I've recently moved over to examiner.com as the "Harrisburg Conservative":    http://www.examiner.com/x-34431-Harrisburg-Conservative-Examiner

I've enjoyed posting here, and I seem to have a few readers, but since the new gig pays something, I'll probably be spending most of my energy posting there from now on.  I'd greatly appreciate the continued support of anyone who wantd to follow me there, and although I'll be covering conservative issues mainly relevant to the central PA area, I'll try to tie them to national issues as well.  In particular, the Pat Toomey -Arlen Specter race is shaping up to be an interesting one, so come on over and see my coverage of this bellwether 2010 election.  See you there.

They finally did it, on Christmas Eve, no less.  The Democratically-controlled Senate, after a series of pork barreling giveaways that culminated with Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska winning the promise of approximately $100 million in free health care for his constituents in exchange for his decisive 60th vote.  Previously, Senate majority leaders also secured the vote of Louisiana and Vermont Senators whose votes were wavering.  The Senate bill, which is priced, probably extremely conservatively, at $871 billion over the next decade, will now have to be reconciled with the House’s previously-passed version, which has some differences in both the funding approach and in determining who will be covered by this new national “universal” health care.  The cost of the House bill is estimated, again probably very conservatively, at $905 billion.

And why do I say these estimates are conservative?  I say this because historically, estimates of the cost of these giveaways of the taxpayer dollar are almost always extremely conservative.  For example, when Congress passed the original “health care reform bill” that established the Medicare entitlement in 1967, its cost was estimated to be $9 billion annually.  By 1990, it was actually costing over $67 billion per year, and it’s been growing ever since.  The original welfare entitlement bill passed a couple of years earlier had paid out over $16 trillion as of a few years ago, after its cost was initially estimated at just a few billion dollars.  Why does this happen, you ask?  Because people see that they have a chance to pay their bills using other people’s money, that’s why.  Who wants to incur the expense of paying for health insurance, when they have a risk-free alternative:  if they get sick, the government will use taxpayer money to bail them out.  

In the past, people who didn’t get health insurance when the were young and healthy ran the risk that when they got older and sick, no one would insure them because they had what’s known as a “pre-existing condition.”  Insuring people who were known to need expensive health care already is a money-losing proposition, unless you can charge them the value of the care they’re about to need.  And if these people with pre-existing conditions had that kind of money, they wouldn’t need insurance.  These people did manage to get some kind of care, if only from emergency rooms, but they ultimately did pay a high price for their bad decision of failing to obtain health insurance.  Of course, some people who failed to get insurance won their gamble and stayed healthy.  But Congress has now turned these lucky few into a lucky many, because both the current bills require that even people with pre-existing conditions be offered insurance from somewhere.  I predict we’re therefore going to see an upswing in people deciding they don’t need to pay for health insurance anymore, preferring to rely on the taxpayer to provide it.  Ergo, the cost is going to skyrocket, just as it has with similar programs in the past.

The very first beneficiaries of this latest government largess will be the lucky taxpayers in the states of Nebraska, who won’t have to pay the usual state share of this new plan, whatever it turns out to be.  Well, maybe they won’t.  It’s possible that other states will challenge the constitutionality of this provision, which seems to violate Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the constitution, which provides that: "no Bill of Attainder…Law will be passed."  A bill of attainder is a law specifically passed to punish a particular group, in this case residents of states other than Nebraska.  The inequity of this exemption and the financial burden that it represents to residents of the other 49 states, who already pay close to 500 billion dollars per year for Medicaid; should be obvious to all residents, because the rest of us are now looking at paying the costs for Nebraska as well.  We can only hope new that the Attorneys General of some of the other 49 states, especially the ones from the wealthier states that will pick up the majority of the burden, can overturn this provision.  If that happens, the bill might lose Ben Nelson’s support and the coalition supporting it will fall apart.  That would be a Godsend.  Meantime, offering this package at this time of the year strikes me as wholly appropriate for our Congressional Santa Clauses – Merry Christmas, America!

A couple of years ago, Ellen Goodman wrote in the Boston Globe that "global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."  She went on to say that for the good of all mankind, "global warming deniers" should be censored - denied the right to speak, write, or, presumably, even think that anthropogenic global warming might be a fantasy.  But no one listened to poor Ellen, and look what's happened now!

A couple of cheeky bloggers from the U.K. have published e-mails exchanged by climate "scientists" from East Anglia University revealing that climate data had been fudged, to say the least, to promote liberal scientists' Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) agenda, which is to essentially stop all growth and industrialization, at least in the developed world.  It's unclear what their intentions are with respect to the developing world, since their political allies in world government have exempted India and China, among others, from global accords such as the Kyoto Treaty designed to halt AGW.

Actually, the e-mails revealed a lot more than just faked data.  They also proved that AGW proponents have conspired to exclude papers tending to cast doubt on AGW and punish, academically-speaking, their authors.  Furthermore, these "scientists" sought to deny access to climate data for any other researchers, stooping in at least one case to "losing" data prior to 1980 or so that would have conclusively demonstrated that warming trends have only been recorded since that time.  Well, actually, to be completely accurate, warming trends have only been observed from 1980 until 1998; in the last 11 years, the trend has returned to cooling.

Some of this data "cooking" has been laughable.  For example, climate historians have known for decades, if not centuries, that there was a warm period - called the Medieval Warm period - from about 900 A.D. until 1300 A.D., during which the Vikings farmed in Greenland and there were vineyards all over England.  It was actually warmer then than it is now, and the polar ice caps weren't melting and causing the oceans to rise 20 feet, and everyone knows it, but these "researchers" actually conspired in their now-revealed e-mails that they were going to ignore these facts.

We need to realize, though, that saving the earth isn't really the goal.  Most liberal climate "scientists" keep quiet about it, but one foolish Environmental Minister, Christine Stewart of Canada, accidentally spilled the beans a few years ago when she said, "No matter if the science is all phony.  There are collateral environmental benefits...Climate change [will provide] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."  This quote is quite revealing, as are the quotes found here: http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/Infowar/52865.  These are also examples of when radical leftist "reformers" accidentally let on to what their true agenda is.  They want to achieve "social justice" by, among other things, reducing the human population and denying us access to cheap energy, because capitalism and growth are the true enemies of their brand of "justice."

So where is Ellen Goodman when we need her?  She has the "right" idea: liberals desperately need to stop these conservative fools from pushing their toxic agenda of growth, and the first step is to ensure only "politically correct" speech by banning any statements that contradict AGW.  Go censorship!

Another letter to the editor of the Patriot News:

One Annabelle Curtis from Harrisburg writes that she's "deeply concerned that our freedom of speech has exceeded all limitations."  There's no need to worry, Ms. Curtis, because, in accordance with the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, there is no limitation on freedom of speech, at least not by government.

Liberals like Annabelle Curtis have suddenly decided, now that a Democrat, and one of African descent to boot, occupies the White House, that criticizing the President constitutes "treason."  Wow, Ms. Curtis, where were you when liberals hurled hate-filled invectives week after week, year after year, at George W. Bush?  Were you hiding your head in the sand so that you missed all that?

Or could it be that you think only conservatives base their criticism on "hate?"  Yes, yes, we all know liberals are incapable of hating.  Their diatribes weren't based on hate, but rather on righteous anger!  That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it?

The fact is that Barack Obama didn't inherit any worse of a situation than any other President.  George Bush gave him an excellent head start, in fact, in combating terrorism, among other things.  One of Mr. Obama's first acts as President, on the other hand, was to kick off a spending spree that will add $2 trillion to the national debt, and action that I, for one, certainly find worthy of criticism.  Be sure to read the Bill of Rights, Ms. Curtis, before you decide to print a letter saying I don't have that right.

Liberals who want to accuse conservative critics of the President of treason need look no further than the last President to see where this precedent was established.  What goes around comes around.

I don't feel the need to comment too much on the Fort Hood massacre of November 5th.  There's been enough commentary surrounding that news, and no one really needs my two cents' worth, with a couple of exceptions.  First, this was, unequivocally, an act of terror. This "Major" Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim terrorist bent on striking fear into the hearts of American fighting men headed for the Middle East. Inasmuch as he thought he could do that, he understood very little of the American fighting man, for all his alleged psychiatric expertise. But even if we didn't understand what he was trying to do, he tipped his hand by contacting - some would say joining - the world's leading terrorist organization - al Qaeda.

This fact brings me to my second point, which is that the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Army knew he had made such contact - as long ago as the end of last year.  What could they possibly have been thinking to have allowed him to retain his freedom, much less a commission in the U.S. Army?? They even promoted this lunatic during the last year!! Heads are going to roll in all four of those organizations, where, even now, operatives are jockeying to put the blame for this disaster somewhere else. But I have no doubt that there will be some careers that will suffer for this outrage, which is as it should be.

I have to ask myself, though, how we came to this. How did four agencies that should be in the forefront of fighting the war on terror become so afraid to blow the whistle on a fanatical, homicidal lunatic who was routinely granted daily access to our military bases? I can only echo what some anonymous sources close to Hasan in the Army have been quoted as saying - that we've become such a politically correct society that we're terrified we might be accused of being "racists" for fingering potential Muslim terrorists. Set aside for the moment the fact that Islam is a religion and not a race, and that most practitioners are Caucasians. Certain elements in our society - the politically correct ones - will surely scream "racism" the first time anyone hints that an Army "major" who contacts al Qaeda might be a terrorist.

If anyone needs any further evidence that this is true, please refer to the recently "settled" case of the praying Imams, who were detained and prevented from boarding a U.S. Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix in 2006 after behaving in a disruptive fashion outside the gate where the flight was boarding. These six Imams promptly sued the airline, the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which runs the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and its police department; and the airport police officers and an FBI agent who were involved in the case,.claiming that anyone who thought their behavior was suspicious was "discriminating" against them. Three months ago, they were "vindicated" when U.S. Airways and some of the other defendants settled out of court.

We need, as a nation, to turn a deaf ear to this and other politically correct nonsense. Muslim terrorists worldwide are targeting us, and it's hard enough to battle the ones outside our borders. The last thing we need is these lunatics attacking us inside our borders. We need to monitor the behavior of such people and put them away where they can't hurt anyone, and if that means ruffling the feathers of a few Muslims, even their Imams, or an al-Qaeda operative masquerading as an Army "major," well, that's just too darn bad.  But instead, we're letting these terrorists and their sympathizers push us around in court, our own courts, while they plot to shoot dozens of our finest young people.  I'm sorry, but I just have to ask: People, what are we doing to ourselves?

Another letter to the editor of the Patriot-News:

Cynthia Tucker recites another variation of the usual liberal class warfare mantra when she says that deregulation “allowed businesses to pillage the economy.”  God forbid people might be able to make some money free of government interference.  As a matter of fact, the only pillaging I’ve seen recently was when government gave big corporations billions of taxpayer dollars to save them from their own foolish decisions.

Coincidentally, I just saw where executives from all those same corporate beneficiaries of government largesse just happened to attend a fundraiser hosted by Barack Obama last week in New York City.  I’m sure they were all busy showing him their gratitude for the bailout with large donations.  I’m equally sure that our President will now have his staff quickly implement “tough standards and more inspections,” just like Cynthia says.

No, seriously, why do you think corporate bigwigs are giving the Democrats money?  Are they doing it to encourage the Dems to regulate them more and better?  The only regulations those corporations are interested in are the ones that act as a barrier to prevent competitors from entering their line of business.  So when liberals demand that we ensure safety by regulating industry, who do they think they’re kidding?"

The truth is that the only thing government intervention in the economy has ever done is slow it down.  It doesn’t necessarily result in safer products, and product recalls, as a fraction of total sales, are relatively small.  More government oversight hasn’t ever benefited anyone but existing corporations, who use government regulations as a barrier to prevent competitors from entering their line of work.  No wonder most corporations favor regulating their industries.

A couple of months ago, New York Times columnist and faux economist Paul Krugman wrote an editorial critiquing critics of Obama care, who are comparing the Democrats' health care "reform" as resembling that of the U.K. or Canada. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html

Implementing "reform" that would look like one of those two countries' health care systems wouldn't be a good thing for us.  It can take months to receive care for most cancers following diagnosis, whereas in this country, you'd begin receiving care within no more than a few days.  "Elective" procedures such as hip and knee replacements, which, although officially classified as elective, can alleviate years of misery for those who receive them, can take years.  In this country, getting a hip or knee replacement usually takes only a few months.

Krugman, however, says that it isn't so.  He says, based on one of the more palatable proposals put forward by the Democrats, that our system won't look so much like the U.K. or Canada but like Switzerland.  The Swiss have implemented a system whereby the private sector provides health insurance, but everyone is incentivized to participate one way or another.  Krugman goes on to say, "In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured."  Yes, it's true that Massachusetts is using the Swiss model.  It probably looked like a good idea to Gov. Mitt Romney when he pushed to implement it five years ago.  After all, nanny-state Massachusetts residents were pushing for universal health care, and Romney, free-marketeer that he is, saw a chance to use the private sector to solve this problem.  Even Krugman admits that " costs are running higher than expected," but how is it working otherwise?

Funny you should ask.  My wife is from Massachusetts, and one of her sisters, Maureen, still lives there.  The other day, my dear sister-in-law called to talk, and one of the topics of conversation was how bad the health care system has become in Massachusetts.  My wife saw an opening and mentioned that Obama wants to bring this magical health care system to the whole country.  Unfortunately, Maureen, deluded liberal that she is, immediately admonished her poor sister to "stop talking politics," as though stating the truth is simply "talking politics."  Maureen, if you happen to read this, please pay careful attention to the first couple of paragraphs.

The complaints about Massachusetts' new health care system seem to focus mostly on costs.  Besides the huge, and probably unsustainable, additional cost to the taxpayer mentioned in Krugman's column, due to the necessity for subsidies to much of the population, there also seem to be increased costs for individuals, in spite of those subsidies.  Furthermore, despite the program's stated goal of universal health care, about 4 - 5% of the state's residents still aren't covered.  There are various reasons for this, but it seems to be mostly due to the fact that the incentives and subsidies simply aren't enough to get people to carry health insurance  This fact is a graphic example of the principle of decreasing returns to scale, a principle of economics that points up the futility of trying to get absolutely everyone to adopt a policy that many of them don't want.  People who are still uninsured mostly don't want to be or feel they can't because they have other, better ways to spend their money. 

Set aside for a moment the morality, or lack of it, of trying to force people who are supposed to be free to buy something they either don't want or don't feel they need.  86% of Americans are satisfied with their health care and their coverage, so what are we trying to fix, and at what cost?  How much more incentive can we possibly give this remaining 4 - 5% to make them buy coverage?  There is no "answer" to the "national health care crisis;"  there are only, as in all walks of life, trade offs.  We just need to be adult enough to accept that we simply can't fix everyone's problems, no matter how hard we try, because the trade off, which is spending gigantic sums of money, simply isn't worth it.

A few weeks ago, I came on here looking for one of my favorite columnists, Burt Prelutsky.  Burt's a right thinker with a great sense of humor about the inherent contradictions and lack of common sense that constitute liberalism, a lot like Ann Coulter, so I was really surprised and disappointed to find him gone.  The reason for my disappointment is obvious, but I was really more surprised because Burt was consistently one of the top rated columnists on townhall.com, a site that has a lot of good columnists but also a few that are, frankly, stupid.

So I'm a bit late, I know, but I feel like I ought to comment, particularly in view of what I read on Burt's site, where he still publishes: burtprelutsky.com.  The August 18th entry states that he believes his next-to-last column, which was critical of Islam, might have scared the townhall editors into dropping him, although their stated reason was that they couldn't afford the $20 per column they were paying him.

I was thinking maybe I wasn't coming here often enough, which is how I became award of Burt's dismissal late, but now I'm not sure I'm not coming too often. Of all the stupid moves, this one takes the cake. Burt was, as I mentioned, consistently one of the most popular columnists here, while I note that illegal immigrant-lover Linda Chavez, consistently the lowest-rated columnist here, is still posting away. That's ridiculous. Based on what Burt said in his August 18th column about what he was paid, I sincerely doubt that he was fired based on budgetary considerations. I still like to come here to blog, but I have other blogs that I could use just as well.  This is definitely food for thought.

Note:  this is the column I promised a few weeks ago that was going to be called R.I.P Burt.  Sorry it took so long to post.  Burt's a good man, and he deserved better than this.

The Patriot-News actually published one of my many letters to their editors, albeit somewhat altered. Anyone interested can view the original letter a few posts below. When the P-N actually publishes one, though, the liberal roaches literally come out of the woodwork. One emerged this time, for example to quote the definition of “empirical” from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, in which apparently, the first definition of "empirical" means "originating in or based on observation or experience." The libbie went on to say, “By definition, therefore, "empirical data" does not need does not need [sic] to be obtained in a laboratory. 

This is just more ignorant liberal commentary. One might be able to obtain empirical data outside the laboratory, but its collection still has to conform to scientific methodology. Mathematical forecasting models don't constitute empirical data in any way, shape, or form. But this genius doesn’t agree, so he sends me to a website he says will educate me in “the empirical study of climate”: http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/Resources/gcc/3-1.html and tells me that I “can believe whatever [I] want, but [my] letter is not remotely convincing.”

O.K., genius, let me convince you by quoting your own website. First, the site cites its source for empirical evidence, saying, “the period traditionally associated with instrumental records extends back only to the middle of the 19th century.” In other words, we only have real data for the last 150 years or so. Wow, a whole 150 years! To heck with any data covering the last millennium, let alone the last 300,000 or so, when real climate change began. But if we look back at life 1,000 years ago, we’d find that there were vineyards in England and farms in Greenland. How can that be? Why, it was a lot warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today, and could you believe it, the seas weren’t 20 feet higher?!?

This website went on to say further, “for periods prior to the recording of instrumental data, climate changes have to be reconstructed from indirect or proxy sources.” So it’s proxy data they're using for 1,000 years ago. Now, continuing to play my friend’s game, I went to his second favorite website, Merriam-Webster.com, to look up the definition of “proxy”: it’s a “function” that “acts as a substitute for another.” So it’s really substitute data that we’re looking at before 150 years ago. That’s very enlightening, since substitute data is by definition not empirical.

Finally, this person came back on to comment that I’m biased and admitting I made a mistake. Well, to that I say “yes” and “no.” Yes, I'm definitely biased - towards the truth. No, I'm not admitting my letter is in error. Far from it. The whole point of my letter is that math models don't constitute empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is that which is gained in repeatable experiments conducted in accordance with the scientific method. That's the third time now that I've had to that concept to this particular liberal critic, who claims, by the way, to not be liberal. I wonder if he came back again and finally got it. 

For those of you who still don’t get it, let me expand a little. The forecasting that these "climate modelers" are doing is the same kind of math modeling that analysts attempt to perform on, say, the stock market or the weather, using the same methods and having the same level of validity. In fact, if these climate modelers are such good forecasters, why are they even bothering to try to model the climate a hundred years from now? Why don't they just become billionaires playing the market? The answer is that they can't forecast with enough accuracy to make any money. Ditto the climate. That’s the right answer.

Friday, the Nobel Prize Committee announced the 2009 winner of its Peace Prize:  President Barack Obama.  I agree with virtually all Republicans and a lot of Democrats as well that this award is, to say the least, premature.  Barack Obama has accomplished very little in his life besides being elected President of the U.S.  It's not that that's such a small achievement, and yet, by comparison to many other winners, it really doesn't amount to much.

Past winners have included such notable humanitarians as Mother Theresa, Elie Wiesel, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela, as well as numerous Middle Eastern statesmen who have worked hard to advance the peace process.  It has even been awarded to activists who have committed their lives to try to end the threat of nuclear weapons and the global holocaust that would result from their usage.  Of course, there have been the occasional joke recipients, such as Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and, of course, that noted peace activist, Yasser, Arafat.  I'm afraid that Obama's award falls closer to the latter group falls closer to that latter group than to the former.

Naturally, the Nobel Committee had its own take on this, citing "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."  Of course, there are some cynics who say that such actions such as his decision to cancel the Eastern European missile defense system have actually made war more rather that less likely.  Those same people speculate that Obama's award is due more to the fact that he simply isn't George W. Bush than any other reason. 

But I'm not a cynic.  I think that the Committee sincerely does have what it considers good reasons to present Obama this award.  Europeans are continually trying to project their values onto our country, because they think we should be inclined to adopt a socialist, or at least democratic socialist, economy like theirs.  On the other hand, because we're haven't done that, we're much more prosperous and overall successful than they are, which is an embarrassment to them. If socialism is so great, after all, why is our per capita GNP so much higher than theirs?  Why is our standard of living so much better?

Europeans therefore try to build the credibility of anyone they think might move us in the direction they'd like to see us go, and the Nobel Committee sometimes uses their prizes to lend such credibility.  This award was probably a part of that process, and it isn't the first time it's happened.  Another example of the same process was when they awarded Paul Krugman the Nobel in Economics last year. 

Krugman did some interesting and useful work in international trade in the 1970s, but it was hardly prizeworthy.  Furthermore, his analyses of our economic system that he frequently writes in his N.Y. Times column is consistently wrong, which demonstrates that he really doesn't understand the fundamentals of economics.  On the other hand, he's one of those leftists who wants us to become more like Europe, so they awarded a "prestigious" prize to him to boost his credibility with the common man.  Unfortunately for them, the common American understands much more about what it takes to be successful than the common European, so it hasn't helped him all that much. 

I've commented on Krugman's failings before, and I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to do so again.  Meantime, Americans should be wary of any politician or policy analyst embraced by the European community.  They don't have our best interests at heart.

Here's a reply to another idiotic letter to the editor, one which I've sent to the editors in rebuttal.  I don't expect they'll publish it, so here it is.

"Mark Miller contends that Paul Krugman, who is in face a Nobel-winning economist, “knows his stuff.”  No, he doesn’t.  He continually makes predictions and cites facts that are erroneous.  But Krugman isn’t the only liberal who’s continually in error.  So is Mark Miller.

Probably the biggest error in Miller’s letter is to say that the Obama plan will pay “for health care by letting Bush’s tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 expire.”  Let’s look at the facts.  The Bush tax cut reduced the top tax rate from 39% to about 35.5% on the top end of earnings.  That means that only the top $125,000 or so of income is actually taxed at that rate, so that the total increase in tax paid by each individual will be about $4500 per year.  Meantime, the Obama health care plan is estimated to cost about $800 billion.  That means that we’d have to have almost 183 million taxpayers making $250,000 per year, and since only about 1% of the 300 million Americans actually make that much, Miller is telling a white lie."

Finally, the “ultra-wealthy” might have inherited their money, but they still invest it and spend it, as do wealthy entrepreneurs and athletes.  If you tax them to give their money to the government, some bureaucrat gets it to waste.  In any case, people making over $250,000 per year aren’t “ultra-wealthy,” but they are doctors, lawyers, accountants, and business executives, and they are indeed the most productive members of society.

I would say that people like Miller need to check their facts, but I don’t want to waste my breath.  Liberals aren’t interested in facts, at least not if they contradict their cherished beliefs.  This letter is for the reality-based community."

Another letter to the editor of the Harrisburg Patriot-News.  They might even publish this one.  They should, because it contains more than the usual good insights.

"A climate modeler is a person who statistically analyzes historical weather data such as temperature such as temperature to determine correlations that can be used to forecast future climatologically significant events.  Environmental "watchdogs" such as Al Gore inform us that there is a "broad consensus" among "climate modelers" that human activity is causing climate change.  Their pet researchers cite "empirical evidence" that they've uncovered as proof it's so.

Empirical data is data obtained in a laboratory using repeatable experiments in accordance with the scientific method.  No "climate modeler" has any such evidence linking "global warming" or its newly-fashionable cousin "climate change" to human activity.  I note, however, that "climate change" has replaced "global warming" as the cause du jour among environmental activists, probably because what was previously thought to be a worldwide warming a decade or so ago seems to have reversed, at least temporarily.  Activists are much safer in declaring the crisis to be climate change, because since the climate is always changing, they're in no danger of contradiction.

Bear in mind that the climate models now predicting worldwide weather disasters are based on the same relationships that weather models use.  Then reflect on the fact that weather forecasters using those same models frequently couldn't predict today's weather even if they happened to be reading tomorrow's newspaper.  That should give you some idea why there are numerous skeptics, both in and out of the climatology business, about climatologists' prediction that the oceans will rise 20 feet by the end of the century.  Most of us aren't willing to restrict economic output, negatively impacting the lives of perhaps billions of people, based on such predictions.

So when columnists like Paul Krugman talk about "climate change" as an "inconvenient truth." don't you believe it.  Krugman and his leftists cohorts are just telling convenient lies."

Frequently at Sunday Mass, we offer prayers for "justice" in the world at large.  While I'm certainly willing to pray for justice - it's one of those concepts with almost universal appeal - I'm never sure exactly what the good Father thinks I'm praying for.  Many people seem to equate "justice" with ensuring everyone has a more or less equal income, for example, in spite of the fact that different people bring various skill sets to the workforce, including some who seem to have the ability and/or desire to work harder to earn more money.

True justice, to some, would ensure that people who work harder for whatever reason should have more money and the things it can buy.  But unfortunately, even that's frequently not the case.  Sometimes, people who are just simply lucky make a lot of money, as for example when they win a lottery.  Other times, there are people who win the "lottery of life," as some liberals like to call it, and have the ability to make more money in the world of business.  Of course, most of these people work their fannies off, too, so maybe that meets the previous definition of justice.

While much attention is paid to people who are monetarily rich, no one says a whole lot about those who are wealthy in many other ways - those who have jobs they like, loving families, and/or a full, healthy, and active life that keeps them constantly entertained and interested in living.  Here in America, that happens to be most of us.  We in this country benefit from an economy and a lifestyle that enables us to be and do pretty much what we want, and that's a priceless blessing.  There are some malcontents, to be sure, but even most of them are quite well off.  They're simply concerned that there might be some Americans who aren't receiving their "just" rewards, but in reality, most of us have plenty.  They have no proof that this is the case - because, after all, it isn't the case - but they need something to protest to stay busy and fulfilled.  To each his own, I guess.

So instead of constantly worrying about some ill-defined concept of "justice," perhaps we should count our blessings.  We have a system that works to keep the maximum number of people well off, leaving out just a few who simply won't join the party and fend for themselves.  Tinkering with that system will only sub-optimize our overall well being, and that wouldn't be a good thing for most of us.  There will always be those malcontents driven by envy for people who have more than they do; envy is, in fact, probably the biggest problem in American society today.  Let's not be like the dog in the manger and lose what we have just because we're worried about what everyone else has.

Ultimately, the only one who can ensure that justice is done is God.  He has specifically reserved the right of judgment to himself.  Those who judge, and envy, will themselves be judged, so let's stop concerning ourselves with "justice" and live our lives the way we know they should be lived.  Everything else is just a distraction.

In 1970, Tom Wolfe published a book of two social commentaries in the form of long essays.  One of those essays, "Radical Chic," made fun of status-conscious celebrities who fawn over extreme leftists like Cesar Chavez and the Black Panthers.  In their celebrity delusion, they imagine that by attaching themselves to people with a "cause," they can stay cool and relevant while atoning for the "sin" of being rich.  It was laughable then, and it's still hilarious.

Fast forward almost 40 years, and we find that "radical chic" has been replaced by child molester chic.  Celebrated director/pervert Roman Polanski, who raped a 13-year old girl in 1977 and has been on the lam in France ever since, was finally apprehended in Switzerland Saturday.  Who knew Swiss authorities, or authorities in any other of the libertine countries of Western Europe, for that matter, could be so civic-minded?  Polanski, who fled the U.S. to France upon being released after the 42-day psychiatric evaluation that followed his guilty plea, has had a U.S. arrest warrant outstanding since 1978.  Apparently, since the Los Angeles County district attorney's office refused to give up on putting him in prison, this evolved in 2005 into an international arrest warrant.  Hence the Swiss arrest, and good for them.

Over the weekend, however, scores of Hollywood notables from actors like Harrison Ford and Debra Winger to directors such as Woody Allen and Martin Scorcese have signed a petition asking for this convicted child molester to be released.  The petition, with a list of signers, can be found here:  http://www.sacd.fr/Le-cinema-soutient-Roman-Polanski-Petition-for-Roman-Polanski.1340.0.html.

Their stated reason for this request seems to be that a film maker of Polanski's "stature" (he's made a few successful movies) is above the law, and any attempt to make him do the time for his crime is simply the work of Neanderthals in the U.S. justice system.  Winger termed the L.A. D.A.s "philistines" and studio head Harvey Weinstein says his friend, whom he calls a "humanist" (as opposed to a rapist), has been the victim of a gross "miscarriage of justice."  Here's a news flash, Harvey.  Your buddy pled guilty, which means he said he did it.

Although radical chic is hilarious, child molester chic isn't at all funny.  If this were just a mere anti-war protest, I could just write it off as more unpatriotic behavior on the part of spoiled Hollywood brats biting the hand that feeds them and their over-inflated egos.  This, however, is a bit more disturbing.  Raping a 13-year old girl should be something everyone, left and right, can condemn.  The fact that at least some on the left won't do that should really make everyone else wonder where the moral compass of these people is pointing.

I learned the other day that Burt Prelutsky, one of the most popular columnists on this site was recently canceled.  I was going to write a farewell column to him which I was going to jokingly call "R.I.P. Burt."  Then, Sunday morning, I had a reality check in the form of some very bad news about a friend of ours, news that suddenly made the R.I.P. for a canceled column seem like a very hollow and inappropriate jest.

There are a few outstanding individuals throughout history whose lives have truly changed the world for the better - Newton, Einstein, Washington, Lincoln, among many others - but probably the best epitaph most of us can ever aspire to is for people to say that we were a nice person who positively impacted their lives.  Our friend Laura was one of those people.  Laura was a good friend of ours for probably most of this decade.  A lifelong diabetic, she eventually, before she turned 40, wore out her kidney and pancreas and required a double transplant to continue living.  Fortunately, a blessed donor appeared in time to save her life, but the transplants were a mixed blessing.  Following the surgery, doctors advised her that the anti-rejection drugs she'd be required to take for the rest of her life also carried the risk of causing cancer later on.

That warning turned out to be prophetic.  A little over three years ago, she did in fact develop Merckel cell skin cancer, which eventually spread everywhere else.  About two years ago, when it began spreading, her oncologists gave her three to six months to live.  She fooled them not once but several times, as the cancer continued its march through her body.  Each time she'd have a new treatment and/or surgery to remove tumors from their latest site, the doctors would again give her three to six months, and they were always wrong.  She bounced back again and again, all the while taking time to enjoy the good things life has to offer with her husband.  They cruised and vacationed all over the world, living life the way it was meant to be lived before her disease inevitably finally took her.

Then, the final blow fell.  She discovered her husband betrayed her when, a little less than a year ago, she caught him e-mailing his new girlfriend, whom he met at his cycling club.  This distressing turn of events left her one surviving aunt as the only family member she could rely on in this ultimate crisis.  Because of her diabetes, she was never able to have children, and most of the rest of her family had predeceased her.

Still, Laura soldiered on, fighting the cancer while living life to the fullest.  Instead of cruising with her husband, she cruised with her friends.  Friends, you see, was one thing this remarkable woman had plenty of.  Her positive attitude towards her life, in spite of the bad cards she'd been dealt, set an amazing example for the rest of us in her life to follow.    She had even bounced back as recently as three weeks ago when the cancer caused brain tumors that made her temporarily incoherent.  The doctors predicted then that she'd never leave the hospital again, but just over a week later some of her friends took her on a shopping excursion to one of the local craft shops.  She'd fooled the doctors again, one last time, and began radiation treatment to try to shrink the tumors in her brain.

Finally, though, over this last weekend, Laura hit the wall.  Never physically robust, in spite of her huge heart, she had shrunk in size to not much more than a wraith, and her body finally began to shut down.  She finally died Tuesday afternoon, a fighter to the end.  She was surrounded by her friends, one of whom was her beloved aunt Chris, who took care of her for the last 8 weeks of her life with help from many of those other friends.  There's no doubt in my mind that she then quickly ascended into heaven, where we'll all eventually see her again.

Even knowing that, though, doesn't make it any easier to lose her, in part because she left all too soon.  Neither does the certainty of knowing that her passing was inevitable, as it is for all of us.  It's never easy to lose even someone who's elderly, but Laura was only 50 years old, the youngest person in the hospital room where she finally passed.  And it doesn’t even make it easier knowing that we're not grieving for her, because she's in a better place, but for ourselves, because we miss her.  It still hurts.

P.S.  I'll get to Burt's departure shortly.