Israel Won't Warn the U.S./Obama if it Attacks Iran

Jack Kemp

Big News - and no real surprise.

From CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57386328/israel-could-strike-iran-without-warning-u.s/

Israeli officials say they won't warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions.

SECTION OMITTED
Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the U.S. would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The U.S. has been working with the Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program.

END OF QUOTE

Marketing Evil by College "Experts"

Jack Kemp

The news is not good.

The Blaze reports:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ethicists-argue-in-favor-of-after-birth-abortions-as-newborns-are-not-persons/

Two ethicists working with Australian universities argue in the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics that if abortion of a fetus is allowable, so to should be the termination of a newborn.

Alberto Giubilini with Monash University in Melbourne and Francesca Minerva at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne write that in “circumstances occur[ing] after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”
END QUOTE

The article further states:

"This means a newborn whose family (or society) that could be socially, economically or psychologically burdened or damaged by the newborn should have the ability to seek out an after-birth abortion. They state that after-birth abortions are not preferable over early-term abortions of fetuses but should circumstances change with the family or the fetus in the womb, then they advocate that this option should be made available."

They advocate killing Down's Syndrome babies if they become "too much of a burden" to a family or society. This, once again, is another reason the left hates Sarah Palin and the Down's Syndrome baby she kept.

Last weekend, I saw the foreign movie "In Darkness," about Polish sewer worker Leopold Socha in Lvov who hid a group of Jews in his city's sewers for fourteen months in World War II. It is based on the book/memoir the last one of those surviving Jews, called "In the Sewers of Lvov" by Robert Marshall. In the movie, one of the young Jewish women gave birth to a child in the filth and rat ridden sewers, with the Nazis and their collaborators just feet above them. She - or another woman - decided, under these extreme circumstances, she could not feed or care for the child and she killed it. What these two "medical ethicists" are proposing is that we should all be reduced to living in a sewer under a National Socialist (that was the full name of the Nazis) regime and make our decisions based on this worldview/desperate situation.

"In Darkness" was nominated for an Academy Award this year and I will assume that Hollywood saw it as an inspiration not to repeat the horrors of the Nazi era rather than an advocacy film for infanticide, what these two Australian "medical ethicists" are advocating. Perhaps I am giving Hollywood too much credit here, but that will be my interpretation of this film: don't create a society that can rationalize any type of casual killing because it is inherently evil and barbaric.

In the famed American History story of the Donner Pass Party, a group of Nineteenth Century pioneers got caught in a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and some of them only survived by eating the flesh of those that perished. Once again, this was as an extreme situation and no one was believed to have been murdered.

But these true stories are exceptions that prove the rule. The two Australian "ethicists" (and Prof. Singer of Princeton in the U.S.) are trying to make the barbaric conditions exceptions the everyday rule in a "Mad Max" - or worse - world. Their starting premise is the worst possible society - and then excuses it, shrugging their shoulders.
Notice that these are the so called "intellectual experts." If they tried to start a private insurance company that advocated infanticide coverage rather than treatment of infants, they would probably go broke. Their "expertise" can only be employed in a state mandated system where the government is the insurer, the appeals court and the doctor - or in more direct terms: judge, jury and executioner. In a single payer system, such as what ObamaCare will become, there is no adversary to argue the point of extending someone's life. Indeed, like the Third Reich, the Obama Administration is trying to negate the social power of the Church (and Orthodox Synagogue) when it comes to abortions. Yes, I know Obama's speech only spoke of contraception being force on the Catholic Church, but who here believes Obama's plans stop with contraception?

When people say that this is a fight between Good and Evil for the Soul of America, they are not exaggerating. If the left can make it an acceptable policy to kill Down's Syndrome babies, then they have redefined murder - and you shouldn't be surprised by which politically out of favor children will be added to the list.

Crossing the Styx with Mona Charon

Timothy Birdnow

Over at National Review Moaning Charon, er, Mona Charen shows why the Conservative Movement is largely kaput. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291843/don-t-pick-rick-mona-charen

Charen has this to say about Rick Santorum:

"Because he has phrased his socially conservative views in vivid terms, he is precisely the sort of candidate who will evoke a Pavlovian response from the press. Just as they were driven mad by Sarah Palin, they will be outraged by Rick Santorum. The campaign will be cluttered by the continual discovery of “controversial” Santorum quotes from the past three decades, and precious time will be lost as he explains, justifies, or withdraws his comments on women in the workforce, contraception, gay unions, Obama’s “theology” (by which he did not mean to question the president’s faith, something he’ll have to explain over and over), and so forth.

In fact, Santorum’s sanctimonious style might put off even many religious voters. His intense 2008 warning about “the Father of Lies, Satan” having his “sights on the United States of America . . . attacking the great institutions of America — using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that [have] so deeply rooted in the American tradition” is not the sort of language most preachers, to say nothing of political figures, employ today. American religion these days is heavy on forgiveness and light on sin. We’ve long since left Jonathan Edwards behind. Anything other than comic references to Satan are likely to give people the creeps."

End excerpt.

Now, the temptation is to skewer one's own eyeballs ala Oedipus Rex at that first paragraph; does Charen actually believe that ANYTHIHNG will fail to evoke a Pavlovian response from the press by any candidate - anything that offers any hope of electoral success? How many years has Mona been studying the American media? Sucking up to the media is less than pointless. They are the enemy, even more than the Democrats, who are at least open about their purposes. If a candidate fails to elicit a pavlovian response we should be concerned about that candidate; they aren't being effective. It's part of why there is so little criticism of Mitt Romney by the media - or of John McCain before him. Or of Bob Dole in 1996. Trying to get media approval is like trying to bail water from the ocean.

I would like to point out that the only conservative President we have ever had - Ronald Reagan - was utterly reviled by the media. It was a source of strength for Reagan, who simply refused to play ball with them on their own field. Reagan called them out rather than pretended to take them seriouosly. This was a huge factor in Reagan's popularity with the general public; he showed that he had convictions rather than said what was popular.

As for Santorum's discussion of Satan, we are supposed to worry that religious voters will turn on him for that?

A 2007 poll revealed that more Americans believe in the Devil than in Darwinism. Fully 62% of Americans believe in the existence of Satan. http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/29/us-usa-religion-beliefs-idUSN2922875820071129 The concept of a Devil and devils is nigh unto universal in scope, being a major component of most non-New Age religions. There is nothing controversial or improper about speaking about Satan to an audience at a Catholic university. The media may seek to make it so, but they are on thin ground.

Moaner continues:

"Additionally, as Santorum himself seemed to acknowledge in the Arizona debate, the social issues that worry him (and should worry all of us), such as the collapse of the two-parent family, are not the kinds of problems that government can or even should attempt to solve. Yes, welfare programs that reward unwed parenting by subsidizing it are part of the problem. But, as Santorum will tell you (repeatedly), he helped reform welfare. That was the easy part. The rest is cultural change, and the president of the United States has very limited influence there.

If the fall campaign is all about what Rick Santorum said about gay adoptions, or a dozen other cultural live wires, it will not be about the Republican party’s most important and compelling issues: the ballooning national debt, the gross expansion of the federal government into every realm of life, economic growth, the flaccid foreign policy of the Obama administration, and the vain pursuit of “green” energy at the expense of abundant domestic oil and gas.

Americans are open to being persuaded that the federal behemoth can be tamed, that our health-care system can be saved before it buries us in red tape and incompetence, and that entitlements can be sensibly reformed. But they wouldn’t even hear those arguments from Rick Santorum. He’d be too busy putting Satan behind him."

End excerpt.

But that is demonstrably incorrect. Yes, people cannot be compelled to be moral, but our economic woes stem from an amoral worldview. Too many are quick to put their hands in the pockets of too many others in America. It's not just welfare, it's the culture of entitlement. Government has conditioned people into believing they have a right to the fruits of other people's labor. This philosophy runs rampant throughout the government, from welfare to the Department of Education, from school lunch programs to the Department of Agriculture. Why should coal miners in Pennsylvania pay farmers not to grow food? They do it because the federal government makes them, because the farmers want the steady flow of cash. Food prices are rising, and these same coal miners are paying more to eat while the farmers take and take. You really can't blame the farmers, because they, too, are paying for somebody else's subsidy. It's the culture of subsidization that is to blame, and THAT is a moral, not economic, problem. We can't fix our economic problems without addressing our moral ones.

The President can be a huge part of a solution to this breaking of the seventh and tenth Commandments; he can shut off the spigot. Without the cash flowing, people will rediscover their own moral character.

America is like a river, and the Left and their media allies are like the Army Corps of Engineers, erecting dams, levees, and other bullwarks to keep the river in a pre-planned channel. It requires constant labor on their part, because the river has a natural course it would flow if left alone. That labor is in the constant reinforcement by the press, but also by a host of cultural and educational institutions that place their message in all manner of things - movies, music, commercials, books, the internet. America is moving at odds to morality because it has been compelled to, twisted by a media that labors incessantly to channel the natural flow of thought. Breech those levees and the river will resume it's course. Americans know right from wrong, but have been confused by the endless drumbeat of liberalism in our schools, our press, our culture. While there are some things that cannot be stopped (such as the news media) the President has the power to dismantle many of these institutions by defunding them. Get rid of government programs and much of this would collapse of it's own weight.

This is a moral program.

Doesn't Charen see the connection between free contraception and the collapse of the two parent family? Surely she must understand that Obama's demand that insurance companies fund contraception is but another way to encourage more extramarital sex, which leads to a further erosion of the family!

Here Rick Santorum is uniquely positioned to act as an advocate for morality, to affect social values and promote sound economic policy at the same time.

The problem with people like Charen is that they do not understand the nature of the electorate. They think in terms of pure numbers; there are X amount of liberals (X because they deserve an x rating), Y amount of conservatives (Y for wise, or because we ask why?) and z amount of moderates (zzzzz). Charen and the Establishment types think the key is to coax the z's into voting for you. Romney's tax plan illustrated that perfectly; he offered a fairly nice across the board tax cut, but he HAD to defend progressivity in the tax code, and give the top people (who produce most of the nation's wealth) a smaller cut. That was done solely to offer a carrot to the z people, on the theory that he would get them to vote for him. But this fails to understand that using the left's own rhetoric means surrendering valuable yardage (to use a football metaphore) and to concede half the argument. Put it in military terms and it is as though the Union Army gave half of the mountains to Lee and the Confederates at Gettysburg because it was easier than defending those hills. When the Rebels charged Little Roundtop Chamberlaine could simply have retreated and fell back on a more easily defended position. That is essentially what the Establishment guys want us to do.

No. Political philosophy is dynamic, much like economic growth; feed it and it grows. The z's will warm to you if you present a positive, strong, confident message, and will walk away if they think you are just a politician trying to get their votes. Americans are crying for a genuine leader, not an artifact created in a boardroom somewhere. They THOUGHT that Barack Obama was one such, but learned he is nothing but a rubber mask. Bring forth a genuine man and the public will embrace him. Ronald Reagan illustrated that perfectly. Yes, Reagan was charming and witty, but that was not his strength; his strength was that he believed in Conservatism, and refused to be moved. Much ink has been spilled over the years about Reagan's popularity, but it is no more difficult to understand than that. He was a man who embodied traditional American values and refused to be moved by the corpsmen and their levees.

If given her way Charen will guarantee we lose. We may win the election, but we will lose the war, which is about saving America rather than any short-term political gain. George W. Bush should have shown us the problem with the Establishment thinking; Bush advanced certain conservative principles but he never went against the liberal orthodoxy. He gave us No Child Left Behind. He gave us a prescription drug entitlement. He gave us a massive growth in government, and ridiculous spending. He did this while tossing a few bones to conservatives, so we supported him. It was death by a thousand paper cuts. Electorally Bush was a disaster, with a steady bleeding of political power to the Democrats throughout his entire term. He ended as liberal as any president we have ever seen, making the insane statement that we must suspend capitalism in order to save it and bailing out the banks in an orgy of spending and government gone wild.

That is not the way.

Yet the Establishmentarians - even those on the right - think it IS the way, and they are determined to try this again. When has it worked? We have not had a true conservative president in office outiside of Ronald Reagan since Calvin Coolidge, and where has it gotten us? America has been on a long, agonizing slide, first in matters of morals and now economically (no surprise, given the linkage of the two). We are coming to the end, and we need more than just political fine tuning. We need a surgeon, and not an accupuncturist. The Tea Party knows this. Even the 99 centers understand this, although they stupidly want to double down on what has been killing us. Charen is advocating for an aspirin when we need heavy chemo.

It's time these old guard people retire. They know their time is past, and they are desperately clinging to their own positions, jealous of the new faces and voices coming out of the Tea Party and whatnot. They have all turned into Gerald Ford. They are looking to ride the tiger rather than tame it. They loathe and fear those warrior types who want to face the beast and stare it down. They would rather befriend it.

They aren't members of the Y's, but have largely joined the z's. They are asleep, and are angry someone wants to waken them from their slumber.

At San Jacinto the Mexican army was asleep when Sam Houston attacked, and the Napoleon of the West Santa Ana was engaged in congress with a half black slave girl (the Yellow Rose of Texas) and so all was lost - or at least Texas was lost. We need the wide awakes on duty, not those on siesta.

Charon was the boatman who ferried souls across the river Styx into Hades. Do we want to be in the same boat with Mona?

Mrs. Thatcher's vindication

Dana Mathewson

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to like to say that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money. It seems that other British politicians have taken longer to learn that lesson, though they apparently have finally done so. http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20VII/FEBRUARY%202012/27.BRITAIN.HTML

Meanwhile, William Katz comments "And we continue borrowing, and dumping one regulation after another on the very industries that need to grow to make the whole economy grow. And around the president are those – they probably spent their junior year abroad – who think the European and British examples are just wonderful, far more civilized than our own way. Why, in Britain they have national health care. At least this week."

As a Man Thinketh; the Devil and Rick Santorum

Timothy Birdnow

(This essay first appeared at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44842 )

What does a man believe? In the end, we are, our very nature and essence, defined by that simple question. Yes, we are physical entities that exist in a particular structure in a particular world, but our response to that world is predicated on what we believe. The Bible explained it long ago "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he" (Proverbs23:7). And this concept was understood by Buddhist monks who taught the uses of chants to keep the mind focused on what they believed was important to them. Tibetan Buddhist monks include such admonitions as:

http://thebigview.com/buddhism/

The greatest worth is self-mastery.

The greatest precept is continual awareness.

The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.

The greatest effort is not concerned with results.

And the 8 fold path concerns itself with how we perceive the Universe and respond to it.
http://thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html

Zoarastrianism likewise taught that Man must practice good thoughts, good words, and good deads. Right thinking is critical to right behavior, which determines our destiny.

Sin, or a state of error, entered first the spiritual world through distorted thinking and pride, and then the human world through trickery and naivete'. The Bible states that this error has twisted the fabric of reality, leading to Man's expulsion from Paradise.

This dovetails with modern science. Quantum physics argues that the observer, when observing a subatomic particle, "collapses the wavefront" which, in essence, defines the position of that particle for the observer. A subatomic particle exists in a range, a probability until an observer performs the act of observing and the wavefront collapses into a specific particle. The observer has a strange god-like power to define reality at the quantum level. And the observer is critical at the macro level as well, with time being intimately linked to the position of the observer in Relativity. Not just time but mass too; mass increases as a body approaches the speed of light. At lightspeed a mass would be infinite, and so a piece of matter could not possibly reach lightspeed. But the observer would see none of this were HE the piece of matter approaching lightspeed; only the outside observer would witness his growing denisty.

But, you say, this has nothing to do with thinking but with observing. Fair enough. But research on neuroplasticity shows that, yes indeed, a man can rebuild his own brain just by thinking. Jeffrey Schwarz's research on people suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) at UCLA http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/about_jeffrey_m_schwartz_.html can rewire their own brains to bypass the damaged neural circuit just by meditating and willing it. It's not easy, but it happens with dedicated effort.

And this speaks volumes; people often develop certain appearances that cannot be simply attributed to choices in style. We all know the dog owner who looks just like his pooch and vice versa. Women often synchronize their menstral periods when living together, and sometimes roommates come to resemble each-other. Often times one can spot a particularly zealous political type - a feminist, say - just by looking. Or a prudish conservative. Why? Materialists would argue that they have certain looks based on their biological nature, on the fact that they were thus and so and are prisoners of their genetics. But is it not perhaps the other way around? Perhaps form follows function, and the brain, the choices made and the identity chosen, is refashioning the body?

This is no idle quesiton, because it strikes at the heart of the Great Divide, the battle between Conservative and Liberal, between God and Man, between Good and Evil. It is this question of how Man sees himself that divides us.

Recently the media, notoriously leftist in approach and sympathy, has trumpeted Rick Santorum's comments http://fox8.com/2012/02/22/santorum-and-satan-devil-is-in-the-details/ to an audience at the Catholic Ave Maria University in which he claimed America is under attack from Satan. To the media and other liberals this automatically disqualifies Santorum to be President, because in their view only a fool would believe in the cartoon character devil with his red tail and cloven hooves. The Devil? Really! This is the 21st century! Who believes in the Devil?

Of course, the presupposition is that if there is no Devil there is little reason to believe in a personal God either. At the root of this belief is the fundamental starting point for liberal thought; Man is inherently good. The liberal movement began with this presupposition, and built a dizzying philosophical system based upon it. It is the core, the first cause of the entire liberal/left worldview.

But if Man is inherently good, there is no explanation for evil except as a result of biology and nature. If that is the case then biology and nature are flawed, and that means either there is a capricious God who is capable of evil or, more likely, no God at all, for how can a man who is inherently good do evil? How does a man even know the difference if there is really no such thing? Maintaining the view that Man is inherently good is the ultimate path to atheism.

The Conservative worldview accepts that Man is NOT inherently good, because he is capable of committing great evil. It is a choice between two divergent things. And evil transcends simple human frailty; anyone who has looked into the eye of a Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer knows evil is a real entity, a seperate thing, a parasitic organism that feeds on the human mind and spirit. And it's power is beyond dispute; Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, etc. should have put an end to any such doubt about the reality and power of evil.

And it is a universal thing. Demonic possession, for instance, transcends all cultures and traditions. Every race, creed, and culture tells of demons, malevalent beings who torment or seduce humans. Witchcraft, too, is universal. If there is no evil there certainly are a lot of people who believe in it. And as a man thinketh...

As James Madison observed in Federalist 51:

"But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

End quote.

Clearly he and the other Founding Fathers understood the reality of evil, and the tendency of Man to succumb to the glamour of evil.

So Liberalism is falsified, like a bad theory. Either Man himself is evil in nature or there is an evil entity at work. But the liberal person refuses to believe either alternative, or even to look at them. Too much has been invested in his worldview to challenge it's fundamental assumption.

And government is the church of the liberal. He seeks to empower it as a priest seeks to proselytize. It is the expression of the common will, and by common will he means his own. Progressives believe that they can create a truly just society, and that the means is government. Man, they believe, is perfectible. He hasn't been perfected only because the right people haven't had adequate power.

With the waning tide of Christendom in the West people have come to glorify the creature rather than the Creator, to believe in a soulless, empty, amoral world governed by the tyranny of physical laws. The modern view is that as a man is so shall he thinketh. There is a near desperation on the part of dedicated atheists and materialists to reduce the human mind to a matter of mechanics, to dethrone free will, to explain the mind and soul as mere illusions, nothing but a function of the mechanical processes of the brain. But quantum physics destroys this argument, and the fact that a person can rewire their own brains by an act of will shows that Man uses that brain and not the other way around. That simply cannot stand. The leftist worldview will collapse of it's own weight if Man is not reduced to a machine.

That is why Rick Santorum must be mocked, ridiculed, attacked, laughed at; he is striking at the achilles heel of the entirety of Liberalism. Notions of a Devil, of a personal malevelant being or beings that seek to darken the human mind and corrupt the human spirit, cannot be permitted a public airing. He is accused of wanting to create a theocracy where everyone is forced to live under strict rules invented by his Church buddies, charges that he would return us to a medieval worldview, that he would force women to be barefoot and pregnant, that he would, well, make America into the spitting image of Iran, only with a Christian face (which is inexcusable). The media and liberal establishment is strangely reticent about condemning theocracy in the Islamic world, but is quite gung-ho on attacking it here. And yet none of this is true.

It was the Christian concept of free will that gave us America, gave us the Bill of Rights, gave us the entire notion of a free people governing themselves. Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence that all men are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" which was a Christian view of the human condition. The Founding Father's clearly did not buy into the argument that Man is inherently good; they would never have restricted democracy, nor chained government if they had. It was the Christian concept of rationality that gave us the concept of Natural Law. It was the Christian desire to know God that gave us modern science. It was Jesus who instituted seperation of Church and State with "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's". It was the Christian concept of equality under God that made the colonists fight a revolution against an English aristocracy that believed in an inherent right to rule.

But none of this matters to the Left; at it's heart Liberalism rejects the First Commandment and places Man on the throne of the godhead. Granted, there are many liberal Christians, but these people fall into a simple trap, one that fits the description of "useful idiots"; the Left cherry picked bits and pieces from the Gospels and tricked the ignorant into believing that Christ came to promulgate a social Gospel. He did not; life is first and foremost a spiritual journey, a venture whose goal is to escape the carnal. Hell uses the carnal to enslave the sojournor. Evil is that which promotes Man centered, nature centered, and humanistic ways of seeing the world. Hell is a state of mind, one which rejects God. Liberalism is a doctrine of Man, a carnal doctrine aimed at a social Gospel, a celebration of humanity.

So do not be surprised to see more such attacks on Rick Santorum. His belief in the existence of Satan is an anachronism that the Left simply cannot allow to stand. If the public should start believing in the Devil they may remember there is a God, and a day of judgement, and then where would we be?

As a man thinketh. The Progressives and the Left must make Man think of himself as meat and nerve tissue,

The Heartland Fraudster Unveiled

Timothy Birdnow

I just found the source of Anticlimategate; Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute.
http://fakegate.org/

Looks like Gleick, a notorious Global Warming alarmist, is the culprit.

Now, will the Holder/Obama DOJ pursue charges against him? Don't hold your breath!

Lower Than Pond Scum

By Alan Caruba

Between 1955 and 1959 I was a student at the University of Miami. It was perhaps the best four years of my life and remembered fondly for its combination of fun and learning. On Thursday, February 23, President Barack Obama was on the UM campus to tell the biggest bunch of lies about energy in America I have heard compressed into a single speech.

This President has already set records wasting taxpayer’s money on a range of so-called clean energy and renewable energy “investments”. Solyndra, the solar panel company that went bust and stuck taxpayers with a half-billion in loan guarantees is just one of those “investments” and I keep waiting for someone to ask why public funds are being flushed down the toilet when, if the companies involved were viable, they could not raise private venture capital?

“And we’re making investments in the development of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance known as algae,” said the President. “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17% of the oil we important for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in America.”

All politicians put the best face on their pet projects, but to flat-out lie about one of the most idiotic ideas to replace oil when this nation has enough oil, domestically and offshore, known and estimated to exist, defies the imagination. It is an insult to every one of us. And Obama wants to pump $14 million into algae, otherwise known as pond scum.

It is very likely that, like the solar panel and other “clean energy” scandals that we know about and will learn about as time goes alone, the average American is unaware that, by 2008, there were fifteen (15) algae startup companies. When I heard Obama talk about algae, I could practically hear the campaign fund-raising bundlers scurrying like rats from company to company.

To those of you not intimately and well informed about algae, it is that organic stuff that gathers in ponds and swamps and, in aggregate, is politely called “plant-like organisms that are usually photosynthetic and aquatic.” It is scum. It has no roots, stems, or leaves. It is scum.

In a marine environment it is called seaweed. Algae have chlorophyll and can manufacture their own food through photosynthesis. Algae, the scientists tell us, produces more oxygen than all the plants in the world in addition to being an important food source for marine creatures as diverse in size as shrimp and whales.

The notion that millions would be “invested” to turn algae into fuel ranks just above the idiocy of converting thousands of acres of corn into ethanol instead of food.

Barack Obama has been lying about so many things for so long I doubt he even knows when he is lying or even cares. It’s not enough to dismiss this saying that all politicians lie because many do not. Some in Congress right now are desperately trying to get the public in general and voters in particular to understand that America has more debt per capita than Greece. We are on the precipice of financial collapse and Barack Obama just wants to spend more and more and more; some of it on pond scum.

During his UM speech, he derided those who have for decades been saying that America has to allow oil companies access to its vast reserves in order to reduce our dependence on imported oil. “We’ve heard the same thing for thirty years,” he said. He’s right. And administrations and Congress have blocked access for just as long. It’s our oil!

He went further, though. “It means that anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about—or isn’t telling you the truth.” That’s rich, coming from someone who lies almost as often as he exhales. Oil is a global commodity. The more that’s available to the market, the lower its cost. Domestic oil always costs consumers less than imported oil!
http://energyforamerica.org/inventory/

The truth is that oil production on federal lands declined last year by eleven percent on lands controlled by the Obama administration and six percent for natural gas in 2011.Oil and natural gas production on federal lands is down by more than forty percent (40%) compared to ten years ago. The Obama administration, in 2010, issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984. In 2011, it held exactly one offshore lease sale.

On February 24, one day after the Obama speech, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report on the amount of oil estimated to exist in the North Slope of Alaska. http://www.anwr.org/ “The amount of oil that is technically recoverable in the United States is more than 1.4 trillion barrels, with the largest deposits located offshore, in portions of Alaska, and in shale in the Rocky Mountain West. When combined with resources from Canada and Mexico, total recoverable oil in North America exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels.

In a 2008 Wall Street Journal interview, Obama’s Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, famously said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe.” Anyone who does not believe this administration has a deliberate policy of achieving this goal is just not paying attention. Remember that the next time you fill your car’s gas tank.

This is the same President who stopped the building of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada that would provide more oil for our refineries and not cost the American taxpayer one penny to build. This is the same President who imposed a moratorium on oil from the Gulf of Mexico even after the courts told him to remove it. It caused the loss of an estimated 12,000 jobs while rigs departed for Cuba, Brazil and Mexico.

Between now and November, the President will be out campaigning and telling the same lies. The rise in the cost of oil isn’t just a seasonal thing though prices have usually gone up in the summertime when people travel more for vacations. It’s up because the Iranians are closing in on making their own nuclear weapons and their own missiles to hit, not just Israel, but the U.S. It’s up because it is essential to ensure that the tankers oil-producing nations around the Persian Gulf can enter and exist it via the Strait of Harmuz.

The world isn’t running out of oil and is not about to run out. The Earth floats on an ocean of oil despite the rising demand from Asia and other developing nations. To replace foreign oil with algae-based fuel would require a chemically-controlled tank the size of the State of Colorado, about 69.3 million acres.

In 2010, Obama’s mandated biofuel production was less than ten percent of foreign oil imports. It is impossible for biofuel of any description to replace foreign oil imports; just as it is idiotic to pay $41,000 for an electric car when you can have a gasoline-fueled car for around $16,000.

Pond scum is not a rational substitute for oil and spending $14 million on its production as a fuel is beyond absurd. It is the same confidence game as selling “carbon credits” to avoid the hoax of “global warming.”

© Alan Caruba, 2012

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/lower-than-pond-scum.html

As a Man Thinketh; the Devil and Rick Santorum at Canada Free Press

Timothy Birdnow

I defend Rick Santorum and show why it is so crucial to Progressives to demonize anyone who makes mention of Satan or demons in a new piece at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44842

A denial of the existence of evil is absolutely necessary to hold to liberal/left views. They will crush anyone who reasserts the old doctrine of evil - and Santorum is in their crosshairs.

Ginsburg and Foreign Law

Timothy Birdnow

Justice Ginsberg wants to scrap the U.S. Constitution and substitute foreign law.
http://netrightdaily.com/2012/02/justice-ginsburg-substitutes-constitution-for-foreign-buffet/

Madam Ginsburg stated:

“I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012"

and she suggests she would be more interested in South Africa's constitution than ours.

While she cannot actually scrap the Constitution, she can borrow from foreign law to make her decisions rather than looking to American jurisprudence.

And that she has done: in 2003 she based her decision in Gruner v. Bollinger et al on an international treaty on race rather than U.S. legal precedent. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-241 for example.

The thing about using foreign law is, which foreign law are you going to choose. If foreign law can be used to justify a decision than another foreign law could be used to justify it's opposite. If, say, a discrimination case came before the court in which a woman bus driver was not promoted because of her sex, should case law from Denmark be employed to find in favor of the plaintiff, or should Saudi law be used to decide the woman should not be driving in the first place? Based on foreign law one can justify anything up to and including female circumcision and slavery. It becomes a matter of pure personal opinion; which laws are more pleasing to your personal desires. Law loses all meaning when it becomes too broad-based, and then becomes an act of judicial tyranny dressed in legalese. American law must apply to American cases, or there is no law at all.

Ginsburg is proof that we need term limits on sitting judges.

Hypocrisy and the AAAS

Timothy Birdnow

This piece appeared first at Canada Free Press and at Project Shining City. This is a bit of a rough draft, so it would be wise to see the polished version:


The BBC is accusing Canada's Conservative government of "muzzling scientists".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16861468

Seems that the Harper government has guidelines about how government-sponsored researchers deal with the press, and some do not like it.

This is the same accusations made by people like James Hansen of NASA during the Bush Administration, and those accusations were proven false. The purpose is to embarass the government, a government that does not ascribe to the catastrophic global warming scenario pushed by leftists who have infiltrated the science establishment.

From the article:

"The allegation of "muzzling" came up at a session of the AAAS meeting to discuss the impact of a media protocol introduced by the Conservative government shortly after it was elected in 2008.

The protocol requires that all interview requests for scientists employed by the government must first be cleared by officials. A decision as to whether to allow the interview can take several days, which can prevent government scientists commenting on breaking news stories.

Sources say that requests are often refused and when interviews are granted, government media relations officials can and do ask for written questions to be submitted in advance and elect to sit in on the interview."

End excerpt.

The complaint is being made by the same AAAS that has stated unequivocally:

http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf

"The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities
is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society."

This against a mounting body of evidence that climate change is natural, normal, and driven largely by variables other than human industrial emissions. It also ignores the growing number of skeptical scientists.

And while the BBC quotes several sources, what is glaringly missing are the actual guidelines issued by the Canadian government. According to the article:

"The media protocol was obtained and reported three years ago by Margaret Munro, who is a science writer for Postmedia News, based in Vancouver. Speaking at the AAAS meeting, she said its effect was to suppress scientific debate on issues of public interest."

End excerpt.

But we aren't given that protocol by the BBC. Why aren't those protocols at least excerpted here?

The amazing thing about this is that what the Harper government is doing is precisely what the AAAS has requested.

The AAAS, in their release "Statement of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Regarding Personal Attacks on Climate Scientists" said http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2011/media/0629board_statement.pdf

"The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse."

And

"Moreover, we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the
professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions."

End excerpts.

And so the Canadian government, seeking to protect these same scientists from badgering skeptical media types, kindly employed a protective protocol. But now the AAAS is crying foul.

Why? Because they WANT to use the media to advance their vision of catastrophic global warming. Sauce for Canadian geese is sauce for Canadian gander; if the AAAS demands protection from inquiry they have no right to demand absolutely free press access - especially considering that their research is being bought and paid for by taxpayer money. It should be noted that there is no gag rule about scientists discussing their findings with one another - just a restriction on what they say to the press.

But the AAAS did not protest the gag rule placed on climate scientists by the IPCC, which claimed that research done under IPCC auspices is proprietary and that Freedom of Information requests should be denied. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/14/ipcc-declares-itself-exempt-from-foia-laws/ Where was the concern for openness then?

The AAAS was strangely silent when Heidi Cullen, meteorologist on the Weather Channel, was demanding the decertification of any meteorologist who would not follow the party line on global warming. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528 They were silent when an environmental activist called for Nueremberg trials for "climate change deniars" - this based on the alarmist science they are promoting. http://grist.org/article/the-denial-industry/ They failed to protest the raid on the home of a skeptical blogger's home over the Climategate e-mails. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/british_police_raid_climategate_bloggers_home.html http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/british_police_raid_climategate_bloggers_home.html They did not complain about strongarming journal editors for publishing "deniar" science. http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/the_warmists_strike_back.html

In point of fact, the Climategate e-mails make it abundantly clear that silencing critics was a major strategy by the AGW alarmists, and the AAAS never bothered to condemn such tactics. It has been strangely silent about the theft of internal memos at the Heartland Institute http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/global_warming_alarmists_hail_mary_pass_a_scurrilous_and_dishonest_attack_on_the_heartland_institute and the subsequent faking of documents http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ to discredit a foundation funding skeptical climate science.

But NOW the AAAS finds it's voice.

James Hansen repeatedly made the charge during the Bush Administration that he was being muzzled by his bosses - yet he went around touting global warming regularly, making considerable sums of money doing so. This is an old dodge; accuse the enemy of what you yourself are doing. Critics of Global Warming theory are accused of trolling for cash, lying about research results, and repressing open inquiry, yet the big money is on the side of alarmists
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/ and the climategate e-mails make it abundantly clear that it is the alarmist side using strongarm tactics and repressing results. What can they do? They have to convince the public that THEY are the victims, and the victims are actually the perps.

This is more of the same.

I don't generally plug movies, but...

Dana Mathewson

... this sounds like the kind of off-the-wall thing I might even actually go to see. Read all about it... http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/02/24/wanderlust-the-rise-of-the-counter-countercultural-comedy/

Does this surprise anybody?

Jack Kemp

Reported from Texas:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gay-texas-judge-tonya-parker-perform-marriages-straight-couples-article-1.1027709#ixzz1nJwsVEuQ

An openly gay Texas judge says she refuses to conduct marriage ceremonies for straight couples until same-sex couples can also wed.

Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker explained her decision Tuesday at a monthly meeting for the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.

“I do not perform them because it is not an equal application of the law. Period,” she said, according to the Dallas Voice, a newspaper for the gay community.

SECTION OMITTED

Same-sex marriage is not legal in Texas.
END OF QUOTE

Judge Parker has essentially outlawed straight marriages in her court. Would anyone bet that a gay judge in a state which already has legal gay marriages wouldn't attempt the same maneuver until such a time until gay marriage is legal all over the US and in Tahiti and Nepal also?

A lesson in how it's done -- party politics, that is

Dana Mathewson

How it's being done now, that is. Not necessarily how it should be done. And there's the rub, as The Bard would say. Sometimes the old ways are better.

http://www.urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20VII/FEBRUARY%202012/22.GOP.HTML

FTA: "We implicitly take for granted the idea that the way things are done now is either the way they have always been done, or that it was changed from the old ways for good reasons. Perhaps it is the march of technology or the seemingly endless growth in the American economy that gives us confidence that today’s rules of the road are better than yesterday’s. But it is not so in the case of the party operations. The sad truth is that Americans who lived and died 150 years ago – who didn’t have modern medicine, personal computers, cars, airplanes, easy access to higher education, "sophisticated" manners and all the rest – had a much better party system than we do today."

Selective Moral Outrage by t he AAAS at Canada Free Press

Timothy Birdnow

I take on the AAAS and it's selective moral outrage in a new piece at Canada Free Press.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44809

The AAAS is furious that Canada is making government paid scientists clear press interviews before granting them, and yet this is exactly what the AAAS wanted previously.

Don't miss it!

Why Global Warming Alarmists are Wrong

Here is a reply to Trenberth et al http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577193270727472662.html by a consortium of climate scientis, who replied to their original op-ed "No Need to Panic about Global Warming" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html :

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213244084429540.html

Editor's Note: The authors of the following letter, listed below, are also the signatories of "No Need to Panic About Global Warming," an op-ed that appeared in the Journal on January 27. This letter responds to criticisms of the op-ed made by Kevin Trenberth and 37 others in a letter published Feb. 1, and by Robert Byer of the American Physical Society in a letter published Feb. 6.


The interest generated by our Wall Street Journal op-ed of Jan. 27, "No Need to Panic about Global Warming," is gratifying but so extensive that we will limit our response to the letter to the editor the Journal published on Feb. 1, 2012 by Kevin Trenberth and 37 other signatories, and to the Feb. 6 letter by Robert Byer, President of the American Physical Society. (We, of course, thank the writers of supportive letters.)

We agree with Mr. Trenberth et al. that expertise is important in medical care, as it is in any matter of importance to humans or our environment. Consider then that by eliminating fossil fuels, the recipient of medical care (all of us) is being asked to submit to what amounts to an economic heart transplant. According to most patient bills of rights, the patient has a strong say in the treatment decision. Natural questions from the patient are whether a heart transplant is really needed, and how successful the diagnostic team has been in the past.

In this respect, an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is "falsified" and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.

These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year-to-year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer-term trends are significant.

Enlarge Image

CloseFrom the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth's temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.

The Trenberth letter tells us that "computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean." The ARGO system of diving buoys is providing increasingly reliable data on the temperature of the upper layers of the ocean, where much of any heat from global warming must reside. But much like the surface temperature shown in the graph, the heat content of the upper layers of the world's oceans is not increasing nearly as fast as IPCC models predict, perhaps not increasing at all. Why should we now believe exaggerating IPCC models that tell us of "missing heat" hiding in the one place where it cannot yet be reliably measured—the deep ocean?

Given this dubious track record of prediction, it is entirely reasonable to ask for a second opinion. We have offered ours. With apologies for any immodesty, we all have enjoyed distinguished careers in climate science or in key science and engineering disciplines (such as physics, aeronautics, geology, biology, forecasting) on which climate science is based.

Trenberth et al. tell us that the managements of major national academies of science have said that "the science is clear, the world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible." Apparently every generation of humanity needs to relearn that Mother Nature tells us what the science is, not authoritarian academy bureaucrats or computer models.

One reason to be on guard, as we explained in our original op-ed, is that motives other than objective science are at work in much of the scientific establishment. All of us are members of major academies and scientific societies, but we urge Journal readers not to depend on pompous academy pronouncements—on what we say—but to follow the motto of the Royal Society of Great Britain, one of the oldest learned societies in the world: nullius in verba—take nobody's word for it. As we said in our op-ed, everyone should look at certain stubborn facts that don't fit the theory espoused in the Trenberth letter, for example—the graph of surface temperature above, and similar data for the temperature of the lower atmosphere and the upper oceans.

What are we to make of the letter's claim: "Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record." We don't see any warming trend after the year 2000 in the graph. It is true that the years 2000-2010 were perhaps 0.2 C warmer than the preceding 10 years. But the record indicates that long before CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere began to increase, the earth began to warm in fits and starts at the end of the Little Ice Age—hundreds of years ago. This long term-trend is quite likely to produce several warm years in a row. The question is how much of the warming comes from CO2 and how much is due to other, both natural and anthropogenic, factors?

Related Video

Heartland Institute President Joe Bast on why global warming activist Peter Gleick stole and forged documents from his organization.

There have been many times in the past when there were warmer decades. It may have been warmer in medieval times, when the Vikings settled Greenland, and when wine was exported from England. Many proxy indicators show that the Medieval Warming was global in extent. And there were even warmer periods a few thousand years ago during the Holocene Climate Optimum. The fact is that there are very powerful influences on the earth's climate that have nothing to do with human-generated CO2. The graph strongly suggests that the IPCC has greatly underestimated the natural sources of warming (and cooling) and has greatly exaggerated the warming from CO2.

The Trenberth letter states: "Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused." However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact.

But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming. To claim, as the Trenberth letter apparently does, that disputing this constitutes "extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert" is peculiar indeed.

One might infer from the Trenberth letter that scientific facts are determined by majority vote. Some postmodern philosophers have made such claims. But scientific facts come from observations, experiments and careful analysis, not from the near-unanimous vote of some group of people.

The continued efforts of the climate establishment to eliminate "extreme views" can acquire a seriously threatening nature when efforts are directed at silencing scientific opposition. In our op-ed we mentioned the campaign circa 2003 to have Dr. Chris de Freitas removed not only from his position as editor of the journal Climate Research, but from his university job as well. Much of that campaign is documented in Climategate emails, where one of the signatories of the Trenberth et al. letter writes: "I believe that a boycott against publishing, reviewing for, or even citing articles from Climate Research [then edited by Dr. de Freitas] is certainly warranted, but perhaps the minimum action that should be taken."

Or consider the resignation last year of Wolfgang Wagner, editor-in-chief of the journal Remote Sensing. In a fulsome resignation editorial eerily reminiscent of past recantations by political and religious heretics, Mr. Wagner confessed to his "sin" of publishing a properly peer-reviewed paper by University of Alabama scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell containing the finding that IPCC models exaggerate the warming caused by increasing CO2.

Enlarge Image

CloseGetty Images/Ikon Images
The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.

The European experience with green technologies has also been discouraging. A study found that every new "green job" in Spain destroyed more than two existing jobs and diverted capital that would have created new jobs elsewhere in the economy. More recently, European governments have been cutting subsidies for expensive CO2-emissionless energy technologies, not what one would expect if such subsidies were stimulating otherwise languid economies. And as we pointed out in our op-ed, it is unlikely that there will be any environmental benefit from the reduced CO2 emissions associated with green technologies, which are based on the demonization of CO2.

Turning to the letter of the president of the American Physical Society (APS), Robert Byer, we read, "The statement [on climate] does not declare, as the signatories of the letter [our op-ed] suggest, that the human contribution to climate change is incontrovertible." This seems to suggest that APS does not in fact consider the science on this key question to be settled.

Yet here is the critical paragraph from the statement that caused the resignation of Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever and many other long-time members of the APS: "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now." No reasonable person can read this and avoid the conclusion that APS is declaring the human impact "incontrovertible." Otherwise there would be no logical link from "global warming" to the shrill call for mitigation.

The APS response to the concerns of its membership was better than that of any other scientific society, but it was not democratic. The management of APS took months to review the statement quoted above, and it eventually declared that not a word needed to be changed, though some 750 words were added to try to explain what the original 157 words really meant. APS members were permitted to send in comments but the comments were never made public.

In spite of the obstinacy of some in APS management, APS members of good will are supporting the establishment of a politics-free, climate physics study group within the Society. If successful, it will facilitate much needed discussion, debate, and independent research in the physics of climate.

In summary, science progresses by testing predictions against real world data obtained from direct observations and rigorous experiments. The stakes in the global-warming debate are much too high to ignore this observational evidence and declare the science settled. Though there are many more scientists who are extremely well qualified and have reached the same conclusions we have, we stress again that science is not a democratic exercise and our conclusions must be based on observational evidence.

The computer-model predictions of alarming global warming have seriously exaggerated the warming by CO2 and have underestimated other causes. Since CO2 is not a pollutant but a substantial benefit to agriculture, and since its warming potential has been greatly exaggerated, it is time for the world to rethink its frenzied pursuit of decarbonization at any cost.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antoninio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Do Ft. Hood Shooting Victims deserve Purple Heart?

Jack Kemp

Frontpage Magazine has a petition requesting those wounded (and I assume killed) by that Muslim officer at Ft. Hood deserve a Purple Heart. When I signed it, I was also put automatically on an email list to receive news updates from Frontpage, which I don't consider a bad thing. I assume one can always cancel this later or have it declared spam if you don't want it.

The petition is at

http://www.frontpagemag.net/forthoodheroes/index.html?cdtrack_creative=01f577e8-f51f-4b54-b809-8200ad8a4ed2&cdtrack_source=6766ecf9-5d7e-4988-ba24-e120e6fe0873

The War on Religious Liberty at Military Funerals

Jack Kemp


Today I noticed that Phyllis Schlafly, in an article counter-attacking Obama's War on Religious Liberty, stated that
http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2012/02/20/phyllis_s...


"At the Veterans Affairs Department, Obama's agents banned Military Honor Details from reciting the significance of each fold of the American Flag during the burial services of our heroic men and women who gave their lives for our country. Obama says the ceremony promoted religion and therefore, the recitations had to stop."
END QUOTE
While this change in military burial services is definitely worth mentioning, it turns out that this ban was enacted in 2007 under President Bush.

Scripps Howard reported at that time:
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/27879

"Flag-folding recitation banned at veterans cemeteries nationwide
Submitted by administrator on Thu, 10/25/2007 - 11:51

By JOE VARGO
The Press-Enterprise
Thursday, October 25, 2007

Through thousands of military burials, Memorial Honor Detail volunteers at Riverside National Cemetery in California have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors of those being laid to rest.

The first fold, a narrator tells relatives, represents life, the second a belief in eternal life.
The 11th fold celebrates Jewish war veterans and glorifies the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
END OF QUOTE

Based on a single complaint at the Riverside National Cemetery, the entire flag folding procedure was banned, including the next fold:
http://www.vamortgagecenter.com/blog/2007/10/31/veterans-outraged-a...

"The 12th fold is meant to glorify 'God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.'”
END QUOTE

Sorry, Phyllis, but this attack on our cultural and religious heritage has been going on since before Obama got in office. But I thank you for pointing out this outrage for those of us not familiar with it.

In Patrick Buchanan’s book about immigration and national identity, "State of Emergency," in Chapter 9, on p. 150 he mentions what Stalin did to raise patriotic feelings in World War II. I quote.


“In the great crisis of his empire, Hitler’s invasion, Stalin did not call on his subjects to save communism or defend the Soviet Constitution. He called on Russia’s sons to defend the Rodina, Mother Russia, against the Germanic hordes, and suspended his suppression of the Orthodox Church so its bishops and priests could bless ‘The Great Patriotic War.’ Communist to the core, Stalin yet knew that men do not die for secular creeds like Marxism or Leninism, but for the ‘ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods.’”


The thoughts about what people fight for mentioned in Buchanan’s State of Emergency book are echoed in Former Under Sec. of the Navy James Webb’s earlier book, "Born Fighting, How the Scots-Irish Shaped America."

Although the Scots-Irish today represent a smaller percentage of the population than they did in Colonial times, I believe they still represent a significant percentage of the US military. This short review by the American Library Association, quoted in an online review from an online bookseller, is as relevant today as it was in the 1700s.

“In telling the story of the Scots-Irish in America as a robust and passionate tale, novelist Webb writes straightforward, no-nonsense, readable history that clips right along while it is also very personal and highly idiosyncratic about a people who, he claims, are largely invisible-taken for granted-to the general public and who, seldom thinking of themselves in ethnic identity terms, mostly don’t know their culture. Webb maintains that Scots-Irish attitudes form the bedrock of American society, especially among the working class. Scots-Irish culture has produced American presidents from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, soldiers from Ulysses S. Grant to George Patton, pioneers, preachers, and others whose most common characteristics may be described as fierce individualism, persistent egalitarianism, and a strong sense of personal honor. Perhaps the most visible examples of broad and ongoing Scots-Irish legacy are the fundamentalist Christianity (a potent combination of Scottish

Calvinism and headstrong populism) of America’s Bible Belt and country music. Webb begins the Scots-Irish saga in Scotland, where, he says, the Scots-Irish character was formed, moves on to the Ulster Scots of what is now Northern Ireland, and follows them to the Appalachians and points beyond as well as through the American Revolution, the Civil War, and up to the present day.”

And while some may wonder about the motivation behind the removing of the 13 flag folds ceremony, here is my take, once again repeating a quote from Communist dictator Josef Stalin I used in an earlier article.

Stalin famously said, "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."

Singing that song in Colo. is conversion to Islam

Jack Kemp

It isn't a mere class exercise in "tolerance." Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs points out the details of the song that young man in Colorado refused to sing, resulting in his getting death threats and leaving the school.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/02/expert-warns-against-singing-islamic-prayer-song-that-prompted-high-school-student-to-quit-the-choir.html

"Expert Warns Against Singing Islamic Prayer Song that prompted High School student to quit the choir
It is ridiculously easy to convert to Islam. Just say it. Leaving Islam, not so much. For the believers, death is the punishment for apostasy.

Obviously the student who refused to submit to inadvertent conversion was wiser than the rest of the schmucks who went along with the dangerous teacher/choirmaster. He quit the choir. Andthen had to leave school because of the death threats that followed. Of course, the dhimmified school backed the teacher, while keeping the student front and center in the line of fire. Such ignorance is unforgivable.
Abandon the public schools in droves. Home-school. Or consider fully vetted religious and/or private schools. American public schools are dangerous in every way imaginable.
Expert Warns Against Singing Islamic Prayer Song KREX TV
Grand Junction - The same song that prompted one Grand Junction High School student to quit the choir has a surprising religious meaning behind a certain verse within the song known as the Shahada. According to experts, the Islamic prayer song called Zikr has a statement within it that, if stated, comes with potential consequences.
“The Shahada is the Muslim statement of faith, and the simple way of becoming Muslim is to say the Shahada,” said Steve Hagerman, founder of Turkish World Organization. Hagerman said this may pose a problem for those singing the song because they don’t know what’s to come after.

“When they sing the Shahada, they need to realize that to radical and conservative Muslims, they are then becoming Muslims,” said Hagerman. He went on to say that the public should know what’s to come from stating the Shahada, because it could be a death sentence.

"In strict Islam, if you become a Muslim--say the Shadada--then later you revert to the particular religion you once were,” said Hagerman. “Then strict Muslims are supposed to kill you."

Officials at a mosque in Denver told NewsChannel 5 that this idea only exists in Muslim-based countries and is of the most radical of beliefs. They’re of the opinion that no one in the United States should worry about this, especially the students singing the song."

End quote.

It's not "radical," it's devout.

SEPP Responds to Heartland Accusations

Timothy Birdnow

Dr. S. Fred Singer has been personally implicated by the NY Times and Christian Science Moniter as recipient of money from the Heartland Institute in their supposed attack on climate science (the core of the prosecution's evidence being a fake document released with some ancillary stolen documents from Heartland) and Ken Haapla at the Science and Environment Policy Project replies:

The Heartland Flap: According to a Heartland press release a person, unknown, used false pretenses to obtain confidential Heartland records. These were quickly posted on some web sites along with an apparently false document of a strategic plan by Heartland to address climate science. Immediately, alarmist web sites went viral. This was proof of a conspiracy to challenge climate science, as alarmists define it. Once dependable newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor immediately trumpeted the news.

The Christian Science Monitor falsely claimed that the Charles C. Koch Foundation was undermining climate science. However, the Koch Foundation stated its donations to Heartland were for health care. The Monitor story avoided the fact that there were no major contributions from oil companies, but it linked to stories such as: "Are climate-change deniers guilty of treason?"

The reports stated that Heartland was paying three scientists a total of $18,267, and some expenses, per month, or $219,204 per year, for work on the reports of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The NIPCC reports include reviews of published scientific articles that are systematically ignored by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

It never occurred to the reporters and the editors of the newspapers that $219,204 per year is an insignificant amount when countering big science, which is a big business. It is peanuts to the environmental industry that promotes global warming alarmism as well. For example, for FY 2011 the National Resources Defense Council spent $105 Million and paid its president in excess of $300,000.
http://www.nrdc.org/about/NRDC_auditedfinanci...

What is most disturbing about this flap is the dogmatic attitude of many reporters and editors to those who challenge the reports of the IPCC. Without evidence, they declare those who challenge the IPCC are attacking climate science, which is not the case. Climate science, as expressed by the IPCC, is totally inadequate and needs to be improved, significantly. Contrary to what is commonly believed there is no solid physical evidence that changes in carbon dioxide are the primary cause of changes in the earth's climate.

A note on Fred Singer: Singer was identified as receiving $5000 per month plus up to $1000 for expenses. The report is wrong! The moneys went to SEPP. Singer is the President of SEPP and is the principal founder of NIPCC. He receives no salary. All the moneys to SEPP are used in educational activities and for research, including challenging the IPCC. His latest research includes the IPCC's failure to adequately account for the chaotic nature of the IPCC models, and questions regarding the reported surface temperatures from 1979 to the super El Niño year of 1998. The surface data are inconsistent with atmospheric temperatures.

Number of the Week: $24,700 Million (rough estimate): In May 2011, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that for the Fiscal Year 2010, that ended September 30, 2010, the US government allocated $8,771 Million for Climate Change Funding, of which $2,122 Million went to the category called climate science. This did not include the $26,140 Million of funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill) which was allocated generally over three years, but was not broken out by year. The figure also did not include the $7,230 Million allocated as tax credits for FY 2010. These are classified as tax expenditures.

Assuming that only one-third of the funds from the stimulus bill were spent in FY 2010, the funding for climate change (including tax credits, etc) by the Federal government in FY 2010 roughly totals $24,700 Million. Putting it differently, Federal government expenditures in 5 minutes during FY 2010 were greater than Heartland's annual expenditures for the three co-authors of the NIPPC reports who dare to present reports challenging the scientific basis used to justify the expenditures.

No wonder those who defend the orthodoxy are so outraged with Heartland. With a total budget of $4.6 million for all activities in 2011, Heartland is among the few organizations that have raised serious scientific objections to the global warming express and its massive expenditures. It frightens the defenders of the orthodoxy that the American taxpayers may realize that they are getting an extremely poor return for these enormous expenditures. The 2011 Heartland total budget is less than 0.02% of the Federal government expenditures on climate change in FY 2010. Yet, for that paltry sum, the science produced by NIPCC and many independent contributors present the vital balance to the biased science of the IPCC.
http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/318556.pdf...

The Federal Reserve Rip-Off

By Alan Caruba

I have not been kind to Ron Paul and his participation in the Republican primary campaigns and it has taken me a while to understand why he is doing this. It is clear that he wants to be around to influence the Republican platform and the issue about which he is abundantly correct is the Federal Reserve.

Anyone taking notice of Obama’s latest budget has to conclude that his mission is to crash the nation’s economy and turn America into a Socialist worker’s paradise. The only problem is that Socialism has been a dismal failure everywhere it has been tried.

One only has to look at the collapse of the Soviet Union for confirmation of that, the Chinese abandonment of Communist economic theory, and Obama’s odd notion that a nation can spend itself out of ever-increasing debt.

I am not a fan of Paul’s isolationism, but he is absolutely right about getting rid of the Federal Reserve.

Established in 1913, the same year income taxes were instituted, the Reserve is not part of the federal government. It is, in fact, privately owned by a consortium of banks and that might include foreign banks as well.

In a remarkable essay, “10 Things That Every American Should Know About The Federal Reserve” by Michael T. Snyder, it is clear that the Constitution intended to have the U.S. Treasury to be soley responsible to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” http://usactionnews.com/2012/02/10-things-that-every-american-should-know-about-the-federal-reserve/

Synder points out that the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) is a privately owned banking cartel and one granted the right to create money out of thin air.

It is, says Synder “a perpetual debt machine because “whenever more money is created, more debt is created as well.” On top of its ability to create money, the government then borrows it, increasing the cost to taxpayers by way of the interest that must be paid to the Fed.

The government issues U.S. Treasury bonds with which to secure a loan from the Fed and it, in turn, sells them to others. Money from nothing; interest on that money, and earnings from the U.S. Treasury bonds it then sells!

Synder noted that in fiscal 2011 the U.S. government paid out $454 billion just in interest on the national debt. “The truth is that our current debt-based monetary system was designed by greedy bankers that wanted to make enormous profits by using the Federal Reserve as a tool to create money out of thin air and lend it to the U.S. government at interest.”

“On July 1, 1914 (a few months after the Fed was created) the U.S. national debt was $2.9 billion dollars. Today it is more than 5,000 times larger.”

If Rep. Paul can convince enough people to end the Federal Reserve Americans might actually learn how many trillions it loans to “too big to fail” Wall Street banking institutions as well as to foreign banks, generally without oversight by the Congress.


The previous Chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, confessed to be totally astonished by the housing bubble that led to the 2008 financial crisis, His successor, Ben Bernanke, the current Chairman of the Fed, has been consistently wrong about the economy since taking office. In 2005 Bernanke said that housing prices had never declined on a nationwide basis and predicted full employment as far as the eye could see.

Those mysterious financial instruments, derivatives, were perfectly safe said Bernanke.

In 2008, he was still predicting housing prices would probably keep rising. In 2007 he saw no problem with the subprime mortgages that two “government sponsored entities”, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, kept pressuring banks to make. “A few months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed, Bernanke said ‘The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.’”

Any CEO or CFO with a record like that would be out on the street looking for a job. And this man is still in charge of the Federal Reserve.

The latest budget put forth by the Obama administration demonstrates the same level of incompetence and wishful thinking. “All the voters need to do is suspend belief for another nine months. And ignore the first four years,” opined The Wall Street Journal.

The budget essentially says that the government that is deeply in debt---with the size of it growing daily---has to do is to borrow and spend more! And, oh yes, Obama wants to raise taxes on everyone and everything.

While I would not vote for Rep. Paul to be President, I applaud his lonely campaign to get Americans to think about ridding the nation of the Federal Reserve and to begin exercising fiscal restraint before we become the next Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy or France.

© Alan Caruba, 2012
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/02/federal-reserve-rip-off.html

The Roots of Climate Change...Reporting

Jack Kemp

As long as a discussion of what the University of East Anglia's lies on climate change are in order, let's bring in a British author, an Oxford graduate, who is familiar with a pompous interview given to a major left wing Brit newspaper, an interview among "friends of global warming" where the deluded can further delude themselves that no conservatives and other classical scientific truth seekers are reading their words because all conservatives only read Rupert Murdoch papers with pictures of young women clad in skimpy swim suits.

From Melanie Phillip's book "The World Turned Upside Down," from Chapter 13, "How Enlightenment Unraveled,"
pages 277-278.

The idea that objectivity is dishonest and malicious found its way into British journalism during the 1980s. Suddenly, what cub reporters had learned on day one in journalism school - that journalists should always strive for objectivity and fairness and should tell the truth as they saw it as honestly as they could - was redefined as an attempt to dupe the public. Real integrity was said to lie in practicing a "journalism of attachment," slanting reports in accordance with a prior point of view. If there was no such thing as truth or objectivity, then it was more "authentic" to be openly biased. Fabrications were put forward as representing a "greater truth" than mere factual accounts of what had actually happened.

SECTION OMITTED

The substitution of lies for objective information in the service of the "greater truth" of prior conclusions has taken deep root in the areas of the academy where ideology rules. This is the case even in scientific fields such as climate change, where a whole new branch of porstmodernism has been invented, called "port-normal science." Normal science discovers facts and then constructs a theory those facts. Post-normal science starts with a theory that is politically sensitive, and then makes up the facts to influence opinion in its favor. This practice was revealed in a display of commendable frankness by Mike Hulme, a professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia, founding director of the Tyndall Centre (sic) for Climate Change Research, and a guru of man-made global warming theory. In 2007, Hulme confided to the Guardian:
(NOTE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/14/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange )

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled "post-normal" science.

SECTION OF GUARDIAN QUOTE OMITTED

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights int the question if it reognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity...

END OF GUARDIAN QUOTE

So global warming theory did not seek to establish the truth through evidence. Instead, truth had to be traded for influence. In areas of uncertainty, scientists had to present their beliefs as a basis for policy.

It was a brazen admission that scientific reason had been junked altogether in the name of science, but for the sake of promoting ideological conviction. In other words, science had short-circuited. Where science failed to support an ideology, the overriding imperative of the ideology meant that science had to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetuate fictions.
END OF BOOK QUOTE

Beware of Abortionists Bearing Gifts

Jack Kemp


It seems Planned Parenthood wants a possible photo opportunity undermining a Catholic Charity.

The Anchoress states:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/02/15/catholic-food-pantry-surrender-your-conscience/

And now, comes a “nuanced” assist.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/now-planned-parenthood-bullies-catholic-food-bank-for-saying-no-to-them

"Planned Parenthood called Paul’s Pantry, part of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the biggest food pantry in Wisconsin, and asked them to come and pick up donations, which may have been noble, but wasn’t something the Catholic organization felt comfortable doing — sending a truck over and perhaps giving the abortion provider a photo opportunity. The American Life League reports what the worker at the pantry said:

All I told the young lady from Planned Parenthood was that I couldn’t send a truck to pick up, and gave her a list of other food pantries that might want to pick up, I gave her no reason at all and she didn’t ask why. Soon after, I started receiving the hate e-mail and phone calls. I politely explained to callers that although we are non-denominational in regards to those we serve, we are a Catholic organization who shares a board of directors with our sister organization, St. Vincent de Paul. We adhere to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and to the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul. I also explained our Gift Acceptance Policy and how acceptance of the donation would compromise our core values and possibly damage the reputation of Paul’s Pantry."

end subquote.

What happens next, of course, is entirely predictable, and of a piece with President Obama’s move with the HHS Mandate; this is all gauged to eliminate the churches from the public square.

Conditioning for Death Panels in the 1950s

Jack Kemp

When I was a kid in the 1950s, there was an old semi-employed socialist who wore rumpled clothes and used to walk around our neighborhood, talking to people, including my ten year old self. He even tried to sell mutual funds to people, referring to it as "people's capitalism" because the opportunity for wealth accumulation was possible for the regular working person. Today, for some reason, I remember his words about a trick question.

Mr. X. used to ask everyone only one question from the U.S. Postal Exam. Simply stated, it was that if a police car, a fire truck, an ambulance and a Post Office truck were coming to an intersection or a curve, who would have the legal Right of Way on the road? Most people, including myself, answered ambulance because we had a concern for the assumed sick person inside. Mr. X. gladly told us we were wrong and the correct answer was the Post Office truck because it was a Federal vehicle. Mind you, this wasn't a military jeep or a tank in a national emergency or a war, but an everyday Post Office truck that was rushing to make the "speedy deliveries" the Post Office is so well known for. I would guess, in real life, a number of Postal truck drivers would give the ambulance the Right of Way, despite their legal authority.

Now if the person in the ambulance had a heart attack or a gunshot wound and the delay for the Postal truck cost them their life, we would have a de facto Death Panel at work. In fact, the exam question, if it could also be found in a test preparation book, was a teaching tool for citizens to learn that their mundane lives were potentially less important than the delivery of their TV Guide (this was the 1950s) or their phone bill. And Mr. X wanted everyone to know the rule in case they somehow got the foolish notion that their life was more important than seeing what Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were up this week.

Mr. X was kind of a squirrely guy, but then again so are many statist self-important officials, both petty and major. But in terms of indifference to the public's needs, you could say he was ahead of his time. By about fifty-five years.

Global Warming Alarmists Hail Mary Pass

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a piece at Big Journalism that adds some detail to Reverse Climategate.
http://bigjournalism.com/bshapiro/2012/02/17/global-warming-lefties-commit-identity-theft-to-target-conservative-think-tank/

As regular readers of this website know, Paul Driessen posted a reply by the Heartland Institute to attacks by members of the mainstream media and environmental advocacy groups, as well as websites (such as Desmog Blog) over some stolen e-mails. http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/heartland_institute_responds_to_stolen_and_fake_documents

A member of the Gang Green - the global warming True Believers and activists, tricked a staffer at Heartland into sending out confidential e-mails about the inner workings of Heartland and about Heartland strategy and funding. He did this through fraudulently claiming to be a member of the Board of Directors at Heartland, and so essentially stole the material.

And, while some of the documents are real, some are forgeries, according to Heartland. So we are faced with several crimes in this instance, and Heartland plans to prosecute the perps.

Among the damning information revealed/ That Heartland received a whopping $25,000 from the Koch brothers, and that Heartland was planning to use money to fight things like Cap and Trade! Gasp! The horror! An advocacy group taking money from a philanthropist and using it for advocacy! How dare they!

Strange; nobody on the alarmist side seems to worry about the millions donated by George Soros groups like the Tides Foundation, nor about the money donated by groups like the Audobon Society, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, nor about the money kicked in by the United Nations or the American or British governments.

Joanne Nova gives us a rundown on the funding Heartland and the skeptics are up against:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/logic-gate-the-smog-blog-exposes-irrational-rage-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/

Greenpeace $300m 2010 Annual Report

WWF $700m

Pew Charitable Trust $360m 2010 Annual Report

Sierra Club $56m 2010 Annual Report

NSW climate change fund (just one random govt example) $750m

NSW Gov (A$700m)

Heartland Institute $6.4m

US government funding for climate science and technology $7,000m ($7B) “Climate Money”

US government funding for “climate related appropriations” $1,300m ($1.3B) USAID 2010

Annual turnover in global carbon markets $120,000m ($120B) 2010 Point Carbon

Annual investment in renewable energy $243,000m ($230B) 2010 BNEF

US government funding for skeptical scientists $ 0

End excerpt.

But what is particularly galling is the comparison being made between the Heartland trick and Climategate. As you all remember, a leaker published a series of hacked e-mails between climate scientists, largely centered around the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, but including a number of power players in the global warming research being done in America and elsewhere. For instance, see this.
http://www.desmogblog.com/blog/richard-littlemore

Desmog Blog, which is at the forefront of this attack on Heartland, had this to say;

"They point out that when the Climategate emails were stolen, Heartland took bits and pieces out of context (and, we would add, advocated for punitive action against the scientists on the basis of these manipulations). At no time did the institute suggest that the hackers who breached the East Anglia University security system to steal the emails had been in the wrong to do so.

In the case at hand, (and as Heartland explains in its own press release) an anonymous "Heartland Insider" asked the Institute to mail the entire briefing package for its January board meeting - and Heartland complied. Having received that package, the DeSmogBlog checked the content against research we had in hand to confirm its authenticity. Then we published it - in its entirety, so there could be no doubt about the context - on our website on Valentines's Day."

End excerpt.

But these two cases are wolds apart; Heartland is a private advocacy group, receiving no money from taxpayers. The Climategate people were working for publicly funded institutions subject to the Freedom of Information Act, an act that they conspired to subvert. These e-mails were not private; as part of the body of work performed as public servants they were bound to turn these over to any FOIA requests, yet they refused to do so. The Climategate scientists are on record discussing how to get around those very same FOIA requests. And their work was of critical importance to the setting of public policy and the world financial system. What these people (Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Ray Bradley, Jonathan Overpeck, Ben Santer, Gavin Schmidt and David Karoly, etc.) were doing was conspiring to manipulate data, to subvert peer review, to strongarm publishers, to committ acts of racketeering, to lie in order to sway public policy. These were government employees manipulating data to strengthen their case for global warming.

Heartland has done none of this. All Heartland has done is labor to counter people like the aforementioned Climategate parties. Given the unique position that such people are in - controling the raw data and thoughtfully "processing" it for us, controling the publications which come out, holding sway over whole chapters of the IPCC reports, holding the careers of younger climatologists hostage - there must be a counterbalance, and Heartland sought to act as that counterbalance. And everything Heartland has done is legal.

It should be pointed out that the U.S. DOJ sent threatening letters to three bloggers; Jeff Id, Tallbloke, and Steve McKintyre, not for receiving the Climategate e-mails but for a link being posted by someone known only as FOIA in the comments sections on their blogs. Tallbloke's home was raided by British police and his computers seized. Nary a peep was heard from Desmog or any of the others who now hurl accusations against Heartland. On the contrary, these seekers after truth demanded investigations and prosecutions at the time of the Climategate leaks, and tried to dismiss the e-mails because of the way they were obtained, yet they refuse to afford the same courtesy to Heartland.

And it turns out key documents in the Heartland "scandal" are forgeries http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ ; nobody ever claimed that of the Climategate e-mails. Desmog and others insisted Climategate e-mails were taken out of context (don't believe your lying eyes).

I'm not sure how you can say statements like these are cherry picked;

<4716> Adams:

Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is extremely
complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and
that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.

<1790> Lorenzoni:

I agree with the importance of extreme events as foci for public and
governmental opinion [...] ‘climate change’ needs to be present in people’s
daily lives. They should be reminded that it is a continuously occurring and
evolving phenomenon

<2428> Ashton/co2.org:

Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn
this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to
one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. [...] the most
valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as
possible

<5111> Pollack:

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.

<0810> Mann:

I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause

<2440> Jones:

I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself
and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<1473> McGarvie/UEA Director of Faculty Administration:

As we are testing EIR with the other climate audit org request relating to
communications with other academic colleagues, I think that we would weaken
that case if we supplied the information in this case. So I would suggest that
we decline this one (at the very end of the time period)

<1577> Jones:

[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US
Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.

End excerpts.

I could go on and on, but everyone should get the idea; these e-mails are not in any way out of context. These people know full well what they are doing. And, again, they are public servants, paid for on the public dime and subject to sunshine laws. They knew it, too:

<1473> McGarvie/UEA Director of Faculty Administration:

As we are testing EIR with the other climate audit org request relating to
communications with other academic colleagues, I think that we would weaken
that case if we supplied the information in this case. So I would suggest that
we decline this one (at the very end of the time period)

End excerpt.

So McGarvie advocates openly disobeying the law. There is nothing comparable in the Heartland documents.

No, the Heartland attack is simply a rewarmed effort to slime the "deniers" with accusations of complicity with Big Oil and Big Tobacco. There is really nothing new here.

And it is a measure of desperation; the Gang Green knows this thing is slipping away from them, and they are desperate for a game changer. This is a ten second Hail Mary pass.