The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Another Poor-Planning “Emergency” Creates Possibility Of Obama Power Grab

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Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution states:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

But it’s another typical day in the Obama administration so the Constitution be damned.  The United States and the Soviet Union need to finish the new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5th and Gary Samore, White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control today said that “…that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive level and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.”

Mind you, the two countries have had 18 years to think about and prepare for this.  President Obama has had over 5 months to prepare for this.

But it’s easier and oh-so-convenient to call the poor planning of prioritizing distracting directives to Congress to force cap and trade and health care “reform” onto Americans an emergency so as to feebly justify using executive privilege; though I fear that his idea of complying will be by the “2/3 of the Senators present” at some 3 a.m. session after Obama and his buddies wrap up a cozy little White House dinner party.

This administration is no longer an embarrassment.  It is a travesty.

Shearing The Shrinking Sheep Myth

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An article from the French press recently made headlines by outlining the “case of the shrinking sheep“.  It seems that the wild Soay sheep in a little place called Hirta, in the St. Kilda archipelago in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, are defying Darwin and the evolutionists by becoming smaller in size as their population ages.

Hirta is a little storm-battered island only just over 2 miles square and when its last small settlement of human inhabitants finally left in 1930, taking their sheep with them, the only fauna remaining behind were the seabirds, seals, and the St. Kilda wood mouse.   The Soay sheep were introduced in 1932 to roam freely and the area eventually became a wildlife refuge.

The average person just doesn’t spend much time thinking about biological diversity and the reasons for it, and brave little sheep on a wind-swept isle in romantic Scotland make for wonderfully guilt-inducing photo ops.   But there is something wrong with this picture.

Every ecosystem has an inherent set of checks and balances and in the case of Hirta, what is missing from the traditional and expected picture is a natural predator of the sheep.  The wild Soay sheep on Hirta have lived with no pressure from anything except their physical surroundings and, naturally, this increases the chances of survival for the small and the weak.  But despite their unpressured existence, studies have shown the population fluctuates with “periodic population crashes, during which up to 60% of the population may die. The adult sex ratio is strongly female biased due to heavily male biased mortality during population crashes.” 

There is also the matter of inbreeding, and although one study shows Soay sheep to be less likely than other species to mate with close relatives, the inherent small numbers of the population and limited habitat naturally depresses the availability of genetic diversity over time.

The fear-mongers who beat the voodoo drums of global warming to conjure up their own future financial windfalls want you to believe that the wild Soay sheep are shrinking like a wool sweater because of being tumbled in a hot man-made dryer, but don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes.  Common sense looks for an explanation that actually meets the criteria of reality; because of my own work I know that there are numerous exceptions in this wonderful world to what is called “Bergman’s Rule”, a biological observation that says members of a species tend to be larger in the cooler part of their range.  When you look at the circumstances in which the wild Soay sheep live on Hirta their slightly smaller size today – a phenomena still unfolding – is far more likely due to a naturally-belated exception-to-Bergman’s-Rule response to the previous, slight warming trend the Earth has recently experienced, then combined with a previously-unneeded but hearty “small size” gene becoming dominent due to the naturally slow rate of inbreeding combined with the lack of natural predation.

And such exceptions do not conclusions make.  Unless, of course, you’re out to fleece someone.

No Choice With Health Care “Reform”

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The big buzz word being used to sell America on the idea of socialized medicine is “choice”.  But – surprise, surprise – the Senate’s release today of certain components of its plans to “reform” health care for Americans doesn’t include it.

How do I force thee?  Let me count the ways:

  1. Americans who make the personal choice to not purchase “affordable” medical coverage
    1. Could be hit with fines of more than $1,000
    2. Employees must buy medical coverage from their employer (if offered)
    3.  Families would be financially penalized more than individuals (that’s called “shared responsibility”)
    4. The IRS would be responsible for collecting the fines
    5. Hardship exemptions would be allowed
  2. Employers must provide health insurance
    1. Must cover 60% of the total cost per employee
    2. Will be fined $750 for each employee not covered
    3. Exempt if employing less than 25 people
    4. Eligible for a government subsidy to provide employee health insurance

All of this is bad enough, but of course the devil’s in the details and it’s in those details we begin to see how the administration is going to twist the screws to secure their ultimately fascist aims.  A health insurance premium that costs an employee more than 12.5 percent of his or her adjusted gross income would be considered unaffordable.  The bill would then let these employees drop their employer coverage to seek cheaper alternatives elsewhere. 

I’ll give you three guesses where that “cheaper alternative” will be found and the first two guesses don’t count.

Workforce.com reports:

A majority of employees already work for employers that pay 50 percent or more of their health care premium costs, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2008 survey on health benefits. In 2008, the average covered worker paid 16 percent of the premium and families paid 27 percent, though those numbers vary sharply according to an employer’s size, employee salary and whether an employee is part of a labor union.

The latest draft from the Senate health committee does not specify what minimum employer coverage must look like, except that mini-medical plans would not qualify nor would plans with high out-of-pocket maximums. The out-of-pocket limit would be defined by Section 223 of the Internal Revenue Code used to determine what qualifies as a high-deductible plan.

That code specifies that, for 2010, a health plan’s out-of-pocket maximums (including deductibles, co-payments and other costs other than premiums) could not exceed of $5,950 for individuals or $11,900 for families.

The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services would add more details to the kinds of health coverage that meet the proposed employer mandate.

This doesn’t even begin to address the costs to American taxpayers or how we’ll be expected to pay for it (but talk abounds about reductions to  Medicare and Medicaid and taxing all types of insurance policies).  The finance committees in both the House and the Senate are working on their own (more expensive) versions but the initial numbers aren’t at all encouraging.  Estimates right now from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for the Senate health committee’s version alone stand at $611.4 billion over 10 years; that’s just a few Starbucks lattes shy of $51,000 for each of the 12 million who will gain coverage.  Senator Dodd says he’s only counting legal residents but tack on the secret that Senator Menendez and La Raza don’t want you to know about adding 22+ million illegal immigrants and at that conservative CBO estimate per person, we’re looking at more like $1,120,900,000,000 right out the gate (yes, Virgina, that’s over a trillion dollars).

Right now, I don’t know what the answer is to “health care for everyone” except a strong, free market economy where people are working and removing the 22+ million drain on health care services provided to illegal immigrants (criminals).  But I do know that what is being planned – taking away Americans freedom to choose – ain’t it.

Health Reform La Raza Style – Giving Health Care To Non-Citizens

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As surely as that the wolf of socialized medicine wearing sheep’s clothing of health care reform means death to the elderly and others deemed not “cost effective” to treat, the legislation now brewing is going to be chock-full of pork and served with an enormous helping of spin, smoke and mirrors.  And of serious concern is the once-covert push to cover illegal immigrants.

At the forefront of this nastiness, prelude to adding 22+ million people to what is already a bloated and broken system, is the infamous La Raza.  It bills itself as “The largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, the NCLR works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.”

Nice.  But in the land where equal opportunity is law, not necessarily necessary.  It’s just another way to draw attention to differences and establish a subculture of permanent victims instead of simply living the fact that we’re all Americans looking to create a good life for ourselves and our children.

But I digress.

La Raza is apparently in bed with Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), one of the key people involved in drafting the Senate’s version of a “health care reform bill”.  Mark Levin had a caller on his show recently who attended a La Raza conference and here are their words:

…they started the conference out by saying “America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform.”And they also said that 75% of the children who will be picked up in this will be non-citizens and that 44% of the uninsured are non-citizens and they can’t possibly allow the American people to know this.”

And someone from Menendez’ office promised that he would make sure that “the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill” and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like “streamline”…

It was La Raza, the Childrens Defense Fund and Senator Menendez from New Jersey, a representative from his office…

They actually got up and said “Latino children need health care more than whites“. And then they would say things like “you must go out into your communities, use words like ‘streamline’, use phrases like ‘all workers’ and ‘all families’,” because they said — and I quote — “If the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it.”

…One of the quotes they said was, “We want to make sure we take care of barriers like verification, but we can streamline programs to the more affluent” and, quote, “Useless treatments for the elderly can be gone because we don’t need to spend money for people who are going to die anyway.”

That’s a direct quote from that meeting. They also said, “We are very concerned there will be an effort to include “the illegal immigrants in this argument, so “we must make sure that we focus this” to the American people that it’s looking like we want “health care for everyone”.

 Menendez’ office said that he’s going to make sure that “a family of four that makes $66,000 a year or less will pay nothing at all for the new health care. And he was the one who said he was going to get rid of specifics like “citizenship status” and focus on, quote, “equity for all workers”.

And he said he’s going to make sure that the Latino immigrants are the focus of the health care reform.

And La Raza said if they get this, they don’t even care about amnesty, because they’ve fixed it so that one family member can apply for all extended family members.

It’s time to let our Senators and Representatives know that we know what they’re up to here and tell them in no uncertain terms that including illegal immigrants – criminals – in anything paid for with our tax monies is wrong.

The Great & Powerful O…bama?

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Logic.  It’s a beautiful thing.  It’s also the stuff of which common sense is made.  Life is made up of continually connecting the dots and coming to a conclusion.  It’s not rocket science, though rocket science and, indeed, all science does basically this very same thing.

If….

Then….

Else….

When you fall off a horse and find yourself unable to move one of your arms without severe pain, you go see a doctor who will x-ray your hurting arm.  If it’s broken, then the doctor will set it so it will heal properly, else they will send you home with instructions to take pain medication and take it easy for a while.

When you’re driving down the highway at night and your car stalls, you pull over to the side of the road and look at the gas gauge.  If it’s on empty then you will call for help, else you’ll walk down the highway to the nearest exit (or sit there unhappily, hoping someone will notice your plight and stop).

There is a difference between “hard science” and what is often called “soft science”.  Hard science is the realm of mathmeticians, biologists, engineers, etc.  They work with hard facts (1 + 1 = 2) and conclusions are based on the ability to consistently repeat a scenario.  This is why your lights turn on when you flip a switch, how your doctor knows when to prescribe an antiobiotic and which one will work, and how man got to the Moon and back.  It is the source of your reading this font on your monitor screen.

Soft science, on the other hand, mimics hard science in its attempts to validate a conclusion but, very simply speaking, its conclusions are far more likely to be mere possibility than real probability because the number of variables is simply far too large to get easily from point A to point B.  Soft science is the realm of psychologists, sociologists, even astrologers.  For example, psychologists study human behavior and tell us things like people who torture animals as children are more likely to grow up to be something really bad, like serial killers.  Astrologers look at a “map” of the time of a person’s birth and tell us of things for which a person has the most affinity.  Because of its inherent element of chance (i.e. too many variables to calculate, often called “choice”), soft science has always been far more fascinating to a majority of people, as evidenced by the never-ending speculation on the predictions of Nostradamus, the Mayans (2012, anyone?), the Bible, etc., as well as documentaries about everyone who doesn’t live a “normal life”, from Jesus to Charles Manson to Michael Jackson. 

People often confuse the two, however, and this is when you find “hard” scientists mocking their “soft”-studying counterparts.  Personally, I believe both sides have a place at the table but it is important to understand what that place is, what it really means for each to be in their proper place, and only then place your bets accordingly.  Think of hard science like putting your money in a savings account.  You’re guaranteed to draw interest on it and come out ahead.  Soft science is like buying a lottery ticket or investing in the stock market.  You may – or you may not – come out a winner.

Confusing the two can also have deadly consequences.  One example is the Holocaust.  Scientists of the “soft” kind determined there was something wrong with Jews, insisted their “hard” counterparts prove their conclusions, and we all know how that worked for everyone involved.  (Well, everyone knows it except a handful of pinheads like Iranian President Ahmadinejad.) 

On the subject of global warming we find a mix of hard and soft science coming together in a way almost as terrifying as the Holocaust.  Hard science is telling us one thing (humans are having little to no effect on the cyclical climate of the Earth) but soft science is telling us something else.  Did I mention that soft science is more often than not influenced by the personal psychology of the scientist?  You can pick up a stone and put it in a bucket, then pick up another stone and put into the bucket, too, then look in the bucket and see two stones.  A hard scientist who calculated there would be three stones in the bucket sees the two stones as tangible proof their calculations were wrong and instead of denying what they see, go back to examine where they messed up (original premise? method? mathmatical equation?).  Then they repeat their experiment and eventually end up with a final, documented conclusion that putting one stone in a bucket, then another stone in the bucket will always give you two stones in the bucket.  In the case of global warming, though the calculations of (government-supported, meaning vested interest-personal agenda) scientists have found to be wrong, instead of going back to find the flaws in their premise, methods, or calculations, the sponsors of the hard scientists (driven by soft scientists) are insisting that they simply throw away any data that doesn’t support their mistakes.   The scientists are, in effect, being told that the speck of dirt left in the bucket because someone didn’t clean it out before they used it to hold the stones must count as their third stone. 

This is a case of hard science shifting away from its original purpose and thereby jumping with both feet into the murky pond of prognostication.  All for the personal gain of a select few.  Of particular amusement is the involvment of President Obama.  Apparently, attempting to usurp the second coming wasn’t enough, it sounds as if he also wants to usurp Nostradamus’ place in our National Enquirer-minded history.  Witness his fortunetelling:

“A long-term benefit is we’re leaving a planet to our children that isn’t four or five degrees hotter.”  (June 25, 2009)

His presidency would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”  (2008 campaign)

President Obama has also claimed he can snap his fingers and we’ll “block the Sun’s rays to end global warming.”

Simply because his one voice carries to the ears of the most Americans doesn’t change the truth.  The truth that what he says is wrong.  Wrong based on the hard facts of hard science.  So don’t confuse facts with “hopes”.  In the same way the Great & Powerful Oz was eventually revealed to be just a man, the stars might lie, but the numbers never do.

 

(Thanks to our friends at Climate Depot for this morning’s inspiration.)

What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?

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Nancy Pelosi would apparently do just about anything.  Closed-door strong-arming of Representatives in the Oval Office with not only the President but his whole family on hand Thursday night while Waxman frantically threw together another 300-page amendment, passing out Dove bars and other concessionary amendments to special interests, kicking Al Gore out of Washington so as not to remind folks that H.R. 2454 wouldn’t be on the table without the false premise of global warming, and forcing an ill-prepared House to a hasty vote as the truth begins to bubble up; all so she could say, “We passed transformational legislation which takes us into the future.”

Well, Nancy, I don’t think the future you’re envisioning, the one in which your stock in CLNE makes you even richer and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management makes him even richer (with the help of none other than Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson; just in case you ever wondered why Goldman Sachs didn’t do a Wall Street meltdown, too) is quite as sure a bet any more.

Friday’s House vote to increase American’s tax burden passed by a very slim margin.  As we’ve already noted, it swung on the political suicide votes of 8 Republicans who threw their constituents under the Obama short bus, and bodes ill for the 44 Democrats who did the right thing and voted against it.  (Votes which, ironically and also previously noted, were for a bill that didn’t even exist; I strongly suggest that, no matter where you live, calls be made tomorrow to the 8 Republican traitors telling them to change their vote since they have 5 days in which to do so.)  The gibbering House monkeys swing on their ropes much farther to the left than do the more conservative mindsets in the Senate so its less-than-stellar passage leaves the door open for what some are already acknowledging as its Senate defeat.

And such defeat certainly seems more and more possible as word gets out that turning pollution into a commodity, with trading managed by new companies formed by those with vested, political interests (Al Gore, GE, etc.) as well as Wall Street’s Geithner-overseen involvement, solely to “maybe” reduce the Earth’s temperature by 2/10 of a degree in some 50 years but significantly increasing the cost of everything touched by recession-struggling American hands today is, to quote sensible Ohio Representative John Boehner, “a piece of shit”.

This can’t be very comforting to the Polar Bear Specialist Group (a set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission), who is meeting right now to figure out how to further their own agenda.  An agenda that – how else? – hinges on monies coming from those who believe in the myth of global warming.

What is most telling is not who will be there, but instead, who will not.  Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a renouned Canadian biologist who has studied the polar bear for 30 years, was told his presence is not welcome.  Why?  Why wouldn’t a polar bear “specialist group” want the credibility of someone who knows polar bears inside and out?  Trust the British to give us the scoop:

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears:  “it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition”.

Dr Taylor was told that his views running “counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful“. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG“.

That’s right.  Dr. Taylor’s research disproves the global warming theory so he is now become persona non grata.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

 And it seems that those currents aren’t a long-term problem, either:

The average temperature at [Arctic] midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year’s recovery from its September 2007 low, this year’s ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time.

Recovery.  Nice word, isn’t it?  I’m sure it’s a big relief to these poster children of Al Gore and all the environmentist groups who have used them to encourage you to part with your hard-earned dollars to donate in support their “fight global warming” efforts, too:

AmandaByrdPolarBearsSummer2004

 

But this amazing image isn’t what those who want your donations would have you believe.  It was discredited 2 years ago.  Al Gore and the “charities” in support of the global warming myth first used this photograph in their propoganda, saying it had been taken by “Canadian environmentalists”.  A big, fat, bald-faced lie.

The student who took the photograph…gives a slightly different account: ‘They were on the ice when we found them and on the ice when we left. They were healthy, fat and seemed comfortable on their iceberg.’

Amanda Byrd, an Australian graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), says she took the picture around three years ago – in the summer.  The photograph was not ‘taken by environmentalists’ but as part of a field trip with the university [ 2004].

Over the past few months the photo has been published widely as a snapshot of the dangers of global warming.

Byrd is clearly a little miffed that ‘the image you have seen around the world was distributed without my consent, and [with] the wrong byline’.

 I bring up this “old news” (at least I hope it’s old news to you) because it’s yet another clear demonstration of the lengths to which some, including Obama and the current administration (now including transnationalist State Department Legal Advisor Harold Koh, who the Senate snuck into place while Americans were watching “breaking news” that Michael Jackson was still dead or trying to convince the House to squash the “Energy bill”), are willing to go to cram cap & trade down America’s throat.  It’s horribly sad that no one is safe from exploitation – not scientists, not students, not innocent polar bears – by those whose only goal in life is to get as much money and control over other people as possible. 

These people have got to go.

The Stars Might Lie, But The Numbers Never Do (A Global Warming Review)

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As the House begins its final sprint to rush some sort of cap & trade (tax) legislation to a floor vote this coming week (HR 2454, the Waxman-Markley comprehensive energy bill), it is worth taking stock of where things stand.  I received an email from an Obama supporter (who once confessed, in secret, that soon after his election they had the beginnings of “serious doubts” about his ability to do his job) that contained what I can only call a progressive’s campaign article from The Nation.  One statement summed up its whole, wordy call to arms to push forward with Obama’s fascist plans:

We also need to expand the agenda for reform. For example, if we are to make the investments vital to our future, as the president has called for, a sustained expansion of public investment is essential–and that will require a far bolder tax policy.

It goes on to blather with reassuring hubris about taxes on the “wealthy” and those evil businesses who dare provide people with private sector jobs, but because of its immediacy, this piece is going to focus on the problems with cap & trade.  And the root cause of cap & trade is the New Religion of global warming.  Now, as we’ve noted here before, the gist of implementing cap & trade as mitigation to global warming is intended to gain government and special interest control of natural resources and thereby gain power and control over American citizens once it is realized that the Earth may more likely be entering a serious cooling period.  Plainly put, it’s all about money, not science.  Science hasn’t been in this picture for decades. 

In response to my friend’s email, I sent back a link to an article that presents an overview of some initial reactions to Obama’s latest “climate report”.  A report that, it should be known, was produced by more than 30 scientists working across 13 government agencies.  A report that, according to a UK Guardian article, was:

 “finalized in late April, but Obama administration officials spent several weeks planning (its)  release, honing the language and graphics to make it accessible to non-scientists and to sharpen its core message:  America must take action on climate change.

As part of the PR surrounding the release of the report, the administration approached the San Francisco consulting firm, Resource Media, which specialises in environmental campaigning, to produce a shorter and more digestible brochure of today’s report for wider public distribution.”

Let’s pretend we have some common sense for a moment and consider this carefully.  If the report was so solid in its facts, why was there a need for the administration to spend “weeks” tweaking its message?  Why did the administration need to hire a PR firm whose sole reason d’etre is putting warm, fuzzy spins on the myth of global warming?

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and comes out of Chicago (or San Francisco), it ain’t worth the pot used to hold the water to cook it in, my friends.

The truth is that the “science” upon which the administration’s “report” is based is flawed.  As in skewed.  As in downright wacked.   And with its purpose being politically-motivated and, based on previous experience, very likely deliberately missing and/or excluding key points.  Another in a series of non-partisan scientific reports was released this month by the Nongovermental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).  Here are a few pertinent excerpts.  It is important to note these scientists didn’t need to use a PR firm to translate (spin) it for you so you can understand what they are saying (emphases mine).:

“The IPCC’s key personnel and lead authors were appointed by governments, and its Summaries for Policymakers (SPM) have been subject to approval by member governments of the UN. The scientists involved with the IPCC are almost all supported by government contracts, which pay not only for their research but for their IPCC activities. Most travel to and hotel accommodations at exotic locations for the drafting authors is paid with government funds.”

“The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (IPCCSAR, 1995) was completed in 1995 and published in 1996. Its SPM contained the memorable conclusion, “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” The SAR was again heavily criticized, this time for having undergone significant changes in the body of the report to make it ‘conform’ to the SPM—after it was finally approved by the scientists involved in writing the report. Not only was the report altered, but a key graph was also doctored to suggest a human influence. The evidence presented to support the SPM conclusion turned out to be completely spurious.

 There is voluminous materialavailable about these text changes, including a Wall StreetJournaleditorial article by Dr. Frederick Seitz (Seitz, 1996). This led to heated discussions between supporters of the IPCC and those who were aware of the altered text and graph, including an exchange of letters in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (Singer et al., 1997).”

“The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC (IPCC-TAR 2001) was noteworthy for its use of spurious scientific papers to back up its SPM claim of “new and stronger evidence” of anthropogenic global warming. One of these was the so-called “hockeystick” paper, an analysis of proxy data, which claimed the twentieth century was the warmest in the past 1,000 years. The paper was later found to contain basic errors in its statistical analysis(McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003, 2005; Wegman et al., 2006). The IPCC also supported a paper that claimed pre-1940 warming was of human origin and caused by greenhouse gases. This work, too, contained fundamental errors in its statistical analysis. The SEPP response to TAR was a 2002 booklet, The Kyoto Protocol is Not Backed by Science (SEPP, 2002).”

“The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (IPCC-AR4 2007) was published in 2007; the SPM of Working Group I was released in February; and the full report from this Working Group was released in May—after it had been changed, once again, to “conform” to the Summary. It is  significant that AR4 no longer makes use of the hockey-stick paper or the paper claiming pre-1940 human-caused warming.  Once again  controversy ensued, however, this time when the IPCC refused to publicly share comments submitted by peer-reviewers, then sent all the reviewers’ comments in hard copy to a library that was closed for renovation, and then finally, but only under pressure, posted them online. Inspection of those comments revealed that the authors had rejected more than half of all the reviewers’ comments in the crucial chapter attributing recent warming to human activities.

AR4 concluded that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” (emphasis in the original). However, as the present report will show, it ignored available evidence against a human contribution to current warming and the substantial research of the past few years on the effects of solar activity on climate change.

Why have IPCC reports been marred by controversy and so frequently contradicted by subsequent research? Certainly its agenda to find evidence of a human role in climate change is a major reason; its organization as a government entity beholden to political agendas is another major reason; and the large professional and financial rewards that go to scientists and bureaucrats who are willing to bend scientific facts to match those agendas is yet a third major reason.

Another reason for the IPCC’s unreliability is the naive acceptance by policymakers of “peer-reviewed” literature as necessarily authoritative.It has become the case that refereeing standards for many climate change papers are inadequate, often because of the use of an “invisible college” of reviewers of like inclination to a paper’s authors (Wegman et al., 2006). Policy should be set upon a background of demonstrable science, not upon simple (and often mistaken) assertions that, because a paper was refereed, its conclusions must be accepted.”

Translation:  The IPCC is under pressure to conform to economically-motivated political interests.  In my neck of the woods, the conditions under which IPCC scientists “work” is called a conflict of interest.  Lots of folks call it the fox watching henhouse.  No matter what you call it, it is just flat-out wrong and those who would support and encourage any action taken on this kind of bad science must be viewed with nothing less than great suspicion.  For this kind of “science” is when you can rest assured that its supporters  have a vested interest in personal gain, not some lofty goal for the good of humankind. 

It was argued to me that it is merely a few rogue, “flat-earth” or “fringe”-type scientists who are running around trying to destroy Obama’s U.N.-backed (gods help us all) plans.  Nice try but, frankly, it’s as wrong as the early Darwinians believing in and perpetuating the “romantic” view of the Middle Ages being the time it became common knowledge the Earth is spherical, not flat, when they used the same “flat earth” slur against Christians.  The Darwinians gleefully stepped into a stinky “scientific belief” that was the unfortunate – and wrong – result of Washington Irving’s 1828 fictional account of Christopher Columbus’ attempt to sail to Japan in a ship too small to make such a journey.  Fact is that most of the educated world realized the Earth is a sphere by about 3 BCE and only China, despite her technological advancements, took until the 17th century to come to the same realization (and then only because of Jesuits holding high positions as astronomers at the Chinese court).

The bottom line of all this is that is is best argued that there does NOT exist a collective consensus among scientists about the effects of humans on global warming.  And because of that it is dangerous for people to rush to any actions that will have long-term soci-economic ramifications when such long-term socio-economic ramifications are harmful the the majority of Americans solely for the great gain of a few.  Some proof of the size of the disagreement about global warming that liberals simply cannot get their brain cell around can be found in “The Petition Project”.  As of the latest NIPCC report (see Appendix 4, that details the purpose and process by which signatures are collected), 31,478 American scientists have signed the following statement:

PetitionProjectForm-sm

The NIPCC report goes on to state that, “This is a remarkably strong statement of dissent from the perspective advanced by the IPCC, and it is similar to the perspective represented by the NIPCC and the current report. The fact that more than ten times as many scientists have signed it as are alleged to have “participated” in some way or another in the research, writing, and review of IPCC AR4 is very significant. These scientists, who include among their number 9,029 individuals with Ph.D.s, actually endorse the statement that appears above.”

To quote the Mary Chapin Carpenter song, “the stars might lie, but the numbers never do.”  Emails are too easy to ignore, calls and/or faxes to your House Representative (both Washington and local offices) must go out starting tomorrow to tell them that no matter what Nancy Pelosi or President Obama demand, they work for you, the American people, and must vote against H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markley comprehensive energy bill.  Congress must know – in no uncertain terms – that rushing to tax ALL Americans on the basis of bad science is not only stupid, but putting already struggling American lives on the line solely for the sake of a greedy few will be the final straw that will cost them their job.

A Blank Teleprompter While Iranian Citizens Die

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As they work to stifle American freedoms through “progressive” legislation like EFCA and nationalized health care, the hypocritical U.S. Congress decided to pass  resolutions to make themselves look knowledgeable and concerned about election protests currently going on in Iran.  Almost perversely wanting to be seen as upholders of democracy, the voice of the people, and free speech, near-unanimously they condemned the Iranian government’s violence against citizen protesters. 

Ron Paul was the lone dissenting voice in the Senate, and there is certainly validity in his reasoning.  Our Founders cautioned, from the start, that we must not stick our nose where it doesn’t belong.  Particularly when we stick it into a place where a hand waits patiently, wielding a razor-sharp, double-edged sword, just itching to cut it off.

But what is happening in Iran today is not the stuff of which simple meddling is made.  What is happening is unequivocably serious, and of concern here is the reaction of the White House. 

“Deeply troubled.”

“Wait and see.”

About a “…vigorous debate….”

There is nothing in the way of “debate” when the only vigor is found in the slaughter of unarmed citizens who raise their voices in protest of their government’s actions.  (Any further questions on why it is so important we protect our 2nd Amendment rights here in America?)  But his hands-in-pockets, whistling-in-the-dark, minimizing stance can be Obama’s only way, for the truth is that when it comes to the real world he has no experience from which to calculate a move or to assess the feasibility of any recommendation of a move, whether concerning matters foreign or domestic.  Some claim he is simply keeping a cool head, and in one respect this may be true, for an Iranian revolution that ultimately overthrows the religious leaders at its helm and the resulting restructuring of the Middle East as we know it, perhaps accompanied by a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel, as well as perhaps also sucking in a spin-off confrontation between India and Pakistan, with North Korea taking advantage of the ensuing chaos to throw in its nuclear gauntlet for good measure, is exactly what Obama needs to bring the U.S. economy out of the depression he has designed.  He’s dug his tentacles into the auto industry (remember their work during WWII?) and he is doing his damndest to control the banks.  Should the worst come to pass he will gear up the American War Machine for the benefit of…exactly who?  For…exactly what?

With his silent and therefore tacit agreement of Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khamenei, it is not for democracy and certainly not for the benefit of America.  At least not for the America that was birthed through its own revolution some 200-odd years ago.  To find a means to go to what Obama’s mask of delicate, spread-the-wealth sensibilities can justify as a legitimate war seems to be the hidden agenda behind the acceleration of his wholesale slaughter of the American economy and his continued wide-eyed toadying to the dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world; in 180-degree contrast to the way he belittles and snubs our ally, Israel.  For it is another world war that will allow Obama to raise his voice in its most soaring, fear-mongering rhetoric and so create an atmosphere that will accept, even (wrongfully) encourage his signing “emergency” executive orders to strip away our rights (guns, free speech, presidential term limits) under the guise of “national security”. 

And in the end, subject us not only to his secret ambition of being a messiah, but also a king.  A king who no longer must bow to his elders but instead may meet his Middle Eastern counterparts on the madman’s perception of equal ground.

The Only Explanation Is Madness

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Like the paycheck of most hard-working, tax paying Americans these days, my leisure time (read:  writing time) seems to be shrinking equally fast.  But being busy doesn’t mean I’ve not been paying attention to what is going on, and, of course, what is going on remains wickedly troubling.

President Obama and the Democratic Congressional majority are pushing forward untenable changes at an unprecedented pace and every day it becomes more and more clear to me that nothing good is going to come out the other end.  How can it when such sweeping “change” comes at the expense of the law, as demonstrated in both the Chrysler bankruptcy and the recent firing of Inspector General Walpin for having the audacity to actually audit – and document the fraudulent use of taxpayer money – one of Obama’s friends?  And it seems to me as if every time Obama opens his mouth, Kim Jong-il shows the world his opinion of our dialogue-mongering President and belligerently fires another missile; but with American journalists in the custody of North Korea, we are hard-pressed to negotiate with the madman at the helm.

But at which side of the table does the real madman sit?  Interestingly, I came across an article that discussed whether Obama is, himself, also a madman. 

Listen to him. He’s talking in what seems to be a glossolalic deluge of issues. One plan a week, each thrown out there while we’re still digesting the previous one. He’s moving too fast for us to keep up with him. He’s talking a private language, to himself, like crazy people do, because he certainly can’t be talking to us, his strange, atrophied people, our capacity for large projects and great achievement, let alone for the participation in enlightened self-government that such projects and achievements require, something safely kept reserved for HBO historical miniseries. The muscles have gone slack, the nerve endings gone dead. He’s talking about phantoms, about ghosts, about things that aren’t really there. He’s speaking in tongues is what he’s doing.

When you consider this perspective alongside Obama’s never-ending obsession with calling out those who don’t agree with him and his deliberate lack of transparency about things that matter, it seems as if perhaps someone has finally come out and stated the truth.  To be sure, Barack Hussein Obama is no ordinary politician, let alone an ordinary American.  A product of progressive liberalism before such a thing became popular, let alone mainstream, and raised among those who would turn America inside-out in pursuit of some deeply bitter and misguided sense of “justice”, even on the best of days Obama exhibits a decided lack of maturity.  Rather like Peter Pan, he flits back and forth between the real world and Never-Never Land; deliberately unwilling to grow up but intrigued by the idea just the same.  He may be master of the teleprompter and a master of self-control, but even the best of armor has cracks and it is through those cracks we may glimpse his rage at being unable to settle down on one side or the other.

Whether his rage is the source of what could be termed his functional insanity or is merely a symptom of it is moot.  For regardless why it exists, that it exists at all it makes him a dangerous man.  As dangerous as the Islamic extremists who target America with, frankly, more than a little similarity of intent.

What Would You Do With $134 Billion?

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That’s the question being asked of two Japanese nationals, arrested in Italy as they allegedly attempted to cross into Switzerland a few days ago.  The big red flag is that nowhere is this being reported by any American mainstream media.

Hidden inside a a suitcase were 249 $500-million U.S. Federal Reserve bonds, 10 Kennedy bonds, and “other U.S. government securities worth a billion dollars each.” 

So why were Japanese nationals carrying around such an ungodly amount of non-negotiable securities?  Particularly in denominations not available to normal financial and banking markets?

Curiouser and curiouser, as they say.

If these are counterfeit, it is headline newsworthy, for the report is that not only would this be the largest financial smuggling attempt in history, but these are the best counterfeits ever seen.

If they are real, it is even bigger news for just how did these special kind of securities get into the hands of these people?  And for what purpose would they be headed for uber-privacy-protecting Switzerland?

Of note is that should the securities turn out be genuine, Italian law would reap 40% of the confiscated amount.  In this particular case, a windfall “five times the estimated cost of rebuilding quake-devastated Abruzzi region,” and a big help to Italy in eliminating its public deficit.

Yes, indeed, curiouser and curiouser.