incredible to me that we elected a man who freely admits that he actively sought out the companionship of Marxists.  Yet, he freely admits virtually nothing else.  What’s going on over the Internet, as this is written, about no classmates of B.H.O. remembering him from Columbia University is alarming.  This is not a recent revelation.  When B.H.O. was a candidate for the nomination, FOX News aired programs on the background of the major contenders.  B.H.O.’s invisibility was brought up at that time, but I guess not enough people actually understood the implication.  That’s the only thing I can think of to explain why anybody except a Communist or Socialist would have voted for the guy.

When I’m not writing columns and articles and other non-fiction, Sharon and I write novels, as most of you know.  If B.H.O. were a figure in a political thriller, we couldn’t draw his character with such obvious strokes.  When I was a kid, one of my favorite cartoon characters was “Mighty Mouse.”  Mighty Mouse was always saving “Pearl Pureheart” and her father from the evil “Oil Can Harry.”  Oil Can Harry looked the part of a villain.  Villains in movies and in theater used to actually look like a villain, so the audience would know when the guy came on stage or in frame and could hiss at him.  In modern fiction, you can’t make your villain so obvious.  We could never have a character with background like B.H.O. supposedly has because it would be like having a guy in dark clothes and a tall hat curling the ends of his mustache as he ties the defenseless damsel in distress to the railroad tracks while the “Special” is steaming around the bend.

The United States is the “damsel in distress” in this story.  And what about the guy with the mysterious past, who hangs out with un-repentant Marxist bombers, who used to attend a church pastored by a man who curses America, who wants to re-distribute wealth, which is a principal tenet of Communism?  He’s tying us to the tracks and the freight train of domestic spending, globalism, socialism and betrayal of the basic principles of a free society is racing down on us.  We can hiss the villain all we want, but to get out of the way of the locomotive is going to take action in the 2010 Mid-Term Election and effort worthy of a superhero in 2012 when, God willing, we re-take the White House.  We must relegate The Bum Steer to its proper place in history – the trash.

LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER, SHALL WE?

The snow is melting away as I write this. It began melting yesterday. On Friday, Northeast Georgia got hit with the odd snowstorm. I use the word “odd” because, in most years, we never see snow. This year we’ve seen a dusting or two and that couple of inches that is just melting off. It’s been an unusually wet winter. Actually, fall and summer were pretty wet, too. Georgia has gone from water shortages and drought to floods and ground so saturated even relatively minor rainfalls are causes for flash flood warnings and rivers and streams rising to or above flood stage. This is all in less than a year. Sharon was just checking the forecast and we may wind up with another inch or two of snowfall starting tonight and into tomorrow. I’m no meteorologist, but I’ve always been interested in weather, read books and articles about meteorology, done some serious research in association with our writing. And, the climate is changing.

But, that is normal. Earth’s climate is not static. Go driving in Wisconsin sometime and check out the terrain. You’ll see things called “terminal moraines,” little ridges and hills that were formed where the advancing glaciers of the last true Ice Age stopped. We used to live in Chicago, in the suburb of Oak Park. We checked a map showing the southernmost boundary of the Ice Age “Lake Chicago,” a sort of Lake Michigan on steroids. If we’d lived in Oak Park in those days, we could have walked to the beach which was only about a mile away, according to that map.

When the Earth warmed up after that last great Ice Age, it wasn’t because there were too many cars emitting too much pollution, nor were those great factories that didn’t exist belching too much smoke into the atmosphere. No, it was just because the climate of our planet is cyclical. Why? I have no idea. Maybe God just wanted it that way, or maybe the very cycles of our planet’s climate keep it from ever getting so hot or so cold that it would be uninhabitable. Solar cycles have to do with Earth’s climate, of course, and I’d really love for one of the “mankind is destroying the planet” fanatics to explain exactly how we are affecting the Sun.

What man does on the surface of the Earth certainly has some effect. If we are in a cycle of global warming, our greenhouse gas emissions may well be hastening it along – but, cycles are still natural and I’m becoming more and more convinced that a suspicion I’ve harbored for quite some time is proving out.

As I say in our forthcoming book, SURVIVE! THE DISASTER, CRISIS AND EMERGENCY HANDBOOK, “With the melt-off of cubic mile after cubic mile of fresh-water Arctic Sea ice and Greenland glacier comes the very real potential for radical cooling of the British Isles and much of Western Europe, due to a slowdown or shutdown of the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is actually a two-way ‘street,’ part of which is called the North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – NAMOC, for short. The Gulf Stream brings warm waters up from the Caribbean, which allows England, Scotland, Wales, the Irelands and Western Europe to have temperate climates. This two way-street, however, can be closed for repairs when the temperature and salinity of the interchange location in the North Atlantic are altered. For the Gulf Stream to work and the warm current to come north, a returning current of salt water must travel back. An oversimplification, perhaps, but if traffic in one direction is reduced or stopped, traffic in both directions are affected. If the circulation is seriously altered, the British Isles and Western Europe will have drastically colder winters at best. At worst, the Northern Hemisphere could experience a return to glaciation and a new Ice Age – minus the cute animated animals. The ultimate irony would be that global warming – whatever the cause and extent – causes global cooling.”

In the light of Climategate and faked or unsubstantiated research being used as the basis for much of the “fact” proving the profound effect humanity is having on global warming, perhaps those climate authorities who are warning that we are entering into a period of global cooling and a possible mini-Ice Age will be given more credence.

It is not a bad idea to study the Earth’s weather systems, certainly. But, spending money to study something called “global warming” is rather like measuring a man for a pine box before putting him on trial for a hanging offense – outcome is assumed to be assured. People like the guy who lives in The White House and his minions and the world government crowd at the United Nations want to “prove” that mankind is ruining the planet, this as justification for more regulation, more taxes, more restrictions and fewer freedoms. If the facts don’t agree with the hoped for outcome, it matters not at all. Can you say, “Ulterior motive?”

A DANGEROUS GAMBLE

The guy who was stupidly sent off to live in the White House may be taking the biggest gamble not only in our nation’s history, but the history of the world. Sharon and I were married in 1968 and bought a television set – a little black and white portable that was a floor model – in time to see man’s first steps on the moon in 1969. And, yes, I really believe we did put a man on the moon. I had hoped that we would again. Now, however, fearless leader and his team of leftist social planners are chopping replacements for the obsolescent Shuttle fleet out of the budget. Just to get astronauts up to the space station, we’ll have to hitch rides with the Russians, for which they are charging us up the ying-yang, as they have a right to do, of course. The Russians continuing their endeavors in manned space flight is the problem.

If you recall, the reason John F. Kennedy pushed for racing to the moon was to beat the Russians to it. In those days, when the kindly Russians were the nasty Soviets, we and other western nations were worried that, if the Russians got to the moon first and built a base there, missiles could be installed and a veritable “sword of Damocles” would hang over our heads and the Russians could have their way with the world.

Well, guess what, leftists! Unless the Russians have changed their mind, it is their express intent to return to the moon and establish a permanent presence there. Both the European Space Agency and the Japanese have plans for manned lunar bases. I’m sure the Chinese have similar interests. What happens when not only countries that like us, but countries that don’t, have lunar facilities and The United States does not?

And, lest we forget, our planet is in what is often called a cosmic shooting gallery, Near Earth Objects (NEOs) of wide ranging size – maybe twenty-five percent of the bigger one’s catalogued – zipping around us all the time. It is commonly believed that the Gulf of Mexico was formed when one of these larger NEOs struck Earth and wiped out the majority of species on the planet. Eventually, what is called a “Planet Killer” will come again. Hey, maybe we’ll be able to divert or destroy it. But, what if we can’t? Mankind’s destiny is among the stars, lest some NEO, some terrible pandemic or some other cataclysm obliterate the species on this planet. It would be nice to think, if that should someday happen, that survivors of the human race might carry with them the principles of freedom and justice which have been the hallmark of The United States. Thanks to the short-sightedness of leftist social planners, America may one day be only a vague memory lost in the corridors of time. Administration plans cancelling development of manned space flight vehicles and a return to the moon are egregiously stupid.