Having defined my own values in 2005, I have also sought to locate people who share most of those values. Of course, no one is perfect, but these ten come as close as I can imagine. Needless to say, I have left myself off this list. Honorable people are not egomaniacs. This list does not necessarily contain people known to be as skeptical as I am. Being honorable and being skeptical are not synonymous.

1. http://maribasque.gaia.com/  Mari Basque  When my spirit was broken at the end of July 2008 and I deleted my original Care2 account, I transferred ownership of my Evolution Education (EE) group to her.

   http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/evolution_education After I returned with my present account, Mari not only made me a member and host again, but went ahead and restored my ownership as well, even though I had not demanded that. That, and a bazillion other experiences she and I have shared, means she is the one in the entire internet I trust the most, hands down. She has never failed me.

2. http://chronicprincess.gaia.com/  Katii  Her track record is impressive: She, like Mari, talked to me after my emotional breakdown last year and pulled me back from the brink of madness and suicide. She also pulls no punches when it comes to people who lie, backstab, or are cowards, while sticking up for her friends when it counts.

3. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=202513583 Lorelie  Anyone who knows her at all won't question her placement on this list.

4. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=957884325  Nick Josh Karean  Both honorable and a skeptic extrordinaire, he is perhaps the only other person on Care2 besides myself who expresses perfectly both sides of my nature. Indeed, he was once accused of being some woman from Canada, but I would not have been surprized if he had been accused of being me (or vice versa). However, he doesn't have my firey temper. So he ranks me there.

5. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=441620532 Earthmaven  She is one of the earliest Care2 members (She joined on Apr 4, 1999) and runs one of the oldest and best Care2 groups, Hot Debates & Shocking News. She is a lady everyone seems to respect, with a balanced approach to everything she does.

6. http://www.myspace.com/peacenowthehippiegirl Janie

   One of the toughest and most brilliant defenders of Liberal politics in MySpace, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her mother Margaret. She is also an amazing artist.

7. Delores Husband   I can't show her avatar because she has none. Indeed, she seldom uses the internet at all. But I know her well enough because she is my mother.

8. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=974818414   Kevin Parsenau 

   A history professor who is highly principled and takes no B S from right-wing extremists he has to deal with on Care2.

9. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=374694550 Uno Totally trustworthy and honest, to the point that she is always willing to tell someone what he needs to hear rather than what he expects to be told.

10. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=275851357 Venetia Spencer

    A profoundly religious Christian, but totally the opposite of a rabid fundamentalist. I think she is one of the few remaining "true" Christians left in the world. It's not about the doctrine you profess, it's what you do with it.

11. http://siona.gaia.com/  Siona van Dijk  There couldn't be a better person to run the gaia.com community! A purer soul I've never met, really! 

12. http://www.care2.com/c2c/people/profile.html?pid=214535046   David Daniels Dedicated to libertarian principles and making a better world for all.

The two sides of the climate change or global warming debate are:

• Man-made Global warming theory (MMGWT) Proponents (MPs)


• MMGWT Denialists (MDs)

Each side is backed up by a "central dogma". The central dogma is a claim that if debunked discredits the entire movement.

The central dogma of MPs is "that there are greenhouse gases that act to retain heat, which in turn can change climate over time".

The central dogma of MDs is "that man cannot change climate, no matter what he does".

Ironically, the MPs' "central dogma" is NOT a dogma at all, since it can be tested via experiment on actual samples of gases said to be "greenhouse", which can be peer reviewed and is reproducible by others.

By contrast, the MDs' central dogma really is a dogma, since there is no way to debunk it. No matter what records you present to show an increase of greenhouse gases like CO2 since the 1950s, no matter what temperature records over the past century or so you present, no matter what records of solar activity you present, MDs will always come up with excuses for rejecting the case of the MPs, including arguing that the records must have been faked. So the position of the MDs is unscientific because it is non-falsifiable.

Well, you cannot fake experimental data. If the "central dogma" of the MPs were indeed false, it would have been debunked many decades ago. Instead, it is so well supported that this "central dogma" is considered as much a fact as anything else in science could be.

So MDs avoid the MPs' "central dogma" and instead constantly argue around it. They confuse uncertainty about global warming models and projections with reasons to deny them completely. They also note the many natural causes of climate change as if that alone supports their central dogma. Both of these are logical fallacies called non-sequiturs. They harp about the few remaining scientists who are MDs as if their credentials alone make them credible. But they don't, because even scientists with PhDs and tenures at universities can be profoundly wrong, especially if they have ideological or financial reasons to corrupt their science.

MPs do not have to attack the central dogma of MDs because, as I showed above, it is unscientific. They just have to point out that it really is a dogma, nothing more.

Global warming has indeed stopped since 2005, due to the Sun. Ironically, the excess CO2 that has been produced by man and contributed to global warming when the Sun was roaring is causing a thermal backlash due to the Sun going quiet now. The reason is because of the other component involved in climate change: water vapor.

One of the most commonly held misconceptions about the man-made global warming hypothesis is that temperatures must increase every year and evenly over the world. No one knowledgable about climate issues would seriously claim that, so it's an obvious strawman.  The question is, why do temperatures fluctuate so much and does global warming explain this? Indeed it does!

The process begins with the slight increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere known to be caused by human emissions. Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate. Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate. In the summer months, the result is much hotter weather than you might expect from CO2 alone.

But H2O has an opposite effect in winter. As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further. Winters will be even colder than one would expect, plus there would be increased precipitation, including snow.

As long as the average temperature over the course of a year at a certain place or region is below the melting point of water, then global warming actually has the paradoxical effect of causing colder winters, more snow and thus increased ice in certain places. It is where the average annual temperatures have risen above the melting point of water that we see glaciers retreating. And the hotter summers at the northern ice cap are nothing to ignore, for its melting away will still have a tragic effect on polar bears.

In the southern hemisphere, global warming has had less of an effect, and this can be explained by geography. There is far more land up north than down south. Land radiates heat, while oceans absorb it. Also, the Arctic Ocean is water surrounded by warmer land, while Antarctica is frigid land surrounded by cold oceans that insulate it from warmer regions. So it stands to reason that the Arctic Ocean will melt long before the Antarctic does, and that there may even be some increase in Antarctic ice for the reasons I explained above.

If there was no CO2, or any other greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, the average temperature on Earth would actually be below the freezing point of water, thus the oceans would be frozen solid and life on Earth would be impossible.  And if there was no H2O to form oceans and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, then CO2 would have accumulated so greatly in the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions over billions of years that we would have experienced temperatures too high for carbon based life forms to survive, thus we would already be like Venus. The abundance of water on Earth, plus the small amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, provide the delicate balance that maintains life on Earth. But too much CO2 can be as much a problem as too little, hence our concern about how much longer it may be before we reach a tipping point in the climate change problem.

The solar activity has dropped, while the CO2 levels have remained high AND the H2O levels are also high. The end result: Warm summers and VERY COLD WINTERS!

But wait until the Sun roars again. When that happens, we will get: Mild winters and VERY HOT SUMMERS!

2002 (Pamela and Randy Copus), Hilary Stagg, and Enya.

Serious solutions to the world's problems. Small talk just wastes everyone's time.

This blog will be a work in progress. I hope to have dozens of pictures of beautiful people, things and places here.

Of course. Always and forever!

I strongly recommend several things to get us out of the economic recession we are in now. For our economy to be as productive as possible, as many people within it need to be working and spending their own money, thus increasing production.

1. Abolish the minimum wage. It was intended to prevent the exploitation of workers, but it actually hurts the working class by limiting the ability of businesses to hire and keep employees. It is far better to have over 99% of workers employed at $3.00 an hour than it is to have only 80% of those workers employed at $7.00 an hour. With the minimum wage, there is a gap between the employed and the unemployed that wouldn't exist otherwise. We never needed a minimum wage because in a truly free market, companies can compete for workers. If workers feel they are being paid less than they are worth, they can search for and find another company that may pay them more per hour.
2. Establish a MAXIMUM wage. Many corporate CEOs and other executives so vastly overpay themselves that they actually are parasites on their own companies rather than leading them to prosperity. If their pay is limited, then the company can hire more workers, increasing production. More production results in a stronger economy.
3. Outlaw outsourcing.  It is the height of absurdity for a company based in the United States to have its manufacturing done in other countries to reduce labor costs and with it the final price of the goods produced. This causes workers in the United States to switch to service positions so they are no longer producers, but middlemen only. This threatens American independence. Thus, a company that outsources its manufacturing is betraying the American people! It is far better to pay higher prices for fewer goods of a higher quality than to pay lower prices for more goods that are of lower quality. It's really that simple! When we make our own goods, we tend to care more about how they are made.
4. Remove the property rights from corporations and ban corporate mergers and corporate bailouts. The biggest mistake we as a society ever made was to grant corporations the same property rights as individuals. This is because corporations are unlimited in size, and when such  giant corporations fail, millions of people may lose their jobs, causing a drop in cash flow that threatens other businesses. So I would recommend that when any corporation fails, the government should NEVER bail it out, but instead should be required by law to BUY OUT the company, fire all its executives, and sell all its properties at auction to individual investors who wish to start and run their own small businesses. I feel that lassez-faire capitalism can really only work when there are NO giant corporations to screw up the works. This is because corporations are more like governments than like individuals, and the same problems of abuse and inefficiency that plague governments ultimately affect corporations as well.
5. Deregulate small businesses. It should be as easy as possible for anyone to start and operate a business. The more people we have owning their own businesses, the more people in general will value their freedom and insist on the government being accountable to them rather than vice versa.
6. Stop the printing and coining of new money for at least a decade.  When the Federal Reserve prints more money, inflation results. Stop the printing of paper money and the making of coins, and we will have deflation as less and less money remains. Deflation will increase the buying power of the dollar, making up for the less remaining currency. 
7. Tax the wealthy heavily and do not tax the poor and middle classes at all, while reducing taxes overall.  This policy will prevent the hoarding of money that impedes cash flow. It does not matter at all how much money is in the economy. If there is less cash flow, the economy is weaker. If there is greater cash flow, the economy will be strengthened. The poorest economies are those with extremes of wealth and poverty, with almost no middle class. We need to increase the middle class and lessen the economic power of the wealthy. Then we will have a stable economy instead of the boom and bust periods we have had repeatedly since the late 1970s. The horror of "Reaganomics" should be thrown into the trash can of history and buried forever!
8. Reduce the size of government.  Also, put government officials under the same economic rules as those outside the government, so that no one can use government to enrich themselves. There should be NO soverign immunity for any government agencies and the people that operate them. Focus primarily on paying down the public debt and make it illegal for the government to ever borrow money. If the government cannot afford something, it should not be done.
9. Decriminalize all drugs.   We waste too much public money on law enforcement by imprisoning people who take illegal drugs instead of treating them like victims of a health problem. Why do we keep tobacco and alcohol legal and regulate them, but not treat all drugs the same way and boost the economy by allowing American citizens to produce and sell them without fear of arrest? Because we have hypocrites running the federal agencies!
10. Outlaw credit cards.   They cause too many people to run up large personal debt that limits their ability to spend money on goods and services later.

I don't claim to be an expert on economics, but I think I know enough to explain why I consider supply-side economics to have been such a disasterous failure since the Reagan years. It was nothing more than a scam to trick people into voting Republican.

When you cut taxes for the wealthy during a recession, they do indeed invest more in the economy, but mainly to benefit themselves rather than to benefit society as a whole. As a result, the gap between rich and poor increases, even as economic activity skyrockets. People become rich by hoarding money rather than spending it, and so the money supply circulating decreases. The Federal Reserve may attempt to solve the problem by printing more money, but this causes inflation, itself a sign of economic distress. Inflation hurts the poor and middle classes, while the wealthy accumulate still more money. Eventually, we end up with ANOTHER recession only a few years after the earlier one ended! So the economic growth caused by the tax cuts may make revenues appear to increase for a short time, but the crash that comes later makes that issue moot. And the default response of the "conservatives" to the new recession is.......more stupid tax cuts!

One thing that can definintely be said about the lies and hypocrisy of many Republicans was that while they did cut taxes, they did NOT reduce the size of government. In fact, they INCREASED it! The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security were both started under Republican administrations (and even this Liberal wants them shut down as unnecessary). And even Reagan blew up military spending while denouncing the excess size of government. Hey, the military IS part of the government! HELLO!!!!

The mistake the "conservatives" kept making was to judge the success of their economic policies by their short term effects, and ignore the downturns that their own policies caused later. What we really need is a set of policies that can generate long-term, slow, and steady economic growth and development that is not likely to result in a crash later. As the old saying goes, "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

If you have never lived through the Great Depression, it's possible that you either don't know what you are talking about, or are lying outright to promote some form of ideological extremism.

First look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKD61r71tIg

This is a video by Shane Killian, a Libertarian activist. While I admire the man for his work on defending evolution and attacking pseudoscience, he seems to be out of his league when it comes to economics, as the next video clearly shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfVIgsz4EME

Killian then proceeds to rewrite history regarding the Great Depression:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubmjc83yAtI

What nonsense! Quite simply, if the New Deal was such a failure, then why did FDR not become a one term President?. Why, indeed, was he elected no less than FOUR TIMES!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd4l6fkxAO8

Because the Great Depression was the worst economic crisis ever in American history, it may be considered uncharted territory. Our government had to experiment to find a solution. Some things attempted during the Great Depression worked better than others, but it was hardly true that the New Deal was a total failure and that World War II finally got us out of the Depression! Indeed, if our economy had not recovered to a reasonable degree by 1941, we would never have been able to wage World War II so well! The right-wing extremists got the issue EXACTLY backwards! War is more likely to destroy a struggling economy than to strengthen it!

So why did Killain make the claims he did? Two reasons.

1. He is a Libertarian. While the ideals of free market economics promoted by that party are indeed admirable, they are also purely a theroetical concept. In the real world, a completely free market CANNOT EXIST FOREVER! If you allow a capitalist economy to run on its own without any government intervention, we will only fall into a depression eventually and stay there PERMENANTLY! Killian's faith in the "free market" is no better than religious fanaticism.
2. He is brilliant on some subjects, therefore he assumes that he must be right on ALL subjects. But that is simply not true of anyone. No one knows or understands everything equally well. Myself included.

There are two reasons why the wealthy in America have managed to increase their appearant wealth. First, having massive capital already, they can take advantage of the capitalist system to maintain their high social position. Second, inflation devalues the dollar over time, so that being merely a millonaire is no longer such a big deal. It seems obvious that people obsessed with their personal wealth are not that concerned with merely being well to do, but being richer than someone else. Thus, people like Donald Trump and Bill Gates make themselves ultra-rich by their own egomania rather than out of any need.

Not only does the massive accumulation of wealth in so few hands deprive millions of others of the chance to be as wealthy, but it hinders economic growth by the limiting of cash flow.

Imagine an economy of ten people, all millionaires buying and selling to each other. We may also have an economy of ten people who have $100 each, also buying and selling to each other. Thus, the economic potential of the first economy is about $10 million, while the economic potential of the second one is only about $1000. But if the millionaires hold on to most of their money and refuse to spend it, then the economic activity is much lower than it can be, while the people with only $100 each who spend their money freely produce a great deal of economic activity relative to their limited financial resources. Money that is held in accounts and not used for anything is useless to an economy. It is only used when it is spent or invested.

With so much money being held by the wealthy, the Federal Reserve tries to produce more to keep the economy moving. But this causes inflation, which over time hurts the poor and the middle class.  So what is the best solution?

I believe that is exactly why tax rates should be far higher for the wealthy than for the middle class and poor, to liberate that excess money and return it to the economy once the government has spent it. At the same time, the Federal Reserve must stop printing and coining any new money for a long period of time and gradually take out most of the money that is there, releasing some of it only occationally later to replace worn out bill and coins. The less money in an economy, the greater its value becomes and thus the buying power of the lower classes will rise enormously. Prices will fall until pennies will be of value once more and being a millionaire will also have meaning again. And there will be NO billionaires at all!

The minimum wage in the United States is $6.55 per hour.  What if a corporate executive is paid about $200 an hour? Doesn't that sound like a lot? No, not really.

A typical work day is about eight hours long. Thus he'd be paid about $1600 a day.

A typical work week is about five days long. Thus he'd be paid about $8000 a week.

A typical work year might be 50 weeks long. Thus he'd be paid $400,000 a year.

Assuming he works that job for a lifetime, about 50 work years, he earn a total of about $20,000,000.

That's only $20 MILLION over his lifetime. Not billion. Just 20 million.

So how did we end up with so many billionaires? Because they used the economy unfairly to enrich themselves at eveyone else's expense. And that limits economic growth. These exectives became parasites on their own companies!

If you cut the pay of these executives to a reasonable limit, then the company will be able to hire and pay more workers, increasing productivity.  Profits for the company will actually rise as a result.

And what benefits those companies benefits the rest of us.

I just say thank you and move on.