Just to let you know that this blog (and its owner) will be down for maintenance (surgery) for a just a little while. In the meantime, please go to my husband's snarky, comprehensive website (not blog) called The Neville Awards to get some first-rate updates on the State of our Union.
See you soon (and keep fighting to defeat the healthcare debacle they are trying to foist upon us!).
--lgstarr
Monday, November 30, 2009
Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science
By J.R. Dunn
The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It is no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime, grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.Read the rest here
A short tour of previous AGW highlights includes:
The Y2K Glitch. This episode involved the NASA/GISS team led by James Hansen, possibly the most fanatical and unrelenting of all warmists -- a man who makes Al Gore look like a skeptic. (Among other things, Hansen has demanded that warming "deniers" be tried for "crimes against humanity.") While examining a series of NASA temperature graphs, Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, himself not so much a skeptic as an anti-warming Van Helsing, uncovered a discontinuity occurring in January 2000 that raised temperatures gathered over widespread areas by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit. McIntyre had no easy time of it, since Hansen refused to reveal what algorithm he'd used to process the data, forcing McIntyre to perform some very abstruse calculations to figure it out.
Once notified, Hansen's team promised to correct the error, stating that it was an "oversight." When the corrected figures were at last released, they rocked the church of warming from bingo hall to steeple. Vanished was the claim that the past few years were "the warmest on record." Now 1934 took precedence. A full half of the top ten warmest years occurred before WWII, well prior to any massive CO2 buildup.
No explanation has ever been offered. We have a Y2K glitch that behaves like no other computer glitch ever encountered, uniformly affecting a large number of sources distributed almost nationwide. Although the incident trashed all recent data and raised uncomfortable questions about the warming thesis as a whole, NASA itself made no effort at an investigation or inquiry. All that we're ever going to hear is "oversight." I guess that's how they do things at NASA/GISS.
The Arctic Ice Melt. We've been informed for the better part of a decade that Arctic ice was melting at an unprecedented rate, and that the North Pole would be ice-free in twenty, thirty, or forty years, depending in the hysteria level of the media platform in question. In truth, ice thinning was due to a cyclical weather pattern in which winds blow ice floes south into warmer water. Everybody involved knew that this cycle occurred, everyone had seen it happen previously since time out of mind. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Worse yet, when the weather returned to its normal pattern two years ago, large numbers of scientists put in considerable effort to suggest that the "new" ice was thinner than usual and would vanish in a flash as soon as the temperatures went back up. The media went along with the joke. The Germans have a phrase to cover such eventualities: "this crew should be stripped of their trade." (Several expeditions setting out for the Pole to "call attention" to the coming Arctic catastrophe had to stop short due to icy conditions. In one case, both women involved suffered serious frostbite.)
The Poor Polar Bears. Closely related is the saga of the polar bears, staring extinction in the face due to warming, while somewhere beyond the aurora, Gaia weeps bitter tears. This was evidently inspired by a single photograph (you've seen it -- the entire world has at this point) of a woebegone polar bear crouched on a melting iceberg. That bear had to be sulking over allowing a nice, juicy seal to escape, because it was in no danger. Out of the twenty major polar bear populations, only two are known to be decreasing. Estimates of bear population (there are no exact figures) have increased over the past forty years, from 17,000 to 19,000 to the current number of 22,000 to 27,000. The bears are becoming pests in municipalities such as Churchill and Point Barrow (as clearly shown here). Despite all this, the bear was put on the U.S. "endangered" list just last year.
The Hockey Stick That Wasn't. The "hockey stick" is a nickname for a chart prepared by Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University professor and leading warmist. The chart purports to show temperature levels for the past millennium, and consists of a straight line until it reaches the late 20th century, when it suddenly shoots upward, creating the "hockey stick" profile. This chart was a major feature of International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on global warming and is a commonly used media graphic.
This chart creates immediate doubt in anyone knowledgeable about the climate of the past millennium, which more resembles a roller coaster than a straight line. It developed -- in yet another impressive McIntyre takedown, this time with an assist from Ross McKitrick -- that Mann was utilizing an algorithm that would produce hockey sticks if you fed it telephone numbers. (Mann is the "Mike" mentioned in the CRU e-mails, and this is one of his "tricks.") Despite this disclosure, Mann has never withdrawn the chart, offered an explanation, or made a correction. The chart remains an accepted piece of evidence among warmists.
Tree-Ring Circus. Due to the fact that direct temperature measures for past epochs are lacking, climatologists utilize "proxy measures," such as tree rings, glacial moraines, and lake sediments. Tree rings have played an important part in the warming controversy as evidence backing the claim that temperatures have been consistently lower worldwide until recently. A crucial series of measurements utilized by Mann, among others, involves trees located on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia. How many trees were measured, you ask? A hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?
The answer is twelve: a number perfectly adequate to trigger international panic, overthrow the capitalist system, establish Green totalitarianism, and completely turn Western culture on its head.
But it turns out that further measurements were in fact made in the area, involving at least thirty-four other trees. And when this data is added to the original twelve, then the warming evidence disappears into the same branch of the Twilight Zone as the grip of Mann's hockey stick. Another "oversight", you understand.
We could go on to mention the automated U.S. weather stations chronicled by the tireless Anthony Watts, which were conscientiously placed next to air-con vents, atop sewage plants, in parking lots, and in one case, in a swamp (as many as 90% may be giving spurious high readings). We could mention the glaciers that are vanishing worldwide...except where they aren't, or the endless papers demonstrating that the coral reefs -- along with various birds, animals, insects, and plants -- are facing extinction even though no warming whatsoever has occurred for twelve years. (And in the thirty years before that, the total rise was 1.25 degrees Fahrenheit, easily within normal variation.) Powerful stuff, this warming -- it maims and destroys even when it's not happening.
It's within this context that the East Anglia e-mails must be judged. The vanishingly small number of legacy media writers who are paying attention behave as if the messages comprise some kind of puzzling anomaly, with no relation to anything that came before. In truth, they stand as the internal memos from the East Anglia branch of the Nigerian National Bank, which can save us from the horrors of global warming after payment of a small up-front fee.
There is always a deeper level to the damage caused by fraud. It strains social relationships, generates cynicism, and debases standing institutions. What has suffered the most damage from AGW is faith in the scientific method, the basic set of procedures -- it could be called an algorithm -- governing scientific investigation. These procedures embody simplicity itself: you examine a phenomenon. You gather data. You construct a hypothesis to explain that phenomenon. And then...
Well, first, let's cover what you don't do...
Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit.Read more
Sunday, November 29, 2009
ObamaCare price tag is $6 trillion!
Bait and Switch:
The advocates of ObamaCare argue that the overhaul of the American health-care system will cost “only” a trillion dollars in its first decade. Michael Cannon at the libertarian think tank Cato says that Congress relies on significant budgetary gimmicks to get to that number, and that the true cost of ObamaCare in its first real decade is six times that amount:Read more
The final nail has been driven into the coffin of Obama's online COLB
(Nov. 28, 2009) — The final nail has been driven into the coffin of Obama’s online COLB (Certification of Live Birth), which was released in 2008 by his campaign to bolster his claims of being born in the United States of America, and which has been used as the reason, motive, or simply the excuse by members of Congress and politicians throughout the country, to explain away doubts regarding Obama’s eligibility.Read the rest here
The now infamous COLB alleged that Barack Hussein Obama II was born on Aug. 4, 1961 to Barack Hussein Obama I and Stanley Ann Dunham, in Hawaii.
However, the Department of Health has never corroborated the authenticity of the document. Rather, in an email to the publisher of The Right Side of Life website, Okubo admitted that the Hawaii Department of Health had no documents on file to establish that any such COLB was issued by them in 2007, even though the online COLB bears a 2007 seal.
Todays newest revelation discounts entirely the authenticity of the information on the alleged COLB, which bears the notation “Date filed by Registrar.” It has been speculated for nearly 3 months, by concerned citizens who have examined the rules of other departments of Vital Statistics accross the country that this designation, “filed by” indicates “submitted to, but not yet accepted as verified.”
This interpretation has now received indirect confirmation from the Communications Officer of the Department of Health, Janice Okubo herself, in her email response to Mr. James H. Roberson, which was published today online at 5:58 PM Eastern Time at Free Republic. The email was originally published at the blog of Attorney Leo Donofrio, which is now defunct.
Mr. Roberson sent his email on Oct. 31, 2009:
The revealing email to and from Okubo reads as follows:
Worst scientific scandal of our generation
Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:10PM GMT 28 Nov 2009
CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December Photo: Getty A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Climate emails sweep America Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.
This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.
The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.
Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p & p.
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker
Published: 6:10PM GMT 28 Nov 2009
CO2 emissions will be on top of the agenda at the Copenhagen summit in December Photo: Getty A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Climate emails sweep America Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.
This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.
The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.
Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p & p.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Cooking the books on climate
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/peer-221438-reviewed-climate.html
Mark Steyn: Cooking the books on climate
By MARK STEYN
2009-11-27 09:58:25
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr., star of the 1980s medical drama "St Elsewhere" but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an "activist." He's currently in a competition with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") to see who can have the lowest "carbon footprint." Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain's Climate Research Unit, in which the world's leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to "hide the decline" and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks. "We'll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies," said Ed airily. "Those are the key words here, Stuart. 'Peer-reviewed studies.'"
Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don't have a 76-inch HDTV, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. "If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it," insisted Ed. "Don't get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. 'Peer-reviewed studies' is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies."
Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier, and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it's something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?
No, no, peer-reviewed studies. "Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature," babbled Ed. "Read peer-reviewed studies. That's all you need to do. Don't get it from you or me."
Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the "peer-review" process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The "science" of the CRU dominates the "science" behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the "science" behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it's President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.
But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed."
Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review". When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."
So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review," climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the "peer-reviewed" "consensus." And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.
The e-mails of "Andy" (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose "Climate Audit" Web site exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann's global-warming "hockey stick" graph, "Andy" writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he's going to "cover" the story from a more oblique angle:
"I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.
"peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?"
And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does!
"Re, your point at the end – you've taken the words out of my mouth."
And that's what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann's mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of "saving the planet" from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the past week, you're as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. The "consensus" warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as "peer-reviewed" if it's published in Peer-Reviewed Studies published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc. (Peermate of the Month: Al Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar bear fur, on a melting ice floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and "Andy" Revkin would still have wandered out, glassy-eyed, into the streets droning "Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled ... ."
Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says 2009 is "the first year of global governance." Global government, huh? I wonder where you go to vote them out of office. Hey, but don't worry, it'll all be "peer-reviewed."
©MARK STEYN
Mark Steyn: Cooking the books on climate
By MARK STEYN
2009-11-27 09:58:25
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr., star of the 1980s medical drama "St Elsewhere" but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an "activist." He's currently in a competition with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") to see who can have the lowest "carbon footprint." Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn't get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain's Climate Research Unit, in which the world's leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to "hide the decline" and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks. "We'll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies," said Ed airily. "Those are the key words here, Stuart. 'Peer-reviewed studies.'"
Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don't have a 76-inch HDTV, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. "If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it," insisted Ed. "Don't get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. 'Peer-reviewed studies' is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies."
Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier, and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it's something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?
No, no, peer-reviewed studies. "Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature," babbled Ed. "Read peer-reviewed studies. That's all you need to do. Don't get it from you or me."
Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the "peer-review" process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The "science" of the CRU dominates the "science" behind the United Nations IPCC, which dominates the "science" behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now-routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it's President Barack Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.
But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed."
Here's what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by "peer review". When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann "consensus," Jones demanded that the journal "rid itself of this troublesome editor," and Mann advised that "we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers."
So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the "consensus" reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley ("one of the world's foremost experts on climate change") suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to "get him ousted." When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
Which, in essence, is what they did. The more frantically they talked up "peer review" as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in the Wall Street Journal Europe is unimproveable: "How To Forge A Consensus." Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That's "peer review," climate-style. The more their echo chamber shriveled, the more Mann and Jones insisted that they and only they represent the "peer-reviewed" "consensus." And gullible types like Ed Begley Jr. and Andrew Revkin of the New York Times fell for it hook, line and tree-ring.
The e-mails of "Andy" (as his CRU chums fondly know him) are especially pitiful. Confronted by serious questions from Stephen McIntyre, the dogged Ontario retiree whose "Climate Audit" Web site exposed the fraud of Dr. Mann's global-warming "hockey stick" graph, "Andy" writes to Dr. Mann to say not to worry, he's going to "cover" the story from a more oblique angle:
"I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks.
"peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?"
And, amazingly, Dr. Mann does!
"Re, your point at the end – you've taken the words out of my mouth."
And that's what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann's mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of "saving the planet" from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the past week, you're as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. The "consensus" warm-mongers could have declared it only counts as "peer-reviewed" if it's published in Peer-Reviewed Studies published by Mann & Jones Publishing Inc. (Peermate of the Month: Al Gore, reclining naked, draped in dead polar bear fur, on a melting ice floe), and Ed Begley Jr. and "Andy" Revkin would still have wandered out, glassy-eyed, into the streets droning "Peer-reviewed studies. Cannot question. Peer-reviewed studies. The science is settled ... ."
Looking forward to Copenhagen, Herman Van Rumpoy, the new president of the European Union and an eager proponent of the ecopalypse, says 2009 is "the first year of global governance." Global government, huh? I wonder where you go to vote them out of office. Hey, but don't worry, it'll all be "peer-reviewed."
©MARK STEYN
Friday, November 27, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Making the World's Knowledge Computable
Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.Try it!
Strange fruit meets bitter fruit...
The Dalai Lama went to McDonald's and said: "Make me One with Everything!" He handed the server a $20 bill and waited. The server looked him in the eye and intoned: "Your Holiness: You have taught us that Change comes from Within..."
Scientists caught hiding evidence of global cooling
Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.Read more
Monday, November 23, 2009
BREAKING: ACORN ENGAGED IN MASSIVE DOCUMENT DUMP IN SAN DIEGO, OCTOBER 9th
Shockingly, we now learn that the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County) engaged in a massive document dump on the evening of October 9th, containing thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents, just days prior to the Attorney General’s visit....ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
I dreamt that I went to Heaven...
I looked around in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.
Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section.
The angel then said to me, "This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them." I noticed again how busy it was there. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.
Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small room. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. "This is the Acknowledgment Section, my angel friend quietly admitted to me", he seemed embarrassed. "How is it that there is no work going on here I asked?"
"So sad," the angel sighed. "After people receive their blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments"
"How does one acknowledge God's blessings I asked?"
"Simple," the angel answered. "Just say, Thank you, Lord."
"What blessings should they acknowledge?" I asked.
"If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. "
"And if you get this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity."
"If you woke up this morning with more health than illness. You are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day."
"If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation you are ahead of 700 million people in the world."
"If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world."
"If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you're unique to all those in doubt and despair."
Ok, what now? How can I start?
If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.
Have a good day, count your blessings, and if you care to, pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are.
ATTN: Acknowledge Department: Thank you Lord, for giving me the ability to share this message and for giving me so many wonderful people with whom to share it."If you have read this far, and are thankful for all that you have been blessed with, how can you not send it on? I thank God for everything, especially for my family and all my friends!
Father of Todd Beamer, who died on United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11: "...party loyalty is trumping concern for America's security interests."
EXCERPT:
Do you really believe that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder love this country???
Read the whole thing
How can we be assured that these enemies will be found guilty? Given that criminal courts are now the presumed venue for those captured on the battlefield, will soldiers need to read them their rights at the time of capture? Since you wish to make exceptions on a case-by-case basis to the presumed civil venue, don't all those captured need to be read their rights and have the opportunity to remain silent? Won't this venue expose intelligence to our enemies? Can our classified information really be secured? Can we in fact predict how the judge will rule? If these people are brought into the country will they get additional rights under immigration law? What if they claim asylum?EXCERPT:
The attorney general seemed bewildered in the face of these inquiries. Recurring themes in his responses included "I think," and "I can't imagine," and "I am not an expert in immigration."
Has our attorney general not considered these issues, or imagined the possible unintended consequences that will arise from his historic decision? It certainly seemed that way. If he had, he would have had better answers.
A second shocker: Mr. Holder said that he and his boss had not spoken in person about this decision. This matter only involves upholding the constitutional rights of Americans, establishing a precedent with battlefield impact, and the safety and security of our citizens in a time of war. What are the criteria to make something a priority with President Barack Obama? How can it be that this matter didn't make the cut?
Our enemies must be thrilled. We are willingly handing them an opportunity to inflict economic harm on New York City, keep their cause in the headlines, gather new intelligence, create new terror strategies, stimulate recruiting, celebrate new-found rights, and foist a fresh round of pain and suffering upon their victims.
This decision is September 11, the sequel. It is my hope that Mr. Holder will reconsider.
Do you really believe that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder love this country???
Read the whole thing
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Give 'em Hell, Sarah
Lurking just below the surface of the second-guessing about Sarah Palin's fitness to be president is the serious question of whether we still believe in the American people's capacity for self-government, what we mean when we affirm that all American citizens are equal, and whether we tacitly believe there are distinct classes of citizens and that American government at the highest levels is an elite occupation.Like Truman, a natural-born executive
Real Truth. Real Power.
From Citizen Wells
Generally, I do believe we should pray for those who have lost their way. However, there is a concept called righteous indignation. A response, sadly lacking in many of those who profess to be Christians. And how ironic. Jesus, who was all about love for thy neighbor, entered the temple, saw the moneychanger’s wrongful acts, and overturned the tables in righteous indignation.
The lesson is simple. We must rise up in righteous indignation and say no more to attacks on Sarah Palin and others.
And be certain you are clear about this.
This is a struggle between good and evil.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”… Ephesians 6:12.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Recently “discovered” classified emails and files prove that the junk scientists behind the global warming movement knowingly perpetrated a fraud on the global community
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.Read the whole thing
Dr. Michael Mann co-authored the famous graph of temperature trends dubbed the “hockey stick graph.” Today, Mann was implicated in the global warming email and document conspiracy.Read the whole thing
Thursday, November 19, 2009
"This doesn't come close to the 'Saturday Night Massacre' in the Nixon days, but it's pretty damn weird..."
"I'm surprised not only that the press seems to be ignoring the fact that two presidential lawyers have left at about the same time, but that no one seems to care that for the first time, I think ever, we have a President's personal attorney also serving as White House counsel....more mysterious than Craig's exit was the announced move eight days ago by Craig's deputy, Cassandra Butts, a Harvard classmate of Obama's and one of the administration's highest-ranking African Americans...
How do you like being the Butt of a Joke?
Guess what? America has been a giant experimental laboratory for Obama's "on-the-job" training. Who enabled this affirmative action atrocity?
Read more
During the presidential campaign, many Americans thought that Barack Obama’s lack of leadership experience would not prevent him from being an effective president. His eloquence, his insistence that, yes, he could solve any problem and his image, so artfully crafted by his advertising team, led by David Axelrod, convinced many that hope could trump demonstrated ability. It has not. Nowhere is the evidence more apparent than in his mismanagement of the conflict in Afghanistan.
Read more
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
How Barack Obama screwed up 15 million people's 2010 taxes (mostly Seniors)
...but taking over the entire health care system will go really well, right?
Isn't it funny how it's mostly (so far) Seniors that are getting screwed...
Isn't it funny how it's mostly (so far) Seniors that are getting screwed...
Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers
A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.Read more
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Defeat ObamaCare in detail
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Harry Reid can pass a bill in the Senate that has no public option or an easy opt-out, shallow subsidies for the uninsured, a low total cost, weak penalties for not having insurance, no coverage for abortion and no general tax increase (except for the premium and medical device taxes).
And Nancy Pelosi can pass a bill in the House (on final passage) that has a public option with no opt-out, steep subsidies for the uninsured, harsh penalties if they don’t buy insurance, a higher cost, full abortion coverage and a surcharge income-tax increase.
The question is: Can either one’s bill pass the other’s chamber?
Probably not.
So here’s how all this is likely to unfold:
Pelosi’s bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Reid is going to have to give up his insistence on the public option and pass a bill in the Senate very much like the Baucus bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee. After extensive negotiations with his liberal wing on the one side and the moderates in the Senate on the other (led by Joe Lieberman) he will eventually strike a deal. He’ll let the bill pass with no public option or with a generous opt-out provision. Meanwhile, he will placate his liberals by telling them that the final version that the Conference Committee will report back to the Senate will have a robust public option, not to worry. (Just as Pelosi told her liberals that the final bill would not ban payments for abortions, not to worry.)
After weeks of negotiations, the Senate will probably pass its version of the bill as a Christmas present to America.
But … in the course of all these negotiations, Obama and the Democrats are going to look worse and worse, more divided and less focused on the ultimate objective. Public antipathy to the bills will mount and the worst-case scenario of each possible variation in the legislation will spark its own storm of opposition. By the time the Senate acts, the feminists will be angry, the uninsured will be angry, the senior citizens will be angry and the fiscal conservatives will be angry.
Support for the bill will drop week after week during November and December.
By the time Congress reconvenes in January to wrestle with the two competing versions, support for the bill will have dwindled to a perilous point. This reduced level of support will just serve to make senators and congressmen more intransigent in the negotiations. Since the bill will need 60 votes in the Senate after the conference report, Lieberman, Maine’s Snowe and Collins and a handful of other moderates will each have a veto. And, collectively, the liberals in each chamber will have one as well.
Weeks and months of wrangling will ensue. The result could be the defeat of the bill or its amendment in positive ways (for those opposed to it).
Our task is to reduce public support for the bill by publicizing its provisions, notably:
1. The $400 billion cut in Medicare
2. The inevitable scarcity that will result from the addition of 35 million new patients with no new doctors or nurses
3. The fine on the uninsured of 2.5 percent of their income if they don’t buy insurance
4. The high cost of these mandatory insurance policies ($15,000 per family)
5. The low level of subsidy available for the uninsured (only after they pay 8-12 percent of their incomes)
6. The likelihood of a $1,700 increase in the average family’s premiums
7. The possibility of up to five years in prison for failing to buy insurance or pay the fine
8. The taxation of medical devices like pacemakers, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, etc.
9. The tax on sick people (increasing the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent to 10 percent of income
10. The additional fiscal burden on the states of the increase in Medicaid eligibility
11. The 40 percent tax on health insurance premiums that will affect households earning more than $75,000 by the fifth year of the plan.
Please circulate this information widely — to friends, relatives, associates, etc. — and go online to dickmorris.com to fund ads we can run in swing states to influence senators.
We can still win this fight!
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/67679-defeat-obamacare-in-detail
Harry Reid can pass a bill in the Senate that has no public option or an easy opt-out, shallow subsidies for the uninsured, a low total cost, weak penalties for not having insurance, no coverage for abortion and no general tax increase (except for the premium and medical device taxes).
And Nancy Pelosi can pass a bill in the House (on final passage) that has a public option with no opt-out, steep subsidies for the uninsured, harsh penalties if they don’t buy insurance, a higher cost, full abortion coverage and a surcharge income-tax increase.
The question is: Can either one’s bill pass the other’s chamber?
Probably not.
So here’s how all this is likely to unfold:
Pelosi’s bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Reid is going to have to give up his insistence on the public option and pass a bill in the Senate very much like the Baucus bill that came out of the Senate Finance Committee. After extensive negotiations with his liberal wing on the one side and the moderates in the Senate on the other (led by Joe Lieberman) he will eventually strike a deal. He’ll let the bill pass with no public option or with a generous opt-out provision. Meanwhile, he will placate his liberals by telling them that the final version that the Conference Committee will report back to the Senate will have a robust public option, not to worry. (Just as Pelosi told her liberals that the final bill would not ban payments for abortions, not to worry.)
After weeks of negotiations, the Senate will probably pass its version of the bill as a Christmas present to America.
But … in the course of all these negotiations, Obama and the Democrats are going to look worse and worse, more divided and less focused on the ultimate objective. Public antipathy to the bills will mount and the worst-case scenario of each possible variation in the legislation will spark its own storm of opposition. By the time the Senate acts, the feminists will be angry, the uninsured will be angry, the senior citizens will be angry and the fiscal conservatives will be angry.
Support for the bill will drop week after week during November and December.
By the time Congress reconvenes in January to wrestle with the two competing versions, support for the bill will have dwindled to a perilous point. This reduced level of support will just serve to make senators and congressmen more intransigent in the negotiations. Since the bill will need 60 votes in the Senate after the conference report, Lieberman, Maine’s Snowe and Collins and a handful of other moderates will each have a veto. And, collectively, the liberals in each chamber will have one as well.
Weeks and months of wrangling will ensue. The result could be the defeat of the bill or its amendment in positive ways (for those opposed to it).
Our task is to reduce public support for the bill by publicizing its provisions, notably:
1. The $400 billion cut in Medicare
2. The inevitable scarcity that will result from the addition of 35 million new patients with no new doctors or nurses
3. The fine on the uninsured of 2.5 percent of their income if they don’t buy insurance
4. The high cost of these mandatory insurance policies ($15,000 per family)
5. The low level of subsidy available for the uninsured (only after they pay 8-12 percent of their incomes)
6. The likelihood of a $1,700 increase in the average family’s premiums
7. The possibility of up to five years in prison for failing to buy insurance or pay the fine
8. The taxation of medical devices like pacemakers, wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, etc.
9. The tax on sick people (increasing the threshold for deducting medical expenses from 7.5 percent to 10 percent of income
10. The additional fiscal burden on the states of the increase in Medicaid eligibility
11. The 40 percent tax on health insurance premiums that will affect households earning more than $75,000 by the fifth year of the plan.
Please circulate this information widely — to friends, relatives, associates, etc. — and go online to dickmorris.com to fund ads we can run in swing states to influence senators.
We can still win this fight!
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/healthcare/67679-defeat-obamacare-in-detail
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Proof that Obama is no Franklin D. Roosevelt!
This excerpt, while taken out of context story-wise, makes it unchallenginly clear that Obama is no FDR (no matter how much he keeps telling everyone he is). Furthermore, the acts of terror being discussed were on our own soil and within our own borders...FDR would not allow a civilian trial under that circumstance and thus would obviously be even less inclined to award a civilian trial to those from a battlefield in another country. Sorry Obama administration: this whole story (actual history) proves beyond a doubt that you are hiding under a plexiglass blanket...you batch of fools will ultimately cause the deaths of more and more Americans.
How terrorists were dealt with by FDRRead this story--it's very telling!
Excerpts from Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage, Joseph E. Persico, 2001:
FDR essentially took charge of the case. He told Biddle that he wanted the eight agents tried, not in a civilian court, but by a military tribunal, which he himself would appoint. They had forfeited any right to a civilian trial, as Roosevelt put it, because "[t]hese men had penetrated battlelines strung on land along our two coasts and guarded on the sea by our destroyers, and were waging battle within our country." They fell under the Law of War. A military tribunal would be quick, not subject to the protracted appeals procedures of civilian courts. It would not be hog-tied by the criminal courts' exacting rules of evidence. It could impose the death sentence, not as the civil courts required, by a unanimous verdict, but by a two-thirds vote. A military tribunal offered the advantages and the assured outcome that the President wanted. A civilian court was out of the question. FDR told Biddle, "I want one thing clearly understood, Francis: I won't give them up . . . I won't hand them over to any United States Marshall armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand!"
Friday, November 13, 2009
THE 20 BIG LIES IN THE HEALTHCARE REFORM DEBATE
From www.docs4patientcare.org/
1.You can keep your insurance if you like it.
2.You can keep your doctor if you wish.
3.US healthcare ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world.
4.Major cause of bankruptcies is related to medical expenses.
5.14,000 people per day are dying due to lack of medical insurance.
6.Most doctors support Obamacare as endorsed by organized medicine (AMA).
7.Senior citizens will not lose any Medicare benefits.
8.Insurance premiums will be reduced for most Americans.
9.This plan will only result in tax increases for the super wealthy.
10.Proposed HC bills are budget "neutral" and will not add to the federal deficit.
11.There are only 2 choices: the current system or Obamacare.
12.The Republicans say NO because they lack and alternative plan.
13.The public "strongly" supports Obamacare and public option.
14.There will not be any rationing in healthcare.
15.The government will not interfere between you and your doctor.
16.Most doctors oppose HCR legislation so they can preserve their income.
17.This is a "crisis" situation and needs to be passed into law immediately.
18.A public option will increase competition and not result in a single payer system.
19.Members of Congress will be subject to the same healthcare as the general public.
20.Contents of the bill will be available to read at least 72 hours prior to a vote.
1.You can keep your insurance if you like it.
2.You can keep your doctor if you wish.
3.US healthcare ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world.
4.Major cause of bankruptcies is related to medical expenses.
5.14,000 people per day are dying due to lack of medical insurance.
6.Most doctors support Obamacare as endorsed by organized medicine (AMA).
7.Senior citizens will not lose any Medicare benefits.
8.Insurance premiums will be reduced for most Americans.
9.This plan will only result in tax increases for the super wealthy.
10.Proposed HC bills are budget "neutral" and will not add to the federal deficit.
11.There are only 2 choices: the current system or Obamacare.
12.The Republicans say NO because they lack and alternative plan.
13.The public "strongly" supports Obamacare and public option.
14.There will not be any rationing in healthcare.
15.The government will not interfere between you and your doctor.
16.Most doctors oppose HCR legislation so they can preserve their income.
17.This is a "crisis" situation and needs to be passed into law immediately.
18.A public option will increase competition and not result in a single payer system.
19.Members of Congress will be subject to the same healthcare as the general public.
20.Contents of the bill will be available to read at least 72 hours prior to a vote.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Next week: The final battle to save America
Be there, or be square (just a joke).
But honestly: It's gettin' really, really heavy...and it's not a joke:
The Senate's Big Cloture Vote
You guys (and I mean the CITIZENS of the United States and NOT the current ruling elite) are the ONLY ones that can save the United States of America as we know it, and as the founders of our great country created it. May God be with us all.
We are not perfect (as the ruling "Elite" think they are), but we beg God's forgiveness and pray that He be willing to preserve the great Blessing of our freedom.
But honestly: It's gettin' really, really heavy...and it's not a joke:
The Senate's Big Cloture Vote
You guys (and I mean the CITIZENS of the United States and NOT the current ruling elite) are the ONLY ones that can save the United States of America as we know it, and as the founders of our great country created it. May God be with us all.
We are not perfect (as the ruling "Elite" think they are), but we beg God's forgiveness and pray that He be willing to preserve the great Blessing of our freedom.
Wisdom channeled by The Real Revo
Sun Tzu speaks to the American People regarding Afghanistan
There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune upon his Army:
(1) By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army.
(2) By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier’s minds.
(3) By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.
But when the army is restless and distrustful, trouble is sure to come from the other feudal princes. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging victory away.
Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory:
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Stop President Obama from giving constitutional rights to terrorists!
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America is sending a petition to President Obama. Hope you sign it too!
Farmer John
John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets', and ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.
The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate.
The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
But to Farmer John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result...The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
Vote carefully...the bells are not always audible!
The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
The farmer's favorite rooster was old Butch, a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning John noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! John went to investigate.
The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
But to Farmer John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result...The judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making: who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.
Vote carefully...the bells are not always audible!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Obama's evil games
Beyond just being the Ditherer-in-Chief, Obama plays with the lives of our armed forces as if they were nothing more than pawns in his political chess game:
Official: Obama won't take any current war options
Official: Obama won't take any current war options
If OBAMACARE is So Great, Why Did Congress Reject 11 Amendments Requiring THEIR Participation?
Critics of the health care bill said they offered the 11 amendments – including some that would require the president, vice president, and Supreme Court justices to give up their Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) to enroll in the ‘public option’ or Medicaid – to showcase the problems with the massive legislation.Read the whole thing
“If Congress forces our constituents into a public option plan over time, then members of Congress should be expected to do the same,” Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) told CNSNews.com.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Why there will be more military base shootings
"The Pentagon has yet to define a threat model to identify, let alone address, jihadism."
I was giving a briefing on Islamic radicalization and current domestic terror threats at a military conference earlier this year when I was approached afterward by an Army colonel who asked exactly what could be done to counter such threats. He was taken aback when I replied, “The military can’t and won’t do what it needs to about jihadism, and we are going to see body bags coming out of our recruiting centers and military bases for the foreseeable future.”Read more
Sadly, the killings at the Little Rock Army recruiting station in June and at Ft. Hood last Thursday confirm my analysis.
Monday, November 09, 2009
What does YOUR church say about the passage of the health care bill?
From a friend of a friend:
How many of you went to church this morning and heard your pastor speak against the passage of the health care bill?
I DID !!!
He told the congregation that we would now have more government in our lives. That it would increase our taxes. He said with increased taxes, we would lose freedom -- freedom to spend our money the way we choose. He said now we can worship as we choose, but we can't say "In Jesus' name" in prayers at football games. He said government doesn't give us our rights, but government dictates how we live. He said now, with time, our government will give us our health care -- it will no longer be an individual responsibility. But if the government gives it, it can take it away.
He said there are 50 things that used to be against the law but which are now funded by us! And we're silent!!! he said.
He read in the Bible a story that was like our country asking China for a loan, but China has strings attached. And then we go back to China for more!
We are losing our freedoms! We are mortgaging our country to China!
He said we can be on the Left or on the Right, but to be elected, politicians must be in the middle. But politicians don't decide where the middle is -- WE do. It is our job to move the centerline. We cannot be passive, he said.
It used to be all pastors spoke about politics from their pulpits, but now they are afraid because of their tax exempt status. But they should look at the tax code -- they can legally say a lot from the pulpit.
If your pastor didn't say these things this morning, perhaps you'll ask him/her to consider doing so in the future. Have him/her check with the IRS Code.
I know a church that has a "Watchman Ministry" just for that purpose, to guide its church members to work for/against State and Federal legislation. They keep a careful eye on the IRS Code.
This pastor then had a guest speak about churches in Iran, who told of how Christians in Iran are jailed for worshiping as they choose.
Oh, you want to know who the pastor is -- the pastor who "goes outside the box" in his sermons?
He is Pastor Rob McCoy of Calvary Chapel.
Pastor Rob has also granted us the use of his sanctuary to show the documentary NOT EVIL JUST WRONG.
Pelosi bill: Jail for no insurance
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation reported that the House version of the healthcare bill specifies that those who don’t buy health insurance and do not pay the fine of about 2.5 percent of their income for failing to do so can face a penalty of up to five years in prison!Read more
The bill describes the penalties as follows:
• Section 7203 — misdemeanor willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.
• Section 7201 — felony willful evasion is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment of up to five years.” [page 3]
That anyone should face prison for not buying health insurance is simply incredible.
And how much will the stay-out-of-jail insurance cost?
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Why Obama's Ft. Hood reaction seems so strange
This blogpost from Alan Keyes will open your eyes and wake you up. It finishes with the following:
"The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail." (Deuteronomy 28:31, cf. Lamentations 5:8, Ezekiel 11:9)Read the whole thing
Better they had sought for hope following God's example and looking "for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it..." (Ezekiel 22:30).
Healthcare in America
Here are some excepts from piece on on Canadian Healthcare--a model on which much of the 2000-page bill that, with only 72-hours to read, the US House of Representatives PASSED yesterday! Even those that support Obamacare can't be in favor of giving the House (and the people) only 3 days to evaluate a TRILLION-DOLLAR bill that will have far reaching ramifications!
The piece was written by Dick Morris. Mr. Morris worked for President Bill Clinton during his 1st term and was on the cover of Time Magazine in the mid-90s.
Now the Senate is our last hope to prevent the same fate in America.
The piece was written by Dick Morris. Mr. Morris worked for President Bill Clinton during his 1st term and was on the cover of Time Magazine in the mid-90s.
Canadian doctors have left the practice and so many young people have entered other fields that Canada ranks 26th of 28 developed nations in its ratio of physicians to population.
This physician shortage leads to massive and never-ending waiting lists. In 1993, for example, there was an average wait of 9.3 weeks from the time a patient got a referral from a general practitioner to the time he could see a specialist. By 1997, the wait was up to 11.7 weeks. Now it's 17.3 weeks -- over four months just to see a specialist!
Because of these long waits for colonoscopies, there is now a 25 percent higher incidence of colon cancer in Canada than in the United States
Overall, the cancer death rate in Canada runs 16 percent higher than in the United States. Cancer does not wait for waiting lists to clear.
Now the Senate is our last hope to prevent the same fate in America.
End of story - End of discussion - End of debate: This was a Moslem attack on America!
I NEVER thought I would see the day when America would be so TERRIFIED of offending anyone, that the people American’s rely upon most for all of their information, represented by the media and politicians, would be such cowards as to wear blinders rather than see the truth for what it is.Read the whole thing
The fact that Obama has already sent a clear message to America’s allies and Islamists worldwide, that he has neither the courage nor the leadership to make a decision on whether or not to fight the enemy of modernity and Secular Freedom, has placed the world at great risk.
Why Obamacare Won't Work
Economics professor explains how It Will Be Rational for People and Companies to Drop Insurance, Pay Fine
Heartsick...for they know not what they do
U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, released the following statement regarding the passage of a 2,000-page health care bill in the House of Representatives:Dems PASS Nationalized Health Care Bill (Video)
“This 2,000-page bill goes in exactly the wrong direction: it means higher premiums, higher taxes, Medicare cuts, more debt & huge new health-care costs for state taxpayers. Instead we should start over and go step by step. Specifically, we could start with small business health care plans that would lower premiums, cover up to 1 million new small business employees, and reduce spending on Medicaid.”
God help us.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
ObamaCare Vs. The Hippocratic Oath
...The Hippocratic Oath written in 400 B.C., changed my life and the lives of the thousands of patients my classmates and I have touched over the past twenty-nine years.Read the whole thing
Through my career, I have tried to add to that Oath my obligation “To PREVENT Harm”, through my work in Prevention and at The Institute For Preventative Sports Medicine. I keep this Oath as my foundation as I review the current proposals for Health Care Reform. Take all of the politics out of the latest versions authored by The Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration, and it comes down to The Oath.
The sad fact is that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Administration’s 1990 page health care reform bill (HR3962) and supplement(HR3961) violate The Oath by stripping freedom from every person, family and business in Our country . This 19 ½ pound pair of documents, entitled ”Affordable Health Care For Americans Act,” will cost taxpayers over $1.2 Trillion, will institute 13 tax increases totaling $740 Billion, will increase Medicare Premiums to Seniors by $70 Billion, will cost shift $34 Billion to State budgets, and will cut Medicare benefits to Seniors by $426 Billion over ten years.
Friday, November 06, 2009
This was a terrorist act. What cowards we are.
By: Ralph Peters — Saturday, November 7th, 2009 ‘The New York Post’
(Op/Ed - Commentary)
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.
This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.
When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."
But the president won’t.
Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.
And the Army won’t.
Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism."
And the media won’t.
Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears.
Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan planned this terrorist attack and executed it in cold blood. The resulting massacre was the first tragedy. The second was that he wasn’t killed on the spot.
Hasan survived. Now the rest of us will have to foot his massive medical bills. Activist lawyers will get involved, claiming "harassment" drove him temporarily insane. There’ll be no end of trial delays. At best, taxpayer dollars will fund his prison lifestyle for decades to come, since our politically correct Army leadership wouldn’t dare pursue or carry out the death penalty.
Maj. Hasan will be a hero to Islamist terrorists abroad and their sympathizers here. While US Muslim organizations decry his acts publicly, Hasan will be praised privately. And he’ll have the last laugh.
But Hasan isn’t the sole guilty party.
The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood .
Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood , had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.
Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would’ve been gone with the simoon. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities.
Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. 31 soldiers were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don’t roll in this maggot’s chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.
There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?
For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.
Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that "he’s a good American." In their world, maybe he is.
But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?
A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait , on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently?
An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit .
A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station.
A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife.
A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized.
Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that "Islam’s a religion of peace."
I guarantee you that the Obama administration’s non-response to the Ft. Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.
Obama administration's ties to terrorists
2 Hasan's participation in a Homeland Security Panel + 2 Fort Hood Shooter's Former Imam had Terrorist Ties = A REAL QUESTION ABOUT OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S DEGREES OF SEPARATION:
From NPR on October 31, 2009
"I shall stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." --Barack Hussein Obama, Audacity of Hope
From NPR on October 31, 2009
This past year has been one of the FBI's busiest — at least when it comes to terrorism cases. In the first 10 months of 2009, there have been possible plots exposed in Denver; Springfield, Ill.; Dallas; Boston; and, just this week, Chicago.Ranking Terrorist Threats By Degree Of Separation
With so many alleged plots, it's difficult to know how seriously to take any particular threat. So the intelligence community has an informal system for ranking them. The basic idea: The closer the link to al-Qaida, the more serious the plot.
"I shall stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." --Barack Hussein Obama, Audacity of Hope
Dick McDonald: Only Super-Religious Muslims Kill Innocent People
From Dick McDonald: I sent this out earlier today before the AP article hit. There now is no question that this was a mainstream Muslim paying his dues to get into Islam’s heaven by killing innocent people while shouting “Allahu Akbar”.
Ft. Hood suspect reportedly shouted `Allahu Akbar'Dick's earlier article:
AP - Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.
Only Super-Religious Muslims Kill Innocent People
Dick McDonald
The NYT this morning did not draw attention to the fact that the Fort Hood mass murderer was a Muslim – obviously one who believes in killing “infidels.” No matter what trumped-up rationale the media uses to blind Americans of the threat Islam poses to the world, the fact remains the media rather than scolding and “spanking” the Muslim faith for not reforming their religious fanatics and texts has embolden them to believe that the West’s culture and resolve is weak and ripe for a takeover. As in everything important the media weakens America rather than strengthens it by using the art of omission. To wit, buried in the far reaches of their lead story the Paper of Record had this to say:
The Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking for many American Muslims, condemned the shootings as a “heinous incident” and said, “We share the sentiment of our president.”
Excuse me! They “share the sentiments of our president” which leaves a big question in an American’s mind. America’s current president was (or is) a Muslim. He has spent $1.4 million on lawyers closing every record of his past from grammar school through law school from review by the American public. We have no idea who Barack Obama really is other than the fact he wants to redistribute wealth and enjoy the good life power conveys on a super successful politician.
The only religious text that sends the believer to heaven if he kills non-believing innocent men, women and children is Islam’s Koran. It is time for Muslims to reform it and join the human race. They need to discipline their own. The Fort Hood killer could only believe as radical Muslims do that an act of violence that kills husbands, brothers and children of non-believers was religiously justified.
This mass murder was the result of Islam’s failure and the failure of our media to make the offenders of society accountable for their actions. Islam’s refusal to reform and its continuing offensive to return their “caliphate” to Earth is the fault of Americans who believe all religions are equal – they are not. There is one which believes that the end justifies the means and delivered the Fort Hood massacre – there are no other reasons – just trumped up excuses.
Report: 237 millionaires in Congress!
Talk about bad timing.Read more
As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.
Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.
CRP says California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is the richest lawmaker on Capitol Hill, with a net worth estimated at about $251 million. Next in line: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), worth about $244.7 million; Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), worth about $214.5 million; Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), worth about $209.7 million; and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), worth about $208.8 million.
All told, at least seven lawmakers have net worths greater than $100 million, according to the Center’s 2008 figures.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The Greatest Scam On Earth
In 2000 Al Gore was a failed Presidential candidate with a paltry 2 million dollars to his name. Not a lot of money for a guy whose lavish mansion gobbles up almost a 150,000 dollars in electric utilities annually alone, and that of course is before property taxes and all the other costs of owning a home in Belle Meade, which has one of the region's highest costs of living. But besides growing a beard and lecturing college students on journalism, a hobby he had last practiced in the 70's, Al Gore didn't have much of a career plan.Read more
But Gore didn't starve on the streets either, and eight years later, despite not having much in the way of a job, the former Vice President is worth over a hundred million dollars. Expanding your net worth by %2500 percent sounds like the Madoff investment plan, but the scam that Al Gore invested in is one that makes Madoff look like a piker... because Gore invested in The Greatest Scam on Earth.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
...and George W. Bush is an idiot?
If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?
If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?
If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?
If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?
So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He did all this in just 5 months--you have three more years to come up with an answer!
If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?
If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?
If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?
If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?
So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He did all this in just 5 months--you have three more years to come up with an answer!
Starner Jones, MD: "Our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care?"
Starner Jones, MD is a seventh generation Mississippian and wanted to come back to Mississippi after going somewhere else for college and medical school. His extracurricular interests are golf, hunting, fishing and college football.
This was his "letter to the editor" in August 29th Jackson, MS newspaper.
This was his "letter to the editor" in August 29th Jackson, MS newspaper.
Dear Sirs:
During my last night's shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: MEDICAID. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.
And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman's health care? Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me". Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.
Don't you agree?
STARNER JONES, MD Jackson , MS
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Will the swine flu sink Obamacare???
...we're seeing a big government health care program in operation right now--the Obama administration's effort to deal with the swine flu problem. No, come to think of it, it's now the swine flu emergency. Last week, President Obama so legally designated it. How's that test case in government-run emergency care going?Read the whole thing
Turn on your local news to find out. You'll see false reassurances, broken promises, rationing which doesn't provide the promised rations, queues lengthening while supplies run out, and lots of bureaucrats explaining just why things aren't working quite as their centrally planned plans had planned.
The swine flu emergency is a foretaste of life under the Pelosi Plan. Surely this spectacle, happening in real time before us, will give even more Democrats pause. Do they really want to be known as the Swine Flu Democrats?
Thomas Sowell On Economics Of Medical Care
IBD Exclusive Series:Readers of Thomas Sowell's columns in IBD don't have to be told why he is considered one of America's greatest thinkers — maybe the greatest.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet has called him "our greatest contemporary philosopher," an opinion that British historian Paul Johnson shares in his book "A History of the American People."
Besides his weekly newspaper column, Sowell has written 43 books — 10 in the last five years — two monographs, 87 articles in periodicals and books, and 33 book reviews.
His latest two books, "The Housing Boom and Bust" and "Applied Economics," came out this year. The latter, subtitled "Thinking Beyond Stage One," is one of six he has written on economics.
Dr. Sowell has granted IBD permission to run one of the chapters of "Applied Economics" — "The Economics of Medical Care" — in its entirety. We are doing so because of its relevance to the debate over health care reform. The chapter will run in nine parts over the next week and a half. The first part starts below and continues in the Issues & Insights section, where the other eight parts will appear.
Sowell was born in North Carolina in 1930 and reared in Harlem. After dropping out of high school, he was drafted into the military and served in the Marines during the Korean War.
During his 20s, when he was a self-described Marxist, he attended and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a B.A. in economics. He also has a master's in economics from Columbia and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
He has taught at Howard University, Cornell, Brandeis, Amherst and UCLA, and is now the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
Thomas Sowell on The Economics of Medical Care