I haven’t had a Global Warming Roundup in a while, so let’s see what’s new.

Straight out of the starting blocks is Al Gore who apparently salted his presentation with a lie so big he even noticed.

Gore Pulls ‘Misleading’ Slide of Disaster Trends/p>

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said.

That someone noticed this is not a shock, only the source of the outrage, which is senior Democrat Senator Robert Byrd.  Via Politico:

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest-serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

Nice that all the media watchdogs that peppered Bush with complaints and accusations over his use of power will sit silently and watch this gutting of constitutional authority.

That, by the way, explains why Byrd is speaking out:

CNN provides this clip of their poster child for mortgage reform.

On the surface she seems sincere and sympathetic, but the more you watch the more questions this raises.

To start, why are they in foreclosure?

Yes, I get that her property equity is upside down, but that does not affect the loan payment.

So why are they behind?  Was she laid off?  I could support that.  Was her husband?   Same. 

Granted, even she admits that they bought more than they can afford, but without explaining why they are in foreclosure, this appears to be a couple whining that there house is upside down value wise.

And that addresses the people I am the least sympathetic to:  People, and she is made to seem this way in the video, whose only problem is that their investment is not working out so well.

The CNN article milks the heart strings.  She will lose everything…the house is at risk.

Everything is there but the simple raw facts as to why.  This is journalistic malpractice.

As I drove around Olympia, I saw a beautiful historic building.  See below:

I thought it looked great and took several shots.

I then saw the sign labeling the building:

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).

So now we know why so many Washington Education policies are written like fairy tales:

The OSPI lives in a freaking castle.

No wonder….

( yes I know it is the old State Capital, but honestly…what does it look like to you?)

Hope.

No other word or concept means so much and is so abused.

Defined, it is the embodiment of dreams: ¹

:  to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

:  to believe, desire, or trust

:  to feel that something desired may happen

Nothing is more optimistic, so cherished and so important, particularly now in such uncertain times.  As the economy crumbles, as the world shifts, and as so many dreams die, all we have left is faith, hope and love².   While  faith and love are essential in their own right³, there is something about hope that sets it apart too.

And hope has become one of the two biggest buzz words in recent memory, sharing said honor with change.

Indeed, in modern politics, hope and change are inseparable, and that intrinsic connection has lead to the huge disappointment waiting for so many.  I will get to that shortly.

I have had a recent run in with hope.  Recently I answered a Craigslist ad that was filled with hope and optimism.  The ad promised something for nothing, essentially, a give away of free equipment due to the honoring of someone’s last wishes.

^{Note to readers:  I am still lite blogging due to a wrist injury.  LSU}

I will qualify this up front that Obama himself is not the race baiter, or the person dropping the race card, though he has played that game in the past.

The problem here is his supporters and other members of his party, including one member of his cabinet.

This is about three separate stories, all of which happened in a short period of time.

The largest and loudest was the NY Post cartoon scandal:

A New York Post cartoon that some have interpreted as comparing President Barack Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police drew outrage Wednesday from civil rights leaders and elected officials who said it echoed racist stereotypes of blacks as monkeys.

The cartoon in Wednesday’s Post by Sean Delonas shows two police officers, one with a smoking gun, standing over the body of a bullet-riddled chimp. The caption reads: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

The cartoon refers to a chimpanzee named Travis who was killed Monday by police in Stamford, Conn., after it mauled a friend of its owner.

This morning I got an email concerning Obamanomics, as it relates to the real estate crisis.

It started out with this article from the NY Times:

The long-awaited housing bailout will finally be announced on Wednesday.

In a speech in Phoenix, a signature real estate boomtown gone bust, President Obama will explain his plan to reduce foreclosures. And the key to understanding that plan will be remembering that there are two different groups of homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure.

The first group is made up of people who cannot afford their mortgages and have fallen behind on their monthly payments. Many took out loans they were never going to be able to afford, while others have since lost their jobs. About three million households — and rising — fall into this category. Without help, they will lose their homes.

The second group is far larger. It is made up of the more than 10 million households that can afford their monthly payments but whose houses are worth less than what is owed on their mortgages. In real estate parlance, they are underwater. If they want to stay in their homes, they will have no trouble doing so. But some may choose to walk away voluntarily, rather than continue to make payments on an investment that may never pay off.

I am back from my visit to California. 

I did not post any blogs since posting of my accident last Saturday.  I chose not to for a couple reasons.

Primarily the accident took a slightly larger toll on me than I first thought, though I still count myself incredibly lucky to have escaped serious injury.  I decided to rest and ensure that upon my return to work today I would be in as good of shape as possible.  I nearly succeeded.  I still have a sprained wrist that plagues my otherwise meager typing skills.  I also have some late blooming bruises on my hips and legs that make sitting slightly unpleasant.

But again, I am incredibly fortunate and I will bear those aches with good nature.

I also had a couple of unpleasant experiences that required me to take some personal reflection time so as to process some harsh truths.

They say you cannot go home, and they are right.  I traveled to my childhood home, and found that so much had changed that it no longer felt like home.  Not all mind you, there were constant glimpses of familiarity, but at the same time, I was shocked at some of the radical changes.

I got in to Oakland Ca Friday and drove to my sister’s and relaxed for a while.  Early Sat Morning, Kayla and I drove 160 miles to the hills above Oroville CA, where old friend Jim and family live in reclusive splendor.

After a hearty meal of tri-tip, asparagus, shrimp and sautéed mushrooms, it was off to an early (seriously, I was in bed before 10) night’s sleep. 

That morning was cold, and dank, and an ominous air of impending disaster loomed.  Well, after the fact it did, or should have anyway.

We decided to take a four wheel drive to the hills and goof off, maybe shoot some targets.

Instead I tried my hand at offroad ATV riding.

Instead I learned about ATV rolling, after tempting gravity too far, and taking a three or four roll tumble.  The fall and tumble wasn’t as bad as when the ATV caught up with me, and added insult to injury as it rolled over me.

Total cost:  Sprained wrist, bruised hand, assorted road rash on both legs, one really decent gouge on my knee, a bruised ankle, soreness most everywhere else and complete and abject humiliation with a linger sense of “you idiot!” to wash it down.

My daughter and I am on the road in California for the next week, so blogging may be a bit lite.

While down here I hope to swing by the Marine recruiters office in Berkeley and see how the stand off is these days.  More on that later.

I am also going home, as they say, to see my old haunts and homes here in the Bay Area.  Tomorrow for example we drive north to Oroville to visit a high school friend and his family.  There may be guns, ATVs and four wheel drive  vehicles involved.

Armed with my trusty new Nikon D60, I should have some fun pictures to post.

I will try to post updates and stories as I go.

Sadly there are some serious issues I will also be monitoring  such as that horrible botched abortion story circulating.

I have a lengthy post in the works about that one.

Thanks,

LSU