Paul's Political Corner

Trump's Achievments - May 2018

• Sweeping Tax Reform
• Individual Mandate repeal
• Opens up Arctic Drilling
• Rollback Regulataions
• Keystone Pipeline
• Veterans Affaisrs reform
• 78% of S&P 500 beat expectations
• $8T new market wealth
• CBO:3.3% GDP - Obama was first President to never have a quarter of at least 3%
  Average Annual Growth Rates:
  • Obama 1.5%
  • Bush II 2.1%
  • Clinton 3.9%
  • Bush I 2.3%
  • Reagan 3.5%
• 3.9% Jobless Rate
• Lowest Jobless Rate for Blacks, Latinos, and Women
• Wages up 2.6% annualized

Liberals are proven wrong on major issues by History
or Why liberals are dangerous

Liberals criticzed Trump's promises of 4% growth

Trump promises 4% growth. Economists say no way
CNN Money Oct 11, 2016

If Trump thinks he can get more than 3% economic growth, he's dreaming
L.A. Times May 19, 2017

Trump's 3% growth target looks out of reach
Wall Street Journal May 23, 2017

Liberals allow free speech as long as it agrees with their ideas.
Some examples of colleges limiting free speech can be found in this article:
"College Liberals Infringe on Free Speech " among others.  On college campuses, conservative speakers are shouted down or even physically threatened by liberal bully students – and the campus administration does nothing about it.  Most conservative speakers don’t attempt to speak at university campuses because they know it is useless.

So, you may ask, what is wrong with being a liberal besides not allowing others to disagree with them?
My answer is:  liberals are more often proved wrong on major issues than correct as proven by the passage of time.  Here are my favorite examples:

1. Paul Krugman, leading liberal economist, on election night 2016:
   It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump. And markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? A first-past answer is never.
2. U.N. in 2005 said 50 million refugees by 2010 - 4/20/11 (from WSJ) - The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) published a color-coded map under the headline "Fifty million climate refugees by 2010." The primary source for the prediction was a 2005 paper by environmental scientist Norman Myers.
   Today, this flood of refugees is nowhere to be found, and global average temperatures are about where they were when the prediction was made.
3. Guantanamo Bay Should Be Closed - 12/13/10 - Nearly two years after President Obama signed the Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay within 12 months, Gitmo is still open for business. In addition, the liberals like Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder, who believes terrorists should be tried like criminals in civilian courts, came close to losing the one terrorist civilian trial of the al Qaeda operative who facilitated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
   Also, 25% or more of those Gitmo prisoners released are now turning out to be more dangerous than before – wreaking havoc on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   A Democrat Congress just passed legislation to de-fund the closing of Gitmo, in effect saying to the President Leave Gitmo the way it is.
   This is another example of how the liberals have great ideas about how we should treat prisoners of war, but when reality sets in, they back-pedal.
   Reference:  The Wall Street Journal, 12/11/10, The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth .
4. Climate Cooling - In the 1970’s, there was a big fear that the earth was undergoing a climate cooling and it will affect the world’s food supply. In fact, the earth had been cooling from 1945 to 1962. 
   Global warming and cooling is just the earth going through its natural cycles.  In 1924, the New York Times declared we were entering a new “Ice Age”.  The liberals profit from these scares by getting the government to spend money on studies to help find solutions – all good hearted, but just wasted money (except for the liberals receiving the money).  In the 1980s the environmentalists were paid to find ways to stop the global cooling by ideas like covering the arctic ice cap with black soot so the sun’s rays would not bounce off the ice but be absorbed so as to heat the cap to melt the ice.
   Then, in the 1990’s, the man-made “Global Warming” scare started heating up.  Al Gore is the champion of man-made Global Warming fears and, he is a big investor in green industries - becoming a millionaire many times over in the last few years.
   But, more importantly, the earth’s temperature has dropped over the last 10 years – thus proving the liberals wrong.
5. Jimmy Carter, in his 1978 speech, said we will run out of oil in ten years.  We haven’t run out after 30 years.
6. Hillary Clinton in Nov, 2006, just before the off-year election says "If you don't like the high price of gasoline, then vote for Democrats". Twelve months later, with the Democrats controlling the Senate and House, gasoline prices were their highest ever.
7. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, Apr 20, 2007, said "the war in Iraq is lost".  On Nov 20, 2007, the NY Times said that since the "surge" started, the American and Iraqi deaths are way down - indicating there is a major turn in the status of the war - we are winning.

Global Warming - Cool Down?

New York Times

March 13, 2007

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming , "An Inconvenient Truth," which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

"I don't want to pick on Al Gore," Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. "But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data."

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made "the most important and salient points" about climate change, if not "some nuances and distinctions" scientists might want. "The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger," he said, adding, "I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand."

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in "An Inconvenient Truth," which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado , said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for "getting the message out," Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were "overselling our certainty about knowing the future."

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe's recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

"He's a very polarizing figure in the science community," said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. "Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore."

"An Inconvenient Truth," directed by Davis Guggenheim, was released last May and took in more than $46 million, making it one of the top-grossing documentaries ever. The companion book by Mr. Gore quickly became a best seller, reaching No. 1 on the New York Times list.

Mr. Gore depicted a future in which temperatures soar, ice sheets melt, seas rise, batter the coasts and people die en masse. "Unless we act boldly," he wrote, "our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes."

He clearly has supporters among leading scientists, who commend his popularizations and call his science basically sound. In December, he spoke in San Francisco to the American Geophysical Union and got a reception fit for a rock star from thousands of attendees.

"He has credibility in this community," said Tim Killeen, the group's president and director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a top group studying climate change. "There's no question he's read a lot and is able to respond in a very effective way."

Some backers concede minor inaccuracies but see them as reasonable for a politician. James E. Hansen, an environmental scientist, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a top adviser to Mr. Gore, said, "Al does an exceptionally good job of seeing the forest for the trees," adding that Mr. Gore often did so "better than scientists."

Still, Dr. Hansen said, the former vice president's work may hold "imperfections" and "technical flaws." He pointed to hurricanes, an icon for Mr. Gore, who highlights the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and cites research suggesting that global warming will cause both storm frequency and deadliness to rise. Yet this past Atlantic season produced fewer hurricanes than forecasters predicted (five versus nine), and none that hit the United States.

"We need to be more careful in describing the hurricane story than he is," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Gore. "On the other hand," Dr. Hansen said, "he has the bottom line right: most storms, at least those driven by the latent heat of vaporization, will tend to be stronger, or have the potential to be stronger, in a warmer climate."

In his e-mail message, Mr. Gore defended his work as fundamentally accurate. "Of course," he said, "there will always be questions around the edges of the science, and we have to rely upon the scientific community to continue to ask and to challenge and to answer those questions."

He said "not every single adviser" agreed with him on every point, "but we do agree on the fundamentals - that warming is real and caused by humans."

Mr. Gore added that he perceived no general backlash among scientists against his work. "I have received a great deal of positive feedback," he said. "I have also received comments about items that should be changed, and I have updated the book and slideshow to reflect these comments." He gave no specifics on which points he had revised.

He said that after 30 years of trying to communicate the dangers of global warming, "I think that I'm finally getting a little better at it."

While reviewers tended to praise the book and movie, vocal skeptics of global warming protested almost immediately. Richard S. Lindzen, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has long expressed skepticism about dire climate predictions, accused Mr. Gore in The Wall Street Journal of "shrill alarmism."

Some of Mr. Gore's centrist detractors point to a report last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming. The panel went further than ever before in saying that humans were the main cause of the globe's warming since 1950, part of Mr. Gore's message that few scientists dispute. But it also portrayed climate change as a slow-motion process.

It estimated that the world's seas in this century would rise a maximum of 23 inches - down from earlier estimates. Mr. Gore, citing no particular time frame, envisions rises of up to 20 feet and depicts parts of New York, Florida and other heavily populated areas as sinking beneath the waves, implying, at least visually, that inundation is imminent.

Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark long skeptical of catastrophic global warming, said in a syndicated article that the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, had refrained from scaremongering. "Climate change is a real and serious problem" that calls for careful analysis and sound policy, Dr. Lomborg said. "The cacophony of screaming," he added, "does not help."

So too, a report last June by the National Academies seemed to contradict Mr. Gore's portrayal of recent temperatures as the highest in the past millennium. Instead, the report said, current highs appeared unrivaled since only 1600, the tail end of a temperature rise known as the medieval warm period.

Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said on a blog that Mr. Gore's film did "indeed do a pretty good job of presenting the most dire scenarios." But the June report, he added, shows "that all we really know is that we are warmer now than we were during the last 400 years."

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore's claim that the energy industry ran a "disinformation campaign" that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

"Hardly a week goes by," Dr. Peiser said, "without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory," including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

"Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet," Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. "Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change."

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore's claim that "our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this" threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century."

Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore's assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had corrupted. "I've never been paid a nickel by an oil company," Dr. Easterbrook told the group. "And I'm not a Republican ."

Biologists, too, have gotten into the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming's effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as spreading malaria .

"For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims," Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald Tribune. "We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts."

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who advised Mr. Gore on the book and movie, said that reasonable scientists disagreed on the malaria issue and other points that the critics had raised. In general, he said, Mr. Gore had distinguished himself for integrity.

"On balance, he did quite well - a credible and entertaining job on a difficult subject," Dr. Oppenheimer said. "For that, he deserves a lot of credit. If you rake him over the coals, you're going to find people who disagree. But in terms of the big picture, he got it right."

Political - The Left holds Opinons higher than Facts

Hear and see how the far-left are totally unable to reason, discuss facts, or make clear what their solution to problems are:

• Sunsara Taylor doesn't condemn radicals disrupting college guest speakers 11/20/07
• Straight Facts where Liberals were flat wrong on major issues.
• Sunsara Taylor doesn't let facts stand in the way of making her point - 3/20/07
• Everyone is entitled to their opinion - Listen to Whoopi tell how an opinion is not dumb even though there is no logic behind it.  Hmm..., Whoopi would respect my opinion that "the sun will not rise tomorrow".
• Angela Alioto 11/8/05 - See how Angela defends idealism even when it is proven to not work.
• Medea Benjamin of "Code Pink" 3/20/06

This is a $50 lesson on Socialism

Recently, while I was shoveling snow my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.

During our friendly conversation, I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up.

She said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied... "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed with pride!

"Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" I told her.

"What do you mean?" she replied.

So I told her, "You can come over to my house and shovel my snow and I'll pay you $50.

Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out,and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and shovel your snow and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

Her parents aren't speaking to me.

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

The Englishman:

Throws away the cup of coffee and walks away

The American:

Takes out the fly and drinks the coffee

The Chinese:

Eats the fly and throws away the coffee

The Israeli:

Sells the coffee to the American, the fly to the Chinese, and buys himself a new cup of coffee

The Palestinian:

Blames the Israeli for the violent act of putting the fly in his coffee

Asks the UN for aid

takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee

Uses the money to purchase explosives

Blows up the coffee house, where the Englishman, the American, and the Chinese are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he was too aggressive

"US Senior Kills Mugger"

U.S. seniors kill mugger in Costa Rica
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/269813,CST-NWS-costa23.article)

February 23, 2007

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- A tour group of U.S. senior citizens fought off a band of muggers in eastern Costa Rica, sending two of the assailants fleeing and killing a third, police said Thursday.

One of the tourists -- a retired U.S. serviceman who officials estimated was in his 70s -- allegedly put Warner Segura in a headlock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon.

The Americans had arrived in Limon on the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Carnival Liberty.

"It was a group of 12 senior citizens from the United States who were going to spend a few hours in the area, but their tour bus entered a dangerous sector known as Cieneguita," Hernandez said.

The tourists drove Segura to the local Red Cross branch, but he was declared dead, Hernandez said.

Costa Rican authorities said they did not plan to file charges against the tourists, who left on their cruise ship.

"They were in their right to defend themselves after being held up," Hernandez said.

AP

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

"Residents defend themselves in New Orleans"
Neighbors tell of gun battles after the storm

By Andy Sullivan

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 21 (Reuters) - After the storm came the carjackers and burglars. Then came the gun battles and the chemical explosions that shook the restored Victorians in New Orleans' Algiers Point neighborhood.

"The hurricane was a breeze compared with the crime and terror that followed," said Gregg Harris, a psychotherapist who lives in the battered area.

As life returned to this close-knit neighborhood three weeks after Hurricane Katrina, residents said they hoped their experience could convince political leaders to get serious about the violence and poor services that have long been an unfortunate hallmark of their city.

"I think now it's a wake-up call," Harris said.

After the storm, the neighborhood association had to act as law enforcement and emergency response unit as city services collapsed and the police force was unable to protect them.

Citizens organized armed patrols and checked on the elderly. They slept on their porches with loaded shotguns and bolted awake when intruders stumbled on the aluminum cans they had scattered on the sidewalk.

Gunshots rang out for days, sometimes terrifyingly close.

For Harris, the first warning sign came on Tuesday, the day after the storm, when two young men hit his partner, Vinnie Pervel, over the head and drove off with his Ford van.

"A police car drove up behind me and saw it happening but he didn't do anything," said Pervel, who heads the 1,500-household neighborhood association.

Then residents heard that police vehicles were being carjacked and looters were taking guns and ammunition from nearby stores.

"We thought, 'Perhaps this is going to get really ugly,'" said Gareth Stubbs, a marine surveyor who lives across Pelican Street from Harris and Pervel.

A Texas woman who runs a Web site called Polimom.com served as a link between those who stayed and those who had left. With her help, they stockpiled an arsenal of shotguns, derringer pistols and an old AK-47.

They were put to use the next day.

"Some looters came up and pulled a gun on the wrong group of men," said Harris, who said he did not fire a gun himself and declined to say who else was involved in the battle.

"Two men were shot right there," Harris said, pointing down the street as he watered his rose bushes. "One was shot in the back, the other in the leg, and the third I was told made it a block and a half before he died in the street. I did not go down to see the body."

The next day a nearby stockpile of chemicals exploded, shaking the houses and sending a fireball 300 feet into the sky. The fire burned for another three days, Harris said.

"For five days we didn't need FEMA, the Red Cross or the National Guard," Harris said. "The neighborhood took care of itself.