Thursday, November 6, 2008
My friends, we have we have come to the end of a long journey. The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly.
A little while ago, I had the honor of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him [BOOING] – please – to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love.
In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.
This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight. I've always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too. But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.
America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.
Let there be no reason now ... let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.
Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer him my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day. Though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.
Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.
I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.
Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.
It is natural. It's natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.
We fought we fought as hard as we could. And though we feel short, the failure is mine, not yours.
(NO!)
I am so...
(CHANTING)
I am so deeply grateful to all of you for the great honor of your support and for all you have done for me. I wish the outcome had been different, my friends.
The road was a difficult one from the outset, but your support and friendship never wavered. I cannot adequately express how deeply indebted I am to you.
I'm especially grateful to my wife, Cindy, my children, my dear mother ... my dear mother and all my family, and to the many old and dear friends who have stood by my side through the many ups and downs of this long campaign.
I have always been a fortunate man, and never more so for the love and encouragement you have given me.
You know, campaigns are often harder on a candidate's family than on the candidate, and that's been true in this campaign.
All I can offer in compensation is my love and gratitude and the promise of more peaceful years ahead.
I am also I am also, of course, very thankful to Governor Sarah Palin, one of the best campaigners I've ever seen and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength ... her husband Todd and their five beautiful children ... for their tireless dedication to our cause, and the courage and grace they showed in the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign.
We can all look forward with great interest to her future service to Alaska, the Republican Party and our country. To all my campaign comrades, from Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, to every last volunteer who fought so hard and valiantly, month after month, in what at times seemed to be the most challenged campaign in modern times, thank you so much. A lost election will never mean more to me than the privilege of your faith and friendship.
I don't know I don't know what more we could have done to try to win this election. I'll leave that to others to determine. Every candidate makes mistakes, and I'm sure I made my share of them. But I won't spend a moment of the future regretting what might have been.
This campaign was and will remain the great honor of my life, and my heart is filled with nothing but gratitude for the experience and to the American people for giving me a fair hearing before deciding that Senator Obama and my old friend Senator Joe Biden should have the honor of leading us for the next four years.
(BOOING)
Please, please
I would not I would not be an American worthy of the name should I regret a fate that has allowed me the extraordinary privilege of serving this country for a half a century. Today, I was a candidate for the highest office in the country I love so much. And tonight, I remain her servant.
That is blessing enough for anyone, and I thank the people of Arizona for it.
(USA USA USA USA)
Tonight – tonight more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Senator Obama whether they supported me or Senator Obama. I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.
Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.
Thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America। Thank you all very much.
Mccain
Monday, October 20, 2008
Eight Reasons Why ‘Global Warming’ Is a Scam
When Al Gore lost his bid to become the country’s first “Environment President,” many of us thought the “global warming” scare would finally come to a well-deserved end. That hasn’t happened, despite eight good reasons this scam should finally be put to rest.
It’s B-a-a-ck!
Similar scares orchestrated by radical environmentalists in the past--such as Alar, global cooling, the “population bomb,” and electromagnetic fields--were eventually debunked by scientists and no longer appear in the speeches or platforms of public officials. The New York Times recently endorsed more widespread use of DDT to combat malaria, proving Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide gospel is no longer sacrosanct even with the liberal elite.
The scientific case against catastrophic global warming is at least as strong as the case for DDT, but the global warming scare hasn’t gone away. President Bush is waffling on the issue, rightly opposing the Kyoto Protocol and focusing on research and voluntary projects, but wrongly allowing his administration to support calls for creating “transferrable emission credits” for greenhouse gas reductions. Such credits would build political and economic support for a Kyoto-like cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
At the state level, some 23 states have already adopted caps on greenhouse gas emissions or goals for replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources. These efforts are doomed to be costly failures, as a new Heartland Policy Studyby Dr. Jay Lehr and James Taylor documents. Instead of concentrating on balancing state budgets, some legislators will be working to pass their own “mini-Kyotos.”
Eight Reasons to End the Scam
Concern over “global warming” is overblown and misdirected. What follows are eight reasons why we should pull the plug on this scam before it destroys billions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
1. Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate. More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition circulated by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine saying, in part, “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” (Go to www.oism.org for the complete petition and names of signers.) Surveys of climatologists show similar skepticism.
2. Our most reliable sources of temperature data show no global warming trend. Satellite readings of temperatures in the lower troposphere (an area scientists predict would immediately reflect any global warming) show no warming since readings began 23 years ago. These readings are accurate to within 0.01ÂșC, and are consistent with data from weather balloons. Only land-based temperature stations show a warming trend, and these stations do not cover the entire globe, are often contaminated by heat generated by nearby urban development, and are subject to human error.
3. Global climate computer models are too crude to predict future climate changes. All predictions of global warming are based on computer models, not historical data. In order to get their models to produce predictions that are close to their designers’ expectations, modelers resort to “flux adjustments” that can be 25 times larger than the effect of doubling carbon dioxide concentrations, the supposed trigger for global warming. Richard A. Kerr, a writer for Science, says “climate modelers have been ‘cheating’ for so long it’s almost become respectable.”
4. The IPCC did not prove that human activities are causing global warming. Alarmists frequently quote the executive summaries of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations organization, to support their predictions. But here is what the IPCC’s latest report, Climate Change 2001, actually says about predicting the future climate: “The Earth’s atmosphere-ocean dynamics is chaotic: its evolution is sensitive to small perturbations in initial conditions. This sensitivity limits our ability to predict the detailed evolution of weather; inevitable errors and uncertainties in the starting conditions of a weather forecast amplify through the forecast. As well as uncertainty in initial conditions, such predictions are also degraded by errors and uncertainties in our ability to represent accurately the significant climate processes.”
5. A modest amount of global warming, should it occur, would be beneficial to the natural world and to human civilization. Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period (roughly 800 to 1200 AD), which allowed the Vikings to settle presently inhospitable Greenland, were higher than even the worst-case scenario reported by the IPCC. The period from about 5000-3000 BC, known as the “climatic optimum,” was even warmer and marked “a time when mankind began to build its first civilizations,” observe James Plummer and Frances B. Smith in a study for Consumer Alert. “There is good reason to believe that a warmer climate would have a similar effect on the health and welfare of our own far more advanced and adaptable civilization today.”
6. Efforts to quickly reduce human greenhouse gas emissions would be costly and would not stop Earth’s climate from changing. Reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to 7 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2012--the target set by the Kyoto Protocol--would require higher energy taxes and regulations causing the nation to lose 2.4 million jobs and $300 billion in annual economic output. Average household income nationwide would fall by $2,700, and state tax revenues would decline by $93.1 billion due to less taxable earned income and sales, and lower property values. Full implementation of the Kyoto Protocol by all participating nations would reduce global temperature in the year 2100 by a mere 0.14 degrees Celsius.
7. Efforts by state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are even more expensive and threaten to bust state budgets. After raising their spending with reckless abandon during the 1990s, states now face a cumulative projected deficit of more than $90 billion. Incredibly, most states nevertheless persist in backing unnecessary and expensive greenhouse gas reduction programs. New Jersey, for example, collects $358 million a year in utility taxes to fund greenhouse gas reduction programs. Such programs will have no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions. All they do is destroy jobs and waste money.
8. The best strategy to pursue is “no regrets.” The alternative to demands for immediate action to “stop global warming” is not to do nothing. The best strategy is to invest in atmospheric research now and in reducing emissions sometime in the future if the science becomes more compelling. In the meantime, investments should be made to reduce emissions only when such investments make economic sense in their own right.
This strategy is called “no regrets,” and it is roughly what the Bush administration has been doing. The U.S. spends more on global warming research each year than the entire rest of the world combined, and American businesses are leading the way in demonstrating new technologies for reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions.
Time for Common Sense
The global warming scare has enabled environmental advocacy groups to raise billions of dollars in contributions and government grants. It has given politicians (from Al Gore down) opportunities to pose as prophets of doom and slayers of evil corporations. And it has given bureaucrats at all levels of government, from the United Nations to city councils, powers that threaten our jobs and individual liberty.
It is time for common sense to return to the debate over protecting the environment. An excellent first step would be to end the “global warming” scam.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
This Week’s Crazy Jobs ## FUNNIEST
This week’s odd arrangement of occupations involves some wordy, but worthwhile job posts. I’ll let them explain themselves:
1. Monroe, WA: Bank Robber Decoys Sought
I didn’t see the actual ad for this post. Here’s the story, via BoingBoing:
A brazen crook apparently used a Craigslist ad to hire a dozen unsuspecting decoys to help him make his getaway following a robbery outside a bank on Tuesday.
The robber had planned ahead. In case anyone was hot on his trail, he had at least a dozen unsuspecting decoys waiting nearby, which he recruited on Craigslist.
“I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour,” said Mike, who saw a Craigslist ad last week looking for workers for a road maintenance project.
He…was e-mailed…instructions to meet near the Bank of America in Monroe at 11 a.m. Tuesday. He also was told to wear certain work clothing.
“Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask… and, if possible, a blue shirt,” he said.
Mike showed up along with about a dozen other men dressed like him, but there was no contractor and no road work to be done. He thought they had been stood up until he heard about the bank robbery and the suspect who wore the same attire.
Priceless.
2. Nebraska: Frustrated Business Owner Wanted
Business Owner frustrated by
the shifting Economy
Must have knowledge of Marketing
Sales and Closings…
2nd Position open for Account Executive
Contact: Dan
(If busy send response via reply email)
Please write
Your resume
In free verse;
Iambic pentameter,
Even better.
3. Beijing: American who loves to decorate
A Chinese real estate developer is looking for an American who can help with arranging accessories and designing window treatment for our model homes in various cities. Interior design or decorating background will be helpful but not required. Some short traveling within China.
We want our suburbia to look just like yours. Please show us how Pottery Barn is done right.
4. Edinburgh: Wanted: 2 X waitresses for fish & chip restaurant–live-in
This is a busy and popular fish and chip licensed restaurant and take-away located in the seas side town of East Lothian.
We are urgently seeking 2 WAITRESSES to start as soon as possible. We can employ singles or 2 female friends, as our accommodation is female shared.
Applicants should be of neat appearance, keen, motivated, fluent in English and should be team players who are willing to pitch in throughout the restaurant and take-away.
We offer a negotiable salary with live-in accommodation.
We apologize in advance that the fish smell permeating your person and belongings will utterly kill your sex life for the duration of your employment.
5. New Zealand: PowerHouse Executive Wanted
Top real estate and mortgage firm with some international activity headquartered in South Florida is looking for a seriously experienced and impressive Executive Administrative Assistant for it’s energetic, fast-paced Founder.
REQUIREMENTS:
• Real Estate and/or mortgage experience/knowledge absolutely required (and “experience” does not mean you own your own home)
• College degree
• Minimum of three years of experience assisting a Senior Executive Assistant: this is mandatory, if Candidate does not have 3 years experience, resumes will not be considered
• Must be EXTREMELY motivated (Never quits)
• Master at daily task-list completion
• Must be able to work very independently
• This should be the candidate’s long-term career choice
• Strong in Word, Excel and Outlook
• Detail-oriented
• Must be able to work in a fast paced environment
• Must have ability to multi-task
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Must be a self starter who can work with minimal supervision
• Must be highly organized and have strong time management skills
• Must have the ability to maintain confidentiality
• Must have flexibility to meet deadlines with short notice
• Professional appearance and demeanor
• Proficiency in iPhone and/or Blackberry operations an absolute must.
*Hedge Fund/Mezz Financing/Senior Debt-Service a PLUS
Candidate must be able to get a nasty “To-Do” list completed daily, and not let items roll-over to the next day. Having the ability to multi-task and work in fast-paced environment is the only way this opportunity will work out for you. Some days a completely manic, and some days you may need to keep yourself busy- on those days, we expect Candidate can be proactive about creating tasks and prioritize them according to the company’s mission.
Join a winning team, help us achieve our goals, we can help you achieve yours.
We’re trying to break a record for highest number of Type-A personalities in a single office in New Zealand. Won’t you help us?
6. India: Elder Care - Home Care
I am searching for a female to take care of a healthy elderly gentleman for 5 months from November ‘08 to March ‘09. Job location is Tuticorin.
Salary offered is Rs. 6,000 per month. Candidate must be over 18 years of age and under 45, have some college education, must have good health, cleanliness and must speak either Tamil or Malayalam or English. Must stay at the job location. Food and living quarters, transportation to and from home town will be provided.
Attending the elderly gentleman is the primary responsibility which includes light cooking, shopping and house keeping. Gentleman is in his 60’s and in good health and so no need for any medical assistance. Prior experience is a plus.
Rent-a-wife! Someone needs to scale this operation and market it to lonely singles around the world.
7. Nationwide: Part-Time National Guard Infantryman
Major duties
Assists in the performance of reconnaissance operations
Employs, fires, and recovers anti-personnel and anti-tank mines
Operates, mounts/dismounts and zeros weapon systems under various conditions including engaging targets using night vision sights
Operates and maintains communications equipment, and operates in a radio net
Performs as a member of a fire team during training and combat missions
Processes prisoners of war and captured documents
Benefits
Up to a $20,000 Bonus
A monthly paycheck
Montgomery G.I. Bill
Up to 100% tuition assistance for college
Retirement benefits for part-time service
Low-cost life insurance (up to $400,000 in coverage)
401(k)-type savings plan
Duties will be activated after you have scrubbed at least 1,500 latrines. Bonus given to infantrymen who pass 30 short-arm inspections without wincing. Benefits contingent upon survival.
8. Finland: General Manager – Dairy Farm
The role is responsible for providing both strategic and operational leadership for the farming, dairy and processing facility. The role will support the execution of strategic and tactical business plans by working directly with the management team, employees, external business relationships, corporate office and any other entities required to ensure that the business objectives are met.
ESSENTIAL JOB RESULTS:
o Technical experience managing farm of 20-30 thousand heads of cows (yield per cow above 30 Liter/day);
o Minimum experience of 15 years in respective fields of dairy farming;
o Broad understanding of the global trends in dairy industry;
o Operational efficiency track records; in terms of milk yield per cows and costs per liters of milk
o Farming and Dairy Operations, Maintenance, Accounting and
o Purchasing, HR and others to ensure objectives and goals are met and departments are managed effectively
o Coach and counsel subordinate managers to encourage autonomy and accountability within departments.
o Demonstrate an adequate understanding of organic dairy cattle, organic farming practices, equipment, processing, quality, and/or other requisite technical knowledge to engage in overall direction, and leadership of managers across the facility that leads to effective financial performance.
o Demonstrate clear integrity and a sense of ethics and responsibility to the farm and its employees on a daily basis, serving as a model for others.
o Manage relationships with neighbors, community leaders and regulatory agencies
o Respond effectively and to work cross-functionally with in the organization particularly with other farms and corporate leadership.
o Effectively partnership with Human Resources and others in a culturally diverse workforce
o Effectively implement, improve and reinforce the company’s environmental health and safety programs and product food safety programs.