Rolling Thunder showed up at the National Mall last Saturday in Washington DC along with Veterans and Patriots at the “Gathering of Eagles.” They were there in a show of patriotic pride as a counter to the anti-war demonstration planned by the far-left. Rolling Thunder is also the organization that protects fallen soldiers’ families and friends when these crazy anti-war people decide to demonstrate at a funeral.

Kudos to the Rolling Thunder.

And speaking of them, I sure do like their Rolling Thunder Special Edition Smith & Wesson .45 caliber ACP Pistol . . .

A thing of beauty! Click on the gun to see the really big image.

Rolling Thunder® Inc.s’ major function is to publicize the POW-MIA issue. To educate the public of the fact that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all past wars. To help correct the past and to protect the future veterans from being left behind should they become prisoners of war - missing in action. We are committed to helping American veterans from all wars.

These pretty “Cosmos bipinnatus” flowers grow in a flower pot on our patio. Sometimes called Mexican Asters, cosmos were grown by Spanish priests in their mission gardens in Mexico. The evenly placed petals led them to christen the flower “Cosmos,” the Greek word for harmony or ordered universe. Cosmos, like many of our warm weather annuals such as marigolds, originated in Mexico and South America.

I am still wondering why this guy isn’t in jail despite having been found in contempt of court and deliberately withholding the firearms of New Orleans’ citizens.

About a year and a half has passed since Mayor Ray Nagin and other City of New Orleans officials illegally stripped legitimate gun owners of their second amendment rights by summarily collecting their guns. Citizens of New Orleans wait in peril for the return of their only means of self-defense - the City doesn’t seem to protect them at all while the murder rate in post-Katrina New Orleans has grown to astronomical proportions!

This statement from Wayne LaPierre at NRANews.com absolutely proves that disarming citizens enhances the ability of criminals to prevail:

No Relief For New Orleans

3/19/2007

The NRA’s been fighting the city of New Orleans for a long time now, trying to get the firearms seized by the city returned to their legal and rightful owners. But every day the city stalls, they’re putting their residents at risk.

The city’s homicide rate is estimated to be an incredible 96 murders per hundred thousand. To put that in perspective, in 2005 the national homicide rate was 5.6 per hundred thousand. New Orleans has done the impossible… it’s made Washington, D.C., look like Mayberry in comparison.

We’re fighting to get the guns back to their lawful owners in New Orleans because it’s the right thing to do. We’re standing up for the Second Amendment, but we’re also standing up for the hundreds of people left defenseless by the city.

Can you imagine living in New Orleans without a firearm for protection? Can you imagine lying in bed at night, hearing the sirens come down your street, knowing that you could be next- and then remembering that the city still hasn’t given your guns back?

We’re fighting for a right, and we’re fighting for freedom, but we’re also fighting a city that prefers its citizens to be helpless against a growing tide of criminal terror.

Make no mistake: We won’t stop until we’ve won.

Remember those picture puzzles where you were supposed to identify as many things as you can that are wrong with it? You would write down all the things you found then go to the answer key to see how you did.

I’m sure that wasn’t Al Gore’s intention when he produced his science propaganda flick, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore does, however, embed quite a number of “things wrong” with his Global Warming Crock-umentary — consider the following list:

• Gore promoted the now debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate
• Gore attempted to minimize the significance of the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age
• Gore insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most sciences believe does not exist
• Gore asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer
• Gore claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice
• Gore hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing
• Gore erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices
• Gore made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way out side of any supposed scientific “consensus” and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature
• Gore incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier’s retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing
• He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa’s Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits
• He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving
• He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004

Hat tip to Senator Jim Inhofe, whose Skeptics Guide to Global Warming (PDF) tells us what’s wrong with Gore’s Picture.

I have a little decorative sculpture of a fish that sits on our fake waterfall. The sculpture is studded with nickel, dime and quarter-sized glass beads of several colors. I took this closeup of the sculpture and managed to get a number of self-portraits of myself.

The rip in my forearm is much better today. The stitches are in and the swelling is down. I think it’s healing OK. It certainly didn’t interfere with actuating the fore-end on our Remington 870 Shotgun when we went to the range today.

Damsel had a little accident today. We were working in the garden and she got a little too close to the thorns on a Mexican Palm. It was a pretty nasty tear on her forearm and deep too. No band-aid and Neosporin for this one. I took her to the urgent care center where they stitched it up (three sutures did it). While we were waiting to be admitted, this cute little hospital Leprechaun was spreading good cheer in the waiting area at the hospital.

Gerbera was considered a powerful aphrodisiac during the early 1920s. Popular legend held it would arouse sentiments when boiled and mixed with regular food. We just like them to add color to our garden.

Apparently, the rate of change of the methane in the atmosphere seems to have gone from increasing to zero change. This must be disappointing to alarmists that claim that unbridled man-made emissions will continue to cause an increase in the levels of tropospheric methane in the 21st century.

Right: Level of Atmospheric Methane 1980-2004 - click image to enlarge.

A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology shows the unexpected decrease in the atmospheric methane rate of change. Data from the study indicate a trend toward decreasing atmospheric methane.

The folks at CO2 Science analyzed the study:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long predicted that earth’s tropospheric methane (CH4) concentration would rise dramatically throughout the 21st century; see, for example, Ehhalt and Prather (2001). So entrenched a place did this dogma come to occupy in both the popular and scientific psyches, in fact, that when real-world data suddenly suggested otherwise, Simpson et al. (2002) continued to vehemently contend it was “premature to believe that the CH4 burden is ceasing to increase,” even though their own data bore witness against them in demonstrating that such was in fact occurring, as we indicated in our Editorial of 8 Jan 2003. Newer findings, however, ultimately caused even them to recant (Simpson et al., 2006); and, now, Khalil et al. (2007) have essentially “put the nails in the coffin” of the idea that rising atmospheric CH4 concentrations pose any further global warming threat at all.

Continue reading Atmospheric Methane: The Good-News Trend Continues

Cymbidiums became popular in Europe during the Victorian era. One feature that makes the plant so popular is the fact that it can survive during cold temperatures (as low as 7°C or 45°F). Orchid hobbyists in temperate climates appreciate the fact that they can bloom in winter, when few other orchids are blooming.

Only a few Cymbidium species are commonly grown in nurseries, due to the popularity of hybrids. Most are to be found in botanical gardens or in their ever shrinking natural habitat.

These were in the hot house orchid section at the garden shop last weekend.

It’s been a couple of weeks since reports of a Kent State University professor with ties to a jihadi website were in the news. Recall that this guy posted our animated 9/11 tribute graphic on his terrorist website. What happened to this guy? Is there still any investigation going on into this treasonous academic?

Global Conservative has kept on top of this story despite it’s disappearance from national news outlets. Also, The Jawa Report posted follow-up article on March 6th regarding Kent State’s continued denial about the jihadi professor in their midst.