IS IRENE A REAL ON-SHORE HURRICANE OR HAVE WE BEEN HAD?

Posted on August 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

To qualify as a hurricane a storm must have sustained winds of 74 miles per hour or stronger.  Less than that is a tropical storm.  Hurricanes cause great wind damage, can lift  small cars off their wheels, turn over trucks and bring down some sturdy structures.  No such extensive damage is being reported as I write and the storm is reported to have traversed the coast from North Carolina to the New Jersey shore.

The reports show some trees are down, signs are swinging furiously and an occasional tin roof has taken to flight.  Actually, it is the same tin roof they are showing repeatedly.  This is the type of damage that is expected from a tropical storm.  Unfortunately, hurricanes are much more destructive than that.  I am sitting 45 miles northeast of New York City and right on the coast, in the dead center of the path that has been projected for days.  Fox News is showing massive red splotches on the screen right now right where I sit.

Outside my door there is barely a breeze.  It has been eerily calm all day.  As a pilot, I can get the instant weather at airports.  The winds at Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Sikorsky Memorial Airport are a mild 8 knots with no gusts reported.  Where is the hurricane?  Is there a hurricane somewhere, or just a significant storm?

I am not complaining and I am not concluding, I am just asking.  Where is the storm?  The television reports say it is in my area but I can’t find a sign of it.  Some weather bloggers are saying NOAA reports do not square with independent measurements and all that ever hit shore was a tropical storm and not even a severe one at that (by tropical storm standards).  We will give it until tomorrow to show up before deciding if we have been had.

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WE MAY GO QUIET

Posted on August 27, 2011 | 1 comment

We are smack dab in the center of the hurricane’s projected path and in a heavily wooded suburban area.  In the last storm we were without power for 4 1/2 days and unable to go anywhere by car for 24 hours due to fallen trees blocking  every outlet.  And that was just a nameless local storm, severe but not hurricane force.

We are prepared and will be safe,  but may not be able to post until after the clean-up.  Stay tuned.

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TWEETER’S TWIT INDEX

Posted on August 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

Crimson Hexagon is to the internet as Nielson is to television programming.  They both are leading firms that take measure of what is popular in their respective spheres.  Crimson measures sentiments as posted in public social networking sites like Twitter.  Their work is directed mostly for commercial purposes, but they also explore political issues.  The outfit monitored tweets on the subject of the Presidents big black bus tour through Tea Party land and found 72% of tweeters were critical of the tour with only 6% tweeting favorably about it.  It places Obama in the running for the Twit of the Year award.

Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but at least he had an easy charm and a sense of propriety.  He also was a man who was capable of being gracious.  Obama is none of that.  Can you picture President Clinton, 2 ½ years into his presidency, ordering a million dollar bus from Canada, having it painted intimidation black, and riding for three days through the midlands making stump speeches blaming mid-east unrest and a Japanese earthquake for the lack of jobs at home?

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DISASTER IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

Posted on August 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Two man-made disasters have hit the Gulf of Mexico in the last year and a half.  One largely corrected itself through the miraculous forces of nature with some helpful assistance from government cleanup programs.  The second disaster continues to fester and is only getting worse.  Mother Nature is powerless to do anything about the second disaster and only fools expect Washington to fix that which Washington broke.

We are talking first about the oil spill caused by lax safety standards on the part of British Petroleum that led to an accidental oil spill, and then about the ill conceived drilling moratorium that followed it.  The second disaster was no accident.  It was wrong headed intentional action taken by Barack Obama against strong advice from the panel of engineers chosen by the President himself.

The engineers report was so clear and emphatic and contrary to the President’s agenda that the administration saw fit to falsify the report.  We reported the fraudulent act here and here at the time.

As of now, ten rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico and gone to locations in Egypt, the Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria and Brazil.  Three more are expected to leave and eight new rigs that were slated for the Gulf have been re-directed elsewhere.  Thousands of jobs have been sacrificed, millions of barrels of domestically produced oil have been forfeited, our dependence on foreign oil has increased, and there is less tax to collect.  Correction: less revenue to be earned.  The Democrats have done away with taxes.

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5.9 EARTHQAUKE HIS DC, PHILLY AND NYC — OBAMA STRONGLY RATING IN CRASH TO -26%

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

An earthquake with its epicenter near Washington DC has caused has created havoc but no great damage and no deaths reported as yet. The Capitol building and the Pentagon were among many buildings evacuated and airports were closed. Check news sources for ongoing details.

The other shock.
The Rasmussen poll that tracks the spread between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of President Obama’s performance has gone from 30% plus on his first day in office to 26% minus now. Can we have the election now? Please?

HOLY MACKERALL !

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RANDOM THOTS Aug 23, 2011

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

Recommended reading
Star Parker, writing for Town Hall, has penned a superb treatise on the confusion among blacks about the failures of Barack Obama.  Her thesis is that blacks are undecided between the ideas that Barack has sold them out or that he is just incompetent.  A few may even wonder if liberalism could be at fault.  There is much more; read it all.

Press Conferences
Obama is the first President ever to call on a member of the Press without looking up.  First he reads the name from the teleprompter, and then he looks up to locate the person in the room.  You don’t see raised hands asking for the privilege to pose a question in one of this president’s press conferences.

Methinks
The fortunes of everyday Americans are on a see-saw.  The economy is sitting on one end of the board and Barack Obama is on the other.  America was on the downswing when Obama was riding up.  Methinks Mr. Obama’s weight has peaked and America is in a bottoming phase.  The keystone tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous is: first you must acknowledge you have a problem, and then you must want to fix it.  The President’s actions, along with those of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the SEIU have exacerbated the nation’s woes to the point that everyone has come to acknowledge we do have a problem.  From the election results of 2010 to the 64 year old lady Democrat screaming that Obama is an idiot because he won’t cut Medicaid, there is ample evidence that Americans want to fix it.

We are at the bottom of a deep hole.  Call me an optimist if you must, but I think the shoveler’s shovel is finally broken.  Now we are about to fix it, (the hole, not the shovel).

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I’M FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND I’M HERE TO HELP

Posted on August 22, 2011 | 1 comment
BARACK OBAMA ON HIS WAY TO HELP

When Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman of Facebook fame resigned in disgrace, it was a foregone conclusion that his replacement would be another Democrat.  Only one in four voters in his district is registered as Independents or Republicans.  Nonetheless, it is turning out to be a race in this super-solid Democratic district that gave birth to Sen. Schumer and other leading Democrats.  The reason is broadly held feelings of deep disgust for Barack Obama among working class Democrats.  It’s a local situation with national implications.

From today’s New York Times

Dale Weiss, a 64-year-old Democrat, approached the Republican running for Congress in a special election and, without provocation, blasted the president for failing to tame runaway federal spending.  “We need to cut Medicaid,” she declared, “but he won’t do that.”  She shook her head in disgust.  “He is a moron.”

After nodding approvingly for a time, the Republican candidate, Bob Turner, signaled for an assistant to cut off Ms. Weiss.  Frustration with Mr. Obama is so widespread, he explained later, that he tries to limit such rants to about 30 seconds, or else they will consume most of his day.

“It’s endemic in the district,” Mr. Turner said.  “You can’t stop them once they get started.”

Working people can be quite forgiving of a leader’s mistakes when they believe the leader is doing his best.  People will endure a great deal of hardship from a leader who is with them in it.  But even then, there is a limit.  When working people see themselves as on a sinking ship and you yell “I’m here to help” as you speed by in your yacht, you have lost them.

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ALIEN’S MAY STRIKE IF WE DON’T CURB GREENHOUSE GASES, SCIENTISTS WARN

Posted on August 22, 2011 | Leave a comment
Measuring greenhouse gases on conservation agr...

MEASURING GREENHOUSE GASES

Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a NASA affiliated scientist, joined with colleagues at Pennsylvania State University to complete a study that warns of possible dire consequences from extra extraterrestrials if they sense how we are destroying the planet.  I kid you not; it’s in the report.

From the UK Guardian

Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI [Extra Territorial Intelligence] because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.

“Green” aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. “These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets,” the authors write.

Are there any sane scientists left or have they all gone Gore?

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BARACK OBAMA’S RACE CARD IS BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE THE TWO OF CLUBS

Posted on August 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

In a recent dust-off at a Detroit townhall meeting, Maxine Waters and John Conyers were severely put upon by their black supporters.  The folks were angry over the rotten economy and lack of jobs.  They demanded that Waters and Conyers get on the president’s case to get something done.

When Waters said “We [the Black Caucus] are supportive of the President,” it was met with howls of discontent.  And then, asides from her like “but we’re getting tired” and “we don’t know what the strategy is” revealed that her own support for Barack Obama is fading.  But it was her very last words before handing the microphone back that are the most telling of all.  She told the crowd “When you let us know when it’s time to let go, we’ll let go”.  The Congresswoman was signaling her audience that the Black Caucus is ready to withdraw its support of the President when the community is ready to back them.

Surfing for offsite comments on our recent post Krugman’s Kind of Kommon Sense, I happened upon this blog with a banner tag that read.

If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you were not a racist, you better vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you are not an idiot.

That one deserves a place alongside “If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart.  If you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no head.”

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THE BIG BUST AND OTHER RANDOM THOTS

Posted on August 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

The President’s big bust tour didn’t go very well.  It’s not surprising when you know the tour was in fly over Tea Party country.  Even the black congressional caucus didn’t like it.  He spent too much time with white folks.  Maxine Waters pleaded with Black Caucus followers to “release us” and then we’ll go at him.  The Caucus is caught between Scylla and Charybdis on this one.

A recent Newsmax poll found that only 42% of voters will admit they voted for Barack Obama.  Now I know why all those Obama/Biden bumper stickers are disappearing from cars everywhere, except in college towns of course.

The goal of public service union leaders is to maximize membership.  If two people can easily do the job, five is better.  Five votes to count, five dues to collect, what could be sweeter than that?  On the other hand, the taxpayers, as citizens paying the wages are entitled to a day’s work for a day’s wages paid.  The negotiating table is supposed to resolve the conflict of interest between the public service unions and we the people.  But it’s the union dues that put the negotiators in their seats across the table.  What could be sourer than that?

Charles Koch responds to Warren Buffet

“Much of what the government spends money on does more harm than good; this is particularly true over the past several years with the massive uncontrolled increase in government spending.  I believe my business and non-profit investments are much more beneficial to societal well-being than sending more money to Washington.  — Charles G. Koch, Chairman and CEO, Koch Industries, Inc.

Charlie must be reading RandomThots.  We said here last Monday.

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