Father’s Day – random thoughts

I generally don’t like these “Hallmark Holidays” type “special days” and really don’t care if anyone remembers it – but I do remember to remember that Mothers Day is important.

I didn’t grow up with a Dad – he passed away from complications from surgery after a car accident when I was 11.  Before that, he and my Mom had separated and for years, I only saw him on weekends.  I am thankful, though, for all of the men who donated their time in various youth activities (e.g., Cub Scout, Boy Scouts, Medical Explorer Scouts, Christian Service Brigade, various youth ministries at the church I grew up in).  No, I’ll never know what it would have been to have a full time – all the time Dad, but these men did fill a gap that was there that I, at the time, did not know existed.

I wonder, too, if some of the mistake I made with the Youngest and the Oldest were because of the lack of example that I had growing up.  But I look at some of the medical problems that they had growing up and I know that anything that I might have missed by not having a Dad would not have made a difference in dealing with those problems.  At the time, I thought to myself “This is impossible – I don’t even know if they’ll even make it to high school graduation because of their behaviors”.  All things considered, I guess I didn’t too such a bad job.  Why?  I’m now starting to hear them say that the reason why they are doing some of they are is because of the example I set.  I thought they were totally ignoring me growing up.    Yet, I see what they are trying to do today, they way they are trying to make important decisions in their lives:  “But Dad, that’s not how you would handled it – you did such and such back when: I WATCHED YOU and I listened to you”.

Talk about being held accountable!  That beats yet-another-Fathers-Day tie any time…

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NASA’s James Hansen – one of the grandfathers of Global Warming – was flat out wrong by 150%

I remember the first Earth Day and I think that that the environmental problems we had in the US at that time did have to be addressed.  Rivers were polluted, we couldn’t see very far in our large cities and in industrial areas, and yes, the air was toxic.  And a LOT of that has been cleaned up – and from a Conservative standpoint, that was a common good that Government played the right role.

There’s also a problem with the environmental problems we have today; they are still man-caused but of a far different nature.  Instead of actually dealing with severe and and actual environmental problems, they are now from a political and ideological standpoints.  When science ignore the science, that’s a problem that spans past the scientific realm and when it spills into the political realm (and where it rooted and grown like Jack’s infamous Beanstalk) it REALLY has acquired a financial component.

But in going forward, potentially spending Trillions a year to spread the wealth mitigate less than one or two degrees of warming, it might be useful to look to the past to see where we’re going in the future.  As with NASA’s James Hansen’s predictions back in 1988 as to how things would look into the future.

As Watts Up With That? points out, the models that much of our current enviro-frenzy is built upon, that James Hansen pushed and pushed and pushed, have turned out to be flat wrong:

One of the most important publications on the “dangerous anthropogenic climate change” is that of James Hansen and colleagues from the year 1988, in the Journal of Geophysical Research published. The title of the work is (in German translation) “Global climate change, according to the prediction of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.”

In this publication, Hansen and colleagues present the GISS Model II, with which they simulate climate change as a result of concentration changes of atmospheric trace gases and particulate matter (aerosols). The scientists here are three scenarios:

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GrokTV Special Interview: Josh Youssef for NH State Senate. Question 6: How / can will you manage without the Republican supermajorities, or if they become a minority?

It is easier to govern when your Party is in power and hold the majority and even easier still when that hold on power is a supermajority (factional Party problems aside).  We saw that in 2006 and 2008 with the Democrat Party and in 2010 it flipped to the Rs.  Where Josh had some ideas … Read more

GrokTV Event: Part 2 – Eileen Mashimo on “Sustainable Communities Initiative” that will Federalize local communities

After Ken Eyring presented the overall situation (the joint program of “Sustainable Communities Initiative” by the EPA, the Federal Dept. of Transportation, and by Housing and Urban Development), Eileen Mashimo stood up.  She is a researcher and she was the one that started to follow and trackdown all the known details – and the further … Read more

First it didn’t work, then it did, then it didn’t….reliable?

Last weekend, I did a couple of forays from the Marriott Downtown where our event was being held over to the RI Convention Center where the NetRoots Nation event was being held.  Well, in registering, I got a “SWAG bag” – a canvas tote that was chock-a-block with Progressive “stuff”.  Well, earlier today, I desperately needed a pen to take a couple of notes with and I remembered that the bag had just the thing I needed.

Problem was, it acted like the title – and the folks that “supplied” it (heh!)!

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RightOnline 2012 Loaded

The first day at RightOnline has been great.  I was able to connect with Groksters Rick Olson, and Don Ewing, and I saw Tim Condon twice, though I’m not positive he’s actually here.  (There are enough folks here that I could easily miss him all weekend.)  And Jeff Chidester is around here somewhere. Last night … Read more

GrokTV Event: Part 3 – Mary and Rick Hebbard on “Scenic Corridor (a subset of the Sustainable Communities Initiative / Granite State Future Plan) Impact on Dover, NH”

At the same meeting that Ken Eyering and Eileen Mashimo spoke about the loss of local control that happens when NH local town fathers sign onto the Sustainable Communities Initiative / Granite State Future Plan being pushed by the Federal entities of the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development), Mary and Rick Hebbard spoke about a subset of the “Feds helping locally” with a small part of this Federalizing local town with a program called Scenic Corridor.

Whew – a long sentence, but this is not a small topic either.  Mary and Rick outlined that while the Feds “innocently” present the program as “help, along with money”, the parts that aren’t publicly talked about lock local communities into organizing and running their town, by hijacking zoning restrictions and loss of the control of private property owners over their property if they are ruled “non-compliant”:

Again, listen to the things that they bring up that AREN’T immediately discussed by the point folks and that ONLY become known when concerned and curious citizens start to dig into what the “fine details” are.

Ask yourself – if programs like this are just so darn wicked good, why isn’t the ENTIRE story and long term ramifications being brought to the fore right from the “get-go”?  Why is it that these Federalies have had to hire a PR firm to “persuade” the local (and they would add “yokels”) that this is such a good deal?

That should alert any NH citizens that some bamboozling might be going on here – for if things were straight forward, open, and transparent, WHY the need for a PR firm?

Rick adds his comments after the jump:

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Son of Greece?

I guess that would make Illinois a close kissing cousin? (H/T: NetRightDaily)

EMail Doodlings – “You all owe me”

There are a few people with whom I converse with a lot – some agree with me all of the time, and some agree with me most (but not all) of the time.  This is from a gentleman that used to agree with me hardly at all (in the beginning) but now keeps seeing the actions rather than just passively listening to the words.    He complains (rightfully!) (emphasis mine):

Skip – twice in the last week I’ve heard comments about Social Security that made me realize how far apart our perceptions are.

The first was from an 82 yr old nurse, who bemoaned the fact she wasn’t part of a union and didn’t have a pension, and she was living off of SS and it just wasn’t enough.
Now I realize nurses aren’t treated the best, but I don’t understand why she feels we owe her a pension.  Yeah, she’s a democrat.

The 2nd is from a pastor who wants to convert the amt a congregation pays into his synod mandated pension, into cash so he can pay down his student loans.
Sounds reasonable, except when he was asked about cleaning out his pension and the penalties incurred, he was ambivalent and said not to worry – SS would be there for him.  And he didn’t want it counted as income – he just wanted the congregation to pay down  his loan directly (tax avoidance).  Ambivalent I understand – it wasn’t his money in the pension plan, and he wasn’t going without to plan for his retirement.  Typical pastoral attitude – he expects to be taken care of.  But just how smart is someone with a master’s degree and over $100K in loans, taking a career that pays $1K/wk?  His wife also has a master’s with over $100K in loans, and stays home with a newborn.Yeah, he’s a democrat.

I am under the (misguided?) impression that SS is there to keep old folks out of the food pantry lines, and volunteering at the food pantry instead, for as long as possible.
Never did I suspect it was intended as a retirement or pension plan.  My parents had a different take on money – 10% went to the church, 10% went to their parents, 10% went to savings, and the rest is what they lived off of.  And my parents weren’t Rockerfellers – my dad never made more than the “average” annual income. And yet my parents sent 4 kids to college.  hmmm

thx for letting me vent.

A socialist society is a selfish society – and as Government does more and more (notice that I did not say Society!), people expect and then demand more and more.  And in the Pastor example above, the worth of other peoples’ money and contributions become meaningless and of little worth because, well, it is EXPECTED.  Think of it this way – which is more appreciated?  Something that you know should be part of life, that has become “the norm”?  Or something that someone gives you out of the blue for little reason at all (and for the trifecta – something that you have actually had to go out and earn)?  My response:

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Email Doodlings – on the “Modern” Episcopal Church

Last month, Steve wrote a post on the NH Diocese of the Episcopal Church as it was time to replace retiring Bishop Gene Robinson (the first openly gay Bishop whose ordination pretty much set afire the whole of the Anglican Church).  At the time, the choices were another gay man, a divorced woman, and a heterosexual man.  The post he linked to assured everyone that even the latter was “a friend of the LGBT movement”.

One of our loyal readers decided to take us to task for putting up such a post:

Skip – I’m calling you to task.  This is inappropriate.  But mentioning whether someone upholds all ten commandments would be nice.

I share your frustration – I just think there’s a better way to express it.

OK, confustion time on my part (not a hard state of being for me to be in, somehow):

You can call me to task any time you want – but I point out that I didn’t write the post.  To be honest, I haven’t figured out the conjunction of  your “This is inappropriate.” and “I share your frustration” – they seem to be diametrically opposed.  I get the second sentence (altho an Evangelical Christian, I am saddened by Churches that purport to be Christian but their leadership stray from Biblical teachings.  That’s why, when I was a Deacon in my church, I helped make the decision that we would withdraw from the American Baptist Convention because it was moving away from Biblical teachings to a more “social gospel” that was more in line with pop culture (in our estimation)).

But please explain your first sentence of “inappropriate”.

There are churches whose theology seems to reflect the Political Correctness of the Day.  Instead of using Biblical principles and interpret current events and issues through that lens of absolute standards, they twist those two things around and use that shifting sand of pop culture instead – after all, we can’t be hurting anyones’ feeling for telling them “er, that’s wrong”.  EVERYthing has become a target of the “non-judgmentalism movement”.  Problem is, then, what is right and what is wrong becomes entirely relative.  Is that anyway to deliver a Gospel message, when anything is permissible?

Skip – I mis-spoke – I meant that I wish to take GraniteGrok to task.  [It] seems inappropriate to mention someone’s sexual deviance…
Take the highroad and mention what they could have been measured against, or what they were measured by,  not what the media wishes to distract with.

Well, I was floored by this answer from this normally soberly outlooked friend.  In essence: “let’s not “see” the wrong in those that purport to be our spiritual Leaders and that are supposed to be the examples for their flocks; just see them as they are.  And besides, we can blame the media for this anyways.”  I am not a Calvinist in that I do not believe that everything in our lives is pre-ordained; we, given that we are created in the image of God, have Free Will – we can and do decide our own behaviors (all Progressive philosophy aside that holds that evil corporations and the dreaded 1% manipulate us all to make the decisions they want us to).

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Balloons and The Law That Almost Was

Balloon Bill HB 62 didn't pass but if it had...A special Interest story recently reported that a Balloon intentionally released in Michigan had landed in Bedford New Hampshire.  If we ignore the warm and fuzzy Bedford Boy Scout Troop members (who found the balloon) meet Michigan Girl Scout Troop (that released it), and jump in our way-back machine to New Hampshire circa 2007/2008, had HB 62 become law, someone in Michigan would owe the State of New Hampshire a $250.00 fine for littering.

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Some Super Fac’s About Super PAC’s – Before the Left Rolls out Their Tired Narrative Again

  From John Nolte at Breitbart/Big Journalism:  A few fac’s about super pac’s 1. Just like a campaign, Super PACs are required to publicly disclose any donor who contributes any amount over $200. 2. You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but… Yes, Virginia, there are pro-Obama super PACs currently hitting Romney and they’re … Read more

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