Imagine the front page of the New York Times this morning, if Bush was president and John Ashcroft was the Attorney General. Splashed across the top would be headlines with the scandal that gun happy Ashcroft had lied under oath to protect the administration from the fact that they were arming the Narco-Terrorists south of the border.

The follow up story would combine fact with accusation, and predict that the “wildly unpopular” Bush administration would not be able to survive the scandal.

If Ashcroft replied to the question:  When did you first know about the program, officially I believe, called Fast and Furious?  To the best of your knowledge, what date?” with  ”I’m not sure of the exact date but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks. in a May hearing, it would be a major scandal if documents later showed that he was aware of it in July of the previous year.

The editorial page would include an indictment of the cowboys in the Justice department on the left page, and a dissertation on the limits of the second amendment would be posted on the right page.

A Justice department that has been at times corrupt,  (the New Black Panther Case); imperious, (Terrorist trial in NYC) and incompetent, ($16 dollar muffins), would be the focus of a perminant New York Times Jihad against a Republican presidency. I could hear the demands even now. “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

BUT… Today’s New York Times was not quite that strong. There was no story at all. No Fast and Furious. No Headline. No accusation. No defense. No editorial. It simply didn’t happen. It was not news that was “Fit to Print”.

For weeks the New York Times regaled us in an orgy of Schadenfreude with front page details of the “News of the World” scandal, although it took place on a different continent, and didn’t directly affect most readers. But perjury, alleged or actual, from the top law enforcement official in the United States of America is not even worth an honorable mention. This is astounding, even for the New York Times.

I realize that they only decided to cover the ACORN story after the organization was de-funded by a near unanimous vote in Congress. They only covered the Van Jones story after he resigned, but eventually they will need to keep up with the rest of the news, won’t they?

My question to the New York Times is: What do you know about Fast and Furious, and when did you know it?

We are at war…WITH OURSELVES!

Are we ready for the casualties this war will cause? So that Obama can get re-elected?

Obama calls for a repeal of the Bush era tax cuts, but only for the top two percent of income earners. These super-productive people need to have more of their income confiscated. They should be punished for their success. After all, they probably won’t even miss that money. It isn’t fair that they should be successful while so many good Americans are less so.  Besides all that, we need to ensure equality of results and in doing so, deny equality of opportunity.

Unfortunately, these wonderfully liberal sounding lines have nothing to do with reality. Successful, productive people do not put their riches under a mattress. What ever money is not spent, hiring contractors, painters, plumbers, landscapers, gardeners, laundry services, diners out, theater tickets, and caterers, and the costs of life, they invest. Now they do not usually invest in opportunities so poorly researched that they lose all their money, or they would soon be out of money. In general, they invest carefully. If the idea is good and the organization is professional, it will attract money like moths to flame. The organization will grow, and people will be hired. Profits will ensue. Taxes will be paid.

Take away that investment, and the idea may die. Paying for the money that Obama wants for his unions, or for Solyndra, or to shore up his base will cause people way down the food chain to become jobless. They will be the victims of a war waged in their name.

More than that, Obama wants to increase the taxes paid on long term capital gains. This is exactly the kind of capital that start-ups are looking for. This is exactly the kind of money that pays for factories here in the US. This is exactly the dollars that are needed for hiring, and raises and training. Sure it’s important to look like you are fighting for the little guy, but the little guy is the person that this tax grab guns down. You see, if you starve your boss, he will not be able to keep you hired, paid or trained. Until recently, that has always been obvious.

Another part of Obama’s War Against the Rich, is the restricting of the deductions for charitable giving. It sounds great “Rich people need to pay their fair share.” But this particular payment will mean that soup kitchens all over America will close, and those dependent on them will fall asleep hungry. They will understand. Its a question of fairness. They will have to sacrifice so that Obama can direct some more pork towards a politician or a union that has pledged support.

Obama wants to choke off mortgage deductions. Yes, of course that will kill the real-estate market, and yes, more struggling families will watch their biggest investment go under water, but they should be willing to stand up and take the hit, become a casualty, so that Obama can get another four years.

Don’t get me wrong. It is not only the poor and middle class that are the victims of this war. As in all wars, there are victims on both sides. That rusty padlock on the place where you used to work, is a good indicator that the guy who ran it is not doing as well now. There are about a third less people earning a million a year now than there were in 2008 and about 40% less making more than $250,000. These are the people that create jobs, but they have become victims in this war. Now they are gone. Now they are not there to create the jobs that let the rest of us prosper.

If this sounds a little theoretical to some of you, look around. The blood and bones and bodies are laying all over the battlefield. Black teen unemployment is at fifty percent! Fifty percent? How do you get up in the morning if your future looks that bleak? Who is mentoring these teens? Where is their salvation?

Over all black male unemployment is 18%. Their long term unemployment is at historically high levels. Work skills deteriorate after time. These men now look in the mirror and all they can see is destitution. War is hell President Obama.

The war against the rich has already claimed victims in other ways as well. Minorities who were climbing the ladder just three years ago, have been completely knocked off that ladder now. According to a Pew Research Center study released in July, ” the inflation-adjusted median wealth among Hispanic households fell 66% from 2005 to 2009. Black households suffered a 53% drop in net worth over the same period. By contrast, whites saw a decline of 16% in household wealth.” This is a disaster. This is the German army at Stalingrad. It is decimation.

Prosperity is like water poured into a colander. The water has to go in faster than it leaks out. If you stop the water, the colander quickly empties. Obama’s failure to understand this basic economic reality, combined with his Napoleonic Narcissism, has become a general leading all of us to our Waterloo.

Obama’s “Jobs” bill includes money for people to remain jobless. Their theory is that money thrown at the jobless is the best use of stimulus, umm, forget that, umm let’s try “magic money making”. Unfortunately their theory is wrong. The CBO has already opined that every dollar spent in that program only returns 90 cents to the economy.

Not that Liberals care; the real reason to include this provision in a Jobs bill is so that Democrats can wag their fingers at Republicans and dare them to turn down the money. The images of starving children would soon replace Grandma getting thrown off the cliff.

BUT… We do not have to live in a “this or that” world. I implore Conservatives and Republicans to offer a new idea.

Instead of raising the unemployment insurance beyond any amount that was collected in premiums, let us reduce the unemployment insurance to 26 weeks, as it was before the crisis, and continue to pay the amount after 26 weeks as a loan.

We are all aware that 80 percent of unemployment claimants find work in the last three weeks of their benefits. This is not because they are all scamming the system, some are, and others feel they have the luxury of holding out for a better offer, and yet others will not take that job working for their father-in-law unless they have to.

On average, these claimants have paid into the system and should receive the first 26 weeks without surcharge. But facing additional debt after 26 weeks, most will settle for the job they can find, or feel the pressure to start that company on their own, or move into Mom and Dad’s basement when the benefits run out. This will result in making them part of productive, tax-paying America, and snatch them from dependent tax-absorbing America.

For the small percentage who, for whatever reason, would not be able to find a job, and had nowhere else to turn, they could agree to keep the unemployment going, provided that when they got a job, they would pay a 10 percent surcharge on their taxes, to be administered by the IRS, until the loan amount plus interest was paid off.

Indeed, there would be a few who would never get out from under. They would be very few. Most of us adjust, learn new skills, move and find a way. When extended recipients do that, they will pay back to society, that which they had to borrow. We the tax payers would be giving them a hand up and not a hand out.

The difference this plan would have on the cost of unemployment benefits would be staggering. The recipients would self-filter. Some might borrow from Uncle Joe, because he would never charge his niece interest. Others might rely on the other spouse’s income for a while, because they are hoping to avoid a tax surcharge. It is likely that the vast majority of those still unemployed by the end of 26 weeks would not opt to continue payments because it would be better for them to use networking, and family than incur a debt that would be collectable by the IRS.

This idea is pragmatic, inexpensive and creates the right kind of optics for Conservatives, Republicans and Americans. If this change can be made, it can be applied to healthcare as well.

The current system does nothing to encourage independence from the entitlement, and simply allows the continued payment to everyone who lost a job as part of a political class. As recipients pass 50 weeks, their skills are so deteriorated, they become almost unemployable. This is a travesty to the tax payers, the beneficiaries and a government that should offer a safety net that doesn’t look like a pillow topped mattress.

Please give me some feed back. How can Democrats stand in the way of this? Why hasn’t this been done already? Are we ready for these kind of adult solutions?

During the debate last Wednesday, Perry stood by his Ponzi scheme statement, and much to the chagrin of beltway pundits everywhere, he was not struck down by a liberal lightning bolt.

It turns out that although Americans want the jobs situation to get better, and they want to see our debt come under control, the most important thing they are looking for in a candidate, is someone who is honest.

After the debate Frank Luntz gathered a group of people together to critique the performance. Almost all of them agreed that social security is indeed a Ponzi scheme. They also said that it was important to do more than label it. We needed to work towards finding a solution. It was these people, in this group, and not the punditry that reminded us Rick Perry also promised that those depending on social security now would not be effected by any envisioned changes. The vast majority felt it was time to tell the truth, and even stated that they could handle the truth. In contrast, Mitt Romney started his answer to the Social Security question with “If we nominate someone who the Democrats can correctly characterize as being opposed to Social Security, we will be obliterated as a party”. Romney is well versed in the courtesan ways of Washington, where one says what they think needs to be heard rather than what needs to be said. In essence he answers “You can’t handle the truth.”

The fact is, we clamor the truth. Sure, we have become jaded and we unhappily expect the inevitable broken promises. Obama vowed to fund his campaign with public funds but broke that promise as soon as it didn’t suit him. He insisted Obamacare would save money, while he certainly knew it wouldn’t and even now, he is asking us to spend another 450 billion dollars, or 1,350 dollars for every man woman and child in America on programs, most of which the CBO had previously announced would not be effective, bringing in only 90 cents for every dollar spent. Honesty is not important to him. He bluntly tells the American people that this “jobs” program is paid for, but he will wait 10 days before telling us how, AND he will ask the group of twelve to toss another half a billion of cuts onto their duties. Both show that this program is anything BUT paid for.

We are fed an endless supply of unworkable crackpot theories, garnished in Orwellian Newspeak, by people who have everything to gain by catering to their constituencies and nothing to gain by telling the truth.

Rachel Maddow gleefully picked up the baton during her rantfest on MSNBC, saying that at least Perry was honest. But again, she thinks that honestly is the last thing Americans want to hear.

So along comes Perry. He is blunt and unapologetic. He calls Washington “a seedy place”. He does not look for sugar coated words. He explains that if someone tells us a 25 year old will have the same benefits as people retiring today, that someone is lying, plain and simple. Perry does not say mis-informed, prevaracating, or guilding the lily, he says “lying”. He gives us enough respect to tell us the truth, unadorned.

While the talking heads decry such outspokenness, and actually assume he is dumb for choosing those words, the rest of us applaud. In every poll taken since the debate, it is Perry who does the best against Obama.

Last night we heard from the president. He had a jobs bill that needed to be passed immediately. The bill has a cost of 450 billion dollars, or 1,350 dollars for every man woman and child in America. This bill would cost more than the entire deficit of the worst year (2004) of deficit spending under Bush.

No need to worry. The president says it is paid for.

How? Well, that he is not sure of. He has some suggestions, and he will share them with us later, but for now he tasked the same bipartisan team that is trying to cut spending with finding the money. Let us understand this a little better.

An agreement that could not be found this summer with everything to lose by not finding agreement was put off six months, and sent to a group of six people who were not at all certain that they could find a solution, but they will certainly be able to find the solution if we only add on more burden than they originally had.

Got it?

Didn’t think so.

But it doesn’t make a difference. The goodies he is spreading around sound good for everyone. The biggest piece, about 250 billion is in tax cuts; the kind of tax cuts that are supposed to be the best kind; the kind of tax cuts that will result in instant jobs; the kind of tax cuts that economists say produce the biggest bang for the buck! So it is said, in the New York Times, just this morning.

Unfortunately, if you read further into the article, we start to get into that Newspeak designed to hide the fact that everything said above was simply not true. Paragraph 13 on the lower left-hand side of page A18 says” In the present climate, however, there are significant reasons to doubt that consumers are honoring the predictions of economic models by taking that money and racing out to spend it.”

Orwell would be proud. Translated literally, we the consumers are aware of economic models that predict a society of hand to mouth victims, who never-the-less decide to dis-honor the conclusions of those economic models. That’s nonsense. What it really says is this tax cut doesn’t work! The biggest piece of Obama’s Jobs Act simply doesn’t work. It does nothing but add billions more to our collective debt, and we or our children will need to pay it all back.

In the same article paragraph 18 reminds us that the Congressional budget office has already estimated that for every dollar spent in employee tax cuts, workers would generate “up to 90 cents”. In other words, we already know it won’t work. It won’t be efficient.

The president said that all his proposals should be passed. Indeed, all of his proposals have been based on ideas that have been passed in a bipartisan fashion in the past, but we have to say it ain’t so. We need to contact our congressmen and senators to register our warning. We have never been so in debt, and asked to borrow so much, to do so little, in such a short time.

 We all know him. He lives large. He has never held a steady job. He is charming, but ever needy. He has grand plans that will put him on the fast track to permanent success. Those plans never quite materialize.

He has hit you up for loans before, and you always, always, want to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, his plans would have worked if only a bad piece of luck had not stopped him.

When he ran out of options and he out-borrowed his ability to be welcome, he was living precariously. The slightest event would throw him off his game. You know this guy. He sprained his shoulder, or his girlfriend threw him out of her apartment and now he is living on your couch.

Just today, you came home and found him drinking milk out of the container. He looked sheepish, after being caught, and promised he would replace the milk. You nodded, because you just knew that he wouldn’t, and it wasn’t worth the fight. C’mon, don’t tell me this isn’t bringing up some bad memories.

Gently, but firmly, you confront him. You tell him that he needs to get back on his feet. You invite him to discuss his plans for the future. You tell him that you want to help, but in fact, you miss your couch, and you will not be drinking milk from the fridge until he is gone.

He agrees. He says he has some BIG ideas and he cannot wait to share them with you, but he has to go play golf for a few weeks and he will discuss it with you in the beginning of September.

We all know this guy. He talks a great game but he is unaware of the tension he has caused between you and your spouse. He feels entitled to that which you have earned. He invites friends over without asking, and you are not altogether happy about how they are interacting with your kids.

One thing is certain. One thing is sure. One thing is beyond question. You would never let him run the household finances! He has no idea how to save, or even why you would. He cannot build for the future because he is so narcissistic that he believes its your job to pave his way to his future.

He agrees to reduce his use of your pay-per-view, but he resents it. Then he suggests that you build a shed for his motorcycle so that it will be protected against the rain, that way he won’t have to borrow from you as often to have it fixed.

We know this guy. He is president of the United States of America. Tonight he is going to give a charming speech. He is going to offer employers a small discount on the cost of Social Security, then ask for 300 billion in borrowed money to build necessary infrastructure. He will tell us that we have crumbling bridges, but he will not tell us that government rules have made bridge building so expensive, that the replacement of the Bay bridge in San Francisco is being built in China, and shipped to California to save half a billion dollars.

He will say that we need money for the FAA to modernize airports. He will not say that this includes airports like Aspen, CO, where tax payers will extend the runway by 1000 ft. Not for the scheduled airlines, and not so that bigger planes can land there, but so that private jets can fly non-stop from Teterboro to Aspen, and back.

Like the guy on the couch, Obama is a promises guy. He pledged not to take private money in his first campaign, but he only kept the pledge until private money was offered. He promised to be a post-partisan president, but he was only post-partisan until the day he was inaugurated. He promised that under his stewardship unemployment would never go above 8 percent. It has never been below eight percent. Even his own team admits that 8 percent will not happen for the rest of his term. He promised 3.5 million, then 2 million then 1 million new jobs. Last month there were no new jobs at all. He promised that Obamacare would reduce the cost of health care. It will increase it, greatly.

Obama is not at all at fault, according to Obama. His failures are due to an earthquake in Japan, a currency problem in Europe, the fall of a dictator in Africa and a 5.8 earthquake in Virginia which according to Ann Coulter, almost caused some Americans to lose their balance. If you are listening closely, you might not notice that the previous president had to deal with an 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that killed 250,000 people in Indonesia, riots in France, intifadas in Israel and two category four storms hitting within 30 days in 2005.

Tonight we will hear more of the same. We will hear him give excuses for why he can’t lead. We will hear him forget why his previous ideas have not worked. We will here him make pledges that he cannot possibly follow through on, and we will hear him blame us. He will tell us in no uncertain terms that this guy on the couch is the smartest guy in the room, and if only he can get his hands on the rest of our bank account, he would prove it to all of us.

I was speaking to my liberal friend yesterday, and as I was describing Rick Perry, I warned her that he did not have a single redeeming quality that a liberal could get behind. Indeed, I think that Rick is the absolute antithesis of our current president. I thought that just ten differences would highlight the comparison, but in fact everywhere I looked, Perry was the polar opposite of Obama. It became an editing job to winnow the differences down to the ten things that will really make liberals foam at the mouth.

1)      Perry is an Evangelical. Oh my GOD!

Liberals believe that there is no room for leaders that also put God in their hearts. Oh, sure, they accept the occasional photo op in or near a church, in order to get votes, but the road to “progression” leads through secularism. An exotic religion, such as Black Liberation Theology is acceptable, but only because it champions Marxism as God’s calling. Liberals believe that we have moved past saying “God bless the USA” and will deride any leader who can attract 30 thousand people to have a day of prayer for our country. It wasn’t so long ago, that the president had one such day annually. In fact, that happened with every president until Obama relegated it to the scrap yard of history.

Now the Liberals really believe that Rick Perry thinks the Earth is only 5000 years old. They believe that he will replace logical thought with “voices from God”. They are calling him a televangelist. Oh and yes, they are foaming at the mouth about it.

2)      Rick Perry is anti – big government.

When Rick announced his presidential bid, he promised “I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.” This was the equivalent of promising to burn down the Cathedral of Progressivism. Liberals believe that it is the government’s role to regulate and referee everything. Liberals see the government as a parental body, that will exchange allowances for chores done, and tell us when to buckle our seat belts, and make sure that we have enough to eat and that our roof doesn’t leak.

During the 2008 election, Obama rarely spoke without saying “Only the government can…” because as a true liberal, he does not believe in the power of the individual, or the capacity of humans to figure out what’s best for ourselves.  Liberals believe that most Americans are stupid, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Michael Moore have all waxed poetic on the subject.

If we are but children, who need government to feed us, clothe us and shelter us, how could anyone dare to make that government inconsequential? Foam is all over the place.

3)      Rick Perry is a Global Warming Denier.

To Liberals Man made Global Warming is a fact. It’s settled science. Anyone who would even question that is strange, weird and not worthy of serious attention.  In a recent interview on the Daily Caller, Al Gore explained that skeptics were much the same as Bull Connor (the Democrat) turning the hoses on Black people. He went on to explain that if you were to take on the deniers, you would need to win the conversation with passion and conviction but failed to say that the argument needed to be won on facts.

That is because the facts are not with him. A quick read of the book WATERMELONS would show why passion and conviction are all the warmists have left.

Rick Perry plays the part of the little boy exclaiming that the king has no clothes on here. He is unapologetically blunt. He is not afraid to point out that we are being swindled. He is destroying the best platform Liberals have used to get to “Eco-equality” as Van Jones would say. That has really got the left lathered up.

4)      Rick Perry believes in Capital Punishment.

Liberals are certain that capital punishment is outmoded, as is much of the constitution, and that we are a savage country, unless we do away with it completely. They will tell you that the very unenlightened Rick Perry put an innocent man to death.

Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in Texas. It is true the Rick Perry did not stop the execution. It is also true that the Supreme court did not stop the execution, nor did any other court in Texas. It is true that there was a new theory that concluded Cameron possibly may not have set the fire that killed his wife and children, but the courts that looked at this theory found it wanting and did not stop the execution.

Rick Perry was guilty of not substituting the judgment of Liberal pundits for the judgment of the trial court, and all the appeals courts and Supreme Court after that. Naturally that makes your average Liberal foment at the mouth.

5)      Rick Perry has good looks. Really.

This is a problem. You see a good looking candidate will attract many voters, so the Liberal punditry has already started foaming at the mount about this.  Phillip Hester says “All policy aside, Rick Perry looks like the evil President in every movie or comic book ever.” Others have called him a fake president, or the evil guy that always gets beaten up. He’s been called Dorian Tyrell from “The Mask”. The Atlantic said his success is because he doesn’t look like him. I’m sorry, but they are just trying too hard, and foaming at the mouth.

6)      Rick Perry has a gun. And he used it. And he killed a poor defenseless coyote.

Yep! It was about a year ago. Rick was jogging with his dog, and he was packing. A coyote came up and started to harass Rick’s dog. One shot. One kill, and the dog was saved.

We never hear about the times that a gun saved a life. To a Liberal that is kind of counter-intuitive. If there were more stories like that getting out, it would be a whole lot harder to ban guns in the first place. Here let me wipe up some of that spittle coming from the corner of your mouth.

7)      Rick Perry is a Capitalist.

Liberals do not believe in capitalism. That may sound farfetched. They certainly believe in “eco-capitalism” (Van Jones) or “Managed Capitalism” (China) but in fact these are not forms of capitalism. They are government controlled economies with some capitalist window dressing. Back in the old days, we used to call it socialism. Rick Perry’s capitalism will have both winners and losers. The government would not provide the seed money and it would not bail out the recipients. Poorly run companies would actually go out of business, and their successful parts would be sold to more successful companies. Liberals cannot abide by a system where people might lose out, but a system where someone might get rich makes them positively froth at the mouth.

8)      Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

Well… It is. The whole idea of Social Security is that you take from an ever expanding base to give to the somewhat narrower top of the pyramid. In true Ponzi fashion, nothing is produced from this, but it can keep going, indefinitely, until the base stops growing. With the baby boom now going into retirement and with retirement lasting so much longer than first intended, that base has indeed stopped growing.

Now Rick never said that he will discontinue Social Security. He never said that he will break the promises already made to the American People, but can you fault him for holding something up and telling you what it actually is? That kind of honesty is way overdue in American politics, but it makes Liberals, wedded to their Orwellian New Speak,  positively rabid.

9)      Rick Perry is Anti-Tort lawyer.

Rick Perry was instrumental in getting tort reform passed in Texas. They have limits on damages and they have “loser pays” laws to reduce frivolous lawsuits. Liberals consider this an affront to their sensibilities. In Texas it is so much harder to file the kind of nuisance suits that makes doing business in the rest of America so hard, that health care is moving there in droves, creating 40 thousand jobs in the last year alone.

Liberals have worked hard to create system where a class action law suit can bring fortunes to the lawyers and make companies beg for mercy. It should surprise no one that lawyers all over the country are raising money now to keep their lucrative franchise open. Imagine what would happen if we benefitted from real tort reform throughout the country. Well, it makes the Liberals foam for sure.

10)  Rick Perry is a Texan.

This may be his single largest sin. He swaggers. He is cock-sure of himself. He tells it like it is, but he does it in an accent from Paint Creek. He speaks slowly. He graduated from Texas A&M. He reminds the Liberals of Bush. Liberals are fond of saying that America is not ready for another man from Texas. The truth is Liberals are not ready for another man from Texas. He does not play the victim card. He is not citified. He didn’t go to Yale or Harvard. He called Washington DC a cesspool. He might wear cowboy boots to a Georgetown Party.

Heck, other than create more jobs that the rest of the country combined, keep taxes low, reduce the footprint of government on the back of Texans, and manage a state that has attracted America’s industrial Diaspora, what has this yahoo done?

It kind of makes you foam at the mouth.

The Real Clear Politics average now has Rick Perry leading the pack by 1.7 percentage.

Amazing since it includes polls from the beginning of the month when Perry wasn’t running.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html

Intrade agrees, with Perry almost 5 points higher than Romney.

It seems as though the New York based media has declared Rick Perry a “Flat Earther” for his skepticism about man-made global warming. The day after he made that declaration a democratic operative “Jane the ventriloquist” (Kristin Bunce) force fed her child questions in a stage whisper, such as “How old is the Earth?” in the belief that somehow Rick Perry would not hear her and would answer that the Earth was 5000 years old and that while he was at it, men have only 13 ribs. Amazingly, although he did not fall for it, and nor would anyone smarter than lichens and ferns, the press accepted the question as proof of the answer.

Fellow Republican, Jon Huntsman, jumped at the chance to glom some of the limelight, and declared that he did believe in Global man made warming. Of course he knew that the press would spotlight that comment, because it would prove that Perry was indeed a “Flat Earther”. I’ll stop there on Jon Huntsman, because he is a Republican, and we will want and need his help when the nominee is chosen, but as I write this, blood is dripping from my tongue and onto the keyboard.

What could possibly make a smart operator like Rick Perry skeptical about the conclusions of a body called: East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, Well, let’s start with the name. If the institute found that man-made climate change was not measurable, or not important, or not correctable, the institute would look like one of those apartment buildings in Chernoble. No one pays for grants on unimportant science. No one gets invited to be the keynote speaker of “nothing happening here, just move on.” No if you are at all involved with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, it is a matter of self preservation to find that man-made global warming is not only real, but that it is an immediate problem that will require the resources of the entire planet to be devoted to correcting it. These guys at the institute are human, petty, and venial. They are made of the same stuff as the rest of us. The white smock does not change them.

And that is what we see in the purloined emails. They resorted to tricks in order to create the famous hockey stick. They conspired to steer their articles away from publications that would support skepticism, they misrepresented large warm epochs (like the medieval warming period) in order to make it go away. The emails show that they conspired to erase the emails because they were afraid that their duplicity would be discovered! Rick is skeptical of these people? The nerve.

I need to explain the hockey stick trick, because there is a lot of confusion here. The scientists were using tree rings to determine how high the temperatures were, going back 1000 years, because records did not exist that far back. when the got into the modern era, the tree rings did not perform as advertised. No hockey stick appeared, so they substituted the actual recorded temperature for the tree ring results. This would seem to make sense. After all the actual temperatures had to be better data that the tree rings any way. The problem of course, is that if the tree rings did not square with the actual temperatures in the modern era, we should have no confidence that it was an accurate indicator in ancient times. It turns out that rate of rainfall, rate of cloudiness, shade from other trees, and stresses caused by animals or even nutrition in the dirt can all effect the annual width of tree rings. It is far more likely that the temperatures went up and down from one period to another, as they do now. The hockey stick just doesn’t exist in the way they would have you believe that it does.

Rick Perry is right. It is only naïveté that informs those who would not look at the science before accepting it.

But beyond the science there is an even bigger reason to be skeptical. The cost of reducing the global temperature by even one degree Celsius, is estimated by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to be 700 TRILLION dollars. Of course we would not be the only country to chip in to that price. As we make 25 percent of the world’s income we would only have to pay 25% of the total, or 175 trillion dollars. A mere 566 thousand dollars per man, woman and child living in the US.

A family of four would have to pay over two million dollars to lower the temperature by 1 degree. This would be even more impressive, because the total GDP of the US is 14.2 trillion, and at no time in the next 10 years is it expected to rise to even 10% of the total needed to reduce temperature by a mere one degree. Even if taxes were raised to 100 percent for everyone living in the US, we could not pull this off. Why a tenth? According to the Global Warming Chicken Little’s, the Globe will be warming up at 1 degree every ten years.

Of course the government will not raise your tax rate to 100%, but they have discussed actually spending seven trillion dollars on this “crisis” over the next ninety years. Seven trillion is much more affordable. That comes to a mere 2,300 dollars per person for you, your children, their children and their children and yes, that means you will need to cut back on vacations, new cars, warm bedrooms, or even a job, but hey we have to save the planet by reducing the global temperature by…0.006 degrees ninety years from now!

To accomplish that they will need to have your thermostat wired to a central authority to supervise your use of power. They will need to inspect your house to make sure that when you sell it, the new owner cannot make the mistake of leaving the leaded cane glass in the window. They will need to put a GPS in your car to supervise the miles that you put on your car, and to make sure you do not go too far in the same direction as mass transit. In order to reduce the global temperature by 0.006 degrees, you will need to sacrifice your income AND your liberty.

I’m guessing that the big brother world of extreme environmentalism is not in keeping with the small government that Perry wants to re-introduce to the American populace. No wonder he is not a believer.

There is yet another reason to be skeptical. We Americans share the planet with the rest of the world. Countries like China and India are not willing to de-industrialize for the sake of 0.006 degrees. Pollution in these countries is harsh. Asthma effects quality of life, but stark poverty, and lack of food are pretty rough on health as well. These countries are adding coal, oil, and nuclear plants as fast as they can build them. As we de-industrialize the rest of the world ramps up. They already have cheaper wages, and less regulation. They will get the energy prices down as well. Heck, they will make the chain and locks we will use to close our job producing factories.

Yes, Rick Perry is a skeptic. Every candidate should be a skeptic. After all, the evidence just doesn’t add up.

My liberal friend showed up today with a Cheshire cat smile. She could not wait to have me explain why in this cruel world a super billionaire like Warren Buffet should pay a mere 17% in income taxes. Even Buffet himself said that his taxes were too low!

 So I asked her a question.

 ”Is the income tax for people that pay over 6 million in taxes annually set at 17%?”

 ”No.” she said.

 ”Is there a special waiver for millionaires and billionaires?” Again she said “No.”

 So how is it that Warren Buffet pays less than half the taxes that his secretary pays?

 ”He makes most of his money on Capital Gains.”

 ”I see. So very little of his money is income as defined by the IRS?”

 ”Correct.”

 ”Well let’s try to correct this travesty. What rate should we set for the income tax of millionaires and billionaires? Perhaps we should double the tax rate? That should teach them. Right?”

 ”Ok.”

 ”Well, if we did that Warren Buffet would be paying all of 19%, you see, he still would be making almost all of his money in Capital Gains. He would hardly break a sweat asking his overtaxed secretary to fetch his check book. On the other hand, all of us less than billionaire and very salaried people would choke on a doubling of our federal tax rate to near 70% and would be unable to afford our state income taxes, and property taxes, and water fees, and sales taxes. Small businesses would collapse. the rest of the real estate market would disappear, and most of us would be jobless. You don’t want that do you?”

 ”Of course not. I just want it to be fair.”

 ”I see. Maybe we need to leave the tax rate alone, and raise the capital gains tax rate to the same as income tax rates. After all, most small businesses file as individuals and the capital gains are counted as ordinary income. That would make it fair and it would be certain to bring Warren Buffet’s tax rate up to and maybe even beyond the rate of his overtaxed secretary.”

 ”Well now that certainly sounds fair.”

“Is it? Do you think that if you invest your capital in something, and take all the risk, the government should automatically grab 35% of all the goodies? What would that do to the ability to raise capital? How would that make American businesses, already burdened by regulation, litigation and local taxation,  more competitive.”

 ”Well, you’re not being reasonable. Warren Buffet is a smart man. He knows all this. He still thinks its a good idea.”

 ”Yes, Buffet know all of this. With the misdirection of a practiced magician, he makes us all believe that he and his friends want to pay more taxes, but in fact, he just wants the rest of us to pay more taxes and think that he is leading the way.”

 As she left the room, I reminded her that there were more overtaxed secretaries than under-taxed billionaires, and I suggested that she concern herself with them instead.