I"m watching the various radar and satellite views of Gustav as he looms below New Orleans, and one indicator sticks out at me--

Just after the storm crossed over western Cuba, soaking the poor victims at Guantanamo Bay, the average wind speed ran up past 150 mph, and it came very near to becoming a Cat 5.

Now, as it is more than halfway across the Gulf, it has dropped to 115 mph in a one minute average.  Cat 3 headed for Cat 2.   It might be 110 or less when it makes landfall.

The Gulf is COOLER than normal, and the cool waters are taking some of the steam out of this hurricane.

Don't expect the media to discuss the fact that the Gulf is cooler than normal.  Instead, they'll be busy talking about how Bush killed so many people during Katrina.

About this.

Month after month, year after year, this same question is polled by these same people, the Battleground Poll.

Do you consider yourself--

very conservative?

Somewhat conservative?

Moderate?

Somewhat liberal?

Very liberal?

The first two responses tallied up 60% of Americans.  The last two?  36%.  This means more than 95% of respondents answered the question, and that leaves about 5% for the other two possibilities:

Moderate - 2%

Did not answer - 3%

This is a steady, repeatable result over the years, folks.  America is NOT a liberal nation.  The vast majority of Americans try to live conservative lives with conservative principles. 

This is the reason liberals hate the 'label' thing.  When they are called liberals, they are NOT POPULAR.  It's why they say they're 'progressives', but clearly the nation is not fooled. 

So why do liberal candidates get more than 36% of positive responses in polls?  Well, this shows that most polls are for one reason or another not actually representative.  It's all in the 'weighting' of political party membership, trying to factor in 'independents', etc.

But the reality is, if a conservative candidate runs for any national office on strongly stated conservative principles, that candidate is likely to win. 

McCain knows this.  This is why he came down so solidly conservative at the Saddlesore Church event. 

And Sarah Palin will take up any slack in his own defense of conservative principles, which we all know can be less than robust.

McCain's numbers were at their worst during the Obama mania at the end of their primary, and are at their best RIGHT NOW, following Saddlesore and Palin's joining the ticket. 

Some polls now show McCain ahead among likely voters.  Strong, steady, principled defense of conservatism, America and apple pie and baseball will win this election.  Because America is NOT a liberal nation.

Forget comparisons of this and that experience.  Forget about all the nuances of comparison the media have been tossing out for hours.

I listened to this woman's acceptance speech on the radio, and when it was over, I was JUBILANT.

Because not only is she a solid, mainstream, core convictions conservative..... 

But her selection shows me that McCain GETS IT.

I haven't felt this overall good about hearing what a candidate believes since Reagan himself was still giving speeches.

Romney's speech at that think tank after he withdrew from the primary was pretty good, but Palin's taken the gold.

I am at present quite convinced that today John McCain won the presidency.

Have you seen the Temple of Barack, erected hastily by the concert stagecrafters who did the most recent Britney Spears stageworks?

It stands on the hallowed ground at Invesco Field, the latest version of Mile High Stadium, home of the Broncos.  And from between its marbled porticoes will emerge tonight the Messiah, like Lincoln getting up and walking out of his own memorial monument.

Obama is, after all, the same height as Lincoln.

The folks at Breitbart have noted the fun the right seems to be having with Obama's temple.  And perhaps this explains Clinton's absence from the stadium tonight.

Maybe the temple has virgins and the organizers were just being prudent.

 Interestingly, this whole idea of a move to the stadium for his acceptance speech came about before his trip to Germany had been executed, and it's clear that his staff has absorbed the less than stellar impact this trip made on Barack's numbers.  Now they're engaged in trying to walk that fine line between impressing the stupid like a god among them and seeming 'down to earth' for the not-so-stupid, so as not to annoy them with pretentiousness.

A month ago they wouldn't have worried about that second part.  Nice to see they learn on the job.

Even the speech, they say, has been 'toned down' from its lofty and atmospheric original intent, brought back to earth so the Messiah can seem like one of the humans whom he graces with his presence.

The New York Times has apparently come up with an article about him that drools over his superhuman qualities, keen focus, control of his emotions, attention to higher goals, etc.  Do not read with a full stomach.  Seriously, it's nauseating.  Who else would even the Times talk about in this fawning way?  I can't think of anyone.

For me, Obama still has not talked in specifics about his planned programs for this nation.  That is the deal, the whole deal.  Once people begin to digest and understand how he thinks, what he believes and what he intends for us, I am convinced he will NEVER be elected without a massive and recordbreaking bit of skullduggery, which is by no means out of the question.

Reference point -- when Michelle spoke earlier this week about 'not seeing the world as it is but the world as it SHOULD be', she was lifting lines from a book by one of America's best known communist radicals, Saul Alinsky, who endorsed violence and outright deception as means not unworthy of the ends he had in mind.

The Obamas are steeped in the kind of social radicalism that permits and welcomes violent change for the sake of change, an uprooting and upending of our present traditional capitalism-based society in favor of socialism, fascism and communism. If you don't understand the danger in this, please do some basic reading before you slide into that voting booth in the fall.

All day long I listened as various conservative commentators and TV yakking heads gave various opinions about Hillary's orange pantsuit.

Nobody got it.  NOBODY.

I must be the only person in AMERICA who realized that an orange pantsuit on a blue background was a nod to the Denver Broncos.

Those are their colors, after all.

But they're definitely not HER colors.  :-)

If she's smart, she'll let that pantsuit keep traveling.

We've been warned for years that America was becoming fascist, that we were losing our freedoms, that repression of the press and silencing of voices were happening, that journalists were only a hand signal away from taking up residence at Gitmo-- 

AND THEY WERE RIGHT.

As usual, when Dems accuse Republicans of anything, it turns out to be something the Dems in fact are doing.

Senator Joe Biden is proud, as any American would be, to serve on the ticket with--

BARACK AMERICA.

Here is an interview with a very very smart guy, a billionaire Canadian investor who has made a bloody FORTUNE in times when others have staggered and stumbled... 

And this guy believes we have passed 'peak oil' and production will decline, in some areas precipitously because of advanced recovery technologies causing more rapid depletion and so forth.

But he does not MENTION the fact that trillions of recoverable barrels of oil are being ignored, and millions of square miles of fertile drilling areas are not even being electronically EXPLORED due to AMERICAN LAW THAT PUTS THE OIL OFF LIMITS.

What happens to his theory if that situation is reversed?  And why doesn't he even mention it?  Does he factor this possibility in?  Or does he know something we don't?  Does he believe that oil will forever be off limits?  Seems like he isn't even concerned by the possibility of a plentiful supply in the future.  He's betting the other way.

Many oil fields have been shown to have increased production over time WITHOUT technologies like water injection and vibration, with only time to rest.  Some areas naturally recuperate, if the production pressure is off.  And if some areas are in fact past the 50% mark, surely others in the American sphere are still sitting, fat and juicy at 100%, just waiting for a little COMMON SENSE from our own legislators?

There is more recoverable oil in America, untapped, than in several other big producer countries combined. 

But who suffers if the price goes down? 

Saudi princes, Venezuelan dictators, a certain Russian KGB veteran....  even Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore and T-bone Pickens.  Every famous person pushing green these days is likely to be heavily invested in the stock of companies poised to profit from redirected taxpayer subsidies toward green energy and alternatives.  

It's a rogue's gallery that's invested in the pain and suffering of the American consumer and the weakening of its economy.  But we keep putting the rogues in office.

Continuing the theme of the post below, here is the latest Ski Report from the slopes of New Zealand's finest ski resorts.

The most snow EVER.

Al Gore, fire up the non-bio-diesels on the 100 ft. houseboat you bought, and start the CO2 spewing.  We're going to need it.

(Gore claims his engines are bio diesel, but of course it's just a word, and there are no sources of bio diesel fuel anywhere near the lake that his monster houseboat floats in.)

We've been told for years that a 'scientific consensus' on a horrific future of heat and misery is enough to cause us to happily accept strict regulation and punitive taxes, 'for our own good', to save the planet.

I noted here a couple of years back that some scientists from the former Soviet Union had predicted the world would be COOLER in ten years (2015) than it is now (2005).

Over these past three years, at least, they've been proven right.  Chicago reports the fewest 90 degree or more days in well over 100 years this summer.  Likewise Juneau, Alaska, with the fewest 70+ days, even the fewest 65+ days in decades.  Summer hasn't really taken off in the northern hemisphere.

Gore's crowd gets more shrill and demanding as the pressure of 'consensus' mounts--  the consensus that they're full of it.

Now a Mexican scientist has joined the Russians and formed a 'consensus' on the future, and it isn't good.

A new ice age is coming, he warns.  More than 50 years of considerably cooler temps are headed our way.

Most people don't think about this, but warmer weather opens up more agriculture, grows more food, as more land gets more sunshine during the growing season.  Places that were too cool to grow temperate crops would be just right.  Food supplies would increase.

But cooling?  That would reduce, sometimes dramatically, the amount and the kind of food crops that will be harvested.

Gore's crowd had better get off his brand new 100 foot houseboat and pay attention.  The party is over.  Global warming, when this is said and done, will be the new GOAL of governments all across the world, and we'll all be THANKED for spewing carbon into the atmosphere.  Assuming the Gore crowd is even right that CO2 causes warming; their silly movie does not mention that increased CO2 levels in history are LAGGING increased temperatures by almost a thousand years.

In fact, if it gets cold, we're probably not going to be able to do anything about it.

Roseanne has apparently been blogging for a long time, or at least she takes credit for having done so.

Between gratuitous (and unfunny) insults flung at good people and the gratuitous insults flung at ANYONE who even hints of drifting from the hardcore nutroots leftist line for any reason, Roseanne has succeeded in what I thought was impossible.

She has dramatically increased my disdain for her. 

She's the female version of Al Franken.  She hasn't been funny in 15 years and has become gratingly loud in her leftist politics. 

Now if only she would run for office.  :-)

When I was younger and becoming aware of the world and of history, I wondered how it was possible that a thing like fascism could take such a hold on a seemingly educated and advanced free society, like Germany or Italy. 

I know better now.  Fascism is something that a certain number of people in any society actively try to bring upon themselves, being already willing to obey the diktats of 'wisdom' and growing ever more insistent that others do the same.

Roseanne is a lefty greenie fascist.  If you don't believe and act as she does, you are horrible and you need to be punished.  Insults are the beginning, and I have little difficulty imagining that a person like her could take several steps past insults and do actual harm to people.  She is certainly mean-spirited enough, cruel enough. 

Read a few posts from her blog on that website. 

Comments do not appear to be enabled on that blog.  Quel surprise.

I have wondered for weeks why Nancy Pelosi seems willing almost to ruin her own party by continuing to oppose the will of the American people, who want more drilling to lower the price of gasoline.

Of course, she will not ever lose her seat for this; she is from the People's Republic of San Francisco.  But aside from the fact that her seat is safe, what is her motive for risking the reelection potential of so many in her own party? 

Michelle Malkin has potential answers, and much is to be learned here. 

I was suspicious from day one of the ole' T Bone.  Mr. Pickens leads off his advertisements with the Democrat talking point, "we can't drill our way out of this problem".

As soon as I heard it, I thought "this man is deceiving people".  It remained only to find out how.

Because the fact is, we CAN drill our way out of high gasoline prices.  Oil prices have plummeted very recently, and it is almost entirely due to the fact that the world has begun to believe that America will soon add its supply to the world market, and this reduces future demand and thus present buying pressure on those future deliveries.  Pelosi herself added to this belief recently, when she speculated that she might allow a vote on drilling under certain circumstances.

America has more oil supply than several other nations COMBINED.  And we don't even really know how much we have, since much of the offshore deposits have not been mapped for more than thirty years and thus have missed out on the newest geophysical technology, which is much more capable of identifying oil deposits than the stuff from back in the days of the vacuum tube.  Any area that is surveyed reveals more oil than did the surveys of thirty years ago.  It is certain that we have considerably more than the books currently show. 

But the offshore areas have not been surveyed because it is ILLEGAL.

Or it was.  We'll know come September if it will remain so, because the offshore drilling ban expires in September and Congress will have to pass it again to prevent such activities.

The bombshell is in the article, as is the foundation of many future questions.  Because you see, Pelosi has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the initial public offering of stock in a company owned by Mr. Pickens, one that plans to earn government subsidies providing alternative power for electricity.

Anyone who understands the circumstances will understand that, if gasoline and oil remains expensive, then it will be easier to make the public and Congress go along with a government subsidized project to get electric power from alternative sources, like the hundreds of windmills Pickens has already built, at a cost to him of billions.

But if we drill and add substantively to the supply, and the price goes down, Pickens and Pelosi and all the other investors will not make a cent, and might lose money.  Because if one can confidently say that oil prices will stay low for a good long time, the public will vigorously oppose any taxpayer subsidies for electricity that costs more than the bills they are paying NOW.

So Pickens is betting the windmill farm on a future of steady and permanent government subsidies.  So is Pelosi.

My follow-up question is, WHO ELSE IS INVESTED IN THESE DEALS?

Who stands to profit hugely from government subsidies for alternative electric power?  We might never know, because only politicians have to do public disclosure of their financial condition.  But I will bet MY farm that there are LOTS of investors in these schemes who are able, for whatever reason, to steer and cajole and FORCE the Democrats to go along with the plan and start the subsidies flowing.

And it won't happen if gasoline prices get low again.

The corn growers have got their share, and that money is rushing like Niagara Falls toward Nebraska and Iowa.  Ethanol pollutes more and gives off less energy than gasoline, and is a huge net negative for the 'climate crisis', but never mind; once the money is flowing, everyone just stops talking about it.  They're afraid to disrupt the flow.  It becomes a genuine black hole, swallowing up all light and sound, and many billions of taxpayer dollars too.

Now the windmill guy, T Bone, and his conspirators in Democrat politics who own stock in his ventures (Al Gore, anyone?) are working feverishly to stifle the voice and break the will of the American people, and in that process to soften them up so their wallets can be lightened without causing a revolution.

For future reference--  if the problem is high gasoline and oil prices because the demand is outstripping the supply, then the answer to the problem is more supply.  Lots more.  America has it.  We could realistically double the supply on the market within a few years.  What do you suppose that would do to prices?

WE CAN MOST CERTAINLY DRILL OUR WAY OUT OF THIS PROBLEM.

And anyone who says we can't is LYING.  T. Boone Pickens is a  LIAR.  

Nancy Pelosi is a LIAR.  But I repeat myself.

Does it make you mad that democrats and rich kooks like Pickens have devised this plan to hose the taxpayer by artificially ramping up the price of a tank of gas so their stupid windmills will seem sensible?

Me too.

UPDATE--  It's slowly coming out.  Here is a new article explaining in detail the plans he's making and the liberties he's taking with your money so that he will make more billions to go with the billions he's already got.  What is he, 80 years old?  Why is he still trying to get richer?  And after reading this article I'm asking myself, is there ANYTHING this man WON'T do to make money?

He is out to sell off the southwest's premiere aquifer, to sell water by the billions of gallons and deplete a natural resource whose presence is vital for all kinds of reasons, and he's out to abuse law and trample property rights so he can get public dollars to pay for the electric cables to transmit the power he will sell us from his windmills.

It's all in how much public dollars he can get to facilitate his plan.  Your money will go to make his profits. 

His ads begin with the idea that his 'Pickens Plan' can be done with PRIVATE investments.  HE IS LYING.

Pickens actually IS the evil oilman liberals have always held up, the lead character in "There will be blood", or the corrupt character of Michael Caine in that silly Steven Seagal movie about the refinery, or the J. R. Ewing character in Dallas.  Pickens is grasping and deceitful, and appears primed to get away with all of it.   He is the manifestation of the 'I'm rich, who's gonna stop me?' stereotype, like George Soros trying to buy our elections for Gore and Kerry. 

Pickens aims to sell us our own water at a premium, and to use imminent domain laws to seize private property so he can build his power towers.  He is buying legislators so that he will be able to do that imminent domain trick.  Read the article, and prepare to puke.

When John Edwards admitted that recently he had become enamored with himself, begun to believe he was special, that he could do what he wanted, he was indeed telling the truth. 

Just not the whole truth.

If he were an honest man, he would admit that he still feels this way today, and has for a very long time.

Otherwise why would he have an affair while campaigning on the premise of being 'in love with the same woman for 31 years'?

And when asked about it, he gave the Clinton response, 'tabloid trash, gotta get back to the business of the people'.  And why not?  It worked for Clinton.

And when he was forced by events to admit the affair, he specifically denied fatherhood, saying he'd be willing to do a paternity test while undoubtedly knowing at that moment that SHE would not do it.  As if the public, in his view, would forgive an affair but not a love child.  He remembers the Clinton lesson well, and the lessons of those who have had children out of wedlock and are no longer in office.  He plays this as if he is literally scanning the headlines in old newspapers and saying exactly what other people have gotten away with, and avoiding saying the things over which others have lost their careers in politics.  As if there is a template to follow that offers a high chance of success.  Thanks, Bill Clinton, for making this an option in today's politics.  It's a special legacy you leave us.

Rielle Hunter is at heart a silly person, a new ager, desperate for some sense of personal validity and inventing same out of whole cloth.  But she is attractive, and was drawn to him.  She has told many people she loves him, gave him the nickname "love lips".  And under those circumstances, what is the likelihood that she was having sex with other men at the same time?  She acted dreamily in love in front of those who knew her best, told them her new love was a married man with complications, that he had kids and that his wife was sick.

Her sister now says it's preposterous that she would have a baby by another man during this time.  The unspoken message was this-- that if she got pregnant by accident on a one night stand, she would simply have an abortion and be done with it. 

And this makes sense, given her liberal predilections and her constant search for the perfect GURU.  (Hint- they're all female, these gurus.  If she fould a male guru who made her feel good about herself, she'd probably jump his bones.)

So why did she have what is likely to be Edwards' baby on purpose?  The key is that it's on PURPOSE.  I seriously doubt he believed she could get pregnant, otherwise he would not have taken that chance.  And if you're John Edwards, you DO ask questions to assure yourself of this, because you KNOW it would destroy your political career.

But Rielle Hunter (born Lisa Druck, by the way, and I don't know if she's even legally changed her name) had this baby.  Could it be because she wanted an extra hook, a permanent attachment to the money pipe?  After all, these guys have kept her in luxury since the beginning.  According to her sister, she was hired by the campaign AFTER the affair began, no doubt to keep her around for the relief of John's stress on the campaign trail or what have you.  And during that time his campaign paid her well over $100,000 for her 'film making'.

He'd better HOPE she didn't make any extracurricular films. 

But SINCE then, they've paid her even more.  Fred Baron, a Dallas lawyer and an Edwards finance guy, has paid for her move to California and has paid her hotel bills and a personal stipend of $15,000 a month, for many months.  She is living in the LAP OF LUXURY, and does essentially nothing.  Oh, there's ONE thing she does, and that's avoid the media.  I suppose it could be called work, especially these days.  :-)

Why would Fred Baron, an Edwards finance committee CHAIRPERSON, pay this woman a monthly income that adds up to $180,000 a year if the father of the baby is Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign guy with a wife and kids?  What does Mr. Baron owe to Mr. Young?

Nothing, of course.  But he DOES have a lot invested in Mr. Edwards, who is himself a trial lawyer and doubtless would advance that cause as president, to the detriment of normal people everywhere.

If John Edwards was an honest man, he would have said "I admit to the affair, I am the baby's father, I am ashamed of myself and sorry to have humiliated my family, I have let down the public who has put their trust in me, and today I announce my withdrawal from all future public life.  I will try to recompense those I have hurt, and you won't be hearing my name in the news again.  I am not a good enough man to have leadership responsibility."

That is the answer of an honest man caught in an affair during an endless political campaign.  He owns up to it.

But Edwards owned up to half of it, and that under relentless pressure from new media while getting all sorts of help from the old.  It was after the story had been essentially PROVEN that the MSM decided to climb on board the train, as their own credibility was under serious threat.

So Edwards admitted to an affair, over a short period of weeks, two years ago, in 2006, as he emphasized over and over on Nightline.  Which immediately made me believe, by the way, that it was much longer and much more recent in scope.  He insisted it was yesterday's news, after having said yesterday that it was tabloid trash.  And he specifically denied paternity, knowing as he did at that moment that it will never be proven one way or the other, because Hunter had already promised her resistance to the idea. 

After all, why would she turn off the money spigot?  Her odds of becoming a paid celeb at her age are a bit long.  She could sell her story, but that would be a one time deal, and raising this child connects her to the money tree for LIFE, or at least for 18 years.

Do you doubt she had a plan?  She knew Elizabeth was unlikely to survive for too many more years.  She had probably been assured by the weasel Edwards that she was the next Mrs. Edwards, and she was not unimaginative (find her blog, but not on a full stomach) and could certainly envision herself as first lady. 

Don't blow corn flakes out your nose.  :-)  From her end, with her brain, this was a real possibility.

And if she already had his child, she was already permanently connected to him.  This meant she just had to wait, and at a certain time she could reveal to the world that the child was his all along.  Probably on the eve of the inauguration of the next president. 

And they lived happily ever after.  With Secret Service protection and a retirement income in the mid six figures, not counting what Edwards himself already has.  Imagine the SPEAKING TOURS.

An American Communist Organization of Radical Nitwits called ACORN (a super-liberal and very race-oriented political action group whose raison d'etre is signing up new voters), is again guilty of signing up dead, fictional and otherwise illegitimate 'new voters'.  They keep getting caught doing this, and they never actually get a proper government intervention.  They claim it was rogue workers, the cards get turned in anyway, and without a doubt at least some of the illegitimate ones get onto the rolls, votes which somehow will come in, as 'rogue workers' get into different polling places signing in as these illegitimately registered fake people.  And their votes will count.  This haul netted over 300 phony voter registrations, in an area that got 35,000 votes in the last presidential election.  That means just the bad registrations that were CAUGHT this time was equal to almost 1% of the electorate, and there is NO doubt that many more are already in the system and that it's already gamed for 2008.  Wisconsin's been ugly; last year lots of Canadians somehow ended up coming across the border and voting, all Democrat of course.  And there was the incident in which Republican vehicles used for bringing voters in to the polls were sabotaged, tires slashed, etc., and it ended up being a son of a local Dem politician who DID IT.

Four other organizations are involved in this latest embarrassment, and of course all five of them are liberal democrat organizations.  And I read this week that ACORN is one of the beneficiaries of a newly passed spending bill allotting 10 billion taxpayer dollars for various purposes, and some of it goes to them. 

I am paying for an organization whose self-appointed task is to cheat at elections so that my side loses. 

Today I read that far more lefty blogs are filled with blue language than the blogs from the right.  After I got over my shock at this fact, I concluded that this is the least harmful of their pursuits and I wish it was all they were up to. 

But their more serious activities can even get a curse out of ME.

Read this quick update from Kate Norley, another of America's finest, the Iraq war veteran turned war correspondent, ready now to go back to where she saw so many friends die and saved so many more. 

Kate is one of many who are managing, with help from friends and determined bloggers like the Blackfive bunch, to bring America the real news from the middle east without the 'filter' of the MSM, which has turned to ignoring Iraq now that the bad news is being outshined by the good.

Ask yourself if you can ever imagine George Clooney, George Soros, Harry Reid, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Charlie Rangel or any of the starlets of Hollywood or congress bending down with tears in eyes and kissing the sweet soil of America the beloved. 

Not gonna happen.  Their entire fame and fortune is inextricably bound up in the 'badness' of America, as contrasted by THEIR OWN 'essential goodness', so that we the stupid voters will realize we need to put THEM in charge of 'fixing' this nation.

Well, they're in charge now. 

So how's that workin' out for 'em?

I believe America is a force for good in the world, and that the world is far better off for our existence and our engagement of the nations, at peace and at war.  We are an anomaly in history, a nation formed in its foundations by careful consideration of what is right and good.  No other nation is like us, and many want to be, in spite of the modern trendy international pastime of speaking ill of us.

Democrats believe America is essentially wrong and bad, and must be fixed.  They speak of our greatness grudgingly, and of our goodness not at all.  But people like Kate and Jimbo and the Blackfive circle are proof positive that America is good and Democrats are wrong.