May 22, 2013
When Liberal Explanations Mock Liberal Causes
Jack Kemp
One of the most cherished liberal beliefs is that criminality is society’s fault and that we should see criminal behavior as society’s fault, not an individual responsibility – or lack of responsibility. The term paper site Studymode.com lists one thousand article on academics’, largely sociologists, belief that crime is caused by poverty and lack of values taught to poor children, thus more or less not the criminals fault. http://www.studymode.com/subjects/crime-as-a-social-problem-page1.html
Can a discussion of crime in America avoid mention of race? Hardly. I’ll mention none less than Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard, famous for having been stopped by a Cambridge policeman in a national headline case, who is quoted in the City Journal as having stated:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_2_my_black.html
BEGIN QUOTE
If you wonder why blacks seem particularly susceptible to rumors and conspiracy theories, you might take a look at a history in which the official story was a poor guide to anything that mattered much, and in which rumor sometimes verged on the truth. Heard the one about the L.A. cop who hated interracial couples, fantasized about making a bonfire of black bodies, and boasted of planting evidence?
Gates, like the renowned sociologist William Julius Wilson, one of the prominent black Americans whose views of the O.J. verdict he cites, was convinced that O.J. was guilty. But he recounts a story Wilson told him about once being stopped near a small New England town by a policeman who wanted to know what he was doing in those parts: "There’s a moving violation that many African-Americans know as DWB: Driving While Black, notes Gates. As "older blacks like to repeat, when "white folks say ‘justice,’ they mean ‘just us.’ In other words, blacks really do experience enough casual, reflexive racism from law enforcement officers to make them understandably fearful that racism permeates the criminal justice system.
END OF QUOTE
This attitude towards blacks and crime, which is true a number of times, is also viewed by many white liberals as being almost universally true. And yet Prof. Gates is quoted (by paraphrasing) as taking the position that while he and the rest of America can understand this attitude among blacks, it is no automatic grounds for dismissing individual acts or responsibilities of perpetrators, be it on grounds of racism or (I would add) grounds of poverty. Still, many liberals, particularly the more young, hard left leaning ones, will reflexively cry racism and assailing the poor in any crime – as have some New York City judges who refuse to hold assailants more accountable than Society in General. This includes locally famous judges such as the late "Turn ‘Em Loose Bruce” Wright http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/rbg-street-scholars-think-tank/22335-what-you-know-about-judge-bruce-m-wright-cut-em-loose-bruce.html ; and Shira Sheindlin, a current vigorous opponent of "Stop and Frisk” policies. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-22/new-york-stop-and-frisk-ruling-stayed-while-city-appeals.html
But what are liberals to make of the crime that occurred recently in New York City’s Greenwich Village, where an ex-convict allegedly shot and killed a black man accompanying another man on the street who were perceived by the defendant to be gay? We also see how inept the much- heralded-by-liberals legislation, the New York State SAFE gun control law, had been able to stop an ex-convict from attaining a gun. New York liberals, including gays and also non-gay women might want to consider this solution to another gun control failure. Perhaps if the supposedly gay men walking on the street, while they were being menaced, could have called upon the immediate open presence of human and equal rights advocates Misters Smith & Wesson or Mr. Samuel Colt, an attack on their safety could have been avoided by someone looking for a risk-free victim and the late Mark Carson, a black man, would be alive today.
The New York Post reports that http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/laughing_monster_lxiKzmkhgCZjaPDTEiLGBJ ; this crime is being treated as both a murder and a hate crime. But if, as many sociologists claim, crime is the fault of society itself, why did the police chose to lock up one man instead of, say, Mayor Bloomberg for not sharing more of his wealth with the poor? And why aren’t sociologists protesting in front of the courthouse, claiming the real root cause of this crime is not being addressed and other wealthier people should be locked up in Elliot Morales’s place?
The article is more lurid as it tells of the arrest. You can read all the details, but I have edited quotes to give the flavor of the story to say:
BEGIN QUOTE
The homophobic ex-con accused of "executing’’ a gay man in Greenwich Village laughed and boasted about the murder, prosecutors said yesterday.
"Yeah, I shot him in the head,” Elliot Morales, 33, sneered while "laughing on the ground” as cops were handcuffing him for fatally shooting Mark Carson, 32, early Saturday morning, according to prosecutors.
Morales yesterday was held without bail on charges of second-degree murder as a hate crime, menacing and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
He is accused of first hissing anti-gay slurs at Carson and a friend while they were walking on Sixth Avenue near West Eighth Street at around midnight Saturday, and then gunning down Carson…
In court, (prosecutor) Illuzzi-Orbon said authorities have footage of a crazed Morales spewing anti-gay remarks about 20 minutes earlier at the staff of the nearby Annisa restaurant — and threatening to put a bullet through a bartender’s forehead if he called cops.
"Are you afraid?” he barked at the worker after being chided for urinating outside the restaurant. "Do you watch the news? Do you know what happened in Sandy Hook?’’
END OF QUOTE
So it appears that the Sandy Hook shootings are a motivator for some criminals in a largely "gun free” zone such as New York City. Mayor Bloomberg, looking like the diminutive prince in the movie "Shrek” while traveling with his entourage of armed guards, may chose to ignore any conclusions about the effectiveness of his gun control policies, as does Rahm Emanuel, the Mayor of Chicago. But reality remains the same no matter the race, age, sexual orientation or political affiliation of the victim.
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Serfdom for Dummies
Jack Kemp
John Hayward at Red State has written a great explanation of how lower expectations of both the government and ourselves leads to a July 1, 1776 mentality (my phrase).
Here's the link and a quote:
http://www.redstate.com/2013/05/21/serfdom-for-dummies/
That’s an important principle for the serf to accept: Success is measured by the suffering of your enemies. It doesn’t matter if your taxes go up, provided some hated rich guy’s taxes go up more. It doesn’t matter if the economy is weak, provided "income inequality” is under attack. Daily life is a means toward the end of elections. Any dissatisfaction you might feel with your political leadership is easily re-directed against their opponents. This keeps the bar set nice and low for the leadership of your team. Who cares if you’re hurting, as long as bad people are hurting worse?
A good serf is willing to grant his leaders immunity from criticism based on race, sex, or other attributes. It’s extremely helpful for a maximum leader to know his loyal followers will dismiss all criticism of his performance as racism, sexism, or other forms of unreasoning hatred. Conversely, members of a group "owned” by the serf’s masters can be stripped of their identity if they become dissidents. Even racial and sexual identity can be erased through ideology.
For example, during a particularly rocky White House press conference on Tuesday, press secretary Jay Carney actually dismissed questions about the IRS scandal and other stories by comparing them to conspiracy-theory interest in President Obama’s birth certificate. A good serf stands ready to comply with such evasions of accountability.
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Dewey: Stalin's Propagandist, the World's Teacher
By Daren Jonescu
Joseph Stalin had been General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party for six years in 1928, when John Dewey, "the father of modern education," toured Russia with a group of educators. Later that year, The New Republic published Dewey's Impressions of Soviet Russia and the revolutionary world. This polemic stands as a remarkable testament to progressivism's disdain for mankind, reason, and truth. It is also Dewey's most honest and concise primer on the principles of his progressive education method. Anyone prepared to defend the idea of government-controlled schooling after reading this work is perhaps beyond reach of rational argument.
Dewey's general assessment of the Stalinist Russia he claims to have encountered is unabashedly positive, not to say romantic. Here is a very typical example:
But since the clamor of economic emphasis, coming... from both defenders and enemies of the Bolshevik scheme, may have confused others as it certainly confused me, I can hardly do better than record the impression, as overwhelming as it was unexpected, that the outstanding fact in Russia is a revolution, involving the release of human powers on such an unprecedented scale that it is of incalculable significance not only for that country, but for the world. [p. 15]
Note the peculiar effect of combining the most understated, non-judgmental language to describe a murderous dictatorship ("the Bolshevik scheme") with the most unobjective hyperbole ("overwhelming," "unprecedented," "incalculable") to describe something as abstract and speculative as "the release of human powers" under communism. This passage, and indeed the entire document, written by a sixty-nine year old eminent intellectual, reads like the silly postcard effusions of a ten-year-old girl on her first trip to Disneyland.
Furthermore, notice Dewey's expression of surprise at the disparity between the Russia he claims to have encountered and the one he supposedly expected to find. Knowing that he is writing for American readers inclined to disapprove of the Soviet dictatorship, Dewey carefully peppers his reminiscences with expressions of shock. The pretense that he never expected to find Russia so wonderfully transformed by communism is this lifelong leftist's cynical reversal of Socratic irony -- his feigned wide-eyed innocence is intended to entrap the unsuspecting reader in naïve acquiescence to irrationalism. The technique is used frequently to punctuate his most outrageous declarations of admiration for Soviet tyranny. Two more examples:
If I learned nothing else, I learned to be immensely suspicious of all generalized views about Russia; even if they accord with the state of affairs in 1922 or 1925, they may have little relevancy to 1928, and perhaps be of only antiquarian meaning by 1933. [22]
I am only too conscious, as I write, how strangely fantastic the idea of hope and creation in connection with Bolshevist Russia must appear to those whose beliefs about it were fixed, not to be changed, some seven or eight years ago. I certainly was not prepared for what I saw; it came as a shock. [40]
Is it possible to be "shocked" by one's own abstract interpretation? Did one of the West's leading socialists really "learn," in 1928, to be "suspicious of all generalized views about Russia"? Or is his "shock" really just part of a predictable leftist apology for the brutality of Soviet communism, a sympathetic assessment that was never in doubt? You be the judge of passages such as this one:
We all know a certain legend appropriate to the lips and pen of the European visitor to America: here is a land inhabited by a strangely young folk, with the buoyancy, energy, naïveté and immaturity of youth and inexperience. That is the way Moscow impressed me, and very much more so than my own country. There, indeed, was a life full of hope, confidence, almost hyperactive, naïve at times and on some subjects incredibly so, having the courage that achieves much because it springs from that ignorance of youth that is not held back by fears born from too many memories. Freed from the load of subjection to the past, it seems charged with the ardor of creating a new world. [37-38, emphasis added]
This charming notion of youthful "ardor," "hope," and "confidence," mere "legend" when applied to America, is, according to Dewey, "very much more" truly said of Stalin's Russia.
Or consider this description of a totalitarian police state:
The mass of the people is to learn the meaning of Communism not so much by induction into Marxian doctrines -- although there is plenty of that in the schools -- but by what is done for the mass in freeing their life, in giving them a sense of security, safety, in opening to them access to recreation, leisure, new enjoyments and new cultivations of all sorts. [55-6]
The general judgment, then, is not only that Russians under Stalin are happier and more hopeful than they have ever been -- than any people have ever been -- but that the regime desires the people's happiness, that conditions under Stalin indicate the regime's devotion to the well-being of the "masses." Dewey makes this point explicit, telling us that the new government "is one as interested in giving them access to sources of happiness as the only other government with which they have any acquaintance was to keep them in misery." [67-8]
Consider the dishonesty of recasting the Marxist-Leninist program of forcibly undoing the traditions and religion of a nation as the glorious achievement of a people "creating a new world" after having been "freed from the load of subjection to the past." And lest anyone question the destructive means of "freeing" a nation from its past, Dewey insists that this alleged destructiveness is part of the West's false narrative about Stalinism.
All that has been said of the anti-clerical and atheistic tendencies of the Bolshevist is true enough. But the churches and their contents that were of artistic worth are not only intact, but taken care of with scrupulous and even scientific zeal. It is true that many have been converted into museums, but to all appearances there are still enough to meet the needs of would-be worshippers. [42-3]
No, you are not reading a clever updating of Swift's Modest Proposal. This is the most influential American philosopher of the twentieth century, and the single most influential man in the history of public education, whitewashing the Soviet crushing of religion as mere "atheistic tendencies," and admiring the violent confiscation of churches and art works on the grounds that the buildings and "their contents of artistic worth" are "intact," "taken care of," and "converted into museums." And take a moment to appreciate Dewey's dismissive swipe at persecuted believers as "would-be worshippers." He carries on, noting with stomach-turning delight that "The collections of ikons in museums in Leningrad and Moscow are an experience which repays the lover of art for a voyage to these cities." And how, we might ask, were the previous owners of these artifacts "repaid" for their involuntary contributions to Dewey's cultural voyage?
Thus far we have established only that the mature Dewey loved communism, and was prepared to say anything, no matter how vile or absurd, to defend the post-revolutionary Russia by which he so unconvincingly claims to have been delightfully surprised.
But what of the primary purpose of his visit, namely the examination of Stalinist Russia's educational establishment? Here, Dewey's enthusiastic rhetoric carries him into rhapsodies of self-revelation that shed the light of frankness on his often disingenuous and manipulative philosophical writings.
One cannot miss the personal pride with which Dewey admires Soviet education. Far from being a disinterested observer, Dewey had a vested interest in providing a favorable review of both the methods and the results of Soviet schools, for they were fundamentally his methods, and the results, therefore, evidence for or against Deweyism. He is therefore predisposed to see noble intentions and great success in every use of public schools for purposes of social control, government indoctrination, and the propagandistic undermining of mankind's moral, political, and rational heritage -- purposes that he himself advocates. Thus we get flourishes such as these:
I have never seen anywhere in the world such a large proportion of intelligent, happy, and intelligently occupied children. [28]
For while a revival of interest in artistic production, literary, musical, plastic, is characteristic of progressive schools all over the world, there is no country, unless it be possibly Mexico, where the esthetic aim and quality so dominates all things educational as in Russia today. [44-5]
I can speak [glowingly] of Russia with any degree of confidence only as the animating purpose and life of that country are reflected in its educational leaders and the work they are attempting. [46]
And how does Dewey define "the work they are attempting," which he finds so praiseworthy? Much of his polemic rides on what he calls the "aesthetic" element of the post-revolutionary period, and which he regards as more important than Marxist economic theory. This aesthetic element has to do with the production of a new emotional sensibility which, in turn, will engender a "new mentality," one suited to totalitarian collectivism -- although Dewey is careful to avoid describing the social system so directly, preferring, for obvious reasons, to define it only negatively, as the antithesis of "the egoistic and private ideals and methods inculcated by the institution of private property, profit and acquisitive possession." In other words, the primary function of Soviet education, of which Dewey thoroughly approves, is the undoing of the "mentality" of individual liberty, free will, and self-determination.
Essential to achieving this new mentality is omnipresent communist propaganda -- which Dewey not only defends, but identifies as the heart of progressive education.
The present age is, of course, everywhere one in which propaganda has assumed the role of a governing power. But nowhere else in the world is employment of it as a tool of control so constant, consistent and systematic as in Russia at present. Indeed, it has taken on such importance and social dignity that the word propaganda hardly carries... the correct meaning. For we instinctively associate propaganda with the accomplishing of some special ends, more or less private to a particular class or group, and correspondingly concealed from others. But in Russia the propaganda is in behalf of a burning public faith. One may believe that the leaders are wholly mistaken in the object of their faith, but their sincerity is beyond question. [53-4]
Once again, Dewey demands that we acknowledge the noble intentions of the Communist Party, which he specifies as "the universal good of universal humanity" [54]. And from this premise, the "sincere" faith in "universal" communism, John Dewey -- the most important theorist behind all public education throughout the civilized world -- draws the following conclusion:
In consequence, propaganda is education and education is propaganda. They are more than confounded; they are identified. [54]
The purpose of this propaganda/education is to inculcate a change in "the mental and moral disposition of a people" [59], in favor of identifying oneself essentially with the collective, while regarding one's own private interests as gratuitous and worthless. However, the progressive educator's efforts are persistently "undone by the educative -- or miseducative -- formation of disposition and mental habit proceeding from the environment" [70], which is to say by natural impulses and social circumstances contrary to the teachings of communist self-immolation. The greatest enemy of communist education -- the condition that inculcates belief in private property, and promotes the natural impulses to self-preservation and self-reliance, which Marxism reductively calls "profit" -- is the private family. The elimination of the family, therefore, is the most necessary means to the propagandistic purity of the progressive school.
Hence the great task of the school is to counteract and transform those domestic and neighborhood tendencies that are still so strong, even in a nominally collectivistic regime. In order to accomplish this end, the teachers must in the first place know with great detail and accuracy just what the conditions are to which pupils are subject in the home, and thus be able to interpret the habits and acts of the pupil in the school in light of his environing conditions -- and this, not just in some general way, but as definitely as a skilled physician diagnoses in the light of their causes the diseased conditions with which he is dealing. [72-3]
Here, Dewey defends the practice of having children spy on their parents, and report their parents' "diseased" (i.e., individualistic) behavior and attitudes, so that the state may undermine them more effectively. He regards this "social behaviorism" as "much more promising intellectually" than physiological behaviorism, as it "will enable schools to react favorably upon the undesirable conditions discovered, and to reinforce such desirable agencies as exist" [75]. This is Dewey's case for public schools as Marxist re-education camps.
He lingers over this all-important task of destroying the family, and bringing the child under the exclusive mental and moral control of the government. Nothing ever written, by the present author or others, to persuade parents of the folly of imagining they can undo the damage of public education at home, can make the point as clearly as Dewey himself, speaking as a general in the opposing army.
It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with a relaxation of older family ties. What is going on in Russia appears to be a planned acceleration of this process. For example, the earliest section of the school system, dealing with children from three to seven, aims... to keep children under its charge six, eight and ten hours per day, and in ultimate ideal... this procedure is to be universal and compulsory. When it is carried out, the effect on family life is too evident to need to be dwelt upon.... [78-9]
Unfortunately, it seems that once this universal and compulsory "ideal" has been achieved, its effect on family life ceases to be so "evident" to parents whose children are currently being hollowed out by it, scoop by scoop. In the earlier stages of the spiritual enslaving of man, the perpetrators knew exactly what and whom they had to defeat, and saw the task as formidable. Their intellectual heirs of today have merely to complete the final clean-up of Satan's workshop -- the hard work has already been done by Dewey and other pioneers of compulsory public education.
Dewey, in identifying the hurdles on the path to complete collectivist social control, helps us to understand exactly what government educators are aiming at today, as they complete the progressive annihilation of mankind.
I do not see how any honest educational reformer in western countries can deny that the greatest practical obstacle in the way of introducing into schools that connection with social life which he regards as desirable is the great part played by personal competition and desire for private profit in our economic life.... The Russian educational situation is enough to convert one to the idea that only in a society based upon the cooperative principle can the ideals of educational reformers be adequately carried into operation. [86]
In short, progressive schools, if they are to produce the desired collectivist mentality, will do so most effectively within the broader societal context of communism. Hence:
While an American visitor may feel a certain patriotic pride in noting in how many respects an initial impulse came from some progressive school in our own country, he is at once humiliated and stimulated to new endeavor to see how much more organically that idea is incorporated in the Russian system than in our own. [106-7]
That is, the theoretical foundation of all compulsory schooling in the developed world is most "organically" suited to implementation in a communist dictatorship. Lest anyone -- probably a graduate of teacher's college -- object here that Dewey was an ardent democrat, and in no way inclined towards authoritarianism, I conclude with this:
Perhaps the most significant thing in Russia, after all, is not the effort at economic transformation, but the will to use an economic change as the means of developing a popular cultivation... such as the world has never known.... The main effort is nobly heroic, evincing a faith in human nature which is democratic beyond the ambitions of the democracies of the past. [31-2]
For John Dewey -- your teacher, your children's teacher, the world's teacher -- Stalinist Russia was history's purest, noblest example of the democratic ideal. (That Dewey, like Stalin's other propagandizing apologists, suddenly became a Trotskyite when the dam of progressive lies burst, only reinforces his disingenuousness.) Soviet education, most "organically" suited to communist "democracy," was the highest achievement in world schooling, and a great source of pride for Dewey, as it was his own system, carried out more completely than social conditions in the West permitted at that time.
Times have changed, however. Dewey has won. Ethical individualism is, in general, dead. Collectivist self-immolation and Dewey's superficial kaleidoscope of infantile "individuality" are the social norm. Private property and family are on their last legs. The West has largely been "freed from the load of subjection to the past." The "aesthetic" revolution of government education (aka propaganda) has borne its deformed, inedible fruit.
Earlier progressives had faith that political enslavement would pave the way to educational revolution. Their intellectual heirs have learned from history that the opposite nexus, pursued gradually, may result at last in a more firmly rooted universal authoritarianism.
We are almost there.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/dewey_stalins_propagandist_the_worlds_teacher.html#ixzz2U2GfvHEg
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If Bush was Hitler, what does that make Obama?
Timothy Birdnow
Thinking about the upwelling of scandals involving the IRS, the DHS, and numerous other agencies under the control of Barack Hussein Obama, my mind wanders back to the Bush era. After the 911 attacks President Bush instituted some rather militaristic policies, designed as they were for an actual war. After all, several thousand Americans died in the Twin Tower attacks, and this had not been an isolated thing but a long-term series of Islamic assaults against this nation. Bush probably meant well, but he was accused of being Adolf Hitler. Granted, the DHS as a cabinet level bureacracy was as much a Democrat Party idea as any, and they insisted on creating the TSA as a unionized, federal agency (airport security had been private and local before that). Bush, always a man to go along to get along, agreed to many of the things that liberal Democrats demanded. Even the Patriot Act, which was so vilified by the Left as Fascism, had strong bipartisan support.
But the Bush/Hitler analogy played through the last decade anyway.
Here is just one example.
http://www.wnd.com/2005/02/28864/
A piece of "artwork" juxtaposing Nazis and Bush over the Iraq war won a prize and was exhibited.
There were other examples, many of them. Margaret Cho famously said Bush could be Hitler if he applied himself. Moron.ogr, er, Moveon.org concurred as did their financier George Soros. So did Naomi Wolf.
But, as I pointed out about the Wolf piece, the really big shew fits Mr. Obama better.
www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obamas_fascist_america_in_10_easy_steps.html
And be not mistaken, Fascism is something solidly rooted in the Left.http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/ Bush expanded government, spent a lot of money, and expanded the military, but he also cut taxes. Obama has cut military spending but has funnelled huge amounts of money into INTERNAL military forces (under the guise of the TSA and DHS). He has greatly expanded surveillance on American citizens. He has used the power of government to suppress political dissent and to silence opposition prior to the last election. He has used regulatory power to enrich big donors and to damage those who are not. He is the quintessential Fascist with a smiling face.
There are ten planks set forth by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto. They are:
1.Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.
2. A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.
3.Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.
4.Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.
5.Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State, by Means of a National Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly.
6.Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transport in the Hands of the State.
7.Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.
8.Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.
9 Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.
10.Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.
As you can see, many of these have already happened here in the U.S., and many of them are part of the current Administration efforts. The U.S. owns almost thirty percent of all the land in this country, for instance, and manages to regulate the rest through the EPA. We have a heavy, progressive income tax. Inheritance is taxed fairly heavily. The U.S. has gone after tax havens to seize money owned by those who would shelter their money. Credit is centralized under the Federal Reserve, and the reforms made after the Housing Bubble collapsed has made credit even more heavily regulated. Mr. Obama is going after the internet in a number of ways in order to centralize communications, and of course he heavily regulates air travel. He has artificially kept gasoline prices high to restrict travel by car. He has nationalized GM and Chrysler, and the U.S. has, through Qualitative Easing, purchased stock in many companies. Part of the amnesty plan is geered toward establishing armeis of agriculture. There has been a concerted war on the family farm by this Administration, with the net result being the rise of big factory farms. Common Core seeks to nationalize all education.
Mr. Obama didn't start the trend toward fulfilling Marx, but he sure has accelerated it.
But it is Hitler whom the current Administration seems to emulate.
Hitler instituted universal healthcare. Hitler instituted credit reform. Hitler instituted government funded family planning (Sandra Fluke anyone?) Hitler instituted a regulatory regime for industry.
Even the New York Times has admitted that Obama's economic policies are quite similar to those of the Third Reich. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2009/04/03/nytimes-obamas-economic-ideas-great-just-hitlers-were
And now his political approach can be seen as quite Hitlerian.
One of the Left's oldest tactics is to accuse their enemies of doing exactly what they themselves are doing. This audacity guarantees a free pass for themselves, because the public could never believe someone would have the nerve to use their own sins as a bludgeon. Joseph Goebbles called this The Big Lie; if you are going to lie tell one so large nobody could believe you are lying. They did this with Bush; beat the Hitler drum through an entire decade so that when they were in power the comparison could not be made. It's a strategy that works, too.
Here is a decent comparative study. http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/many-of-obama-s-policies-similar-to-hitler-s/article_8e0c3578-22c5-11e2-bfec-0019bb2963f4.html
But in the end, the stench of the Third Reich - and of Uncle Joe Stalin - remains with them, not with us. Small comfort when one has an iron boot on the throat.
Thinking about the upwelling of scandals involving the IRS, the DHS, and numerous other agencies under the control of Barack Hussein Obama, my mind wanders back to the Bush era. After the 911 attacks President Bush instituted some rather militaristic policies, designed as they were for an actual war. After all, several thousand Americans died in the Twin Tower attacks, and this had not been an isolated thing but a long-term series of Islamic assaults against this nation. Bush probably meant well, but he was accused of being Adolf Hitler. Granted, the DHS as a cabinet level bureacracy was as much a Democrat Party idea as any, and they insisted on creating the TSA as a unionized, federal agency (airport security had been private and local before that). Bush, always a man to go along to get along, agreed to many of the things that liberal Democrats demanded. Even the Patriot Act, which was so vilified by the Left as Fascism, had strong bipartisan support.
But the Bush/Hitler analogy played through the last decade anyway.
Here is just one example.
http://www.wnd.com/2005/02/28864/
A piece of "artwork" juxtaposing Nazis and Bush over the Iraq war won a prize and was exhibited.
There were other examples, many of them. Margaret Cho famously said Bush could be Hitler if he applied himself. Moron.ogr, er, Moveon.org concurred as did their financier George Soros. So did Naomi Wolf.
But, as I pointed out about the Wolf piece, the really big shew fits Mr. Obama better.
www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obamas_fascist_america_in_10_easy_steps.html
And be not mistaken, Fascism is something solidly rooted in the Left.http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/ Bush expanded government, spent a lot of money, and expanded the military, but he also cut taxes. Obama has cut military spending but has funnelled huge amounts of money into INTERNAL military forces (under the guise of the TSA and DHS). He has greatly expanded surveillance on American citizens. He has used the power of government to suppress political dissent and to silence opposition prior to the last election. He has used regulatory power to enrich big donors and to damage those who are not. He is the quintessential Fascist with a smiling face.
There are ten planks set forth by Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto. They are:
1.Abolition of Property in Land and Application of all Rents of Land to Public Purpose.
2. A Heavy Progressive or Graduated Income Tax.
3.Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance.
4.Confiscation of the Property of All Emigrants and Rebels.
5.Centralization of Credit in the Hands of the State, by Means of a National Bank with State Capital and an Exclusive Monopoly.
6.Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transport in the Hands of the State.
7.Extension of Factories and Instruments of Production Owned by the State, the Bringing Into Cultivation of Waste Lands, and the Improvement of the Soil Generally in Accordance with a Common Plan.
8.Equal Liability of All to Labor. Establishment of Industrial Armies, Especially for Agriculture.
9 Combination of Agriculture with Manufacturing Industries; Gradual Abolition of the Distinction Between Town and Country by a More Equable Distribution of the Population over the Country.
10.Free Education for All Children in Public Schools. Abolition of Children's Factory Labor in it's Present Form. Combination of Education with Industrial Production.
As you can see, many of these have already happened here in the U.S., and many of them are part of the current Administration efforts. The U.S. owns almost thirty percent of all the land in this country, for instance, and manages to regulate the rest through the EPA. We have a heavy, progressive income tax. Inheritance is taxed fairly heavily. The U.S. has gone after tax havens to seize money owned by those who would shelter their money. Credit is centralized under the Federal Reserve, and the reforms made after the Housing Bubble collapsed has made credit even more heavily regulated. Mr. Obama is going after the internet in a number of ways in order to centralize communications, and of course he heavily regulates air travel. He has artificially kept gasoline prices high to restrict travel by car. He has nationalized GM and Chrysler, and the U.S. has, through Qualitative Easing, purchased stock in many companies. Part of the amnesty plan is geered toward establishing armeis of agriculture. There has been a concerted war on the family farm by this Administration, with the net result being the rise of big factory farms. Common Core seeks to nationalize all education.
Mr. Obama didn't start the trend toward fulfilling Marx, but he sure has accelerated it.
But it is Hitler whom the current Administration seems to emulate.
Hitler instituted universal healthcare. Hitler instituted credit reform. Hitler instituted government funded family planning (Sandra Fluke anyone?) Hitler instituted a regulatory regime for industry.
Even the New York Times has admitted that Obama's economic policies are quite similar to those of the Third Reich. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2009/04/03/nytimes-obamas-economic-ideas-great-just-hitlers-were
And now his political approach can be seen as quite Hitlerian.
One of the Left's oldest tactics is to accuse their enemies of doing exactly what they themselves are doing. This audacity guarantees a free pass for themselves, because the public could never believe someone would have the nerve to use their own sins as a bludgeon. Joseph Goebbles called this The Big Lie; if you are going to lie tell one so large nobody could believe you are lying. They did this with Bush; beat the Hitler drum through an entire decade so that when they were in power the comparison could not be made. It's a strategy that works, too.
Here is a decent comparative study. http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/many-of-obama-s-policies-similar-to-hitler-s/article_8e0c3578-22c5-11e2-bfec-0019bb2963f4.html
But in the end, the stench of the Third Reich - and of Uncle Joe Stalin - remains with them, not with us. Small comfort when one has an iron boot on the throat.
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Skew the Vote; the Conspiracy to Crush ;a Conservative Voter-Integrity Group
Timothy Birdnow
True the Vote has been targeted by multiple Federal and State Agencies, and the inconsequentiality - and the variety of accusations - suggests a purposeful, coordinated campaign to silence one of the Democrats most potent critics.
Robert Romano at Net Right Daily has this to say;
http://netrightdaily.com/2013/05/who-coordinated-multi-agency-attack-on-tea-party-group/#ixzz2U1NDAfd5
"Engelbrecht was hit up not just by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in delaying True the Vote’s still-unapproved application for tax-exempt status with mountains of invasive and improper follow-up questions — but also by the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration (Department of Labor) of Engelbrecht Manufacturing; several rounds of questioning by the FBI (Department of Justice) concerning her local meet up group, King Street Patriots; two audits by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Department of Justice) of her manufacturing plant; a separate IRS audit of her family business and personal income tax returns; and another audit by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
As reported by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review, this targeting resulted in a $17,500 fine from OSHA, plus a demand by the Texas agency for Engelbrecht to spend $42,000 for additional storage sheds, notes Breitbart.com’s Brandon Darby. The Texas targeting was supposedly the result of "a complaint being called in.”
The OSHA fine came after "the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it,” Melchior reports the Engelbrechts saying.
Engelbrecht’s difficulties apparently originate with a 2010 skirmish with the Texas Democrat Party, which filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliate, charging the group had acted as a political action committee by providing poll watchers.
On top of all that, True the Vote became subject to congressional scrutiny, Melchior notes, by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a letter to Department of Justice’s Thomas Perez — coincidentally Obama’s pick to head up the Labor Department — urging the group be investigated for "voter suppression.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote a letter directly to Englebrecht accusing her group of "illegal voter suppression” that if "intentional, politically-motivated, and widespread across multiple states they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”
End excerpt.
If this were an isolated incident one could perhaps excuse it or claim it was a bad bunch, but it is not an isolated incident; we are learning of numerous Tea Party groups that have been targeted by the IRS, as well as Fox News journalists targeted for alleged national security leaks, etc. More people are coming forward all of the time, claiming they were harassed or strongarmed prior to the last election. True the Vote, which is capable of damaging the very core of the Democrats vote-stealing scheme, was perhaps the most logical target for intimidation.
What we are witnessing is staggering; a concerted effort, financed largely by U.S. taxpayers via the stimulus and everyday government entities, to intimidate and silence critics of the ruling junta. This is more worthy of the Bolsheviks than of America's liberal democracy.
Some may argue this is mere coincidence. Romano has an answer;
"The most charitable explanation is that this was a spontaneous state and federal party opposition to Engelbrecht’s group, along with several unrelated inquiries by state and federal government offices, including law enforcement, all going after the same group. That, simply put, they all had the same idea at exactly the same time and nobody talked to one another.
But, the chances of each subsequent visit and inquiry by a government agency without cause being a mere coincidence are infinitesimal, if not impossible. It strains believability."
End quote.
During the Bush Administration a very humorless comedian named Margaret Cho said of George W. Bush "he isn't Hitler, he could be Hitler if he $%@#$%ing applied himself"
It looks like she found some who are quite dilligent in applying themselves
True the Vote has been targeted by multiple Federal and State Agencies, and the inconsequentiality - and the variety of accusations - suggests a purposeful, coordinated campaign to silence one of the Democrats most potent critics.
Robert Romano at Net Right Daily has this to say;
http://netrightdaily.com/2013/05/who-coordinated-multi-agency-attack-on-tea-party-group/#ixzz2U1NDAfd5
"Engelbrecht was hit up not just by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in delaying True the Vote’s still-unapproved application for tax-exempt status with mountains of invasive and improper follow-up questions — but also by the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration (Department of Labor) of Engelbrecht Manufacturing; several rounds of questioning by the FBI (Department of Justice) concerning her local meet up group, King Street Patriots; two audits by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (Department of Justice) of her manufacturing plant; a separate IRS audit of her family business and personal income tax returns; and another audit by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
As reported by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review, this targeting resulted in a $17,500 fine from OSHA, plus a demand by the Texas agency for Engelbrecht to spend $42,000 for additional storage sheds, notes Breitbart.com’s Brandon Darby. The Texas targeting was supposedly the result of "a complaint being called in.”
The OSHA fine came after "the OSHA inspector complimented them on their tightly run shop and said she didn’t know why she had been sent to examine it,” Melchior reports the Engelbrechts saying.
Engelbrecht’s difficulties apparently originate with a 2010 skirmish with the Texas Democrat Party, which filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliate, charging the group had acted as a political action committee by providing poll watchers.
On top of all that, True the Vote became subject to congressional scrutiny, Melchior notes, by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in a letter to Department of Justice’s Thomas Perez — coincidentally Obama’s pick to head up the Labor Department — urging the group be investigated for "voter suppression.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote a letter directly to Englebrecht accusing her group of "illegal voter suppression” that if "intentional, politically-motivated, and widespread across multiple states they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.”
End excerpt.
If this were an isolated incident one could perhaps excuse it or claim it was a bad bunch, but it is not an isolated incident; we are learning of numerous Tea Party groups that have been targeted by the IRS, as well as Fox News journalists targeted for alleged national security leaks, etc. More people are coming forward all of the time, claiming they were harassed or strongarmed prior to the last election. True the Vote, which is capable of damaging the very core of the Democrats vote-stealing scheme, was perhaps the most logical target for intimidation.
What we are witnessing is staggering; a concerted effort, financed largely by U.S. taxpayers via the stimulus and everyday government entities, to intimidate and silence critics of the ruling junta. This is more worthy of the Bolsheviks than of America's liberal democracy.
Some may argue this is mere coincidence. Romano has an answer;
"The most charitable explanation is that this was a spontaneous state and federal party opposition to Engelbrecht’s group, along with several unrelated inquiries by state and federal government offices, including law enforcement, all going after the same group. That, simply put, they all had the same idea at exactly the same time and nobody talked to one another.
But, the chances of each subsequent visit and inquiry by a government agency without cause being a mere coincidence are infinitesimal, if not impossible. It strains believability."
End quote.
During the Bush Administration a very humorless comedian named Margaret Cho said of George W. Bush "he isn't Hitler, he could be Hitler if he $%@#$%ing applied himself"
It looks like she found some who are quite dilligent in applying themselves
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More on the (Rotten) Core
A.J. Cameron
Hey, gang!
The 1st of the 3 columns addresses education. It is lengthy. There are 2
parts, and Common Core is discussed in part 2, but part 1 provides a history of
why we are where we are today. I urge you to read this ASAP so we can act
accordingly!
These are evil people & this transcend the political ideological divide. It is
distressing to read about people who have been held out as people we can trust,
only to find they are as much of a hood rat as those who know we can't trust.
We need to take ownership of our country, educational system, etc., & demand
those in government dance to our strings, not the puppeteers' strings, a
majority of whom are not even U. S. citizens.
For Catholics, and many Christians, last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. We need
to invite the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit into our fight against
those who have conspired to seek our destruction.
A. J.
News with views header
May 21, 2013
Click Here to see our Selection of DVDs and Books
Local school boards are being replaced, stripped of power
Apparently the United States views the citizens as tools to be manipulated in order to implement the prearranged United Nations plan. Included in a packet of materials I received from a concerned citizen was a statement from Minnesota to Mr. Holland. "I am appalled that my government is running propaganda campaigns among the citizenry reminiscent of Chairman Mao’s many political campaigns in Communist China.”.....
http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest232.htm
by Ann Herzer, M.A
Goldworth.com
Click on the banner and order this historic masterpiece
Virginia’s Cuccinelli Battles Democrats, Media
The Washington Post apparently doesn’t care how ridiculous it looks as it embarks on the process of destroying Ken Cuccinelli and other Republican candidates for top statewide offices in Virginia. After Cuccinelli won the gubernatorial nomination, the Post stories looked like press releases from the Democratic Party. The front-page online Washington Post headline proclaimed, "Virginia GOP leans far to the right.......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff731.htm
by Cliff Kincaid
PROTECT YOUR FUTURE
Our devalued currency and war against the dollar Our devalued currency and war against the dollar. Protect your assets with the only real money - gold. Call Harvey Gordin at USA Gold Vault today - 602-228-8203.
--USAGoldVault.com
The Lady and the Snake
The liberals of this nation have been quite busy and quite focused as they "progress” with their socialist agenda in this nation. The Conservative-Republic has compromised to appease, and we trusted those we elected to do as they campaigned to do… but… each campaign – each election seems to once again voice the same promises regarding the same issues critical to this nation......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Schoeneberg/beth102.htm
by Beth Schoeneberg
Hey, gang!
The 1st of the 3 columns addresses education. It is lengthy. There are 2
parts, and Common Core is discussed in part 2, but part 1 provides a history of
why we are where we are today. I urge you to read this ASAP so we can act
accordingly!
These are evil people & this transcend the political ideological divide. It is
distressing to read about people who have been held out as people we can trust,
only to find they are as much of a hood rat as those who know we can't trust.
We need to take ownership of our country, educational system, etc., & demand
those in government dance to our strings, not the puppeteers' strings, a
majority of whom are not even U. S. citizens.
For Catholics, and many Christians, last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. We need
to invite the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit into our fight against
those who have conspired to seek our destruction.
A. J.
News with views header
May 21, 2013
Click Here to see our Selection of DVDs and Books
Local school boards are being replaced, stripped of power
Apparently the United States views the citizens as tools to be manipulated in order to implement the prearranged United Nations plan. Included in a packet of materials I received from a concerned citizen was a statement from Minnesota to Mr. Holland. "I am appalled that my government is running propaganda campaigns among the citizenry reminiscent of Chairman Mao’s many political campaigns in Communist China.”.....
http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest232.htm
by Ann Herzer, M.A
Goldworth.com
Click on the banner and order this historic masterpiece
Virginia’s Cuccinelli Battles Democrats, Media
The Washington Post apparently doesn’t care how ridiculous it looks as it embarks on the process of destroying Ken Cuccinelli and other Republican candidates for top statewide offices in Virginia. After Cuccinelli won the gubernatorial nomination, the Post stories looked like press releases from the Democratic Party. The front-page online Washington Post headline proclaimed, "Virginia GOP leans far to the right.......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff731.htm
by Cliff Kincaid
PROTECT YOUR FUTURE
Our devalued currency and war against the dollar Our devalued currency and war against the dollar. Protect your assets with the only real money - gold. Call Harvey Gordin at USA Gold Vault today - 602-228-8203.
--USAGoldVault.com
The Lady and the Snake
The liberals of this nation have been quite busy and quite focused as they "progress” with their socialist agenda in this nation. The Conservative-Republic has compromised to appease, and we trusted those we elected to do as they campaigned to do… but… each campaign – each election seems to once again voice the same promises regarding the same issues critical to this nation......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Schoeneberg/beth102.htm
by Beth Schoeneberg
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May 21, 2013
Cooking the AGW Books
Timothy Birdnow
Tom Nelson shows that our friend John Cook of the farcically named Skeptical Science has cooked the global warming books, claiming such "denier" luminaries as Craig Idso published pro-global warming papers.
Don't believe that "97% of scientists agree" nonsense.
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More Fox People Targeted by IRS
Timothy Birdnow
Two more Fox reporters were targeted by the BHO Administration.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/05/20/doj-secretly-monitored-three-fox-news-reports-n1601625
In addition to targeting James Rosen we now learn they went after William LaJeunesse who was covering Fast and Furious, and senior producer Mike Levin.
Predictably, White House Press Secretary Jay carney refused to comment.
Two more Fox reporters were targeted by the BHO Administration.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/05/20/doj-secretly-monitored-three-fox-news-reports-n1601625
In addition to targeting James Rosen we now learn they went after William LaJeunesse who was covering Fast and Furious, and senior producer Mike Levin.
Predictably, White House Press Secretary Jay carney refused to comment.
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GOP Bosses Preparing to Cave on Benghazi
Timothy Birdnow
Once again, Boehner and the GOP elites want to crawl back into their burrows and hide from the face of Barack the Almighty.
From the Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/19/republicans-weigh-risks-benefits-of-select-committ/#ixzz2Tuj7bcGB
"House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has resisted — largely, analysts say, because the long-term political risks of a high-profile probe could outweigh any short-term benefit.
"This issue is not a sure-fire winner politically for the Republicans unless there is some bombshell that can be surfaced through a hearing in a select committee that has not already been surfaced by the multiple hearings that have been held so far,” said Christopher A. Preble, who has monitored the Benghazi scandal from his office at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
"If you spend a lot of time and there’s no additional information that comes out through the process, then you have the appearance of having, at a minimum, wasted a lot of time on a fairly insignificant matter,” Mr. Preble said.
Wasting a lot of time, he said, means that the Republican focus on Benghazi "just might reflect poorly on the party” as the November 2014 congressional elections approach."
End excerpt.
Oh my; because this may not be a route for the GoP we should not pursue it! That is the thinking of the GOP and the Cato Institute, apparently.
Sun Tzu - the Chinese military philosophyer - once said "opportunities multiply as they are seized" meaning a risk taken boldly will give you a whole new landscape of opportunity, but to dither and failt to take advantage when opportunity knocks will keep you stuck in the mud. George McClellan proved this during the Civil War; Robert E. Lee ran rings around him, even though he had more men, was better armed and equipped and had better training and supplies. What he didn't have was the will to fight, and so the Army of the Potomac remained moribund while Lee's forces kept him at bay. U.S. Grant, on the other hand, never sat around waiting, and he ended up dominating the West and eventually split the Confederacy. Why? He had the courage to go after the enemy. He did not sit and wait.
The GOP is the party of McClellan on steroids.
If they are unwilling to fight over Benghazi they are unwilling to fight for anything. Cowards.
Benghazi reeks. There was so clearly a series of lies told, of coverups, and of general mismanagement if nothing worse. The Democrats are in full cover up mode, saying "move along; nothing to see here" and the media is backing this to the hilt, but the reality is there most assuredly IS something to see. Where was the President? He simply disappeared during a long, drawn out attack. Why were no attempts made to scramble jets? Even if you didn't think the attack would last long enough, any even marginally competent manager would know to at least try. Why were we using native security when we knew something was immanent? I'm sorry, but this whole affair is extremely curious, and the public deserve answers. And then the whole "youtube video" mantra from the Administration (and the maker of this silly video still rots in jail, a political prisoner, and we are to say nothing?)
If Boehner and the GOP can't pursue this they are worthless, and we have no need of them. The most pucillanimous Democrat would be all over this.
And if they won't pursue this, will they pursue Fast and Furious? Is that "old news" that we must drop? How about the IRS scandal? Does it not occur to the GOP that the Administration has kept the lid on these scandals until now, hoping to overwhelm the public and frighten the GOP, who would fear overreach by pursuing multiple avenues? Clinton did that sort of thing during his Administration, and Hillary was a principle in both. Boehner and company are being led by the nose.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the GOP is madder than a march hare.
Once again, Boehner and the GOP elites want to crawl back into their burrows and hide from the face of Barack the Almighty.
From the Washington Times:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/19/republicans-weigh-risks-benefits-of-select-committ/#ixzz2Tuj7bcGB
"House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has resisted — largely, analysts say, because the long-term political risks of a high-profile probe could outweigh any short-term benefit.
"This issue is not a sure-fire winner politically for the Republicans unless there is some bombshell that can be surfaced through a hearing in a select committee that has not already been surfaced by the multiple hearings that have been held so far,” said Christopher A. Preble, who has monitored the Benghazi scandal from his office at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
"If you spend a lot of time and there’s no additional information that comes out through the process, then you have the appearance of having, at a minimum, wasted a lot of time on a fairly insignificant matter,” Mr. Preble said.
Wasting a lot of time, he said, means that the Republican focus on Benghazi "just might reflect poorly on the party” as the November 2014 congressional elections approach."
End excerpt.
Oh my; because this may not be a route for the GoP we should not pursue it! That is the thinking of the GOP and the Cato Institute, apparently.
Sun Tzu - the Chinese military philosophyer - once said "opportunities multiply as they are seized" meaning a risk taken boldly will give you a whole new landscape of opportunity, but to dither and failt to take advantage when opportunity knocks will keep you stuck in the mud. George McClellan proved this during the Civil War; Robert E. Lee ran rings around him, even though he had more men, was better armed and equipped and had better training and supplies. What he didn't have was the will to fight, and so the Army of the Potomac remained moribund while Lee's forces kept him at bay. U.S. Grant, on the other hand, never sat around waiting, and he ended up dominating the West and eventually split the Confederacy. Why? He had the courage to go after the enemy. He did not sit and wait.
The GOP is the party of McClellan on steroids.
If they are unwilling to fight over Benghazi they are unwilling to fight for anything. Cowards.
Benghazi reeks. There was so clearly a series of lies told, of coverups, and of general mismanagement if nothing worse. The Democrats are in full cover up mode, saying "move along; nothing to see here" and the media is backing this to the hilt, but the reality is there most assuredly IS something to see. Where was the President? He simply disappeared during a long, drawn out attack. Why were no attempts made to scramble jets? Even if you didn't think the attack would last long enough, any even marginally competent manager would know to at least try. Why were we using native security when we knew something was immanent? I'm sorry, but this whole affair is extremely curious, and the public deserve answers. And then the whole "youtube video" mantra from the Administration (and the maker of this silly video still rots in jail, a political prisoner, and we are to say nothing?)
If Boehner and the GOP can't pursue this they are worthless, and we have no need of them. The most pucillanimous Democrat would be all over this.
And if they won't pursue this, will they pursue Fast and Furious? Is that "old news" that we must drop? How about the IRS scandal? Does it not occur to the GOP that the Administration has kept the lid on these scandals until now, hoping to overwhelm the public and frighten the GOP, who would fear overreach by pursuing multiple avenues? Clinton did that sort of thing during his Administration, and Hillary was a principle in both. Boehner and company are being led by the nose.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, the GOP is madder than a march hare.
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Military power grab
Dana Mathewson
If this doesn't scare the pants off you, you aren't wearing any! The military has just quietly granted itself total police power!
"By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled "Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries." [Emphasis mine]
"The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of "civil disturbances.” According to the rule:
Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances."
Scary, no? The fact that it is so vague is bad enough. What's worse is that it speaks about "temporary," and we all know that once a government entity grabs power it never wants to give it up. There's no such thing as "temporary" in the government lexicon.
The entire article is here -- long but I'd consider it required reading! http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/05/14/u-s-military-power-grab-goes-into-effect/
If this doesn't scare the pants off you, you aren't wearing any! The military has just quietly granted itself total police power!
"By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled "Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries." [Emphasis mine]
"The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of "civil disturbances.” According to the rule:
Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances."
Scary, no? The fact that it is so vague is bad enough. What's worse is that it speaks about "temporary," and we all know that once a government entity grabs power it never wants to give it up. There's no such thing as "temporary" in the government lexicon.
The entire article is here -- long but I'd consider it required reading! http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/05/14/u-s-military-power-grab-goes-into-effect/
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Big Green helps Big Wind hide bird and bat butchery
Paul Driessen
The saga – the con job – of wind energy just gets worse and worse, the more you study it. And we’re paying for it with our hard-earned tax dollars.
This time, Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold weighs in on the issue, citing a new study by researcher Teresa Platt and still more damning facts about the way wind turbines are destroying America’s wildlife, especially our raptor and bat populations … in the name of saving the planet from illusory climate change catastrophes. The real catastrophe is what these monstrous "Cuisinarts of the air” are doing to our natural environment and people’s health and lives
Ron Arnold
Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass?
It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that's like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. "It” is wind power, of course.
These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.
"Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, "the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.
I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. "Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, "while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”
Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.
Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration.
So Big Oil clearly doesn’t have an Obama Big Wind Get Out of Jail Free card. This unaccounted wind industry bird-killer subsidy reveals a federal multiple personality disorder that must be cured.
Domestic oil and gas production is setting records – thanks to fracking on state and private lands, despite efforts by Obama, Cuomo, Brown and environmentalist lunatic groups to slow or stop it, and despite Obama and Comrades continuing to shut down ANWR, OCS and other federal drilling opportunities.
We could totally end reliance on Middle East oil, if we would drill more here and permit Keystone XL pipeline. Instead, Obama is still pushing wind and solar, and working with "green” industry to minimize or conceal impacts, while subsidizing renewable energy to the tune of HYPERLINK "http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/05/08/does-11-million-jobs/" $11.4 million per permanent job.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hedges its annual windmill bird death estimates at between 100,000 to 444,000 dead birds. That smells like political appointees and staff biologists had both insisted on publishing their numbers – and too many staff biologists promote Big Wind, don’t want bird butchery to hurt Big Wind’s "eco-friendly” image, and don’t want to cross swords with subsidy-hungry politicians.
This body count issue has become a genuine data war, with experts hurling "my data are better than your data” cudgels at each other in the press and scientific literature. For example, a 2013 report by K. Shawn Smallwood estimates that in the U.S. in 2012, some 573,000 birds (including 83,000 raptors) were killed by wind turbines, at a rate of 11 birds per MW of installed capacity.
That’s ridiculously low-balled, says Jim Wiegand, California raptor specialist and Berkeley-trained wildlife biologist. I asked Wiegand what the real number was. "At least 2 million birds per year,” he told me, "and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if over 10 million birds were killed each year by wind turbines.”
Wiegand is an on-the-ground, count-the-corpses type of wildlife biologist who does not take anyone’s word for the facts – a basic requirement of real science. Wiegand’s motto could be "Go and look.”
Therein lies Wiegand’s most potent argument for the Smallwood study’s underestimation: The wind industry has adopted bird-death counting standards that limit counts, so the results look lower than reality: Counters go and look only every 30 to 90 days – letting scavengers remove and devour large numbers of dead birds, artificially lowering the body count. Counters examine only a very small footprint around the windmill tower base – artificially lowering body counts. Rotor blade tips can be whirling at 200 miles per hour, enough to whack an unfortunate bird "out of the ball park” – far beyond the little counting circle, out where nobody looks, artificially lowering body counts even more. Some critics accuse counters of simply burying some troublesome corpses – the old "slice, shovel and shut up” routine.
Rebutting Smallwood’s report, Wiegand told me, "In my opinion, there are at least 35 bird deaths per megawatt per year across the country. Some turbines kill several hundred birds per megawatt, depending on their location. In high bird use areas like the Kenedy Ranch turbine site in Texas, I believe proper studies on would easily show several hundred bird deaths per megawatt per year.”
The wind power industry must also share responsibility for bird deaths caused by super-long high-tension lines from distant turbines to cities. A 2007 report estimated the number of such mortality due to collisions on the wing to be at least 130 million, possibly as high a 1 billion, birds per year.
And these numbers are just for birds. We don’t often think about bat benefits, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimates bats are worth $74 in pest control costs per acre – and windmills may have killed more than 3 million bats by last year. A small bat eats about 680,000 insects a year, so 3 million dead bats means 2 billion mosquitoes and other insects that shouldn’t be here are still flying around.
Those numbers are likely way too low, as well. Windmill-caused bat mortality statistics, like bird death numbers, are hotly contested with estimates running into the multi-millions every year.
Wind is usually touted as using no fuel, particularly no fossil fuel. That’s a clever deception. Windmills don’t work when it’s too hot or too cold, or when the wind blows too hard or not at all. So they need a backup, which is usually a coal- or oil- or gas-fired power plant.
Also, every windmill comes with a power line, which comes with a maintenance road, which comes with CO2-emitting traffic. Nobody’s counting that. Why not?
Then there’s SF6, sulfur hexafluoride, the most potent greenhouse gas evaluated by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with a global warming potential 22,800 times that of CO2. It’s used to insulate equipment inside wind turbines, their related infrastructure and transmission lines. It may leak during installation or maintenance. or from damaged, aging or destroyed equipment.
Speaking of which, the average service life of a windmill is between 10 and 15 years – not the 20 to 25 years claimed by turbine operators, says a 2012 study by Britain’s Renewable Energy Foundation.
Falmouth, Massachusetts has the right idea. The town voted 110-91 to remove its two 400-foot industrial wind turbines for health and nuisance reasons. The only problem is paying the $15 million price tag for removal. They need to borrow $8 million to get the job done.
Maybe some powerful Big Green group – think the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council – will step forward to save Falmouth? Fat chance. They’re in love with bird and bat butchering turbines.
Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report appeared originally in the Washington Examiner and are used by permission.
The saga – the con job – of wind energy just gets worse and worse, the more you study it. And we’re paying for it with our hard-earned tax dollars.
This time, Washington Examiner columnist Ron Arnold weighs in on the issue, citing a new study by researcher Teresa Platt and still more damning facts about the way wind turbines are destroying America’s wildlife, especially our raptor and bat populations … in the name of saving the planet from illusory climate change catastrophes. The real catastrophe is what these monstrous "Cuisinarts of the air” are doing to our natural environment and people’s health and lives
Ron Arnold
Why do taxpayers have to subsidize this? Why do environmentalists give it a free pass?
It uses tons of fossil fuels every day, emits a greenhouse gas that's like CO2 on steroids, can’t do the job it’s made for, costs taxpayers exorbitant fees, and makes the federal government look mentally ill for giving it outrageous subsidies. It also chops up birds, bats and scenery with roads and monstrous 400-foot-tall machines. "It” is wind power, of course.
These harsh facts were condensed into a preliminary draft study of wind subsidies by researcher Teresa Platt, who circulated it to specialists for vetting. I obtained a copy of the extensively footnoted working draft, which gave chilling reality to the truth behind wind industry claims.
"Every year since the 1980s,” Platt’s study said, "the 5,000 turbines at NextEra’s Altamont Pass in California kill thousands of slow-reproducing red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls, kestrels, as well as iconic golden eagles, and bats.” The birds Platt mentions are raptors – birds of prey – particularly valued for their agricultural role in killing mice and other crop-damaging rodents. Eagles, both golden eagles and bald eagles, have long impressed Americans for their majesty, and the bald eagle was selected by our Founding Fathers as our national emblem.
I asked Bob Johns, spokesman for the American Bird Conservancy, about wind farm eagle mortality. He confirmed Platt’s study and told me the Altamont operation alone has killed more than 2,000 golden eagles. But that’s not all. "Nationwide, the wind industry kills thousands of golden eagles without prosecution,” Johns said, "while any other American citizen even possessing eagle parts such as feathers would face huge fines and prison time.”
Huge is right. Violate either the Migratory Bird Treaty Act or the Eagle Protection Act, and you could get fined up to $250,000 or get two years imprisonment.
Not a single wind farm operator has yet been prosecuted for killing birds, yet in 2009 ExxonMobil got whacked with a $600,000 fine for killing 85 common ducks and other birds that flew into uncovered tanks on its property. Other similarly outrageous revenge-style penalties have been assessed on oil companies by the viciously ideological anti-fossil fuel Obama administration.
So Big Oil clearly doesn’t have an Obama Big Wind Get Out of Jail Free card. This unaccounted wind industry bird-killer subsidy reveals a federal multiple personality disorder that must be cured.
Domestic oil and gas production is setting records – thanks to fracking on state and private lands, despite efforts by Obama, Cuomo, Brown and environmentalist lunatic groups to slow or stop it, and despite Obama and Comrades continuing to shut down ANWR, OCS and other federal drilling opportunities.
We could totally end reliance on Middle East oil, if we would drill more here and permit Keystone XL pipeline. Instead, Obama is still pushing wind and solar, and working with "green” industry to minimize or conceal impacts, while subsidizing renewable energy to the tune of HYPERLINK "http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/05/08/does-11-million-jobs/" $11.4 million per permanent job.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hedges its annual windmill bird death estimates at between 100,000 to 444,000 dead birds. That smells like political appointees and staff biologists had both insisted on publishing their numbers – and too many staff biologists promote Big Wind, don’t want bird butchery to hurt Big Wind’s "eco-friendly” image, and don’t want to cross swords with subsidy-hungry politicians.
This body count issue has become a genuine data war, with experts hurling "my data are better than your data” cudgels at each other in the press and scientific literature. For example, a 2013 report by K. Shawn Smallwood estimates that in the U.S. in 2012, some 573,000 birds (including 83,000 raptors) were killed by wind turbines, at a rate of 11 birds per MW of installed capacity.
That’s ridiculously low-balled, says Jim Wiegand, California raptor specialist and Berkeley-trained wildlife biologist. I asked Wiegand what the real number was. "At least 2 million birds per year,” he told me, "and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if over 10 million birds were killed each year by wind turbines.”
Wiegand is an on-the-ground, count-the-corpses type of wildlife biologist who does not take anyone’s word for the facts – a basic requirement of real science. Wiegand’s motto could be "Go and look.”
Therein lies Wiegand’s most potent argument for the Smallwood study’s underestimation: The wind industry has adopted bird-death counting standards that limit counts, so the results look lower than reality: Counters go and look only every 30 to 90 days – letting scavengers remove and devour large numbers of dead birds, artificially lowering the body count. Counters examine only a very small footprint around the windmill tower base – artificially lowering body counts. Rotor blade tips can be whirling at 200 miles per hour, enough to whack an unfortunate bird "out of the ball park” – far beyond the little counting circle, out where nobody looks, artificially lowering body counts even more. Some critics accuse counters of simply burying some troublesome corpses – the old "slice, shovel and shut up” routine.
Rebutting Smallwood’s report, Wiegand told me, "In my opinion, there are at least 35 bird deaths per megawatt per year across the country. Some turbines kill several hundred birds per megawatt, depending on their location. In high bird use areas like the Kenedy Ranch turbine site in Texas, I believe proper studies on would easily show several hundred bird deaths per megawatt per year.”
The wind power industry must also share responsibility for bird deaths caused by super-long high-tension lines from distant turbines to cities. A 2007 report estimated the number of such mortality due to collisions on the wing to be at least 130 million, possibly as high a 1 billion, birds per year.
And these numbers are just for birds. We don’t often think about bat benefits, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimates bats are worth $74 in pest control costs per acre – and windmills may have killed more than 3 million bats by last year. A small bat eats about 680,000 insects a year, so 3 million dead bats means 2 billion mosquitoes and other insects that shouldn’t be here are still flying around.
Those numbers are likely way too low, as well. Windmill-caused bat mortality statistics, like bird death numbers, are hotly contested with estimates running into the multi-millions every year.
Wind is usually touted as using no fuel, particularly no fossil fuel. That’s a clever deception. Windmills don’t work when it’s too hot or too cold, or when the wind blows too hard or not at all. So they need a backup, which is usually a coal- or oil- or gas-fired power plant.
Also, every windmill comes with a power line, which comes with a maintenance road, which comes with CO2-emitting traffic. Nobody’s counting that. Why not?
Then there’s SF6, sulfur hexafluoride, the most potent greenhouse gas evaluated by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with a global warming potential 22,800 times that of CO2. It’s used to insulate equipment inside wind turbines, their related infrastructure and transmission lines. It may leak during installation or maintenance. or from damaged, aging or destroyed equipment.
Speaking of which, the average service life of a windmill is between 10 and 15 years – not the 20 to 25 years claimed by turbine operators, says a 2012 study by Britain’s Renewable Energy Foundation.
Falmouth, Massachusetts has the right idea. The town voted 110-91 to remove its two 400-foot industrial wind turbines for health and nuisance reasons. The only problem is paying the $15 million price tag for removal. They need to borrow $8 million to get the job done.
Maybe some powerful Big Green group – think the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council – will step forward to save Falmouth? Fat chance. They’re in love with bird and bat butchering turbines.
Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report appeared originally in the Washington Examiner and are used by permission.
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May 20, 2013
Climate Scientists Agree: Flouride Toothpaste Whitens your Smile, but Global Warming???
Timothy Birdnow
97% of climate scientists agree Man is causing Global Warming?
Horse poo.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/17/to-john-cook-it-isnt-hate-its-pity-pity-for-having-such-a-weak-argument-you-are-forced-to-fabricate-in-epic-proportions/
John Cook, the Wizard of Odd from Skeptical Science, a terribly misnamed defender of the AGW orthodoxy, has published paper claiming a 97% agreement rate among scientists that Global Warming is caused by human industrial emissions. Barack Obama even sent Cook a tweet.
To determine this Cook looked at research papers - the same trick used by Nancy Oreskes years ago to make the original claim. According to Watts:
"Here’s the genesis of the lie. When you take a result of 32.6% of all papers that accept AGW, ignoring the 66% that don’t, and twist that into 97%, excluding any mention of that original value in your media reports, there’s nothing else to call it – a lie of presidential proportions.
From the original press release about the paper:
Exhibit 1:
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Exhibit 2:
"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.”
End excerpt.
See, 66% did not mention whether Global Warming was caused by humans, and 32.6% did. Somehow that translates into 97%. Cook made the assumption that not specifically saying AGW was hooey constituted an endorsement. It is a classic way to manipulate data.
And let us not forget that a good many papers do not get published by science journals if they contradict the orthodoxy. The Climategate e-mails show that there was a conspiracy a-foot to keep "deniar" papers out of the mainstream journals and there was constant pressure on editors to block them, as well as an inside club of "expert reviewers" to hold the line. This was another of the dirty tricks used by the Gang Green; keep "deniar" literature outside of "acceptable science" then dismiss it for not being published.
Also, lots of money has flowed into the field as a result of AGW and climatologists do not want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Naturally there are quite a few alarmist papers out there for Crook, er, Cook to chose from. When something is subsidized it flourishes, and scientific literature is no different.
Furthermore, this is to be expected; nobody is going to do a paper trying to prove a negative. Naturally they will remain at best agnostic in issuing formal conclusions, since everyone is agreed that it did warm in the twentieth century (under 1*) and that human activity may have played a part. That is hardly grounds for saying everyone is in agreement; there are things people do (such as cut down trees) that impact the climate. Land use certainly has an effect. But that does not mean the author of a paper agrees that carbon dioxide is driving temperatures up in a catastrophic way.
Watts also gives us this update:
(Update: some folks aren’t getting the significance of Schollenberger’s findings, using Cook’s own data and code, which have been shown to be replicable at Lucia’s comment thread, Schollenberger finds 65 that say AGW/human caused, but there’s 78 that reject AGW. Cook never reported that finding in the paper, thus becoming a lie of omission, because it blows the conclusion. Combine that with the lack of reporting of the 32.6%/66.1% ratio in Cook’s own blog post and media reports, and we have further lies of omission.)
There were some excellent comments there, too (Watts' site has some of the brightest). Here are a few:
Greg Goodman says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:43 am
” 0.7 per cent rejected AGW”
That was NOT the question asked in the survey. Ask one thing, report another.
The survey asked whether the abstracts "minimised” AGW. Minimise means to play down. It implies bias.
Clearly no abstract will suggest it is "minimising” anything.
An author asked whether his paper minimises is almost obliged to say no.
A reviewer, without seeing the whole paper cannot assess whether this abstract minimised the evidence.
Like all surveys, it’s a case of asking the questions in the right way so as to get the response that the funder requires.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:03 am
Leif, all the papers that they examined were choosen on the words "global warming” or "global climate change”. That makes that all papers were GW related. But even so 66% didn’t explicitely endorse AGW, which is quite remarkable. The non-endorsing may be because the writers of the paper take that as a given, or don’t have and opinion or do think that it isn’t true, but don’t like to express that opinion in their paper (that could prevent publication). We don’t know, but assuming that there is a 97% consensus, based on not counting papers with an absence of opinion is not really honest…
Further, the whole work was done by reading the abstracts (as was which Oreskes did in a similar test). I have read several works where the researchers show that natural influences were far more important than the models take into account (thus in fact saying that CO2 has far less importance), but in the abstract, the AGW "consensus” was explicitely endorsed (probably because of fear that the paper wouldn’t be published otherwise). Thus in the Oreskes count as good as in this excersize, these are all part of the "consensus”…
Gary Pearse says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:04 am
lsvalgaard says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:36 am
"They didn’t reject AGW. That is what counts. What is missing in the statistics is if those papers even mentioned or discussed AGW and explicitly said ‘we have no position’. I can point you to thousands of papers from the Journal Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, and the like that have no position on AGW claim”
The 12,000 papers were specifically selected for their mention of AGW by Cook. And why should we exclude the New England J of M? Psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, ichthyologists, astronomers, railway engineers and cartoonists like Cook are all writing papers on AGW. The 66% has just as much right in there as the others. Indeed, if a survey is responded to on AGW, they do count. My surprise is that any scientists would trust a cartoonist to select the papers and to design a survey – I don’t imagine this happens in solar science.
big_e says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:26 am
Circular logic based on selection bias at best. 97% of the expert researchers in the field of Dianteics, believes that Dianteics is true, thus Dianteics is true based on the consensus of researchers who are considered experts in the field of Dianteics. Everybody better go to the Church of Scientology.
stone says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:42 am
A more sensical breakdown would be
Of the 1200 papers
0.6 percent attribute man as the primary contributor to gw
32 percent state that man has an affect on climate (but was not the main contributing factor)
66 percent showed affects on climate that had nothing to do with agw
0.7 percent entirely disproved agw
And 0.3 percent were papers that could not be certain
Gail Combs says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:42 am
Warren says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:59 am
The problem is we don’t know if the 66% didn’t address it, accepted it unquestioningly, or what? ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Correct because all that was looked at was the ABSTRACT and not the actual paper. Heck you have no idea what the actual scientist(s) thinks of CAGW or AGW without doing a very well designed unbiased BLIND study.
This study shows how the wording of the questions can make a big change in the study results.
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data
ABSTRACT
The frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct is a matter of controversy…. This is the first meta-analysis of these surveys.
… Survey questions on plagiarism and other forms of professional misconduct were excluded. The final sample consisted of 21 surveys that were included in the systematic review, and 18 in the meta-analysis.
A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words "falsification” or "fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. ….
Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.
Cook’s survey doesn’t say a darn thing about what scientists are really thinking about CAGW especially given the power of group think, peer pressure, political correctness and the almighty $$$$.
Roger Knights says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
PS: The debate is not about "the cause of recent global warming,”–that’s a warmist misdirection, and one that Obama has been misdirected by. Most contrarians accept the basic AGW idea and the attribution of much or most GW to it. We’re part of the 97%, IOW.
Rather, the debate is about how much more AGW can be anticipated. Contrarians point to the diminishing effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere and to the likely dominance of negative feedbacks over positive ones. This is the message we need to get across. (The media seems willfully obtuse in its failure to communicate our POV.
End
You get the idea.
-30-
97% of climate scientists agree Man is causing Global Warming?
Horse poo.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/17/to-john-cook-it-isnt-hate-its-pity-pity-for-having-such-a-weak-argument-you-are-forced-to-fabricate-in-epic-proportions/
John Cook, the Wizard of Odd from Skeptical Science, a terribly misnamed defender of the AGW orthodoxy, has published paper claiming a 97% agreement rate among scientists that Global Warming is caused by human industrial emissions. Barack Obama even sent Cook a tweet.
To determine this Cook looked at research papers - the same trick used by Nancy Oreskes years ago to make the original claim. According to Watts:
"Here’s the genesis of the lie. When you take a result of 32.6% of all papers that accept AGW, ignoring the 66% that don’t, and twist that into 97%, excluding any mention of that original value in your media reports, there’s nothing else to call it – a lie of presidential proportions.
From the original press release about the paper:
Exhibit 1:
From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.
Exhibit 2:
"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.”
End excerpt.
See, 66% did not mention whether Global Warming was caused by humans, and 32.6% did. Somehow that translates into 97%. Cook made the assumption that not specifically saying AGW was hooey constituted an endorsement. It is a classic way to manipulate data.
And let us not forget that a good many papers do not get published by science journals if they contradict the orthodoxy. The Climategate e-mails show that there was a conspiracy a-foot to keep "deniar" papers out of the mainstream journals and there was constant pressure on editors to block them, as well as an inside club of "expert reviewers" to hold the line. This was another of the dirty tricks used by the Gang Green; keep "deniar" literature outside of "acceptable science" then dismiss it for not being published.
Also, lots of money has flowed into the field as a result of AGW and climatologists do not want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Naturally there are quite a few alarmist papers out there for Crook, er, Cook to chose from. When something is subsidized it flourishes, and scientific literature is no different.
Furthermore, this is to be expected; nobody is going to do a paper trying to prove a negative. Naturally they will remain at best agnostic in issuing formal conclusions, since everyone is agreed that it did warm in the twentieth century (under 1*) and that human activity may have played a part. That is hardly grounds for saying everyone is in agreement; there are things people do (such as cut down trees) that impact the climate. Land use certainly has an effect. But that does not mean the author of a paper agrees that carbon dioxide is driving temperatures up in a catastrophic way.
Watts also gives us this update:
(Update: some folks aren’t getting the significance of Schollenberger’s findings, using Cook’s own data and code, which have been shown to be replicable at Lucia’s comment thread, Schollenberger finds 65 that say AGW/human caused, but there’s 78 that reject AGW. Cook never reported that finding in the paper, thus becoming a lie of omission, because it blows the conclusion. Combine that with the lack of reporting of the 32.6%/66.1% ratio in Cook’s own blog post and media reports, and we have further lies of omission.)
There were some excellent comments there, too (Watts' site has some of the brightest). Here are a few:
Greg Goodman says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:43 am
” 0.7 per cent rejected AGW”
That was NOT the question asked in the survey. Ask one thing, report another.
The survey asked whether the abstracts "minimised” AGW. Minimise means to play down. It implies bias.
Clearly no abstract will suggest it is "minimising” anything.
An author asked whether his paper minimises is almost obliged to say no.
A reviewer, without seeing the whole paper cannot assess whether this abstract minimised the evidence.
Like all surveys, it’s a case of asking the questions in the right way so as to get the response that the funder requires.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:03 am
Leif, all the papers that they examined were choosen on the words "global warming” or "global climate change”. That makes that all papers were GW related. But even so 66% didn’t explicitely endorse AGW, which is quite remarkable. The non-endorsing may be because the writers of the paper take that as a given, or don’t have and opinion or do think that it isn’t true, but don’t like to express that opinion in their paper (that could prevent publication). We don’t know, but assuming that there is a 97% consensus, based on not counting papers with an absence of opinion is not really honest…
Further, the whole work was done by reading the abstracts (as was which Oreskes did in a similar test). I have read several works where the researchers show that natural influences were far more important than the models take into account (thus in fact saying that CO2 has far less importance), but in the abstract, the AGW "consensus” was explicitely endorsed (probably because of fear that the paper wouldn’t be published otherwise). Thus in the Oreskes count as good as in this excersize, these are all part of the "consensus”…
Gary Pearse says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:04 am
lsvalgaard says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:36 am
"They didn’t reject AGW. That is what counts. What is missing in the statistics is if those papers even mentioned or discussed AGW and explicitly said ‘we have no position’. I can point you to thousands of papers from the Journal Cell, New England Journal of Medicine, and the like that have no position on AGW claim”
The 12,000 papers were specifically selected for their mention of AGW by Cook. And why should we exclude the New England J of M? Psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, ichthyologists, astronomers, railway engineers and cartoonists like Cook are all writing papers on AGW. The 66% has just as much right in there as the others. Indeed, if a survey is responded to on AGW, they do count. My surprise is that any scientists would trust a cartoonist to select the papers and to design a survey – I don’t imagine this happens in solar science.
big_e says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:26 am
Circular logic based on selection bias at best. 97% of the expert researchers in the field of Dianteics, believes that Dianteics is true, thus Dianteics is true based on the consensus of researchers who are considered experts in the field of Dianteics. Everybody better go to the Church of Scientology.
stone says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:42 am
A more sensical breakdown would be
Of the 1200 papers
0.6 percent attribute man as the primary contributor to gw
32 percent state that man has an affect on climate (but was not the main contributing factor)
66 percent showed affects on climate that had nothing to do with agw
0.7 percent entirely disproved agw
And 0.3 percent were papers that could not be certain
Gail Combs says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:42 am
Warren says:
May 17, 2013 at 8:59 am
The problem is we don’t know if the 66% didn’t address it, accepted it unquestioningly, or what? ….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Correct because all that was looked at was the ABSTRACT and not the actual paper. Heck you have no idea what the actual scientist(s) thinks of CAGW or AGW without doing a very well designed unbiased BLIND study.
This study shows how the wording of the questions can make a big change in the study results.
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data
ABSTRACT
The frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct is a matter of controversy…. This is the first meta-analysis of these surveys.
… Survey questions on plagiarism and other forms of professional misconduct were excluded. The final sample consisted of 21 surveys that were included in the systematic review, and 18 in the meta-analysis.
A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words "falsification” or "fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. ….
Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.
Cook’s survey doesn’t say a darn thing about what scientists are really thinking about CAGW especially given the power of group think, peer pressure, political correctness and the almighty $$$$.
Roger Knights says:
May 17, 2013 at 9:49 am
PS: The debate is not about "the cause of recent global warming,”–that’s a warmist misdirection, and one that Obama has been misdirected by. Most contrarians accept the basic AGW idea and the attribution of much or most GW to it. We’re part of the 97%, IOW.
Rather, the debate is about how much more AGW can be anticipated. Contrarians point to the diminishing effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere and to the likely dominance of negative feedbacks over positive ones. This is the message we need to get across. (The media seems willfully obtuse in its failure to communicate our POV.
End
You get the idea.
-30-
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The Socialist Model of the Capitol Building
Jack Kemp
Years ago, when I started hectoring the New York Times in online pieces for not having any Christmas decorations at their new headquarters building, I described their December lobby as "The Ghost of Stalin Past."
Although the Times eventually put up large Christmas wreaths in late December of 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/nyt_finally_acknowledges_chris.html ; the Socialist War against God merely moved south to Washington, with the construction of a model of "The Ghost of Stalin Future."
If you go to the Amazon.com preview of the book "When The Crosses Are Gone: Restoring Sanity To A World Gone Mad" by Michael Youssef, Ph.D., you will find these quotes concerning the misrepresentations and (arguable) censorship at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, constructed in recent years.
Starting on page five, Dr. Youssef states:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Crosses-Are-Gone-Restoring/dp/0984810803/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368997899&sr=1-1&keywords=when+the+crosses+are+gone#reader_0984810803
BEGIN QUOTE
The United States Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) on December 2, 2008, at a cost of $621 million dollars...
When Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina took a preview tour, he was dismayed to find that the CVC seemed to have scrubbed all references to God and America's religious heritage from the displays. There were references to Earth Day and casinos, but no references to churches...A panel on one wall incorrectly stated that America's national motto is "E Pluribus Unum" meaning "Out of Many, One"...when in fact our national motto (is) "In God We Trust."
One display represents a replica of the Speaker's Rostrum in the Chamber yet omits the words "In God We Trust" inscribed in gold letters above the chair. Photos of the Speaker's Rostrum in the display either have the words cropped out or washed out so they are unreadable.
END OF QUOTE
There is a copy in the CVC of the Constitution with the words "In the Year of Our Lord" removed. The actual table on which Abraham Lincoln placed his Bible at his second inauguration is there - minus a Bible.
Dr. Youssef goes on to state that "Senator DeMint was particularly troubled by an inscription at the entrance that read, "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." This is a quote attributed to relatively obscure Sen. Rufus Choate of the Whig Party, a man who took office in 1841 and died in 1859, definitely serving in office well after the Founding Fathers. In fact, if the current so-called progressives actually did follow Choate's advice and consult the Constitution "as their oracle" rather than their own whims, we would be better off. If the career of Rufus Choate is an example of what people who build no temple (or church) are like, I say get out your blueprints and pour the concrete for a foundation.
Senator DeMint (now retired from the Senate) and others got some of these omissions fixed, but not all. But, as page six of ""When The Crosses Are Gone" states, "The fact remains that almost two thirds of a billion dollars of taxpayer money was spent to present a distorted and godless image of America to Capitol visitors." In fact, I would add, there was a time early in the Republic when prayer sessions were held in the House of Representatives.
It is much more difficult to get into the Congressional Chambers's visitor galleries themselves than it is to get to see the Visitor Center just southwest of - and outside - the Capitol Building. This CVC - and any of its historical omissions and distortions - is all that the typical low information voter will get to see after they find out their White House tour has been cancelled. The actual original copy of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives Building is fading with age, making it difficult to read, despite its sealed glass case protected with an inert gas, the total effect giving off a greenish hue. Not surprisingly, it is up to us to tell our children, our grandchildren and young people not related to us what the Founders of this country believed in and what sustained them in times both good and bad.
Years ago, when I started hectoring the New York Times in online pieces for not having any Christmas decorations at their new headquarters building, I described their December lobby as "The Ghost of Stalin Past."
Although the Times eventually put up large Christmas wreaths in late December of 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/nyt_finally_acknowledges_chris.html ; the Socialist War against God merely moved south to Washington, with the construction of a model of "The Ghost of Stalin Future."
If you go to the Amazon.com preview of the book "When The Crosses Are Gone: Restoring Sanity To A World Gone Mad" by Michael Youssef, Ph.D., you will find these quotes concerning the misrepresentations and (arguable) censorship at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, constructed in recent years.
Starting on page five, Dr. Youssef states:
http://www.amazon.com/When-Crosses-Are-Gone-Restoring/dp/0984810803/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368997899&sr=1-1&keywords=when+the+crosses+are+gone#reader_0984810803
BEGIN QUOTE
The United States Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) on December 2, 2008, at a cost of $621 million dollars...
When Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina took a preview tour, he was dismayed to find that the CVC seemed to have scrubbed all references to God and America's religious heritage from the displays. There were references to Earth Day and casinos, but no references to churches...A panel on one wall incorrectly stated that America's national motto is "E Pluribus Unum" meaning "Out of Many, One"...when in fact our national motto (is) "In God We Trust."
One display represents a replica of the Speaker's Rostrum in the Chamber yet omits the words "In God We Trust" inscribed in gold letters above the chair. Photos of the Speaker's Rostrum in the display either have the words cropped out or washed out so they are unreadable.
END OF QUOTE
There is a copy in the CVC of the Constitution with the words "In the Year of Our Lord" removed. The actual table on which Abraham Lincoln placed his Bible at his second inauguration is there - minus a Bible.
Dr. Youssef goes on to state that "Senator DeMint was particularly troubled by an inscription at the entrance that read, "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." This is a quote attributed to relatively obscure Sen. Rufus Choate of the Whig Party, a man who took office in 1841 and died in 1859, definitely serving in office well after the Founding Fathers. In fact, if the current so-called progressives actually did follow Choate's advice and consult the Constitution "as their oracle" rather than their own whims, we would be better off. If the career of Rufus Choate is an example of what people who build no temple (or church) are like, I say get out your blueprints and pour the concrete for a foundation.
Senator DeMint (now retired from the Senate) and others got some of these omissions fixed, but not all. But, as page six of ""When The Crosses Are Gone" states, "The fact remains that almost two thirds of a billion dollars of taxpayer money was spent to present a distorted and godless image of America to Capitol visitors." In fact, I would add, there was a time early in the Republic when prayer sessions were held in the House of Representatives.
It is much more difficult to get into the Congressional Chambers's visitor galleries themselves than it is to get to see the Visitor Center just southwest of - and outside - the Capitol Building. This CVC - and any of its historical omissions and distortions - is all that the typical low information voter will get to see after they find out their White House tour has been cancelled. The actual original copy of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives Building is fading with age, making it difficult to read, despite its sealed glass case protected with an inert gas, the total effect giving off a greenish hue. Not surprisingly, it is up to us to tell our children, our grandchildren and young people not related to us what the Founders of this country believed in and what sustained them in times both good and bad.
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Post contains 684 words, total size 4 kb.
Missouri Republican Filibusters Bill to Kill Common Core
A.J. Cameron forwards this e-mail. A bill to kill Common Core in Missouri was filibustered by a GOP rat.
"Namely Senator Pearce ( A Republican) who filabustered our Common Core bill yesterday. The bill even had bi partisan support and a Republican killed it. God will deal with him. I pray God deals with him. He is an imposter."
End
Senator Pearce from Warrensburg should be filibustered right out of office. All Missouri residents should make a point of contacting his office - and your own representatives - demanding a reintroduction and passage of this bill.
"Namely Senator Pearce ( A Republican) who filabustered our Common Core bill yesterday. The bill even had bi partisan support and a Republican killed it. God will deal with him. I pray God deals with him. He is an imposter."
End
Senator Pearce from Warrensburg should be filibustered right out of office. All Missouri residents should make a point of contacting his office - and your own representatives - demanding a reintroduction and passage of this bill.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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Post contains 104 words, total size 1 kb.
Stunner: who is suddenly telling liberal jackals to attack Obama? by Jon Rappoport
A.J. Cameron
This is a great column, and there is only one perspective I would alter.
There was a comment about how the TC issue slipped by the media. A majority of the TC elitist thugs are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, &/or the Bilderberg Group, &/or other alphabet organizations. Included with these memberships are the elites atop each of the traditional media outlets, including the WSJ & FOX News.
Due to this incestuous relationship, the TC issue didn't slip by the media, the media buried it. Once people come to terms w/ this reality, it is much easier to understand how things happen when common sense says they can't. The member elites also help to explain why we are being pushed in the same direction as the nations in Europe; they are destroying each country, slowly, but surely, and they have partnered w/ jealous, greedy thugs to push their agenda.
This is how we end up w/ ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, EPA dictates (circumventing Congress), Agenda 21 & Common Core, etc., designed to destroy the greatest country ever blessed by God.
http://www.infowars.com/stunner-who-is-suddenly-telling-liberal-jackals-to-attack-obama/
Stunner: who is suddenly telling liberal jackals to attack Obama?
Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
May 17, 2013
When Chris Matthews files for divorce from Barack Obama, you know the world is upside down.
When the liberal online rag, Politico, features a clip of Matthews saying, "[Obama] obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch,” we’re through the Looking Glass.
The liberal jackals are stalking their own leader, the President. After making mind-bending excuses for Obama’s disastrous presidency, they’ve suddenly heard a supersonic whistle, and they’re out for blood.
Jonathan Turley, famous liberal constitutional lawyer, is counting Obama’s sins, ranging far beyond the current IRS and AP phone-tapping scandals.
James Goodale, former lawyer for the NY Times, is writing, at the Daily Beast, "Obama is fast becoming the worst national security press president, worse than Nixon, and it may not get any better.”
Liberal radio host Bill Press is calling for Obama to fire Eric Holder. Charley Rangel says, "No one believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer [to the IRS and DOJ scandals].”
Representative Zoe Lofgren and NBC’s Brian Williams are down Obama’s neck.
Just a few weeks ago, after the Boston bombing, Obama was unassailable. He was still the king with his own people. Now, he’s turning into lunch meat.
Liberals could be shouting and claiming that the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitutional groups had nothing to do with Obama, that he’s entirely innocent, that he just got rid of the IRS chief and all is well…but they’re not saying it.
They could be insisting that the DOJ tapping AP phones was all on Eric Holder, and Obama had nothing to do with it…but they’re not saying it.
The current press virus is: Obama is Nixon.
What’s going on?
Who’s giving liberals the order to go after Obama? Who shifted the political wind overnight?
Yesterday, I examined Watergate from the perspective of Nixon’s betrayal of the Rockefeller family. That was the key to his ouster from the presidency. The Washington Post was used as the attack dog. Are we looking at something similar here?
Has Obama failed to live up to his promises to people far more powerful than he is? If so, what is his betrayal?
Is it simply the fact that the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations have chosen Hillary Clinton as the next president—and in order to make that happen, major diversions have to guide the press and public away from her role in the Benghazi catastrophe? Is that why we’re suddenly seeing the IRS and DOJ scandals erupting?
Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission (TC) certainly wields enough power to torpedo Obama, if they want to. And they surround Obama.
Patrick Wood, author of Trilaterals Over Washington, points out there are only 87 members of the Trilateral Commission who live in America. Obama appointed elevenof them to posts in his administration.
Keep in mind that the original stated goal of the TC was to create "a new international economic order.” Consider the following TC members, who have held Obama posts:
Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary;
James Jones, National Security Advisor;
Paul Volker, Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee;
Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence.
All Trilateralists.
In the run-up to his inauguration after the 2008 presidential election, Obama was tutored by the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The TC is the hand that feeds Obama. Has he bitten it?
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, four years before birthing the TC with his godfather, David Rockefeller: "[The] nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force. International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation state.”
A closer look at Tim Geithner’s circle of economic advisers reveals the chilling Trilateral effect: Paul Volker; Alan Greenspan; E. Gerald Corrigan (director, Goldman Sachs); and Peter G Peterson (former CEO, Lehman Brothers, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations). These men are all Trilateral members.
How many foxes in the hen house do we need, before we realize their Trilateral agenda is controlling the direction of our economy?
Any doubt on the question of TC goals is answered by David Rockefeller himself, the founder of the TC, in hisMemoirs (2003):
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
So yes, if the Trilateral Commission wanted to sink Obama’s presidency, they could call that shot. They could radically influence press coverage of the president, they could pull strings and end the worshipful celebration of Obama as the great prophet. They could bring hard doom to him.
Nixon started imposing tariffs on imported goods. That was his Waterloo. He ran afoul of the massive Rockefeller free trade agenda. What has Obama done?
Is he stalling on war with Iran? Has he gone too far in his embrace of Islamic partners? Has he finally balked at continuing the war in Afghanistan?
Setting economic and political policy for the US is a prime operation of the Trilateral Commission. If Obama has crossed swords with the TC, he would be treading on very dangerous ground.
From the shadows of history, let me give you an illustration of how far and deep the TC can reach. It really does boggle the mind.
Here is a close-up snap shot of a remarkable moment—in the form of a conversation between a reporter, Jeremiah Novak, and two Trilateral Commission members, Karl Kaiser and Richard Cooper.
The interview took place in 1978. It concerned the issue of who exactly, during President Carter’s administration, was formulating US economic and political policy.
The careless and off-hand attitude of Trilateralists Kaiser and Cooper is astonishing. It’s as if they’re saying, "What we’re revealing is already out in the open, it’s too late to do anything about it, why are you so worked up, we’ve already won…”
NOVAK (the reporter): Is it true that a private [Trilateral committee] led by Henry Owen of the US and made up of [Trilateral] representatives of the US, UK, West Germany, Japan, France and the EEC is coordinating the economic and political policies of the Trilateral countries [which would include the US]?
COOPER: Yes, they have met three times.
NOVAK: Yet, in your recent paper you state that this committee should remain informal because to formalize ‘this function might well prove offensive to some of the Trilateral and other countries which do not take part.’ Who are you afraid of?
KAISER: Many countries in Europe would resent the dominant role that West Germany plays at these [Trilateral] meetings.
COOPER: Many people still live in a world of separate nations, and they would resent such coordination [of policy].
NOVAK: But this [Trilateral] committee is essential to your whole policy. How can you keep it a secret or fail to try to get popular support [for its decisions on how Trilateral member nations will conduct their economic and political policies]?
COOPER: Well, I guess it’s the press’ job to publicize it.
NOVAK: Yes, but why doesn’t President Carter come out with it and tell the American people that [US] economic and political power is being coordinated by a [Trilateral] committee made up of Henry Owen and six others?After all, if [US] policy is being made on a multinational level, the people should know.
COOPER: President Carter and Secretary of State Vance have constantly alluded to this in their speeches.
KAISER: It just hasn’t become an issue.
Source: "Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management,” ed. by Holly Sklar, 1980. South End Press, Boston. Pages 192-3.
Of course, although Kaiser and Cooper claimed everything being manipulated by the Trilateral Commission committee was already out in the open, it wasn’t.
Their interview slipped under the mainstream media radar, which is to say, it was ignored and buried. It didn’t become a scandal on the level of, say, Watergate, although its essence was far larger than Watergate.
If the mainstream press had made hay out of this interview, had reported it widely, and commented upon it with relentless fervor and disgust and shock (a pipe dream, to be sure); if the interview had been pushed and publicized as a scandal of the greatest depth; if ensuing denials and distractions had been cast aside; the exposure of the Trilaterals would have shaken the country’s foundations, and the press would have had to admit all their coverage of government was a farce and a cartoon.
US economic and political policy run by a committee of the Trilateral Commission—the Commission had been been created in 1973 as an "informal discussion group” by David Rockefeller and his sidekick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who would become Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.
Shortly after Carter won the presidential election, his aide, Hamilton Jordan, said that, if after the inauguration, Cy Vance and Brzezinski came on board as secretary of state and national security adviser, "We’ve lost. And I’ll quit.” Lost—because both men were powerful members of the Trilateral Commission and their appointment to key positions would signal a surrender of White House control to the Commission.
Vance and Brzezinski were appointed secretary of state and national security adviser, as Jordan feared. But he didn’t quit. He became Carter’s chief of staff. He gave up.
That’s the kind of power we’re talking about. Barack Obama would merely be a minor figure blowing in the wind, if the TC decided he’d betrayed them. Obama’s administration is stacked with TC members.
They could foment the sudden liberal opposition to this president, which has bloomed overnight like a mushroom in the dark.
No one at the moment is playing the race card for Obama, which has been an effective strategy. No one in the press is claiming that Obama’s Republican opponents are racists. Why not?
The IRS and DOJ scandals are manageable. By themselves, absent the press firestorm, they can be contained. Eric Holder can go. The IRS chief has already been dispatched to nowhere land. The president can claim immunity from these two doofuses. Indeed, he may try that.
As long as his liberal allies keeping pounding on the fact that he’s a great president who has been served badly by his inferiors, the ship could hold water. But right now, that’s not happening. The sudden sea change is swamping the boat.
Remember, with Watergate, we saw a successful attack on the US Attorney General, John Mitchell, on the way to nailing Nixon and knocking him out of the box. That Rockefeller operation worked like a magic machine.
Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, has just testified before Congress that he doesn’t know anything about anything. He’s pretty much said, "Ask me a question about any scandal and I’ll plead vast ignorance. That’s my defense.”
Holder is ripe for a takedown. And then the press hounds would be that much closer to pinning blame on Obama himself.
I’m not saying Obama will be impeached or will resign—although in politics, never say never. I’m saying his presidency, such as it is, could be destroyed very quicklyamong and by his own supporters.
The clue here, again, is the sudden and boggling liberal press turnaround, their all-out assault on Obama. This kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. It certainly doesn’t happen from the bowels of the president’s rabid worshipers. But it is happening.
That means marching orders. That means screws have been turned by people who expect and demand and can count on obedience. Those people are players who live far above government. Government is their mechanism, as is the press, when it needs to be.
And right now, it needs to be.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com
This is a great column, and there is only one perspective I would alter.
There was a comment about how the TC issue slipped by the media. A majority of the TC elitist thugs are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, &/or the Bilderberg Group, &/or other alphabet organizations. Included with these memberships are the elites atop each of the traditional media outlets, including the WSJ & FOX News.
Due to this incestuous relationship, the TC issue didn't slip by the media, the media buried it. Once people come to terms w/ this reality, it is much easier to understand how things happen when common sense says they can't. The member elites also help to explain why we are being pushed in the same direction as the nations in Europe; they are destroying each country, slowly, but surely, and they have partnered w/ jealous, greedy thugs to push their agenda.
This is how we end up w/ ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, EPA dictates (circumventing Congress), Agenda 21 & Common Core, etc., designed to destroy the greatest country ever blessed by God.
http://www.infowars.com/stunner-who-is-suddenly-telling-liberal-jackals-to-attack-obama/
Stunner: who is suddenly telling liberal jackals to attack Obama?
Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
May 17, 2013
When Chris Matthews files for divorce from Barack Obama, you know the world is upside down.
When the liberal online rag, Politico, features a clip of Matthews saying, "[Obama] obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch,” we’re through the Looking Glass.
The liberal jackals are stalking their own leader, the President. After making mind-bending excuses for Obama’s disastrous presidency, they’ve suddenly heard a supersonic whistle, and they’re out for blood.
Jonathan Turley, famous liberal constitutional lawyer, is counting Obama’s sins, ranging far beyond the current IRS and AP phone-tapping scandals.
James Goodale, former lawyer for the NY Times, is writing, at the Daily Beast, "Obama is fast becoming the worst national security press president, worse than Nixon, and it may not get any better.”
Liberal radio host Bill Press is calling for Obama to fire Eric Holder. Charley Rangel says, "No one believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer [to the IRS and DOJ scandals].”
Representative Zoe Lofgren and NBC’s Brian Williams are down Obama’s neck.
Just a few weeks ago, after the Boston bombing, Obama was unassailable. He was still the king with his own people. Now, he’s turning into lunch meat.
Liberals could be shouting and claiming that the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitutional groups had nothing to do with Obama, that he’s entirely innocent, that he just got rid of the IRS chief and all is well…but they’re not saying it.
They could be insisting that the DOJ tapping AP phones was all on Eric Holder, and Obama had nothing to do with it…but they’re not saying it.
The current press virus is: Obama is Nixon.
What’s going on?
Who’s giving liberals the order to go after Obama? Who shifted the political wind overnight?
Yesterday, I examined Watergate from the perspective of Nixon’s betrayal of the Rockefeller family. That was the key to his ouster from the presidency. The Washington Post was used as the attack dog. Are we looking at something similar here?
Has Obama failed to live up to his promises to people far more powerful than he is? If so, what is his betrayal?
Is it simply the fact that the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations have chosen Hillary Clinton as the next president—and in order to make that happen, major diversions have to guide the press and public away from her role in the Benghazi catastrophe? Is that why we’re suddenly seeing the IRS and DOJ scandals erupting?
Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission (TC) certainly wields enough power to torpedo Obama, if they want to. And they surround Obama.
Patrick Wood, author of Trilaterals Over Washington, points out there are only 87 members of the Trilateral Commission who live in America. Obama appointed elevenof them to posts in his administration.
Keep in mind that the original stated goal of the TC was to create "a new international economic order.” Consider the following TC members, who have held Obama posts:
Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary;
James Jones, National Security Advisor;
Paul Volker, Chairman, Economic Recovery Committee;
Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence.
All Trilateralists.
In the run-up to his inauguration after the 2008 presidential election, Obama was tutored by the co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The TC is the hand that feeds Obama. Has he bitten it?
Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, four years before birthing the TC with his godfather, David Rockefeller: "[The] nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force. International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation state.”
A closer look at Tim Geithner’s circle of economic advisers reveals the chilling Trilateral effect: Paul Volker; Alan Greenspan; E. Gerald Corrigan (director, Goldman Sachs); and Peter G Peterson (former CEO, Lehman Brothers, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations). These men are all Trilateral members.
How many foxes in the hen house do we need, before we realize their Trilateral agenda is controlling the direction of our economy?
Any doubt on the question of TC goals is answered by David Rockefeller himself, the founder of the TC, in hisMemoirs (2003):
"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
So yes, if the Trilateral Commission wanted to sink Obama’s presidency, they could call that shot. They could radically influence press coverage of the president, they could pull strings and end the worshipful celebration of Obama as the great prophet. They could bring hard doom to him.
Nixon started imposing tariffs on imported goods. That was his Waterloo. He ran afoul of the massive Rockefeller free trade agenda. What has Obama done?
Is he stalling on war with Iran? Has he gone too far in his embrace of Islamic partners? Has he finally balked at continuing the war in Afghanistan?
Setting economic and political policy for the US is a prime operation of the Trilateral Commission. If Obama has crossed swords with the TC, he would be treading on very dangerous ground.
From the shadows of history, let me give you an illustration of how far and deep the TC can reach. It really does boggle the mind.
Here is a close-up snap shot of a remarkable moment—in the form of a conversation between a reporter, Jeremiah Novak, and two Trilateral Commission members, Karl Kaiser and Richard Cooper.
The interview took place in 1978. It concerned the issue of who exactly, during President Carter’s administration, was formulating US economic and political policy.
The careless and off-hand attitude of Trilateralists Kaiser and Cooper is astonishing. It’s as if they’re saying, "What we’re revealing is already out in the open, it’s too late to do anything about it, why are you so worked up, we’ve already won…”
NOVAK (the reporter): Is it true that a private [Trilateral committee] led by Henry Owen of the US and made up of [Trilateral] representatives of the US, UK, West Germany, Japan, France and the EEC is coordinating the economic and political policies of the Trilateral countries [which would include the US]?
COOPER: Yes, they have met three times.
NOVAK: Yet, in your recent paper you state that this committee should remain informal because to formalize ‘this function might well prove offensive to some of the Trilateral and other countries which do not take part.’ Who are you afraid of?
KAISER: Many countries in Europe would resent the dominant role that West Germany plays at these [Trilateral] meetings.
COOPER: Many people still live in a world of separate nations, and they would resent such coordination [of policy].
NOVAK: But this [Trilateral] committee is essential to your whole policy. How can you keep it a secret or fail to try to get popular support [for its decisions on how Trilateral member nations will conduct their economic and political policies]?
COOPER: Well, I guess it’s the press’ job to publicize it.
NOVAK: Yes, but why doesn’t President Carter come out with it and tell the American people that [US] economic and political power is being coordinated by a [Trilateral] committee made up of Henry Owen and six others?After all, if [US] policy is being made on a multinational level, the people should know.
COOPER: President Carter and Secretary of State Vance have constantly alluded to this in their speeches.
KAISER: It just hasn’t become an issue.
Source: "Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management,” ed. by Holly Sklar, 1980. South End Press, Boston. Pages 192-3.
Of course, although Kaiser and Cooper claimed everything being manipulated by the Trilateral Commission committee was already out in the open, it wasn’t.
Their interview slipped under the mainstream media radar, which is to say, it was ignored and buried. It didn’t become a scandal on the level of, say, Watergate, although its essence was far larger than Watergate.
If the mainstream press had made hay out of this interview, had reported it widely, and commented upon it with relentless fervor and disgust and shock (a pipe dream, to be sure); if the interview had been pushed and publicized as a scandal of the greatest depth; if ensuing denials and distractions had been cast aside; the exposure of the Trilaterals would have shaken the country’s foundations, and the press would have had to admit all their coverage of government was a farce and a cartoon.
US economic and political policy run by a committee of the Trilateral Commission—the Commission had been been created in 1973 as an "informal discussion group” by David Rockefeller and his sidekick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who would become Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.
Shortly after Carter won the presidential election, his aide, Hamilton Jordan, said that, if after the inauguration, Cy Vance and Brzezinski came on board as secretary of state and national security adviser, "We’ve lost. And I’ll quit.” Lost—because both men were powerful members of the Trilateral Commission and their appointment to key positions would signal a surrender of White House control to the Commission.
Vance and Brzezinski were appointed secretary of state and national security adviser, as Jordan feared. But he didn’t quit. He became Carter’s chief of staff. He gave up.
That’s the kind of power we’re talking about. Barack Obama would merely be a minor figure blowing in the wind, if the TC decided he’d betrayed them. Obama’s administration is stacked with TC members.
They could foment the sudden liberal opposition to this president, which has bloomed overnight like a mushroom in the dark.
No one at the moment is playing the race card for Obama, which has been an effective strategy. No one in the press is claiming that Obama’s Republican opponents are racists. Why not?
The IRS and DOJ scandals are manageable. By themselves, absent the press firestorm, they can be contained. Eric Holder can go. The IRS chief has already been dispatched to nowhere land. The president can claim immunity from these two doofuses. Indeed, he may try that.
As long as his liberal allies keeping pounding on the fact that he’s a great president who has been served badly by his inferiors, the ship could hold water. But right now, that’s not happening. The sudden sea change is swamping the boat.
Remember, with Watergate, we saw a successful attack on the US Attorney General, John Mitchell, on the way to nailing Nixon and knocking him out of the box. That Rockefeller operation worked like a magic machine.
Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, has just testified before Congress that he doesn’t know anything about anything. He’s pretty much said, "Ask me a question about any scandal and I’ll plead vast ignorance. That’s my defense.”
Holder is ripe for a takedown. And then the press hounds would be that much closer to pinning blame on Obama himself.
I’m not saying Obama will be impeached or will resign—although in politics, never say never. I’m saying his presidency, such as it is, could be destroyed very quicklyamong and by his own supporters.
The clue here, again, is the sudden and boggling liberal press turnaround, their all-out assault on Obama. This kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. It certainly doesn’t happen from the bowels of the president’s rabid worshipers. But it is happening.
That means marching orders. That means screws have been turned by people who expect and demand and can count on obedience. Those people are players who live far above government. Government is their mechanism, as is the press, when it needs to be.
And right now, it needs to be.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com
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May 19, 2013
Update on adding two Hamas-linked 'journalists' to the Newseum's Memorial
Jack Kemp
Rick Moran reported on May 10 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/two_hamas_journalists_to_be_added_to_newseums_memorial.html that the Newseum in Washington was about to induct two Hamas "newsmen" onto their memorial engraved glass panels. Now there seems to be some second (one could argue first) thoughts about doing that.
Clifford May at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote a piece on May 16 -- an update on this attempt to induct Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama into the Newseum as "reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news," near the names of Daniel Pearl and others on the Newseum's glass panels. Here is what he has, in part:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/night-at-the-newseum/
They were terrorists because the United States government says they were terrorists. Both men were employees of Al-Aqsa Television, designated a terrorist entity in 2010 by President Obama's Treasury Department. Al-Aqsa is an arm of Hamas...
I first heard about the Newseum's plans late last Thursday night when a reporter e-mailed me. He knew that the national-security-policy institute I head, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, holds its annual Washington Forums at the Newseum. As someone who spent most of his adult life as a reporter and editor (for the New York Times and other publications), I have a fondness for the venue. I was asked if FDD would be changing its plans for 2013.
It would, of course, be inappropriate for a think tank that opposes terrorism to hold an event at an institution that honors terrorists. But I said I would call the Newseum's CEO, James C. Duff, first thing in the morning, in the hope that there had been some misunderstanding[.] ...
On Monday morning, just minutes before its ceremony honoring a list of "fallen journalists," the Newseum released an "update" saying that "serious questions" had been raised and, in response, it had "decided to re-evaluate the inclusion" of Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama "as journalists on our memorial wall pending further investigation."
The keynote speaker at the ceremony was Richard Engel, NBC's intrepid chief foreign correspondent who was held hostage in Syria for five days last December. Briefly addressing the controversy, Engel said, "just because you carry a camera and a notebook doesn't make you a journalist[.]
Now that the Newseum itself has become the subject of a news story within its own walls, let's see how well the people there research the facts before they author the central theme of any upcoming articles.
P.S.
The Newseum has an outdoor balcony that runs the length of one of the upper floors named the Hank Greenspun Terrace, a place I've walked out on to see the city below. Mr. Greenspun was the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and a crusader for civil rights in the 1960s in that city. Before that, in 1947 and after, Greenspun traveled in secret to Asia to procure World War II surplus arms for Israel in events that remain largely secret.
Wikipedia states that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Greenspun#Supplies_arms_to_foreign_power
In 1947, when the Haganah was already in armed conflict with Arab forces, Greenspun shipped machine guns and airplane parts to that organization (which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces). This was a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Acts, a crime for which Greenspun was arrested and ultimately convicted on July 10, 1950. He was fined $10,000 but received no prison time. On October 18, 1961, President John F. Kennedy granted Greenspun a pardon.[1] Upon Greenspun's death in 1989, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres called Greenspun "a hero of our country and a fighter for freedom."
Rick Moran reported on May 10 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/two_hamas_journalists_to_be_added_to_newseums_memorial.html that the Newseum in Washington was about to induct two Hamas "newsmen" onto their memorial engraved glass panels. Now there seems to be some second (one could argue first) thoughts about doing that.
Clifford May at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote a piece on May 16 -- an update on this attempt to induct Mahmoud al-Kumi and Hussam Salama into the Newseum as "reporters, photographers and broadcasters who have died reporting the news," near the names of Daniel Pearl and others on the Newseum's glass panels. Here is what he has, in part:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/night-at-the-newseum/
They were terrorists because the United States government says they were terrorists. Both men were employees of Al-Aqsa Television, designated a terrorist entity in 2010 by President Obama's Treasury Department. Al-Aqsa is an arm of Hamas...
I first heard about the Newseum's plans late last Thursday night when a reporter e-mailed me. He knew that the national-security-policy institute I head, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, holds its annual Washington Forums at the Newseum. As someone who spent most of his adult life as a reporter and editor (for the New York Times and other publications), I have a fondness for the venue. I was asked if FDD would be changing its plans for 2013.
It would, of course, be inappropriate for a think tank that opposes terrorism to hold an event at an institution that honors terrorists. But I said I would call the Newseum's CEO, James C. Duff, first thing in the morning, in the hope that there had been some misunderstanding[.] ...
On Monday morning, just minutes before its ceremony honoring a list of "fallen journalists," the Newseum released an "update" saying that "serious questions" had been raised and, in response, it had "decided to re-evaluate the inclusion" of Mahmoud Al-Kumi and Hussam Salama "as journalists on our memorial wall pending further investigation."
The keynote speaker at the ceremony was Richard Engel, NBC's intrepid chief foreign correspondent who was held hostage in Syria for five days last December. Briefly addressing the controversy, Engel said, "just because you carry a camera and a notebook doesn't make you a journalist[.]
Now that the Newseum itself has become the subject of a news story within its own walls, let's see how well the people there research the facts before they author the central theme of any upcoming articles.
P.S.
The Newseum has an outdoor balcony that runs the length of one of the upper floors named the Hank Greenspun Terrace, a place I've walked out on to see the city below. Mr. Greenspun was the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun and a crusader for civil rights in the 1960s in that city. Before that, in 1947 and after, Greenspun traveled in secret to Asia to procure World War II surplus arms for Israel in events that remain largely secret.
Wikipedia states that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Greenspun#Supplies_arms_to_foreign_power
In 1947, when the Haganah was already in armed conflict with Arab forces, Greenspun shipped machine guns and airplane parts to that organization (which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces). This was a violation of the U.S. Neutrality Acts, a crime for which Greenspun was arrested and ultimately convicted on July 10, 1950. He was fined $10,000 but received no prison time. On October 18, 1961, President John F. Kennedy granted Greenspun a pardon.[1] Upon Greenspun's death in 1989, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres called Greenspun "a hero of our country and a fighter for freedom."
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The Green Enemies of Humanity, Science and the Truth
By Alan
Caruba
Among the greatest liars on Earth
today is the international organization called Friends of the Earth (FOE). It
has engaged in the most scurrilous fear-mongering for decades, along with
Greenpeace,the Sierra Club, and the World Wildlife Fund, while all the
timethey pulledin billions in funding.
In May 2012, the Daily Caller noted
that "The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal
government has spent nearly $70 billion on ‘climate change activities.’” The
leading critic in Congress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked at the time, "Which
would you rather have? Would you rather spend $4 billion on Air Force base solar
panels, or would you rather have 28 new F-22s or 30 F-25s or modernized C-130s?”
"Would you rather have $64.8 billion
spent on pointless global warming efforts or would you rather have more funds
put toward modernizing our fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles to
improve the safety of our troops and help defend the nation against the
legitimate threats that we face?’
On May 9th, I received an email from Friends of
the Earth that repeated all the lies we have heard for years. Painting with a
very broad brush that completely ignores the fact that the U.S. climate has
always had highs and lows of temperature, FOE complained that "Last year the
U.S. experienced record-breaking weather all over the country. But, the nightly
news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC barely talked about what was fueling this
extreme weather—climate change.”
What FOE failed to mention was a
record that was set in 2012-13; as of May, according to the National Oceanic and
Atmosphere Administration, the U.S. had its longest stretch in recorded
history—2,750 days—without a major hurricane landfall. The many claims of
"extreme” weather are classic fear-mongering. I might also add that, according
to the National Interagency Fire Center, the number of wildfires is at a
ten-year low. Glaciers are not melting and seas are not rising, unless a
millimeter or two worries you.
"Climate change” is the replacement
name for "global warming.” Climate
is measured in centuries. The weather is whatever is happening anywhere in the
nation on any given day. Around the world, however, there has been a significant
increase in cold weather and many are still waiting for spring to
arrive.
Typical of the hyperbole that is
representative of the lies we have heard from so-called environmental
organizations, FOE fumed that "the nightly news programs at the major broadcast
networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather—climate
change.” Citing a Media Matters for America study, FOE noted that "ABC’s nightly
news program did only one segment about climate change last year. Meanwhile
NBC’s news show did only four and CBS just seven segments to this critical
issue.” Perhaps this is because these notably liberal news organizations have
concluded it is not a critical
issue?
It gets better, FOE was angry, saying
"What’s almost worse is that when these networks have covered global warming,
they have often treated climate change as a ‘two-sided debate’ rather than what
it really is; an issue in which there is overwhelming scientific consensus.”
These are people who do not want to have a debate because, based on the facts,
they would lose. As for scientific consensus regarding either global warming or
climate change, there is NONE. If anything, leading scientists around the world
have been debunkingglobal warmingnow for
years.
One of the leading think tanks in the
effort to end the global warming hoax has been The Heartland
Institute. It has sponsored several international conferences in
which scientists and others have offered papers and addressed the topic. I
recommend you subscribe to its national monthly, Environmental & ClimateNews. Its Managing Editor,
James M. Taylor, J.D., provides the latest information on the environmental
organizations greatest villain, carbon dioxide
(CO2).
Two recent dispatches by Taylor noted
in one that "Climate models supporting predictions of rapid global warming
during the next century have performed miserably predicting global temperatures
during the past two decades”, citing a comparison of computer model predictions
and real-world temperatures by climate scientist Roy W. Spencer. In another,
Taylor noted that "New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, but
global temperatures are not following suit. The new data undercut assertions
that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing a global warming
crisis.”
Undismayed by the facts, FOE could
only cite the taxpayer-funded PBS News Hour that "devoted 23 segments to
covering climate change.” When the President is telling everyone that the
climate is the greatest threat to the nation, PBS bureaucrats who know where the
money comes from can be depended upon to broadcast his
lies.
Ironically, the Wall Street Journal
published an opinion by Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer on the same day
the FOE email arrived. It was titled "In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.” Schmitt was an Apollo
17 astronaut and a former U.S. Senator from New Mexico. He is an adjunct
professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Happer is a
professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office
of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.
"The cessation of observed global
warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most
other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little
correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon
dioxide.”
No wonder FOE is upset that even the
mainstream media networks no longer want to report on a global warming that does
not exist. There’s real science and there’s the fulminations and lies of Friends
of the Earth.
© Alan Caruba,
2013
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A bee in their bonnet
Anti-pesticide activists falsely blame new pesticides for bee colony problems
Paul Driessen
Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new.
Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. "If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist HYPERLINK "http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202447,00.html" Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, "they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using HYPERLINK "http://www.RachelWasWrong.org" Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria.
Trumpeting HYPERLINK "http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32148" illusory or manufactured dangers of DDT and callously indifferent to the HYPERLINK "http://www.cfact.org/2010/09/13/3-billion-and-counting/" deaths of millions from this horrible disease, radical greens still battle its use, even to spray only the inside walls of primitive homes to keep most mosquitoes out, and keep those that do enter from infecting people.
Attacking a new class of insecticides for equally spurious reasons is thus no big deal, even if the chemicals are safe and vital for modern agriculture. Their real goal is to raise more money and acquire more power. As HYPERLINK "http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Corporate-Warriors-Survive-Shakedowns/dp/0939571218/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368744348&sr=1-1&keywords=nick+nichols" Saul Alinsky taught, they have picked their new target, personalized and polarized it, and attacked it relentlessly.
The target now is a widely used new class of safe pesticides – neonicotinoids – that Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, Sierra Club and other "socially responsible” groups are blaming for bee population declines in various countries. But the real danger is a phenomenon called " HYPERLINK "http://perc.org/sites/default/files/ps50.pdf" colony collapse disorder,” which poses a serious threat to bees, crop pollination, flowers and food crops in many areas.
CCD and other bee die-offs are not new. What we now call colony collapse was first reported in 1869, and many outbreaks since then have turned scientists into Sherlock Holmes detectives, seeking explanations and solutions to this mysterious and scary-sounding problem. Fungi, parasitic mites and other possible suspects have been implicated, but none has yet been arrested or convicted.
That’s created a perfect Petri dish for anti-pesticide groups. They’re pressuring the United States and other countries to ban neonic pesticides, by blaming them for bee population declines. Their fear-mongering assertions are pure conjecture, but that hasn’t stopped activists – or news outlets – from promoting frightening stories implicating the chemicals.
"Neonics” are derived from naturally-occurring nicotine plant compounds and have been hailed as a low-toxicity pest treatment. They are often applied to seeds or on soils during planting, become part of the plants’ physiology, and work by giving treated plants internal defenses against invasive pests. That means neonics are toxic only to insects that feed on crops, which dramatically reduces the need to spray entire fields with other, less safe pesticides. It also curtails risks to farm workers and beneficial insects.
Claims that these insecticides could kill bees appear plausible at first blush, and laboratory studies have shown that high doses can affect bees in minor ways. However, doses that bees receive in lab studies "are far above what a realistic field dose exposure would be,” says HYPERLINK "http://www.producer.com/daily/ontario-field-study-finds-no-link-between-seed-treatments-bee-deaths/" Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, environmental biology professor at the University of Guelph. The difference is akin to an 81 mg aspirin tablet versus a full bottle of 200 mg tablets, or light rainfall on a bee versus throwing it into a bucket of water.
Scott-Dupree helped coordinate a Canadian field study that compared hives exposed to neonics to those that weren’t exposed – and found no difference in colony health between the two groups. Another study by Britain’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs reached the same conclusion.
HYPERLINK "http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13937-neonicotinoid-bees-20130326.pdf" The DEFRA evaluation of studies purporting to link neonics to bee harm found that the lab work was conducted under extreme scenarios which would not occur under real-world conditions. "Risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low,” the scientists concluded.
That’s hardly surprising. Plant tissues contain only tiny amounts of neonics, bees are not feeding on the plants, and pollen contains barely detectable neonic levels.
Nevertheless, several beekeepers and activist groups have sued the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding that EPA immediately ban all neonicotinoids.
The lawsuit is not merely ill advised. By blaming pesticides, activists are ignoring – and deflecting attention from – a very real and serious threat to bees. The aptly named parasitic mite "Varroa destructor” threatens honeybees directly, while spreading and activating previously dormant or harmless bee viruses, which then become dangerous. The mites are not easy to eradicate.
"You can imagine how hard it is to kill a bug on a bug,” says John Miller, President of the California State Beekeepers Association, and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Treating Varroa requires insecticides that can be toxic to bees at levels high enough to be effective. Well-intentioned apiarists trying to combat Varroa can accidentally overdose hives with miticides.
Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes HYPERLINK "http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/04/11/science-collapse-disorder-the-real-story-behind-neonics-and-mass-bee-deaths/" science writer Jon Entine. Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world’s prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet’s healthiest. By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used.
Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling. They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity.
Activists aren’t asking for investigation into these problems – which calls their science, sincerity and integrity into question. Their track record on DDT and malaria underscores this modus operandi. The activists get money, publicity, power and phony solutions – and end up hurting the very things (bees and people) they profess to care so much about.
Right now, no one knows why bees aren’t thriving. Studies have shown that neonicotinoids are innocent, and reflexive bans will harm farmers, whose crop yields will fall; consumers, whose food bills will rise and food safety will decline; and environmental values, as older, more toxic insecticides will have to be reintroduced to protect crops. The detective work needs to continue, until real answers are found.
The prudent, precautionary approach would be to avoid eliminating vital, low-toxicity neonicotinoids, while continuing to study their potential effects on bees, and other potential causes of die-offs and colony collapses. Right now we don’t have an equally low substitute for neonics. Sound, replicable science – not pressure group politics – must underpin all pesticide policies, or the unintended consequences will be serious, far-reaching, and potentially devastating to agriculture and food supplies.
We need to let science do its job, not jump to conclusions or short-circuit the process, as the media did in accusing HYPERLINK "http://www.businessinsider.com/lessons-from-richard-jewell-2013-4" Richard Jewell of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.
This time – as always – we need answers, not scapegoats.
______________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow ( HYPERLINK "http://www.CFACT.org" www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
Paul Driessen
Chemophobic anti-pesticide groups are at it again. This time they’re attacking a widely used and safe new insecticide, but their assertions and real agendas are nothing new.
Radical environmentalism rose to ascendancy on opposition to pesticides, specifically DDT. "If the environmentalists win on DDT,” Environmental Defense Fund scientist HYPERLINK "http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202447,00.html" Charles Wurster told the Seattle Times in 1969, "they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before.” Using HYPERLINK "http://www.RachelWasWrong.org" Rachel Carson’s often inaccurate book Silent Spring to drive a nasty campaign, they succeeded in getting the Environmental Protection Agency to ban US production and use of DDT in 1972, leading to a de facto global ban even to combat malaria.
Trumpeting HYPERLINK "http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32148" illusory or manufactured dangers of DDT and callously indifferent to the HYPERLINK "http://www.cfact.org/2010/09/13/3-billion-and-counting/" deaths of millions from this horrible disease, radical greens still battle its use, even to spray only the inside walls of primitive homes to keep most mosquitoes out, and keep those that do enter from infecting people.
Attacking a new class of insecticides for equally spurious reasons is thus no big deal, even if the chemicals are safe and vital for modern agriculture. Their real goal is to raise more money and acquire more power. As HYPERLINK "http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Corporate-Warriors-Survive-Shakedowns/dp/0939571218/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368744348&sr=1-1&keywords=nick+nichols" Saul Alinsky taught, they have picked their new target, personalized and polarized it, and attacked it relentlessly.
The target now is a widely used new class of safe pesticides – neonicotinoids – that Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, Sierra Club and other "socially responsible” groups are blaming for bee population declines in various countries. But the real danger is a phenomenon called " HYPERLINK "http://perc.org/sites/default/files/ps50.pdf" colony collapse disorder,” which poses a serious threat to bees, crop pollination, flowers and food crops in many areas.
CCD and other bee die-offs are not new. What we now call colony collapse was first reported in 1869, and many outbreaks since then have turned scientists into Sherlock Holmes detectives, seeking explanations and solutions to this mysterious and scary-sounding problem. Fungi, parasitic mites and other possible suspects have been implicated, but none has yet been arrested or convicted.
That’s created a perfect Petri dish for anti-pesticide groups. They’re pressuring the United States and other countries to ban neonic pesticides, by blaming them for bee population declines. Their fear-mongering assertions are pure conjecture, but that hasn’t stopped activists – or news outlets – from promoting frightening stories implicating the chemicals.
"Neonics” are derived from naturally-occurring nicotine plant compounds and have been hailed as a low-toxicity pest treatment. They are often applied to seeds or on soils during planting, become part of the plants’ physiology, and work by giving treated plants internal defenses against invasive pests. That means neonics are toxic only to insects that feed on crops, which dramatically reduces the need to spray entire fields with other, less safe pesticides. It also curtails risks to farm workers and beneficial insects.
Claims that these insecticides could kill bees appear plausible at first blush, and laboratory studies have shown that high doses can affect bees in minor ways. However, doses that bees receive in lab studies "are far above what a realistic field dose exposure would be,” says HYPERLINK "http://www.producer.com/daily/ontario-field-study-finds-no-link-between-seed-treatments-bee-deaths/" Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, environmental biology professor at the University of Guelph. The difference is akin to an 81 mg aspirin tablet versus a full bottle of 200 mg tablets, or light rainfall on a bee versus throwing it into a bucket of water.
Scott-Dupree helped coordinate a Canadian field study that compared hives exposed to neonics to those that weren’t exposed – and found no difference in colony health between the two groups. Another study by Britain’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs reached the same conclusion.
HYPERLINK "http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13937-neonicotinoid-bees-20130326.pdf" The DEFRA evaluation of studies purporting to link neonics to bee harm found that the lab work was conducted under extreme scenarios which would not occur under real-world conditions. "Risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low,” the scientists concluded.
That’s hardly surprising. Plant tissues contain only tiny amounts of neonics, bees are not feeding on the plants, and pollen contains barely detectable neonic levels.
Nevertheless, several beekeepers and activist groups have sued the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding that EPA immediately ban all neonicotinoids.
The lawsuit is not merely ill advised. By blaming pesticides, activists are ignoring – and deflecting attention from – a very real and serious threat to bees. The aptly named parasitic mite "Varroa destructor” threatens honeybees directly, while spreading and activating previously dormant or harmless bee viruses, which then become dangerous. The mites are not easy to eradicate.
"You can imagine how hard it is to kill a bug on a bug,” says John Miller, President of the California State Beekeepers Association, and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Treating Varroa requires insecticides that can be toxic to bees at levels high enough to be effective. Well-intentioned apiarists trying to combat Varroa can accidentally overdose hives with miticides.
Various neonicotinoids are widely used in Canada to protect its vast canola fields, and Canadian bee populations are thriving, notes HYPERLINK "http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/04/11/science-collapse-disorder-the-real-story-behind-neonics-and-mass-bee-deaths/" science writer Jon Entine. Varroa-free Australia is likewise one of the world’s prime users of these pesticides, and its bee colonies are among the planet’s healthiest. By contrast, bee populations have been severely impacted by Varroa mites in areas of Switzerland where neonics are not used.
Multiple studies point to still other factors that explain why bees are struggling. They include bees developing resistance to antibiotics, funguses like Nosema, multiple bee viruses and parasites, bacterial infections like foulbrood, exposure to commonly used organophosphates, bee habitat loss, and even long-term bee inbreeding and resultant lack of genetic diversity.
Activists aren’t asking for investigation into these problems – which calls their science, sincerity and integrity into question. Their track record on DDT and malaria underscores this modus operandi. The activists get money, publicity, power and phony solutions – and end up hurting the very things (bees and people) they profess to care so much about.
Right now, no one knows why bees aren’t thriving. Studies have shown that neonicotinoids are innocent, and reflexive bans will harm farmers, whose crop yields will fall; consumers, whose food bills will rise and food safety will decline; and environmental values, as older, more toxic insecticides will have to be reintroduced to protect crops. The detective work needs to continue, until real answers are found.
The prudent, precautionary approach would be to avoid eliminating vital, low-toxicity neonicotinoids, while continuing to study their potential effects on bees, and other potential causes of die-offs and colony collapses. Right now we don’t have an equally low substitute for neonics. Sound, replicable science – not pressure group politics – must underpin all pesticide policies, or the unintended consequences will be serious, far-reaching, and potentially devastating to agriculture and food supplies.
We need to let science do its job, not jump to conclusions or short-circuit the process, as the media did in accusing HYPERLINK "http://www.businessinsider.com/lessons-from-richard-jewell-2013-4" Richard Jewell of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.
This time – as always – we need answers, not scapegoats.
______________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow ( HYPERLINK "http://www.CFACT.org" www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
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Stop Common Core
A.J. Cameron
This has numerous columns about Common Core from around the country, not just IL.
If you are engaged in this battle, there may be nuggets of wisdom embedded w/in these columns that can assist you in educating those who are in a position to impose CC upon our students, or save them from it.
For those in the midland, there are several columns regarding CC in KS & MO.
http://stopcommoncoreillinois.org/
This has numerous columns about Common Core from around the country, not just IL.
If you are engaged in this battle, there may be nuggets of wisdom embedded w/in these columns that can assist you in educating those who are in a position to impose CC upon our students, or save them from it.
For those in the midland, there are several columns regarding CC in KS & MO.
http://stopcommoncoreillinois.org/
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
04:20 PM
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Common Core and Data Mining
A.J. Cameron on the rotten Common Core.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55288#.UZeX9bPmAnQ.gmail
This from A.J.
This comes from a CFP contact in FL. We must persevere in repelling the elitist/U. N. attack upon our educational systems.
Activists & Education Liberty Watch Combine to Stop Florida Data Mining Bill
Education Liberty Watch was honored to be able to join with
Floridians Against Common Core Education to defeat Florida’s very invasive Common Core linked data collection/data mining bill SB 878, (See Dr. Karen Effrem’s analysis and correspondence with Florida legislators here, here, and here). Here is their end of session update:
A BATTLE WON!
As we began this journey several weeks ago, many bills had been written already, many were out of committee, and some were days from being passed into law. Our goals were simply to slow down the implementation of Common Core and to stop the intrusive data-mining between the State and the Federal Government. Through your help and by the grace of God, we were able to accomplish both of these goals.
The following is an update of bills that we have been fighting:
Senate Bill 878- A bill sponsored by Senator Galvano was a very intrusive bill that would have connected over 400 data points with the federal government. Though we were able to get a portion of the language out of the bill such as religious and political affiliation as well as a few other points, we were not able to get the bill completely stopped. The Senate unanimously passed this bill, sent it to the House which, again, unanimously passed it with a small amendment. Through the tireless efforts of our supporters, the bill died in committee. Frankly, for a bill to die, having moved this far through the process, is very unlikely. In fact, we were concerned that the language was placed in another bill not related to education. After the tedious analysis of thousands of pages of legislation and the end of session, we knew the bill indeed had died.
House Bills such as 7027 and 7057 also died which had similar language to SB878.
Senate Bill 1630′s language was moved into another bill and was passed. This bill requires technological load testing of systems prior to implementation of Common Core. In this good bill, sponsored by Senator Legg, we asked that there be language requiring a short and long term cost analysis of Common Core prior to implementation. Though this language was not put in the bill, we believe that we will be able to get this language into a bill in next year’s session.
Make no mistake – we have won a battle but the war is still raging and Common Core proponents are working hard to stop our coalition. We must not let them win! Our children’s and our nation’s futures are at stake!
The following is our course of action:
• Educate – We must educate the voters, parents, teachers, school board members, and our politicians. We are currently developing a plan to create a state-wide effort to accomplish this task.
• Engage – We must expand our statewide coalition to build a force of citizens to hold our elected officials accountable to stop Common Core.
http://edlibertywatch.org/
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55288#.UZeX9bPmAnQ.gmail
This from A.J.
This comes from a CFP contact in FL. We must persevere in repelling the elitist/U. N. attack upon our educational systems.
Activists & Education Liberty Watch Combine to Stop Florida Data Mining Bill
Education Liberty Watch was honored to be able to join with
Floridians Against Common Core Education to defeat Florida’s very invasive Common Core linked data collection/data mining bill SB 878, (See Dr. Karen Effrem’s analysis and correspondence with Florida legislators here, here, and here). Here is their end of session update:
A BATTLE WON!
As we began this journey several weeks ago, many bills had been written already, many were out of committee, and some were days from being passed into law. Our goals were simply to slow down the implementation of Common Core and to stop the intrusive data-mining between the State and the Federal Government. Through your help and by the grace of God, we were able to accomplish both of these goals.
The following is an update of bills that we have been fighting:
Senate Bill 878- A bill sponsored by Senator Galvano was a very intrusive bill that would have connected over 400 data points with the federal government. Though we were able to get a portion of the language out of the bill such as religious and political affiliation as well as a few other points, we were not able to get the bill completely stopped. The Senate unanimously passed this bill, sent it to the House which, again, unanimously passed it with a small amendment. Through the tireless efforts of our supporters, the bill died in committee. Frankly, for a bill to die, having moved this far through the process, is very unlikely. In fact, we were concerned that the language was placed in another bill not related to education. After the tedious analysis of thousands of pages of legislation and the end of session, we knew the bill indeed had died.
House Bills such as 7027 and 7057 also died which had similar language to SB878.
Senate Bill 1630′s language was moved into another bill and was passed. This bill requires technological load testing of systems prior to implementation of Common Core. In this good bill, sponsored by Senator Legg, we asked that there be language requiring a short and long term cost analysis of Common Core prior to implementation. Though this language was not put in the bill, we believe that we will be able to get this language into a bill in next year’s session.
Make no mistake – we have won a battle but the war is still raging and Common Core proponents are working hard to stop our coalition. We must not let them win! Our children’s and our nation’s futures are at stake!
The following is our course of action:
• Educate – We must educate the voters, parents, teachers, school board members, and our politicians. We are currently developing a plan to create a state-wide effort to accomplish this task.
• Engage – We must expand our statewide coalition to build a force of citizens to hold our elected officials accountable to stop Common Core.
http://edlibertywatch.org/
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04:18 PM
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