You can't say a Democratic Congress isn't compassionate ( especially about seniors )

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, Congress has decided to implement a scheme to put workers of 50 years of age and above on early retirement, thus creating jobs and reducing unemployment.
This scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).
Persons selected to be RAPED can apply to Congress to be considered for the SHAFT program (Special Help After Forced Termination).
Persons who have been RAPED and SHAFTED will be reviewed under the SCREW program (System Covering Retired-Early Workers).
A person may be RAPED once, SHAFTED twice and SCREWED as many times as Congress deems appropriate.
Persons who have been RAPED could get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependants & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).
Obviously persons who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTED or SCREWED any further by Congress.
Persons who are not RAPED and are staying on will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Congress has always prided themselves on the amount of SHIT they give our citizens.
Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the SHIT you can handle.
Sincerely,
The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)
PS - - Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

Hoping may be all we get from this administration

Hope of change "Authorities are holding out hope that [Abdulmutallab] will change his mind and cooperate"
The Washington Post reports that the would-be Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, remains in a Detroit prision where, after initial debriefings by the FBI, he has "restricted his cooperation." The "restriction" occurred after he obtain a defense attorney.
Abdulmuttab should not be in a regular prison and he should not have a defense attorney. His decision about whether to cooperate with our efforts to learn about other terrorists he may have associated with and their plans to engage in future terrorism should not be one he makes free from coercion.
An earlier version of the Post's story included this statement: "Authorities are holding out hope that [Abdulmutallab] will change his mind and cooperate with the probe, the officials said." The Post removed the passage. Whether it did so out of embarrassment for the "officials" or for the newspaper itself is unclear.
"Hope" seems like a rather ineffective counterterrorism tool. If "authorities" intend to rely on it, they should be hoping that no one connected, however indirectly, with Abdulmutallab commits an act of terrorism against America or American interests.

Obama's appointees are less accomplished than advertised.

http://tinyurl.com/ycvbp9h
Education secretary’s legacy questioned Some critics challenge magnitude of Duncan’s accomplishments in ChicagoBy Nick Anderson Washington Post
...****The highest praise for Obama appointees will be: Well, he/she isn't as bad as Janet Napolitano.****

Cavalier attitude about security costs us.

http://tinyurl.com/yztasxk
Key security agencies lack permanent leaders
By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press****Of course, a permanent appointment like the clueless Napolitano is even worse!****
WASHINGTON – Two federal agencies charged with keeping potential terrorists off airplanes and out of the country have been without their top leaders for nearly a year. It took the Obama administration more than eight months to nominate anyone to lead the Transportation Security Administration and the Customs and Border Protection agency.
President Barack Obama has ordered a review of U.S. security policies following the failed Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam. He vowed Monday to "do everything that we can to keep America safe."
The acting heads of the TSA and CBP — both created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — will be at the forefront of these efforts.
Bogged down with health care reform, the Senate has yet to set a date to hold hearings for the Customs position. And Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has placed a hold on the president's choice to head the TSA over the senator's concern that the new leader would let TSA screeners join a labor union. This has some Democrats blaming politics for the vacancy.****Letting screeners join a labor union???? Insanity!!!****...able to sneak an explosive device aboard his flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, only to be thwarted by the device's apparent failure to work as designed, and aggressive action by other passengers. Abdulmutallab was not on the government's terrorist watch list — though he was on a less sensitive and broader database. He was able to maintain a valid U.S. visa despite warnings about him to U.S. embassy officials in Nigeria from his father.****What the hell is wrong with the U.S. State Department? The U.K. denied this guy a re-entry visa to return to Britain although he had an expensive apartment in the West End of London.**** ...officials have begun to assemble information related to watch list procedures....
"Running a security agency with a revolving door is a recipe for failure," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. Abdulmutallab,..., is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich. A court hearing that had been scheduled for Monday to determine whether the government can get DNA from him was postponed until Jan. 8.****Why is this guy treated as a criminal and "lawyered up" with a public defender and not subjected to interrogation as a terrorist and enemy combatant? Even w/o "enhanced interrogation" much information about his ties and associates could have been obtained in the hours right after his arrest.****
U.S. officials had warning signs that Abdulmutallab might be a threat.
The embassy visit in which Abdulmutallab's father said he was concerned about his son's radicalization triggered a Nov. 20 State Department cable from Nigeria to all U.S. diplomatic missions and department headquarters in Washington. It was also shared with the interagency National Counter Terrorism Center,...landed Abdulmutallab among the about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the NCTC. Other, smaller lists trigger additional airport screening or other restrictions, but intelligence officials said there wasn't enough information to move Abdulmutallab into those categories.****"wasn't enough info?" Enough negative points might be an argument but the mere absence of information might lead one to conclude that the benefit of the doubt should NOT be given to a potential terrorist. What is merely inconvenience for an individual has to be balanced with possible death for many others.****
The NCTC, which has responsibility if any visas are to be pulled over terrorism concerns, then reviewed the information and found it was "insufficient to determine whether his visa should be revoked," Kelly said....Abdulmutallab had spent a year in (Yemen) from 2004-2005...also was in Yemen from August until early December of this year. Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden's family, has been an al-Qaida haven...A Yemen-based group, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for Abdulmutallab's actions...

GITMO "grads" were behind the Xmas Day plot

http://tinyurl.com/ycuwa4h
Two Al-Qaeda top dogs behind Flight 253 jihad plot were released from Gitmo By Robert Spencer 12/29/2009
Jihad Watch (www.jihadwatch.org/)
In its Monday statement claiming responsibility for the Northwest bombing, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a 'hero'..."Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. "Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans. "American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials. "An "art therapy rehabilitation program." Yes, you read that right.
"Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody. Al-Harbi has since changed his name to Muhamad al-Awfi...

How much more evidence is needed that Obama has let our guard down, perhaps willfully?

Janet Napolitano and her version of the Dept of Homeland Security are only the most recent reductio ad absurdum of what is endemically wrong with the Obama view of security.
1) His administration refuses to recognize the existence of terrorists who are at war with the U.S. and its allies.He continues to treat this war as individual criminal acts where the "rights" of the criminals have paramount importance.
2) He doesn't identify with traditional U.S. allies (or values ).
3) He doesn't recognize ( indeed, DENIES ) that the terror threat is Islamist and not due to "root causes" of poverty, disenfranchisement, American disrespect, etc. Rather, it is due to the Islamist version of religion. He is more concerned with reassuring Muslims that the U.S. is not at war with Islam despite evidence that much of Islam is at war with the U.S.
4) Political correctness trumps all commonsense precautions. The head of the army worries more about diversity in the military than having an Islamist terrorist like Major Hasan running loose. Navy seals are court-martialed because a lying terrorist captured on the battlefield claims he was roughed up during capture. The CIA and the lawyers who advised them have more to worry about from the U.S. Justice Department under Eric Holder than do the Islamist terrorists who kill Americans.
5) The left wing wacko incompetents he has appointed to various critical positions important for national security have amply demonstrated that they are unfit for the jobs they occupy but blandly assert the contrary.
6) It is amply clear that Obama has no interest in thwarting Iran's progress to nuclear weapons and is blithely prepared to live in a world of nuclear-armed apocalyptic fanatics. Carter was merely incompetent; Obama is creatively destructive of America and, perhaps, Western civilization.

After, INCREDIBLY, Napolitano claimed "the system worked", Homeland Security backs down in face of the obvious..

http://tinyurl.com/ycv3xgb
Napolitano concedes airline security system failed By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.... A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.
"Our system did not work in this instance," she said on NBC's "Today" show. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."...On Sunday, Napolitano said, "One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked." On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.
The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano's initial assessment. Airport security "failed in every respect," Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked."****Reviewing her facing the TV camera and making her absurd claim that everything worked as it was supposed to ("the passengers, the flight crew,the subsequent warnings to other flights...") it's hard to credit the "out of context" remark. This is the Homeland Security chief who eschews the use of "terrorism" in favor of "manmade disasters" ( not even logical since it doesn't even distinguish between deliberate and accidental ones ) and the "war on terror" with "overseas contingency operations." (Of course it should really be WWI - War With Islamists.) ****
http://tinyurl.com/yamudq4
Fire Napolitano [Jonah Goldberg]
...the White House is trying very hard to get out in front of the would-be Christmas bomber story. The head of the Department of Homeland Security isn't helping. I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the previous appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it's fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have "worked" since it has done everything right.
Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patently unqualified hack.
Here she is her own words, over at RealClearPolitics...

Al Franken plays true to type: you can't keep a good man down or a bad one quiet.

Sharp-Tongued Franken Clashes With Republicans
After a quiet first few months in the Senate, Al Franken has begun to show the sharp-tongued confrontational style he displayed as a comic and author, clashing with Republicans behind the scenes and on the Senate floor.
Franken was sworn in on July 7 after a vote recount and lengthy court battle gave him a victory over Republican rival Norm Coleman, and Franken initially avoided the limelight to the extent that rumors circulated that the Democratic leadership had told him to keep a low profile.
But on Dec. 14, the Minnesota Democrat battled Sen. John Thune in the Senate after the South Dakota Republican claimed that healthcare reform legislation would levy new taxes immediately but not provide benefits for several years.
Franken implied that Thune had fabricated some of his facts, “a more personal confrontation than usual in the clubby Senate,” The Hill newspaper reported.****It's clear that Thune is right and Franken wrong.**** Franken disclosed a private conversation he had with Thune on the topic, and the angry Republican stormed off the Senate floor. “We are entitled to our own opinions; we’re not entitled to our own facts,” Franken loudly declared. He later apologized to Thune.
Then during a later debate on healthcare legislation, Franken cut off Sen. Joe Lieberman during his speech on the Senate floor. Lieberman, an independent Democrat who opposed the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill, asked for an additional moment to finish his remarks. But Franken, who was presiding over the Senate, refused the routine request. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., later complained that Lieberman’s request was “objected to by the newest member of the United States Senate in a most brusque way . . . We’ve got to stop this kind of behavior. I have never seen anything like that.”
Behind the scenes, Franken had a clash with an aide to Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Franken went to Corker’s office to discuss an amendment Franken offered to a defense bill, which would bar the government from doing business with contractors who required workers to settle rape and sexual assault charges through arbitration instead of the courts. “The meeting quickly deteriorated when Franken began berating one of Corker’s aides,” according to The Hill. “Franken’s sally was so harsh that Corker told Franken to lay off his aide and direct the comments at him instead.”
Franken, a former Air America radio host, also tongue-lashed an aide to a Republican leader at a recent Senate reception, grilling the aide over what Franken viewed as the failings of the GOP.
“The Al Franken head tells him to steer away from the limelight and build his reputation,” Lawrence Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, told The Hill. “Then there is his heart, which is quite fiery.”****Alas, it's his asshole which is the totality of his being.****
Jacob warned that engaging in political brawls could reinforce the unfavorable view that Franken is “a hot-headed partisan.”

Percy Sutton dies - told interesting story about Obama

http://tinyurl.com/yb44ku4
Percy Sutton, civil rights activist, attorney and NY political figure dies at 89 December 27
He was the son of a slave, a mentor to Rev. Jesse Jackson, lawyer for Malcolm X and prominent figure in New York politics and a fixture in the Harlem community, Percy Sutton died late last night at the age of 89, his longtime friend Governor David A. Paterson said late last night.
After serving in World War II and Korea as one of the Tuskegee Airmen Sutton, the youngest of 15 children opened a law office on 125th Street in Harlem, where he'd spend decades representing Malcolm X and later the slain leader's family, as well as taking on many prominent civil rights cases.
Sutton would go on to serve a long career in politics, representing the neighborhood as a member of the New York State Assembly. In 1966 Sutton was appointed to fill a vacancy in the office of Manhattan Borough President, making him the highest-ranking black politician in the state. He later mounted unsuccessful campaigns for the United States Senate and New York City Mayor, and served as political mentor for Rev. Jesse Jackson's two presidential races...
http://tinyurl.com/ycqjp9e
Obama's Harvard Years: Questions Swirl By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
How exactly did Barack Obama pay for his Harvard Law School education?
The way the Obama campaign has answered the question was simply hard work and student loans.
But new questions have been raised about Obama’s student loans and Obama’s ties to a radical Muslim activist who reportedly was raising money for Obama’s Harvard studies during the years 1988 to 1991.
The allegations first surfaced in late March, when former Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton told a New York cable channel that a former business partner who was “raising money” for Obama had approached him in 1988 to help Obama get into Harvard Law School.
In the interview, Sutton says he first heard of Obama about twenty years ago from Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Muslim and Black Nationalist who was a “mentor” to the founders of the Black Panther party at the time the party was founded in the early 1960s...

Many clues but Homeland Security Dept is clueless.

The terrorist (and only the Politically Correct would call him "alleged") was a Nigerian (a smuggling center ), a Muslim-named passenger, who paid cash for his plane ticket (probably one-way ), had no checked baggage, was on a warning list, had his own father report him to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria as a potential terrorist, had an expensive apartment in London's West End but was denied re-entry to Britain... That he was cleared to fly out of Amsterdam by U.S. Homeland Security is astounding and a travesty. Homeland Security did essentially nothing to thwart this attempt and only dumb luck and the quick reaction of passengers avoided tragedy. The President was not informed until three hours after the fact although news agencies reported it earlier.The incident didn't interfere with Obama"s golf today in Hawaii.
The "beefed up" security seems stupid and beside the point. The idea of stipulating that plane passengers will henceforth not be allowed to leave their seats, have anything on their laps, or access their overhead luggage DURING THE LAST HOUR BEFORE LANDING. What about one hour plus one minute? The Xmas bomber was seated and did none of the things prohibited henceforward.
The only likely prevention mechanism that can work in most cases is to target the individuals themselves with both profiling and behavioral screening modalities. Left-wing opposition on the basis of privacy and political correctness will have to yield or those people will have to take responsibility for what happens.

Bad enough that O has not supported the Iranian dissidents, now this

Kerry of Tehran His trip would convey legitimacy that the dictatorship is especially eager to have at the current moment.
John Kerry lost the Secretary of State sweepstakes to Hillary Clinton, but that hasn't lowered his diplomatic ambitions. The Journal reported Thursday that the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman is mulling a trip to Iran, and with the blessing of the Obama Administration.
If the mullahs had any sense, they'd send him a government plane. Beset by almost daily demonstrations by a democratic opposition that has been growing despite beatings and arrests since the stolen June election, Mr. Kerry would arrive from Washington to show the Iranian people that at least someone still favors the regime. He would be the most senior American to visit Tehran in 30 years and his trip would convey legitimacy that the dictatorship is especially eager to have at the current moment.
The Kerry mission would also look like a panicky effort to persuade the Ayatollah Ali Khamanei to accept the increasingly plaintive U.S. offers of engagement. Mr. Obama has set the end of this month as his latest deadline for progress on nuclear talks before he says he'll seek tougher sanctions against Iran at the U.N.
But if a year of personal Presidential letters and Administration entreaties hasn't worked, why would a Senatorial trip? The regime would probably exploit the visit for its own domestic purposes, perhaps adding to its P.R. coup by releasing to Mr. Kerry the three hapless American hikers it has promised to put on trial for having "suspicious aims" as they wandered across the border with Iraq.
The Iranians who need support now are the democrats in prison, in the streets, and increasingly in the mosques as the regime loses its legitimacy even among many clerics. Please do them no more harm, Senator.

What can we learn from the Xmas Day bombing attempt?

If one is not politically correct, the guy's name and background might have raised some concern for heightened surveillance. It turns out that the guy was on a "watch list" for two years but not on a "no fly" list and, most strangely, there's no third list indicating "heightened surveillance" if flying internationally.
The technology of mixing explosive chemicals on board seems to have advanced past the current transportation protocols' abilities to interdict.It is only blind luck ( or the terrorist's incompetence ) that caused the bomb to detonate prematurely and without fatal consequence. The only technology that might have caught this is full-body scanning which the privacy enthusiasts have been inveighing against, presumably for reasons of modesty and intrusiveness ( one commentator suggested that being blown up was a tad more intrusive!)
A past head of security at Ben Gurion Airport, Rafi Ron, suggested that technology would always advance a stage past whatever surveillance technology is employed for defense and that the only way to maximize safety is through behavioral monitoring ( which the left will immediately condemn as profiling.) His point is that the potential terrorists are being drawn from ranks not restricted to James Bond types and that more amateurish terrorists can be straightforwardly identified by behavior observation protocols combined with intelligent use of databases.

If Obama is a disaster on domestic issues, consider his foreign policy.

http://tinyurl.com/y8mdvuy
Obama's top 10 foreign policy blunders
In London's Daily Telegraph, Niles Gardner gives a list of President Obumbler's top 10 foreign policy blunders
1. Surrendering to Russia over missile defence.
2. Appeasing the mullahs of Iran.
3. Ending the war on terror.
4. Announcing a surge while declaring an exit.
5. Apologizing to France for America's "arrogance."
6. Giving DVDs to the British Prime Minister.
7. Siding with Marxists in Honduras.
8. Bowing to emperors and kings.
9. Embracing genocidal killers in Sudan.
10. Throwing Churchill out of the White House.
****It's problematical as to which are the "top ten" because, for sure, there are many.Pushing for a 'total settlement freeze' in Judea, Samaria and 'east' Jerusalem didn't even make the list but it made the Palestinians even more intransigent than usual and set back any hope of peace negotiations immeasurably ( although the chance is nil, anyway.) Failure to back the uprisings in Iran is disgraceful from both a moral and strategic perspective. Indulging his Islamist proclivities at every turn, Obama's obeisance to the Keeper of the Two Shrines was partially covered up by his similarly bowing to the Emperor of Japan. That it is not just an innocence of diplomatic protocol ( or personal deference to kings and emperors ) was shown by his insouciant, indeed disrespectbul, treatment of Queen Elizabeth of the U.K. Perhaps he feels more Kenyan ( hating Britain for its colonialism ) than American ( remembering Britain as America's stanchest friend since the Revolution.)****

Carter, as usual, either lies or doesn't understand (or both)

http://tinyurl.com/ya23gax
Carter Says Sorry to Jews, Apology Not Linked to Grandson's Political Ambitions
Jimmy Carter's recent apology to Jews for actions he acknowledged have stigmatized Israel is not timed to a decision by his grandson on whether to enter Georgia politics, the former president told an online Jewish news agency this week.
Atlanta attorney Jason Carter, 34, is debating whether to run for Georgia's state Senate from the district representing suburban DeKalb County, which has a significant Jewish population in the area around Emory University. Jason Carter, whose father is Jimmy Carter's eldest son, Jack, would aim to succeed David Adelman, President Obama's nominee to be ambassador to Singapore. Carter told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that electoral considerations had nothing to do with his recent outreach to the Jewish community, although he did not outright deny it. "Jason has a district, the number of Jewish voters in it is only 2 percent," Carter is quoted saying in a report published Tuesday. ****Except that it had enough clout( actual voters plus money ) to elect a guy named Adelman to the seat.****... "I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so," he reportedly said, referring to the Yom Kippur prayer for atonement for sins against God.****As usual, Jimmy distorts. Al Het prays for God's forgiveness. Sins against man require rather more: the sinned-against must be sought out, AMENDS MADE, sincere apologies tendered and forgiveness sought. The sinned-against does not have to forgive but, after this process has been sincerely repeated THREE times, the sin is adjudged to be expunged and the sin belongs to the unforgiving. Carter has quite a ways to go. Also, his sins are not restricted to writing his "Apartheid" book. He even had the gall, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech to refer to Resolution 242 as saying Israel had to withdraw from "...THE territories..." although he clearly knew that the absence of the definite article was important, was negotiated for and was absent in the official English translation.****
... "If it turns out that President Carter's love for his grandson brought about an epiphany in his relationship with the Jewish people, that's fine," said Foxman, according to the report...
http://tinyurl.com/yabwtov
...Did the Saudis bounce a check on Carter? On as he gets a little closer to the Ultimate Judge, is he starting to remember what's actually in the Bible he purports to believe in? Tell you what, Jimmah....your Jew hatred was a sin against G-d who will forgive you, but also against man, and if you claim to know something about Yom Kippur and Atonement, you know this is just the beginning. Teshuvah, repentance for a sin committed against man requires more than just a sorry. You have to make restitution and an honest attempt to undo some of the harm you've done. For starters, instead of quietly admitting you were wrong to the likes of the ADL. write one of those famous editorials in the New York Times or the Washington Post and announce it to the world. Admit you plagiarized large portions of "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", that it had huge and almost defamatory factual errors that you stubbornly refused to admit, even when long time associates of the Carter Peace Center resigned in disgust. Be honest and have the humility to admit that Apartheid and Israel don't belong in the same sentence, let alone as the thesis of an entire book. Hit the talk shows and confess.
Talk honestly about your many dealings with Hamas, and how you met in Damascus with your buddy Khalid Mashaal, head of the Hamas politburo for the express purpose of advising Mashaal on how high a ransom to ask for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Admit that you were shamefully inhumane not to insist that Hamas allow the Red Cross to visit Shalit. Admit how you covered for Yasir Arafat, even though you knew he murdered Americans and had two of our diplomats kidnapped and tortured to death.
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/carter_arafat.jpg
Go to Israel and apologize personally to the people of Israel for demonizing them the whole world over. That's what repentance looks like, according to G-d's own standards, Mr. Carter. And you know as well as I do that nothing is going to change for you spiritually until it happens.
Jesus said about someone very like you that they were neither hot nor cold, so he would spew them out of his mouth and reject them. Right now, according to that standard, you're barely luke warm. Do the right thing, for your own sake if nothing else.

Liberals who are ideological are scaring "liberals" who are interested in power.

http://tinyurl.com/ybq4fyg
Keep the Big Tent big By William M. Daley
****This scion of the Daley machine in Chicago is a bit chagrined that a protege of that machine, having actually been elected President, doesn't understand that by governing only from the Far Left he is likely to lose power. Admittedly, Obama has the Far Left and only had to fool the moderates and independents to get elected. Now, however, he is pulling aside the curtain in Oz and Daley thinks it should be put back in place.One might suppose that there are things that Obama cares about, such as domestic policy and turning the U.S. into socialist France ( or worse 0 and things he cares less about, like wars and foreign affairs. The only plausible reason he took so long to make a decision about sending troops to Afghanistan, and then wound up with a compromise, is that he needed all the months to do focus groups and find which set of stated policies would do him the least amount of harm. Note that what is good for the country, and the fact that delay emboldens our enemies, were/are matters of no concern to this President.****
http://tinyurl.com/yg7zyuy
The Democrats have been down this road before.
When Legerdemain Is Used to Pass an Unpopular Bill Michael Barone
... Obama has been saying that passage of the bill will mean that the health care issue will be settled once and for all... wrong. ...That legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Its lead sponsor was Stephen A. Douglas, at 41 in his eighth year as senator from Illinois,...Douglas' legislative prowess far exceeded that of current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. To hold together his 60 Senate Democrats, Reid simply dispensed favors -- eternal Medicaid financing for Ben Nelson's Nebraska, a hospital grant for Chris Dodd's Connecticut, more rural health money for Byron Dorgan's North Dakota and Montana's Max Baucus.****Don't forget Medicaid financing for Reid's own Nevada and Mary Landrieu's $300M for Louisiana.****...The issue that Douglas said the Kansas-Nebraska Act would settle forever was slavery in the territories....the results of the next election were pretty convincing. The Republican Party was suddenly created to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the 1854-55 elections transformed the Democrats' 159-71 majority to a 108-83 Republican margin. ...On the health care bill, there can be little doubt about public opinion. Quinnipiac, polling just after the Senate voted cloture, found Americans opposed by a 53 percent to 36 percent margin. Polls suggest that Democrats may suffer as much carnage in the 2010 elections as they did in 1854. Nor did the Kansas-Nebraska Act settle the issue it addressed. ...A health care bill like the Senate's is unlikely to settle all health care issues, either,..."We aren't done talking about health care," writes Atlantic blogger (and Obama voter) Megan McArdle. "We haven't even really started. Our budget problems are as big as ever, and we just used up both political capital, and some of our stock of tax increases and spending cuts, to pay for something else." The Senate bill contains provisions that are likely to be revisited. Its language channeling federal and consumer dollars to abortion coverage is opposed, according to Quinnipiac, by a 72 percent to 23 percent margin. Its provision establishing an Independent Medicare Advisory Board and stating that it cannot be abolished except by a two-thirds vote of the Senate is of dubious constitutionality, and even if upheld in a court of law may not pass muster in the court of public opinion. Since when has Congress passed laws that cannot be repealed? Kansas-Nebraska was an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by legislative legerdemain and political trickery. The Democrats' health care bills are an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by partisan maneuver and cash-for-cloture....such tactics can work for a while, but the country -- and the Democratic Party -- can end up paying a heavy price.

More things start appearing as the thousands of pages are scrutinized.

http://tinyurl.com/ya9o9z3
What Doctors and Patients Have to Lose Under ObamaCare Changes to Medicare will give the feds control of surgical decisions. By SCOTT GOTTLIEB
...The plan's most tangible efforts to restrain medical costs are through its controls on specialist physicians....It all starts with the sweeping power that the Senate bill gives to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The agency will be given the authority to unilaterally write new rules on when medical devices and drugs can be used, and how they should be priced. In particular, the Obama team wants to give the agency the power to decide when a cheaper medical option will suffice for a given problem and, in turn, when Medicare only has to pay for the least costly alternative...****This is the agency the bill tries to make unmodifiable in the future by declaring any effort to do so to be "not in order" with respect to Senate rules. Whether such insulation against subsequent Congresses having any discretion is Constitutional ( or even sensible under any legal theory )is questionable.Who knows? The one thing lawyers are good at is dreaming up unreasonable strictures on ordinary logic and commonsense.This harks back to a dictatorial version of "democracy": one man, one vote, one time.****

Are jihadis entitled to "human rights"?

http://tinyurl.com/yzhzznb
Islamofascists As Robotically Lethal As Nazis
By RICHARD COHEN...I attended a panel discussion on robots. One of the experts — everyone's an expert at Davos — predicted that robots would take over the world. Another said this was nonsense. A robot couldn't even scratch its own back....Robots killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, India....call the 10 young men who did the killing (nine of them died) ...robots. They did not know the people they killed. They did not care about the people they killed. They took orders over the phone from a controller in Pakistan. When he told them to kill, they killed. When he told them to die, they died....disturbing HBO documentary called "Terror in Mumbai." ...In recent days, five young men from Northern Virginia have been arrested in Pakistan, ...bent on joining terrorist outfits there....the Mumbai attack was assisted in its planning by a Chicago resident, a native-born American named David Headley who is now in custody....it does not take a clever individual to commit appalling mayhem. All it takes is a frightening plasticity and some training...In three months he and the others were turned into merciless killers....The coldblooded killing of Jews is hardly a new idea. The Mumbai terrorist attacks had elements of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust....Mumbai advances the horror. The banal background of the German killers — not, by any means, hardened Nazis — is somewhat similar to the pedestrian stories of the Mumbai killers. The difference this time was that the Mumbai terrorists were not only willing to kill others but themselves as well....one of the panelists described what he thought would happen when ...one robot was hooked up to the computer in another and then another and another until each robot was supersmart and superfast...and totally without a conscience — cold, soulless, pitiless....not exactly what happened in Mumbai, but it's close enough....done with nothing fancy — some automatic weapons, grenades and young men turned into robots.
...****It has long been interesting to discuss at what point humans are distinguished from, first, other primates and animals, and, latterly, from robots like the replicants in Blade Runner. A book called The Moral Animal makes a case for morality being a difference, perhaps THE difference. If that is the case, then a being that looks human but lacks the free will morality that the West (at least) considers important might well not be human. We are used to eschewing capital punishment for the mentally ill who do not "know" the meaning of their actions ( and the Ft Hood killer is bound to consider this sort of defense, as recommended by various Muslim apologists who refuse to acknowledge that this might be a religious characteristic rather than a mental illness --Islam as "religious illness," if you will )and consider that they might be not guilty by reason of mental incapacity. A more rational viewpoint might hold that they ARE guilty by reason of mental incapacity.
Perhaps a more analogous situation is that of a wild animal ( bear, cougar,...) that kills a person. The animal is not even aberrant; it usually is doing what is natural for it and the person most often has intruded into the animal's realm rather than the other way around. Nevertheless, the animal is hunted and "put down." I have often considered that the proper response for someone who seems to have forfeited, misplaced or been otherwise disabused of his humanity in the commission of some heinous act against an actual human is to put that person down. In the robotic sense, perhaps he should be dismantled and permanently put on the shelf.
At the same time,this might not go far enough. We are constantly reminded by the jihadis that they "love death more than (we) love life." Thus, for them death is necessary but insufficient as a demotivator. Other means must be sought even if they seem to transgress the rules of morality applicable to "ordinary" humans rather than robots. What in their programming would assume high enough priority to be dissuasive? Injury to something outside themselves is clearly needed (although one might well argue that coercive interrogation methods to elicit life-saving information would be moral and appropriate for such robotic types ). These could involve the sources of their programming ( e.g. harm to the religious impulses that motivate them such as precluding them ascending to heaven through use of their own superstitions about pigs and women and defilement or even threats to the symbols of the religion itself such as Mecca and Medina or their ayatollahs ) or things like their families. There has long been an argument against extending to "lower" animals ( and now to robots ) the rights one would ordinarily extend to other humans. We have seen from the Nazi era and the demonstrations of the psychologist Solomon Asch that ordinary humans are capable of robotic cruelty but, until now, the West has thought there is a line that humans do not cross: that of robotic agreement to destroy themselves. One might well submit that this is a clear line of demarcation that separates the human from the non-human. ****

Zoo question: What animal has an asshole in the middle of its back?

Prince Charles of Arabia by Ronni L. Gordon and David M. Stillman Middle East Quarterly September 1997
http://www.meforum.org/356/prince-charles-of-arabia...//
http://tinyurl.com/y95fvjq
Prince Charles addresses Copenhagen summit, says Earth 'on brink'
Britain's Prince Charles says it's now or never if the world wants to halt climate change / AFP Source: AFP

* Earth on brink of crisis, says prince
* "Partial solution is no solution at all"
* UN wants more from developing nations


ANS: Prince Charles' horse.

FBI suspicions of Muslims? Perhaps well-founded.

http://tinyurl.com/y8rafyk
Muslims Say F.B.I. Tactics Sow Anger and Fear
By PAUL VITELLO and KIRK SEMPLE NYT
...In March, a national coalition of Islamic organizations warned that it would cease cooperating with the F.B.I. unless the agency stopped infiltrating mosques and using “agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab-American Association of New York, said that bonds with the F.B.I. were not permanent.****I'll bet not.**** ......after an imam in Queens was charged with aiding what the authorities called a bomb-making plot, a group of South Asian Muslims there began compiling a database of complaints about their brushes with counterterrorism investigators...“There is a sense that law enforcement is viewing our communities not as partners but as objects of suspicion,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America,...a spate of recent cases — from the alleged bomb plot by a former Manhattan coffee vendor, Najibullah Zazi, to the shootings at Fort Hood, in Texas — has heightened Americans’ concerns about homegrown terrorism. Muslim leaders have promised to redouble efforts to combat extremism in their ranks.****Perhaps "redoubling" is insufficient since the extremism may be growing exponentially.****...worry about the fallout for the vast numbers of the innocent...“This is a national security issue,” said David Schanzer, who heads the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. “It’s absolutely vital that the F.B.I. and the Muslim-American community clear the air and figure out how to work together.”... Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in an interview that it tries to resolve anxieties by giving community leaders “explanations, where the circumstances permit, and resolving concerns where possible.”...Mr. Bresson said that no group is spotlighted because of its members’ religion or ethnicity. ... The new guidelines, which the F.B.I. confirmed in October in response to a suit filed by the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, make it easier to plant informers and allow agents to include ethnicity and religion in the assessment of targets, as long as those are not the only factors considered....the case stoked apprehensions that the government sees Arab-Americans and Muslims as a people apart....Some factions within the agency, he said, have always been leery of Islamic and Arab-American organizations, considering their loyalties to be divided....The American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, which threatened to cease cooperating with the F.B.I., has not yet done so....the unraveling of ties between the F.B.I. and Muslim-Americans began two years ago, with the F.B.I.’s decision to stop sharing information with the nation’s most prominent Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations....the specter looming largest among immigrant Arabs and Muslims is fear of deportation. And some say the F.B.I. has used that threat forcefully....Mr. Rolince, the former F.B.I. agent, said he understood the worries, but felt they were overblown. “The F.B.I. has 12,500 agents,” he said. “Believe me, there’s not enough of them to waste time looking at you unless they have a good reason.” ****Most smokers don't get lung cancer but enough do that sanctions against smoking have been broadly accepted and the argument that most do not is irrelevant.****

Playing "The Price is Right": buying legislators at premium prices.

In order to get the 60th necessary for Obamacare, Sen Reid has had to "pay" ( with taxpayer money, of course ) unbelievable prices to buy the last few holdouts in his own party. Senator Landrieu got a special $300Million for the "Louisiana Purchase" but that was dwarfed by $10Billion garnered by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The record might have been set by the last bargainer, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. He got absolution for Nebraska for now and forever after from state payments for increases in MedicAid otherwise unfunded mandates ( which will afflict the other 49 states as the Federal government offloads much of the cost for Obamacare onto the states.) Senator Reid, rather from being the master negotiator, evidently just targeted those who didn't sign on with the simple question: "What will it take to buy your vote?" In typical Democrat fashion, he was merely spending the taxpayers' money and could be as generous as necessary. Evidently, the last holdouts played "The Price is Right" better than anyone else. Whether the other Senators, let alone the taxpayers, will like this is another matter.

Why vote against even sanctions?

Only 12 House Members Vote Against Iran Sanctions Eric Garris
Email This | Print This | Share This | Comment | Antiwar Forum
What happened to the “antiwar” members of Congress?
Only 12 voted against new sanctions on Iran, 3 of them Republicans. 412 voted in favor.
Here is the honor roll who voted against:
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
John Conyers (D-MI)
John Duncan (R-TN)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Gwen Moore (D-WI)
Ron Paul (R-TX)
Pete Stark (D-CA)
Voting Present: E.B. Johnson (D-TX), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA)

The French want to do it themselves because...they're French.

http://tinyurl.com/ydkwdle
French technology upstart challenges Google By GREG KELLER, AP PARIS – France's efforts to digitize its culture, from Marcel Proust's manuscripts to the first films of the legendary Lumiere brothers, long have been bogged down by the country's reluctance to rely on help from American Internet giant Google Inc.
A new startup launched Thursday says it may be the answer.
The consortium of French technology companies and government-backed information-technology research labs says it can provide the know-how needed by Europe's libraries, universities, publishers and others to scan, catalog and deliver to end users the contents of their archives — better than Google can.
The consortium's partners have studied the results of Google Books' scanning efforts, "and we know that we can do better," said Alain Pierrot, one of the project's leaders.
"We also know we have a ways to go, in productivity, in quality, in profitability. And we set up the consortium to do exactly that," Pierrot said at a news conference to present the project...
****There is usually the fact that THE First Mover Advantage doesn't exist but there are categories of FMAs. In this case, Google has a headstart in building a database of scanned documents and the User Multiplier Effect ( or Metcalfe Effect ) obtains. Goog has 10M scanned to the new company's 1M and that lead is likely to increase. The putative advantages of the French project ( "we've looked at what they've done and we can do better" )are run-of-the-mill and can always be said by those following pioneers. Unless they can identify something that Google has been doing wrong, and do it better, their venture is doomed except for whatever parochial exclusivity is mandated by the French government and that will require subsidies and waiting. They are also chasing a moving target since Google can improve their offerings continually unless the French have access to technology for which Google has barriers.****

Where did this reputation for eloquence come from? Glibness (w/ teleprompter), maybe.

****Google "great quotations of Obama" and get ...nil. Cliches, repetition characteristic of revival tenting, hyperbole...perhaps but not much memorable. Worse, much of what he says is not to be believed and does not any longer even get the benefit of the doubt. Who still believes him when he declaims that the healthcare bill will reduce the deficit and "save Medicare" or that the nation will go bankrupt without it? Only those who turn off their minds and only listen to the sounds, not the words. Congressman Wilson was prescient when he burst out "You lie." Now more and more people think it if they don't have the temerity to call it out.****
http://tinyurl.com/ye5kcr3
On The Precipice
...an illuminating choice of words...We are indeed "on the precipice" — staring into an abyss of statism...It was another of history's memorable Freudian slips.
Neville Chamberlain in 1938 disembarked from his plane and told the crowd, "This morning, I had another talk with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it, as well as mine." Forever, he will be remembered for waving his worthless "piece of paper."
President Bill Clinton a decade ago told the grand jury investigating whether he committed perjury that "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Forever, he will be remembered for twisting language into pretzels to avoid the truth.
President Jimmy Carter in his infamous 1979 "Malaise Speech" blamed Americans for a national "crisis of confidence" and "loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." Carter's solution: Carpool and "set your thermostats to save fuel. ... I tell you it is an act of patriotism."
Carter didn't know it, but he was describing a crisis of leadership — his — that Americans, unified in purpose, fixed the next year by electing Ronald Reagan. Forever, Carter will be remembered as the personification of American self-doubt and decline.
Has Barack Obama just written his own historical epitaph? Will he be the figure who pushed America off the precipice, into a bottomless pit of socialism?
Much of what the president said in his Tuesday statement was patently false....the Senate bill, ...won't mean that "families will save on their premiums." Independent studies make it clear that premiums will go up by thousands of dollars.... The president claims "the CBO has said that this is a deficit reduction." But as Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who sits on both the appropriations and banking committees, recently told Fox News' Neil Cavuto, the definition of "deficit-neutral" that Democrats have been using "means it's going to cost you over $1 trillion, and we are going to find $1 trillion either in Medicare cuts or increased taxes, so that we end up with the same number at the bottom line."
Speaking of the Congressional Budget Office, after candidate Obama last year promised a $2,500 annual reduction in health premiums annually for average families, the CBO has warned of premium increases of about $5,000 a year....with public support at 41% according to IBD/TIPP and 35% according to Gallup — not to mention two-thirds of doctors opposed to Congress' plan, as IBD/TIPP also found — most Americans clearly don't want to take a plunge like this.****Obama claimed/claims that most American doctors support the plan ( although he admits that no one knows what "the plan" is yet.)He claims support and consensus when there isn't any (even should consensus be an endorsement.)****This is becoming increasingly true and even obvious: much of what he says is false and immediately, and demonstrably false.****//
http://tinyurl.com/y8r23kl
Obama's War of Words Eloquence without action is soon forgotten. By WILLIAM MCGURN
Whatever else he may be, Barack Obama is a gifted orator whose words will be remembered by generations. Or will they?...President Obama has delivered two critical war speeches. At West Point he outlined a new policy for Afghanistan, committing 30,000 additional troops to deal with the threat that militant Islam continues to pose to the American people. In Oslo scarcely a week later, he used the occasion of his Nobel Prize to deliver a bracing reminder that the reality of evil requires nations willing to confront it.
Now comes the question put to all presidential speechwriters when a wartime president gives a major address. What did you think? Did he make his case? How will these speeches be treated by history?
The answer, surely, is that the measure of a speech goes beyond words....ultimately a war speech will be judged as much on the success of the war as on the eloquence of the words. Think of the great war speeches, starting with the Gettysburg Address. When Abraham Lincoln delivered those words at a cemetery for the Union fallen in 1863, he justified the terrible human toll on the promise "that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."...Had Lincoln not committed himself so single-mindedly to that effort,...would schoolchildren still be memorizing his words today? Or consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt....there can be no debate that his exhortations resonate even today because they were backed by policies that defeated totalitarian threats ...Ditto for John Kennedy. ...Kennedy adviser and speechwriter Ted Sorensen did not dismiss the power of the spoken word, but neither did he confuse it with action. "[A]fter all is said and little is done, a speech—even an elevated, eloquent speech—is still just a speech," he wrote. "Saying so doesn't make it so." ****This is, so far, the hallmark of Obama: saying so doesn't make it so...And saying it so often and repetitiously.When does the man have time to think, let alone to do?**** ...the point about Reagan is that when he spoke, he wasn't acting. When Reagan declared that the "last pages" of communism were being written or called for the Berlin Wall to come down, he believed it—and his policies reflected those beliefs....We remember Reagan at Berlin because the wall did come down—and he did his part to help bring it down."...In wartime, people soon tire of lofty words that do not seem borne out by events. In September 2001, with the twin towers still smoldering and the Pentagon wounded, President Bush delivered a war address to a joint session of Congress (which I had no part in, so am free to praise) that ranks with the best of FDR. Whether that speech ever receives its full due depends in part on how this war ends. The same goes for President Obama. At West Point and Oslo, he spoke...The irony is that whether these fine speeches are remembered by history depends on a word he didn't use in either one: victory.

The Chicago Way: of bribery and intimidation.

http://tinyurl.com/ygpjqut
The Chicago Way
Hadassah Lieberman: No breast-cancer spokesperson job for you.
Politics: If the Democrats' stitched-together Frankenstein monster of health care reform gets the 60 votes to get through the Senate, it will have been done through an assortment of bribes and brass knuckles.
With the Medicare buy-in and the public option seemingly gone, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may be getting close to what he needs to get the nationalization of one-sixth of the nation's economy through the Senate. We'll just be forced to buy the insurance the government wants through its power to tax and regulate the insurance industry.
This seems to be enough to secure the vote of Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who has been under enormous pressure from the liberals not to block their plans for a command-and-control system directed by a maze of bureaucracies, commissions and panels in Washington. The loony left was taking no chances, however.
Just in case, activists led by the blog Firedoglake called on the Susan G. Komen Foundation to fire Joe's wife, Hadassah Lieberman, who works as a paid international spokesperson for the breast-cancer research group.
Blogger Jane Hamsher, a movie producer ("Natural Born Killers") and political activist who runs Firedoglake, went after Mrs. Lieberman on the blog as Sen. Lieberman was refusing to vote for a health care reform bill that included expanding Medicare to people as young as 55.
Have these people no shame? Just ask Kenneth Gladney, beaten up by thugs wearing SEIU shirts outside a St. Louis health care reform town hall.
Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat, has also been critical of the buy-in and public option, but he has an additional issue about whatever comes out of the Senate not involving public funding of abortion in any way. Michael Goldfarb on the Weekly Standard blog quotes a Senate aide as saying the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base on the base closure and realignment list if Nelson doesn't fall into line.
Offutt is the headquarters for the U.S. Strategic Command, successor to the Strategic Air Command. STRATCOM was situated in the middle of the country for strategic reasons. Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in southeast Nebraska. Its closure would be a major blow to the state's economy and would amount to playing politics with our national security.
As Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com puts it, if we're going to bring terrorists into Illinois to placate the liberal left and world public opinion, what does it matter if we put the U.S. Strategic Command on wheels for a few years?"
In what has been called the second Louisiana Purchase, that state's senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, was given a $300 million sweetener for her health care vote. It was not-so-cleverly hidden in language inserted in a bill that targeted help to states hit by major disasters to cover soaring Medicaid costs. Deciphering the language showed it was meant to help only one state and only one senator — the one from the Big Easy. If there's ever a sequel to the book "Profiles in Courage," Sen. Landrieu of Louisiana will not be in it.
We hesitate to speculate what methods may be used to ensure the votes of other senators on the bubble, such as vulnerable Blanche Lincoln, the Democrat from Arkansas, a red state that actually got redder in 2008. Will it be a cutoff of national support or the threat of a well-funded primary opponent? Will it be an offer she can't refuse?
Deal-making and political hardball have long been a part of the legislative process. But as this particular sausage has been made behind closed doors it has reached new levels of arm-twisting that make the smoke-filled rooms of earlier eras seem like Athenian democracy.

Libs' rabid attack on Lieberman and even on his wife!

http://tinyurl.com/yatmo8k
...Lieberman's partial show of independence on health care has intensified the left's already-seething hatred for him.

Redistribution (of American wealth) under the guise of "climate change."

http://tinyurl.com/ybunf6s
Clinton: US would help raise billions on climate By CHARLES J. HANLEYCOPENHAGEN – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought to put new life into flagging U.N. climate talks Thursday by announcing the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming.
The $100 billion figure, the first offered by Washington in discussions here over long-term financing, falls short of what some experts suggest will be needed. Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said talks would focus on the "adequacy" of that target...
****What a boondoggle! Third world countries OSTENSIBLY need money to cope with climate change and need the developed world to pay for such things as a seawall around the Maldive Islands ( although there is no discernable rise in sea level to threaten them.) Worse, contributions would go to totalitarian dictatorships where the money would certainly go down a rathole. However, if the money down a rathole comes from richer people, then the absolute goal of redistribution would still be achieved: reducing everyone to the same level, however much lower than before! ****

But I thought Obama said no one was to arrive before 2010 and thus his procrastination had no effect.

First of 30,000 new troops arriving in Afghanistan (AP)

AP - Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell says the first of 30,000 additional troops being sent to Afghanistan have begun to arrive.

Muslim chaplains in military and prisons vetted by Islamists

http://tinyurl.com/ydrogrw

Dhimmitude and stealth jihad at Fort Hoodfrom Jihad Watch by Robert Spenser
I have word from an informed source that a top representative of the Muslim Brotherhood arm known as the Islamic Society of North America -- Louay Safi -- is at Fort Hood this week training the army brigade getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan. At about 1800 EST today, Safi gave a check to families of the victims of the Major Hasan jihad killings.
The Fort Hood leadership was overheard commenting that Safi was "really nice."
The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words to "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands"? The rest of that passage, of course, is: "...and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." That's from "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.
ISNA is a Brotherhood entity, and an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case.
This is criminal and the base commander should be fired right now. Posted by Robert on December 2, 2009

Detailed exposition of the fraud revealed by Climategate

http://tinyurl.com/y8uf3h8
A Closer Look At Those Climate Change Graphsby Michael Laprarie
****The fraud revealed by closer examination was even more egregious than one could have imagined: the fraudsters of the warmist movement actually switched from one data set to another, without recalibration and for the sole purpose of producing the result they wanted. This is a capital crime in any kind of scientific activity. There is nil difference between doing this and making up ersatz data out of whole cloth: there is always some "real" data set that can be endlessly manipulated in this way.
There are also less malign but still erroneous ways of taking data that can be demonstrated by anyone with an outdoor car in cold weather. Read the temperature outside the car when it is near a building and then read the temperature when it is away from any habitation on the road. In cold weather, you will see the temperature FALL by as much as ten degrees. Then ask whether the thermometers used in recent years to monitor current climate are placed out in the fields or ( for convenience's sake) nearer buildings. Perhaps that's why recent temperature readings vary between land and satellite and ocean and desert etc.****

Obamacare's ability to lower costs is a chimera and fraud

http://tinyurl.com/y8fuz28
The 'Cost Control' Bill of Goods How Peter Orszag and the White House sold a health-care illusion.
ObamaCare's core promise—better quality care for everyone at lower costs—is being exposed as an illusion as it degenerates into the raw exercise of political power. Naturally, the White House and its media booster club are working furiously to prop up this fiasco, especially on cost control. As Obama budget director Peter Orszag put it at a revealing media breakfast earlier this month, the Senate bill does everything the experts recommend to "get at the underlying drivers of health-care costs." While he admitted that "we don't know enough" to produce results right away, the key is to encourage "continuous improvement" through pilot programs and demonstration projects. Cost containment will actually take "years to decades," Mr. Orszag conceded....
****A salient illogicality is reliance on "Waste,Fraud & Abuse" as a source for funds. While it is possible to identify WF&A through statistical sampling and detailed audit, that methodology cannot be extended actually to root out such since the detailed audit's cost exceeds the savings. This is a truism characteristic of almost all bureaucratic programs ( e.g. the IRS, government procurement, entitlement programs and subsidies of all kinds ): they have W,F&A but are inextricable and irremediable features of large, governmental systems pretty much as an overhead cost of doing business. This is not to say that loopholes and specific instances of W,F&A should not be identified and rooted out but it is hardly a reliable source of funds to finance other things.Anyone who says it is is either a fool or thinks we are.****

Parody or truth about media bias?

http://tinyurl.com/ydk2v78
Humorist Presumes Liberal Bias in Unveiling 'Secrets Journalists Never Told You' | NewsBusters.org
In “sharing my do's and don'ts” as a journalist, Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten found good fodder in the presumption journalists are out to help liberals and Democrats while hurting conservatives and Republicans. “When deliberately slanting stories in support of liberal causes, always cover your tracks by quoting the other side,” he advised. “Example: 'President Obama wants universal health care, whereas Rush Limbaugh, the big fat drug addict, contends it is a bad idea.'”
That's not far from reality...

Insult allies; vacation and coddle sympathetic press w/ taxpayer money.

PRO-OBAMA JOURNALISTS GET PAID WITH TAXPAYER MONEY, TO SURROUND OBAMA DURING HOLIDAY IN HAWAII by Brigitte de Maubec
Obama will enjoy a 13 day Hawaiian Holiday repleat with a corps of jouralists, paid for with your tax-dollars....after the aftermath of yet another insult to our allies via the refusal to participate to the traditional events surrounding the award of the Nobel Prize including a dinner with the King, on the pretenses that the recipient was a very busy, sitting “President,” responsible for not one, but two, wars and facing the worst economic crisis “EVAHHH!”, the White House is quietly organizing yet another vacation-time for the Obamas....the invitations for the entourage are out!...Laurence Haim, the only French-Press-accredited, White House correspondent — but for the AFP — revealed that she had received an email inviting her and a guest to stay for the duration of Obama’s trip to Hawaii, at a Hotel next to the Obamas’ vacations spot....the entire corps of White House correspondents, domestic and international has been invited (with a guest of their choice), to follow the Obamas under the sun at the American taxpayer expense...

Lately, the mantra of climate al/warmists is about the decade

http://tinyurl.com/y8euehu
Warmest ever, or getting cooler? By Randall Hoven
You might hear climate change "deniers" saying recent temperatures show global cooling. But then you hear climate "scientists" say the last 10 years were the warmest on record. Who's right? They both are.
That is, if you accept, say, the NASA/GISS Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change (land-ocean mix) as the "true" global temperature.
(By the way, I do not accept that the NASA/GISS data represent truth. The data NASA provides are not raw temperature readings or even simple averages of temperature readings. They are adjusted, quality-controlled, homogenized and fudge-factored in ways we don't know and they're not telling. But for the purposes of the question at hand, let's accept NASA's adjusted and homogenized data.)...//
http://tinyurl.com/ycsku3k
When the warmest year in history isn't Debra J. Saunders SFChronicle
...Any science involving complex organisms is rarely black and white. When it comes to global warming, newspapers play up stories that reinforce the prevalent the-sky-is-falling belief that global warming is human-caused and catastrophic. But if a study or scientist does not portend the end of the world as we know it, it rarely rates as news....reviewed 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed articles on global warming published between 1993 and 2003, and concluded, "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."...no scientist dares challenge the politically correct position on the issue....David Bellamy - an Australian botanist who was involved in some 400 TV productions, only to see his TV career go south after he questioned global warming orthodoxy - wrote in the Australian last week, "It's not even science any more; it's anti-science." Bellamy notes that official data show that "in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002, Arctic ice actually increased." Exhibit B: MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard S. Lindzen recently wrote, "There has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995."

Such findings rarely are reported,..."Scientists keep coming out of the woodwork" to challenge the so-called consensus. "It's almost like a bandwagon effect." The Global Warming Petition Project urges Washington to reject the Kyoto international global warming pact because there is "no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. So far, the Politico reports, more than 31,000 scientists have signed it......two bloggers found that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data wrongly cast October as the warmest in recorded history. It turns out that the mistake was due to an error ...The error occurred because a report "had the wrong month label attached. There is quality control at NOAA and GISS but this particular problem had not been noticed before and the existing QC procedures didn't catch it..."...Just last year, again thanks to the vigilance of Watts and McIntyre, Goddard had to reconfigure its findings and recognize 1934 - not 1998, as it had figured - as the hottest year on record in American history....it is hard to see Goddard as objective when its director, James Hansen, testified in a London court in September in support of six eco-vandals...that their use of force would prevent greater damage to the environment after Hansen predicted the one Kingsnorth plant could push 400 species into extinction. Of course, he could be wrong.

Puncturing the myths of Tiger and Barack (but Tiger can at least play golf!_

http://tinyurl.com/yhpwfdr
Tiger, Barack, and the Law of Transitivity By Lisa Schiffren The American Thinker
...what is it about Tiger Woods that makes his cheating so different...We see now that the image was all a fraud. The talent was real....much artifice -- sustained, deliberate deception -- goes into the construction of a public persona when there is profit to be made or power to be had... for business reasons -- Buick, Nike, Gatorade, Gillette, EA Sports, and Accenture being among them -- Woods decided to exfoliate from his public image all things base, carnal, and even personal....The Tiger Woods that was constructed for corporate consumption was spotless and smooth, an edgeless brand easily peddled to sheikhs and shakers.
...if this comprehensive a charade can be sustained for a decade as Woods and those around him amassed billions, it can happen elsewhere. It can happen right in front of our eyes....Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record or accomplishments, and the public's willing suspension of critical evaluation of his résumé allowed his handlers and the media to project whatever they wanted ...They constructed a persona that would make the American electorate comfortable with a barely-known, first-term senator with a left wing voting record, a deliberately obscured personal and professional past, and no traditional qualifications for high office....The flaws that were airbrushed out of the candidate photos are becoming glaringly obvious...it matters a lot if the president is revealed to be an inexperienced, excessively ideological, and weak man who is naïve about the world and uncomfortable exercising American power during a time of war. It matters if nothing in his training would have equipped the president to understand what it takes to stimulate job growth, or ameliorate a recession, or to end an overseas conflict successfully. It matters that he is uninterested in the science behind global warming -- and wishes to use the issue to amass power and reorder society. It matters that he has no interest in the construction of policy.
...Woods is an exceptional golfer with a character problem. Barack Obama, by contrast, is not an exceptional, or even particularly competent, leader....so many politicians, interest groups and factions have an interest in his continued presence, no one is ready to reveal the man behind the curtain just yet...

What the Senate Dems didn't tell us.

Today it turns out that a salient feature of what was promised ( that insurance couldn't be terminated for those with an illness ) was eliminated through a loophole inserted behind closed doors. That is, although insurance is not supposed to be cancelable in event of illness, and the lifetime limits on payments were supposed to be eliminated, AN ANNUAL LIMIT ON PAYMENTS WAS INCLUDED. Thus, if someone is stricken with a serious and expensive illness, payments during a given year can be capped! This effectively terminates insurance for that year.
This was ostensibly done to prevent premiums from rising too much!! That is, the Senators quietly conceded that actuarial truths cannot be eliminated by Congressional fiat but chose to hide the fact from the taxpayers/voters. When this was discovered, and attacked by such as the American Cancer Society, Senate Democrats "promised" to close the loophole.What else remains to be "discovered?"
First of all, what are their promises worth? Second, why do they promise to close loopholes only after they have been discovered and made public? What does that portend for a bill that is several THOUSAND pages long and hidden from both the public and Senate Republicans? Having already confirmed the nature of their ethics, it is impossible to accept passage of a bill that long and complex based on "trust me" as the guarantee.

Succinct wisdom from Gen. Schwarzkopf

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harboured and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America.
His answer was classic Schwarzkopf.
The General said, "I believe that forgiving them is God's function.OUR job is to arrange the meeting."

Celestial greeting to Messiah Obama debunked.

http://tinyurl.com/ylezzh9
New Russian missile failure sparks UFO frenzy
by Stuart Williams
MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia's new nuclear-capable missile suffered another failed test launch, the defence ministry said Thursday, solving the mystery of a spectacular plume of white light that appeared over Norway. The Bulava missile was test-fired from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi in the White Sea early Wednesday but failed at the third stage, the defence ministry said in a statement. The pre-dawn morning launch coincided with the appearance of an extraordinary light over northern Norway that captivated observers...Describing the latest failure of the Bulava as a major embarrassment for the military, leading Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said the images were consistent with a missile failure....

Does Obama conduct foreign policy out of personal grudges?

http://tinyurl.com/yg6rsmu
Does Obama have it in for Britain? By Nile Gardiner
He insults our troops and PM while sucking up to the French and Germans...For decades, Britain and the U.S. have been the closest of allies...Over 70 years, the special relationship has certainly had its ups and downs. The cast has changed - Thatcher and Reagan, Blair and Bush ... but it has always endured. Until now.
... Barack Obama has failed to mention the special relationship between Great Britain and America in any of his speeches both before and after becoming President of the United States....there wasn't a single mention of America's main ally in the region, Britain... Never mind that we have 10,000 troops on active service there - far more than any other of America's so-called allies - and never mind that 237 of our brave soldiers have already lost their lives there, Great Britain wasn't even a footnote. Even some of Gordon Brown's sternest critics thought he was appallingly treated by the Obama administration when he visited Washington in March...Given the level of sacrifice by British troops, it was the most extraordinary and insulting oversight... Obama seems keener on currying favour with Germany and France - who have failed to provide adequate support in Afghanistan - than he is with Britain
...while the special relationship may not be dead yet, it's certainly dying,...becoming the first U.S. President in modern times to place no importance on the historic relationship between the U.S. and Britain. This is a watershed moment in the political evolution of our two countries....The U.S. President presented Prime Minister Gordon Brown with 25 DVDs on his departure from the United States in March this year...a man who, within days of being sworn in as President, ordered that a bust of Winston Churchill - a gift from the British people to the U.S. in the dark days that followed 9/11 - be removed from the Oval Office... His Kenyan grandfather, however, was reportedly mistreated under British colonial rule during that country's Mau Mau rebellion - an event to which he devotes 35 pages of his memoir, Dreams From My Father.****Now we see it: the PERSONAL animosity to Britain, the PERSONAL affinity for Muslims (and, likely, the PERSONAL animosity to Israel from his Chicago days associating with Farrakhan, Wright and Khalidi.) He bows low to the King of Saudi Arabia ( a Muslim obeisance to the Keeper of the Two Shrines ), covers it up (he thinks) by bowing low to the Emperor of Japan but had Michelle casually put her hand on the shoulders of the Queen of the United Kingdom.The continual affronts to the PM of Britain, Gordon Brown, are myriad.****...Obama apparently keener on sitting down with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, or cosying up to his new friends in France or Germany than he is on spending time with the Prime Minister....the speed at which the special relationship - an alliance that had endured for seven decades - has fallen apart in barely 11 months is both remarkable and deeply alarming....very real danger of being banished to the history books for ever. Obama, however, seems to be a president with no real grasp of history, as one of his first major acts on gaining office showed....appeased the Russians, he also betrayed the Poles and the Czechs,...just been released from the yoke of Soviet control ...The Obama administration is far happier doing business with Brussels than it is with Britain....Two key NATO command posts have recently gone to the French at Britain's expense,...The threat to an independent, sovereign Britain is clear and yet, remarkably, the country leading that threat is our oldest ally....when it comes to taking decisive military action, the only country the U.S. has ever been able to rely on is Britain... • Nile Gardiner is director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.
****It should not be surprising that Obama is not on Britain's side in anything (or Eastern Europe's, or Israel's, etc ); it's not clear he's on AMERICA's side in anything, at least the America of the traditional values and interpretation of the Constitution ( asserting that the Constitution was deficient in being negative about limiting the role of government rather than being positively redistributionist in guaranteeing people things. )****

Incident on Air Tran 297

http://tinyurl.com/ykzk8ur
snopes.com:Flight 297
****A bizarre incident, descritpion of which Snopes.com considers to be of "mixed" accuracy, occurred in which there was clearly a delay occasioned by a return to the gate of a plane ready to take and attributed in all accounts to at least one passenger refusing to cooperate with the flight attendants. Several accounts make it seem like a "dry run" for a terrorist incident by eleven identifiably-Muslim passengers distributed throughout the plane, acting in concert. The airline and the Transportation Safety Administration claim that the incident was due to one or two passengers and that all eleven people were allowed to go on the plane. According to accounts, the entire flight crew and about a dozen other passengers deplaned rather than continue with the eleven passengers. Now, the TSA is a thoroughly-imbued politically correct organization and the airline is likely concerned about law suits from Muslim passengers so that version clearly has some reason to be questioned. For the airline to claim that all the passengers were in ordinary western dress and not in "Muslim attire" makes it unlikely since how could the other passengers identify them as Muslims. If it was because they were jabbering in Arabic, all of them, and that was how they were identified as Muslims, then the substance of the main accusation seems to be verified.****

Previous warnings about the fallacy of apocalyptic AGW

http://tinyurl.com/ycgr7gj
Germans Tried To Warn Us Of Climate Fraud by Dennis T. Avery, AmericanDaily.com
CHURCHVILLE, VA - ...Now researchers are digging into the Hadley data to find if the rest of the world’s climate data have been similarly “adjusted.“ But Der Speigel, the German news magazine, tried to blow the whistle on this climate fraud more than two years ago. In May of 2007, it published a story titled, “Not the End of the World As We Know It.” The story pointed out that Svente Arrhenius, the Swedish chemist who first posited the Greenhouse, had seen global warming as a good thing, with “better climates” potentially making poor harvests and famine a thing of the past. Der Spiegel noted how previous cold periods - including the Little Ice Age that began in 1300 - were too cold for grain to mature properly. In Germany, thousands of mountain villages and huge tracts of farmland were abandoned due to the cold. “When global temperatures plunged unexpectedly again in the 1960s, many meteorologists were quick to warn people about the coming of a new ice age - supposedly triggered by man-made air pollution. Hardly anyone at the time believed that a warming period could pose a threat.”“It was not until the rise of the environmental movement in the 1980s that everything suddenly changed,” said the Speigel article. “From then on it was almost a foregone conclusion that global warming could only be perceived as a disaster for the earth’s climate. . .”...‘A warmer climate helps promote species diversity,’ says Munich zoologist Josef Reichholf.’”...it quickly became apparent that the horrific talk of a melting South Pole was nothing but fiction. The average temperature in the Antarctic is -30 degrees Celsius. Humanity cannot possibly burn enough oil and coal to melt this giant block of ice. On the contrary, current climate models suggest that the Antarctic will even increase in mass: Global warming will cause more water to evaporate, and part of the moisture will fall as snow over Antarctic, causing the ice shield to grow.”...Reichholf, who pointed out that “biodiversity reached its peak at the end of the tertiary age, a few million years ago, when it was much warmer than it is today. The development went in a completely different direction when the ice ages came and temperatures dropped, causing a massive extinction of species, especially in the north.”
Two years ago, Germany was apparently not ready to accept Der Speigel’s answer to the “global warming problem.” None of the world’s other major media quoted the article, or picked up the theme. Today, only Fox News, among the world’s major media, has dared to look at the Hadley Center information as a real news story. Must we wait for the huge new energy taxes to be imposed by the Congress before we take the evidence of climate fraud seriously?

Someone should explain to Obama that productivity is GOOD.

In a(NOTHER) speech today, Obama complained that companies were doing more with fewer people."That's something we have to work on."
Obviously this doesn't apply to government. Yoda noticed, years ago, while in government the "Conservation of Boxes in Reorganizations." This refers to boxes on an organization chart. Whenever, a section or department was reorganized and the hierarchy reporting to some executive divided or partially hived off, that executive would immediately REORGANIZE what was left but with new boxes, albeit presently unoccupied, or virtual. The number of boxes, real and virtual, that reported to him would be the same. Eventually, they would be filled.
This derives from two simple questions that one can address to any government bureaucrat:
1) Do you want a bigger budget or a smaller one?
2) Do you want more people reporting to you or fewer?
Since accomplishment and success in a bureaucracy is measured only by the size of the budget one has to spend and the number of people one has to manage, one can only imagine what effect these have on efficiency or productivity or governmental waste.(This is aside from the important question: what harm is this bureaucracy and these bureaucrats doing?)

Anyone saying Climategate doesn't matter is full of ..it!

http://tinyurl.com/yz3u9do
Climategate: why it matters The corruption of climate science revealed by the purloined CRU files undermines the claims of the global-warming alarmists.by Phil Manger...//
http://tinyurl.com/yb8j22h
Climategate: Follow the Money Climate change researchers must believe in the reality of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God. By BRET STEPHENS
...these gifts—amounting to about 0.00027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.
Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU...why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. ...it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them....between 2000 and 2006 Mr. Jones was the recipient (or co-recipient) of some $19 million worth of research grants, a sixfold increase over what he'd been awarded in the 1990s...Why did the money pour in so quickly? Because the climate alarm kept ringing so loudly: The louder the alarm, the greater the sums...European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal...
this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus"—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely....they depend on an inherently corrupting premise, namely that the hypothesis on which their livelihood depends has in fact been proved. Absent that proof, everything they represent—including the thousands of jobs they provide—vanishes. This is what's known as a vested interest, and vested interests are an enemy of sound science...//
http://tinyurl.com/yevjavz
Climategate: Science Is Dying Science is on the credibility bubble. By DANIEL HENNINGER
Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once. I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science...****This is where Henninger is wrong, although his mistake is shared by myriad others. Climate "science" is NOT "hard science." It bears the same relation to real hard science (by which I mean physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, math--stretching the definition a bit, where agreement is possible between theory and empirical observation)as Economic "Science" does. Both Climatology and Economics are characterized by the use of non-falsifiable models ( i.e. models of reality that cannot be tested in the real world ) about which practitioners can disagree fundamentally and over an extended period of time. When there is agreement, it is often arrived at by intimidation, groupthink or loss of interest and moving on to newer subjects. Yoda was trained as a PhD physicist, was a working physicist and physics professor for years and, together with others ( including public figures such as S. Fred Singer et al,) has been skeptical about the claims of this "climate science" from the getgo. The recent revelations might be dispositive but they were anticipated for several years. The salient and immediate reason not to believe Mann's "Hockey Stick" was that it failed to reproduce the Medieval Warming Period or the Little Ice Age. Even the models put forth by stock brokers give clients the ability to "back test" them, a necessary but not sufficient condition. **** ...The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).****And not, of course, in one of the sciences.****...Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science....Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences...This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. ...conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine. The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition....climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank....relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle."..."When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically."...this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence. ...The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant—...a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." ...in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.****Harks to the perjorative "Good enough for government work."****...If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.//
****Heedless of the facts, and trying to ignore that they've been outed, the AGW community is doubling down and insisting that they're right, despite even their own faulty predictions and deviation from the evidence. After all, Coperhagen is coming up and they might as well tough it out and keep the money flowing, whatever the scientific "truth."****
http://tinyurl.com/ybhyqtd
Study: Slowdown in warming last year not permanentWASHINGTON – Climate researchers say cooler temperatures in North America last year do not mean global warming is easing. Their report comes just days before President Barack Obama goes to Copenhagen...the last decade has been the hottest in thousands of years, according to climate records.****NO! Only according to the guys who falsify climate records!***** However, the warming eased a bit last year over North America, and groups seeking to deny climate change seized on that in an effort to challenge the idea of overall warming. North America wasn't as warm as expected because of cooler water in the North Pacific, but the rest of the world continued to warm, the university and government researchers said Friday.****Gee, their models missed a rather important phenomenon. If the entire world warmed up anyway, and North America was cooler, shouldn't other parts have warmed even more than they predicted? It's getting to be a joke, except that they've chewed up hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world and could commit the U.S. to layout billions more chasing a chimera ( which would have nil effect under any and all circumstances because China and India won't go along.)****