The Arctic Has Recovered -- Sea Ice at Normal

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According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the Danish Meteorological Institute, the Japan Space Agency (JAXA), and the Norwegian Remote Sensing Experiment, Arctic Sea Ice is above or nearly above average.

So much for global warming, melting of the polar caps, polar bears dying of the heat, and associated total nonsense.

The official global warming models predicted that the decline of ice in 2007 (which was caused by unusual wind patterns pushing ice to lower latitudes -- not by warming) would cause a "death spiral" where more open ocean would cause more heating, leading to an ice-free Arctic in 2008.  When that didn't happen, they "corrected" their prediction to 2013.  I wonder what they will say when that doesn't happen either.

The NSDIC shows a trend that, if continued, should bring
the ice above normal in a couple of days

The Danish Meteorological Institute shows Arctic ice extent at the
highest level in their six year record.

JAXA shows more sea ice than any other year in their
nine year record on today's date.

The Norwegians also show Arctic Sea Ice above normal.

And what is happening at the South Pole?  Let's take a look:

Not much change in the last two years (source: Cryosphere Today)

Significant positive trend in Antarctic ice extent, November 1978 through
December 2006 (source: Comiso and Nishio, 2008).

We see a decades-long trend of increasing sea ice at the South Pole and a multi-year recovery at the North Pole that bring sea ice coverage to normal or above.  But the latest IPCC report (AR4, released in 2007) states, “Sea ice is projected to shrink in both the Arctic and Antarctic under all SRES scenarios.”  Real measurements of world temperature, sea ice, and just about anything else, never seem to match their computer models, do they?   It is a "travesty" that global warming scientists can't account for.

As one of the creators of Global Warming (Prof. Phil Jones, shown at left) admitted recently, there has been no statistically significant global warming in the last 15 years.

So why exactly do the UN and the IPCC want the power to institute worldwide taxes to fight global warming?  Why do they want the United States to implement severe limits on our oil and coal consumption?  Why do they rail against capitalism and the consumer society of the US? 

I'll leave those questions for you to figure out.

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Quote for the Day

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"Frankly, I don't know what it is about California , but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine , even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington , we're number one. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The three of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."  

   -- Burt Prelutsky
       author and former Los Angeles Times Columnist


(hat tip to my uncle)

These books are written by Burt Prelutsky, including his newest, "Liberals: America's Termites (It's A Shame That Liberals, Unlike Hamsters, Don't Eat Their Young). Click on these links and and buy them!

Iran's Nuclear Program

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New CIA report on Iran's nuclear capabilities here:  http://www.dni.gov/reports/2009_721_Report.pdf

Another Indication of Odd Solar Activity

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For decades, the number of observed sunspots has been directly related to the amount of radio waves coming out of the sun -- particularly the 10.7cm wavelength radio waves.  If you measure this 10.7 radio flux, you can calculate a "synthetic" sunspot number using a simple equation.  The synthetic number has matched the observed number very closely since 1951, when we first started measuring the flux.

Until lately.

Here is a chart from solar physicist Dr. Leif Svalgaard:

Since 1990, the number of observed sunspots has started to decline from the normal relationship.  (Note that when the number of sunspots "R" is less than 5 per month or so, the relationship "is less reliable" -- mostly because observed sunspots are counted in a screwball way with single spots receiving a count of 12).  The thin curve on the bottom of the chart is the normal 11-year sunspot cycle -- so you can see that this decline is independent of the regular up-and-down behavior of the sun.

This appears to be another manifestation of what Bill Livingston (National Solar Observatory) has seen in his measurements showing a decline in sunspot contrast and magnetic field since 1990 (which I have posted on previously).  Here is Dr. Livingston's raw data, charted by me, with dots indicating yearly averages (placed mid-year):

The data forms somewhat of a cloud, but the noisiness is due to the sun's behavior, not to measurement error.  The trend lines are calculated second order polynomials of the entire data set, not just eyeball curves.

It has been hypothesized that this decline in solar activity, independent of the 11-year solar cycle, is similar to what happened during the Maunder and Dalton Minimums (1645-1715, and 1790-1830 respectively).  These "little ice ages" were times of excessive cold, although scientists disagree about cause and effect. 

If you are interested in Dr. Svalgaard's equation used to calculate synthetic sunspot number from the 10.7 flux for dates between 1951 and 1990, it is:
         SSN = -0.00106 SF^2 + 1.40438 SF - 80.25 ; r^2 = 0.9928

For dates after 1990, the equation has become:
         SSN = -0.00226 SF^2 + 1.53925 SF - 92.33 ; r^2 = 0.9908

These equations are derived empirically, and do not reflect any underlying process.  Dr. Svalgaard's paper is here.  (Note that Dr. Svalgaard has mentioned a typo.  All references to 1951-1988 should be 1951-1990.)  Drs. Livingston's and Penn's paper is here.

No one knows why the sun is doing this.

Not really related but interesting nonetheless, Dr. Svalgaard on Solar Cycle 24 has provided this animation of a sunspot and its magnetic field taken by the Japanese Hinode spacecraft.  Click for a movie:

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Quote of the Day

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“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

Legal Cannibalism on the Ballot in California

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Oh wait... I guess it is not cannibalism, it is cannabis.  I suppose cannibalism has always been legal in California. The Donner Party of 1846 was never prosecuted at least.  Afterward, one of them even opened an inn that served food.  It had good reviews, except for one guy (published in Harper's I believe) who just couldn't get beyond the idea of it.

It is hard to keep up with all the law-making in California.  When I lived there, the state government averaged between 2000 and 3000 new laws a year.

It would probably be a better place to live if the legislature was constitutionally restricted to meeting only for a month or two each year, as is done in Wyoming.  Or maybe require that for a new law to be passed, two existing laws have to be repealed.

World history shows that the slate always gets wiped clean eventually.  But then they start writing again.

Have they declared the massive California state debt illegal yet?

A girlie knife to cut the budget

Isn't it funny that when the budgets are tight (which is really all the time in California), the first thing they threaten to cut are schools and essential services.  "If we can't get this new tax passed, our schools/police/courts/fire department will suffer."  Instead why don't they close the government employee motor pool, or sell all the government employee gym equipment, or cut the office furniture budget?

Or an even better idea:  Look at the list of what California state government agencies existed in 1955, and compare it to the list of agencies that exist now.  Dissolve any agencies not on the 1955 list, terminate the employees, and sell the assets. The government worked fine in 1955 -- actually much better than it does now.

A little better

I try to tell folks that the federal and state governments were never intended to help people.  They just look at me blankly and say, "Well if they aren't supposed to help people, why do we even have them?"

I just smile, and say, "To do those few things that people can't do themselves.  You need to think of government as really just an association that we belong to.  We hire some people and give them the power to provide schools, and police, and courts, and a fire department.  And we need to pay a small tax for that so that they can keep going.  That's about it."

It is funny that even the proponents of gigantic government understand this intuitively.  Those true government services are the ones they always threaten to cut whenever the people balk on more taxes.

Is there any state that has a small government that doesn't try to enslave the people in the name of providing everything they need?

Well, maybe Wyoming.

What Arnold really needs for budget cutting

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Breaking the Code of History - The Decline and Fall of the US

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In his new book, "Breaking the Code of History", David Murrin (CEO of Emergent Asset Management) argues that the US faces a rapid decline based on a "big picture" view of history. We have had our run, and we are done:



I have always felt that the rise of the US over the last 200 years has been the result of a self-selection process: People came to the US because they were the kind of folks who believed in risk-taking and self-sufficiency -- and they produced enormous progress and enormously better living conditions for everyone than what had previously been seen in the entire history of the planet.

The whole "westering" of civilization since the discovery of the New World in 1492 provided an evolutionary selection process favoring people who didn't fit into rigid societies, who didn't like cities, who wanted the open air, who weren't afraid to take risks, and who didn't like government and religious control. They wanted freedom.  And we are their inheritors.

Whether individualism is a genetic trait or not, the individualism of Americans has recently been declining. Since the end of WWII, generation by generation, it has been going away.   I believe that part of this is due to the the amount of comfort that we have been able to achieve, but there are other reasons too.  A lot of people hate America because of its dominance and success.  They want it destroyed, along with the philosophies of freedom and individualism that created it.

Whether or not Obama was actually born in the US has been questioned, but his ideas are foreign regardless.  The election of Obama is the latest step in the harmonization of America to be more like the rest of the world.  And make no mistake, America is not like the rest of the world.  Our belief in individual freedom puts us into conflict with even our allies.  We should not gauge ourselves on their beliefs, or seek to replace our beliefs with theirs.

But now, the people of the United States want to be fed, housed, clothed, and generally be taken care of.  With Obama, they are promised safety and care at the price of freedom and more taxes. Most people in the US seem like that trade. Unlike their ancestors, they don't mind being controlled.

I note that the people who voted for Obama are mostly from areas of the country with large populations -- plus areas of the gentrified rich (rural areas where city folk go to retire), and areas where poor and special interest groups live (since he promised them more money). The cities are places where the original American westering types do not live. When you think about it, in the 1800s as the line of population moved west, these folks moved further west, until they ran out of room.

If you look at rural America, where people still see the open sky, Obama lost. Indeed, when tallied by area, Obama lost in a landslide. He is really only a president of the densely populated cities of America -- the places our forefathers fled from.

I believe that history will show that America peaked in the late 20th century. Militarily, we peaked in World War II, and again in the 1980s. Technologically, we were strong from 1950 through 2000. Sociologically, we peaked in the 1950's and early 1960's. But the only peak that will be remembered hundreds of years from now will be the moon landing in 1969.  It has been all downhill since.

I find it fascinating that the latest census advertisements are encouraging you to "be counted" so that your town can get "your fair share" of money from the government. Without a census, we evidently won't know how big a hospital to build.  In the future, I suppose, we also won't know how many grocery stores the government should build for us.  Or housing units. Or how much food and clothing our town will be allowed.





Well, I don't think the federal government should provide any money to our communities for anything.  Your fair share should be zero.  This is all another one of William Blake's "minute particulars" that "predicts the ruin of the state."

The new health care law will fail of course.  It is designed to fail so that Obama can roll out a plan for full government-provided health care.  He said as much yesterday in Iowa:

But what this is, is a historic step....It doesn't do everything that everybody wants, but it moves us in the direction of universal health care coverage in this country and that's why everybody here fought so hard for it.

Again I ask, "If Obama were trying his hardest to destroy our country, what would he be doing differently?"  The answer, of course, is "nothing".

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Update on the Big Dustup Index Fund (BDUIF)

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The BDUIF is continuing to operate as it was designed to operate -- following the average of the ratio of the price of oil to the stock market and the ratio of the price of gold to the stock market.  As I mentioned in the introductory post here, and the last update here, the BDUIF is a way to invest in oil and gold that uses stock market short ETFs as a hedge against commodity price falls due to economic decline.

Since oil and gold have been following the stock market -- going up as the market goes up and going down as the market goes down -- "naked" investing in such commodities carries a risk.  If the economy were to decline, oil and gold prices would also decline, which may seem somewhat counter-intuitive to people who see gold and oil as safe stores of wealth.

What you give up with the BDUIF is any gain in oil and gold that follows the performance of the stock market.  The BDUIF is designed to hold steady with minimal gains and losses in "normal" circumstances.  So really, it is an investment technique waiting for a world event that causes the stock market and gold/oil to diverge.  Stagflation, or a war that disrupts oil supplies, would be examples.

A problem for the BDUIF would be if gold and oil prices declined as the stock market advanced.  This would happen if the Mideast were to announce a lasting peace, or if the economy continues to do well with no inflation.

The chart below shows the performance of the BDUIF against the ratio of oil to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the ratio of gold to the DJIA, all normalized to 1000 on 4 February 2010 when the BDUIF was formulated.

The BDUIF is performing as designed

(click for larger image)

As you can see, the price of gold is not doing well in relation to the market right now, probably because the general sentiment is that inflation is not a problem.  The use of gold in the BDUIF has limited potential gains that could have been seen from the run up in oil in early-mid February, and has resulted in losses of about 3 percent over the last two weeks.  Here is a chart focused on gold/DJIA so you can see how badly it is performing -- down over 6 percent from the baseline:

History of the Ratio of the Price of Gold to the DJIA normalized to 1000 on 4 February

You may recall that I mentioned in the last update that gold was not performing.  Despite uncertainty in the Mideast, gold was flat, raising significant questions regarding its usefulness.  I had considered removing the gold position from the BDUIF, but held off to see what it would do.  I wish I had removed it.  I will make a decision this week and likely remove at least some of the gold position. 

The makeup of the BDUIF has not changed much over the last two weeks.

UGL: 2x leveraged gold futures bull

DBO: Crude oil various month futures bull

OIL: Crude oil next month futures bull

USO: Crude oil next month futures bull

BGZ: Large cap 3x leveraged bear

DPK: Developed markets 3x leveraged bear

I actually have a significant amount of money in this, but my other investments are doing much better.  We will see how it plays out.  The BDUIF hasn't made any money, but it hasn't really lost any either -- which is what it is supposed to do.
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The Mideast: Solutions that Create Larger Crises

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I don't understand the world community's hatred of Israel.

Hamas launches thousands of rockets into Israeli cities, Israel attacks them back and then is roundly condemned even to the point of being formally accused of war crimes.  Israel builds houses in their own capital city, and Hillary and Mr. 0 use it as an excuse to stop providing them support.

Mr. 0 wants Israel to make peace with the Palestinians by giving up land -- land that once it is occupied by Palestinians will be used as rocket launch pads and terrorist staging areas.  He criticizes Israel for building houses on their own territory, while making no comment about the Palestinian television programs teaching their children to become suicide bombers -- and naming streets and town squares after famous terrorists (or as they say, "martyrs in the war to annihilate the Jews and the US").

Lawmakers in the US who are Jewish are questioned in the press about their objectivity and their support of Israel.  But it is considered racist to question Obama's family ties to Islam, his upbringing in an Islamic country, and the potential impact of that on the foreign policy of the US.

Israel has given up land, and has offered even more land for a Palestinian state, but that is not what the Palestinians want.  As Shmuley Boteach says:

War between the Arabs and Israelis has raged for six decades because the former have always sought to destroy the latter. Israel has made endless concessions only to see its citizens die.

I don’t see you making peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mr. President. So why do you insist that Israel  reach an accord with a Palestinian Authority that won’t even control the terrorist organization Hamas, whose stated goal is the annihilation of the Jewish state?

And now we hear that Obama has canceled the delivery of precision penetrating munitions to Israel, evidently to keep them from attacking Iran. (This is why the bombs went to Diego Garcia, as I had mentioned before.  They had originally been intended for Israel.)

Hamas rocket parts recovered in a town in southern Israel

Interestingly, Mr. 0 is using the same strategy against Israel that he is using against the US economy and against the US health care system:  Create a crisis, then solve the crisis in a way that precipitates an even larger crisis in the future, eventually leading to his final goal.

• Institute a health care system that makes people even more dissatisfied.  Burden the health insurance companies so they collapse, then claim that capitalism has failed.  Socialize all medical care.
• Burden the US economy with housing and lending rules that encourage the making of poor loans, then when it collapses, use stimulus to create a false economy that doesn't solve the leverage problem, while creating a massive deficit.  Blame greed.  Add more rules as a further burden.  When the economy collapses again, claim that capitalism has failed.  Socialize banks and investment firms.
• Force Israel to give up land.  Allow Iran to develop nuclear missiles.  When the Arabs overrun Israel, claim that the Jews just did not make enough concessions for peace.  Israel is destroyed.

It is sad to think that the only free country, the only democracy, in the Middle East has been abandoned by the United States.  We are pushing them into a corner to be destroyed.  There seems to be no way that Israel will survive the Obama presidency, unless they break from the US and  launch a full scale ground and aerial war against Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and attack the Iranian nuclear sites with nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles.

Failing that, or something similar, I do not believe that Israel will exist in 2020.  It is starting to look like a new Holocaust is in the works.

Women of the Israeli Defense Force

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Odd Cold Weather in Colorado

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I recorded a low of 7.5 degrees F in the pre-dawn hours Saturday at my house near Boulder.  This has to be some kind of record for the date, but I didn't hear anything about it on the news.  We also had nearly a foot of snow on Friday.  Today was beautiful with temperatures around 60.  Monday will bring temperatures in the upper 60's.  Tuesday's forecast is for more snow.  Except for the surprisingly low temperature on Saturday morning, this is typical Colorado spring weather.
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The Continuing Decline of the Sun — New Data

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The Frozen Thames, London, 1677
click for larger image

Despite the recent increase in solar activity, the sun is still behaving very strangely.

In 2006, Dr. William Livingston and Dr. Matthew Penn, of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, wrote a paper describing their observations showing that the relative darkness and magnetic field strength of sunspots have been declining independently of the normal sunspot cycle since 1990. They predicted that if this continues, sunspots would disappear entirely from the sun sometime between 2015 and 2020. It is not clear when they would return.

The paper was never accepted for publication, primarily because no one had a theory to account for the observations. Since that time, measurements have continued to show an almost linear decline in both spot darkness and magnetic field.

The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1565
click for larger image

It has been hypothesized that this dimming is similar to what happened during the Maunder Minimum that lasted from 1645 to 1715. It coincided with the Little Ice Age, a time of extraordinarily cold winters and crop failures throughout the world. While there is a dispute among scientists whether or not the Maunder Minimum actually "caused" the Little Ice Age, many believe that solar magnetic/plasma activity, measured by the quantity and size of sunspots, affects climate through a number of mechanisms, including such obscure things as the modulation of the cosmic ray flux reaching the earth, which may cause changes in cloud formation.

If a Little Ice Age were to occur today, with our present world population, we could see famine, war, and economic collapse worldwide.

The Livingston and Penn Data
click for larger image

On Friday, I asked for and received Livingston and Penn's raw data, including the most recent observations, from another solar physicist. My plot shown above is similar to the chart available in this thread, but provides a little more resolution and detail. I also plotted the yearly averages as large dots, centered on the middle of each year. The dot for 2010 represents just the data so far recorded.  It should be mentioned that the data in the 1990's is sparse and is therefore less certain.

The "umbral intensity ratio" is a measurement of the continuum intensity of the dark part of the sunspot (umbra) as a ratio to the surrounding quiet sun.  When this ratio is equal to 1, the sunspot is invisible (or doesn't exist).  The sunspot magnetic field is measured by the Zeeman splitting of the iron (Fe) spectral lines.    When the magnetic field is less than 1500 gauss, the sunspot does not form.  L&P have also measured an absolute temperature change using a molecular technique, but that data is not shown here.

As you can see, the data varies quite a bit, but the noise is in the real solar phenomena, not in the measurement technique.  Regardless, there are clear trends as indicated by second order polynomial fits to the data.  The umbral intensity ratio is increasing toward 1, and the magnetic field is decreasing.  The fit is almost linear.

Livingston and Penn get telescope time infrequently, and measurements are often impossible due to weather conditions.  Also, the unusually deep 11-year solar cycle minimum for the last three years has afforded few spots to measure.  So sometimes, months go by with no observations at all.

It is very important to note that this solar decline has been unaffected by the peaks and valleys of the 11-year solar cycle, and appears to be a completely independent phenomenon.  The fact that it is continuing during the higher activity now being seen as solar cycle 24 ramps up is further confirmation of its independent nature.

The L&P dimming of sunspots is independent of this data showing the ramp up in solar activity in recent months.  Shown are Total Solar Intensity, the 10.7 meter radio flux, the overall solar magnetic field, and the number of sunspots (http://www.leif.org/research/)

If this behavior continues, I believe that we may be in quite a bit of trouble.  Even a shorter and shallower minimum such as the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800s would be bad.  A degree or two of extra warmth is much preferred to killing freezes.

 Winter skating on the main canal of Pompenburg, Rotterdam in 1825,
by Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove

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Fess Parker (August 16, 1924 – March 18, 2010)

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Back in the early summer of 1968, when I was 12 years old, we took a trip to Southern California.  My dad had an aerospace conference to go to at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (just a few months after Robert Kennedy's assassination there), and we stayed at a little motel on the north side of Sunset.  We did all the normal stuff for kids:  Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the Beach, Marineland.  But the most memorable thing was a chance meeting with Fess Parker that resulted in us visiting the set of The Daniel Boone Show.

One morning, one of the maids in the hotel came running to tell us that Fess Parker was in the motel restaurant.  She told us that he frequently stopped by for breakfast with some of his buddies from the show before going to work at 20th Century Fox Studios a few blocks over.  She told us to hurry.

My brother Steven and I ran down the balcony stairs and managed to catch him as he was getting into his car.  I remember that he was very tall, and seemed barely to fit into the driver's seat.  He smiled at us and said "Hi" as he reached for a pad of paper.  He gave us both his autograph, and then wrote a phone number down.  "Have your parents call this number, and you can come visit us at the studio and watch us film the show."

Fess Parker rehearsing for the opening of Disneyland in 1955

That afternoon, we were ushered onto the sound stage, while my dad sat at his boring conference. This was no tourist thing.  We were the only visitors.  We borrowed some of the typical hollywood folding chairs and watched as several scenes were filmed.  We wrangled an invite to spend the whole next day there too.

Fess was just like his on-screen persona:  Unassuming, humble, gentle, kind and never in a hurry.  Just a nice guy doing what he liked to do.

Fess Parker's two kids were hanging around the set, and Steve and I wandered around with Eli (actually Fess Elisha Parker III) and Ashley.  The kids had some kind of big bodyguard type that followed us around to keep them safe, but he didn't really interfere.  The only rules were to stay out of the way and keep quiet and unmoving during scenes. We got good at that.  The filming proceeded in fits and starts, with moves to various sets.  In between times, we were taught by one of the character actors how to crack a whip and spin a gun.  We had a wonderful time.

Dallas "Dal" McKennon, who played Cincinnatus, was asked by Mr. Parker to be our unofficial guide and caretaker during our two days on set.  He was only in a few of the scenes, so he basically showed us around.  If we had any questions, he would answer them, usually with a lot of colorful stories.  He told us the story of his life and how he did acting and numerous cartoon voices.  He also did many of the voices on the rides and exhibits at Disneyland.  Here is an audio interview with him.  I remember that he said he lived up in the San Fernando Valley.  Unfortunately, Dallas is gone now too.

Dallas McKennon on The Daniel Boone Show

My mother has always been something of a performer (she had her own radio show for a while in Hastings Nebraska), so she fit right in.  She was 42 at the time, but looked much younger.

Jimmy Dean was a guest star for this particular episode, and as Fess said, he was a "real smoothy".  My mom helped him go through his lines before several scenes.  (I don't think he really prepared beforehand.)   He tried to get my mom to stay another day so they could put her in the show, turned around once and said, "My goodness, you are a pretty woman," and even invited her to dinner (she declined).  Unfortunately, we had to leave, otherwise, my mom would likely have had a new career in TV westerns.

Jimmy was constantly telling cornball jokes, and was pretty much the center of attention whenever he was around.  One joke I remember went like this:

A man I knew once owned a race horse that could never finish a race.  At the first turn, it always veered off the track to the right, and got all tangled up.  The guy tried everything, special trainers, blinders, even hypnotism - although I don't really know how you can do that to a horse.  I listened to him and thought about it.  I told him that I had the solution.  "Since he always veered right," I said, "you jus' have to put a chunk of lead in his left ear."  "OK, so how do I get the lead into his left ear?"  "Well," I told him, "you simply gotta put a gun in his right ear."  Yes sir, that fixed the horse up real good for him.

One of the big running jokes on the set was that every once in a while, especially if he flubbed a line, Jimmy would say, "I am goin' to QUIT this business, buy some HAWGS and run a HAWG farm.  Yes, that IS what I sincerely am goin' to do."  Everyone would give him reasons why that was a stupid idea.  Turns out that one year later, he founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company, made a fortune raising "hawgs", and eventually made another fortune selling his business to Sara Lee, where he remained active in running the division for many years.

We ate with Dallas, the kids, and the bodyguard at the small commissary.  The next table over were a bunch of character actors and bit players for the show, and they were always causing a ruckus.  I think they thought they were really in the Wild West, and were acting accordingly.

Back at the set, an old film editor regaled my mom with stories of the old 20th Century Fox days and the famous movie stars from the 40's.  He looked down on the wild TV character actors, snapping whips, as representing a certain "fall from grace" for the studio.

My parents ran into Fess many years later at a store promotion in Boulder for his winery.  Unlike so many actors, he took the money he made and invested it, first in real estate ventures, including a DoubleTree hotel, and then in his winery. My parents talked to him quite a while.  When my mom mentioned Jimmy Dean, he said, "Oh, that old rascal?"

Fess also told them that the whole reason he started the winery was so that his kids would have a legacy -- a place for them to be and work and make money, after he was gone. 

Well, now he is gone, but he has an enduring legacy indeed .

There have been several turning points in my life, but the most important one came the day I stepped before the cameras as Davy Crockett. The way I look at things, a man's life story isn't his alone, but it belongs to a lot of people who have influenced him and done things for him that he can never repay....I guess you could call me plain. I don't go in for show. There isn't anything I want too much, except to be a good actor.

I think I'll go out now and buy some wine.  Maybe a little breakfast sausage too.

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Jim Cramer on "Obama-Proof" Stocks

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To offset the huge tax increases that are coming with the health care plan, Jim Cramer recommends buying stocks with high dividends, to wit:

• Dupont (DD)
• BP (BP)
• Kinder Morgan (KMP)
• Verizon (VZ)
• Eli Lilly (LLY)

I may consider these after the BDUFI plays out. I was in DD last year for a while, and probably should have kept it.

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Stimulants, Vampires, and the Renminbi

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Our economy is like a cancer patient who refuses surgery and simply takes lots of stimulants instead.  The patient looks good for awhile, but the basic problems are not addressed:

• The government is too big
• Obama wants the government to do even more
• The health care plan is a vampire on the economy that will bleed it dry -- and destroy health care
• The national debt has doubled under Obama
•  Just the interest on the debt is projected to become 50% of tax revenue in 10 years
• The government is still protecting people and companies against risk in the financial and real estate sectors -- causing more and more risk to be taken on

We will soon be in a situation where taxes can't go up anymore, the interest rate can't go up (or it will kill the economy), and tax revenues fall as the economy struggles.

The best the Fed can do will be stagflation.  If they err, they will get either a depression or hyperinflation--and may get both at the same time.

Should we call our next currency the "new dollar" or just bite the bullet and call it the renminbi?

Again I ask, "If Obama was intent on destroying the US, what would he be doing differently?"


Here is a CNBC video about market volatility (tracked by the VIX) and risk of a recession in late 2010.

The Cumbersome Apple iPad

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When I first saw Steve Jobs waving it around, I laughed out loud.  "What a clunky, old-fashioned looking piece of junk."  My opinion still holds.  The clueless name, the gigantic size, the thickness are all awful.  Worst of all is the thick black border around the thing -- apparently just to make it bigger than it needs to be.

The present size of the iPad makes it no better than the MacBook Air.  Worse actually, since the Air is thinner, has no big black border, has a real keyboard, and was actually designed by somebody who knew what looks nice.  It is always bad to have two products that compete -- especially when the previously introduced product is tons better in every way.

How about something the size of a Blu-ray case that is all screen and no border? It would then fit into some of my big jacket pockets at least.

The idea is to have something with more utility than the iPhone, and more portability than the Air.  The iPad doesn't do it.

I found this to be particularly amusing:

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The Obama Plan for Mideast Peace

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It is becoming obvious that Mr. 0's policy of engagement with Iran has failed. This is no surprise. Ahmadinejad wants nuclear weapons and no amount of discussions or sanctions will disuade him. He is adept at playing games with indecisive countries.

Here is Obama's preferred plan in a nutshell:

• Avoid violence at all costs
• Let the Iranian nuclear and missile programs go forward, while administering economic sanctions from time-to-time (if possible), in an attempt to control them.
• Impose international financial sanctions on the leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (these folks are wealthy and powerful) to encourage them to restrain or overthow Ahmadinejad
• Continue covert activities in Iran to damage their programs and encourage dissent, especially among the Sunni resistance
• Use SM-3 equipped Aegis ships in the Persian Gulf to interdict any attack from Israel on Iran, and Iran on Israel or the Gulf States
• Provide the Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, with Patriot missile batteries in order to mollify them
• Seduce Syria's Assad away from Iran
• Have Israel give up land for peace
  
• Build a Palestinian state

In an even smaller nutshell:  Capitulate to Iran, do not let Israel defend itself, force Israel to give up land.

Of course, history--even recent history--shows that all of this is a terrible mistake that will lay the seeds for a huge future war, which will probably be fought with nuclear weapons.

Israel has tried "land for peace" many times before--and even has offered to have a separate Palestinian state.  It never works because the so-called Palestinians don't want land and don't want their own state.   They want the destruction of Israel and will settle for nothing less.  After all, they are backed and controlled by Iran.  (Note that I say "so-called" because the "Palestinians" didn't come into being as an ethnic group until the 1960s.)

Iran wants the destruction of Israel, and will settle for nothing less.  Letting them build nukes and long range missiles (with the help of the North Koreans, by the way) greatly increases the probability that Iran will soon rule the entire Mideast -- and wipe Israel off the map.  If nothing is done in the next 5 years, it becomes a virtual certainty.


Do we really think that the Revolutionary Guard is going to overthrow Ahmadinejad if we pressure them a little?  And Syria is tight with Iran; Assad even made fun of Hillary, who had asked him to separate his country from Iran:

We met today [with Iran's Ahmadinejad] to sign a separation agreement between Syria and Iran, but things went wrong probably because of translation or lack of understanding, so we signed an agreement to remove the requirement for entry visas instead.  I do not know whether these two things are consistent.  I wonder how they [the US] can talk about stability in the Middle East and all other such attractive principles while at the same time calling for the separation of two countries, Syria and Iran, regardless of the strategic relations between them and their belief in shared principles.

Regardless, we are rewarding Assad by opening an embassy in Syria, and sending a permanent ambassador after many years of having no relations with the terrorist regime.

And the Saudis have repudiated Defense Secretary Robert Gates's version of their recent meeting:

[T]he Saudis publicly repudiated Gates' statement after his arrival in Abu Dhabi that he had obtained Saudi consent to come aboard US diplomacy on Iran and play its part by leaning hard on China to endorse sanctions.  On March 13, the royal house issued this bulletin: "This issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of the secretary of defense who was in the kingdom recently."

Nowadays, people in the west often delude themselves into thinking that their enemies are like themselves:  i.e. they have families and want the best for their children and are really good people inside etc.  This is bull.  In the Mideast, many Palestinians are exceptionally proud to send their children off as suicide bombers.  They wish they had more children so that there could be more bombs against Israel.

And the Shiites are looking for their Twelfth Imam to come back to them as the messiah Mahdi.  Ahmadinejad believes he can hasten his arrival by erasing Israel.  Diplomacy doesn't work if the entire meaning of life for one side is based on fulfilling end-of-the-world prophecies, which include "cleansing" the earth of the Jewish people.



This is shaping up to be very similar to 1938.  Here is what Neville Chamberlain said, after he met with Hitler on the 30th of September of that year.  I quote it in full because the stupid delusions expressed are so similar to the present rhetoric:

We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.  We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.  My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.

 Chamberlain with the agreement

Really the only way to extinguish this fire is to join with Israel to put Iran completely out of business.  It should have been done years ago, before Iran built its cavernous deeply-buried facilities.  It is doubtful that they can be destroyed with normal penetrating bombs --and the new MOP bomb is not ready and may not work.  At this point, it is probably nukes or nothing.

Obama has chosen to do nothing -- or worse than nothing since he is blocking Israel from even acting alone.

A final question:  Once again, I must ask: If Obama's intent was the destruction of the United States, would he be doing anything differently?

Yeah, and the same to you too.

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