Ben Carson Takes on the PC Crowd By Peter Burrows elburropete@msn.com – silvercityburro.com 10/8/15

I was watching Morning Joe this morning (10/8/15) and the topic was Dr. Ben Carson’s “outrageous” statements about having a Muslim president and what Dr. Carson recommended people do if they find themselves caught in a mass-murder situation.

I like Morning Joe. I think it’s by far the best thing on MSNBC, and I find it much more entertaining than Fox and Friends, which likes to have lots of “human interest” stuff, e.g. some kid who grew a big pumpkin. No thanks.

Joe Scarborough, the ‘Joe” in Morning Joe and former Republican congressman, more than holds his own with the lib crowd.  He’s good, and he’s entertaining. I‘m even getting to like his number one co-host, Mika Brzezinski, in spite of her look of oh-so tolerant superiority every time someone says something she disagrees with.

Importantly, Morning Joe gives me an insight into how the typical liberal thinks, at least the East Coast crowd of libs.  They, like a lot of people, have had a difficult time figuring out the Donald Trump phenomena, and they have come to the conclusion that both Trump and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side are appealing to a whole bunch of folks who are really, really PO’d with the DC crowd.

I think this attitude out there on the part of the public was news to Joe and his co-hosts, although not to anybody I know.  Similarly, Dr. Carson has them puzzled.  His remark that a Muslim would not be acceptable as president had one of the little pinheads on Morning Joe equating such an attitude with wanting to deport illegal Mexicans, as though it was some racial thing. (From Ben Carson!)

They just don’t get it.  The public does, though.  Mark Halperin, frequently on the show, showed a clip of an Iowa political focus group that he had moderated in which 11 of 11 agreed with Dr. Ben’s Muslim president comment.  Halperin said 7 of 11 in his New Hampshire group also agreed.  This decidedly not “politically correct” response can be easily explained, and it’s not some racial thing.

It’s a matter of common sense. People see the constant stream of barbarities perpetuated in the name of Islam and most of them come to the correct conclusion: Islam is an abomination

I have long held that opinion.  When I first heard President George Bush say “Islam is peace,” I went through the roof.  That was the last straw with Bush.  Every time I saw him on TV after that, I would go into an obscene rampage, a thing that lasted until my dear wife informed me that if I kept that up she was going to morph into somebody very much like her late mother. That cooled me off. (Think of the TV show, “The Hulk.”)

Every now and then, Joe Scarborough shows his RINO side and he used this occasion say that he had known a lot of “nice people” who were elected to various positions who were a disaster because they had no political experience, ergo Dr. Carson is not acceptable to Joe. Gee, Joe, ever known somebody with a lot of experience as an elected official who was also a disaster, hmmmm? How about Bush, Bush and Obama, for starters? Throw in LBJ, too.

What Joe and the political class don’t understand is that Dr. Carson, at least when it comes to Islam, knows how the world works.  The PC blinded do not.  If Jeb Bush, somebody Joe  really likes, becomes president and has the same view of Islam that his brother had, i.e “Islam is peace,” then he is, in my opinion, totally unqualified to be president.  If he can’t see Islam as the existential threat it is, than what good is all his political experience?

The other Carson comment that had the talking heads tut-tutting was that Dr. Carson thinks the best course of action when under the gun of a mass-murdering lunatic is to attack the lunatic.  This is something most people agree with, the only caveat being that most of us don’t know if we have the courage to do so.

Doesn’t anybody remember United Airlines Flight 93, the one hijacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001 as part of that infamous terrorist plot?  There were four commercial aircraft hijacked that day, and only Flight 93 did not reach its intended target, which was probably either the White House or the Capital Building.  It crashed in a field. Nobody knows its intended target. Why doesn’t anybody know?

Ask Dr. Ben Carson.

FYI: Ten articles on Islam at silvercityburro.com
Monsters From The Id, 2/25/14
Groucho, Chico and Islams’s Useful Idiots 12/4/14
Islam 101, Part One 12/18/14
Islam 101, Part Two 12/27/14
Islam 101 Part Three 1/6/15
Islam For Smart Dummies 1/11/15
Islam 101 Part Four 1/18/15
Move Over, Neville Chamberlain 4/6/15
Slandering The Prophet 4/26/15
The Deadly and Suicidal Side Effects of the First Amendment

Lessons for Liberals by Peter Burrows 9/3/15 elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com

Years ago, I used to get irritated with dyed-in-the-wool liberals because, almost without fail, they all suffer from moral and intellectual certitude, regardless of the topic. It seems that if a liberal thinks something is, it therefore is, whether they know anything about the topic or not.  (Liberals spend a lot of time defining “is.”)

Some of my liberal friends are what Eric Hoffer called true believers. It does no good to argue with THEM. They are protected by what Hoffer called “a fact-proof shield.” He writes, “The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observations but from holy writ.”  By “holy writ,“ Hoffer was not referring to any sacred texts, but making the analogy that secular beliefs can be essentially religious beliefs, with a similar intolerance of doubt.

He then quotes something that Reformation leader Martin Luther said:  “So tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I not be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to  be either seen or heard.” (1)

I said as much once to a church-going believer in the modern Apocalypse of Global Warming.  I told her if the Almighty appeared before her to declare global warming the biggest scientific scam since Piltdown Man, that I suspected she would instantly become an atheist rather than deny her belief in Global Warming. (Global Warming: Capitalized in the tradition of capitalizing religions.)

Here’s a sad fact: The Global Warming believers will be DISAPPOINTED if the world DOESN’T suffer all the dire calamities forecasted in the Global Warming scenario.  What pathetic people.

The liberal true believer’s tendency to ignore reality is evident in their vision of how the world works, which is based, in part, on the naive assumption that people are stupid. Here are three lessons for my liberal friends, not that there’s any chance they will heed them:

1) Poor people are POOR, not stupid.  This means that they will game-to-the-max every well-meaning program meant to help them.  Last year, Governor Paul LePage of Maine imposed a three-month limit on food stamps for those known as Abawds, able-bodied adults without dependents, unless they work 20 hours a week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for six hours a week. Repeat: OR VOLUNTEER FOR SIX HOURS A WEEK. After LePage’s rules went into effect, the number of Abawds on food stamps dropped nearly 80 percent.(2)  I suspect the governor was able to get the food stamp restrictions passed because Maine is a lily white state, so he didn’t have to face the inevitable charge of “racism.”  Care to guess LePage’s political Party?

2) Crazy people are CRAZY, not stupid.  If a crazy person wants to get his picture in the papers and on television by going into a movie theater and killing as many people as he can, he will not be deterred by a sign that says, “No Guns Allowed.” Just the opposite.  If I owned a movie theater, I’d have a large sign at the ticket counter: “Off-duty policemen and spouses: Half-price if armed.”  THAT would stop the crazy bastards.  By the way, it is society that’s crazy for allowing the media to so heavily publicize the perp’s identity, such publicity being at least a partial motivation for the crime. (3)

3) Uneducated people are UNEDUCATED, not stupid.  The ghetto mom who wants to put her kids in a better school, whether it be charter, voucher-chosen or religious, knows damn well the public school systems are lousy.  She probably also knows busing is stupid.  You can watch a William F. Buckley Firing Line show from 1981 (1981!) in which his guest is Thomas Sowell.  Buckley’s guest questioner, a liberal woman, simply could not believe that ghetto moms were capable of making good school choices for their children.(4) Her attitude was unmistakable: If I believe it is, it is.  Typical liberal: Then, now and forever.

This tacit liberal assumption that people are stupid implies that liberals are NOT stupid.  That’s debatable. It’s the liberals who are stupid, either that or they’re evil.  Welfare programs that don’t do anything to exclude the non-poor are stupid, unless the goal is to get as many as possible dependent on government handouts and the champions of such handouts, the Democrats. In that case, it’s buying votes for Big Government, and that’s evil.
Publicizing the identity of mass murderers is definitely stupid, as is thinking that no-gun zones are anything but counterproductive.  Do some liberals WANT more such mass killings so they can eventually pass laws to confiscate all our guns?  I’m afraid so.  Look how they eagerly jump on every such tragedy to call for more gun laws, most of which only disarm law abiders. That’s evil.

The liberals support of public education in spite of never-ending poor results is not stupid.  They keep the valuable support of the teachers unions, and they don’t give a damn that the most disadvantaged students, the black kids, are the ones who pay the price.  This builds the tinder for racial strife, “victimhood” and welfare, all Democratic political staples.  That’s evil. Stupid is the rest of us who let them get away with it.
Run Ben, run. (You too, Carley.)

(1) Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Harperperennial Modernclassics, 1951, p. 79.
(2) Governor Requires Food Stamp Recipients to Work 6 Hours a Week, This Happens Immediately After by
Michael Cantrell Young Conservatives April 14, 2015
http://www.youngcons.com/governor-requires-food-stamp-recipients-to-work-6-hours-a-week-this-happens-immediately-after/
(3) “The Deadly and Suicidal Side Effects of the First Amendment,” silvercityburro.com, 7/19/15
(4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y021WAdUlW8

President Obama and Senator Warren: On the Same Collectivist Page by Peter Burrows 8/29/15 elburropete@gmail.com- silvercityburro.com

When campaigning for reelection back in 2012, President Obama said the reason people have become successful in America was due to more than hard work and brains.  There’s lots of hard working, smart people.  The real underlying secret to success is — drum roll please —- GOVERNMENT!

He wasn‘t quite so succinct: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (1)

A year earlier, just before announcing what was to be her successful run for the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren made it crystal clear that the reason people get rich is because of  Government. (Always capitalize Government when writing about Progressives, for whom Government is God.) This is what she said to charges that asking the rich to pay more is class warfare:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well this is class warfare, this is whatever.’  No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you, but I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You  hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”(2)

Of course, Warren didn’t mean “you take a hunk of that and pay forward.”  She meant Government is going to take a hunk of it, and a damn big hunk, because Government’s hidden subsidies did so much to help you.  In fact, the not so subtle message she and Obama are delivering is that since you didn’t build that, you really don’t own that. The Government does.

Unfortunately, this “socialism light” is good politics. Both Warren and Obama easily won their elections and Elizabeth Warren is being pushed to run for the presidency, if not this time, almost certainly within the next eight years.  This means that a significant proportion of the American electorate shares the Obama/Warren vision of how the world works, and that’s too bad because Obama and Warren don’t know how the world works.

Neither understands American exceptionalism. Neither understands that this exceptionalism is a direct result of a Constitution that was written to prevent the kind of government that has typified human society since the beginning of history, namely governments that owned the governed.  Our constitution switched that, building on the British example, but without the burden of a monarchy.  In America, the people owned the government. Revolutionary stuff indeed.

Furthermore, one of the functions of a government owned “by the people” was to protect the people’s property, whether that was the individual’s personal being or the individual’s  personal possessions.  This protection included protection not just from other individuals or from external aggression, but from the government itself, as set down in the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Thirteenth Amendments. (Although not the Sixteenth, which authorized taxes on incomes.) (3)

That’s the key: PROTECTION FROM THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF.

The Obama/Warren vision puts the government back on top.  When this happens, the private sector is stifled, if not smothered, and political leaders don’t have to go around saying “you didn’t build that” because nobody builds anything.  This is “progressive?”

(It’s amazing how the left has taken two wonderful words, liberal and progressive, and used them to describe a political philosophy that is neither liberal nor progressive. The clueless Republicans let them get away with it.)

Of course, a strong government supporting INDIVIDUAL rights is a requirement for individual achievement. Ask yourself, if all it takes is government –OOPS! Government — one would expect human achievements to be spread randomly throughout civilizations. So, where are the Russian, European, Asian or Muslim Googles, Facebooks, Hewlett Packardss, IBMs, Ubers, or for that matter, where are their Willie Nelsons, Wynton Marsalises, Dr. Ben Carsons, Steven Spielbergs, Oprahs etc, etc. ad infinitum?

This ought to be one of those “self-evident truths” the Declaration of Independence mentioned, but lying in the face of self-evident truths is something the left is good at and, once again, the clueless Republicans let them get away with it. For instance, for at least a half century it has been a mathematical fact that successful people pay an inordinate amount of the total collected by the Federal income tax.  So much so relative to the vast majority of citizens, that is it much more accurate to say they are the ones subsidizing society, not the other way around.  (Thanks and a hat tip to the great Thomas Sowell for that insight.)

At what point does the tax “fairness” advocated by the lefties turn into petty vindictiveness? I’m reminded of the old Russian joke where one of two peasants acquires a goat and begins to prosper. The other finds a magic lamp that when rubbed produces a genie offering anything the peasant wants. He immediately says, “Kill Boris’s goat.”

Not,  “Give me a goat, too.” Oh, no.  That would mean showing initiative. That would mean admiring Boris’s achievement, instead of envying it.

Socialism is built not just on an unattainable egalitarian idealism, but on the all-too-human traits of envy of the successful and mistrust of individual freedom. Socialism reflects the darker side of human nature.  “Capitalism” is the antonym of socialism, but it’s a poor word to use. It’s so impersonal.  Who wouldn’t prefer a “social” system over a cold “capital” system?  “Individualism” would be a better word than capitalism, but it has too many syllables to ever catch on.

One of the ironies in Warren’s statement above is that she says thanks to government protection, the business builder doesn’t have to worry “–that marauding bands would come and seize everything—.” That’s not true anymore.  The recent rioters in Baltimore were given the green light to do just that by the Democratic Mayor.(4) So, it’s OK for marauding bands to seize everything, at least if the marauding bands are composed of a politically protected class, in this case black Americans.

Marauding bands doing the seizing or the government doing the seizing: Makes no difference. I can see a future in which there will be nothing to seize in Baltimore, Ferguson, and much of America.  People learn not to waste their time creating assets when the government puts them in harm’s way.

Welcome to the world of Obama-Warren.

(1) WSJ 7/19/12 – http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405270230438800457753330091605368
(2) Elizabeth Warren speech, August 2011 in Andover MA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn’t_build_that
(3) In brief, the Fourth Amendment protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures–,” the Fifth against private property taken for public use  “–without just  compensation,” the Eighth against “excessive fines,” the Thirteenth against “involuntary servitude” except as a punishment for being convicted of a crime. One has to wonder how many taxpayers feel they are in involuntary servitude to support legions of people gaming the welfare system.
(4)  Press conference, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, 4/26/15. http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-04-27/-space-to-destroy-the-short-history-of-a-dangerous-botched-quote

The Gathering Storm, 21st Century Version by Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com silvercityburro.com 8/22/15

The controversy surrounding President Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal has brought comparisons to events that preceded WWII, specifically Neville Chamberlain‘s ill-fated Munich agreement.(1) This incident is detailed in the first volume of Winston Churchill’s history of World War II, “The Gathering Storm,” which covers the prewar years to May of 1940, when Churchill was appointed Prime Minister. It has much to teach us.

In many ways, it is the best of the six volumes.  Most of the later volumes get bogged down in a great deal of minutia concerning Britain’s war preparation and execution. Also, Churchill could not reveal or even hint at how breaking the German secret codes had altered the war, and it most certainly did.  That remained a secret until 1974.

This shortcoming did not effect the first volume, which is about the pre-war years when Britain, and much of the world, was in denial about the German threat.  The one individual conspicuously NOT in denial was Winston Churchill.

This did not do his popularity any good. Google: “Churchill jingoist” and you will find the following from the Encyclopedia of Nationalism, 2001, page 165:  “Thus the appeasers of Hitler successfully maintained their criticism of Winston Churchill as a belligerent jingoist right through the 1930s and up until 1940, when Hitler’s aggressive ambitions became undeniable.“(2)

Churchill’s was not the only voice warning about Adolph Hitler, just the one we remember the most, in no small part for his prescient reaction to Chamberlain’s triumphant “peace for our time” return from Munich on September 30, 1938. Here’s what Churchill wrote about  his roundly condemned House of Commons assessment:

“I well remember that when I said ‘We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat’ the storm which met me made it necessary to pause for a while before resuming.  There was widespread and sincere admiration for Mr. Chamberlain’s persevering and unflinching efforts to maintain peace and for the personal exertions which he had made.”(3)

Unfortunately, all the personal exertions in the world will do no good, and can do plenty of harm, if the nature of the enemy is misunderstood.   Chamberlain was perhaps psychologically unable to see Hitler for what he was. Hitler, on the other hand, knew he was dealing with a naïve idealist who desperately wanted a peace agreement.

Preceding the Munich agreement, Hitler had violated the Treaty of Versailles with impunity by rearming, instituting conscription, and reoccupying the Rhineland. Two years after marching into the Rhineland, in the course of bullying the Austrian Chancellor, Hitler said that “If France had marched then we should have been forced to withdraw.”(4)  He then marched into Austria. No reprisals.

Flush with his successes, Hitler then eyed Czechoslovakia.  Like his Austrian conquest, Hitler justified German territorial ambitions by citing a large population of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, especially in the bordering Sudetenland. Unlike Austria, however, the Czechs had a large and well equipped army. Should its allies come to its aid, especially France, which could mobilize a hundred divisions to invade Germany from the west,  German success was highly unlikely.

That is what Hitler’s generals told him. Testimony at the Nuremburg trials revealed that had Hitler failed in his Czechoslovakia gambit, the Army General Staff had detailed plans to overthrow him.  It never happened because Chamberlain and the French gave Hitler what he wanted at the Munich conference.  In spite of repeated assurances, the Czechs found themselves alone.

At the Nuremburg trials, a high-ranking member of Germany’s army was asked the following: “Would the Reich have attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 if the Western Powers had stood by Prague?” Marshall Keitel answered: “Certainly not. We were not strong enough militarily.”  Churchill goes on to write: “Hitler’s judgment had been once more decisively vindicated. The German General Staff was utterly abashed.  Once again the Fuehrer had been right after all. He with his genius and intuition alone had truly measured all the circumstances, military and political.“ (5)

I think to that should be added “psychological.”  As Churchill himself had noted about the French: “ — France, though armed to the teeth, is pacifist to the core.”(6)  Having the military wherewithal to prevent war does no good unless there is the will to actually use it to prevent war.  Hitler was confident the French did not have the stomach to go to war for Czechoslovakia.
Churchill, however, does not blame the French alone for not acting:  “Great Britain, who would certainly have fought if bound by treaty obligations, was nevertheless deeply involved, and it must be recorded with regret that the British Government not only acquiesced but encouraged the French Government in a fatal course.”(7)

FDR once asked Churchill what the war that became World War II should be named and Churchill responded, “The Unnecessary War.”(8)  This was because there were at least two times that the political will to risk war with a show of force would have prevented the conflagration that became World War II.

Churchill acknowledges the “tormenting dilemmas” facing world leaders when confronted with war or peace decisions. “There is however one helpful guide namely for a nation to keep its word and to act in accordance with its treaty obligations to allies. This guide is called honour.” (9)

With all due respect to Winston Churchill, I don’t think that’s much of a guide. He qualified his “guide” by writing that it applied when it “pointed to the path of duty and when also the right judgment of the facts at that time would have reinforced its dictates.” (10)

It seems to me that “the right judgment of the facts at that time” is something that can only be known in hindsight. In hindsight, lots of bad things are avoided. The problem is foresight, or, as Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

One of the impressive skills Churchill had was his ability to step out of his own skin and recognize how others saw the world. This objectivity is rare. Too many of us see the world as we wish it, not as it is.  Neville Chamberlain was guilty of this.  He also suffered an enlarged sense of self-importance. Here’s what Churchill wrote as 1939 began: “Mr. Chamberlain continued to believe that he had only to form a personal contact with the Dictators to effect a marked improvement in the world situation.”(11)

In America, someone who thought the same way was William Borah, long-time Senator from Idaho.  When Hitler invaded Poland, he told the International New Service’s Washington Bureau Chief, “Lord, if I only could have talked to Hitler, all this might have been averted.” (12)

Such hubris is just mind boggling.

Do we see any evidence of this sort of thinking today? I’m afraid so.  President Obama thinks U.S. foreign policy has alienated the rest of the world with its arrogance.  He wants to “lead from behind.” His new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was of a like mind. After calling almost 40 foreign leaders and foreign ministers in her first week in office she said, “There is a great exhalation of breath going on around the world. We’ve got a lot of damage to repair.“ (13)

A belief that effective diplomacy involves the personal touch is not without some merit. Certainly Reagan proved that. However, thinking personal charm is the most important component of effective diplomacy is dangerous, especially when foreign leaders take advantage of such a vanity, as Hitler did with Chamberlain.

Today, much the same thing is happening. The Russians invade Ukraine, Assad ignores the “red line,” China hacks our government files with impunity, and Islamic terrorists commit carnage in the U.S. while their true motivations are shielded by political correctness. The world’s tyrants are taking advantage of Obama’s naivete. That’s what tyrants have always done and always will do. Somebody should tell Obama to read a little history.

The threats from Russia and China, while formidable, are not our most imminent threat, as both nations have extreme internal problems, demographic and economic, that may take years to solve, if ever.  Also, in both nations pragmatists outnumber zealots, at least so far. Not so with Iran. This is a nation ruled by religious fanatics.(14)

How might a Winston Churchill assess the situation?  Churchill was be able to put himself into his adversary’s shoes because he studied them and understood human nature. He had read Hitler’s biography, Mein Kampf, and understood that Hitler was obsessed with his vision and his mission.  Churchill recognized that Hitler, in a sense,  was insane.

A little background: In late 1923, Hitler attempted to seize control of the State of Bavaria.  This was a total failure, resulting in the death of about twenty of his followers and Hitler’s eventual arrest.  Churchill describes what followed:

“Although the German authorities had maintained order, and the German court had inflicted punishment, the feeling was widespread that they were striking at their own flesh and blood, and were playing the foreigners’ game at the expense of Germany’s most faithful sons.  Hitler’s sentence was reduced from four years to thirteen months. These months in the Landsberg fortress were however sufficient to enable him to complete in outline Mein Kampf, a treatise on his political philosophy inscribed to the dead of the recent Putsch. When eventually he came to power there was no book that deserved more careful study from the rulers, political and military, of the Allied Powers. All was there – the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of   National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit of the world.  Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.” (15)

Note: “Here was the NEW KORAN.” To echo Churchill, no book today deserves more careful study by our leaders, political and military, than the Koran.  Turgid, verbose,  shapeless and pregnant with its message: Death, slavery or conversion is to be inflicted on the infidels.  It is the word of Allah.

Churchill had Islam figured out years before.  In his book The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, published in 1899, the first edition, he had this to say about Islam:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

— the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome. (16)

It is a puzzle to me that Churchill had it figured out over a hundred year ago yet the two most recent Prime Ministers of Britain, Tony Blair and David Cameron, run around saying stupid things about Islam being a religion of peace. Ditto Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Was Churchill that smart? You betcha. He STUDIED  his enemies.

Still, you would think that after fourteen hundred years the civilization threatening message of Islam would have gotten through to the non-Islam world.  Like Mein Kampf, few have actually read the Koran or have been taught the fundamentals of Islam.  This is a big mistake. I have written nine articles about Islam which I think provide sufficient background on the subject for most people. (17)

Today, Western civilization is no longer “sheltered in the strong arms of science” because the “Mohammedans” have enough oil wealth to buy anything they want, including nuclear technology and the rockets to deliver nuclear destruction.  This means we do not have the luxury of being politically correct, which is to say, we do not have the luxury of being stupid.

The terrorists who are becoming a fact of life throughout the civilized world are not radical Islamists.  That is a redundancy.  They are faithful Islamists.  I don’t know how many Americans must die on American soil before that truth triumphs over political correctness.  When that happens, I suspect the response to Muslims and their apologists will be severe.

Unlike our citizens of Japanese descent in WW II, who posed little threat to the country,  our Muslim citizens pose a real and present danger. We must not let our WW II mistake with Japanese Americans prevent us from defending ourselves today from a potentially very real fifth column of domestic jihadists.   Similarly, we must not let our Constitution’s First Amendment protect those who advocate Islamic sedition. (18)

I hope it isn’t too late before we begin to believe the Iranians when they chant “Death to America,” because Iran is ruled by Mahdaviats, an especially dangerous Islamic sect.   A strong case can be made that these people want nuclear weapons so they can use them.

Obama may have brokered a “peace for our time” deal, but with the release of over $100 billion in Iranian assets as part of that deal, he has guaranteed there will be plenty of terrorist war for our time. Ted Cruz was right when he said, “If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.”(19)

At the heart of the problem, Obama is an Islamophile. He has made appallingly ignorant statements about Islam. His exchange of five Taliban terrorists for the return of the turncoat Sgt. “Bowe” Bergdahl shows he is clueless to the threat Islam presents.  He was so proud of himself he had a press conference with Bergdahl‘s parents. Did he think the jihadists would be mollified by releasing five of their brethren?

He couldn’t be more delusional if he were on LSD.

Recently released details about the Iranian agreement indicate some others on our side are also ingesting LSD.  Incredible as it may seem, the AP reported that the U.N. agency responsible for inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites has a secret agreement allowing Iran to do the inspections themselves at one of their sites, a very important site. Let’s hope there is an explanation for what appears to be breathtaking stupidity.

When Iran does get its nuclear arsenal in place, they will have the ability to trigger a nuclear Armageddon, which they believe will hasten the return of the 12th Imam, also known as the Mahdi or the Hidden Imam.  They’ve been praying for this for over a thousand years.

The Mahdaviats are marching into the Rhineland.  It’s long past time to study our enemy. It’s long past time to understand their motivations.

We need another Churchill. Now.

(1) See: Move Over, Neville Chamberlain 4/6/15 silvercityburro.com
(2) A ridiculously large URL. Just Google: Churchill jingoist. Should be quicker than typing in the following:
.ttps://books.google.com/books?id=9_vuJusOJkMC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=churchill+jingoist&source=bl&ots=K07GHvZLpP&sig=qOdfgLr50qlgOXG25BxX1Qk4_ro&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMI-_LGxKGhxwIVjDqICh3E4ADT#v=onepage&q=churchill jingoist&f=false
(3)  Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Houghton Mifflin, 1946  p. 292.
(4)  ibid p. 236
(5)  ibid p. 286
(6)  Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 272, November 23, 1932, p. 87.
(7)  Churchill, ibid p. 288
(8)  ibid p. xiv
(9)  ibid p. 288
(10)  ibid p. 288
(11) ibid p. 305
(12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Borah?
(13) Lander, Mark: “Clinton Sees an Opportunity for Iran to Return to Diplomacy.” New York Times 1/27/09.
(14) See: Monsters From The Id, silvercityburro.com 2/25/14
(15) Churchill, ibid p. 50
(16) http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/churchillislam.asp
(17) I’ve written ten articles about Islam. Go to silvercityburro.com and see:

Monsters From The Id, 2/25/14
Groucho, Chico and Islams’s Useful Idiots 12/4/14
Islam 101, Part One 12/18/14
Islam 101, Part Two 12/27/14
Islam 101 Part Three 1/6/15
Islam For Smart Dummies 1/11/15
Islam 101 Part Four 1/18/15
Move Over, Neville Chamberlain 4/6/15
Slandering The Prophet 4/26/15

The Deadly and Suicidal Effects of the First Amendmentm7/19/15

(18) See: The Deadly and Suicidal Side Effects of the First Amendment, silvercityburro.com 7/19/15
(19) http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/ted-cruz-calls-barack-obama-sponsor-terrorism-iran-nuclear-deal-120780.html#ixzz3j1xLWPJd

An Email to the Public Regulatory Commission of New Mexico by Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com 7/25/15

The New Mexico PRC web site has the email addresses of all five members.  Go to http://www.nmprc.state.nm.us/.  The following is an email I sent  to each of them July 25.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the PRC,

You have been holding public meetings for input concerning Public Service Company of New Mexico’s proposed plan to shut down two of the four coal-fired boilers at the San Juan Generating Station. If the meeting I attended in Silver City on March 16 is any indication, well over 50 percent of those giving public testimony favor eliminating all four of the coal-fired boilers.

These well meaning people cite two primary reasons for their position:
(1) Increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to catastrophic global warming, and coal is the number one contributor of  CO2.  Implicit in this argument is the assumption that shutting down the San Juan Generating Station will make a meaningful contribution to reducing world CO2 levels;
(2) Renewable energy, specifically solar and wind, are cheaper alternatives.

Both of these arguments are terribly misinformed.

(1) A study published in March of this year by The Sierra Club and CoalSwarm, a project of Earth Island Institute, titled “Boom and Bust – Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline,“(1) reveals that there are 276 gigawatts of new coal plants under construction today and 1,083 gigawatts in the planning stage. (2)

Considering the recent history of project cancellations, and the strong likelihood that the current slowdown in Southeast Asia, especially China, will continue, it is possible that the planning stage projects will be cut by two-thirds or more.  Still, if only 25 percent of the 1,083 gigawatts in the planning stage actually gets constructed, that would mean that the total of new coal-fired capacity coming on stream over the next decade or so would be 547 gigawatts. (276 + .25×1,083)

The San Juan Generating Station generates 1,848 megawatts from all four coal-fired boilers.(3)  Assuming the planned projects are completed at a 25 percent rate, shutting down San Juan completely would represent a reduction of .34 percent of just the new coal-fired capacity coming on stream (1,848,000/547,000,000). That’s POINT 34 percent, about one-third of one percent, and that‘s probably  high.  The percent of total coal-fired capacity would of course be much, much lower.

This is a meaningless reduction in world CO2 levels.  I believe the PRC should reject the CO2 argument as simply not relevant.  To ask New Mexicans to save the world from CO2 when the rest of the world quite obviously doesn’t want to be saved from CO2, is something that appeals to only a minority of New Mexicans, and probably a small minority.

(2) Many who testified in Silver City said that renewables are cheaper than coal.  Anybody asserting that has probably not considered the costs of intermittency and transmission.  Nonetheless, I would like the PRC to direct PNM to survey its customers to see what percent each customer would like to have of their bill reflect the cost or savings from renewables.

For example, PNM could ask each customer how much of the electricity they receive would they like to be from  renewables. Some would certainly want 100 percent, others, like me, zero percent.  PNM would then allocate the incremental costs or savings from renewables accordingly.   If the solar/wind proponents are right, my electricity bills will increase while theirs decrease.  It’s a chance I’m willing to take.

On the other hand, the $5.39 Renewable Energy Rider on my last PNM bill just might disappear and be billed to those who support renewable energy.  Sounds fair to me.

Thank you for your consideration,

Peter Burrows
Silver City
575 590 8602
elburropete@gmail.com

(1) http://action.sierraclub.org/site/DocServer/Coal_Tracker_report_final_3-9-15.pdf?docID=17381
(2) Ibid pg 6
(3) Powering Past Coal at the San Juan Generating Station, Wild Earth Guardians http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/San_Juan_Generating_Station_Fact_Sheet.pdf?docID=1342

The Deadly and Suicidal Side Effects of the First Amendment by Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com, silvercityburro.com 7/19/15

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is only one sentence long, but it packs a powerful line-up of freedoms most of us think essential:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Implicit in those freedoms is the idea that they cannot be used in ways that do harm, e.g. the famous adage that freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater.  There are gray areas, however, where society has to weigh the pluses and minuses.

One example that comes to mind is the freedom of the press to publicize acts of depravity, which to some extent may be motivated by the very publicity such acts generate.  The recent mass murder in a Charleston church  generated tons of publicity for the moronic little punk who committed the crime, including pictures of him posing with the Confederate flag.

I strongly suspect that such tragedies would be reduced if the media were under publicity constraints of some kind.  I realize that a total blackout is not possible with the Internet so ubiquitous, but if television, newspapers and magazines would limit coverage to victims only, not show pictures of, or name, the perpetrators other than to describe them as depraved, mentally deficient, etc., I think that would remove at least some of the motivation for such acts.

Passing laws abridging press freedoms to cover these atrocities is not my first choice.  It used to be that the press never printed the names of rape victims.  There was no law saying so, just an unwritten code of conduct most journalists, print and media, followed.  Why not have the same sort of thing for coverage of mass murders?

This is something President Obama could initiate.  The press likes to say he is worried about his legacy, maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.  (He sure as Hell SHOULD be.)  I think history would look very favorably on a White House summit that gathered television, cable and print executives together to propose they voluntarily refrain from what could be described as “infamy enhancing” coverage of acts of mass murder and terrorism.

It’s worth a try.

The above is fairly trivial compared to another part of the First Amendment that is VERY troubling.   This is the part that prohibits laws that restrict “the free exercise” of religion. The problem is that the religion of Islam, if allowed to be freely exercised, advocates the prohibition of all other religions.  Furthermore, it commands its followers to use murderous force to achieve this.

The recent incident in Chattanooga, where a Muslim killed five U.S. military recruiters, has authorities scrambling to determine if the killer had ties to ISIS.  How stupid. Of course he had ties. It’s called the Koran.  The infamous Verse of The Sword, sura 9:5, commands Muslims to “slay the Pagan wherever you find them.”  So, you think, “I’m no pagan, I’m Jewish,” or “I’m Christian.”   Sorry, infidels.  Sura 9:29 says to fight anybody who doesn’t acknowledge Islam as the “Religion of Truth,” even if they are “People of the Book,” i.e. Jews and Christians.(1)

Essentially, the First Amendment, if slavishly followed, amounts to an assisted suicide of our Republic. At the very least, we have to prohibit the free exercise of Islam within our borders, but how to do so constitutionally?  My first thought was to more tightly define the meaning of  “religion.” The dictionary definition is of no help:  Religion 1. A. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe. B. A particular integrated system of this expression: the Hindu religion. 2. The spiritual or emotional attitude of one who recognizes the existence of a superhuman power of powers. (2)
Sorry to say, but Islam fits.  There is no way to square the circle. Islam is protected by a law it would do away with. I’m hardly the first to notice this conundrum. Google: “Islam and the first amendment” and you will find extensive discussion of this inherent contradiction.. I especially liked “Islam and the First Amendment” by Tom Gilson 1/21/15 Breakpoint Columns. This link will get you close:
http://www.breakpoint.org/features-columns/breakpoint-columns/entry/2/26740

I’m sure the Founding Fathers would have qualified “the free exercise thereof” phrase had they known Islam would someday be a problem.  They didn’t, and we’re stuck. I think a Constitutional Amendment is in order, and ASAP. Until then we will have to rely on common sense and a universal law that has existed far longer than the Constitution: The right of self defense.

(1) I’ve written nine articles about Islam, not all of which were published in The Grant County Beat. Go to silvercityburro.com and see:

Monsters From The Id, 2/25/14
Groucho, Chico and Islams’s Useful Idiots 12/4/14
Islam 101, Part One 12/18/14
Islam 101, Part Two 12/27/14
Islam 101 Part Three 1/6/15
Islam For Smart Dummies 1/11/15
Islam 101 Part Four 1/18/15
Move Over, Neville Chamberlain 4/6/15
Slandering The Prophet 4/26/15

(2) The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, Houghton Mifflin 1991, pg. 1044.

Water Follies by Peter Burrows, elburropete@gmail.com 7/7/15

I wonder how many thousands of hours people in our area have spent in the last ten years traveling to and attending meetings related to the Arizona Water Settlement Act?  Add another thousand or so over the past few weeks as Luna County, Grant County, Deming and Silver City elected officials held hearings and voted on whether or not to be a part of the governing body that will build and run a proposed $500 million to $1 billion project to tap “excess” water from the annual flooding of the Gila and San Francisco Rivers.

Emotions are running pretty high, with the two sides roughly divided into “Boondoggle” vs. “Build it for our children.”   I’ve attended a number of meetings on this issue, and my unscientific sampling of attitudes is that about 90% of the participants are in the “Boondoggle” camp.

This hasn’t done much good as far as persuading elected officials to not be a part of the governing group that will oversee the proposed project. All the above governments voted unanimously to participate, with the exception of Silver City, which voted unanimously to NOT participate.

Silver City’s attorney had some strong objections to becoming entangled in an open-ended project that he thought could involve the city in huge liabilities.  Since the Joint Powers Agreement specifically states, Section III (f), that any financial support is up to the individual governments, i.e. not subject to majority rule, I’m not sure that’s the case.

In any event, I thought it would be a good idea to get all the government-retained attorneys involved, from Grant County, Luna County, Deming and Silver City, in a public forum to publicly vet the legal pros and cons. Since three of the four gave different advice than Silver City’s attorney, I thought that would be a fun forum.

A wiser friend, Vic Topmiller, looked at me and said, “Wait a minute, Burro. You think you can get four  attorneys to air their differences in public for FREE?”  I immediately saw the utter stupidity of my idea. Still, it would be nice.

Some of those opposed to a huge diversion project e.g. Dutch Salmon, have long maintained that the big diversion was the goal of the NM Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) all along. Such cynicism was warranted.

Last July, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) released a report with the somewhat lengthy title, “Appraisal Level Report on the Arizona Water Settlements Act Tier -2 Proposals and other Diversion and Storage Configurations – Technical Support Provided to the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.”.  The graph on page 18 says it all: A few minor projects  MAY make economic sense, but not the big $500 million-plus diversion that the ISC is pushing.  That one’s way off the chart.

As soon as I saw the BOR report I called Craig Roepke, Deputy Director of New Mexico’s Interstate Stream Commission (ISC) and asked him if the BOR report was the death sentence for the big diversion. Oh, gosh no. The ISC disagreed with the BOR study and the ISC had their own much better analysis that supported the big project.

That’s when it hit me.  “Burro,” I thought, “you are a damn fool.  Dutch has been right all along. This diversion has been the goal of the ISC from day one. All the hearings, all the studies, just a big Kabuki Dance.”  (Years ago I read “Cadillac Desert,” and I should have known that if there’s a cup of water anywhere in the Southwest, some bureaucracy will spend a billion dollars to save it.)

I like Craig Roepke. I met him a few years ago when he addressed the TEA Party here in Silver City about the AWSA.  He is passionate about the water future of New Mexico, and  he worries that we are using, in his words, “Ice Age water” that isn’t being replaced.  Combine that with the time honored practice of bureaucratic empire building, and of course he’s all for the big diversion project.

This big diversion project has crowded out all other less grandiose projects that have been proposed, some of which could be paid for out of funds that will be spent on environmental and archeology studies necessary for the big project to begin. That will take years.  But it needn’t get that far. The big, perhaps insurmountable hurdle is financing.

The only possible way to raise the necessary funds is through a public bond offering. Any public bond offering has to be accompanied by a prospectus that lists all the pertinent details concerning the project, including all the potential problems. This means the prospectus will have to include the conclusions of  The Bureau of Reclamation.  It will also have to include the objections of Norm Gaume, an engineer and former head of the ISC.

Norm has described the project with the memorable word “infeasible.” His studies raise big doubts about the amount of water available, doubts that have been vindicated by proponents of the project suddenly talking about the need to tap the San Francisco River as well as the Gila.  That should raise the cost considerably.

Norm presented his objections in some detail at a well attended TEA Party sponsored presentation last summer. (Damn, our local TEA Party is GOOD!!)

The bottom line is that nobody’s going to buy bonds to finance a project with such huge questions concerning its viability.  Kyle Johnson was essentially correct when at the recent Grant County Commission meeting he said, as reported in The Grant County Beat, that investors “want a guaranteed return, water or no water.”

In my opinion, to get that guarantee bond buyers will need the backing of the state of New Mexico, something I doubt very much will be forthcoming, especially given the state‘s two existing financial tar babies, The Rail Runner and the Spaceport.  Too bad those boondoggles didn’t get the public scrutiny the water diversion is getting.

Having a government guarantee means the bond will be a general obligation (GO) bond as opposed to an industrial revenue bond, which is a bond backed by the financial results of the project itself.  Bond buyers would balk at buying bonds only secured by the financial results of a project so vulnerable to such unknowables as the amount of rain in the area.

A lot of time and money could be wasted  before this financial roadblock is faced. Best to accelerate the process with the following suggestions for the new Central Arizona Project entity.

1. Contract with a major construction firm to do a cost estimate independent of either the ISC or the BOR.  Off the top of my head, I would suggest calling Fluor Corporation, down in Irving Texas.  If they can’t do it, they probably know of a firm that could do it. Regardless, it should be a big, respected construction firm with expertise in water projects.  This may cost several million dollars, but a hard cost estimate is absolutely essential before anything else.  Once this is in hand, the financing can be responsibly addressed. Not before.

2. With cost estimate in hand, call in at least two investment bankers for their opinion on financing feasibility, given the caveats that must accompany any financing.  G.K. Baum has been involved in the background of all the discussions about the diversion project, so they are familiar with the details and should be one of the firms, but not the only one.   Their recommendation(s) will include the advisability of an industrial revenue vs. general obligation.

3. If, in the unlikely event the bankers give their approval contingent on the offering being a New Mexico GO,  the next step is take it to the state legislature for approval, where it will not fly.  If by some unbelievable lapse of judgment the bankers think the four county area could support a GO, then it should be put to a referendum vote,  ASAP, where it will be overwhelmingly defeated, IMHO.

The idea is to get a yea or a nay on the project as soon as possible.  This could save a lot of money that would otherwise be wasted in  environmental and archeological studies, and perhaps lawsuits, if the skeptics are right

Global Cooling? By Peter Burrows –  elburropete@gmail.com 5/20/15

In my last column, “Confirmation Bias,“ I mentioned a Facebook share from a liberal friend of mine, a lady I like very much, even though we‘re from different planets.  It was an article titled “The Great Grief: How to Cope With Losing our World.”  The first two sentences set the tone: “Climate scientists overwhelmingly say that we will face unprecedented warming in the coming decades.  Those scientists, just like you or I, struggle with the emotions that are evoked by these facts and dire predictions.” It goes downhill from there. (1)

My friend’s comment was out of character with her usual good nature: “Even if we make great progress NOW, we will still have to deal with some of the changes anyway. Damn the holdouts and obstructionists! Yes, I am asking God, The Goddess, The Gods, et.al. to Damn them and get them out of the way because there is much work to do.”

This is a clear case of confirmation bias at work, hers and also mine.  She reads such an article because it reinforces her sense of righteous indignation over global warming skeptics, who reject what “climate scientists  overwhelmingly say” because they are “obstructionists”  who stand in the way of Saving The World.  When I read such an article, it reinforces my conviction that global warmists are emotionally unable to accept any facts that disagree with their “religion.”  In fact, if they could, some of them would treat climate skeptics much like Muslims treat heretics and apostates. Google “James Hansen Nuremburg,” or “Punish Climate Change Deniers.” Note that both my liberal friend and I each think the science is on our side.

As my article on confirmation bias said, when opinions become tied to one’s ego, emotions take over and it’s best to avoid confrontations, when possible.   With global warming, that’s not possible.  There’s too much at stake. The global warming agenda forces billions of dollars of unnecessary costs on society, e.g. banning coal, requiring renewable fuel standards, and huge subsidies for solar, wind and biomass.

I used to think that if the skeptics could show that climate scientists do NOT overwhelmingly accept global warming’s “dire predictions,”  then the whole global warming hype of cards would fall down. Sigh. Wrong again. Back in 2007, eight years ago, Senator Inhofe, (R-OK) published a list of over 400 scientists who disagreed with the global warming orthodoxy. Didn’t make a wave then, still doesn’t, even as the list of scientists has grown to over a thousand. (2)

I listed fifteen of them in my article “Global Warming’s Useful Idiots and Useful Innocents” on silvercityburro.com, 6/29/14. Not one of my better efforts, but two of the scientists on that list were the Russian Dr. H. Abdussamatov and Danish physicist Dr. Henrik Svensmark.  If these gentlemen are right, the absence of global warming over the next few years will become so obvious that even the mainstream media won’t be able to ignore it.

Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov is Director of Space Physics at the Polkovo Observatory in St Petersburg and Russian Director of the International Space Station.  He believes there is clear evidence that both short term and long term solar cycles will lead to the start of a new Little Ice Age, with declining temperatures, well into the 22nd century. He predicted the beginning of this cycle could begin as early as last year, 2014, and he thinks there will be no more global warming this century. (3)

The first publishing of Dr. Abdussamatov’s  research I could find was in 2005, which means that for at least ten years his hypothesis has been in the public domain. (4) Ever heard of him? Of course not.  There have been numerous updates since then  and at least one independent confirmation. ( 5)

I suppose global warmers will say Abdussamatov is following the dictates of his Russian masters who have a vested interest in selling oil and gas to the rest of Europe, but his predictions are tracking actual weather/climate much, much more closely than global warming predictions, which are failing miserably.  Anybody notice we are having a very cold spring?  Back in Wausau, Wisconsin, where I lived for 20 years, they have had two miserable winters in a row, much like what I remember when I first moved there back in the 1960’s.

Also, the work of Henrik Svensmark, author of “The Chilling Stars“ with Nigel Calder, presents what I think is a compelling description of the mechanism by which solar cycles work to influence the climate.  This was partially confirmed by a CERN experiment, CLOUD, which has led to more research buttressing Svensmark’s hypothesis. (6)

Finally, we should not ignore research from the other side of the planet. In 2009, Chinese scientists studied tree rings on the Tibetan Plateau covering the past 2,485 years.  They published their results in 2011 and confirmed that The Medieval Warming Period, The Roman Warm Period and The Little Ice Age were climatic events that occurred in Tibet and were not confined to Europe or only parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

“What‘s more, they  found the temperature cycles were associated with solar activity, with cold intervals corresponding to sunspot minimums. Based on these findings, they predicted temperatures will decrease until 2068 A.D. and then increase once more.” (7) The Chinese confirmed these results with two other studies, one using sediment cores from two Tibetan lakes, and one using sea shells from the northern South China Sea. (8)

Abdussamatov and Svensmark: Take a bow.

These hemispheric changes in climate, especially the Medieval Warming Period, cannot be explained by a global warming theory that only looks at the carbon dioxide additions caused by the burning of fossil fuels.  Also, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s claim that “recent decades have been the warmest in at least the last 1,300 years” (9) is something that just cannot be said with such certitude. (10)

The Chinese are paying a lot of lip service to the carbon dioxide argument but it wouldn’t surprise me if they have concluded, given the prideful and even xenophobic nature of the Chinese, that they have decided that their scientists know a helluva lot more about climate change than the Occidental Chicken Littles pushing expensive renewable energy while banning coal.

I’d even bet that the Chinese agreed to cap their CO2 emissions starting in 2030 — 2030! — because they figure that by then the global warming argument will have been skewered by temperatures going down, not up.  In the meantime, Chinese coal consumption has been growing rapidly and they are by far the world’s largest user, consuming roughly four times that of number two, the U.S. Chinese coal consumption is just about equal to the U.S. on a per capita basis.  I wonder what it will be by 2030?

I doubt if I’ll be around to find out, but if temperatures are in fact falling, I’ll bet today’s global warmists will be blaming the burning of fossil fuels for that, too.

(1)  http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/14/great-grief-how-cope-losing-our-world
(2)  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/1000_scientists_dissent.html
(3)  http://scientificqa.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-ice-age-fast-approaching.html
(4)  http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005KFNT…21..471A
(5)  http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/new-data-backs-ice-age-prediction/
(6)  http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/sep/09/physicists-claim-further-evidence-of-link-between-
cosmic-rays-and-cloud-formation.
(7)  Roosters of the Apocalypse by Real Jean Isaac, Heartland Institute, 2012, pg. 22 and footnote 58, pg. 96.
(8)  http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N34/C2.php and
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/evidence-of-mwp-in-china/)
(9)  https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms1.html
(10) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6158/617 and
CO2 Science http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N50/EDIT.php