Here’s a story from yesterday’s Washington Times by Tom Carter entitled, “Gore’s ‘Truth’ splits hurricane scientists.” It lays out pretty well the debate between the global-warming-causes-more-severe-hurricanes crowd and the many scientists who just flat disagree. Unfortunately, the latter group isn’t featured on the cover of Time magazine or on CNN these days. No hysteria, no news. There’s this from the article:

“According to NOAA hurricane records going back into the mid-1800s, hurricanes come in cycles. There have been quiet periods, with less hurricane activity, followed every 25 to 40 years by active periods, that last about 25 years. The current active period began in 1995 and is expected to last another 10 to 15 years.”

It all depends on what base line you use, apparently — can show whatever you want. What is it Reagan used to say? There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Just want you to be aware there’s another side to this story, and want to keep a brake on the mantra of “consensus” that’s being lazily repeated by folks unwilling to look for contrary points of view. The dissenting views are out there in droves.

Any of you who watched the Memorial Day Concert from the National Mall last night on PBS saw the duo Big & Rich sing their new song, “The 8th of November” a heart-rending story of one Niles Harris. Harris befriended the musicians a few year ago and told them the story of his unit — 30 men of the 173rd Airborne — being ambushed by 1200 Vietcong on November 8, 1965. Harris, from Deadwood, South Dakota, has a story similar to so many vets, but Vietnam Vets hold a special place in history. They were the only vets in modern times who were met on their arrival back home not with adulation but with revulsion and ridicule by far too many. It was a disgrace, and one that time has not erased.

Butler, NJ was one of those mill towns that supplied manpower to the Vietnam war. As their draft numbers were called, they dutifully reported to the draft board and became part of the war effort. Some made their way to Southeast Asia. Not all returned. But Butler, like so many towns, was not a place where you’d find an anti-war rally. You were more likely to find flags flying outside the homes and — if asked — support for the boys who were there, just doing their duty. They all had “8th of November” moments and, as in Niles Harris’ case, some weren’t known until many years later, after they felt comfortable speaking about it in public, unafraid of a public backlash.

As a new war rages in Iraq, young men and women are taking up the cause once again, doing their duty. Once again anti-war ire is prevalent. Let’s hope we never again confuse the soldiers with the war and besmirch the men and women who are doing their duty with the mud being kicked up by those who are busy second-guessing and scoring political points.

This Memorial Day we remember the fallen as we do every year, the men and women who gave their lives in defense of liberty and freedom, men and women who understood that a threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere. Here’s a link to our Memorial Day post from last year, with a bit of Memorial Day history.

We would also remind you of National Moment of Remembrance, a moment of silence to be observed at 3 p.m. (local time) today. We hope you will take this moment to pause and reflect on the sacrifice of those who gave all.

This week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — famous for the “Nation’s Report Card“, issued the results of the National and State Science Assessment, a decidedly mixed bag. It showed, in summary, since 1996 an increase in the average scores for Grade 4, no change for Grade 8 and a slight decrease in grade 12. Of course we want to see increases in scores for all grades.

Way back in the end of August of last year when we published our annual Labor Day Report, we included this chart showing the growing disparity between engineering degrees here and in China. We also posted this chart showing the growing number of foreign nationals obtaining advanced degrees in math and science here on the US., While Congress is busy debating immigration, they should stare at these charts. We certainly want to narrow the gap between us and China in the number of engineers that we’re minting, as they are the lifeblood of innovation for manufacturers everywhere. But we also need to make sure that the foreign nationals who obtain advanced degrees in the areas where we need them most are able to stay in this country. Shipping them home to compete against us is just bad policy. We will continue to push for provisions in the final immigration bill that encourage the best and brightest to come to our shores and to stay. And in the meantime, we need to redouble our efforts to make sure we’re cranking out students with the abilities and the ambition to pursue these technical careers in college and beyond.

By the way, to see how your state ranked in the NAEP Report, click here.

We’ve been so busy this week on the Al Gore movie and on the ANWR vote in the House and other shenanigans that we didn’t have the opportunity to link to this great editorial by our friend Mark Tapscott in The Examiner entitled, “School for sharks finally gets bit itself.” Says Tapscott:

“Of all the abuses of civil law, class actions are the worst. They allow a single law firm to represent millions of “injured clients,” who often end up with pocket change while the lawyers make fortunes.

Of all the law firms running these fleecing operations, the slickest and fattest of them all is Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman. When the latter two partners, David Bershad and Steven Schulman, were charged on May 18 with bribery, perjury and fraud, it was a long-awaited tolling of the bell for this school of sharks.”

It echoes and amplifies the points we made on this toxic factory a week or so ago. Here’s a link to the full editorial, pretty much hitting the nail on the head.

What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than to fly the American Flag? You know we are fond of saying that manufacturers touch every part of American life (and drive our prosperity).

And so this week we present this 6-minute video of American flags being made. This is another in the Eye Wonder series form the South Carolina Educational TV folks. It walks you through the process for printed flags and screen printed flags from printing all the way through stitching. This plant makes up to 30,000 flags a day.

The flag means so much to all of us, but when you fly it this weekend, when you see it this weekend, just remember it’s brought to you by American manufacturers.

Click here to watch the video and feel the manufacturing vibe.

Just wanted to provide a quick post-mortem on the successful ANWR vote yesterday. The bill to allow us to tap our own energy, a supply as large as our current exports from Saudi Arabia — which are substantial — passed 225-201, with 198 Republicans and 27 Democrats voting in favor of the bill. This, incidentally, is the 12th time — the twelfth time — that this bill has been voted on in the House. You’d go a little nuts if you lived here, wouldn’t you….?

Here again is the roll call vote. You should look it over and find your Member of Congress, make sure they voted “yea”. Then you should look at this list, too, to make sure they voted “nay” last week on the Putnam Amendment to continue the ban on exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf. If they’re wrong on both votes, don’t ever let them tell you they care about how high your energy prices are. They have missed a golden opportunity — no, two golden opportunities — to lower your prices by increasing our domestic supply.

On the ANWR blog, you can send a note to your Representative to either thank them or to let them know you’re not too happy with their vote. We hope you’ll do that, let ‘em know you’re watching. A vigilant electorate is our best hope for actually doing something about energy prices.

Thanks to our friend and fellow blogger Eric McErlain for passing this along to us, a review of Al Gore’s movie by Gregg Easterbrook in Slate. Overall, it appears that Easterbrook buys into the basic premise of the film, but not entirely. Two interesting passages caught our eye:

“[T]he film flirts with double standards. Laurie David, doyenne of Rodeo Drive environs, is one of the producers. As Eric Alterman noted in The Atlantic, David “reviles owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable, a private jet.” For David to fly in a private jet from Los Angeles to Washington would burn about as much petroleum as driving a Hummer for a year; if she flew back in the private jet, that’s two Hummer-years. Gore’s movie takes shots at Republicans and the oil industry, but by the most amazing coincidence says nothing about the poor example set by conspicuous consumers among the Hollywood elite.”

And this, on the “morality” of the issue:

“This raises the troubling fault of An Inconvenient Truth: its carelessness about moral argument. Gore says accumulation of greenhouse gases “is a moral issue, it is deeply unethical.”… But the last century’s headlong consumption of oil, coal, and gas has raised living standards throughout the world; driven malnourishment to an all-time low, according to the latest U.N. estimates; doubled global life expectancy; pushed most rates of disease into decline; and made possible Gore’s airline seat and MacBook, which he doesn’t seem to find unethical.”

Double standards? Misplaced morality? Doesn’t sound like the Al Gore we know….

It was only 108 short years ago that Teddy Roosevelt resigned his commission as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to join the forces in Cuba fighting the Spanish American War. In July of 1898, he and his band of Rough Riders launched their legendary charge up San Juan Hill.

In that same year, Congress enacted a tax to help finance what TR called this “splendid little war”. The tax — a temporary tax, of course — was set at one cent for all long-distance calls lasting more than 15 minutes. Since only about 1300 Americans had phones in 1898, the income to the Treasury wasn’t substantial.

Of course, that was then. Fast forward 108 years, where this tax is now at 3% and where phones are a bit more commonplace. As a result, this “temporary tax” brings in about $5 billion in annual federal revenue.

That is, until now…

Yesterday, the Treasury Department — aided in its deliberations by several successful court challenges by opponents of the tax — decided to drop it altogether. This, of course, brings a more or less official end to the Spanish-American War. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) had the same thought we did in the press statement he put out yesterday.

By the way, Treasury has dropped this tax on long-distance service, but there is still a tax on local phone service which requires Congressional action to repeal. Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) have introduced a bill to do just that. Apparently, such a bill passed years ago, but was vetoed by then-President Clinton.

And so we welcome the end of the last vestige of the not-too-recent unpleasantness and urge everyone to keep this episode in mind next time Congress gets the brainy idea for another “temporary” tax.

Just want to note the fact that the Senate manged to pass the immigration bill after many votes, many struggles, many amendments and many weeks in the process. It now goes into conference with the House version, to see if they can work out a compromise between these very different bills.

For our part, we are glad the process is moving forward. Of interest to us are the provisions that address the H1B (high-skilled) visa issue and the employment-based green card system. We want to make sure we continue to attract the best and brightest in the world to the US. We need a less arbitrary system for doing so. As for employer sanctions, we just don’t think we should be subject to fines and penalties until we have a reliable and effective system in place. Makes sense, no? Why on earth should an employer acting in good faith be penalized if the system is unreliable? Let’s get a reliable system in pace first.

By the way, manufacturers are working to make sure we’re improving the US education system as well, so that hopefully we can be home-growing more and better talent right here in the US.

Here’s a link to our press release from yesterday, applauding passage of the bill.

Guess it was the headline in The Examiner that grabbed us: “Indiana Male, In a Dress, Barred From Prom“. Or maybe it was the first sentence:

“A male student who has worn women’s clothes to school all year was turned away from his high school prom because he was wearing a dress.”

Wow.

Said the 18 year-old student, “I have no formal pictures, no memories, nothing. You only have one prom.”

Well, he’s right about that. Somewhere in Toledo, Max Klinger is crying….