First Book of Government...

Via my mom...

FIRST BOOK OF GOVERNMENT ...


Obama is the shepherd I did not want.
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my faith in the Republican party.
He guideth me in the path of unemployment for his party's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the bread line,
I shall fear no hunger, for his bailouts are with me.
He has anointed my income with taxes,
My expenses runneth over.
Surely, poverty and hard living will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will live in a mortgaged home forever.
I am glad I am American,
I am glad that I am free.
But I wish I was a dog ...
And Obama was a tree.

In the past few weeks, I've noticed more and more of my lefty (or left-leaning) friends starting to voice their disatisfaction with Obama. One in particular astonished me with her sudden transformation from a slavering Obama lover into a disenchanted Democrat/liberal/progressive who is now starting to listen to the Tea Party types. I told her about Reason magazine (which she had never heard of), and after reading their web site for a while she up and subscribed.

Enough transformations like that and I might look more favorably on Obama, for an entirely unexpected reason!

Yup, She's Got Experience...

Via my mom:

A woman applying for a job in a Florida lemon grove seemed to be far too qualified for the job.

The foreman frowned and said, "I have to ask you this; have you had any actual experience in picking lemons?"

She replied: "I've been divorced three times and I voted for Obama."

Sunspots Disappearing?

An interesting post over on Watts Up With That? about the declining magnetic field strength of the sun's “spots”. Note that the vertical axis (magnetic field strength in gauss) is exagerated by crossing the X axis at 1800 instead of 0.  But still, the downward slope is clear enough.

The article speculates that if and when the field strength dips below about 1300 gauss, the sun's spots will become invisible.  No big loss there, but there are other consequences: slightly lower solar luminance and more cosmic rays striking our atmosphere (and therefore easier cloud formation, and therefore cooler climate). 

In other words, this looks like an influence on our climate that is in the opposite direction of global warming.  A considerable body of climatologists believe that solor cycles like these, combined with details of the earth's orbit (its elliptical shape, precession and other “wobbles”, etc.), are the primary drivers behind historical ice ages. 

Hmmm....