Follow the Money – AIG Executive Bonuses

When the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, who added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill providing an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009”? Senator Christopher Dodd, Dem-Connecticut, where one of AIG Financial Products’ largest offices is based (article here).

And who signed the bill into law? President Barack Obama. Of course.

And who were the two largest recipients of AIG campaign contributions? Senator Dodd was no. 1, former Senator Obama was no. 2, and Democrats received 76 percent of total AIG political contributions.

Although Senator Dodd, President Obama, and the Democrats are mad as Hell about the $450 million in bonuses AIG is paying to employees in its financial products unit, Dodd’s amendment exempts the very AIG bonuses that he and the Democrats are now seeking to recover.

Poor AIG. Back in the good old days a company knew that when they bought a Democrat, he would stay bought.

Now the Democrats run to cover their asses at the first sign of trouble.

Medicare - Bernie Madoff would be proud!

I continually go to the San Francisco Chronicle for inspiration because their far-left orientation ensures a steady supply of foolish articles to debunk. I’m rarely disappointed, and this is an example: When Republicans lose their principles, by David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Friday, March 13, 2009.

Mr. Sirota challenges Republican principles of competition between government and private suppliers of services, and Republican belief that private medical services are better than government such as Medicare. To further his point, Mr. Sirota chooses his facts narrowly. He reports “that private insurers spend up to 30 percent of their revenue on administrative costs (read: salaries, paperwork, etc.) while government programs spend just 5 percent, and polls show Medicare recipients are far more satisfied with their health care than those in the private system.”

I guess I will accept Mr. Sirota’s statement that “polls show Medicare recipients are far more satisfied with their health care than those in the private system.” They should be. They’re not paying for Medicare. Medicare is an enormous Ponzi scheme, just like Bernie Madoff’s only with an unfunded liability a thousand times greater than the piddling fifty billion Madoff swindled.


Madoff took money from newer investors to pay earlier ones, just as Medicare takes money from current workers to fund the retired. However, Medicare has reached a “Madoff moment” when income from current workers is less than what is paid out. In other words, Medicare is bankrupt, and if Medicare was a private company, the government would shut it down because of insolvency. In its current state, Medicare has an unfunded liability for future retirees of about 45 trillion dollars, which is just about equal the annual World GDP before the recession shrunk it.

But Mr. Sirota’s argument was really about the costs of private insurers compared to government programs.

Where to start? First, the phrase “that private insurers spend up to 30 percent of their revenue on administrative costs” does not mean that private insurers spend 30 percent of their revenue on administrative costs. Technically, if even one private insurer spends 30 percent on administrative costs, Mr. Sirota’s statement is true. However, the average for private insurers’ administrative costs is 14.1 percent, less than half the 30 percent that Mr. Sirota slyly suggests.

As I continued my research, I found support for Mr. Sirota’s claim that the “government programs spend just 5 percent.” However, I suspected that Mr. Sirota was slyly comparing private insurer “lemons” to government “apples.” As a CPA, I knew that private insurers would have to declare all their revenues and the expenses that generated those revenues. As an Air Force financial manager for fourteen years, and an auditor involved with defense contracting for another twelve years (and two years of healthcare auditing at Kaiser Permanente, Oakland), I knew that a lot of government costs are difficult to identify when making cost comparisons.

For an “apples to apples” comparison between private insurers and government programs, are there relevant costs that government does not include in “administrative costs?”

You bet there are, and in my humble opinion (based on over a quarter century of experience in government accounting), if properly identified and measured the government administrative costs would exceed private insurer costs significantly. By how much it would take too much time and effort for me to determine, given my modest resources, but my experiences indicate that the lack of a profit motive (and the desire to amass as many resources as possible to make doing the job easier, but not more efficiently) results in large, bureaucratic, costly, and inefficient government services.

Is Mr. Sirota telling us that government is driven to be efficient, and private insurers aren’t? Might there be some Medicare administrative costs that are ignored in Mr. Sirota’s comparison?
Indeed there are (from the American Medical Association Proposal for Reform):

• Tax collection to fund Medicare—this is analogous to premium collection by private insurers, but whereas premium collection expenses of private insurers are rightly counted as administrative costs, tax collection expenses incurred by employers and the Internal Revenue Service do not appear in the official Medicare or NHE accounting systems and are overlooked
• Medicare program marketing, outreach and education
• Medicare program customer service
• Medicare program auditing by the Office of the Inspector General (which is costly but does little to eliminate the enormity of Medicare fraud)
• Medicare program contract negotiations
• Building costs of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) dedicated to the Medicare program
• Staff salaries for CMS personnel with Medicare program responsibilities
• Congressional resources expended each year on setting Medicare payment rates for services

A pair of studies of Medicare administrative costs that included unreported expenditures on the program made by numerous government agencies concluded that Medicare administrative expenditures were at least three times the amount reported in the federal budget in 2003—$15.0 billion vs. $5.2 billion.
(The following are the studies cited above)
(Litow ME. Medicare versus Private Health Insurance: The Cost of Administration.
Milliman Inc. Published January 6, 2006.)
(Matthews M. Medicare’s Hidden Administrative Costs: A Comparison of Medicare and the Private Sector Council for Affordable Health Insurance. Published January 10, 2006.)

(We can easily relate this information to the statistics cited by Mr. Sirota. The tripling of costs would equate to a tripling of the government administrative cost percentage from 5.2 percent to about 15 percent.)

Advocates of a single-payer system (also known as a government-run health system) frequently cite the Canadian system as an example for the United States. Remarkably, many Canadians don’t rub their system in our faces, because they don’t like its rationed care and long waiting lines. In fact, private medical providers have sprung up in Canada because the Canadian health system often cannot provide adequate health services.

Another administrative cost analysis—possibly the most comprehensive and methodologically rigorous to date—examined a wide array of costs borne by insurers, health care providers, and patients in the United States and Canada, paying particular attention to indirect costs of carrying out basic administrative functions. The study calculated costs, net of associated benefits, of explicit and implicit methods of collecting revenues, curbing use of services and paying providers. For example, longer waiting times in Canada implicitly keep utilization of health care services in check, generating indirect costs to patients from delayed treatment and missed work. The study found that indirect, hidden administrative costs dwarfed monetary expenditures, concluding that true administrative costs are many times higher in Canada than in the United States.
(Danzon PM. Hidden overhead costs: is Canada’s system really less expensive?
Health Aff. 1992;11(1):21–43.)

A final point, one that I’m sure Mr. Sirota would never acknowledge, is that the federal and state governments drive up the costs of private insurers by requiring them to comply with myriad regulations and reporting requirements rather than operating in a uniform and standardized health care environment.

Both overregulation and arbitrary differences in regulation create unnecessary administrative costs and prevent cost-savings from economies of scale. Private insurers also must pay premium taxes, usually counted as an administrative expense, driving up administrative costs as a percentage of total costs and creating the appearance of reduced efficiency.

As I look back over Mr. Sirota’s article, and compare it to information readily available on the Internet, I arrive at some conclusions. The first is that Mr. Sirota thinks that now is the time, with Democrats in charge, to push big government proposals that don’t pass the smell test; i.e., that government programs are more efficient and cost effective than private ones. The second is that, given the liberal bias and the weak financial condition of journalism, Mr. Sirota does not have to worry about the kind of investigative reporting that would leave him red faced in embarrassment.

In conclusion, Mr. Sirota counts on ignorant and apathetic Americans accepting that Republicans are too beaten down to stand up for their principles of supporting competition between private businesses and government programs.

Au contraire, Mr. Sirota, Republicans (like me) welcome the opportunity to have the government compete with private insurers for healthcare resources. Right now the government has a monopoly on health insurance for Americans over 65 and is able to maintain its monopoly only because it does not have to operate within the accounting standards it requires of private companies. Only by privatizing Medicare is there any chance of saving it and preventing future generations from facing ruinous tax increases, means testing of the wealthy (and eventually of the almost-wealthy), and draconian rationing of health services.

By the way, Mr. Sirota, as long as we’re throwing competition between the government and private businesses on the table, why don’t we consider privatizing education?

And Social Security, of course.

Talk about a Ponzi scheme.

The Last Word on Rising Seas Alarmists

A writer to our local weekly newspaper accused me of being like Hitler – apparently the Left’s favorite device for silencing conservatives – because he avows that I repeat lies against anthropogenic global warming over and over until repetition gives them substance. Oddly enough, that’s the way I feel about the global warming activists; no matter the science, one outrageous claim of impending disaster follows another.

The latest was in a front-page San Francisco Chronicle article Report: rising seas could cost Ca. more than $100B, by Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writer, Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

The prediction of a 1.4-meter sea-level rise over the next century is based on international climate change models that predict more land ice melting as warming continues.

On Tuesday, top climate scientists in Copenhagen, Denmark said new research suggests that current international predictions of sea level rise are too conservative, and warned that seas could rise twice as much as previously projected.

Al Gore, of course, predicted that sea levels would rise 20 feet by 2100, over four times the amount of this most extreme current projection and about ten times what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has led us to expect.

The prediction that sea levels would rise 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) by 2100 really got my attention. The first thing that hit me was that we are already nine percent of the way this century to 2100, so we should have already experienced five inches of rising sea levels – over half of the total for the past century - if we’re going to get to 4.6 feet by 2100. So far sea levels have risen 0.7 inches since 2000, leaving us needing an increase of over 4.5 feet in the next 91 years (or an increase of 19.9 feet to satisfy Al Gore).

Have there been sea level increases in the past as great as 4.6 feet in a century? There certainly have; since the end of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago sea levels have risen over 400 feet, an average of over two feet per century. Of course the rate was about double the two-foot average during the first 10,000 years following the end of the Ice Age because there was so much ice to melt and warming was much faster than currently.

By the Holocene Climate Optimum, a warmer period than today which lasted from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, sea level increases of approximately 400 feet had occurred, and in the last roughly 8,000 years sea levels have only risen a total of about 40 feet, or an average of half a foot per century.

Remarkably, given the dire prophecies of sea levels rising 4.6 feet this century, the Holocene Climate Optimum had exceptional warming in northern latitudes and yet sea level increases per century apparently did not exceed one foot. Why would warming of a lesser magnitude now cause melting of a far greater magnitude? It didn’t during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), when tree lines in the Alps were 300 meters higher than today and Greenland glaciers had retreated much farther than at present.

This last point is significant, because according to Al Gore and his global warming alarmists, Greenland is particularly vulnerable to suddenly melting. Interestingly, scientists who have carefully studied Greenland don’t see how Gore’s or others’ dire prophesies can be fulfilled. There is ample evidence that the Greenland ice cap has withstood longer periods of warmth without significant shrinkage, and there are enormous physical barriers to sudden ice movement and rapid changes that would cause flooding. Very accurate records also show that Greenland was much warmer sixty to eighty years ago than it is now.

Temperatures were warmer in the 1930s and 1940s in Greenland. They cooled back to the levels of the 1880s by the 1980s and 1990s. In a GRL paper in 2003, Hanna and Cappelen showed a significant cooling trend for eight stations in coastal southern Greenland from 1958 to 2001 (-1.29ºC for the 44 years). The temperature trend represented a strong negative correlation with increasing CO2 levels.

We must thank Al Gore for drawing our attention to Greenland, where temperatures went down as CO2 increased for half a century. Besides the strong negative correlation between temperatures and CO2 in Greenland, scientists have found a strong positive correlation between temperatures and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

That’s right, Al. Scientists have found a strong positive correlation with a natural force, not an anthropogenic one.

Warming in the Arctic is likewise shown to be cyclical in nature. This was acknowledged in the AR4 (the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)) which mentioned the prior warming and ice reduction in the 1930s and 1940s. Warming results in part from the reduction of arctic ice extent because of flows of the warm water associated with the warm phases of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) into the arctic from the Pacific through the Bering Straits and the far North Atlantic and the Norwegian Current.

Polyakov et al (2002) created a temperature record using stations north of 62 degrees N. The late 1930s-early 1940s were clearly the warmest of the last century. In addition, the numbers of available observations in the late 1930s-early 1940s (slightly more than 50) is comparable to recent decades.

The same is true for the Antarctic Ice Cap, which arguably has been increasing and would increase if warmer temperatures cause increased precipitation.

Warmer temperatures are, of course, at the heart of this issue, and I suggest that no one will be able to argue anthropogenic global warming convincingly when confronted by Climate Change: Driven by the Ocean not Human Activity, by William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (Prepared for the 2nd Annual Heartland Institute sponsored conference on Climate Change, New York City, March 8-10, 2009). In his presentation Dr. Gray clearly demonstrates that doubling of atmospheric CO2 will only increase global temperatures about one degree Fahrenheit this century. In other words, there will be no warming engine to drive Antarctic and Greenland melting and concomitant significant rising of sea levels.

Sorry Al. By 2100 you’re going to be stuck with over 19 feet in your mouth, and the more cautious scientists predicting a 4.6-foot rise will come up four feet short.

Obama - Thanks for Sharing with Rush Limbaugh

President Obama has a strangle hold on the "bully pulpit." As our first almost-black, almost-native-born American president, every word he stumbles to read from a teleprompter is trumpeted to the four corners of our Al Gore-doomed planet. No utterance or action of The Obama is deemed too banal or ordinary for breathless Chris Matthewsian-type coverage.

It is in this light of the total domination Obama has over news coverage that I must note and applaud his magnanimity, his unselfish sharing of the spotlight with his most articulate opponent, Rush Limbaugh.

The Democrats got what they asked for, and now sound like they bit off more than they can chew (At a White House Press Briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted that the White House Rush Limbaugh strategy is counterproductive).

Plus The Obama now has a direct challenge from Rush to debate him (a highly publicized challenge at that, thanks to a Drudge link)

Rush couldn't be happier, since he's accustomed to paying his own way, including such things as advertising his own show and website. In just a three-day period, Rush has had banner-headline links on Drudge, and daily questions about him at Obama's Press Secretary's press briefings. Who needs to pay for advertising when your opponents are so generous?

Rush also was vilified by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, then almost immediately received an abject apology from Steele. More Drudge headlines, more involvement of Democrats such as their Congressional Campaign Committee (Rush immediately published the link to their "ImSorryRush.com" website), and speculation by Bill O'Reilly that Rush may be, probably is, more powerful than Steele.

All of this is helping publicize Rush and his message. After all, if the Democrats have organized a group headed by Rahm Emanuel, featuring James Carville and Paul Begala, to attack Rush, doesn't that demonstrate they think Rush is at a level with President The Obama? And Michael Steele clearly demonstrated where he, as the head of the Republican National Party, stands in relation to Rush.

Unfortunately The Obama will never give us the satisfaction of debating Rush, and with good reason: The Obama wouldn't stand a chance, even with half of Rush's brain tied behind his back.

Rush continues to rack up headlines:

The Christian Science Monitor says that until someone else steps up, Rush is the head of the Republican Party, and mentioned his challenge to debate The Obama.
Ditto The Financial Times.
Another day, another Drudge item about the Democrat "brain trust" focusing on Rush.

Obama's 100% Middle-Class Tax Increase

After promising that he will reduce taxes on 95 percent of Americans, the Obama Administration’s budget establishes a $646 billion energy tax hike that will impact anyone who uses electricity, drives a car, or relies on energy in any way.

A little background on taxes. First, a minority of Americans pay significant income taxes. The bottom 50% of taxpayers only pay a total of 2% of income tax revenues, while the top 5% pay 60% (up from 50% ten years ago, and roughly 40% thirty years ago).

Therefore, Obama's promise to cut income taxes for 95% of Americans doesn't mean much, because little or no taxes will be saved by a majority of "taxpayers."

However, the energy tax hike will be paid by almost 100% of Americans, including almost all non-taxpayers. Just one item in Obama's program, a cap-and-trade system to make manufacturers pay for creating CO2 in a vain attempt to solve a non-existent problem, anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming, will increase everyone's costs for fuel, travel, heating and cooling, and just about every manufactured good or service they buy. Further, it will reduce American global competitiveness, reducing exports and making imports more attractive, while killing American jobs.

After all is done, natural climate change will do as it has for millions of years, never noticing or caring about the puny efforts mankind takes to forestall the inevitable. During the much warmer Medieval Warm Period of only 1,000 years ago, mankind probably prayed for its return as the climate changed to the Little Ice Ages of 1300-1850 AD. Our ancestors would think us daft to be so upset and concerned by natural warming, when they suffered so grievously during the 550-year calamity of global cooling.

Now Obama's Administration is going to extract money from almost all Americans to squander accomplishing nothing, while returning a pittance.

Obama is betting that you will all notice the extra $300 you save on your yearly taxes, and not the $2,400 you pay for the hidden taxes on energy.

Knowing the economic-knowledge level of Americans, Obama is betting on a sure thing.

More Joe Biden Dumb Remarks

Joe Biden has only been Vice-President a month, and already he has provided me a steady stream of "dumb" remark articles. In his latest demonstation of stupidity, he remarked that Louisiana was "losing 400 jobs a day," when Louisiana was one of few states actually adding jobs, and Louisiana's unemployment at 5.9% is well under the national average of 7.3%.

Thanks for drawing attention to a Republican success story, Joe.

Selective Cartoon Outrage Makes a Monkey of Democrats

This is the offending New York Post cartoon that Al Sharpton considers an excuse for government imposed censorship and sanctions against free expression. It hurts me to look at it because it reminds me of the terrible tragedy - the horribly maimed woman; the monkey's owner faced with the double tragedy of her friend's injuries and the death of her beloved pet; and the monkey dead because it was overprotective and incapable of understanding a change in its environment.

I looked at the cartoon and saw a monkey killed by the policemen, not President Obama. When I thought further about the meaning of the cartoon, I grasped that it was ridiculing the writers of the stimulus package, as I did in an earlier post. I still didn't think of Obama.

Then it struck me. To the Left, President Bush had been "BushChimpHitler." Many pictures and cartoons compared Bush to Hitler. Many others depicted President Bush as a chimp.

Unlike the Post cartoon, it was clear that President Bush was being compared to a chimp,

Democrats have been very selective about which cartoons they deem cause racial offense. For example, many well-known Leftist cartoonists drew very offensive cartoons of Condoleezza Rice:

This is by the always execrable Ted Rall, who is President of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.

This one stereotyping Condi Rice as a slovenly, uneducated Mammy, is by Jeff Danzinger of the Los Angeles Times, syndicated by Tribune Media.

Even Pat Oliphant joins the racial stereotyping parade. Actually, Oliphant has been criticized many times for racist caricatures.

You notice that in each of these cartoons, unlike the Post cartoon, there is no ambiguity about who is being mocked and about the racial connotations.

Liberal Plan to Save Social Security

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article by a particularly ignorant writer entitled, Federal waste we can end, by Susan Alexander, January 28, 2009. I don’t know how her article could have gotten through an editing process, so I’m assuming The Chronicle’s editors are equally ignorant.

Ms. Alexander used Senator John McCain collecting Social Security payments as an example of what she considers Federal waste. Ms. Alexander admits her essential ignorance of the system she is writing about when she states: “How many working Americans are even aware that wealthy retirees receive Social Security checks? I didn't know until the 2008 presidential campaign, when one very prominent "retiree" revealed that he cashed a hefty Social Security check every month.”

Before I go on, I assume Ms. Alexander realizes that many wealthy Americans now contribute 6.2% of their income (12.4% if self-employed), and have contributed to Social Security all their working lives.

I shouldn’t assume too much about Ms. Alexander’s awareness of what I thought was common knowledge of Social Security. She further paraded her ignorance of Social Security when she continued:

(Senator McCain’s) earnings in the Senate, where he contributes 6.2 percent of his income into Social Security, apparently entitled him to this handsome sum on some bureaucrat's chart, but isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Ms. Alexander, Senator McCain contributed from 3% to over 5% of his income into Social Security during each of his many years of military service. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised if you didn’t know that military members pay into Social Security.

For many years Congressmen didn’t pay into Social Security, even when military members like Senator McCain did.

Under a law enacted in 1983, all members of Congress both contribute to and receive benefits from the Social Security system. Apparently all of them, not just Senator McCain, are what you, Ms. Alexander, consider too wealthy to receive Social Security.

Where would you draw the line, Ms. Alexander? The top one percent of American households make over $350,000 a year, or about $175,000 per person, which is roughly a Senator’s salary. In the wealthiest one percent there are approximately 380,000 Americans over 65 drawing Social Security, receiving a total of about one billion dollars per year (assuming each wealthy recipient received at least the Social Security maximum of $2,323 per month starting at age 66).

Would stopping Social Security payments to the wealthiest one percent of households save Social Security? The $1 billion saved would be almost 0.2% of the over $600 billion paid out in 2008, or an extra $2 per month to each of the less wealthy recipients.

Do you really consider that meaningful progress towards saving Social Security, Ms. Alexander? Your answer has to be “yes,” or why would you write your article? Or perhaps you assumed that The Chronicle editors and readers would be too dumb to do the numbers. It appears you got that right. Thousands will have read your erroneous article and, like The Chronicle editors, not be able to make a common sense evaluation of your position.

A few will read my blog post and realize the truth, but most of them will be conservatives too. To us it is obvious that Social Security is an enormous waste and, by the way, its unfunded liability is roughly $16 trillion (a couple of trillion dollars more than the United States annual GDP).

If the United States was a business, the government of the United States would take it to court for misstating its liabilities, and shut it down for insolvency.

The Big Global Warming Cover Up!

Alice showed me an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Hashem Akbari's cool anti-global-warming plan" by Justin Berton (Chronicle Staff Writer, Friday, February 20, 2009), that really had me puzzled.

After getting past the concept of cooling the Earth by painting roofs white and roads a light color, the first real puzzler was the claim of benefits from so doing.

In September, Akbari and his team published a study in the academic journal Climatic Change, which found for every 100 square feet of black rooftop converted to white, a building owner could offset about 1 ton of carbon dioxide.

Add to that all the world's paved urban surfaces (Akbari recommends converting black asphalt to an aged concrete color instead of white), and the team concluded enough cooling benefits to offset 44 billion tons of CO2.

Put another way, that's roughly the same amount of CO2 the planet emits every 18 months.

Where did the Akbari team get the above amount of CO2? Sources I've checked show the Earth emits 180 billion tons of CO2 per year, and mankind produces another 6 billion tons a year. Apparently Akbari is claiming his scheme would save all of mankind's CO2 emissions for over a seven year period. How does he do that?

About Akbari's suggestion to retard global warming by painting all roofs and roads a light color:
I don't think you can do anything about the color of the oceans, and they cover 70% of the Earth's surface. Ditto Antarctica - but it's already white anyway. A scan of a globe shows that the less than 25% of it that is neither ice nor ocean appears to be over 99% free of buildings and roads - and huge swaths of it, such as most of Canada, Greenland, and Siberia, don't require air conditioning (or much heating either, since hardly anyone lives there).

Almost all of Australia is uninhabited, and New Zealand too - plus its many glaciers and sheep are already white. Other huge, relatively uninhabited areas include the interiors of South America, North America, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, and the mountain, steppe, and desert regions of Asia.

Alice reminds me that many of the roofs that are candidates for painting already host solar panels. They won't work well covered with white paint, and Alice has forbidden me to paint over the 800 square feet of glass in our sunroom ceiling.

Which brings me to another point. The Sun spends little time directly overhead. In fact, for much of the year, particularly here in Northern California and more northerly, the Sun's rays strike the sides of houses as much or more than the roofs - and none of us have air conditioning - and it's been getting colder the past ten years.

I appreciate that Mr. Hashem Akbari is a big thinker, and he would be a boon to painting and road surfacing businesses. However, I don't think he's noticed how tiny an area he's dealing with in relation to Planet Earth.

I'm afraid Mr. Akbari has spent too much time out in the sunshine without his hat.

This is another solution in search of a problem.

Greenhouse Gases Up, Global Temperatures Down

What does it mean when a cause factor in a model increases, and the effect it is supposed to cause decreases? One reasonable conclusion is that the causative factor in the model is wrong.

Global warming models predict that if greenhouse gases increase, warming increases. Further, if greenhouse gases increase more rapidly than predicted, warming should also increase more rapidly.

Recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide indicate it is increasing at a 3.5% rate per year instead of the predicted 0.9%. Therefore, warming should be increasing at an accelerating rate rather than at a reduced or negative rate, as it has in the past decade.

The Master Resource blog notes that global warming models are adrift, and Dr. Patrick J. Michaels shows that temperature observations fall at or below the models' lower temperature predictions. In other words, the models are being proven false by reality.

Time to get some new models.

Stumbling, Fumbling, Bumbling Obama Continued

My previous post on this topic was getting so overfilled with updated instances of further stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling that I decided to start a new one.

Leading off, the CEO of Catepillar, Jim Owens, was quoted by Obama as saying that the stimulus, when passed, would cause Catepillar to rescind 22,000 layoff notices issued last month. After Obama made the remark, and later repeated it, Owens was asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs or not, and answered, "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again."

Apparently the Democrat's "Great Communicator," is not a "Great Listener."

Come to think of it, he's coming up light in the communications area too, as evidenced by the sudden withdrawal of his Commerce Secretary nominee, Republican Senator Judd Gregg, who found too much to disagree with in Obama's policies. At least Gregg pulled out without an ethics cloud above his head.

Those who want to criticize Senator Gregg for getting cold feet might want to consider that Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, joined a long line of known tax cheats nominated by Obama, and is notable because he didn't have the decency to withdraw when his $34,000 of tax cheating became public.

On this topic, it goes without saying, but needs to be said because the main stream media ignores it, that Joe Biden deserves a wing in Obama's Stumbling, Fumbling, Bumbling Hall of Infamy all his own. Most recently he clearly forecasted failure of the stimulus even if Obama and the Democrats did everything right.

Fortunately for Obama, no one with any intelligence pays any attention to what Joe Biden says. Unfortunately, that means that most Democrats do take Biden seriously.

It's a fundamental mystery of life how anyone can credit Obama with competence after his selection of Biden as his running mate.

More Dumb Joe Biden Remarks

Joe Biden said "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong."

When Obama was asked about Biden's remark at a White House press conference, he commented: "You know, I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly."

However, what I believe is the final word on this was left to a commenter on the The Telegraph website, who noted that the Obama administration is not handling the financial crisis with absolute certainty, and is not making the tough decisions. With the stumbling, bumbling, fumbling approach the Obama administration is taking - primarily leaving crafting the stimulus package to the single-digit approval Democrat-led Congress - a 30 percent chance of getting it right would be wildly optimistic.

Test this and see if it seems logical. Obama comes into office with a mandate rarely seen in American politics, a belief that he can walk on water and that he will make everything alright. He joins forces with a Democrat-led Congress that has been in power for two years, got nothing accoplished and nothing right, and has the lowest rating in the history of congressional approval polling. So Obama steps aside and turns the salvation of the nation - most say of the world - to the widely preceived most ineffectual and incompetent group of legislators ever assembled in our nation's capital.

And then in another logic-defying step, they let Joe Biden out to talk about it.

The clowns can entertain, but never make one the Ringmaster.

Gigantic Snake Proves Global Warming is Ancient News

About 60 million years ago the Earth was much warmer than today, and no one seems to seriously dispute this. A recent find in Colombia of a fossil of an ancient snake that grew to be over 40 feet long indicates that temperatures then were 6 to 8 degrees warmer than today.

Without an SUV in sight.

To me, this is another indication that climate change is natural and constant. To commited global warming alarmists, it's something else. According to paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga, senior author of a report on the find in the journal Nature:

Titanoboa's size gives clues about its environment. A snake's size is related to how warm its environment is. The fossils suggest equatorial temperatures in its day were significantly warmer than they are now, during a time when the world as a whole was warmer. So equatorial temperatures apparently rose along with the global levels, in contrast to the competing hypothesis that they would not go up much, Head noted.

"It's a leap" to apply the conditions of the past to modern climate change, Head said. But given that, the finding still has "some potentially scary implications for what we're doing to the climate today," he said.

The finding suggest the equatorial regions will warm up along with the planet, he said.

"We won't have giant snakes, however, because we are removing most of their habitats by development and deforestation" in equatorial regions.

Head's statements seem odd, even gratuitous in light of other information he and another paleontologist provided about the gigantic snake. Not only was it warmer then naturally, but the snake's habit was nothing like today's. According to Head: "While related to modern boa constrictors, it behaved more like an anaconda and spent almost all its time in the water."

Adds Paleontologist Jonathan Bloch of the University of Florida, fish fossils were also found that were related to bonefish and tarpon, and that would have lived in brackish seawater. "That indicates it was a big, riverine system close to the ocean."

And obviously not a habitat that would exist today, whether or not there was development or deforestation.

Another Chris Matthews Tirade - "Dick Cheney, War Criminal"

As I read Chris Matthews' tirade against Dick Cheney: "100,000 killed, 4,000 Americans dead, 15,000 wounded," I search in vain for equal outrage at the 800,000 to a million Rwandans murdered in 1994 under the benevolent watch of Bill Clinton and kind protection of the United Nations.

Chris, do you know what Bill Clinton said about the Rwandan genocide? He lied.

In 1998 he said: "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

Chris, Bill lied. And lied. And lied.

I'll bet you're surprised.

During the first three days of the killings U.S. diplomats in Rwanda reported back to Washington that well-armed extremists were intent on eliminating the Tutsi.

Chris, I've been Googling for your condemnations of Bill Clinton for the Rwandan genocide, and I haven't found anything. What am I missing? I'll bet somewhere there's a tape of you praising his humility and sincerity as he "apologized."

It probably made your leg tingle when he bit his lip...then bit it again...and again.

There's no one who can fake sincerity like Bill Clinton.

I also search in vain for your, Mr. Matthews, condemnation of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and millions of Iranians, that Saddam had killed. I can't give Bill Clinton credit for saving lots of innocent lives, because he didn't, but President Bush's actions resulted in fewer Iraqis being killed than would have lost their lives under the tender ministrations of Saddam.

A recent study finds that the number of Iraqis killed since Saddam was ousted is about 50,000 instead of your 100,000 figure (and the wildly trumpeted 655,000 included in the thoroughly discredited Lancet study just before the 2006 mid-term elections). As a "journalist" you should know these things, right?

Chris, try this to put things in perspective. If all your friends could kick their drug habits, the 7,000 Mexicans killed in drug wars (10% are innocent bystanders) the past two years (Huffington Post article) would still be alive.

The gangs make a staggering £15bn a year smuggling heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine and Colombian cocaine to the hip bars and dinner parties of North America and Europe.

Chris, that sounds like the crowd you run with.

Stumbling, Bumbling, Fumbling Obama

The White House is full of hothouse plants. So this is how you fight global warming!

The first two weeks of the Obama administration probably seem like déjà vu all over again for Detroit Lions fans.

(Click on the cartoon for a larger image)

(The latest stumbling, bumbling, fumbling Obama UPDATE: Obama likes it toasty warm in the White House. Reported by the New York Times:

He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?" said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. "He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there."

Not included in the New York Times article, back in May 18, 2008, CNN.COM has a transcript of a speech Obama gave in Portland, Oregon, about the seriousness of combating global warming. This is an excerpt of that speech:

We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership.

More "do as I say, not as I do" leadership from the top Democrat?

Obama and Al Gore share the same approach to fighting global warming: "Talk a good fight, but let someone else take the hits." For more, go here:

(S)ome energy experts say Obama, who made energy efficiency a cornerstone of his campaign, needs to stay on message.

"He's got to make every American make a personal commitment" to decrease their own energy use and educate the country about the threat of climate change, he said. "The earlier the president can convey that message the better."

(The previous latest UPDATE:

A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business -- liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.

Hilda Solis is a nominee I would really like to see tossed out. She's a throwback to the type of union-pandering Democrats that have killed and are killing American industries while claiming to be "saving jobs." Ms. Solis, you can't save union-workers' jobs if union costs and practices drive their employers out of business.)

The original post starts here:

The latest was Obama’s about face on a “Buy American” policy in the bailout when Europe and Canada reminded him that trade restrictions are a two-way street – they won’t buy our exports if we won’t buy theirs – and that what He proposed was a violation of World Trade agreements, anyway.

The Man who decried George Bush leading America away from other countries almost invited a Trade War. Fortunately He blinked. But why bring up something so stupid in the first place? Didn’t Democrats and The Obama brag about how They were in tune with the rest of the world, not arrogant like Republicans?

And smarter, too?

As a historical footnote, economists give FDR credit for using restrictive trade practices to deepen and drag out the Great Depression. “Beggar thy neighbor” politics.

Now I know what it means when Democrats say that He wants to be just like FDR.

As another digression, Democrats have been bemoaning the fact that a lot of basic manufacturing is done in China and other countries, not here. There’s a really good reason for that – basic economic common sense. Why should we make something simple and inexpensive when another country can make it cheaper? Isn’t it dumb to try to hold on to jobs where our workers are competing with lower paid foreign workers? Why wouldn’t we want to let go of such jobs, and have our citizens do higher skilled, better paying jobs?

Anyway, the bottom line, according to Democrats, is that we can’t Buy American for many goods because we don’t produce them in America anymore.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Obama may have found the key to increasing tax revenues: just nominate Fat Cat Democrats like Tom Daschle, whose pockets were bulging with stipends from corporations who wanted him to make rain for them from government agencies, and use the confirmation process disclosures to force them to pay their tax liabilities. Then when they cough up their back taxes, dump them and nominate another Fat Cat.

Remember when Joe Biden said it was a pleasure to pay more taxes? Apparently not all Democrats share Joe’s euphoria.

Nancy Killefer, appointed by The President to a new position at the Office of Management and Budget to scrutinize government spending, couldn’t stand up to scrutiny of her own spending.

From Jay Hancock’s blog:

We have Treasury Secretary (!) Tim Geithner, who didn't pay self-employment tax for Medicare and Social Security for several years. We have Killefer. And don't forget Caroline Kennedy, who seems to have withdrawn from consideration for filling Hillary Clinton's NY Senate seat because of tax issues.

Jay adds that the joke going around Washington is: “Why are Democrats so happy to raise taxes?”

Answer: “They don't pay them.”

Al Gore is a Climate Change Denier

It’s strange to be called a global warming denier, when I’m a climate change believer. I think man-caused global warming activists are the ones in denial – in denial of natural climate change.

It is ridiculous to think that our current climate is stable, or that we must or even are capable of maintaining it in its current state, or changing it for better or worse.

Only 18,000 years ago, so much water was trapped in ice sheets over the northern hemisphere that sea levels were over 400 feet lower. From Gualala it would have been a six-mile hike to the Pacific shore, and from San Francisco you would have to walk over 27 miles, past the horizon and the Farallon Islands, to reach the beach.

However, about 125,000 years ago sea levels were about 25 feet higher than today, and ocean temperatures averaged almost four degrees Fahrenheit warmer. Northern hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now. Trees grew as far north as the southern portion of Baffin Island, several hundred miles north of the current tree line in the Nunavik region of Quebec. Similarly in Europe, forests grew in Norway well above the Arctic Circle, where they don’t now.

In more recent years – in fact, less than 1,000 years ago – the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Al Gore’s claim our warm weather is “unprecedented” only holds if you define weather as not including the three warmer periods of the Holocene, which began 10,000 years ago and continues today. The Holocene is an interglacial period in our current ice age, and when it ends soon (in geological terms), our climate will be once again very cold.

Less than 1,000 years ago it was so warm that vineyards flourished in England, where they don’t now. The British say the way to make a small fortune is to have a large one and invest it in vineyards in England.

Al Gore makes fools of many, convincing them that our global warming is unprecedented, but you can’t fool Mother Nature.

Democrats Like Spending, Not Paying, Taxes

Democrat eagerness to spend taxpayers' money is only exceeded by their reluctance to pay taxes themselves. Former Senator Tom Daschle is the latest of Obama's nominees to get caught doing major tax avoidance, in this case $128,000 over a three-year period.

You have to give Daschle credit for chutzpah. The man who was in on writing our tax laws for decades made "honest mistakes" in determining what should be included in taxable income.

Apparently the only way to get high-ranking Democrats to pay their back taxes is to nominate them for a high position in the Obama administration, and then do a thorough vetting of their background. That leads me to suggest that Obama create more positions, nominate Democrat high-rollers to fill them, then use the tax revenues generated during the review process to help reduce the deficit.

However, the nominee should then be blocked from taking the position, and another nominee selected. The whole process is wasted if you approve the tax cheats for the jobs anyway, because then they'll just soak up and spend more of the taxpayers' money than they paid back.

The compensation Daschle and other former Democrat legislators are paid are clearly legal bribes for access to Democrat power brokers. Yet Daschle and others resent giving a little back after being enriched so much.

Obama’s “I Won” More Arrogant than “Mission Accomplished”

Democrats have been ridiculing President Bush for the “Mission Accomplished” sign displayed after the rapid fall of Saddam and his army. Far from being arrogant, the “Mission Accomplished” sign reflected that our military did their job outstandingly. In a very brief period, with amazingly low loss of lives, the formidable Iraq military was defeated.

Our American armed forces accomplished their mission fantastically. They had every right and reason to display their congratulations for the most successful military campaign in history. What followed was the irrationality that accompanies Islam worldwide: one Muslim hates another more than any other, and this has persisted for over a thousand years.

In the unerring certitude of hindsight, we are now aware that Shi’ite and Sunni cannot put aside their murderous animosities, even when released from brutal tyranny and given every opportunity to travel a peaceful and democratic road.

On the other hand, what has Obama “won” except the opportunity to attempt to govern wisely? To date nothing has been accomplished, and Obama and the Democrats’ attempts at solutions to the world’s problems are vague and unformed. When last I was updated, the plan was to have the government spend us into prosperity. If I had known it was that simple, I would want the government to do it all the time, just like California.

I wonder why it works for the federal government and not the states? It must be something about the states having to balance their budgets, and the federal government doesn’t.

What are the objectives of the stimulus package, and how will we know if they have been accomplished?

When that moment comes, Obama can hang his “I Won” sign, but now is too soon.

A Sensible Statement about Global Warming

Sensible statements about global warming are very rare, and I was amazed to find this one lurking among typical alarmist statements.

If the temperature of the Earth’s surface is changing, something needs to be done to mitigate the effects.

Of course, that is what humans have been doing for thousands of years. Actually, adapting to change is what humans do best.

What do we know about the temperature of the Earth’s surface that is incontrovertible?

Simple.

We know that it is constantly changing.

And we know that we must do something to mitigate the effects of these constant changes.

In Minnesota we put on a thick coat. In Alaska we put on a couple of thick coats. In Oregon and Washington we wear rain clothes and carry umbrellas. In Hawaii, we take off almost everything. In California we complain about everything, demanding perfection in our weather as we do in all things.

Looking back in time, less than 20,000 years ago North America to points south of the Great Lakes was covered by mile-thick ice sheets. Come to think of it, the Great Lakes were a product of that Ice Age.

Obviously, humans mitigated the effects of that climate change by waiting for the ice to melt before living in Chicago.

In more recent years, Americans living in the populous northeastern states found they could find employment and live more comfortably in the warmer southern and western states, and a massive exodus from the colder states ensued. This movement in favor of global warming was abetted by the invention of air conditioning, which mitigated the effects of voluntary climate change.

In the 1930s heat and drought afflicted the Plains States – in particular northern Texas, western Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, and eastern Colorado and New Mexico. Many of the residents of the Dust Bowl area took action to mitigate the effects of the climate change – they loaded up their trucks and moved to Californy.

Today Canadian and New England “Snow Birds” migrate to Florida and Arizona each winter to mitigate the effects of climate change. For them, warmer is better.

People also move in great masses to mitigate the effects of political climate change, but that’s for another article.

Dental Implants in Hungary - Not a good idea

Unfortunately, my implant holiday in Hungary did not work from a dental point of view. The upper left implant fell out a month after our return, and when I contacted The Implant Center, they mailed me a screw to be inserted while they repaired the implant and mailed it back to me. The screw was too big. By the time they mailed me the correct size, the hole in my gum had grown closed.

Then my dentist gave me more bad news. "The two upper right implants are mobile. They've failed, and it's just a matter of time before you lose them too."

I gingerly checked them, and they moved a lot side to side. So did the bottom right impant. "They should be very firm, not mobile like that," my dentist said.

The bottom line is that concerning my teeth, I'm worse off now than before I got the implants. It won't be long before all I have are the anchors embedded in my jaws, with no implants in them. Also, the anchors are not compatible with any fixes or repairs I could get in the United States, and there is no reason to believe I could get the dentists in Hungary to make them work any better than they do now. Now with each bite I expect an implant to pop out.

Sometimes saving money can get mighty expensive.