Goracle Watch

Healthcare debates are making for a long hot summer, except it hasn't been all that hot after all:

The July 2009 temperature for the contiguous United States was below the long-term average, based on records going back to 1895, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

I'm still waiting for the screaming NYT headlines warning us of yet another summer temperature record broken and how it signals the demise of the human race if we don't act now since it changed a whole .8 degrees.

Because if the temperature had actually gone UP .8 degrees, you know that is how the headlines would have read.

Goracle Watch

I think the Cash for Clunkers (C4C) is an interesting preview of the Goracle's Cap and Trade scam.

Cap and Trade is supposed to be a financial incentive to be more efficient (pollution-wise) in manufacturing. If you can't be more efficient you buy yourself (trade) more carbon (pollution) credits from someone else who doesn't produce as much carbon (pollution) as you do.

In the C4C program, someone's current vehicle can't become more efficient, so why not trade that old inefficient clunker in for a vehicle that is more economical and efficient?

Sounds reasonable. However, instead of the purchaser paying the financial penalty for not being able to be more efficient on his own, everyone else does it for him via a "government voucher". The cash part of the C4C is taxpayer money.

Sound familiar? Just like the mortgage bailout already in progress, responsible taxpayers are paying for their neighbor's previous poor decisions. Last year the bad decision was too much house, this year it is too much car. But don't worry, everyone else will help pay for those bad decisions. No need for the irresponsible to take any financial hit for choosing poorly.

Anyways....If you look at the stats of the C4C, you might be surprised to find out that Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado are now considered fuel efficient vehicles, as well as the Jeep Patriot. I guess they are efficient if the government is subsidizing the purchase, but last year owners of the same vehicles were demonized as owning environmentally unfriendly gas guzzling SUVs. Last year liberals were wagging their fingers at truck/SUV owners, this year it's a pat on the back. I guess as long as taxes pay for the gas-guzzlers, it is ok.

So what about the Cap and Trade part of the Cap and Trade? In this case your income was Capped by the government because those vouchers need to be funded by taxes. The government then Traded your money to someone driving an old gas guzzler to buy a shiny new marginally more efficient gas guzzler.

So was the environment saved by all the Capping and Trading? Not very much. But alot of money is changing hands and someone is definitely getting richer and definitely benefitting in the process, all under the ostensible banner of "Save the Planet".

The C4C program gets a double dose of ostensible banners to shame us into action, "Save the Planet" and "Economic Stimulus".

I wonder if there is an Eddie Bauer edition Hummer? (click on the link and search the page for Hummer) You might as well roll in style while guzzling gas in your tax payer funded eco-vehicle on the way to the next "Save the Planet" rally.

Goracle Watch

Even at headquarters of the of man-made Global Warming lunacy, things are not quite normal:

this summer has been conspicuously different in New York City. Not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature failed to reach 90 in either June or July.

The daily average last month was at or below normal every day but two. The temperature broke 80 on 16 days in New York — one more day than in Fairbanks, Alaska. Depending on Friday’s high, this was the second or third coolest June and July recorded in New York. If August follows the same pattern — and the latest forecast through midmonth predicts that it will — this could be the coolest summer on record.

I especially like this factoid, reported so calmly:

In the end, this will have been the coolest June and July since either 1903 or 1881, when sweltering New Yorkers grumbled about a sudden early August heat wave.

If that factoid had been reversed and it had been the hottest June and July since 1881, can you imagine the screaming headlines of doom?