Questions for the veep candidates

I’ll be live-blogging the veep debate Thursday night. So check me out during or after the debate.

In the meantime, here are the questions moderator Gwen Ifill should ask the veep candidates:

For Gov. Palin:

Q: Your beloved husband, Todd, was a member of the Alaska Independence Party. If Obama-Biden wins in November, would you join the AIP in calling for Alaska to secede from the Union?

Q: How far would you confront Russia over its troubles with Georgia? Would it be worth destroying America in nuclear armageddon?

Q: If a President McCain became erratic in office, or showed signs of insanity, would you recommend that Congress relieve him of his duties?

Q: You’re big supporter of Title IX, the federal program that mandates quotas for women in college sports. Would you support similar programs in other areas of life? For example, should the NFL and NBA mandate that 50% of players be female?

For. Sen. Biden:

Q: As a Catholic, you are required by your faith to be pro-life, as you were earlier in your career. Yet you switched to be pro-abortion when you ran for the presidency back in 1988. Is the state of your immortal soul worth less than your political ambitions?

Q: As someone who has backed the Iraq War, why didn’t you insist that the Congress first declare war, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution?

Q: Follow up: As someone who has never served in the military yourself, do you feel right sending young men to die in unconstitutional wars?

Q: Given Obama’s inexperience and your long experience, would you play a similar role to VP Dick Cheney, who has taken over much of the role of the president, secretly advancing your own agenda?

“Maverick” McCain should have led revolt against $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff

Whatever chance McCain had of winning has been blown by him. He should have lived up to his self-applied “Maverick” moniker by leading the opposition to the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout of Wall Street crooks. Instead, he supported it, same as Obama.

If he had led the opposition, he now would be hailed as a true tribune of the people. He would be surging in the polls, surpassing Obama. Instead, here’s what he said in Des Moines after the bailout lost in the House, as posted on his Web site:

The plan is now significantly improved. We strengthened taxpayers’ protections and oversight, and the taxpayers were on the hook for less money up front. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t perfect. And the fact that taxpayers could have to spend a single dollar to create stability in our economy is a decision that I do not take lightly.

I was hopeful that the improved rescue plan would have had the votes needed to pass because addressing a credit crisis is of vital importance to families, small businesses, and every working American who must be assured that their assets are safe and protected and that our economy will continue to function.

Today, I’ve spoken to the Federal Chairman Bernanke, Secretary Paulson, Congressional leaders and now it’s time for all members of Congress to go back to the drawing board.

I call on Congress to get back obviously immediately to address this crisis. Our leaders are expected to leave partisanship at the door and come to the table to solve our problems. Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame. It’s time to fix the problem.

I would hope that all our leaders, all of them, can put aside short-term political goals and do what’s in the best interest of the American people. Thank you.”

Blah, blah, blah.

He’s trying to have it both ways.  He’s helped the process that “strengthened taxpayers’ protections and oversight, and the taxpayers were on the hook for less money up front” — while also being responsible and selling out to Wall Street.

Some “Maverick.”

McCain: A Keating Five senator

All that does is remind us that he was one of the Keating Five senators who got us into a similar mess, the Savings and Loan Bailout, two decades ago. Here’s what Wikipedia says about that:

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981,^[11] and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators.^[27] Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona.^[25] Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.^[28] In addition, McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.^[7][29]

And people are reminded that McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, just bailed out by taxpayers.

Lost opportunities

McCain never is going to get a chance like this again to do an end run around Obama’s campaign. The economy is going to keep imploding, with the party in power in the White House — Bush, McCain, and the Republicans — getting the blame.  Obama is going to run with that right into the Oval Office.

With McCain on the wrong side, it was good old Ron Paul who led the revolt against the $700,000,000,000.00 heist. He’s not even running for president anymore, but Paul still has a great following, and was warning about this debacle years ago, as well as during the primaries in debates and in stump speeches.

McCain is no “Maverick,” just erratic.

McCain should quit the race and let the real Maverick, Ron Paul, take his place on the top of the Republican ticket.

Then we would see the Revolution we need.

Bailot defeated — for now

The American people finally rose up and said to the ruling plutocrats: enough is enough! They screamed at Congress which, for a change, listened. The House just defeated the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff of taxpayers.

A key actor in the defeat was Ron Paul, who has been everywhere on the TV news shows and YouTube explaining how the government, not capitalism, caused this economic crisis, and why the bailout should be defeated. He’s been predicting the economic crash for years, and named the causes: inflation, government subsidies of loans, and expensive wars.

Failing companies should not be rewarded, but allowed to fail. Thats real capitalism, as opposed to the crony capitalism we increasintly have gotten in recent years, under which capitalists who buy Congress get bailed out, with the rest of us forced to pay the tab.

Two big losers were Obama and McCain, who were supporting the bailout ripoff. If they had any decency, both would quit the race, allowing Ron Paul to be nominated and elected by acclamation.

The people won this round.

But the battle isn’t over. It’s just starting.

Crooks bailing out crooks: You get the $700,000,000,000.00 tab

The bailout of Wall Street is the biggest heist in history. It’s robbing Main Street to bankroll Wall Street. Here’s all you need to know, from Bloomberg:

Paulson Plan Aimed at Helping `Poorly Run’ Banks, Allison Says
By David Mildenberg

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson‘s proposed $700 billion bank rescue aims to help “poorly run” companies and the primary beneficiaries would be Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, said BB&T Corp. Chief Executive Officer John Allison in a critique of the plan.

Paulson used to be the head honcho at Goldman Sachs. So he’s bailing out his old firm and his buddies on Wall Street. You get the bill for $700,000,000,000.00.

Paulson is a crook, pure and simple, who should be impeached, removed from office, put on trial, convicted, and jailed. So should all those also involved in the greatest ripoff ever: President Bush, VP Cheney, Speaker Pelosi, Senate boss Reid, every representative and senator who votes for the bailout, and the Wall Street criminals who will profit.

On of the main crooks cooking up the bailout is Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Two decades ago a male paramour of his was running a prostitution ring from Frank’s Washington, D.C. apartment. Anyone who supports this bailout also is a Barney Frank prostitute.

As I write, it’s not clear whether Obama and McCain will support the Bush-Paulson-Frank bailout, but they’re leaning in that direction. If so, then both should quit the race and become streetwalkers for Frank.

This whole bailout robbery has one positive aspect: It shows us that America no longer is a democracy, but a plutocracy, with the whole show being run of Wall Street, by Wall Street, for Wall Street.

They make all the profits. If they goof up and lose money, then you, Joe and Jane Taxpayer, get stuck with the immense bill.

Heads Wall Street wins, tails you lose.

Live: Obama-McCain Debate notes

These are my live notes, typed live as I watched the debate on my computer.

Bailout

Both started out badly by supporting the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout ripoff of taxpayers. (Neither brought up the real cause of this crisis: the Iraq War’s immense expense, which Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke paid for by inflating the currency, which blew out the economy, as inflation always does.)

Taxes

Obama said he would cut taxes on 95% of Americans, raise taxes on the other 5%.

McCain  had a good point, explaining how Ireland has only a 11% business tax, so tax increases on “the rich” in America would drive them to Ireland.

McCain asked at what level Obama would increase taxes.

Obama didn’t answer, just repeating the 95%/5% mantra.

McCain: Obama voted to increase taxes on those making as low as $42,000 a year.

So far, 6:26 pm, it’s pretty close, with McCain ahead.

Energy

Obama wants more spending on renewable energy. And we need to invest more in science and technology. (Meaning more wasted tax dollars. Obama said China just launched some guys into space. Maybe he didn’t hear, but America did that in then 1960s. We even sent a guy to the moon in 1969.)

McCain: “No matter what, we’ve got to cut spending.”

But, John, what about the biggest and most wasteful spending of all, the Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-Somalia-maybe Iran wars?

Obama: Need to make cuts. Need to change the culture. Need: Google for government. So we can see who’s promoting programs. (Except Google is a private company.)

McCain: How about a spending freeze on everything except  Defense, veterans affairs, and entitlements. (But how about starting the cuts with ending the unconstitutional foreign wars? Fewer wars, fewer veterans and their special needs. Start the cuts there.)

McCain: Need nuclaer power. Important for power, and climate change.

Financial crisis’ effect on budgets

Obama: FDR bought back houses, values went up. (Except Franklin “Dictator” Roosevelt didn’t end the Depression which lasted until 1946. And why bring up a tyrant who put 120,000 Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps?)

McCain:  Don’t put health care under control of government. Obama wants to spend another $800 billion. Low taxes, no new taxes, best way for the economy.

6:38 pm. Surprisingly, the old guy is winning. (Must have taken his meds tonight.)

Obama: It’s Bush, “your president,” whom you agreed with 90% of the time, who increased this spending, you voted for almost all his budgets.

McCain: I opposed the prez on spending, taxes, torture of prisoners, climate change. I have a record as a “Maverick.”

Lessons of Iraq

McCain: Lessons of Iraq are very clear. You can’t have a failed strategy. (Right. The wrong strategy was starting the war!)

McCain: Needed more troops. Surge. Strategy has succeeded. We will see a stable ally. Defeat would be increased Iranian influence. (But that’s what’s happening! The Shiites who control the Iraqi government are close to the Shiite Iranians.)

Obama: Fundamental difference. I opposed this war 6 years ago.  We took our eye off the ball. Should have kept going after Al Qaeda. Iraq now has a $79 billion surplus. Lesson: We should never hesitate to use our military wisely, didn’t do it in Iraq.

McCain: Next prez will have to decide when we leave Iraq. Obama contradicted himself on surge.

Obama: McCain believed Bush lies on weapons of mass destruction, etc., about the Iraq War.

McCain: Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy. 600 troops who re-upped in Iraq said: Let us win. (Wasn’t that from one of the Rambo movies? And maybe Obama doesn’t understand the diff between strategy and tactics; but McCain doesn’t understand the difference between strategy and Grand Strategy, which includes knowing that a long war blows out your economy.)

Obama: Withdraw most troops w/in 16 months, move them to Afghanistan, to crush and kill Osama bin Laden.

McCain: Petraeus and Osama both said Iraq is the main battlefield. (Yeah, but thats only because the US gov has been stupid enough to go there and stay there.)

6:51 pm. McCain still in the lead. But given that most Americans oppose the Iraq War, he probably lost some points here.

Afghanistan

Obama: Need more troops. Strategic mistake to have 4 times as many troops in Iraq as Afg. (No, Obama! We need to leave Afghanistan more than to leave Iraq. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires.)

Obama: Need to deal with exploding poppy trade, and Pakistan.

This shows Obama really is a warmonger.

McCain: Let’s not repeat the mistake of, after helping Afghans drive out Soviets, we didn’t help then, the result was the Taliban. On Pakistan, I’m not prepared at this time to cut of aid to Pakistan. We’ve got to get the support of the people of Afghanistan. Work with Pak government.

Amazingly, McCain sounds more peaceful than Obama.

McCain: I’ve been to Waziristan. Run by tribes. Need new strategy, the same as in Iraq that Obama condemned. Will have to go with the Pakis and go to those areas. It’ll be tough.

Now McCain flys into fantasyland.

McCain: Petraeus now in charge in Afghanistan.  Need more troops. I know how to work with the Pakistan.

Obama: We coddled Musharraf, the former dictator. We lost legitimacy in Pak. And weren’t going after al-Qaeda.

McCain: Was a failed state in Pak when Musharraf took power. (And there isn’t one now?)

Obama: McCain is a warmonger.

McCain: No I’m not. Opposed 1983 deployment of Marines to Lebanon, got blown up. But I supported bombing Serbia over Bosnia, Kosovo. Genocide was taking place there. (A big lie. The US bombing of the Serbs led to the Albanians ethnically cleansing everybody else — Serbs, Bosniaks, Jews, etc. — from most areas of Kosovo.)

7:01 pm. McCain still ahead. Seems more “presidential.”

McCain: I was part of an army that was defeated. We’ll win this one, won’t have to come home in defeat and dishonor, then have to go back.

Obama: No American soldier ever dies in vain. They were obeying orders of the Commander in Chief. (What about soldiers following the Constitution, Obama? That’s what soldiers are supposed to follow, in wars declared by Congress, not the president. Obama is, essentially, a fascist. But McCain didn’t object, so, presumably, he is too. )

Iran threat

McCain: If Iran acquires nukes, it’s an existential threat to Israel, and to other countries in the region. We cannot allow a second Holocaust. Need to form a League of Democracies. The Russians are preventing significant action in the UN. We could impose sanctions on the Iranians. The Iranians have a lousy government, so their economy is lousy. (Finally, something Iranians have in common with Americans!)

But the UN inspectors and Bush’s own National Intelligence Estimate say Iran isn’t developing nukes.

Obama: McCain right, Iran bad, sanctions needed. But also need tough, direct talks.

McCain: Obama said he would sit down with Bad Man Ahmadinejad, Raoul Castro, and Chavez of Venez to talk without precondition. (Neither noted that Bad Man “President” Ahmadinejad actually holds a minor post, with the mullahs really calling the shots.)

My DSL connection conked out here, so I missed some of it. When is America going to get fiberoptic capabilities equal to those Korea had 10 years ago because they don’t suffer under America’s heavy load of absurd regulations? How about debating that?

DSL connection back up. (Note written after the debate: Checking some other sites, it turns out that when my connection was down, Obama did note that Ahmadinejad isn not the leader of Iran.)

Obama: Talks are good.

McCain: Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe Israel “off the map.” (Actually, Ahmadinejad never said that, as McCain should know. What a dangerous ignoramus. Obama doesn’t refute that.)

McCain:  Repeats that A. wants to wipe Israel “off the map.” Kissinger my friend for 30 years. (Amazing: Kissinger was and is a disaster, a Machiavellian murderer. Given how often McCain brings up his POW experience, it’s shocking that he would praise the man whose evil policies kept the Vietnam war going and going, and McCain in shackles, only to lose it in the end. If Kissinger/Nixon had ended the Vietnam War in early 1969, as they should have, McCain and the other POWs would have come home 4 years earlier.)

Russia

Obama: Resurgent and aggressive Russia bad. Actions in Georgia “unwarranted.’ (But Georgia started the war by invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia.)

Obama: Russ must be out of South Ossetia, Abkhazia.

Obama is just taking the Bush-McCain line put down by Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top national security advisor, who was a paid influence peddler for Georgia.

McCain: Russia petrodollar dictatorship. Run by KGB. Need to bolster our friends and allies. Had do with energy. Pipeline. Watch Ukraine, Crimea, Sebastopol. Let’s make sure the Ukrainians understand that we are our friends and ally.

Obama: McCain and I agree.

Why is this our concern? The Cold War is over. Get over it. America’s empire already has bankrupted us. Let’s bring all our troops home, cut the military budgets, return the money to taxpayers, send the troops home to their loving families.

These clowns don’t understand that there’s no money for their imperial adventures.

Obama: Need energy strategy, self-sufficiency, so we’re not dependent on bad guys. Need alternative energy. I’ve got a plan.

Another plan!

Obama: McCain voted against alternative energy 30-something times.

McCain: No one in Arizona votes against solar.

Neither bozo noted that our energy “dependency” mainly is on imports from Canada and Mexico, our neighbors and friends.

Final question (yes!): Likelihood of another 9/11

McCain: Much less than the day after 9/11. We have a safer nation. Lieberman and I wanted a 9/11 Commission. We were stymied by Bush, until the families of the victims backed it.

Except that the Commission was a farce, as Ron Paul explained.

McCain: Safer today, but have a long way to go. Men and women in gov. doing a great job protecting America.

Obama: We’re safer in some ways. Still a long way to go. Harden chemical sites. Transit. Ports. Worries about suitcase bombs. Nuclear proliferation is important, need to spend more dough on that. Need to focus on al-Qaeda, in Afghan and Pakistan. Way we are perceived in the world is important. Need to restore America’s standing in the world. America is the greatest country in the world.

McCain: Obama doesn’t get it. Failure in Iraq would mean al-Qaeda would run the place, have a base.

Wrong, McCain. If we left, the Iraqis would fight it out among themselves, kill the al-Qaeda interlopers. McCain seems to be re-fighting Nam.

Obama: McCain, Bush solely focused on Iraq. Bin Laden still out there. (Sounds like and X-Files episode.) Chinese are swarming around the world.

McCain: Obama has made the wrong responses. Doesn’t have the experience. At first, didn’t attack Russians for invading Georgia. (But Georgia invaded first! And McCain adviser Scheunemann is a crook!)

Obama: My father was from Kenya. Foreigners don’t like USA now,  as they did when my Pa came here full of idealism. America dreams.

McCain: Brings up, as always, his coming home from prison. Reconciled USA to commie Vietnam.

The end. I need a double bourbon.

My conclusion

McCain won by a fair amount.  He looked more “presidential.” He was more knowledgeable about the issues, although his knowledge was wrong.

Obama was a little flustered. He’s stuck defending the same things as McCain: attacking Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, Russia, etc.

Not much difference between these guys on policy, really.

McCain had to do well to close the poll gap with Obama. Which he did, but not enough.

Too bad Americans don’t have more choices. These “debates” don’t include the third-party candidates: Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, and Ralph Nader. Including them would have livened things up and given voters a choice among real alternatives.

Both Obama and McCain blab a lot about democracy, but there isn’t a lot of it on display here, not in these debates, and not in the $700 billion shafting of the American people our bipartisan criminals in the White House and Congress will be voting into law the next few days.

Neither one earned my vote, nor will get it.

Bush’s billionaire bailout: They get the gold mine, you get the shaft

It’s still being worked on, but the $700 billion bailout of the billionaires and their banks is, as of my writing, all but a done deal.

If you ever doubted the ultimate crookedness of the U.S. political system, doubt no more. It exists to profit the plutocrats who run everything. When they win, they get more billions. When they lose, the middle-class taxpayers are forced to bail them out, either with tax increases or inflation, which is another form of tax increase.

Heads the plutocrats win, tails you lose.

This isn’t the free market or capitalism, but “crony capitalism.” It’s crooks in power controlling us, profiting from us.

The answer is not to raise taxes or increase regulations: That just gives the plutocrats even more power.

Rather, the answer is to get rid of government as much as possible. Government, after all, caused this problem. Its wars have cost trillions. To pay for them, it has inflated the currency and run up more than $9 trillion in debt.The inflation and debt blew out the banking system and the economy.

Both Obama and McCain are part of this corrupt system. They won’t change anything. Do you think McCain will endanger second wife Cindy’s millions? Her 7 houses and 13 cars, including a Lexus? He’s just a gigolo for her and the plutocracy.

Obama is using the economic crisis to push for more government control of our lives: more taxes, more regulations, more Marxism.

Only Ron Paul has been telling the truth all along. He got just 4% of the vote here in Orange County, supposedly the most conservative highly populated area in the known universe. Actually, here Republicans, as elsewhere, just want to have their delusions confirmed by McCain, Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. They don’t want to hear the truth.

Ron Paul told them the truth — that the Empire of war, debt, and inflation couldn’t last. But they didn’t want to hear it.

Now the truth is hitting us all good and hard — even those of us, like me, who believed and supported Ron Paul all along.

Have a lovely Depression.

McCain flips out on the economy

I’ve always thought McCain eventually would flip out. His “Maverick” personal really hides an Establishment hack prone to unbalanced behavior.

Today he flipped out, “suspending” his campaign and seeking to postpone Friday’s debate so he can deal with the economic crisis. As if hanging around the U.S. Senate, with its history of corruption, were the solution. The “suspension” comes after 10 days of him floundering, offering one bad idea after the another to “solve” the crisis.

This contrasts with Obama, who has remained steady, calm, and collected by offering a single, comprehensive solution: Marxism to replace capitalism.

McCain should have said, “I’m taking a day off to formulate a comprehensive plan to solve this problem. I’ll announce it tomorrow. On Friday, we’ll debate it.”

A big problem problem he has is that the real ideas for ending this crisis all were advanced by Ron Paul — starting a year ago: Cut spending by ending America’s imperial adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.; abolish the evil Federal Reserve Board in favor of a return to the gold standard; eliminate the income tax. Just listen to Lew Rockwell’s podcast with Paul, in which Paul explains in just a few minutes, what’s really going on.

What’s wrong with America that Paul wasn’t nominated even by the nominally “conservative” party?

McCain’s true colors as an Establishment hack are shown by his not adapting any of Ron Paul’s brilliant, and necessary, ideas.

This is the unraveling of John McCain. We can expect him to start bashing Bush to prove his anti-Establishment bona fides, even though he’s a premier member of that Establishment.

And we can expect him to loose.

Turn Friday’s “debate” into a mud-wrestling match between Obama and McCain

Friday’s “debate” will be another quadrennial farce.

Most egregious is that no third-party candidates will be included. The fascist Citizens’ Debate Commission isn’t composed of regular citizens, but of elites that want to make sure real citizens don’t hear anything but the two almost identical blatherings of Obama and McCain. The Commission exists almost exclusively to exclude third-party candidates.

So, no Bob Barr of the Libertarian Party, Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, or Ralph Nader.

That is, no real debate.

So, instead of this “debate,” I propose a mud-wrestling match between Obama and McCain.  On the one hand, Obama has the advantage of youth. On the other hand, McCain has the advantage of military training and actual experience in combat in a real war. I’ll bet the Naval Academy taught him a few tricks Obama never has seen.

Imagine it: Instead of a boring “debate” filled with lies, we would have an entertaining mud-wrestling match. The winner would be declared the new president, thus dispensing with the phony “election” and saving our time.

WHAT global warming?

I’ve spent 19 summers here in Huntington Beach, about a half mile from the Pacific Ocean. Except for the North Korean-style government, it’s paradise.

As the Beach Boys say, it’s an “Endless Summer” filled with “California Girls,” “Good Vibrations,” and nothing but “Fun, Fun, Fun.”

No air conditioning is needed. But usually I have to turn a fan on, especially at night, for about 20 days in the summer, as the day’s heat stays on the roof above my apartment.

This summer, which just ended, I didn’t turn the fan on once.

It was a cool summer that belies the impending global “warming” of the environmental doomsayers. Granted, it’s not a major scientific survey. But it’s what I experienced. And given that I’m near an ocean that’s supposed to rise up from the melting polar ice caps and sink me, my experience must count for something.

Meanwhile, South Africa just experienced a fluke snow storm in what is the first day of their “spring.”  Far from having global “warming,” it’s more likely we’re having a global cooling, as in the 1970s, when I remember Michigan temperatures diving down to 30 degrees Fahrenheit — so cold parts of my father’s car froze.

Far from us puny humans having much impact on global temperatures, this is a cyclical pattern from nature, probably from sun spots. August 2008 was the first sunspot-less month since June 1913. According to Wikipedia:

The number of sunspots correlates with the intensity of solar radiation over the period (since 1979) when satellite measurements of absolute radiative flux were available. Since sunspots are darker than the surrounding photosphere it might be expected that more sunspots would lead to less solar radiation and a decreased solar constant. However, the surrounding margins of sunspots are hotter than the average, and so are brighter; overall, more sunspots increase the sun’s solar constant or brightness. The variation caused by the sunspot cycle to solar output is relatively small, on the order of 0.1% of the solar constant (a peak-to-trough range of 1.3 W m^-2 compared to 1,366 W m^-2 for the average solar constant).^[6][7] During the Maunder Minimum in the 17th Century there were hardly any sunspots at all. This coincides with a period of cooling known as the Little Ice Age.

Environmental fascism

But that hasn’t prevented environmentalist extremists from trying to take over even more areas of our lives by blabbing about global “warming” and the need to supposedly counter it by shutting down most industries.

In the current issue of The Nation magazine, Bill McKibben calls for a “Green Corps,” like, he says, the “Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s.”

He doesn’t note that the CCC, like most of Roosevelt’s New Deal, was modeled on fascist make-work programs such as those in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

Wikipedia explains:

FDR’s personal letters reveal that he was impressed by what Mussolini was doing and said that he kept in close touch with that “admirable gentleman.”^[8] Mussolini himself praised the New Deal as following his own corporate state, as quoted in a July 1933 article in the New York Times, “Your plan for coordination of industry follows precisely our lines of cooperation.”^[9]

McKibben’s idea is to employ millions of the unemployed in programs that supposedly help the environment.

Actually, such programs would cost trillions of tax dollars, and destroy millions of American businesses and tens of millions of real, private sector American jobs. America’s descent would continue, even as the ascent of China, Japan, Europe, Russia, Brazil, India, etc., would continue.

Yet American business is more “green friendly” than any of these places.  So, instead of America leading the way economically and environmentally through a moderate environmental policy that preserves both prosperity and decent conservation, we would crash into a floundering, second-rate, large third-world country run by fourth-rate bureaucrats of the type created in even more abundance by McKibben’s brummagem idea.

But since both Obama and McCain have bought into the global “warming” voodoo, we’re likely to get something of the strichnine prescription that Dr. McKibben prescribes.

So, after you get fired from your job during the coming, government-caused Depression, pick up your shovel get ready too save the environment for the McKibben Corps.

McCain, Obama commercials

I try to avoid watching TV, but saw it a few times in recent days. Two campaign commercials stuck out.

In McCain’s commercial, he’s attacking Obama for not backing the surge, which is “working.” (Never mind that the surge didn’t work, but failed. And never mind that Obama flip-flopped, and recently said the surge “has succeeded.” And really never mind that McCain himself, on Feb. 8, 2007, said he doubted the surge included enough troops.)

The real problem is that, as most Americans now think the Iraq War was a huge mistake, McCain is tying himself to what Americans oppose.

Obama’s commercial, by contrast, successfully tied McCain to the failed economic policies of recent years. (Never mind that Obama’s solutions would bring more of the socialism that caused the problems).

The commercial points out that McCain’s top advisers include investment bankers who will be bailed out. It closes with a picture of McCain and President Bush smiling, apparently on the White House front porch. So it ties McCain, also, to a highly unpopular president.

As I predicted, when the end got near, Obama’s campaign would focus on the economy with full force.

McCain, who floundered last week, showing his own admitted ignorance of economics, just can’t keep his focus off his real passion: Invading countries that are no threat to us and fighting there forever until America is totally bankrupt.