“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, to CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, December 7, 2009.

Google’s New Privacy Policy:

At Google, we are keenly aware of the trust you place in us and our responsibility to protect your privacy IF you have nothing to hide.  Otherwise, too bad, use Bing.

I guess Schmidt won’t mind:

1. Cameras stationed outside his house.

2. Providing his credit card statements to the public.

3. Responding to ValleyWag and others who reported on his many girlfriends, despite being married.

4. Publishing his health records.

5. Publishing his tax returns.

If Google’s Schmidt does not immediately publish those records, it is obvious he has something to hide.

It is the height of stupidity to say that everyone’s private life should be open to the public view.  Just because you don’t share your credit card statements doesn’t mean you are doing something wrong.

There are people out there (including one on the CBS News website today) that claim Al Gore never said “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”  The facts say otherwise and Snopes.com tries to massage the issue by saying it is false.  Snopes confuses the issue by saying “Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed he ‘invented’ the Internet.”  They respond with it as “Status: False.”  Now, we have never seen a claim that Al Gore says he “invented” the internet, but it is clear that Al Gore does say that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

Let’s look at the facts:

1. CNN’s own transcript of the discussion on March 9, 1999’s “Late Edition” with Wolf Blitzer (see

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/index.html) says  “I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

Clearly he does not say he “invented” the internet, but he does claim he created it and Snopes.com is clearly being disingenuous when they change the claim to something it is not.  This is called a straw man, and while one should expect better from Snopes, it is not surprising.

2. ARPANET, the first packet switching network, first went active October 29, 1969 (recently there were articles about the 40th anniversary of the Internet, commemorating that event). But ideas for such a network had been circulating as early as August 1962.  In October 1963, ARPA began to believe that such a network was an important concept.  So, who “created” the internet?  Scientists in the 1960s.  If any politician can claim to have “taken the initiative in creating the internet” it would be the two Presidents were involved in funding it – President Kennedy and President Johnson with President Nixon continuing to fund it more in the early 1970s.  President Johnson’s tenure coincides closest with the initial groundwork and initial operation.  The Congresses at the time should also deserve some credit if any politician could be said to have “created” the internet.  In reality though, it was the researches and the people at ARPA would took the initiative to create the internet.

Gore began serving in Congress in 1977 and the Internet was approximately 9 years old.

Interesting article on climate science here.

Check out this link to an article that shows that the ClimateGate computer source code (e.g. the program that processes the data) has more issues than the emails do.

Part of the summary:

For those who can’t follow what is being stated here is that data after 1960 will be “artificially adjusted” to “hide the decline”. In other words they were hardcoding in the program ways to manipulate the data to hide the decline in temperatures.

But then the scientific (???) journal, Nature finds nothing out of the ordinary in previous papers relying on the data.  At least we know Nature is on the global warming without scientific inquiry bandwagon.

Here is the video of Chris Matthews saying West Point may be the enemy camp for Obama. He may have been accurate for himself and President Obama:

santa@santaclaus.com still works even though the United States Post Office does not. http://santaclaus.com/ See: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575686,00.html

Check out the link, where Al Gore shows in his new book, a photoshopped globe.  Of particular note, the hurricane off the coast of Florida is spinning the wrong direction, Cuba is completely underwater (about 2000 meters/6000 feet of water – meaning Denver would be too) etc.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/with-hurricanes-at-thirty-year-low-gore-turns-to-photoshop.html

After our update from last week and 3 calls to BMW FInancial, BMW is still sending Sandra A’s private information to us.  Now, BMW Financial assured me that they would look into the problem of why they were sending someone else’s private information to me and correct it.  Alas it appears they did not.  And they still provide no simple means of notifying them of their mistake.

——————————

Dear Sandra Axxxxxxxx:

The payment for your 2006 BMW 325xi was received on 11/15/2009 and applied to your account.

Payment Amount          : $430.57
Confirmation Code       : 939159xx

Please allow up to 3-5 additional business days for your payment to be reflected on your bank account statement.

Please do not reply to this message. Replies to this message are routed to an unmonitored mailbox. If you have questions regarding your account, please go to the My Account website http://www.bmwusa.com/myaccount and click the ‘Priority Email’ link or call 1-800-578-5000, Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET.

Nice article here on the ObamaCare bribe.

The Un-Constitutionality of Health Care ‘Reform’ was detailed September 29, 1993 in the Wall Street Journal, page A19. One of the few locations of the article on-line is here. Some selected quotations:

If the legality of a health-care package featuring federally mandated universal participation is litigated (and we can bet it will be), and the system is upheld, it will mark the final extension of this originally modest grant of federal authority. Thereafter, Congress will be able to regulate you not because of who you are, what you do for a living, or whether you use the interstate highways, but merely because you exist. …

One of the fundamental tenets underlying the Constitution of 1787 was that the federal government was a government of limited powers. Unlike the states, which had more general authority to regulate their citizens, the federal government was to be limited to those powers found within the four corners of the Constitution. In particular, Congress could exercise only that authority specifically granted to it by the people and the states.

There was a list — and not a very long list. One of the powers enumerated on it was the “Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations and among the several States.”

…

If the courts uphold Congress’s authority to impose this system, they must once and for all draw the curtain on the Constitution of 1787 and admit that there isnothing that Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause. The polite fiction that we live under a government of limited powers must be discarded — Leviathan must be embraced.

…

The implications of this final extension of the commerce power are frightening. If Congress can regulate you because you are , then it can do anything to you not forbidden by the handful of restraints contained in the Bill of Rights. For example, if Congress thinks Americans are too fat — many are — and this somehow will affect interstate commerce — who’s to say it doesn’t? — can it not decree that Americans shall lose weight? Indeed, under the new system, any activity that might increase the costs of health care might be regulatable.

…

Once Congress’s power is extended to every individual not because of his activities, but because he is, limits on its power will depend upon the fortitude and creativity of the courts. No American, whatever his policy views on health-care reform, should rejoice at the disappearance of the last fragments of the principle that the federal government is one of limited powers. It is indeed ironic, and sad, that as the rest of the world is discovering the virtues of limiting their governments, the U.S. seems hellbent on unleashing its own.