Posts
http://tinyurl.com/yhh7mj9
7 stories Obama doesn't want told John F. Harris
...Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds...
won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on....Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering... Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:
He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money...
Too much Leonard Nimoy... Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems....a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles... likened him to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.****His "intellectuality" is hardly up to Spock's standard and, when analyzed, is based on hidden academic records, no academic publications, and no achievements except that he "didn't take calculus."****... No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance.
That’s the Chicago Way... his West Wing is dominated by brass-knuckled pols....the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode.... Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t....
He’s a pushover...some of the same insider circles that are starting to view Obama as a bully are also starting to whisper that he’s a patsy....this unflattering storyline would take a more serious turn if Obama is seen as unable to deliver on his stern warnings in the escalating conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.
He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe... the safe ground has always been to be an American exceptionalist.... unwelcome for Obama if the perception took root that he is comfortable with a relative decline in U.S. influence or position in the world.... On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights...he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States,... will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.
President Pelosi...No figure ... has had more success in advancing his will than the speaker of the House, despite public approval ratings that hover in the range of Dick Cheney’s....Pelosi’s achievements are more impressive than Obama’s or come at his expense....Obama has allowed the speaker to become more nearly an equal —
He’s in love with the man in the mirror...A photo the other day caught him leaving the White House clutching a copy of GQ featuring himself....****Examples of his narcissism are myriad.****
Turning Point: Couric Rips Obama
... Couric said on “CBS Evening News” that Americans are growing “disenchanted” with Obama and are openly questioning his credibility. “Is the honeymoon over?” anchor Couric said...“Although President Obama has been in office less than a year, many Americans are growing disenchanted with his handling of the enormous problems he and the country are facing, from healthcare to unemployment to Afghanistan. “His poll numbers are sliding, and at least one poll shows his job approval rating has fallen, for the first time, below 50 percent.”...“The president is getting battered on everything from the economy to foreign policy. Some polls show Americans are increasingly questioning his credibility.”...while Obama talks about dealing with unemployment, which is over 10 percent and expected to rise, he has developed “no new ideas” for dealing with the problem....cited a poll showing that only 14 percent of Americans believe Obama’s claim that healthcare reform won’t add to the budget deficit, and only 7 percent believe that the stimulus has created any jobs at all....criticized the president for being “indecisive” on Afghanistan, and for returning from his recent Asian trip “with little to show for it.”...describing his trip as the “amateur hour,” as he did not line up agreements with foreign countries before venturing abroad
Monday, November 30, 2009
Incredible! Despite evidence it's all a fraud, "leaders" go on to Copenhagen as if the earth is flat.
http://tinyurl.com/ye547ef
Leaders say momentum building on climate change By BEN FOX, Associated Press PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – Leaders of the Commonwealth countries called Saturday for a legally binding international agreement on climate change and a global fund with billions of dollars to help poor countries meet its mandates.
The 53-nation meeting was the largest gathering of international leaders before next month's global climate summit in Copenhagen. The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.****Hurry, hurry! Before EVERYONE realizes it's crap.**** At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.****At least it's logical for the RECIPIENTS to push for this nonsense.**** "Climate change is the predominant global challenge," the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. "For some of us, it is an existential threat."
****Sure. Having committed their political futures to this fraud, they would be voted out of office if the truth were acknowledged before they retire.****The document called for a "legally binding" agreement by the world's nations. ****It's got to be "legally binding" ( as with a treaty signed by the President and ratified by 2/3 of the Senate in the U.S.) so it can't be reversed when people wise up.****
Leaders say momentum building on climate change By BEN FOX, Associated Press PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – Leaders of the Commonwealth countries called Saturday for a legally binding international agreement on climate change and a global fund with billions of dollars to help poor countries meet its mandates.
The 53-nation meeting was the largest gathering of international leaders before next month's global climate summit in Copenhagen. The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.****Hurry, hurry! Before EVERYONE realizes it's crap.**** At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.****At least it's logical for the RECIPIENTS to push for this nonsense.**** "Climate change is the predominant global challenge," the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. "For some of us, it is an existential threat."
****Sure. Having committed their political futures to this fraud, they would be voted out of office if the truth were acknowledged before they retire.****The document called for a "legally binding" agreement by the world's nations. ****It's got to be "legally binding" ( as with a treaty signed by the President and ratified by 2/3 of the Senate in the U.S.) so it can't be reversed when people wise up.****
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Evidence of fraud in the AGW debate goes back YEARS.
There has long been ample reason to disbelieve in the protestations of the AlGoreians since fraud was discovered years ago.Here's one discussion from August 2006 that should have lifted eyebrows enough to levitate the whole community.
http://tinyurl.com/yhsw9pc
"Fake But Accurate" Science?By Jonathan David Carson August 17, 2006
The American Association for the Advancement of Science claims for its journal Science 'the largest paid circulation of any peer—reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million.' Be that as it may, Science is the Dan Rather of science journalism. "Fake Data, but Could the Idea Still Be Right?" in the July 14 issue actually makes the following statement (emphases mine): European investigators last week confirmed that a pioneering oral cancer researcher in Norway had fabricated much of his work. The news left experts in his field with a pressing question: What should they believe now? Suppose his findings, which precisely identified people at high risk of the deadly disease, were accurate even though data were faked?
AAAS's fake—but—accurate standard of scientific rigor applies not merely to the science of such obscure and unimportant subjects as death, disease, and cancer, but extends even to the science of impending doom.
The Hockey Stick Graph
The so—called "hockey stick" graph appears in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization that dominates climate change discussion. The graph purported to show that world temperatures had remained stable for almost a thousand years, but took a sudden turn upward in the last century (the blade of the hockey stick). It was the product of research into "proxy" temperature records, such as tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs, by Michael Mann, the Joe Wilson of climate change. It can be seen here. Charles Martin took a critical look at it last March for The American Thinker.
The problem is that the world was almost certainly warmer than it is today during the "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Climate Optimum" of the 9th through 14th Centuries, which was followed by the "Little Ice Age" of the 15th through 19th Centuries, whose end is the occasion for today's global warming hysteria.
But Science magazine stuck to its argument. "Politicians Attack, But Evidence for Global Warming Doesn't Wilt" in the July 28 issue of Science not only employs the typical deceitful rhetoric of the scientific establishment, here presenting an argument among scientists as an argument between scientists and politicians, but also uses the fake—but—accurate excuse for the corrupt activities of its favorite scientists.
Mann's statistical methodology was soon exposed as flawed, if not downright fraudulent, by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, and he responded by refusing to make public the details of his analysis. This in turn angered Joe Barton and other members of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who objected to this arrogant refusal to allow oversight of federally financed research—either by the responsible congressional committees or by the scientific community....Since Mann's work—and the IPCC's inclusion of it in its report—are indefensible, Science resorted to the fake—but—accurate defense. Gerald North of Texas A&M, testifying on behalf of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, "concluded that the hockey stick was flawed but the sort of data on which it was based are still evidence of unprecedented warming."
The graph shows unprecedented warming; the graph is flawed in such a way as to produce a false appearance of unprecedented warming; nevertheless, there is unprecedented warming. "Finding flaws 'doesn't mean Mann et al.'s claims are wrong,' he told Barton."
I must admit that it is possible for science to be fake but accurate, just as it is possible for Israel to have committed war crimes despite the fact that the evidence for them is faked. It is indeed possible that, as the New York Times famously proclaimed, "Memos on Bush Are Fake But Accurate, Typist Says." The question, however, is...whether we have any reason to believe the reporting of Reuters or CBS News. It is possible that the hockey stick is accurate, but why should we take the word of Michael Mann, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the United Nations for it?
Michael Mann faked his statistics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published his fakery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science suggested that the fakery is beside the point, and the United Nations, well, readers of The American Thinker are quite acquainted with the United Nations.****Lying words in Science (!!)**** The article in Science would do Dan Rather proud. It says the North investigation found that the "only supportable conclusion from climate proxies" was that "the last few decades were likely the warmest of the millennium." However, here is what North actually testified. "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries."
Four centuries, not the millennium! North testified that recent decades were warmer than the Little Ice Age, not that they were warmer than the Global Warm Period! North also testified that he "finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium." North first said that in recent decades the world was likely warmer than in any other time in the last four hundred years. Then he said that in recent decades the Northern Hemisphere was likely warmer than in any other time in the last millennium. Science has converted these statements into the claim that in recent decades the world was likely warmer than in any time in the last millennium. So much for the Scientific Method.****Yoda must protest! This is NOT the Scientific Method and members of the community are not real scientists as shown by their behavior.****
But even the statement that the Northern Hemisphere was likely warmer than in any other time in the last millennium is subject to uncertainty according to North:
"However, the substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large—scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that 'the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium' because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales." As to Mann's scandalous statistical manipulations, North says gently, "We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues."Ah, the "choices" euphemism.
A perfectly reasonable letter to Michael Mann from Representative Barton, who is derisively characterized by Science as a politician, makes clear that in the morally inverted universe of the liberal scientific establishment, it is the scientists who play politics, forcing the politicians to uphold the ideals of science."As you know, sharing data and research results is a basic tenet of open scientific inquiry, providing a means to judge the reliability of scientific claims. The ability to replicate a study, as the National Research Council has noted, is typically the gold standard by which the reliability of claims is judged. Given the questions reported about data access surrounding these studies, we also seek to learn whether obligations concerning the sharing of information developed or disseminated with federal support have been appropriately met....According to The Wall Street Journal, you have declined to release the exact computer code you used to generate your results. (a) Is this correct? (b) What policy on sharing research and methods do you follow? (c) What is the source of that policy? (d) Provide this exact computer code used to generate your results." The subcommittee commissioned a study of the hockey stick headed by Edward Wegman of George Mason University, Chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, referred to dismissively as "Barton's choice" by the article in Science. The study reached the following conclusions:"In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 [papers by Mann] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b [papers by McIntyre and McKitrick] to be valid and compelling.
"In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus 'independent studies' may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.****That is, "peer review" by incestuous peers is potentially collusive, conspiratorial and can obscure truth.****
"Overall, our committee believes that Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."
The response of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science and its prestigious journal? It refers to the hockey stick as a "now—superceded curve."
"An ill—advised step in Mann's statistical analysis may have created the hockey stick, Wegman said."
Statistical choices, ill—advised steps, fake but accurate, what difference would it make, flawed doesn't mean wrong. The betrayal—of—science establishment has adopted the standards of Dan Rather and Reuters and should be equally trusted.
http://tinyurl.com/yhsw9pc
"Fake But Accurate" Science?By Jonathan David Carson August 17, 2006
The American Association for the Advancement of Science claims for its journal Science 'the largest paid circulation of any peer—reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million.' Be that as it may, Science is the Dan Rather of science journalism. "Fake Data, but Could the Idea Still Be Right?" in the July 14 issue actually makes the following statement (emphases mine): European investigators last week confirmed that a pioneering oral cancer researcher in Norway had fabricated much of his work. The news left experts in his field with a pressing question: What should they believe now? Suppose his findings, which precisely identified people at high risk of the deadly disease, were accurate even though data were faked?
AAAS's fake—but—accurate standard of scientific rigor applies not merely to the science of such obscure and unimportant subjects as death, disease, and cancer, but extends even to the science of impending doom.
The Hockey Stick Graph
The so—called "hockey stick" graph appears in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization that dominates climate change discussion. The graph purported to show that world temperatures had remained stable for almost a thousand years, but took a sudden turn upward in the last century (the blade of the hockey stick). It was the product of research into "proxy" temperature records, such as tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs, by Michael Mann, the Joe Wilson of climate change. It can be seen here. Charles Martin took a critical look at it last March for The American Thinker.
The problem is that the world was almost certainly warmer than it is today during the "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Climate Optimum" of the 9th through 14th Centuries, which was followed by the "Little Ice Age" of the 15th through 19th Centuries, whose end is the occasion for today's global warming hysteria.
But Science magazine stuck to its argument. "Politicians Attack, But Evidence for Global Warming Doesn't Wilt" in the July 28 issue of Science not only employs the typical deceitful rhetoric of the scientific establishment, here presenting an argument among scientists as an argument between scientists and politicians, but also uses the fake—but—accurate excuse for the corrupt activities of its favorite scientists.
Mann's statistical methodology was soon exposed as flawed, if not downright fraudulent, by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, and he responded by refusing to make public the details of his analysis. This in turn angered Joe Barton and other members of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who objected to this arrogant refusal to allow oversight of federally financed research—either by the responsible congressional committees or by the scientific community....Since Mann's work—and the IPCC's inclusion of it in its report—are indefensible, Science resorted to the fake—but—accurate defense. Gerald North of Texas A&M, testifying on behalf of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, "concluded that the hockey stick was flawed but the sort of data on which it was based are still evidence of unprecedented warming."
The graph shows unprecedented warming; the graph is flawed in such a way as to produce a false appearance of unprecedented warming; nevertheless, there is unprecedented warming. "Finding flaws 'doesn't mean Mann et al.'s claims are wrong,' he told Barton."
I must admit that it is possible for science to be fake but accurate, just as it is possible for Israel to have committed war crimes despite the fact that the evidence for them is faked. It is indeed possible that, as the New York Times famously proclaimed, "Memos on Bush Are Fake But Accurate, Typist Says." The question, however, is...whether we have any reason to believe the reporting of Reuters or CBS News. It is possible that the hockey stick is accurate, but why should we take the word of Michael Mann, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the United Nations for it?
Michael Mann faked his statistics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published his fakery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science suggested that the fakery is beside the point, and the United Nations, well, readers of The American Thinker are quite acquainted with the United Nations.****Lying words in Science (!!)**** The article in Science would do Dan Rather proud. It says the North investigation found that the "only supportable conclusion from climate proxies" was that "the last few decades were likely the warmest of the millennium." However, here is what North actually testified. "It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries."
Four centuries, not the millennium! North testified that recent decades were warmer than the Little Ice Age, not that they were warmer than the Global Warm Period! North also testified that he "finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium." North first said that in recent decades the world was likely warmer than in any other time in the last four hundred years. Then he said that in recent decades the Northern Hemisphere was likely warmer than in any other time in the last millennium. Science has converted these statements into the claim that in recent decades the world was likely warmer than in any time in the last millennium. So much for the Scientific Method.****Yoda must protest! This is NOT the Scientific Method and members of the community are not real scientists as shown by their behavior.****
But even the statement that the Northern Hemisphere was likely warmer than in any other time in the last millennium is subject to uncertainty according to North:
"However, the substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large—scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that 'the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium' because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales." As to Mann's scandalous statistical manipulations, North says gently, "We also question some of the statistical choices made in the original papers by Dr. Mann and his colleagues."Ah, the "choices" euphemism.
A perfectly reasonable letter to Michael Mann from Representative Barton, who is derisively characterized by Science as a politician, makes clear that in the morally inverted universe of the liberal scientific establishment, it is the scientists who play politics, forcing the politicians to uphold the ideals of science."As you know, sharing data and research results is a basic tenet of open scientific inquiry, providing a means to judge the reliability of scientific claims. The ability to replicate a study, as the National Research Council has noted, is typically the gold standard by which the reliability of claims is judged. Given the questions reported about data access surrounding these studies, we also seek to learn whether obligations concerning the sharing of information developed or disseminated with federal support have been appropriately met....According to The Wall Street Journal, you have declined to release the exact computer code you used to generate your results. (a) Is this correct? (b) What policy on sharing research and methods do you follow? (c) What is the source of that policy? (d) Provide this exact computer code used to generate your results." The subcommittee commissioned a study of the hockey stick headed by Edward Wegman of George Mason University, Chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, referred to dismissively as "Barton's choice" by the article in Science. The study reached the following conclusions:"In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 [papers by Mann] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b [papers by McIntyre and McKitrick] to be valid and compelling.
"In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus 'independent studies' may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.****That is, "peer review" by incestuous peers is potentially collusive, conspiratorial and can obscure truth.****
"Overall, our committee believes that Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."
The response of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science and its prestigious journal? It refers to the hockey stick as a "now—superceded curve."
"An ill—advised step in Mann's statistical analysis may have created the hockey stick, Wegman said."
Statistical choices, ill—advised steps, fake but accurate, what difference would it make, flawed doesn't mean wrong. The betrayal—of—science establishment has adopted the standards of Dan Rather and Reuters and should be equally trusted.
Let's hope Obama IS unique, and non-repeating.
http://tinyurl.com/yfo27zp
OBAMA IS UNIQUE By David M. ShribmanSOUTH BEND, Ind. -- For someone who looks and sounds far different from any previous American president, Barack Obama sure invites a lot of comparisons with his predecessors....He has (himself) drawn on Lincoln comparisons...Time magazine portrayed Obama on its cover as a modern-day Franklin Delano Roosevelt,...the conservative Weekly Standard's cover showed the president...contemplating a bust of Jimmy Carter. Not long ago The Wall Street Journal carried a lengthy piece comparing the (scant) foreign-policy experience of Obama and Harry S Truman... What is it about this president that invites so many allusions to other presidents?...Is it an extension of the way that so many voters last fall projected their own yearnings onto a relatively unknown figure, believing that their perspectives were his perspectives and their hopes were his hopes? Is it a lack of imagination, or flawed historical literacy, among commentators?...Indeed, there are flaws with all of these comparisons -- flaws that exaggerate the president's failings, or overstate the president's challenges, or warp our notions of past presidents. Let's examine the most prominent ones: The Lincoln comparison...The FDR comparison...The Truman comparison...came to office from the Senate and with little experience....he acquired strife in stereo --...Truman possessed less formal education and perhaps more native smarts than Obama,...The big difference between these two eras is the confidence factor. Though engaged in a bipolar struggle with the Soviet Union, the United States was strong and bold in the Truman era. Though the single superpower in the Obama years, the nation is tentative and wary today....The Carter comparison...At his Notre Dame commencement address in 1977, Carter spoke of an "inordinate fear of communism."
Obama...in history he will be regarded ... -- a unique president for a unique time. He may be considered uniquely weak, or uniquely masterly, or uniquely unsuccessful, or uniquely visionary. But critics and supporters alike should recognize this about Obama, or any other president: There's nobody quite like him.//
http://tinyurl.com/ykfmsmg
Barack Hussein Obama: I Told You So – Yes I Did By Howard Galganov Montreal, Quebec, Canada
When Obama won the Presidency with the help of the LEFTIST Media, Hollywood And Entertainment Liberals, Ethnic Socialists (ACORN), Stupid Non-Business Professionals and Bush Haters, I wrote: It won't take six months until the People figure this guy out and realize how horrible a mistake they've made. And when they come to that realization, the damage to the United States of America will be so great it will take a generation or more to repair - IF EVER. The IDIOTS who not only voted for the Messiah, but also worked [hard] to promote his Lordship, are now left holding the bag. Here are two things they will NEVER do: They will NEVER admit to making a Blunder out of all proportion by electing a snake-oil salesman with no POSITIVE social history or management experience of any kind. They will NEVER take responsibility for the curse they've imposed upon the immediate and long-term future of their country....In just six months, the Messiah's polls are showing the following: On Healthcare Reform - He's going under for the third time with polling well Under 50 percent, even within his own Party. Even though he might be able to Muscle a Healthcare Reform Bill by using Chicago BULLY tactics against his Fellow Democrats, it will just make things worse. On Cap and Trade (Cap and Tax) - The Fat-Lady is already singing. On the Stimulus Package (Tax and Spend) - His popularity is in FREE-FALL. On the TARP package he took and ran With from President Bush -It's all but Good-Night Irene. On the closing of GITMO and "HIS" war on what he no longer wants called the War On Terrorism - He's standing in quicksand...
He's personally invested in [totally insulting] America 's ONLY REAL Middle Eastern ally ( Israel ) in favor of Palestinian Despots and Murderers. He's traveling the world apologizing for the USA while lecturing others on how to do it right, when in fact and truth he has no experience at doing anything other than getting elected.
He went to the Moslem world in Egypt to declare that America IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION while he heaped praises on Islam, where he compared the "plight" of the Palestinians to the Holocaust.
The Russians think he's a putz, The French think he's rude.
The Germans want him to stop spending.
The Indians want him to mix his nose out of their environmental business.
The North Koreans think he's a joke, The Iranians won't acknowledge his calls.
And the British can't even come up with a comprehensive opinion of him.
As for the Chinese, he's too frightened to even glance their way. [After All, China now owns a large portion of the United States .]
Maybe if America 's first Emperor would stay home more, travel less, and work A little bit instead of being on television just about everyday...or stop running to "papered" Town Hall Meetings, perhaps he would have a little bit of time to DO the work of the nation....another prediction: OBAMA WILL PROBABLY NOT FINISH HIS 4-YEAR TERM, at least not in a Conventional way....MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, the Democrats will make Obama THEIR OWN LAME DUCK PRESIDENT. I don't believe the Democrats have nearly as much love for their country as they do for their own political fortunes. And with Obama, their fortunes are rapidly becoming toast...//
OBAMA IS UNIQUE By David M. ShribmanSOUTH BEND, Ind. -- For someone who looks and sounds far different from any previous American president, Barack Obama sure invites a lot of comparisons with his predecessors....He has (himself) drawn on Lincoln comparisons...Time magazine portrayed Obama on its cover as a modern-day Franklin Delano Roosevelt,...the conservative Weekly Standard's cover showed the president...contemplating a bust of Jimmy Carter. Not long ago The Wall Street Journal carried a lengthy piece comparing the (scant) foreign-policy experience of Obama and Harry S Truman... What is it about this president that invites so many allusions to other presidents?...Is it an extension of the way that so many voters last fall projected their own yearnings onto a relatively unknown figure, believing that their perspectives were his perspectives and their hopes were his hopes? Is it a lack of imagination, or flawed historical literacy, among commentators?...Indeed, there are flaws with all of these comparisons -- flaws that exaggerate the president's failings, or overstate the president's challenges, or warp our notions of past presidents. Let's examine the most prominent ones: The Lincoln comparison...The FDR comparison...The Truman comparison...came to office from the Senate and with little experience....he acquired strife in stereo --...Truman possessed less formal education and perhaps more native smarts than Obama,...The big difference between these two eras is the confidence factor. Though engaged in a bipolar struggle with the Soviet Union, the United States was strong and bold in the Truman era. Though the single superpower in the Obama years, the nation is tentative and wary today....The Carter comparison...At his Notre Dame commencement address in 1977, Carter spoke of an "inordinate fear of communism."
Obama...in history he will be regarded ... -- a unique president for a unique time. He may be considered uniquely weak, or uniquely masterly, or uniquely unsuccessful, or uniquely visionary. But critics and supporters alike should recognize this about Obama, or any other president: There's nobody quite like him.//
http://tinyurl.com/ykfmsmg
Barack Hussein Obama: I Told You So – Yes I Did By Howard Galganov Montreal, Quebec, Canada
When Obama won the Presidency with the help of the LEFTIST Media, Hollywood And Entertainment Liberals, Ethnic Socialists (ACORN), Stupid Non-Business Professionals and Bush Haters, I wrote: It won't take six months until the People figure this guy out and realize how horrible a mistake they've made. And when they come to that realization, the damage to the United States of America will be so great it will take a generation or more to repair - IF EVER. The IDIOTS who not only voted for the Messiah, but also worked [hard] to promote his Lordship, are now left holding the bag. Here are two things they will NEVER do: They will NEVER admit to making a Blunder out of all proportion by electing a snake-oil salesman with no POSITIVE social history or management experience of any kind. They will NEVER take responsibility for the curse they've imposed upon the immediate and long-term future of their country....In just six months, the Messiah's polls are showing the following: On Healthcare Reform - He's going under for the third time with polling well Under 50 percent, even within his own Party. Even though he might be able to Muscle a Healthcare Reform Bill by using Chicago BULLY tactics against his Fellow Democrats, it will just make things worse. On Cap and Trade (Cap and Tax) - The Fat-Lady is already singing. On the Stimulus Package (Tax and Spend) - His popularity is in FREE-FALL. On the TARP package he took and ran With from President Bush -It's all but Good-Night Irene. On the closing of GITMO and "HIS" war on what he no longer wants called the War On Terrorism - He's standing in quicksand...
He's personally invested in [totally insulting] America 's ONLY REAL Middle Eastern ally ( Israel ) in favor of Palestinian Despots and Murderers. He's traveling the world apologizing for the USA while lecturing others on how to do it right, when in fact and truth he has no experience at doing anything other than getting elected.
He went to the Moslem world in Egypt to declare that America IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION while he heaped praises on Islam, where he compared the "plight" of the Palestinians to the Holocaust.
The Russians think he's a putz, The French think he's rude.
The Germans want him to stop spending.
The Indians want him to mix his nose out of their environmental business.
The North Koreans think he's a joke, The Iranians won't acknowledge his calls.
And the British can't even come up with a comprehensive opinion of him.
As for the Chinese, he's too frightened to even glance their way. [After All, China now owns a large portion of the United States .]
Maybe if America 's first Emperor would stay home more, travel less, and work A little bit instead of being on television just about everyday...or stop running to "papered" Town Hall Meetings, perhaps he would have a little bit of time to DO the work of the nation....another prediction: OBAMA WILL PROBABLY NOT FINISH HIS 4-YEAR TERM, at least not in a Conventional way....MORE LIKELY THAN NOT, the Democrats will make Obama THEIR OWN LAME DUCK PRESIDENT. I don't believe the Democrats have nearly as much love for their country as they do for their own political fortunes. And with Obama, their fortunes are rapidly becoming toast...//
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Obama's reach far exceeds his grasp...of anything.
Obama's Strategy for Forging a Middle East Peace Is So Far Fruitless and Apparently Futile: Is It Time to Back Off?
The Obama administration's attempt to break the logjam in Middle East peace by taking a completely different tack than that of George W. Bush has no doubt been well-intentioned. However, it seems to have been based on some profoundly misguided assumptions and no small measure of naivete (on this we'll give the President the benefit of the doubt and spare him the accusation of arrogance).
We must admit that most U.S. presidents in recent times have initially believed they could achieve a Middle East peace where their predecessors had failed. But Obama was even more ambitious, having what Policy Watch commentator Robert Satloff calls an "inclination to engineer a 'big bang' in peacemaking that would transform the regional environment, launch high-level talks, and give a huge boost to the goal of reaching a final-status agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians."
Yet Obama's efforts to force quick reconciliation in the Israel-Palestinian conflict have consistently met with failure. Saudi Arabia, for example, has refused to consider even baby steps toward normalization of relations with Israel. Egyptian sentiment toward Israel hasn't thawed in the least.****This is hardly a model for future "agreements." The "peace treaty" has led to a very cold relationship, indeed,while in force and is likely to be abrogated by the Egyptians as soon as there is a change in leadership ( likely since the octogenarian Mubarek has no stable succession plan in the works and the Muslim Brotherhood lurks.)In return for this frigidity,and a porous border with Gaza, Israel also gets the anti-Semitic tropes of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Egyptian national TV while having given up the Sinai buffer, and the Sinai oil fields.****
Even more importantly, Obama's early and abrupt demand to a halt of any further housing developments on Israel's eastern reaches, even in east Jerusalem, was flatly rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has continued Israel's growth policy there that has been in place since 1967. Netanyahu did, however, eventually agree to restraining some future settlements, but this gesture was scoffed at by all Arab nations.
Similarly, the Palestinians have thwarted Obama. They have steadfastly refused any call to negotiations until all Israeli settlement activity is halted and (as they fantastically declared at their recent ruling Fatah party convention) they are given full control of all Jerusalem. Fatah did briefly cooperate with Obama's request to reject pursuit of the infamous Goldstone Report at the U.N., but President Mahmoud Abbas backtracked on that commitment within a few days.****Of course, Fatah has always backtracked on any commitments although not usually in English.****
Of course, the terrorist Palestinian group Hamas, with which Obama has had no communication and which rules Gaza, has only one goal: Destroy Israel and create an Islamist state in Palestine. (No negotiations necessary, thank you very much.)
Not only have Obama's expenditures of political credibility delivered no dividend in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but he hasn't made any progress in slowing down Iran's head-long drive to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, U.S. overtures toward "constructive engagement" with Iran have been rebuffed by the Islamic republic with disdain.
Yet among all of Obama's foreign policy challenges, the issue of Iran's nuclearization looms as the one with the greatest import and consequences for the U.S., for Israel and other Middle East nations, and for the entire world. Is this not where Obama should be focusing his energies? Is it not time for the administration to step back from the Israel-Palestinian conflict and focus on a pressing problem to which the world truly and desperately needs a solution? This week's FLAME Hotline features a bold proposal by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, with whom we rarely find ourselves in agreement. In it, Friedman suggests that the U.S. leave Israel and the Palestinians to their own devices for now---that Obama back off. While Friedman sounds almost disappointed and a bit cynical about this prospect---almost as if he doesn't want to believe in the wisdom of his suggestion---we think he's right on target. Certainly Israel is better off without pressure from the U.S. to make unrequited concessions, and the Palestinians clearly have demonstrated no motivation to conduct peace talks.
Call White House, Ask for Barack
By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency — not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit.
Indeed, as I ranted about this to a Jordanian friend the other day, he said it all reminded him of an old story.
"These two guys are watching a cowboy and Indian movie. And in the opening scene, an Indian is hiding behind a rock about to ambush the handsome cowboy," he explained. " 'I bet that Indian is going to kill that cowboy,' one guy says to the other. 'Never happen,' his friend answers. 'The cowboy is not going to be killed in the opening scene.' 'I'll bet you $10 he gets killed,' the guy says. 'I'll take that bet,' says his friend.
"Sure enough, a few minutes later, the cowboy is killed and the friend pays the $10. After the movie is over the guy says to his friend, 'Look, I have to give you back your $10. I'd actually seen this movie before. I knew what was going to happen.' His friend answers: 'No, you can keep the $10. I'd seen the movie, too. I just thought it would end differently this time.' "
This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our "Peace-Processing-Is-Us" sign and just go home.
Right now we want it more than the parties. They all have other priorities today. And by constantly injecting ourselves we've become their Novocain. We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening. "Look, the U.S. secretary of state is here. Look, she's standing by my side. Look, I'm doing something important! Take our picture. Put it on the news. We're on the verge of something really big and I am indispensable to it." This enables the respective leaders to continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price.
Let's just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: "My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It's just you and me and the problem we own."
Indeed, it's time for us to dust off James Baker's line: "When you're serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix."
The fact is, the only time America has been able to advance peace — post-Yom Kippur War, Camp David, post-Lebanon war, Madrid and Oslo — has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy, and we had statesmen — Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, George Shultz, James Baker and Bill Clinton — savvy enough to seize those moments.****In Carter's case, it should read "opportunistic enough" since his contribution came only after Sadat and Begin had commenced the process without any input from him.****
Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership "wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations" and Israel's leadership "wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal."
It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can't decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.
If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It's time to call a halt to this dysfunctional "peace process," which is only damaging the Obama team's credibility.
If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don't want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they'll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let's fight about something big.
The Obama administration's attempt to break the logjam in Middle East peace by taking a completely different tack than that of George W. Bush has no doubt been well-intentioned. However, it seems to have been based on some profoundly misguided assumptions and no small measure of naivete (on this we'll give the President the benefit of the doubt and spare him the accusation of arrogance).
We must admit that most U.S. presidents in recent times have initially believed they could achieve a Middle East peace where their predecessors had failed. But Obama was even more ambitious, having what Policy Watch commentator Robert Satloff calls an "inclination to engineer a 'big bang' in peacemaking that would transform the regional environment, launch high-level talks, and give a huge boost to the goal of reaching a final-status agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians."
Yet Obama's efforts to force quick reconciliation in the Israel-Palestinian conflict have consistently met with failure. Saudi Arabia, for example, has refused to consider even baby steps toward normalization of relations with Israel. Egyptian sentiment toward Israel hasn't thawed in the least.****This is hardly a model for future "agreements." The "peace treaty" has led to a very cold relationship, indeed,while in force and is likely to be abrogated by the Egyptians as soon as there is a change in leadership ( likely since the octogenarian Mubarek has no stable succession plan in the works and the Muslim Brotherhood lurks.)In return for this frigidity,and a porous border with Gaza, Israel also gets the anti-Semitic tropes of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on Egyptian national TV while having given up the Sinai buffer, and the Sinai oil fields.****
Even more importantly, Obama's early and abrupt demand to a halt of any further housing developments on Israel's eastern reaches, even in east Jerusalem, was flatly rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has continued Israel's growth policy there that has been in place since 1967. Netanyahu did, however, eventually agree to restraining some future settlements, but this gesture was scoffed at by all Arab nations.
Similarly, the Palestinians have thwarted Obama. They have steadfastly refused any call to negotiations until all Israeli settlement activity is halted and (as they fantastically declared at their recent ruling Fatah party convention) they are given full control of all Jerusalem. Fatah did briefly cooperate with Obama's request to reject pursuit of the infamous Goldstone Report at the U.N., but President Mahmoud Abbas backtracked on that commitment within a few days.****Of course, Fatah has always backtracked on any commitments although not usually in English.****
Of course, the terrorist Palestinian group Hamas, with which Obama has had no communication and which rules Gaza, has only one goal: Destroy Israel and create an Islamist state in Palestine. (No negotiations necessary, thank you very much.)
Not only have Obama's expenditures of political credibility delivered no dividend in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, but he hasn't made any progress in slowing down Iran's head-long drive to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, U.S. overtures toward "constructive engagement" with Iran have been rebuffed by the Islamic republic with disdain.
Yet among all of Obama's foreign policy challenges, the issue of Iran's nuclearization looms as the one with the greatest import and consequences for the U.S., for Israel and other Middle East nations, and for the entire world. Is this not where Obama should be focusing his energies? Is it not time for the administration to step back from the Israel-Palestinian conflict and focus on a pressing problem to which the world truly and desperately needs a solution? This week's FLAME Hotline features a bold proposal by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, with whom we rarely find ourselves in agreement. In it, Friedman suggests that the U.S. leave Israel and the Palestinians to their own devices for now---that Obama back off. While Friedman sounds almost disappointed and a bit cynical about this prospect---almost as if he doesn't want to believe in the wisdom of his suggestion---we think he's right on target. Certainly Israel is better off without pressure from the U.S. to make unrequited concessions, and the Palestinians clearly have demonstrated no motivation to conduct peace talks.
Call White House, Ask for Barack
By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times
The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency — not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit.
Indeed, as I ranted about this to a Jordanian friend the other day, he said it all reminded him of an old story.
"These two guys are watching a cowboy and Indian movie. And in the opening scene, an Indian is hiding behind a rock about to ambush the handsome cowboy," he explained. " 'I bet that Indian is going to kill that cowboy,' one guy says to the other. 'Never happen,' his friend answers. 'The cowboy is not going to be killed in the opening scene.' 'I'll bet you $10 he gets killed,' the guy says. 'I'll take that bet,' says his friend.
"Sure enough, a few minutes later, the cowboy is killed and the friend pays the $10. After the movie is over the guy says to his friend, 'Look, I have to give you back your $10. I'd actually seen this movie before. I knew what was going to happen.' His friend answers: 'No, you can keep the $10. I'd seen the movie, too. I just thought it would end differently this time.' "
This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our "Peace-Processing-Is-Us" sign and just go home.
Right now we want it more than the parties. They all have other priorities today. And by constantly injecting ourselves we've become their Novocain. We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening. "Look, the U.S. secretary of state is here. Look, she's standing by my side. Look, I'm doing something important! Take our picture. Put it on the news. We're on the verge of something really big and I am indispensable to it." This enables the respective leaders to continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price.
Let's just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: "My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It's just you and me and the problem we own."
Indeed, it's time for us to dust off James Baker's line: "When you're serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix."
The fact is, the only time America has been able to advance peace — post-Yom Kippur War, Camp David, post-Lebanon war, Madrid and Oslo — has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy, and we had statesmen — Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, George Shultz, James Baker and Bill Clinton — savvy enough to seize those moments.****In Carter's case, it should read "opportunistic enough" since his contribution came only after Sadat and Begin had commenced the process without any input from him.****
Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership "wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations" and Israel's leadership "wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal."
It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can't decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.
If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It's time to call a halt to this dysfunctional "peace process," which is only damaging the Obama team's credibility.
If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don't want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they'll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let's fight about something big.
"Don't bother me with facts. I BELIEVE!"
http://tinyurl.com/ya53g6j
Climate 'czar' says hacked e-mails don't change anything Stephen Dinan
Obama administration climate czar Carol Browner on Wednesday rejected claims that e-mails stolen from a British university show climate scientists trumped up global warming numbers, saying she considers the science settled....appear to show scientists saying they've smoothed over data that doesn't back up their claims of warming, and pondering how to freeze out scientists who disagree with them....fueled skeptics ahead of next month's major global warming meeting in Copenhagen, which is supposed to set the framework for a new global treaty to restrict greenhouse gas emissions....Obama will personally travel to Copenhagen to commit the U.S. to greenhouse gas reductions....called for an investigation into the e-mails, and says they confirm his long-held suspicion that climate claims are not supported by the actual data. Ms. Browner said the only people who still doubt global warming is happening and that humans are to blame are "a very small group of people who continue to say this isn't a real problem,..."
****Who is Carol Browner?****
Obama climate czar has socialist ties
Group sees ‘global governance’ as solution Stephen Dinan
“Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available. Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties...says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies. The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions. …”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-
Climate 'czar' says hacked e-mails don't change anything Stephen Dinan
Obama administration climate czar Carol Browner on Wednesday rejected claims that e-mails stolen from a British university show climate scientists trumped up global warming numbers, saying she considers the science settled....appear to show scientists saying they've smoothed over data that doesn't back up their claims of warming, and pondering how to freeze out scientists who disagree with them....fueled skeptics ahead of next month's major global warming meeting in Copenhagen, which is supposed to set the framework for a new global treaty to restrict greenhouse gas emissions....Obama will personally travel to Copenhagen to commit the U.S. to greenhouse gas reductions....called for an investigation into the e-mails, and says they confirm his long-held suspicion that climate claims are not supported by the actual data. Ms. Browner said the only people who still doubt global warming is happening and that humans are to blame are "a very small group of people who continue to say this isn't a real problem,..."
****Who is Carol Browner?****
Obama climate czar has socialist ties
Group sees ‘global governance’ as solution Stephen Dinan
“Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available. Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties...says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies. The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions. …”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-
Consensus-climate-"science" isn't science and isn't to be believed.
http://tinyurl.com/yhw54an
Rigging a Climate 'Consensus' About those emails and 'peer review.'
The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science...."My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well...."...We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report said "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" Mr. Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.****Mr. Mann can certainly voluntarily reveal his cache of emails to demonstrate this. Wanna bet?****...The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start...// ****Suppression of dissent endemic in the politically-correct Obama administration.****
http://tinyurl.com/o99n9c
Two EPA Staffers Question Science Behind Climate 'Endangerment' Proposal By ROBIN BRAVENDER of Greenwire
Two U.S. EPA career employees detailed their concerns about the science underpinning the agency's "endangerment" finding in a report released last night by a conservative think tank...blasted EPA for failing to release the document, accusing the Obama administration of suppressing dissenting views for political purposes. But EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency considered a broad range of opinions and maintained an open and transparent process in developing the proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Dissent on the proposal was expressed in a March 16 report (pdf) by Alan Carlin and John Davidson of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. They raise questions about data that EPA used to develop the proposed finding. The Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute posted the document on its Web site last night....The report's authors say EPA accepted findings reached by outside groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, "without a careful and critical examination of their own conclusions and documentation." The report says EPA used outdated science to support its finding. The authors cite studies that show -- among other things -- declining global temperatures and a changing scientific consensus on weather patterns. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject," Carlin and Davidson wrote. Carlin is a senior operations research analyst who has worked in EPA's economics office since 1983. He has a doctorate in economics and a bachelor's degree in physics. He specializes in cost-benefit analysis and the economics of global climate change control, EPA said. The co-author of the report, John Davidson, is an environmental scientist in the economics office who holds a doctorate in physics. Davidson also joined the program in 1983.
A string of e-mails (pdf) surfaced this week showing discussions between Carlin and Al McGartland, the director of the economics office. In exchanges between March 12 and March 17, Carlin asked McGartland to forward his comments to the office responsible for managing the endangerment finding's development. McGartland declined. "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote (E&E Daily, June 25)...."What's happening here is that the EPA is cooking the books," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), ranking member of the House Select Committee on Energy and Global Warming. "They have suppressed a study that completely blows apart the scientific underpinnings of the endangerment finding that the EPA administrator made on CO2, and this study has been suppressed because it does not fit the...administration's political objectives."...EPA's actions raise serious questions about the development of the endangerment proposal, "a finding that relates directly to the rush to vote" today on a sweeping climate and energy bill...EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said earlier this week that Carlin is not a scientist and was not part of the working group that dealt with the endangerment issue.****This person wouldn't know a "scientist" from a hole in the ground. The "Consensus" Climate "Scientists" are computer modelers and data manipulators with no recollection of how science is actually done, if ever they knew it.The "not part of the working group..." is the cult-like aspect of this whole issue. By the way, is Al Gore a "scientist?" He flunked out of theology school and out of law school; what kind of credential is that?**** "Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding," she said. "Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar."****"Allowed?" McGartland did whatever he could to suppress these opinions.****
http://tinyurl.com/18o37v
The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL JULY 3,2009
...one of President Barack Obama's first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science....took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over." Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin,...In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon...establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.
Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis...email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.
26 September 2009 Follow Up on Alan Carlin:...comments on how EPA had handled the case of Alan Carlin, a career bureaucrat opposed to action on climate change who complained about how his dissenting views were handled in the agency. ...Friday's NYT has a follow up article on the situation in which they report that EPA officials appeared to agree..."Dr. Carlin remains on the job and free to talk to the news media, and since the furor his comments on the finding have been posted on the E.P.A.’s Web site. Further, his supervisor, Al McGartland, also a career employee of the agency, received a reprimand in July for the way he had handled Dr. Carlin. . . Dr. McGartland was “counseled” by his superior “to assure that professional differences are expressed in appropriate and considered ways,” according to one of the newly released documents."
Rigging a Climate 'Consensus' About those emails and 'peer review.'
The climatologists at the center of the leaked email and document scandal have taken the line that it is all much ado about nothing. Yes, the wording of their messages was unfortunate, but they insist this in no way undermines the underlying science...."My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well...."...We don't doubt that Mr. Jones would have phrased his emails differently if he expected them to end up in the newspaper. He's right that it doesn't look good that his May 2008 email to Mr. Mann regarding the U.N.'s Fourth Assessment Report said "Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?" Mr. Mann says he didn't delete any such emails, but the point is that Mr. Jones wanted them hidden.****Mr. Mann can certainly voluntarily reveal his cache of emails to demonstrate this. Wanna bet?****...The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced. The impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start...// ****Suppression of dissent endemic in the politically-correct Obama administration.****
http://tinyurl.com/o99n9c
Two EPA Staffers Question Science Behind Climate 'Endangerment' Proposal By ROBIN BRAVENDER of Greenwire
Two U.S. EPA career employees detailed their concerns about the science underpinning the agency's "endangerment" finding in a report released last night by a conservative think tank...blasted EPA for failing to release the document, accusing the Obama administration of suppressing dissenting views for political purposes. But EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says the agency considered a broad range of opinions and maintained an open and transparent process in developing the proposed finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Dissent on the proposal was expressed in a March 16 report (pdf) by Alan Carlin and John Davidson of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. They raise questions about data that EPA used to develop the proposed finding. The Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute posted the document on its Web site last night....The report's authors say EPA accepted findings reached by outside groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, "without a careful and critical examination of their own conclusions and documentation." The report says EPA used outdated science to support its finding. The authors cite studies that show -- among other things -- declining global temperatures and a changing scientific consensus on weather patterns. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject," Carlin and Davidson wrote. Carlin is a senior operations research analyst who has worked in EPA's economics office since 1983. He has a doctorate in economics and a bachelor's degree in physics. He specializes in cost-benefit analysis and the economics of global climate change control, EPA said. The co-author of the report, John Davidson, is an environmental scientist in the economics office who holds a doctorate in physics. Davidson also joined the program in 1983.
A string of e-mails (pdf) surfaced this week showing discussions between Carlin and Al McGartland, the director of the economics office. In exchanges between March 12 and March 17, Carlin asked McGartland to forward his comments to the office responsible for managing the endangerment finding's development. McGartland declined. "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote (E&E Daily, June 25)...."What's happening here is that the EPA is cooking the books," said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), ranking member of the House Select Committee on Energy and Global Warming. "They have suppressed a study that completely blows apart the scientific underpinnings of the endangerment finding that the EPA administrator made on CO2, and this study has been suppressed because it does not fit the...administration's political objectives."...EPA's actions raise serious questions about the development of the endangerment proposal, "a finding that relates directly to the rush to vote" today on a sweeping climate and energy bill...EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said earlier this week that Carlin is not a scientist and was not part of the working group that dealt with the endangerment issue.****This person wouldn't know a "scientist" from a hole in the ground. The "Consensus" Climate "Scientists" are computer modelers and data manipulators with no recollection of how science is actually done, if ever they knew it.The "not part of the working group..." is the cult-like aspect of this whole issue. By the way, is Al Gore a "scientist?" He flunked out of theology school and out of law school; what kind of credential is that?**** "Nevertheless, several of the opinions and ideas proposed by this individual were submitted to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding," she said. "Additionally, his manager allowed his general views on the subject of climate change to be heard and considered inside and outside the EPA and presented at conferences and at an agency seminar."****"Allowed?" McGartland did whatever he could to suppress these opinions.****
http://tinyurl.com/18o37v
The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic The professional penalty for offering a contrary view to elites like Al Gore is a smear campaign. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL JULY 3,2009
...one of President Barack Obama's first acts was a memo to agencies demanding new transparency in government, and science....took another shot at his predecessors in April, vowing that "the days of science taking a backseat to ideology are over." Except, that is, when it comes to Mr. Carlin,...In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon...establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.
Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis...email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision...Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.
26 September 2009 Follow Up on Alan Carlin:...comments on how EPA had handled the case of Alan Carlin, a career bureaucrat opposed to action on climate change who complained about how his dissenting views were handled in the agency. ...Friday's NYT has a follow up article on the situation in which they report that EPA officials appeared to agree..."Dr. Carlin remains on the job and free to talk to the news media, and since the furor his comments on the finding have been posted on the E.P.A.’s Web site. Further, his supervisor, Al McGartland, also a career employee of the agency, received a reprimand in July for the way he had handled Dr. Carlin. . . Dr. McGartland was “counseled” by his superior “to assure that professional differences are expressed in appropriate and considered ways,” according to one of the newly released documents."
Friday, November 27, 2009
Science fraud ignored by MSM and head of IPCC.
http://tinyurl.com/yhsldvd
MSM Goes to Ridiculous Lengths to Avoid Climategate by Ignoring IPCC Chairman Response to Scandal By P.J. Gladnick Big news on the Climategate front. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, has issued a major response to the Climategate scandal. As a result a big rift has developed between the IPCC and a delegate to that organization on the topic of Climategate. ...Well, guess how many MSM reporters have covered this story? The answer as of this moment is one. ONE!...Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environmental reporter, who covered this story in his Dot Earth blog. Revkin...will report on breaking climate stories even if contradicts the prevailing MSM agenda on this topic..."Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has distributed a statement on the unauthorized disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents involving a variety of contributors to the panel’s reports. One e-mail message from July 8, 2004, particularly related to the workings of the climate panel, has been the subject of much discussion. In it, Phil Jones, the now-embattled head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked files, discusses several papers that challenge the status quo with Michael Mann, a longtime colleague from Pennsylvania State University. This is the take-home line, now reverberating around skeptics’ Web sites: I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Here’s Dr. Pachauri’s statement...: It is unfortunate that an illegal act ...has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency. IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. The entire report writing process of the I.P.C.C. is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. ...There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed....However, if it weren't newsworthy enough that the IPCC chairman has responded to the Climategate scandal at length, it turns out that a delegate of that organization strongly disagrees with the chairman's assessment of the scandal. Here is the reaction to the IPCC chairman's response to Climategate from Saudi Arabia's liaison to that organization, Mohammad Al-Sabban. Note that he does not use vague diplomatic language in his very direct reaction to the position of IPCC chairman:
"A lot of damage has already been done to this international scientific body and I do not think the attached response by Dr. Pachauri was convincing enough to remove such a damage."...The IPCC chairman gives a lengthy response to the Climategate and a liaison to that organization claims a lot of damage has been caused by that scandal and is unsatisfied with the excuses provided. And yet the MSM still does not think this worthy of coverage.
...It is the scandal that dare not speak its name as far as the MSM is concerned. ...if Climategate explodes as an issue at the Copenhagen summit which President Obama will be attending. Then the MSM, as in the case of the ACORN and Van Jones scandals, will have to go through the embarrassing task of explaining to its readers and viewers what Climategate is all about even though most folks familiar with the Web would have already known all about it...no thanks to their ridiculous non-reporting of this major event. Oh, and a big round of applause to Andrew Revkin for reporting on all aspects of climate news...including Climategate.
MSM Goes to Ridiculous Lengths to Avoid Climategate by Ignoring IPCC Chairman Response to Scandal By P.J. Gladnick Big news on the Climategate front. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, has issued a major response to the Climategate scandal. As a result a big rift has developed between the IPCC and a delegate to that organization on the topic of Climategate. ...Well, guess how many MSM reporters have covered this story? The answer as of this moment is one. ONE!...Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environmental reporter, who covered this story in his Dot Earth blog. Revkin...will report on breaking climate stories even if contradicts the prevailing MSM agenda on this topic..."Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has distributed a statement on the unauthorized disclosure of thousands of e-mail messages and documents involving a variety of contributors to the panel’s reports. One e-mail message from July 8, 2004, particularly related to the workings of the climate panel, has been the subject of much discussion. In it, Phil Jones, the now-embattled head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked files, discusses several papers that challenge the status quo with Michael Mann, a longtime colleague from Pennsylvania State University. This is the take-home line, now reverberating around skeptics’ Web sites: I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Here’s Dr. Pachauri’s statement...: It is unfortunate that an illegal act ...has led to several questions and concerns. It is important for me to clarify that the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency. IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out. The entire report writing process of the I.P.C.C. is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. ...There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed....However, if it weren't newsworthy enough that the IPCC chairman has responded to the Climategate scandal at length, it turns out that a delegate of that organization strongly disagrees with the chairman's assessment of the scandal. Here is the reaction to the IPCC chairman's response to Climategate from Saudi Arabia's liaison to that organization, Mohammad Al-Sabban. Note that he does not use vague diplomatic language in his very direct reaction to the position of IPCC chairman:
"A lot of damage has already been done to this international scientific body and I do not think the attached response by Dr. Pachauri was convincing enough to remove such a damage."...The IPCC chairman gives a lengthy response to the Climategate and a liaison to that organization claims a lot of damage has been caused by that scandal and is unsatisfied with the excuses provided. And yet the MSM still does not think this worthy of coverage.
...It is the scandal that dare not speak its name as far as the MSM is concerned. ...if Climategate explodes as an issue at the Copenhagen summit which President Obama will be attending. Then the MSM, as in the case of the ACORN and Van Jones scandals, will have to go through the embarrassing task of explaining to its readers and viewers what Climategate is all about even though most folks familiar with the Web would have already known all about it...no thanks to their ridiculous non-reporting of this major event. Oh, and a big round of applause to Andrew Revkin for reporting on all aspects of climate news...including Climategate.
Science Czar Holdren involved in Climategate
http://tinyurl.com/ygd4wm4
White House Science Czar Involved in Climategate By: L.D. Breen
You haven’t heard it from America’s mainstream media yet – even Fox News hasn’t covered it – but the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John P. Holdren, is a key player in the Climategate e-mails flap, which is shaping up as the biggest scandal in the history of modern science. Holdren is an intractable global warming activist with no time for climate change skepticism. In a New York Times article, he contended that such questioning “has delayed – and continues to delay – the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge.” He has also become something of a celebrity... But the Canada Free Press this week revealed that the former Harvard professor and Al Gore global warming adviser features prominently in the thousands of e-mails and other files made public after the hacking last week of a computer server used by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
****So far...**** The most embarrassing item for the Obama Administration may be a 2003 exchange between Holdren and TCSDaily.com editor-in-chief Nick Schulz. Schulz challenged Holdren on whether downplaying the significance of the Medieval Warm Period required “what lawyers call the burden of proof.”Holdren’s retort contained a remarkable assertion coming from a scientist: “In practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing – it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.” Canada Free Press columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball says of the correspondence with Schulz that Holdren’s “entire defense and position devolves to a political position.” The CRU documents also find Holdren disparaging solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, contrarians regarding surface temperatures over the past millennium, who were colleagues of Holdren at Harvard, and Ball wonders if Holdren may have intimidated the two scientists before they “suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray,” as Ball describes it....Dr. Holdren has a history of alarmingly extremist views. He co-authored a 1977 book, “Ecoscience: Population Resources, Environment,” advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China’s one-child policy, and a “planetary regime” to be policed by the United Nations. Not long before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion-on-demand throughout America, Holdren co-authored “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” which seems to argue that even years after birth a baby is not yet a human being. ****Should one remain "abortionable" up to age 18?****
White House Science Czar Involved in Climategate By: L.D. Breen
You haven’t heard it from America’s mainstream media yet – even Fox News hasn’t covered it – but the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John P. Holdren, is a key player in the Climategate e-mails flap, which is shaping up as the biggest scandal in the history of modern science. Holdren is an intractable global warming activist with no time for climate change skepticism. In a New York Times article, he contended that such questioning “has delayed – and continues to delay – the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge.” He has also become something of a celebrity... But the Canada Free Press this week revealed that the former Harvard professor and Al Gore global warming adviser features prominently in the thousands of e-mails and other files made public after the hacking last week of a computer server used by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
****So far...**** The most embarrassing item for the Obama Administration may be a 2003 exchange between Holdren and TCSDaily.com editor-in-chief Nick Schulz. Schulz challenged Holdren on whether downplaying the significance of the Medieval Warm Period required “what lawyers call the burden of proof.”Holdren’s retort contained a remarkable assertion coming from a scientist: “In practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing – it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.” Canada Free Press columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball says of the correspondence with Schulz that Holdren’s “entire defense and position devolves to a political position.” The CRU documents also find Holdren disparaging solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, contrarians regarding surface temperatures over the past millennium, who were colleagues of Holdren at Harvard, and Ball wonders if Holdren may have intimidated the two scientists before they “suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray,” as Ball describes it....Dr. Holdren has a history of alarmingly extremist views. He co-authored a 1977 book, “Ecoscience: Population Resources, Environment,” advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China’s one-child policy, and a “planetary regime” to be policed by the United Nations. Not long before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion-on-demand throughout America, Holdren co-authored “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” which seems to argue that even years after birth a baby is not yet a human being. ****Should one remain "abortionable" up to age 18?****
Israel's paying too high a price for Shalit: encourages more kidnappings.
Eitam: Shalit Deal Endangers the State of Israel by Avi Yellin
(IsraelNN.com) Former Member of Knesset Effie Eitam told Israel National News that the deal currently being formulated to release terrorists in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit is a serious threat to every citizen of Israel and will hamper the state’s ability to continue fighting terrorism. This, according to Eitam, is exactly what Hamas wants. “Hamas does not want the prisoner. They want the State of Israel’s defense and legal systems on their knees.” The reserves general added that the Shalit family is expressing the most natural and understandable position on the exchange but that the state cannot be managed by emotional parents. “The government has an obligation to factor in considerations of deterrence and sovereignty. If this deal will be carried out, it would seriously weaken the country’s foundations and will endanger every citizen by encouraging future abductions. We need the courage to place all options on the table.”//
Gaza charity offers bounty on kidnapping Israeli soldiers=
The Waad charity from Gaza is headed by Hamas’ Interior Minister. Waad offers $1.4 million to any Arab citizen of Israel who kidnaps an Israeli soldier. This is the first time that money was offered for that (Wall St. J., 11/19, A16). The constant Radical Muslim abuse of charities for warfare and criminality is just one of several underhanded ways of Radical Muslims. The world’s media and the Left has not caught on to that. It still makes Israel and the U.S. scapegoats for false allegations by Radical Muslims.****CAIR keeps protesting limitations on contributions to any Muslim charity even though some purely fund terrorism and others fund both legitimate activities AND terrorism.****
Lt-Col (res) Eckstein Offers 9 Rules for Abductions by Gil Ronen
...Lt-Col (res.) Gershon Eckstein offered nine rules for handling abductions – like that of Sgt. Gilad Shalit and preceding ordeals – and for reducing the effectiveness of subsequent blackmail and psychological warfare by terrorists:
1. As a rule, live terrorists will not be freed in return for soldiers' bodies. Otherwise there is a risk that the lives of abducted soldiers will be deemed expendable.**One would have thought this simple common sense but it has happened.**
2. The price tag will be one or two prisoners in exchange for an IDF soldier. It is possible to let the terrorists choose whom they want freed. No more than that.****And when the most heinous terrorists are chosen, that should be denied.****
3. No negotiations will begin before the Red Cross or another authorized body visits the abducted Israeli and provides reliable information of his well being and health.
4. Terrorists with blood on their hands who pose a security risk upon their release will not be freed.
5. The expression “free him at any cost” will be deleted from the national lexicon so as not to sacrifice Israel's strategic and national interests.
6. Despite the fashion regarding “the public's right to know,” a law shall be passed or an ordinance written that will forbid media reports on prisoner swaps, especially during negotiations, and maintain silence on the subject until the deal is finalized. All this is in order to achieve optimal results.
7. Decision makers including the prime minister, ministers and officials dealing directly in the negotiations will be forbidden from meeting the abducted men's families and their representatives until the end of the affair, so as not to place any pressure on the decision makers. Only a person who is not a direct part of the negotiations, who will be appointed by the government, will maintain contact with the families.
8. If a vote is held in the government on approving a swap, the vote should be a secret ballot so that ministers can vote according to their consciences without being influenced by external pressure.
9. The families of abducted individuals should not be a party to the negotiations, and they should not involve the media or engage in lobbying decision makers to persuade them to approve the deal. There should be an agreed code that makes it possible to maintain a distance between the decision makers and the families. With all due empathy for their plight, there should be ground rules regarding contact with them.****It's hard to see how the families' right to a public forum can be denied.****
...Legislation in this spirit will rein in the public discourse around abductions and reduce the pressure on the government. It may even gradually reduce the enemy's motivation to make use of the weapon of abductions.
(IsraelNN.com) Former Member of Knesset Effie Eitam told Israel National News that the deal currently being formulated to release terrorists in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit is a serious threat to every citizen of Israel and will hamper the state’s ability to continue fighting terrorism. This, according to Eitam, is exactly what Hamas wants. “Hamas does not want the prisoner. They want the State of Israel’s defense and legal systems on their knees.” The reserves general added that the Shalit family is expressing the most natural and understandable position on the exchange but that the state cannot be managed by emotional parents. “The government has an obligation to factor in considerations of deterrence and sovereignty. If this deal will be carried out, it would seriously weaken the country’s foundations and will endanger every citizen by encouraging future abductions. We need the courage to place all options on the table.”//
Gaza charity offers bounty on kidnapping Israeli soldiers=
The Waad charity from Gaza is headed by Hamas’ Interior Minister. Waad offers $1.4 million to any Arab citizen of Israel who kidnaps an Israeli soldier. This is the first time that money was offered for that (Wall St. J., 11/19, A16). The constant Radical Muslim abuse of charities for warfare and criminality is just one of several underhanded ways of Radical Muslims. The world’s media and the Left has not caught on to that. It still makes Israel and the U.S. scapegoats for false allegations by Radical Muslims.****CAIR keeps protesting limitations on contributions to any Muslim charity even though some purely fund terrorism and others fund both legitimate activities AND terrorism.****
Lt-Col (res) Eckstein Offers 9 Rules for Abductions by Gil Ronen
...Lt-Col (res.) Gershon Eckstein offered nine rules for handling abductions – like that of Sgt. Gilad Shalit and preceding ordeals – and for reducing the effectiveness of subsequent blackmail and psychological warfare by terrorists:
1. As a rule, live terrorists will not be freed in return for soldiers' bodies. Otherwise there is a risk that the lives of abducted soldiers will be deemed expendable.**One would have thought this simple common sense but it has happened.**
2. The price tag will be one or two prisoners in exchange for an IDF soldier. It is possible to let the terrorists choose whom they want freed. No more than that.****And when the most heinous terrorists are chosen, that should be denied.****
3. No negotiations will begin before the Red Cross or another authorized body visits the abducted Israeli and provides reliable information of his well being and health.
4. Terrorists with blood on their hands who pose a security risk upon their release will not be freed.
5. The expression “free him at any cost” will be deleted from the national lexicon so as not to sacrifice Israel's strategic and national interests.
6. Despite the fashion regarding “the public's right to know,” a law shall be passed or an ordinance written that will forbid media reports on prisoner swaps, especially during negotiations, and maintain silence on the subject until the deal is finalized. All this is in order to achieve optimal results.
7. Decision makers including the prime minister, ministers and officials dealing directly in the negotiations will be forbidden from meeting the abducted men's families and their representatives until the end of the affair, so as not to place any pressure on the decision makers. Only a person who is not a direct part of the negotiations, who will be appointed by the government, will maintain contact with the families.
8. If a vote is held in the government on approving a swap, the vote should be a secret ballot so that ministers can vote according to their consciences without being influenced by external pressure.
9. The families of abducted individuals should not be a party to the negotiations, and they should not involve the media or engage in lobbying decision makers to persuade them to approve the deal. There should be an agreed code that makes it possible to maintain a distance between the decision makers and the families. With all due empathy for their plight, there should be ground rules regarding contact with them.****It's hard to see how the families' right to a public forum can be denied.****
...Legislation in this spirit will rein in the public discourse around abductions and reduce the pressure on the government. It may even gradually reduce the enemy's motivation to make use of the weapon of abductions.
Climategate revelations go beyond emails
http://tinyurl.com/yk89nwv
Climategate Computer Codes Are the Real Story The "Read Me" file of a harried programmer who couldn't replicate the scientists' warming results.by Charlie Martin
...It’s in such a mess that they can’t replicate their own results...But put this in the context of what else we know from the CRU data dump:
1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else
2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.
3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things.
...They had the big research organizations, the big grants — and when they found themselves challenged, they discovered they’d built their conclusions on fine beach sand. But the tide was coming in.//
http://tinyurl.com/yzsaq8y
Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud A decorated scientist and author of the most influential book debunking global warming joins Viscount Monckton in calling the CRU behavior criminal. by Ian Plimer
In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant...Something is seriously wrong. To argue that humans change climate requires abandoning all we know about history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and solar physics. This is exactly what has been done. The answer to this enigma was revealed last week. It is fraud.Files...show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination.Data were manipulated to show that the Medieval Warming didn’t occur, and that we are not in a period of cooling. Furthermore, the warming of the 20th century was artificially inflated. This behavior is that of criminals and all the data from the UK Hadley Centre and the US GISS must now be rejected...The same crooks control the IPCC and the fraudulent data in IPCC reports. The same crooks meet in Copenhagen next week and want 0.7% of the Western world’s GDP to pass through an unelected UN government, and then on to sticky fingers in the developing world. You should be angry. Very angry.//
http://tinyurl.com/yzoskdk
Climategate and the “T”-word...the “t”-word. ...It’s – ... transparency....politicians (and mega-bureaucrats like Kofi)...never delivered,...But scientists, scientists, they are...the honest ones, the ones who, unlike cheap pols, work for eternity, like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein. Anyway, they were, until Climategate came along. Here from the Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog is a breathtakingly short and simple illustration of the values of...the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, from whence all these emails and documents concerning global warming have been lifted.
...Oops. Forget the “T”-word. How about the “P”-word (prevarication)? Or the “BFL” word (big fat liar)?...What’s clear, however, is these scientists at CRU don’t know (or aren’t so sure) either. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been so guarded, so deceptive, with their data (what remains of it) for so long. They would have been transparent and shared the data with the skeptics if they were so sure they were right. It’s the scientific thing to do, as we all learned in grammar school, if you’re serious about the truth....our President and his crew, not to mention our friends at European Union and the UN, are going along as if this download never happened. It’s full steam ahead to Copenhagen:...will present a target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions at next month’s climate conference in Copenhagen, Obama administration officials said Monday....saying their delays were hindering global efforts to curb climate change....What we don’t agree on, now more than ever, is the role of AWG, which is increasingly mysterious the more you read these documents. As Charlie Martin shows us, it’s not just the emails, it’s the data itself that is corrupt. We don’t know what we know. But the world is poised to spend untold billions or trillions on that basis..//
http://tinyurl.com/yex82dm
Vincent Gray on Climategate: ‘There Was Proof of Fraud All Along’ IPCC Expert Reviewer Gray — whose 1,898 comments critical of the 2007 report were ignored — recently found that proof of the fraud was public for years. by Vincent Gray
... In 2007, the following paper exposed the whole business: D. Holland. Energy and Environment, 18 951-983 “Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process, the “Hockey Stick” Affair and its Implications”. The author Holland obtained the original Chinese data, and found the claim that the data referred to a continuous series was unfounded. He accused Wang of fraud — and it is interesting to read that Tom Wigley (of the CRU emails) agrees with him. Wigley fails to say, however, that his colleagues Jones and Karl are guilty of much worse than Wang — as they continued to use their fraudulent paper to boost their constant and sometimes daily assertion that recent global temperatures are unprecedented. It is also interesting now to read the contortions the CRU email clique went through to frustrate the inquiries of Holland...
Climategate Computer Codes Are the Real Story The "Read Me" file of a harried programmer who couldn't replicate the scientists' warming results.by Charlie Martin
...It’s in such a mess that they can’t replicate their own results...But put this in the context of what else we know from the CRU data dump:
1. They didn’t want to release their data or code, and they particularly weren’t interested in releasing any intermediate steps that would help someone else
2. They clearly have some history of massaging the data — hell, practically water-boarding the data — to get it to fit their other results. Results they can no longer even replicate on their own systems.
3. They had successfully managed to restrict peer review to what we might call the “RealClimate clique” — the small group of true believers they knew could be trusted to say the right things.
...They had the big research organizations, the big grants — and when they found themselves challenged, they discovered they’d built their conclusions on fine beach sand. But the tide was coming in.//
http://tinyurl.com/yzsaq8y
Climategate: Alarmism Is Underpinned by Fraud A decorated scientist and author of the most influential book debunking global warming joins Viscount Monckton in calling the CRU behavior criminal. by Ian Plimer
In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant...Something is seriously wrong. To argue that humans change climate requires abandoning all we know about history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and solar physics. This is exactly what has been done. The answer to this enigma was revealed last week. It is fraud.Files...show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination.Data were manipulated to show that the Medieval Warming didn’t occur, and that we are not in a period of cooling. Furthermore, the warming of the 20th century was artificially inflated. This behavior is that of criminals and all the data from the UK Hadley Centre and the US GISS must now be rejected...The same crooks control the IPCC and the fraudulent data in IPCC reports. The same crooks meet in Copenhagen next week and want 0.7% of the Western world’s GDP to pass through an unelected UN government, and then on to sticky fingers in the developing world. You should be angry. Very angry.//
http://tinyurl.com/yzoskdk
Climategate and the “T”-word...the “t”-word. ...It’s – ... transparency....politicians (and mega-bureaucrats like Kofi)...never delivered,...But scientists, scientists, they are...the honest ones, the ones who, unlike cheap pols, work for eternity, like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein. Anyway, they were, until Climategate came along. Here from the Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog is a breathtakingly short and simple illustration of the values of...the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, from whence all these emails and documents concerning global warming have been lifted.
...Oops. Forget the “T”-word. How about the “P”-word (prevarication)? Or the “BFL” word (big fat liar)?...What’s clear, however, is these scientists at CRU don’t know (or aren’t so sure) either. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been so guarded, so deceptive, with their data (what remains of it) for so long. They would have been transparent and shared the data with the skeptics if they were so sure they were right. It’s the scientific thing to do, as we all learned in grammar school, if you’re serious about the truth....our President and his crew, not to mention our friends at European Union and the UN, are going along as if this download never happened. It’s full steam ahead to Copenhagen:...will present a target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions at next month’s climate conference in Copenhagen, Obama administration officials said Monday....saying their delays were hindering global efforts to curb climate change....What we don’t agree on, now more than ever, is the role of AWG, which is increasingly mysterious the more you read these documents. As Charlie Martin shows us, it’s not just the emails, it’s the data itself that is corrupt. We don’t know what we know. But the world is poised to spend untold billions or trillions on that basis..//
http://tinyurl.com/yex82dm
Vincent Gray on Climategate: ‘There Was Proof of Fraud All Along’ IPCC Expert Reviewer Gray — whose 1,898 comments critical of the 2007 report were ignored — recently found that proof of the fraud was public for years. by Vincent Gray
... In 2007, the following paper exposed the whole business: D. Holland. Energy and Environment, 18 951-983 “Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process, the “Hockey Stick” Affair and its Implications”. The author Holland obtained the original Chinese data, and found the claim that the data referred to a continuous series was unfounded. He accused Wang of fraud — and it is interesting to read that Tom Wigley (of the CRU emails) agrees with him. Wigley fails to say, however, that his colleagues Jones and Karl are guilty of much worse than Wang — as they continued to use their fraudulent paper to boost their constant and sometimes daily assertion that recent global temperatures are unprecedented. It is also interesting now to read the contortions the CRU email clique went through to frustrate the inquiries of Holland...
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Islam's war on the West; not the West's war on Islam.
http://tinyurl.com/yjdqvzg
Hasan and the Big Lie: U.S. "War" Against IslamIPT_News
When an American-born radical Islamist cleric chose to praise last week's Fort Hood shooting spree by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, part of the rationale was that no Muslim could faithfully serve the U.S. armed forces. To Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, that's because "The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam." A 2005 Canadian study of radicalism concluded that this theme is a potent tool in recruiting Muslims and turning them into violent extremists...
****And yet it is indisputable that at least a subset, "Radical Islam", consisting of Al Qaeda Sunni jihadists and Shia jihadists, has conducted and is conducting a war on the West. While the West might have been IN Saudia Arabia BEFORE 9/11, it was to protect the Saudis from Saddam Hussein. Whatever the historical causality (even granting Western slights led to Islamic terrorism ), there is no doubt about the present situation. And yet, Obama says "America is not and never weill be at war with Islam" while the Islamists claim that a war on terror IS a war on Islam. Thus, Obama doesn't acknowledge a war on terror ( lest it be taken as a war on Islam, even Radical Islam ) and professes that jihadist violence is merely a criminal act. That is, despite protestation to the contrary, Obama does NOT believe that the West is at war, but only responding to criminal acts. We are starting to see the erosion of American defenses against enemies ( what can be worse than not even acknowledging that we ARE at war? )****
http://tinyurl.com/yznjqen
Goldberg: Holder's 9/11 Trials a 'Travesty' By: Dave Eberhart...sending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts to a civilian trial in New York is a travesty on many levels...I think the fundamental problem with it -- from which everything else flows -- is that there is no way to get around the fact that it is a decision that you would make -- if you didn't think we were at war...a problem that the Obama Administration is all too conscious of...see how self conscious and defensive the administration is about this, where Eric Holder has to say over and over again, "I know we are at war. I know we are at war." And that's because that criticism is stinging. "The simple fact is that if we are at war, we wouldn't do this," Goldberg argues.And if we are not at war, what we are doing not just with these trials? We are killing people and kidnapping people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And if we are not at war that's murder and kidnapping....Sen. Lindsey Graham had it right in his grilling of Eric Holder on Capitol Hill "We have never taken an enemy combatant during a war and put them in a civilian court. And the idea that we should start that now, to me is lunacy."...even if Holder weren't Attorney General, we would still have these policies. I think this is one of the great deceptions of -- and then just flat out dishonesties -- that Obama is claiming that Eric Holder has made all of these decisions and that this is, "Oh, this was just the Attorney General." "That's impossible," said Goldberg,..."And even ...Obama has wanted to do this from the beginning. He tipped his hat that he was going to do this from the beginning...the Commander in Chief has decided that these enemy combatants, these terrorists -- who are not signatories to the Geneva Convention, who attacked us in a ghastly fashion -- should be handled by the cops and the prosecutors and not by the military," he concludes..."I honestly don't know how you can view it any other way than a retreat from the war on terror,...a fundamental first-principled disagreement about the nature of the conflict that we are fighting...the idea that we are going to turn, you know, the war on terror into a bunch of episodes of Kabul CSI, where people are taking forensic evidence in Helmand Province, is just crazy."
...whatever makes Obama tick, it flows deep and strong. "He just has a visceral dislike for talking about terrorism. He has a visceral dislike for saying unpleasant truths about Islam."
...Goldberg confesses that he used to think it was more probable that Obama had this really well-formulated ideological agenda that he wasn't being honest about. He has amended his thinking, he says. "I am moving increasingly towards the incompetent argument....in many ways a lot of his positions are the result of him really not thinking through things and thinking everything was going to be easy," the columnist concludes...he thought it was going to be easy. And he is screwing up, and he doesn't really understand why or how."...
****And here's how Obama-sycophant Joe Klein of TIME magazine fails to see a pattern other than incompetence:
Joe Klein: Obama's "Mistakes" Not a Pattern
Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein says he has found no discernible pattern yet in President Obama's "mistakes" and it's simply too early to judge him on these "mistakes".http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1942832,00.html
Here's how Klein starts off his Time column:Over the past few weeks, "Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn't go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall's coming down. He didn't make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats' being taken hostage in Iran. He didn't show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference (a moment memorably satirized by Saturday Night Live). He didn't come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to, and given congressional Democrats too much control over, healthcare reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans."
****Of course Klein's list leaves off: stiffing allies like the U.K., the Czechs, Poles and Israelis, pandering to Russia, Iran and being weak toward North Korea, bowing obeisance to the Keeper of the Two Shrines ( at least providing a reason for bowing low to the emperor of Japan, lest someone think he pays homage to the major leader in the Muslim world ), etc etc.The BEST possible pattern is that of incompetence; the worst is that of someone who doesn't like the values of traditional America and the West ( and, therefore, seeks "change.") ****
Hasan and the Big Lie: U.S. "War" Against IslamIPT_News
When an American-born radical Islamist cleric chose to praise last week's Fort Hood shooting spree by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, part of the rationale was that no Muslim could faithfully serve the U.S. armed forces. To Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, that's because "The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam." A 2005 Canadian study of radicalism concluded that this theme is a potent tool in recruiting Muslims and turning them into violent extremists...
****And yet it is indisputable that at least a subset, "Radical Islam", consisting of Al Qaeda Sunni jihadists and Shia jihadists, has conducted and is conducting a war on the West. While the West might have been IN Saudia Arabia BEFORE 9/11, it was to protect the Saudis from Saddam Hussein. Whatever the historical causality (even granting Western slights led to Islamic terrorism ), there is no doubt about the present situation. And yet, Obama says "America is not and never weill be at war with Islam" while the Islamists claim that a war on terror IS a war on Islam. Thus, Obama doesn't acknowledge a war on terror ( lest it be taken as a war on Islam, even Radical Islam ) and professes that jihadist violence is merely a criminal act. That is, despite protestation to the contrary, Obama does NOT believe that the West is at war, but only responding to criminal acts. We are starting to see the erosion of American defenses against enemies ( what can be worse than not even acknowledging that we ARE at war? )****
http://tinyurl.com/yznjqen
Goldberg: Holder's 9/11 Trials a 'Travesty' By: Dave Eberhart...sending Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts to a civilian trial in New York is a travesty on many levels...I think the fundamental problem with it -- from which everything else flows -- is that there is no way to get around the fact that it is a decision that you would make -- if you didn't think we were at war...a problem that the Obama Administration is all too conscious of...see how self conscious and defensive the administration is about this, where Eric Holder has to say over and over again, "I know we are at war. I know we are at war." And that's because that criticism is stinging. "The simple fact is that if we are at war, we wouldn't do this," Goldberg argues.And if we are not at war, what we are doing not just with these trials? We are killing people and kidnapping people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And if we are not at war that's murder and kidnapping....Sen. Lindsey Graham had it right in his grilling of Eric Holder on Capitol Hill "We have never taken an enemy combatant during a war and put them in a civilian court. And the idea that we should start that now, to me is lunacy."...even if Holder weren't Attorney General, we would still have these policies. I think this is one of the great deceptions of -- and then just flat out dishonesties -- that Obama is claiming that Eric Holder has made all of these decisions and that this is, "Oh, this was just the Attorney General." "That's impossible," said Goldberg,..."And even ...Obama has wanted to do this from the beginning. He tipped his hat that he was going to do this from the beginning...the Commander in Chief has decided that these enemy combatants, these terrorists -- who are not signatories to the Geneva Convention, who attacked us in a ghastly fashion -- should be handled by the cops and the prosecutors and not by the military," he concludes..."I honestly don't know how you can view it any other way than a retreat from the war on terror,...a fundamental first-principled disagreement about the nature of the conflict that we are fighting...the idea that we are going to turn, you know, the war on terror into a bunch of episodes of Kabul CSI, where people are taking forensic evidence in Helmand Province, is just crazy."
...whatever makes Obama tick, it flows deep and strong. "He just has a visceral dislike for talking about terrorism. He has a visceral dislike for saying unpleasant truths about Islam."
...Goldberg confesses that he used to think it was more probable that Obama had this really well-formulated ideological agenda that he wasn't being honest about. He has amended his thinking, he says. "I am moving increasingly towards the incompetent argument....in many ways a lot of his positions are the result of him really not thinking through things and thinking everything was going to be easy," the columnist concludes...he thought it was going to be easy. And he is screwing up, and he doesn't really understand why or how."...
****And here's how Obama-sycophant Joe Klein of TIME magazine fails to see a pattern other than incompetence:
Joe Klein: Obama's "Mistakes" Not a Pattern
Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein says he has found no discernible pattern yet in President Obama's "mistakes" and it's simply too early to judge him on these "mistakes".http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1942832,00.html
Here's how Klein starts off his Time column:Over the past few weeks, "Barack Obama has been criticized for the following: He didn't go to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the Wall's coming down. He didn't make a forceful enough statement on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. diplomats' being taken hostage in Iran. He didn't show sufficient mournfulness, at first, when the Fort Hood shootings took place, and he was namby-pamby about the possibility that the shootings were an act of jihad. He has spent too little time focusing on unemployment. He bowed too deeply before the Japanese Emperor. He allowed the Chinese to block the broadcast of his Shanghai town-hall meeting. He allowed the Chinese President to bar questions at their joint press conference (a moment memorably satirized by Saturday Night Live). He didn't come back with any diplomatic victories from Asia. He allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters to be tried in the U.S. criminal-justice system rather than by the military. He has dithered too long on Afghanistan. He has devoted too much attention to, and given congressional Democrats too much control over, healthcare reform, an issue that is peripheral to a majority of Americans."
****Of course Klein's list leaves off: stiffing allies like the U.K., the Czechs, Poles and Israelis, pandering to Russia, Iran and being weak toward North Korea, bowing obeisance to the Keeper of the Two Shrines ( at least providing a reason for bowing low to the emperor of Japan, lest someone think he pays homage to the major leader in the Muslim world ), etc etc.The BEST possible pattern is that of incompetence; the worst is that of someone who doesn't like the values of traditional America and the West ( and, therefore, seeks "change.") ****
The friend of my enemy is my enemy.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad Gets Hero's Welcome in Venezuela - Hannah Strange
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, received a hero's welcome in Caracas Wednesday as he visited his key Latin American ally on a regional tour designed to shore up support for Tehran in its confrontation with Western powers. Shouting "Viva Ahmadinejad!" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged his full backing for Iran. Iran is trying to deepen its strategic inroads on the Latin American continent, where it has found new allies in a host of anti-American leftist leaders led by Chavez. Tehran has opened five new diplomatic missions and signed hundreds of cooperation deals in the region, including some 200 with Venezuela in the areas of trade, energy and defense. (Times-UK)
Venezuela's Chavez Calls Israel "Murderous" U.S. Arm - Frank Jack Daniel
Venezuela's President Chavez used a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad on Wednesday to brand Israel as a murderous agent of Washington. "We know what the State of Israel stands for - a murderous arm of the Yankee empire," Chavez said. His fierce speeches against Israel are taken by some supporters as a green light for anti-Semitism and walls in Caracas are often daubed with anti-Jewish slogans. (Reuters)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, received a hero's welcome in Caracas Wednesday as he visited his key Latin American ally on a regional tour designed to shore up support for Tehran in its confrontation with Western powers. Shouting "Viva Ahmadinejad!" Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged his full backing for Iran. Iran is trying to deepen its strategic inroads on the Latin American continent, where it has found new allies in a host of anti-American leftist leaders led by Chavez. Tehran has opened five new diplomatic missions and signed hundreds of cooperation deals in the region, including some 200 with Venezuela in the areas of trade, energy and defense. (Times-UK)
Venezuela's Chavez Calls Israel "Murderous" U.S. Arm - Frank Jack Daniel
Venezuela's President Chavez used a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad on Wednesday to brand Israel as a murderous agent of Washington. "We know what the State of Israel stands for - a murderous arm of the Yankee empire," Chavez said. His fierce speeches against Israel are taken by some supporters as a green light for anti-Semitism and walls in Caracas are often daubed with anti-Jewish slogans. (Reuters)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
To a man who does not know history, everything is "unprecedented."
http://tinyurl.com/y9l2mhk
The White House's unprecedented use of 'unprecedented' Carol E. Lee
The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.”
Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."
What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.
But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents...
****When it comes to things like stiffing our allies and pandering to our enemies, there is still a precedent in that Jimmy Carter preceded Barack Obama in doing these things. It will likely be the case that Obama will outstrip the feckless Carter in unprecedented ways.Obama does have an unprecedented lack of experience in preparation for the office of President; Carter was at least a governor for a term. Carter gave away the Panama Canal and it remains to be seen how Obama can trump this but we have confidence he will. Likewise, Carter presided over a disastrous economy with high inflation and unemployment and the invention of the "misery index" ( sum of inflation and unemployment rates ) to describe it. We have that to look forward to.****
The White House's unprecedented use of 'unprecedented' Carol E. Lee
The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.”
Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."
What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.
But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents...
****When it comes to things like stiffing our allies and pandering to our enemies, there is still a precedent in that Jimmy Carter preceded Barack Obama in doing these things. It will likely be the case that Obama will outstrip the feckless Carter in unprecedented ways.Obama does have an unprecedented lack of experience in preparation for the office of President; Carter was at least a governor for a term. Carter gave away the Panama Canal and it remains to be seen how Obama can trump this but we have confidence he will. Likewise, Carter presided over a disastrous economy with high inflation and unemployment and the invention of the "misery index" ( sum of inflation and unemployment rates ) to describe it. We have that to look forward to.****
MSM distortion of what is "Palestinian."
http://tinyurl.com/yccuge7
Gilo in Perspective How did the media report building plans for a Jerusalem suburb?
Israel has recently come in for international criticism over the approval for construction of 900 housing units in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. ...So how did some of the media refer to Gilo?
The "occupied Jerusalem suburb of Gilo." - The Economist
The "Gilo settlement in Jerusalem." - Reuters
A "Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem." - BBC
A "controversial settlement on the outskirts of east Jerusalem." - The Guardian
A "settlement in East Jerusalem." - The Daily Telegraph
"one of a dozen Israeli settlements in mostly Arab east Jerusalem." - AFP
A "part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians." - LA Times
The Christian Science Monitor could not even decide on Gilo's location, introducing it as a "Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem" in the first paragraph of the story and then referring to the "area in southern Jerusalem" in the next.
The prize for the worst inaccuracy, however, goes to The Times of London, whose staff editorial spoke of "Israel's decision to go ahead with new settlements around Jerusalem." Of course, Gilo is certainly not new and, while some existing areas are being developed within existing boundaries to allow for natural growth, there are no plans whatsoever on the part of the Israeli government to create any new settlements in the Jerusalem region.
...question then, is whether Gilo is in fact a settlement and if so, what type of settlement it is. To all who prefer to analyze a situation before arriving at a conclusion it is important to look at the facts in context. ...
The reality is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land. The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media...
Gilo in Perspective How did the media report building plans for a Jerusalem suburb?
Israel has recently come in for international criticism over the approval for construction of 900 housing units in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. ...So how did some of the media refer to Gilo?
The "occupied Jerusalem suburb of Gilo." - The Economist
The "Gilo settlement in Jerusalem." - Reuters
A "Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem." - BBC
A "controversial settlement on the outskirts of east Jerusalem." - The Guardian
A "settlement in East Jerusalem." - The Daily Telegraph
"one of a dozen Israeli settlements in mostly Arab east Jerusalem." - AFP
A "part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians." - LA Times
The Christian Science Monitor could not even decide on Gilo's location, introducing it as a "Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem" in the first paragraph of the story and then referring to the "area in southern Jerusalem" in the next.
The prize for the worst inaccuracy, however, goes to The Times of London, whose staff editorial spoke of "Israel's decision to go ahead with new settlements around Jerusalem." Of course, Gilo is certainly not new and, while some existing areas are being developed within existing boundaries to allow for natural growth, there are no plans whatsoever on the part of the Israeli government to create any new settlements in the Jerusalem region.
...question then, is whether Gilo is in fact a settlement and if so, what type of settlement it is. To all who prefer to analyze a situation before arriving at a conclusion it is important to look at the facts in context. ...
The reality is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land. The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media...
The scandal is not the hacking but the substance of the content hacked.
http://tinyurl.com/yayyrlv
Hacked Climate Change Emails Set Off Political Storm By Richard Koman, ...
****To hear the MainStreamMedia tell it, the issue is the breach of security and the publication of documents intended not to see the light of day. The NYTimes, in an act of extraordinary hypocrisy, declined to publish from the trove of hacked documents on the grounds that it was improperly, perhaps illegally, obtained. This from the publication that published the Pentagon Papers and has on myriad occasions published things that were classified and could reasonably be thought to breach national security.
The point of the publication of these email exchanges within the religious community of AnthropicGlobalWarming professERS is that they have consistently suborned perjury within their community, admitted distorting so-called evidence and called on others in the community to do the same. Simultaneously, the emails reveal a continual conspiracy to drown out voices of legitimate dissent and deny those who disagree public forums in the journals that the community favors. Not only have the members of the AGW community seemed not to understand empirical science ( requiring empirical evidence to back up or falsify predictive theories), claiming that computer models are somehow empirical evidence, and that their agreement WITH EACH OTHER is some kind of validation ( of anything other than groupthink) but they have violated the basic tenet of all science which is the dispassionate search for truth.
I say "profess" rather than "believe" because the emails reveal a cynical desire to obscure the truth, both of their claims and that of those debunking them; were they actual BELIEVERS, they would welcome any light shed on errors or counter-examples since they would hope that the truth will out and substantiate their beliefs. Rather, the AGW community, with Al Gore as their High Priest, does not search for truth but merely the furtherance of their agenda by any means, foul if needed ( as it seems, from the correspondence, to be the case continually.)
Why the MSM is misdirecting attention to the process by which these emails were unearthed, rather than on the UNDENIED accuracy of them and on their political and unscientific agenda, is unclear except that the MSM are part of the community and, themselves, hold no brief for accurate reporting and analysis. It is impossible for any objective observer to lend any further credence to the positions and claims of the AGW community until they clean their house, acknowledge and renounce their actions to this point, and start over again. For the world to be asked to spend trillions of dollars on the basis of their claims, tainted to this point, is absurd. ****
http://tinyurl.com/ylaqyxy
Global Warming With the Lid Off The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.
...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. . ...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. ... 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...****Jones was referring to his intent to thwart the efforts of people trying to get at his raw data to determine if his published claims were borne out by the evidence.Destroying evidence when obliged to provide it is actionable in the U.S. and, likely, in the U.K. as well. What it says about the scientific ethics and integrity of Jones and his correspondents is unambiguous.****...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.... responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers....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.
****This is too charitable; the only reason for withholding the "right to know" is that what would be known is at variance with the public claims of the malefactors, i.e. their exaggerations or outright lies.****... 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......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 ..."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. ...therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on.". 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,"...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... 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.
Hacked Climate Change Emails Set Off Political Storm By Richard Koman, ...
****To hear the MainStreamMedia tell it, the issue is the breach of security and the publication of documents intended not to see the light of day. The NYTimes, in an act of extraordinary hypocrisy, declined to publish from the trove of hacked documents on the grounds that it was improperly, perhaps illegally, obtained. This from the publication that published the Pentagon Papers and has on myriad occasions published things that were classified and could reasonably be thought to breach national security.
The point of the publication of these email exchanges within the religious community of AnthropicGlobalWarming professERS is that they have consistently suborned perjury within their community, admitted distorting so-called evidence and called on others in the community to do the same. Simultaneously, the emails reveal a continual conspiracy to drown out voices of legitimate dissent and deny those who disagree public forums in the journals that the community favors. Not only have the members of the AGW community seemed not to understand empirical science ( requiring empirical evidence to back up or falsify predictive theories), claiming that computer models are somehow empirical evidence, and that their agreement WITH EACH OTHER is some kind of validation ( of anything other than groupthink) but they have violated the basic tenet of all science which is the dispassionate search for truth.
I say "profess" rather than "believe" because the emails reveal a cynical desire to obscure the truth, both of their claims and that of those debunking them; were they actual BELIEVERS, they would welcome any light shed on errors or counter-examples since they would hope that the truth will out and substantiate their beliefs. Rather, the AGW community, with Al Gore as their High Priest, does not search for truth but merely the furtherance of their agenda by any means, foul if needed ( as it seems, from the correspondence, to be the case continually.)
Why the MSM is misdirecting attention to the process by which these emails were unearthed, rather than on the UNDENIED accuracy of them and on their political and unscientific agenda, is unclear except that the MSM are part of the community and, themselves, hold no brief for accurate reporting and analysis. It is impossible for any objective observer to lend any further credence to the positions and claims of the AGW community until they clean their house, acknowledge and renounce their actions to this point, and start over again. For the world to be asked to spend trillions of dollars on the basis of their claims, tainted to this point, is absurd. ****
http://tinyurl.com/ylaqyxy
Global Warming With the Lid Off The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.
...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. . ...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. ... 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...****Jones was referring to his intent to thwart the efforts of people trying to get at his raw data to determine if his published claims were borne out by the evidence.Destroying evidence when obliged to provide it is actionable in the U.S. and, likely, in the U.K. as well. What it says about the scientific ethics and integrity of Jones and his correspondents is unambiguous.****...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.... responded to our requests for comment by saying they must first chat with their lawyers....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.
****This is too charitable; the only reason for withholding the "right to know" is that what would be known is at variance with the public claims of the malefactors, i.e. their exaggerations or outright lies.****... 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......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 ..."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. ...therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on.". 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,"...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... 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.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Infringement of American sovereignty
In a speech on March 30, 2008 in San Francisco's Unitarian Universalist church, Ellsberg observed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't really have the authority to declare impeachment "off the table". The oath of office taken by members of congress requires them to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". He also argued that under the US Constitution, treaties, including the United Nations Charter, become the supreme law of the land that neither the states, the president, nor the congress have the power to break. For example, if the Congress votes to authorize an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, that authorization wouldn't make the attack legal. A president citing the authorization as just cause could be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and it is the duty of congress to impeach the offending president regardless of any agreements that may have been made.//
****Inadvertently, a far-Left figure makes the point that the Copenhagen Conference presents a great risk of infringement of American sovereignty. If the President signs a treaty, that is ratified by 2/3 of the Senate ( now safely in Democratic hands ), the U.S. is bound by the terms of that treaty and cannot abrogate it unilaterally without the approval of the other parties. In the case of Copenhagen, what has been proposed are oppressive strictures on U.S. use of energy AND enormous payments to other countries ( ostensibly for the past generation of CO2 and to cushion the impact on third world countries --like China???!!!!.) For a citizen of the world ( rather than the U.S. only ), Obama would like nothing better than to take a step toward "world government" dictating how the U.S. runs its affairs.See The Bricker Amendment, which failed but anticipated this derogation of American sovereignty and attempted to pre-empt it.****
****Inadvertently, a far-Left figure makes the point that the Copenhagen Conference presents a great risk of infringement of American sovereignty. If the President signs a treaty, that is ratified by 2/3 of the Senate ( now safely in Democratic hands ), the U.S. is bound by the terms of that treaty and cannot abrogate it unilaterally without the approval of the other parties. In the case of Copenhagen, what has been proposed are oppressive strictures on U.S. use of energy AND enormous payments to other countries ( ostensibly for the past generation of CO2 and to cushion the impact on third world countries --like China???!!!!.) For a citizen of the world ( rather than the U.S. only ), Obama would like nothing better than to take a step toward "world government" dictating how the U.S. runs its affairs.See The Bricker Amendment, which failed but anticipated this derogation of American sovereignty and attempted to pre-empt it.****
Sweden in grip of radical Islam
http://vodpod.com/watch/1428923-sweden-in-grip-of-islam
http://tinyurl.com/csohf9
Sweden in Grip of Islam
An alliance of Muslims and Leftists has been anything but liberal: violent, anti-Western and anti-Semitic, they have turned Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city into a crime-ridden hellhole with prospects for all of Sweden becoming majority-Mulsim by 2050.
http://tinyurl.com/csohf9
Sweden in Grip of Islam
An alliance of Muslims and Leftists has been anything but liberal: violent, anti-Western and anti-Semitic, they have turned Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city into a crime-ridden hellhole with prospects for all of Sweden becoming majority-Mulsim by 2050.
Bribery in Academe and in Politics
Columbia, Rutgers on Iran-Controlled Foundation's Gift List (New York Post) Isabel Vincent -
Anti-Israel, pro-Iran university professors are being funded by a shadowy multimillion-dollar Islamic charity that the feds charge is an illegal front for the repressive Iranian regime. The Alavi Foundation has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Columbia University and Rutgers University for Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs that employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian dictatorship. "We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation," said Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Federal law-enforcement authorities are in the midst of seizing up to $650 million in assets from the Alavi Foundation, which they charge funnels money to Iran-supported Islamic schools in the U.S. and to a syndicate of Iranian spies based in Europe. The foundation donated $100,000 to Columbia University after the school agreed to host Iranian leader and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the foundation's 2007 tax filings. Rutgers professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, former head of the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and president of the American-Iranian Council, unabashedly has touted Hizbullah and Hamas as legitimate organizations and not terrorists.//
The Louisiana Purchase
The vote of Louisiana's Senator Landrieu was bought for $300M in appropriations for Louisiana specially provided in the Senate HEALTHCARE bill. Neither Landrieu nor Lousiana is mentioned in the few pages of legislative gibberish from which it was determined that a special appropriation for Louisiana had been provided. Senator Landrieu, when outed about this, proudly declaimed that the bribe was $300M for Louisiana ( and, presumably, something about which she could boast in her re-election campaign.) The money, of course, comes from the taxpayers of all 50 states as does the rest of Senate Democratic Leader Reid's "largesse." Whether other Senators will appear at the trough in the garden of porcine delights has yet to be seen.
Anti-Israel, pro-Iran university professors are being funded by a shadowy multimillion-dollar Islamic charity that the feds charge is an illegal front for the repressive Iranian regime. The Alavi Foundation has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Columbia University and Rutgers University for Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs that employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian dictatorship. "We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation," said Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Federal law-enforcement authorities are in the midst of seizing up to $650 million in assets from the Alavi Foundation, which they charge funnels money to Iran-supported Islamic schools in the U.S. and to a syndicate of Iranian spies based in Europe. The foundation donated $100,000 to Columbia University after the school agreed to host Iranian leader and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the foundation's 2007 tax filings. Rutgers professor Hooshang Amirahmadi, former head of the school's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and president of the American-Iranian Council, unabashedly has touted Hizbullah and Hamas as legitimate organizations and not terrorists.//
The Louisiana Purchase
The vote of Louisiana's Senator Landrieu was bought for $300M in appropriations for Louisiana specially provided in the Senate HEALTHCARE bill. Neither Landrieu nor Lousiana is mentioned in the few pages of legislative gibberish from which it was determined that a special appropriation for Louisiana had been provided. Senator Landrieu, when outed about this, proudly declaimed that the bribe was $300M for Louisiana ( and, presumably, something about which she could boast in her re-election campaign.) The money, of course, comes from the taxpayers of all 50 states as does the rest of Senate Democratic Leader Reid's "largesse." Whether other Senators will appear at the trough in the garden of porcine delights has yet to be seen.
Obama/FBI: PC apologists for Islamist jihadis
http://tinyurl.com/yekxgwp
The FBI, seized by political-correctness and further constrained by the Obama Justice Department has abandoned its functioning with respect to threats from Muslims.
Major Hasan and Holy War A domestic Islamic threat is real, and the FBI is unprepared to fight it. By REUEL MARC GERECHT
For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans. A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism...
The FBI, seized by political-correctness and further constrained by the Obama Justice Department has abandoned its functioning with respect to threats from Muslims.
Major Hasan and Holy War A domestic Islamic threat is real, and the FBI is unprepared to fight it. By REUEL MARC GERECHT
For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans. A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism...
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Watch, Hasan's sexual frustrations will be blamed rather than jihadi terrorism.
****It will be said that Hasan's lapdances and inability to find a wife should make us regard him as a frustrated loner with no reference to his Islamist motivations. However, the same behavior and argument was ascribed to the 9/11 hijackers and their connection to jihadi terrorism is beyond question.
http://tinyurl.com/yfhlp2r
Agents of terror leave their mark on Sin City
Las Vegas workers recall the men they can't forget Kevin Fagan, SF Chronicle October 4, 2001
...To the 29-year-old stripper, Marwan Al-Shehhi simply looked "cheap."...naming him as one of five Sept. 11 hijackers who stayed in Las Vegas not long before...The self-styled warriors for Allah -- who believed their hijackings would earn them eager virgins in heaven -- engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures in America's reputed capital of moral corrosion....remember a couple of those guys coming in here in August, too," said Samantha,...In addition to Atta, 33, and Al-Shehhi,... Nawaq Alhamzi, age unknown, Ziad Jarrahi, 26, and Hani Hanjour, 29, stayed in Las Vegas off and on between May and August. They say the group -- which chillingly included a hijacker from each of the four flights -- made at least six trips here....the five reckoned as long as they had to meet, they might as well do it where they could gamble and indulge in the same forbidden frolics some of them reportedly found at the Pink Pony strip joint in Florida over the summer....
"True Muslims don't drink, don't gamble, don't go to strip clubs," said Dr. Osama Haikal,...of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada. "These things are a sin, just like what they did in New York and Washington is a sin." If the hijackers copped a lap dance or even a watery scotch in most strict Islamic countries, they would be flogged, Haikal said -- and they would be executed for the horror they wrought..****Yeah, yeah,...if these guys ( and Hasan ) weren't "true" Muslims, there sure as hell are a lot of fake ones that answer to the description.****
http://tinyurl.com/yfhlp2r
Agents of terror leave their mark on Sin City
Las Vegas workers recall the men they can't forget Kevin Fagan, SF Chronicle October 4, 2001
...To the 29-year-old stripper, Marwan Al-Shehhi simply looked "cheap."...naming him as one of five Sept. 11 hijackers who stayed in Las Vegas not long before...The self-styled warriors for Allah -- who believed their hijackings would earn them eager virgins in heaven -- engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures in America's reputed capital of moral corrosion....remember a couple of those guys coming in here in August, too," said Samantha,...In addition to Atta, 33, and Al-Shehhi,... Nawaq Alhamzi, age unknown, Ziad Jarrahi, 26, and Hani Hanjour, 29, stayed in Las Vegas off and on between May and August. They say the group -- which chillingly included a hijacker from each of the four flights -- made at least six trips here....the five reckoned as long as they had to meet, they might as well do it where they could gamble and indulge in the same forbidden frolics some of them reportedly found at the Pink Pony strip joint in Florida over the summer....
"True Muslims don't drink, don't gamble, don't go to strip clubs," said Dr. Osama Haikal,...of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada. "These things are a sin, just like what they did in New York and Washington is a sin." If the hijackers copped a lap dance or even a watery scotch in most strict Islamic countries, they would be flogged, Haikal said -- and they would be executed for the horror they wrought..****Yeah, yeah,...if these guys ( and Hasan ) weren't "true" Muslims, there sure as hell are a lot of fake ones that answer to the description.****
The Scylla and Charybdis of Obamacare
****First we have the fallacious and repeated reliance on "preventive care" to save all kinds of money, showing the greater wisdom of the Obamacare approach to health.
The fact is that not all screening is cost-effective since it depends on the ratio of false positives to false negatives and to the efficiency with which later-to-be expensive procedures are preempted.
This has been recognized by "The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984, and since 1998 sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is the leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care. The USPSTF conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling, and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the "gold standard" for clinical preventive services.
The mission of the USPSTF is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender, and risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care.
... The Task Force makes its recommendations on the basis of explicit criteria. Recommendations issued by the USPSTF are intended for use in the primary care setting. The USPSTF recommendation statements present health care providers with information about the evidence behind each recommendation, allowing clinicians to make informed decisions about implementation.*
The USPSTF is supported by an Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC). Under contract to AHRQ, the EPC conducts systematic reviews of the evidence on specific topics in clinical prevention that serve as the scientific basis for USPSTF recommendations."
****Second is the failure of similar agencies, such as NICE in the U.K., to note the injunction that these recommendations are intended for the PRIMARY CARE setting since they represent averages, not necessarily applicable to individual patients.NICE has simplistically elevated cost-effectiveness standards to absolute bans on expensive drugs and procedures.
The recent recommendation of the USPSTF to cut back on routine mammograms for women under 40 AND OVER 75 caused violent reaction from women, the women's lobby being overridingly strong on such issues. Likewise, the AIDS constituency elevated treatment of this disease far beyond cost-effectiveness criteria compared with, say, various cancers of the prostate, liver and pancreas. Allocation of health resources by lobby groups is not an effective way to run the ship.
The whole philosophy of agents such as USPSTF and NICE should not be applied universally but only in the primary care situation. A wiser and more nuanced approach is epitomized by Gilbert S. Omenn in "From Human Genome Research to Personalized Health Care": "The vision of personalized health care is understandably very popular. It reflects the admirablegoal of tailoring the treatment to the patient and the fact that different people with the same diangose may have multiple underlying mechanisms of disease and may require quitre different therapies. For many widely-used drugs, fewer than 30% of patients treated actually experience a benefit, and some of these may be getting better on their own or through placebo effects. The path to the ideal of predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory health care must proceed through several complex steps Ther must be sufficient evidence at molecular, physiological, and clinical levels to sub-type patient groups and stratify them for targeted therapy or prevention. There is a big leap from carefully selected patients in a randomized clinical trial of efficacy to evidence of effectiveness in patients with many co-existing diseases being cared for in the community."
The FDA might well heed this advice and revise its most recent use of "comparable efficacy" in the approval of drugs. Their evidence must, perforce, use averages and they might not approve drugs that benefit patients in the 70% referred to above who do not benefit from the existing drugs in the marketplace. Perhaps even the FDA should be more generous in its approvals and let the marketplace of doctors' judgments decide.
The fact is that not all screening is cost-effective since it depends on the ratio of false positives to false negatives and to the efficiency with which later-to-be expensive procedures are preempted.
This has been recognized by "The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984, and since 1998 sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is the leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care. The USPSTF conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling, and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the "gold standard" for clinical preventive services.
The mission of the USPSTF is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender, and risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care.
... The Task Force makes its recommendations on the basis of explicit criteria. Recommendations issued by the USPSTF are intended for use in the primary care setting. The USPSTF recommendation statements present health care providers with information about the evidence behind each recommendation, allowing clinicians to make informed decisions about implementation.*
The USPSTF is supported by an Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC). Under contract to AHRQ, the EPC conducts systematic reviews of the evidence on specific topics in clinical prevention that serve as the scientific basis for USPSTF recommendations."
****Second is the failure of similar agencies, such as NICE in the U.K., to note the injunction that these recommendations are intended for the PRIMARY CARE setting since they represent averages, not necessarily applicable to individual patients.NICE has simplistically elevated cost-effectiveness standards to absolute bans on expensive drugs and procedures.
The recent recommendation of the USPSTF to cut back on routine mammograms for women under 40 AND OVER 75 caused violent reaction from women, the women's lobby being overridingly strong on such issues. Likewise, the AIDS constituency elevated treatment of this disease far beyond cost-effectiveness criteria compared with, say, various cancers of the prostate, liver and pancreas. Allocation of health resources by lobby groups is not an effective way to run the ship.
The whole philosophy of agents such as USPSTF and NICE should not be applied universally but only in the primary care situation. A wiser and more nuanced approach is epitomized by Gilbert S. Omenn in "From Human Genome Research to Personalized Health Care": "The vision of personalized health care is understandably very popular. It reflects the admirablegoal of tailoring the treatment to the patient and the fact that different people with the same diangose may have multiple underlying mechanisms of disease and may require quitre different therapies. For many widely-used drugs, fewer than 30% of patients treated actually experience a benefit, and some of these may be getting better on their own or through placebo effects. The path to the ideal of predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory health care must proceed through several complex steps Ther must be sufficient evidence at molecular, physiological, and clinical levels to sub-type patient groups and stratify them for targeted therapy or prevention. There is a big leap from carefully selected patients in a randomized clinical trial of efficacy to evidence of effectiveness in patients with many co-existing diseases being cared for in the community."
The FDA might well heed this advice and revise its most recent use of "comparable efficacy" in the approval of drugs. Their evidence must, perforce, use averages and they might not approve drugs that benefit patients in the 70% referred to above who do not benefit from the existing drugs in the marketplace. Perhaps even the FDA should be more generous in its approvals and let the marketplace of doctors' judgments decide.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Hackers find evidence of fraud in the AGW (Anthro Global Warming) community.
http://tinyurl.com/yhx9juw
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? By James Delingpole
...The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.
When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more...
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? By James Delingpole
...The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.
When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more...
Anti-Semitism in international athletics, even of a petty kind,
Austrians Mute Israeli Anthem at Fencing Tourney by Gil Ronen
Young female athletes from Israel's fencing team swept top medals at a 28-nation European tournament held in Mödling, Austria last week – but faced an additional challenge when they stood on the winners' podium to receive their medals: the organizers did not play the recording of the Israeli national anthem, and the Israeli winners had to sing the anthem on their own, a capella style. The Israeli team's staff has no doubt that the incident was intentional.
Israel's Dana Strelnikov, 14, won the gold medal and Alona Kamarov won the bronze at the tournament, which hosted 120 fencers aged up to 17. Both Israeli medalists hail from the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot, whose fencing club has produced many of Israel's best young fencers. But as they stood on the podium and awaited the opening sounds of national anthem HaTikvah – they heard only silence. The girls and their trainers quickly understood what was happening and proceeded to sing the entire anthem on their own, with some scattered support from voices in the spectators' bleachers.
The Israeli national team's coach, Yaakov Friedman,...the Israeli team faces constant political challenges on the international circuit. At a tournament in Göteborg, Sweden, in January this year, Israel won the silver medal and when the medalists were already on the podium the organizers informed Friedman that they do not have a recording of the Israeli anthem. The team sang the anthem without the help of the recording. ...In the Mödling incident, Friedman said, the organizers approached him when the winners were on the podium and told him that “we do not have a recording of the new Israeli anthem, just the old one.” Friedman informed them that to the best of his knowledge, Israel has only had one anthem – HaTikvah – since it was founded, but this did not change anything, and the team had to sing a capella again. While the anthem was missing, the Israeli flag still hung proudly, he said – because tournament rules specifically require the presence of the national flags.
The head of the Israel Fencing Association, Yossi Harari, told The Forward that in the next tournaments Israel participates in, the team and every single one of the athletes will be equipped with recordings of the anthem, so that organizers will at least no longer be able to use the same excuses when refusing to play HaTikvah.
Young female athletes from Israel's fencing team swept top medals at a 28-nation European tournament held in Mödling, Austria last week – but faced an additional challenge when they stood on the winners' podium to receive their medals: the organizers did not play the recording of the Israeli national anthem, and the Israeli winners had to sing the anthem on their own, a capella style. The Israeli team's staff has no doubt that the incident was intentional.
Israel's Dana Strelnikov, 14, won the gold medal and Alona Kamarov won the bronze at the tournament, which hosted 120 fencers aged up to 17. Both Israeli medalists hail from the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot, whose fencing club has produced many of Israel's best young fencers. But as they stood on the podium and awaited the opening sounds of national anthem HaTikvah – they heard only silence. The girls and their trainers quickly understood what was happening and proceeded to sing the entire anthem on their own, with some scattered support from voices in the spectators' bleachers.
The Israeli national team's coach, Yaakov Friedman,...the Israeli team faces constant political challenges on the international circuit. At a tournament in Göteborg, Sweden, in January this year, Israel won the silver medal and when the medalists were already on the podium the organizers informed Friedman that they do not have a recording of the Israeli anthem. The team sang the anthem without the help of the recording. ...In the Mödling incident, Friedman said, the organizers approached him when the winners were on the podium and told him that “we do not have a recording of the new Israeli anthem, just the old one.” Friedman informed them that to the best of his knowledge, Israel has only had one anthem – HaTikvah – since it was founded, but this did not change anything, and the team had to sing a capella again. While the anthem was missing, the Israeli flag still hung proudly, he said – because tournament rules specifically require the presence of the national flags.
The head of the Israel Fencing Association, Yossi Harari, told The Forward that in the next tournaments Israel participates in, the team and every single one of the athletes will be equipped with recordings of the anthem, so that organizers will at least no longer be able to use the same excuses when refusing to play HaTikvah.
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