Fake but true:

IT APPEARED to provide incontrovertible proof that global warming was accelerating faster than even the most doom-laden scientists had predicted.

There was considerable alarm when the word’s most authoritative atlas printed a map which showed that Greenland was rapidly turning green.

However, experts from around the globe pointed out that the cataclysmic chart had no scientific support and was contradicted by all of the most recent satellite images.

Now the Scottish map-makers responsible for the disappearance of 115,830 square miles of polar ice have admitted publicly they were wrong.

As an act of contrition, The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World cartographers have produced a new map which restores Greenland’s ice cover.

We’re sorry- that we got caught.

Jethro Lennox, senior publishing editor of the £150 tome, insisted lessons would be learned from the episode, which generated headlines around the globe.

The Glasgow-based map-maker said: “We’re very disappointed at the way it happened.

Nothing to see here, move on:

“But we are now looking to draw a line under the Greenland controversy and move on.”

It was a “blunder”

The latest atlas, which was published in September, showed a reduction in ice cover compared with the previous edition from four years ago.

Accompanying publicity material declared the change represented “concrete evidence” of the effects of global warming, stating: “For the first time the new edition has had to erase 15 per cent of Greenland’s permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the UK and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”

Publishers HarperCollins originally stood by the accuracy of the map but have since admitted to the mistake after the blunder was exposed by scientists.

No word on exactly how this “blunder” happened.

Without an official transcript, and still with the SOTU speech being new, I thought I’d provide an open forum thread for first impressions, and open a thread specifically devoted to the SOTU speech.

UPDATE: You can read the transcript provided by the WH here.

Just to lead off on my own first impressions, I’d say that the POTUS and his TOTUS didn’t disappoint with a soaring campaign speech with all the expected moments… and a few unexpected surprises. For those that are the O’faithful, it’s an out of the park home run.

Even I will admit it was a good speech. Then again, I have as much appreciation for well done fiction as the next person.

What caught my ear most of all was one particular promise of administration-bypassing-Congress actions by this POTUS. Because I have no official transcript, I will use the Hillbuzz Blog Live Transcript wording. This relates to the “clean energy” parts of the speech, and Obama’s unusual tie in to the Defense Department.

We can spur energy innovation with new incentives. We need to fight climate change with a clean energy standard and innovation.

I am directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on public land to power three million homes. The Department of Defense will purchase Navy clean energy.

The easiest way to save money is to not waste it.

~~~

From UPDATED WH transcript, linked above:

We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well, tonight, I will. I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes. And I’m proud to announce that the Department of Defense, working with us, the world’s largest consumer of energy, will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history -– with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year. (Applause.)

Once I got my eyebrows back into place, and my jaw clamped back shut, I started pondering… exactly what can the administration do to “develop” public lands, bypassing Congress, for development of national public lands in order to power three million private residences, and what the heck does the Navy and Defense Department have to do with it?

I have only one possible initial explanation to offer… (not much time to research before providing a forum/debate outlet)… and this comes from a June 2011 working draft plan from the Department of Energy, addressing geothermal energy. According to the document:

Excerpt from the Introduction & Overview: The clean energy priorities set forth by the Congress and the Administration require an investment climate where public and private sector partners can come together to research, develop and deploy technologies to make geothermal energy a sustainable resource for generations to come. Furthermore, looking ahead, the expanding electrification of society and replacement of aging generation infrastructure also will require that all renewable energy options are given full consideration. It is in this context that the contributions of geothermal energy to electricity production may become critical to meeting this sizable challenge.

This collaborative document describes the roles and responsibilities of key Federal agencies in the development of geothermal technologies including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), including the U.S. Forest Service; the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), including the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM); the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the Department of Defense (DOD). It also highlights the activities of those agencies that as early adopters are deploying geothermal technologies for end-use applications. In identifying these Federal initiatives, it is the purpose of this document to provide an overview of relevant Federal policies and programs for the geothermal industry, financial community, policymakers, state and local government, other stakeholders and the American public.

From pg 17 of the 38 pg draft, they address the role of the DoD and Navy INRE geothermal development.

Department of Defense (DOD) – Geothermal Program Office (GPO)

The Department of Defense (DOD) participates in geothermal development activities, in particular as an end user. In 1978, DOD established the Geothermal Program Office (GPO) and designated the United States Navy as the lead agency responsible for geothermal exploration and development on military lands. The DOD GPO manages 32 million acres of land. < ?b>GPO has helped develop geothermal energy projects for the military as end user at a variety of locations in the Western United States including in California, Nevada, and Arizona. They include those in California at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake; the Naval Air Facility in El Centro; and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms; those in Nevada at the Naval Air Station in Fallon and the Hawthorne Army Depot in Hawthorne; and the one in Arizona site at the Chocolate Mountains Aerial Gunnery Range at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. This section includes additional information on three of these projects, most notably the long-running and successful Coso Geothermal Field at China Lake, California.

Okay… I see that the Navy can develop public lands for geothermal as the end user of that development. But is Obama planning on using the US Navy to develop geothermal power for private residential use? And where does that authority come from?

Amy Harder at the National Journal also zero’ed in on the same phrase with her evening posting on the SOTU. She has interpreted it as the Navy making a clean energy purchase… enough to power three million homes.

With Congress gridlocked and clean-energy policy stifled by solar-panel maker Solyndra’s default on a federal loan, President Obama said on Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address that he is pressing forward with major initiatives in solar and wind energy that his administration can shepherd on its own.

“The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change,” Obama said. “But there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation. So far, you haven’t acted. Well tonight, I will.”

Obama announced that the Navy will make the largest purchase of renewable energy purchase in history, enough to power a quarter of a million homes a year, and the Interior Department will lay the foundation to provide 3 million homes with renewable energy power from solar and wind projects on public lands by year’s end. The announcements are consistent with Obama’s “We Can’t Wait” initiatives that focus on actions the president can do under his own executive authority without congressional action.

I’m still snooping. Obvious the entertaining fiction that is Obama’s final (she says optimistically) SOTU speech is not fraught with details. But it is a direct reference to bypassing Congress, and using Executive Powers to push his agenda in any way possible.

So feel free to add your own thoughts, research and input to the evening here. And to point out some of the specific points of fiction you, personally, would like to highlight

As a country boy with six years of formal schooling, I am hardly the one to question the role of intellectuals in politics; however, after reading an article by Gary Gutting in the New York Times, I am reminded of a university professor who asked me to help him with a mule problem.

I love mules, but you must be careful with a mule, they can kick with lethal force if they feel they have been offended. Since most of my career with horses has been directed more toward sorting out human problems, rather than equine problems, I was a little apprehensive at the prospect of trying to help this professor and his mule. To be honest, professors tend to be among the least capable in matters dealing with animals and simple everyday problems. Problems that men of humble origins and trades can often solve with little or no deliberation, often baffle learned men, who tend to struggle with theory and morality rather than simple and obvious solutions.

In my youth, I helped several professors who wanted to be closer to the past and nature by owning and riding a horse. Fair enough, everyone needs an excuse for owning these expensive beasts, and seeking some elemental force of nature, makes as much sense as the rest of the excuses. However, mules often have a proclivity for exacting revenge on the human race for perceived injustices of a past life; therefore, I believe, mules are best handled by bona fide mule men, not university professors living in nineteenth century log houses, who want to get in touch with their roots (human not tree), but I heard a calling to help my fellow man and I saw an opportunity to make a few bucks.

I rode my Triumph motorcycle out through the country and enjoyed the colors of fall. I marveled at the beauty of the hardwood leaves after the frosts had killed them, and arrived at the professor’s farm with more than a little trepidation for what might lay ahead, hoping I wouldn’t end up like the colorful leaves.

The professor was glad to see me and dropped the standard pretensions of a tenured professor with condescension for all those who speak with country accents and wear cowboy boots. He seemed to be almost childlike in his excitement at my presence. He was proud of his farm, a former homestead, it was over 150 years old. Some poor homesteader had put his whole life into this 160 acres, a quarter section that at best, could barely yield forty bushels of topsoil an acre, it had never grown a decent crop and today it was a struggle to grow a garden, but it had once again, grown another crop of hard wood trees. But the professor owned it now, and it was a beautiful farm, despite not having crops or pasture.

He showed me, his log barn, his fine harness carriage, his buckboard, and his mule Emily. It was a match made in heaven; he loved the mule and the mule loved him. Emily was a mule that had never been abused by cruel hands and she was a model citizen. I had worried over problems that didn’t exist.

While the professor gushed over his mule and his farm, I began to wonder why I had been summoned to this farm. Everything seemed perfect, far better than most equine situations I am called to visit. The professor finally had to take a break in his speech to catch his wind and I asked why he needed me.

He apologized and said,”I need you to raise the front door of the barn.”

I was once known as a guy who could or at least try to do anything around a farm or ranch, but this seemed like ann odd request. It was an old square log barn and had large blocks of limestone located in strategic spots for a foundation. It was a good system, but not really designed to last a 150 years; the blocks had settled a little deeper every spring during the rains, and now the barn was a little lower than normal, but still high enough to function well. I tried to tell the professor the height of the lintel was well within the realm of reason, but he was agitated that I couldn’t grasp the seriousness of the problem.

He said I would need to see the problem myself, and put a halter with a lead shank on Emily and led her through the front door of the barn. I’ve only worked with thirty or forty mules, so I don’t really know if this is typical mule behavior, but when she walked through the door, she carried her ears straight up and rubbed them against the oak lintel of the door. As a horseman, I have been asked to deal with some bizarre problems, but this didn’t really seem to be a serious problem.

When I told the professor my feelings, he was incredulous, “Don’t you realize, she will wear the hair off her ears.” He showed me a vague strip of wear on the front of her ears. I wasn’t totally convinced that the perceived wear of the mule’s ears and the lintel were related, but some arguments aren’t really worth getting started.

I explained that the lintel over the door of the well made dove tailed barn was a special log, chosen for its strength, grain, and straightness. If I sawed into the log, we might be inviting trouble by compromising strength at a critical spot, that spot being the span over the door.

He was lost in deep thought over this information being added and causing complications to this unique predicament. I broke the silence by saying, “There is a much easier solution.”

With a look of incredulous exasperation, he twisted his lips to the side of his face, to hear my solution, “I can dig a trench about eight inches deep in the dirt beneath the door.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “It’s not her damn feet I’m worried about, it’s her ears.”

This professor considered himself an intellectual, and to him, I was but a mere tradesman of mortal lineage. True to the myopia of philosophy, his only concern was the ears of the mare, and he was determined to reach a conclusion by employing critical thinking: I was limited, by nature of an inferior intellect to solutions not based in theory and critical thinking, but to those related to real and practical solutions.

Mr Gutting is a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame; and is convinced of the superiority of critical thinking, but fails to mention the utter failure of the Obama Administration, an administration made up exclusively of critical thinkers from academia. Yet, after this stark demonstration of dismal failure by critical thinkers, we are supposed to be reassured by Mr Gutting’s self-serving arrogance, that seeks to legitimize a personal image of importance, after all, he writes for The Stone, “A forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.”

With unabashed arrogance, Gary assures us of his intelligence, by informing us that he is among the most august of critical thinkers, “I’m an intellectual myself”; it’s just possible, that within this particular oxymoronic phrase, may be a clue to this deviant personality that is currently running amuck in government and in a permanent state of denial as to the charges of incompetence and corruption. Denial has become more than a river in Egypt, it is an endemic example of hubris among the not so bright intellectuals, currently in serving in the Obama Administration, who are teetering above the abyss of failure and humiliation.

From the nimble but dull fingers of Gutting and the pages of the NYT:

What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. Nowadays, universities are the most congenial spots for intellectuals, although even there corporatism and careerism are increasing threats.

It is such a joy, to read of someone describing himself as an intellectual, who writes with such finesse and precision. I am reminded of a cowardly man doing battle with a bed of rattle snakes while armed with a grub hoe. After reading this pregnant phrase of many vectors, “someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the” it’s obvious that intellectuals aren’t required or expected to write well. For reference, we know Hemingway was the master of the simple and concise sentence, and Melville was a genius with the complex double and triple entente; may we assume Gary Gutting is the champion of lost and bewildered adverbial phrases.

It would be easy enough to eviscerate Gary Gutting on the merits of his writing ability and embarrass him in front of his peers and anyone else who can read, but it is his message we seek. For if there is a protasis within this fart, stumble, fall style of writing, it evades the reader. For while his prose delights the ear of those who crave the mundane and boring, his adverbs assault our dignity in a relentless pursuit of relevance, but like the dog chasing its tail, his periphrasis becomes his catharsis. Relating to Aristotle, in Chapter VI of Poetics, “Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such emotions.”

Gary Gutting is primarily concerned with Newt or more precisely, fear of Newt. Newt is a bit of a problem for Leftists; oh fear not, they have excess baggage charges and they are ready to confront and dun him for back payments, but that is not the strategic issue. The prospect of an empty suit engaging Newt in debate is the terrifying issue. Oh dear, it brings to mind the great defeats of history, Stalingrad, Waterloo, The Little Big Horn. There is always the excitement of the contest beforehand, and the first few minutes when hope still springs eternal, before that same hope becomes a forlorn hope, but it is only a matter of time, before they are faced with the inevitable prospect of annihilation and utter defeat.

How best to neutralize the prospect of a witless pseudo-intellectual champion being embarrassed in the arena of ideas and indirectly casting aspersions toward all those who say with arrogance and condescension, “I’m an intellectual myself”; there is a simple solution, impress upon everyone, that intellectualism is a collective team effort of critical thought and that is how ignorance must be defeated. One man can’t be expected to lead a country; he needs a gaggle clueless intellectuals.

Unfortunately, Newt doesn’t need a team for a debate or a teleprompter, and pitting him against a fool who seems to be bewildered without his faithful teleprompter, will be like slaughtering lambs in an abattoir. A scene that doubtless will cause even the most cold blooded Socialist to admit the futility of resisting the epiplexis of a Newt/Hussein comedic tragedy.

Poor Gary, in an attempt to establish credibility as an intellectual and advance his vague aphorisms, he tries to use the obligatory and token reference to poor Plato, a man who understood the inherent weakness of adverbs and relied as little as possible on the ancients for guidance. We can assume that Gary not only understands the Cliff Notes version of Plato, but he is not afraid or reluctant to employ a deluge of adverbs.

In his “Republic,” Plato put forward the ideal of a state ruled by intellectuals who combined comprehensive theoretical knowledge with the practical capacity for applying it to concrete problems. In reality, no one has theoretical expertise in more than a few specialized subjects, and there is no strong correlation between having such knowledge and being able to use it to resolve complex social and political problems. Even more important, our theoretical knowledge is often highly limited, so that even the best available expert advice may be of little practical value. An experienced and informed non-expert may well have a better sense of these limits than experts strongly invested in their disciplines. This analysis supports the traditional American distrust of intellectuals: they are not in general highly suited for political office.

We now know that in a politically correct world, we need intellectuals to prescribe correct thinking and appreciation; otherwise, we might lose ourselves in original thought processes.

Intellectuals tell us things we need to know: how nature and society work, what happened in our past, how to analyze concepts, how to appreciate art and literature. They also keep us in conversation with the great minds of our past. This conversation may not, as some hope, tap into a source of enduring wisdom, but it at least provides a critical standpoint for assessing the limits of our current cultural assumptions.

Read his entire article if you must, but be prepared to ask yourself why tuition must continue to rise for your children and grandchildren, and will this dubious degree they seek at such expense, teach them to write with the clarity of Gary Gutting or will they be able to maintain the skills they acquired in high school.

But it does not support the anti-intellectualism that tolerates or even applauds candidates who disdain or are incapable of serious engagement with intellectuals. Good politicians need not be intellectuals, but they should have intellectual lives. Concretely, they should have an ability and interest in reading the sorts of articles that appear in, for example, Scientific American, The New York Review of Books, and the science, culture and op-ed sections of major national newspapers — as well as the books discussed in such articles.

It’s often said that what our leaders need is common sense, not fancy theories. But common-sense ideas that work in individuals’ everyday lives are often useless for dealing with complex problems of society as a whole. For example, it’s common sense that government payments to the unemployed will lead to more jobs because those receiving the payments will spend the money, thereby increasing demand, which will lead businesses to hire more workers. But it’s also common sense that if people are paid for not working, they will have less incentive to work, which will increase unemployment. The trick is to find the amount of unemployment benefits that will strike the most effective balance between stimulating demand and discouraging employment. This is where our leaders need to talk to economists.

Knowing how to talk to economists and other experts is an essential skill of good political leaders. This in turn requires a basic understanding of how experts in various fields think and what they might have to offer for resolving a given problem. Leaders need to be intelligent “consumers” of expert opinions.

According to Gary Gutting the intellectual philosopher, our leaders should now, not only be intelligent consumers of intellectual thought but must read the Leftist dogma of Scientific American, the New York Review of Books, and effete pseudo-intellectual rags like the New York Times, but they must also have the ability to listen to monotonous circumlocution and derive a pretense of meaning from gibberish. Intellectuals are now to be elevated to a higher standing, not only in the community, but more importantly in government and leadership. For now, they will advise and direct our leadership so they can make intelligent decisions and we are left with the story of Emily’s ears.

The real cause of global warming

The leak of more emails from East Anglia makes painfully clear why climate “scientists” desparately want to prevent dissemination of their internal communications.

More than 5,000 documents have been leaked online purporting to be the correspondence of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia who were previously accused of ‘massaging’ evidence of man-made climate change.

Following on from the original ‘climategate’ emails of 2009, the new package appears to show systematic suppression of evidence, and even publication of reports that scientists knew to to be based on flawed approaches.

And not only do the emails paint a picture of scientists manipulating data, government employees at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are also implicated.

One scientist made things pretty clear:

‘I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,’ wrote another.

And there’s this:

Clive Crook, a commentator for the Atlantic, who described the earlier inquiries into the Climategate emails as ‘ineffectual’ and ‘mealy mouthed’, reportedly said, ‘The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me.

‘The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.’

And the Mann “hockey stick” is trashed:

Take this from first principles.

A tree only grows on land. That excludes 70% of the earth covered by water. A tree does no grow on ice. A tree does not grow in a desert. A tree does not grow on grassland-savannahs. A tree does not grow in alpine areas. A tree does not grow in the tundra We are left with perhaps 15% of the planet upon which forests grow/grew. That does not make any studies from tree rings global, or even hemispheric.

The width and density of tree rings is dependent upon the following variables which cannot be reliably separated from each other. sunlight – if the sun varies, the ring will vary. But not at night of course.

cloudiness – more clouds, less sun, less ring.

pests/disease – a caterpillar or locust plague will reduce photosynthesis

access to sunlight – competition within a forest can disadvantage or advantage some trees.

moisture/rainfall – a key variable. Trees do not prosper in a droughteven if there’s a heat wave.

snow packing in spring around the base of the trees retards growth temperature – finally!

The tree ring is a composite of all these variables, not merely of temperature. Therefore on the 15% of the planet covered by trees, their rings do not and cannot accurately record temperature in isolation from the other environmental variables.

In my article on Greening Earth Society on the Hockey Stick, I point to other evidence which contradicts Mann’s theory. The Idso’s have produced more of that evidence, and a new article on Greening Earth has `unearthed’ even more.

Mann’s theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue. Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE and LIA as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings – a proxy which has all the deficiencies I have stated above.

The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad science’. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case, only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.

Cheers
John Daly

via Doug

A complete review is here

AGW is a load of crap. It is clear that it is nothing more than politics and designed to be redistributionism in science drag.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

Prologue: This is a story of two Stone Age chieftains, who migrated to America during the last Ice Age, approximately twenty thousand years ago: one came from the East and one came from the West, but before you begin to recite the teachings of Archaeology from twenty years ago, you might be surprised to know of startling new discoveries about the migration of man and the inconvenient facts surrounding the theories of Anthropomorphic Global Warming.

The Whale People, Their Homeland (Europe’s Western Coast, now submerged)

Yellow Hair was an anomaly; he was ancient, almost forty years old, but strongest among all the men of the Whale People. He was chief of the Whale People, and he ruled his tribe with rules etched in flint. Breaking the rules often meant death for the offender; for life was a tedious and constant struggle between survival and death, and death came all too often twenty-thousand years ago, during the height of the last great Ice Age in the area off the coast of Western France.

Much of the world’s water was locked up in ice sheets that a mile high covering much of Europe, Asia, and North America; in fact, the ice sheets covered one-third of the earth’s land masses and depleted the oceans of so much water, the ocean depths were a hundred meters less than they are now. There were coast lines connecting Europe with North America, and Asia with North America, they extended nearly a thousand miles from north to south on each corridor. It was a temperate area of grasslands and coniferous forests with limited precipitation, because of the amount of water frozen in the glaciers. There were thousands of creeks and rivers fed by springs and lakes that are now a hundred meters under water. It was a harsh ecosystem that supported the mastodon, a creature much larger than the elephant, as well as musk ox, giant sloths, saber toothed tigers, large bears, caribou, giant moose, elk, horses, and camels, all of whom migrated freely back and forth from Asia and Europe to North America.

No one knows why the giant glaciers appeared or why they receded, but the Ice Ages were real events in the story of the earth; the Ice Ages spanned tens of thousands of years and facilitated the dispersal of man all over the world.

The Whale People were a hardy bunch that had drawn their genetic pools from the blue and green eyed traders from the East, the tall, blonde haired, white skinned people from the land to the North, and the darker people of the South. It was a fairly short walk from North Africa to what would become Spain; the drought conditions of the world brought on by so much water being sequestered in ice forced many of the darker people of Africa to migrate north to be near the life giving water from glacial melt in summer and the springs that formed creeks and rivers on the Southern boundaries of the European Glacier and to the western shores of Spain and France.

The Whale People had originally occupied a coastal area that was next to the Southern ice shield of Europe approximately twenty-thousand years ago. Almost nothing could survive on these ever increasing glaciers that covered large portions of the continents, but there was a strip of new land exposed from the ocean depths, extending well beyond our present shorelines, because of so much of the earth’s water being frozen in the glaciers. This strip of land was warmed by the ocean, but it still remained a cold climate in summer, from the cooling effects of the great mass of ice on its borders. On this narrow strip of land, a micro-climate existed that had allowed animals, grasses, and a few hardy trees to proliferate in a wondrous abundance for tens of thousands of years, but the pressure by humans and the ever encroaching ice was reducing the availability of food sources and thus the livable space was under fierce competition by all species, but the competition among humans was the probably the fiercest.

Yellow Hair’s tribe had occupied the Southern coastal regions since the beginning of time or at least as far back as their oral history recorded their time here on earth. Yellow Hair wasn’t a singer who memorized the family lines and history of his tribe, but he knew his fathers had been chiefs far back in time. He had remembered his fathers and his personal history by assigning each of them, one of his fingers. He could go back in time by looking at a finger and tell you the name of that father, going back in time, nine generations.

The Ice People, The Migration (From Central Asia)

Tiger Paw loved to hunt and here in the land of the North Star, this land the North People call Beringia (the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska), the hunting was better than in the stories of the First Days.

It was told in the oral traditions of history, on the nights of the full moon, of how his people, the Ice People, had followed the herds over the Great Grasslands and forests to the West, just South of the great walls of ice. In the beginning, they were the first people, because the Father of the Ice had shown them great favor by providing them with flint for spears and the many animals to hunt. At first everyone was hungry during the winter, but the Father of the Ice liked the Ice People and gave them the beasts of the Steppes and the stone technology to kill the beasts, he also gave them fire and taught the women how to cook and how to brain tan furs and leather.

They learned that the brain of each animal, when allowed to break down to a gelatinous mass in a covered ceramic bowl, was sufficient to tan its own hide. They marveled at the skills of the ice Father and how he put all these mysteries of life within reach of those with the intelligence to figure out the answers. The Ice Father taught the women to love the hunters and to entertain them at night, so the tribe would be happy and always have new little ones.

Tiger Paw’s belief was essentially correct in the oral history of his tribe, but his concept of time wasn’t capable of comprehending the enormity of his tribe’s migration. His ancestors started moving east through the mountains and grasslands of Southern Russia and Northern Asia, several thousand years ago. Using the logic of 20,000 years ago, they figured the sun was always refueled in the East and traveled overhead to the West, only to get tired at the end of each day, needing to sleep through the night to be strong and hot the next morning, much like the hunter who hunts all day, breeds his woman at night, and then sleeps to be strong in the morning. They wanted to see this land where the sun is refreshed; there is surely much fuel to warm the sun, just beyond the horizon to the east. Sadly, the sun seemed to be weakening, because the great ice sheets were getting larger and eating more and more land. They were over a mile high and moving to the South at the rate of several man strides every day.

The idea of a great source of fuel to the East, was essentially the idea for migrating to the East. For over a thousand years, they followed the basic idea of moving east, always east. There were hostile tribes to contend with and periods of starvation coupled with disease, but they kept moving east.

Their culture and customs were ill suited for sedentary life. It was a simple matter of hygiene; a concept that was understood by sedentary tribes, for they knew that human waste was dangerous and should be deposited in a hole dug specifically for that purpose, they also understood the need to maintain clean drinking water.

It seems a simple concept, but migrating people rarely suffered from the ravages of cholera and dysentery, for they rarely made camp for longer than it took for a kill to be consumed or to spoil, except in the winter and the effects of disease were lessened during the extreme cold of winter.

Sedentary tribes, without cultural customs for contending with human waste, were condemned to die of disease if they stayed too long in one place. The problem was self-correcting in time, since tribes that lacked certain cultural conventions were weakened and often annihilated by other tribes who looked upon them as unclean or they simply died out from the ravages of disease.

During the migration of the Ice People, they had acquired many customs from the women they had traded for and the occasional lost hunter they had adopted. Even though Tiger Paw believed his tribe to be the only true people walking the earth, he understood advantages in acquiring new people with new technologies and customs.

The Whale People of Europe

Nine generations would place Yellow Hair’s father in the time when the great mother whale, Olalla of the big wild salt water, gave birth to man and all the creatures of the earth. In Yellow Hair’s mind, his distant relative was the first human to slide through Olalla’s birth canal and swim to shore; therefore, his birthright was one of leadership and a semi-divinity, for he was a direct descendant of Olalla. He couldn’t explain the bloodlines of other people or even those in his tribe and he forbid himself and others from asking frivolous questions that complicate the simple explanations of their life.

It was this natural birth of Yellow Hair’s relative that intrigued the Whale People and provided the common bond that held them together. The secrets of their existence and their connection with divinity was thought to exist through the navel of Yellow Hair, for that umbilical connection was directly related to Olalla the Whale Mother who had birthed the first relative of Yellow Hair, the very first human.

Unfortunately, it was the natural scheme of their life that was in jeopardy at this time; for the success of the Whale People made them the envy of many tribes. They had mastered the science of not only trapping great bounties of salmon in the rivers, but more importantly, they smoked and dried the salmon over smoldering fires to preserve them for months. This was a quantum leap in technology for the people of the world. News spread for over a thousand miles to the East along with the tasty morsels of the pink colored fish flesh.

Tribes with many huge warriors and advanced stone weapons ventured into the traditional lands of the Salmon People and brought many wondrous trade goods to trade for the smoked salmon of the Whale People. Trade was good for the Whale people, but some of these tribes decided to stay and there were now tribes camped in their winter hunting grounds and on their fishing grounds.

The winters were too cold to fish in the great salt water and the rivers and creeks were frozen. Rather than eat smoked salmon all winter, the Whale people had learned the different migration routes of the Caribou and devised traps to catch the Caribou in blind canyons for the winter. If there was enough feed for the Caribou, they would slaughter them as they needed meat; if the valley floor ran out of the lichens that the Caribou eat, they would slaughter them all at once and smoke the flesh like that of the salmon. In a gaunt world of starvation and hardship, the Whale People lived in a world of plenty.

They were happy to live under the leadership of Yellow Hair; not only was he divine, but he was a fair and intelligent leader, who could sense when and where the Caribou were migrating and when the Salmon started their runs or when there was a whale trapped in a small estuary by the tide. His people made boats with oak frames with greased leather for hulls that worked well if you kept the hide well greased with seal oil or whale blubber.

If his people observed the rules, they lived in harmony within the group: if they broke the law, Yellow Hair might cut their throat or trade them into slavery. He was feared, but loved as well. He was the nucleus that kept his tribe strong.

In these early days and up up until the present, there were several aspects of a society that needed to be worked into a particular culture for that society to exist and thrive. Survival, procreation, food, and leadership were all important elements that had to be defined culturally for a tribe to exist. If the rules or laws were broken, the society broke down.

Yellow Hair could control his own people; unfortunately, there were other tribes moving in and occupying their traditional Caribou hunting grounds. They observed the Caribou techniques of the Whale People and just repaired the log fences and gaits while waiting for the Caribou to pass through the mountain valleys.

This was no problem for Yellow Hair, he knew the mountain passes and could divert the Caribou with fire and by dressing his men in wolf and bear hides to drive the Caribou into different blind canyons. He would just build new gaits and fences at the entrances. These new people would have to live off the few Caribou that might be separated and the odd elk, horse, camel, or moose they could kill. If they were desperate or if they found a mastodon trapped in mud or lame, they could fight the mastodon to the death, for it was only possible to kill one at great risk to the hunters. He knew these new green and blue eyed people would often be facing starvation and that the Whale People almost always had plenty of Caribou and fish; therefore, they were at risk from these starving tribes.

These interlopers should have stayed in their own country, Yellow Hair reasoned. They were unfit for life between the ice and the salt sea. Their eyes were light colored and they suffered from the sun’s glare, their skin was too white in color and they couldn’t work naked in the glacier fed waters to catch the salmon. They didn’t engage in ritual washing and smoking their bodies in the traditional way. That alone prevented them from being hardy enough to survive the fierce cold and winds of these ancient lands. The blue and green eyed people were weak beyond measure, but they were large people and dangerous.

Yellow Hair knew he carried the seed of the first human, but it was this first human’s lusty ways and hunger for wild women of the forests that had produced all these uncultured barbarians. This ancient father had produced these excess humans of his own blood, and were now posing a threat to the very existence of the Whale People.

Yellow Hair had little sympathy for weakness, he had seen a weakness of character in the previous chief, his own father, and challenged the chief to personal combat for leadership of the tribe and to possess the young princess wife of his father. He killed his own father and claimed his father’s earthly goods and wives as his own. He was hardy enough, but that was back when men were men. (The weakest of the men was many times stronger than an NFL linebacker.) In those early days they hunted and killed the near humans for sport. There weren’t enough of them left now to worry over; besides, they can’t speak words, the men run like pregnant women, and they make the crudest tools and weapons. They are laughable, but in a wrestling match they are deadly, for they are strong like the mastodon. No, it is much safer to kill them with spears from a goodly distance. The near humans’s muscles are so large, they can only thrust a spear, if they try to throw a spear it is laughable.

He didn’t like to think about it, but these near humans, might be the result of his relative, the First Human, coupling with some creature of the forest. It was an ugly thought, but how else do you explain the presence of these near humans. He tried not to dwell on the negative aspects of the heritage of the First Human, but sometimes this irresponsible behavior of his family was embarrassing and impossible to ignore.

Yellow Hair had several wives and at least nine children, aged from twenty-four years to one winter. He enjoyed his kids; however, they were expected to meet the same requirements for life and work as everyone else, if the rules were relaxed for his family, he knew there would be resentment among his people.

Women who chose a mate from another tribe were expected to leave, but if a suitable mate was a loner and could prove himself as far as fishing, hunting, courage, and work, he could be accepted into the tribe. Yellow Hair would never allow slackers and free loaders a wooden soup bowl; charming a maiden of his tribe, did not warrant a free meal around the cook fire.

Everyone had to contribute with meaningful work or be banished or possibly executed by Yellow Hair. Life was a precious gift, but the nature of living next to the ice made it imperative that everyone worked to insure survival of the group. When the Salmon got lost and didn’t return to their rivers and creeks in sufficient numbers or the Caribou were called by Olalla to rest a year and not migrate, the old frail people were expected to walk alone into the night and not return, infanticide was also practiced to keep the numbers of the tribe down when food was scarce to help keep the nutritional requirements low. There were always hard decisions to be made, but the Whale People realized they must be ready to sacrifice just to survive next to the ice.

Killing a huge mastodon could mean survival through the winter, but unless they were mired in a bog hole or suffering from a severe lameness, it was far too dangerous to try and kill them and even when they were trapped, it often took hours to kill the monsters and many times his hunters were killed as well.

Sea lions were also dangerous to kill for they could travel much faster than a man can run. They were usually killed with a fusillade of spears when the animal was caught sunning himself beneath a ledge. The spears were made with sharp narrow points and heavier shafts, but the lighter javelin was also used, these weapons were designed to penetrate a tough hide and several layers of blubber; unless, the spear throws were lethal, the animal would run to the sea to escape and a valuable cache of spears and javelins would be lost with him. The sea lions were unafraid of humans and would run over a man who stood in his way as if he wasn’t there. The man would be crushed under several tons of sea lion, traveling faster than a horse.

The wild horses were trapped in blind canyons like the caribou, but they were more wary than the caribou and often sensed a trap and would turn just before being caught, to run over the men and sacrifice a few members of the herd to insure that the herd would survive.

Stealth and hunting discipline was primary in killing any of these animals, for even though man was a strong lethal killer, if an animal turned to fight and a man was caught without his weapon, humans always died. Yellow Hair explained to his elder sons, Sea Otter and Ivory Tusk, that Olalla, the whale mother that had birthed their first father, had given them superior brains to stand against the fierce animals of the grasslands and the ocean; otherwise they would have starved long ago. They accepted these truths without question; yet, there were many unanswered mysteries for the twenty year old lads.

The Ice People of Asia

Often the men had some hunting trick or knowledge of nature that helped them secure food: the women the hunters acquired for wives, always brought new knowledge of food preparation and garment making that made life better for the Ice People.

Several generations ago, the Ice People adopted a small band of tiny people with black silky hair (from the tribes that would form Japan, then a mountainous area connected to Asia and on the Eastern shore of a large lake). Their tribe had been wiped out by barbarians and they were starving. Chief Four Fingers, Tiger Paw’s grandfather, was intrigued by the women and thought if they had some meat on their bones they would be intriguing bed warmers.

The kindness shown by Four Fingers was rewarded not only by having attractive bed warmers, but these people were excellent fishermen, they also knew how to smoke fish and meats, but most importantly, they understood boatbuilding and using a mast with a short gaff rigged sail and rudder.

Although, the Ice People were on the coast, it is important to remember that so much water was frozen in the great ice sheets, that the ocean depth was reduced by over a hundred meters. The land bridge connecting Alaska and Siberia was over a thousand miles wide. Coastal areas often extended hundreds of miles farther into the sea than they do now. Thousands of rivers and creeks existed that are now on the sea floor. Beringia was a dry grassland that teemed with migrating herds traveling freely between Asia and North America.

Four Fingers had welcomed these fishermen into the tribe and did his best to insure the little people adopted the Ice Culture, but the technology that was gained by the little people was transforming their culture. He was primarily concerned with the combining the two DNA groups by spreading his seed around as much as possible, but the cultural and technological aspects of these ancient fishermen kept the Ice People from starving many times.

The original DNA pool of the Ice People had been slowly diluted for thousands of years as they traveled through Asia, along the borders of the ice; but rather than weakening the gene pool of the Ice People, they became stronger. Instead of a fair-haired tribe with green and blue eyes, they were primarily dark haired people with almond eyes. There would be an occasional child born with round blue eyes and fair hair, amid great laughter and jokes directed toward the mother and father, but the Ice People were a loving people and the throwback was always accepted as one of the true people.

The Ice People had managed to keep their own numbers close to one hundred hunters, not counting women and children. They lived well, but there were dangers from larger hostile tribes. Many tribes were driven into Beringia by starvation, but killing the great mastodon required advanced hunting skills and coordination among hunters; and yet, the skills for hunting horses, camels, muskox, caribou, and other animals of this huge grassland were advanced as well. Fishing required the skills and knowledge for building fish traps and a willingness to work naked in near freezing cold water. Boat building skills consisted of carefully burning and scraping a log with sharp instruments, until a boat shaped form appeared. Their sails were abbreviated, since the heavy keel technology would take thousands of years to be discovered; however, with paddles, these fairly fast, sleek canoe type vessels could be used for fishing and sealing and perhaps more importantly for continued migration to the land of fuel to the East.

The Ice People were hunting and fishing on the Northern edge of the glacier that extended into Southern British Columbia and north into the Yukon and Alaska. Although, it was an enormous glacier, in comparison to the glacier to the East, covering the rest of Canada and much of the US, it was a miniature glacier. Tiger Paw’s People knew there was a corridor of excellent winter hunting between the two glaciers, but they were also enjoying excellent fishing and sealing in the stormy salt sea, during the summer months.

Life was good for the Ice People, but with success in the struggle for life, comes those who want to steal that success.

The Whale People of Europe

Both of Yellow Hair’s sons had chosen good mates from outside the tribe. Yellow Hair had examined the potential mates closely for sickness or deformities and then deemed them sound women suitable for work and childbirth. He had paid a man’s weight in smoked salmon and several pairs of winter moccasins for the young girls, but each one had been an excellent purchase from the barbarian tribes of green and blue eyes, since they each produced a healthy son for the tribe. Thus his tribe would be guaranteed to survive with the superior intellect and knowledge that Yellow Hair was passing on to his sons. Yellow Hair was respected by his tribe for his infinite knowledge of nature, animals, survival, food preservation, weather, the seasons, and the land itself.

Mates were an important aspect of tribal life, adultery was not permitted without a formal declaration by a woman in front of the tribe at dinner. A man could have several wives if he could care for them, but if one of them stated her desire to be with another, there might be a fight to the death or the choice might go unchallenged for various reasons. Yellow Hair was a detached observer and official of these domestic disputes. Someone might die in a fight as a result of hard feelings and tempestuous desires, so the divorce option was not to be taken lightly. He thought it was a good system that helped keep his tribe strong and stable and especially, in helping to control these wild mating desires of both men and women.

Yellow Hair liked to keep about a hundred men in the tribe and twice that many women. The number of children fluctuated, because so many children died from the harsh life. It was obvious that Olalla wanted only the strongest of children to survive and she had to test them every winter. Everyone was expected to work in the cold glaciers streams to help catch the salmon and the boys were expected to join in the difficult and dangerous hunts. The work of women was much safer, but many of them died in childbirth, so in time, Olalla provided twice as many women as men. Yellow Hair also purchased wives for his men, when there always seemed to be a shortage of unmarried women.

He gave them a thorough physical exam before purchase. He demanded clear eyes, preferably of the earth colors and not the colors of plants and sky, broad hips for child birth, good sound teeth that met in a fairly uniform manner, well formed milk paps, and a well formed birth canal with no infection.

He had an unfortunate incident in the past, a woman was infected and gave birth to two blind children. Yellow Hair had been forced to kill the babies and after becoming suspicious, he examined the woman and discovered that she was infected. He killed her and drove her husband out of the village to prevent the spread of infection to other members of the tribe. He hesitated to only banish the man, who was a cousin of his, rather than kill him, for he knew the infection would probably continue through the populations of other tribes.

Yellow Hair had picked his eldest son, Ivory Tusk, to succeed him as chief. The lad was strong, had good eyes, and an uncanny way of understanding the animals and fish. He was a good strong son.

It all happened very quickly. A group of several tribes raided the fishing camp in the early morning before the sun chased away the thick fog. They intended to kill and rob the Whale People of their dried salmon. Many of the Whale men were overwhelmed and killed, the survivors were forced to retreat to their canoes. They lost over half the adults and most of the children in the initial minutes of the attack. They had few personal belongings with them, but they felt lucky to escape with their lives. They pushed the canoes into the surf as spears were landing around them. They managed to retrieve a few of the spears that were thrown, but they escaped with only a few stones for knives and a few spears.

Yellow Hair counted people, there were forty-five men and twenty-three women with just a few suckling children and adolescents that had survived the raid. They had suffered a terrible defeat. The raiders might be following them in the extra canoes, they kept paddling all day to the North. Ivory Tusk was wounded in the gut and in a few hours, he could no longer continue to paddle. Yellow Hair took the time to transfer him to his canoe.

He looked his brave, handsome son in the eye and felt tears for the first time, since he was a child. “Olalla is calling you home” he said, “You have the chance to see her in this world, before you cross over to the spirit world. Are you ready, to see the Whale Mother?”

Ivory Tusk nodded his head, yes, and looked to the blue sky of morning, while thongs secured his legs and arms to prevent him from swimming and prolonging his agony. He was proud to be a strong leader like his father and made sure to maintain his honor and dignity as the men prepared him for the depths.

His father said to him, “We will sing of you at the winter fires and I will see you in the Spirit World, my son,” as he slipped his son’s bound body into the great salt sea.

The Whale People all said their goodbyes as Ivory Tusk disappeared under the waves and still looking up at them, the Whale People then resumed paddling as the storm clouds began forming.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew there were food thefts taking place by some of the other tribes and some of them were making threatening signs at kill sites. Life was hard in Beringia, starvation was everywhere, the Ice People were well fed, their women had meat on their bones and produced children every year or two; they were successful, but the other tribes wanted this good life and the riches associated with success and eating well.

The Ice People had a simple life and a simple formula for success, but it required a keen observation of nature, the intelligence to apply the skills of hunting, and the willingness to work tirelessly to secure food; for everything was easier if you secured food. If you had excess food, like dried and smoked fish and meat, you could trade for tools, weapons, furs, and women.

Tribes who weren’t successful had to trade their women and girls for food to live; eventually, the young men of less successful tribes became despondent and angry. They looked at the wealth of Tiger Paw’s people and wondered why their tribe wasn’t rich with the bounty of the world. After all, the bounty was put on earth for everyone, all the tribes should have healthy women and dried fish; the Ice People were just acting like bears, they took their share and everyone else’s share as well.

Blue Duck, the only son of Chief One Eye, of the Muskeg people, was one of those consumed with envy and hatred. He and several of his companions watched as a small band of Ice People brought down one of the giant moose with several well placed spear throws. He was incredulous that women accompanied the men on the hunt. This fact alone made his heart burn with hatred and anger; these people had no respect for the ancient customs of his people and now they were going to enjoy the tasty internal morsels of this magnificent animal, an animal that rightfully belonged to Blue Duck and his people. He decided it was time for the Muskeg people to assert their authority over the greedy tribes of the world and take what is rightfully theirs.

The three men of the Ice People had the moose deboned and cut into roast sized pieces that were packed into six backpacks, while the women prepared a feast of the heart and liver cut into small chunks and stuffed into the stomach with blueberries, onions, and edible grasses that the moose had eaten on his own. The stomach was roasted over the coals until it swelled and pressure cooked the contents into a nutritious feast for the three couples.

Blue Duck gathered his hunters around him and devised a plan; they would sneak up on the camp and attack the group when they started to eat the wrongfully acquired feast. They would kill the men and try to capture the women; if the women fought too hard, they would kill them as well. They would then eat the feast and pack the meat back to their own camp. It was a momentous decision, the men were reluctant to resort to murder and theft, but their stomachs had been empty for a week and they had not known a woman for months.

Blue Duck had five men to attack three men and three women in a camp that was celebrating. It was almost dark by the time they had crawled close enough to hear the Ice People laughing and talking. They crawled to within several caribou strides, just after dark. The stomach had the entrance and exit sections tied in a knot and it was under extreme pressure from the steam and heat locked inside. One of the men split the top with his flint knife and the delicious aroma made the Ice people cheer and laugh, while the Muskeg men felt their senses sharpened by the scent of food; until, they were even more determined to commit murder and mayhem.

The Ice People let their meal cool for a few minutes, while they waited with their wooden spoons ready to dig into the stomach.

Blue Duck had his right index finger in the air to remind his men to wait for his signal, before beginning the attack.

Just as the Ice People closed around the stomach to eat, Blue Duck and his men attacked with a fierce savagery. The Ice men were each killed with multiple wounds from the spears. An older woman managed to jump on the back of one of the attackers and mortally wound him through the neck with a knife, before a spear entered her rib cage from the side and pierce both her lungs. A second woman was hit in the mouth with the butt end of a spear and fell backwards in an unconscious state. The men fell on the meal and had turns breeding the woman like a pack of ravenous wolves. It was an hour or two later, before Blue Duck noticed a woman was missing. He tried to get his men to leave, but once a leader encourages his men to break the cultural laws, the men begin to lose respect for that man’s leadership and authority; besides, their bellies were distended after eating like animals and they were exhausted after having their way repeatedly with the woman, who now appeared to be lifeless. They wanted to sleep and leave in the morning, and there was nothing Blue Duck could do to get them moving.

Blue Duck realized it was hopeless and drifted off to sleep. Just before morning, a well disciplined group of hunters, led by Bear Killer, son of Tiger Paw, descended on Blue Duck and his men and within seconds, three more of the Muskeg men were dead, Blue Duck and another were wounded, but still alive.

They brought the wounded men back to Tiger Paw’s camp and tied them to a tree. Tiger Paw raged inside, but he didn’t show emotion to his people or to these criminals. He used his serrated flint knife, with an edge as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, but far more durable, to cut the fur clothing from the two men, exposing their nakedness.

Blue Duck was screaming threats and insults, but his efforts were wasted, for the Ice People noticed the silhouette tattoo of a right hand on Blue Duck’s chest. It was a well known symbol of a chief’s hand, designating his choice for leadership; it was a black tattoo done with ashes.

This was big medicine for the Ice People; it could mean war, the Muskeg tribe was a large tribe with oversized people, who were often starving.

The Whale People of Europe

The Whale People followed the shore line and passed camps on shore with people who waved to them, but yellow Hair pushed on wanting to find a new hunting and fishing ground. The shoreline no longer allowed them to head north, they had been paddling west for several days when the storm clouds finally unleashed a fury on the Whale People. The waves were higher than the boats were long. Yellow Hair yelled to the other leaders to paddle to the peak of the waves at an angle and to paddle down at a high rate of speed to keep the waves from cresting and breaking over the top of them and burying them under a wall of water.

It was hopeless, the canoe captains couldn’t hear him over the noise of the storm; hopefully, his captains would follow his lead and survive the storm. He saw one of the canoes trapped in the trough, when a huge wave many times as high as a man buried them and drove them to the bottom of the salt water.

The storm raged for three days and at the end, the Whale People were so exhausted they collapsed in the hulls of their canoes and let the storm have its way with them. Yellow Hair awoke on the fourth morning and looked out to see only one other canoe floating near-by. The temperature was mild, nearly seventy degrees, Yellow Hair had never felt such a mild temperature, on the shore, there was a forest of huge trees he had never seen before. He thought he might be in the Spirit World. He called out to the other boat, three men, including his youngest son, sat up and waved. There was also a woman in that canoe with a suckling child. There were three men and an adolescent girl in his canoe. Yellow Hair made a motion with is hand towards shore and the two canoes landed on a sandy shore; although, they were a hundred and fifty miles from the present coast of Virginia, they were the first Europeans to reach the East Coast of North America.

That night at low tide, they walked far out on a sand bar to look for the tell-tale yellow flickering of campfires in the distance: for the first time in their lives, they realized they were utterly alone in the world, like the beginning of time and being born by Olalla, they were alone in the world.

The Ice People of Asia

Tiger Paw knew this was a crucial and defining moment in the leadership of his tribe. His son and his raiding party had been correct in their method of revenge on this Chief’s son and his raiding party and now Blue Duck was screaming for mercy. Tiger Paw yelled for a wooden gag to be placed in each of the captive’s mouths and tied behind their heads with a leather thong. He skinned the tattoo from the chest of Blue Duck and tied it with a thong to the neck of the other captive.

Tiger Paw then ordered his son to take half the tribe and circle the North end of the glacier and head south through the Yukon and into British Columbia. They were loaded and starting their migration within the hour. It was a big gamble; Tiger Paw had no idea whether the two glaciers maintained a corridor of land between them, he just had a fairly good hunch that there was a corridor of good hunting between the glaciers.

They had to leave this country or be annihilated by the Muskeg People. There were only enough canoes for half the tribe. He might be sending his son and half his tribe to their doom, but he knew the coast line couldn’t support people traveling by land; therefore, there was no choice, he had to send half his people inland. He told his son to follow the Western Glacier and he would meet him at the southern end of the ice, in the area that was to become Seattle; Tiger Paw would take half the tribe by boat and they will join up at the end of the ice.

He turned to Blue Duck and emasculated him, so that his father would know he would never reproduce in the spirit world and certainly not on this earth ever again. He waited until Blue Duck had accepted his fate and was no longer struggling, he then cut his throat and ordered the rest of his people into their canoes. He let Blue Duck’s warrior go with his hands tied behind him and the tattoo still tied to his neck.

Tiger Paw and the rest of the Ice people left Beringia forever.

Tiger Paw and his did meet each other in the Puget Sound area, but Tiger Paw had no idea it would take twelve years for his son to make the trip. Tiger Paw’s son had gray hair and Tiger Paw was now little more than an ancient old man, but for the survivors it was a great reunion and a chance for marriages and procreation.

Eventually, nearly five hundred years later, the descendants of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair would meet in the area that was to become Omaha, Nebraska. The names of Tiger Paw and Yellow Hair had been forgotten, but traces of their DNA are still present in many Americans. The same qualities that drove these chiefs to succeed against all odds and care for their people were carried down through the eons and it is still in the blood of tens of millions of their descendants, now walking the earth in North America.

Epilogue: This story is of course fiction; however it is based in fact, since we now know that there were land bridges that connected Europe and Asia to North America. Cultural and technologic traits as well as DNA evidence record the presence of DNA tracings of ancient Europeans among our indigenous native people of North America. This is significant, because the DNA evidence illustrates, that in spite of superficial cultural differences and phenotypical variation, people are much more closely related than anyone’s wildest imagination ever dreamed.

It is the author’s dream, that as new DNA science is discovered, people will have a softening of preconceived ideas of racial differences and a greater harmony can be achieved through knowledge and science, rather than relying on ignorance and cultural division.

Although the events in this article are based on supposition by the author, a man who has experience living on a sharp divide between survival and death, at least more than most people, it is easy to combine human nature with a harsh environment and find these behaviors close to the surface, even with our superior cultural attitudes.

The envious wailings of the OWS people who bemoan their pitiful existence and hide their selfish pleadings behind the cloak of Marxism and a dubious desire for an end to corruption; yet, their cries for equality seem to be hypocritical at best as they perpetuate and promote a code of lawlessness. Yes, under the guise of fairness and equality, greed begets more greed and the veneers of advanced culture become laughable with their pretensions of enlightenment.

This article, the preface of a novel, is not meant to belittle prehistoric man, but rather to illustrate that our advancements are mainly technological and we who consider ourselves so highly evolved culturally, are not that far removed from seeking shelter in caves and tents made of hides.

These people are modern in the sense that a baby from their culture could be raised in a twenty-first century family and no one would know the difference, but switching adults would be nearly impossible because of the cultural differences.

The extent of the land bridge between Europe and North America will be argued for decades, but the new DNA evidence suggests that if it was not complete, the exposed land masses permitted human migration with short trips by boat.

It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.

Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.

Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.

It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.

The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.

But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

…She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.

Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.

In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.

‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’

Of course the BEST group put out a graph that hid the fact that warming has stopped:

Stopped in the face of ever increasing evvvvvviiiiiil CO2.

…‘Of course this isn’t the end of scepticism,’ she said. ‘To say that is the biggest mistake he [Prof Muller] has made. When I saw he was saying that I just thought, “Oh my God”.’

In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.

They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.

Yesterday Prof Muller insisted that neither his claims that there has not been a standstill, nor the graph, were misleading because the project had made its raw data available on its  website, enabling others to draw their own graphs.

However, he admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view, this might not be ‘statistically significant’,  although, he added, it was equally  possible that it was – a statement which left other scientists mystified.

‘I am baffled as to what he’s trying to do,’ Prof Curry said.

What he is trying to do is to form the debate. Just as Prof. Hanson before him tried to do. Any claim that “the debate is over” should immediately ring alarm bells. Hell, Muller didn’t even consult the co-author on all four papers, Prof Curry, before deciding to release them to the internet instead of allowing the peer review process to carry itself out.

‘For the Berkeley team to have chosen this particular moment to launch a major international publicity blitz is a highly unethical sabotage of the peer review  process.’

In Prof Curry’s view, two of the papers were not ready to be published, in part because they did not properly address the arguments of climate sceptics.

As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.

And playing the media like a fiddle. He claimed to be a “skeptic” but there is little evidence that he was one. He claimed he just wanted to get the information out there to the climate community, but picked and choose certain reporters and certain papers to interview him. He is trying to form the debate, and now that the climate community has had some time to study their findings his attempt to hide the decline is becoming that much more apparent.

…Could it really be the case that Professor Muller has not looked at the data in an appropriate way to see the last ten years clearly?

Indeed Best seems to have worked hard to obscure it. They present data covering more almost 200 years is presented with a short x-axis and a stretched y-axis to accentuate the increase. The data is then smoothed using a ten year average which is ideally suited to removing the past five years of the past decade and mix the earlier standstill years with years when there was an increase. This is an ideal formula for suppressing the past decade’s data.

When examined more objectively Best data confirms the global temperature standstill of the past decade. That the standstill should be present in land only data is remarkable. There have been standstills in land temperature before, but the significance of the past decade is that it is in the era of mankind’s postulated influence on climate through greenhouse gas forcing. Predictions made many times in the past few years suggest that warming should be the strongest and fastest in the land data.

Nice try Muller, but no cigar.

H/T to Doug for the article.

Is he running or isn’t he? A NY Post article today suggests he may be leaning towards running:

After months of hedging, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is giving serious thought to jumping into the ring for a GOP presidential run — and could make his decision next week, The Post has learned.

The announcement may come as soon as Monday, said sources familiar with Christie’s thinking.

The renewed consideration about a White House run came after prodding this week from some Republicans he idolizes, including former First Lady Nancy Reagan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former President George W. Bush, sources said.

“It’s more than just flattering,” a source close to Christie said, adding they helped convince Christie that he not only could win, but that he has what it takes to be president.

…Christie pals said the pol’s “mind-blowing” experience at the Reagan library in California Tuesday changed his thinking.

He has forcefully and bluntly said no many times, but if Nancy Reagan, Kissinger, and Bush tell you to run….maybe you should. I know the rest of the party is waiting for the decision:

“Chris Christie has, essentially, frozen the race. The most important Republican moneymen in the country, Paul Singer and David Koch, are waiting on him, as are any number of donors and elected officials. This makes it much harder for Romney to consolidate his advantage on Perry. It also makes it harder for Perry to expand his circle of support.

“And so we’re all pretty much waiting for Chris Christie’s inner guidance.”

The speech was fantastic though. It was uplifting, appealed to the true American spirit (not the Socialist dream that Obama and company try to sell), while at the same time calling out Jimmy Carter…uh, Barack Obama, for the way he has divided this nation into the haves and have-nots:

“Telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others . . . trying to cynically convince those who are suffering that the American economic pie is no longer a growing one . . . insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American dream . . . is a demoralizing message for America.”

It was a perfect speech for the Reagan library and I would love for the guy to get in…but would I vote for him? Hmmmmm:

New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor told a Latino group it’s a civil offense – not a crime – for immigrants to live in the country without proper documentation, a comment that a spokesman later said was aimed at a narrowly worded question.

…”Don’t let people make you believe that that’s a crime that the U.S. attorney’s office should be doing something about,” Christie was quoted as saying in The Star-Ledger of Newark for Monday editions. “It is not.”

Then there is his view of man-made global warming, on gun control.

He’s not perfect, but no one candidate is to all people. But a major plus in my book is the fact that appears to be a straight shooter who is not afraid to upset the applecart, which is one reason I like Palin so much. So I guess the question is would I support him over Obama? Uh, I would support my neighbor’s dog over Barack Obama.

These Democrats are just plain idiots:

Congress must pass a stopgap spending bill by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown. Both the House and Senate are scheduled to be on recess next week, adding to the urgency of reaching an agreement by the weekend.

Democrats opposed the GOP bill en masse because it partially offsets $3.65 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with a $1.5 billion cut to a separate Department of Energy manufacturing loan program.

“The bill the House will vote on tonight is not an honest effort at compromise. It fails to provide the relief that our fellow Americans need as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the wake of floods, wildfires and hurricanes, and it will be rejected by the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement Thursday night before the House vote.

The House did indeed approve the bill after Boehner compromised, which will keep the government operating and disaster relief money flowing:

…The House early Friday narrowly approved a stopgap spending measure to keep the federal government running into October, as Republican leaders secured the votes of conservatives who rejected a similar bill a day earlier. The 219-203 vote sets up a confrontation with the Senate, where Democratic leaders have vowed to block the measure in a dispute over federal disaster aid… (only) six Democrats supported it.

So let me get this straight. With unemployment over 9%, with our economy in shambles, and the world starting to panic over their own economy, the brilliant plan by Reid and his cronies is to shut down the federal government?

Wow!

It gets better. All disaster money would be stopped if they oppose this bill:

Without a resolution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund will run out of money early next week

As DrJohn wrote yesterday “There simply is no overstating the stupidity of democrats.”

They want to protect a 100 million dollars for their green energy boondoggle so bad they will risk another shut down confrontation over it. That worked out so well for them last time….sigh.

I notice a pattern. President Obama stages a high stakes showdown. President Obama backs down. The world sees a weak leader of the free world, and the nation is downgraded.

Obama and company have succeeded in making the United States look like damn eunuchs.

NASA scientists are hoping a bus sized satellite will disintegrate on reentry and people won’t be run down by their dead climate satellite that they presumably used to contribute to the Anthropomorphic Global Warming hysteria. It will land today, but by using the same mathematical skills they employed in the Left’s political ploy to weaken the US and redistribute its’ wealth among developing countries like China, they don’t have a clue as to where to reserve a parking space for their dead orbiting climate change bus.

NASA gained valuable insight and a sense of relief into the parking issue on Thursday, when they decided the bus sized satellite would miss the Western Hemisphere, saving them the hassles of litigation in an LA or NY civil law court. The prospect of a confrontation in a Liberal court that has no tort reform must be frightening to the wizards at NASA.

NASA maintains that predicting a returning satellite’s return, is unlike future climate and weather predictions, in that it is an imprecise science; but like the weather, it will be much easier to predict just before it happens.

The bus sized satellite is expected to disintegrate into 26 pieces of metal scrap; only the largest pieces, in the 300 pound category, will be expected to survive reentry temperatures caused by friction. Since three fourths of the world is water, the odds are in their favor as far as causing injuries and death.

The odds of a human being hit by a piece of space junk is 3,200 to one, considerably better odds than Americans bet against to win lotteries. If you are worried about your own ass and not the rest of the world, the odds improve dramatically to 1 in 21 trillion. Still those old bomb shelters from the 50′s could become useful once again.

NASA takes on the responsibilities of a nanny by warning us not to touch the pieces of a downed satellite, because they could be sharp. See how an ever thoughtful government agency can watch out for its’ people like a benevolent dictator.

Modern satellites are equipped with steering mechanisms and a reserve fuel cell that can put them into a different orbit or careening into the infinite of space or into one of our oceans.

There are approximately 22,000 pieces of junk and satellites orbiting the earth and the possibilities of human injury are much less than a short ride on one of our highways. Reentry predictions are like a government space exploration agency becoming involved in the Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam, they are laughable, unless you are one of the hysterical heavy breathers of the Left. There have been two Russian satellites reenter the atmosphere this year and no one noticed, but NASA in an effort to encourage people to take due diligence and to make headlines, issued a press release. LOL

Charles Ponzi after being released from prison, 1935.

Part of FDR’s statement upon signing the Social Security Bill:

“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family …”

History will judge the Social Security Bill to be the grandest Ponzi scheme in all of history; unless, the government continues on with the Anthropogenic Global Warming regulations. These may sound like wild ambiguous statements to you the reader; however, you probably aren’t that familiar with the history of Ponzi schemes or understand how they function or the similarity would be painfully obvious. So obvious, that it is conceivable that the SS Bill used the genius of Charles Ponzi as the framework for the Social Security Bill.

The public wasn’t really familiar with the Ponzi scheme until Bernie Madoff pulled his now comedic rise to wealth by peddling his version of the Ponzi scheme to the wealthy. Concentrating on the extremely wealthy, he sold an exclusivity of influence for investors. Making a mockery of “the rich are so smart” parable, he had them clamoring for the opportunity to get close to Bernie and be bilked for millions.

The Ponzi scheme wasn’t invented by Charles Ponzi, but he had the name that was adopted by the public for the designation of an old confidence game called, “Rob Peter to pay Paul“. This fairly simple larceny involves promising huge returns on investments, so that you have a continuous flow of naive and simple minded investors who will believe the lies of the confidence man. The original investors are paid outrageous returns to entice new investors.

There is always a defining characteristic for confidence men, they have pleasing personalities that inspire confidence in the naive and weak minded.

The scam often continues on its own momentum and the lies of the perpetrator, until a point of critical mass is reached or until the carnival barker runs out of rubes to ante up fresh money for the scam. Once there is no longer funds to payout to the older investors the scam falls apart.

The Social Security Administration is approaching the critical mass phase. Adjustments will need to be made or the program will bankrupt itself, I have termed this phase critical mass. There is a major difference in the design of the Rob Peter to pay Paul scams and Social Security: the others are illegal, FDR had the genius to not only make Social Security legal, but he made dues paying membership required by law. Thus he assumed there will never be a tell tale line up of doubting Thomas’s wanting their money back. Another tragic, but humorous trait of the critical mass phase of a classic Ponzi Scheme.

However, there were some unforeseen problems that evolved in FDR’s Ponzi Scheme. People have begun to live longer and a changing demographic is upsetting the worker to retiree ratio. Obviously, FDR wasn’t a mercenary confidence man, but whether Social Security was set up with the Ponzi Scheme as a template or he just used the old Rob Peter To Pay Paul scenario is without doubt, a cold hard fact of American life. It fits the classic description or definition of this particular con game. The only reason it isn’t in the midst of critical mass is that participation is required by law. Once the public stops believing in a con man or a hoax, the jig is up. Requiring participation was a stroke of genius that delays the inevitable end of all Ponzi Schemes, this period known as critical mass or melt down.

Charles Ponzi started his scheme by buying older undervalued postal coupons in European currencies at fixed, outdated rates of exchange and trading them in the Us for dollars, generating a guaranteed profit. He promised investors a 50% return on investment in 45 days. The bank’s return on investments at this time was 5% per annum.

His early investors doubled and tripled their money. Many of his investors declined to redeem the coupons and preferred to let their money ride to get the exponential increases. His company, the Security Exchange Company or the SEC, yes, you read that correctly, received great reviews in the financial editorials of newspapers and new investors stood in line to become part of the scam. At his peak, Ponzi received one million dollars from investors in a three-hour period. In nine months his scam took in $15,000,000 during 1919 and 1920 (approximately $174 million in 2007 dollars). No one realized that there weren’t enough of these foreign exchange coupons to begin to equal the amount of money that was being invested. They were essentially a coupon that people sent to Europe from the US so that their relatives could afford a stamp to mail a return letter with a postage coupon redeemable for a certain amount of postage in a foreign country. Remember, this was the Great Depression.

Ponzi spent five years in federal prison, when his scam collapsed. The State of Massachusetts sentenced Ponzi to an additional nine years, but he left the country and settled in Brazil. He lived the rest of his life in poverty and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

In his last interview he came clean about his scam:

“My business is simple. It was the old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. You would give me one hundred dollars and I would give you a note to pay you one-hundred-and-fifty dollars in three months. Usually I would redeem my note in 45 days. My notes became more valuable than American money … Then came trouble. The whole thing was broken.” (Zuckoff, Mitchell, Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend, p. 313)

Ponzi didn’t possess the killer instinct of the true confidence man; the goal of the confidence man is to take the money and run; he was trying up until the end to make his scheme into a legitimate business. Whether he was aware that there was not enough postal coupons on the planet to cover his customers’ investments is open to debate, but if he could have become Ponzi International Shipping, he could have avoided prison and retired a wealthy man.

Al Gore, one of the biggest confidence men of the modern age seems to have reached the point of no return, he has lost credibility and his sanctimonious pleas to make money and save the earth are falling on deaf ears more and more.

Obama is possibly the greatest hoax in history. He is the first undocumented president in the history of the country. His “Hope and Change” jingoism, seems to only benefit campaign contributors; but his days as a confidence man are nearly over, the Son of Stimulus will tell the tale of whether the country has lost faith in the Obama Magic. Obama also has numerous incidents of corruption nipping at his anles, Fast and Furious, Gunwalker, Solyndra, Operation Castaway in Tampa, Gangwalker and Lightsquared have compromised his confidence game. But he hasn’t promoted a Ponzi Scheme.

Bernie Madoff’s scheme was another deal entirely. He “Made Off” (the correct pronunciation of his name, BTW) with $50 Billion. It is the largest (money involved) Ponzi scheme in history: investigators found his larceny stretched back the 1970′s. Madoff had a head start with his position as Chairman of NASDAQ, a prominent and influential position on Wall Street. His victims were arguably the most financially savvy and wealthiest in the world; he required a minimum of twenty-million to invest with him. His literature was meant to convey “Confidence” among potential investors.

Ponzi was a Democratic conman in that he reached out to the masses and gave them a chance to accrue wealth. In a manner of speaking Madoff was also a Democratic swindler; although, he serviced the Elites or Limousine Liberals of Wall Street and Palm Beach, he serviced their hunger for wealth and greed. You had to be in the upper echelons of society and wealth to be accepted into Madoff’s select group of suckers.

In an era of faceless organizations owned by other equally faceless organizations, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner’s name is on the door. Clients know that Bernard Madoff had a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm’s hallmark.

Of course, when the veil was lifted on the nefarious nature of Madoff’s investment scheme, there was pandemonium as the world’s elite tried to recover their investments like starving peasants. No more were they interested in having access to the genius Bernie Madoff; it was time to scratch and claw to the front of the line to get their money; unfortunately, Bernie had squandered the funds by living the profligate lifestyle that had attracted those same affluent investors. The so-called smart rich people were played for fools and morons by Bernie Madoff, the charismatic conman, the guy who didn’t know when to quit.

Madoff offered little more than his word. There have been scams with real value and legitimate businesses with a practical product.

On the other side of the world, Wang Fengyou founded Yilishen Tisnxi an ant farm conglomerate that had farmers maintaining ant farms on a precise feeding regimen so that they could later convert dead ants into an aphrodisiac. A million Chinese developed a passion for farming ants. They saw the financial rewards of a simple enterprise and were happy to be involved in improving life for people with deflated egos.

Poor farmers bought into the scheme for 10,000 yuan (approx. $1,500) and they were given a box of special ants. The insects were fed the a sugar and honey solution twice a day at 9 am and 4 pm and they were to be fed a cake and egg yolk solution every three to five days. They were never to open the box and after 74 days the boxes were picked up. The farmer received 13,500 yuan every 14 months, an excellent return on investment.

The ants were ground to a pulp and sold as an aphrodisiac, did the product work? Yes indeed, it worked like no other traditional medicine in the history of the world! The powdered ants put extra lead into the pencils of tens of millions of Chinese men!

Wang became a very wealthy man, his aphrodisiacs were sold in 80,000 pharmacies across China. He is reported to have had over one million farmers raising his ants. His company had a yearly turn over of 15 Billion yuan or $2 billion US. In October 2007, he reached critical mass and his company missed farmer payouts and collapsed, he was soon arrested.

Although, the ants were traditionally considered to be an aphrodisiac in traditional Chinese Medicine, Weng hedged his bets by including sildenafil with his crushed ants to give them a little extra boost. Sildenafil is the main active ingredient in Viagra.

In 1935, while the country was under the yoke of poverty and depression, Roosevelt signed into law “Social Insurance” to alleviate the cruelty of abject poverty imposed upon retirees and the unemployed, it was considered a part of the New Deal. The benefits paid to retirees and the unemployed were paid by taxes from the wages of employed workers.

Over the years the rules and regulations have changed, but we still have the basic premise of Charles Ponzi: the new investors (workers) pays in the form of taxes to support the older investors (retirees). This is the first and primary premise of the Rob Peter to Pay Paul confidence game or the Ponzi Scheme.

Between 1937 and 2005, Social Security took in $10.7 trillion in taxes and other revenue: during that same period it paid out more than $8.9 trillion.

Currently Social Security runs a surplus (it invests the money in Treasurys, thus complicating the issue, because the government is essentially giving itself an IOU). It is expected to run a surplus until 2018. The baby boomers will then be retired and drawing benefits; the Social Security program will have theoretically reached critical mass. Unless the system is altered, it will be bankrupt by 2040. Taxed income will need to be increased and the retirement age will need to be increased; these are two of the obvious possible partial adjustments that will need to be made.

Even though FDR mandated participation by law, he hedged his bets by making the retirement age 65 when the average lifespan was 62. He was such a kind hearted man. No one figured the lifespan would be increased to approximately 80 in 75 years. People are sticking around far too long as far as the Rob Peter to Pay Paul confidence scheme is concerned. Now the young people in their thirties are complaining that there won’t be any money left for them when they retire: ha! they just don’t realize there was never any stockpile of money in the lock box, it has been a Ponzi Scheme since day one. They must rely on the younger generations to support them in the greatest Ponzi Scheme of all time. Have faith young people, we older people believed the conmen, why can’t you follow the government in blind obedience like your grandparents and great grandparents? Why should you not have faith in the great Liberal Ponzi Scheme?

Young Americans should remember Ernest Ackerman and Ida May Fuller before they worry themselves into an early grave over the prospect of paying into the Social Security version of a Ponzi Scheme. Like the traditional Ponzi Scheme, the early investors have the best chance to make money. Ernest worked for one day under the Social Security before he retired. His total involuntary contribution was $.05. The government decided to pay him a lump payment of $.17 for his retirement. Ida May Fuller, of Ludlow, Virginia, was the first person to receive monthly retirement checks in 1940 at the age of 65. She paid $24.75 and received $22,888.92 until her death at 100 years of age.

FDR was truly the most Democratic of all the conmen of Ponzi Scheme history, he offered the helping hand of government to the retired workers in a show of humanism; of course, you were supposed to be dead according to the statisticians and odds makers before you could start dipping into the kitty. Now, that was a fantastic idea for a con game; until, the parameters changed and people began to live healthier lifestyles and longer lives.

Social Security started paying benefits in 1940, there was only one beneficiary for 160 workers. In 1950, there were 16.5 workers for every beneficiary. Presently, we have three workers for every beneficiary. In twenty years, we are projected to have only two workers for every beneficiary.

The average retiree receives approximately a third of what the average worker earns. In 1940, the worker paid .02% of his income to support a retiree. In 1950, he was required to pay 2% of his income towards Social Security. Today he must pay 11% to support the system. In twenty years, it will require 17% of a paycheck to keep the system viable. With the increasing costs of Medicare, the costs to the taxpayer will be astronomical.

The Treasury is borrowing money to pay the deficit in Social Security revenue to meet the payouts to seniors and this deficit will only increase as the ratio of workers to retirees continues to invert.

Yes, my friends, Social Security is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever devised, but it is an institutionalized and integral confidence game of Rob Peter to pay Paul, within our society and our economy. It is imperative that we alter the plan by increasing the retirement age and we will surely need to raise the taxes for Social Security; unless, someone can figure out a way to avoid the inevitable. We can’t throw our seniors into the street. It is not who we are and besides they have already paid into our grand Ponzi Scheme for 50 years.