Senator Gone Wild
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) apparently had one too many congressional cocktails before taking to the floor of the senate to clumsily slur his way through another tirade against Republicans.
Besides the fact that Senator Baucus is a complete tool, in this clip he blames Republicans for not reaching across the aisle to work with Democrats. This is rubbish. The Dem's have rammed this bill through both Houses of Congress, they've bought off anyone in their way, and refused to include the GOP leadership in their meetings.
Have one on me, Maxie boy.
Steyn and Morris
Mark Steyn, my boy, is filling in for Sean Hannity this week on Fox News (9pm EST) and has done a tremendous job so far. The guy needs his own radio and/or tv show.
Here's a clip of Steyn and Dick Morris dissecting how the Democrats got to 60 votes this week.
Aren’t the changes in climate “natural”?
So glad you asked...
The UK's Daily Express printed the top 100 reasons why global climate change, the kind the world's leading proponents of statism and collectivism are discussing in Copenhagen right now, is naturally caused. The list was put together by The European Foundation, a think-tank located in London.
Here are a few of my favorite things from the list:
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago
19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.
24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder
Read the rest of the list here.
I realize that it is not a fool-proof, case-closed argument to make, but does it not bother anyone else that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe have all been invited to speak at the Copenhagen conference? All three men are totalitarian thugs who want nothing more than to harm the United States, especially its economy. Does it send up any warning flare to you man-made global warming believers that these wicked leaders of suppressive regimes would be so happy to help the West all of the sudden?
What is being proposed at the Climate Summit is the massive re-distribution of wealth to poorer countries and higher taxes for Western nations (i.e. America). It will cripple our economy and hand portions of US sovereignty over to global governing bodies. Can we afford this right now (or ever)? Where are American climate change activists citing the Constitution in any of this?
Harry Reid: Historically Illiterate
Fresh off the wires today:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.
Those of you under the impression that our elected leaders in the House and Senate are superior to the average voter/taxpayer in any conceivable way, enjoy this from the leader of the United States Senate (Harry Reid, D-NV):
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"
He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.
"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
So in the mind of the 4th most powerful man in the country, Government-run Health Care =Freedom (the kind slaves were only granted when a Republican president ignored Democrats and fought an unpopular, horrifically violent Civil War)? Do you feel safer knowing this guy is making decisions about the fate of your nation?
Historically speaking, what Senator Reid said was something more than "false." This is a new kind of wrong.
The Republican Party, for all of its many faults, was created in 1854 with one of its core tenets being the abolition of slavery.
Oh, and remember Civil Rights? It was the Republicans who helped Lyndon Baines Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The bill came before the full Senate for debate on March 30, 1964 and the "Southern Bloc" of southern Senators led by Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster to prevent its passage. Said Russell: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states.
But what's factual representation of history compared to forcing a public option through Congress, right? Plus, it's not like Harry Reid will have to be worried about getting lambasted in the major newspapers in this country tomorrow.
There's no political fall-out from ridiculous spectacles such as the one he made today because the media will have plenty of "Sarah Palin sounds funny" and "Dick Cheney is an old, mean guy" write-ups to fill in the places in their publications that could be dedicated to actual reporting and intellectually honest commentary.
One last thing: please remember that in Bush's second term, the Democrats fought tooth-and-nail for judicial nominations to the federal court. Now they are mad and shocked that the GOP would stand its ground over the government take-over of 1/6 of the U.S. economy. Makes sense.
Even John Stewart’s Covering This Story
It was recently discovered that many of the key, leading scientists advocating man-made global warming have been for years manipulating data that disagreed with their hypothesis.
"Shockingly", the mainstream media has ignored the story for two weeks. Two weeks!
Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart has even joined in the coverage of Climategate:
Peer-reviewed Madness
If you haven't seen the interview actor Ed Begley Jr. gave on Fox News last week, here's the stimulating exchange:
Ed Begley Jr., Al Gore, and any other liberal global warming advocate with a pulpit all tell us that "the science is settled." They tell us to look to the scientists and experts who affirm their climate change worries.
But, as Mark Steyn points out in his latest column, what do we non-experts do when the expers are exposed as frauds?
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process.
When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet.
But don’t worry, it’s all “peer-reviewed.”
The problem with this entire global warming/climate change debate is of course that the science is NOT settled, and the current leaders in congress and the White House are pushing catastrophic pieces of legislation and public policies that assume it is.
Steyn also recently wrote this about the upcoming Copenhagen world summit that President Obama will be attending:
I’m always appreciative when a fellow says what he really means. Tim Flannery, the jet-setting doomsaying global warm-monger from down under, was in Ottawa the other day promoting his latest eco-tract, and offered a few thoughts on “Copenhagen”—which is transnational-speak for December’s UN Convention on Climate Change. “We all too often mistake the nature of those negotiations in Copenhagen,” remarked professor Flannery. “We think of them as being concerned with some sort of environmental treaty. That is far from the case. The negotiations now ongoing toward the Copenhagen agreement are in effect diplomacy at the most profound global level. They deal with every aspect of our life and they will influence every aspect of our life, our economy, our society.”
Hold that thought: “They deal with every aspect of our life.” Did you know every aspect of your life was being negotiated at Copenhagen? But in a good way! So no need to worry. After all, we all care about the environment, don’t we? So we ought to do something about it, right? And, since “the environment” isn’t just in your town or county but spreads across the entire planet, we can only really do something at the planetary level.
But what to do? According to paragraph 38 on page 18 of the latest negotiating text, the convention will set up a “government” to manage the “new funds” and the “related facilitative processes.”
The Left has a totalitarian instinct that should alarm any proponent of liberty and free markets.
Climate Change Exposed
From The Boston Herald:
In an embarrassing blow to the movement to combat global warming, hackers have posted hundreds of e-mails from a world-renowned British institute that show researchers colluding to exaggerate warming and undermine skeptics.
Like most pet issues of the Left, global warming and climate change have become sacred cows that must be defended at all costs. Lying, misrepresenting the facts, or personal ad hominen attacks on skeptics are all fair-game tactics to advance the agenda and ultimate goal: global governing bodies to oversee nearly ever aspect of our lives.
Of course the average "Green" American or European is not necessarily thinking about how best to hand over control of their nation's sovereignty to foreign entities and unelected bureaucrats in Copenhagen or Brussels, rest assured your progressive leaders are.
In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.
Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.
We're using manipulated data, presented to us by ideologically (and financially) driven people, to make decisions about our economy and country.
Plus many of these climate-obsessed people are just plain mean and heartless:
One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:
“In an odd way this is cheering news.”
Mark Steyn, as usual, has written a powerful column that encapsulates the bigger, broader implications of the climate change hysteria (and scam).
White House Silences Cap-and-Trade Critics
How could I pass up posting this story:
Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.
Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade -- a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade -- as a means to fight climate change.
On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions
Not sure what Cap-and-Trade even is (or means)? Arm yourself with the truth here.
ACORN in desperation mode
In September congress voted to cut federal funding of the community-organizing group ACORN. Now the radical-Left organization is fighting back and claiming that what Washington did was "unconstitutional".
Representatives for ACORN sued the federal government Thursday morning in an attempt to regain the millions of dollars in funding the community organizing group lost after filmmakers videotaped its workers offering advice on how to commit tax fraud and various other felonies.
The suit charges Congress with violating the Constitution when it passed legislation in September that specifically targeted ACORN to lose federal housing, education and transportation funds.
Now of course ACORN and her supporters will try and paint the group as innocent victims of dirty tricks by Glenn Beck and conservative talk radio. The trouble with that scenario is that it discounts the dozens of indictments for voter registration fraud that ACORN has incurred over the past 8 years.
The best news from all of this?
ACORN claims it has been badly hurt by the congressional actions, and has had to fire workers and close some of its 1,200 branches around the country.
Though it remains unclear precisely how much money the national organization was receiving from federal sources and aid programs, a lawyer pressing the suit said ACORN has already lost an amount "in the millions" since the freeze took effect.
Fox News Banned From Pay Czar Interview
It's fairly important to the story here that you take a moment and watch this:
From the mind of Charles Krauthammer we read the following:
The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."
Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.
The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.
I do have to at least eat some crow and say that the other reporters from networks at loathsome as MSNBC did come to the defense of Fox News when the administration attempted to bar them from interviewing the "Pay Czar" Ken Feinberg.
Part of me wants to think that this whole thing, this "war" between Fox News and the White House, is nothing more than the staged brain-child of Fox News' Roger Ailes and David Axelrod. The two met in New York last month when the president was in town for the United Nations General Assembly. Not much attention was paid to the story at the time, but the pessimist in me says that these two strategic masterminds concocted the entire ordeal as a way to give both sides what they want: Fox News sees higher ratings, and the White House has a scapegoat (the Left's favorite scapegoat) to bash while continuing to work behind-the-scenes on health care.
But in such matters I suppose I defer to the experience and wisdom of someone like Chuck Krauthammer.
There's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
What do you think about this whole thing?
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