Jack Kemp (not the late politician)

Besides Atty. Gen. Holder’s working for a law firm that defended Guantanamo terrorists, the decision to hold the trial of the five Guantanamo terrorists in New York City was the inspiration of the terroristic attempt in the skies over Detroit. 

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab could have gone into the airplane’s many bathrooms anywhere between Amsterdam and Detroit, but he wanted to near the end of the flight to be in a position to go on trial in Detroit if he failed, in a city in an area with the largest Muslim population concentration in America.

The plan was and is, in my opinion, planned to get Muslims on a civilian jury (Obama would not be turning him over to a military tribunal) and have a hung jury not convict Mutallab, thus further demoralizing Americans and making them feel they are impotent to stop a terrorist attack and the advancement of jihad.

Reports at Atlas Shrugs and other sources state that Muallab did not resist when attacked by the passengers and crew. That means the terrorist, once failing to ignite a bomb, was in a position to stand trial in a Detroit area courtroom. If he had fought, he might well be killed, as happened to the Westerner who attempted to violently open an airliner cabin door in a flight approaching Salt Lake City almost a year before 9/11 (no Federal charges were filed against the passengers). http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2000/Sep-17-Sun-2000/news/14407481.html

This was at least a four goal attack: an attempt to take advantage of Obama administration politically correct passenger screening, a test our security measures, a terrorizing of passengers and a terrorizing of the court system and citizens of the Greater Detroit metropolitan area.

Welcome to ObamaAir. Janet Napolitano will now check your boarding passes – with one eye closed.

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Timothy Birdnow

Here is an interesting story, one that has slipped in under the radar.
http://technorati.com/business/finance/article/supreme-court-returns-rights-to-secured/

When Chrysler was sold to Fiat, a federal judge violated a basic tenant of bankruptcy law by short-changing secured creditors in favor of unsecured creditors - such as the U.S. government and the UAW. This was clearly a politically motivated act, but was upheld by an appeals court as necessary in the current "emergency".  This has made it's way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has issued a summary judgement vacating the lower courts ruling.

According to the article by Jeremiah Bourque:

"The degree to which the media went along with the idea that this was perfectly legal is testament to the political and economic pressure brought to bear upon the process at the time.

In a summary decision so brief as to slip under the radar of many, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the law about this (at the time) white-hot legal issue with a silent bolt of lightning, vacating the appeals court ruling affirming the original judge's legal reasoning.

A "summary decision" to overturn is taking this position: the original ruling was so dramatically improper that there's no point even bothering to hear arguments as to why it should be upheld.  Smack-downs such as these are very rare in American jurisprudence."

[...]

"While Chrysler is a done deal, those who viewed the precedent established by the Chrysler case as a way to begin a new regime of quick bankruptcies will have to live with disappointment.

Quick asset sales were not invented in July. Precedents existed in the early Great Depression. Congress felt creditors were shortchanged and passed laws against such injustices. That was the law of the land until the fierce urgency of now (well, at the time) caused a group of judges to conveniently forget the law. The Supreme Court has now conveniently remembered."

End Excerpt.

Now, I take a less charitable view than Mr. Bourque (or, at least am willing to proclaim it); this was clearly an attempt to rewrite American jurisprudence, to give the U.s. government the ability to nationalize assets. If secured creditors have more stake than unsecured ones, the government and associated groups will not be able to take a larger slice of the pie. That larger slice would have established the precedent that corporations exist under the umbrella of governmental authority; much like under fascism, the companies may be privately run (or not) but they are ultimately the property of the State. (Actually, with the government owning stock and choosing the CEO were are closer to true socialism than fascism.) THAT was the goal of the Obama Administration, and the Supreme Court has rightly acted to restrain the fascistic ambitions.

Here is a good explanation of fascist economic theory http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html

From the Encyclopedia of Economics article:

"Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions."

[...]

"Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.” The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national self-sufficiency, protectionism was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled, leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism.

Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability to bargain and move about freely.

To maintain high employment and minimize popular discontent, fascist governments also undertook massive public-works projects financed by steep taxes, borrowing, and fiat money creation."

End Excerpt

The Obama economic policy may not encourage foreign adventurism to obtain resources (prefering an internationalist approach using global communities) but they clearly favor a Mussolini-esque approach to business. Rewriting bankruptcy law to give the government greater interest in the bankrupt company is clearly designed to bring about tighter governmental control of business in general.

I never thought I would say this, but THANK GOD for the U.S. Supreme Court!

Here is the SCOTUS document:
http://www.bankruptcylitigationblog.com/archives/us-supreme-court-cases-us-supreme-court-drops-bombshell-summary-disposition-vacating-2d-circuits-chrysler-decision.html

(ORDER LIST: 558 U.S.)
MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2009
CERTIORARI -- SUMMARY DISPOSITION
09-285
IN POLICE PENSION TRUST, ET AL. V. CHRYSLER LLC, ET AL.
The motion of Washington Legal Foundation, et al. for leave
to file a brief as amici curiae is granted. The petition for a
writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the
case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss the appeal as moot.
See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U.S. 36 (1950).
ORDERS IN PENDING CASES
09M57
SALTER, LOMAX V. McNEIL, SEC., FL DOC
09M58
HUPP, PAUL V. KURPINSKY, VICKI, ET AL.
The motions to direct the Clerk to file petitions for writs
of certiorari out of time are denied.
08-645
ABBOTT, TIMOTHY M. V. ABBOTT, JACQUELYN V.
The motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate
in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument is
granted. The motion of S&W International ChildFind Program, et
al. for leave to participate in oral argument as amici curiae
and for divided argument is denied.
08-661
AMERICAN NEEDLE, INC. V. NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, ET AL.
The motion of the Solicitor General for leave to participate
in oral argument as amicus curiae and for divided argument is
granted and the time is allocated as follows: 30 minutes for
petitioner, 10 minutes for the Solicitor General, and 30 minutes

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Jack Kemp has a new illustration at American Thinker, courtesy of Big Fur Hat:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/we_dont_need_no_stinkin_profil.html

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Wil Wirtanen

Not sure how authentic this is but it is good.

Here is a letter that tears Babs Boxer a new one:

Do you remember the scene? The Senate. Barbara Boxer hearing from a Brigadier General? Silly General! He addresses Barbara as "Ma' am", and she CORRECTS him, telling him she's "worked SO hard to earn the title, "Senator", so please to use that when speaking to her.

Get a load of this letter!

Read the letter sent to Sen. Barbara Boxer from an Alaskan Airlines pilot below. Many of us witnessed the arrogance of Barbara Boxer on June 18, 2009 as she admonished Brigadier General Michael Walsh because he addressed her as "ma' am" and not "Senator" before a Senate hearing.

This letter is from a National Guard aviator and Captain for Alaska Airlines named Jim Hill.. I wonder what he would have said if he were really angry. Long fly Alaska  !!!!!

Babs:
You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, "ma' am," instead of "Senator". After all, in the military, "ma' am" is a term of respect when addressing a female of superior rank or position. The general was totally wrong. You are not a person of superior rank or position. You are a member of one of the world's most corrupt organizations, the   U.S.  Senate, equaled only by the U.S.House of Representatives.

Congress is a cesspool of liars, thieves, inside traders, traitors, drunks (one who killed a staffer, yet is still revered), criminals, and other low level swine who, as individuals (not all, but many), will do anything to enhance their lives, fortunes and power, all at the expense of the People of the United States and its Constitution, in order to be continually re-elected. Many democrats even want American troops killed by releasing photographs. How many of you could honestly say, "We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor"? None? One? Two?

Your reaction to the general shows several things. First is your abysmal ignorance of all things military. Your treatment of the general shows you to be an elitist of the worst kind. When the general entered the military (as most of us who served) he wrote the government a blank check, offering his life to protect your derriere, now safely and comfortably ensconced in a 20 thousand dollar leather chair, paid for by the general' s taxes. You repaid him for this by humiliating him in front of millions.

Second is your puerile character, lack of sophistication, and arrogance, which borders on the hubristic. This display of brattish behavior shows you to be a virago, termagant, harridan, nag, scold or shrew, unfit for your position, regardless of the support of the unwashed, uneducated masses who have made California into the laughing stock of the nation.

What I am writing, are the same thoughts countless millions of Americans have toward Congress, but who lack the energy, ability or time to convey them. Regardless of their thoughts, most realize that politicians are pretty much the same, and will vote for the one who will bring home the most bacon, even if they do consider how corrupt that person is. Lord Acton (1834 - 1902) so aptly charged, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Unbeknownst to you and your colleagues, "Mr. Power" has had his way with all of you, and we are all the worse for it.

Finally Senator, I, too, have a title. It is "Right Wing Extremist Potential Terrorist Threat." It is not of my choosing, but was given to me by your Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. And you were offended by "ma' am"?

Have a fine day. Cheers!
Jim Hill
16808 - 103rd Avenue Court East
South Hill,   WA    98374

If you care about the way our Country is heading, Please circulate this to remind every voter that the "cesspools" MUST be pumped out when we go to the polls in November, 2010
 
 
 

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This from Act for America:

Weakening Islamism is Vital to Improve US Image in the Muslim world
By Tawfik Hamid
www.tawfikhamid.com

In the December 1, 2009 issue of the WSJ Europe, Fouad Ajami - in an Op-Ed entitled "The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama" - argued that President Obama's diplomatic approach to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world has not been successful. Poll results have shown that unfavorable views of the US are as high as 82%, 69 %, and 70% in the Palestinian territories, Turkey, and Egypt respectively. In fact, the Op-Ed stated that unfavorable views of the US in Pakistan have risen from 63% in 2008 to 68% in 2009 according to a recent Pew survey.

In addition, after President Obama came to office in 2009, the number of home-grown Islamist terror plots inside the US has risen dramatically compared to the previous years. The Year of 2009 represents the highest level of domestic home-grown Islamic radicalism in the US since 2001.

We must question why President Obama's approach with the Muslim world has not succeeded yet in at least having a more positive effect in improving the US image in several Muslim countries or in decreasing the rate of home-grown Islamic radicalism on the home front. One of the main reasons for this lack of success is that US strategic communications with the Muslim world was largely based on the assumption that the problem of Islamic Radicalism and hatred to America is primarily because of the US foreign policy with the Muslim world and thus changing this policy will change the latter. This can only work if the main problem was in the US approach; however, if the main problem was in the Muslim world, such an approach cannot succeed as it will be like trying to change the keys to open a room while the problem is in the rusty lock! In the latter situation, changing the lock - or in other words changing the Muslim world itself - is crucial to solving the problem.

Improving the image of the US in the Muslim world before the proliferation of the phenomenon of Islamism was a very different task compared to trying to improve its image after the phenomenon has proliferated. While traditional approaches of diplomatic, economic and social engagement had the possibility of working with the earlier situation, non-traditional ways to weaken Islamism are now needed for today's situation.

Islamism, or the broad collection of movements to impose intolerant forms of Islamic teachings and practices, has made many in the Muslim world unable to be satisfied with any political system that does not implement Sharia law in some form or fashion. Any Un-Islamic system is seen as an enemy to Islam that must be opposed through violent or even non-violent means. Dr. Al-Zawaherri (second in command of Al-Queda) was clear is his offer for the US to convert to Islam in order to stop terrorism against it.

In addition, Islamism has made many in Muslim societies dream about regaining the superiority of the historical Islamic Caliphate over the world. This is clearly observed on web sites and comments by many Muslims in the Muslim world. In this case, it is hard for many Islamists to accept a country like the US that is viewed as denying this position to the Islamic world.

Furthermore, Islamism has aggravated criticism of the US as it advocates and supports values of freedom and liberty around the world that are seen by Islamists as "Un-Islamic" - particularly the values of freedom of religion, women's rights, gay rights, and more humane punishments for criminals (e.g., not stoning women for committing adultery). Some may argue that Muslims are still very interested to come to the US even if they see it as "Un-Islamic". The answer is simply that many Muslims are attracted by the economical factors rather than the values of freedom and liberty in the US and the West.

The above complex situation illustrates that the US may need to address the challenge of weakening the Islamism phenomenon first in order to improve its image in the Muslim world as this phenomenon plays an important role in creating hatred of America. In other words, removing the obstacle that impedes improving the US image in the Muslim world or at least significantly reducing it is fundamental to succeed in this diplomatic mission.

Trying to satisfy the Muslim world by changing the US will not be effective unless the US is ready to end its values of freedom and liberty and adopt an Islamic Sharia system.

The US administration must realize that the problem of poor views of this country in the Muslim world could actually be predominantly in the Muslim world and not in America. In such a case, changing the latter or the Muslim world rather than the US is fundamental to improving the image of the US among Muslims. This also can lead to the conclusion that the US may need to work on changing the perception of the Muslim world to its foreign policy rather than focusing on changing its foreign policy to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Sophisticated psychological and behavioral modification methods may be needed to achieve this.

In this context, it is also important to raise the point that the Muslim world is in far greater need than the US to improve its image in the world as its image has been painted by terrorism and barbarism especially in the last few years.

In brief, no matter what the non-Islamic world does - short of submitting to the Islamic Sharia - the Islamists will never be satisfied completely. The US must either change itself to adopt an Islamic system to satisfy the Muslim world or alternatively assist in changing the latter. Weakening the Islamism phenomenon is vital to ultimately improve the image of the US in the Muslim world as Islamism is currently a - if not the - major obstacle to enhancing the US image among Muslims.

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Jack Kemp (not the late politician)

this journalist is so angry, he is ranting like a blogger.
About time this happened.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1209/ahlert.php3

Jewish World Review Dec. 30, 2009/ 13 Teves 5770
A Day Off

By Arnold Ahlert

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | One of my rules for writing is to present criticism in such a way that it avoids becoming the kind of outright rants that separate thoughtful columnists from angry bloggers. I not a big fan of personal attacks either. When I whack someone, it has to do with what they do or say, not who they are. On the other hand, since everyone gets a "day off" once in a while, here are some personal observations admittedly less "measured:"

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is as dumb as a dipstick. The airline security system "worked," one day later it "failed" and the first comment was "taken out of context?" Sorry, Janet. The only failing here are the nerve synapses delivering common sense messages to your brain. That this woman still has her job--much less was hired in the first place--is astounding.
Barack Obama is a inveterate slacker. For three days, the entire world knew two things: a Muslim terrorist (politically incorrect, but highly accurate description intended) tried to blow up a jetliner, and Iranian dissidents were getting slaughtered by the same corrupt regime that sponsors worldwide terrorism. For three days, the Slacker-in-Chief said absolutely nothing about either subject. Comatose liberals consider this "thoughtful diplomacy." Baloney. A searing combination of laziness, (over a hundred "present votes as an Illinois legislator) an infatuation with Islamic apologism, (a world tour of mea culpas and Muslim "outreach") and radical ideology (we don't "meddle" with totalitarian thugs) means saying something that isn't completely pre-calibrated for political correctness is impossible. That it took three days to come up with statements is an indication of the mental gymnastics required to reconcile this odious trifecta.
We will not get serious about defeating Islamo-facism until thousands more Americans die. We already know 3,000 people slaughtered on 9/11 was an insufficient number to engender a permanent change in the political mindset of the American left. We've been told countless times by al Qaeda that they want to destroy America, and a number of plots have been thwarted. But we're engaged in an "overseas contingency operation?" Has there ever been a time in the annals of modern warfare when we knew where the enemy was, had the capacity to inflict a serious, if not mortal, blow to their chain of command--and allowed a bunch of Defense Dept. lawyers to hamstring our military to the point of impotency? No one likes "collateral damage," but given the choice between "collateral Americans" and everyone else, everyone else gets the nod--with extreme prejudice.

We have no genuine allies in the Middle East, except for Israel. Everyone else is playing both ends against the middle, and an old Arabic saying says it all: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As long as we are the "stronger horse" we have "friends"--the same friends who would spit on America's grave if we end up on the short end of the war against Islamic terror (once again, politically incorrect, but highly accurate). And spare me the never-ending "peace process." Until the Palestinians get beyond the idea that "diplomacy" equals the annihilation of Israel, it's all a giant load of b.s.
If there were ever a group of my fellow Americans I'd love to kick in their collective butts, radical environmentalists top the list. If it were up to them--and it might be, if our comatose Congress can't recognize an end run around them when they see one--Americans will be permanently beholden to foreign oil, chasing wind and solar chimeras, and watching the rest of the world use nuclear power while we sit with our thumbs up our you-know-whats. And that's before these jackboots stick the cap-and-trade shiv into the American economy. There isn't a country in the entire world that has solved the "fossil fuel problem," and while it's an admirable effort to try, reality still bites. And here's the real chafer: in a sane country, the aforementioned war on terror would engender a Manhattan Project-style attempt to become as energy independent as possible. It's incomprehensible to me that radical environmentalism isn't seen for what it truly is: a serious threat to America's national security.
Nancy Pelosi's promise to end the "culture of corruption" in Congress and Barack Obama's promise to run the "most transparent administration in history" were unadulterated lies. An ominous thought: both of them might actually believe they're doing just that, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Such a profound disconnect from reality is making Americans furious. It ought to scare the hell of out them.

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Timothy Birdnow

Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes an Iranian Ayatollah about the current state of rebellion in Iran in a piece at NRO's The Corner:

-Iranian Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar, currently at Duke:

"You are right that the Shiite theocracy in its present form has failed — a fact that few have expressed as clearly as my teacher in the last few months. Incidentally, when Grand Ayatollah Montazeri had his falling out with Khomeini, three months before the supreme religious leader's death in 1989, he said: This state is so different from the one we dreamed of and worked to create. Still, it is not Islam which has failed, but rather a particular interpretation of Islam. I also want to express that there hasn't been a revolution in Iran yet. The opposition is becoming increasingly clear in the formulation of its objectives and more daring. Still, we need to remain patient. I do not know when, exactly, but I am convinced that the regime will collapse."

He adds:

"Perhaps Western countries should stop treating Ahmadinejad's government as the legitimate government of Iran."

End excerpt

Collapse indeed! This was the goal of the Bush policy of regime change from the beginning; to squeeze the Islamic  Republic.  Every good analyst of terrorism rightly attributes the problems in the Mid-East to the revolutionary regime in Iran, and after the attacks on 911 the Bush Administration sought a real solution to the problems there, rather than to apply band-aids and strongarm Israel into futile talks (as former Administrations had been content to do.)  But invading Iran would have been counter-productive, turning the Iranian people against us and perhaps bringing the Russians into the mix. An Iranian invasion would have been very difficult, given the terrain, and, of course, the media would have been shrill with accusations that we invaded solely for oil; "no blood for oil!" would have seeped from the lips of every anti-war leftist in the Western World. No. The logical plan was to go into Iraq. Iraq was in violation of innumerable U.N. declarations, Congress had already given the Clinton Administration authorization to use force, all of the world's intelligence agencies were in agreement that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction despite the terms of their surrender in Gulf War I, and the Iraqi people were a cosmopolitan bunch, amenable to westernization. It helped that Iraq was a wide river valley and much smaller than Iran, too. 

The Bush Administration rightly saw that they would have Iran treed like a cat, with American forces in the west (in Afghanistan), to the south in the Persian and Arabian gulfs, and to the west in Iraq. Indians weren't going to be very friendly to their plight, either. we could squeeze them economically, support uprisings and dissidents, and make life generally miserable for the Mullahs.

But mistakes were made. One was assuming the Russians would be on our side. Russia had her problems with Islamic jihadists, especially in Chechnya, and Condi Rice and company assumed they would be on board. Russians are, and have always been, paranoid critters; the Steppe has been a constant source of invaders throughout their history, and they have never forgiven the Teutonic Knights for invading from the west when the Tsar asked for help against the Golden Horde.  Having their 20th century nemesis at their doorstep, where they could intervene in the Caucasus and the newly-emerged Asian republics was something they could not bear, and so they pulled the rug out on American efforts. I am fairly convinced that they assisted in removing the WMD's that Saddam Hussein possessed, for instance (otherwise we would find their final resting place; we KNOW they had them because they used them, and we should have been able to find the places where they were destroyed. There would have been evidence. We did not. It should be pointed out that Russian special forces moved into Lebanon when Israel last invaded that country, sending in all manner of technical  people without U.N. sanction. Why?) Russia caused great trouble at the U.N. for America, and has been assisting Iran with technical and commercial support, helping to prop the regime up.

In fact, the pincher moved was played on our forces, with Syria and Iran sending in advisors, weapons, and assistance to the "insurgents" in Iraq. Political correctness and a complicit media and opposition party made victory a difficult proposition. Only by surging U.S. forces were we able to stabilize the Iraqi regime.

And that stability is prompting Iranian freedom fighters to take to the streets, risking assault and even death, to hopefully liberate their country and provide freedom for their children. What is happening in Iran is a testament to the Bush Doctrine, that the much maligned President took the right steps. (I'm not much of a Bush fan, but his strategy was essentially sound.) 

Of course, Barack Hussein Obama is positioned to bring the curtain down on the Mullahs, yet continues to dither; his open reproach of the Iraqi war and his disdain for the exercise of military power to solve international problems makes him incapable of acting, lest he be proven wrong and his favorite pinata (George W. Bush) be proven right. Obama's cozy relationship with Islam doesn't help much, either; he was educated in a Madross in Indonesia, and his religion was listed on Indonesian documents as Islamic.

So now a great people are on the threshold of throwing off a terrible yoke and liberating women from the tyranny of oppressive Men, yet Obama fails to act. Whether the Iranian People can succeed entirely on their own remains to be seen; America did not succeed on her own when she rebelled against Britain, for example, and there is no reason to believe that Iran would be able to shake off the chains without help. Obama's pride could well enslave millions. I hope he is proud of himself.

We could be on the  precipice of a sea change in the entire Middle East. Without Iran's resources to draw upon, the terrorist organizations - Hezbollah in particular - will wither. The Syrians will pull in their horns rather than attempt to promote Islamic revolution alone, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down. We are at the moment of truth here! Unfortunately we have a child on the American throne.

How many lives are worth Barack Obama's pride?  If Bush exchanged blood for oil, at least we got a tangible return; with Obama we sew a vast crop of death and mayhem, all to deny George W. Bush his victory and to salve his tender pride.

History will not be kind to Barack Hussein Obama.

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Ron De Haan

As the world and the USA discuss the "dire consequences" of the use of carbon fuels that propel our current civilization and a war unfolds over a political doctrine called Obamism supported by fraudulent science and the notion that man can control our climate, this same world is remembering the 2004 Tsunami, responsible for killing 250,000 people in sixteen countries.

This Tsunami disaster bankrupts the very basis of Obamism - and so do the blizzards that have hit the USA and Europe this month. We have arrived at the eve of a major climatic shift that will overrule all political and social doctrines including Obamism. In the past these shift have destroyed entire civilizations and on many occasions they have been responsible for mass extinctions. In 1977, the days that the CIA made a report of an upcoming ice age, another report was published about a huge Interstellar Cloud which was on the track of our solar system.The scientists warned for the fact that this cloud had the potential to effect our terrestrial climate with dire consequences. Three days ago NASA’s Voyager’s reached the boundaries of this huge cloud. The cloud is so big that it will effect our climate for the next 10.000 years. This cloud, our sun and tectonic forces will determine the future of humankind in a manner no political doctrine like Obamism ever can. It will entirely destroy the notion that humans are or ever will be in control of nature, let alone effect planet earth’s climate in any serious manner. We are not more but a spec on Mother Nature’s ass and our entire solar system is nothing more but some grains of sand on Patong beech during the Tsunami.

Read Howard Bloom’s excellent article titled “Climate Change Mother Nature’s way” here  http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/%3Ca%20href=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004574599981936018834.html%3Ehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004574599981936018834.html%3C/a%3E and read about the Interstellar cloud our solar system is bound to enter soon here http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/%3Ca%20

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm%3E

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm%3C/a%3E and here http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/%3Ca%20

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ApJ...223..589V%3E

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ApJ...223..589V%3C/a%3E

I also refer to a publication of Solar Scientist Nir Shaviv about this subject as he writes:

“Cosmic Rays, at least at energies lower than 1015eV, are accelerated by supernova remnants. In our galaxy, most supernovae are the result of the death of massive stars. In spiral galaxies like our own, most of the star formation takes place in the spiral arms. These are waves which revolve around the galaxy at a speed different than the stars. Each time the wave passes (or is passed through), interstellar gas is shocked and forms new stars. Massive stars that end their lives with a supernova explosion, live a relatively short life of at most 30 million years, thus, they die not far form the spiral arms where they were born. As a consequence, most cosmic rays are accelerated in the vicinity of spiral arms. The solar system, however, has a much longer life span such that it periodically crosses the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Each time it does so, it should witness an elevated level of cosmic rays. In fact, the cosmic ray flux variations arising from our galactic journey are ten times larger than the cosmic ray flux variations due to solar activity modulations, at the energies responsible for the tropospheric ionization (of order 10 GeV). If the latter is responsible for a 1°K effect, spiral arm passages should be responsible for a 10°K effect—more than enough to change the state of earth from a hothouse, with temperate climates extending to the polar regions, to an icehouse, with ice-caps on its poles, as Earth is today. In fact, it is expected to be the most dominant climate driver on the 108 to 109 yr time scale.

http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate”

And finally this NASA publication that confirms a dramatic cooling of our upper thermosphere due to the current Solar Minimum here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/26/satellite-measurements-prove-our-quiet-sun-is-cooling-the-upper-thermosphere/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/26/satellite-measurements-prove-our-quiet-sun-is-cooling-the-upper-thermosphere/

We are in for exciting times and I think Fred Singer will agree with every word I have written. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/26/satellite-measurements-prove-our-quiet-sun-is-cooling-the-upper-thermosphere/

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Larry Kaufman

Birth of a New Nation?

So I gather that James Cameron's film Avatar is opening this weekend.  From everything I've read, it is absolutely, positively brilliant on a technical level, and it will revolutionize film-making.  I'm prepared to believe it and even concede that on a technical level James Cameron is a genius (evidently he helped develop much of the 3-D technology etc.).

But I've also read about the film's plot and themes, most recently in a review by Ross Douthat in the just-released National Review.  To cut to the chase, he finds Avatar "deeply stupid.  Relentlessly stupid.  Occasionally mindboggingly stupid."  Why?   "He’s taken every left-wing cliché — about politics, religion, the environment, the military, imperialism, big business, Vietnam, George W. Bush, you name it — from a generation’s worth of preachy Hollywood movies, and crammed them all into a single teeming blockbuster." 

Which makes me realize that, about 90 years ago, DW Griffith also wrote, produced and directed a movie that changed the face of film forever.  Griffith was the James Cameron of his day, a technical wiz who realized film's potential as a revolutionary new art form.  Griffith's break-out blockbuster was called Birth of a Nation, and it was dedicated to the proposition that the wrong side won the Civil War and the Ku Klux Klan was the savior of the South (I've seen it, I'm not going from third party reports).  Birth of a Nation is also deeply, relentlessly, mindboggingly stupid, with racial cliches and caricatures that will curl your hair and make you want to retch.  However, they didn't appear quite so outrageous at the time.

We recognize the idiocy of Birth of a Nation now.  In 90 years, will we also look back on Avatar as a dazzling but embarrassing document of political stupidity?  I'm sure none of us will be around to see it, but we can hope. 

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Jack Kemp (not the late politician)

Two Air Rage stories

STORY ONE

The first story is the most second most famous passenger attack on a trouble maker, after (in importance) Flight 93 on 9/11. It occurred almost a year before 9/11, resulting in the death of a man who tried to open a plane's door in flight. No charges were filed against the passengers who fought to save their lives.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2000/Sep-17-Sun-2000/news/14407481.html

Air rage death clarified
Autopsy: LV man beaten, suffocated by fellow passengers

 STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

      A Las Vegas man who tried to break into a Southwest Airlines jetliner cockpit during an August flight to Salt Lake City was killed by the passengers who restrained him, not by a heart attack, an autopsy concluded.

      However, the U.S. Attorney's office is not filing any criminal charges, saying Jonathan Burton's death was merely an act of self-defense by frightened passengers and there was scant likelihood of winning a conviction against anyone involved.

      Janet Burton of Las Vegas, Jonathan's mother, referred all questions to her attorney, Kent Spence of Jackson, Wyo. Spence is the son of famed defense attorney and author Jerry Spence.

      "He was strangled, beaten and kicked," Kent Spence said. "We'd like to know how this could have happened to this young man. This kid had no history of violence. He would sooner take a spider outside than kill it."

      The family has not decided whether to pursue a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines or the passengers, Spence said.

      The Utah medical examiner's autopsy report classified his death a homicide because it resulted from "intentional actions by another individual or individuals."

      The report, released by Burton's family, said he was suffocated. He also had contusions and abrasions on his torso, face and neck and suffered other blunt force injuries.

      Burton, 19, became combative 20 minutes before Flight 1763 from McCarran International Airport was scheduled to land Aug. 11 at Salt Lake City International Airport, hitting other passengers and pounding on the locked cockpit door. Passengers told investigators that Burton went toward the door and began banging on it as pilots prepared the aircraft for landing, but was calmed down by two passengers and returned to his seat.

      Minutes later, the 6-foot, 190-pound Burton charged the door again, and as many as eight of the jetliner's passengers subdued him.

      After the plane landed, airport security handcuffed Burton and started to escort him off the Jetway when he collapsed and later died.

      Southwest Airlines spokeswoman Linda Rutherford said Saturday that the company considers the U.S. Attorney's office decision fair.

      "This was a very stressful situation and we really extend our sympathies to the Burton family, but we really wish he had not done what he did. By taking the violent action that he did on board the plane, he put in danger the lives of 137 passengers and five crew members.

      "We believe that the U.S. Attorney's decision not to pursue any charges is a good and correct decision," Rutherford said.

      Rutherford wouldn't comment on the appropriateness of passengers handling the outburst. She said the airline's attendants undergo rigorous behavior training upon hire, and each year attendants must undergo additional training.

      "You can never predict human behavior, so you can't train for every situation." Rutherford said. The airline has not experienced any other incidents similar to Burton's, she added.

      Burton died after being removed from the plane. Authorities initially believed he suffered a heart attack.

      The autopsy found low levels of marijuana in Burton's tissues but said that was an "unlikely explanation" for his violent outburst.

      Janet Burton said last month that her son had watched a special report on airline crashes the night before the flight. She said he expressed some reservations about flying but seemed to shrug it off upon arriving at the airport.

      She said her son, a 1999 graduate of Cheyenne High School and a caregiver at a retirement home, was heading to Salt Lake City to visit his aunt for a few weeks and had made previous trips there without incident.

      "He was a good kid and not someone with an explosive temper," Janet Burton said last month. "I really don't know what happened up there."

      The outburst occurred as federal officials report a dramatic increase in air-rage incidents nationwide. Statistics from the Federal Aviation Administration showed 292 incidents of unruly passengers last year, more than double the 138 reported in 1995.

      The FAA can recommend fines of up to $25,000 against airline passengers who "assault, threaten, intimidate or interfere with a crew member."

STORY TWO

In 2006, passengers took down a jui-jitsu professional fighter engaging in air rage.

http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/2006/09/jiujitsu_cant_s.html

Jiu-Jitsu can't help airline passenger
Posted by Pete Williams, Justice Correspondent (11:58 am ET, 09/13/06)

Pete Williams, Justice Correspondent

Federal authorities have declined to prosecute a man who tried to open a cabin door during a United flight from Los Angeles to Washington Dulles airport last night [story link].

Flight 890 was about two hours from Dulles when the man walked to the rear of the plane and flipped up the handle on the rear cabin door. Because those doors cannot open when a plane is in flight, nothing happened to the door. But the same cannot be said of the man. A federal investigator says he was immediately jumped by nearby passengers and beaten. "They roughed him up quite a bit," a federal official says.

However, after an investigation by the FBI, prosecutors declined to file charges. Federal agents said the man flipped the handle out of curiosity or boredom, not intending to cause any harm. "It was a stupid move. Something an eight-year-old kid would do," an FBI official says.

The official says the man, who spoke Portuguese and little English, was apparently a professional Jiu-Jitsu fighter and was described as walking around the cabin during the flight, trying to attract attention. "He was strutting his stuff," the official says.

Even though federal authorities won't prosecute, local prosecutors are considering some charges.

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Jack Kemp (not the late politician)

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/nyt_finally_acknowledges_chris.html

December 29, 2009
NYT finally acknowledges Christmas
Jack Kemp

After American Thinker hectored the New York Times twice about not having any Christmas decorations at their headquarters building, once in 2007

and once in early December 2009, the Times has placed three prominent Christmas wreathes at their entrances at Forty-First Street, Fortieth Street and

along Eighth Avenue.

3 PICS INCLUDED AT THE AMER. THINKER WEBSITE - 2 TIMES ENTRANCES WITH WREATHS, 1 ITALIAN RESTAURANT WINDOW

We don't know if we can claim full credit for this. We'll have to ask Santa.

One wonders if Maureen Dowd will be writing a screed denouncing this pandering to the Religious Right and other "knuckle draggers."

The Times' Japanese men's clothier tenant MUJI still doesn't have any Christmas decorations, but their Italian restaurant tenant Montenapo has Christmas

baubles displayed prominently in their windows.

Alas, the Times headquarters still has no Hanukkah displays. Efshar beh Hashanna Habaah. Maybe in the coming year. After all, Hanukkah does acknowledge a miracle.

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Timothy Birdnow

Barack Hussein Obama continues his drive toward world governance and subordination of American Sovereignty to globalism.
http://netrightnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1252229:why-does-interpol-need-immunity-from-american-law&catid=1:nrn-blog&Itemid=7

Apparently Obama has signed an executive order granting blanket immunity to Interpol, the Europe-based international police organization and marshall for the World Court. 

This from the piece by Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online:

"Interpol is the shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization. It was established in 1923 and operates in about 188 countries. By executive order 12425, issued in 1983, President Reagan recognized Interpol as an international organization and gave it some of the privileges and immunities customarily extended to foreign diplomats. Interpol, however, is also an active law-enforcement agency, so critical privileges and immunities (set forth in Section 2(c) of the International Organizations Immunities Act) were withheld. Specifically, Interpol's property and assets remained subject to search and seizure, and its archived records remained subject to public scrutiny under provisions like the Freedom of Information Act. Being constrained by the Fourth Amendment, FOIA, and other limitations of the Constitution and federal law that protect the liberty and privacy of Americans is what prevents law-enforcement and its controlling government authority from becoming tyrannical.

On Wednesday, however, for no apparent reason, President Obama issued an executive order removing the Reagan limitations. That is, Interpol's property and assets are no longer subject to search and confiscation, and its archives are now considered inviolable. This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.

Interpol works closely with international tribunals (such as the International Criminal Court — which the United States has refused to join because of its sovereignty surrendering provisions, though top Obama officials want us in it). It also works closely with foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities (such as those in Europe that are investigating former Bush administration officials for purported war crimes — i.e., for actions taken in America's defense)."

End excerpt.

So, Obama grants Constitutional rights to terrorists - demanding they be read their Miranda
Rights on the battlefield and be given civilian trials inside of the United States, yet he does not give American citizens the right to sovereignty over an international police, an alien entity, which may now work actively against U.S. citizens without recourse or appeal.

Why?

McCarthy hints at part of it; Obama wants to appease the bloodthirsty on the Left, to go after the "war criminals" of the Bush Administration while keeping personally out of the fray. (Note to Obama; sauce is equally tasty on goose as on gander, and your goose may wind up stewing in the same juices.)

But there is much more to this; Obama sees himself as president of the world, and is attempting to institute world government. It really is his ambition - he sees the U.S. Constitution, the thing he swore to uphold and defend, as a backward provincial document, a relic from a bygone era. Obama's every act since taking office has been designed to subsume America into the dark waters of the Kingdom of Man, the new order without nation-states or local sovereignty. America is arrogant, America must be put in her place, a place beneath the righteous will of the global community. Remember John Kerry's "global test"? Obama wants no global test, but rather more direct global control. He wants Interpol to be able to arrest anyone in this country and whisk them off to The Hague for trial in the World Court, to be held, tried, and punished outside of America's legal framework.

This act alone is grounds for his removal from office. Should the Republicans take Congress, impeachment should begin.

Consider; the Democrats and liberals wanted to impeach George W. Bush for his "warrantless wiretapping", something they themselves claimed was a tyrannical act and gross breech of liberty, yet now Obama is essentially giving Interpol the power to do exactly the same thing, and there is nothing that can be done about it because U.S. courts will hold no jurisdiction. If Bush was culpable in trying to intercept telephone calls from terrorists, how much more is Obama who is authorizing ALIENS to do it?  I wouldn't hold my breath; the calls for Obama's impeachment are likely to be rather, shall we say, sparse.

Here is the oath Obama took;

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Granting a foreign law enforcement entity blanket immunity from the Constitution clearly violates this oath. 
Obama has broken his oath of office. THAT, my friends, can be construed as "high crimes and misdemeanors" under any rational interpretation of the Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution. The President is acting alone to surrender U.s. sovereignty, something he is not authorized to do. He is, essentially, suspending the Constitution for a particular foreign organization entirely on his own authority. I hate to remind him, but we have three branches of government, and he has not even bothered to consult the other two. That is immaterial regardless; there is no provision in the Constitution for it's suspension by any or all branches. If Obama wants to overturn the Constitution he must walk it through the amendment process and organize a Constitutional convention.

It is little wonder that the Obama Administration tried to get Honduran would-be president-for-life Manuel Zelaya reinstated despite his attempt to override that nation's constitution. Tyrants and thugs always seek to change times and laws, to overturn restrictions. Is it any surprise that the man who supported overturning the Honduran constitution would have no problem overturning our own? 

Honduras, at least, had the temerity to remove their aspiring tyrant and thug. Do we Americans have similar courage?

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Jack Kemp

American Thinker posted a watered down version of my submission, leaving out some details and the second incident in Eilat, Israel, years later. It is at
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/taking_airline_security_seriou.html

You readers here will, however, get the full story, "the real Kentucky stuff, straight from the bottle."

ObamaAir vs. El Al in Amsterdam and Israel
Jack Kemp

As a young man in the early 1970s, I worked in Israel. After about a year, I took a vacation flight to Europe. I had a Temporary Resident's card issued by the Israeli government and some local clerk at the airport copied the number down incorrectly on some additional paper issued to me. This caused no problem in leaving, but on my return trip to Israel, on my arrival at Schipshool Airport in Amsterdam, the same airport that terrorist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab boarded his plane for Detroit, a problem arose.

I arrived hours early at the airport and, in an unnecessary move, I volunteered my supplemental/additional temporary resident's paper from the Israeli Government, the one with the mismatched numbers. This got me taken aside for questioning as a potential terrorist. Remember, I was a young man in his 20s who would be of the age group for physically fit hijackers or terrorists. I also had a homemade 110-220 volt electric converter assembled by my uncle in Tel Aviv which didn’t look that much different than a homemade bomb. The security people took that and examined it as well.

I was asked where I stayed while in Israel, what were the names and addresses of  my relatives in Israel. If that weren't enough, I also got "befriended" by a young Dutchman, probably a plainclothes policeman, who tried to size me up psychologically as I waited in the passenger lounge. Talking to him was when I recalled what probably happened with the miscopied number Temporary Resident number on my paper. After the Israelis checked out my information, presumably by communicating with their records offices in Israel, I was allowed on the plane. If this procedure had taken longer, I’m sure the authorities would have had me miss the flight – and worse. 

Fast forward to the 1980s

In the 1980s, I flew to Israel to attend my first cousin's wedding and travel around the country. After the wedding, I went to a local travel agent near Haifa. I speak around 5000 words of Hebrew and in a mixture of that and English, told the agent that I wanted to fly to a beach, preferably at Ashqelon, a place where I’ve never been. With little resistance, she persuaded me to fly to Eilat, the southern port and resort city on the Red Sea, instead. After relaxing at the Malkat Shva (Queen of Sheba) Hotel, I boarded Hawker-Sidley propeller plane (perhaps a prop jet) for a flight back north to Tel Aviv on the internal Israeli airline Arkia. As we taxied away from the gate, I saw a young man, goofing around, jumping up and down, in a freight storage area under the terminal building. I mentioned this to the stewardess in my English accented Hebrew and she remarked that few foreigners would understand the need for such caution. She went forward to the captain and got the flight stopped short of the runway while Israeli security agents looked for the young man, bombs, missile launchers…whatever, underneath the terminal. After about 20 minutes to a half hour, we proceeded to fly north, first to Jerusalem and then on to Tel Aviv.

What I have hoped to show you, the reader, is a difference in mindset between the current ultra-liberal US administration and a country that knows there are people who hate them and want to do them great harm. I believe the Israelis - and the Dutch of 1972 - understood the world as it was and is, not as they hoped it could be. We all wish the world to be peaceful and loving, but we have locks on our doors and cars. And even Barack Obama travels with armed security agents. Come to think of it, the Dalai Lama has a similar security force.

As liberal actor Richard Gere might well agree, we should all strive to be as wise as the Dalai Lama.

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Dana Mathewson forwards this:

"I can relate to this. In 1938 mother my 1 year sister and I were
visiting my grandmother and mother's family in
Bad Cannstatt (a part of Stuttgart). We were Americans and the
government tried hard to keep the truth from us. I could relate many
parallels.  I had a girl playmate in the next 5-story apartment home to
grandmothers. One night we heard screams. Next day we found out that her
father had been taken during the night not ever to be heard of again.
When I was stationed in Goeppingen
with the 9th Div Band, I had a VW via my uncle. On weekends several of
us would visit such as Dachau.. it was not suppressed then.  From my
Dad's family in Holland, we heard much about the goings on .. when I
visited there during service leaves and also when I was at the
Conservatory (GI Bill after release) 1957 - 59

Too many Americans have no idea of how they are being led down the same
path as this Austrian situation. It is done so slowly with stealth and
"sugar coating".  For every Government "Freebee" there is a price to pay."

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Jack Kemp (not the late politician):

I just sent this email to Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ as additional comments, background information to add to the information she found out - and no one else published - about the terrorist bombing attempt over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Pamela,

Jack Kemp again.

The stories you report at your website on how easy it was for this terrorist to get on a flight to the US, of the couple who saw him try his luck getting on without a passport, recall some similarities to the 1970s and the Entebbee hijacking.

In 1973, I was leaving Israel on the very same flight that would later get hijacked to Entebbe, Air France 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris-Orly Airport with a stop in Athens. We actually changed planes in Athens for a Sabena Belgian Airways flight to Brussels and a modern tourist bus to Le Bourget Airport (where Lindbergh landed) to foil hijack attempts. The Greek ground personnel kept us in the dark as to what was going on (perhaps, in part, for security reasons) and one of the passengers remarked how curt and cold the Greeks working the airline counter were. But we made to Paris with no problems in what was a tense flight.

News reports after the 1976 Entebbe hijacking and raid led by the late brother of Prime Minister Netanyahu - and one or both of the American made-for-television movies on the Entebbe raid - showed some suspicious, angry looking men of Arab appearance boarding the plane in Athens (they wouldn't have gotten on in Tel Aviv/Lod) with unusual looking "cookie" tin boxes. In other words, the terrorists got on the plane with tacit cooperation of the people at an airport.

The Atlas Shrugs report http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ where passenger Kurt Haskel stated he "witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport" has its similarities to the Entebbe hijacking situation at Athens Airport. Whether  Umar Mutallab got on the plane with or without a passport, there was clearly lax security. And it probably was, in part, lax security by the United States in not putting someone on the terrorist watch list into the NO-Fly List database.

The terrorist Mutallab had a fire-bomb device in his crotch area. Airlines used to pat down people's bodies before they flew, most notably El Al. In London in 1972, I got on my first El Al flight to Tel Aviv and the same airline agent who I talked to for about thirty minutes ran his hands along my body, feeling close to my genitals before I was allowed on the plane. Jackie Mason used to have a comedy routine about El Al where he praised their security and patting down of passengers, saying that he goes down to the airport a few times a week to get felt up by El Al.

I recall, one time flying out of Tel Aviv for New York in the 1990s when body pat downs were no longer done on the general group, an Arab couple were taken aside for a thorough search, most probably using a woman security agent to thoroughly pat down the wife. There were no complaints of "prejudice" by the couple, as everyone understood that they would never get on the plane without this precaution by the Israelis.   

I hope this background material is of some value to you, Pamela, even if just a small amount. 

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Ron De Haan

Global Warming alarmism is clearly in trouble.

Concrete criminal charges are filed against CRU and Michael Mann.
They also have acquired funding for a real long trial.

What do we have above the table now:

Corruption network involving an entire chain of cooperating institutes and universities and the IPCC.

Records have been falsified from the US, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China etc, etc.
The complaints come from the scientists who provided the data.

Santer, the head of the IPPC scientific review committee has publicly stated that he removed and altered the conclusion of the 1995 IPCC Report stating that Humanity was not to blame for the warming.

This same guy is responsible for manipulating the entire peer review process, feeding only the data to the IPCC that supported the AGW doctrine.

Than we have the Chairman of the IPCC who is as corrupt as hell and receiver billions, yes you read this well, billions of dollars from multi nationals to continue the AGW scam.

We have frauds within NASA and now we have Wikipedia where a guy has altered the entire Climate History changeing more than 5000 publications.

Wait until the political establishment is put in the spot light, providing grants to scientists with the conclusions of the research already on the table. This is politics pushing for science with public money for which they are liable because it is FORBIDDEN.

Today we have two US Government Departments that have been funding the CRU that have ordered to preserve and secure all data and started an investigation.

This will get very big and it will end up at the front porch of Al Gore, Ban Ki-Moon and many politicians with butter on their head.

It will go from Wikipedia to all the Science institutions and magazines, from the New York Times to BBC and from CNN to Google.

They are all going to "eat it" and heads will role.

The entire peer review process will be overhauled and against the time this breaks out the entire AGW scam will be as dead as can be.

Mark my words, this is going to be very, very big.

Why do I think this is the case?

Too many scientists have been demonized and treated in a very abject manner, too many skeptics are on this and too many good willing politicians feel screwed.

The entire GOP will be served with breaking open this scam and they will use it to get rid of Obama for good.

No doubt about it.

Besides that, the weather is on our hand.

Have a look at this amazing publication of a visualized timeline of ClimateGate
screwing the climate data to serve a political agenda.
Download the PDF here and be as  stunned and flabbergasted as I am:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/23/the-climategate-timeline-30-years-visualized/

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Ron De Haan

Yesterday Nasa came up with a "Great Interstellar discovery" made by the Voyager satellite http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/23dec_voyager.htm
However, this so called "Great Interstellar Discovery was already made in 1978: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ApJ...223..589V

It's about our solar system entering an interstellar cloud with a high magnetic field and a temperature of over 7000 degree Celsius.

These clouds are remnants from Super Nova's.

When we pass through such a cloud, it will compress our magnetic field allowing high amounts of cosmic rays to enter our atmosphere.

Solar scientists Svensmark (Denmark) and Nir Shaviv (Israel) have published extensively about these clouds.

In fact with this publication NASA finally confirms the basic theories from Svensmark and Shaviv and other prominent scientist who's research was not accepted by the Global Warming Clan:

Nir Shaviv writes:
“Cosmic Rays, at least at energies lower than 1015eV, are accelerated by supernova remnants. In our galaxy, most supernovae are the result of the death of massive stars. In spiral galaxies like our own, most of the star formation takes place in the spiral arms. These are waves which revolve around the galaxy at a speed different than the stars. Each time the wave passes (or is passed through), interstellar gas is shocked and forms new stars. Massive stars that end their lives with a supernova explosion, live a relatively short life of at most 30 million years, thus, they die not far form the spiral arms where they were born. As a consequence, most cosmic rays are accelerated in the vicinity of spiral arms. The solar system, however, has a much longer life span such that it periodically crosses the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Each time it does so, it should witness an elevated level of cosmic rays. In fact, the cosmic ray flux variations arising from our galactic journey are ten times larger than the cosmic ray flux variations due to solar activity modulations, at the energies responsible for the tropospheric ionization (of order 10 GeV). If the latter is responsible for a 1°K effect, spiral arm passages should be responsible for a 10°K effect—more than enough to change the state of earth from a hothouse, with temperate climates extending to the polar regions, to an icehouse, with ice-caps on its poles, as Earth is today. In fact, it is expected to be the most dominant climate driver on the 108 to 109 yr time scale.
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate”

So here you have it.

Our sun, our position in the interstellar space, the Melankovich Cycle determines our climate, together with our sun, oceans and volcano's.

We must forget all about AGW as quickly as possible for it's a political scam to control humanity.
This is the real stuff.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:26 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jack Kemp

When I was 21, years before the expansion of casinos, I worked a summer at two Lake Tahoe casinos.

One of the things that struck me was the busloads of senior citizens coming up from San Francisco to spend their social security checks. They did it in a futile attempt to relieve their boredom and drown out their lonliness in a clammor of flashing lights and ringing bells. Even the young college football players hired as guards remarked about a psychologist's study that showed the seniors considered the two or three slot machines they typically played on as their "husband" or "spouse" and anyone attempting to take one of the machines away from them would meet with fierce resistance because of this emotional attachment. Working one overnight shift, night a guard told me of someone who wouldn't leave their slots and went to a dark corner and "relieved themselves" of some solid waste matter which workers had to clean up. A trip to the restroom would have risked the loss of their favorite machines, you see.

Years later, in the 1990s, I had traveled on the bus from my home in New York to the Atlantic City casinos enough times to ascertain that most of the patrons of that south New Jersey tourist mecca looked like they used to babysit for Wilford Brimley, the actor who was frequently seen in oatmeal and other senior health related commercials on television.  Without children and grandchildren visiting, these seniors - sadly - have nothing better to do.

Although an East Coast resident, around five years ago I spent a night in a Native American casino in the hills north of San Diego, not being able to book the entire weekend. Besides the improved sanitary habits of the visitors, nothing had changed since my Lake Tahoe days. The same type of bored seniors sat listlessly at their slot machines. It was like visiting a government senior center, but with more lights and noise and less comraderie among the residents.

The saddest senior I ever saw was on a gambling day ship that sailed from the Port of Palm Beach. I was visiting my father in Florida and we decided to join the other seniors in an excursion beyond the 12 mile limit. Late in the afternoon, we were just hanging around the slot machines, observing the crowd, when we saw a well dressed woman around 60 years of age placing $100 bill after $100 bill into a slot machine and pulling the handle. After observing how long $100 lasted for her, I did a quick calculation and estimated she would be losing $5000 that day. My dad even loudly remarked on how much she was losing and it didn't phase her for she kept on feeding the machine and "playing." This (psychologically) poor woman must have felt some great sadness in her life, with no way of escape other than to drown her troubles in a floating casino. It is a wonder that she didn't jump over the side of the ship.  

Las Vegas is somewhat different because it is lively, having a more even mix of young and old, albeit the young can be just as desperate. Tales such as the young man who calmly asked someone for a boost up on the observation deck of the 79 story Stratosphere, then jumping to his death abound. They say the Luxor Hotel had to put in a net above its food court because people would jump off the high balconies inside its main pyramid-shaped building and wind up literally in the buffet. Sadly, Las Vegas is the home of various "non-assisted suicide" attempts, such as the one protrayed in the movie "Leaving Las Vegas."

On a tour bus ride to Hoover Dam, I shared a table at the Dam's snack shop with an amicable farmer from the Midwest and his wife. He had recently sold his farm and they were both in their late fourties or early fifties. After about a half hour of walking around together, the wife told me a secret: she had cancer and was undergoing treatment, wanting to see Las Vegas for the first time. What was unspoken was that this might be her last chance to be healthy enough to visit anywhere.

Yet the suicidal rub elbows with those still very much wanting to live and enjoy life in high spirits. Near the Stratosphere, there is the self-proclaimed "World's Largest Souvenir Shop." The place features Viagra Blue (icing) fudge in the shape of the blue pills. I've also seen ads in the tourist guide magazines hawking clinics where one can buy Viagra in Vegas with a cursory exam by a doctor (wonder what ObamaCare will do to that business). The hardest part of the exam, it appears, is the verification of the patient's credit card.

At a magician show I attended in the afternoon at the Flamingo, a woman was asked to hide a card. Standing there with her purse in her hand, she chose to put the card between her breasts which got a rise out of the audience. It stopped the act and drew laughs because she had upstaged the magician.

All these examples are why I recently submitted an illustration idea to American Thinker of Harry Reid, after being voted out of the Senate, working as a slot machine host in Las Vegas, urging seniors to play for a gall bladder operation they would not be able to get under ObamaCare. The seniors could either win the medical care they now take for granted - or literally die trying.

Last year, people had to go to a casino to gamble their life's savings - or very life. Today, the entire country has become a casino. And you can't sit out a round of  bets at anything else but the casino rollercoasters.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Timothy Birdnow

S. Fred Singer has written an editorial about the corruption of the IPCC and it's ties to Climategate:

SEPP SCIENCE EDITORIAL #41-2009 (Dec 26, 2009)
By S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

[Note: This is the second of a series of mini-editorials on the “junk science” influencing the global warming issue. Other topics will include the IPCC’s Assessment Reports 3 and 4, the UN Environmental Program and some individuals heavily involved in these matters.]

Junk Science #2:  IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (IPCC-AR-2, 1995, published in 1996)

IPCC assessment reports, and particularly their Summaries for Policymakers (SPM), are noted for their selective use of information and their bias to support the political goal of control of fossil fuels in order to fight an alleged anthropogenic global warming (AGW). 

Perhaps the most blatant example is IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (SAR), completed in 1995 and published in 1996.  Its SPM contains the memorable phrase “the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate.”  You may recall that this 1996 IPCC report played a key role in the political deliberations that led to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

This ambiguous phrase suggests a group of climate scientists, examining both human and natural influences on climate change, looking at published scientific research, and carefully weighing their decision.  Nothing of the sort has ever happened.  The IPCC has consistently ignored the major natural influences on climate change and has focused almost entirely on human causes, especially on GH gases and more especially on carbon dioxide, which is linked to industrial activities and therefore ‘bad’ almost by definition. 

How then did the IPCC-SAR arrive at “balance of evidence”?  It was the work of a then-relatively-junior scientist, Dr Benjamin D. Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), who has recently re-emerged as a major actor in ClimateGate.  As a Convening Lead Author of a crucial IPCC chapter, Santer carefully removed any verbiage denying that human influences might be the major or almost exclusive cause of warming and substituted new language.  There is no evidence that he ever consulted any of his fellow IPCC authors, nor do we know who instructed him to make these changes and later approved the text deletions and insertions that fundamentally transformed IPCC-SAR. 

The event is described by Nature [381(1006):539] and in a 1996 WSJ article by the late Professor Frederick Seitz (See also my Science Editorial #2-09).  Seitz compared the draft of IPCC Chapter 8 (Detection and Attribution) and the final printed text.  He noted that, before printing, key phrases had been deleted from the draft that had earlier been approved by its several scientist-authors.  For a full account of these text changes see my Hoover Essay in Public Policy No. 102 [2000] “Climate Policy: From Rio to Kyoto”

Exec Summary  http://media.hoover.org/documents/epp_102a.pdf

Essay pdf  http://media.hoover.org/documents/epp_102b.pdf

Essay Notes   http://media.hoover.org/documents/epp_102c.pdf

[PLEASE NOTE: If you cannot bring up these documents as you expect, please try entering the stated URL’s directly on your internet browser.]

Seitz wrote [WSJ, Aug 13, 1996]:

“Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations organization regarded by many as the best source of scientific information about the human impact on the earth's climate, released "The Science of Climate Change 1995," its first new report in five years. The report will surely be hailed as the latest and most authoritative statement on global warming. Policy makers and the press around the world will likely view the report as the basis for critical decisions on energy policy that would have an enormous impact on U.S. oil and gas prices and on the international economy.

This IPCC report, like all others, is held in such high regard largely because it has been peer-reviewed. That is, it has been read, discussed, modified and approved by an international body of experts. These scientists have laid their reputations on the line. But this report is not what it appears to be--it is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. The scientists were assuming that the IPCC would obey the IPCC Rules--a body of regulations that is supposed to govern the panel's actions. Nothing in the IPCC Rules permits anyone to change a scientific report after it has been accepted by the panel of scientific contributors and the full IPCC.

The participating scientists accepted "The Science of Climate Change" in Madrid last November; the full IPCC accepted it the following month in Rome. But more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report--the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate--were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had accepted the supposedly final text.

Few of these changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities are having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in particular.

The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report but deleted from the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:

"None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases." "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes." "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced."

The reviewing scientists used this original language to keep themselves and the IPCC honest. I am in no position to know who made the major changes in Chapter 8; but the report's lead author, Benjamin D. Santer, must presumably take the major responsibility.

IPCC reports are often called the "consensus" view. If they lead to carbon taxes and restraints on economic growth, they will have a major and almost certainly destructive impact on the economies of the world. Whatever the intent was of those who made these significant changes, their effect is to deceive policy makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming.

If the IPCC is incapable of following its most basic procedures, it would be best to abandon the entire IPCC process, or at least that part that is concerned with the scientific evidence on climate change, and look for more reliable sources of advice to governments on this important question.”

But in addition to these text changes there are also two key graphs that were doctored in order to convey the impression that anthropogenic influences are dominant.  Again, my Hoover essay gives the details.

1.  According to all climate models, GH warming shows a characteristic ‘fingerprint’: a ‘hot spot’ in temperature trend values in the tropical upper troposphere.  Michaels and Knappenberger [Nature 384 (1996):522-523] discovered that the IPCC’s claimed agreement with observations was spurious and obtained by selecting a convenient segment of the radiosonde temperature data and ignoring the rest.

2.  Santer also claimed that the modeled and observed patterns of geographic surface temperatures were correlated, with the correlation coefficient increasing over time (suggesting to the reader that a growing human component gradually emerged from background noise).  I found, however, that Santer had obtained this result by simply deleting from a published graph all the trend lines that disagreed with his desired outcome [Eos 80 (1999):372].  In fact, the original paper had Santer himself as lead author and did not appear in print until after the IPCC report was completed – in contravention of IPCC rules.

It is interesting that these several documented falsifications went largely unreported and had little impact on scientists and politicians, who went on to support the passage of the Kyoto Protocol -- in spite of the absence of any scientific support.  A wide-ranging investigation of ClimateGate may yet serve to bring this IPCC triple-malfeasance to light.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:02 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Jack Kemp (not the late politician)

Daryl Mongomery hits another home run. He's got almost as many as Daryl Strawberry, for you baseball fans. Our government statistics seem to, once again, have been calculated by the Mad Hatter at Alice's Tea Party (the only Tea Party Movement the administration approves of). Perhaps you have a comment on this, Tim?

Jack

New Homes Reveal Old Problems With Government Statistics

The 'Helicopter Economics Investing Guide' is meant to help educate people on how to make profitable investing choices in the current economic environment. We have coined this term to describe the current monetary and fiscal policies of the U.S. government, which involve unprecedented money printing. This is the official blog of the New York Investing meetup.

The U.S. New Home Sales report released on December 23rd indicated a drop of 11.3% in November. Analysts had expected a gain. According to the previous Commerce Department reports, new homes sales had risen every month since April. They were expected to rise again in November because a government tax credit for new home buyers were originally scheduled to end in the beginning of the month (it was extended to June 2010), so analysts had assumed that there would be a rush of last minute buyers. There may have been and without them the drop might have been much greater than 11%.

New Home Sales is almost certainly the most inaccurate of the economic reports issued by the U.S. government. I can say this with some certainty because it would be almost impossible to produce something more error ridden. One of the major news services stated in their coverage of the November report, "Government statisticians have low confidence in the monthly report, which is subject to large revisions and large sampling and other statistical errors. In most months the government isn't sure whether sales rose or fell." Read that last sentence again and then consider that if the U.S. government is willing to issue an official report on housing that is about as accurate as picking numbers randomly out of a hat, how much can you trust the GDP, CPI, PPI (the two major inflation reports) and Non-Farms Payroll reports. Also note that the mainstream financial media seems to be well aware of the lack of reliability, but doesn't mention it except on very rare occasions when the news is particularly bad.

If the New Homes Sales report is so prone to inaccuracy why not just fix the problem? This is indeed a good question. The statistical tools to make this report better have been known for decades and yet the U.S. Commerce department doesn't seem to be able to apply them. It can be assumed that this isn't done because they don't want to do it. Statistically sloppy work is extremely prone to manipulation after all, solidly done work is not.

When confronted with this problem, you will get a more accurate picture of what is taking place by looking at many months of data in aggregate and comparing it to the previous year (the errors will cancel out at least to some extent). In the first 11 months of 2009, new home sales are down 24% from the first 11 months in 2008. Inventories have been falling throughout 2009 and are now at 38 year lows. The number of homes under construction or planned for construction have fallen to a record low. If new home sales were rising between April to October as the Commerce Department reported, why are home builders building fewer and fewer homes? That doesn't look like an industry in recovery as the public has been repeatedly told. For some reason, we seem to have gotten a glimpse of the true state of the housing market in the November New Home Sales report. Perhaps the guy in charge of producing cheerful statistics was on vacation? Somehow, I'm sure he'll be back soon.

Daryl Montgomery
Organizer,New York Investing meetup
http://investing.meetup.com/21

Tim's 2 pennies:

Yes, I had my suspicions when the government said new home sales had risen; how?  Credit is tight, jobs are shaky, and people don't buy new in that type of market, because new homes require a committment. It takes at least six months just to build the thing, and usually longer; how can you commit to that when you don't know where the market it going?  Your contractor could go out of business half way through the process. 

The reality is that nothing has changed since the collapse, except that government regulators are holding a tighter leash - something that prevents rather than stimulates growth. Since the housing bubble was the cause of our current economic problem, there is a powerful incentive to make it appear more solvent, or we must question what the Obama Administration and Congress are doing.

Real property became the investment of choice for people burned by the tech bubble of the '90's, and that actually spurred new housing sales, because investors were buying up older homes, driving the price up to the point where it was worth purchasing new. The investment market is kaput, and this makes used homes a far more viable alternative, meaning that there is no good reason to buy new in a dangerous market. Used home sales do help the economy, but the big money is in new home construction, and there isn't any real growth in the used market, outside of handymen doing repairs and government inspectors and the like. New home construction has a multiplier effect, because it employs all manner of people; masons, carpenters, tinners, plumbers, glazers, tuckpointers, backhoe operators, dumptruck drivers, etc. etc.  It is something worth lying about, and given the track record of this bunch in office it seems likely that is what they have been doing. It is much like their claims of  economic growth; they ignore the fact that all growth has occured in the public sector, and that because of the money they have stolen from future generations to pay for the stimulus.

What I suspect is happening is that we are seeing the application of baseline budgeting on these statistics; Commerce is using the point of bubble burst as the baseline, thus any houses built since then can be claimed as an increase.  It's much like the temperature stats for global warming, which are always based on  the time frame after the end of the Little Ice Age. OF COURSE the globe is warming after such a cool period!  This is more of the same; they are claiming that houses are being built, which means an increase since the critical point started at zero, or nearly zero. It's a cute accounting trick.

What nobody is mentioning is the commercial market; nobody is renting commercial space, malls are sitting vacant, and nobody is building new retail, warehouse, or office space. This is the real measure of the market, because it means business is not being conducted, or is being conducted in a desultory fashion. It also means that investors are losing money, as are the banks. New residential property sales should logically rise because those employed in the public sector are more secure - and have more money - than ever. These people will be buying houses.  The commercial market, more than any other, is a bellweather of the health of the market in general, because such property illustrates the confidence in the market in general. There does not appear to be any.

But the One and his sycophants in the media are ever eager to find good news to paint the Messiah in a good light, and they can find statistics to back up their claims - just as they found statistics to say we were in a horrible economy during the boom years under George W. Bush. This is a lie, but one that will convince those less knowledgeable.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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