The annual Festival of Lights Parade in Salem will go on after all! During a late night emergency meeting of the Salem City Council last night, Mayor Janet Taylor made a motion to grant $10,000 (UPDATE: THE AMOUNT WAS ACTUALLY $25,000, NOT WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY REPORTED TO THE MEDIA!) from the city's contingency fund to help offset a budget shortfall.
Now I don't want to sound like the Grinch, but, I am a little concerned that "contingency funds" designated for "budget shortfall" was used. I love a parade. I love Christmas. I don't love misuse of funds and this to me, seems like a pretty silly way to use those emergency funds. If the Festival of Lights group cannot raise the funds then the parade itself should not happen. In this economic climate, do we really have the latitude to use money for a parade? Aren't there many more pressing issues that could have used this money? Where were the brave city councilors when the Obama administration wanted to take OUR land away at Minto Brown Park? They were holding another late night meeting to give 200 acres to the Feds in exchange for $800k. Yes, that is the Salem city council hard at work. Maybe THIS decision, was to help placate the residents? Bah Humbug!
Now there are just a teensy bit of problems with that...... The geothermal gradient is usually quoted as 25-50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in the crater of Kilauea). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that's a mile and a quarter if you're not as science-y as Al) you'll have an average gain of 30-60 degrees - exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth's core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius, though these guys claim it's much less, while some contrarian geophysicists have posted claims up to 9,000 degrees. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees. If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was "several million degrees," we'd be a star. (Al's a star) The physics and astronomy website Physlink also contests Gore's absurd claim: It is approximately 4000°C at the centre of the Earth. To put this in context:
1. The centre of the Sun is approximately 15 million°C 2. The surface of the Sun is 5500°C 3. Iron melts at 1535°C (when at atmospheric pressure) 4. Water boils at 100°C (when at atmospheric pressure) 5. Human skin is comfortable with temperatures up to about 60°C 6. The highest temperature recorded on the Earth's surface is 58°C (Libya 1922)
It is not possible to directly measure the temperature at the centre of the Earth and four thousand degrees is nothing more than our most well-established piece of guesswork to date. Most modern calculations rely on the fact that we believe the inner core to be made up of iron and nickel that is just about at melting point. It is under a lot of pressure, which prevents it from melting, even at such high temperatures. There is also a lot of evidence regarding how the outer core of the Earth convects and that helps to establish the temperature. Anyone who followed the controversy over Gore's piece of cinematic fantasy An Inconvenient Truth knows that Gore tells a lot of very convenient untruths in his quest to create a market for his carbon-trading company. However, this is just flat-out ignorance that with any other person in any other context would destroy their credibility. This is worse than Tom Cruise telling Matt Lauer that he can debunk the entire psychiatric field because he's read a few books. If Gore can't get this rather basic fact right, why should he be believed on anything else in the energy field? This raises an obvious question: in a world where media fact-check a comedy skit and a book written by a former governor, shouldn't they equally scrutinize statements being made by a man who's actively pushing for the passage of economically impactful legislation currently before Congress?
Or is that asking too much from so-called journalists?
Consider that if Gore was a Republican, his numerous departures from fact would have so discredited him years ago that he would now be considered a total joke.
By contrast, because he's a Democrat who preaches liberal gospel, he can say whatever he wants without any regard for its accuracy and not only receive media's praise for his inexcusable errance, but an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize to boot. By the way his school grades are very telling: When John C. Davis, a retired teacher and assistant headmaster at St. Albans, was recently shown his illustrious former pupil's college board achievement test scores, he inspected them closely with a magnifier and shook his head, chuckling quietly at the science results. "Four eighty-eight! Terrible" Davis declared upon inspecting the future vice president's 488 score (out of a possible 800) in physics.
"Hmmmm. Chemistry. Five-nineteen. He didn't do too well in chemistry."
Now, I'm not sure on all these, but I am certain there is no "00" district! Unfortunately, over 3 million dollars was spent there! Even if they mean Senate districts, there are only 30, so there are four on this list that don't exist.
I also find it interesting that there were 15.1 jobs created by $4,932,024 (326,624 per job). And $330,404 spent on 0 jobs "created or saved."
Also, according to the map, the vast majority of the funds are going to government agencies, and are not creating or "saving" any jobs. For example, the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Salem got $699,184 and "created or saved" 0 jobs. The Northwest Senior Disability Services got $125, 276 and "created or saved" 0 jobs. The City of Salem got $597,562 and "saved or created" 0 jobs. What are they doing with all this money?
They are either so incompetent that they cannot figure out how to correctly show where the money is going, or they think we are so stupid that we wouldn't notice this stuff.
Oregon Cataylst dot com, a conservative gathering site on the web has posted a link to my Veteran's Day tribute yesterday. I had Vets call in and tell their stories and it was extremely moving!
This Veterans Day, I am reminded once again of the wonderful line at the end of the movie adaptation of James Michener's The Bridges at Toko Ri.
A Navy Admiral is reflecting on the sacrifice of airmen given the mission of destroying a group of heavily defended bridges during the Korean War. The men were successful, but at the cost of their lives, leading the Admiral to famously ask: "Where do we get these men?"
This is the 20th Anniversary of one of the GREATEST Moments in Human History, the fall of the Wall in Berlin. Where is our President?
Here are the highlights of my thoughts on this issue for today's radio program:
President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week, he sets out on a weeklong tour of Asia.
But the president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.
"A tragedy," is how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Obama's absence.
Some question whether the decision not to go was a nod to Russia, with which the Obama administration is trying to mend relations, or just another attempt to play down the perception of the United States as an exceptional superpower.
For its part, the administration is citing a scheduling conflict. The White House says the president simply does not have the time to go, with the trip to Asia starting Wednesday.
"Obviously we have a lot to work on here and we have commitments for an upcoming Asia trip," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that a "very senior delegation" of U.S. officials would attend.
David Hasselhoff may seem at first an unusual person to be commenting on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But the American actor and singer has a long association with the wall and the German public. In the summer before the wall fell, Hasselhoff's hit song Looking for Freedom was racing up the charts in West Germany.
'I have about 100 pieces of the wall and I also have one that's really special because it's got all the colours of the German flag, that I just chopped out look at this piece,' he told Reuters.
Hasselhoff was even part of a concert on New Year's Eve 1989 where he sang on top of the partly demolished wall at the Brandenburg Gate.
'I had an opportunity to actually sing behind the Wall before New Years Eve at a kind of a pre-concert. And I drove in 35 minutes into East Berlin and I went to the studio and the studio was magnificent it had the most beautiful lighting and the stage and the cameras, but outside it looked like World War II,' he said.
Now Hasselhoff is back in Berlin for the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.
Obama acknowledged the anniversary of the fall of the wall last week during his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"We are now moving towards the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and Germany being reunified after so many painful years," Obama said. "And this is a special moment for Chancellor Merkel, as somebody who grew up in East Germany, who understands what it's like to be under the shadow of a dictatorial regime, and to see how freedom has bloomed in Germany, how it has become the centerpiece for a extraordinarily strong European Union."
But some saw Obama's decision not to travel personally to Berlin as a snub to Merkel, Germany and the history behind the anniversary.
"Barack Is Too Busy," Germany's Der Spiegel magazine declared in a headline last month, writing that Obama had declined Merkel's invitation.
While Obama has traveled to Germany since taking office, he has not as president traveled to Berlin -- the site of his major speech in July 2008 during his overseas campaign tour. During that speech, he acknowledged Berlin's struggle, saying, "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."
Why then, critics asked, would the U.S. president not revisit that site to mark the culmination of that dream? After all, he has established himself as an intrepid traveler in office, setting off on a slew of overseas trips during his first 10 months on the job.
On several of the stops he has expressed regret for past American behavior, but the Berlin Wall anniversary was seen as an opportunity for the president to honor an American and Western victory for which the U.S. need feel no regret.
"It is a true shame that the president of the United States -- this man who cloaks himself in the rhetoric of hope -- won't be pausing to remember," Gingrich wrote in a column last week in The Washington Examiner.
The National Review's Rich Lowry wrote that the decision speaks to Obama's "dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking."
"John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, 'Ich bin beschaftigt' -- i.e., I'm busy," he wrote. "Obama's failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. It's hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion."
Time line of the fall:
1987
June 12 Speaking in West Berlin at the wall, US President Ronald Reagan says : "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
1989
February 6 Chris Gueffroy is the last person shot and killed trying to escape. Meanwhile, the Polish government initiates talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.
April 5 The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.
May 2 Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.
Aug. 19 The 'Pan-European Picnic' – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West .
Aug. 24 Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.
Sept. 10 Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.
Oct. 18 East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.
Nov. 4 One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.
Nov. 9 The Berlin Wall falls.
Here is a wonderful video tribute to this momentous day:
How has the Stimulus money been working in Oregon? Watch this video from Fox News last night featuring one of my friends and regular guests on The Bill Post Radio Show, Rep. Bruce Hanna (R) from Roseburg.
