The Editorial Times.ca

Editorial Times.ca is moving...

2010-02-21T14:01:00.003-05:00

Blogger is reaching the end of its useful life, I believe. Always a bit slow, it is not keeping pace with other blogging formats, such as Wordpress.

Therefore, I've made the decision to begin the process of moving "Ed Times" over to the wordpress engine. While there is merit in Blogger allowing access to the theme code for modification, especially where special features like Chris Muir's superb Day By Day cartoon series are easily added, there are many technological ways in which the blogger format is becoming harder to use (Chris' cartoons will find their way to the new wordpress format somehow, I promise).

The new wordpress format is crisper and cleaner, and fits better where I want the blog to go for the next while. Shortly, www.editorialtimes.ca and www.editorialtimes.com will point to the new site. This site will remain for a while as its base url: editorialtimes.blogspot.com- I haven't yet made the decision as to how much of the old content will be moved over. This is a labour intensive and slow process, and there is a fair bit of structural work to be done yet on the new site.

The new site is hosted as editorialtimes.wordpress.com, but as mentioned above, will eventually be simply Editorialtimes.ca and Editorialtimes.com.

Editorial Times.ca originally started in 2003, as an html site that required laborious creation of new html pages for each post entry. Its original purpose remains, to provide selected editorial content concerning issues of the day, with a particular emphasis on Canadian issues, and like many blogs, it ebbs and flows with the interests of its owner and of the issues and topics of the day.

I'm open to adding regular guest contributors, if anyone wants to be a participant. While I am "predominantly" conservative politically, I value considered contrary opinion. This shouldn't be interpreted as providing a forum for "nutroots" of either persuasion, but even they provide a standard on which to compare and contrast. As my tagline says, The Thorn of Dissent is the Flower of Democracy - one can't exist without the other.

Steyn:Iran will go nuclear and formally inaugurate the post-American era.

2010-02-21T10:15:00.002-05:00

Keeping You Safe

by Mark Steyn, February 20, 2010 8:00 A.M.

In Britain, it is traditional on Shrove Tuesday to hold pancake races, in which contestants run while flipping a pancake in a frying pan. The appeal of the event depends on the potential pitfalls in attempting simultaneous rapid forward propulsion and pancake tossing. But, in St. Albans, England, competitors were informed by Health & Safety officials that they were “banned from running due to fears they would slip over in the rain.” Watching a man walk up the main street with a skillet is not the most riveting event, even in St. Albans. In the heat of the white-knuckle thrills, team captain David Emery momentarily forgot the new rules. “I have been disqualified from a running race for running,” he explained afterwards.

In Canada, Karen Selick told readers of the Ottawa Citizen about her winter vacation in Arizona last month: “The resort suite I rented via the Internet promised a private patio with hot tub,” she wrote. “Upon arrival, I found the door to my patio bolted shut. ‘Entry prohibited by federal law,’ read the sign. Hotel management explained that the drains in all the resort’s hot tubs had recently been found not to comply with new safety regulations. Compliance costs would be astronomical. Dozens of hot-tubs would instead be cemented over permanently.” In the meantime, her suite had an attractive view of the federally prohibited patio.

Anything else? Oh, yeah. In Iran, the self-declared nuclear regime announced that it was now enriching uranium to 20 percent. When President Obama took office, the Islamic Republic had 400 centrifuges enriching up to 3.5 percent. A year later, it has 8,000 centrifuges enriching to 20 percent. The CIA director, Leon Panetta, now cautiously concedes that Iran’s nuclear ambitions may have a military purpose. Which is odd, because the lavishly funded geniuses behind America’s National Intelligence Estimate told us only two years ago that Tehran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Is that estimate no longer operative? And, if so, could we taxpayers get a refund?

This is a perfect snapshot of the West at twilight. On the one hand, governments of developed nations micro-regulate every aspect of your life in the interests of “keeping you safe.” If you’re minded to flip a pancake at speeds of more than four miles per hour, the state will step in and act decisively: It’s for your own good. If you’re a tourist from Moose Jaw, Washington will take preemptive action to shield you from the potential dangers of your patio in Arizona.

On the other hand, when it comes to “keeping you safe” from real threats, such as a millenarian theocracy that claims universal jurisdiction, America and its allies do nothing. There aren’t going to be any sanctions, because China and Russia don’t want them. That means military action, which would have to be done without U.N. backing — which, as Greg Sheridan of the Australian puts it, “would be foreign to every instinct of the Obama administration.” Indeed. Nonetheless, Washington is (all together now) “losing patience” with the mullahs. The New York Daily News reports the latest get-tough move: “Secretary of State Clinton dared Iran on Monday to let her hold a town-hall meeting in Tehran.”

That’s telling ’em. If the ayatollahs had a sense of humor, they’d call her bluff.

The average Canadian can survive an Arizona hot tub merely compliant with 2009 safety standards rather than 2010. The average Englishman can survive stumbling with his frying pan: You may get a nasty graze on your kneecap, but rub in some soothing pancake syrup and you’ll soon feel right as rain. Whether they — or at any rate their pampered, complacent societies in which hot-tub regulation is the most pressing issue of the day — can survive a nuclear Iran is a more open question.

It is now certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. It is far worse than Pakistan going nuclear, which, after all, was just another thing the CIA failed to see coming. In this case, the slow-motion nuclearization conducted in full view and through years of tortuous diplomatic charades and endlessly rescheduled looming deadlines is not just a victory for Iran but a decisive defeat for the United States. It confirms the Islamo-Sino-Russo-everybody-else diagnosis of Washington as a hollow superpower that no longer has the will or sense of purpose to enforce the global order.

What does it mean? That a year or two down the line Iran will be nuking Israel? Not necessarily, although the destruction of not just the Zionist Entity but the broader West remains an explicit priority. Maybe they mean it. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they’ll do it directly. Maybe they’ll just get one of their terrorist subcontractors to weaponize the St. Albans pancake batter. But, when you’ve authorized successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, when you’ve blown up Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, when you’ve acted extraterritorially to the full extent of your abilities for 30 years, it seems prudent for the rest of us to assume that when your abilities go nuclear, you’ll be acting to an even fuller extent.

But even without launching a single missile, Iran will at a stroke have transformed much of the map — and not just in the Middle East, where the Sunni dictatorships face a choice between an unsought nuclear arms race and a future as Iranian client states. In Eastern Europe, a nuclear Iran will vastly advance Russia’s plans for a de facto reconstitution of its old empire: In an unstable world, Putin will offer himself as the protection racket you can rely on. And you’d be surprised how far west “Eastern” Europe extends: Moscow’s strategic view is of a continent not only energy-dependent on Russia but also security-dependent. And, when every European city is within range of Tehran and other psycho states, there’ll be plenty of takers for that when the alternative is an effete and feckless Washington.

It’s a mistake to think that the infantilization of once-free peoples represented by the micro-regulatory nanny state can be confined to pancakes and hot tubs. Consider, for example, the incisive analysis of Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to the mass murderers of Sudan: “We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration a few months back. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”

Actually, there’s not a lot of evidence “smiley faces” have much impact on kids in the Bronx, never mind genocidal machete-wielders in Darfur. So much for the sophistication of “soft power,” smiling through a hard-faced world.

So Iran will go nuclear and formally inaugurate the post-American era. The Left and the isolationist right reckon that’s no big deal. They think of the planet as that Arizona patio and America as the hotel room. There may be an incendiary hot tub out there, but you can lock the door and hang a sign, and life will go on, albeit a little more cramped and constrained than before. I think not.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn

VideoJournalism 101

2010-01-30T16:03:00.000-05:00

Too Much of a Bad Thing, by My Hero, Mark Steyn, sigh:)

2010-01-23T19:19:00.003-05:00

January 23, 2010, 0:07 a.m.

Too Much of a Bad Thing
Who’s panting for Obama speech number 412? Exactly no one.

By Mark Steyn

So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is
determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it.

So who’s panting for that 412th speech? Not the American Left. As Paul Krugman, the New York Times’s “Conscience of a Liberal,” put it: “He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For.”

Not the once-delirious Europeans, either. As the headline in Der Spiegel put it: “The World Bids Farewell to Obama.”

And not any beleaguered Democratic candidates trying to turn things around in volatile swing states like, er, Massachusetts. The Barack Obama who showed up last Sunday to help out Martha Coakley was a sad and diminished figure from the colossus of a year ago. He had nothing to say, but he said it anyway. As he did with his Copenhagen pitch for the Olympics, he put his personal prestige on the line, raised the stakes, and then failed to deliver. All those cool kids on his speech-writing team bogged him down in the usual leaden sludge. He went to the troubleof flying in to phone it in.

The most striking aspect of his performance was how unhappy he looked, as if he doesn’t enjoy the job. You can understand why. He ran as something he’s not, and never has been: a post-partisan, centrist, transformative healer. That’d be a difficult trick to pull off even for somebody with any prior executive experience, someone who’d actually run something, like a state, or even a town, or even a commercial fishing operation, like that poor chillbilly boob Sarah Palin. At one point late in the 2008 campaign, when someone suggested that if Governor Palin was “unqualified” then surely he was too, Obama pointed out as evidence to the contrary his ability to run such an effective campaign. In other words, running for president was his main qualification for being president.

That was the story of his life: Wow! Look at this guy! Wouldn’t it be great to have him . . . as community organizer, as state representative, as state senator, as United States senator. He was wafted ever upwards, staying just long enough in each “job” to get another notch on the escutcheon, but never long enough to leave any trace.

The defining moment of his doomed attempt to prop up Martha Coakley was his peculiar obsession with Scott Brown’s five-year-old pickup:

“Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads,” the president told an audience of out-of-state students at a private school. “Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.”

How they laughed! But what was striking was the thinking behind Obama’s line: that anyone can buy a truck for a slick ad, that Brown’s pickup was a prop — like the herd of cows Al Gore rented for a pastoral backdrop when he launched his first presidential campaign. Or the Iron Chef TV episode featuring delicious, healthy recipes made with produce direct from Michelle Obama’s “kitchen garden”: The cameras filmed the various chefs meeting the first lady and then picking choice organic delicacies from the White House crop, and then for the actual cooking the show sent out for stunt-double vegetables from a grocery back in New York. Viewed from Obama’s perspective, why wouldn’t you assume the truck’s just part of the set? "In his world,” wrote The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, “everything is political and everything is about appearances.”

Howard Fineman, the increasingly loopy editor of the increasingly doomed Newsweek, took it a step further. The truck wasn’t just any old prop but a very particular kind: “In some places, there are codes, there are images,” he told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “You know, there are pickup trucks, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another.”

Ah, yes. Scott Brown has over 200,000 miles on his odometer. Man, he’s racked up a lot of coded racism on that rig. But that’s easy to do in notorious cross-burning KKK swamps like suburban Massachusetts.

Whenever aspiring writers ask me for advice, I usually tell ’em this:

Don’t just write there, do something. Learn how to shingle a roof, or tap-dance, or raise sled dogs. Because if you don’t do anything, you wind up like Obama and Fineman — men for whom words are props and codes and metaphors but no longer expressive of anything real.

America is becoming a bilingual society, divided between those who think a pickup is a rugged vehicle useful for transporting heavy-duty items from A to B and those who think a pickup is coded racism.

Unfortunately, the latter group forms most of the Democrat-media one-party state currently running the country. Can you imagine Bill Clinton being so stupid as to put down pickup trucks while standing next to John Kerry? And what’s even more extraordinary is that those lines were written for Obama by paid professionals.

But fine, have it your way. Tuesday’s vote was really a plea by a desperate people for even more Obama. We’re going to need even more Obama teleprompters, even more Obama speeches, even more sonorous banalities unrelated to action, even more “Let me be clears” prefacing even more tinny generalities, on even more reams of even more double-spaced paper. And we’re gonna need a really heavy-duty rig to carry all that verbiage.

Maybe Scott Brown can sell ’em his truck.

"Sarah Palin, Man of the Year"

2010-01-01T22:23:00.002-05:00

Greetings and best wishes for a new year, new decade... :)

Sarah Palin, Man of the Year, By Don Surber

2009 was an extraordinary year in which ordinary people did extraordinary things not because they were the easy things to do, but because they were the right thing to do. The people ranged from young Hannah Giles who jump-started her journalism career by donning a hooker’s garb to bring down the racketeer influenced corrupt organization known as ACORN, to Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, who culminated the decades of his life that he worked toward airline safety simply by landing an engineless plane on the Hudson River.

Michael Paul Mizzone, a carpenter’s business representative, pulled Josef R. Bruckuf, 82, out of a burning house, severely burning himself in the rescue. Police Sergeant James Crowley refused to buckle under presidential pressure and apologize for arresting a belligerent man. Economist Douglas W. Elmendorf refused to buckle under presidential pressure to cook the books for Obamacare.

The list of such candidates was long as the United States and Canada are nations that still celebrate and nurture rugged individualism. We still produce people like Stephen McIntyre who demand proof before they sign onto the global warming fad.

And lest we forget, the Netherlands gave us Jasper Schuringa, who saved Flight 253. The Dutch have our gratitude.

While each of the finalists was deserving, there can be only one man of the year — Sarah Palin. In the pantheon of people who stood up this year for that which is right, no one else stood taller or looked better.

She endured the most and came to symbolize the majority of American citizens who are stunned by the attempt to rapidly dismantle this great nation of ours and transform it into another Euro-weenie socialist country that apologizes for trying to save the rest of the world over the years.

The cynic in me said I should honor the person most responsible for reviving the conservative movement — Barack Obama. His arrogance and over-reach gave people pause. The plunder of the treasury in February caused even apolitical people to question his true motives. His slide to 44% approval among voters came lightning quick and we all know that thunder follows lightning.

But conservatives make lousy cynics. Skeptics yes. We refuse to act now, think later. This is why so many of us were cool to the theory of global warming. Climategate proved us correct. We may be suspicious, but being conservative means never saying things will not get better someday. Usually tomorrow. Conservatives are patient. Wait till next year became the battle cry by August. We shall see how that works out in November.

This post originally was written as the runner-up slot. Most readers thought Sarah Palin would be the first Man of the Year of the Don Surber blog, but I had other plans. Just as in the Miss Alaska contest a quarter-century ago, she would be the runner-up. Rush Limbaugh’s CPAC speech was a magical moment in American history and so he would win.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that while Rush Limbaugh deserved the award, Mrs. Palin did even more for the conservative movement, and therefore for America, this year than even he did. In the final days, they switched places.

Naming Sarah Palin as Man of the Year is the only logical conclusion to a year when Americans who petitioned their government for a redress of grievances were smeared as “un-American” by the people who are temporarily in charge.

And still the people rose up.

Mrs. Palin has endured more slings and more arrows than any other politician in America. She may not have gone into any burning buildings, but she was singed nonetheless. Had Obama’s mansion deal received one-tenth the scrutiny that her shopping for clothes received, we conservatives would be grousing today about President Hillary. All things considered, Mrs. Clinton would have been the better president than this one.

The personal attacks on Mrs. Palin this year were so vile that if she were the Rutgers women’s basketball team, David Letterman would have lost his job. But CBS put profits above decency. Letterman had no problem calling her a slut and her daughter a slut on national TV; it upped his ratings as liberal misogyny is alive and well and profitable.

His offer of a half-assed apology with an invitation to come on his show and boost his ratings was met with an the iciest No of the year, so cold that it actually shocked him into giving a real apology.

Mrs. Palin moved on, marching to the beat of the American drummer. She caught hell from the left for another year, and began firing back. Her Facebook posts are well-written and thought out. Tagging Obamacare as having “death panels” rattled the lefty cages and woke up Americans to the rationing of health care that was right around the bend.

Not all the criticisms of her were without substance. Many of us remain puzzled by her decision to resign abruptly as the governor of Alaska. But her campaign for the 2012 presidency continues despite this misstep. She stood up for what is right and held her head high as she marched forward — ever forward.

Half the people of the United States love her for hanging in there. They love her for sharing their values of home, hearth and country. They love her for being of the the people, by the people and for the people.

Oh, not the elites and the elitist wannabes. The little potty-mouthed drones on the left think they are so sophisticated as they mock 14-year-old girls, babies with Down syndrome and people who shop at Wal-Mart. The Washington Post’s book reviewer bragged that she did not read Sarah Palin’s book. Ignorance is now a status symbol for the left.

Ordinary people did read her book and they were impressed. The people who shop at Wal-Mart bought 1 million copies of her autobiography in just 2 weeks. Thousands of them stood in line by the thousands in the freezing nights of November and December just to get her autograph. She is of them — a hockey mom who is naive, unsophisticated and learning just how rotted from within America’s political system has become. She beat corruption in Wasilla. She beat corruption in Alaska. And well, she finished 2009 with a higher approval rating than The Won.

She did this despite nearly universal adulation in the press for him and nearly universal condemnation in the press for her.

The people know the elites hate her. Dumping on her has gone beyond the point of reason. The Tina Feying of her backfires anymore. We get it already. The more they mock her, the deeper the resolve of her fans. The odd thing is, her detractors slam her because Sarah Palin boosts ratings. They are trying to stop the hurricane with a beach umbrella.

Her appearance on Oprah Winfrey pushed Oprah’s ratings — which have sagged since Oprah publicly endorsed Obama — up by 68%. Mrs. Palin gave Oprah her highest ratings in 2 years, easily topping the appearances by anyone named Obama.

She is genuine. Her beliefs in freedom, in independence and in community service reflect how she was raised. She does not hide who she is. There are no ulterior motives. There is no one underneath her bus.

The question anymore is not whether she is ready for the presidency — unlike our current president, she has had her mettle tested in fire several times now and passed with quite more than a gentleman’s B+ — but rather the question is whether she is too pretty to be president.

Sarah Palin, Man of the Year of the Don Surber blog for 2009.

The other finalists:

Rush Limbaugh, Man of the Year Runner-up.

Kenneth Gladney, Man of the Year Finalist No. 3.

Glenn Beck, Man of the Year Finalist No. 4.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Man of the Year Finalist No. 5.

Jim Justice, Man of the Year Finalist No. 6.

23 Carnegie Medal heroes, Man of the Year Finalist No. 7.

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, Man of the Year Finalist No. 8.

Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger III, Man of the Year Finalist No. 9.

Hannah Giles, Man of the Year Finalist No. 10.

Stephen McIntyre, Man of the Year Finalist No. 11.

Rick Santelli, Man of the Year Finalist No. 12.

James Crowley, Man of the Year Finalist No. 13.

Andrew Breitbart, Man of the Year Finalist No. 14.

Jasper Schuringa, Man of the Year Finalist No. 15.

UPDATE: That photo at the top is not a beach photo of Mrs. Palin but rather from a military photo taken when she visited the troops. She looks good anywhere. The uncropped photo:

Cross the River, Burn the Bridge

2009-12-27T10:37:00.000-05:00

Obamacare is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture.

By Mark Steyn, December 26, 2009

Last week, during a bit of banter on Fox News, my colleague Jonah Goldberg reminded me of something I’d all but forgotten. Last September, during his address to Congress on health care, Barack Obama declared: “I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

Dream on. The monstrous mountain of toxic pustules sprouting from greasy boils metastasizing from malign carbuncles that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve is not the last word in “health” “care,” but the first. It ensures that this is all we’ll be talking about, now and forever.

Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the U.S. economy” (i.e., the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade . . . ” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else.

In Canada, once the wait times for MRIs and hip surgery start creeping up over two years, the government distracts the citizenry with a Royal Commission appointed to study possible “reforms” which reports back a couple of years later usually with recommendations to “strengthen” the government’s “commitment” to every Canadian’s “right” to health care by renaming the Department of Health the Department of Health Services and abolishing the Agency of Health Administration and replacing it with a new Agency of Administrative Health Operations which would report to a reformed Council of Health Policy Administrative Coordination to be supervised by a streamlined Public Health Operations & Administration Assessment Bureau. This package of “reforms” would cost a mere 12.3 gazillion dollars and usually keeps the lid on the pot until the wait times for MRIs start creeping up over three years.

The other alternative is what the British did earlier this year: They created an exciting new “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” promising every Briton the “right” to hospital treatment within 18 weeks. Believe it or not, that distant deadline shimmering woozily in the languid desert haze can be oddly reassuring if you’ve ever visited a Scottish emergency room on a holiday weekend. And, if the four-and-a-half months go by and you still haven’t been treated, you get your (tax) money back? Ah, no. But there is a free helpline you can call which will give you continuously updated estimates on which month your operation has been rescheduled for. I mention these not as a preview of the horrors to come, but because I’ve come to the bleak conclusion that U.S.-style “health” “reform” is going to be far worse.

We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave some 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young fit healthy Americans in their first jobs who currently take the entirely reasonable view that they do not require health insurance at this stage in their lives will be forced to pay for coverage they neither want nor need. On the other other hand, those Americans who’ve done the boring responsible grown-up thing and have health plans Harry Reid determines to be excessively “generous” will be subject to punitive taxes up to 40 percent. On the other other other hand, if you’re the member of a union which enjoys privileged relations with Commissar Reid you’ll be exempt from that 40 percent shakedown. On the other other other other hand, if you’re already enjoying government health care, well, you’re 83 years old and, let’s face it, it’s hardly worth us giving you that surgery for the minimal contribution you make to society, so in the cause of extending government health care to millions of people who don’t currently get it we’re going to ration it for those currently entitled to it.

Looking at the millions of Americans it leaves uninsured, and the millions it leaves with worse treatment and reduced access, and the millions it makes pay significantly more for their current health care, one can only marvel at Harry Reid’s genius: government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

That’s why I believe America’s belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one’s philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you’re a cabinet minister or a bigtime hockey player, you’ll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it’s up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs, and arbitrary shakedowns.

That’s why Nebraska’s grotesque zombie senator Ben Nelson is the perfect poster boy for the new arrangements, and not just another so-called Blue Dog Democrat spayed into compliance by a massive cash injection. There is no reason on earth why Nebraska should be the only state in this Union to have every dime of its increased Medicare tab picked up by the 49 others. So either that privilege will be extended to all, or to favored others, or its asymmetry will be balanced by other precisely targeted lollipops hither and yon. Whatever happens, it’s a dagger at the heart of American federalism, just as the bill’s magisterial proclamation that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board can only be abolished by a two-thirds vote of the Senate strikes at one of the most basic principles of a free society — that no parliament can bind its successors.

These details are obnoxious not merely in and of themselves but because they tell us the truth about where we’re headed: Think of the way almost every Big Government project bursts its bodice and winds up bigger and more bloated than its creators allegedly foresaw. In this instance, the stays come pre-loosened, and studded with loopholes. Because the Democrat operators — the Nancy Pelosis and Barney Franks — know that what matters is to get something, anything across the river, and then burn the bridge behind you.

My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option — because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill — because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

As I’ve been saying for over a year now, “health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture. The unlovely Democrats on public display in the week before Christmas may seem like just a bunch of jelly-spined opportunists, grubby wardheelers and rapacious kleptocrats, but the smarter ones are showing great strategic clarity. Alas for the rest of us, Euro-style government on a Harry Reid/Chris Dodd/Ben Nelson scale will lead to ruin.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

The Bottle Genie

2009-12-03T18:18:00.002-05:00

Reprinted from Small Dead Animals.

By Kate McMillan, December 3, 2009.

"Well, it finally happened. Much of Canadian media broke radio silence on Climategate today. There really wasn't much choice but to report it, now that Environment Minister Jim Prentice had officially described the allegations as "serious", coupled with the day-old news that CRU head Phil Jones was "stepping aside" in preparation for his encounter with a double-decker.

As of this evening, there are 23,100,000 Google results for "climategate" - and exactly one on-air report from the CBC.

It's been 14 days since the cork was pulled from FOIA 2009.zip

And as it turns out, the concerted efforts of a protective mainstream media to ignore the scandal turned out to be worst possible course of events for the University of Anglia's motley CRU and their supporters in the wealth distribution industry.

They gave us something very powerful - 14 days of time. Time, while scores of bloggers and thousands of readers put in uncountable man hours of dissection and analysis.

Time for those who'd been discussed and copied in the leaked emails to confirm that there was no evidence of tampering.

Time for programmers to sift through Harry's now famous code line by line, to test it for themselves.

Time for members of the academic community to get their outrage and condemnation on the record, and on their own terms. Time for those who'd been targeted to retell their stories.

Time for opinion columnists and talk radio to break ranks and take on the job their news editors refused to do, to disseminate the facts gathered, checked and analyzed by bloggers to a wider audience.

Time for the comments sections of every online newspaper in the western world to fill with angry demands from their readers to cover the damned story. Not because they were needed anymore, but because we wanted the stupid charade to end.

So when Peter Mansbridge went on the National tonight to admit what he had surely known for days, we didn't watch to find out what's contained in FOIA 2009.zip, for we'd read it for ourselves.

We only watched to see if he had.

For perhaps the first time in the history of mass media, the gatekeepers broke a major scandal to an audience fully 10 days ahead of them.

It's a spin doctor's worst nightmare.

As I've been saying from the beginning, they're hearing the sound of all hell breaking loose. And as much as it's being directed at the research institutions and the policy makers following along like so many imprinted penguins, the bulk of public rage has focused on the media.

I don't think my friends in traditional news gathering truly appreciate what it is they've done. I don't believe they fully comprehend how gravely they have injured themselves, and how they're driving home the razor into an industry already struggling for survival with abbreviated, dismissive, misleading reports and "denier" and "conspiracy nut" slurs.

The bloggers tried to warn them. The opinion columnists tried to warn them, the talk hosts tried to warn them. Their readers, viewers and listeners tried to warn them.

The news media perfected the business of bombshells. They wind them up, drop them, film the explosion, and move on.

They're just learning now that we're in the business of bottle genies."

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XV. The Future of Scence.

2009-11-29T10:35:00.001-05:00

Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science By J.R. Dunn November 29, 2009

The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It would be no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.

A short tour of previous AGW highlights would include:

The Y2K Glitch. This episode involved the NASA/GISS team led by James Hansen, possibly the most fanatical and unrelenting of all warmists, a man who makes Al Gore look like a skeptic. (Among other things, Hansen has demanded that warming "deniers" be tried for "crimes against humanity".) While examining a series of NASA temperature graphs, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, himself not so much a skeptic as an anti-warming Van Helsing, uncovered a discontinuity occurring in January 2000 that raised temperatures gathered over widespread areas by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. McIntyre had no easy time of it, since Hansen refused to reveal what algorithm he'd used to process the data, forcing McIntyre to perform some very abstruse calculations to figure it out.

Once notified, Hansen's team promised to correct the error, stating that it was an "oversight". When the corrected figures were at last released, they rocked the church of warming from bingo hall to steeple. Vanished was the claim that the past few years were "the warmest on record". Now 1934 took precedence. A full half of the top ten warmest years occurred before WW II, well prior to any massive CO2 buildup.

No explanation has ever been offered. We have a Y2K glitch that behaves like no other computer glitch ever encountered, uniformly affecting a large number of sources distributed almost nationwide. Although the incident trashed all recent data and raised uncomfortable questions about the warming thesis as a whole, NASA itself made no effort at an investigation or inquiry. All that we're ever going to hear is "oversight". I guess that's how they do things at NASA/GISS.

The Arctic Ice Melt. We've been informed for the better part of a decade that Arctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate, and that the North Pole would be ice-free in twenty, thirty, or forty years, depending in the hysteria level of the media platform in question. In truth, ice thinning was due to a cyclical weather pattern in which winds blow ice floes south into warmer water. Everybody involved knew that this cycle occurred, everyone had seen it happen previously time out of mind. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Worse yet, when the weather returned to its normal pattern two years ago, large numbers of scientists put in considerable effort to suggest that the "new" ice was thinner than usual and would vanish in a flash as soon as the temperatures went back up. The media went along with the joke. The Germans have a phrase to cover such eventualities: this crew should be stripped of their trade. (Several expeditions setting out for the Pole to "call attention" to the coming Arctic catastrophe had to stop short due to icy conditions. In one case, both women involved suffered serious frostbite.)

The Poor Polar Bears. Closely related is the saga of the polar bears, staring extinction in the face due to warming while, somewhere beyond the aurora, Gaia weeps bitter tears. This was evidently inspired by a single photograph (you've seen it -- the entire world has at this point) of a woebegone polar bear crouched on a melting iceberg. That bear had to be sulking over allowing a nice juicy seal to escape, because it was in no danger. Out of the twenty major polar bear populations only two are known to be decreasing. Estimates of bear population (there are no exact figures) have increased over the past forty years, from 17,000 to19,000 to the current number of 22,000 to 27,000. The bears are becoming pests in municipalities such as Churchill and Point Barrow. (As clearly shown here.) Despite all this, last year the bear was put on the U.S. "endangered" list.

The Hockey Stick That Wasn't. The "hockey stick" is a nickname for a chart prepared by Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania professor and leading warmist. The chart purports to show temperature levels for the past millennium, and consists of a straight line until it reaches the late 20^th century, when it suddenly shoots upward, creating the "hockey stick" profile. This chart was a major feature of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on global warming and is a commonly-used media graphic.

This chart creates immediate doubt in anyone knowledgeable about the climate of the past millennium, which more resembles a roller coaster than a straight line. It developed -- in yet another impressive McIntyre takedown, this time with an assist from Ross McKitrick -- that Mann was utilizing an algorithm that would produce hockey sticks if you fed it telephone numbers. (Mann is the "Mike" mentioned in the CRU e-mails, and this is one of his "tricks".) Despite this disclosure, Mann has never withdrawn the chart, offered an explanation, or made a correction. The chart remains an accepted piece of evidence among warmists.

Tree-Ring Circus. Due to the fact that direct temperature measures for past epochs are lacking, climatologists utilize "proxy measures", such as tree rings, glacial moraines, and lake sediments. Tree rings have played an important part in the warming controversy, as evidence backing the claim that temperatures have been consistently lower worldwide until recently. A crucial series of measurements, utilized by Mann among others, involves trees located on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. How many trees were measured, you ask? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?

The answer is twelve. A number perfectly adequate to trigger international panic, overthrow the capitalist system, establish a Green totalitarianism, and completely turn Western culture on its head.

But it turns out that further measurements were in fact made in the area, involving at least thirty-four other trees. And when this data is added to the original twelve, then the warming evidence disappears into the same branch of the Twilight Zone as the blade of Mann's hockey stick. Another "oversight", you understand.

We could go on to mention the automated U.S. weather stations chronicled by the tireless Anthony Watts, which were conscientiously placed next to air-con vents, atop sewage plants, in parking lots, and in one case, in a swamp (as many as 90% may be giving spurious high readings). The glaciers that are vanishing worldwide except where they aren't. The endless papers demonstrating that the coral reefs, along with various birds, animals, insects, and plants, are facing extinction even though no warming whatsoever has occurred for twelve years. (And in the thirty years before that, the total rise was 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit, easily within normal variation.) Powerful stuff, this warming -- it maims and destroys even when it's not happening.

It's within this context that the East Anglia e-mails must be judged. The vanishingly small number of legacy media writers who are paying attention behave as if the messages comprise some kind of puzzling anomaly, with no relation to anything that came before. In truth, they stand as the internal memos from the East Anglia branch of the Nigerian National Bank, which can save us from the horrors of global warming after payment of a small up-front fee.

There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. And then...

Well, first, let's cover what you don't do.

You don't manipulate data. (As CRU chief scientist Phil Jones stated he was doing in the now-famous "Mike's trick" e-mail, not to mention throughout the now-famous source code.)

You don't fabricate data. (As one CRU scientist did while compiling weather-station data. Running into problems, he states, "I can make it up. So I did." He adds an evil smiley face. This e-mail has gone under radar up until now. It can be found in the comments on James Delingpole's blog.

You don't deny data to other investigators. (As Hansen, Jones, and, it appears, everybody else in the warming community has done at one time or another.)

You don't destroy evidence. (As the members of the CRU did following a Freedom of Information request.)

You don't bury contradictory data. (As Jones and several colleagues did in an attempt to undercut the impact of the Medieval Warming Period.)

You don't secretly manipulate the argument from behind the scenes. (As the CRU staff did with the website Realclimate.org., screening comments to allow only those that supported the warming thesis.)

You don't secretly undercut your critics. (As Mann advised the CRU to do concerning the scientific journal, Climate Researh: "I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.")

You don't try to get a journal editor critical of your case fired. (As the CRU staff evidently succeeded in doing with an editor for Geophysical Research Letters.)

What you do, if you are a serious scientist operating according to the established method, is attempt to falsify your hypothesis. Test it to destruction; carry out serious attacks on its weakest points to see if they hold up. If they do -- and the vast majority of hypotheses suffer the indignity embodied in a phrase attributed variously to Thomas Huxley and Lord Kelvin: "a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact" -- then you have a theory that can be published, and tested, and verified by other scientists. If you don't, you throw it out.

None of this, amidst all the chicanery, fabrications, and manipulations, appears to have been done by anyone active in global warming research, the CRU least of all. From which point we are forced to conclude that AGW is not science, and that any "consensus" that can drawn from it is a consensus of fraud.

(The late-breaking revelations of temperature manipulations at New Zealand's NiWA institute -- another one of Mike's tricks? -- merely underlines the lesson of CRU. Now that the dam has busted, we'll be hearing dozens of stories like this over the weeks and months to come.)

The West is a technological society. Science is as responsible for making us what we have become as any other factor, including the democratic system of government. The two are in fact complementary, each supporting and encouraging the other across the decades since this country was established. (And yes, I am aware that Britain and Germany were both centers of scientific progress, both of them nations liberalized by the example of the United States. Even the utterly authoritarian Bismarck was forced to heed the voice of the people despite his inclination to do anything but.)

The technology developed from scientific research has created a world that would be unrecognizable to our forebears of even a century ago. Technology has transformed diet, health, communications, and transportation. It has doubled lifespans in advanced countries. Prior to the modern epoch, few ever caught a glimpse of the world past their own farming fields. India, China, and Africa were wild myths, the Pacific and Antarctica utterly unknown, the planets and stars merely pretty lights in the sky. Technology opened the world, not just for everyday men and women, but for invalids, the disabled, and the subnormal, who once lived lives of almost incomprehensible deprivation. Technology was a crucial factor in the dissolution of the ancient empires, the humbling of the aristocracies.

As Paul Johnson has pointed out, a technological breakout appeared imminent at a number of points in the past millennium. Consider the anonymous Hussite engineer of the 15^th century who left a notebook even more breathtaking than that of Leonardo, or the revolutionary English Levelers of the 17^th century who dreamed of flying machines and factories. If a breakout had occurred at those times, the consequences would have been unimaginable. But the Hussites were destroyed by the German princes, the Levelers by the reestablishment of the English crown. It required the birth of a true democratic republic in the late 18^th century to provide the setting for a serious scientific-technical takeoff, one that after 200 years has brought us to where we stand today, gazing out at the galaxies beyond the galaxies with the secret of life itself within reach.

It is this, and no less, that scientific fraud threatens. This is no trivial matter; it involves one of the basic elements of modern Western life. When scientific figures lie, they lie to all of us. If they foment serious distrust of the scientific endeavor -- as they are doing -- they are creating a schism in the heart of our culture, a wound that in the long run could prove even more deadly than the Jihadi terrorists.

Such failings are not relegated only to climatology. With the apparent success of the climate hustlers, it has infected all areas of research. Over the past decade, stem-cell studies have proven a hotbed of fraud. Recall Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean biologist who claimed to have cloned various higher animals and isolated new stem cell lines, to worldwide applause. Suk was discovered to have faked all his research, prompting the South Korean government to ban him from taking part in any further work. Nor was he alone. Researchers throughout the field have been caught fabricating and manipulating data, and at least one large biotech company has developed the habit of announcing grand breakthroughs to goose its stock prices.

A number of factors are responsible, among them the grant-making process, which rewards extravagant claims and demands matching results, and the superstar factor, in which media adulation creates a sense of intellectual arrogance -- as in the case of Dr. Suk -- unmatched since Galileo's heyday. But the major problem lies in politics, specifically as involves ideology.

In both major recent cases of fraud, science had become entwined and infected with ideology to a point where its very nature had been transformed. It was no longer science in the classic mold, boldly asking basic questions without fear or favor. It had become an ideological tool, carrying out only such research as met with the approval of political elites. Stem-cell research had become enmeshed with the abortion question. Embryonic stem cells, obtained by "processing" aborted babies, received the lion's share of funding and attention despite its showing no potential whatsoever. Adult stem cells, obtainable from bone marrow, skin cells, or virtually any other part of the body, were shunted aside despite extraordinarily promising research results. This bias permeated the entire field and distorted all perceptions of it -- one of the reasons Dr. Suk was so wildly overpraised was his willingness to attack Pres. George W. Bush for limiting embryonic stem-cell exploitation.

The climatology story is little different. Environmentalist Greens needed a threat, one that menaced not only technological civilization but life on earth itself. They had promoted an endless parade of such threats since the 1960s -- overpopulation, pollution, runaway nuclear power, and global cooling -- only to see them shrivel like popped balloons. They required a menace that was overwhelming, long-term, and not easily disproven. With warming, the climatologists gave them one. In exchange for sky-high funding, millennial scientists, the heirs of Bacon, Copernicus, and Einstein, men who bled and suffered for the sake of their work, continually inflated the nature and extent of the CO2 threat, using, as we now know, the sleaziest methods available. The result has been complete intellectual degradation.

Scientists were once among the most trusted figures in Western public life, similar to bankers, priests, and doctors, but in a real sense standing above them all. Scientists were honored as truth-tellers, aware that their reputation for veracity and seriousness was their only real asset. And while exceptions existed (read the story of Blondlot and his N-rays, for one example), the public took them at their own valuation.

That is ended, one with the scholastic monasteries and the academy at Athens. Scientists today are well on their way to becoming an amalgam of the cheap politician and the three-card monte dealer. They are viewed by the less educated as a privileged class making alarming and impudent claims for their own benefit. The better informed find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to defend something we once admired.

The next set of questions in physics cannot be answered without equipment costing billions at the very least, and possibly much more. Will a disbelieving public pay for that? We are facing serious dilemmas concerning breakthroughs in biology, not only in stem-cell technology but also in neurology and synthetic biology, breakthroughs that threaten to distort the very nature of humanity itself. Should we leave the solutions up to people who want us to pick a card, any card?

The collaboration between science and democracy is one of the great achievements of human history. It is now threatened by the behavior of people at the very heart of that collaboration. If it is destroyed, something of unparalleled value will have vanished, something that will be nearly impossible to replace. If the Western world wishes to continue its magnificent upward journey, we will have to save science from itself. An errant and corrupt climatology is the place to start.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XIV. Steyn on peer review.

2009-11-29T08:38:00.002-05:00

CRU’s Tree-Ring Circus
Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?

By Mark Steyn. November 28, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the “climate change” racket was Stuart Varney’s interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr. — star of the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an “activist.” He’s currently in a competition with Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) to see who can have the lowest “carbon footprint.” Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn’t get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain’s Climate Research Unit in which the world’s leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to “hide the decline” and other interesting matters.

Nothing to worry about, folks. “We’ll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,” said Ed airily. “Those are the key words here, Stuart. ‘Peer-reviewed studies.’”

Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don’t have a 76” inch HDTV, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. “If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it,” insisted Ed. “Don’t get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. ‘Peer-reviewed studies is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies . . . ”

Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it’s something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?

No, no, peer-reviewed studies. “Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature,” babbled Ed. “Read peer-reviewed studies. That’s all you need to do. Don’t get it from you or me.”

Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!

The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.

But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”

Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review.” When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which in essence is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style.

The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the “peer-reviewed” “consensus.” And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line, and tree-ring. The e-mails of “Andy” (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose Climate Audit website exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann’s global-warming “hockey stick” graph), “Andy” writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he’s going to “cover” the story from a more oblique angle:

I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.

peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?

And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does! “Re, your point at the end — you’ve taken the words out of my mouth.”

And that’s what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann’s mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of “saving the planet” from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the last week, you’re as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask “Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?” Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. The “consensus” warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as “peer-reviewed” if it’s published in Peer-Reviewed Studies published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc (Peermate of the Month: Al Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar-bear fur, on a melting ice floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and “Andy” Revkin would still have wandered out glassy-eyed into the streets droning “Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled . . . ”

Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says 2009 is “the first year of global governance.” Global government, huh? I wonder where you go to vote them out of office.

Hey, but don’t worry, it’ll all be “peer-reviewed.”

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XIII. Britain and the flat earthers.

2009-11-29T08:01:00.002-05:00

Climate Change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Our hopelessly compromised scientific stablishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker. Published: 6:10PM GMT 28 Nov 2009

"A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age."

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XII. The Cast.

2009-11-28T13:20:00.002-05:00

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. XI.

2009-11-25T16:23:00.001-05:00

US Senator James Imhofe(R, Ok), minority leader of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has announced today that an investigation will be launched into ClimateGate emails. He has advised that letters have been sent out to many government departments and also to many of the scientists named in the emails. Committee activity should be interesting as Imhofe's co-chair is America's sweetheart, Barbara Boxer(D, Ca).

The First SockPuppet will continue to sell-out and diminish his nation at Copenhagen

2009-11-25T11:09:00.006-05:00

The LA Times is breaking the story this morning that Obama will go to Copenhagen after all:

President Obama will attend the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month, according to a senior administration official, a sign of the president’s increasing confidence that the talks will yield a meaningful agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House will also announce today that the United States will commit, in the talks, to reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases scientists blame for global warming “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, the official said. That’s the target set out in the climate bill the House passed in June.

The president will address negotiators on Dec. 9, just after the opening of the two-week summit, on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize in nearby Sweden. His speech will come ahead of planned visits by prominent heads of state from Europe and around the world, and before the talks are expected to reach their most frenzied pitch.

In light of the revelations surrounding ClimateGate, the controversy that pegs anthropogenic global warming as an out-and-out fraud, the wise course for the US would be a wait-and-see. For a president whose popularity is dropping faster than global temperatures, standing up at Copenhagen and announcing draconian tax grab commitments in the face of the collapse of the AGW meme (on his way to pick up a dubious Nobel prize, no less), will clearly signal to the American people that he is either too narcissistic to see past the teleprompter, never had any intention of implementing policy based on rational science or economics, or as many suspect, wishes to continue his path of Socializing the US regardless of the cost to the nation, both on a personal level, and as the competitive and surviving democratic entity in the world.

In the face of the aspirations of China, the "new" Russia, and the Orwellian machinations of the European Union, the US cannot afford a president who is rapidly becoming the world's rent-seeker.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. X.

2009-11-25T09:36:00.005-05:00

BBC wobble on Climate Change: the Corporation and the dead-tree media have lost the war

By Gerald Warner UK Telegraph.co.uk Last updated: November 24th, 2009

Call it the Domino Effect. After Monday’s Newsnight item on the Climategate scandal it is evident that the leaked e-mails allegedly from the University of East Anglia’s manmade global warming propaganda unit are threatening to bring down more than just the IPCC/Al Gore axis. Themuch-derided mainstream media are waking up to the fact that their owncredibility and hence commercial viability are imminently threatened bytheir clinging to the climate change superstition.

Do not misunderstand me. The Newsnight package was in no sense a mea culpa by the BBC; nor was it a resiling from the Corporation’s fanatical attachment to the global warming legend. Many of the familiarfeatures were in evidence: Paxman’s scepticism of scepticism; the interviewing of a sceptic scientist in his overcoat, outdoors, somewhere in central London, while Professor Bob Watson, from the University of East Anglia, lorded it comfortably in the studio.

Yet there was something new. BBC Kremlinologists could not fail to notice just a scintilla of unease, reflected in Susan Watts’ relatively open-minded presentation of the issue; above all, the fact that the BBC felt compelled to address the matter at all. Clearly, someone at the BBC realised that this is a global scoop in which the blogosphere has left the Corporation and all the dead-tree media standing. Those media are already facing increasing marginalisation without marginalising themselves by refusing to report news that is viral on the Internet.

Is it even just possible that some trillionaire BBC executive,somewhere in the depths of Broadcasting House, retained just enough ofhis youthful news-hound instincts to feel a hollow pit in his stomachand to ask himself: “Ohmigod, what if it is all a crock and we are left looking like a bunch of complete self-abusers when Al Gore takes his place alongside Titus Oates and other great false witnesses in history?”

Is there just the dawning of a self-preservation instinct at the BBC to hedge the odd bet on AGW? Possibly. It is more likely that the establishment consensus will prevail and years from now Paxman, shivering in his woolly combinations (we have his own testimony he has problems with his underpinnings) in mid-July will still be proclaiming global warming as cooling reaches brass-monkey levels.

But it is surely not beyond the realms of possibility that one or two of Auntie’s servitors look at e-mails exchanged within a supposedly scientific community in which the death of a sceptical scientist is greeted as “cheering news”; the suggestion is made that “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”[in warming] should be employed; the removal of a sceptical writer froma journal is triumphantly reported; and colleagues are urged to delete material subject to Freedom of Information law – and asked themselves is this the language and methodology of Einstein?

From Professor Bob Watson, on Newsnight, we learned that the scientists’ only offence was “looseness of language”: their command of climate science was unquestionable, but their handling of the English language had been inept. We further learned that the term “trick” refers to a mathematical process; this interview was more educational than the Open University. The clowns at Hadley CRU know that they are blown; that one of the four legs on which the great IPCC imposture stands has been broken and will never be repaired.

Manmade global warming is not science, but a religious cult. It is the 21st century’s equivalent of the Fifth Monarchy Men and the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion. Only a massive collaborationbetween governments anxious to extend state power, scientists with their mouths clamped to the IPCC teat and entrepreneurs eager to make billions has enabled a superstition to be imposed on the world that will wreck developed nations’ economies, impoverish developing countries and kill their populations and rape the landscape of Europe.

The majority of people now reject this nonsense. Media organisations like the BBC have betrayed truth and objectivity on this, as so many other issues, so should not be surprised if the public abandons them for open debate online.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. IX.

2009-11-25T08:52:00.003-05:00

The excerpt below is from a recent post on wattsupwiththat , detailing the chronology of the CRU email fiasco and the duplicity of CRU members, and indeed, of the office of the British Information Commissioner itself. There can no doubt in any right thinking person's mind, about the worthlessness of the global warming temperature conclusions as presented by the East Anglia Climate Research Unit. Eschenbach tightly chronicles the unfolding controversy, from his perspective of one of the major antagonists. The post is a long one, but should be read in its entirely, including the comments. This is a hugely significant developing story.

[...]

[By Willis Eschenbach]

"People seem to be missing the real issue in the CRU emails. Gavin over at realclimate keeps distracting people by saying the issue is the scientists being nasty to each other, and what Trenberth said, and the Nature “trick”, and the like. Those are side trails. To me, the main issue is the frontal attack on the heart of science, which is transparency.

Science works by one person making a claim, and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists then attack the claim by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

As far as I know, I am the person who made the original Freedom Of Information Act to CRU that started getting all this stirred up. I was trying to get access to the taxpayer funded raw data out of which they built the global temperature record. I was not representing anybody, or trying to prove a point. I am not funded by Mobil, I’m an amateur scientist with a lifelong interest in the weather and climate. I’m not “directed” by anyone, I’m not a member of a right-wing conspiracy. I’m just a guy trying to move science forwards.

The recent release of the hacked emails from CRU has provided me with an amazing insight into the attempt by myself, Steve McIntyre, and others from CA and elsewhere to obtain the raw station data from Phil Jones at the CRU. We wanted the data that was used to make the global temperature record that is relied on to claim “unprecedented” global warming. I want to give a chronological account of the interactions. While we don’t know if all of these emails are valid, the researchers involved such as Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann that clearly indicate that they think they are authentic They certainly fit with my experience. I have only included the relevant parts of emails, and indicated where I have snipped by an ellipsis (…)."

Mr. Eschenbach has detailed his brief here, in addition to what's in the WUWT post, and indicates this will be a work-in-progress as more analysis of the FOIA dump is done.

[...]

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VIII.

2009-11-24T20:27:00.001-05:00

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VII.

2009-11-23T19:28:00.002-05:00

Global Warming With the Lid Off

Wall Street Journal * OPINION EUROPE * NOVEMBER 23, 2009, 7:22 P.M. ET

The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.

'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."

So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center. We found this nugget among the more than 3,000 emails and documents released last week after CRU's servers were hacked and messages among some of the world's most influential climatologists were published on the Internet.

The "two MMs" are almost certainly Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadians who have devoted years to seeking the raw data and codes used in climate graphs and models, then fact-checking the published conclusions—a painstaking task that strikes us as a public and scientific service. Mr. Jones did not return requests for comment and the university said it could not confirm that all the emails were authentic, though it acknowledged its servers were hacked.

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a "unified" view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the "common cause"; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to "hide the decline" of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

Some of those mentioned in the emails have responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers. Others have offered legal threats and personal invective. Still others have said nothing at all. Those who have responded have insisted that the emails reveal nothing more than trivial data discrepancies and procedural debates.

Yet all of these nonresponses manage to underscore what may be the most revealing truth: That these scientists feel the public doesn't have a right to know the basis for their climate-change predictions, even as their governments prepare staggeringly expensive legislation in response to them.

Consider the following note that appears to have been sent by Mr. Jones to Mr. Mann in May 2008: "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same?" AR4 is shorthand for the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, presented in 2007 as the consensus view on how bad man-made climate change has supposedly become.

In another email that seems to have been sent in September 2007 to Eugene Wahl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Paleoclimatology Program and to Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Climate and Global Dynamics Division, Mr. Jones writes: "[T]ry and change the Received date! Don't give those skeptics something to amuse themselves with."

When deleting, doctoring or withholding information didn't work, Mr. Jones suggested an alternative in an August 2008 email to Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, copied to Mr. Mann. "The FOI [Freedom of Information] line we're all using is this," he wrote. "IPCC is exempt from any countries FOI—the skeptics have been told this. Even though we . . . possibly hold relevant info the IPCC is not part of our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on."

It also seems Mr. Mann and his friends weren't averse to blacklisting scientists who disputed some of their contentions, or journals that published their work. "I think we have to stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal," goes one email, apparently written by Mr. Mann to several recipients in March 2003. "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

Mr. Mann's main beef was that the journal had published several articles challenging aspects of the anthropogenic theory of global warming.

For the record, when we've asked Mr. Mann in the past about the charge that he and his colleagues suppress opposing views, he has said he "won't dignify that question with a response." Regarding our most recent queries about the hacked emails, he says he "did not manipulate any data in any conceivable way," but he otherwise refuses to answer specific questions. For the record, too, our purpose isn't to gainsay the probity of Mr. Mann's work, much less his right to remain silent.

However, we do now have hundreds of emails that give every appearance of testifying to concerted and coordinated efforts by leading climatologists to fit the data to their conclusions while attempting to silence and discredit their critics. In the department of inconvenient truths, this one surely deserves a closer look by the media, the U.S. Congress and other investigative bodies.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. VI.

2009-11-22T21:48:00.006-05:00

"The Scarlet Emails"

"I reject your reality..."

2009-11-18T07:00:00.000-05:00

By Dafydd Ab Hugh, November 12, 2009

“…And substitute my own!”

So reads a t-shirt often worn by Adam Savage, one of the two original starts of the Discovery Channel’s series Mythbusters, which I have slavishly watched since the very first episode (I think that was the episode where they busted the myth of the rocket-propelled car launching into the air).

The tee commemorates a pithy summary Adam Savage delivered on the show, I can even remember whether he meant it optimistically or sarcastically: “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” I remember Adam saying that, but I can’t recall now what precipitated the remark. But after today, I suggest he send his wonderful t-shirt to another fellow who now has a greater claim to it: President Barack H. Obama.

Take a look and tell me I’m exaggerating:

"President Barack Obama rejected the Afghanistan war options before him and asked for revisions", his defense secretary said Thursday, after the U.S. ambassador in Kabul argued that a significant U.S. troop increase would only prop up a weak, corruption-tainted government.

“I’m not happy with the options reality has offered me; I demand you produce new fantasy options more to my liking!”

Let’s take an Eikenberry detour. Yes indeed, he was once a military commander in Afghanistan; but he’s not the commander now, and he hasn’t been for well over two years — during which time the situation has changed dramatically. Note that he also left before Gen. David Petraeus achieved such a thorough and remarkable victory in Iraq using a very similar strategy.

In 2007, as the Iraq COIN was picking up, Eikenberry was named Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and NATO was not officially involved in the Iraq War (as they are in Afghanistan). Thus I see no evidence that Eikenberry has spent any significant time studying the Iraq COIN — or even talking to David Petraeus, who, as Commander of CENTCOM, is now McChrystal’s boss.

Nor was Ambassador Eikenberry a COIN specialist when he wore a uniform instead of a suit. So why should his advice trump McChrystal’s in the Obamacle’s mind? (Except for the obvious explanation: Because what Eikenberry says, by happenstance or design, precisely matches what Obama wants to hear.)

Eikenberry’s argument for why we should abandon Afghanistan is not exactly subtle; I think it boils down to the peculiar idea that the purpose of a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is to “prop-up” the existing government, whatever it may be; therefore, since we don’t like the fellow that Afghan voters elected, Hamid Karzai, we shouldn’t prop it up by implementing a COIN strategy. Instead, we should focus on “training” the indiginous Afghan troops.

Most others experts on the subject I’ve read — I’m certainly not an expert, so I must rely on others, such as Fred Kagen or David Petraeus— who seem to believe the purpose of COIN is to improve civilian security throughout the country, thus to enlist civilian support for the war effort against the insurgents and deny the latter the chaos and collapse they need to seize the government.

It needn’t incorporate any support for the specific civilian government at all, just for the concept of democratic voting. All we need from Karzai is that he not interfere with Afghan troops’ participation in COIN-related joint patrols and operations… which is, incidentally, exactly how we go about training the local forces, both military and tribal militia, in the first place. No joint ops — no training.

Here is the Eikenberry thesis on display:

Obama’s ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who is also a former commander in Afghanistan, twice in the last week voiced strong dissent against sending large numbers of new forces, according to an administration official. That puts him at odds with the current war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is seeking thousands more troops.

Eikenberry’s misgivings, expressed in classified cables to Washington, highlight administration concerns that bolstering the American presence in Afghanistan could make the country more reliant on the U.S., not less. He expressed his objections just ahead of Obama’s latest war meeting Wednesday.

But there is an even more disturbing possibility: If AP is accurately recounting Eikenberry’s objections (and I don’t know that to be the case), then he, too, believes that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations consist of nothing but “send 40,000 more troops” — rather than “implement a COIN strategy, then decide how many troops we need.” (McChrystal adds, “Psst… it turns out to be about 40,000 more than we have right now”). This would put the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in the same conceptual box as the elite news media.

It’s hard to swallow the contention that a former lieutenant general (that’s a 3-banger) in the United States Army would be blissfully unaware of what counterinsurgency strategy is, and how it differs from a counter-terrorism strategy… where we “fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt”. I hope that’s not the problem. But if not, then what makes Eikenberry think he’s more fit to opine on Afghanistan than the general that Barack Obama himself hand-picked to do just that? (And who is, as I understand it, an expert on COIN strategy.)

(There is a third, even more disturbing possibility: That Eikenberry knows very well that McChrystal is right, that a COIN strategy is the only one that leads to victory; but the ambassador believes that victory is the last thing Obama wants. In that case, Eikenberry may be quietly conspiring to lose the war, either to give Obama’s leftist supporters the terrible American defeat they demand, or to deny President Bush the victory he earned. Or both. I certainly hope this is not what’s going through Eikenberry’s mind!)

But back to the One, who is ultimately calling the shots here. His philosophy of “I reject your reality and substitute my own” is, in fact, the standard modus vivendi of liberalism. As in:

“I reject the reality that one must work hard, or at least smart, to live well; I substitute the reality where I can sit around and smoke pot all day but still receive a national income (big enough to pay for my dope).”
“I reject the reality that says the best remedy for bad speech is more good speech; I substitute the reality where we can simply outlaw or ban bad speech, and then all that will be left is good speech.”
“I reject the reality that increasing health-insurance demand (via mandate) while decreasing supply (by driving companies out of business) will result in much more expensive insurance; I substitute the reality where a complete government takeover will lower costs, improve care, and expand the pool of those covered.”
“I reject the reality that we need cheap energy; I substitute the reality where we can tax the hell out of it, raise energy costs through the roof (as Obama himself gleefully predicted), declare more and more energy sources off-limits, and therefore make America stronger and more prosperous.”
“I reject the reality that doubling taxation of the average Joe will leave him with less money to spend; I substitute the reality where doubling taxation results in an explosion of new economic growth, causing the economy to take off like a rocket.”
“I reject the reality that Israel needs the ability to defend itself, or it will be destroyed; I substitute the reality where, if Israel will only give the Palestinians everything they want, while demanding nothing in return, the latter will be so grateful they will become fast friends with the Jewish state.” (Alternatively: “I reject the reality that Jews should be allowed to have a state; I substitute the reality where Jews are so uniquely evil that they are the only “race” who should be barely-tolerated strangers wherever they live.”)

To the liberal, reality is infinitely malleable: If you don’t like it, just hold your breath, close your eyes, strain really hard, and intensely visualize the new reality. When you open your eyes and gasp in a lungful, the new reality will miraculously have been subbed in!

This seems to work in some environments but not others. It works great in Hollywood; and it works reasonably well in two-party politics — averaging out to being successful about half the time. However, it doesn’t seem to work much at all in warfare, where the default reality has a depressing way of contradicting the happy-facers, rudely and abruptly.

Alas, even that catastrophe could play into the hand of Barack Obama and his incompetocracy; after bargaining down the number of troops we need — and implementing Slow Joe Biden’s counter-terrorism strategy, rather than a COIN strategy — we might be handed a signal, Vietnam-style defeat. Then B.O. could declare:

“Clearly this means the war was unwinnable from the beginning, and my predecessor should never have invaded Afghanistan in the first place.”
“I gave the policy of the previous administration every opportunity; I even sent more troops — not once, but twice! It’s time to admit that the whole adventure was a terrible miscalculation, pull out, accept that defeat was inevitable, and MoveOn.”
“Now the whole country understands why I have embarked upon a new era of Strategic Reassurance, talking to our enemies without preconditions, instead of the “cowboy militarism” of the Republican Party.

“We’re going to redouble our efforts to talk Iran and North Korea into doing what’s best for America, rather than what’s best for themselves. I know we’ve tried it again and again, and it’s never worked yet; but by the Law of Averages, that means we’re due to hit the jackpot really soon now!”

In the long run, I don’t think a strategy of denying reality is a military winner; and a long-run strategy of hoping for American defeat will not be a political winner in 2010 or 2012. But as John Maynard Keynes is reputed to have said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

A jihadist hiding in plain sight

2009-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

Orange County Register: "How many deaths are acceptable for the sake of diversity?"

By MARK STEYN 2009-11-13 11:55:01

Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again – not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "Shoebomber" attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn't have to be "alert" to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He'd spent most of the past half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying "JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK." But we (that's to say, almost all of us; and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.

Two joint terrorism task forces became aware almost a year ago that Maj. Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the American-born but now Yemeni-based cleric who served as imam to three of the 9/11 hijackers and supports all-out holy war against the United States. But the expert analysts in the Pentagon determined that this lively correspondence was consistent with Maj. Hasan's "research interests," so there was no need to worry. That's America: Technologically superior, money no object (not one but two "joint terrorism task forces" stumbled across him). Yet no action was taken.

On the other hand, who needs surveillance operations and intelligence budgets? Maj. Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on his business card: "SOA." As in "Soldier of Allah" – which seems a tad ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks or thereabouts in elite medical school education to train him to be a Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences considered the question of whether then-Capt. Hasan was psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members of the policy committee wondered "how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents." So he got promoted to major and shipped to Fort Hood, Texas.

And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.

Well, like they say, it's easy to be wise after the event. I'm not so sure. These days, it's easier to be even more stupid after the event. "Apparently, he tried to contact al-Qaida," mused MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "That's not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy?" Interesting question: Where do you draw the line?

The truth is, we're not prepared to draw a line even after he's gone ahead and committed mass murder. "What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy," said Gen. Casey, the Army's chief of staff, "but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here." A "greater tragedy" than 14 dead and dozens of wounded? Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army chief of staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before marshmallow illusions that led to the "tragedy" must remain in place. If it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern Irish "Troubles", "an acceptable level of violence." Fourteen dead is evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess we'll find out.

"Diversity" is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to think. Likewise, a belief in "multiculturalism" doesn't require you to know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing "Muslim" garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage. And it wasn't until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me: He is an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress – that's to say, a "Punjabi suit," as they call it in Britain, or the "shalwar kameez," to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds of talking heads droning on about "diversity" across the TV networks, it was only Tarek Fatah, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out that no Arab males wear this get-up – with one exception: Those Arab men who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the Taliban and al-Qaida. In other words, Maj. Hasan's outfit symbolized the embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his ethnic heritage.

Mr. Fatah would seem to be a genuine "multiculturalist": That's to say, he's attuned to often very subtle "diversities" between cultures. Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and coos, "Aw, look. He's wearing ... well, something exotic and colorful, let's not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a grant."

The brain-addled "diversity" of Gen. Casey will get some of us killed, and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel that the author's not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch-22s multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you're openly in favor of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon will put down your e-mails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of your long-established "research interests." If you're psychotic, the Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that we can all relax, there's no terrorism angle, because, in our over-credentialized society, it doesn't count unless you're found to be carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist Licensing.

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this past week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a "tragedy" but a national scandal, already fading from view.

©MARK STEYN

Bringing al-Qaeda to New York

2009-11-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

EDITORIAL: Bringing al-Qaeda to New York

By the Editors, National Review Online

Candidate Barack Obama urged a return to pre-9/11 counterterrorism-by-courts. President Obama’s Justice Department overflows with lawyers who spent the last eight years representing America’s enemies. Thus, Friday’s announcement that top al-Qaeda terrorists will be brought to New York City for a civilian trial is no surprise. That doesn’t make it any less inexcusable.

The treatment of jihadist terror as a mere law-enforcement issue, fit for civilian courts, was among the worst of the national-security derelictions of the Nineties. While the champions of this approach stress that prosecutors scored a 100 percent conviction rate, they conveniently omit mention of the paltry number of cases (less than three dozen, mostly against low-level terrorists, over an eight-year period, despite numerous attacks), as well as the rigorous due-process burdens that made prosecution of many terrorists impossible, the daunting disclosure and witness-confrontation rules that required government to disclose mountains of intelligence, the gargantuan expense of “hardening” courthouses and prisons to protect juries and judges, and the terrorists’ exploitation of legal privileges to plot additional attacks and escape attempts.

In placing the nation on a war footing after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration invoked the laws of war to detain terrorists as enemy combatants and to try those who had committed provable war crimes by military commission — measures that were endorsed by Congress despite being challenged in the courts by some of the lawyers now working in Obama’s Justice Department. This military-commission system provided due-process protections that were unprecedented for wartime enemies, including the right to appellate review in the civilian courts. But they protected national-defense information from disclosure.

This commission system is tailor-made for the 9/11 plotters, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suicide-hijacking mastermind who is brazen in taking credit for that and numerous other attacks against the United States. In fact, last December, KSM and his four co-defendants indicated to the military judge that they wanted to plead guilty and move on to execution. But then the Obama administration swept into power and undertook to repudiate many of Bush’s counterterrorism practices, declaring its intention to close Gitmo within a year and forcing a moratorium on military commissions so the process could be “studied.” Friday’s announcement that KSM and the other 9/11 plotters will be sent to federal court in New York for a civilian trial is the most significant step to date in Obama’s determination to turn back the clock to the time when government believed subpoenas rather than Marines were the answer to jihadist murder and mayhem.

It is difficult to quantify how dangerously foolish this course is. As they demonstrated in offering to plead guilty while bragging about their atrocities, KSM and his cohorts don’t want a trial so much as they want a soapbox to press their grievances against the United States and the West. With no real defense to the charges, they will endeavor to put America on trial, pressing the court for expansive discovery of government intelligence files. Having gratuitously exposed classified information on interrogation tactics and other sensitive matters in order to pander to Obama’s base, the Justice Department will be in a poor position to argue against broad disclosure, even if it were so inclined. As the court orders more and more revelations, potential intelligence sources and foreign spy services will develop even graver doubts about our capacity to keep secrets. They will reduce their intelligence cooperation accordingly, and the nation will be dramatically more vulnerable.

Moreover, the transfer of the worst al-Qaeda prisoners into the U.S. will grease the skids for many, if not most, of the remaining 200-plus Gitmo terrorists to be moved here. This will be the worst of all possible outcomes. These are trained terrorists who have been detained under the laws of war, but most of whom cannot be tried because the intelligence on them cannot be used in court. We are still holding them because they are deadly dangerous and because no other country is willing to take them off our hands. Once inside the United States, they will indisputably be within the jurisdiction of the federal courts — which are staffed by judges predisposed against wartime detention without trial. As long as the terrorists were at Gitmo, those judges were reluctant to order them released into the U.S. — a transfer that would violate federal law. If the terrorists are already here, though, judges will not be as gun-shy. Inevitably, some will be freed to live and plot among us.

The Obama Left delusionally argues that running these risks will make us safer. The international community will see how enlightened we are, the fable goes. The hostility of America’s enemies will melt away. They’ll lay down their bombs and stop attacking us. As observed by former attorney general Michael Mukasey — who presided over terrorism cases as a federal judge — “We did just that after the first World Trade Center bombing, after the plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, and after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. In return, we got the 9/11 attacks and the murder of nearly 3,000 innocents.”

Embellishing The First Person

2009-11-15T07:36:00.002-05:00

Obama's swelling ego
By Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, November 14, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends’’ that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.’’ He referred to “tyranny,’’ but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words “Soviet Union’’ or “communism,’’ for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

He did, however, talk about Barack Obama.

“Few would have foreseen,’’ declared the president, “that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.’’

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for “Ich bin ein Berliner,’’ still less another “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’’ But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn’t be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made “destiny’’ of his own rise to power.

Was there ever a president as deeply enamored of himself as Barack Obama?

The first President Bush, taught from childhood to shun what his mother called “The Great I Am,’’ regularly instructed his speechwriters not to include too many “I’s’’ in his prepared remarks. Reagan maintained that there was no limit to what someone could achieve if he didn’t mind who got the credit. George Washington, one of the most accomplished men of his day, said with characteristic modesty on becoming president that he was “peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.’’

Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,’’ he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.’’

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal “we’’ - “We will build the roads and bridges. . . . We will restore science to its rightful place. . . . We will harness the sun and winds,’’ he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, “By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked ‘I’: ‘As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.’ ‘I called for action.’ ‘I pushed for quick action.’ ‘I have told each of my Cabinet.’ ‘I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.’ ’I refuse to let that happen.’ ’’ In his speech on the federal takeover of General Motors, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. (“Congress’’ he mentioned just once.)

At this rate, it won’t be long before the president’s ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own.

Then again, how modest would any of us be if we were as magnificent as Obama knows himself to be? “I am well aware,’’ he told the UN General Assembly in September, “of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world.’’

In 1860, writes Doris Kearns Goodwin in her celebrated biography “Team of Rivals,’’ an author wishing to dedicate his forthcoming work to Abraham Lincoln received this answer: “I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.’’

Obama has often claimed Lincoln as a role model, but apparently it only goes so far.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

Sarah Palin and the Dysfunctional Political Class

2009-11-12T09:00:00.002-05:00

by James V. DeLong

The frenetic hostility to Sarah Palin, even by many on the Republican side, is unnerving, because her qualifications to be president are objectively better than those of almost anyone who has been on the national ticket over the past decade.

A reasonable conclusion is that these qualifications are precisely the cause of the hostility. To admit to the reality that the dominant political class, including the MSM and the punditocracy of both parties, has been giving us abysmal presidential candidates, to accept that a hockey mom plucked from small-town Alaska is better than the best that the political class can come up with, would require recognition of the terrible truth that the system has become deeply dysfunctional. Doing this would force our political elites to look into an abyss of serious questions about the functioning of our democracy. Palin creates a cognitive dissonance so intense that it simply cannot be accepted.

To start, compare her experience as a person, mayor, and state leader with George W. Bush’s pre-presidential career as an alcoholic, baseball executive, and ornamental governor. Whatever one thinks of his performance as president — and like most conservatives my views are complex — he was not promising material as of 2000.

Al Gore would be disqualified by knowledge of his academic career and by a reading of Earth in the Balance, an exercise in messianic ignorance. His subsequent career getting rich from climate change subsidies would reinforce this opinion. John Kerry had a Senate career of unbroken mediocrity, compounded by his unapologized-for Winter Soldier exercise and the still-unanswered Swift Boat questions.

John Edwards had no shadow of a qualification, and again the judgment is confirmed by subsequent events.

Obama’s qualifications were will-o-the-wisp. His supporters cited his “potential,” as they had to, because his only actual feat was his first book — and the claims that this was ghosted have been met by non-denial. The Asia Times characterizes these rumors as “well-established,” which tells one something about current foreign assessments of Obama. The president’s long-standing ties to the radical left should have tipped the balance to the negative.

Vice President Joe Biden has a long history of blurring the line between fantasy and reality to a degree that one wonders if he sees any distinction, but 36 years of this is enough to make him “qualified.” This, too, tells a lot about the mental processes of the dominant political class.

One can deeply respect John McCain’s courage and service. But he is an erratic senator, with a tendency to reach decisions on a whim and then excoriate anyone who disagrees. As demonstrated by McCain-Feingold — which hamstrings the middle-class base of the Republicans while leaving intact the power of unions and public employees, the media, the rich, and Native American tribes — McCain does not, or cannot, think even two moves ahead.

This leaves Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney as the only candidates with any weight, and Palin’s executive experience gives her an edge over Lieberman.

The list may not be impressive, but being number two is not bad.

The biases of the political class also explain why Palin got sandbagged at the outset. Anyone familiar with the world of Washington private schools knows that they are experts at resume building — creating scads of extracurricular activities and awards so that every student can shine for the college of his or her choice. Well, the kids learned it from their parents, who are also experts at blowing air into the CV.

Palin was called inexperienced because she had never gone on a five-photo-ops-with-foreign-leaders-in-four-days tour, held show hearings on the topic du jour, introduced meaningless legislation, or had her staff give her a list of the publications she should say she was currently reading.

In fact — and of course — negotiating with Exxon is better preparation for negotiating with Putin than is a foreign photo op. And running a town is a miles-better education than warming a Senate seat. But again, it is not in the interests of the political class to acknowledge this.

So her handlers tried to cram her into a D.C. frame of reference by stuffing her with facts on national and international issues that could withstand grilling from a gotcha! press, something that was neither possible nor the right game.

Palin should instead have conceded that of course she would not be ready to be president on day one, but that:

1. What she had turned her hand to, she had quickly learned to do successfully — and this ability, based on her solid grounding in the realities of American life, was and is the real test.

2. If she were called upon on day one, she would be the head of a government, not a lone individual, and she had the experience in handling people that would be necessary to tap into the collective intelligence of the nation.

Those are called real qualifications!

Since the election, Palin has learned her lesson about the political handlers and she has followed Mao’s advice, as channeled through Anita Dunn — “you fight your war and I’ll fight mine.”

Her resignation from the governorship, which was mostly condemned by the pundits, was dead-on shrewd. Why let herself be tied down defending perjured ethics charges from people with infinite money, whose only desire is to shut her up or bankrupt her? Her willingness to be herself and pursue her own ideas without regard to whether or not they could lead to future office is a source of great political strength. Her public pronouncements, such as the Hong Kong speech, are serious and adult, unlike most of the vapidity produced by politicians, especially Obama. And Palin is mastering the art of short, sharp statements.

None of this is winning over the political class. Indeed, Palin’s refusal to fulfill their desires that she be a clown or take a proper role in the kabuki theater of Washington is making them angrier than ever and more determined to marginalize her. But the disillusionment with government among the tea-partying middle class is so great that every attack on her builds her stature on Main Street.

Is Palin going to be nominated? Hard to tell, even assuming she wants it. The unrelenting hostility of the media does have an insidious effect. She also needs to achieve the discipline in speaking that she displays with her written pronouncements — more brevity and less nattering — but this is doable.

The cultural issues are more important. There is a middle ground of people who are against the increasing bipartisan kleptocracy but not conservative on cultural matters — personally, I am pro-choice (but with reasonable caveats about the exercise of that choice), utterly indifferent to gay marriage, pro-gun, pro-decriminalization of marijuana, in favor of a forward strategy towards the terrorist wing of Islam and with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and sympathetic to China’s extraordinary effort to remake itself economically and politically.

Ultimately, this may or may not make me into a Palin supporter. But either way, our most fundamental current crisis is the inability of the political class to produce plausible leaders, and its hostility to anyone, such as Palin, who threatens the system. The election of Obama was a symptom of our current dysfunctional politics, not a cause.

We need more Palins, not fewer.

James V. DeLong is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and a former Book Review Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Recent articles include The Coming of the Fourth American Republic and Rhett Butler Comes to Washington.

Remembrance Day 2009

2009-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy

2009-11-07T12:35:00.001-05:00

The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy
We’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives terrorism.

By Mark Steyn

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a “tragedy” (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the “War on Terror.” Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America’s enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy — a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

And he’s a U.S. Army major.

And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that “the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the “noble” “heroism” of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

When it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: “Please judge Major Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name.”

Concerned Tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that — and not just in the sense that the New York Times’s first report on Major Hasan never mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam,” or that ABC’s Martha Raddatz’s only observation on his name was that “as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”

What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.

Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions — flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we’re effective at responding with action of our own — taking out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto and Dearborn.

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam” from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate. An army psychiatrist, Major Hasan was an American, born and raised, who graduated from Viriginia Tech and then received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, which works out to the best part of half a million dollars’ worth of elite education. But he opposed America’s actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and made approving remarks about jihadists on American soil. “You need to lock it up, Major,” cautioned his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee.

But he didn’t really need to “lock it up” at all. He could pretty much say anything he liked, and if any “red flags” were raised they were quickly mothballed. Lots of people are “anti-war.” Some of them are objectively on the other side — that’s to say, they encourage and support attacks on American troops and civilians. But not many of those in that latter category are U.S. Army majors. Or so one would hope. Yet why be surprised? Azad Ali, a man who approvingly quotes such observations as “If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation” is an adviser to Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service (the equivalent of the U.S. attorneys). In Toronto this week, the brave ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish mentioned en passant that, on flying from the U.S. to Canada, she was questioned at length about the purpose of her visit by an apparently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: “We are not to question sharia.”

That’s the guy manning the airport-security desk.

In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Hasan’s faith only obliquely: “He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference.” Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had “Allah” and “another word” pinned up in Arabic on his door. “Akbar” maybe? On Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don’t worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there’s no terrorism angle.

That’s true, in a very narrow sense: Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that’s the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

"[a] new utopian vision of the world"

2009-11-07T08:18:00.005-05:00

by Vaclav Klaus

"Many thanks for the invitation and for the courage to organize such an important gathering in the moment when political correctness tells you not to do it.

We are meeting one month before the Climate Change Copenhagen Summit and several weeks before the U.S. Senate hearing regarding the cap-and-trade scheme. For these reasons, today’s meeting can’t be an academic conference, even though the topic still needs academic discussion. There is no consensus — neither in science, nor in economic analysis or politics.

I have already been at a UN Summit in Copenhagen before. It was in 1995 at the so-called Social Summit. At that time, the Summit was attended by then U.S. Vice President Al Gore who — so it seems — will be there again this year. I did also attend, as Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, but I don’t plan to go there now. I don’t see any chance to influence the results or to be listened to.

In 1995, there were huge demonstrations organized by all kinds of anti-establishment groupings - from socialists and greens to anarchists and anti-globalizationists. I have never seen such clashes between demonstrators and police and army forces before. The difference is that I don’t expect any demonstrations in Copenhagen now. The anti-establishment people have in the meantime become insiders and will be sitting in the main hall. This is a shift with far-reaching consequences.

My views on the doctrine of global warming and especially on the role of man in it are relatively known. My book with the title Blue Planet in Green Shackles has been already published in 12 languages and, two and a half years after its original publication, I don’t have any urgent need to rewrite it.

We should not forget how the doctrine of global warming came into being. In a normal case, everything starts with an empirical observation, with the discovery of evident trends or tendencies. Then follow scientific hypotheses and their testing. When they are not refuted, they begin to influence politicians. The whole process finally leads to some policy measures. None of this was the case with the global warming doctrine.

It started differently. The people who had never believed in human freedom, in impersonal forces of the market and other forms of human interaction and in the spontaneity of social development and who had always wanted to control, regulate and mastermind us have been searching for a persuasive argument that would justify these ambitions of theirs. After trying several alternative ideas — population bomb, rapid exhaustion of resources, global cooling, acid rains, ozone holes — that all very rapidly proved to be non-existent, they came up with the idea of global warming. Their doctrine was formulated before reliable data evidence, before the formulation of scientifically proven theories, before their comprehensive testing based on today’s level of statistical methods. Politicians accepted that doctrine at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and — without waiting for its confirmation — started to prepare and introduce economically damaging and freedom endangering measures.

Why did they do that? They understood that playing the global warming game is an easy, politically correct and politically profitable card to play (especially when it is obvious that they themselves won’t carry the costs of the measures they implement and will not be responsible for their consequences).

I don’t see any problem with the climate now, or in the foreseeable future, and for that reason I am not sufficiently motivated to discuss the technicalities of the cap-and-trade scheme. I only protest against calling it a “market solution.” It reminds me of the communist planners who similarly talked about “using market instruments” when they finally came to the conclusion that “planning instruments” did not work. Markets can’t be used by anybody.

We should not deceive ourselves. A cap-and-trade scheme is a government intervention par excellence, not a “market solution.” How much “to cap” is the decision of the government (and the European failure several years ago — when too many carbon permits were issued — is I hope well known here). The size of the cap defines the price of carbon and this price is nothing else than a tax imposed upon citizens of the country. I agree with Lord Monckton that the cap-and-trade bill “is the largest tax increase ever to be inflicted on a population in the history of the world.” How is it possible that such arguments are not used? Why does nobody argue that to tax energy means that the costs of anti-global warming policy will disproportionally fall onto the poor people? What bothers me is that to “trade” the artificial “good” — the permits — means that a new group of rent-seekers will arise who will make profits at our expense. Why doesn’t anybody say that the carbon permits have no intrinsic value other than by government decree? I could continue along these lines.

But we should return to the beginning. Despite huge scientific efforts and spending, it has not been proved that the human effect on the climate is statistically significant. Once again Lord Monckton: “the correct policy to address a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

This country, my country, as well as the rest of the world face many real issues. We do not need to solve non-existing problems. I don’t think the real issue is temperature and/or CO2, but a new utopian vision of the world. We have only two ways out: salvation through carbon capping or prosperity through freedom, unhampered human activity, productivity and hard work. I vote for the second option."

Václav Klaus is the President of the Czech Republic. On Nov. 4, the Washington Times hosted a briefing, “Advancing the Global Debate over Climate Change Policy” at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. These remarks were given at the last panel of that event.

Are you freakin' kidding me?

2009-10-09T07:14:00.006-04:00

So the news is reporting that the first black American Sockpuppet has been awarded the Nobel Prize...

Are you freakin' kidding me?!!!?

As one poster on SDA noted this morning, that if the rationale for the award was for his vision of world peace made in his speeches, then every beauty contest winner who stood before a microphone is entitled to the same award.

It also needs to be noted that nominations for this award closed in February, a scant 10 days after his inauguration.

First the monumental fraud artist Al Gore, now the First Sockpuppet? TOTUS is more deserving since its well known that Obama can't speak without it. The metro euroweenies have again redefined the concept of "beta male". What a disgrace to the memory of Alfred Nobel.

To quote another SDA commenter: "This blemishes the prize Yaser Arafat worked so hard for." Amen, brother.

Nine, Eleven... 2,996 ...24, ... numbers of the 21st century (Reprise)

2009-09-11T19:41:00.008-04:00

(Reprised from my September 11, 2006 post, the 5th anniversary of 9/11, and updated, some. I regret that, as the maxim says, "life goes on for the rest of us", and I haven't been able to spend the time this year to fully update this page, so if links no longer point to where they should, I truly apologize.)

Some of the links below to tributes to individuals lost, remain, some have poignant general tributes to the victims of 9/11, as with all things some have moved on, in their own lives. Still we remember, and our thoughts continue to go out to those who have lost loved ones. Below, the 24 Canadians lost in the twin towers...

Michael Arczynski * Garnet Bailey * David Barkway * Ken Basnicki * Jane Beatty * Cindy Connolly * Arron Dack * Christine Egan * Michael Egan * Albert Elmarry * Meredith Ewart * Peter Feidelberg * Alexander Filipov * Ralph Gerhardt * Stuart Lee * Mark Ludvigsen * Bernard Mascarenhas * Colin McArthur * Michel Pelletier * Donald Robson * Roy Santos * Vladimir Tomasevic * Chantal Vincelli * Debbie Williams.
H/T to JYC for the list (You know who you are. Thank you.)

Reuters/Jeff Christensen

24 Canadians lost in the twin towers, 9/11, lest we forget. Our world has changed, and those who do not understand why we are sending son and daughters to Afghanistan to assist in nation rebuilding can take a moment to look at that picture. Taken 15 minutes after the first tower came down.

15 minutes later, they were gone too.

The terror and the horror of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, can never be allowed to fade. There is no negotiation, no appeasement of ideologies that can erase or legitimize the actions of terrorists that day. The 24 Canadians lost, and the 2,972 others representing 90 nations of the world, bear silent witness to the fight that must be fought.

Take the time to browse the links below and reflect on 9/11. Do take the time.

For everyone else who understands why we fight for democracy and freedom, who dares to be reminded of the reason for the iconic phrase "9/11", the sites below offer an especially poignant journey back...

THE BLACK DAY

Dedicated to the Men and Women...

FDNY -Blood of Heroes
The first, a photographic memorial, the others, video tributes worthy of viewing... Lengthy. Bring a hanky.

The Victims...

World Trade Center, Pentagon, Flight 11, Flight 175, Flight 93,
The 2996 Project
... was a web effort to recognize and honour each of the victims of 9/11. 3,013 people had signed up to prepare a tribute to each one of the 9/11 souls lost to the tragedy. Browse the list to know the real loss. I am pleased to say that I had confirmed all of the links to the Canadian tributes then (most have now moved on...). A very heartfelt thank you for all of those in the 2996 Project who took the time to care, and participate. The tributes were to remain on their hosts site until Midnight September 11, 2006. I hoped then that perhaps those that can, will leave them a bit longer so that family and friends may have an opportunity to find them. I still do. God bless you all.

Update for 2009: The 2996 project remains alive and well, and tributes continue to be obtained, and maintained. Please the link above and reflect on the magnitude of loss.

Update for 2008: I haven't had an opportunity to go through all of the names above on the Canadian list this year to see if tributes remain. As with all things in time, many of the hosts from the 2996 project have moved on. Yet still, Canada remembers that 9/11 devastated Canadians too. Take the time if you can, and if you find a tribute still online, take the time to reflect on a life lost, perhaps even send a note if a link is available. The family might appreciate that.

Gun Control Canada signs off...

2009-08-08T11:21:00.002-04:00

The quixotically named "Gun Control Canada", so named in order to compete in search engines with Wendy Cukier's website, has hung up its spurs. Cross-posted from GCC:

As of this weekend, Gun Control Canada, the dot-org, dot-com and dot-ca domains, will be allowed to expire. The core programming, the Blogger link guncontrol-canada.blogspot.com will continue for a time, as will the links (for as long as they remain valid) and the articles on the blog pages. Most of the articles referenced in the links were archived off for safe-keeping in the event the link went bad.

I thought long and hard as to whether I would keep funding the domains or not. When they came up for renewal this month, I decided it was time to let them go, "to all things, there is a season". Traffic levels have never been high enough to support the efforts, even amongst those who profess to defend the right to bear arms in Canada, and while the fight continues in earnest, my time is done. I am simply getting too old to continue the fight on the front lines. I will do what I can when I am able, but its time for me to focus my remaining good years on the many other things that I enjoy, and to maintaining some quality of life as I enter old age.

The Conservatives have been a huge disappointment on the gun rights front. While their lack of majority has prevented some of the legislative changes, they also have not taken advantage of the orders-in-council approaches they might have. Moving the registry to the RCMP was a huge strategic blunder on their part. No police organization in Canada supports an armed citizenry. While individual rank and file members get why the right to bear arms is a fundamental necessity to a free people, its simply counter to the objectives of para-military forces to support such freedoms. The legislative changes they introduced only hands the registry off to the provinces.

The Conservatives have also squandered an opportunity to fix a horribly broken and patronized civil service. Thirteen years of Liberal trough-dipping and grossly incompetent mismanagement have left departmental ruin in its wake. My own department, in which I am a LEO, has now been given the last rites - it is no longer capable of even the simplest of effective enforcement programs.

Forced attrition through programmed staff budget cuts, retirements (and, indeed, early retirements of those no longer interested in carrying on in such an environment), lack of new hires, suspension of meaningful training programs, "corporatization" initiatives, and senior management postings filled with people who don't understand what the work is, or how its done, have destroyed what was once a proud, attuned, professional cadre of civil servants looking out for Canada's interests. Repairs will now take two parliamentary cycles and a massive expenditure. Billions of tax dollars have been squandered, and will have to be spent, to fix what could have been done in the first year of the new Conservative mandate.

The last British WWI veteran was laid to rest this week. My crystal ball, cloudy as it is, predicts that freedom as we understood it, and fought for it, was buried alongside him. The outrageous thuggery of Obama and his administration may be a bellweather of the turmoil to come, if the Americans don't re-align things in 2010. He is well on his way to becoming the most ignoble of US presidents. Americans may need their right to bear arms before his administration finishes.

I will have control of the domains for about 20 days longer for anyone on the side of right wishes to acquire them. Email me.

And to those young enough to carry the torch, hold it high, for the sake of the children (an inside joke, perhaps, but never more appropriate). See you on the range, or in the camp. ... Skip

Obama, Spock? Palin, Kirk? Kobayashi Maru!

2009-08-05T07:15:00.003-04:00

Leadership: If Barack Obama is Spock, Sarah Palin is Kirk

by Leigh Scott

When Sarah Palin resigned a few weeks ago every blogger with a keyboard chimed in on it. I didn’t want to be late in the game with a Sarah Palin blog, so I put this blog in the old hard drive of justice, right next to my Buffy the Vampire fan fiction and an un-produced screenplay about the Braves leaving Milwaukee.

Then I saw one of my childhood idols, Bill Shatner goofing on Sarah Palin. At last, my geeked out political observation had new relevance! Apple “C.” Apple “V.” Send to Big Hollywood.

We were treated to some really lame comparisons between Obama and Mr. Spock a few months back. Let’s ignore the obvious fact; that Mr. Spock is and always was the #2 guy. The Captain’s chair rightfully belonged to Kirk. Spock lacks the passion and empathy to be a leader. Trying to make a flattering comparison between the leader of the free world and a legendary sidekick seems like a non-starter.

No, let’s focus on the fact that Obama does not follow the Vulcan path. The path of logic. His demeanor may be calm, cool, and unemotional, but his thought process is driven by raw emotion. He represents decades of grievance education, America bashing, and misplaced empathy. There is nothing logical about the man. Exhibit A is the “stimulus plan.”

So with the whole Obama is Spock meme D.O.A. I went searching for another apt Sci-Fi/Politics metaphor. Let’s see, George W. Bush is Luke Skywalker? Cheney is Paul Atredies? Donald Rumsfeld is Optimus Prime? Joe Biden is a Tribble?

Then, as Sarah Palin announced her resignation, it hit me. Sarah Palin is Captain Kirk. Why? Because she just passed the Kobayashi Maru.

For those of you who don’t know what the Kobayashi Maru is, let me explain. In the Star Trek universe it is an unwinnable test. It’s creator, Mr. Spock, designed it to test how Starfleet captains deal with failure and death. There is no right way to successfully navigate through it.

But cadet James Tiberius Kirk found a way to beat it. He rigged the computer simulation to allow him to complete the mission without killing his crew. Starfleet accused him of cheating, but Kirk’s response was simple, eloquent, and very revealing. “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario. I don’t like to lose.” Kirk didn’t change the strategy. He changed the rules.

Since Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene she has been savaged. The media, the Left, the Right, the Middle, you name it. People either love her or hate her. In the media it seems people love to hate her. The “elites” on both sides of the aisle hate the populism she represents. Traditional feminists hate the fact that she has both a family and a career; something that their paradigm teaches is impossible. Her future rivals hate her because she isn’t a typical politician. Her authenticity makes Mike Huckabee look about as real as the Guinea Pigs in “G-Force”.

Palin was faced with her own Kobayashi Maru. How could she effectively govern the state of Alaska while facing ridiculous ethics charges and the scrutiny of the national media? How could she increase her exposure in the lower 48 while staying true to the people in Alaska who elected her? Perhaps if the wingnuts in Alaska didn’t stalk her with silly lawsuits she would have simply put her larger ambitions on the back burner and continued to do her job as governor. But it wasn’t meant to be. She was perfectly set up to fail. Her popularity in Alaska would decline. The national media would point to it as an indicator of her overall effectiveness. The Klingons…I mean the left, would have won.

But Palin defied them. She changed not her strategy, but the very rules. She resigned her position, turning the state over to her loyal Lieutenant Governor to continue the plans and policies she put into motion. Like any good story, it was an unexpected twist, yet when viewed in retrospect it was the only way it could play out.

The notion that a candidate with scant command of policy, who either lacks experience or didn’t complete the duties of their elected position, is doomed to failure doesn’t take into account a little thing I call history. In 2008 this nation elected a President who spent the majority of his Senate term campaigning for his next gig. I only wish he had the class, respect, and decency for and towards his constituents to resign. And while Palin may lack the depth of foreign policy knowledge, that say a Joe Biden has (yes, I just did that cough/laugh thing), she has a damned good grasp of energy policy. According to a lot of folks that energy thing is a big deal. Sarah Palin understands that people should have more freedoms. Government should be small. Taxes should be low. I understand that too. Neither of us has a Doctorate in Economics. I think that’s a good thing.

For all his talk of being different, representing “hope,” and bringing “change” Obama has turned out to be quite the bore. He is the consummate insider, a recycler of old ideas and failed policies. People wanted to beam up to the starship and explore strange new worlds. We wanted to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. Obama is in the wrong franchise. He and crazy Doc Brown, I mean Joe Biden, gassed up the DeLorean and took us back in time. To 1976.

Palin passed the Kobayashi Maru. She is qualified to command the ship. She has all the qualities we want in a captain; valor, principals, vision and most of all, the ability to change the rules.

Will Palin be a candidate in 2012? Will she run for Senate? Will she be a third party spoiler? Who knows? Maybe she should just enjoy the spoils that are the dividends of her hard work. People get paid millions of bucks because their coffee at McDonald’s is too hot, I think she’s entitled to a book deal and a TV show after having her entire family slandered by a bunch of elitist vampires. But something tells me she won’t just become the “White Oprah.” People like Kirk and Palin don’t retreat. They have an innate craving for responsibility and adventure as well as a desire to help their fellow man.

Go ahead. Write her off. Make a joke out of her. Be my guest. But that would be about as smart as marooning Captain Kirk on Seti Alpha V.

We all know how well that worked out for Khan don’t we?

AWESOME!

2009-07-20T09:20:00.000-04:00

"Bystander-In-Chief"

2009-06-28T12:48:00.005-04:00

Comedian Greg Gutfield described Mr. Obama as "the bystander-in-chief." That may be his inclination, but it is hard to vote "present" in the Oval Office.

[...]
The president knows he's been a day late and a dollar short since the Iranian crisis began and is defensive about it. He grew testy when Major Garrett of Fox News asked him what took him so long to condemn the regime's violence against protesters. Mr. Obama said his remarks have been consistent.
"Even the most egregious toady in the White House press corps knew that wasn't true," said Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard.
For President Obama to be following events rather than leading them is part of a pattern, said columnist Michael Barone, who recalled Mr. Obama was "flummoxed" last year by the Russian invasion of Georgia. It took candidate Obama three days to issue a statement criticizing the Russians.
(Read more: http://post-gazette.com/pg/09179/980161-373.stm#ixzz0JkA2H2Mr&C)
[...]

Uh, its been patently clear since Obama entered the presidential race, that he was, uh, not in control of his agenda, that somebody, the DNC presumably, was actually pulling the strings, and that he was simply a front man -the empty suit. Its not without justification that the circulating joke is that the real power in the White House is TOTUS, Teleprompter of the United States. He is an empty suit. For every action, he has to go off and think about what he thinks about the situation, or be told what to think about it, or something.

Another clue to the president's timid and tepid response to the turmoil in Iran is the number 129. That's the number of times Mr. Obama voted "present" in the Illinois Senate. This is not a guy who is comfortable taking clear positions on controversial issues.

Indeed.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. V.

2009-06-03T21:57:00.004-04:00

"Climate Change Reconsidered"

"As Congress debates global warming legislation that would raise energy costs to consumers by hundreds of billions of dollars, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific support for the position that the warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented, that its impact on human health and wildlife was positive, and that carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC’s self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is an international panel of nongovernment scientists and scholars who have come together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. Because it is not a government agency, and because its members are not predisposed to believe climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, NIPCC is able to offer an independent “second opinion” of the evidence reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NIPCC traces its roots to a meeting in Milan in 2003 organized by the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), a nonprofit research and education organization based in Arlington, Virginia. SEPP, in turn, was founded in 1990 by Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, and incorporated in 1992 following Dr. Singer’s retirement from the University of Virginia."

Order a copy from the website, or download it here.

The First 100 days of President Palin.

2009-05-15T14:13:00.003-04:00

[If you don't get this, please don't vote. For anyone. Anywhere. For anything.]
A near disaster.

By Victor Davis Hanson

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first 100 days of the Palin presidency, according to a consensus of media commentators, have proven a near disaster. Perhaps it was Palin’s scant two years’ experience in a major government position that has eroded her gravitas, or maybe it was her flirty reliance on looks and informal chit-chat. In any case, the press has had a field day, and it is hard to see how President Palin can ever recover from the Quayle/potatoe syndrome. Here is a roundup of this week’s pundit mockery.

LET THEM EAT MOOSE
“Ted Stevens may have gotten off,” wrote Bob Herbert in the New York Times, “but he taught our Sarah something first — like using $100-a-pound beef for her state dinners. And what’s this $50 mil for her inauguration gala? Since when do you fly in your favorite pizza-maker from across the country on our dime? Or send the presidential 747 for a spin over the Big Apple for a third-of-a-million-dollar joyride? Does Palin think she’s still in Alaska and has to have everything flown in from the South 48 by jumbo jet?”

WASILLA CHIC
Also in the Times, Gail Collins weighed in on the already-tired yokelism of the new commander in chief. “What we’re getting is Wasilla chic. That’s what we’re getting. She arrives in the Oval Office, and first thing sends back Blair’s gift of the Churchill bust as if it’s a once-worn Penney’s outfit. Then she gives the Brits some unwatchable DVDs as a booby prize — as if she idled the old Yukon and ran into Target’s sale aisle. Did Sarah send Bristol into Wal-Mart back in Anchorage for that ‘engraved’ iPod for the queen? And what’s this don’t-bow-to-the-queen stuff, but curtsy for a Saudi sheik? Maybe that explains why she brags to Stephanopoulos about her ‘Muslim faith.’ So far, the best things going for her are Todd’s biceps.”

IT'S THE MATH, STUPID!
“Well,” lectured Paul Krugman, again in the Times, “we were worried that they didn’t teach math at Idaho U., and now we know for sure they don’t. Is it $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion, or $2 trillion in red ink this year? Are we supposed to be impressed that she offers ‘fiscal sobriety’ by cutting 0.003 percent of the budget? She gives out money to those who don’t pay taxes and calls it a tax cut. And now Queen Sarah tells us that in four years she’ll ‘halve’ the deficit, as if she hasn’t borrowed another $5 trillion in the meantime. Does she think we’re morons? How many ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ oil wells can she tap into up there in Alaska to pay for the extra $11 trillion in debt she’s saddling us with?”

WORSE THAN 'NUCULAR'
ABC’s Katie Couric summed up the general disappointment with the president’s communication skills. “I tried to warn the American people in that interview a few years back what they would get if they voted for her. Let’s face it: She’s a walking embarrassment. I mean just count ’em up: The mayor of Wasilla thinks Austrians speak some lingo called ‘Austrian.’ Then she tries her hand at Spanish and comes up with some concoction, ‘Cinco de Cuatro.’ Next thing she’ll walk into the window of the Oval Office and expect it to open — oops, she’s already done that. No wonder that when her Teleprompter stalls, she shuts her mouth until it catches up. I’m surprised she managed to get sworn in. And did she think that tasteless ‘Special Olympics’ slur was funny? Or making fun of octogenarian Nancy Reagan’s séances? No wonder Wanda Sykes feels at home.”

ANCHORAGE STYLE
A “dragon lady in heels” is what President Palin is, according to the NYT’s Frank Rich. “Don’t fall for this pageant nice-girl stuff. Our former beauty queen is a ward hack. Look at her nominations. Can’t Palin find anyone who has paid his taxes — or do they simply ignore that stuff in no-tax Alaska? Does ‘No more lobbyists’ mean ‘More lobbyists than ever’? Her chief performance overseer doesn’t perform too well herself — and, like Daschle, Geithner, and the rest, skips out on her taxes. When Palin brags about fiscal sobriety, it really means record deficits. In Sarahland, not wanting to take over banks and car companies translates into, ‘She already has.’ Highest ethical standards equates to ‘There are none.’ Calling herself the VA president means she’s just told vets to use their own health insurance.”

GUTTER TRASH
“Pretty crude, pretty petty,” Sally Quinn sighed in the Washington Post. “No manners at all. Does our new mom in chief think it’s neat to laugh when her court jester at the correspondents’ dinner calls Michael Moore a traitor and a terrorist — and hopes he dies of kidney failure? Is that funny? Ask those on dialysis. Is that what Alaskan hockey moms do — scream out at every talk-show host who hurts their itty-bitty feelings? Limbaugh, Hannity — who will it will be next? Poor old Jim Cramer?”

NEOCON CON
“She’s a Bush clone,” the Times’s Maureen Dowd chimed in. “Bush is out, Palin is in — but we keep getting renditions, military tribunals, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, Predator drone executions over Pakistan, the same in Iraq, and even more of the same in Afghanistan — all retrofitted with new ‘hope and change’ banalities. I mean, who’s putting Mommy Dearest up to this — Wolfie, Perlie, Cheney?”

TINGLE FOR HUGO?
“There is no foreign policy,” Chris Matthews said on Hardball, his voice dripping with scorn. “She just tours the world and nods, as if her good looks and serial apologies are going to win us a collective tingle abroad. I don’t think Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad care much that she’s got great legs and a nice wink. How many times can Ms. Vapid say, ‘We’re sorry’ and ‘Hit that old reset button’ and expect thugs to make nice?”

RACE, ALL THE TIME
Eugene Robinson worried in the Washington Post about Palin’s emphasis on race. “Look, she gets 95 percent of the working-class white vote. She promises next month to talk to the ‘Christian world’ from Estonia, of all places. Hello? She goes to the Summit of the Americas and immediately puts race on the table — as if we are supposed to separate those with European heritage from those without. Then she tells al Arabiyya that she hopes to heal the rift with Europe ‘because of my own shared European heritage that seems to resonate in ways I hadn’t imagined throughout the EU.’ I guess we’re learning that those ‘gaffes’ last year on the campaign trail, like her ‘typical black person’ remark and Todd’s ‘I am finally proud of my country again’ nonsense were not gaffes at all.”

WHERE IS THE PRESS?
Howard Kurtz summed up the press cynicism the best in his Washington Post column. “How long does she think she can keep picking on her right-wing plants in the audience for these softball Q-and-A sessions? I mean, there are only so many pukey ‘What has surprised you the most about this office? What has enchanted you the most about serving in this office?’ questions you can lob.”

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. IV

2009-05-15T12:29:00.001-04:00

[I lifted this directly from Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website (who got it from Kate). If you don't like to read about global warming - you should read this, if you read nothing else. The decisions you make and your future may depend on the understanding conveyed here. Sorry about the long read.]

This speech at the 22nd Annual UVU Symposium on Environmental Ethics, held April 1st and 2nd at Utah Valley University is one of the most sensible and pragmatic ones I have ever read. It would have made a better commencement speech in my view. Some in the crowd must have been ready to bust. But let us hope some of the soon-to-be graduates took away something from this other than a desire to pummel the speaker because it went against what they “know”. This is well worth the read. – Anthony

The original PDF is here (h/t to Kate at SDA)

Energy Myths and Realities
Keith O. Rattie
Chairman, President and CEO
Questar Corporation
Utah Valley University
April 2, 2009

Good morning, everyone. I‟m honored to join you today.

I see a lot of faculty in the audience, but I‟m going to address my remarks today primarily to you students of this fine school.

Thirty-three years ago I was where you are today, about to graduate (with a degree in electrical engineering), trying to decide what to do with my career. I chose to go to work for an energy company – Chevron – on what turned out to be a false premise: I believed that by the time I reached the age I am today that America and the world would no longer be running on fossil fuels. Chevron was pouring money into alternatives – and they had lots of money and the incentive to find alternatives – and I wanted to be part of the transition.

Fast forward 33 years. Today, you students are being told that before you reach my age America and the world must stop using fossil fuels.
I‟m going to try to do something that seems impossible these days – and that‟s have an honest conversation about energy policy, global warming and what proposed „cap and trade‟ regulation means for you, the generation that will have to live with the consequences of the policy choices we make. My goal is to inform you with easily verifiable facts – not hype and propaganda – and to appeal to your common sense. But first a few words about Questar.

Questar Corp. is the largest public company headquartered in Utah, one of only two Utah-based companies in the S&P 500. Most of you know Questar Corp. as the parent of Questar Gas, the utility that sends you your natural gas bill every month. But outside of Utah and to investors we‟re known as one of America‟s fastest-growing natural gas producers. We also own a natural gas pipeline company. We have terrific people running each of our five major business units, and I‟m proud of what they‟ve done to transform this 85-year old company. We‟re the only Utah-based company ever to make the Business Week magazine annual ranking of the 50 top-performing companies in the S&P 500 – we were #5 in both 2007 and 2008, and we‟re #18 in the top 50 in Business Week’s 2009 ranking, just out this week.

At Questar our mission is simple: we find, produce and deliver clean energy that makes modern life possible. We focus on natural gas, and that puts us in the “sweet spot” of America‟s energy future and the global-warming debate. Natural gas currently provides about one-fourth of America‟s energy needs. But when you do the math, the inescapable conclusion is that greater use of natural gas will be a consequence of any policy aimed at cutting human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). You cut CO2 emissions by up to 50% when you use natural gas instead of coal to generate electricity. You cut CO2 emissions by 30% and NOx emissions by 90% when you use natural gas instead of gasoline in a car or truck – and here in Utah you save a lot of money. You can run a car on compressed natural gas at a cost of about 80 cents per gallon equivalent. You also cut CO2 emissions by 30-50% when you use natural gas instead of fuel oil or electricity to heat your home.

But you didn‟t come here for a commercial about Questar and I didn‟t come here to give you one. Let‟s talk about energy.

There may be no greater challenge facing mankind today – and your generation in particular – than figuring out how we‟re going to meet the energy needs of a planet that may have 9 billion people living on it by the middle of this century. The magnitude of that challenge becomes even more daunting when you consider that of the 6.5 billion people on the planet today, nearly two billion people don‟t even have electricity – never flipped a light switch.

Now, the “consensus” back in the mid-1970s was that America and the world were running out of oil. Ironically, some in the media were also claiming a scientific consensus that the planet was cooling, fossil fuels could be to blame, and we were all going to freeze to death unless we kicked our fossil-fuel habit. We were told we needed to find alternatives to oil – fast. That task, we were told, was too important to leave to markets, so government needed to intervene with massive taxpayer subsidies for otherwise uneconomic forms of energy. That thinking led to the now infamous 1977 National Energy Plan, an experiment with central planning that failed miserably. Fast-forward to today, and: déjà vu. This time the fear is not so much that we‟re running out of oil, but that we‟re running out of time – the earth is getting hotter, humans are to blame, and we‟re all doomed if we don‟t stop using fossil fuels – fast. Once again we‟re being told that the job is too important to be left to markets.

Well, the doomsters of the 1970s turned out to be remarkably wrong. My bet is that today‟s doomsters will be proven wrong. Over the past 39 years mankind has consumed nearly twice the world‟s known oil reserves in 1970 – and today proven oil reserves are nearly double what they were before we started. The story with natural gas is even better – here and around the world enormous amounts of natural gas have been found. More will be found. And guess what? The 30-year cooling trend that led to the global cooling scare in the mid-70s abruptly ended in the late 70s, replaced by a 20-year warming trend that peaked in 1998.
The lesson that we should‟ve learned from the 1970s is that when it comes to deciding how much energy gets used, what types of energy get used, and where, how and by whom energy gets used –that job is too important not to be left to markets.

Now, I‟d love to stand here and debate the science of global warming. The media of course long ago declared that debate over – global warming is a planetary emergency, we‟ve got to change the way we live now. I‟ve followed this debate closely for over 15 years. I read everything I get my hands on. I‟m an engineer, so I tend to be skeptical when journalists hyperventilate about science – “World coming to an end – details at 11”. My research convinces me that claims of a scientific consensus about global warming mislead the public and policy makers – and may reflect another agenda.

Yes, planet earth does appear to be warming – but by a not so unusual and not so alarming one degree over the past 100 years. Indeed, global average temperatures have increased by about one degree per century since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age 250 years ago. And, yes CO2 levels in the upper atmosphere have increased over the past 250 years from about 280 parts per million to about 380 parts per million today – that‟s .00038. What that number tells you is that CO2 – the gas we all exhale, the gas in a Diet Coke, the gas that plants need to grow – is a trace gas, comprising just four out of every 10,000 molecules in the atmosphere. But it‟s an important trace gas – without CO2 in the atmosphere, there would be no life on earth. And yes, most scientists believe that humans have caused much of that increase.

But that‟s where the alleged consensus ends. Contrary to the righteous certitude we get from some, no one knows how much warming will occur in the future, nor how much of any warming that does occur will be due to man, and how much to nature. No one knows how warming will affect the planet, or how easily people, plants and animals will adapt to any warming that does occur. When someone tells you they do know, I suggest Mark Twain‟s advice: respect those who seek the truth, be wary of those who claim to have found it.

My perspective on global warming changed when I began to understand the limitations of the computer models that scientists have built to predict future warming. If the only variable driving the earth‟s climate were manmade CO2 then there‟d be no debate – global average temperatures would increase by a harmless one degree over the next 100 years. But the earth‟s climate is what engineers call a “non-linear, dynamic system”. The models have dozens of inputs. Many are little more than the opinion of the scientist – in some cases, just a guess. The sun, for example, is by far the biggest driver of the earth‟s climate. But the intensity of solar radiation from the sun varies over time in ways that can‟t be accurately modeled.

Another example, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. [The media now calls CO2 a “pollutant”. If CO2 is a “pollutant” then water vapor is also a “pollutant” – that‟s absurd, but I digress]. Some scientists believe clouds amplify human CO2 forcing, others believe precipitation acts as the earth‟s thermostat. But scientists do not agree on how to model clouds, precipitation, and evaporation, thus there‟s no consensus on this fundamental issue.

But the reality for American consumers is that whether you buy that the science is settled or not, the political science is settled. With the media cheering them on, Congress has promised to “do something”. CO2 regulation is coming, whether it will do any good or not. Indeed, President Obama‟s hope of shrinking the now the massive federal budget deficit depends on vast new revenues from a tax on carbon energy – so called “cap and trade”. Harry Reid has promised cap and trade legislation by August.

Under cap-and-trade, the government would try to create a market for CO2 by selling credits to companies that emit CO2. They would set a cap for the maximum amount of CO2 emissions. Over time, the cap would ratchet down. In theory, this will force companies to invest in lower-carbon technologies, thus reducing emissions to avoid the cost of buying credits from other companies that have already met their emissions goals. The costs of the credits would be passed on to consumers. Because virtually everything we do and consume in modern life has a carbon footprint the cost of just about everything will go up. This in theory will cause each of us to choose products that have a lower carbon footprint. Any way you slice it, cap and trade is a tax on the way we live our lives – one designed to produce a windfall for government.

The long term goal with cap and trade is „80 by 50‟– an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Let‟s do the easy math on what „80 by 50‟ means to you, using Utah as an example. Utah‟s carbon footprint today is about 66 MM tons of CO2 per year. Utah‟s population today is 2.6 MM. You divide those two numbers, and the average Utahan today has a carbon footprint of about 25 tons of CO2 per year. An 80% reduction in Utah‟s carbon footprint by 2050 implies a reduction from 66 MM tons today to about 13 MM tons per year by 2050. But Utah‟s population is growing at over 2% per year, so by 2050 there will be about 6 MM people living in this state. 13 MM tons divided by 6 MM people = 2.2 tons per person per year. Under „80 by 50‟ by the time you folks reach my age you‟ll have to live your lives with an annual carbon allowance of no more than 2.2 tons of CO2 per year.

Question: when was the last time Utah‟s carbon footprint was as low as 2.2 tons per person per year? Answer: probably not since Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley (1847).

You reach a similar conclusion when you do the math on „80 by 50‟ for the entire U.S. „80 by 50‟ would require a reduction in America‟s CO2 emissions from about 20 tons per person per year today, to about 2 tons per person per year in 2050. When was the last time America‟s carbon footprint was as low as 2 tons per person per year? Probably not since the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

In short, ‘80 by 50’ means that by the time you folks reach my age, you won’t be allowed to use anything made with – or made possible by – fossil fuels.

So I want to focus you on this critical question: “How on God‟s green earth – pun intended – are you going to do what my generation said we‟d do but didn‟t – and that‟s wean yourselves from fossil fuels in just four decades?” That‟s a question that each of you, and indeed, all Americans need to ask now – because when it comes to “how” there clearly is no consensus. Simply put, with today‟s energy technologies, we can‟t get there from here.

The hallmark of this dilemma is our inability to reconcile our prosperity and our way of life with our environmental ideals. We like our cars. We like our freedom to “move about the country” – drive to work, fly to conferences, visit distant friends and family. We aspire to own the biggest house we can afford. We like to keep our homes and offices warm in the winter, cool in the summer. We like devices that use electricity – computers, flat screen TVs, cell phones, the Internet, and many other conveniences of modern life that come with a power cord. We like food that‟s low cost, high quality, and free of bugs – which means farmers must use fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels. We like things made of plastic and clothes made with synthetic fibers – and all of these things depend on abundant, affordable, growing supplies of energy.

And guess what? We share this planet with 6.2 billion other people who all want the same things.

America‟s energy use has been growing at 1-2% per year, driven by population growth and prosperity. But while our way of life depends on ever-increasing amounts of energy, we‟re downright schizophrenic when it comes to the things that energy companies must do to deliver the energy that makes modern life possible.

We want energy security – we don‟t like being dependent on foreign oil. But we also don‟t like drilling in the U.S. Millions of acres of prospective onshore public lands here in the Rockies plus the entire east and west coast of the U.S. are off-limits to drilling for a variety of reasons. We hate paying $2 per gallon for gasoline – but not as much as we hate the refineries that turn unusable crude oil into gasoline. We haven‟t allowed anyone to build a new refinery in the U.S. in over 30 years. We expect the lights to come on when we flip the switch, but we don‟t like coal, the source of 40% of our electricity – it‟s dirty and mining scars the earth. We also don‟t like nuclear power, the source of nearly 20% of our electricity – it‟s clean, France likes it, but we‟re afraid of it. Hydropower is clean and renewable. But it too has been blacklisted – dams hurt fish.

We don‟t want pollution of any kind, in any amount, but we also don‟t want to be asked: “how much are we willing to pay for environmental perfection?” When it comes to global warming, Time magazine tells us to “be worried, be very worried” – and we say we are – but we don‟t act that way.

Let me suggest that our conversation about how to reduce CO2 emissions must begin with a few “inconvenient” realities.

Reality 1: Worldwide demand for energy will grow by 30-50% over the next two decades – and more than double by the time you‟re my age. Simply put, America and the rest of the world will need all the energy that markets can deliver.

Reality 2: There are no near-term alternatives to oil, natural gas, and coal. Like it or not, the world runs on fossil fuels, and it will for decades to come. The U.S. government‟s own forecast shows that fossil fuels will supply about 85% of world energy demand in 2030 – roughly the same as today. Yes, someday the world may run on alternatives. But that day is still a long way off. It‟s not about will. It‟s not about who‟s in the White House. It‟s about thermodynamics and economics.
Now, I was told back in the 1970s what you‟re being told today: that wind and solar power are „alternatives‟ to fossil fuels. A more honest description would be „supplements‟. Taken together, wind and solar power today account for just one-sixth of 1% of America‟s annual energy usage. Let me repeat that statistic – one-sixth of 1%.

Here‟s a pie chart showing total U.S. primary energy demand today. I “asked” PowerPoint to show a wedge for the portion of the U.S. energy pie that comes from wind and solar. But PowerPoint won‟t make a wedge for wind and solar – just a thin line.

Over the past 30 years our government has pumped roughly $20 billion in subsidies into wind and solar power, and all we‟ve got to show for it is this thin line!

Undaunted by this, President Obama proposes to double wind and solar power consumption in this country by the end of his first term. Great – that means the line on this pie chart would become a slightly thicker line in four years. I would point out that wind and solar power doubled in just the last three years of the Bush administration. Granted, W. started from a smaller baseline, so doubling again over the next four years will be a taller order. But if President Obama‟s goal is achieved, wind and solar together will grow from one-sixth of 1% to one-third of 1% of total primary energy use – and that assumes U.S. energy consumption remains flat, which of course it will not.

The problems with wind and solar power become apparent when you look at their footprint. To generate electricity comparable to a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant you‟d have to build a wind farm with at least 500 very tall windmills occupying more than 30,000 acres of land. Then there‟s solar power. I‟m holding a Denver Post article that tells the story of an 8.2 MW solar-power plant built on 82 acres in Colorado. The Post proudly hails it “America‟s most productive utility-scale solar electricity plant”. But when you account for the fact that the sun doesn‟t always shine, you‟d need over 250 of these plants, on over 20,000 acres to replace just one 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant that can be built on less than 40 acres.

The Salt Lake Tribune recently celebrated the startup of a 14 MW geothermal plant near Beaver, Utah. That‟s wonderful! But the Tribune failed to put 14 MW into perspective. Utah has over 7,000 MW of installed generating capacity, primarily coal. America has about 1,000,000 MW of installed capacity. Because U.S. demand for electricity has been growing at 1-2 % per year, on average we‟ve been adding 10-20,000 MW of new capacity every year to keep pace with growth. Around the world coal demand is booming – 200,000 MW of new coal capacity is under construction, over 30,000 MW in China alone. In fact, there are 30 coal plants under construction in the U.S. today that when complete will burn about 70 million tons of coal per year.

Why has my generation failed to develop wind and solar? Because our energy choices are ruthlessly ruled, not by political judgments, but by the immutable laws of thermodynamics. In engineer-speak, turning diffused sources of energy such as photons in sunlight or the kinetic energy in wind requires massive investment to concentrate that energy into a form that‟s usable on any meaningful scale.
What‟s more, the wind doesn‟t always blow and the sun doesn‟t always shine. Unless or until there‟s a major breakthrough in high-density electricity storage – a problem that has confounded scientists for more than 100 years – wind and solar can never be relied upon to provide base load power.

But it‟s not just thermodynamics. It‟s economics. Over the past 150 years America has invested trillions of dollars in our existing energy systems – power plants, the grid, steam and gas turbines, railroads, pipelines, distribution, refineries, service stations, home heating, boilers, cars, trucks and planes, etc. Changing that infrastructure to a system based on renewable energy will take decades and massive new investment.

To be clear, we need all the wind and solar power the markets can deliver at prices we can afford. But please, let‟s get real – wind and solar are not “alternatives” to fossil fuels.

Reality 3: You can argue about whether global warming is a serious problem or not, but there‟s no argument about the consequences of cap and trade regulation – it‟s going to drive the cost of energy painfully higher. That‟s the whole point of cap and trade – to drive up the cost of fossil energy so that otherwise uneconomic “alternatives” can compete. Some put the total cost of cap and trade to U.S. consumers at $2 trillion over the next decade and $6 trillion between now and 2050 – not to mention the net loss of jobs in energy-intensive industries that must compete in global markets.

Given this staggering cost, I hope you‟ll ask: will cap and trade work? If Europe‟s experience with cap and trade is an indication, the answer is “no”.
With much fanfare, the European Union (EU) adopted a cap and trade scheme in an effort to meet their Kyoto commitments to cut CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012. How are they doing? So far, all but one EU country is getting an “F”. Since 2000 Europe‟s CO2 emissions per unit of GDP have grown faster than the U.S.! The U.S. of course did not implement Kyoto – nor did over 150 other countries. There‟s a good reason why most of the world rejected Kyoto: with today‟s energy technologies there‟s no way to sever the link between CO2 emissions and modern life. Europe‟s cap and trade scheme was designed to fail – and it‟s working as designed.

Let‟s do the math to explain why Kyoto would have failed in the U.S. and why Obama‟s cap and trade scheme is also likely to fail. Americans were responsible for about 5 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions in 1990. By 2005 that amount had risen to over 5.8 billion tons. If the U.S. Senate had ratified the Kyoto treaty back in the 1990s America would‟ve promised to cut manmade CO2 emissions in this country to 7% below that 1990 level – to about 4.6 billion tons, a 1.2 billion ton per year cut by 2012.

What would it take to cut U.S. CO2 emissions by 1.2 billion tons per year by 2012? A lot more sacrifice than riding a Schwinn to work or school, or changing light bulbs.

We could‟ve banned gasoline. In 2005 gasoline use in America caused about 1.1B tons of CO2. That would almost get us there. Or, we could shut down over half of the coal-fired power plants in this country. Coal plants generated about 2 B tons of CO2 in 2005. Of course, before we did that we‟d have to get over 60 million Americans and a bunch of American businesses to volunteer to go without electricity.

This simple math is not friendly to those who demand that government mandate sharp cuts in manmade CO2 emissions – now.

Reality 4: Even if America does cut CO2 emissions, those same computer models that predict man-made warming over the next century also predict that Kyoto-type CO2 cuts would have no discernible impact on global temperatures for decades, if ever. When was the last time you read that in the paper? We‟ve been told that Kyoto was “just a first step.” Your generation may want to ask: “what‟s the second step?”

That begs another question: “how much are Americans willing to pay for „a first step‟ that has no discernible effect on global climate?” The answer here in Utah is: not much, according to a poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates published in the Deseret News. 63% of those surveyed said they worry about global warming. But when asked how much they‟d be willing to see their electricity bills go up to help cut CO2 emissions, only half were willing to pay more for electricity. Only 18% were willing to see their power bill go up by 10% or more. Only 3% were willing to see their power bill go up by 20%.

Here‟s the rub: many Europeans today pay up to 20% more for electricity as a result of their failed efforts to sever the link between modern life and CO2 emissions.

So, if Americans aren‟t willing to pay a lot more for their energy, how do we reduce CO2 emissions? Well, here are several things we should do.
First, we should improve energy efficiency. Second, we should stop wasting energy. Third, we should conserve energy. Fourth, we should rethink our overblown fear of nuclear power. Fifth, if we let markets work, markets on their own will continue to substitute low-carbon natural gas for coal and oil.
Indeed, 2008 will be remembered in the energy industry as the year U.S. natural gas producers changed the game for domestic energy policy. Smart people in my industry have „cracked the code‟ – they‟ve figured out how to produce stunning amounts of natural gas from shale formations right here in the U.S. As a result, we now know that America and the world are “swimming” in natural gas.

U.S. onshore natural gas production has grown rapidly over the past three years – a feat that most energy experts thought impossible a few years ago. America‟s known natural gas resource base now exceeds 100 years of supply at current U.S. consumption – and that number is growing. Abundant supply means that natural gas prices over the next decade and beyond will likely be much lower than over the past five years. While prices may spike from time to time in response to sudden, unexpected changes in supply or demand – for example, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or extreme cold or hot weather – these spikes will be temporary.

Indeed, the price of natural gas today is less than $24 per barrel equivalent – a bargain, even without taking into account lower CO2 emissions.
Greater use of natural gas produced in America – by American companies who hire American workers and pay American taxes – will help reduce oil imports. Unlike oil, 98% of America‟s natural gas supply comes from North America.
And get this: we don‟t need massive investment in new power plants to use more natural gas for electric generation. I mentioned earlier that America has about one million MW of installed electric generation capacity. Forty percent of that capacity runs on natural gas – about 400,000 MW, compared to just 312,000 MW of coal capacity.

But unlike those coal plants, which run at an average load factor of about 75%, America‟s existing natural gas-fired power plants operate with an average load factor of less than 25%. Turns out that the market has found a way to cut CO2 emissions without driving the price of electricity through the roof – natural gas‟s share of the electricity market is growing, and it will continue to grow – with or without cap and trade.
Sixth, your generation needs to focus on new technology and not just assume it, as many in my generation did back in the 70s – and as many in Congress continue to do today. Just one example: there‟s no such thing as “clean” coal, though I should quickly add that given America and the world‟s dependence on coal for electric generation, we do need to fund R&D aimed at capturing and storing CO2 from coal plants.

To be sure, CO2 capture and sequestration (underground storage) will be hugely expensive and it‟ll take decades to implement on any meaningful scale. The high costs will be passed through in electricity rates to consumers. To transport massive amounts of CO2 captured at coal plants we‟ll have to build a massive pipeline grid that some estimate could be comparable to our existing natural gas pipeline grid. Then we‟ll have to drill thousands of wells to store CO2 in the ground. The facilities required to inject CO2 into the earth will use huge amounts of energy – which ironically will come from fossil fuels, negating some of the carbon-reduction benefits. And where are we going to put all this CO2? Questar owns and operates underground natural gas storage facilities. Gas storage is in high demand – we‟re always looking for suitable underground formations. But I can tell you that there aren‟t many.

Seventh (for anyone who‟s still counting!) it‟s time to have an honest conversation about alternative responses to global warming than what will likely be a futile attempt to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. What about adapting to warming? In truth, while many scientists believe man‟s use of fossil fuels is at least partly responsible for global warming, many also believe the amount of warming will be modest and the planet will easily adapt. Just about everyone agrees that a modest amount of warming won‟t harm the planet. In fact, highly respected scientists such as Harvard astrophysicist Willie Soon believe that added CO2 in the atmosphere may actually benefit mankind because more CO2 helps plants grow. When was the last time you read that in the paper?

You‟ve no doubt heard the argument that even if global warming turns out not to be as bad as some are saying, we should still cut CO2 emissions – as an insurance policy – the so-called precautionary principle. While appealing in its simplicity, there are three major problems with the precautionary principle.
First, none of us live our lives according to the precautionary principle. Let me give you an example. Around the world about 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents – about 3,200 deaths a day. At that pace, 120 million people will die this century in a car wreck somewhere in the world. We could save 120 million lives by imposing a 5 MPH speed limit worldwide. Show of hands: how many would be willing to live with a 5 MPH speed limit to save 120 million lives? Most of us won‟t – we accept trade-offs. We implicitly do a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that we‟re not going to do without our cars, even if doing so would save 120 million lives. So before we start down this expensive and likely futile cap and trade path, don‟t you think we should insist on an honest analysis of alternative responses to global warming?

Second, the media dwells on the potential harm from global warming, but ignores the fact that the costs borne to address it will also do harm. We have a finite amount of wealth in the world. We have a long list of problems – hunger, poverty, malaria, nuclear proliferation, HIV, just to name a few. Your generation should ask: how can we do the most good with our limited wealth? The opportunity cost of diverting a large part of current wealth to solve a potential problem 50-100 years from now means we do “less good” dealing with our current problems.
Third, economists will tell you that the consequence of a cap and trade tax on energy will be slower economic growth. Slower growth, compounded over decades, means that we leave future generations with less wealth to deal with the consequences of global warming, whatever they may be.

In truth, humans are remarkably adaptive. People live north of the Arctic Circle where temperatures are below zero most of the year. Roughly one-third of mankind today lives in tropical climates where temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees. In fact, you can take every one of the theoretical problems caused by global warming and identify lower-cost ways to deal with that problem than rationing energy use. For example, if arctic ice melts and causes the sea level to rise, a wealthier world will adapt over time by moving away from the beach or building retaining walls to protect beachfront property. Fine, you say. But how do we save the polar bear? I‟d first point out that polar bears have survived sometimes dramatic climate changes over thousands of years, most recently the so called “medieval warm period” (1000-1300 A.D.) in which large parts of the arctic glaciers disappeared and Greenland was truly “green”. Contrary to that heart-wrenching image on the cover of Time of an apparently doomed polar bear floating on a chunk of ice, polar bears can swim for miles. In addition, more polar bears die each year from gunshot wounds than from drowning. So instead of rationing carbon energy, maybe the first thing we should do to protect polar bears is to stop shooting them!

Let me close by returning to the lessons my generation learned from the 1970s energy crisis. We learned that energy choices favored by politicians but not confirmed by markets are destined to fail. If history has taught us anything it‟s that we should resist the temptation to ask politicians to substitute their judgments for that of the market, and let markets determine how much energy gets used, what types of energy get used, where, how and by whom energy gets used. In truth, no source of energy is perfect, thus only markets can weigh the pros and cons of each source. Government‟s role is to set reasonable standards for environmental performance, and make sure markets work.

I‟ve covered a lot of ground this morning. I hope I‟ve challenged your thinking about your energy future. Mostly, I hope you continue to enjoy freedom, prosperity – and abundant supplies of energy at prices you can afford! Thank you for your attention, and now I‟ll be glad to take rebuttal!

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. III

2009-05-01T20:40:00.002-04:00

From Andrew Bolt, The Herald Sun [Aus]

Global Warming Alarmists Out in the Cold

April 29, 2009 12:00am

IT’S snowing in April. Ice is spreading in Antarctica. The Great Barrier Reef is as healthy as ever.

And that’s just the news of the past week. Truly, it never rains but it pours - and all over our global warming alarmists.

Time’s up for this absurd scaremongering. The fears are being contradicted by the facts, and more so by the week.

Doubt it? Then here’s a test.

Name just three clear signs the planet is warming as the alarmists claim it should. Just three. Chances are your “proofs” are in fact on my list of 10 Top Myths about global warming.And if your “proofs” indeed turn out to be false, don’t get angry with me.

Just ask yourself: Why do you still believe that man is heating the planet to hell? What evidence do you have?

So let’s see if facts matter more to you than faith, and observations more than predictions.

MYTH 1

THE WORLD IS WARMING

Wrong. It is true the world did warm between 1975 and 1998, but even Professor David Karoly, one of our leading alarmists, admitted this week “temperatures have dropped” since - “both in surface temperatures and in atmospheric temperatures measured from satellites”. In fact, the fall in temperatures from just 2002 has already wiped out half the warming our planet experienced last century. (Check data from Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA’s Aqua satellite and the US National Climatic Data Centre.)

Some experts, such as Karoly, claim this proves nothing and the world will soon start warming again. Others, such as Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University, point out that so many years of cooling already contradict the theory that man’s rapidly increasing gases must drive up temperatures ever faster.

But that’s all theory. The question I’ve asked is: What signs can you actually see of the man-made warming that the alarmists predicted?

[ Ian Plimer, Temperature trends]

MYTH 2

THE POLAR CAPS ARE MELTING

Wrong. The British Antarctic Survey, working with NASA, last week confirmed ice around Antarctica has grown 100,000 sq km each decade for the past 30 years.

Long-term monitoring by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the same: southern hemisphere ice has been expanding for decades.

As for the Arctic, wrong again.

The Arctic ice cap shrank badly two summers ago after years of steady decline, but has since largely recovered. Satellite data from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre this week shows the Arctic hasn’t had this much April ice for at least seven years.

Norway’s Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre says the ice is now within the standard deviation range for 1979 to 2007.

[Antarctic Ice Growth, Arctic Ice Recovery ]

MYTH 3

WE’VE NEVER HAD SUCH A BAD DROUGHT

Wrong. A study released this month by the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre confirms not only that we’ve had worse droughts, but this Big Dry is not caused by “global warming”, whether man-made or not.

As the university’s press release says: “The causes of southeastern Australia’s longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.

“A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole - a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water - dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia.”

MYTH 4

OUR CITIES HAVE NEVER BEEN HOTTER

Wrong. The alleged “record” temperature Melbourne set in January - 46.4 degrees - was in fact topped by the 47.2 degrees the city recorded in 1851. (See the Argus newspaper of February 8, 1851.)

And here’s another curious thing: Despite all this warming we’re alleged to have caused, Victoria’s highest temperature on record remains the 50.7 degrees that hit Mildura 103 years ago.

South Australia’s hottest day is still the 50.7 degrees Oodnadatta suffered 37 years ago. NSW’s high is still the 50 degrees recorded 70 years ago.

What’s more, not one of the world’s seven continents has set a record high temperature since 1974. Europe’s high remains the 50 degrees measured in Spain 128 years ago, before the invention of the first true car.

MYTH 5

THE SEAS ARE GETTING HOTTER

Wrong. If anything, the seas are getting colder. For five years, a network of 3175 automated bathythermographs has been deployed in the oceans by the Argo program, a collaboration between 50 agencies from 26 countries.

Warming believer Josh Willis, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reluctantly concluded: “There has been a very slight cooling . . .”

[Ocean cooling]

MYTH 6

THE SEAS ARE RISING

Wrong. For almost three years, the seas have stopped rising, according to the Jason-1 satellite mission monitored by the University of Colorado.

That said, the seas have risen steadily and slowly for the past 10,000 years through natural warming, and will almost certainly resume soon.

But there is little sign of any accelerated rises, even off Tuvalu or the Maldives, islands often said to be most threatened with drowning.

Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, one of the world’s most famous experts on sea levels, has studied the Maldives in particular and concluded there has been no net rise there for 1250 years.

Venice is still above water.

[Sea Level in the Maldives, Sea Level satellite data]

MYTH 7

CYCLONES ARE GETTING WORSE

Wrong. Ryan Maue of Florida State University recently measured the frequency, intensity and duration of all hurricanes and cyclones to compile an Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index.

His findings? The energy index is at its lowest level for more than 30 years.

The World Meteorological Organisation, in its latest statement on cyclones, said it was impossible to say if they were affected by man’s gases: “Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate
record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”

[Ryan Maue and Hurricane energy, Hurricane landfall trends]

MYTH 8

THE GREAT BARRIER REEF IS DYING

Wrong. Yes, in 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, our leading reef alarmist and administrator of more than $30 million in warming grants, did claim the reef was threatened by warming, and much had turned white.

But he then had to admit it had made a “surprising” recovery.

Yes, in 2006 he again warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

But he later admitted this bleaching had “minimal impact”. Yes, in 2007 he again warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were bleaching the reef.

But this month fellow Queensland University researchers admitted in a study that reef coral had once more made a “spectacular recovery”, with “abundant corals re-established in a single year”. The reef is blooming.

MYTH 9

OUR SNOW SEASONS ARE SHORTER

Wrong. Poor snow falls in 2003 set off a rash of headlines predicting warming doom. The CSIRO typically fed the hysteria by claiming global warming would strip resorts of up to a quarter of their snow by 2018.

Yet the past two years have been bumper seasons for Victoria’s snow resorts, and this year could be just as good, with snow already falling in NSW and Victoria this past week.

[New low temp record at Australian ski resort this year]

MYTH 10

TSUNAMIS AND OTHER DISASTERS ARE GETTING WORSE

Are you insane? Tsunamis are in fact caused by earthquakes. Yet there was World Vision boss Tim Costello last week, claiming that Asia was a “region, thanks to climate change, that has far more cyclones, tsunamis, droughts”.

Wrong, wrong and wrong, Tim. But what do facts matter now to a warming evangelist when the cause is so just?

And so any disaster is now blamed on man-made warming the way they once were on Satan. See for yourself on www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htmthe full list, including kidney stones, volcanic eruptions, lousy wine, insomnia, bad tempers, Vampire moths and bubonic plagues. Nothing is too far-fetched to be seized upon by carpetbaggers and wild preachers as signs of a warming we can’t actually see.

Not for nothing are polar bears the perfect symbol of this faith - bears said to be threatened by warming, when their numbers have in fact increased.

Bottom line: fewer people now die from extreme weather events, whether cyclones, floods or blinding heatwaves.

Read that in a study by Indur Goklany, who represented the US at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “There is no signal in the mortality data to indicate increases in the overall frequencies or severities of extreme weather events, despite large increases in the population at risk.”

[Going down - death rates due to extreme weather events]

So stop this crazy panic.

First step: check again your list of the signs you thought you saw of global warming. How many are true? What do you think, and why do you think it?

Yes, the world may resume warming in one year or 100. But it hasn’t been warming as the alarmists said it must if man were to blame, and
certainly not as the media breathlessly keeps claiming.

Best we all just settle down, then, and wait for the proof — the real proof. After all, panicking over invisible things is so undignified, don’t you think?

Context - the US deficit...

2009-04-04T09:49:00.001-04:00

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number.
But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit!
We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them
economical numbers.

- Richard Feynman

Methane derived CO2 from livestock - the answer

2009-04-01T17:52:00.002-04:00

CO2 warnings getting you down, bunky? Tired of having to "night-vent" your livestock in order to avoid getting caught up in carbon credits or cap-and-trade?

Purchase an ACME pilot light kit for Bessie and your carbon gas waste problem will be over, and your barn will be warmer in winter too.

Not recommended for barns which also store hay and straw.

h/t Anthony Watts and the Telegraph

Obama's False Choice

2009-03-28T21:48:00.002-04:00

Obama’s False Choice

A “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now.
By Mark Steyn, March 28, 2009, 7:00 a.m.
Writing in the Chicago Tribune last week, President Obama fell back on one of his favorite rhetorical tics: “But I also know,” he wrote, “that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.”

Really? For the moment, it’s a “false choice” mainly in the sense that he’s not offering it: “a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is not on the menu, which leaves “an oppressive government-run economy” as pretty much the only game in town. How oppressive is yet to be determined: To be sure, the official position remains that only “the richest five percent” will have taxes increased. But you’ll be surprised at the percentage of Americans who wind up in the richest five percent. This year federal government spending will rise to 28.5 per cent of GDP, the highest level ever, with the exception of the peak of the Second World War. The 44th president is proposing to add more to the national debt than the first 43 presidents combined, doubling it in the next six years, and tripling it within the decade. But to talk about it in percentages of this and trillions of that misses the point. It’s not about bookkeeping, it’s about government annexation of the economy, and thus of life: government supervision, government regulation, government control. No matter how small your small business is — plumbing, hairdressing, maple sugaring — the state will be burdening you with more permits, more paperwork, more bureaucracy.

And don’t plan on moving. Ahead of this week’s G20 summit in London, Timothy Geithner, America’s beloved Toxic Asset, called for “global regulation.” “Our hope,” said Toxic Tim, “is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight . . . ”

“Global oversight:” Hmm. There’s a phrase to savor.

“We can’t,” he continued, “allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints . . . ”

Just as a matter of interest, why not? If you don’t want to be subject to the punitive “oversight” of economically illiterate, demagogic legislators-for-life like Barney Frank, why shouldn’t you be “allowed” to move your business to some jurisdiction with a lighter regulatory touch?

Borders give you choices. Your town has a crummy grade school? Move ten miles north and there’s a better one. Sick of Massachusetts taxes? Move to New Hampshire, as thousands do. To modify the abortionists’ bumper sticker: “I’m Pro-Choice And I Vote With My Feet.” That’s part of the self-correcting dynamism of capitalism: For example, Bono, the global do-gooder who was last in Washington to play at the Obama inauguration, recently moved much of his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, in order to pay less tax. And good for him. To be sure, he’s always calling on governments to give more money to Africa and whatnot, but it’s heartening to know that, when it comes to his wallet as opposed to yours, Bono — like Secretary Geithner — has no desire to toss any more of his money into the great sucking maw of the government treasury than the absolute minimum he can get away with. I’m with Bono and Tim: They can spend their money more effectively than hack bureaucrats can. We should do as they do, not as they say.

If you listen to the principal spokesmen for U.S. economic policy — Obama and Geithner — they grow daily ever more explicitly hostile to the private sector and ever more comfortable with the language of micro-managed government-approved capitalism — which, of course, isn’t capitalism at all. They’ll have an easier time getting away with it in a world of “global oversight” where there’s nowhere to move to. Unfortunately, even then it won’t work. Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.

Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done.

Barack Obama, even when he’s not yukking it up on 60 Minutes, barely disguises his indifference to economic matters. He is not an economist, a political philosopher, a geopolitical strategist. He is the president as social engineer, the Community-Organizer-in-Chief. His plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving, for example, is not intended primarily to raise revenue, but to advance government as the distributor of largesse and diminish alternative sources of societal organization, such as civic groups. Likewise, his big plans for socialized health care, a green economy, universal college education: They’re about extending the reach of the state.

Unfortunately, all of it costs money he doesn’t have. So he has to borrow it, in your name. Where does the world’s hyperpower go to borrow more dough than anyone’s ever borrowed in human history? More to the point, given that, partly at the behest of Obama and Geithner, almost every other western government is ramping up national debt to cover massive bank bailouts and other phony-baloney “stimuli,” is there enough money out there to buy up the debt that’s already been run up? Last week, at the official British Treasury auction, investors failed to buy the full complement of so-called “gilt-edged” 40-year bonds. Two such auctions have already failed in Germany. The U.S. Treasury, facing similar investor reluctance to snap up $34 billion of five-year notes, was forced to increase the interest it will pay on them. The Chinese and the Saudis have long taken the view that it’s to their advantage to own as much of the western world as they can snaffle up, but it’s unclear whether even they have pockets deep enough for what America and the many Bailoutistans of Europe are proposing to spend.

In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children’s future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president’s “false choice,” that “chaotic and unforgiving capitalism” is exactly what we need right now. It’s the quickest, cheapest, fairest, most-efficient route to economic stabilization and renewal. A regimented and eternally forgiving global command economy with no moral hazard will destroy us all.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2009 Mark Steyn

Economist: Obama’s not who we thought he was

2009-03-28T21:20:00.003-04:00

March 28, 2009 by Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

The fact that Barack Obama won endorsements from most daily newspapers comes as no surprise to American readers, as they mostly go with Democrats regardless of the specific candidates. Some of us got surprised when publications like The Economist chose to back Obama, however, considering their normally sober analysis of economics and the radicalism and inexperience Obama brought to the campaign. Now, The Economist has had a Road to Damascus moment just two months after their candidate took office (via QandO):

His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

Why “curiously”? After all, Obama had next to no executive experience before running for the presidency. His only executive experience came at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama spent over $160 million and had no effect on education. He has never been responsible for a public budget, public appointments, or economic policy. And they find his poor performance “curious”? Would The Economist have hired Obama to run their magazine based on his resumé and then found his incompetence “curious”?

The magazine then scolds Obama for not doing the basics:

His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis. His budget, though in some ways more honest than his predecessor’s, is wildly optimistic. And he has taken too long to produce his plan for dealing with the trillions of dollars of toxic assets which fester on banks’ balance-sheets.

How is it “more honest” than Bush? Deficits actually went down during Bush’s second term, at least until 2008. Obama says he’s all about reducing the deficit, but even by his own OMB predictions, the Obama budgets never return even to the 2008 level in the next 12 years. By the CBO’s account, both of which rely on “wildly optimistic” growth during the period, Obama won’t even come close. Now that Social Security surpluses have vanished far more quickly than anyone except George Bush predicted, they’ll get higher than either prediction.

The failure to staff the Treasury is a shocking illustration of administrative drift. There are 23 slots at the department that need confirmation by the Senate, and only two have been filled. This is not the Senate’s fault. Mr Obama has made a series of bad picks of people who have chosen or been forced to withdraw; and it was only this week that he announced his candidates for two of the department’s four most senior posts. Filling such jobs is always a tortuous business in America, but Mr Obama has made it harder by insisting on a level of scrutiny far beyond anything previously attempted. Getting the Treasury team in place ought to have been his first priority.

As I reported weeks ago, the Obama administration has done almost nothing to staff what should be the highest-priority positions in an economic crisis. That’s simply executive incompetence, and it can’t all be blamed on Obama’s level of scrutiny. The man at the top of Treasury committed tax evasion, and he’s still around. Obama issued a waiver a day for his anti-lobbyist policy in the first two weeks of his administration. If there are literally no candidates of any qualification who have paid their taxes properly, maybe that’s an indication that we should simplify our tax codes rather than make them even more complicated and punitive, as Obama has proposed.

Mr Obama has mishandled his relations with both sides in Congress. Though he campaigned as a centrist and promised an era of post-partisan government, that’s not how he has behaved. His stimulus bill attracted only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. … Republicans must take their share of the blame for the breakdown. But if Mr Obama had done a better job of selling his package, and had worked harder at making sure that Republicans were included in drafting it, they would have found it more difficult to oppose his plans.

What share? Obama outsourced the stimulus to Pelosi, who locked Republicans out. The Economist even noted that earlier in this article! Obama abdicated leadership on the stimulus plan and endorsed Pelosi’s “we won” policy — in fact, explicitly repeating it to Republicans whom he courted. The Economist hits Democrats next, however:

If Mr Obama cannot work with the Republicans, he needs to be certain that he controls his own party. Unfortunately, he seems unable to. Put bluntly, the Democrats are messing him around. They are pushing pro-trade-union legislation (notably a measure to get rid of secret ballots) even though he doesn’t want them to do so; they have been roughing up the bankers even though it makes his task of fixing the economy much harder; they have stuffed his stimulus package and his appropriations bill with pork, even though this damages him and his party in the eyes of the electorate. Worst of all, he is letting them get away with it.

They’re doing all of this despite Obama? Hell, no. Obama himself talked about “shaking with outrage” over the bonuses and openly encouraged the “clawback” movement on Capitol Hill until saner heads prevailed. The Economist must also have missed Obama’s promise to Big Labor during the campaign (which got The Economist’s endorsement, remember) to make Card Check one of his top priorities once he got elected. He co-sponsored it in the Senate in 2007. In fact, in January, Obama told the Washington Post of his continuing support for it. Does The Economist believe in research any longer?

If Obama is not who The Economist thought he was, then the fault lies with The Economist and not Obama. The scales may be falling from their eyes now, but if they had done their jobs a few months ago, it wouldn’t be necessary at all.

The Country Formerly Known as the Most Powerful Nation on Earth

2009-03-22T17:08:00.003-04:00

To complete an intuitive vision of the current administration in Washington, Kathleen Parker, in her Our Foundering Father article in WaPo [Washington Post] has provided, perhaps unwittingly, the completion for the Obama presidential metaphor, using the meme of Prince. One of her lead paragraphs reads:

...Lately, it's been hard to tell whether Obama himself knows that he is the leader of the country formerly known as The Most Powerful Nation on Earth....

So there it is:

T.O.T.U.S., Leader of the Country Formerly known as The Most Powerful Nation on Earth

(For those who still haven't got the T.O.T.U.S. thing, its a Rush play on "POTUS", President of the United States, only in Barack Obama's case, since he clearly cannot think on his feet and requires a teleprompter for everything, the standing joke is that the real president is the teleprompter, since it contains all the words and thoughts - thus, Teleprompter Of The United States).

My, but it certainly hasn't taken Obama and the Democrats (no, its not a rock band) long to pussywhip The Most Powerful Nation on Earth. The nutroots must be so proud.

Please don't let them take my teleprompter away...

2009-03-19T22:16:00.006-04:00

Uh huh...
Uh huh...
We like it...

I know its only been a couple of months, but its really time for the empty suit to take a pass and let somebody else actually do the job. While its tempting to say to the Democrats, its your bed, lie in it (and I guess they are, lying in it), the American people deserve, and need, much better than this:

Carol Liebau: It reminds me a little bit of my experience with him when he was president of the Harvard Law Review. You know, I hesitated to say a lot about this during the campaign because I really thought maybe it wasn't fair. That maybe, finally, when he got to be President, this would be a job big enough to engage and hold Barack Obama's sustained interest, because really, is there a bigger job out here?

[...]

[W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review.

A lot of the time he quote/unquote "worked from home", which was sort of a shorthand - and people would say it sort of wryly - shorthand for not really doing much. He just wasn't around. Most of the day to day work was carried out by the managing editor of the Review, my predecessor, a great guy called Tom Pirelli whose actually going to be one of the assistant attorney generals now.

He's the one who did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he'd leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done.

So, you know, you see that and you think, gosh, maybe that's the way the guy operates, hut then you figure ok, obviously he always had his eye on bigger and better things.

But now he's President...there really isn't a bigger or better thing.

h/t SDA

"Pathologising dissent? Now that’s Orwellian"

2009-03-07T12:07:00.002-05:00

The musty, mossy old rocks formerly known as the United Kingdom have, without doubt, clearly become an asylum for the intellectually bizarre. Sir Winston, unfortunately old chap, there will not always be an England...
Wednesday 4 March 2009

Pathologising dissent? Now that’s Orwellian

Ahead of a conference on the psychology of climate change denial, Brendan O’Neill says green authoritarians are treating debate as a disorder.

Brendan O’Neill:

A few months ago, for a joke, I set up a Facebook group called ‘Climate change denial is a mental disorder’. It’s a satirical campaigning hub for people who think that climate change denial should be recognised as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association, and that its sufferers – who probably engage in ‘regular chanting and intensive brainwashing sessions in cult-like surroundings’ – should be offered ‘eco-lobotomies’ to remove ‘the denying part of their brain’. The group now has 42 members. Yes, some have signed up because they get the joke, but others are serious subscribers to the denial-as-insanity idea. ‘Thank God I’ve found this group’, says one new member, who is sick of other Facebook groups being ‘hijacked’ by unhinged eco-sceptics.
The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
This weekend, the University of West England is hosting a major conference on climate change denial. Strikingly, it’s being organised by the university’s Centre for Psycho-Social Studies. It will be a gathering of those from the top of society – ‘psychotherapists, social researchers, climate change activists, eco-psychologists’ – who will analyse those at the bottom of society, as if we were so many flitting, irrational amoeba under an eco-microscope. The organisers say the conference will explore how ‘denial’ is a product of both ‘addiction and consumption’ and is the ‘consequence of living in a perverse culture which encourages collusion, complacency and irresponsibility’ (1). It is a testament to the dumbed-down, debate-phobic nature of the modern academy that a conference is being held not to explore ideas – to interrogate, analyse and fight over them – but to tag them as perverse.
[...]

Read the rest. This is some scary shit.

The British are now, quite clearly, insane, the British Isles, an Asylum.

Ok, the irony here is just too funny...

2009-02-24T18:25:00.002-05:00

What Obama Should Do: A path out of the continuing crisis...[snicker].

by...

Conrad Black?!

The apparent failure of the Obama administration’s first attempts to restore economic confidence gives us the opportunity to look at the whole crisis afresh.

The first thing we need to do, as we reassess the crisis, is realize the extent to which the country was horribly and unimaginably failed by its entire public- and private-sector leadership. The Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, and their Congresses, discouraged savings; legislated non-commercial mortgages in the private sector (a political free ride, as both parties boasted of increasing home ownership at no cost to the taxpayers); raised the ceiling on investment-bank debt leverage on unsecured assets to 30 to one; and acquiesced while consumers piled up debt that enriched Chinese exporters of cheap goods, European and Japanese exporters of luxury goods, and the oil-exporting cartel, including Venezuela and (indirectly) Iran.

[...]

Go read the rest at National Review Online, if you can stop giggling long enough...

Stephen Harper on Canadian Banking -Kudlow CNBC

2009-02-24T18:10:00.008-05:00

You won't likely see this on any malpractising Canadian MSM:

Kudlow:

What follows is the transcript of my interview with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on last night’s show. Mr. Harper is a trained economist and quite an impressive statesman. Our northern neighbors are lucky to have him at the helm. We covered a wide range of key topics including the ailing banking system, the risks of protectionism, oil sands, and autos. As you’ll see, Mr. Harper offered some very wise observations and insight.

[full transcript here, video at the link below.]

Harper & Kudlow on CNBC

Media Malpractice - John Ziegler takes on the Obama MSM Lovefest.

2009-02-23T13:04:00.004-05:00

Whack two:

doc talk
by luvnews

Game. Set. Match.

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud. II.

2009-01-29T20:27:00.003-05:00

Forecasting Guru Announces: “no scientific basis for forecasting climate”

[Ed Note... A continuing saga is developing as more scientists connected to the climate business begin to speak out about the fallacies of the global warming fraud. Follow this story from Anthony Watts through as well.]

It has been an interesting couple of days. Today yet another scientist has come forward with a press release saying that not only did their audit of IPCC forecasting procedures and found that they “violated 72 scientific principles of forecasting”, but that “The models were not intended as forecasting models and they have not been validated for that purpose.” This organization should know, they certify forecasters for many disciplines and in conjunction with John Hopkins University if Washington, DC, offer a Certificate of Forecasting Practice. The story below originally appeared in the blog of Australian Dr. Jennifer Marohasy. It is reprinted below, with with some pictures and links added for WUWT readers.

[...]

Finally, the beginning of the end of the global warming fraud.

2009-01-27T22:32:00.007-05:00

Bombshell! From Anthony Watts. Go through the whole story. Full press release is here.

[...]

Washington DC, Jan 27th 2009: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice-President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fear soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of man-made global warming fears.

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained.

“Hansen was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). Hansen thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress,” Theon wrote. [Note: NASA scientist James Hansen has created worldwide media frenzy with his dire climate warning, his call for trials against those who dissent against man-made global warming fear, and his claims that he was allegedly muzzled by the Bush administration despite doing 1,400 on-the-job media interviews! - See: Don't Panic Over Predictions of Climate Doom - Get the Facts on James Hansen - UK Register: Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men' - June 23, 2008 & UK Guardian: NASA scientist calls for putting oil firm chiefs on trial for 'high crimes against humanity' for spreading doubt about man-made global warming - June 23, 2008 ]

Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

“As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research,” Theon wrote of his career. “This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate science since retiring by reading books and journal articles,” Theon added. (LINK) Theon also co-authored the book “Advances in Remote Sensing Retrieval Methods.” [Note: Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Award-winning NASA Astronaut and Physicist Walter Cunningham of NASA's Apollo 7, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA's Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility]

[...]

The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Reports from the conference found that Skeptical scientists overwhelmed the meeting, with ‘2/3 of presenters and question-askers hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC’ ( See full reports here & here ] In addition, a 2008 canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed 68% disagree that global warming science is “settled.” A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.” More evidence that the
global warming fear machine is breaking down. Russian scientists “rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming”. An American Physical Society editor conceded that a “considerable presence” of scientific skeptics exists. An International team of scientists countered the UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate”. India Issued a report challenging global warming fears. International Scientists demanded the UN IPCC “be called to account and cease its deceptive practices.”

The scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering climate claims are the key reason that the U.S. public has grown ever more skeptical of man-made climate doom predictions. [See: Global warming ranks dead last, 20 out of 20 in new Pew survey. Pew Survey: & Survey finds majority of U.S. Voters - '51% - now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change' - January 20, 2009 - Rasmussen Reports ]

The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grow louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data and inconvenient developments challenged the UN’s and former Vice President Al Gore’s claims that the “science is settled” and there is a “consensus.”

[...]

Related: From Watts ...influence the nature of data...

Sarah Palin goes for 2012

2009-01-27T20:25:00.002-05:00

It appears that Sarah Palin is dead serious about taking on the Demorats for the White house in 2012. Sarahpac.com has been registered and her national political action committee has been put in place. The registrar for the site, Campaign Solutions, has confirmed that the political action committee papers were filed with the U.S. Federal Elections Commission yesterday. Knowing that Alaska plays a pivotal role in any U.S. energy independence scheme, Palin apparently wants into the game in a big way.

h/t Hotair

2008 WeblogAwards

2009-01-12T21:21:00.006-05:00

Small Dead Animals is currently in a dead heat with the U.S. Ace of Spades for Best Conservative Blog. This is a huge endorsement for Kate and SDA, as Ace is a well-known conservative agitator/aggregator who was particularly active during the U.S. presidential election. Support Canadian conservative presence in North America! Toss a vote for SDA today! Poll ends Jan. 13! Show the Yanks, Canuckistan rules!

VOTE NOW! Polls close at 5:00PM EST today!

Best Conservative Blog

Update: Success! By a narrow margin, the Canadian blog Small Dead Animals succeeded in knocking off popular U.S. blog Ace of Spades for Best Conservative Blog. SDA was Best Canadian Blog from 2004-2007, and was bumped into the broader based Best Conservative Blog category this year in order to open the field for Best Canadian Blog. That category was won this year by Ezra Levant, in recognition of Ezra's efforts against the egregious abuses of Canadian human rights commissions and attempts by their proxies to personally shut him down.

Finally, an admission that all that multiculturalism provides is the destruction of a national soul.

2008-12-31T15:11:00.003-05:00

Its about time that these fundamental truths were recognized. We are not all the same, and we can't all get along.

From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance

by John Vinocur, International Herald Tribune, December 29, 2008.

Two years ago, the Dutch could quietly congratulate themselves on having brought what seemed to be a fair measure of consensus and reason to the meanest intersection in their national political life: the one where integration of Muslim immigrants crossed Dutch identity.

In the run-up to choosing a new government in 2006, just 24 percent of the voters considered the issue important, and only 4 percent regarded it as the election's central theme.

What a turnabout, it seemed - and whatever the reason (spent passions, optimism, resignation?), it was a soothing respite for a country whose history of tolerance was the first in 21st-century Europe to clash with the on-street realities of its growing Muslim population.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Netherlands had lived through something akin to a populist revolt against accommodating Islamic immigrants led by Pim Fortuyn, who was later murdered; the assassination of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim killer; and the bitter departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.

Now something fairly remarkable is happening again.

Two weeks ago, the country's biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch "tolerance."

It came at the same time Nicolas Sarkozy was making a case in France for greater opportunities for minorities that also contained an admission that the French notion of equality "doesn't work anymore."

But there was a difference. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims' obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor's chairperson, was exceptional.

The paper said: "The mistake we can never repeat is stifling criticism of cultures and religions for reasons of tolerance."

Government and politicians had too long failed to acknowledge the feelings of "loss and estrangement" felt by Dutch society facing parallel communities that disregard its language, laws and customs.

Newcomers, according to Ploumen, must avoid "self-designated victimization."

She asserted, "the grip of the homeland has to disappear" for these immigrants who, news reports indicate, also retain their original nationality at a rate of about 80 percent once becoming Dutch citizens.

Instead of reflexively offering tolerance with the expectation that things would work out in the long run, she said, the government strategy should be "bringing our values into confrontation with people who think otherwise

[...]

... Ploumen says, "Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally." Immigrants must "take responsibility for this country" and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.

Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, "The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women on citizenship.

"We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society."

And the obligations of the native Dutch? Ploumen's answer is, "People who have their roots here have to offer space to traditions, religions and cultures which are new to Dutch society" - but without fear of expressing criticism. "Hurting feelings is allowed, and criticism of religion, too."

[...]

"The multi-cultis just aren't making the running anymore. It's a brave step towards a new normalcy in this country. "

The former Governor General needs to shut up.

2008-12-04T06:35:00.001-05:00

Ed Schreyer, the former Governor General and once NDP leader and premier of Manitoba, needs to keep his political biases in his belly, and as a former GG, needs to understand that it is not his place to comment on affairs of the office he no longer represents. Such is the decorum he should be according his successor. Coloured by his political bias, he should save his comments for his memoirs. Neither the present Governor General, nor the government of the day has requested his public opinion.

"Moi, I be pretty dam good dumb-fuck! You'll see!"

2008-12-04T06:25:00.003-05:00

And he was...

Expanded video here.

Dion's coming out speech here.

The prime minister, in spite of being severely ill this week, managed to get his basic message out in a short but inclusive, patriotic speech. M. Dion was to follow up with a statement in response. He couldn't do it, literally, despite feeble attempts with what appeared to be a cell phone camera.

THe choice for the Governor General can not be more clear. M. Dion is not capable of running any government, much less one having to stick handle its way through monumental global financial issues. Canadians made the right choice in the last election; they know it, and the opposition parties and the supporters of the Bloc should too.

In a perfect world, enough honest Liberal MPs would either cross the floor or sit as independents to give the Conservatives a clear majority. Canada needs and deserves nothing less at this time. The Liberal Party in its current iteration is done in Canada, and the NDP, through the duplicity of its leader, has demonstrated that its not worthy of Canada's highest office. Woe be to the country who hands it most treasured possession, its governance, to this rag-tag bunch of ghoulish self-serving fools.

Breaking - Iggy crashing the party, finally?

2008-12-02T18:48:00.005-05:00

Bourque is reporting that Ignatieff is having sober second thoughts about the coalition, mostly in response to pressure from colleagues and backbenchers.

Ignatieff has really has three choices (well, four - he can just go back to the States), he can suck up to the coalition and watch the party evaporate on the horizon, he can push Dion and Rae out of the limelight and go publicly nuclear on the folly of it all, or his best option - take 10-15 good Canadian Liberals with him and cross the floor, giving Harper the necessary muscle to flush these pretenders out of consideration for good.

If Ignatieff stays the course, he'll have nothing left in May. Dion's actions have likely soiled the Liberal linens for good in the party's present incarnation. Canadians of every political stripe from coast to coast are furious at the spectre of having their vote overthrown. Harper needs a majority in order to start the process of eliminating the future possibility of separatist authority over parliament once and for all. Ignatieff needs to figure for himself who's side he's on, Canada's, or the Liberal's. He can't, at present, be on both.

New updates from Bourque: UPDATE 1:Meanwhile, former Lib MP & Deputy PM John Manley is also now distancing himself from Dion's unholy alliance, telling a G&M confcall that his inclusion in Dion's wise men sounding board is news to him. "I havent agreed to do anything", he said ...... UPDATE 2: Insiders are telling Bourque late this evening that "at least 15 opposition members are ready to break ranks and, if necessary, sit as independents. This group includes Dryden, Tonks, Bevilacqua (from Grits) and Angus (NDP)". Bourque is also hearing that "at least three Bloc members are considering same course of action and there maybe at least two Tories thinking of going the other way (as independents) - Michael 'Cheech' Chong and backbencher Lee Richardson." Developing ...

Les Trois Chavez

2008-12-01T23:24:00.003-05:00

What they were really saying...

Chavez Layton: "Merci M. Dion, you're a pretty dumb-fuck, but I've managed to get out of you what I've always dreamed, the keys to the washroom at 24 Sussex, and to sleep in a real bed...you don't snore, do you?"

Chavez Dion: "I 'av to congrat vous for making me le Roi. Its not izzy being un pretty dumb-fuck, but moi, I try. You'll see! Moi, I be pretty dam good dumb-fuck! You'll see!"

Chavez Duceppe: "Eh tabernac! My hand is out, fill it! My allegiance is Quebec, seulement, so cross the palm with more cash! Vous harlots will have to pay en avance, extra for the jolie dumb-fuck."

The Tories made them do it

2008-12-01T11:18:00.004-05:00

By Andrew Coyne, Maclean's, Nov 30, 2008

"Well that didn’t take long. Barely three days after the Finance minister rose to deliver his annual fall update, it is all in the dumpster: the fiscal plan, the curbs to subsidies to political parties, the suspension of public employees’ right to strike, maybe even the government itself.

And the settled wisdom of every single pundit in the country is that it is all the Conservatives’ fault. After all, they provoked the opposition beyond endurance. They made demands of the opposition that they could not possibly accept. How could Harper have been so reckless? What a toxic gambit! What a colossal miscalculation!

Absolutely no one pins even a sliver of blame on the Liberals, the NDP or the Bloc. Of course not. Faced with the unreasonable and extreme proposal that they raise funds in the same way as the Conservatives have been doing for years — by asking people for their money, rather than taking it from them — they really had no alternative but to seize power. What on earth were they supposed to do? Revamp their moribund fund-raising organizations? Find a message and a leader capable of motivating large numbers of Canadians to click the “donate” button on their websites? Get off their collective duffs? What were the Tories thinking?

No. No, the sensible, restrained, pragmatic thing to do when threatened with the loss of subsidy is to take down the government. The sober, reasonable, moderate thing to do in this time of economic uncertainty is to provoke a constitutional crisis — to cobble together a coalition without a prime minister or a program, propped up by a separatist party, and demand the governor general call upon it to form a new government, replacing the old one we just elected. It’s been six weeks, after all.

Thank God that Canada has such statesmen in this time of peril, willing to put partisanship aside in pursuit of high office. What a contrast to those hyper-partisan, power-mad Conservatives, with their insane demands that the parties make do on the millions in tax credits and reimbursements they receive outside the subsidy.

But what am I saying? Notwithstanding the hundreds of column-inches attacking the Tories for their intolerable affront to opposition sensibilities, it is important to remember that the opposition’s sudden lurch for power had nothing to do with the impending loss of public funds. No, the reason they are absolutely forced to defeat the government this time, having declined to do so over Afghanistan, or global warming, or budgets 2006, 2007 ot 2008, is on account of the fall update. Nothing bespeaks the fierce urgency of now so much as an annual statistical review.

Again, the commentariat is as of one maddened mind. How could the government be so blind? Can it not see that unemployment has soared to 6.2%? Why, that’s four-tenths of a percentage point above its recent, thirty-year low. And what about Canadians’ fears of losing their home, what with the proportion of mortgages more than 90 days in arrears standing at an all-time record 0.2%? Okay, it’s an all-time record low, but still. When will it realize there’s a Depression on? Or coming? Or quite possible, certainly, in other countries.

While this laissez-faire, do-nothing government contents itself with spending more than any government in the history of Canada — 25% more, after inflation and population growth, than at the start of the decade — and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the banking system, what Canadians demand is “stimulus.” And stimulus, we all know, in a sophisticated, 21st century economy, can be delivered in only one way: by hiring large numbers of unionized men to dig holes in the ground (see “infrastructure.”) Loosening monetary policy doesn’t count. Tax cuts don’t count. It only counts as “stimulus” if the government spends it.

Or rather, it only counts as stimulus if a Liberal government spends it. The Tories have already promised to deliver billions more in “stimulus” in the next budget. But that’s, like, 58 days from now. We can’t possibly wait until then. We cannot wait to see how the economic situation evolves, or what effect the extraordinary series of measures countries around the world have taken to date will have. We cannot wait to see what the Americans will do. By then the polls might have shifted. By then the crisis might have passed. The government must fall now — so that it can fall again in a month’s time.

Because, as absolutely everyone agrees, the Conservatives made them do it. Not that that had anything to do with it.

CODA: To be clear, the opposition is entirely within its rights to defeat the government, and to request the Governor General to call upon them to form a government. And it is entirely within her prerogative to accept their request, rather than to defer to the Prime Minister’s apparent preference for dissolution.

On the other hand, it is also within her prerogative to refuse their request. They have to show, at a minimum, that they can command the confidence of the House, that is to say that the coalition is stable and secure — which at this point is anything but certain. For goodness sake, the Liberals can’t even agree who should lead them, let alone whether and on what terms they can get along with the other parties."

I'm of the opinion that Andrew is right on the money with this. Harper was entirely correct to blow this subsidy out of the water; it never should have existed in the first place. Political parties which can not find sufficient public support for their policies have no business being supported on the public dole. If their political positions resonate with a sufficient number of Canadians, they will find support. If not, then so be it - that is what is democratic, not simply feather-bedding an endless string of fringe groups.

I believe, however, he is being unnecessarily ham-handed with the civil service. Many of the civil service are still reeling from the drubbing they took during the years of Finance Minister Paul Martin. Income levels for many professional and semi-professional positions severely lag their counterparts in other governments or the private sector. This has become particularly acute in the major metropolitan areas where income levels of civil servants have not had economic increases consistent with the rise in cost of living in these areas.

The net result is that the quality of service is declining because civil service positions are becoming secondary income positions for families, rather than primary careers. Simply put, qualified, skilled people can no longer afford to work for the government offering high quality public service because they cannot maintain a home and feed their families in these high cost areas at their present pay scales. The unions have been ineffective at addressing this, partly because its not in the union's best interest to pump for more wages, but rather more (lower paying) jobs. Union dues are the same regardless of the pay scale. More workers, more dues. From a union perspective, numbers count for more than quality of work.

A coalition of the left will be a disaster for Canada's economic well-being. Harper has set Canada on the right path, and Canada needs the CPC for now. The upcoming Obamanation will quite probably be a financial catastrophe for the US, given that democratic policies lie at the root of the existing crisis. Canada cannot benefit from piling on.

On the 11th day, at the 11th hour, in the 11th month...

2008-11-11T06:10:00.004-05:00

Vignette courtesy Veterans Affairs Canada
©Veteran Affairs Canada

When I prepared this video for last year, Canada's Afghanistan mission had lost 72, now we are a hundred fallen. For those who still don't get the value here, look around, look to your family, your life, the blessings that you have. In truth, we can't all get along, and so we must fight, constantly, for the freedoms and liberties we all take for granted. And if you question the sacrifice for those liberties, ask those who don't have them, whether the fight is worth it. On Remembrance Day, the clock cannot be set back. This isn't about where we are going, its about where we have been.

For the youngsters of today who believe in social justice, look back at what it takes, sometimes, to achieve it, when the fight has to be taken up on a global scale. You can only imagine the horrors of those years, only imagine. Your parents and grandparents had to live them. Don't turn your back on what others surrendered for your future, else it be your future too...

Other remembrances and information can be found at the Veteran Affairs Canada Remembrance Week website, and on other pages on their site.

Their Links page has a wide variety of additional information.

If you are Canadian, please take the time to visit their pages and explore the reasons why there is a Remembrance Day. The freedoms and privileges that Canadians enjoy and take for granted came at a price - take the time to learn the stories.

:)~

2008-11-06T16:14:00.001-05:00

Death watch for the MSM now in play

2008-11-06T11:07:00.001-05:00

A succinct and well-put comment on the issue of the abdication of the media in its responsibility in the US election, from SDA:

"I'm absolutely confounded by those who still won't admit that the MSM were almost all entirely behind the Obama campaign"

I'm with you Robert W. Imagine if Barack Obama’s life, policies and mistakes had been examined by media as vigorously and relentlessly as they probed into Sarah Palin’s.

Good heavens, what does it mean when the media overlooks as an issue as important as Mr. Obama’s original declaration that he would accept public funding and the corresponding spending limits only to suddenly abandon that idea and raise over 600 million dollars. The screams of “BUYING AN ELECTION” and “FLIP FLOP” would have been deafening had Mr. McCain done precisely the same thing. Instead Obama raises a 4 to 1 advantage in money over McCain and there was barely a peep from his biggest supporters, the so-called fair and balanced media.

When you think of it, Mr. Obama hardly needed that massive bankroll to buy media advertising, given the press was giving it to him free anyway.

Where was the outrage in the press over the inconsistencies of Mr. Obama’s pledge to cut taxes on households earning less than $200.000. a year while raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 annually. On October 28th Obama’s Vice Presidential Candidate declared that the tax cut would only go to those earning $150,000. Then, on Oct. 31st on a radio program the current Democratic Governor Bill Richardson stated that only those that make under$120,000. will get a tax cut. It is hard to imagine the scale of the outrage if McCain had blundered this badly. Why are the Democrats backing off? If they had wanted to, the media could have reported that the top 1% or taxpayers pay 35% (of all the US taxes), top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab, -and the bottom 50 percent pay just 3 percent of the taxes. In other words Obama has to raise taxes the very middle class he purports to cut taxes for. Too bad the media did not go to work for the whole electorate before voting day.

And where was the press investigation into the ramifications of Mr. Obama’s plan to raise raise taxes on corporations and the “rich”. Mr. Obama promised to assess a windfall profits tax on oil companies like Exxon and distribute a $1000. of the proceeds to those who pay little taxes to no taxes at all. Sounds good, even sounds nice. However when the Democratic Presidential candidate Obama and his personal Main Stream Media advertising team overlooked a few things. Yes, Exxon makes $1400 a second in profit, but Exxon also pay’s $4000 a second in taxes and $15,000 a second in costs......almost 3 times (285%) as much profit to the government than they put in their own piggy bank. They are already paying a massive amount of taxes to that get directed to the less fortunate. How much more can they take before they bog off to a lower tax jurisdiction. Like maybe Canada.

With a corporate tax rate of 39.4 % rate (second highest in the OECD) forecast to rise under Obama, corporations have to begin looking next door to Canada where their current 36.4% rate is scheduled to drop dramatically to 29.25% in 2012 (combined Fed/Prov). How is it that the far more socialist Canada is offering business a better deal than the USA, the greatest bastion of capitalism in history? Probably because we learned the hard way that raising taxes higher on business and subsidizing failing ones in the past killed jobs, the economy and ultimately reduced the amount of taxes that found its way into federal treasuries.

The media bias robbed voters of accurate, fair and balanced reporting on a huge broad range of subjects vital to the future health of their nation. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness got replaced with deception, avoidance, and media collaboration in the cause of ever larger and intrusive government.

America misses a class act, goes for flash over substance.

2008-11-05T14:48:00.002-05:00

Catch the part where she mentions that not only did she run around the country campaigning, she also maintained her Governor's duties full time as well. Seriously underestimated. Apparently much too busy in public service to write her autobiography, twice even.

Liberalism is a mental disorder

2008-10-27T17:52:00.005-04:00

Clear, irrefutable proof that liberalism is indeed a derangement. Consider the following:

"An unintentionally hilarious assertion was made by Alaska State Senator Hollis French on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show Friday night.

Maddow and French were discussing the so-called Troopergate scandal and Gov. Sarah Palin's alleged grudge in firing former Alaska public safety commissioner Walt Monegan for not reopening an investigation of a state trooper who went through a nasty divorce with Palin's sister.

Hollis, a Democrat who led the state legislature's investigation into Palin's actions in firing Monegan last July, cited "severe logical fallacies" in claims made by Palin and her husband Todd, including the Palins' request for reduced security despite their assertions that Wooten was a rogue cop.

Then came the coup de grace from French:

"Stop and think about, what good does it do to fire a trooper if you really think he's dangerous?"

Yes -- the man actually uttered those words ... loud enough to hear ... on national television. The mind reels when confronted with such a worldview. Could be worse, however. If French were wearing a badge, for example.

The well-intentioned Alaskan legislator elaborated on his odd, troubling assertion, asking of anyone taking such a supposedly outlandish action as terminating the employment of a "dangerous" police officer:

Do you think he's going to leave his job and suddenly be docile and happy about life because he's just been fired? It's likely to make him more dangerous.
Heaven forbid that a dangerous state trooper is ever fired. This sort of thing might convey to those employed on the public dime that they are accountable for their actions."

[...]

L.A. Times guilty of suppressing info "in the Political Interest"?

2008-10-27T12:54:00.006-04:00

The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape

Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, but the press doesn’t think it’s quite as newsworthy as Sarah Palin’s wardrobe.

By Andrew C. McCarthy NRO Online

"Let’s try a thought experiment. Say John McCain attended a party at which known racists and terror mongers were in attendance. Say testimonials were given, including a glowing one by McCain for the benefit of the guest of honor ... who happened to be a top apologist for terrorists. Say McCain not only gave a speech but stood by, in tacit approval and solidarity, while other racists and terror mongers gave speeches that reeked of hatred for an American ally and rationalizations of terror attacks.

Now let’s say the Los Angeles Times obtained a videotape of the party.

Question: Is there any chance — any chance — the Times would not release the tape and publish front-page story after story about the gory details, with the usual accompanying chorus of sanctimony from the oped commentariat? Is there any chance, if the Times was the least bit reluctant about publishing (remember, we’re pretending here), that the rest of the mainstream media (y’know, the guys who drove Trent Lott out of his leadership position over a birthday-party toast) would not be screaming for the release of the tape?

Do we really have to ask?

So now, let’s leave thought experiments and return to reality: Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?

At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.

The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.

Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?"

[...]

Bill Whittle and the Obama " Redistribution of wealth" Bomb

2008-10-27T12:42:00.001-04:00

Shame, Cubed
Three separate reasons to be appalled, each more disgusting than the last.

By Bill Whittle NRO Online

The Drudge Report this morning led off with a link to audio of Barack Obama on WBEZ, a Chicago public radio station. And this time, Barack Obama was not eight years old when the bomb went off.
Speaking on a call-in radio show in 2001, you can hear Senator Obama say things that should profoundly shock any American — or at least those who have not taken the time to dig deeply enough into this man’s beliefs and affiliations.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Barack Obama, in 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

A caller then helpfully asks: “The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical. My question is (with economic changes)… my question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work, economically, and is that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to change place?”

Obama replies:

You know, I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way. [snip] You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court is just not very good at it, and politically, it’s just very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it, legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.”

THE FIRST CIRCLE OF SHAME
There is nothing vague or ambiguous about this. Nothing.

From the top: “…The Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.”

If the second highlighted phrase had been there without the first, Obama’s defenders would have bent over backwards trying to spin the meaning of “political and economic justice.” We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: It means redistribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides “deserve” it.

This redistribution of wealth, he states, “essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.” It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.

Now that’s just garden-variety socialism, which apparently is not a big deal to may voters. So I would appeal to any American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will beg you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear: “And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

The United States of America — five percent of the world’s population — leads the world economically, militarily, scientifically, and culturally — and by a spectacular margin. Any one of these achievements, taken alone, would be cause for enormous pride. To dominate as we do in all four arenas has no historical precedent. That we have achieved so much in so many areas is due — due entirely — to the structure of our society as outlined in the Constitution of the United States.

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to limit government. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population.

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw: “…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

There is no room for wiggle or misunderstanding here. This is not edited copy. There is nothing out of context; for the entire thing is context — the context of what Barack Obama believes. You and I do not have to guess at what he believes or try to interpret what he believes. He says what he believes.

We have, in our storied history, elected Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives and moderates. We have fought, and will continue to fight, pitched battles about how best to govern this nation. But we have never, ever in our 232-year history, elected a president who so completely and openly opposed the idea of limited government, the absolute cornerstone of makes the United States of America unique and exceptional.

If this does not frighten you — regardless of your political affiliation — then you deserve what this man will deliver with both houses of Congress, a filibuster-proof Senate, and, to quote Senator Obama again, “a righteous wind at our backs.”

That a man so clear in his understanding of the Constitution, and so opposed to the basic tenets it provides against tyranny and the abuse of power, can run for president of the United States is shameful enough.

We’re just getting started.

THE SECOND CIRCLE OF SHAME
Mercifully shorter than the first, and simply this: I happen to know the person who found this audio. It is an individual person, with no more resources than a desire to know everything that he or she can about who might be the next president of the United States and the most powerful man in the world.

I know that this person does not have teams of highly paid professionals, does not work out of a corner office in a skyscraper in New York, does not have access to all of the subtle and hidden conduits of information … who possesses no network television stations, owns no satellite time, does not receive billions in advertising dollars, and has a staff of exactly one.

I do not blame Barack Obama for believing in wealth distribution. That’s his right as an American. I do blame him for lying about what he believes. But his entire life has been applying for the next job at the expense of the current one. He’s at the end of the line now.

I do, however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: It only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation.

We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone — even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them.

Remember this, America: The press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the Internet did.

There is a special hell for you “journalists” out there, a hell made specifically for you narcissists and elitists who think you have the right to determine which information is passed on to the electorate and which is not.

That hell — your own personal hell — is a fiery lake of irrelevance, blinding clouds of obscurity, and burning, everlasting scorn.

You’ve earned it.

THE THIRD CIRCLE OF SHAME
This discovery will hurt Obama much more than Joe the Plumber.

What will be left of my friend, and my friend’s family, I wonder, when the press is finished with them?

Hotair: "Smells Like Socialist Spirit"

2008-10-27T11:02:00.009-04:00

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.

To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. …

I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way. Barack Obama
"...One more clarifying thought is in order. Barack Obama complains that the Constitution is a “charter of negative liberties”. That’s because the Constitution was intended as a limiting document, to curtail the power of the federal government vis-a-vis the states and the individual. The founders intended at the time to limit the reach of the federal government, and built the Constitution accordingly.

Barack Obama wants to reverse that entirely. And that’s radical change you’d better believe in, or else."

Related ,

and:
If I told you that in 2006 several former Weather Underground terrorists linked up with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to form an activist support group, would you do any more than yawn?

If I were to say that two of those former terrorists were Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, would your ears prick up-ever so slightly?

If I then revealed that several leaders of this organisation went on to create a satellite group, specifically designed to help Barack Obama win the US presidency, would you start to get a little bit interested?

Read all of the link immediately above:
Early this year MDS board members Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher and Barbara Ehrenreich joined with radical actor/activist Danny Glover to set up a new organisation-Progressives for Obama.

The quartet announced;

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined....

"Vote for the old guy."

2008-10-26T13:33:00.004-04:00

An acquaintance of mine offered up the observation that, given the extent to which the liberal media (is there any other kind now?) have climbed so deeply into the tank advocating the vote for Obama, and given how they've pretty much lied or failed to report on just about everything Democrat in the U.S. election, perhaps the real message from them is "Vote for the old guy".

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac: May 5, 2006

2008-10-12T11:44:00.006-04:00

The second signature on the left, if you don't recognize it is "John McCain"

Powerline:

"One thing I hadn't realized is that McCain's reform legislation was passed through the Senate Banking Committee, but was not able to gain majority support on the Senate floor. All twenty Senators who signed the letter calling attention to the urgency of reforming Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were Republicans. After May 2006, the Democrats continued to use Fannie and Freddy as their private slush funds until the inevitable collapse, which McCain had warned against so eloquently, occurred."

Whittle on: "Cowboys and Secret Agents"

2008-10-05T07:44:00.003-04:00

There are only a few people, it seems, that truly understand the nascent threat that Islam is to western democracy, and why, for all its bluster, warts and bravado, the United States may well be the last frontier for western democracy and true individual freedom and responsibility. Canada is about halfway along the road to capitulation. Britain has fully capitulated, most of the rest of the EU is on its way, some states tentatively trying to resist assimilation, with limited success. Bill Whittle at NRO talks about the divide that exists in the fight:
[...]
"So I found myself toe-to-toe with someone on the same team, but from the opposite side of the fence, so to speak. It was weird. Helga might start in with a criticism of how stupidly the Bush administration handled the run-up to Iraq . . . oh no, here we go again . . . and follow that instantly by saying of course Saddam had WMDs! Bush should have attacked him without warning before he had time to move them to Syria!

Not what I expected. So then she’d say if Americans could just be a little more informed they could evolve past being such cowboys about such complex issues — at which point I would jump in and say, whoa, whooooaaa there little filly! You don’t evolve past being a cowboy. Being a cowboy is the pinnacle of evolution. Once you’re at cowboy, there’s nowhere to go but down. Cowboys don’t look for fights, but they don’t run away from them either. They do what they have to do, when they have to do it. And they usually have to do it alone, because everyone wants Black Bart’s gang out of town, but no one wants to walk down the street alongside the sheriff and get shot doing it.

Helga had never heard anyone defend cowboydom before. I mean, she’s from freaking Europe, fer chrissakes. But she liked it. And so we spent several hours over lunch, turning the clichés up to eleven in that sort of playful yet serious yet playful tone you take after four margaritas at your best friend’s wedding reception.

I asked her if she’d ever fired a gun before, and she had to think for a moment. Once, she replied, at the carnival, shooting at the paper target.

Ma’am? That’s a BB gun. It goes tick-tick-tick-tick. A real gun makes a sound like the earth coming apart and produces a muzzle flash the size of a large pizza. When you shoot a .45 caliber 1911-A1 hand cannon, you will know it. You will have no trouble remembering the experience whatsoever. And when I told her that what I like to shoot at most often was a life-sized paper image of Osama Bin Laden, she literally gasped in amazement. They let you do that?

Let you? They not only let you do it, they charge you for it. That’s the sound of freedom, baby! BOOOOOM!!"

[...]

Media barely literate...anyone surprised?

2008-10-04T07:33:00.002-04:00

An analysis carried out by a language monitoring service said Friday that Gov. Sarah Palin spoke at a more than ninth-grade level and Sen. Joseph Biden spoke at a nearly eighth-grade level in Thursday night's debate between the vice presidential candidates.
The analysis by the Austin, Texas-based Global Language Monitor said Palin, governor of Alaska and the GOP vice presidential nominee, used the passive voice in 8 percent of her sentences, far more than the 5 percent used by the Democratic senator from Delaware. [...]
The two candidates were nearly even in total number of words spoken. The normally voluble Biden restrained his tendency to ramble by uttering just 5,492 words during the 90-minute debate, versus 5,235 for Palin, Payack said. [...]
Here's the breakdown:
Grade level: Biden, 7.8; Palin, 9.5 (Newspapers are typically written to a sixth-grade reading level.)
Sentences per paragraph: statistically tied at 2.7 for Biden and 2.6 for Palin.
Letters per word: tied at 4.4.
Ease of reading: Biden, 66.7 (with 100 being the easiest to read or hear), versus 62.4 for Palin.

This sure explains a lot about what we read and hear from our esteemed media mavens. Some years ago, I had dealings in a retail computer business with public school teachers. At the end of it, I had to find someone who could speak in polysyllabic words, complex sentences and with genuine sophistication of thought. The teachers, bless their hearts, had lowered their communication ability to that of the grade 4 kids, and couldn't seem to get out of the mode in the rest of their lives.
So, if media pundits write and speak at the "grade 6 level" on a regular basis, it may follow that that's the level of their thinking as well. Certainly, that would be consistent with the intellectual level presented in much of their verbiage. What you get is what there is...

Two words for Bob Rae and Stephane Dion over the Harper "Speechgate" issue...

2008-09-30T19:47:00.005-04:00

"Green Shift" inc...

Domestic espionage? The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

2008-09-29T23:24:00.001-04:00

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

by James Simpson: "...One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.
I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth."

[...]

FauxBama

2008-09-27T09:25:00.002-04:00

In Friday night's US presidential debate, advantage McCain, the defining moment, perhaps, may be Barack Obama's having to think and look down to read the name of the dead soldier inscribed on the memorial bracelet he wears, given to him by a grieving mother (mimicking the bracelet McCain got from Matthew Stanley's mom a year ago). Watch the video... Me too, me too!

Flashback 1993: Assault on the mortgage lenders: in the name of racial justice...

2008-09-24T20:12:00.004-04:00

FindArticles > National Review > Dec 27, 1993 > Article

Assault on the mortgage lenders: in the name of racial justice, the Clintonites want the power to decide who gets a home of his own - efforts to impose regulations on banks to make loans even if applicants are not creditworthy

Robert Stowe England

QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous.
Here, as in affirmative-action efforts in hiring, college admissions, and the drawing of voting districts, the Washington establishment is obsessed with "disparate impact," which it equates with racism. In the mortgage-lending area, there is ample evidence of disparate impact to feed this obsession. Data collected by the Federal Government reveal that in 1992, while 16 per cent of white applicants for mortgage loans were rejected, 36 per cent of black applicants were rejected.
But does disparate impact indicate racism? According to Lawrence Lindsey, the Federal Reserve governor who oversees the collection of mortgage-lending data, even the celebrated Boston Fed study that inspired this crusade found that factors other than race--such as one's credit record and whether one has sufficient income to meet the payments--are enough to account for nearly all the difference in rejection rates. Furthermore, a different analysis of the data in the Boston Fed study by David Horne, an economist with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, finds no evidence of a pattern of discrimination. In any case, Census data show whites and blacks, taken as groups, have similar default rates. If discrimination were in fact occurring--that is, if banks were applying a higher standard to blacks than to whites--you would expect blacks to have a lower default rate.
The essentially irrational assumption underlying the notion that there is widespread discrimination in mortgage lending seems to be that lenders are willing to give up good profits in order to feed their subtle but thorough-going racism. Says Senator Don Riegle (D., Mich.), "They talk about how the free-enterprise system is supposed to work, but it's sophistry, as we all know." Senator Riegle (one of the Keating Five who plans to retire rather than run for re-election next year) has made a holy crusade of mortgage-lending discrimination since he took over the Senate Banking Committee in 1989.
Senator Riegle has found enthusiastic allies in the Clinton Administration, particularly Attorney General Reno, Secretary Cisneros, and Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig. As Ludwig told the Senate Banking Committee, "We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible."
One Size Fits All

MR. LUDWIG'S idea of ending discrimination is for blacks and whites to have the same rejection rates, regardless of the legitimate reasons for differences. The crackdown is already well under way, as the Administration turns many of its bank examiners into discrimination police by re-interpreting the Fair Lending Act of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.
The primary responsibility of banking regulators--the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision--has always been the safety and soundness of banks and thrift institutions. In the last few decades a separate cadre of bank examiners for fairness and consumer protection has been established. These so-called "compliance examiners" represent the shock troops of the Clinton assault. Ludwig is increasing the number of OCC compliance examiners from 330 to 530 by next year. Already they've been busy examining loan files; their work has resulted in four referrals to the Department of Justice for further investigation. Miss Reno, meanwhile, has chastised the other bank regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, before the Senate Banking Committee for failing to get with the program.
While Justice has not yet identified any of the four referrals, two of them have publicly identified themselves: Shawmut National Bank of Hartford, Conn., the largest mortgage lender in New England, and Barnett Bank of Jacksonville, Fla. Only two weeks after Miss Reno's slap at the banking regulators in Senate testimony, the Federal Reserve Board, usually not prone to politicizing its bank examinations, prevented Shawmut from acquiring New Dartmouth Bank of Manchester, N.H., under a rarely used provision of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, claiming Shawmut had discriminated against minorities. While it is impossible to judge the case against Shawmut without more information, the timing of the denial is suspicious. Henry Cisneros quoted Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as saying in Senate testimony that an end to discrimination would boost economic activity. Mr. Greenspan has made no secret of his campaign to win over the President on the issue of the Fed's independence, endangered by battles with congressional leaders like House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez. Thus, the Fed's Shawmut action might be seen as the regulatory equivalent of sitting next to Hillary Clinton at the President's inauguration.

Tightening the Screws

THE SHAPE of the future may be seen in a case that actually pre-dated the Clinton Administration-the case against the Decatur Federal Savings & Loan of Atlanta. That case was referred to Justice during the Bush Administration, and, under the threat of litigation, Decatur Federal agreed to a draconian settlement last year that permeates almost every activity the bank conducts. The settlement includes Maoist-sounding sensitivity training for Decatur's loan officers and recommends bonuses for those who bring in minority loans.
Justice's case against Decatur was not based on individual complaints and contained no proof that any single minority loan was rejected without just cause. It relied entirely on a computer model that attempts to duplicate the factors that banks consider when making loans--a process that is an art, not a science. As Congress's leading mortgage expert, Represehtative Bruce Vento (D., Minn.), explains: "We can't take away the judgment of individual financial institutions about what is a good credit risk. You can't put that into a computer because there are too many uncertainties. You have to have a market test at some point." Nevertheless, Justice's computer concluded that Decatur Federal had discriminated.
The Federal Reserve now has its own computer program too, according to Lawrence Lindsey, who revealed its existence in Senate testimony. The Fed apparently used it to make its case against Shawmut Bank and is using it to ferret out more cases to refer to the Justice Department. Furthermore, under the new examination process at both OCC and the Federal Reserve, compliance examiners can look through an entire mound of applications until they find a single case of an approved white loan applicant whose qualifications are close to those of any rejected minority applicant, which includes blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. This one close match would establish that the bank had discriminated. Stephen Cross, OCC's deputy comptroller for compliance management, says that perhaps as few as four examples a year would lead to a finding of a pattern of discrimination. Since no two applications are ever identical, this approach allows the discrimination police considerable latitude.
Mr. Ludwig is in the process of rewriting regulations for the Community Reinvestment Act so as to offer further inducements for banks to allocate credit by race. In the past, banks and thrifts were rated on the efforts they made to reach out to minorities. Under a directive from President Clinton, however, Ludwig plans to introduce new CRA regulations that will require lenders to meet certain numerical guidelines in total minority loans. Ludwig calls these "performance-based standards"--that is, they will judge institutions not on their efforts but on the results. Congressional supporters of the performance-based CRA standards, such as Senators Paul Sarbanes (D., Md.) and Carol Moseley Braun (D., Ill.), and Representatives Joseph Kennedy (D., Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D. Calif.), deny they are quotas--but some CRA consultants and Wall Street banking analysts say that banks having trouble finding qualified minority candidates will simply approve the minimum number of bad loans and consider them, as one put it, "blood money for the politicians."
The Clintonites go out of their way to gloss over the real agenda at work in the mortgage crackdown; they insist they would prefer the voluntary cooperation of mortgage lenders and that enforcement is only a last resort. Inside the velvet glove, however, is an iron fist. Miss Reno testified that many banks and thrifts have told her they want to lend more to minorities but have been unable to do so. These benighted institutions must be "educated," she says, in how to recognize discrimination in their own lending practices. It's so subtle and insidious, she explains, that the lenders do not see it themselves.

'Subtle Discrimination'

MISS RENO, like other mortgage militants, believes banks discriminate by such means as telling white applicants how to correct their applications so as to get loan approval, but not telling black applicants. The authors of the controversial Boston Fed study concur. The truth is, however, that most banks now routinely review all rejected minority applications, sometimes passing the loan file to the president's office. The Consumer Bankers Association has found that 88 per cent of banks responding to its annual "affordable housing" survey now automatically review all mortgage rejections.
HUD is also enrolled in the battle to ferret out "subtle discrimination." For now it is concentrating on a group of lenders known as "mortgage bankers," who are not covered by the Community Reinvestment Act. Mortgage bankers do not take deposits and do not hold mortgages in their own portfolios, as banks and thrifts sometimes do. Instead, they sell all their mortgages to investors in the secondary market. These firms are not closely regulated like banks and thrifts; they are therefore not hampered in reaching less profitable markets by the high cost of regulation, and so can be far more aggressive in filling in the gaps in the mortgage market. Ironically, therefore---in view of HUD's targeting them--mortgage bankers originate 80 per cent of government-guaranteed Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loans, which disproportionately benefit minorities.
The HUD crackdown on mortgage bankers is being administered by Assistant Housing Secretary Roberta Achtenberg, who before being tapped for the Clinton Administration gained fame in San Francisco for pressuring big corporations to stop funding the Boy Scouts. She has hired an independent testing firm that has been for several months sending out phony black, white, Hispanic, and Asian-American mortgage applicants to see if minorities are treated differently from whites. If a single loan officer or other employee in any way treats a single black applicant less favorably than a white applicant, then it can be considered a case of discrimination. Discrimination can be something as simple as not smiling at the black tester, having smiled at the white
one.
Miss Achtenberg has considerable leverage against mortgage bankers, since HUD oversees the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal National Home Association (Fannie Mae), two government-sponsored private enterprises which buy mortgages from mortgage lenders and sell them to investors in the secondary market. If HUD denied a mortgage banker the right to sell its mortgages to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, that would force the banker out of business.

Pre-emptive Action

MEANWHILE, mortgage lenders are feverishly trying to improve their lending to minorities without sacrificing good underwriting principles. For several years now, mortgage lenders have been discovering that education and counseling can increase the pool of potentially credit-worthy minority homebuyers. Many minority applicants are rejected because they apply for a larger mortgage than they can afford or because they have failed to clear up past delinquent loans. Under "affordable housing" programs devised without Washington's help, lenders are finding that many rejected applicants can pass muster as early as a year after initial counseling and remedial action. The education reduces the credit risk of the borrower by making him or her a more responsible mortgage holder. The cost of the education is generally absorbed by non-profit organizations which provide it free to all would-be homeowners.
Mortgage lenders have been working vigorously on other fronts too. Increasingly, minorities can qualify for loans without conventional credit criteria, by counting regular rent and utility payments as proof of creditworthiness. Also, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, private mortgage insurers, and mortgage lenders have worked together to develop programs that combine counseling with lower down-payments (as low as 3 per cent of the applicant's own money), since the lack of a down-payment is the leading obstacle to greater minority home ownership. Happily, these affordable housing loans have so far produced delinquency and default rates similar to those for loans with more conventional criteria.
To be sure, many potential applicants do not know of these affordable housing programs, which have been around only since 1989. Mortgage lenders have found that advertising does not do the trick. It seems to require one-on-one contact to drive the message home, and so they have started trying to track down more of these potentially credit-worthy homebuyers by working with community housing groups, holding seminars, and sending out mailings.

Color-Blind Markets?

INDEED, some mortgage lenders now believe that low- and moderate-income borrowers are one of the growth markets of the 1990s. If left alone to devise methods of reaching this market, they will do so in a color-blind manner without sacrificing credit standards and without redistributing costs by charging other borrowers more for their mortgages. The alternative can already be seen at work at banks and thrifts struggling to improve their lending to minorities. The Consumer Bankers Association reports that 69 per cent of banks in its affordable-housing survey subsidize their minority-outreach programs, usually by offering lower interest rates, but also by incurring higher operating costs to administer the loans. Among banks that subsidize, 76 per cent of the subsidies come from bank profits, while the remaining subsidies come from government programs and non-profit organizations. The Clinton Administration's heavy-handed, raceconscious approach threatens to forcibly expand this small subsidy foothold.
The crackdown is, therefore, not a boon but a roadblock to racial progress. If it succeeds in driving banks to make bad loans in order to improve their minority-approval rates, this will eventually lead to more foreclosures in troubled inner-city communities. It will also reduce the available capital to credit-worthy borrowers, forcing more Americans to settle for a less attractive home than they had expected. Some whites who formerly would have qualified at the margins for a mortgage will be denied their chance at the American dream. And mortgage rates will rise for everyone to cover the losses from bad loans.
The Clinton method will achieve faster, but short-lived, results for minority rejection rates. And in the process it will heighten racial divisions in our society. As in every other field in which quotas have been tried, they will hurt the people they are trying to help--and everyone else, too.
Mr. Congdon is economic advisor to Gerard & National in London and managing director of the economic consulting firm Lombard Street
Research.
COPYRIGHT 1993 National Review, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

[Editor's note: this article has been reproduced in its entirety due to its renewed currency. If the copyright holders object, we will reduce it to a fair-use reference.]

Heather Mallick, troll extrordinaire, the fallout continues...continues...

2008-09-23T19:09:00.004-04:00

Bumped -> Update: Greta VanSusteren and David Warren go at Heather again and have a good discussion about political correctness off the rails in the Canadian and US media. Oh, yes, and Heather, you're still a pig, according to Greta.

Mallick might have got what she wanted after the CBC ran her disgusting trash piece about Sarah Palin, if what she wanted, was notoriety. Certainly, her name is on the lips and keyboards of American media in almost every corner of the republic.

Outside of a couple of articles, though, very little media comment has been made here in Canada. Well, that's not much of a surprise, given the extent to which the CBC and other Canadian media outlets have fallen into the tank with the Liberals. With every excess, the cry to overhaul the CBC just gets louder and louder. You can be sure, majority or minority, when the Conservatives are returned, there will be an orchestrated hue and cry to rip the CBC apart and rebuild it (or not).

But back to Mallick. Her anger and hatred as published by the CBC has had collateral damage far beyond the twitterings of the media darlings. There has been considerable outrage addressed at Canadians in general by Americans, who, also offended as I and many Canadians are, haven't been shy about expressing themselves.

Equally, Canadians who are closer to the truth about Sarah Palin are outraged as well. Mallick's puerile outburst is especially cause for concern amongst Sarah Palin's neighbours:
Sane citizens, who love this country, must ask the begging question: 'what is in it for them'? What is the media involvement in egregious, criminal activities like Adscam, if any? If the msm are not intertwined with the Puffins/Dippers on a very personal/economic level; why do they care so much about the outcome of elections?

I have never understood the freaky hatred the media has for President Bush and I recoiled, in horror, when I read that spewing of hatred and vitriol that Heather 'whats her name' put to paper in a mini mind attempt to attack Governor Palin. Heather Mallick works for the CBC, she is a pubic servant, by the virtue of being paid by taxpayers: she writes for all the people of Canada. Do Canadians think that it is O.K. to attack a Governor of a foreign country, though condescending, mean, sanctimonious smearing of the Governor's family? Governor Palin is very popular here in the North, we value the long standing friendship we Yukoners have with the Great state of Alaska. How are we to react when a freaky public servant takes it upon herself to attempt to slander our good friends, their families and our families via the Governors family from our side of the border?

The brain challenged Mallick has compromised Yukoners. She has not apologized to us or the people of Alaska.

The msm has yet to learn that the door swings both ways. They have been sitting on nice, comfy Liberano furs for so many years that they have no integrity - and neither do many of the civil servants.

Most people, who have ever actually done anything in their lives or have made any decisions under stress understand the gallows humour of Mr. Ritz. Most of the media don't understand that most Canadians do not have nice comfy furs to sit on; we live in a real world where bad things happen. The media are smearing all of us via Gerry Ritz - they have earned our contempt and they have it - most of my friends don't believe anything that the media says anymore.

The question is 'why are we paying these fools who risk our nation's relations with the Governor of Alaska who is running for Vice President?' Why are we paying, TWICE, for the Puffin propaganda in this election?

Indeed, why are we paying for Heather Mallick? The Palin piece was only the latest and sleaziest of several drivebys she's written in recent times, and indeed throughout her career at CBC. If public funds are going to be used to underwrite this troll, let it be for some public institution other than the CBC. An Ontario Hospital, say, where she can explain her anger management issues to a shrink, or to any one of four padded walls.

All of this reminds me of some comments I've heard recently, something about lipstick on a pig...

ABC's McCain-Palin Media Avoidance Watch, tanking...

2008-09-22T13:58:00.003-04:00

LOL! Funniest trashing of a reporter I've seen in a long time. Jake Tapper of ABC tries to do a driveby on Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign for keeping Sarah away from the mainstream media. Please do take the time to wander down the comments while they're still up. Here's a few samples:
You haven't earned access and she's speaking directly to the American people. The only thing we need from you guys at this point is to turn on the camera and shut up. Now go back to your Tasergate, Trig-gate, Bookgate, AIP-gate. trip to Iraq-gate nonsense. You know, the issues that matter to embittered, hostile, hypocritical liberals everywhere.

The MSM's treatment of Sarah and McCain has been horrendous. Absolutely obscene.
And you think they should go out of their way to meet with you? Why? So you can edit their quotes, like ABC? So you can pose "gotcha" questions?
Why don't you go cover some of the Obama scandals? There are plenty for you to take a look at. But NO, you won't do that.
If you did to my daughter what you have done to Sarah Palin you wouldn't get out of the hospital for six months. And if you did, you would be right back in.

Why should she talk to you?? You've done nothing but ridicule and denegrate the poor woman. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn't talk to you either.
You idiots in the mainstream media are fast becoming a non-entity to people like me (Thank God). You're so far in the tank for Obama you practically drool in his presence. It's a disgrace.

Well, maybe if you buggers in the fourth estate weren't campaigning for Obama maybe other candidates would talk to you. But why should McCain or Palin talk to you guys? So you can try to embarass them while ignoring every question about Obama? What's the point of spending time talking to you, your minds are made up and you've decided the election is over.
Palin drew 60,000 at a rally in Florida but try to find a press report that speaks in anything even remotely the same terms as "Obama went to the bathroom this morning, it was a world class event."

There's plenty more! Giggle your way through the rest of the day...!

Astroturf and "cyber ambuscade"

2008-09-22T11:17:00.002-04:00

No one doubts for a moment politics is a messy business. The left has especially made efforts in unfounded smear ads like the Paul Martin's "soldier's in our cities" TV ads that caused so much outrage during the campaign the Liberals last lost, and more recently, the attack ad running on CTV attempting to smear agriculture minister Ritz over his bit of black humour privately expressed over the listeriosis outbreak.

In the US, this appears to have reached a high art in the use of Youtube to make smear ads masqueraded as "grassroots" sentiment go viral. Rusty Schackleford of the JAWA Report, has assembled a compelling case for corporate "astroturfing" on behalf of the Democrats that may trace back directly to Obama's chief media strategist.

"Astroturfing" is what PR industry insiders call the practice of "manufacturing grassroots support." It tries to disguise itself as a "grassroots" phenomenon -- but it's artificial and inorganic. Hence, "Astroturf." At the corporate level, the practice has been dubbed "a cyber ambuscade" - a campaign designed to upset competitors by deliberately spreading rumours and false information through the use of the internet.

Shackleford painstakingly details a campaign through Youtube, aimed at discrediting Sarah Palin through the use of audio and visual material that perpetuates stories known to be false about the candidate, all the while trying to make them appear as if they originated from the netroots (cyber equivalent to "grassroots", for those trying to keep up. Pejoratively known as "nutroots" when applied to lefty supporters).

Shackleford's exquisite tracking leads circumstantially, but with an apparently compelling clarity, back to the executive owners of a major leagues PR firm with strong Democratic ties, ultimately leading speculatively right back to Obama's chief media honcho.

What makes the connections plausible, is the action of the youtube users as the light was being shone on them - deletions of videos and accounts abound, not something you would expect to see if the users were true nutroots.

There is a difference, for the moment, between grassroots supporters making up stuff to support their favorite candidate all on their own, and a corporate program to purposely spread false innuendo. The US federal election commission has rules of engagement in this regard. Shackleford contends that if the audit trail of users and accounts holds up, FEC regs have been broken, and specific individuals could be (and should be) on the hook for violations.

The read on JAWA is illuminating. If substantiated, and the cursory evidence is certainly compelling, then one has to question the integrity of a political ideology that believes lies, deceit and deception are acceptable means to acquire power.

Shackleford's tale is a rare insight into the politics of hate, where principles have long since withered in the name of winning.

Hillary Clinton in Sarah Palin's government?

2008-09-22T09:23:00.001-04:00

The New York Post has reprinted Gov. Palin's speech that she intended to deliver at the anti-Iran rally she was "dis-invited" to, apparently from some strong arm tactics of the Democrats.

McCain is an advocate of collaborative government, and Palin has frequently offered a strong positive olive branch to the senator from New York, and does so again in her speech. Palin originally had expected to share a stage with Clinton at the rally, but Hillary pulled out - apparently feelings weren't mutual.

Hillary needs to play off Sarah Palin carefully. If the McCain/Palin ticket does take the White House, Senator Clinton's career could in fact get a personal boost from Palin's ascendency.

Sarah Palin:

I am honored to be with you and with leaders from across this great country — leaders from different faiths and political parties united in a single voice of outrage.

Tomorrow, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will come to New York — to the heart of what he calls the Great Satan — and speak freely in this, a country whose demise he has called for.

Ahmadinejad may choose his words carefully, but underneath all of the rhetoric is an agenda that threatens all who seek a safer and freer world. We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator's intentions and to call for action to thwart him.

He must be stopped.

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a "stinking corpse" that is "on its way to annihilation." Such talk cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a madman — not when Iran just this summer tested long-range Shahab-3 missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, not when the Iranian nuclear program is nearing completion, and not when Iran sponsors terrorists that threaten and kill innocent people around the world.

The Iranian government wants nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran is running at least 3,800 centrifuges and that its uranium enrichment capacity is rapidly improving. According to news reports, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians may have enough nuclear material to produce a bomb within a year.

The world has condemned these activities. The United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran suspend its illegal nuclear enrichment activities. It has levied three rounds of sanctions. How has Ahmadinejad responded? With the declaration that the "Iranian nation would not retreat one iota" from its nuclear program.

So, what should we do about this growing threat? First, we must succeed in Iraq. If we fail there, it will jeopardize the democracy the Iraqis have worked so hard to build, and empower the extremists in neighboring Iran. Iran has armed and trained terrorists who have killed our soldiers in Iraq, and it is Iran that would benefit from an American defeat in Iraq.

If we retreat without leaving a stable Iraq, Iran's nuclear ambitions will be bolstered. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons — they could share them tomorrow with the terrorists they finance, arm, and train today. Iranian nuclear weapons would set off a dangerous regional nuclear arms race that would make all of us less safe.

But Iran is not only a regional threat; it threatens the entire world. It is the no. 1 state sponsor of terrorism. It sponsors the world's most vicious terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Together, Iran and its terrorists are responsible for the deaths of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, and in Iraq today. They have murdered Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and other Muslims who have resisted Iran's desire to dominate the region. They have persecuted countless people simply because they are Jewish.

Iran is responsible for attacks not only on Israelis, but on Jews living as far away as Argentina. Anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are part of Iran's official ideology and murder is part of its official policy. Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the "One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws." The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of "propaganda against the system." After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to "only" 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Earlier this year, Senator Clinton said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is in the forefront of that" effort. Senator Clinton argued that part of our response must include stronger sanctions, including the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization. John McCain and I could not agree more.

Senator Clinton understands the nature of this threat and what we must do to confront it. This is an issue that should unite all Americans. Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!

Only by working together, across national, religious, and political differences, can we alter this regime's dangerous behavior. Iran has many vulnerabilities, including a regime weakened by sanctions and a population eager to embrace opportunities with the West. We must increase economic pressure to change Iran's behavior.

Tomorrow, Ahmadinejad will come to New York. On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

We must rally the world to press for truly tough sanctions at the U.N. or with our allies if Iran's allies continue to block action in the U.N. We must start with restrictions on Iran's refined petroleum imports.

We must reduce our dependency on foreign oil to weaken Iran's economic influence.

We must target the regime's assets abroad; bank accounts, investments, and trading partners.

President Ahmadinejad should be held accountable for inciting genocide, a crime under international law.

We must sanction Iran's Central Bank and the Revolutionary Guard Corps — which no one should doubt is a terrorist organization.

Together, we can stop Iran's nuclear program.

Senator McCain has made a solemn commitment that I strongly endorse: Never again will we risk another Holocaust. And this is not a wish, a request, or a plea to Israel's enemies. This is a promise that the United States and Israel will honor, against any enemy who cares to test us. It is John McCain's promise and it is my promise.

Thank you.

"Palin's never met a head of state..."

2008-09-22T09:08:00.003-04:00

...issue is about to be put to bed. MSNBC is reporting a series of meetings scheduled for Gov. Palin in New York, that will remedy that problem:
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Palin will meet with the presidents of Iraq, Pakistan, Georgia and the Ukraine, as well as singer and activist Bono during her three-day trip to New York, the McCain campaign announced Sunday.

Palin will meet Wednesday with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli and Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko together, according to campaign officials. She will then meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari before hosting Bono, the lead singer of U2. Later in the day, she will meet with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The campaign had previously announced meetings set for Tuesday in New York, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Columbian President Alvaro Uribe.
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Yeah, well, the Bono gig is for comic relief, I guess. Now that the Liberals are dissolving in the mud, he's got some spare time. This meeting marathon will pretty much even up the criticism against her "foreign policy experience" (forgetting, of course, her trade delegate experience as governor) putting her on equal footing with that of Obama. Oh yeah, he's running for president.

I never understood the "foreign policy" issue, outside of gotcha politics. Meetings between heads of state are largely symbolic. The real meetings occur between the legions of state officials surrounding both heads. Sometimes directions change as a result of meetings, but more often as not, all they do is set a tone for the meetings of the bureaucrats who ultimately work out the real deals.

Further, the fuss about Palin's experience would be appropriate for a presidential candidate, but she's only the vp nod. I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to bury John McCain just yet. As VP, Palin will have substantial on-the-job training leading into a presidential spot, should McCain buy the farm.

Obama, on the other hand, hits the ground running as POTUS with no foreign policy experience, which means he will be relying on Joe Biden's experience? (just kidding!)

Carbon tariffs seen as risk for trade wars: OECD

2008-09-15T20:50:00.002-04:00

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is advising condemning attempts by countries to impose carbon tariffs on certain imported goods, a program the Liberal Green Shift Plan would promote, says the National Post in an article today. The view is based on a draft copy of a briefing released Sept. 10 and obtained by the National Post.
"The Liberal environmental platform adds there should be no risk to Canada's trading relationship with the United States because it is expected that the next U. S. president, whether Republican or Democratic, will pursue a policy that prices carbon.

However, the business advisory group warns the OECD that trade policy should not be used to "coerce" countries to adopt more stringent environmental policy. It adds an unintended consequence for countries that pursue carbon tariffs is that their business communities will become complacent and less productive -- leading to drops in their respective standards of living.

"The initial advantage of protection for domestic companies will over time likely turn into a competitive disadvantage as companies that are partially shielded from competition tend to be less innovative, less active in seeking new business opportunities and less eager to reduce excessive costs than companies that are exposed to effective international competition," the OECD warned."

US Coast Guard helo rescues during Ike, raw video

2008-09-14T09:31:00.001-04:00

First, pulling a couple of people from a pickup in Galveston that is nearly submerged in surf:

And a couple clinging to an set of storage tanks in Galveston adjacent to a seawall: