Pro Commerce

What happened to create the crime wave?

One of the truly most baffling issues for thinkers and researchers is what created the great American crime wave that began in the mid-1960s and exploded in the early 1970s.  It grew at astounding rates in the late 1970s and through the 1980s before starting its decline in 1991. We went from 2,000 crimes per 100,000 people in 1961 to 4,000 by 1971 and 5,900 by 1981 where it grew slowly until 1991.

So far I can think of several explanations.
 
1. The end of the top hereditary social class that was nearly complete by the early 1960's.  Could the presence and activity of our hereditary upper class have been a restraint on crime.  Could the classes' replacement by others have lead to some form of incompetence?

2. Did the vast migration of women into the work force and rise of divorce for the period from 1960 to 1980 have a direct or indirect cause of the crime explosion?

3. Did the loosening of the bonds of sexual restraint and the explosion of drug use by young people (baby boomers) contribute to the crime rate explosion?

4.  Was it the hippies and the era of social rejectionism that is the explanation?

5. Was it the vast movement of blacks from the South to urban areas that began in the mid-1950s?

6. Was it the school integration movement and the subsequent urban disruption that followed from white flight to the suburbs?

7. Was it simply the age range of the giant baby boom?

Your opinion is sought.  Write a comment.

Hopefully, future research will give us an answer to this vital question of social structure and social cohesion.

Rolodex vs phone

Like nearly everyone else in business up until the 21st Century, I had hundreds of names on a device called a Rolodex. 

Sometime after computers became common I generated lists of my most commonly called numbers and put them on folded paper to carry with me in my pocket.

What was unambiguously true for my Rolodex and my paper 'short' list was that all the names were arranged alphabetically by last name.

Big news: starting a few years back most names, especially on phones and email contact lists, have become arranged alphabetically by first name.

Good lord... who figured this out?  Its fine with me but it is truly a revolution in our behavior and I'd like to know how it happened.

The Way of science and technology

We have a wonderful example of how science really works thanks to the Cassini space craft. Cassini has photographed a region on Saturn's north pole that is a perfect hexagon...a moving hexagon formed in gas clouds.

(Be sure to look at the moving image...and thanks to David Boxenhorn.)

What this tells us is how science works.  Technology is usually the first step.  In this case it is Cassini bringing us a full image of a phenomenon never before seen in the universe. Just like Galileo's telescopic discovery of moons around Jupiter began the scientific era.

Next there will be an effusion of theories.  Most of the theories will be based on existing math about dynamic stability in multi-dimensional fluid spaces.  A few theories will fit most of the Cassini data.

Next will come more technology, another Cassini, to test some of the theories and some of the details of the theories.

Ultimately we will revel in a new scientific model of semi-rigid  dynamic gas structures and find a few more examples in the universe and on earth.

Lastly, the phenomenon will be measured so accurately that we will find a constant that applies in all similar hexagonal cases.  It may be called the Phillips constant 131.488.... (I'm joking about the name and details of the constant).

That is how science, real science, works.  Technology is really the mother of science.

Change in the liberal mantra over past 30 years.

The Liberal mantra used to be: 'Capitalism created too much change, inequality and poverty; that we need bigger government to redistribute wealth and control the 'means of production'.

I call it the Liberal Mantra and Lefty Fundamentalism others call it the Liberal Catechism and the Torah of Liberalism.  Whatever it is called its basic tenant is being replaced. The change has come over the past 30 years.

I owe my recognition of this change in Liberal Dogma to a letter in the Claremont Review from Donald T. Critchlow at St. Louis Univ.

New Liberalism is concerned with controlling our consumer behavior.  In San Francisco we call it Nanny government but it is a direct attack on the Declaration of Independence.  It is an attack on our right to the pursuit of happiness.

The New liberalism tells us what kind of light bulbs we have to use, when we have to use helmets, what weight and size our children must be before they can stop using 5-point auto harnesses, when and where we can smoke, what we can smoke, how we can talk on the phone in a car, what kinds of foods we can't eat at all (horse, whale, dolphin etc), what labels must tell us about the food that we buy and on and on.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the pioneer region in New Liberalism, these days we are told when we can have a warm household fireplace going, how we must pre-sort our compost properly or be punished, we must bring our own bags to grocery stores or be restricted to paper bags, we can not smoke in apartment houses or inside a wide range of businesses (bars; even outside coffee houses) and no smoking in public parks or beaches.  Hundreds of stores are banned from selling cigarettes.  In my neighborhood one chain restaurant is prohibited from serving coffee (Fuzio).  We are not even allowed to build garages in our own private new homes for more than one car per house.  Much of our food consumption is in the process of being regulated from trans fats to movie popcorn.

The New Liberalism focuses on controlling our behavior.

The new world order

 It is going to happen very fast.  

Two of the groups who have created havoc in the past half century, the tribal Arabs and the theocratic Russians are about to lose their vital role in the energy world.  The tribal Arabs are being defeated by the discoveries of vast natural gas resources worldwide, and the theocratic Russians by the efforts of all their neighbors in finding ways to circumvent Russian territory in the delivery of energy.

Here is the story of China getting oil and gas directly from  Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Why do I call the Russians theocratic?  I look at their 1,000 year old ubiquitous-character-defining Russian church, the Eastern Orthodox, that had three basic principles: hierarchy is everything, ignorance is bliss and secrecy is happiness.

The end of the Birkenstock era

The title Birkenstock Era should be perfectly descriptive of the era I'm talking about and easily understandable.  It started in 1964 with the early spread of rock music and a few drugs and the arrival of Salli Rasberry in San Francisco.  It ended last week with the triumvirate of events: the discovery of vast natural gas supplies for an abundant energy future (which happened over a year), Climategate which put an end to the latest Armageddon theory and the Oslo speech of the most radical Lefty president in history declaiming against pacifism and proclaiming the exceptionalist thesis of Americanism.

I've called the demise of several past eras correctly: the end of the population explosion, the end of environmentalism and the end of the women's movement. 

Now I can call the end of the Birkenstock Era.  Whatever the new era is it will be an era where we waste energy, don't give a damn about producing CO2 and start enjoying our astounding prosperity.  Lets eat to joy (eat meals with an average distance traveled for the food of over 600 miles) drink to joy (drink the widest assortment of imaginative beverages humans have ever tasted) and be merry (thanks to the bountiful world of diverse humans, goods, ideas, technologies and services brought to us by commerce).

New city is going to erupt

This photo is of a development in the middle of the San Francisco Bay Area.  It will be a large town, over 2,500 homes and 10,000 residents.  It is south of Orinda.  You can Google Castlegate to see it on a map. You can also Google news about Castlegate or any other new development in that area and not find it mentioned.

Here is a giant new development that will effect everything in the East Bay area and it doesn't seem to register. 

The project is in abeyance for the time being due to a funding shortage, but it will be back online in a year or less.

Do metropolitan areas just grow with giant internal spots of explosion without anyone paying attention?  I guess so.

(Photo by Eliot Khuner. Click to enlarge).

Is there a God?

I hope you never expect me to answer a question like this.  Most people who believe in a God or a 'higher power' ascribe powers to intervene in human lives, making prayer and moral behavior relevant to the individual's relationship to God.  Such a god is like Santa Claus.

I wish to suggest that there is such a phenomenon.  It is the market response to a commercial mind. The invisible hand of Adam Smith operating in our lives. If you have and use a commercial mind you will be rewarded generously, extravagantly, sometimes more than Croesus.

What is a commercial mind?  There is an academic mind, a military mind, a political mind, a technological mind, a healing mind, a religious and many other kinds of minds.  

A commercial mind has several qualities that distinguishes it from other kinds of minds. A commercial mind is pragmatic, always open to change, driven by customer desires and always willing to treat reliable financial data as important. When a person with a commercial mind confronts the world he sees many things others don't see.  He sees with a freshness that accepts novelty with enthusiasm, he sees others communicating with him via financial data, imploring him to act.  The person with a commercial mind sees what can be done that others doubt or do not see.

We live in a society where such a mind is rewarded in many ways.  It is rewarded with extra work, extra opportunities, extra wealth and abundance of all resources.  

Commerce rewards meritocratically. Pretty much like a god rewarding moral behavior.. except commercial behavior is rewarded and commercial behavior is amoral (non-moral).

Politics 101-4

On the surface it has always looked like newspapers are important to the political process.  Every political season, aspiring  candidates and elected officials troop to the newspaper offices and sometimes to the TV stations to be cross-examined by the editorial board, with hopes for an endorsement.

I'm here to tell you different.  I've been in and around politics for nearly half a century.  I've followed newspaper and TV endorsements of half a dozen papers and comparable number of TV stations over four hundred elections and several thousands of candidates, initiatives and propositions.

I've never seen an endorsement that had any influence whatsoever.  For every case where every press outlet endorsed a candidate and he won, there are an equal number where his opponent won.  The same is true for initiatives and propositions.  The only conclusion is that endorsements don't matter, that includes union endorsements and party endorsements. Sorry.  I've tested this several times with statistical tests.

So then, it must be reasonable to conclude that money spent on a campaign is what makes a difference.  Again, the answer is "generally no."

I've seen extreme conditions where a rich man spent a fortune running against a popular figure (Huffington for Senate) and lost. I've seen cigarette companies spend a fortune, millions of dollars, and lose to a group that spent $40,000.  The only thing that raising money does is tell you whether you as a candidate have a chance.  Money does not flow to candidates who are complete losers (recent campaign of S.F. mayor Newsom is an example... he couldn't raise money because everyone knew he is a loser.)

So what does matter in any campaign? 

*(1) Some realities about politics such as the normal turnout in a specific election, the party allegiance of the registered voters, incumbency etc.

*(2) In local city or regional elections there are 30+ trusted opinion leaders who's private communications determine the election outcome... all done via informal networks.

*(3) What the voters perceive to be the real nature of the candidate or the issue.

*(4) Fortuitous circumstances such as political waves, dominant issues and unexpected public events.

President Obama said this

 President Obama said this: "...the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest -- because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity."

I'm proud of our president for making this speech.

Data, does anyone else care?

Two economists at Harvard looked at government fiscal policies in the OECD countries (30) for a 37 year period.  That is one hell of a data set.

What did they find? 

* Fiscal stimulus based on tax cuts were more likely to increase GDP growth than spending increases.  Keynes was wrong.

*  Spending cuts with no tax increase are more likely to reduce deficits and debt than tax increases.  Democratic policy makers are wrong.

* Reductions on the spending side are less likely to create recessions rather than increases on the tax side which are more likely to create recessions.

Like it or tell me you don't rely on data from 1,000 national historic data points.

I'm emotionally distressed

 It is painful for me to see the horrible scene around me.  It is agonizing it is depressing.

The entire global warming fraud has been exposed on the Internet in precise and thorough detail.  I look up from the computer to see:

* All the mainstream media (except the Wall Street Journal) ignoring the global level fraud and lying about the tiny part they report. Major media lying to the world. Day after day.

* Tens of thousands of people from all over the world meeting in Copenhagen to consciously tax and damage the commercial engines that are the only forces on the planet eradicating poverty, hunger, bigotry and desolation.

* Our own Congress and 95% of elected officials lying, prevaricating and looking like blathering idiots still towing the line of global warming.

* Members of my own family (not Scott) and many close friends still caught up in this monstrous, life sucking, religious, hysterical absurdity.

Its painful.  Its depressing.

Smell the smoking gun for yourself

My readers know that I figured out the Hadley CRU global warming scam by myself and published my findings on this blog.

Now you can see the exact details of how the global warming data was fraudulently constructed at Anthony Watt's' blog.  Watts shows the raw data for Australia and how it was distorted, scrambled and exaggerated by the Global-Warming-consensus-scientists  (a new category of dangerous people to beware of).

Look at the data charts if you like numbers and data the way I do.  If you are still a global warming believer after looking at these charts... you have a brain function problem.

Politics 101-3

It may come as a surprise to my many good spirited and upbeat readers that legislative bodies have long memories, particularly for vindictive matters.

Richard Nixon was the most hated man in the 20th Century by the Left.  He was accused of having defeated Senator Helen Douglas (I knew her daughter) by lying about Douglas's 'Red' connections and slandering her.  (Nixon's charges against her were entirely accurate.) Nixon was defeated in the 1960 presidential race because of ballot stuffing in Illinois and Texas but bided his time carefully and was elected President in 1968 against Hubert Humphrey after Bobby Kennedy, the logical candidate, was murdered by an anti-Israeli Palestinian.
 
The Democrats controlled the House and Senate but did not have 60 votes in the Senate, until Nixon's second term (which he won by victory in 49 states). In the 1974 off-year election the Democrats gained 60 seats in the Senate, enough to impeach Nixon, which they proceeded to do, first by forcing Nixon's VP (Spiro Agnew) out of office and replacing the VP with a fellow senator.  We know the affair as Watergate which was run by leaks from Mark Felt the acting head of the FBI who was a Democrat who hated Nixon.

The next time Congress had a chance to punish a Republican president whom they hated was after the 1985 election when they had majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in seven years but not 60 Senate votes.  They failed to carry a successful attack on President Reagan (known as Iran-Contra).

Congressional Republicans never forgot.

By 1995 the Republican party gained control of both houses of congress for the first time in 44 years. They began investigating the Democratic President Bill Clinton. By 1998, when they saw that they had two more years of Congressional control, the Republicans brought impeachment proceedings against Clinton.  With only 55 Republicans in the Senate they couldn't succeed with the impeachment but they got their revenge.

The Democrats gained control of both the House, Senate and Presidency in 2008 and have begun their on-going revenge.  So far they have attacked the previous president, Bush, by attempting to close Guantanamo Prison, renaming the Bush War on Terror, trying five Bush indicted terrorists as criminals, re-opening a Justice Department probe of the CIA interrogation procedures and attempting to punish Bush's ally Karl Rove (failed effort).  The Democrats don't have a solid 60 Senate votes so their power is limited.

Legislatures have memories and they can be vindictive.

Unbelievable

I don't care who you are or how knowledgeable you are, you didn't know this.

The crime rate in the United States has fallen every year, repeat, fallen every year since 1991. That goes for nearly every type of crime including murder and other violent crimes.  

The crime rate today is the lowest in forty years, including murder, burglary and car theft.

An article in the latest Commentary brought this to my attention because the author (Daniel Griswold) argues that the influx of illegal Latino immigrants is the reason for lower crime.  Immigrants come here to find work and escape the stultifying family authority of Latin America. They want to work hard and raise their families.  I know that is true.

I buy Griswold's thesis but there is much more to this matter. 

Steve Levitt and John Donohue showed conclusively that the downturn in crime began in 1991 because of legalized abortions twenty years earlier.  The abortion effect must have had an impact for many years but we need to know more about other effects that kicked-in afterwards. 

I'm sure illegal immigration was one of the causes for the decline in crime rates but the data on that subject is not as conclusive as the abortion data that explains the beginning of the decline.

Another climategate revelation

The hacker, David Kernell, who posted Sarah Palin's private emails online was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury more than a year ago and still hasn't been tried.  Kernell is an Obama supporter and son of Tennessee legislator, Mike Kernell.

David Kernell was found by Internet bloggers doing their own research, not by the FBI.

What do you say about that Senator Boxer?  You want the Climategate whistleblower criminally charged. 

This is a photo of David.

Will anyone ever be punished in the future for publishing hacked material?

How many Madoffs?

The climate conference this week in Copenhagen will announce that rich nations are setting up a fund to support poor nations with funding for carbon restraint. That is all that will be done.

I think the amount of the fund number should be viewed as X number of Madoffs.

If the number is $500 billion that should read 10 Madoffs.

The whole event is a farce and at this point many politicians know they look like fools and many scientist know it too.

No countries will actually end up putting money in the fund.  It is entirely a fraud like Madoff, with a comparable fabricated story behind it.

How many Madoffs will be announced at Copenhagen?

Wok on

Here is a photo of a restaurant on Market Street in San Francisco that is clearly Chinese but is trying to gain appeal with the promise of Japanese food.

Two things.  First the Japanese don't use woks, except to cook Chinese food.  The Japanese use pots to boil rice and many other stew-like foods and they love to grill. The wok is Chinese.

Second, for the first twenty years that sushi was gaining popularity in the U.S. I refused to eat sushi in any restaurant that was not run by Japanese.  The reason was simple: sushi requires super hygienic conditions and on this planet only the Japanese and possibly the Swiss could meet those standards.

However, the Japanese opened sushi schools in the U.S. in the 1980s and have been training everyone who wants to be a sushi chef; the Japanese sushi schools include strict requirements for the mastery of cleanliness.  Now I'll eat sushi nearly anywhere.

Who let the secret out?

One of my readers let the cat out of the bag. 

One of my readers exposed the deeply covered secret that I alone exposed last March: that the second largest business in San Francisco is education.  I begged my readers to keep this fact a secret because in the perverse anti-commerce world of San Francisco and most big cities, big healthy business will be taxed, harassed and driven out of town for ideological reasons.  My own quote: " If the City politicians had this data they would inadvertently set out to destroy this industry, with their ideological blindness."

It is nine months later and the Planning Commission of San Francisco asked the District Attorney to take legal action against the biggest and fastest growing private educational institution in San Francisco (the Academy of Art University with 16,000 students). 

Of course the Academy of Art University has done something that is downright criminal (I'm joking).  It has taken a condemned (for the high cost of earthquake retrofitting) church, unused for 15 years, and used earthquake protected sections of the church for classrooms and study space.  It has also taken warehouse space unused for decades and converted that to classrooms.  It has done the same with an auto dealership.

I can only blame myself for this tragedy of a successful business being harassed. If I hadn't identified the commercial importance of education to San Francisco's vitality this might never have happened.

I hope the University can spare the $2 million in bribes it will take to payoff the S.F. politicians and straighten out this mess.

How the mind works

I've been able to see through four major American hysterical eruptions.  I know how Americans deal with hysteria.

Do you want to know?

I was the first person to publicly, in print, call the child-satanic-ritual-abuse-cults (with kidnappings, sex and torture at kindergartens) an hysteria, I publicly called the recovered memory movement an hysteria,  I was one of the first persons to publicly call attention to the end of the population explosion (population growth was real but projections were wildly exaggerated) and for the entire period of the human caused global warming hysteria (25 years) I have been saying the data is faulty. I have never backed down on this... I have countless blogs saying it.

So what has happened after the three previous instances of hysteria passed?

Everyone, no exceptions, everyone claimed after the fact that they had never really believed it.

I'm not kidding.  My parents, my kids, my closest friends, my opponents all said "I never really believed it."

The same will happen again.  No matter how many articles, videos or emails you show them, that they wrote or stated publicly, after the fact everyone will deny they ever believed it.

Watch Al Gore a few years from now.  He'll say: 'I was only acting as a spokesman for my scientific and academic friends who asked me to speak out... I never believed much of what they were saying." 

Really, he'll say that.

The definition of chutzpah

The New York Times (founded by a Jew) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (a Reform Jew) have defined 'chutzpah' for everyone. 

The NY Times refused to publish the emails revealing fraud, deception and pure scientific malice on a vital issue of climate change where world leaders are currently planning to spend trillions of dollars.  The Times claims these were stolen emails and should not be published.

This is the same NY Times that last year on Sept. 17th published stolen emails from Sarah Palin that revealed nothing except private account addresses of her friends and family.  That defines chutzpah.

Senator Barbara Boxer called for criminal investigation into the hacked emails that reveal her Senate votes and persistent anti-CO2 bills are based on phony data. "You call it Climate-gate. I call it E-mail-theft-gate," Boxer said at a hearing Wednesday. 

This from a woman who never said a peep during the Palin stolen email revelations even when the thief was known to be the son of a Democratic Congressman.  Again, the definition of chutzpah.

Walmart marketing genius

In the annals of marketing, Walmart is going to have to be the lead case study.

First Walmart hired Julie Roehm away from Madison Avenue where Walmart has half a billion in advertising.  Julie was to select a new ad agency.  She was famous for big buzz campaigns like a football game in lingerie.  Julie was fired after a short while in Bentonville. Julie and Madison avenue are not Walmart nor does Madison Ave talk to Walmart's hundreds of millions of customers worldwide.

Now, instead of a Beneton Colors campaign that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and offend nearly all of Walmart's customers, we get one of the greatest strokes of genius in marketing history. Walmart offered the ten best selling books in America for a pre-publication price of $9.00.  That is about $3-$5 below wholesale price.

I would guess that the campaign cost over $70 million in subsidies directly to customers.  But the campaign did three things that no standard TV based campaign could ever do:

* (1) It informed the world and Walmart customers that Walmart is a big player in Internet sales, soon to be the biggest;

* (2) It showed Walmart customers that they could pick-up orders placed on the Internet at ubiquitous Walmart and Sam's Club brick-and-mortar stores, an incredible marketing advantage that Walmart has; and lastly

* (3) with sheer luck Walmart got the warm buzz of the Sarah Palin best selling book in its top ten books... reaching a pure loyal Walmart customer segment that can not be reached any other way and certainly not with conventional book sales.

Walmart genius with a little luck.

Black democrat ideas

A few blogs back I said that the two black democrats (POTUS and the AG) who made the decision to destroy the CIA and bring terrorists to trial as criminals were doing something that seems black to me. With a little more thought I am more confident it was Black Democrat thinking.

If you are too politically correct to consider that there is such a thing as Black Democratic thinking then you have to explain the Congressional Black Democratic Caucus with Maxine Waters as chair.

Maxine Waters has said many times, publicly, that the CIA brought AIDs to the black community.  Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's lifelong friend has said the same thing many times.  That is Black Democratic thinking and that may be why Eric Holder and Barack Obama decided to destroy the CIA by re-opening a closed investigation that cleared CIA operatives of any interrogation wrong-doing.

The Black Caucus are the only Democratic hold-outs on Barney Frank's financial reform package. The caucus won't give their reasons for blocking Frank's bill for fear that the American public will be offended by Black Democratic thinking.

The Black Caucus has its own total discretionary funds as part of the U.S. Foreign Aid Bill. Over $600 million worth.

The black community also has strong hostility to the criminal justice system and complains endlessly about anti-black bias in justice, racial profiling, prosecution, sentencing and the number of blacks in the prison population.  I think that is why Obama and Holder want the criminal justice system to try terrorists. I think they deliberately want to embarrass and defame the criminal justice system.

If you think my opinions on this matter stem from racial prejudice you'll have to explain why I was manager of a black church (Glide Memorial) for twelve years and still have close ties to my black friends. Maybe that is also why I'm not PC on matters of black-white race.

Did criminals do this to us?

As usual, I flew on a commercial airline Saturday.  I had to stand in a long line, do a mini strip tease, empty my pockets and be checked several times for identity and metal.

 Two black men* (Republicans can never be blacks or women... think Justice Thomas and Sec'ty Rice) have decided (without consulting Congress) that the reason I (and tens of thousands of other Americans, today) was standing in line and searched was because of a criminal act.

 

Apparently 24 (19 died and 5 are being tried) criminals crashed four passenger filled commercial airlines into buildings and the ground for criminal reasons. For criminal reasons, that were not monetary, they murdered 3,000 anonymous humans.  One other criminal brought chemicals in his shoes on-board an airline so we have to all remove our shoes and have them checked in x-ray machines.

How can that make sense?  How was that behavior criminal?

Other criminals have all sorts of behaviors but few have led the government to pass laws that forced tens of millions of Americans to stand in long lines and be searched and have created millions of wasted man hours. These 24 unique criminals apparently created this.

If airline searches were really caused by criminal behavior then we Americans who stand in long airport search lines should be able to sue these twenty four men and their families for our lost time.

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

*I think history will ignore our PC mode and note that two black men (President and AG) together tried to destroy the American intelligence services and side-track America's defense against Islamic Jihad.

Politics 101-2

Trust is vital in politics.  That is not what you'd ordinarily think about politics.

The most surprising thing I can say about politics is that trust is one of the vital elements.  For a politician, staffer or lobbyist to be effective he must be trusted;  his word must be good.

With all the prejudice against politics it may be hard to understand why this is true.

At all times in politics you are dealing with a vast number of people, not just fellow legislators, staffers and lobbyists but donors, supporters and important people of all sorts.  Politics is the art of creating coalitions.  Coalitions include friends, allies, opponents and enemies.  The only glue that can hold such a strange conglomerate together is a common purpose and mutual trust.

When a politician gives his word to another politician, lobbyist or staffer it must be good.  It doesn't matter whether the word is a threat, a promise, a commitment or a rejection... everyone else will be operating on the assumption that the statement is trustworthy.

So that leaves two obvious questions: what happens to people who aren't trust worthy and how does trust relate to campaign politics?

A person in politics who is not trustworthy becomes a pariah in the political world.  It may pain you to hear this, but Bill Clinton was always known as untrustworthy and to this day he is not trusted by anyone.  Clinton had lied to or deceived every member of Congress by the time his impeachment reached the House.  I was shocked that not one single Democrat stood up for him in the House and no one used the dozen procedural options available to derail the impeachment.

One of the most famous internal Senate letters in the past decade was from John McCain to junior Senator Obama when Obama had broken a promise to McCain on a vote.  McCain laid out the core principle of the Senate: trust.  I assume Obama listened.  I hope he did.

What about campaign statements?  Campaign statements are meaningless.  Some politicians try to be honest in their campaigns, many don't; many more try to make statements that are ambiguous and can be read by multiple parties in selective ways.

Within the political circles there is great tolerance for vague or outlandish campaign statements.  It doesn't impinge on the requirement for interpersonal trust.  Candidate Obama made many statements that threatened important American treaties.  Canada checked with his staff to see if Obama was 'just talking campaign talk' and got reassurances that he was.

That is how it works.

I was right but not a genius

Back in August I wrote a blog saying that the core data for human caused global warming was totally fraudulent.  Now the Times of London has confirmed my statement.

The basic global temperature measurements were thrown away because they don't support global warming. I knew that and wrote about it because I have been an expert witness on statistics and research data for over 25 years.The reality of fraud by the East Anglia University people was obvious.

The Copenhagen conference is a waste of everyone's time and money.  Call it off now, if you have an IQ that is three digits or even close to three digits.

Arab memory and the Holocaust

I had a Lebanese correspondent who asked me and others on his list whether the Holocaust occurred.

Why would anyone who can use a keyboard ask such a stupid question?

One simple reason.  The Arab world is mentally incapable of recognizing that Israel was settled in a sparsely populated land where Jews bought the land and turned it into a paradise.  Those few Jews who accomplished this miracle did so with 20th century Western skills and intelligence.

Because the Arabs, everywhere, live with no skills and no competence and in a paradise only a camel would appreciate, the Arab world must fabricate a reason for their desolate self-inflicted failure.

The fabrication is that the Jews made up the Holocaust as a way to move en mass, with European support to create Israel and drive out the large Arab population.

Piling fabrication on top of blindness is the Arab Way. Anything to save face.

Turkey resumes its role

The Ottoman Empire extended from Hungary to Ethiopia, from Morocco to Iran and lasted over seven hundred years.

Are the Turks about to revive the Ottoman Empire?

They are well on the way to trying.  Turkey has turned its back on NATO, the EU, Israel and America. 

It started when, under pressure from the EU with a promise of fast access to EU membership, Turkey banned American access to Iraq at the start of the Iraq war and destroyed a major war front for the U.S. She destroyed good relations with the U.S.  Since then the EU has turned its back on Turkey, double-crossed in the Turkish view, with no offer of EU membership.  Since then, Turkey has rebuffed the U.S. on several occasions and cut long time good relations with Israel.

Turkey is opening relations with the Kurds, Armenia and is opening active trade with Syria and Iran.

Turkey is moving to re-create the Ottoman Empire.

Will she succeed?

I have not been to Turkey.  I am told that Turkish soldiers are good fighters with terrible officers.  I am told that the Turks have few industrial skills and fewer modern technical aptitudes.

Turkey created and controlled the Ottoman Empire because the Arabs were so totally incompetent and lacked even rudimentary managerial and communication skills. That difference may exist today but it means little.  The Turks can fly fighters with Israeli help and the Saudis can fly fighters with American help, but neither can do it alone.

Since I see a long term failing of the Arab world due to the abundance of natural gas, I see little or no significance in the change in direction of Turkey and its potential rise to power.

With my projection of future oil at today's equivalent of $40 a barrel I expect to see the middle eastern tower cities as abandoned havens for Blade Runner movies.

Sirhan Sirhan

It is time to elevate Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy, in 1968, to his rightful status: the founder and father of the Islamic Jihad War on the West.

Sirhan was a 24 year old Palestinian who moved to the U.S. with his parents when he was 12 years old.  He chose Robert Kennedy as his target because Kennedy promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel.  The murder occurred one year after the Israeli victory over the Arab world in the 1967 War.

Sirhan cased the hotel where he killed Kennedy two days earlier and went to practice at a pistol range the day before the murder. Sirhan said his reason for his deliberate murder of Robert Kennedy was very clear. ' I did it for Palestine'.  He hated Israel and Jews and except for the intervention of the judge he would have gotten one of his court appointed Jewish lawyers, Emile Berman, removed.

We are now in a time where a U.S. president and attorney general think that there is no Islamic Jihad against the West, just an inchoate series of criminal acts.

I think it is time to declare June 5th 1968 the day the real Islamic Jihad War against the West began.  Sirhan Sirhan was not a man ahead of his time, he was the first soldier to be captured on American soil in a war that began 41 years ago.

We should have a special day of remembrance on June 5th much like December 7th.

Dangerous tea party terrorists

Recently, I went to a buffet dinner with a speaker.  The main attendees were San Francisco Bay Area Tea Party activists.

These are the people who Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have assured Americans are neo-terrorists, dangerous pro-Hitler radicals and represent the extreme right in our country.

Frankly, I've lived in America more than 2/3rds of a century and I wonder about the sanity of Pelosi and Reid.  These tea party people look like every private club, golf membership group I've ever seen.  Radical only if you think a 70 year old woman is outrageous for bleaching her hair.

One member of the Code Pink crew that lives in tents in front of Pelosi's house looks more dangerous than twenty people from this group.