Ray,

You raise a very interesting issue here.

The policies that many employers have adpoted (especially in states that have shall-issue concealed carry licenses) the formula "your right to carry a gun ends at my property line." They search private automobiles to find guns (in many cases using the local police to do it) and to fire any employee who has one in his car.

One's right to bear arms does not end at someone else's property line. It does not end anywhere (except where government-supervised special security zone exists, e.g., past the metal detectors in the airport or inside a prison).

What happens at the proprety line is that the right of the property owner to control the use of his land and his right to not associated with gun carrying people comes into play.

There are borderline cases here. The case of employers searching employee's vehicles for the purpose of imposing a pacifist anti-gun agenda is one of them. One's motor vehicle is own's own private property. Enclosing things within (or attaching things to) your car is your property right. This right does not end when you enter someone else's street or parking lot.

The property right of that the owner of a street or a parking lot does not extend to the contents of you motor vehicle. The extent of his right is to set conditions of the use of his property and violations can be enforce only two ways:
1. ejection for tresspassing (with or without the help of the police -- with the possibility of criminal prosecution reserved only for eggregious cases of tresspass)
2. refusal to associate with some one who will not follow the conditions of use (e.g., firing employees who violate a no-gun-possession policy)

What the owner of a parking lot cannot do is to search your car without your consent. Doing so is the felony crime of burglary. Enlisting the police to do the searches does not legalize the burglary, it merely componds it by adding to it another crime: the blatant violation of the 2nd and 4th Amendment rights of those who have parked their cars in the parking lot.

The National Rifle Association is currently pursuing legal action and seeking legal protections against employer searches of private automobiles. If you look into what the NRA is doing on this issue; however, they've got themselves entanged in the anti-rights welfare-state view that employees own their jobs and cannot be fired without just cause. In several states the NRA has drafted laws that would prohibit employers from firing employees who are caught with guns at a gun-ban facility. It is obviously every employer's right to fire anyone for any reason...including evil reasons like because they're black or because they carry guns.

---------------------------------------------

As a (one-time) instructor and someone who maintains a little bit of training in this area, I would strongly encourage anyone on this list who legally carries a handgun for self-defense (or, who feels compelled to illegally carry a handgun for legitiamte self-defense) to get some combat handgun training and to periodically practice the moves at home (with a visually-verified UNLOADED gun).

Marksmanship training is 10% dry fire/90% live fire (it can be very hard to learn). Combat training is 90% dry fire/10% live fire...plus force-on-force training (e.g., with paintball guns)...(It is very easy to learn, easier than basketball)

Most CCW holders don't practice drawing their guns and reholstering -- let alone practice engaging targets quickly, shooting on the move, seeking cover, shooting moving targets, changing magazines, clearing jams, etc.

(For a guide on the proper movements for combat handgun, I strongly recommend the books of Gabe Suarez. But I even more strongly recommend taking at least one class from a reputable teacher. In an era in which 40 states have shall-issue concealed carry permits, these kinds of classes hvae been sprouting up everywhere.)

The question you asked is very interesting and it should be answered. The answers from all quarters (in this thread and by modern liberal and conservative journalists) is to catalog all of the forces that could possibly drive the price of oil down and then conclude that one has explained it.

But that doesn't.

The reason why oil prices dropped in the second half of 2007 is that the forces that drove the spectacular price rise in the first half of 2007 left the stage:

1. Vast sums of capital loosely invested in commodities based on enthusiasm and momentum-buying -- vast sums of capital that were created by Greenspan/Bernanke easy money policies of the '00s. (Check out Yaron Brook's comments on this topic. He's right on the money.)

2. Demand rising to within approx. 5% of the engineering limits of the world's oil pumping capacity -- in a world in which most of the oil pumping capacity is controlled by criminal regimes, at least one of whom (Iran) repeatedly threatened to start a war by "militarily" disrupting the oil shipments of all of its neighbors.

In the 2003 - 2006 time frame, speculative investors jumped from a real estate market that had been driven to reach high temporary gains through momentum buying to the stock markets in order to get better returns. But, in making the jump, they created temporary momentum-driven gains in the stock markets. By the beginning of 2007, these temporary gains in the stock marked had played out (i.e., the supply of greater fools -- like me -- had dried up). So, in search of double didget annual appreciation rates, speculative investors jumped into commodities and into credit default swaps.

But commodities and credit default swaps are a pure zero-sum game. The trillions that these speculative investors threw into these markets pushed prices up by pure momentum. In 2008, in less than six months these investors created trillions in unreal self-referential "wealth" on paper by force of the masses of their own enthusiastically pledged captial.

A good indication of this was the fact that the price of oil did not go up all by itself. Oil and copper and beef and chromium and corn and just about every other publically traded commodity doubled in just a few months. And the non-publically-traded commodities? Well, the prices for steel and concrete and many other mundane commodities took a giant leap upwards, too.

What is it that we call a general rise in prices?

Inflation.

These prices rises indicated that there was too much paper money out there. The dramatic fall of the dollar against other national currencies over the period 2003 - 2007 proved that the primary driver of this world-wide inflation in commodities prices was inside the United States.

Implicitly government-backed mortgage lending -- mortgages purchased or that had the potential to be purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac -- and their securitization and use in the general global credit markets (a practice also led by or backed by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) led to the inflationary production of debt in the private capital markets. And the Fed under Greenspan and Bernanke happily accommodated this inflationary spiral with low federal funds rates for bank reserves and by pilig on their own increases in the money supply through the purchase by their Open Market Committee

Some of the most dramatic, inflation-driven prices rises in commodities occured with oil. But the most dramatic was copper. While the whole culture was abuzz with concerns about "Peak Oil," there was also talk of "Peak Copper."

As it turns out, the world will not see peak oil for at least 15 more years (and that is likely to happen so soon only because of the incompetence and malfeasance of state-controlled and state-operated oil companies that possess three-quarters of the earth's proven reserves). But the fact of the matter was that in the summers of 2007 and 2008, world oil consumption reached 82 - 84 million bbl/day at a time when oil analysts believed that peak oil production capacity was only about 87 - 90 million bbl/day.

This approx. 90-95% capacity utization rate in a world in which most production was in incompetent or malevolent hands raised rational financial concerns over where oil prices might go in the future. And the threat of war over free passage of oil shipments throught the Strait of Hormuz added a rationally-calculated $5 - 10/bbl premium to the price.

The engineering limits and political concerns -- something that I informally dubbed "Geopolitical Peak Oil" -- caused oil prices to rise at rates slightly above those of other commodities that were, themselves, climbing upwards at hyper-inflationary rate driven by too much paper money created by the glut of (implicitly) government-backed mortgages and mortgage-backed securities.

THAT paragraph, I'll admit, was quite a mouthful...but it sums up the explosive rise in oil prices from the winter of 2007 - 2008 to the summer of 2008.

The collapse of world credit markets led to a sudden $15 trillion shrinkage of world-wide credit (and the paper money that government-backed credit illegitimatly generated). The destruction of all this paper "capital" in the months of September and October erased momentum-buying in oil futures and led to the immediate and total collapse of oil prices.

The general disruption and economic slowdown caused by the collapse of the inflationary credit bubble will, of course, lead to a reduction of world-wide oil consumption...and has decreased the utilization rate of the world's oil pumping facilities to below 90%. This is a secondary effect of the collapse of inflationary credit. After the collapse -- now and for the next year or two* -- weak demand will be the dominant issue for oil prices going forward.


* or three or four or five years...if our government continues to destroy the privately-controlled economy with "experiments" in government ownership.

I'm with you.

The expansion of the welfare state that we're all about to experience is a legallized crime. Its perpetrators should not be given the respect due to civilized men.

Unfortunately you (and I) will have to watch our tongues. As of January 20, saying something that is one degree more antagonistic than "I wish the bastard ill" regarding Sen. Obama physical well being will become a federal felony.

Yes.

This is the (almost) plausibly constitutional way to legally enforce "service" on young people.

Establishing a cerntain number of hours of "community service" as a requirement for high school graduation is a very common practice now. In a private school with its volumtary attendance requirements this would not be a violation of the young people's rights...it would just simply be irrational and evil.

But in a public school where attandence is enforced by truancy laws -- and the whole thing is funded by tax dollars -- this is the initiation of force and should legally be considered to be a crime. It should be a serious felony punishable by ten years or more imprisonmnet.

"Change" started long before Sen. Obama was elected President.

Unfortunately, this kind of change was the centerpiece of John McCain's bid for the Republican nomination in 2000.

Unfortunately, Sen. Obama's predeliction for committing legalized crimes is not nearly as limited as Sen. McCain's. With Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid (and all the Soros-founded 527s "nutroots" organizations) egging him on, Sen. Obama will do damage to liberty.

Expect Obama/Pelosi/Reid to target free speech because it is "divisive."

With the market crash, the whole focus and mood of the electorate has dramatically shifted. Like a jackals sensing possible weakness in the practical reputation that private property and free markets have earned over the past 25 years, the leadership of the Democratic Party (and the Main Stream Media) have declared all-out war on Wall Street and the entire "investor class." They crow even more loudly about how capitalism has failed as they crowed about how the war in Iraq was already lost.

Citing the fact that a Republican president, and his appointees at the Treasury and at the Fed – as well as the main body of the Republican leadership in congress – have engineered the largest “emergency” government intervention in the economy since Nixon’s wage and price controls, the leadership of the Democratic Party now threatens to subject the nation to a revival of Roosevelt’s "New Deal."

In response, libertarian-leaning Conservatives in the Republican Party woke from their slumber and have attempted to recast the campaign as a referendum on economic liberty. These capitalist sympathizers -- including literal passers by like Joe the plumber and Tito the construction contractor -- have taken over the McCain campaign and temporarily drowned out Sen John McCain's statist “me-too” condemnations of greed on Wall Street. The conservatives are trying to put Barack Obama on the spot for supporting a wholesale expansion in government schemes to redistribute wealth and income.

And Barack Obama is not backing down. He answers the conservatives' charges with ridicule, dishonestly pretending that he does not want to re-install the Johnson-era regime of steeply-graduated income tax and large-scale “transfer payments” to the listless, the lazy, and the unemployable....while simultaneously advocating exactly the expansion of income re-distribution that the libertarian-leaning Conservatives accuse him of.

In addition to the government’s forced purchase of shares of investment banks, counting the votes of those shares as controlling regardless of their number, and de-capitating the leadership of America’s financial institutions with executive salary caps – socialist programs sponsored by Democrats and centrist Republicans, the Democratic Party leadership is looking for more power. Yielding to their deepest philosophical impulses the Democratic Party leadership is experimenting with the idea of open political warfare against America’s “investor class," the 50% of American households that own corporate stock. After all, the Democratic leadership appears to feel, if those who seek personal financial independence don’t vote to perpetuate Democratic Party in power, why not prune their numbers by…say…converting our private 401K accounts into a program that “invests” in the U.S. government?

The market crash has loosed the jackals of statism. The malcontented mood of the majority in our majority-rule nation is likely to deliver an Obama win and a general Democratic Party sweep of the congressional, gubernatorial, and state house elections. It is likely that Democratic Caucus the Senate will increase to 56 or 57 seats…enough to sustain most votes for cloture.

And at the center of this cultural spectacle is Barack Obama and his crowds. It is not a good philosophical recommendation for a leader that he speaks of shared feelings for an hour at a time to the rapt attention of crowds of 35,000, 50,000, 75,000 and 100,000 people at a time. No shared political policy, no shared philosophical vision for the future of the nation…no, all that this demi-god offers the people in those crowds is the opportunity to be there, in person, to see the first black man in America get elected president. (In case you haven’t already done it, for an excellent tongue-in-cheek presentation of the totalitarian-cult-of-personality moments that keep cropping up in his campaign, go to Obama Messiah.)

The strangest moment for Barack Obama and his crowds was when he decided to take his world-historical campaign to…Germany…to Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. When a confused German government refused that venue to Sen. Obama, they offered him another from which eventually addressed a world-historical crowd of 200,000 Germans and wowed them as the the first black president in a recently racist America …woops, did I say he was already president just then?…

Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party nomination to a crowd of 84,000 complete with a classical (world-historical-style) backdrop. What will be the backdrop to his final…and inevitable…victory speech? And how many people will be required to fulfill the vision of president-elect Obama’s world-historical achievement? Chicago’s Grand Park and a crowd of 100,000s will transfigure. Chicago’s lakefront.

In the midst of this wave of Hegelian emotion over the end of racism in America, one conservative wonders if the presumption that Sen. Obama is “secretly sensible" might actually be a rationalization for accepting a leader who is, at his root, a neo-Marxist?

Should a rational individualist sit this election out? Not on your life.

Amen!

There is not distinction between Altruist-Nationalist-Stoic and Collectivist-Socialist demagogue who sometimes thinks he's a demi-god? There is no distinction between a Republican Party run by welfare statists and a Democratic Party run by opponents of free speech and specialists at election fraud?

Only if you believe in the World of Forms.

Here, in the real world where we are half-salve and half-free, there is a difference.

I would offer my congratulations to Dr. Brook directly, but I don't think he would accept them right now (due to our difference over the war). So I will do it here, instead.

Yaron Brook has been doing a superb job in this crisis for capitalism.

In the past six weeks he's penned 11 excellent press releases and he's presiding over this exxellent series of lectures in Washington D.C.; speaking against statism in the shadow of the tyrants at Treasury, the White House, and Congress. With his clear spoken delivery, quick wit, and ability to field questions on a wide range of topics, Dr. Brook has earned a place on the cable T.V. and radio talk show circuit. He will be very effective in those venues during this crisis.

In the midst of the market crash, no man has stood up to defend capitialism who isn't sure of himself. All who support capitalism for its practical value, but are unsure of the moral ground on which they stand have fallen silent. Today only Objectivists and libertarian conservatives who have read some of Ayn Rand's writings are speaking out against gigantic "emergency measures" that violate our property rights and threaten to derail our personal plans for our persuit of happiness by perpetuating this recession for several more years.

Finance is Dr. Brooks specialty. We who value liberty are fortunate there is such a man to argue our case in this test for Wall Street's -- and our -- freedom.

Yes.

Precisely.

Ayn Rand argued again and again that the primary problem with religion in American politics is that it is used to argue in favor of liberty and that religious arguments for liberty undermine it at every level:

1.) Ayn Rand objected that when American conservatives based their argument for man's rights on the idea that they're god-given, they conceded that reason and science were on the side of socialism.

2.) Ayn Rand objected that it attempting to argue that the American system of liberty was based on universal Christian standards, American conservatives were attempting to base the justification for capitalism on tranditional religious-altruist morality -- a contradiction that, over and over again, required Conservatives to concede that socialism held the moral high ground.

3.) Ayn Rand objected that in attempting to base the American system of liberty on Christianity, American conservatives were doomed to repeat the exact process of defeat at the hands of the sophistries of Kantian-subjectism that had already led to all of the abridgments of liberty we already suffer.

Ayn Rand saw religion as a false doctrine doomed to fail as a defense of liberty and as a false doctrine that politically-culturally displaces any meaningful attempt to challenge any of the philosophical premises that led to the rise of statism in America.

Ayn Rand saw religion's danger to American liberty as an indirect. Religion is a false defense that acts as an ideological fifth column within the ranks of those who attempt to defend liberty using it.

That is not to say that Ayn Rand ever neglected the potential for religion to be a direct threat to liberty. She fiercely opposed all religious restrictions on abortion as direct threat to liberty: an attempt to enslave women to the "un-born" non-existent non-entity -- the fetus -- that is a part of their body during pregnancy.

Remarkably, in her public statements, Ayn Rand often turned away opportunities to ridicule religious belief. Instead she focused her comments on building a new rational foundation for moral belief and moral aspirations. It appeared that she did not want any part of tearing down the moral aspirations of others unless it was a part of building rational foundations for morality. To me, a life-long athiest, this was a remarkable aspect of Ayn Rand's treatment of religion. It almost looked like a gesture of respect towards religious people -- not to their irrational, evil, and self-destructive beliefs -- but to their personal, spiritual, moral ambitiousness.

Leonard Peikoff's current view of the dangers of religion to American liberty is different from Ayn Rand's. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, he sees religion as the primary and direct threat that exists for American liberty. This difference is based on the change in historical circumstances: there is no more international loyalty to a Communist "ideal." This change in circumstance is a real change that must alter the way we Objectivists treat religion. As long as socialism is dead, religion is the alternative as the primary threat to liberty.

Unfortunately, the events of the past ten years have proved that socialism is not dead. It has reared its ugly head in more purely nihilistic and anti-intellectual neo-Marxist variants of collectivism and in the anti-man ideology of environmentalism. Unfortunately, Dr. Peikoff's view that religion is the primary threat to American liberty does not fully acknowledge the fact that socialism is still alive. Furthermore, Dr. Peikoff's view on the nature of the religious threat are based on his "DIM Hypothesis" on the role of epistemological method in history.

It is clear (to me, at least) that Dr. Peikoff refers to his "DIM Hypothesis" as a hypothesis precisely because it is not an idea that Ayn Rand formulated and was not a part of her philosophy of life. He argues that his hypothesis is consistent with Objectivism and he treats his hypothesis as a logical extension of Objectivist views in epistemology. The "DIM Hypothesis" is not, however, a part of Objectivism...at least not as of yet. As of now, it is unproven.

Based on what I know of it, I do not agree with the DIM Hypothesis. In-so-far as it correctly identifies the effect that epistemological method has on the ideas that move history, it is only correct to the extent that it repeats Ayn Rand's many philosophical distinction between the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. Without going into details, I will simply assert that I do not think it is a good method for understanding the way that ideas have moved history. At best, the "DIM Hypothesis" can only describe half of the way ideas move -- the half in which they move deductively from the general principle to the specific practice. As far as I can tell, the DIM Hypothesis is invalid when it comes to the other half of the way ideas move history -- the half in which they move inductively from the human experiences of specific practices to general principles.

(I must also disclose that I find the terminology of the DIM Hypothesis personally revolting. The use of specialized jargon and acronyms such as "I2" "D2" "M2" are -- at best -- a bad use of language. For we who speak and read and write it, plain English is objective communication. Semi-cryptic acronyms are not.)

One participant on this thread referred to "the anti-Peikoff crowd." On one topic, I guess I am "anti-Peikoff." I find it peculiar to be in that position. It was the taped lecture courses on Objectivism taught by Dr. Leonard Peikoff that helped me -- more than any other source of information or experience in my life -- to understand Ayn Rand's idea of objective methodology.

That philosophical understanding, above and beyond the general "logical-empirical-scientific" mental method I had prior to reading Ayn Rand, has been a constant source of intellectual strength that has enabled me to bravely face and successfully penetrate many confusing questions. But based on what Dr. Peikoff taught me I cannot integrate or use his pronouncements on the most elementary of the current political issues of the day: which candidate I should or should not vote for. I know well his feeling of frustration and utter contempt for the political choices we face today -- they are my own -- but his pronouncements on this and other elections are not intelligible to the mind that he helped to train: mine.

In making a choice on November 4, I don't have to stay home because it is impossible to chose the lesser of two evils this year. There is no reason for paralysis. Both candidates aren't equally bad. There is a significant difference between the two. It really does matter which of the two candidates wins; which of the two parties wins. I can vote against the candidate who obviously is the worst; the party that plainly should not win. Arguing for liberty is more important than voting, but voting is something that I can do, too.

If the juggernaut of altruist/socialist irrationality is stopped, it will have to be stopped by the right philosophy. But we do not live in a World of Forms. We live in the real world; a world of particulars. That the juggernaut of altruist/socialist irrationality will have to be beaten one issue at a time; one battle at a time.

Do not wait for the right philosophy to win first. Look to do battle now.

When the juggernaut of altruist/socialist irrationality suffers its first defeats, the right philosophy will not be in place. When the tide is turned against juggernaut of altruist/socialist irrationality, the right philosophy will not be fully on top in the culture. Only after every major battle is won will the right philosophy be installed.

Yes!

With all due respect to Yaron and his colleagues (they're doing a fabulous job on the financial crisis and the nationalization of the banking industry and they're doing a very good job on the global warming issue), they do not have a good track record when it comes to the time scales of change or when it comes to the cultural-political processes of change. They take a strictly philosophical view.

If you want to make predictions about the velocity of change -- for good or for evil -- you need to look to the special sciences (history, technological history, military history, economics, political science, even biology). Any cultural predictions about time scales must consult specialized knowledge in these fields.

History teaches us that political changes can occur quickly while cultural changes are generally more slow. History teaches us that most political and cultural changes aren't property identified while they're developing. The rise of ideas are often not noticed or accounted for until after they have swing a large section of the society or have actually become the most dominant.

History also teaches us that cultural change is affected by the technology of transmitting knowledge and by the spans of human lives. Finally, history teaches us that people learn good and bad ideas from the philosophical interpretations of events. The ideas of a culture that become dominant are often those promoted by the dominant explanations of events.

History teaches us that there is no refuge from evil. The universality of its dishonest ideas can find any valley and any cave that is inhabited by men. So you can forget about the idea that you can do well by hiding out or going unnoticed in a crowd. Kira Argonova tried that and was shot through the chest anyway.

If we don't fight for capitalism while it is being assaulted by pseudo-scientific interpretations in economics and climatology, we (or our ancestors) will eventually find ourselves fighting on an unequal battlefield in which defeat is death.

Today's battlefield we are, man-for-man, far superior to our more numerous enemies. But because there is freedom of speech (more or less), the battlefield is graded in our favor. There are few of us, but we hold all of the high ground.

I'm not sure whether you guys are really arguing about something here.

Aan Greenspan once was an Objectivist. During years of The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist, he authored the article-of-record on the gold standard, making a complete statement in a non-fiction format of what Francisco D'Anconia and the other fictional characters of Altas Shrugged had stated in parts. That article "Gold and Economic Freedom" still stands as Objectivism's primary statement against paper money.

Mr. Greenspan's ideological collapse occurred during the period 1974 - 1983.

In 1974 Ayn Rand commented that she was very proud that Alan Greenspan had earned a place on Gerald Ford's Council of Economic Advisors. He served as chairman of that council during the Ford Administration from 1974-1977. Without knowing the details of Mr. Greenspan's first major foray into national politics, we can be pretty sure that in the first year he brought a pro-liberty voice of reason to the statist and economically-interventionist policies of that Republican administration.

Based on the reputation that he earned during that period, president Ronald Reagan (a conventional conservative who would not be able...or possibly willling...to detect Mr. Greenspan's ongoing ideologial collapse) nominated and congress agreed to appoint Mr. Greenspan as head of the "non-partisan" National Commission on Social Security.

What that commission's report the intellectual tombstone of Alan Greenspan:

(1) The members of the National Commission believe that the Congress, in its deliberations on financing proposals, should not alter the fundamental structure of the Social Security program or undermine its fundamental principles. The National Commission considered, but rejected, proposals to make the Social Security program a voluntary ones or to transform it into a program under which benefits are a product exclusively of the contributions paid, or to convert it into a fully-funded program, or to change it to a program under which benefits are conditioned on the showing of financial need.

(2) The National Commission recommends that, for purposes of considering the short-range financial status of the OASDI Trust Funds, $150-200 billion in either additional income or in decreased outgo (or a combination of both) should be- provided for the OASDI Trust Funds in calendar years 1983-89.

(3) The National Commission finds that, for purposes of considering the long-range financial status of the OASDI Trust Funds, its actuarial imbalance for the 75-year valuation period is an average of 1.80% of taxable payroll.

Based on this "non-partisan" finding presided over by "free-market" economist Alan Greenspan, Congress and the president approved increases in the social security payroll tax on employees, employers, and the self-employed. Due to the steady increase in "pension" and "disability" obligations and projected decreases in the number of payers these tax increases were not limited to "1.80% of taxable payroll" recommended by the commission. In 1983, the combined Social Security payroll tax rate was 9.35%. In 1990, it was 15.3%.

You can thank Alan Greenspan for being the key man in placing this burden of slave labor on our shoulders. The social security tax increases that he sanctioned were among the greatest tax increases in American history.

As Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987-2006, Alan Greenspan was the world's most powerful dictator of paper money...this from the man who authored Objectivism's broadside against paper money. In answer to the request that he become our nation's most powerful economic dictator, Alan Greenspan answered "yes." John Galt had a different answer.

In stating that Gov. Palin lacks knowledge of many of the political issues of the day (in foreign policy and the recent history of the Supreme Court, to cite just two topics of which she has recently demonstrated her near total ignorance) I did not mean to imply that all of the more considerable volume material that Sen. Obama holds in his mind is knowledge.

Please forgive the implication.

The "ignorant" small town conservative often holds more knowledge in the thin volumes of material in his mind than the "sophisticated" big city liberal holds in his considerably larger mental library.

In Barak Obama's case, a great deal of what he holds as "knowledge" is actually the complex set rationalizations and shibboleths that comprise the underpinnings of his "porgressive" liberal ideology. The thick volumes of sophisticated understandings are understandings of how to arrange cherry-picked facts from history into a set of false theories about man's nature , the nature of society, and the nature of human economies. The thick volumes in Sen. Obama's mind are packed with complex "explanations" -- epicylces -- that "explain" why the wide range of facts that contradict his altruist-collectivist-statist world-view aren't applicable or don't matter.

In the well-appointed library of Sen. Obama's "progressive"-liberal mind whole rows and whole shelves are deliberatly left empty: Few books on science and engineering and invention, no books on the numerous life-giving and materially liberating achievements of businessmen, and no books on the good done by the policemen and the soldiers of free nations.

In Obamas world it is "community activists" and national leaders who determine whether or not anyone lives in material confort...not the men who actually create that comfort (or the technology that is required). It is "enlightened" countries, like socialist Nicaragua, that develop, not evil capitalist ones full of brilliant businessmen, like South Korea. (The fact that South Korea enjoys a standard living that is NINE TIMES that of Nicaragua cannot be found on any of Barak Obama's book shelves.)

In Obama's world there is no legitimate use of force for individual or national self-defense. Why? because he can't allow himself to entertain any thoughts about the use of force of any kind. Force -- force by government edict -- is his instrument and he doesn't want to think about it. He's very uncomfortable about "the thin blue line" that separates him from the barbarism of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Stalin and Mao are well-meaning activists fighting for the underpriveldged and against their exploitation under capitalism...with rifles in the streets, firing squads in the police stations, and mass internment camps in the countryside. Sen. Obama prides hiimself on the fact that he doesn't use rifles, is opposed to capital punishment, and does not want to see so many criminals imprisoned.

Are any of Gov. Palin's empty bookshelves left deliberately empty? You betcha. Nothing that might contradict her Biblical faith can be found. But in the thin volumes that are there, one will find fewer distortions -- fewer lies that have to be learned in order to tell them to others.

I agree that Chris Mathews shares a trait common to many liberal-"progressives:" a lack of intellectual curiosity. His condemnations of Gov. Palin are a projection of his own dis-interested method.

Unfortunately, it looks like Gov. Palin is an ambitious (relatively) young politician who believes she can defend man's "God-given" individual rights...without reference to some of the past five centuries of human intellectual experience. She is poorly versed on most of the political issues of the day. While it speaks well of a first-handed integrating method, the issue Sarah Palin knows well are only those that were related to her duties as Governor, State energy supervisor, Mayor, and Council woman.

She has a lot to learn before she could become an effective president...in the event that that is required of her. She has more to learn than George W. Bush did after 9/11.

I'm afraid that Sarah Palin's appeal as a candidate rests very heavily -- too heavily -- on the fact that she has the "common" touch. Middle-class populism is a better ground upon which to build a fast-track political career that black liberation theology -- more healthy and more sanitary -- but it is weak ground.

If a Vice President Palin is to become a good standard bearer for the Republican Party, she needs to rapidly absorb a great deal of wisdom from the world around her. Many Republicans think that she could become the Party's next Ronald Reagan, but that assumes a full intellectual and political-leadership blossoming during the second half of her life. She's at the "Bedtime for Bonzo" stage right now.

I don't agree. The Ayers-Wright-related attacks on Sen. Obama are very relevent. It's only in the abscence of attacks on Sen. Obama's political program that they are totally "ineffective" -- almost irrelevent.

As Objectivists, we're all VERY familiary with why Sen. McCain, the Republican Candidate, is running an effective full-time attack against the immorality of Sen. Obama's program of (1) selving America's national defense in order to impress left-of-center Europeans, (2) squeezing energy production down to 15% of current levels to stop the non-existent phenominon of Global Warming, (3) nationalizing medical care, and (4) raising corporate income tax rates, eliminating the capital gains differential, and raising marginal rates to more re-distributively impose the graduated income tax.

In an earlier -- and very poigniant -- comment you made on this forum, you woundered what differentiates Objectivists from Conservatives; our varing views seemed so conventional.

I had to smile.

Between this year's liberal and this year's conservative, none of us who hold the Objectivist world-view can find a good candidate to support this November.

(I can explain the chief differences between Objectivists and Conservatives -- and I suspect you already know it -- so I'm not sure that it would help for me to list some of the key points on which we differ from conservatives either by degrees in in toto: We are convinced that capitalism is good on moral (not just "practical") grounds. We know that liberty is a requirement for man's life: for his enjoyment of life and for his bare physical survival in a world that is populated by potential tyrants. We understand that morality is not a social convention; it is a requirment of man's survival. We reject any sacrifice of any individual for any reason. We hold in contempt any claim that we should believe in anything without evidence...including the existence of God. What we do share with Conservatives is that we live on this earth and within the political systems that operate on it...so we deal with the same real-world facts and issues with which they deal. Knowing that there are no miracles, we would like to see existing political systems change in the fastest way that we might reasonably expect is possible. We want no armed revolution in the mistaken belief that miracle can be found in battle. We will not take up arms unless our government -- and our fellow citizens -- take up arms against us.)

Thank you for posting this.

We may not be fellow Objectivists, but we are fellow residents of Northeastern Illinois. We have a front row seat at one of stinkiest political cesspools in America. The political leadership of Cook County and Chicago (and, so a significant extent, the State of Illinois) is manned by large numbers of neo-Marxist collectivists, incompetants on the patronage dole, "me too" second-handers, and common criminals.

Members of this forum who do not live near such an odorous pit will not be able to fully grasp the nature of Barack Obama's political career. We who do, can sense something in addition to the disgust that an independent man feels for Sen. Obama's manipulative appeals to collectivist sentiments. We sense something in addition to the contempt that a rational advocate for liberty feels for claims that Mr. Obama's speaches are "the soaring rhetoric of hope."

What do we sense? We smell something that Mr. Obama has not yet been able to completely wash off. Mr. Obama is a mecurial politician who began his career as the turd that floated to the top of the cesspool.

QUOTE(KPO'M @ Oct 6 2008, 10:12 PM)

Wright is a pastor. Since you forgive Rush Limbaugh's unabashed support of irrational religion, it's only fair to discount Obama's. Obama's affiliation also has a big element of politics. He needed to prove that he was "black enough" to get elected in a majority-minority district running without the support of the machine. Also, just because Wright isn't a cheerleader for America doesn't mean he isn't patriotic. He did serve his country in the military, just like a certain presidential candidate you plan to vote for. I've met people like Wright. While I disagree with them wholly, I sense more anger and disappointment than hatred.

I "sense" more than "anger and disappointment" in Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger, and the other "liberation theology" wacos of Chicago's religious left. It is [i]more than a hatred of America. These are men who are at the "fountainhead" of Chicago's political cesspool. These are men who are philosophically opposed to every single attribute of America that makes America good. These are men who are philosophically committed in every single one of their proposed reforms to making American a less free; a less liveable; a less surviveable place to be.

These are men are philosophically opposed to America's national defense, free (non-fraudulent) elections, every form of private property and the free market, free speach (any speach that is not neo-Marxist propaganda, that is), every form of productivity, every form of human independence, every aspect of individualism, every immutable aspect of man's fundamental nature, and reason herself. These men are ideologically at war with the founding ideas of the United States and more. These men are at war with reality.

...and at the beginning of his carreer, the abitious Barack Obama who wanted to become a leader of men sat at their feet to learn about the source of their power.

Yes, Sen. Obama's political associations are among the reasons why I will vote in November to stop him from becoming president. I'll vote even knowing that it is useless (it's a foregone conclusion that he'll win Illinois' presidential electors by a landslide). I'll vote against him even even though that means voting for his opponent -- a man who has joined the insane altruist-collectivist chorus condemning capitalist greed for the global collapse of credit (a collapse initiated by our government's use of mortgages as a half-trillion-dollar welfare-state give-away program).

...as for Todd Stroeger's son,

Thanks for posting this. ICECAP (International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project) looks like a superb operation. It's a website I'll be monitoring from now on.

One intersting thing that creeps into a few stories covered on this weblog is that Great Britain is home to large numbers of global-warming non-believers from all walks of life -- climate scientists, teachers, laymen, and politicians. Rob Tracinski has noted the existence of this deep well of pro-science culture in Britain in one story on global warming that he covered recently in TIA Daily.

Is Britain's excellent primary education system (at least up until to the year 2000) the reason why? Are Briton's better aculturated to science as a part of their universal childhood education? Better than any other country on earth?

Back in the 1970s it was free-market Tory "Thatcherism" that first began to eat away at the politically dominant view of man's nature: that man's nature is socially determined, determined by his upbrining, his peers, the material factors of his everyday life, and his mode of production.

Back in the late '50s and early '60s, Ayn Rand's ideas failed to directly ignite pro-capitalist sentiment in America. Instead we got a brief and failed resurgence of pro-liberty thinking via the religious conservatism of Barry Goldwater and then an audio playback of Ayn Rand's political statements by subjectivist Libertarians.

It wasn't until Thatcherism caught on in Great Britian that it became acceptable to preach (semi-)non-Kensian economics at the University, in the political think tanks, and in the leadership of the Republican Party...which, through the person of Ronald Reagan adopted British Thatcherism with an Amerian accent. The Thatcherist role was particluarly important in the creation of the economically libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Without the influence of the American economists and free-market advocates who were partially inspired by Thatcher (and partly inspired by Ayn Rand), America's turn to the Right and Ronald Reagan's Presidency probably would have been much more religous-conservative than it was free-market-conservative.

The British played a very important role in the reopening of (some) liberty in the United States during America's turn to the right in the 1980s...perhaps almost as important as Ayn Rand's influence.

On the issue of the environmentalist dictatorship that is being laid out to solve the non-existant global warming crisis, will Great Britain's rational thinkers play such a role again?

When it comes to policy questions, for the next eight weeks (or the next eight years) the public statements of Sarah Palin will conform to the public statements of John McCain. That's the V.P.'s job.

This may be why the McCain-Palin campaign team kept their conservative lady (with a mildly radical religious-conservate past) away from press conferences and interviews. They had to have time to thoroughly brief her on all the things she needs to support, on the goals of the election campaign, and on the standards of discression that would be used in the McCain White House.

There is a contorted shadow of Sarah Palin's current view global warming -- that it is not scientifically proven and the government shouldn't do anything drastic until and unless it is -- in her interview answer:

"...whether it's entirely, wholly caused by man's activities or is part of the cyclical nature of our planet -- the warming and the cooling trends..."

But that view is something we will not hear anymore. Sarah Palin came off very well in the interview, but whether there are good and rational reasons for doing it or not, a Vice President Palin will pay an intellectual/moral price for being a loyal party man. If she publicly supports her president's CO2 reduction beliefs for eight more years she may become vague about her own beliefs about it.

When it comes to Sarah Palin's ideological future as the presumptive successor to John McCain as party leader, we can only hope that a President John McCain would, over the next eight years, mellow in his views on global warming and become somewhat skeptical of all the pseudo-science behind it.

You are absolutely correct.

My comment about who wins the election was the product of my total dismay that the Bush Administration has decided to aggressively exceed its statuatory, legal, and regulatory authority in order to promlugate a vast new regulatory structure that will chock off any growth in the production of man-made power.

There can be little doubt that Mr. Bush and his advisors have decided that someone is going to stop growth in the one industry that is at the root of all production that occurs above the level of agriculture -- if the continued growth of the industrial revolution is to be fundamentally throttled -- it should be done by their hand so that it is done on the least unfavorable terms.

This is typical of the go-along ideological defeatism practiced by conventional middle-of-the-road conservatives.

Of the four people on the presidential tickets, only one, Sarah Palin, rejects the idea that global warming is happening, that global warming is out of control, that rising CO2 concentrations cause global warming, that geometric growth in industrial CO2 emissions has begun to cause out-of-control global warming, and that there is a level of scientific proof that cannot be questioned that man's emissions of CO2 will destroy the earth's climate.

In addition there is one other of the four candidates, John McCain, who is capable of second-guessing his belief in the global warming shibboleth. He has already questioned...and reversed...his long-standing opposition to offshore oil drilling because of the harm that that drilling ban may have on American's economic future. All it took for him to reverse himself was a quadrupling of average annual oil prices from $25 to $100 a barrel.

When the EPAs 70% in 40 years CO2 restriction promises to quadruple the prices of electricity within 10 years -- a threat which will become very obvious by the end of John McCain's first term in office (assuming that he wins) -- we can expect that he will question his new-found belief in global warming.

Above all else, the United States of America could use an executive that will be able to hear and accept the scientific evidence from the cosmic-ray / cloud-nucleation experiements at CERN. We could use an executive that will be able to hear the mounting evidence for Henrik Svensmark's discoveries in climatology. We could use an executive that is capable of rejecting the whole man-made-CO2-catstrophic-global-warming myth -- even if it is only in small increments in the intellectually-cowardly fashion which we can expect from conventional conservatives.

That is -- of course -- assuming that a president John McCain does not, in a flourish of "honorable" bi-partisanship appoint such a large fraction of environmentalists, liberal Democrats, RINO Republicans to his cabinet and his inner council that no conventional conservative voices (including Sarah Palin's) are heard.

I would amend one comment that I put forward about the ultimate consequences of the EPA 70% in 40 years rule. If environmentalists do not stop "clean-"coal power plants (plants that produce pure oxygen, burn coal with the stoichiometry of a rocket motor, compress the CO2 exhaust and push it through hundreds of miles of piping to up-side-down natural gas wells that pump it underground), there is a possibility that a technology of coal power production could be developed (at great expense) in conformance with the environmentalist's newest (and nearly total) barrier against the production of man-made power.

And, therefore, it is possible that plug-in electric cars and trucks powered by "clean-"coal power plants will make available to ship and rail transport the few liquid hydrocarbon fuels that the regulations will allow to be burned in atmospheric combustion cycles.

(And air transport? Well if there isn't a whole set of exemptions that almost totally shields the airlines from CO2 reduction regulations, we can kiss all air travel goodbye. Like characters watching wall-screens in "Fahrenheit 451", we'll have to content ourselves with "virtual" trips on-line displayed on our new big-screen 1080P T.V.s.)

Thus, it is not realistic to project one-child-per-couple and zero-child-per-couple policies to control population will necessarily be a consequence of the rule, if it were carried out to its conclusion.

But I do not see how a world with a 70% reduction in hydrocarbon fuel consumption imposed over the next 40 years can produce the power necessary to support geometric economic growth. On the contrary, the energy businessmen of the world should be trying to figure out how to increase the productive uses of hydrocarbon fuels 20-fold over the next 40 years.

To give you an idea of how desperate the situation is under the EPA's new rule, the executives of the large nuclear power company I mentioned earlier spent several days last week entertaining proposals to support the development of a new concept for a laser-fusion power plant. When environmentalists push rational men towards the sci-fi world of "The Children of Men" reasonable but un-philosophical men try to bend the world towards a Buck Rogers sci-fi world.

At this point, however, in 2008, both views of our energy future -- the environmentalist view that mankind should adjust to shrinking world of mass economic stagnation and the conservative's un-philosophical view that does not question environmentalism but projects new technology as the answer that will permit continued growth under its political dictatorship -- both views are science fiction.

Instead some one needs to defend our lives against the threat now posed be the EPA Administrator and civil service employees inside the EPA who came up with the idea that a Supreme Court ruling gives them the authority to regulate CO2....and, thereby, ruin the lives of everyone in America.

The EPA's proposal for a 70% reduction in CO2 over the next 41 years moves the election off the front pages for me. Who wins the election -- a topic that has occupied my thoughts recently -- is a very very small story in comparison to the birth of this regulatory monster.

The proposed EPA rule is a threat to life and liberty on such a large scale that it is difficult even for those fully "intiated" on the misenthropic evil of environmentalism to fully grasp it. It is an Enabling Act for environmentalist dictatorship. The fact that we Objectivists long expected and long feared the birth of this civilization-destroying monster, does not mean we should greet its actual arrival with philosophical equanimity, saying "we told you so." On the contrary, this is the beginning of a political emergency of the first order -- an emergency that is very unlikely to end well.

Please allow me to dwell on this issue at some length.

Early in the spring this year, at the American Power Conference, the CEO of a major nuclear power producer (one that operates over a dozen plants) told attendees that the economics of nuclear power had become problematic.

Price increases for construction commodities (structural steel, stainless steel pipe, portland cement, nuclear components, copper wire have gone up anywhere from 20 to 500% over the past two years) have driven the projected cost of new nuclear construction up from $2000 per kW of installed capacity to $300 - $4500 kW.

In the late spring and early summer the chatter from this energy companies headquarters over government-guaranteed loans for nuclear construction became louder and louder. By the middle of July, all of the company's executives agreed that the future of their new nuclear building program depended entirely upon a successful application to get a federal guaranteed loan for "alternative energy" for the first power plant. But the problem they faced was that the existing plan to build their first new units could not be completed before the end of 2017. This would place their new untis in 6th and 7th or 10th and 11th in place in the line of federal loan supplicants. And there was 'only' about $25 billion in the federal guaranteed loan pot. Regardless of their ability to skip several places ahead in the line of loan supplicants by exploiting their connections through the leadership of the building trades unions (the energy company runs an all-union-labor, closed-shop operation) to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, there would still be nothing left in the federal financing pot even once they got to it.

Suddenly in August, all chatter about the "alternative energy" loan guarantee melted away. Executives began calmly going over schedules for that would place their new units in operation in 2017, 2019, and 2020. Some talk of Japanese financing through revised pro-nuclear-energy-development rules in one of their government's giant Third World development banks went around. (The Japanese dominate the international and the American markets in the manufacture of nuclear reactors and steam generators, so the new government development bank rules were developed to benefit the Japanese firms who are in the business.) But talk among the middle managers company about the benefits of Japanese financing was about it just being icing on their cake. The issue of the costs of construction and financing had become a side issue. All talk had shifted towards the engineering and construction issues of which technology, which construction partners, which sequence of building might be best.

Why? (I didn't know why until I read about it in this thread last night.)

As of July the EPA's announced a draft rule for reducing CO2 emissions by 70% by 2050. That changed everything. Unlike congressional proposals to reduce CO2 emissions by 55%, 65% and 85% (or al Gore's Great Leap Forward: reduce by 90% by 2020), the EPA's proposed rule cannot get bogged down in White House and Congressional wrangling over non-essentials. It cannot get bogged down over fears of how it will reduce America's international competativeness. For all practical purposes, the EPA's proposed rule cannot be stopped. A bow wave of cultural-political opposition so high that it swamps the foredeck is required before the steam ships of regulation are slowed. And, on the issue of global warming, there will be no bow wave until after the carbon cap recession of 2014 - 2020 really takes hold over the nations of the Western World.

Under the EPA's proposed rules for reducing CO2 emissions, all economic considerations are removed from the competition among different technologies for large-scale electrical power production. Nuclear power is the only power technology left standing.

The problem the nation faces after zeroing out all other large-scale technologies is that there is no way to scale nuclear power plant construction activities up to the level necessary to sustain geometric growth in industrial production over the next 40 years. We don't even know if there is enough uranium on the earth. So all new industrial production capacity (and a large chunk of existing industiral production capacity) will have to be moved offshore to nations that don't have carbon caps: China, India, the Pacific Rim, and other developing countries.

But carbon caps create a problem for the importation of goods from China, India and the Pacific Rim: the costs of shipping products from overseas will escalate two-fold, four-fold, eight-fold, twenty-fold as the consumption of oil for transportation becomes progressively more heavily taxed by the regulatory requirement to buy more and more expensive CO2 emissions allowances.

Because of the U.S. EPA's new rule, competition among the nations of the industrialized world for who can pay the greatest level of taxes on the CO2 emissions "trading" floor will grow more intense. Because the U.S. will soon beginin its CO2 reductions, the European Union will become less reluctant to slit its industrial wrists when it moves from the 20% reduction by 2020 program it has just entered into a 30% reduction program. Energy self-mutilation by one nation will help other nations to go through with their own acts of energy self-mutilation.

What would life be like in America if the EPA rule for 70% went all of the way through to its conclusion?

Soviet Communism painted on a cultural-aesthetic canvas on a continental scale. It gave us bread lines and public housing projects and rusty factories and bakelite appliances -- never ending economic stagnation, purposelessness, and despair amid a well-educated population, relieved only by one blind-drunk vodka party a month (all that people could afford).

If it progresses without effective opposition, the EPA's 70% rule will paint its own history. The first thing that was targeted (in last year's 35 mpg rule) was the SUV, the fast luxury car, and the sports car. (By 2020 most cars will look like mail boxes on wheels, but there won't be any traffic jams because gasoline will be $10 a gallon.) The next thing that was targeted (spectacularly in the environmentalist's takeover of TXU) was new coal power plant construction. As of July 2008, the proposed EPA rule effectively stoped all new coal power plant projects from proceeding to construction. (Some plants currently under construction will be cancelled.) Some of the next things that will be targeted are beef production, construction materials, and the registration and restriction of commuter traffic. And, finally, as the 40% and 50% phases of CO2 reduction are implemented, preventing the Western World from falling into the lowest of levels of abject poverty in the Third World, a one-child-per-couple policy will need to be implemented. To get to 70%, a zero-child-per-couple policy will have to be implemented on the majority of the population.

If you want to see what the economic conditions and the life-style of the (formerly) industrialized Western World would look like, take a look the 2006 movie "The Children of Men." Even though the premise of this sci-fi flick is that all of the world's women have become sterile -- with its urban crowding, abandoned farms (complete with rotting livestock), industrial recycled building materials, tiny cars that go only 50 mph and won't start, police roaming about in steel-caged riot vans dressed in full riot gear and ballistic body armor...and an ever-present and overwhelming sense that these are the last days of mankind (complete with a universally-felt psychological depression with spontaneous acts of mass mourning over the death of mankind) -- this movie is a perfect depiction of what a 70% CO2-reduction world would look like. It is a perfect picture of the continent-wide collapse that would be painted by the EPA's proposed environmentalist dictatorship for the United States of America.

I appreciate your reference to Henrik Svensmark's "The Chilling Stars." This book outlines a powerful theory of cloud formation. Dr. Svensmark's discovery is that cosmic rays, within a specific energy band, generate the vast numbers of microdroplets of electrically-charged H2SO3 and H2SO4 in the lower atmosphere that cause sun-reflecting clouds to form. He has observed dramatic increases charged micro-droplets of acid in the laboratory and he has seen it in data reported in airborne H2SO3, H2SO4 microdroplet surveys over the ocean. Experiments are scheduled for the CERN particle accelerator to further examine the precise mechanics of the collisions of cosmic rays with atmospheric molecules by which charged mircodroplets of H2SO3 and H2SO4 are formed.

For decades meteorologists have been chasing after the source of these microdroplets and planetary chemsists have been chasing the SO3 emissions over the oceans that provide the material for most of these droplets (because most of the earth's surface is covered by oceans). They've been interested because these electrically charged micro droplets of H2SO3 and H2SO4 -- many of which are only dozens or hundreds of molecules in size -- are the nucleation sites for atmospheric water droplets that makeup clouds.

Henrik Svensmark discovered that cosmic rays create these charged micro droplets, that differences in the annual flux of cosmic rays within the frequency range that generates lower atmospheric clouds correlate directly with changes in the global atmosphere and ocean temperatures, that major atronomical collisions that have occured two or three times over the past billion years (and produce vast fluxes of cosmic rays) can be correlated to paleontological evidence of major shocks to the earth's climate, that decadal sun spot cycles (which alters the fraction of the cosmic rays within the right energy band that get deflected away from the solar system) correlate to decadal warming and cooling of the earth's atmosphere, that early rennaissance observations of sun spots are correlated with centuries-long warming and cooling cyles (the end of the medieval warm period and the little ice age), and that changes in isotopic concentrations of atmopheric gasses trapped in polar ice which are correlated to consmic ray flux can be correlated to mellenial changes in the earth's atmospheric temperature.

His cosmic-ray / cloud-formation theory explains atmospheric temperture changes on every time scale against which it has been tested: on the annual timescale, on the decadal timescale, on the tricentennial timescale, on the millenial timescale, and on the time scale of paleontological epochs (100s of millions of years).

The theory works on all time scales.

Henrik Svensmark has discovered the primary thermostat of the earth.

Henrik Svensmark's theory even explains the "Antarctic anomoly" -- ice cores around the world show that, for over 30,000 years, when arctic ice and glaciers across the northern and southern hemisphere recede, Antarctic ice accumulates...and vice versa.

Are there other, secondary thermostats? Surely there are. (e.g., atronomical changes in our sun's output as it ages...it is getting hotter and hotter, the precession of the earth's spin and irregularities in its orbit, and -- of course -- atmospheric chemistry...the green house effect of water, methane and CO2). But none is correlated to global climatic temperature change with one tenth of the strength or one tenth of the reliability, across all time scales, that Dr. Svensmark's cosmic-ray / cloud-formation discovery.

I read Paul Saunders's scientific brief. It is superb. He outlines the absolute non-existence of any evidence that CO2 is guilty.

But the science on the isssue of CO2's role in changing the climate is even more clear cut. Not only is there no scientific evidence of any kind that the earth's climate is getting hotter and being driven out of control by rising CO2 concentration, there is newly discovered scientific evidence that proves that the earth's temperature is being driven by cosmic rays and there is newly discovered scientific evidence that the climate is well under control. There is newly discovered evidence that proves that substantial reductions in solar activity over the past ten years have cooled the earth 0.3C.

We not only know that CO2 is innocent, we know -- with the certainty of Perry Mason winning a confession on the witness stand -- which party "did it."

It is a very peculiar -- even tragic -- situation that Dr. Svensmark made his momentus discoveries about what is the primary driver of the earth's climate (he made the discoveries in approx. 2002 - 2006) at the exact moment in the culture of Western Civilization when it has become almost impossible to rationally discuss the earth's climate. He made his discoveries at the moment when the entire Western World is on the brink of committing industrial suicide over the supposed horrors of too much CO2.

The EPA has chose this moment, when America is totally focused on the final eight weeks of the presidential campaign, to introduce the most sweeping regulation ever proposed in America? The EPA has chosen this season between two sessions of Congress and two presidencies to establish a regime to choke industrial revolution?

This is an enabling act for environmentalist dictatorship.

But the evil of this act is not limited to the destruction of liberty. It goes way beyond that. At the very least, this dictatorial act proposes to end economic growth for two generations. If substitutes for fossil fuel cannot be developed (and developed at gunpoint) quickly enough this dictatorial act proposes America have its second Great Depression...and that the Great Depression never end. Our government is attempting to impose an environmentalist version of Mao Tse Tung's Great Leap Forward.

This is a life-threatening act.

Sarah Palin's church membership before she ran for state-wide office was "unplanned." Now it is an integral part of her career. The degrees by which Sarah Palin gives up her integrity are the degrees by which she first becomes less crazy and, then -- later -- becomes more and more conventional in her views and less and less effective and doing any good.

This pattern can already be seen in her career. As mayor she eliminated several useless offices and reduced city spending. As governor she pressed oil companies to pay more money to the state and she approved increases in state spending.

The reason why it sounds like I still like her, it is because she is has a likeable public persona which appears to reflect her real personality. If Sarah Palin's journey in politics is more a process of corruption than one of genuine learning by experience, she will be of little use as a potential defender of liberty who will be the presumptive leader of the Republican Party after the end of John McCain presidency (if he wins) or presidential campaign (if he loses).

Yes, I am "naive" enough to hope that Sarah Palin may genuinely be capable of learning to be more rational and to be a better advocate for liberty. The facts on her are not yet in. And at this early stage of her political career, she still has a partly blank slate to write on. It is possible that some might come from her rise in the Republican Party.

In the coming weeks and years, we'll get indications of which way she is headed.

Yes...that is exactly what I meant. It looks like Sarah Palin "adjusted" her strips to promote her political career.

This is not a cynical observation. I don't expect people to abandon their principles. But if a person change his principles in a way that ends up advancing his political career, it is more likely that a corrupting ambition played the primary role and any real learning that might have been caused by soul-searching following a major defeat probably plays the secondary role.

To give Bill Clinton the little bit of credit that is due to him. The trauma of losing his gubernatorial re-election campaign and the difficulties of losing the Congressional majority in 1994 may have been occasions for some first-hand learning about the virtues of a few parts of the conservative program. But Bill Clinton's primary purpose for altering his spots was to gain and keep power for himself and for the Democratic Party.

I've never been too hard on Bill Clinton for adopting Welfare Reform and NAFTA. And if it sounds like I am somewhat tolerant of Sarah Palin's apparent manipulation of her own thoughts and beliefs for the purpose of winning elections, it is for the same reason. In President Clinton's case, we know the change was motivated by political advantage and in Palin's case it is likely to prove to be so, too. But when it comes to integrity, I've never had much respect for people who maintain their fidelity to wholly false and evil ideas. "Corruption" that results in less destructive behavior is not a terrible thing.

There are issues in politician's public life in which performance depends primarily on his philosophical integrity. On other issues I care less about the health of a politician's soul, than I care about whether or not he oppresses me. If he is compelled by the will of the voters to stay his taxing hand, that is a first step in the right direction.

Oh, I forgot to mention what I did figure out about that U-Tube film clip. It was from a talk Sarah Palin gave at the Wasilla Assembly of God in 2002.

Excerpts of sermons about Christian warriors made by her former pastor at this Pentecostal church that are currently in circulation (e.g., the statement read by the leftist in the U-Tube picture that I posted a link to above) were made more recently...after Palin left the group.

This information accurately reflects Sarah Palin's world-view in 2002, before she began her effort to transform herself into a conventional conservative political leader.

What world-view would she bring to the office of Vice President? We'll have to watch her stump speeches, the vice presidential debate, her reaction to statements made against her, and press interviews.

Gov. Palin's campaign manager totally shielded her from all interviews for over a week following her V.P. nomination. I suspect he did this to allow the American people to get a strong dose of her benevolent sense of life before the facts about some of the odd and peculiar views she held before 2002 become widely publicized.

Today I was poking around on the web to learn more things about Sarah Palin. While a U-Tube clip of a speech made in church can be valid information, you have to do the work yourself of validating it. Is it true or is it doctored like this silly photo (with a nasty leftist talking in the background)).

The most reliable information can be found at big newspapers and other major news organizations. There are many holes in today's journalistic standards, but at least journalists have some standards for confirmation and fact checking.

Based on stories by professional journalists, I have learned that from her teenage years through the age of 38, Sarah Palin was a member of the In 2002"]Wasilla Assembly of God[/url], a Pentecostal church. The Pentecostals are a Christian sect that can rightly be considered a little... er... "goofy." They're a Christian evangelical sect that believes that faith healing is possible (radical Pentecostalists have been prosecuted for child abuse for failing to provide medical treatment...praying over a gravely ill child rather than seeking a routine treatment that has been proven to be effective in modern medical practice). They're also way too interested in the craziest, most mystical, and most warlike book of the Bible: the Book of Revelations.

Being a member of such a sect for her entire first half of her adult life demonstrates that Sarah Palin flirted with abandoning a large body of rational knowledge that she'd acquired from living in secular society and breaking away from rational methods of thinking.

In 2002 Sarah Palin quit her Pentecostal church and joined a less radical and more private evangelical group, the Wasilla Bible Church. She did this after she ran for Lt. Governor of Alaska and lost. If the staff of the New Republic is to be believed in this matter (I believe them), the defeat of Sarah's ambition to win a state-wide election may have also prompted her husband, Jim, to quit his seven-year membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party.

It is reasonable to speculate in the defeat of her this-worldly political ambition, that Sarah Palin decided to reform herself, become more like her fellow Alaskans, and conform to a more conventional world-view. It is reasonable to speculate that she asked her husband, and he agreed, to refrain from radical and unconventional political affiliations.

In 2006 Sarah Palin ran for and was elected governor of Alaska. She has served 20 months in that office and has acted as a relatively conventional practitioner of rational administration. She has limited her political advocacy to arguing against insider deals and big government.

Sarah Palin may have undergone a political conversion by electoral defeat of the same kind that Bill Clinton underwent when he lost his bid to be re-elected governor of Arkansas. In Clinton's case, he gave up on the welfare state as an ideal and settled for a series of "compromises" that took him in the direction of supporting the free market system...a process that climaxed with "Welfare Reform" and "NAFTA" after a second election defeat, the Republican takeover of congress in 1994. In Palin's case -- after briefly flirting with telling librarians what books to keep (and possibly flirting with some Christian-survivalist viewpoints), she traded some of her radical religious conservative ideals for a better political career.

The fact that Sarah Palin came from an unconventional background could be surmised from the fact that she was fearless in condemning some conventional political shibboleths that most conservatives are afraid to touch these days:

“America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions,” she said. “Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

I don't know the rural v. urban/suburban statistics on the distribution of government benefit payments, but because the rural population is small and relatively less prosperous and because George Bush and the Republican leadership in congress brought the federal farm program back to life in 2001 and it is now bigger than ever -- because of these two things, I suspect that the rural population, as a group, gets more government loot on a per capita basis.

That said, I would strongly caution you against keeping track of the welfare state benefit system in these terms. If you seek justice in the distribution of government benefits you will never find it. The injustice occurred when the government seized money from people by taxation. The only way to redress this form of mass armed robbery is to reduce and eliminate it.

If the federal, state, and local government were reduced to their proper function of protecting our rights -- through police services, the criminal justice system, the civil courts, our national defense, the operation of the offices of representative government, and other services connected with the delegation of our right to use force in self-defense -- there is no reason why our country's total tax burden should be more than 8% of the nation's total income...even in our time of small wars and international tension; even in our time of numerous criminals (4% of adult men in America are convicted felons...and two thirds of those convictions are not drug and other victimless "crimes".)

But the federal government swallows up 22% and state and local governments swallow up something like another 12 - 14% of economic output...and the income and wealth taken by regulation amounts to an economic burden that has been calculated in various studies to be equal to another 3 - 10% (EVW's very valid concern is about how environmentalist regulations can take most or all of the value of land). In order to obtain guaranteed "low interest" financing of the federal debt (which currently stands at 69% of GDP), inflation of the currency by the Fed takes another 2 - 4%. Add it up and government takes over and either destroys, consumes in administrative costs, or "re-distributes" about 45% of everything made in America.

In looking at these abuses of government power, we should focus on the blunt fact that -- as a nation -- we're literally half slave and half free. (We live in a Democracy, so the masters who enslave us to our tax burdens are the majority of our fellow citizens; the voting majority.) Whether or not our masters throw others too many scraps from our nation's collectivized dinner table is an issue. It is the final act of train of injustices. But to focus on that is exactly what the collectivists among us want to trick us into doing. If we fight each other over the scraps, we'll be too busy with it to overturn the system.

Don't fall for it. Don't fight for scraps. Be upright in your opposition. Demand all an end to each and every instance of looting. Find politically constructive ways to bite the hand that takes the food from you:

No more farm subsidies. No more food stamps. No more public education. No more FHA home loans. No more social security payments. No more research grants. No more Medicare and Medicaid. No more slavery. No more loot.