Wolf Howling

Politicized Science of Global Warming Take II

2009-08-10T12:00:00.006-04:00

. . . The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public. To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking. . . .

President Barack Obama, Memorandum, Subject: Scientific Integrity, 9 March 2009

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Who could not agree wholly with Obama's stated position. But when it comes to global warming, the entire history of the movement is replete with brazen examples of scientists misrepresenting data and refusing to release the methodology used to arrive at their conclusions. It is a tale of corrupted and politicized science that has now taken a turn for the worse with scientists and major government organizations removing raw climate data from the public realm.

Physicist and Prof. Frank Tipler writes in PJM, discussing the dire state of science in the arena of global warming. This from Prof. Tipler:

The chief British Climate Research Unit (CRU) at Hadley has begun to eliminate the daily temperature records from its public websites.

Yes — the daily high in London is now a state secret!

Actually, this disappearance of temperature records has been going on for some time — not only in Britain, but also in the United States. Why would American and British climate “scientists” not want outside scientists to see the raw data upon which their predictions of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are based?

Why would Bernie Madoff not want outside accountants to see his day-to-day “earnings” data? . . .

Prof. Tipler demonstrates how the AGW crowd use "corrections" to data to create a perception of warming where the raw data shows little to none to exist. You can find his graphs here. As Tipler further opines:

[A] linear fit to the data would show a slight upward trend. Or one could model the data by a flat line from 1979 to 1998, followed by a huge jump up in 1998, followed by a straight-line decrease since 1998. The very fact that there are equally plausible alternative ways to model the raw data — most alternatives being inconsistent with global warming — is another reason why those climatologists who believe in AGW want to perform a disappearing act on the raw data.

And indeed, deception has been at the heart of the global warming hysteria since its inception. The whole global warming carnard got its greatest push about ten years ago from what is now one of the most thoroughly discredited hoaxes in the history of science - Mann's hockey stick graph.

The importance of this graph was discussed by Dr. Richard North in a short discussion of his book, "Scared To Death." This from Dr. North:

One of the greatest problems Gore and his allies faced at this time was the mass of evidence showing that in past times, such as the Mediaeval Warming, global temperature had been even higher than they were in the late 20th century, long before CO2 levels had started to rise. Even the first two IPCC reports had included a graph conceding this point, But In 1998 came the answer they were looking for – a completely new temperature chart, devised by another obscure young American physicist, Michael Mann. This became known as the "hockey stick" because it showed historic temperatures running in an almost flat line over the past 1,000 years, only suddenly flicking up at the end to temperatures never recorded before.

Mann's hockey stick was just what the IPCC wanted. When its 2001 report came out it was given pride of place at the top of page 1, and prominently repeated four more times. The Mediaeval Warming, the Little Ice Age, the 20th century Little Cooling when CO2 had already been rising, all had simply been wiped from the record.

The Mann hockey stick graph was a hoax on par with Barnum's Feejee Mermaid. Dr. Tipler discusses how the hoax was finally made clear:

Steve McIntyre is not a professional climatologist at all, but a mining engineer who spends most of his career doing “due diligence” for mining claims. If you are thinking of investing in a mine, you want to be sure that the mine has not been salted with fake ore and you want to know that the mine has been independently checked to make sure the amount of real ore the mine promoters claim is there is actually there. McIntyre was such an independent mine checker.

Having some time on his hands a few years ago, McIntyre decided it would be fun to check a graph that was the smoking gun of AGW evidence — the infamous hockey stick graph first published in Nature, the leading British science journal. The hockey stick was supposedly a plot of Earth’s temperature over the past few centuries. The temperature vs. time graph was essentially flat until the twentieth century, where it shot up rapidly. The curve resembled a hockey stick, hence the name.

McIntyre requested the raw data and the algorithm used to analyze the data from the lead author and was surprised when this request was refused. The public release of this sort of information is required by law if one is selling a mine, but secrecy is allowed if one is selling a plan to take over the U.S. economy.

McIntyre managed to get the key data — most of it was available publicly from other sources — but the authors of the hockey stick have not released their algorithm to this day. What McIntyre thinks the algorithm does is give enormous weight to any data set that shows recent global warming, and very little weight to those data sets showing recent global cooling. With such an algorithm, McIntyre was able to generate a hockey stick from random noise. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences and a separate committee organized by the leading U.S. academy of statisticians concluded that indeed the hockey stick was a statistical artifact, not evidence of real world global warming.

Imagine what the outcome would have been if the raw data had been secret. We would still believe in hockey stick climatology. The Medieval Warm Period, which is confirmed by historical records from all over the world but which was not present in the hockey stick, would have gone down the memory hole.

What truly shocked me was the fact that many of the leading scientific organizations — in particular the American Association for the Advance of Science (which publishes the leading U.S. science journal Science) and the National Academy of Science — supported the hockey stick authors’ refusal to make their algorithm public. The leading “science” organizations are now officially opposed to checking “science” that supports the party line.

And thus we have today people who call themselves "scientists" not merely refusing to release their methedology, but major organizations now complicit in removing raw data from the public realm. It is an atrocity.

That said, how have we come to this point? According to Prof. Tipler, the answer is "[g]overnment financing of scientific research caused it." That funding has, over a period of years, resulted in an almost complete shut-out of scientists who question global warming from academia. As Prof. Tipler explains:

"[Government] provide[s] research grants only to those who agree with them. . . These AGW scientists, the only ones with federal grants, are much more likely to get university jobs, since universities are now almost wholly dependent on federal money. These new professors of climatology, mainly true believers in AGW, teach their students to believe in AGW and make sure that only true believers can get grants and thus tenure at universities.

Soon there are none but true believers in the field. . . ."

You can read Prof. Tipler's detailed explanation here. Certainly a recent PEW poll lends credence to Prof. Tipler's opinion. According to that poll, "[m]ajorities of scientists working in academia (60%), for non-profits (55%) and in government (52%) call themselves Democrats, . . ." It should be noted that in that poll, 55% of the scientists self identified as Democrats, with the rest refusing to say, calling themselves independents, or in a shockingly small number - 6% - self identifying as Republicans.

This really is a travesty. But what I find most breathtaking is people calling themselves "scientists" while refusing to release their methedology and, now, complicit in hiding even the raw data. Such people should be stripped of their tenure and accreditation. Perhaps then some of the problems of politicized science that are now so bedeviling us would disappear.

Remember Their Words

2009-08-10T09:12:00.003-04:00

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer have an article in the USA Today headlined, misleadingly, "'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate." As odious as these two individuals are, and as "un-American" as I think that they actually are, they still make one very valid point in their thousand words of otherwise excreta:

[I]t is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included . . . protesters [who] shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.

These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." [emphasis added]

Remember their words. Burn them into your skull. The complete shut down of opposing speech has been a favored and common tactic of the far left for years. Go to Frontpage Magazine and you can find examples of conservative speech shut down daily in campuses across America. Read through the news of the last decade and you will find it replete with examples of conservative speech shut down by the left in political venues. And the past six months of Obama government have been one example after another of circumventing Congressional debate, a tactic in which both Pelosi and Hoyer have been complicit.

I concur strongly with that one, very narrow point made by Pelosi and Hoyer in their otherwise disingenuous piece. Opposing views should be allowed to be aired and drowning them out is "un-American." The fact that Pelosi and Hoyer are making that point is the height of hypocrisy, but it does not make it any less legitimate. And their words should now be quoted against the left at every venue where it is appropriate.

Thuggery - & Astroturf - Up Close & Personal

2009-08-09T21:26:00.006-04:00

Alternative Post Title:

Shabbily Dressed, Deranged, Post Menopausal Moonbat With An SEIU Printed Sign Attacks Bleached Blonde Botoxed Bimbo Republican At AstroTurf Event

Heh. This one is fun to blog.

One of my long time blog friends is the estimable blogger, Dinah Lord, pictured above (are those clothes Brooks Bros?) in the midst of an assault by an SEIU thuggette at a Denver 'meet and greet' of sorts for Nancy Pelosi. The picture, and the story of the assault on Dinah, were featured in the Denver Post, where one of the snarky left wing commentors labeled pretty Ms. Dinah a "bleached blonde botoxed bimbo republican." Heh. Dinah, already having proven her physical ability to give as good as she got in the altercation, proved herself equally up to the task in the literary realm, being moved to describe her attacker as a "shabbily dressed, deranged, post menopaual moonbat."

You can read Dinah's pugilistic tale in all of her colorful prose here and here.

There was also a very interesting second aspect to the event that one blogger, Looking At The Left, captured in excruciating detail. First, compare and contrast these four pics from the Denver event attended by Dinah:

One would expect the highly organized puppets of the insurance industry and racially motivated Republican astro-turfing efforts to be displaying similar messages. But they aren't. Indeed, their placards all sport hand drawn messages - swastikas curiously absent - each somewhat different than all others. The same was hardly true of the SEIU / pro-Obama protestors. They arrived with cookie cutter signs provided by an organization for the event. So, just who is the "astro-turf" at this event?

But you have to see the entire above post. It is truly excellent. I will leave one of the most telling scenes of it for you to find when you read the post. It involves spanish-speaking day laborers who were also found to be carrying signs for the pro-Obama crowd at the event. It is hilarious.

A Requiem For Arab Civilization - & Distorted Beliefs

2009-08-09T15:07:00.006-04:00

Arabs, perhaps the most imperealist race in history after they came under Islam, at one time produced great societies that led the world in culture and science. That era ended over a millenia ago, followed thereafter by an unbroken decline. The facts of this decline today include:

- "[A]ll [360 million] Arabs combined [have] a smaller manufacturing capacity than Finland with its five million people."

- "a vast Arabic-speaking world translated into Arabic a fifth of the foreign books that Greece with its 11 million people translates."

- "With all the oil in the region, tens of millions of Arabs [are] living below the poverty line."

- "Oil is no panacea for these lands. The unemployment rates for the Arab world as a whole are the highest in the world, and no prophecy could foresee these societies providing the 51 million jobs the UNDP report says are needed by 2020 to “absorb young entrants to the labor force who would otherwise face an empty future.”"

And what of the cause of this backwardness, this decay and decline. To an objective observer, the answers begin and end with the Arabs themselves, but to today's Arab intellectual - why its the United States of course. This from Johns Hopkins Prof. Fouad Ajami, writing in the WSJ:

We are now in the midst of one of those periodic autopsies of the Arab condition. The trigger is the publication last month of the Arab Human Development Report 2009, the fifth of a series of reports by the by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on the state of the contemporary Arab world.

The first of these reports, published in 2002, was treated with deference. A group of Arab truth-tellers, it was believed, had broken with the evasions and the apologetics to tell of the sordid condition of Arab society—the autocratic political culture, the economic stagnation, the cultural decay. . . .

The simple truth is that the Arab world has terrible rulers and worse oppositionists. There are autocrats on one side and theocrats on the other. A timid and fragile middle class is caught in the middle between regimes it abhors and Islamists it fears.

Indeed, the technocrats and intellectuals associated with these development reports are themselves no angels. On the whole, they are unreconstructed Arab nationalists. The patrons of these reports are the likes of the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi and the Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi, intellectuals and public figures whose stock-in-trade is presumed Western (read American) guilt for the ills that afflict the Arabs. Anti-Americanism suffuses this report, as it did the earlier ones.

There is cruelty and plunder aplenty in the Arab world, but these writers are particularly exercised about Iraq. “This intervention polarized the country,” they say of Iraq. This is a myth of the Arabs who are yet to grant the Iraqis the right to their own history: There had been a secular culture under the Baath, they insist, but the American war begot the sectarianism. To go by this report, Iraq is a place of mayhem and plunder, a land where militias rule uncontested.

For decades, it was the standard argument of the Arabs that America had cast its power in the region on the side of the autocrats. In Iraq in 2003, and then in Lebanon, an American president bet on the freedom of the Arabs. George W. Bush’s freedom agenda broke with a long history and insisted that the Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA. A despotism in Baghdad was toppled, a Syrian regime that had all but erased its border with Lebanon was pushed out of its smaller neighbor, bringing an end to three decades of brutal occupation. The “Cedar Revolution” that erupted in the streets of Beirut was but a child of Bush’s diplomacy of freedom.

Arabs know this history even as they say otherwise, even as they tell the pollsters the obligatory things about America the pollsters expect them to say. True, Mr. Bush’s wager on elections in the Palestinian territories rebounded to the benefit of Hamas. But the ballot is not infallible, and the verdict of that election was a statement on the malignancies of Palestinian politics. It was no fault of American diplomacy that the Palestinians, who needed to break with a history of maximalist demands, gave in yet again to radical temptations.

Now the Arabs are face to face with their own history. Instead of George W. Bush there is Barack Hussein Obama, an American leader pledged to a foreign policy of “realism.” The Arabs express fondness for the new American president. In his fashion (and in the fashion of their world and their leaders, it has to be said) President Obama gave the Arabs a speech in Cairo two months ago. It was a moment of theater and therapy. The speech delivered, the foreign visitor was gone. He had put another marker on the globe, another place to which he had taken his astounding belief in his biography and his conviction that another foreign population had been wooed by his oratory and weaned away from anti-Americanism.

The crowd could tell itself that the new standard-bearer of the Pax Americana was a man who understood its concerns, but the embattled modernists and the critics of autocracy knew better. There is no mistaking the animating drive of the new American policy in that Greater Middle East: realism and benign neglect, the safety of the status quo rather than the risks of liberty. (If in doubt, the Arabs could check with their Iranian neighbors. The Persians would tell them of the new mood in Washington.)

One day an Arab chronicle could yet be written, and like all Arab chronicles, it would tell of woes and missed opportunities. It would acknowledge that brief interlude when American power gave Arab autocracies a scare, and when a despotism in Baghdad and a brutal “brotherly” occupation in Beirut were laid to waste. The chroniclers would have to be an honest lot. They would speak the language of daily life, and the truths that Arabs have seen and endured in recent years. On that day, the “human development reports” would be discarded, their writers seen for the purveyors of double-speak and half-truths they were.

Read the entire article. Arab culture of today is, for me at least, summed up in the picture at the top of this post. It is a culture consumed by Wahhabi and Khomeinist radicalism, that has at its core not the advancement of their own society, but the conquering of Israel and the West. It is morally and intellectually bankrupt. It is a culture that is largely undisturbed by the autocrats whose sole concern is maintaining their own wealth and plunder. Perhaphs the one hope for Arabs in the Middle East is Iraq if it is able to devolp a stable, secular democracy. But that is what both the despots and the Islamists fear, and thus Iraq will only, if ever, achieve such a state at tremendous cost and against constant, mortal opposition.

Europe's Suicide

2009-08-09T12:23:00.015-04:00

The socialist left, now largely in control throughout Europe, has warred on Christianity and made common cause with Muslims - in many cases radical Wahhabists - as a means of gaining political power and remaking Western society. An ever increasing Muslim population in Europe inevitably votes for the socialist left. In exchange, the left provides lax immigration, permissive public benefits, and pushes multiculturalism - a thoroughly bankrupt philosophy that denigrates the traditional foundations of Western civilization, including Christianity, and that actually encourages Muslims not to integrate into their respective Western societies. The end result is an ever growing population of Muslims who are, in many cases, even more radicalized than the general populations in their respective countries of origin. And a sizable portion of these individuals wish to see their European homes converted, forcibly if necessary, to Muslim rule and Sharia law. The process is very far along in many cases - with, for but one example, Brussels, the capital of the EU, now dominated by Muslims. And there is this today from the Telegraph:

Last year, five per cent of the total population of the 27 EU countries was Muslim. But rising levels of immigration from Muslim countries and low birth rates among Europe's indigenous population mean that, by 2050, the figure will be 20 per cent, according to forecasts.

Data gathered from various sources indicate that Britain, Spain and Holland will have an even higher proportion of Muslims in a shorter amount of time.

The UK, which currently has 20 million fewer people than Germany, is also projected to be the EU's most populous country by 2060, with 77 million people.

The findings have led to allegations that policy-makers are failing to confront the widespread challenges of the "demographic time bomb".

Experts say that there has been a lack of debate on how the population changes will affect areas of life from education and housing to foreign policy and pensions. . . .

To say that there has been a lack of debate on this issue is, in the UK in particular, a laughable understatement. In 1968, a Tory Shadow Minister, Enoch Powell gave a speech, commonly called today the "Rivers of Blood" speech, where he warned against allowing large scale immigration. Powell was utterly demonized by the socialists in Labour and kicked from the Shadow Cabinet by the Tories. And since his speech, the socialist left has made any criticism of the UK's permissive immigration policy sheer political suicide, while the Tory leadership has cravenly capitulated to the left on the issue. Indeed, so radioactive has the left made this issue and so thoroughly have the Tories put their tails between their legs that as recently as two years ago a Tory candidate for Parliament was forced to withdraw from his bid after he merely made an approving reference to Enoch Powell's speech.

The aftermath of Powell's speech is telling. While socialists demagogued and conservatives cowered, polls at the time immediately after Powell's speech showed public support for Powell rising to 75% of the electorate. This demonstrates that there was then, and very much still is today, a true disconnect between Britain's political elite and the rank and file. The rank and file of Britain were then and are now very concerned about the deconstruction of their society. The ruling elite have utterly refused to take heed of their concerns. And indeed, that is true on many of the critically important issues confronting Britain, including most recently the turn-over of British sovereignty to the EU without a promised referendum of the electorate. The rank and file, however, seemed like sheep - content to disagree vehemently while doing naught else but a shrug of their shoulders. It appeared until very recently that the blood of Cromwell lay dormant in their veins. That is not necessarily so today.

The demagoguery of the left on this issue was already starting to loose its force as the real problems facing the UK as a result of this mass demographic change became increasingly obvious and painful. More importantly though, the political landscape of the UK has changed drastically in the past months. The British rank and file exploded in Cromwellian fashion with real, seething anger - and MP's acted with real fear of the electorate for the first time in perhaps centuries - over the recent revelations of widespread and outrageous abuse of expenses by MP's. We have yet to see whether the rank and file anger at the MP's over expenses also resonates to the truly critical and existential issues facing the UK, one of which is clearly immigration - an issue also inextricably bound up in EU membership. Let us hope so, as it is not an overdramatization to say that the future of Western civilization in the UK and on the Continent hangs in the balance.

Projections, Thuggery & Racism Of The Left

2009-08-08T19:54:00.009-04:00

One of the keys to understanding the left is how they invariably resort to 'projection.' By projection, I mean they foist their own shortcomings and failings onto others, then criticize them for acting with such base motivations. Projection is psychiatric term that Dr. Sanity explains in detail here.
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The above was the opening line of a post I had decided to craft in light of statements by Pelosi and others on the left to the effect that those people who show up at town hall meeting and embarrass Dems with tough questions are mere thugs, controlled by evil Republicans and an insurance industry motivated purely by . . . dare I say it . . . "profit" [shudder]. Knowing that Dr. Sanity has explained the concept of projection on multiple occasions in her previous posts, I went to her site to run down a link. And what should I find but . . . . a posting she did on Thursday that hits many of the key points on which I intended to expound. I won't repeat them. Do read her post.

The only things that I would add are in regards to Paul Krugman and Cynthia Tucker of the AJC, both of whom play casually play the race card on the protesters of Obama's economic and health care programs. Krugman opined in the NYT that the people who are protesting are being manipulated by disingenuous special interests following "a strategy that has played a central role in American politics ever since Richard Nixon realized that he could advance Republican fortunes by appealing to the racial fears of working-class whites." Tucker, a black opinion columnist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, opined on Hardball that "45 to 65% of the people who appear at these [protests] are people who will never be comfortable with the idea of a black president."

It is more than a bit ironic that they should make their statements the day after the beating of a black conservative, Kenneth Gladney, who was protesting the Obama socialized health care plan outside of a Democratic townhall meeting in Missouri. Gladney was beaten by Obama-supporting SEIU thugs. Gateway Pundit has the videos and story on that incident here, here, here, here and here. But I digress.

I know of nothing that would support either Krugman's or Tucker's statement. Indeed, I know of no racially motivated backlash to the election of Obama occurring anywhere in the U.S. Perhaps I missed the reporting on such events in the NYT or the Washington Post, two notoriously conservative news organizations who might well repress such facts if they existed. In many respects what Krugman and Tucker say is nothing more than the classic 'blood libel' of labeling any opposition that somehow involves a black person, in this case Obama, as being racially motivated, wholly irrespective of the facts. But the more I think about it, the more seems also a form of projection.

As I wrote here, you will find racism nowhere more ensconced today - and historically - than on the left. That could be the loud and horrific reverse racism of Jerimiah Wright and his ilk of race baiters, the equally vile but far more nuanced reverse racism of academia and exponents of "critical race theory," the casual reverse racism of a Justice Sotomayor, or the many adherents of whatever ethnicity to the left's identity politics - an inherently racist philosophy that holds that blacks - and every other victim group - are victims of white (male) wrongdoing and are incapable of competing with white males on a level playing field. Nowhere was this more apparent than in reaction to the Supreme Court's Ricci decision.

Krugman is a deeply committed member of the far left - and thus it is not surprising to see Krugman view the world through an identity politics lens. While no one I know in conservative circles entertains even the tiniest iota of animus towards Obama because of his skin color - it is utterly meaningless - I have no doubt that many on the far left, for whom race and other indicators of victim class are paramount, should project their beliefs onto conservatives and other protesters. As to Tucker, it is much the same. I dare say she could not give a single instance of a person at a single protest who is motivated by race. But in her world - and I read her columns regularly - it is safe to say that she views race as a paramount issue. The fact that Obama was elected President has not ameliorated her racial paradigm - nor Krugman's - but rather just shifted it a little. As Tucker sees it - if you do not support Obama in each and every one of his radical proposals, then race must be at the heart of it - because that is how she views the world. For such people as her - and Henry Louis Gates of recent "beer summit" fame - if something happens that they do not like and a white person is involved, then racism must be involved.

I lived 32 years in a distinctly uncloistered and racially mixed world, working with, for, under, and over blacks and minorities of all stripes until I saw my first example of true eye-popping racism. I remember it vividly. It was watching perhaps one of the most vile speeches I have ever heard. The speaker was Louis Farrakhan. His targets were whites and Jews. It was utterly despicable and so alien to all that I had seen and known, that I actually started asking my black friends about him. Of the probably ten that I asked, only one even said that he knew who Farrakhan was - and that Farrakhan was an evil nutter of the first order.

In my world, which was the military up til then and awhile afterwards, neither racism nor reverse racism existed in any form that I had ever observed. When I match my personal observations up to that point against what I see in the political world of today, it is apparent that there is a huge disconnect between reality in working class America, where racism is far more the anomaly than the norm, and the political class, where race is a means of stoking passion and obtaining power. Obama promised to end all of that. To the contrary, he seems only to have thrown fuel onto the fire.

Obama - Smoke, Mirrors & Unemployment

2009-08-08T13:57:00.005-04:00

Obama took the opportunity of the release of Dept. of Labor unemployment report on Friday to claim his stimulus (all 7% of it spent so far) was accomplishing its goal, the recession is coming to its end, and that what we need now is a lot more of Obamanomics (health care, cap and trade, finanicail regulatory change, etc.) to insure that we don't repeat the sins that got us into this recession in the first place. According to Obama, among those sins were "inflated profits," "dirty . . . energy," and "soaring healthcare costs" that only "serve special interests."

There is so much wrong with Obama's statement in each and every particular, it would take a small book to address them all. But first and foremost is his claim that the July unemployment figures are somehow good news for the economy. That claim is mind boggling.

In July, according to the Dept. of Labor, America hemmoraged yet another 247,000 jobs. So then how did the Dept. of Labor's unemployment figures drop from 9.5% unemployed in June to 9.4% unemployed in July? It has to do with how the counting is done - and it seems an incredibly dodgy method. Simply put, under Dept. of Labor methedology, if you are unemployed and not somehow counted as actively seeking work within the past four weeks, then you do not count as unemployed for their statistical summary. The actual number of unemployed and underemployed in America is without doubt well into double digits, but that number is unreported. And indeed, with another quarter million jobs lost in June, yet the unemployment rate dropping, the only conclusion is that there is a real numbers game being played at Obama's Dept. of Labor. Smoke, meet mirror - and the teleprompter.

Unfortunately, Obama refused to take any questions from reporters on Friday. One wonders if anyone will follow up on Obama's incredible claims, and particularly his embrace of further bad economic news as marking the "begining of the end" of the recession.

Insulting Americans Of Latino Heritage

2009-08-08T12:54:00.004-04:00

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has now been confirmed to the Supreme Court. In his remarks on the vote, Obama called it "historic." And as the NYT summed up:

Many political strategists warned Republicans that opposing the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court would jeopardize the party in future elections, and some Democrats sought to portray Republican opposition as an insult to Hispanics.

Unfortunately, what did not make it into the debate on Judge Sotomayor, nor into the national narrative following her confirmation, is the story of Miguel Estrada. Republicans missed a huge opportunity by not raising his story as a counterpoint to show the vast hypocrisy of the left's identity politics.

What should be in today's paper, as part of the story on Sotomayor's confirmation, is at least a paragraph on how these same Democratic politicians, in 2001, used all of the tricks at their disposal to prevent Miguel Estrada being named to the DC Court of Appeals explicitly because they perceived that he was a "LATINO" being "groomed for the Supreme Court." That was the real insult to "latinos," not republicans choosing to oppose a woman, whatever her background, whose judicial paradigm is overtly tainted with reverse racism.

Dissent - No Longer The Highest Form Of Patriotism

2009-08-05T21:03:00.004-04:00

Dissent is now a vast right wing conspiracy it would seem. Obama, following in the footsteps of Saul Alinsky, had his first job as a "community organizer," arranging for groups of the electorate to make their voices heard in the halls of politics. Thus, as Krauthammer has repeatedly voiced on Fox News of late, it is the height of hypocrisy for the Obama administration to attack protestors of their plans, demonizing them for having the gall to speak out.

The Opposite Of Straight Talk

2009-08-05T20:30:00.003-04:00

There is a special place reserved in the American pantheon for those people who "say what they mean and mean what they say." Obana represents the opposite. Not but two years ago, as he campaigned for the Presidency, he spoke about a single payor health care system before the SEIU. He could not have been more explicit in stating that he envisioned that a "public plan" health care option, put in place today, would crowd out private insurance and result in full government control of healthcare in about two decades.

And in the wake of his push for a public option, the main criticism of a "public option" has been on precisely that ground - that a public option would result, if not tomorrow, then in the foreseeable future, in a complete government take over of health care. Obama now claims that it would do no such thing. Who are we to believe, Obama or . . . well . . . Obama.

The White House has come out obfuscating furiously. They have laughably opined that the Obama-SEIU video was "taken out of context" and utterly false. They do not show any of the video. The White House instead just shows Obama's very recent statements claiming otherwise. Compare and contrast:

There is no objective reality when it come to Obama. This truly is Orwellian. How much would anyone like to bet that no one in the press will follow up on this with anything other than a softball question at best.

German Scientists Dissent On Global Warming

2009-08-04T16:41:00.004-04:00

A group of sixty German scientists - some themselves members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - have penned an open letter to PM Merkel dissenting from global warming, calling the IPCC a fraud, global warming a "pseudo religion," and pointing out that carbon dioxide levels have no impact on our climate. This from a letter translated at Climate Depot:

To the attention of the Honorable Madam Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

When one studies history, one learns that the development of societies is often determined by a zeitgeist, which at times had detrimental or even horrific results for humanity. History tells us time and again that political leaders often have made poor decisions because they followed the advice of advisors who were incompetent or ideologues and failed to recognize it in time. Moreover evolution also shows that natural development took a wide variety of paths with most of them leading to dead ends. No era is immune from repeating the mistakes of the past. . . .

A real comprehensive study, whose value would have been absolutely essential, would have shown, even before the IPCC was founded, that humans have had no measurable effect on global warming through CO2 emissions. Instead the temperature fluctuations have been within normal ranges and are due to natural cycles. Indeed the atmosphere has not warmed since 1998 – more than 10 years, and the global temperature has even dropped significantly since 2003.

Not one of the many extremely expensive climate models predicted this. According to the IPCC, it was supposed to have gotten steadily warmer, but just the opposite has occurred.

More importantly, there's a growing body of evidence showing anthropogenic CO2 plays no measurable role. Indeed CO2's capability to absorb radiation is already exhausted by today's atmospheric concentrations. If CO2 did indeed have an effect and all fossil fuels were burned, then additional warming over the long term would in fact remain limited to only a few tenths of a degree.

The IPCC had to have been aware of this fact, but completely ignored it during its studies of 160 years of temperature measurements and 150 years of determined CO2 levels. As a result the IPCC has lost its scientific credibility. The main points on this subject are included in the accompanying addendum.

In the meantime, the belief of climate change, and that it is manmade, has become a pseudo-religion. Its proponents, without thought, pillory independent and fact-based analysts and experts, many of whom are the best and brightest of the international scientific community. Fortunately in the internet it is possible to find numerous scientific works that show in detail there is no anthropogenic CO2 caused climate change. If it was not for the internet, climate realists would hardly be able to make their voices heard. Rarely do their critical views get published.

The German media has sadly taken a leading position in refusing to publicize views that are critical of anthropogenic global warming. For example, at the second International Climate Realist Conference on Climate in New York last March, approximately 800 leading scientists attended, some of whom are among the world's best climatologists or specialists in related fields. While the US media and only the Wiener Zeitung (Vienna daily) covered the event, here in Germany the press, public television and radio shut it out. It is indeed unfortunate how our media have developed - under earlier dictatorships the media were told what was not worth reporting. But today they know it without getting instructions.

Do you not believe, Madam Chancellor, that science entails more than just confirming a hypothesis, but also involves testing to see if the opposite better explains reality? We strongly urge you to reconsider your position on this subject and to convene an impartial panel for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, one that is free of ideology, and where controversial arguments can be openly debated. We the undersigned would very much like to offer support in this regard.

Read the entire article here. It would seem the German media is much the same as our own. Regardless, that was a superb letter. Possibly the only quibble is that, under the circumstances, the scientists should have thought to nail a copy to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg.

Informed Votes

2009-08-04T12:57:00.005-04:00

What we expect from Congress is that legislators are fully informed on the legislation upon which they vote and that, prior to the vote, the legislation is given a full and fair hearing. Never to my knowledge has legislation so often been rammed through as it has been in this Congress, with none of the legislators fully informed and the process specifically designed to circumvent debate. It is what one would expect to see in a banana republic. It is an atrocity, though some of the criticism for legislators goes off afield when it comes to calls for legislators to read every line of every piece of legislation being proposed.

Obama said that he wanted to remake America. He has attempted to do so by bypassing the processes built into our system to insure Democracy works. It worked with the stimulus. It has worked in the House with cap and trade. Obama tried mightily to do this with socialized medicine and a vast overhaul/expansion of financial regulation. But the electorate are pushing back - which we damn well should, since this violates the very spirit of our democratic form of government. That said, criticism goes afield when it calls for the legislators to "read every line" of every piece of legislation.

Democrats, instead of addressing the substance of this problem, are focusing on the narrow issue of "reading every line." There is no better example of that than Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH), a congressman who voted for Obama's stimulus and cap and trade. There can be little if any doubt that he voted for those bills without being aware of all that was in them. No one who voted for those bills did. Yet he tries to obfuscate his responsibility for those fundamental failings by shifting the issue:

Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02) believes reading every bill in Congress “would slow down the business of Congress to a crawl and it would be hard to get done what needs to be done.”

Members of Congress who don’t read the bills they are voting on “is not necessarily the major problem with the way Congress functions,” he said.

Hodes, who is the sole Democratic candidate in the race to replace the retiring New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, made the remarks during a recent editorial board meeting with the Nashua Telegraph.

“Hodes said it’s not realistic to expect members of Congress to read every bill word-for-word, as Congress took more than 2,000 votes in the session that ended in December,” the paper reports. . . .

Congress - and Hodes - should be vilified for their votes on stimulus and cap and trade. It violates every tenet of our democracy. We have every right to demand legislators understand what it is for which they are being asked to vote. But on the very narrow issue of "reading every line," Hodes has a point. It does not matter how an individual Congressman gets his knowledge of a bill, it only matters that they have the knowledge and they don't vote for legislation that has not been given a full and fair hearing. Those on the right and left who are rightly angered at what they see happening under Obama need to tighten their criticism - otherwise, people like Hodes and the other hundreds of his cronies that violated our democratic tenets will escape their responsibility.

(H/T Hot Air)

Heh . . .

2009-08-03T22:46:00.002-04:00

It's taken a few months, but we are finally able to starting defining a previously, seemingly inchoate word:

(H/T No Oil For Pacifists)

Fratricide?

2009-08-03T22:23:00.003-04:00

Who said when your enemy is fighting amongst themselves, get out of the way?

Who said this: “And in the face of Obama’s deplorable agenda we have “progressive” organizations like MoveOn, which should be declared the Sociopathic Slime-Balls of the Century.”

Rush Limbaugh? Nope. A prominent Left-wing blog, OpEdNews.com.

And who said this: “This is not a simple matter of an organizational oligarchy manipulating its membership, although the avoidance by MoveOn's leadership is a troubling sign.”

George Will? Nope. An excerpt from a column in the Left’s flagship, The Nation, by anti-Vietnam War activist Tom Hayden.

How about this headline? “Violent Crackdowns and Sweetheart Deals. Andy Stern's Rackets.”

Michelle Malkin? Nope. Ralph Nader writing in counterpunch.org.

While the Right is bemoaning The Fall of Western Civilization As We Know It, so, on other grounds, is the … elitist Left.

Looks like the Left’s having a power failure. . . .

Do read the entire article. As the author cogently concludes:

Elitists fear the values of democracy and liberty, more so from within their own movement. Hence Stalin’s assassination of the anti-totalitarian Trotsky…. Politics 2.0 is as much about populism vs. elitism as it is about Left vs. Right; and the shape of the future will depend as much upon whether the elitist Left or the populist Left prevails as it does upon the Left’s emerging power failure.

Reality & The Public Option

2009-08-03T21:40:00.003-04:00

Lest there be any doubt that the public option is intended to end private health care, there are Obama's own words:

One would think that public opinion would have completely tanked for the public option after Obama had the following exchange during his hour long infomercial on the public option:

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

That was a telling moment. And it would seem that, whatever he might say, Obama proposes a government takeover of the healthcare system. The losers in this - the middle class who have decent health care coverage now but who will have a system imposed on them that seeks to cut costs by admittedly limiting treatment, particularly to the elderly. Clearly the wealthy, such as Obama, will not be forced to accept the consequence of a single payer system. The poor already have access to health care in many, if not most cases. The large portion of uninsured who do so voluntarily won't be helped - they will be forced to pay for a service they do not think that they need. Ultimately, the only winner in this will be those in government who want to increase their control over our lives.

An Obscene Summit

2009-08-03T19:14:00.008-04:00

Is it just me, or did anyone else find the "Beer Summit" to be a thoroughly a transparent attempt by Obama to pose as a post racial figure? In fact, doesn't it seem so blatantly hypocritical and such a blatant effort at damage control as to be obscene?

The so called "Beer Summit," relating to the incident discussed in a post here, was a meeting between President Obama, Vice President Biden, Officer Crowley, and the race baiting Harvard Prof, Henry Gates. As discussed in that post, when Sgt. Crowley responded to a report of a burglary in progress, Prof. Gates played the race card, then, shockingly, Obama doubled down, creating a public furor. Obama quickly backpedaled, then tried to portray himself as above the fray instead of in the middle of it. As he said in a later press conference, "[m]y hope is that, as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what's called a teachable moment."

Obama was never clear about what he intended to "teach" the rest of America about the Gates race card fiasco. Indeed, it seemed the only thing he wanted to "teach" us was that, in contradiction to his initial remarks, he was really above all of this. And indeed, not only was he above it all, but he clearly implied that he has a wisdom and understanding the rest of us do not possess. The effort was brought to culmination when Obama invited Gates and Crowley to the White House for a "Beer Summit" - a photo op with, not surprisingly at all, no reporters able to hear to conversation.

I do not know why Police Sergeant Crowley decided to allow himself to be used by Obama and attend this meeting. Given the degree to which Crowley was wronged, first by Gates, then by Obama, Sgt. Crowley would have been completely within reason to have refused the President's offer for what it was - a throughly hypocritical effort by Obama to portray himself in a favorable light with Crowley's assistance.

Regardless, Crowley decided to attend. Here was his press conference afterwards:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Hats off to Sgt. Crowley for handling this whole matter with class. The same cannot be said for Harvard Prof. Henry Gates, who refused to speak with reporters but did issue a statement. According to Prof. Gates:

Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control. [Gates playing the race card was anything but an 'accident.'] . . . It is incumbent upon Sergeant Crowley and me to utilize the great opportunity that fate has given us to foster greater sympathy among the American public for the daily perils of policing on the one hand, and for the genuine fears of racial profiling on the other hand [Gates has yet to explain how anything that Crowley did amounts to racial profiling. To use his logic, the arrest of any African American is racial profiling irrespective of the facts.]

. . . Thank God we live in a country where speech is protected, a country which guarantees and defends my right to speak out when I believe my rights have been violated; a country that protects us from arrest when we do express our views, no matter how unpopular.

And thank God that we have a President who can rise above the fray, bridge age-old differences and transform events such as this into a moment in the evolution of our society’s attitudes about race and difference. [This would seem the opposite of reality, but it is clearly the meme Obama wanted to portray.] President Obama is a man who understands tolerance and forgiveness, and our country is blessed to have such a leader. [Who is he tolerating and who is being forgiven? Gates seems to be implying that he is forgiving Crowley.]

The national conversation over the past week about my arrest has been rowdy, not to say tumultuous and unruly. But we’ve learned that we can have our differences without demonizing one another. . . . [Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't playing the race card "demonizing" the other by very definition?]

Having spent my academic career trying to bridge differences and promote understanding among Americans, I can report that it is far more comfortable being the commentator than being commented upon. . . .

I would lastly add that I would very much like to hear some of the substance of what Prof. Gates has taught in his academic career. Given both my experience with the curriculum of "African American Studies" programs - i.e., critical race theory - and the speed with which Gates played the race card on Sgt. Crowley, I would not be surprised to find Prof. Gates teaching in academia what Rev. Wright screeched from the pulpit.

In any event, the President will once again get a pass on all of this from the media. Perhaps that is the only "teachable moment" of this whole event.

Thomas Sowell On Govt. Regulation

2009-07-29T18:52:00.002-04:00

Thomas Sowell weighs in on Barney Frank, our government's role in causing this economic mess, and the stimulus. Prof. Sowell is always worth a listen.

Gates & The Politics of Race

2009-07-29T02:56:00.005-04:00

The Gates/Obama incident has been played and replayed many times over the past few days. A woman sees two men - one possibly Hispanic, the other of unknown ethnicity - trying to force in the back door of a residence that had been burglarized a week earlier. Police respond to a call of possible burglary in progress. By all accounts it is standard procedure when responding to such calls to ask any person who answers the door to step outside. If there is an invader in the home, this allows the police to secure the individual who answered the door, to remove them from any coercive threat, and insure they are not in harms way while the matter is resolved. Prof. Gates, a Professor of African American Studies at Harvard, immediately turned the incident into one of race. He was beligerent with the police from the outset, he refused their lawful order to step outside, and he told the police that they would not "do this to a white person." He was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Not a single individual of any ethnicity in the police dept. invovled has spoken out against the arresting officer or in support of Prof. Gates. To the contrary, they have been uniform in their support of the arresting officer's actions. But then there was President Obama who, at a press conference, pronounced the arrest of Prof. Gates "stupid," giving the implication that this was a racist act by the arresting officer. The result was a furor that had Obama back peddaling within days.

This is not a big incident. But I find it fascinating for what it tells us about the nation. I think it says several things:

- Our nation has progressed far towards the colorblind ideal since the dark days of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bull Conor.

- There was a time when playing the race card would be mean automatic free pass for the player of the card. White liberal guilt and intense pressure from the left combined to make playing the race card a sure winner. The Gates incident tells us that is no longer automatically true.

- The last step on the road to a truly post-racial America will be a dismanteling of affirmative action in all its aspects, creating a truly level playing field with actual acts of racism and reverse racism punished under the law. The highly publicized Ricci case focused attention on this in a way that had not occurred previously. If the polls in the wake of Ricci are any indication, that is the goal of most Americans.

- People expected Obama to be true to his word of promising to build a post racial America. Indeed, the symbolism of his Presidency, that it marks the triumph in America of equality over racism, will be the defining and most precious legacy of Obama's election. That is no doubt the reason why, when Obama took take sides in a "racial incident," it shocked much of the electorate who had taken him at his word.

Given the above, while the Gates incident itself is not of great significance, it foreshadows what may be one of the great ironies of the Obama presidency. His election, which marks the high water mark of identity politics, may also sound its death knell. Whether Obama actually meant to heal the "racial divide," his election may takes us the last few "longest yards" in spite of the substance of Obama and his Presidency. If America can collectively vote a black man as President, then objectively there is no longer a gaping racial divide. And with that, collective white guilt may well no longer be the prime driver in the politics of race. When that happens, perhaps the ideal of Martin Luther King Jr. will finally come to fruition. The writing is on the wall, it is only a matter of time.

Intel & Politics In The Dem's Congress

2009-07-21T12:57:00.005-04:00

Nancy Pelosi may be clinically insane - an opinion I have had for a long time - but she knows how to choose people that are loyal. Congressman Sylvester Reyes is a case in point. Pelosi elevated this man to the post of Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. It was certainly not because he was the sharpest knife in the box - to the contrary, at the time of his appointment, he did not know whether al Qaeda was a Sunni or Shia organization. One might consider that show of confusion on the most basic of points a disqualifier for an aspiring Intel chief during time of war. But what Reyes lacks in even the most basic of understanding of intelligence, he more than makes up for in loyalty to his mentor, Pelosi. And he is now leading the charge to discredit the CIA and to insure that the truth never comes out about Pelosi's claim that she was not briefed on waterboarding.

Democrats are claiming it a scandal that our CIA might have floated a program to conduct targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives without briefing Congress. They further claim that the decision not to brief Congress was made by the font of all evil in the world, Dick Cheney, Their goal is to hold this situation up as proof that the CIA regularly misleads Congress, and that, as such, no further proof on the Pelosi matter is warranted. As to the program itself, one has to wonder why such a plan was not operational on 9-12. Beyond that, there is this from Congressman Pete Hoekstra writing in the NY Post:

CIA Director Panetta refused to back the allegation that Cheney gave such an order. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden flatly denied that he'd ever been instructed not to brief Congress. Now Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has also distanced himself from these over-the-top allegations by House Democrats.

There's also been a flurry of bizarre letters from House Intelligence Committee members about this matter suggesting that Democrats are no longer interested in bipartisan oversight of intelligence. One was slipped under a Republican staff member's door after business hours. I first learned about it from the news media.

Another letter signed by seven Democratic House intelligence-committee members did not use House Intelligence committee stationery, apparently to ensure that Republicans didn't get a copy. Two Democratic House Intelligence Committee members refused to sign this letter because they thought it was too political.

These new allegations, letters and calls for investigations are part of a strategy by Democrats to attack intelligence personnel and agencies. Why? To protect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who is in hot water over her May 14 comments that the CIA "lies all the time" and misled her about enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects.

A major consequence of this Democratic effort to politicize intelligence is that the House Intelligence Committee has essentially stopped doing meaningful work. The 2010 intelligence-authorization bill was so poorly drafted (and loaded with language to protect Pelosi) that President Obama threatened a veto, forcing Democratic leaders to pull the bill from consideration this month.

. . . Disarray by House Democrats on intelligence oversight is seriously damaging the morale of US intelligence officers and their ability to do their jobs. How can Democrats claim they are serious about national security when they are exploiting intelligence and attacking intelligence professionals for political advantage?

I have emphasized that the intelligence community must be accountable when it does not tell Congress what it is doing. But when Congress is told and approves, Congress needs to be held accountable.

Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied to her about enhanced interrogations and recent Democratic claims that the CIA misled them about another program ignore the point that Democrats were repeatedly briefed on and approved the CIA's tough counterterrorism programs from the outset.

. . . The incredible amount of partisanship Democrats have introduced into intelligence matters is demoralizing the US intelligence community, causing sensitive information to be disclosed and encouraging our enemies. For the good of our nation, Democrats need to start acting like adults and begin conducting responsible and bipartisan intelligence oversight. These attacks on our intelligence community need to stop now.

Partisan political games have no place when it comes to national security.

That last sentence from Congressman Hoekstra is purely aspirational. Democrats have been politicizing intelligence since they decided that the Vietnam War that they led us into was unpopular. Democrats have been politicizing and hamstringing our intelligence capabilities in an unbroken line since the Church Commission at the conclusion of the Vietnam War. It has worked for them, so why stop now.

Evil Does Exist

2009-07-21T11:50:00.006-04:00

Perhaps the most brilliant history prof whom I had the good fortune to have for several classes in undergrad, Prof. Jack Martin, made the observation that history had proven that the worst possible form of government was a theocracy. Such governments are draconian, brutal, and irrational according to the whim of the moment of the theocrat. It is a form of government were horrid acts are justified on a twisting of religious dogma. He made that statement in reflecting upon all of history's theocracies of whatever religion and before he had the benefit of seeing the rise of the Taliban and Khomeini's final assertion of control in Iran. As he noted, religion's that take power to build utopia on earth invariably become evil when given the opportunity to use police powers rather than moral suasion.

Our recent history is replete with examples that prove Prof. Martin's argument. The latest is from Iran where, among other obscenities, the government sets the age of consent at nine and condones the rape of women on religious grounds. This from the country with whom Obama so desperately wishes to hold talks.

Robert at Seraphic Secret quotes this passage from a Jerusalem Post article:

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks.

He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard—essentially raped by her "husband."

"I regret that, even though the marriages were legal," he said.
Why the regret, if the marriages were "legal?"

"Because," he went on, "I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their 'wedding' night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

"I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over," he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her."

Read Richard's post, then see the Elder of Ziyon, who has much more to add to the mosaic of evil that is Iran's theocracy. As do Soccer Dad and Mere Rhetoric. Note also that the crimes for women in Iran are executed have nothing to do with crimes of violence. Prostitution and adultery lead the list.

Richard cites to a Jonathan Tobin opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post, asking how American Jews concered with support for Israel could have possibly seen their vote for Obama as meeting that concern. True, but given that Iran is equally as much a threat to the entire civilized world, how could anyone concerned our security have voted for Obama?

Sorry For The Absence

2009-07-21T11:48:00.003-04:00

Have spent the better part of the last two weeks caring for a seriously injured family member. She is getting better.

She Speaks

2009-07-14T12:37:00.003-04:00

Well, she writes, actually, in today's Washington Post, attacking the disaster that is Obama's cap and trade plan. It is vintage Palin, on point and with a bit of cynical humor.

. . . I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics. . . .

Do read the entire article. Palin has composed an excellent piece that hits all the salient points in the cap and tax fiasco.

As to the last part about understanding supply-side economics, after listening to Pelosi, Reid and virtually the entire Democratic Party last year attempt to disavow that supply is actually part of any economic equation, I have my doubts about them. As to the rest of rank and file America, I am sure that is a lesson everyone will learn quite quickly.

AP - Reporting the Record Deficit, Spinning For Obama

2009-07-14T10:05:00.005-04:00

The AP reports that the budget deficit has now actually exceeded $1 trillion for the fiscal year, and forecast that it will likely exceed $2 trillion by the fall. That would raise our total national debt to 12.5 trillion. Then they shill for Obama and a second round of stimulus, giving a history lesson that reads like something out of the People's World Weekly.

With the government spending masses of money it does not have and burning out the printing presses (yes, apparently this stuff does grow on trees in Washington, at least when the left does the gardening), and the fiscal year's debt topping a $1 trillion already, the AP tells us that our creditors are getting a might worried:

"These are mind-boggling numbers," said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at the Smith School of Business at California State University. "Our foreign investors from China and elsewhere are starting to have concerns about not only the value of the dollar but how safe their investments will be in the long run."

To summarize the rest of the AP's logic:

1. Yes, we've spent a lot, but we found an economist to say that if we hadn't done all this borrowing and spending, we'd be worse off.

2. Trying to reign in spending now would be a bad idea. A second round of stimulus might well be need.

3. Republicans are complaining about the size of the defecit and the massive public spending. They don't know what they're talking about.

4. The Recession of 1937 occurred because FDR stopped massive government spending. To quote from AP:

History shows the dangers of assuming too soon that economic downturns have ended.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made that mistake in 1936. Believing the Depression largely over, he sought to reduce public spending and to balance the federal budget, but that undermined a fragile recovery, pushing the economy back under water in 1937.

I'd love to know who does their historical research.

As a threshold matter, the Depression started in 1929. By 1936, most sectors of the economy were back at pre-depression levels, but for unemployment which was down from the peak but still in double digits.

How can one look at the graph above and think that the New Deal - or the second round of "stimulus" from FDR in 1937, healed our economy? The war economy started in 1939, and that is what pulled us out of the Depression. We had virtually full employment with people in America willingly sacrificing for the war effort by working overtime without pay as well as undergoing rationing and price controls.

As to the origins of the 1937 Recession, that occurred directly on the back of FDR's passage of laws empowering unions and his talk of a massive attack on big business. Do you think there might be a connection? This from Conservapedia:

[T]he New Deal had been very hostile to business expansion in 1935-37, had encouraged massive strikes which had a negative impact on major industries such as automobiles, and had threatened massive anti-trust legal attacks on big corporations. All those threats diminished sharply after 1938. For example, the antitrust efforts fizzled out without major cases. The CIO and AFL unions started battling each other more than corporations, and tax policy became more favorable to long-term growth.

Any of that sound similar to today, with Obama poised to war on businesses and expanding the power of unions?

Moreover, the AP completely mischaracterizes Republican opposition to the "stimulus." According to AP, the bases for Republican opposition are the massive borrowing and the failure of all this deficit spending to help the economy recover. They fail to note the biggest Republican complaint that ties all of this together - that the way the left is going about the "stimulus" is not to promote growth or jobs - it was a package of special interest spending that has been ineffective. Less than 1% - all of $6 billion of it - went to small business loans. The rest went to funding such much needed economic problems as saving endangered mice.

One wonders if, when things get predictibly worse, organizations such as the AP will feel any sort of responsibility for it all?

No posts today

2009-07-11T15:05:00.000-04:00

Reality intruding on blogging time today. Back to it tonight or tomorrow.

Clueless & On The Clock

2009-07-10T15:22:00.007-04:00

From former CIA Officer Reuel Marc Gerecht, following his analysis of the import of the declaration of Qom's Association of Religious Scholars:

. . . In the West, what's particularly distressing is that the Obama White House still seems to have little idea of the magnitude and nature of what is transpiring inside Iran. Tied to a fruitless policy of engagement (there's nothing wrong with "engaging" Khamenei so long as you use force as a medium of dialogue, i.e., you do unto them as they have consistently done unto you), President Obama appears to be blind to the most amazing time in the Middle East since the Islamic revolution. The future of the region is in play. We do--even after apologizing for the 1953 coup--have a few equities involved and can helpfully "meddle."

As Iran's unfolding battle between the children of the revolution is likely to last awhile, President Obama will get a chance to change course. Administrations often endeavor for three years on failed foreign policies before they can admit, at least internally, that there is a severe disconnect between their objectives and reality. Ali Khamenei has demolished President Obama's Iran policy in only five months. As a "student of history," the president may yet grow to appreciate the favor.

I love the line about force. And indeed, the history of Iran's theocracy has been that they meaningfully modify their behavior only in response to force or the threat of force. I do not share Gerecht's belief that we can afford Neville Chamberlain Obama guiding the U.S. foreign policy with Iran for three years and still be in a position to right the ship. I believe our window will be far shorter than that due to the nuclear issue. Unfortunately, while Obama has shown a real willingness to adopt Bush policies that worked in the War on Terror, none of that has bled into his uniformly inept and ideologically driven foreign policy. At best, we will play no role during this critical window of opportunity for regime change in Iran. At worst, Obama may actually throw a life line to the floundering mad mullahs who run the regime. He is the wrong man in office at a critical moment in history - and time is not on our side.