In a very recent post, I made a major error that I must retract.

First, I will say that my information came from an email from a usually “you can take it to the bank” source of information that I should have fact checked regardless, and second, I got the subject of the post intertwined with another Republican congressman, Walter Jones, who also hails from North Carolina. Mr. Jones was evidently a co-initiator of the no-confidence bill with two Democrats.

Nonetheless, such an error on my part was, at best, inexcusable and for that part of the post in question I can only apologize profoundly.

The revelation and subsequent research was the result of a telephone call in response to my post by Kevin Klein, a member of Congressman Robin Hayes’ staff, in which he apologized for the duplicate response and corrected me on the subject of Hayes’ vote on the “no-confidence” issue. I caught the call on my voice mail late yesterday and returned it this afternoon, to their DC offices.

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Supplementally:

While talking with Mr. Klein, I brought up the matter of the generic response his office sent in reply to my email, pointing out that the way it was presented, the email contained a paucity of information that committed the congressman to nothing as far as how he planned to vote on the issue of H.R. 254.

Mr. Klein replied that Congressman Hayes intended to vote nay on the bill, and said that since the bill was still being drafted, responses were, per SOP, noncommittal as provisions and language might still be rewritten before a final product was brought to a vote.

I suggested that the reason for the duplicate of the generic reply was that a staff member had obviously, not being all that interested in the content/ my concerns or input, had simply seized on a keyword (H.R. 254) and sent the reply. He could really do nothing but agree that that might have been the case.

1. I explained to him that such responses are not what we, the constituents expect when we make inquiries — that we want candid answers on our representative’s position — and cited the fact that these generic form letters are extremely discouraging as they only indicate a politician’s reluctance to offend a potential new voter.

2. I also indicated the concern of most conservatives at the thought of a bill that favors one group of citizens passing — the precedent that would be set would enable those pressing for said group(in this case, homosexuals) to push other bills through that would further give the subjects of their agenda special rights that exceed those of the rest of the citizens of the U.S.

3. I told him that conservatives are concerned at the way our Republican representatives on the Hill back down all to often on issues when the Democrats employ language to the effect that opposing them might constitute “racism”, lack of concern for “the children”, etc, in fear of losing votes from certain quarters, and that we expect them to fight for those ideals upon which we elected them to begin with rather than allow the left to twist and tear the Constitution in order to meet their own agendas.

4. I pointed out that since the beginning of our Iraq enterprise, while the Democrats have loudly, unfairly and incessantly attacked the President as they have, the Republicans on the Hill have kept their own council so as not to rock the vote boat, leaving George Bush in the lurch to defend himself against these attacks — and that the conservative voting base expects the starboard side of Congress to be as verbal as the left, in defending the policies of the Commander-In-Chief.

I made mention of the results of the 2006 elections and suggested that those Republicans remaining in Congress might learn a lesson from that and rethink their obligations to those of us who put them there before a re-run occurs in 2008.

Mr. Klein said he agreed with me on “2″, and would pass along the rest of my points to Robin Hayes. He also invited me to visit their offices in DC ,when I’m there in mid-March to join the counter-protest against the legions of anti-war leftist wingnuts who will be descending on the Nation’s Capital for their usual treason, to discuss whatever concerns I might have and get “face-to-face” about it. I will definitely take him up on it.

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Again, my sincere apologies for posting the inaccuracy of the Hayes vote, and I look forward to the discussions I expect to have in a couple of weeks in DC.

….but I just had to post this excellent column by Ann Coulter!

… to which I hadn’t given any thought, probably because I was totally unaware of it, but now that I am aware, well,

Environmentalists say they want renewable energy, but they’re tearing down dams, which provide hydropower across the country. And the networks are ignoring this eco-campaign to save the salmon and turn out the lights.

Hmmmmm….

You can read the entire enlightening (at least to me) piece here.

I can’t say this surprises me much, if at all. Not the media’s silence on it, because if a liberal agenda is involved, it’s also an MSM agenda, and I’m certainly not at all surprised that this is happening, period. I’m just surprised that I haven’t run across this particular story before.

It could hardly be called amazing, given the left’s unending battle to damage the U.S. economy and infrastructure wherever opportunity presents itself. One only need look at the Kyoto kerfuffle and the liberals’ (along with their Democrat butt munchers) war on corporate America.

Here we have yet another great example of lefty lunacy: They yell, as the article cites, about the need for regenerative energy sources, then find ways to destroy regenerative energy sources.

Hey, I lived in San Francisco during the energy crisis a few years ago (luckily, I lived on the same part of the grid as a BART station, so I didn’t have to suffer through the brown-outs those less fortunately located had to endure). Remember that one? That liberal fool Gray Davis, who was governor at the time — we later ended up firing him for gross incompetence and replacing him with the Terminator, LOL — “solved” the problem by grossly overpaying out-of-state electric companies for more juice, then, when we had an excess, selling it off for pennies on the dollar (those liberals sure are brilliant businessmen!): Buy dear, sell cheap.

Okay, so we get rid of hydro-electric plants, which gets rid of a significant percentage of regenerative power — it may only be, as the article states, about 10% of the total national source of electricity, but to be realistic, we have to look at this as a regional, not a national, issue. A given hydro-electric plant might be supplying the bulk of electricity to tens of thousands of homes and most of the infrastructure in one part of one state.

What’s the local government supposed to do? Send out letters saying, “Sorry, folks, we’re going to give you a tax rebate to use to build windmills and/or have solar panels installed on your roof. We’re really, really, truly sorry that you’ll have to live in the dark and barbecue your dinner until your new energy sources are in place. In the meantime, we regret to inform you that we’ll have to seize 40,000 homes via eminent domain in order to convert the properties to windmill and solar energy fields….”

Of course, the glaringly obvious and cleanest solution to the lost energy due to the closing of hydro-electric plants would be more nuclear power facilities, but…. those would be unacceptable to the left. They will fight tooth and nail against the construction of energy-oriented nuclear power plants, but it’s perfectly okay if Iran builds breeder reactors in the guise of innocent energy sources. After all, the only thing we need to assure that Iran doesn’t develop any threat value is some peaceful, understanding, mares-eat-oats-and-does-eat-oats diplomacy, right?

What can I say? It would appear that the life and convenience of a single salmon is infinitely more important than the lives of millions of Americans.

Who can argue with that logic?

….with the President on this issue. I’m also pleased to see that he’s actually getting backing from the Congress critters on the right side of the aisle.

Collective bargaining venues have no place in any vital infrastructure, let alone in homeland security.

…zero dark hundred hours and dawn (a more than frequent Seth consciousness time), I’m sitting here in my office and thinking about things in general, and asking myself the “is it all worth it?” question – no, not a prelude to suicide, LOL, just weighing the hypothetical options between carrying on and simply going off into the limbo of total retirement from society, or what’s left of it.

Let’s see, what do we have here?

We blog, we attend demonstrations when we can get to them, we defend the conservative point of view in conversation and debate, we send donations to, and support, political action committees, we write or call our political leaders to express our opinions, we vote…

And it seems that no matter what we do, we run into a solid wall called the mainstream media (MSM). This is a left leaning kollektive that abuses a great and sacred trust – that of keeping the people informed on the current events level, giving us the tools we need to form honest opinions so that we might be able to plan our lives according to the directions taken by political and economic trends and, just as important, that we will be qualified to vote for political leaders based on viable data.

In short, the MSM, by accepting the privileges of access they enjoy, has an awesome responsibility: They are the keystone of Democracy – the accuracy or inaccuracy of their reporting, given that the vast majority of Americans look to them for news, is directly responsible for the outcomes of our elections.

The fact that the MSM has become nothing short of a propaganda outlet for the liberal side of our political equation and a champion of the War on Bush, the War on Homeland Security, the War on Corporations, the War on America and American Values, the War on Decency, the War on G-d, the War on Any Semblance of Morality and the War on Common Sense leads me to this grim conclusion –

They have all but decimated our entire political system.

I mean, how can we say, after an election, that “the people have spoken” with any kind of confidence in the outcome when we know that The People went to the polls armed with disinformation? Garbage in, garbage out, right?

The same can be said for opinion polls. How can we have faith in a poll when we know that its participants had formed their opinions based on lies that they were led to believe as truth.

Take Iraq as a prime example:

In this post at Robert’s most excellent blog, Conservative Commentary, is a first rate list of many of the positives that have been achieved in Iraq since we “fired” Saddam, began helping the Iraqis form a democratic government and helping them to rebuild their country and their infrastructure. My comment on that thread got me thinking and formed the basis for this post I am now typing.

Go do some reading there while I go grab another cup of coffee, then come back.

So, you read the list, now compare it to what you read in MSM newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post or watched on the news at the alphabet networks.

Pure doomsday exaggerations — Quagmire, another Vietnam, our troops are being butchered in the cross-fire of a vicious religious civil war, our presence over there is getting thousands of Iraqis killed, it’s all about the oil, it’s all about profits for the evil Halliburton, yadda yadda yadda… But we see or hear no mention of what has been accomplished (see linked post and list) thanks to the coalition presence in Iraq.

The American people, looking to the MSM for hard, accurate, full story news, are instead saturation bombed with what amounts to pure, one-sided liberal propaganda.

Global Warming is another issue in which the MSM misleads the American people.

There hasn’t been a shred of evidence, other than unproven statements made by “authorities” on the subject, that anything mankind does has any effect on climate change – for that matter, there has been a paucity of credible evidence that the atmosphere is heating up to any significant extent – yet the MSM supports the left’s assertion that man is creating a catastrophic scenario that promises certain doom, melting the Arctic, causing the likes of Hurricane Katrina, etc, etc.

Once, it was blame it on El Nino… Now, it’s blame it on Bush.

While these portside media venues have yet to produce any viable conclusive study results backing up the Global Warming Armageddon story, they have simply moved on to portray it as “understood” as a reality, while ignoring any and all infinitely more credible evidence to the contrary. They deny equal time to those who might prove them wrong, because they could not find any effective counter argument. After all, it’s profoundly difficult to defend a lie against detailed truth.

Taking the two above examples, we have…

1. The bulk of the American people believing the left’s falsities regarding Iraq, and

2. The bulk of the American people believing the left’s falsities regarding Global Warming.

Just look at the poll results, which are based on those “garbage in, garbage out” news reports.

And these examples are only the tip of an iceberg.

Acceptance of the first by the American public could ultimately result in the premature withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, the penalties being not only the slaughter of tens of thousands or more Iraqis by Islamofascists and the country itself becoming a virtual terrorist firebase, training, logistics and deployment center for terror organizations targeting the west.

Acceptance of the second by the American public could ultimately result, by way of the Kyoto accords, in severe damage to our economy, including millions of lost jobs – all due to an unproven – and disproven – myth.

The first would endanger large numbers of the populations of the U.S. and other western countries. The second would cause the necessity, in order to preserve the lives and security of millions of unduly financially challenged American families, to move closer to the socialist blueprint envisioned and sought after by the left.

In short, the MSM has become an enemy of the state rather than a source of accurate information, but they are “winning” – they have indelible credibility status among the American people, and they enjoy the advantage that they can ignore anything that refutes the opinions they interweave in their “news” reports.

It is in my very nature to fight to the death, but I have begun to feel just a bit like a certain Cervantes character. At what point does one finally reach across the chessboard and lay down ones’ king?

In response to an AFA email regarding HR 254, a bill purportedly geared toward protecting homosexuals from hate crimes (included therein would be prohibition within houses of worship to quote Biblical scripture in which G-d prohibits same gender sex, Boy Scout troops to reject gays as leaders and granting permission for schools to teach homosexual agendas to grade school children, enveloping all in the same context as violent hate crimes), I sent an email to my congressman, Robin Hayes (Republican - North Carolina), asking him how he intends to vote on the issue.

This would be a simple task — yea or nay — that would require no further explanation. Here is what he emailed me back:

Dear Seth,

Thank you for contacting me regarding HR 254, The David Ray Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Although great strides have been made in recent years to overcome discrimination based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation, unfortunately ignorance and hate persist. This ignorance is sometimes manifested into crimes against those in society who are in a minority.

As you may know, hate crime legislation in the form of H.R. 254 was introduced in the House by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) on January 5, 2007. This bill seeks to enhance federal enforcement in cases that are classified as hate crimes.

It is my belief that all violent crimes are hate crimes and must be punished under the full extent of the law. However, I am uncertain about the need for a duplicative set of laws and separate standards for “hate crimes.” While we should continue with our efforts to eliminate hate and ignorance, I question whether overlapping laws will help us achieve this goal. Please be assured that I will continue to work for a safer society for all individuals, and actively support legislation that helps promote a safer society.

Again, thank you for expressing your views on this issue. It is an honor to serve as your United States Representative, and I look forward to tackling the issues 8th District constituents sent me here to address. Please know that I have assembled what I believe is the most responsive and courteous staff in Congress. Your suggestions are always welcome, and if ever we may be of assistance, please do not hesitate to call.

Sincerely,
Robin Hayes
Member of Congress

You’ll notice that it was the typical generic reply, committing to nothing, favored by no-account, politically motivated, PC, vote pandering career politicians, not the response of an honest man seeking candidly to answer a question posed by a constituent.

Being accustomed to receiving such generic replies, I sent him a further email informing him that I had not asked for the lengthy say-nothing response, just a simple three letter word telling me which way he planned to vote on the bill.

While I was emailing anyway and having meant to do so to begin with, I also commented on his being among the seventeen “Republicans” who joined the Democrats in their no-confidence vote against the President and our troops in Iraq. I pointed out that he and the rest of the Republicans on the Hill were only there because we conservatives put them there to represent our point of view in Congress, and his no-confidence vote was a sell-out to his voting base. I added that it seemed that he, like several of his colleagues, had evidently failed to learn the lesson imparted at the polls in November, 2006 — that he and other so-called Republicans hadn’t been elected and reelected to lick leftist and moderate derrier (ugh, French, spit!) — well, I didn’t put that part in the email, but I think it was well implied — or to play the political correctness game to gain votes, but to serve the nation and his constituents as a Republican member of Congress is expected to.

I even indicated that I intended to post his reply in this forum.

His reply was a duplicate of the email I posted above, leading me to believe that he and his staff don’t even bother to read his constituents’ emails — they simply seize on a keyword, in this case HR 254, and send out their non-committal generic responses.

If you ever hear of this dishonest Republican-in-name-only saying that he listens to his constituents, remember this post. He is a disgrace not only to the Republican Party, but to all true Americans, and ought to be regarded the same respect by all conservatives that we reserve for the likes of John Murtha and Nancy Pelosi.

Julia A. Seymour and Amy Menefee of the Business & Media Institute do a great job of dispelling the “income inequality as a menace” myth.

The argument that income inequality is bad is based on an underlying assumption: that if one person has more, another automatically has less. This “zero-sum” approach bases its logic on a pie chart that adds up to 100 percent. If one person has 30 percent of the pie, that leaves 70 percent for all the others to divide among themselves.

The problem is, that isn’t how a free-market economy works. And the media have left out economists who could explain it on the nightly news.

Read the entire article here.

…. of Conservatives is speculated upon in the latest YouTube video by Julia Goren and friends of Republican Girls Gone Wild fame, to be found here. Atheists and liberal fellow travellers, pay close attention. You will encounter this material again, but only once.

Yes, of course — and man-made, to boot! At least, if we ignore science and go with Gore, LOL…

Phil Brennan’s got yet another scientific perspective that leaves the alarmists of the left in the Gorehouse.

As a blizzard of snow and ice pummels the Northeast after trouncing the Midwest, and waves of Arctic cold fronts drop much of America below sub freezing weather, the $64,000 question is, Where is Al Gore?

Gore claims that global warming is an immediate problem facing the United States and the world, and places like New York and Chicago could feel like Caribbean haunts.

Yeah, whew! In upstate New York, I understand it’s been freezing hot… Colorado hasn’t fared much warmer of late.

If there is any doubt that God has a sense of humor, it has to be dispelled by a headline in Wednesday’s Drudge Report: “House hearing on ‘warming of the planet’ canceled after ice storm.”

He followed up with this: “Save it for a sunny day: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area canceling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm.”

What must have evoked the loudest laugh in heaven is the notion that if global warming is really occurring, puny mankind is going to overcome it by legislation and business regulation that would strangle the U.S. economy and be overseen by the super efficient United Nations.

At any rate, the linked article advances still another theory — scientifically derived, rather than politically — as to the causes of temperature change — and again, having nothing to do with anything done by mankind.

The world’s oceans are being heated by underwater tectonic activity — underwater volcanic eruptions and blisteringly hot magma seeping up from cracks in the sea floor.

The heated ocean water creates high levels of CO2 that it sends aloft along with huge amounts of moisture. That moisture becomes precipitation — rain in the spring, summer, and fall, and snow in the winter. Increased amounts of moisture in the upper atmosphere equals increased amounts of precipitation.

The hotter the oceans, the more water vapor sent heavenward and the heavier the precipitation. This explains the large number of record-breaking rainfalls we’ve been seeing in the past couple of years — with as noted above, areas of the United States getting 20 inches of rain in a day or so.

As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.

The same records show that there have been a series of ice ages over the past 5 million years, naturally occurring every 100,000 years, with about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by about 12,000 years of interglacial climate.

The last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. Clearly we are in line for the next period of glaciation. But more about that later.

Suffice it to say that unless Al Gore has managed to repeal a demonstrated law of nature, the iceman cometh.

The befuddled Gore keeps blathering about how the oceans are being heated by global warming, instead of the warming being created by the oceans, as the facts clearly show.

Definitely read on…

…. here is a really fun Wal-Mart discussion on YouTube, that covers all the bases, between Julia Gorin and a couple of friends.