NJ US Senator Mendez is nuts

Oh, he was being funny while making a very serious allegation in factual error. Laugh at his humor and laugh at Senator Mendez. Wall Street Journal

Two days before Christmas, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey sent a bizarre open letter to the North Pole to warn Santa about the "dramatic melting of the Arctic sea ice" due to the effects of carbon emissions. "I am worried about your safety and your ability to deliver billions of Christmas gifts if the ice cap on the North Pole no longer stays frozen all year," the senator wrote. "What will happen to your house, your workshop, the elves' houses and your reindeer barns?" The senator's solution is for Kris Kringle to move to New Jersey. "Please know that I will work to mobilize the U.S. federal government to assist when you relocate," he wrote. "I am sure we can both agree that on a warming planet, we need to do all we can to save Christmas."

His constituents in Hoboekn, NJ, correct him:

"Sen. Menendez is apparently unaware that polar ice melting is a completely natural phenomenon and certainly not unprecedented—as various photos of submarines floating around the North Pole have attested for more than fifty years," said the Hoboken Republican Club in a statement. "We therefore seek to reassure nice children everywhere that Santa is just fine. They can happily look forward to Santa's presents for many years to come."

Bozos are in charge - Incompetano version

Janet Incompetano, aka Napolitano, when confronted with 70 per cent failure rate on guns in carry-ons at major airports says "Let's just move on."

Napolitano dismissed a recent news report about major airports failing secret tests designed to get contraband such as guns and knives past security screeners. The report said some airports had a 70 percent failure rate.

"Many of them are very old and out of date and there were all kinds of methodology issues with them. Let's set those aside," she said. "We pick up more contraband with the new procedures and the new machinery."

She forces you and me to go through a naked scanner and/or get felt up, but she is not bothered by 70% failure of guns getting through screening?

Why are we putting up with this?

Fox News

Merry Christmas

We celebrate Jesus' coming to Earth today. Hallelujah!

We are at Lake Chelan in a condo at Wapato Point. It is gray and white. They got several inches of snow Wednesday, but it is overcast and gray. Still, we can't complain.

God bless you as you celebrate His birth today.


Photo: Snow on apple trees on a gray day like today. From esperanto.wunderground.com.

One guy beats UK's WX forecasters

A lowly, lonely independent weather forecaster has been beating the UK's national weather service. Sydney Morning Herald ... They [National Weather Service] said it would be mild and damp, and between one degree and one and a half degrees warmer than average. Well, I am now 46 and that means I have seen more winters than most people on this planet, and I can tell you that this one is a corker. Never mind the record low attained in Northern Ireland this weekend. I can't remember a time when so much snow has lain so thickly on the ground, and we haven't even reached Christmas. And this is the third tough winter in a row. Is it really true that no one saw this coming? Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again. Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its "mild winter" schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. Indeed, it was back in May that he first predicted a snowy December, and he put his own money on a white Christmas about a month before the Met Office made any such forecast. He said that the Met Office would be wrong about last year's mythical "barbecue summer", and he was vindicated. He was closer to the truth about last winter, too. ... How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun. He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles. He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time - and he makes a prophecy. I have not a clue whether his methods are sound or not. But when so many of his forecasts seem to come true, and when he seems to be so consistently ahead of the Met Office, I feel I want to know more. Piers Corbyn believes that the last three winters could be the harbinger of a mini ice age that could be upon us by 2035, and that it could start to be colder than at any time in the last 200 years. He goes on to speculate that a genuine ice age might then settle in, since an ice age is now cyclically overdue.

Detroit Lions should use their quarterback

Huh? Our son-in-law Chris wrote a guest column in Detroit Free Press with advice for his favorite Detroit Lions: CHRIS MARSHALL / CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

"If only for one game, Matthew Stafford has to play" Detroit Free Press

Viaje a Cabo

I am working on learning Spanish, so this post is in Spanish for practice. He estado estudiante español durante un año. Yo estuvé buen durante 13 dias. Perro habria estado malo, por que Dios me abandonó. Despues de 14 dias, tengomos que volver a nuestra casa en Seattle. A Cabo san Lucas, Baja California Sur, México, nosotros hacíamos un paseo a amanecer todos los dias. Por lo general a la playa; a veces al puerto. Todos los mañanas, yo estudié español durante 90 (noventa) minutos. La mayoría días nuestro hacíamos un paseo en el puerto o en el ciudad. Los tardes leímos y platicamos al piscina mientras buscábamos ballenas. Todos los días yo caminé para el ejercicio durante 45 (cuarenta y cinco) minutos. Nuestro cuarto tuvo un vista del puerto, le ciudad y las montañas. A la oportunidad yo hablá un poco español; - Una toalla por favor. -- Deja de molestarme¡ El fin Mas lejos -- viaje a La Paz; snorkeling; las focas y las aves. I welcome corrections. Leave a comment.

Cruel Barbara Walters

Tell me how classy Barbara Walters is. Then watch The View. She is making fun of John Boehner because he sometimes cries. I hear she is well known for making her interviewees to cry. She says he has a mental problem. I am sure she is the expert. AmericaBlog links to the video:

"This guy, I'm sorry, he's gonna be Speaker of the House, and he's not gonna invite me to his Christmas party, but this guy has an emotional problem that every time he talks about anything that's not 'raise taxes' he cries. If this were a woman, if you saw Nancy Pelosi, who's been vilified, and I'm not taking sides, if you saw her getting up and crying... I hope he's a good Speaker of the House, but he's got a problem."

Lower cancer rate in Erin Brokovich town

The 600 residents of Hinkley, California won $333 million in a settlement from Pacific Gas and Electric through the heroic efforts of legal aid Erin Brokovich, made famous in the movie named for her. PG&E paid because it polluted the water supply with chromium, which increases the risk of cancer. But Hinkley residents do not have higher rates of cancer. In a study over the period 1996 to 2008 their rate is 196 cases, which is lower than expected for the demographics and geography of Hinkley. Will they return the $333 million? Washington Post

Our ship again

The ship we didn't go to Antarctica on because it had an accident and got damaged was in the news again this week. Clelia II on its way north to Ushuaia, Argentina from the Shetland Islands off Antarctica, was smashed by a 35-foot wave and damaged.

Last January we had to scramble to change our travel plans because Clelia II hit a rock while sending passengers ashore in zodiacs. Travel Dynamics International thought it would be out of service for less than three weeks, but OK for us, so they didn't tell us at first. But the repairs took much longer and they had to move us to the other ship - Corinthian II.

Clelia II is a smaller ship than Corinthian II and its bridge is on the third deck, rather than the forth. A wave smashed a window on the bridge and wetted the electronics, resulting in loss of communications on Tuesday. One crew member was injured, but no passengers. The first reports said that an engine was lost, but that was not the case.

From the reports I can find it appears that communications were restored and Clelia II returned to Ushuaia in good time.

Gadling

See the video. Our ship was in seas as rough - swells up to 10 meters - but no one wave hit with the impact that would smash through a window. I was on the bridge on our return trip when the officer at the wheel told me a wave that put water across the bridge windows (on the fourth deck) was 10 meters.


Photo: Seattle Times. Click to enlarge. Clelia II is 88 meters in length, which is 290 feet.

Islamic humor

Truth is stranger than fiction. In Pakistan a medical doctor was arrested for throwing away the business card of a salesman. Salesman calls on doctor; leaves business card. Doctor throws away business card. Salesman complains to the police. Doctor is arrested on the charge of defaming the prophet of Islam, Mohammed. Huh? The salesman's first name is Mohammed. So he claims that ignoring him is insulting the prophet, because he is named after Mohammed. And the police make an arrest. This took place in the southern city of Hyderabad and Dr. Naushad Valiyani is the victim of the Islamic police. Strange. Take these people seriously. Well, try to. Seattle P-I Well, that link leads to another story. Did they change it? Here is a good source: Asian Correspondent

Birds and beaches

We get to stay in Cabo San Lucas for another week. Last week we suffered through a time-share sales presentation to get some cash. We earned our pay. The salesman for Grand Mayan resort seemed to be insulted that we did not buy and he made sure he insulted us. We told a person in the resort business about this. She said the saying is that at that resort "You buy or you cry." We did some rock climbing and got to Lovers Beach which everyone has to travel by boat to get to. With my limited mobility due to hip socket injury in past trips I didn't verify the rumor that you can climb the rocks from the Pacific beach that our resort Playa Grande is on to famous Lovers Beach and its companion, Divorce Beach. It was rock scrambling, but less than 100 vertical feet. Our room looks over the harbor (at The Ridge) and I enjoy watching pelicans by the dozens all day. There is a group of at least a dozen frigate birds - large and black with deep forked tail and white breast for most, white head for some and red breast for a few. Once or twice a day, I hear the strange chirp of ospreys high overhead. There are a few seagulls, but they are shy compared to the pelicans. That is hard for a Puget Sounder to believe - a bird bolder than seagulls. When fish are being cleaned they walk among the people working and waiting - bold! And I saw a hawk who is not an osprey today - Wednesday. A few sea lions hang around the harbor entrance and sometimes off our Pacific beach. Today, Monday, is my lovely wife's birthday. Happy Birthday! Wednesday - We saw a bunch of beach walkers gathered around something, half an hour after sunrise today. A sea turtle was heading for the water. Not fast, but she kept at it.

Electric car? Powered by coal and gasoline

The call their electric cars, like the $41,000 Volt from Government Motors, zero emissions. Where does the electricity come from? American Thinker

Rush Limbaugh has coined some of the best words for saving our PC-corrupted public language, but I think this gem should be remembered: Rush says that electric cars are "coal-fired." Which is exactly correct, and it's funny, too. Millions of bubble brains in the media think the GM Volt is supposed to be the answer to our energy needs. It is of course a fraud, as GM actually admitted after it hyped the new Volt. It's not a "hybrid electric," as GM lied to the hearty applause of Obama and the New York Times. Rather it's a gas-powered car for 340 miles per tank, and you can run it for 40 miles on batteries that will have to be replaced when they stop taking a charge, as batteries do. That's why your laptop battery has to be replaced after a while. And it will cost you $ 41,000.00 to snoot out the other Green suckers.