Fly your flag

Update: Ed makes us see stars. See below the “continue reading” line.

I slept so late today recovering from my jet lag I almost forgot to place my flag outside.

Flying to Australia and traversing the country, gives me an appreciation for liberty no matter what hemisphere you reside in. Aussies have made many contributions to freedom, such as I witnessed with this WWI war memorial in Emerald, QLD:

There is also a WWII memorial just to the right of the photo. Aussies have been side by side with the USA in every world conflict. They are owed thanks on this day as well.

As the founders of our country declared in this document:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing colonial grievances against King George III, and by asserting certain natural rights, including a right of revolution.

Like with the colonists, with this blog,  the readers, and the publications, I often assert my right of revolution against unreasonable acts of taxation, such as Kerry’s cap and trade bill.

Today, once again Ed Darrell and I are in agreement, and I particularly like the flag on the moon he chose. It is depressing that President Obama has proposed killing the next step in the manned space program, Aries.

So today, take a cue from myself and Ed, no matter whether you are a free market optimist or a tax happy sourpuss, fly your flag. Later today, I’m going to pursue some life, liberty, and happiness, you should too.

UPDATE: Speaking of Ed Darrell and Australians, perhaps some of our readers “down under” might like to educate Ed as to what the 5 stars mean in the logo for the AU Climate Skeptics Party.

I laughed out loud when I read this from Ed’s blog. Not only does he misappropriate the source of the logo, even though all he had to do was click the image on WUWT, he also seems to have no clue as to the reference to why the stars of the “southern cross” is a symbol of Australia. After learning about it with the help of some WUWT commenters, perhaps he’ll make a lesson plan of it for his students.

From Ed’s blog:

==================================

That may explain why Anthony Watts’ logo for his Australian tour shows a kangaroo whose rear end has just been kicked (you can tell by the stars).

In cartoons, stars show where a character has been punched or kicked, right?

No agreement to control greenhouse gases came out of the Copenhagen conference last fall.  So-called climate skeptics patted each other on the back, claimed victory, and proceeded to send Christopher Monckton on his Bonnie Lies All Around the World Tour.  In cool light of morning, however, the facts can’t be silenced:  Warming continues, science shows the extremely high probability that humans cause it, official investigations show that climate scientists who had their e-mails stolen were victims of crime, not perpetrators, and climate skeptics failed to stop warming with their big-dollar, nice-banquet meetings with the Heartland Institute, or anywhere else.

If they are skeptics, they are pretty bad at it, falling like chumps for a story that fourth-grade science project made the case they have failed to make everywhere else, and for the story that one of their comrades was sent a bomb in the mail (it turned out to be a misdirected fuel filter).

No wonder Americans remain concerned about warming.

=======================================

The Southern Cross stars with a boxing kangaroo is a common design in Australia. This car decal for example:

http://beaututes.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=153&products_id=934

or this t-shirt

http://www.gooses.com.au/categories.asp?cID=32&c=55834

or this flag:

http://www.1uptravel.com/flag/flags/au-kang.html

BTW here’s the update on the bomb scare story, it also fooled a journalist and a terrorism expert. In fact, suspicious packages are cause for alarm every day around the world, and often get misidentified (and often blown up) by professional people erring on the side of caution. Here’s a few examples:  1 2 3 4 5 and even in Ed’s home state of Texas they react to suspicious packages the same way. It’s hard to be skeptical when you risk life and limb to find out. Sheesh Ed.

Heh, “big dollar nice banquet meeting”. The once a year meeting not using a dime of taxpayer money, totally privately funded, and yes, no big oil either. I guess he’s still sore for not getting invited to the IPCC meeting in Bali. Ed’s a slippery sort of bloke, so he’ll probably try to claim post facto that it was humor, or that we misinterpreted his reference to the 5 stars. Give him no quarter.