Obamacare – Bad and Badder

The Obama administration and Democrats placed their bets on passing any health reform bill they could, and then selling it to voters before the November elections. They felt they could do this because little if anything would change before the election, so all they would have to do is tell the voters how wonderful things will be.

The problem is that evidence is piling up that Obamacare will be far from wonderful. Estimated costs have been steadily revised upwards as unrealistic assumptions are examined and rejected. The most obvious assumption was that payments to doctors and hospitals would be cut to finance the expansion. The truth is that planned cuts are always rescinded, and the only cutting has been doctors and hospitals dropping coverage of Medicare and Medicaid patients because the low reimbursement rates don’t cover costs. Simply, they cause losses.

The whole scheme will soon collapse like a house of cards when compelling all citizens to buy a product – health insurance – is ruled unconstitutional. It’s one thing to say you can’t drive without a license, or get a mortgage without home insurance, but to say that the mere fact that you are an American is cause to be compelled to buy health insurance will not be considered a legitimate use of government power.

We have a Constitution, you know.

Karl Rove in an excellent Wall Street Journal article provides cogent analysis of the problems of Obamacare, which you can access by merely clicking here.

Arizona Adopted California and Oklahoma Immigration Laws

All the liberal anxiety aimed at Arizona's new tough illegal immigration law is surprising, since I don't remember any of it when California passed a law years ago almost the same as Arizona's.

the California Penal Code actually requires that every law enforcement agency in the state shall "fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws."

Below is a copy of section 834b of the California Penal Code that deals with immigration law enforcement at the local level.

(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. (b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following: (1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status. (2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States. (3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity. (c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.

The last sentence prohibits such abominations as San Francisco's "sanctuary" law.

Three years ago Oklahoma passed a similar law:

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma Legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative
Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

So what makes Arizona's law special? In fact, what would make any state law special in light of federal law?

President Obama was a spokesperson for those of you ignorant of federal law (apparently all Liberals fall in this category), when he said in Iowa:

"One of the things that the law says is that local officials are allowed to ask somebody who they have a suspicion might be an illegal immigrant for their papers."

If the President believes that is wrong, his complaint is with federal law, not Arizona's.

It is already federal law that an alien in the United States must register and carry certain documents with him while he's in the United States. In fact it's been federal law for 70 years.

Nor is it news to local law officers. They check the immigration status of those they stop on suspicion of a crime.

The federal government has a 24-7 hotline that's been in place for about 15 years for exactly that purpose. And it's being used more than a thousand times a day all over the country.

The defenders of the immigration law say it's essentially the same as federal law -- which the president is bound to uphold.

(The above information was provided by Kris Kobach, a lawyer who is an expert in immigration and who helped construct the Arizona bill.)

So there you have it -- grandstanding by ignoramuses, which seems to be our leaders' most highly developed talent.

Making the Army of Reconquista

“Maria, it is your patriotic Mexicana duty to make a baby with me tonight.”

“Jose, you already have esposa y ocho niños in Mexico. You send them all your dinero except for what you spend on yourself y los prostitutas. I know why you want to go to bed with me. But why do you want to make a bebé?”

“Maria, you think I am just a peón, but I am a Reconquistadore, a gallant soldier in the Army of Reconquista. And tonight I want to enlist you in this noble cause”

“Last night Juan wanted me to go to his room too, but he didn’t say he wanted to ‘enlist’ me. He used a different word.”

“Juan is a selfish pig. He told you he would use a condom, so no bebé, verdad, is that not so? He wanted you for his pleasure only, I want you to show my patriotism.”

“Jose, last night I think Juan showed me a bigger patriotism than yours.”

“Maria, la Reconquista must have babies, mucho bebés. Very soon, maybe 15 years, the babies will be big, and they will have mucho bebés. Then, in 15 more years, mucho, mucho bebés! Comprende, Maria? In 50 years California will be just like Mexico!”

“Jose, are you loco? We came to California to get away from Mexico. What will we do when California is just as bad?”

“Maria, then we will go to New York. You will like it. For now, show me your patriotism.”

Damn! I Want Global Warming!

Alice and I moved to the northern California coast in 1998, when we were each 56 years old. We knew the weather on the coast was cool, but with expectations of global warming, as promised by Al Gore, we thought it would warm as we aged.

Old people need warmer, you know.

If you don't believe me, go to Florida and Arizona.

Anyway, each year we look for the warming signs.

Last summer it was so cool on the coast that the blackberries we pass on our daily walks to the beach never ripened. We watched them hungrily, day after day, and they never made it past "too bitter to swallow."

They were at their best twelve year ago just after we moved here from hot and sunny Livermore. That also happened to be the last real warm year we've had here, thanks to the strongest El Nino in the past hundred years.

Now a very respected scientist finds that we're in for more cooling until around 2030.

Whoa just a ding dong dang minute! In 2030 Alice and I will be 88 years old, and in need of all the warming we can get!

No one seems to like cooling, least of all our elders. If you look at a map of population trends in the United States, you will see massive movement from the colder regions to the warmer. In effect, we've been voting for global warming with our feet for the past century.

However, Alice and I love our home, and we don't want to move south, particularly to the idiocy and stupidity of Los Angeles, where I was born and Alice grew up. Alice and I are looking forward to the lights going off in Los Angeles when LA votes to boycott Arizona. We're already boycotting San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley because of their fatuous boycotts. Now we've added LA to the list. So far our boycotts have resulted in almost $1,000 of our funds not being spent in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We're doing our part to cool them off.

Don’t Shit in Your Mess Kit – Protecting Against Terrorists

The would-be Times Square terrorist almost escaped. The Obama administration says that it’s the job of the airlines to check passengers against the no-fly list, and that Emirates Airlines dropped the ball. Luckily Customs spotted Faisal Shahzad on the passenger list before his flight left, but after he had already boarded.

The Obama administration may claim a victory here, but it seems more like dumb luck. The anti-terrorist system is no good if you trust that the airlines will do all the right things at the right time. In this case, Emirate Airlines followed their usual procedure of updating their no-fly list infrequently, and we didn’t have a clue that they probably wouldn’t have a current list available to check against less than 24 hours after Faisal Shahzad was put on it.

Trusting in dumb luck is no way to run an airline, and even less an anti-terrorist system.

Illegal Immigrants Have More Rights Than Citizens

Federal authorities just arrested 596 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions (LA Times), according to John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Most of them will be deported, though 22 may be prosecuted for illegal entry after previous deportation. He said the Obama administration is focused on deporting immigrants who break the law.

The sweep exposed holes in the U.S. immigration enforcement system, since 572 of the criminals, some previously convicted of murder, sex crimes, assault and fraud, had been released from jail or prison without being turned over to immigration authorities as the law requires, Morton acknowledged.

There are as many as a million such criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S., Morton said.

The sweep illustrates the hypocrisy of the Obama administration towards immigration enforcement as it dithers over responding to Arizona’s law. Obama officials say they are focusing their efforts on people convicted of crimes, but acknowledge that they continue to remove noncriminals.

Meanwhile, the administration is also facing criticism from Congress that it is not aggressively enforcing immigration laws. In response, officials say they are removing a record number of immigrants, about 400,000 per year. A majority of those have not been convicted of crimes.

Arizona proposes doing what the federal government does poorly – enforce immigration laws. Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If I were stopped for a driving violation, the officer would ask to see my driver’s license. If an illegal immigrant were stopped for the same violation and asked to show a driver’s license, that’s not racial profiling, unless illegal immigrants now have more civil rights than U. S. citizens.

Hide The Decline

It Is The Government, Stupid!

It is the government, Mr. Obama. What we're seeing in Greece is a foreshadow of what's in store for us if you, the government, and the public employees unions continue to grow the public sector on the back of the private.

Here's the money quote about Greece and its problems:

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country’s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.

In California, the counties and cities have lived far beyond their means by expanding public employment much faster than the general population growth, and demanding more and better government services. Looming over all the public sector employment - which, the public seems to have forgotten is paid for by taxes out of someone's pockets - is the spector of generous pension plans that begin with the illogic of very early retirements.

Of course, much of this is not recognized by the voters, because many of them are net recipients of tax monies rather than payers. Add to these beneficiaries of government generosity the members of the fastest growing voting block in California, the public employees themselves, and you have a perfect system for increasing taxes and spending.

In Europe they have been working at this longer than we have, so are much further down the path to economic ruin. We could learn from their mistakes, but instead we emulate them because we don't recogize that their security, which we envy, is only illusory.

Look to Greece for an example of what's soon to come for Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland - and they're only tips of the iceberg.

Bureaucrats will raise their fists at the barricades in a general strike and protests on Wednesday to protect their considerable perks from the IMF.

They and other public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.

Obama denies it, but even a fool should realize that what happened in Greece happened because government employees became too strong.

California's public employment is up significantly during the past four years, even as California as a whole has its highest rate of unemployment of modern times.

California public service unions are so strong, that even though the only answer to California's ruinous budget deficits is drastic cuts to the public payroll, California politicians will not bite that bullet. The unions are too powerful.

You Can't Get There From Here

Global warming alarmists base their scenarios of doom on the contemplation of a doubling of atmospheric CO2. However, responsible scientists realize the impossibility of doubling atmospheric CO2. Simply, we will not have enough hydrocarbons available to burn in the time frames the alarmists envision. Both fossil fuel emmissions and atmospheric CO2 will peak before 2100, and atospheric CO2 will only reach about 500 ppm, a 32% increase over the present 380 ppm.

As the farmer in the field replied when the city slicker asked directions to New York City, "You can't get there from here."

Al Gore - Can He Have It Both Ways?

A graph of Northern Hemisphere snowfall by decade for the past fifty years shows the past decade was the smowiest. Click link here for eye-opening information Al Gore denies exists.

According to Al:

"Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,” Gore wrote in a wonky Op-Ed for The New York Times.

"The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth,” he acknowledged.

“Yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans,” he wrote. And that puts “significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow.”

Al, look at the graph. Notice the high levels of snow in the relatively cool 1960's and 1970's, and the diminishing levels in the warming 1980's and 1990's.

Then the record-breaking (for the fifty-year period, that is) snow for the 2000's.

Al, you say the increased snow in the 2000's is proof of warming. Then what did the much lower levels of snow in the warming 80's and 90's prove? And the higher levels in the 60's and 70's?

Al, you just don't make sense.

"Porndogs" or Watchdogs?

Some posts write themselves.

According to an Associated Press news story, "Securities and Exchange Commission ... senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation's financial system."

Phrased another way, Who watches the watchers?

Since a very high percentage of government workers are Democrats, what are the odds that these government workers, seventeen of whom were "at a senior level" earning salaries up to $222,418 per year, were predominantly Democrats?

The "senior attorney" among them undoubtedly was.

Clearly these Securities and Exchange officials "'were preoccupied with other distractions' when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system."

But have no worries.

The Democrats are minding the store, and have been since the mid-term election of 2008.

Barney Frank, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Franklin Delano Raines were on top of everything.

If you doubt me, check out what the SEC staffers were watching.

"Unprecedented" Warming for 160 Years

Like the dollar, "unprecedented" just doesn't go as far as it used to.

Believers in anthropogenic global warming argue that current warming is unprecedented. The gist of my counter-argument is that numerous studies show warming was greater during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300AD), and that it was even warmer during the Holocene Climate Optimum 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. These studies will show that warming during those periods was global and persistent, was reflected in ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, in the distribution of plants by latitude and elevations, and evidence from human settlements and historical records.

Arrayed against this record of natural climate changes going back over 11,000 years to the end of the Ice Age, the alleged evidence of man-caused global warming spans 60 years when global temperatures both rose and fell while atmospheric carbon dioxide increased. Now the “Climategate” e-mails show that alarmist scientists had to “hide the decline,” admit that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm or warmer, and that it is a “travesty” that their computer models can’t explain recent cooling.

Earth Day Blows It

On Earth Day the “Windies” gusted, and John Muir spun. The marriage of convenience between environmentalists – the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, the American Bird Conservancy, Greenpeace, and the Audubon Society – and industrial wind power projects offends the principles of both science and conservation.

Wind power is retrograde, a technological dinosaur. It only generates within a narrow range of wind speeds, is intermittent, produces best when needed least (nighttime), doesn’t play well with others (see “intermittent”), destroys scenic vistas, remorselessly kills birds (endangered or otherwise), and is and will continue to be prohibitively expensive. Although wind power has a very low capacity factor (25%) compared to nuclear (over 90%), coal (around 80%), natural gas (used primarily for load following, 60%), or hydro (50%), it is much better than solar (under 20%).

For example, between Maryland and West Virginia there is potential for around 2000 wind turbines, each nearly 500-feet tall; they would be placed atop 400 miles of the Allegheny Mountain ridges. About 20 acres of forest must be clear cut to support each turbine—4-6 acres to allow free flow of wind per turbine; one or more large staging areas for each wind project; access road construction; and a variety of substations and transmission lines. Cumulatively, about 40,000 acres of CO² sequestering woodlands containing rare habitat and many vulnerable wildlife species would be destroyed.

Local environmentalists used the California Coastal Commission to annihilate my home-town Gualala’s modest fireworks display by demonstrating that a few nesting pairs of seabirds were disturbed. I doubt any of these environmentalists have voiced objections to the thousands of eagles and raptors killed, not just disturbed, by the Altamont Pass wind farm, or the thousands of migratory birds and sea birds killed annually worldwide. On the contrary, most “environmentalists” turn a blind eye to such carnage.

Congress F's Up Their Own Health Care

The New York Times reports that Congress screwed itself out of its own health care program by mistake.

This is poetic justice - the comment was made over and over that Congress didn't know what was in the Health Care Bill, but still Democrats rushed to pass it to save their political asses. They knew if they took their time that their constituents would be all over them on their Spring break.

"Pass anything, then hope something will work out before November elections."

Well "anything" was passed, and it's hard to criticize because no one understands it - particularly the Democrats.

When the New York Times gives Democrats a hard time, you know they really messed up.

Iowa Method Proves Global Warming

Scientists' use of computer models to predict climate change is under attack

The following is an excerpt from the above Washington Post article:

But scientists say that, during this time, they have only become more certain that their models work.

Put in the conditions on Earth more than 20,000 years ago: they produce an Ice Age, NASA's Schmidt said. Put in the conditions from 1991, when a volcanic eruption filled the earth's atmosphere with a sun-shade of dust. The models produce cooling temperatures and shifts in wind patterns, Schmidt said, just like the real world did.

If the models are as flawed as critics say, Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said, "You have to ask yourself, 'How come they work?' "

“The Iowa Method, that’s why they work,” would have answered my late friend, Senior Master Sergeant Robert Kenneth Clough, US Air Force. According to Sgt. Clough, the Iowa Method is a brilliant model of simplicity and accuracy: you start with the desired conclusion, and then figure how you got there.

In short, the Iowa Method is infallible.

Apparently that’s the way climate scientists like Gavin Schmidt feel about their computer models.

Do you want an Ice Age? Take the one that occurred, and build a model that you declare replicates it. The model will always create the Ice Age that occurred, although it may not create the one that’s coming.

Does the computer model of the last Ice Age begin with a precipitous drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide? It should, if the computer model predicting current rapid warming based on rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is also the Ice Age model.

The same is true for a volcanic eruption in 1991. It may seemingly explain the subsequent cooling, but what explains the past decade of cooling without volcanic eruptions? Kevin Trenberth in a Climategate e-mail says it’s a "travesty" that our climate science (based on computer models) doesn’t explain the current lack of warming.

A major segment of climate models is based on paleoclimate reconstructions by Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, Phillip Jones, et al. In essence their studies, heavily weighted to analyses of tree rings, show very little variation in global temperatures for the past thousand years, then a rapid warming in the last half century corresponding to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Inconveniently, their tree-ring reconstructions show cooling after 1960 instead of warming, so researchers conveniently discarded that portion of their research and replaced it by grafting on instrumental records to “hide the decline.”

Doing this obviated the need to explain why the tree-ring proxies for temperatures were good until 1960, then not good thereafter.

While ethically problematical, their approach satisfied the dictates of the Iowa Method: show that global warming did not begin until atmospheric carbon dioxide increased.

Non-scientists like Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. grabbed hold of this “correlation” by first stating that current warming was “unprecedented” for the past thousand years, then by doubling this claim to the time of Jesus Christ.

Again inconveniently, Über-climate alarmist Phil Jones recently admitted that the Medieval Warm Period (900 to 1400 AD) may have been warmer than present, and that global climate had cooled recently.

However, Jones ended by proclaiming what can only be regarded as inconsequential, that January 2010 was the warmest on record, the record having begun in 1979. I doubt any reputable scientists would regard one month in a 31-year record as proof of anything, up to and including considering it to be just cause for reordering energy production and the economies of all nations.

Although the Iowa Method would approve.

Cargo Cult Science - Anthropogenic Global Warming

CARGO CULT SCIENCE, by Richard Feynman, was presented at Caltech commencement in 1974. In it he defined Cargo Cult Sciences as theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

What are Cargo Cult Sciences missing? Scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to utter honesty; leaning over backwards. For example, in an experiment you should report everything that you think might make it invalid; not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

AGW has become – probably always has been – a Cargo Cult Science. Examples of past warmer periods have been ignored or dismissed. Recent periods of cooling during heightened levels of atmospheric CO2 have been mated to strained explanations involving aerosols, etc. Recent low levels of Arctic ice create panic even though lower Arctic ice was previously reported – 1922 for just one example. AGW links were forged to Katrina, Midwestern tornados, Himalayan glaciers, Amazon rain forests, African agriculture, Mount Kilimanjaro ice cap, Bangladesh sea level, without mention that there were sounder scientific explanations for these anomalies.

And these are anomalies only in light of ignorance of climate history.

Like the true Cargo Cult believers, the AGW true believers gather in worshipful expectancy of catastrophes that will never come, while practicing rituals that do nothing to alter the direction of natural climate change.

Bill Mauldin - Tribute

For many of my Air Force years, the military newspaper Stars and Stripes was my local paper. I looked forward to it every day, in Turkey, the United Kingdom, and in other lands where duty ocassionally called me - Germany, Japan, Korea, The Phillipines. By then World War II was already almost two decades past, but the Stars and Stripes was still there as our link to "home."

Bill Mauldin famously cartooned for Stars and Stripes during the war, and published a book Up Front of "Willie and Joe" cartoons in 1945. Pop read Up Front to me - explaining the cartoons while giving me history lessons - sometime around 1950 when we were living in the old abandoned Point Arena High School building.

The following tribute to Bill Mauldin was written by Bob Greene, author and award-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.

And with the renewed push to get rid of Saturday mail delivery, expect complaints to intensify. But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month. Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.




Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.

He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin and his work meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper. Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen, Willie and Joe, were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.

Beautiful view. Is there one for the enlisted men?
Mauldin was an enlisted man just like the soldiers he drew for; his gripes were their gripes, his laughs were their laughs, his heartaches were their heartaches. He was one of them. They loved him.

Radio th' ol' man we'll be late on account of a thousand-mile detour.
He never held back. Sometimes, when his cartoons cut too close for comfort, his superior officers tried to tone him down. In one memorable incident, he enraged Gen. George S. Patton, and Patton informed Mauldin he wanted the pointed cartoons -- celebrating the fighting men, lampooning the high-ranking officers -- to stop. Now.The news passed from soldier to soldier. How was Sgt. Bill Mauldin going to stand up to Gen. Patton? It seemed impossible.

Not quite. Mauldin, it turned out, had an ardent fan: Five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Ike put out the word: Mauldin draws what Mauldin wants. Mauldin won. Patton lost.

If in your line of work you've ever considered yourself a young hotshot, or if you've ever known anyone who has felt that way about himself or herself, the story of Mauldin's young manhood will humble you. Here is what, by the time he was 23 years old, Mauldin had accomplished:

He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine. His book "Up Front" was the No. 1 best-seller in the United States.

All of that at 23. Yet when he returned to civilian life and he grew older, he never lost that boyish Mauldin grin, he never outgrew his excitement about doing his job, he never big-shotted or high-hatted the people with whom he worked every day. I was lucky enough to be one of them; Mauldin roamed the hallways of the Chicago Sun-Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s with no more officiousness or air of haughtiness than if he was a copyboy. That impish look on his face remained.

He had achieved so much. He had won a second Pulitzer Prize, and he should have won a third for what may be the single greatest editorial cartoon in the history of the craft, his deadline rendering on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated of the statue at the Lincoln Memorial slumped in grief, its head cradled in its hands. But he never acted as if he was better than the people he met. He was still Mauldin, the enlisted man.

During the late summer of 2002, as Mauldin lay in that California nursing home, some of the old World War II infantry guys caught wind of it. They didn't want Mauldin to go out that way. They thought he should know that he was still their hero.

Gordon Dillow, a columnist for the Orange County Register, put out the call in Southern California for people in the area to send their best wishes to Mauldin. I joined Dillow in the effort, helping to spread the appeal nationally so that Bill would not feel so alone. Soon more than 10,000 letters and cards had arrived at Mauldin's bedside.

Even better than that, the old soldiers began to show up just to sit with Mauldin, to let him know that they were there for him, as he, long ago, had been there for them. So many volunteered to visit Bill that there was a waiting list. Here is how Todd DePastino, in the first paragraph of his wonderful biography of Mauldin, described it:"Almost every day in the summer and fall of 2002 they came to Park Superior nursing home in Newport Beach, California, to honor Army Sergeant, Technician Third Grade, Bill Mauldin. They came bearing relics of their youth: medals, insignia, photographs, and carefully folded newspaper clippings. Some wore old garrison caps. Others arrived resplendent in uniforms over a half century old. Almost all of them wept as they filed down the corridor like pilgrims fulfilling some long-neglected obligation.

"One of the veterans explained to me why it was so important: "You would have to be part of a combat infantry unit to appreciate what moments of relief Bill gave us. You had to be reading a soaking wet Stars and Stripes in a water-filled foxhole and then see one of his cartoons.

"Mauldin is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This month, the kid cartoonist makes it onto a first-class postage stamp. It's an honor that most generals and admirals never receive.

What Mauldin would have loved most, I believe, is the sight of the two guys who are keeping him company on that stamp.

Take a look at it. There's Willie. There's Joe.

And there, to the side, drawing them and smiling that shy, quietly observant smile, is Mauldin, himself, with his buddies, right where he belongs. Forever.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene. And me. And a lot of other guys.

CO2 Can't Cause Global Warming

Increasing CO2 can't cause global warming - the Vostok ice cores show warming precedes rising CO2, not vice versa. Since water vapor is by far the predominant greenhouse gas (95%), and can increase quickly and in huge quantities - just add heat from the sun to the 40% of the earth's surface not shielded by clouds - increased CO2 adds no net increase to warming.

Climate scientist and Hungarian, Dr. Miklos Zagoni in his paper “CO2 Cannot Cause any more “Global Warming”” dated December 2009 describes this discovery and its meaning. Dr. Zagoni beautifully sums it all up: “Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases [water vapor], if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans.”

Dr. Zagoni explains: “Earth type planetary atmospheres, having partial cloud cover and sufficient reservoir of water; maintain an energetically uniquely determined, constant, maximized greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by emissions. The greenhouse temperature must fluctuate around this theoretical equilibrium constant; [change] is possible only if the incoming available energy changes.”

For further explanation of natural climate change, the Pacific decadal oscillation and other periodic fluctuations (see the Maunder Minimum and sun spot activity) complete the picture. How the simple and simplistic coincidence of 150 years of warming (following the Little Ice Age) with 50 years of rising CO2 (during which temperatures fell almost as often as they rose) could be considered proof of the need to drastically and expensively (and vainly) change all aspects of human existence is ludicrous. The genius of humanity is in adapting to, not denying, the natural forces of change. It is preposterous to think that the current climate is the optimum when we have indisputible proof that climate has and will constantly change.Read more:

Sea Levels Rising Six Inches per Century - French Space Agency

Using GPS methodology, a team of French, Spanish, and UK scientists funded by the French Space Agency found that sea level rise is approximately 1.6 millimeters per year, or six inches per century. That's about nineteen and a half feet short of Al Gore's apocalyptic prognostication.

Since the rate of sea level rise has been steady at about six inches per century since the end of the Little Ice Age (about 1850), this latest finding comes as no surprise to anyone but the alarmists. However, I doubt it will get front-page coverage complete with color-coded maps in the San Francisco Chronicle like the earlier, totally scientifically unsupported, predictions of Bay Area sea level rise of three to four feet by 2100.

Global Warming - Natural or Man Made?

It really is very simple. If the believers in anthropogenic global warming can demonstrate that the two statements below are true, they would shut up their critics fast. Of course, we know both statements are false and that forms the basis for our disbelief in man-caused global warming.

(1.) There is no evidence of historic temperature increases or temperature levels similar to what we have observed in the past 40 years that could arise from natural causes.

(2.) The climate models upon which the IPCC reports rely fully incorporate the influences of water vapor, the El Nino southern, the Pacific decadal oscillation, the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, the Arctic oscillation, and the causes of long-term (1,500, 5,000 and 20,000 year) climate variation, thus eliminating the potential to mistake a natural cause in climate variation with a man-made cause of variation.

Why are we required to prove that the 150 years of sporadic warming following the end of the Little Ice Age (1850) is not caused by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activities when the eight periods of similar (often greater) warming during the past 20,000 years obviously were not?

What perverse logic demands that we declare the oscillating warming and cooling of the past 60 years to be proof that mankind is causing warming, and further that this warming is imminently catastrophic? Was the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1300 AD) catastrophic? Was the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) beneficial?

For the historically challenged, the answers to both questions are "No!"