•Did you notice something odd last week when we commemorated the 69th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion and the American President failed to say anything about it?

One of the finest young conservative bloggers out there, Katie Pavlich, noted this last week on Twitter. There was no released statement on WhiteHouse.gov and nothing on the White House or Barack Obama Twitter feeds about the anniversary. President Obama did not make any public remarks about the anniversary, either.

However, Obama did take time to release a statement about Rep. John Dingell becoming the longest serving member of Congress in U.S. history.

"I want to congratulate Congressman John Dingell on becoming the longest-serving member of Congress in our country's history. First elected in 1955 to the seat formerly held by his father, John Dingell Sr., John has always worked tirelessly for people of his beloved Michigan and for working families across America. He has helped pass some of the most important laws of the last half-century, from Medicare to the Civil Rights Act to the Clean Air Act to the Affordable Care Act, and he continues to fight for workers' rights, access to affordable healthcare, and the preservation of our environment for future generations to enjoy. Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to John and his family, and I look forward to congratulating him in person at the White House next week."

Obama has failed to commemorate D-Day since 2010.

•In the SMH Section of our review of the week, (for the uninitiated, SMH is Twitter slang for “shake-my-head” as in, “this is so idiotic I am shaking my head in disbelief!) the U.S. Army's "Net Zero" energy initiative is to have an installation produce as much energy as it consumes. That results in a net usage of zero energy for the installation. The Net Zero program also focuses on water and waste, with similar goals.

Seventeen installations are now taking part in pilot programs as part of the Army's Net Zero initiative. The installations participating in the Net Zero pilot programs are diverse, including huge installations such as Fort Hood and Fort Bliss -- both in Texas -- as well as much smaller installations like Fort Buchanan, in Puerto Rico. One unique participating installation highlighted was Kwajalein Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. That remote installation gets all its energy from diesel-powered generators.

Justifiers for this nonsense program used the example of how a remote base that guards a mountain pass in Afghanistan worked with a Net Zero team and reduced the need for aerial resupply missions from one every three days to one every 10 days.

Soldiers had to leave their secure location to receive those airdropped supplies. That put them in danger and took them away from the mission.

"By having one aerial resupply every 10 days, those Soldiers can focus on the mission, versus on the resources required to support the mission," she said.

So depriving our troops of needed supplies makes them more sustainable!?!

This nonsense just chaps my hide! The purpose of the U.S. Army is to kill people and break things. In order to execute that primary function, our troops need to be well-fed, well-equipped, and focusing on the task at hand and not whether they properly disposed of their trash in the correct receptacle!

•From Eric Roston of Bloomberg.com, a key question was posed to Mark Tersek, president of the Nature Conservancy (TNC) and a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who has embraced "natural capital." That's kind of like a group that wants to oppose radical environmentalism without outright denouncing it as the nonsense it is. It's the concept in environmental economics that natural systems, such as storm-blocking coastal wetlands or water collection, are critical but largely unaccounted for in the industrial economic sector.

Tersek was asked, “Why do you think Americans don't like environmentalists?”
Tercek's answer: “I don't think people like to be told what to do or to be criticized. I know I don't like it. And environmentalists, we kind of preach. Our choir likes it, or they agree with us. And it's not like we're wrong. We're probably often right. But that preachy tone...I came from Cleveland, Ohio. Most people in Cleveland, Ohio, don't like environmentalists. Why? Because it does look like we're troublemakers, or against stuff. We're not realistic. We're insensitive to the need for economic growth and jobs. We lecture. We criticize. Those are not qualities that people like. It's not that obvious that we're helping anyone.”

I cannot say that I disagree with any of that.

(Follow Twitter.com/bkparallax or email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

•Back to enviro-nonsense. I realize that this subject has been kind of a one-note-song for me, but this one is important:

In Washington, D.C., the fire department is trying to determine why one of its newer diesel ambulances broke down just as crews were transporting a patient in cardiac arrest.

It happened on I-295 Wednesday afternoon last week as Ambulance 19 was taking a shooting victim to the hospital. The ambulance suddenly shut down and had to be parked on the side of the road for the several minutes it took for a second ambulance to arrive and take the patient on to the hospital.

The driver of the disabled ambulance told investigators the indicator lights on the emission control system suddenly and unexpectedly jumped from a warning to shut down in a matter of seconds, and as the engine died, she was able to pull the rig to the side of the road.

The question now is why? And can these newer rigs be trusted to be there in an emergency?

When the D.C. fire department began buying these diesel engine ambulances a few years ago, officials knew they would have to manage them with a new emission control system that would automatically shut the engine down if it wasn't allowed to what's called "regenerate.”

This regeneration process was a mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently, when diesel engine exhaust (A.K.A. soot) reaches a certain threshold of particulate concentration, a regeneration process is engaged that processes the soot by “burning it off.” When the soot content collects to a certain threshold and cannot be “burned off” fast enough, an ignition override occurs and the engine is shut down to stop it from producing more soot.

You have to be kidding me! The ambulance engines aren't shut down to save the engine or to avoid a fire hazard. The engines transporting an emergency patient to a hospital shut down to address an unconfirmed environmental hazard that likely is not a threat to anybody outside of the gurney inside the ambulance.

That, my friends, is environmentalism run amok.

•From the U.K. Telegraph, current Member of Parliament (MP), and former firm believer in the dire predictions of human-driven climate change, Timothy Yeo has finally admitted that humans may not be to blame for climate change.

Here's what Yeo said in 2009:

"The dying gasps of the deniers will be put to bed. In five years' time, no one will argue about a man-made contribution to climate change.”

And here, less than five years on, is what he is saying now:

“Although I think the evidence that the climate is changing is now overwhelming, the causes are not absolutely clear. There could be natural causes, natural phases that are taking place.”

The telegraph articles' author predicts that we're going to see a lot of this hand-wringing in the coming months, especially in the form of the non-apologetic retractions from all the former chicken-little's in public research groups who are now trying to run from the collapsing edifice of the great AGW scam (picture the falling walls of the 1867 church in Platte City we watched on Monday) while trying to salvage any shred of professional dignity.

•Incidentally, if you are interested in seeing how so-called Warmists react when their beliefs are subjected to a fact-assault, follow me on Twitter (@bkParallax) and go back to last weekend. You will come across a fairly voluminous exchange whereby you will learn (through articles that my opponents themselves posted) that humans actually contribute comparatively very little carbon dioxide to the atmosphere compared to natural sources. (Yes, all their research articles point that out.) The <3ppm human contribution on the 400ppm total is verified.

They go on to claim that the miniscule human contribution of carbon dioxide is relevant because without human's contribution, the atmosphere and environment is “in balance.” They claim that the tiny human contribution tips the scales to cause global warming.

Yes, you heard it here first a long time ago right here…The Tipping Point Argument. I use the analogy of the straw that broke the camel's back because we've all heard that one. Well, the person that placed that final straw that broke the poor camel down is not at fault for the breaking of the camel's back. As a matter of fact, the last straw is no more or to blame than the guy that put the first straw there.

I prefer to take the tack that coal and oil are fossil fuels that are made by plant matter being squashed beneath miles and miles of rock beneath the layers of the Earth's crust. The higher the temperatures warm, the more plant growth that occurs, and the more fossil fuels for my descendants.

Also, if you want to stay with the Twitter argument, you will see once again how liberals devolve into spitting profanity when they run out of facts.

•Have we had enough of the IRS yet? Charles Ramsey, the guy that stepped away from his Big Mac to free the young ladies held captive for a decade in Ohio, became an instant internet celebrity. In the days that followed, there were calls to recognize Ramsey in some way. McDonald's heard suggestions for free burgers and offered a deal to Ramsey for free merchandise. McDonald's indicated that the local owner-operators of the McDonald's restaurants in Ramsey's neighborhood have offered him free McDonald's food for the next year. They also made a $10,000 donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the names of the young women.
So apparently some are now asking if Ramsay will be on the hook for taxes on all the free hamburgers. Really?

I'm ready to dismantle the IRS now. Who's with me?

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com and follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•By the way, amid all the hullabaloo being blathered by the Libs about the atmosphere supposedly exceeding 400ppm in carbon dioxide a couple of weeks ago, I neglected to point out that the United States only contributes less than 3ppm out of that 400ppm.
You want to know how I verified that fact - I went to the U.S. Department of Energy and the EPA. At epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html we learn that our carbon dioxide emissions have actually fallen to about 5.50 billion metric tons. Now, remember that 1ppm equals 2.13 billion metric tons, so divide 5.50 by 2.13 and you get 2.6ppm.

The key part of all this is this information is available from these government agencies themselves, but they ignore this very important evidence in favor of a political ideology that supports the narrative of the political left.

•Did you know that homosexual men in the United States still cannot donate blood?
Canada is currently lifting a lifetime ban that prevented homosexual men from donating blood, though some restrictions will still be enforced. Canadian Blood Services, which manages the country's blood supply, announced Wednesday that the policy banning homosexual men from ever donating blood will end by summer 2013. The organization released a statement saying Health Canada, the national public health department, gave approval for the lifetime ban to be lifted and replaced with a five-year deferral period. The deferral period means homosexual men can donate blood provided they haven't had sex with another man within the last five years.

Now how in the heck are they going to validate that statistic?

Multiple countries already permit homosexual men to donate blood, and some even have a shorter deferral period than Canada. In Britain and Australia the deferral period is one year, while in South Africa it is six months.

In the U.S., however, gay men remain prohibited universally from donating blood.
As of 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has barred any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 from donating blood. The FDA considers 1977 the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., and this donation policy was enacted during a time when doctors were still unsure how AIDS spread. At that time, there were no legitimate tests to check for HIV in the blood, and infected blood was finding its way into the nation's supply.

So, think about how the issue of same-gender marriage might impact this…if two men were allowed to marry, wouldn't there be a public health threat in existence if the government “blessed” the union, thus giving tacit approval to the union and sexual activity therein? To donate blood, they would have to renounce sexual activity within their marital union, wouldn't they?

•Sen. Barbara Boxer took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming.

“This is climate change,” she said. “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago…the scientists all agreed that what we'd start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said 'what do you mean? It's gonna get hot?' Yeah, it's gonna get hot. But you're also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You're gonna have terrible storms. You're going to have tornadoes and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That's our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.”

She also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

The depth of stupidity in politics at these high levels is utterly staggering.

•On the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, President Obama was asked during a press conference a few days ago to "assure the American people that nobody in the White House knew about the IRS' actions before the Counsel's Office found out on April 22nd. The President responded by saying:

"I can assure you that I certainly did not know anything about the IG report before the IG report had been leaked through the press."

What did that answer have to do with the question?

The New York Times reported the Obama administration was aware of the fact that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups as far back as June of 2012. The Treasury Department's Inspector General confirmed that he told senior Treasury officials in June of 2012, a full five months before Election Day.

The Treasury Department's inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was investigating the Internal Revenue Service's screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

And don't believe for a minute that President Obama didn't know that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups.

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com or follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•First, my thoughts and prayers go out to those devastated by the tornadoes in Oklahoma.

Pres. Obama said the following at a commencement address last week:

“…And there's still a lot more work to be done to make our economy more energy-efficient, to make sure that we're dealing with serious issues like climate change…I want to make sure that 30 years from now, 40 years from now, when (my children) they're with their kids and their grandkids, that they've got a planet that isn't in chaos because of decisions that we made or decisions that we failed to make. We've got a lot more work to do there.”

O.K.

Let's recall the words from a much better mind, that of Prof. Walter Williams, taken from a 2008 column:

Some environmentalist predictions that Liberals would prefer we forget:

In 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, "The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind."

C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed."

In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich predicted a major food shortage in the U.S. and "in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich's predictions about England were gloomier: "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

In 1972, a report warned the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992.
Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, "...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind."

That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 "...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

And, it's not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong. Doomsday predictors have always been wrong.

In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.

In 1949, the Secretary of the Interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.

In 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey advised us that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. The fact of the matter, according to the American Gas Association, there's a 1,000 to 2,500 year supply.

The moral – liberals like to use science to control people. They have been doing it as long as they have been in political power and they will continue to try as long as we allow them to.

•Did you know the ozone hole above the Antarctic has reached its maximum extent for the year?

Spanning about 9.7 million square miles the ozone hole over the South Pole reached its maximum annual size on Sept. 14, 2011. The largest Antarctic ozone hole ever recorded occurred in 2006, at a size of 10.6 million square miles.

The Antarctic ozone hole was first discovered in the late 1970s by the first satellite mission that could measure ozone, a spacecraft called POES and run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The hole has continued to grow steadily during the 1980's and 90s, though since early 2000 the growth leveled off. Scientists have seen large variability in its size from year to year since measurements began in 1970.

On the Earth's surface, ozone is a pollutant, but up high it forms a protective layer that reflects ultraviolet radiation back out into space, protecting us from the damaging UV rays. Years with large ozone holes are now more associated with very cold winters over Antarctica and high polar winds that prevent the mixing of ozone-rich air outside of the polar circulation with the ozone-depleted air inside.

There is a lot of year to year variability, in 2007; the ozone hole shrunk 30% from the record setting 2006 winter. Over the course of two to three months, approximately 50% of the total amount of ozone disappears. At some levels, the losses approach 90%. This has come to be called the Antarctic ozone hole. In spring, temperatures begin to rise, ice evaporates, and the ozone layer starts to recover. Sulfate aerosols from volcanism and the recent high latitude volcanoes in Alaska, Iceland and Chile may have contributed to the warming.

The data shows much variability and no real trends after the Montreal Protocol banned CFC's (refrigerants that make our air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers cool things down). Computer models predicted a partial recovery by now. Now, scientists say the recovery will take decades - may be just another failed alarmist prediction.
Remember we first found the ozone hole when satellites that measure ozone were first available and processed (1985). The “hole” is very likely to have been there forever, varying year-to-year and decade-to-decade as solar cycles and volcanic events affected high latitude winter vortex strength.

We have never measured ozone without there being a “hole” of some size…NEVER.

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com and follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•Wow, what a day this has been! Gosnell guilty, Benghazi is tightening, IRS is targeting Obama's political opponents, and now we learn that the Obama Justice Department has been tapping phone records for a number of AP reporters – and they have been doing so for quite some time! What shoe drops next?

The Obama White House has now been hit with its third major scandal in just about as many days. Last week it was discovered that the Obama Administration was much more involved than they initially admitted with the editing of the CIA/Benghazi talking points. We also learned that the IRS was targeting conservative groups and the problem was apparently not limited to some low level staffer in the Cincinnati office, but was also known about in Washington.

On the latest wiretapping scandal, Monday afternoon it was reported that the Obama Justice Department obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press. Eric Holder's department obtained information on 20 different telephone lines assigned to AP reporters that:

…listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
Apparently spying on their opponents via their IRS records is not enough for this administration, they also go after their allies.

•By the way, if you've heard some environuts squealing this past week about carbon dioxide (CO2) levels passing some kind of watermark (ironic word usage, I know), pay it no heed.

Daily measurements of CO2 at the authoritative "Keeling lab" on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time. The measurements are made at a station on the Mauna Loa volcano.

Yes, you heard that right – they are measuring CO2 on top of a volcano! That's kind of like measuring methane levels while standing on a landfill.

The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was about 3-5 million years ago - before modern humans existed, which of course, begs the question, how did CO2 levels get to 400ppm back then when there were no humans doing any kind of organized industrial activity? Apparently, the earth can do that all by itself without man's contribution.

Now last week, the House of Representatives' Oversight Committee hearings about the September 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya concluded. Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the September 11, 2012 attack.

Pres. Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the hearings, led by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), were nothing more than a partisan attempt to smear the current administration.

Agree or disagree with that contention, Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie summarized Benghazi very well:

1. We still don't know what really happened.

The Benghazi attack marked the first time in “more than three decades” that a U.S ambassador was killed in the field. Yet after these hearings and the State Department's own “accountability review,” we still don't know why the consulate was so poorly protected and why the military didn't or couldn't respond in a timely fashion. Pleading incompetence or “the fog of war” isn't an answer.

2. U.S. officials keep attacking free speech as the cause of the attack.

Even after it became clear that the YouTube video “The Innocence of Muslims” had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack, Hillary Clinton invoked it as the cause of the attack at a memorial service for the slain Americans. And President Obama told the United Nations that everyone should condemn “those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

3. We still don't have a foreign policy in the Middle East - or anywhere else.
How does the murder of an ambassador to a country we helped liberate reflect on the way in which we got involved in Libya: President Obama dispatched forces without consulting Congress? As U.S. involvement in Syria and elsewhere heats up, the absolute lack of a coherent – much less constitutional - foreign policy will only lead to more tragedies both in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Remember what I told you about Benghazi after Obama won re-election?

•And now, 56 days after the grisly trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell began, ABC decided to suddenly cover the story. World News anchor Diane Sawyer this afternoon told viewers that Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder against newborn babies, and on hundreds of other charges.

As Brent Bozell's Media Research Center has well documented, ABC went from March 18, 2013 (the trial's start) through Monday afternoon with absolutely no coverage of the trial. During the same time, they devoted a 187 minutes (70 segments) to other shocking criminal cases, such as Jodi Arias and Amanda Knox.

•So, now that Gosnell has been convicted, I need someone to explain something to me…as I understand this case, standing back a bit to see everything more clearly, Dr. Kermit Gosnell is facing the death penalty for murdering three babies, which was a crime that occurred during a medical procedure he was being paid to perform on the subject mothers. The medical procedure was an abortion whose goal is to kill the involved baby.

We're potentially going to kill him for killing babies that he was paid to kill. Is that how it works?

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com and follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•If you haven't noticed, the State of Kansas has been making some national news lately regarding a recent law they passed that declares the federal government has no power to regulate guns manufactured, sold and kept only in Kansas. The legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Sam Brownback also applies to ammunition made, sold and kept in the state. The new law makes it a felony for a federal agent to enforce any law, regulation, order or treaty regulating such items.

The text of the law states, “Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States which violates the second amendment to the constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.”
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Gov. Brownback threatening a lawsuit to stop enforcement of the law. In that letter, AG Holder claimed that the Kansas law was in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and was thus unconstitutional. Fortunately, the Attorney General is not the final authority on constitutionality.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who assisted in drafting the Kansas law, told the US Attorney General to “bring it!” referring to legal action. Kobach's take is that the federal government cannot enforce laws that are unconstitutional, so the Supremacy Clause would not apply and Kansas law would stand.

Hard to figure where this all will go, but it appears that such laws enacted at the state level will keep attention on Congress and what, if any, gun control measures are attempted in the future. With the last one failing miserably (I was pleased to see!) another gun control measure being successful in Congress is not likely.
But Kobach is correct, let's get these other states on-board enacting similar laws.

•You always hear the media say our carbon dioxide emissions are increasing. You ever wonder how they actually measure it? You know that they can measure the percentage of the atmosphere which is carbon dioxide, and that's always been a pretty small number overall (38 thousandths of one percent of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide).
Gregg Marland at the Environmental Sciences division of Oakridge National Laboratory noted in a recent interview that they don't actually directly measure it. What they try to do is measure how much fuel is burned and if you know in advance how much carbon is in the fuel, you can calculate how much CO2 must be produced. Some large power plants actually place measurement devices in the smoke stack and measure the amount of CO2 that comes out, but that's unusual. Of course, such a method has quite an error potential. The error margin depends on the country and on the greenhouse gas. It really depends on how much a country invests in collecting energy statistics. For countries like those in Europe or the US or Japan, the error margin is something in the order of plus or minus 5%. For those discharging smaller quantities of CO2, the error bars can be as high as 20 to 25%.

Also, they do nothing to measure or quantify the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by other sources not related to man. For example, volcanoes put out tons of carbon dioxide, and nobody knows exactly how much because nobody makes a flow hood that large! We don't even know how many active volcanoes there actually are all over the Earth. The latest estimates place the number somewhere between 1500 and 3000 – and that's the active ones! Imagine the number if we included a count of the dormant ones too! Also, carbon dioxide emanates from every square foot of earth, as plants and animals decay. Geysers, fissures in the earth, and all living animals exhale carbon dioxide.

The point is, none of those sources are included when they talk about carbon dioxide levels because all they are going is measuring the amount of fuel we are putting into our machines.

Kind of places things in perspective doesn't it.

So, further to my theory that controlling carbon dioxide is really nothing more than another cockamamie scheme to attack capitalism and push global socialism, consider that the fuel we burn is how we work, play, do commerce of all kinds. It is how we operate our computers. It is how we drive to and from work.It is how we operate machinery. If we heed warnings to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we put out, we're really reducing the amount of work we do. The work we do is capitalism. Reducing capitalism reduces human productivity – reduces profit. And guess who is going to be standing there ready to step-in to fill the gap? Government.
Keep growing those carbon footprints folks!

•And how 'bout them Royals! It is fun watching baseball again in KC, isn't it!

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com or follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

Barack Obama is Kermit Gosnell. Or perhaps more apropos, if Barack Obama had a mentor he relied on to help formulate his positions on the subject of abortion; like he had a mentor for his politics in the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, that person would look like Kermit Gosnell.

You think that's too harsh?

Then please, by all means, ask Obama to separate himself from Gosnell.
When asked about the trial last week and the on-going national discussion on late term abortion, Obama punted with the excuse that he couldn't comment on an on-going legal matter.

Strange that such limitations haven't stopped him before.

In the Travon Martin case, where a young man was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in an apparent case of either mistaken identity or self-defense, he was very eloquent in pre-judging George Zimmerman guilty of murder in a verbal statement, going as far as to say, “If I had a son, he would look like Travon Martin.”

Another example - Obama showed no such restraint in commenting after the arrest of Prof. Henry Gates by a Cambridge policeman for trespassing, which WAS a case of mistaken identity that Gates himself should have been grateful for given that it showed police were attentive to illegal activities near his home. If you will recall, President Obama commented soon after the arrest that the policeman, “acted stupidly.”

Unless Obama specifically condemns Gosnell's activities, specifically his late-term abortions, we have no choice but to come to the conclusion that Obama believes, like Gosnell does - babies can be delivered alive then killed in whatever method is convenient to the abortionist.

Then, in a true act of bravado, Obama slunk in to an address in D.C. to abortion provider Planned Parenthood on the day that the Gosnell trial in Philadephia was seeing Gosnell's defense rest, and failed to mention the trial in any way. He didn't even say the word, “abortion,” as though the 330,000 abortions performed last year by Planned Parenthood were just a sidelight activity, nothing important enough to consider.

Stephen Hayes with The Weekly Standard summed that particular deliberate omission quite well:

“The fact that the President would go and address Planned Parenthood in the context of this national discussion about the Gosnell trial and fail to mention it is a profound act of moral cowardice.”

I couldn't have expressed more accurate thoughts on truth serum.

•And to add injury to insult, we have this…

According to a new report by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Obama has spent more than twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours).

The report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” used Politico's (that's a website sympathetic to Democrats and President Obama) comprehensive presidential calendar, and media reports to calculate its results.

Comforting that the President feels our pain, isn't it?

•And on the Global Warming nonsense front….Steam engineer and amateur scientist Guy Stewart Callendar, who first theorized a link between global warming and carbon dioxide emissions 75 years ago, actually believed global warming would be a good thing for mankind.

“Callendar, who died in 1964, aged 66, thought global warming was actually beneficial because it would stop 'deadly glaciers' from returning and could boost the growth of crops at high latitude.”

To that claim, Reuters reported recently that Greenland residents are able to grow crops they previously couldn't because of longer, warmer summers. Thawing ice sheets have also spurred increased mining and oil exploration.

Global warming could also allow more shipping through once impassable areas of the Arctic. Fortune magazine reported recently that geographers are predicting sea ice melt will open up new Arctic shipping routes by the mid-century which would “shave off costly travel time in the late summer and reduce Russia's control over trans-Arctic shipping.”

•The P.C. police are out in-force this week after a journeyman NBA player on the verge of retirement declared that he preferred to express his sexuality in a homosexual manner (What that has to do with basketball or the NBA I'll NEVER know!). The PC Cops came after ESPN Analyst Chris Broussard who declared in response to the NBA player's statement that he believed homosexual sexual expression is a sin. Broussard may get fired by the time you read this; ESPN never has showed much courage.

Very telling about the real intentions and goals of the liberal PC media when they jump to declare that a professional athlete with an alternative lifestyle is to be honored for his “heroism” but an opposing opinion delivered respectfully is derided with calls for the firing of the analyst. That's not very consistent guys.

(You can get consistency from Brian at Twitter.com/bkparallax)

If you are typically a purveyor of the Mainstream Media (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc.) you are not likely familiar with the name Dr. Kermit Gosnell.

The reason for that has been under considerable speculation over the past few weeks in the non-traditional media, namely Fox News, Twitter, Twitchy, and several conservative and Pro-Life blogs. Fox News contributor and Democrat Kirsten Powers swam upstream against the tide of liberal bias to decry, in a USA Today column, why the New York Times and the big networks weren't covering the trial of likely the most prolific mass murderer in history.

Who is Dr. Kermit Gosnell?

He's an abortionist that has been operating out of a clinic in a poor section of Philadelphia for more than 40 years. He has come to particularly be known as one of the few doctors, like George Tiller was in Wichita, Kansas, who would perform late term abortions, also known as abortions on viable fetuses, or infanticide.
Gosnell was arrested in 2010 after a raid on his clinic then under suspicion for illegal drug distribution when investigators found:

-Extreme unsanitary conditions, including STDs, septic (unsterile) conditions, blood and animal feces and urine and other noxious fluids and waste, and months-old fetal remains stored in "jars, bags and jugs."

-Surgical malpractice including perforation of bodily organs and "on at least two occasions" death.

-Improper equipment and usage, including repeated reuse of disposable supplies.

-Fraudulent recording of gestational age and training of staff to manipulate ultrasound in a way that would match the stated number of weeks.

-Patients given labor and delivery inducing drugs during the day, then left waiting until late evening for Gosnell to attend or for surgery. Many gave birth during the day as a result, and employees testified "it was standard procedure for women to deliver fetuses – and viable babies – into toilets" while waiting for his arrival.

-Practice staff routinely delivered living babies in the third trimester, subsequently killing them. As part of this, fetuses and babies had their demise "ensured" post operatively by severing of the spinal cord with scissors, known by staff as "snipping." Among the "few cases" where tangible evidence existed, the jury noted a boy aged 30 weeks at 6 pounds, a frozen body in a water container of "at least" 28 weeks, remains of at least one abortion of over 32 weeks for which an extra $1000 had been demanded, and testimony of a baby heard to make noise, and a baby left "moving and breathing for at least 20 minutes" prior to "snipping."

Where induced labor failed, Dr. Gosnell allegedly would attempt to abort surgically, "often calamitously" for the woman involved. A notable example:

-Death of Karnamaya Mongar, who allegedly received "repeated unmonitored, unrecorded intravenous injections of Demerol" which the practice staff used, causing her to cease breathing. Staff were unable to revive her (emergency medications were not used and the defibrillator was not working), and paramedics were unable to revive her after gaining access, in part because they were deceived by staff as to what had happened and the drugs and dosages responsible.

You might wonder what charges are being pursued against Gosnell – license revocation due to the unsanitary conditions perhaps?

No. Gosnell is charged with 8 counts of murder: Monger and 7 viable babies that he killed after they were born. There would be more charges but Gosnell failed to keep records.

Some ask how do we stop the Kermit Gosnells of the world?

Abortion is one of the least regulated surgical procedures in America. Just 29 states regulate abortion centers at all, and but a few have anything approaching comprehensive regulation. Only four states hold abortion facilities to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. Eight states don't even require that surgical abortions be performed by licensed physicians.

I think a better question is what separates a Kermit Gosnell from a George Tiller?
Tiller was known for performing late term abortions. Apparently, he kept his practice fairly clean, at least outside the womb. Phill Kline as Kansas' Attorney General and later Johnson County's District Attorney filed similar charges against Tiller a few years ago – performing illegal late term abortions, but Kline was not as successful as the Philadelphia folks appear to be because Kline had a pro-abortion governor (Kathleen Sebelius) and a pro-abortion DA in Wichita (Nola Foulston) opposing his every move, not to forget later AG Paul Morrison (the dude with the Linda tattoo).

If you will recall, Tiller was murdered by a mentally deranged person in 2009 because, as the killer claimed, he was one of the most prominent providers of late-term abortions. Though Gosnell's patients would have gotten better care from Tiller, the reality is that the fetuses would have been killed under the “care” of either doctor.
Jonah Goldberg rightly asked a profound question in a column last week: What is the moral difference between killing a living baby that is outside the mother for a few seconds and killing one that's still inside the mother's womb?

A sane and logical person should have no problem with that question. Apparently, many in our society, politics, and media are having a particularly rough time with it.

(Follow Brian at Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•So much of what I was going to write about this week needs to be set aside in the face of the horrible tragedy which occurred in Boston Monday during the Boston Marathon. By the time you read this, much more will be known about the particulars, but what appears to be known now is three confirmed dead, one of whom was an 8-year old child, and some more than 150 people injured.

There is word of a person of interest being questioned and numerous mentions of possible areas being investigated.

As this story occurred, I first learned about it reading Twitter (follow me @bkParallax) about 20 minutes after the explosions occurred. I then turned on the TV and began to follow the newly breaking story. I stayed with both mediums – Twitter and TV - throughout the day, as well as the radio (980 KMBZ until Dana Wright came on the air at 2 p.m. and the requisite nausea recurred causing me to switch to 810 WHB). I learned that there is simply no comparison between Twitter and TV in terms of getting information out quickly. Videos appeared on Twitter at least a half an hour before they appeared on TV.

980 KMBZ, the self-described “news station” in Kansas City, was still carrying on about Wright soiling herself in the presence of Jon Bon Jovi. I think it took at least an hour for them to pick up on the tragedy. 810 WHB, the sports talk station was on the story even before the “news station.”

But Twitter is where you need to follow stories if you want to get all the information in an unfiltered manner. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick and tired of having information filtered by news weasels, especially in the face of the mainstream media's absolute indifference to the Gosnell murder trial in Philadelphia (more on this next week!).

Twitter is where I first heard the NY Post report on 20+ deaths in the blasts, which appear to be erroneous at this point in time. I also heard a large number of sources report that there are two confirmed deaths. Those folks that want to make a big deal about sources on Twitter being wrong need to look at recent history. CBS is still picking the egg out of its eyebrows over the Dan Rather/George Bush Texas National Guard story, and they were supposed to be the source for news at the time.

You also see massive idiocy on display at Twitter and though the sources can take it back by deleting the messages, screen shots allow their nonsense to be on display forever. Examples on this terror attack include:

Chris Matthews (MSNBC): “Let me ask you about domestic terrorism as a category. Normally, domestic terrorists, people tend to be on the far right, well that's not a good category, just extremists, let's call them that. Do they advertise after they do something like this? Do they try to get credit as a group or do they just hate America so much or its politics or its government that they just want to do the damage, they don't care if they get public credit, if you will?” - Has Matthews ever heard of Obama best-friend-forever and terrorist Bill Ayers? Unbelievable!

Cynthia McKinney @cynthiamckinney, a former U.S. House member, said, “The pattern is becoming too, too familiar. So, Boston cops were having a "bomb squad drill" on the same day as...” http://fb.me/1JHrFKCc9 -- Pattern? Familiar? Moron.
Nick Kristof (NY Times) on Twitter just after the blast, “explosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment.”

Esquire magazine columnist Charles Pierce: “Obviously, nobody knows anything yet, but I would caution folks jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.”

•To preview what I'm going to be getting into next week, I have a question…can someone explain to me the difference between Dr. George Tiller and Dr. Kermit Gosnell?

•Prayers for the victims of Boston.

(Follow Brian at Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•Please pardon me for veering from our normal path this week. I need to stretch my legs.

•What's the matter with you people in Platte County? When I used to live among you – for 17 years!, I could count on you all to remember the proper role of government in our lives. Government is for roads and streets and keeping marauders out of neighboring states. That's about it.

Now I see that you have voted in a tax increase to apparently repair and maintain roads and bridges in the county.

I have one question…

Aren't roads and bridges the original reason that we started paying taxes to government? Why do we need an increase to pay for something that the county should already have more than enough money for?

I'm not a resident of Platte County anymore, but if I were still among you, I would be looking for opportunities to tar-and-feather those folks that thought they would be sly in foisting a tax increase based on the polling of 15% of the county's population.

And for those of you that did not vote…I get it. You are weary of the political process when you are steamrolled by RINOs as we Conservatives were in 2012. But we need to answer when these tactics are used against us and our founding principles.

If not us, who will bear the standard?

•A new study says that walking is just as good for your heart as running.

“A brisk walk proved to lower the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes slightly more than the same amount of energy expended on vigorous activities.”
Really? So running around the block is just as good for my heart as walking 5 miles? Eating 100 calories of McDonald's food is just as bad for you as 100 calories of carrots.

Got it. Thanks for the clarification guys.

•As I was listening to Rush Limbaugh this week, I was intrigued to hear him giving an iPad to a 13-year-old who said he found evidence that human-induced global warming is a hoax by reading books from a local library.

“It was really easy for me to find this evidence, really easy,” said Alex, who called in to Rush's show from Wilmington, Ind. “I believe the reason that the liberals do not have the evidence is because they do not want the evidence, they do not want to hear that it is wrong.”

After Alex told Limbaugh that he went to the local library, Rush replied: “I am surprised you find evidence of this at a library. That is heartening.” Limbaugh told Alex that if his parents agreed, he would send him an iPad.

This story was reported on The Hill's website. After six paragraphs of information, the website closed with this,

“The scientific consensus is that the planet is warming and human activities are a major driver, but a very small minority of scientists hold other views.”

Really? 17,000 scientists are a “small minority?” Exactly how does that work?

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/291957-rush-limbaugh-gives-ipad-to-13-year-old-climate-skeptic#ixzz2PbCdeW31

•Someone please explain this one…

Remember Trayvon Martin, Obama's “would-be son?” Well, his parents are apparently trying to cash in on their son's death.

Trayvon Martin's parents have settled a wrongful death claim for an amount believed to be more than $1 million against a Florida homeowners association where their teen son was killed.

Trayvon was shot and killed by Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder, but he says he fired in self defense after the 17-year-old attacked him.
In paperwork made public, both parties to the settlement specified that they would keep the involved amount confidential, The Orlando Sentinel reported. “It is understood and agreed that the payment made herein is not to be construed as an admission of any liability by or on behalf of the releasing parties; but instead the monies being paid hereunder is consideration for avoiding litigation, the uncertainties stemming from litigation as well as to protect and secure the good name and good will of the released parties,” the settlement said.

Lawyers!

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com and follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

An article appeared in The Economist magazine last week about the movement formerly known as global warming that had a considerable number of tongues wagging in response.

The article noted that over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth's surface have been flat (not changing at all) while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. What the article was not clear about was that they were referring only to manmade greenhouse gases “soaring.” The world (meaning mankind) added roughly 100 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. They claim that is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750, though I don't know how they measured mankind's CO₂ output in 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”

Now as I mentioned, the key part of the above paragraph is that the greenhouse gas emissions that have been soaring are those caused by mankind. What the article conveniently omits, though, is the fact that man only produces 3% of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The magazine notes, “The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now.” In other words, “We might be wrong, but there has to be some other explanation.” Love the arrogance on display there!

•By the way, at the oral argument last week pertaining to the Left's attempt to gain constitutional recognition of same-sex marriage, Justice Scalia repeatedly questioned pro-same-sex-marriage attorney Ted Olson on when prohibiting same-sex marriage became unconstitutional, which is a good question in the face of a claim that same-sex marriage should be made constitutional.

From the transcript:

JUSTICE SCALIA: I'm curious, when - when did — when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes — some time after Baker, where we said it didn't even raise a substantial Federal question? When — when — when did the law become this?

MR. OLSON: When — may I answer this in the form of a rhetorical question? When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?

JUSTICE SCALIA: It's an easy question, I think, for that one. At — at the time that the Equal Protection Clause was adopted. That's absolutely true. But don't give me a question to my question. When do you think it became unconstitutional? Has it always been unconstitutional? . . .

MR. OLSON: It was constitutional when we -as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control, and that that –

JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen? When did that happen?

MR. OLSON: There's no specific date in time. This is an evolutionary cycle.
Now, if I were in Scalia's position, I'd have followed-up with, “if 'sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control' how does one logically explain bisexual people, or people who switch back-and-forth in their forms of sexual expression during their lives.” You hear the gay lobby “explain” that those folks are just confused.

•The Economist magazine then twists itself into a veritable pretzel trying to explain why the earth is not warming and why such a fact isn't evidence that the whole global warming myth is not a construct of a political movement to knee-cap capitalism.

“The mismatch might mean that—for some unexplained reason—there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990's, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before.”

But they do give some lip-service to the notion that man doesn't control any of it, though minimally…

“Lastly, there is some evidence that the natural (i.e: non-man-made) variability of temperatures may be somewhat greater than the IPCC has thought…'the anthropogenic global-warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century.' It is possible, therefore, that both the rise in temperatures in the 1990's and the flattening in the 2000's have been caused in part by natural variability.”

Wow! Amazing that they even gave that much credence to nature!

•On the immigration issue, the Left is bound-determined to allow the illegal immigrants currently in this country to instantly become legal voting residents. The right is firm (at least for now) on sealing the border, then setting-up some form of plan for illegals to become American citizens.

Of course, the spineless RINOs like Lindsey Graham and John McCain are going to try to strike some form of grand compromise which will give up too much and take too little away from the other side, but unless there is some form of crack-down on the rampant flow of illegal immigration now occurring, why would the illegals come out of the shadows? They have everything they want now. They're here, working, consuming taxpayer resources without paying for them beyond some minimal sales taxes. That's a gravy train. Why would they change that?

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

•As we, hopefully (prayerfully!!), finally emerge from this hellacious winter season, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight this most excellent column that appeared in American Thinker. My observations are inserted in parentheses.

10 Reasons Climate-Change Hysterics Continue (with their baseless and nonsensical claims that man is causing the planet to warm to any practically measurable degree…)
Here are 10 winning reasons for continued climate-change hysterics:

1. Indoctrination from grade school through graduate school has inculcated the "incontrovertible conclusion" that people are destroying the planet. By acting to save the earth, precious self-esteem is elevated, while guilt is assuaged.

(Remember all the liberally-biased garbage we were fed in school at all levels about how we needed to be “sensitive to Mother Earth?” I went to elementary school in the 70's and I remember it. Well it has been ramped-up since then like Jeff Gordon test driving a sports car. There is a price to be paid for indoctrination.)

2. Lack of depth of understanding about science and scientific practice, not only because of being uninitiated, but partially because inadequate science education has left the public either clueless about, intimidated by, or apathetic to science in general and climate change in particular.

(Want to have your own Jaywalking episode? When Jay Leno does it, he usually asks about some element of government or history or politics and he always happens upon someone that knows what they are talking about. Try it on the subject of environmental science and I dare you to find ONE person that can identify the largest single greenhouse gas – water vapor; or the percentage of man's contribution to water vapor on the planet – 3%; or the percentages of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere and man's part of that – 0.038% and 0.00114% respectively. I am nowhere near a climatologist and I can find this information in a matter of a minute or so.)

3. Man-made climate-change hype acculturation has infused acceptance of human culpability into the psyche of everyone, from industrialists and businesspersons to the "man on the street."

(Just look at all the “green” marketing going on with all the products we consume. It's nonsense and people actually buy something marketed as “green” without even slightly questioning it.)

4. Billions of dollars are up for grabs with consultants making beaucoup bucks advising on carbon credits, technocrats raking in the cash with carbon dioxide control and sequestration contraptions, and researchers securing grant money to tie every wind of change to human excesses.

(Which is why corporations slap evergreen trees on their product labels.)

5. Those who sincerely believe they know the long-term future of the global climate are committed to the cause. Commitment can be admirable, but nobody, no matter how smart, can predict the future climate decades ahead with any serious degree of accuracy. That has already been demonstrated with the leveled temperature trend that belies predictions. Could it be that if humans are responsible for a significant portion of the global warming in recent years, that we could be witnessing the maximum effect people have on the planet's temperature?

(Arrogance. We, as the major sentient species on the planet are deeply afraid of death. We dread, secretly, that there is nothing after we die. We try to assuage that fear with the belief that we are actually powerful enough to do actual permanent harm to this massive sphere that we live on.)

6. Politicians and bureaucrats can increase their power over the proletariat. Control of energy is near ultimate control.

(BINGO. Remember when I told you that climate taxes were an effort for government to tax EVERYTHING? Have you found anything we live, eat, use, build, consume, breathe, drink, sleep in, or smell that doesn't use carbon?)

7. Journalists and bloggers have found a juicy, fruitful topic to squeeze.
(Nice pun. That's about all I have on that.)

8. Environmental and social activists have discovered a new "higher-calling" cause to champion and cash in on.

(“Higher-calling” of course being the notion that we will, in pushing against the imaginary demon of anthropogenic climate change, at least somewhat sate our fear over being as insignificant as we really are in the big picture.)

9. Sales of T-shirts and bumper-stickers advertising imminent world environmental cataclysm and its simple solutions--"Go Green," "Hug a Tree," "Love your Mother (Earth),"…would dry up like the Aral Sea. Without such capitalistic merchandizing where would socialism be?

(Maybe capitalism needs to have a moral underpinning, so private individuals pursuing profit in the free market are doing so without actively trying to cheat science in the process…)

And last, but certainly not least:

10. People get to defend their deeply held religious beliefs and can feel they're doing something good for Jesus, God, the Buddha, Vishnu, Gaia, the Universe, children or grandchildren, pets, polar bears, plankton.

(Religion and science have their separations after all, don't they?)

So, everybody wins...everybody that matters, that is, but not the middle-class who ultimately end up footing the bill, and definitely not the poor who are simply used as a sanctimonious diversion, yet end up as impoverished as ever.

These reasons come from Anthony Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic's Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books, 2012)

(Email Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com and follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•The CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference last weekend was not as compelling as the one a few years ago when Rush Limbaugh spoke without notes or a teleprompter for more than 40 minutes, but it did include the words of the most senior member of the Conservative movement.

Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, told the CPAC assembly the Republican establishment had given America a series of losers as presidential candidates over the last two decades, and the last time they picked a winner, George W. Bush, he was a bigger spender than the Democrats.

“Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?” Schlafly said. “The establishment has given us a whole series of losers: Bob Dole and John McCain and Mitt Romney. And even when they picked a winner--George W. Bush--they picked somebody who spent more than the Democrats.”

Schlafly continued, “First of all, they only want candidates who will vote the way they're told to vote, and we like to have ones who will go down there and stir up a little trouble and make sure they vote no,” she said. “You know they're blaming (U.S. Senator from Texas) Ted Cruz for voting no on everything that's come up. Well good for him!”

Schlafly said the establishment wants candidates that “will only talk about economic issues” and not social or moral issues or even national security issues.

“And that's such a terrible mistake, because those social issues are the cause of the fiscal issue, and they are the issues that get to the heart of people--issues like life and marriage,” Schlafly said.

The establishment also tells their candidates to call themselves moderates and move to the center, she said.

Schlafly challenged political consultants like Karl Rove, who founded the super PAC American Crossroads, over their losing record.

Now posit this in your mind:

Karl Rove spent almost $400 million on the election last year, and he ran TV ads for 31 candidates and only elected seven of them. That's a rotten record, by any standard.

•The United Kingdom Daily Mail ran an article that declared the world isn't getting warmer. The paper on Sunday presented irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed. In response to global warming scares, Britain has reshaped its entire economy, spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added hundreds of dollars a year to household energy bills.

In reality, the data shows in incontrovertible detail how global warming has been massively overestimated. But the forecasts have had an unbelievable impact on the bills we pay, from heating to car fuel to huge sums paid via taxation to reduce carbon emissions.

•This little bit is all you need to know about House Speaker John Boehner
Last week, Boehner said, “We'll keep funding Obamacare because we don't want to shut down the government.”

Hat-tip to The Right Scoop.

Boehner was asked if, like Ted Cruz, he would put language into the latest budget bill to defund Obamacare, but Boehner said no because he doesn't want to shut down the government.

Didn't he just telegraph to the Democrats exactly what they want to hear, that he would always be a willing partner in funding Obamacare because he doesn't want to shut down the government? This is why the Democrats always railroad him because he is afraid to do anything controversial for fear of bad press.

This is why John Boehner needs to be removed as House Speaker.

I'm not kidding either.

•Briefly, Breitbart.com brought us the knowledge that Mark Kelly, Gabby Giffords' former-astronaut-turned-anti-2nd-Amendment nut, husband got caught buying an AR-15 rifle. The purchase was not a crime, but certainly was a strange purchase for a gun-control advocate looking to ban the weapon.

He claimed he was buying it to demonstrate how easy it is to buy an AR-15.

A couple of problems:

He didn't actually buy it. The gun he intended to buy was on consignment, and there's a 20-day federal delay to check to see if the weapon was used in a crime. On the other hand, had he bought a new AR-15, he could have walked right out of the store with it-- thus demonstrating the point he claims he wanted to make.

Looks like he just wanted to save a buck on a gun, which is not really the sort of thing someone crusading to make a point usually cares about.

Further what would his point have been, had he actually gone through the federal check (which he didn't, despite his claims)? That a law-abiding Naval officer astronaut married to a Congresswoman can pass a federal gun purchase check?

Of course he could. On what grounds would there be a delay for someone who not only has a clean criminal record, but in fact almost certainly has a US intelligence clearance of much better than Top Secret?

It makes no sense.

What makes sense is that he just wanted to buy the AR-15 and is now making up stories to explain away hypocrisy.

Thanks – I feel much better.

•The Washington Times last week featured a story that actually offers a person with an understanding of the need for abundant and cheap energy in the world a ray of hope in the future of mankind.

President Obama and the Democrats have for years been singularly focused on driving the coal industry out of business. Fortunately, coal is operating in a worldwide market.
As Obama passes restrictive regulations on coal-fired power plants in the U.S. at a breakneck pace, hundreds of plants are closing. However, countries in Europe and Asia are starving for coal, and their hunger is not dissipating.

By 2030, coal will be the most widely used fuel in the entire world due mostly to the fact that developing countries are powering growing cities at a furious rate. For every burgeoning society on the planet, coal is the main, cheapest, and most reliable source of energy.

In a direct quote from the article, Frank Clemente a retired Penn State University professor observed, “For a vast multitude of the human race, the world is a dark place. Over 1.2 billion people lack any electricity and another 2 billion or more have inadequate access to power. A key goal of the Copenhagen accord of 2010 is to provide energy to these impoverished populations. Coal is the only fuel that can sustainably meet growing global demand at such a scale.”

Unfortunately, Obama is closing the door on many older coal-fired power plants in the U.S., but to the contrary, coal is booming in Europe and roaring in Africa, Asia and the rest of the developing world as it remains the cheapest and most reliable source of power. Coal now provides 41 percent of the world's power and that will grow massively as half of the world attempts to join the grid.

Not to be forgotten, China fuels 80 percent of its electricity with coal, and the country has added more coal plants to its grid than the entire fleet of U.S. power generators. China's coal appetite is so insatiable it soon will be consuming more coal each year than the rest of the world combined.

That represents opportunity for U.S. coal companies, who are in possession of the world's largest coal reserves. “South Africa is bringing millions out of poverty with a coal-based economy,” said Prof. Clemente, and the world has never experienced such an appetite for coal as seen in Asia's rising powers.

Elliott Gue, an energy investment adviser, noted in the article that reports about the death of coal have been greatly exaggerated.

“King Coal still sits on the world's power throne,” he said. “Coal-fired plants in both the U.S. and global markets will continue to provide the bulk of base load power generation for years to come.”

He sees plentiful opportunities for U.S. coal exports, including $1.3 billion a year in exports to China alone if West Coast ports are built to accommodate the traffic.

All of this is good news for the battered U.S. industry. However, with the EPA attacking mercury, other toxic emissions and greenhouse gases, U.S. mining companies face daunting challenges to maintain their markets at home, even as the door is opening wide for exports to nearly every other corner of the world.

As the Obama Administration is hoisting new regulations that are aimed at reducing domestic coal usage, many utilities are burning natural gas as a base load fuel instead of coal simply because natural gas is now dirt-cheap in the U.S. The reality is that as fewer coal plants are left running, the ones left in operation will become more important than ever as a steady source of reliable power.

There is nothing wrong with coal.

•Now that the sequestration government spending growth reductions are enacted, Congressman Tim Griffin (from Arkansas) issued the following statement in response to the Obama Administration's effort to intentionally undermine government operations in order to score political points:

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama Administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the Sequester cuts for political gain. Instead of cutting waste, the Administration Obama is hurting workers. President Obama should stop protecting wasteful government spending.”

According to an internal email, Charles Brown, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's (APHIS) eastern regional director, asked his superiors about how much flexibility he had in trimming his program's budget in light of the sequester. The response from the Obama Administration was clear:

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that 'APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.' So, it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

“…make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be?” Seriously?!?!

I'd like to hear a defense from any Obama supporter on this. Any takers?
Hat-tip to Dan Reihl as www.reihlworldview.com

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com or follow Twitter.com/bkparallax)

•From Breitbart News, you probably don't know this because you never hear the drive-by media say anything about the base of the Republican Party that isn't spun into a negative, but Conservative House Republicans have circulated a letter calling on House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to defund Obamacare in the upcoming continuing resolution that funds the government. Oklahoma Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine, a freshman, and Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp are leading the charge. (Where are the Republicans from the Missouri side of the line?)

“'ObamaCare' remains hugely unpopular across America,” the letter to Boehner and Cantor reads. “More and more Americans are now feeling its impact--from job losses and part-time downgrades, to insurance policy changes and violations of religious liberties, to state budget strains from Medicaid expansions. And Americans don't like these impacts. Most Americans still believe that healthcare should be controlled by patients and doctors, not by the government.”

House Republicans have the power, should they choose to use it, to shut down Obamacare through the appropriations process--the power of the purse laid out in the United States Constitution. Why haven't they done anything in that regard since Republicans assumed control of the House in 2010?

It's unclear if Boehner and Cantor will defund Obamacare this time around. Since 2010, they've passed continuing resolutions that actually fund Obamacare. The Breitbart News folks have asked for comment from Boehner and Cantor and received no response.

For the record, Cantor and Boehner both promised to use the appropriations process to defund Obamacare in press statements in early 2011 after the Tea Party movement swept the GOP into control of the House of Representatives. At a February 2011 press conference, CNS News asked Cantor: "On the CR [continuing resolution], when that bill comes to the floor, will there be any funding for the health care reform law in it?"

Cantor responded that there would not. “I expect to see, one way or the other, the product coming out of the House to speak to that [ObamaCare funding] and to preclude any funding to be used for that,” Cantor said.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel added: “Make no mistake, House Republicans are committed to repealing ObamaCare (which we have already voted to do) and--if the Senate fails to act on repeal--we will use every means at our disposal to stop this job-destroying law.”

In the two years that have passed since, Boehner and Cantor have not followed through.

Now you know why so many of us wanted Boehner ousted as House Speaker.

•This one chapped my hide the most…

Last week, the Republican-controlled House passed the Senate version of the unconstitutional Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). The Senate bill expands “coverage” to illegal aliens, men, homosexuals, transgendered individuals and prisoners. It also expands the law's reach to give tribal Indian authorities jurisdiction over non-Indians accused of abusing Indian women. Some of the alleged offenses can be as innocuous as “harsh speech.” Under this ridiculous law, a Washington Redskins fan can be prosecuted for simply wearing his team gear!

Get a load of this backhanded work on the part of “our” Republicans leading the House: the final bill passed with the support of 87 Republicans. Before voting on this bill, the House considered a substitute amendment that removed some of the ridiculous new anomalies. It was defeated by a coalition of Democrats and 60 Republicans. It is important to note that about half of the GOP no votes were opposing the bill precisely because it did not contain the new social engineering provisions. So even if all the conservatives had supported the House version, there were enough liberal Republicans to block it. Moreover, even had the GOP version passed the House, the conferees would have inserted the extra provisions in conference anyway.

The following House members should be recognized (and remembered in the 2014 elections, and the 87 and 60 should also be red-marked!!) who understood that the entire premise of the bill is flawed, superfluous, and an unconstitutional federal power grab.

Jim Bridenstine, Paul Broun, Tom Cotton, John Culberson, Ron DeSantis, Jeff Duncan, John Duncan, Stephen Fincher, Scott Garrett, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Doc Hastings, Tim Huelskamp, Walter Jones, Doug Lamborn, Tom McClintock, Mark Meadows, Markwayne Mullin, Kristi Noem, Pete Olson, Thomas Petri, Mike Pompeo, Trey Radal, David Schweikert, James Sensenbrenner, Steve Stockman, and Ted Yoho.

There is absolutely no excuse for a GOP-controlled House to bring this bill before Congress – NONE. Why have a Republican controlled House if all you do is pass Democrat legislation?

Stop being concerned about political optics and just LEAD PLEASE!

(Follow Twitter.com/bkparallax or email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

If you didn't catch the recent Liberal pantie-bunching over the New York Times' review of the new Tesla Motors electric car, you missed an entertaining exhibition of a very spoiled child in the form of the Liberal Left.

The review was titled, “Stalled Out on Tesla's Electric Highway,” by John Broder of The New York Times published Feb. 8, 2013.

Broder attempted to navigate the trip from Washington, D.C. to Connecticut in Tesla's new Model S and after a nightmare of efforts to keep the car moving, he ended up stranded with a battery-consumed electric car and had to be towed to an electrical charging station along the way. The actual account is much more entertaining to read first-hand, so go to the Times' website and check it out yourself.

Tesla Motors blasted the New York Times, going so far as to say the car review was “fake.”

Business Insider magazine had a great run-down of the brouhaha and accurately summarized the state of the electric car, “Regardless of who's right, the whole experience reveals why today's all-electric cars are, for all intents and purposes, dead on arrival…”

“…New York Times John Broder's account of trying to drive from Washington to New York and then to Connecticut reveals how even a routine trip can be transformed into a stressful, uncomfortable, time-consuming hassle while driving an all-electric car.

Despite having direct, real-time help from Tesla, Broder's car forced him to start worrying and conserving energy (turning down the heat, traveling slowly, "conditioning the battery," etc.) long before he reached his destination. And, in the end, he didn't reach it, because the car ran out of power and shut down...”

This has been the reason electric cars have been out of mass production for more than 100 years in this country. You cannot ignore logic.

Gas-powered cars do at times run out of gas, but gas is plentiful, despite Obama's efforts, and filling a car's gas tank doesn't require hours of recharging time.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-problem-electric-cars-2013-2#ixzz2LSFFp6Hl

•But perhaps the most telling part of the story, Tesla Motors reported a wider-than-anticipated net loss for the fourth-quarter of 2012 due to higher production costs offsetting better-than-anticipated revenues.

The Times' experience won't help those numbers. Electric cars are what they are – taxpayer subsidized $100,000 golf carts.

•What are the facts on coal combustion?

When we burn any carbon fuel such as coal, oil, wood, gas, grass, candle sticks, cardboard or cow manure, it produces several gases. Burning typical thermal coal in air produces mainly nitrogen (68%), carbon dioxide (21%), water vapor (7%), oxygen (1%), argon (1%) and ash (2%).

So 98% by weight of coal combustion products are natural gases merely being recycled to the atmosphere. None are toxic. All are invisible except for water vapor.

To describe carbon dioxide as a “lethal air pollutant” is a lie, plain and simple.

Carbon dioxide is the most important and essential atmospheric plant food, without which there would be no plants, no herbivores (which live on plants), and no carnivores (which live on herbivores).

Our coal is simply another form of trees and plants that grew in soils in a previous era. Ash is unburned mineral matter that comes naturally from the soil and will eventually go back there. Almost all of the ash is now captured in modern coal fired power stations, but is released freely in bush fires, barbeques, wood stoves, cow manure cookers and open air cremations.

Soot is a product of incomplete combustion and is not produced in modern, well-designed power stations. It is no more dangerous than burnt toast.

It is true that some coals can produce some SOX (oxides of sulphur) and NOX (oxides of nitrogen) but these are caught in modern filters and cleaners. Only small traces enter the air. They could be annoying, and would be dangerous if concentrated in city air, but EVERY normal component of coal is an essential plant nutrient, and far from being invariably toxic, is often in short supply in the broader environment.

Anyone who raises crops or animals often needs to supplement soils, pastures or animal feeds with nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc and selenium, just to name a few.

The few coal combustion products that are genuinely toxic, such as mercury, occur rarely and in tiny quantities. If present, special filters are used to ensure they are not released. American coals are generally very low in mercury, indeed lower than in the average earth environment.

In Earth's long history, today's level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is very low and the green world will benefit greatly from any additional carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere.

That is why nurseries add carbon dioxide to their greenhouses. So fire up those grills as the weather warms with a clear conscience.

(Fire up Twitter to follow Brian at Twitter.com/bkparallax or email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

The Daily Bell (via www.ClimateDepot.com) had a great interview with Dr. S. Fred Singer, (Siegfried Fred Singer) who is an American atmospheric physicist, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which he founded in 1990. Dr. Singer has published more than 200 technical papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Dr. Singer is author, coauthor or editor of more than a dozen books and has given hundreds of lectures and seminars on global warming, including to the science faculties at Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley and many others. He is elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Geophysical Union, American Physical Society, and American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics.

How's that for qualifications? I am condensing the interview for brevity, but I encourage you to visit ClimateDepot.com for the full transcript.

Daily Bell: Where did you grow up and go to school?
Dr. Singer: I grew up in Vienna, Austria, left school at the age of 13 and apprenticed at an optical machine shop until 1939, crossing the border into Holland the same day Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia, on March 15, 1939. I joined my parents in Ohio in 1940. In 1941, I studied electrical engineering at Ohio State University; finishing in 1943 and attended Princeton as a graduate student of physics. My Ph.D. came after service in the US Navy in World War 2 and dealt with cosmic rays, essentially high-energy physics.

Daily Bell: You've questioned the link between CFCs and stratospheric ozone loss.
Dr. Singer: I have never questioned the connection between CFCs and stratospheric ozone loss; my only concern was whether enough CFCs entered the stratosphere to deplete ozone.

Daily Bell: Explain your view on global warming and climate change.
Dr. Singer: Climate change includes both global warming and global cooling, as well as regional changes. It is not known to what extent human activities are responsible for climate change or global warming.

Daily Bell: How did you become such a global warming skeptic? Your critics say you are irresponsible for advocating your positions. Are you?
Dr. Singer: My skepticism about global warming is purely based on the observed evidence - which shows no appreciable warming while there had been large increases in greenhouse gases. I feel that scientific criticism is the most responsible sort of thing - both from the point of view of science and from the point of view of national policy.

Daily Bell: In 2006 you were named by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as one of a minority of scientists said to be creating a standoff on a consensus on climate change. Was this an unfair charge?
Dr. Singer: The CBC forgot to mention that thousands of scientists hold the position that I hold and therefore not a "minority" of scientists, at least not a small minority.

Daily Bell: You argue there is no evidence that global warming is attributable to human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that humanity would benefit if temperatures do rise.
Dr. Singer: As far as we can tell, the increase of CO2 has not been producing corresponding warming. For example, there has been no warming in the 21st century - despite the large increase of greenhouse gases.

Daily Bell: You are an opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and have said of the climate models that scientists use to project future trends that "models are very nice, but they are not reality and they are not evidence."
Dr. Singer: I am one of many who oppose the Kyoto Protocol, both for scientific reasons and for economic reasons. It is basically a political document; a treaty based on climate models rather than observed evidence.

Daily Bell: You have been accused of pushing "climate-denier" and "junk science" lines on behalf of large corporate interest groups.
Dr. Singer: I have never been supported by any corporation and have therefore developed my work on climate science without any such support.

Daily Bell: You don't believe a hole in the ozone layer is a danger.
Dr. Singer: The so-called hole in the ozone layer is a temporary thinning in the month of October in the Antarctic; I do not believe it is dangerous.

Daily Bell: You recently concluded that unchecked growth of climate-cooking pollution is "unequivocally good news."
Dr. Singer: Agricultural experts pretty much agree that a higher level of CO2 promotes plant growth and makes plants more resistant to droughts and pests.

Daily Bell: Are islands drowning?
Dr. Singer: As far as I am aware, islands are not drowning.

Daily Bell: Why have you fought this fight? You've been smeared, derided and even slandered. Has it been worth it?
Dr. Singer: I think it is worth fighting for sound science even if one is smeared and slandered. My belief is the global warming scare will be over in the matter of a decade or so.

Daily Bell: Will we continue to bury carbon in the ground? Shouldn't this money be spent elsewhere?
Dr. Singer: The idea of burying carbon dioxide in the ground is a bad one, and I hope we do not carry out such projects. There are much better ways of spending the money; the world is full of places that need support.

•Don't know about any of you, but I am definitely ready for Spring 2013!

•I caught this tidbit from www.hotair.com that illustrates an inconsistency in abortion law that I have spoken about before.

CNN's Erin Burnett covered a story about an unborn child recently killed by a drunk driver in Colorado. As Colorado state law does not consider unborn human babies due the legal protection assigned to babies that are born, the impaired driver faces no charges for ending the child's life who was due to be born within days. Burnett clearly expressed her indignation over the injustice as follows:

“That baby was 8 pounds, 2 ounces. He was going to be born in a couple of days. How could you not define that as a person? That is a viable life.”

This legal incongruity makes absolutely no sense. Pro-choice advocates argue this case is different from an abortion because the mother wanted the baby. What should that have to do with the question of right to life for humans? Shouldn't ethical standards be logical and consistent?

There are those who will argue that the baby was in the third trimester of pregnancy and was largely considered to be viable outside the womb, so it's an unfair comparison because most abortions occur earlier in the gestational cycle. These points suggest that there is some stage of development when an unborn child's right to life outweighs the right of the mother to control her own body. When?

The two obvious lines are conception and birth. ”Viability” has always been a shifting standard that technology moves ever closer to conception. The child has no say in these matters, and cannot speak in her own defense if female.

Abortion is a moral question. I believe abortion at any stage of pregnancy for virtually any reason is repugnant and should be illegal if one claims to be pro-life. But to argue the other side, if we were to define when a fetus becomes a baby based on viability, and we settle on the date of five months, how do you justify denying a right to life for another living human who happens to be at four months and 30 days gestation? As technology evolves, we are going to eventually see viability for fetuses beginning at conception. What will we think of our actions now when that occurs? Contrary to the position of the Obama Regime, this has nothing to do with a “war on women.” Actually, millions more females have been aborted than males due to gender selection abortions. Now THAT'S a war on women.

•How about this for racial inconsistency? From Jay Leno's show last week:

“Well, as you know, there is a, oh my God, just a huge snowstorm going on back east. I hope everybody is doing okay. I know some folks have lost power back east. So, good luck to them. You know, I spoke to my buddy in Boston. They've already gotten a ton of snow in Boston. He said Massachusetts is now whiter than a Romney family reunion. That's how much snow.”

www.Newsbusters.org‘s Noel Sheppard had a great summation of the issue.
Imagine if during his opening monologue Monday Leno said of the power blackout at the Super Bowl, "The Superdome was suddenly darker than Harlem."

Leno, and any other comedian would have been fired by the end of the broadcast had that occurred. What about that idiotic notion that Obama was going to improve race relations in America? Boy was that a dumb prediction.

•And from Brent Baker at www.Newsbusters.org, CNN anchor Deb Feyerick asked last Saturday if the approaching asteroid, which will pass by Earth on February 15, “is an example of, perhaps, global warming?”

Moments earlier, before a commercial break, she moved from discussing the Northeast blizzard to a segment with Bill Nye “the science guy,” by pointing to global warming: “Every time we see a storm like this lately, the first question to pop into a lot of people's minds is whether or not global warming is to blame? I'll talk to Bill Nye, 'the science guy,' about devastating storms and climate change.”

“Talk about something else that's falling from the sky (she was talking about the Northeast blizzard) and that is an asteroid. What's coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming or is this just some meteoric occasion?”

Nye resisted confirming her hypothesis, though I suspect he agreed with her. By the way, Bill Nye is a moron and a buffoon. If you want reasoned analysis from a TV weather and science guy, listen to Joe Bastardi. Bastardi is currently the Chief Forecaster at WeatherBell Analytics, L.L.C.

For the record, Bastardi maintains humans are too insignificant on a global scale to cause climate change for the entire planet. He asserts that the world was likely warmer in the 1930s than today, human contribution of carbon dioxide is too small to have any effect, and warming is caused by sun spots and exchange with warmer oceans. In other words, he makes common sense.

(Get a Parallax Look at Twitter.com/bkparallax or bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

•Did you know that the first slave owner in the US was black?

The first slave owner in America was a black tobacco farmer? Further, thousands of free blacks in the South were themselves slave owners?

National perception of the history of slavery depends largely on Hollywood activists and academic revisionists. Add those in the mainstream media who belch out everything Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton say and you have a lot of ignorance out there.
A recent article at www.DailyKenn.com came up to set the record straight.

Verbatim from the article:

“Anthony Johnson came to the American colonies in August 1619 as an indentured servant. In 1623 Johnson had completed his indenture and was recognized as a free Negro. In 1651 he acquired 250 acres of land in Virginia, later adding another 250 acres; a sizable holding at the time.

John Casor, a black indentured servant employed by Johnson, became America's first slave after a legal dispute with Robert Parker. Parker was a white colonist who employed Casor while Casor was still indentured to Johnson. Johnson sued Parker in Northampton Court in 1654. The court upheld Johnson's right to hold Casor as a slave on March 8, 1655. The court found:

'The court seriously consideringe and maturely weighing the premisses, doe fynde that the saide Mr. Robert Parker most unjustly keepeth the said Negro from Anthony Johnson his master ... It is therefore the Judgement of the Court and ordered That the said John Casor Negro forthwith returne unto the service of the said master Anthony Johnson, And that Mr. Robert Parker make payment of all charges in the suit.'

Five years later, in 1670, the colonial assembly passed legislation permitting blacks and Indians the right to own slaves of their own race, but prohibiting them from owning White slaves.”

•Another fact nobody at the NAACP talks about:

Free blacks commonly owned black slaves in the antebellum South. In fact, there were thousands of black slave owners in the South.

"In 1830 there were 3,775 such slaveholders in the South who owned 12,740 black slaves, with 80% of them located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. There were economic differences between free blacks of the Upper South and Deep South, with the latter fewer in number, but wealthier and typically of mixed race. Half of the black slaveholders lived in cities rather than the countryside, with most in New Orleans and Charleston."

•A full accounting of blacks who owned slaves in the antebellum South necessitates a library's volume of books. The book, Black slave-owners: free Black slave masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 by Larry Koger is one.

Koger tells of Richard Holloway, Sr., a black carpenter who purchased his African cousins as slave labor. Cato was the name of one of his slaves. Cato remained in Holloway's possession throughout the 1830s and '40s, according to Koger, until he was sold to his son, Richard Holloway, Jr., in 1845. Cato died in 1851 and the younger Holloway replaced him with the purchase of a 16-year-old black male.

In 1860 the largest slave owner in South Carolina was William Ellison, a black plantation owner.

Blacks owning black slaves were even common in the pre-war North. Black-on-black slavery was not unique to Southern states.

Koger states that records in 1830 New York City noted eight black slave holders who owned a total of 17 black slaves. The total number of slaves owned by blacks in 1830 was more than 10,000 according to the federal census of 1830; and that includes only four states: Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia. In addition there were "black master(s) in every state where slavery existed," Koger says.

All black slaves from Africa were delivered to ports in the North and transported to the South. Actually, without black African slave owners, there would have been no slavery in America.

•How many of you know that Henry Louis Gates, he of “White House 'Beer Summit'” fame, absolutely enraged his base of supporters in 2010 by strongly opposing reparations to blacks, which had been a cause-celeb at the time. According to Gates, the slave trade was almost totally attributable to black slave owners selling their human wares to Europeans.

He wrote:
"While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today's Congo, among several others."

The notion of white European raiding parties descending on unsuspecting African villages is a gross distortion of reality. Not only does the historical record argue against White raiding parties, but such parties would have been costly and inefficient compared to purchasing Africans already held in slavery. White slave traders would not endure the risk related to such incursions. Furthermore, Africans already held as slaves would be less willing to resist, particularly among those whose African owners were brutal enemies.

[Source: Ending the Slavery Blame-Game, Henry Louis Gates, The New York Times April 22, 2010]

•So you see, not everything (I may argue very little) that you hear or read in the big media is accurate and true.

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

•For two straight weeks a topic more compelling than Piers Morgan nonsense has bumped him from my column. Must be why nobody watches his show.

•You didn't hear this on any of the ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN media cabal, but 600,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. last Friday to stand for the basic right to life we humans possess and often voluntarily forget.

Jan. 22nd, 2013, is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States.

As most everyone knows, Planned Parenthood is the organization that is most known for conducting abortions. In 2009, 332,000 babies were murdered at a Planned Parenthood Clinic which is nearly half of all abortions done in that year. Margaret Sanger, the nation's first birth control advocate, is Planned Parenthood's founder. Few know, however, that Planned Parenthood did not perform abortions prior to Sanger's death in the early 1960's. Even fewer know that she was vehemently opposed to the practice of abortion.

Sanger is infamously known more for her racist and eugenicist opinions, but her words on the practice of abortion may surprise many people.

From Chapter II of her 1920 book Woman and the New Race, she states: “So, too, with woman's struggle for emancipation. Women in all lands and all ages have instinctively desired family limitation. Usually this desire has been laid to economic pressure. Frequently the pressure has existed, but the driving force behind woman's aspiration toward freedom has lain deeper. It has asserted itself among the rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent. It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.”

From Chapter X of the same book: “While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”

In a speech to the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, she said: “Human society must protect its children–yes, but prenatal care is most essential! The child-to-be, as yet not called into being, has rights no less imperative.”

In 1930, Pope Pius XII wrote his encyclical Castii Connubii, which reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition of abortion. In 1931, Sanger wrote this in her response to the encyclical: “Birth Control Does Not Mean Abortion – 'The real alternative to birth control is abortion,' wrote Dean Inge, in his article already quoted. It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. I bring up the subject here only because some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not. Abortion destroys the already fertilized ovum or the embryo; contraception, as I have carefully explained, prevents the fertilizing of the ovum by keeping the male cells away. Thus it prevents the beginning of life.”

There's more - in her 1938 autobiography, Sanger says the following on page 217:

“To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not begun.”

Dave Tell at the Weekly Standard offers a great assessment of Sanger's beliefs (find it at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/139rdqpe.asp?page=3 ), with the most emphatic point:

“One final misconception about Mrs. Sanger must also be addressed, it seems, and in this case the truth will terribly inconvenience the propaganda efforts all around. It is not right, pace Planned Parenthood, that Margaret Sanger declined to advocate abortion on grounds that it was then a dangerous and illegal surgery. 'There are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician,' she wrote in 1920, and 'we know that abortion, when performed by skilled hands, under right conditions, brings almost no danger to the life of the patient.' On the evidence in 'The Woman Rebel,' the real reason Sanger declined to advocate abortion, notwithstanding the law's flexibility and what she took to be the procedure's safety, is that abortion appalled her.

She turned women seeking abortions away from her clinics: 'I do not approve of abortion.' She called it 'sordid,' 'abhorrent,' 'terrible,' 'barbaric,' a 'horror.' She called abortionists 'blood-sucking men with MD after their names who perform operations for the price of so-and-so.' She called the results of abortion 'an outrageous slaughter,' 'infanticide, 'foeticide,' and 'the killing of babies.' And Margaret Sanger, who knew a thing or two about contraception, said that birth control 'has nothing to do with abortion, it has nothing to do with interfering with or disturbing life after conception has taken place.' Birth control stands alone: 'It is the first, last, and final step we all are to take to have real human emancipation.'”

I don't know about you, but if an organization I founded was twisted by people after my death to advocate in favor of a practice as horrid as abortion when I was so outspoken against it in my writings, I would move heaven and earth to come back from the dead and exact some revenge.

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

I was going to focus this week's column on Piers Morgan's rampant stupidity, but I came across this superb piece by Mark Levin published at Breitbart.com. It is worthy of your time.

Mark Levin's message for the second term of Barack Obama: (I edited it for brevity, bolding the key points.)

“I don't think Obama knows exactly what he's going to go for in his second term, as he will look for opportunities to exploit as events unfold. I am sure they've drawn up a partial list, not limited to, gun control; attacks on the First Amendment such as religious liberty; amnesty for illegal aliens; union expansion; institutionalizing Obamacare and voter corruption; de-industrialization via the EPA; destroying the capitalist-based economy via tax increases, smothering regulations, massive spending, and endless borrowing; and hollowing out our military; etc.

Obama sees himself as correcting historic wrongs in this country; delivering the fruits of the labor of other people to people he believes have historically been put upon. He was indoctrinated with Marx and Alinksy propaganda. You see it in his words -- class warfare; degrading successful people, causes, and organizations; pretending to speak for the so-called middle class when, in fact, he is destroying their jobs and future.

The Republican Party, its so-called leadership, the parasitic consultants, represent an institution that is tired, old, almost decrepit, full of cowardice and vision-less. It has abandoned the Declaration of Independence and any serious defense of constitutional republicanism.

The Democrat Party is now a radical 1960s party; it's the anti-Constitution, anti-capitalism, anti-individual party. It largely controls the federal government, including the massive bureaucracy and much of the judiciary -- the permanent branches of the federal government. The Democrat Party represents the federal government, and the federal government expands the power of the Democrat Party.

Republicans may speak of the Constitution, limited government, low taxes, etc., but what have they done about them? Even when Bush 43 was president and the Republicans controlled Congress, they expanded Medicare, the federal role in local education, drove up the debt, etc.

Meanwhile, we are lectured by putative Republicans like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Tom Ridge, and a conga line of others trashing often viciously NOT Obama and what the Democrats are doing to our nation, but conservatives, constitutionalists, and tea party activists who are the only people left standing for liberty against tyranny in this country.

I think the answer at this moment is for conservatives to retake the Republican Party. Reagan did it, and Reagan was opposed by the Republican establishment every step of the way, including the Bush family…After the Reagan presidency, Bush 41 and Bush 43, who'd opposed the Reagan Revolution, immediately dragged the nation back into the Republican mush. In fact, they sought to distance themselves from Reagan and his achievements, using such silly phrases as "a kinder and gentler" conservatism or "compassionate conservatism," as if all the opportunities, wealth, jobs, and enterprises Reagan's policies launched were neither kind nor compassionate.

There is an intransigence in the Republican Party that sabotages and obstructs those who have answers for this nation based on our founding principles. And so we had a brief eight-year period where Reagan showed us the way and created a foundation on which future Republican presidents could build, and they haven't. They invoke Reagan because he is beloved by the American people, but they reject his principles and policies. Keep in mind, George W. Bush was the most profligate spender in world history until Obama came along; the Tea Party grew out of the last months of Bush 43 and the early months of the Obama presidency. Yet Bush administration staffers are everywhere today: the media, advising candidates, leading fundraisers, etc. And they arrogantly and condescendingly lecture conservatives about responsible, moderate governance.

The so-called mainstream media promotes big government and those who advance it. Obama, for example, is their champion. When you look at the audience numbers for the networks, and you see the newspaper subscriptions dropping, that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The years of near-monopoly control over what is said to be news by self-serving liberal propagandists needs to end, as the recent outrageous comments by Bob Schieffer and Tom Brokaw make clear. In the end, though, the consumer needs to be discerning.

Right now we have a government with so much power…I cannot conceal my great fear for the future of this country…We need to roll back the size of the federal Leviathan or it will surely be our undoing….We need to roll back the debt, even though the last Republican administration contributed mightily to it. The way to start is by cleaning out the old guard in the GOP and installing fresh, bold, articulate, knowledgeable, confident, courageous conservatives. We also must find ways to devolve political and economic power back to the states and the individual.

The one positive aspect I see today, there are more people in America now who have at least a general concept of how the Constitution is supposed to work, including the Bill of Rights, and a general concept of what the Declaration of Independence means, including the emphasis on the value of every individual…But I think, in part, that's why you see so many millions of people frustrated, because they know our government shouldn't be operating this way…so many people keep talking about the Constitution. I view this as a very positive thing. Are there more of us than there are the others -- that is, those who reject our heritage and are conquered by or have surrendered to the Leviathan? History will tell us one day.

The choice is in our hands right now.”

I came across the following historical account on Facebook in the past week and thought it particularly relevant to the recent gun control debate.

•“A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY TO THINK ABOUT.......December 29, 2012 marks the 122nd Anniversary of the murder of 297 Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine ...Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. These 297 people, in their winter camp, were murdered by federal agents and members of the 7th Cavalry who had come to confiscate their firearms 'for their own safety and protection.' The slaughter began after the majority of the Sioux had peacefully turned in their firearms. The Calvary began shooting, and managed to wipe out the entire camp. 200 of the 297 victims were women and children. About 40 members of the 7th Cavalry were killed, but over half of them were victims of fratricide from the Hotchkiss guns of their overzealous comrades-in-arms. Twenty members of the 7th Cavalry's death squad, were deemed “National Heroes” and were awarded the Medal of Honor for their acts of [cowardice] heroism.

“Wounded Knee was among the first federally backed gun confiscation attempts in United States history. It ended in the senseless murder of 297 people.

“The Second Amendment was written by people who fled oppressive and tyrannical regimes in Europe, and it refers to the right of American citizens to be armed for defensive purposes, should such tyranny arise in the United States.

“The Patriot Act signed into law by G.W. Bush, was expanded and continues under Barack Obama. It is just one of many examples of American citizens being stripped of their rights and privacy for 'safety.' Now, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is on the table, and will, most likely be attacked to facilitate the path for the removal of our firearms, all in the name of 'our safety.’”

“Wounded Knee is the prime example of why the Second Amendment exists, and why we should vehemently resist any attempts to infringe on our Rights to Bear Arms. Without the Second Amendment we will be totally stripped of any ability to defend ourselves and our families."

Very pointed and relevant to today, wouldn't you say?

•And for those dismissing the Wounded Knee Massacre as just a part of the old Indian Wars, consider the following:

Ruby Ridge: (This account came from an article written in 2002 by Timothy Lynch of the CATO Institute.)

“On August 21, 1992 a paramilitary unit of the U.S. Marshals Service ventured onto the 20-acre property known as Ruby Ridge. A man named Randy Weaver owned the land and he lived there with his wife, children, and a family friend, Kevin Harris. There was an outstanding warrant for Weaver's arrest for a firearms offense and the marshals were surveilling the premises. When the family dog noticed the marshals sneaking around in the woods, it began to bark wildly. Weaver's 14-year-old boy, Sammy, and Kevin Harris proceeded to grab their rifles because they thought the dog had come upon a wild animal.

A firefight erupted when a marshal shot and killed the dog. Enraged that the family pet had been cut down for no good reason, Sammy shot into the woods at the unidentified trespasser. Within a few minutes, two human beings were shot dead: Sammy Weaver and a marshal. Harris and the Weaver family retreated to their cabin and the marshals retreated from the mountain and called the FBI for assistance.

During the night, FBI snipers took positions around the Weaver cabin. There is no dispute about the fact that the snipers were given illegal “shoot to kill” orders. Under the law, police agents can use deadly force to defend themselves and others from imminent attack, but these snipers were instructed to shoot any adult who was armed and outside the cabin, regardless of whether the adult posed a threat or not. The next morning, an FBI agent shot and wounded Randy Weaver. A few moments later, the same agent shot Weaver's wife in the head as she was standing in the doorway of her home holding a baby in her arms. The FBI snipers had not yet announced their presence and had not given the Weavers an opportunity to peacefully surrender.

After an 11-day standoff, Weaver agreed to surrender. The FBI told the world that it had apprehended a band of dangerous racists. The New York Times was duped into describing a family (two parents, three children) and one adult friend as 'an armed separatist brigade.' The Department of Justice proceeded to take over the case, charging Weaver and Harris with conspiracy to commit “murder.” Federal prosecutors asked an Idaho jury to impose the death penalty. Instead, the jury acquitted Weaver and Harris of all of the serious criminal charges.

When Weaver sued the federal government for the wrongful death of his wife and son, the government that had tried to kill him twice now sought an out-of-court settlement. In August 1995 the U.S. government paid the Weaver family $3.1 million. A Department of Justice official told the Washington Post that if Weaver's suit had gone to trial in Idaho, he probably would have been awarded $200 million.”

Also, we should all still have a memory of the U.S. government siege on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas in 1993.

(Get a Parallax Look from Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

•Welcome to 2013 my loyal readers - time to resume the fight to keep American from being “fundamentally transformed.”

•If you weren't paying attention, the RINO's at the head of Congress gave-in to Obama's demands that we allow him to raise taxes. It all happened in the early morning hours of January 1.

Remember the saying that nothing good happens at 2am in the morning? Well that goes triple for government activities at those hours.

Of course, Obama maintained all along that he was only raising taxes on the evil rich. But as those of us who know, and aren't afraid to admit, that he was lying, that wasn't the case.

“What happened that my Social Security withholdings in my paycheck just went up?” a poster wrote on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com.

“My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don't feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna' hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?” opined another.

SURPRISE! Democrats who supported Obama's re-election just refused to believe that his steadfast pledge to raise taxes on the rich wouldn't end up raising THEIR TAXES.

“I know to expect between $93 and $94 less in my paycheck on the 15th,” wrote a poster ironically named “RomneyLies.”

“My boyfriend has had a lot of expenses and is feeling squeezed right now, and having his paycheck shrink really didn't help,” wrote another named “DemocratToTheEnd.”
“BlueIndyBlue” added: “Many of my friends didn't realize it, either. Our payroll department didn't do a good job of explaining the coming changes.”

So let's explain this. In 2009, Obama trimmed the payroll tax deduction from employees' paychecks, dropping the Social Security rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. But the drop ended on Dec. 31, 2012, and all working taxpayers woke up Jan. 1 with less money for their work.

“My paycheck just went down. So did my wife's. This hurts us. But everybody says it's a good thing, so I guess we just suck it up and get used to it. I call it a tax increase on the middle class. I wonder what they call it. Somebody on this thread called it a 'premium.' Nope. It's a tax, and it just went up.” Posted Bake.

There are still many that still don't know their taxes went up. They'll get their first 2013 paychecks on the 15th of the month. So when you're kicking it at work around grumbling co-workers on the 16th, ask them, “Who'd you vote for in November?”

When they say Mr. Obama, just tell them: “Well, you got what you voted for. You did know he was going to raise taxes, right?”

We warned you. (The real work for this story was done by Joseph Curl for The Washington Times.)

•Recall NBC's David Gregory breaking D.C. gun laws on-air a couple of weeks ago? Haven't heard of his prosecution have we?

•Former Army Specialist Adam Meckler, a multi-tour veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, was arrested in D.C. in 2011 for possessing ordinary self-defense ammunition; no gun.

Meckler was in D.C. for paperwork to leave the military after 9 years. On Sept. 19, 2011, Meckler was arrested when building security found 14 loose 9mm rounds in his backpack. Federal police put him in handcuffs and drove him to police headquarters, where he was put in jail, with no phone call.

Meckler spent about two hours alone in the cell. He kept thinking, “I can't believe this is happening.”

Police charged Meckler with possessing “unregistered ammunition” They gave him back his bag and released him with a court date.

The maximum penalty for having unregistered ammunition is a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. There were 594 arrests for unregistered ammunition in 2011 in D.C. To date in 2012, there have been 292 arrests. Meckler was one of only nine nonresidents arrested just for unregistered ammunition in 2011.

He didn't fight the charges because he didn't have the time or money. He accepted a deal from the city to plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge and got 30 days unsupervised probation, pay a $100 fine and make $100 "donation" to the Victims of Violent Crimes fund. Meckler was then placed on the District's Gun Offender Registry.
Emily Miller with The Washington Times followed up on the story in the wake of the Gregory incident.

“It's been more than a week since police in Washington, D.C., opened an investigation into NBC's David Gregory's possession of a 'high-capacity magazine' that's prohibited in the District. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier's spokesman refused Monday to respond to whether Mr. Gregory had even been interviewed yet. This is a rather curious departure for a city that has been ruthless in enforcing this particular firearms statute against law-abiding citizens who made an honest mistake.”

“In Gregory's case, NBC asked the police in advance for permission to bring the contraband into Washington for an interview with the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, but it was not granted.”

“'I unknowingly broke the law,' Mr. Meckler told The Washington Times. 'Mr. Gregory knowingly broke the law.”

These laws don't apply just to “regular” people but also to the rich and powerful. D.C. should either repeal its over-the-top restrictions or send a squad car to take David Gregory into custody.

What do you think?

(Email bkubicki@kc.rr.com)

As all this fiscal cliff nonsense gets bantered about in the media, it becomes apparent that the drive-by media doesn't understand the issues at hand well enough to accurately communicate them. The Heritage Foundation did a great job compiling 10 of the most important elements of the fiscal cliff issue for your consideration.

1. 2012 concluded with a $1.1 trillion deficit, marking the fourth year of trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Too much spending is the root cause of the federal government's deep and sustained deficits. At 23 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 and on track to rise further, federal spending is growing at a dangerous pace.

2. On September 4, the U.S. national debt hit the $16 trillion mark. We owe more on the national debt than the entire U.S. economy produced in goods and services in all of 2012. Sixteen trillion dollar bills stacked one on top of the other would measure more than 1 million miles high, which would reach to the moon and back more than twice.

3. On January 30, the federal government raised its debt limit from a staggering $15.2 trillion to an even bigger $16.4 trillion.

4. Much of 2012 was spent arguing over tax rates in the fiscal cliff debate while lawmakers ignored the much more dangerous looming fiscal crisis. As large and as major a concern as federal budget deficits are today, they stand in the shadow of $48 trillion in long-term unfunded obligations in Social Security and Medicare. Even with President Obama's originally proposed tax hikes in his budget, the federal debt would still rise by more than $7.7 trillion in the next 10 years.

5. According to the 2012 trustees report, Social Security spent $45 billion more in benefits in 2011 than it took in from its payroll tax. This deficit is in addition to a $49 billion gap in 2010 and an expected average annual gap of about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018. Social Security's deficits will balloon yet further. After adjusting for inflation, annual deficits will reach $95 billion in 2020 and $318.7 billion in 2030 before the trust fund runs out in 2033 and a 25 percent across-the-board benefit cut occurs.

6. The last time both chambers of Congress agreed on a budget was on April 29, 2009. Since then, Congress has operated on a spend-as-you-go basis, characterized by incoherent, ad hoc budget procedures. The House passed budget resolutions each of the past two years, but the Senate failed to do its part.

7. The average American household's share of federal spending in 2012 was $29,691, or roughly two-thirds of median household income. The government collected $20,293 per household in taxes in 2012, resulting in a budget deficit of $9,398 per household in 2012.

8. After the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, the Congressional Budget Office did an update of its scoring of the law. The result: Obamacare will spend $1.7 trillion over 10 years on its coverage expansion provisions alone, including a massive expansion of Medicaid and federal subsidies for the new health insurance exchanges. This means that Obamacare will increase federal health spending by 15 percent.

9. In 1993, Social Security surpassed national defense as the largest federal spending category, and it remains first today. The top five biggest spending programs, in order, are 1) Social Security; 2) national defense; 3) Medicare; 4) Medicaid, CHIP, and other government health care; and 5) interest on the debt.

10. According to Census Bureau data and Heritage Foundation calculations, 129 million people in America depend on a government program for basic (or not so basic) needs, such as rent, prescription drugs, and higher education.

That is a formula for outright disaster. Something has to change.

•This little item was particularly interesting.

Matt Damon was blathering on about his latest anti-movie – I believe this one was against fracking, which is a method of extracting petroleum and natural gas actually called “hydraulic fracturing.” I think Damon and his band of lunatics are afraid that the process is somehow going to destroy the earth and then we'll all die, but the important part of this interview occurs below:

Damon also was asked for his thoughts on Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention (the two worked together on 2010's “Hereafter”).

“I heard the backlash, but I never saw the whole thing because I just didn't want to see my friend … you know. Look, his knowledge of filmmaking is so vast and deep that he can wing it beautifully on the set. What he did at the RNC was an unrehearsed bit he decided to do at the last minute. You can't go onstage and do 12 minutes of stand-up completely unrehearsed. But I agree with what Bill Maher said — Clint killed it at the convention for 12 minutes, and the audience loved him. I wouldn't do that unless I spent a month rehearsing.”

You know that Damon would love to have ripped into Eastwood for making fun of Obama during the Republican National Convention last summer. But Matt's convictions go only so far. He knows how powerful Eastwood is in the industry. Careful how you phrase your veiled criticism there Matt.

•I have a sinking feeling that Chiefs GM Scott Pioli is going to survive this season and return for 2013. I think that Clark Hunt secretly extended Pioli's contract before this season completely went down the drain and now he's stuck financially. He can't dump him without eating a ton of GM contract.

I hope I'm wrong.

Have a superb 2013 my loyal readers and thank you all for your support.

(Get your Parallax Look from Brian at bkubicki@kc.rr.com)