Or alternatively titled: “Why I Question Science to Begin With”
Hey cat lovers, do you have your high blood pressure medicine near by? Because you’re probably going to need it – get this, scientists NOW claim that CATS, of all things, are causing Global Warming, oops, I mean, Climate Change (I must remember to use the current terminology. After all, it began as Global Cooling, then Global Warming and now it’s Climate Change. Darn that cyclical weather).
Domestic cats, officially considered an invasive species, kill at least a hundred million birds in the US every year—dwarfing the number killed by wind turbines. They’re also responsible for at least 33 avian extinctions worldwide. A recent Smithsonian Institution study found that cats caused 79 percent of deaths of juvenile catbirds in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Bad news, since birds are key to protecting ecosystems from the stresses of climate change—a 2010 study found that they save plants from marauding insects that proliferate as the world warms.
But wait, it gets better. Mother Jones even provides a video to “back” up the claim, complete with a graph! (*gasp* NOT a graph. It MUST be legit then!!!)
Hold on, it gets even better … apparently, not only do cats CAUSE Climate Change but they’re also multiplying BECAUSE OF Climate Change.
Droves of cats and kittens are swarming into animal shelters nationwide, and global warming is to blame, according to one pet adoption group.
Several shelters operated by a national adoption organization called Pets Across America reported a 30 percent increase in intakes of cats and kittens from 2005 to 2006, and other shelters across the nation have reported similar spikes of stray, owned and feral cats.
The cause of this feline flood is an extended cat breeding season thanks to the world’s warming temperatures, according to the group, which is one of the country’s oldest and largest animal welfare organizations.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get even more bizarre, there is this response from a cat activist:
I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or lower my opinion of this country’s intelligence level another point.
Seriously. Seriously??
I suppose, now, to save the planet, we need to kill off all the cats. I wonder what PETA would think of that proposal?
*SIGH*
Once again – Global Warming is Natural – Not Man-Made. We need to definitely work on keeping our pollution to a minimum but to assume that we humans, or even a species, are big enough, or even important enough, to impact our planet is ludicrous.
Kevin and I went and picked up Jazz’s car on Wednesday, finally.
It's an '03 Mazda Protégé - 98,000 miles
We bought it on Saturday, but noticed that the horn wasn’t working and there was a bumping noise near the back wheels when we took it for a test drive.
Kevin looked under the car and noticed that the sway bar had come loose and it needed a new attachment and he could fix that himself. But the horn … we weren’t going to buy a car that had a pretty serious safety issue and of course, it wouldn’t pass inspection like that.
So, the car dealer said they would get those items fixed for us. (I’m sort of surprised they even thought it was okay to try and sell the car without a horn. I’m thinking they were betting on the fact that we wouldn’t notice, or that we wouldn’t ask questions about the car when they sold it. I’m only speculating, but it just seems a little odd to me that they wouldn’t fix these things FIRST and then just add the cost to the price of the car, but whatever).
The dealer told us that we could pick it up on Monday.
We called the dealer on Monday, it wasn’t ready, call back and 5:00, he said.
We called back at 5:00, the part hadn’t come in and it still wasn’t ready, call back on Tuesday.
We called back on Tuesday, but the dealer said the garage hadn’t called him back (why he didn’t call the garage is beyond me).
Okay now I’m starting to get suspicious. Kevin had looked up the sway bar part online and noticed that you could buy the part at O’Reilly’s for like $40 bucks and they could have it at the nearest store within an hour. (O’Reilly’s rocks, by the way). So … what exactly was the hold up with the garage? They must have gone through the dealer to get the part which is kind of silly considering that takes twice as long and likely costs twice as much.
I was starting to get the feeling we were being given the run around. I mean, if there’s a problem, then tell me, don’t assume that I’m a person who can be swept under the rug, ESPECIALLY after already spending the money and having nothing to show for it.
That crap doesn’t fly with me.
So on Wednesday, Kevin got a bit firmer with them. When the dealer told us that the garage still hadn’t called him, we got the garage’s number and called ourselves. They told us the horn had been fixed and they would have the sway bar fixed that day (after Kevin told them that we would be by at 4:30 to pick up the car).
We arrived at the garage at the appointed time and the lo and behold, the car was ready.
*Side note: We’re nice people and we give people a lot of leeway, but there comes a point where nice just doesn’t cut it anymore and you need to be a little more firm with people. I’m not saying to be an asshole, but some people just take advantage of overly nice people. Just sayin’.
When we got it home, Kevin showed me what they had done with the horn.
Apparently, in order to avoid messing up the airbag in the steering wheel (because replacing air bags is INSANELY EXPENSIVE), they drilled a hole in the dashboard and rerouted the horn through that opening. Now, you have to press a button to make the horn work – it’s not on the steering wheel. Weird, right? But in some ways, it might be better, because in order to make a normal horn work, you need to hit an exact spot on the steering wheel and when it’s an emergency, you don’t exactly have time to feel your way around. Oh well. It passed inspection and it works great now, so …
I’ve taken Jazz out to a large parking lot to practice a few times now and I must admit, the boy is doing pretty well for never having driven before.
His turns, starts and stops are still rough and jerky (which makes me carsick so we sort of have to take breaks so mom can catch her breath – HA!), but we’re making progress. His parking is actually pretty good. He’s a bit crooked, but it’s better than a lot of parking jobs I see out there from seasoned drivers.
I’m hoping we’ll get to a point where he can drive to band camp in a few weeks, but I’m not sure he’ll be ready for that by then. I tend to take these driving lessons pretty slow and want to make sure the boys feel comfortable enough to move on to more advanced roads before actually going there.
Jazz is more enthusiastic about driving than Dude ever was. He likes new challenges – Dude doesn’t like change or challenges – he’s more comfortable settling into routines and he doesn’t like surprises. (He gets that from me). Of course, we’re just getting started so the newness will likely wear off and I’ll have to put on my “mom means business” hat before long.
But here we are … teaching our youngest son how to drive.
My baby is learning to drive. WAH!
P.S. In case anyone is wondering why I’m teaching the boys to drive and not Kevin – it’s because Kevin is one of those drivers.
“Watch out for that car! He’s swerving! Slow down!”
“There’s a squirrel. Don’t hit the squirrel.”
“I think I see a pedistrian one mile away. DON’T HIT HIM!”
And then he proceeds to tell the boys horror stories that get them so shook up, paranoid and freaked out they’re like petrified humans behind the steering wheel when he’s done and they’re afraid to make even simple decisions from that point on. I tend to internalize my freak outs and force myself to remain calm when they make mistakes (or have near misses) because freaking out just makes the situation worse. So, I teach the boys instead of Kevin to avoid scarring them from driving for life.
Kevin will deny he is like this, but I assure you, he is. It’s also gotten worse since his motorcycle accident, which, SURE. He’s entitled to be a bit freaked out when it comes to driving after that horrific experience, but it’s not exactly a stellar attitude to have when teaching impressionable teenage boys how to drive.
ADDED: I just wanted to add, for posterity purposes, that the radio is broken, too. (These are the little details that Kevin and I disagree over in later years. Ha!)
“I cannot guarantee that those (Social Security) checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue, because there may simply not be money in the coffers to do it.” – President Obama.
Can you believe the president is stooping so low as to scare our seniors half to death by saying that? I mean, the whole “sky is falling unless we raise taxes” ruse is in the Democrat playbook, but to blatantly lie to people and scare seniors who DEPEND on those social security checks to LIVE just to make the situation even more dire and to support his out-of-control spending problem is really quite despicable.
Look. We have enough money to not only pay our seniors, AND Military personnel, AND to pay our debt, the problem comes with paying the REST of the bills this administration seems determined to keep on the books at all costs.
It all boils down to priorities. And this White House has no clue what that even means.
We have the $200 billion coming into the federal government every month. It takes $35 billion — I’m sorry, billion dollars — we have $35 billion that we must use to service the debt, $50 billion that we must use to write those Social Security checks, $2.9 billion to pay for our military personnel, and then other essentials.
You prioritize. Our president essentially suggested the other day that he’s not able to prioritize. As the chief executive of our nation, he cannot prioritize, and that’s why he suggested that Social Security checks may not be written come August 2nd if that debt ceiling isn’t increased.
No. You pay for the essentials first and then the non-essentials have to get cut. They have to wait. That — that’s just reality
Mark Levin suggested we shut down the National Parks for a month. Why not shut down the Department of Education for a month? After all, it’s summer – school is not even in session. What about revoking, or freezing, a lot of these grants that go out to various organizations for “research” purposes. I think paying off our obligations are a bit more important than experiments, don’t you?
The point is, we have options. We can cut/freeze programs until we figure this mess out. It would inconvenience some folks and some people would lose their jobs, but we’re going to have to do this sooner or later – it’s not going to get any easier as time goes on.
At some point, we are going to have to address Social Security. The money that comes out of our paychecks for Social Security is not even going toward YOUR own Social Security, it’s going to pay for seniors RIGHT NOW, EVERY MONTH. It’s a survive-by-the-seat-of-my-pants program that barely gets by month-by-month. And it’s largely because our government has squandered it away over the past several decades and now, there’s simply nothing left to draw FROM. We have to take it from people NOW.
This president is so weak and wishy-washy I can hardly stand looking, or listening to him anymore – I no have respect for the man. None. He’s a man-child that needs to grow the hell up! (Evidenced by this hissy fit and walking out of talks because he has been so used to getting his way that now that he has real, logical opposition, he’s throwing a temper tantrum. WAH. What a cry baby).
And by the way, it’s not only US citizens that are getting fed up with Obama – the Arabs are pretty disappointed, too.
Based on the survey, which placed Obama’s favorable ratings across the Arab world at 10% or less, any hope that Obama could improve relations is all but gone.
(Not that I care what Arabs think of us, I just find the irony of the situation humorous. Because Obama was convinced he was God’s answer to foreign relations, if we JUST humble ourselves and bow down to their demands then SURELY they would love us. *snort* Moron).
It amazes me how gullible people are. They listen to politicians and believe every word that comes out of their mouths. They simply sit in front of their TV’s and dumbly nod their agreement without even thinking through what the morons are even saying to begin with. And if you really pay attention, you’ll notice that a lot of them contradict themselves and don’t even make sense half the time they open their mouths.
The left consistently scream at us that tax hikes are good for the economy and tax cuts are bad for the economy. Let’s debunk a few of those lies by dissecting some of their historical “proofs.”
Tax Lie 1) 1982: Ronald Reagan’s tax hikes helped the economy.
The truth: This is nonsense. The economy remained mired in misery inherited from Jimmy Carter. The economy began to recover a year later. 1983 was when the massive tax cuts of Jack Kemp and William Roth, and embraced by President Reagan, lifted the American economy like a rocketship. Supply side economics unleashed the American economy.
Tax Lie 2) 1990: George Herbert Walker Bush and the Luxury Tax.
The truth: Democrats badgered President Bush to raise taxes on luxury items such as yachts and watches. All this did was cause the rich to tighten their belts. Makers of yachts and watches were decimated. Middle class people saw their businesses collapse. In 1993, Bill Clinton had the luxury tax repealed.
Tax Lie 3) 1993: Bill Clinton’s tax hikes helped the economy.
The truth: Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the economy of the 1990s. The Internet revolution created massive wealth that Americans alive at the time may never see again. This was the third wave behind the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
Giving Clinton the credit is as laughable as praising him for balancing budgets and reforming welfare. That was Newt Gingrich and Republican Governors. [Let’s not forget that Clinton’s administration was a Republican House AND Senate]. Clinton was utterly irrelevant. [And reaped the benefits of the Republicans’ decisions].
Liberals deeply believe in higher spending. Raising the debt limit is not to avoid default. Raising the debt limit gives them more money to spend on their priorities. They want more social programs. America going bankrupt is irrelevant to them. They need people dependent on government so they can govern in perpetuity. Democrats did not offer a budget in 2010 or 2011. They will spend at all costs for their supporters, the country be damned.
Please read that last paragraph again. I’ll wait …
Obama has NO INTEREST in balancing anything. He has NO INTEREST in cuts. All he wants to do is spend and build his voting base.
Folks. I’m not trying to scare you but we really have to be realistic here – we CAN’T keep giving this man a blank check. He is bankrupting our country. It’s time to take our heads out of the sand and FIX this.
We can’t close our $1.5 trillion deficit overnight, but we must get as close as we can as soon as we can. Little nibbles here and there over 10 years (spun to sound like they’re huge budget cuts) aren’t anywhere near enough. I know from experience that cutting government spending isn’t easy. As governor, I made the largest veto cuts in my state’s history, and I didn’t make many friends doing it. But we will never recover, we will never get free of devastating debt, unless we make tough choices now. We don’t hear talk like this from leaders in D.C. or from those running for office because they say what they think we want to hear rather than what must be said.
We are in desperate need of real leadership, but President Obama’s solution to everything is to grow government by borrowing more money, spending more money, printing more money, and taxing our job creators. He once said that he “believes in American Exceptionalism…just as the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.” Well, the path he has us on will make us just as “exceptional” as Greece – debt crisis, stagnation, permanent high unemployment, and all.
As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.
But let me tell you where real hope lies. It’s not the hopey-changey stuff we heard about in 2008. Real hope comes from realizing how God has blessed our exceptional nation, and then doing something about it. We have been blessed with natural resources, hardworking entrepreneurs, and a Constitution that preserves the greatest form of government ever devised by man. If we develop those natural resources, allow our entrepreneurs to keep and invest more of what they earn, and adhere to the time-tested truths of our Constitution, we will prosper and endure.
But first and foremost we must tackle our debt. We don’t have the luxury of playing politics as usual. We need real leaders who will put aside their own political self-interest to do what is right for the nation. And if they don’t emerge… well, America has a do-over in November 2012.
ADDED: By the way, one of my favorite political blogs, Biblical Conservatism, is devoting this week to dissecting liberal talking points. He’s carefully, and systematically, breaking down liberal arguments over trying to raise the debt ceiling and/or that raising taxes will somehow “save” us. Please take a moment to read these because the White House? Is totally lying to you. Don’t fall for their lies a moment longer.
This video is really for my mom – I thought she would get a kick out of it.
My parents lived out of town for several years when the boys were babies. My dad taught electronics at vocational schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, so it was a real treat whenever my folks could come down and visit. I don’t remember taking the boys up to visit them very often – Actually, I don’t remember going very many places outside the home at all when the boys were babies because we all know what a pain it is to take babies very far from home.
Near the end of the video, you will hear me babble about something (seriously – my folks always teased me about talking fast and though I knew they were right, I didn’t realize HOW right they were until I heard myself on these tapes. Sheesh). I’m saying something about how I couldn’t believe I was a mom. The whole experience just felt surreal to me – and I think that was partly due to the fact that Dude came so fast and so early I never really had a moment to “process” it all.
Actually, it’s STILL hard for me to accept the fact that I’m the mother of two boys – and they’re well into their teens.
Dude is nearly two months old in this video. He’s still pretty small – but he grows pretty fast from this point on and it’s not long before he’s in the normal growth percentile.
I mentioned that I read a lot of baby books when my boys were babies … and I did. Some of those books recommended hanging a black and white mobile up in their crib to help stimulate the babies’ brains.
Thinking this made sense (on some weird level known only to me), I researched mobiles and bought this do-hickie.
Dude loved it. As you can see in the video below. Jazz … I seem to recall Jazz not being that interested in it, but Dude spent hours looking at it.
Which was awesome because it meant:
A. He wasn’t crying.
B. It gave me time to get some stuff done, like shower.
C. He wasn’t whining.
D. It was hopefully stimulating his brain.
E. He wasn’t crying.
I apologize for the sheer … nothingness behind this video. I wanted to show ya’ll how much interest Dude took in this mobile, but it’s also one of the few video snippets I have of Dude being content. The rest of the footage, he’s always fussy, or spitting up, or whining.
Also? I told you. HOURS of my kids doing nothing. I was just content to watch their facial expressions. It’s amazing how you can just SEE them absorbing information, isn’t it?
And I don’t know what is up with the squeaky toy. I think I was curious to see how he would respond to it. I’m surprised the boy didn’t start wailing because, UGH, that sound is annoying, isn’t it? But Dude seemed too preoccupied with the mobile to notice.
Now that I watch this again, I hope that thing didn’t give him nightmares. It’s sort of “Twilight Zone-ish” isn’t it.
In fact, he looks sort of freaked out in the screen capture still, doesn’t he.
Poor baby. Mama’s sorry she tortured you like that.
P.S. The cute binky bobbing as he’s sucking on it makes my heart squeeze.
P.S.S. Also? That binky is nearly as big as his face.
We’re getting ready to head out to the Bahamas, in case you didn’t know that, and Kevin found some old pictures of when he was there the first time.
(With his first wife. Surprised? It seems weird to think he was married before. He’s happier now, NATURALLY).
We’re on a mission to take another picture of him standing by this sign. In fact, Kevin did a little research and has already found the sign – we know exactly where to go to look for it. I just hope it’s still there. (The research/picture he found was a few years old).
Talk about complete circle! He went there with his first wife and he’s going back with his second (better – ha!) wife AND sons.
A few things about this picture:
1. Wow. Jazz looks SO MUCH like him it’s scary. Though I can see Dude’s face in his, too. (But seriously – Jazz could be his twin).
2. Look at those shortie shorts. SEXY. hahahahaha!!!
P.S. I’m having a blast giving him a hard time about his shortie shorts.
Here is Senator Rubio’s speech to Congress (beginning at the 3:00 minute mark). Watch it. LISTEN to it. He perfectly sums up what is wrong with our country and debunks the “talking points” the Democrats are trying to make us believe – again.
What really made an impression? When he quotes from a study that compiled all of the “millionaires”, (which, incidentally, Obama classifies anyone who makes over $250,000 a year a millionaire – by WHOSE math, Mr. President??), the oil companies, the jet owners, etc. and if we were to take every penny they made in the next year, demanded they turn it over to the government, it would sustain us for almost 10 days.
Ten days. It would pay for almost 10 days of our insane government spending. And then what? These “wealthy” individuals have nothing left, there is nothing more to give. And they’re the ones who create jobs. So, the jobs they would have created if we just left them alone? Are gone. Which only makes our 9.2% unemployment even worse.
It’s a vicious cycle and we MUST stop it. If we don’t stop this insane spending, it will only get worse – it will NEVER get better. Our country is like a huge money pit. We keep throwing more money into the pit, but the problems continue to grow. We can’t continue this madness.
I mean, let’s bring this analogy down to the average Jane/Joe level:
You have a mountain of debt. You’ve taken out a second mortgage and have maxed out your home equity loan. You have two car payments on vehicles that aren’t even worth the balance you have left to pay. You have three credit cards that have all been maxed out. Everything you make goes to pay the interest on these outstanding loans ONLY. And you can’t even pay all of THAT because you need some money left over to pay for food, phone, utilities.
You are at your wit’s end. It’s time to take serious steps to getting out of debt. Would you:
A. Apply for more credit cards?
B. Take more loans in order to pay down on the existing loans?
C. Immediately cut out all non-essential items in your life and apply that extra money to the least amount owed?
D. DO NOT SPEND ANY MORE MONEY.
Obviously, a rational person would pick C and D.
Our government insists on choosing options A and B.
Do you see how asinine those options are when things are in dire straits?
And yet … here we are.
We need some conservatives, with balls, to get in there and clean up this mess. We need to stop spending, get rid of non-essential government programs, and restructure existing programs (yes, even entitlements. You think I EXPECT to receive Social Security when I reach that age? Oh hell to the no. There’s NO MONEY LEFT FOR MY GENERATION).
That’s it, folks. THOSE are our options. Any politician that tries to tell you that we can get past this debt issue WITHOUT cutting spending? Is blatantly lying to you. They’re telling you what you want to hear.
It’s time to open our eyes, roll up our sleeves and get this problem under control before we sink to Greece levels.
It’s time we started acting like GROWN UPS and stop expecting the government to take care of us.
One last thought: I WANT MARCO RUBIO AS OUR NEXT PRESIDENT. I know he’s not running (this round), but THIS is the type of person we need in the White House to clean up Obama’s “Hope and Change” crap.
I mentioned that I read a lot of baby books when my boys were babies … and I did. Some of those books recommended hanging 
Write From Karen 