Eden Prairie News - National Politics - Comments

For Franken, a math

Gino G — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:11:56 -0600

For Franken, a math problem.
Challenged ballots may offer the Senate challenger a path to overtaking Coleman, but numbers indicate it would be a tough route.

By PAT DOYLE and GLENN HOWATT, Star Tribune

Last update: November 30, 2008 - 12:52 PM
While a tiny margin separates the candidates in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, it is wide enough that Democrat Al Franken faces a daunting task in challenging votes to erase Sen. Norm Coleman's lead.

The two sides have disputed thousands of the other's votes, but many of those challenges are regarded by experts as frivolous.

To win his case before the state Canvassing Board, Franken must prevail on more than 6 percent of his challenges of Coleman votes even if Coleman fails to succeed on any of his challenges, a Star Tribune analysis shows.

If the outcome of past election disputes provides a clue, Franken will have a hard time reversing enough votes to win, said one veteran elections official who has been involved in the Senate recount.

"Based upon the kinds of challenges I've been looking at in the last two weeks, I think that's just not going to happen," said Joe Mansky, Ramsey County elections manager.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/35263049.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEy...

You would think liberals

sd42webmaster — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 11:19:06 -0600

You would think liberals would be celebrating this month. You would think they would be reveling in their smashing success -- in a few short weeks Obama will be President, Democrats will have near veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, they can go ahead with their socialist plans and no one will be there to stop them.

But no, they aren't happy. They need another round of Erik Paulsen-bashing.

Vile? Here is what is vile, Mr. Bromelkamp, Democrats like you who write screeds about "vile attacks" and then spend all day long on websites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed . . . making vile attacks.

Democrats actually want you to believe Republicans are full of dirty tricks while they are pure as the driven snow. Do you want proof? Four years ago -- or so the story goes -- John Kerry was "Swiftboated". Never mind the fact that 264 of John Kerry’s fellow Swift Boat veterans signed a petition against him, and only 13 took his side.

And Barack Obama told Tennessee Republicans to "Lay off my wife" for attacking some of her public statements.

You can’t get lower than THAT, can you?

Until we start to learn that liberals will dredge to the depths of hell to get as low and dirty as they can, and then they will keep on digging. And they will stop at absolutely nothing until they have reached absolute rock bottom.

In the three days after Sarah Palin was announced to be the pick for VP, the NY Times ran no fewer than 67 articles attacking her. Everything from "she’s no Hillary" to "her hair looks 20 years out of date" to "she’s got a Fargo accent". They attacked the church she goes to and repeated the lie that she’s a seperatist nut-case, that she wants Alaska to break off from the United States.

But it's funny. I don't remember you or Ken writing ONE WORD defending Sarah Palin or complaining about how she was treated in this campaign.

The smears went on and on. They said that Palin was a bad mother who put her own ambitions ahead of her baby to advance her career. Democrats are all heart. They smear their opponent as someone who doesn’t even care enough to watch over her own children.

But the attack machine does not stop there. Then Democrats claimed that Sarah Palin is not the mother of Trig. No, the baby born with Downs Syndrome, according to Democrats, is really her granddaughter from her daughter Bristol.

And even that isn't low enough -- oh no! Soon stories were out that Sarah's husband, Todd Palin, was the incestuous father of the kid. Sarah, according to some Dems, faked her pregnancy in order to explain away the fact that her husband’s DNA was in the baby.

One blogger, Charles Martin, at last count, compiled at least 84 lies about Sarah Palin.

And now the slime merchants and bottom feeders who dragged Sarah Palin's family through the mud want to lecture the rest of us about clean campaigns? Yeah -- good luck with that!

Erik knew the vile charges

danbrome — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:37:14 -0600

Erik knew the vile charges against Ashwin were wrong:

* Not "one of us"
* Liar, Liar, Liar.. he lie here, and here, and here.
* Ashwin's face darkened to look like a terrorist at best.
* $2600 per family in fictitious Madia tax increases
* Carpetbagger with no connection to the 3rd CD

Erik knew, but he accepted the attacks as his way to "win".

"I'm Erik Paulsen, and I approved this message."

Like you said Ken, the look on Erik's face said it all. In his heart he was troubled by the ads, but he allowed them anyway because he had to win even if it meant selling his soul.

Tommy, the stock market and

sd42webmaster — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:46:59 -0600

Tommy, the stock market and commodity markets in general tend to be forward looking. If the economy under a newly elected president looks bleak, the markets will go down.

Obama promised to increase corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, the top marginal income tax rate, a massive new energy tax that will bankrupt coal, and his party is talking about a government takeover of 401(k) plans. So on Wednesday after the election the Dow drops about 486 points. The biggest post-election drop in history. The next day, Thursday, there was another big drop. And its been plunging ever since.

I suggest to you that this is not a coincidence. Many are even calling this the "Obama Recession". I don't think that is an unfair characterization.

Obama's prescription for the economy will devastate businesses. Raising the capital gains tax will instantly make every business in America worth less. Eliminating the 401K program will de-capitalize markets. Wall Street is reacting to that -- there is little reason to hope that these measures will help our economy.

As far as why Obama won, there was a recent Zogby poll as well as this humorous video where actual Obama voters were polled about why they voted the way they did. The poll and video soundly refute your claim that this election was a referendum on "Reaganomics".

For my part, I continue to wish that Republicans will re-discover market principles and fiscal discipline. A party that supports a bridge to nowhere, taxpayer funder baseball stadiums, massive bank bailouts, and cap and trade (McCain's position) is not a party that is interested in small government conservatism.

It was many thousands of

Jagu — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:44:50 -0600

It was many thousands of data points that they got wrong. Do you get that?

Surely these experts must have thought the data was suspect, given that many parts of the world were much cooler during October, particularly Russia. Anyone who reads the USA today, would have had a hunch something wasn't right.

Did anyone at NASA question the data, only to be stifled by their extremist peers? Advocates of global warming theory (or climate change if you prefer) rely heavily on group- think.

Goddard blames the mistakes on outside sources and admits it does not have quality control over the measurements. This was a situation where simply eyeballing the date should have sent up red flags, but it didn't.

As a matter of practice they accept data without knowing if it is reliable. If you think that is not significant, then you just don't get it.

Do you have any doubt that if those readings had mistakenly shown October to be one of the coldest on record, Goddard would have caught it? This is yet one more example of global warming enthusiasts cherry picking the evidence.

What's silly, Jagu, is to

William Wood — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:10:30 -0600

What's silly, Jagu, is to think that an error on one data point is significant. If you think it is, you just don't get it.

Liberal bailout and green

Gino G — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:49:59 -0600

Liberal bailout and green cars.
The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's the ultimate in lemon socialism.

Democrats are suggesting, however, an even more ambitious reason to nationalize. Once the government owns Detroit, it can remake it. The euphemism here is "retool" Detroit to make cars for the coming green economy.

Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone should drive: small, light, green and cute. Now they will have the power to do it.

In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them.

If you think we have economic troubles today, consider the effects of nationalizing an industry of this size, but now run by bureaucrats issuing production quotas to fit five-year plans to meet politically mandated fuel-efficiency standards -- to lift us to the sunny uplands of the coming green utopia.

Republican minimalism -- saving the credit-issuing utilities -- certainly risks not doing enough. But the Democratic drift toward massive industrial policy threatens to grow into the guaranteed inefficiencies of command-economy maximalism.

In this crisis, we agree to suspend the invisible hand of Adam Smith -- but not in order to be crushed by the heavy hand of government.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR200811...

It's ironic that NASA's

Jagu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:49:08 -0600

It's ironic that NASA's "error" was discovered the same week that the NBC Today show is running a series of global scare reports. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2008/11/17/scare-mongering...

We should expect that as Barack Obama gets closer to move-in day at the White House, that Global Warming Hysteria will begin to die down. Just as homelessness and the aids epidemic disappeared from nightly news reports, once Bill Clinton was elected President.

There is definitely something awry in the media, when the original reports make big news, but the subsequent discovery of erroneous data does not. It really isn't "silly" or something to "chuckle" about. It is good news, unless you're so caught up in the politics of the issue - that you take this personally, as a defeat for a cause in which you've placed so much faith. (Do you get upset when people refer to "An Inconvenient Truth" as a dramamentuary?)

Politics aside, you should be happy to know that the life expectancy for polar bears just went up!

You know, I was so busy

William Wood — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:35:45 -0600

You know, I was so busy chuckling at your post that I forgot to say anything about your note on methane. Yeah, you've got a good one there. I mean, if we, through CO2 emmissions, indirectly cause the release of methane (recall from my post above, which you obviously did not read, that methane is 25 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2), well, then obviously global warming is not man-made. It's just indirectly man-made. It's like when you're out drunk driving. If you're out drunk driving and you hit a parked car that subsequently hits someone and kills them, you're not responsible for killing them. The parked car is. (It was in the way of your personal freedoms, after all.)

Check this (skip to 4:12 in the clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL5xmkEp7AI

Oh, yeah, you know what? You got me: I wasn't really chuckling at your post. Lauding what threatens the lives and welfare of millions isn't really so funny.

Peter, your post is just

William Wood — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:17:32 -0600

Peter, your post is just silly. Here is a well-stated response to Christopher Booker's piece in the Telegraph: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/mountains-and-mole.... (I won't point out that Booker is also the guy who thinks asbestos is chemically identical to talcum powder, but that's so. He's obviously an intellectual giant.) I suppose you can be excused for worrying about this stuff...you may have gotten it from such a noble source as -- hmmm -- the minority side of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Wow. How could a guy like Inhofe possibly be in the minority? Peter, I think we found your playbook.

" It may be time to question

twoputttommy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:51:26 -0600

" It may be time to question politicians who want to put us on a path to economic ruin."

That time came and went; it was the election on November 4th. And voters natinwide overwhelmingly rejected Republican economic failures and elected Barak Obama.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed last Friday at 8,497 - a 338 point loss from the day before. The 52 week high was last December 11th - 13,850. So, what were the Reaganomics Disciples - Art Laffer, Ben Stein, et al - saying on the talking heads circuits prior to the meltdown? Link here, to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Our economy is in the toilet - and Reaganomics put it there. "Trickle-down" doesn't work; it never has and it never will. The economic mess President Obama will have to clean up is just like the economic mess President Clinton had to clean up when he took office, only worse. Much worse. Republicanism has destroyed the economy, and the recession will not be pretty. Place the blame squarely where it belongs - Republicans that refused to face reality.

More good news about Global

sd42webmaster — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:12:32 -0600

More good news about Global Warming! NASA now admits that they BLUNDERED when they declared last month to be the "hottest October on record". See the full article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

What caused the error? Apparently, NASA copied the figures wrong.

Yes, the same "funny math" that is currently taking place in Minnesota's Senate Race also apparently takes place at NASA. NASA now admits that they copied temperature records from Russia and other places ... from the previous month. That's right -- the "hottest October on record" ... was really September.

Oops!

The error was caught by U.S. meteorologists Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre. Watts and McIntyre are the same Canadian scientists who were made famous when they debunked the Michael Mann's notorious "hockey stick" graph. Before it was debunked, the hockey stick graph was promoted as fact by global warming alarmists. It turns out even if you plug in random data into Mr. Mann's model, it ends up looking like a hockey stick.

False propaganda promoted as fact –- a theme that repeats again and again when it comes to global warming discussion.

Was October the hottest month ever? Apparently not. In fact of the 114 Octobers on record, last month ranked number 70 –- which actually makes it COOLER than average.

False propaganda promoted as fact –- a theme that repeats again and again when it comes to global warming discussion.

When the error was reported, NASA attempted to lie again. They claimed to have discovered another hotspot -– this one in the Arctic where satellite images are showing that sea ice is undergoing such a rapid recovery from its summer melt that the ice is actually 30 PERCENT THICKER than at the same time last year.

False propaganda promoted as fact –- a theme that repeats again and again when it comes to global warming discussion.

Last month scientists at MIT recorded nearly simultaneous world-wide increases in methane levels -- this the first increase in nearly 10 years. The new data contradicts other studies that state that man -- and not natural cycles -- are the primary source of increases in greenhouse gases.

False propaganda promoted as fact –- a theme that repeats again and again when it comes to global warming discussion.

SO WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Your politicians are being heavily lobbied to place a huge economic bet on the notion that AGW (the theory that humans are the primary cause of Global Warming) is real.

Despite our shaky economy, businesses are gearing up -- at considerable cost -- to deal with new environmental regulations and complex carbon trading schemes our politicians are about to impose on them.

Instead of "Combatting Global Warming", our politicians may simply be Combatting Global Free Enterprise.

"Combating global warming" will be costly and will involve loss of freedom and a lower standard of living for all of us. It may be time to question politicians who want to put us on a path to economic ruin.

For this post, I would like

William Wood — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:33:12 -0600

For this post, I would like only those who already do agree that carbon dioxide emissions are a factor in global warming to read on. If you don't agree with this, then all that follows will be moot.

First, take a look at the EPA's personal emissions calculator:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/calculator/ind_calculator.html

When I run the numbers for my 4-member family, I come out to about 39-40 thousand pounds of emissions per year. (A factor that helps my numbers that probably is not available to many people is that my job can be performed remotely and my employer is amicable to letting me work from home quite a bit. That cuts out a 24-mile roundtrip commute for me 15-20 times per month, leaving the bulk of our car emissions to hauling the kids around to their various activities.)

My numbers look about like this:

Car emissions: 26% of total emissions
Natural Gas burn emissions: 29% of total emissions
Electricity emissions: 39% of total emissions

I'd also point out that the reasonable efforts we take to recycle yield no more than a 4% reduction in emissions. We've already done the easy stuff in our home. Any further reduction in emissions is going to be hard.

Now, the Union of Concerned Scientists writes that

Several recent analyses have concluded that, to avoid dangerous climate change, the United States and other industrialized nations will need to reduce emissions at least 80 percent by mid-century, compared with 2000 levels.

It's unfair, of course, to expect that this means an 80% reduction to each individual, but try working that math on your personal emissions results. You'd have to do something about the cars (and even if you got yourself a Tesla or a Clarity or even a Prius with a plug-in modification, some of the burden will simply shift from your auto emissions to your electricity emissions), you'd probably have to find an alternative to natural gas for heating your home, and...what the heck are you going to do about the emissions caused by generating the electricity you consume? Consume less electricity? Seriously, how much less can you possibly consume, especially if you are plugging in your car or hydrogen fuel compressor each night?

The point I'm coming back to is that we as a country will need to find a solution to deliver at least as much electricity as is currently demanded if not more, and in a way that does not generate greenhouse gasses. And I snipped off part of the Union of Concerned Scientists sentence. They add to the end of the sentence above

—and that national and international policies must be in place within the next 5 to 10 years to achieve this ambitious outcome.

I'm going to keep coming back to this: nuclear is our only available technology that will solve for the given problem. It is a far-less-than-ideal solution, but the conversation now must turn to how to make nuclear power and store nuclear waste as safely as possible. Any waivering or hoping for pie-in-the-sky solutions is just ignoring the problem constraints and wasting precious time. I'm going to start posting thoughts about things we can do.

Some links:

Union of Concerned Scientists whitepaper on Nuclear Power in a Warming World; includes a concise Executive Summary with important recommendations on nuclear waste storage, banning nuclear waste reprocessing, and nuclear plant design
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear-power-in-a-...
NASA/JPL/CalTech's updated Global Climate Change website
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/
DOE to seek second permantent nuclear waste storage site and/or expansion of Yucca Mountain
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27582900/

Ocean Cooling Based on Bad

William Wood — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:29:42 -0600

Ocean Cooling Based on Bad Data

In your Oct 22, post, you wrote: "And what is this (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html) we hear from your friends at NASA?"

Here is a follow-up from NASA, interviewing Josh Willis, one of the co-authors of the paper cited in your link:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/

It turns out the ocean cooling was based on bad data.

As the article puts it:

If there is a moral to this story, it’s that...we need multiple, independent, overlapping sets of observations of climate processes from space and from the Earth’s surface so that we can create long-term climate records—and have confidence that they are accurate. We need theories about how the parts of the Earth system are related to each other so that we can make sense of observations. And we need models to help us see into the future.

And that -- the need for more scientific research -- is something I think we agee upon, yes?

NASA: Methane On Rise After

William Wood — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:56:26 -0600

NASA: Methane On Rise After Decade of Stability
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=35802

Summary:

The amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end approximately a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable...

"This increase in methane is worrisome because the recent stability of methane levels was helping to compensate for the unexpectedly fast growth of carbon dioxide emissions," said climate modeler Drew Shindell at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "If methane continues to increase rapidly, we'll lose that offsetting effect."...

Given that methane is about 25 times stronger as a greenhouse gas per metric ton of emissions than carbon dioxide, the situation will require careful monitoring in the near future to better understand methane's impact on future climate change.

The article provides two speculative causes but indicates that further study is needed to determine exactly why this is happening.