Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   1/06/2015

         Traveling circus of irony

Here are, in no particular order, a few items of random observations or spindle clearing:

A back issue of the Daily News, October 11, had an article, “Timber company criticizes probe,” in which Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) claimed gross malfeasance and deception by “state and federal prosecutors and investigators” over a settlement stemming from a 2007 fire on 65,000 acres of national (and other) forests. SPI agreed to the “$47 million legal settlement” of fines and land transfers based on what was presented as proof of SPI’s culpability.

“A state court judge in February found that California officials lied and hid evidence, and the judge ordered the state to pay the company $30 million. The company is citing the same evidence to re-open the federal case.” Judge Leslie C. Nichols concluded, “Cal Fire’s action initiating, maintaining and prosecuting this action…is corrupt and tainted. Cal Fire withheld documents for months, destroyed evidence and engaged in a campaign of misdirection with the purpose of recovering money from Sierra Pacific.”

The feds and state ganged up on SPI based on the contention that “a bulldozer hired by Sierra Pacific was to blame when its front blade nicked a rock and sparked” the fire. Judge Nichols found, however, “that the lead CalFire investigator’s testimony about where and how the fire was started was not credible” and cited “other deficiencies” in the prosecution.

Government under the tutelage of Democrats—indeed, the staffing of many government agencies no matter the party in charge—has morphed into massive, interconnected, corrupt, criminal enterprises. They’re using the power given by citizens and their representatives to exercise undue control, manipulation, legal extortion and shakedown operations. The case above is but one example. A report I’ve since lost stated that every single federal Inspector General has, en masse, told Congress that the agencies they are charged under law to have unlimited access to—and oversight of—are obstructing, avoiding and evading investigations.

Sunday news shows obsessed for a second week of overblown coverage of a 12-year old meeting ostensibly addressed by a then-Louisiana state lawmaker, Steve Scalise, now a Republican Congressional leader. There’s been zero interest in a statement by one Kenny Knight, (“About that Steve Scalise Story…” Powerlineblog.com, Jan. 1) who booked the meeting space for the (white supremacist) European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), founded by David Duke. He stated that, as the EURO meeting was in the afternoon, he invited his local Jefferson Heights Civic Association, a completely non-controversial group, to gather in the morning—a meeting that was attended and addressed by Scalise who was seeking support for a state tax measure he was promoting. That supports Scalise’s non-recollection of the EURO group meeting. He shouldn’t knuckle under and step down over what’s nothing more than a scalp-seeking tempest in the Democrat/media teapot.

Of course, if they didn’t have double standards, the liberal news media wouldn’t have any standards at all (“A footnote to the Scalise story…” Powerlineblog.com, Jan. 1). About Barack Obama attending and listening to a racist Rev. Wright for decades? Well, he didn’t agree so, no problem. That he launched his political campaign in the home of his eventual co-dispenser of foundation (radical leftist) education grants, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers? Anyone would have done the same, move along. The Southern Democrats as the enforcers of Jim Crow and segregation? No, it’s those supposedly (no-proof-needed) racist Tea Party Republicans. Robert “KKK” Byrd, anyone?

“The all-time low for unaccountable Democrats has to be the parade of Democratic politicians who made nice with People’s Temple suicide cultist Jim Jones (though maybe it isn’t such a stretch since liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide)” (Steve Hayward and Newsbusters.org). A partial list of Democrats praising and lauding the self-deluded and –destructive Jones and his People’s Temple includes: (then first-term) Governor Jerry Brown “We are the two best friends that anyone could ever have…”); Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (Jones is like “Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein and Chairman Mao”); Senator Walter Mondale and Rosalynn Carter (each of whom had meetings with or glowing accolades for Jones); Senator Mike Gravel (People’s Temple “was almost too good to be true”), ditto for Congressman Don Edwards (D-CA); Joseph Califano of the Kennedy, Johnson and Carter administrations (“outstanding contributions to the cause of human dignity”); and Hubert Humphrey (yet more gushing accolades about their “Christian approach” to “myriad problems” of society.)

Virtually the entire human-caused global warming paradigm is upended by the Antarctic Vostok Ice Cores, analyzed by Euan Mearns and Petit et al (1999), posted at DonPolson.blogspot.com and Powerlineblog.com (“Vostok Ice Cores and the 8,000-year lag”). Briefly, every 100,000 or so years, for the last 500,000 years, there’s been 12,000 to 20,000 years of warmth, warmer than the current 12,000 years-long warm period—with higher CO2.

In between those warm periods, which provided the only conditions suitable for human life, have been glacial periods lasting many tens of thousands of years. CO2 levels always lagged the warm periods. Currently, earth is experiencing a 2,000 years long cooling trend of –0.30 degrees C per 1,000 years (Journal of Quaternary Science). Finally, we are now over 18 years without any discernible global warming. I’ll take warming over glacial eras anytime I have a choice, folks.