Academic Tenure, or Trickle-Down Entitlement Theory

Daren Jonescu
(This first appeared at American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/academic_tenure_or_trickle-down_entitlement_theory.html#ixzz1wSLElJVv)
Those who wonder how the modern university could have become so fundamentally disdainful of political liberty should consider that the entitlement mentality that is destroying Western civilization began in academia.  Academic tenure is the original entitlement program.
Conservatives rightly fear that civilization could reach a tipping point at which a majority of citizens are subsisting on government redistribution programs, and hence have a vested interest in blinding themselves to the fact that their "entitlement" simultaneously imposes an unjust and coercive "obligation" upon others to provide for them.  The university, as usual, was the vanguard of this intellectual development, not merely in the sense of helping to promote it through bad theory, but in the more direct sense of creating its own entitlement to foreshadow all the others.
All entitlement programs are sold as responding to a genuine need.  In a community that has lost its rational moorings, one man's need can easily be converted into another man's obligation.  After all, who has the right to deny someone what he needs?  Once one accepts that conversion -- accepts, specifically, that my needing something trumps your property rights -- it is the shortest step to declare that the need itself is actually a right.  FDR's infamous Marxist-inspired "second bill of rights" is a classic example of this.  It was an early Americanization of the principle that everyone ought to be enslaved to everyone else.  (Naturally, it is enslavement by other names; America's current super-cool upgrade of FDR favors the name "social justice.")
A right is a claim one can make against other people.  To deny someone his right is to deny him his freedom.  Hence, the entitlement mentality is grounded in a twisted conception of freedom -- namely, freedom understood as a lack of risk, guaranteed security, and the removal of any need to take responsibility for one's actions and their natural outcomes.
And this brings us back to academia.  Academic tenure -- in effect a lifetime-guaranteed academic career, immune to judgment of one's effort, merit, or sanity -- is a creation of the twentieth century, the entitlement century.  From the medieval inception of the modern university as a vessel of Catholic philosophy, theology, and legal theory through the end of the nineteenth century, university teaching posts were secured only by the judgment and approval of the institution's administration, and protected only by the good faith of administrators in their pursuit of intellectual excellence and social honor.
The result of this pre-tenure system was that few professors ever lost an academic job for academic reasons.  That is to say, universities reserved the right to decide whom they wanted to hire and to ensure that their schools' reputations were not imperiled by an employee's words or actions; beyond that, most professors were left to their own consciences in pursuing their work.
In 1915, however, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a "declaration of principles," according to which boards of trustees would be entirely barred from any attempt to restrict the intellectual activity of a professor, faculty alone would have the authority to hire new faculty members, and professors would be protected by a system of formal tenure, to be designed and operated by professors themselves.
This declaration of principles would more accurately be called a list of demands.  The professors were, in short, staging a polite coup in the university.  Academia, in every sense that matters, would henceforth be controlled entirely by the teachers.  If this sounds essentially benevolent to you, and like a reasonable safeguard of intellectual activity, consider what it implies, and what it has meant in practice.
Except for the most extreme cases, such as those involving overt criminal activity, the proprietors of the university -- those who provide the campus, the buildings, and the professors' salaries -- have no direct say in the hiring and firing of those who are to represent their university in the community.
Here is the danger of this scenario: if the faculty alone determines who can be hired in the first place, and ultimately who is granted tenure, then you have a recipe for the most insidious form of establishmentarianism, the true enemy of the academic conscience that tenure was allegedly supposed to protect.  The gang that controls the neighborhood now decides who gets to come into the neighborhood.  After a vetting period, during which the gang demands that you prove yourself up to their standards -- i.e., non-threatening to their internal status quo -- they either chase you out of the neighborhood or present you with your own gang jacket.
The pre-tenure academy retained traces of a patronage system, in which a scholar was obliged to convince his potential patron that he, the scholar, had an extraordinary mind.  In the tenure system, the scholar is obliged to convince his judges that he is not extraordinary, or rather that he is ordinary, in the relevant ways.  Orthodoxy is king.  The stifling effects of this orthodoxy-protecting system are seen even in the sciences.  (Global warming "deniers" are a clear enough example.)
However, in the humanities and social sciences, establishmentarianism of the sort promoted by the tenure system has even more direct societal implications.  For the dominant theories in these disciplines set the tenor of society as a whole.  The leftward ratchet of modern civilization can be traced to the universities.  Academia's own leftward ratchet is cranked by the tenure system.
In America, the anti-individualist, socialistic principles of Dewey presided in the Ivy League schools in the early twentieth century, when tenure was adopted.  Professors sympathetic to such theories, given (or rather, seizing) the power to choose their own colleagues, naturally tended to favor the like-minded.  Thus, what might otherwise have been a "fling" with Marxist progressivism in the university became instead an entrenched, multi-generational establishment.
And the circumspection that subversive thinkers -- whatever their merits -- had hitherto been forced into by practical considerations was obliterated by tenure.  There was almost nothing one could not say.  There was every incentive to push the collectivist, illiberal envelope.  Those seeking tenure must win the approval of the leftists -- activist or milquetoast -- who control the hiring committees.  They do this by espousing ideas consistent with those of their judges, while perhaps attracting attention by putting a toe into previously uncharted (or at least unpopularized) progressive waters.
Then, once they have tenure, the more ambitious types leap headlong into that water with impunity, while the milquetoasts keep the chairs warm and dutifully attend to the less glamorous tasks of the revolution, such as half-wittingly teaching the basic tenets of leftism to each new generation of undergraduates.
Through this mechanism, cocooned and incubated by the tenure system, the Dewey-inspired espousal of an "individual creativity" detached from -- actually explicitly at odds with -- individual liberty evolved into Marxist "critical theory"; into the post-Freudian liberation of the id from the constraints of bourgeois capitalist society; into the Rawlsian rape of seventeenth-century "state of nature" theory as a rationalization for the welfare state; into the revival of Marxist-style class divisions and theories of the systemic oppression of every class and sub-class by the non-poor white male; and finally, it seems, into the open demand for the dismantling of the remains of liberty, the denial of all property rights, and the subjugation of all mankind under a reign of induced poverty, degradation, and self-loathing, to be undertaken in the name of "the planet."
Thus, the general moral, political, and economic destruction wrought by the modern entitlement mentality is a reflection of the degraded "life of the mind" holed up in the erstwhile ivory tower, which has since been converted into a walled fortress with a moat, through the power structure created by the tenure system.  Obsolete, ridiculous, and dangerous ideas are no longer merely tolerated in order not to risk throwing out the baby with the bath; they are now the coin of the academic realm.
Convicted on trumped up charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates is offered the opportunity to recommend his own proper punishment.  He proposes that if Athens really wants to give him what he deserves, the city ought to provide him with free lunch every day for the rest of his life.  As Allan Bloom observed, what else is today's tenure but a free lunch for philosophers?
The difference, of course, is that Socrates' withering irony, which led to his being sentenced to death, was intended to mock his jurors, and to reassert his rejection of their charges, whereas today's alleged free thinkers are dead serious about having all the risk removed from thinking.  Corrupting the youth, modern-style, is the safest, most pampered job you can get.  Bill Ayers, a perfect embodiment of both the corruption and the corrupting of modern youth, gets his free lunch for life, along with the critical race theorists, the radical feminists, and the members of Columbia University's Earth Institute, dedicated to the despotic, redistributive impoverishment of seven billion people.
As I noted earlier, entitlement theories tend to distort their new "rights" claims into a new, illiberal form of freedom.  In the case of tenure, the distortion is called "academic freedom."  If that term means anything, it is only as a rephrasing of the natural rights to free speech and association.  In the U.S., at least, it can have no other legal significance.  Otherwise, it can apply only to institutions, rather than to professors, as an extension of property rights -- but this is precisely what the tenure system denies.  Nevertheless, the professoriate's supposed "academic freedom" has come to be regarded as sacred, although no one can explain what it means.
In practice, academic freedom is the perfect counterpart to the distorted new freedom developed from modern entitlements of the sort championed by FDR -- the "freedom" from responsibility for oneself and one's choices, and permanent security against personal risk.  Academic freedom, as the tenured class perceives it, means freedom from ever having to face adverse consequences for one's views, or for advocating courses of action that might unravel civilizations.
The great minds of the past understood that new ideas invite danger, both figurative and deathly literal.  From public ostracism to political condemnation and sometimes execution, the harsh realities of the free thinker were faced -- bravely and resignedly -- by Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Aristotle, Boethius, Dante, Galileo, Spinoza, and so many other transformative figures throughout human history.  They thought on, in exile, battling political enemies, condemned by religious authorities -- feeling compelled to speak and write as they did, even at the greatest risk.  These men were, in short, exemplars of the free individual, the rational soul exercising its powers and taking responsibility for the results, however unjust those might be.
Today's "thinkers," by comparison, have, through the coup that established tenure, achieved in reality what Socrates proposed in mockery -- total protection and deference from the powers that be, including even the trustees of their own universities, whose campuses they occupy entirely at their own whim, and without recognition of any authority beyond themselves.  They are the original "occupiers" -- is it any wonder they have created, and sympathize with, the new "Occupiers"?
The scholar class -- once so vital and honorable a part of civilized man's moral and political development -- declared itself an entitled class -- i.e., immune to the natural risks of human endeavor, intellectual or otherwise.  From that moment on, it was unreasonable to hope that, as a whole, they would ever be friends or supporters of individual liberty.  The risks of self-determination, and the uncertain outcomes of rational agency, are the glorious core of freedom.  The entitlement mentality obviates those glories, and hence produces a mind unreceptive to, and disdainful of, true freedom.
 Your children are being prepared for the "real world" by men and women sustained by the oldest, most corrupt entitlement program.  What kind of influence are such people likely to have on young minds?

Armed EPA Agents Visit Ashville Man

By Alan Caruba

Sometimes a small incident says volumes about a large government agency. In this case the Environmental Protection Agency.

Around 1.45 PM on May 23, Ashville, North Carolina resident Larry Keller was in the midst of an international call which he had to cut short in order to answer his front door. He found two armed agents of the EPA who were accompanied by an Ashville Police officer.

According to a May 24 news story in the Ashville Tribune, a weekly newspaper to which I am a contributing columnist, the agents had blocked his and his neighbor’s driveways with their cars. They had driven all the way from Raleigh to confront him.

What had he done? The unannounced visit had been occasioned by news that Dr. Al Armendariz, a regional EPA administrator whose 2010 lecture had been videotaped and been released by the office of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on April 25th. In the lecture, Dr. Amendariz had said that the agency’s “general philosophy” was to “crucify” oil and gas producers.

He compared the agency’s “philosophy of enforcement” to the way, as a Wall Street Journal editorial reported http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577368292876696550.html?KEYWORDS=%27Crucify+Them%27, “Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. “They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them, And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. The point is to ‘make examples’ of alleged lawbreakers.”

The case in point had been Range Resources, a driller who had been exonerated of charges of water pollution as the result of fracking. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the reference to executions “raise(d) questions not only about” not only Dr. Arnendariz’s comments “but the EPA’s larger impartiality and judgment.”

Keller, who describes himself as “a bit of a political activist” had emailed the EPA Director of External Affairs, Dr. David Gray, saying “Hello Mr. Gray. Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello?”

That was enough to dispatch two armed agents to his front door. He was told by one agent that “…my choice of words in the email could be interpreted in many ways.” They did not identify themselves, but asked if he had ever been arrested. He responded swiftly that he had not. When he asked for a copy of his email, they refused to provide it because “the case was still under investigation.”

His wife arrived home and the agents did not want a witness so “They left in a big hurry.”

The Ashville Tribune by Catherine Hunter quoted Keller who described their attitude as "accusatory" reporting that he compared "their tactics to those of Nazi Germany SS methods.”

Keller contacted the agent’s supervisor, Michael Hill, and was told that the incident with Dr. Armendariz “had prompted so many emails and calls that authorities in Washington, DC ordered an investigation.”

Keller’s email inquiry to contact Dr. Armendariz was treated as a threat when it clearly was not. Since when is trying to contact an EPA administrator a crime?

“I want the world to know,” said Keller, “the government is reaching into the privacy of our homes and computers. I’ve never been so offended by the power of government in my life.”

Do we really want an EPA that uses such tactics against a citizen who has merely indicated an interest in contacting one of their administrators to comment on what he had said during a lecture?

Do we really want an EPA whose working “philosophy” regarding the oil and gas industry is to “crucify” it in order to regulate it and, as we know, is trying to thwart drilling, as well as to end the coal industry that provides an energy resource that produces one half of all the electricity in the nation?

It is, as noted, just one small incident, but it reflects the way the EPA functions in a presumably free society. Over the years I have read of many incidents in which the EPA has asserted powers to impede the most innocent actions of citizens and it is long past the time when this agency is reined in by Congress.

The only option at this point is to rid the nation of the Obama administration, crack down on the EPA, and rid us of the threat it poses in its efforts to deny entire industries from providing the energy the nation requires and attacks our agricultural and ranching communities for practices that reflect its normal operation.

As they used to advertise horror films, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” An EPA that operates on the basis of intimidating its chosen enemies and that seeks to intimidate citizens inquiring about it, is reason enough to be afraid.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The Zombie Apocalypse is at Hand

Timothy Birdnow

It's official; the Apocalypse is at hand.

Case in point; a man in Miami ate another guy's face off his skull. The naked perp, one Rudy Eugene, 31, was shot to death while dining on the face of the victim, who apparently resembled Mayor McCheese, or at least looked that way to Mr. Eugene. http://www.longislandpress.com/2012/05/29/miami-causeway-cannibal-eats-mans-face-video/ Eugene was high on "bath salts" a new and powerful hallucigenic. Word has it that McDonalds will include a packet of said salts with every Happy Meal.

In a similar vein (and one hopes Mr. Eugene does not think those veins are spaghetti noodles) a man assaulted several police officers with his own intestines. It seems that the 43 year old Hackensack, N.J. man - Wayne Carter - was confronted by police who had reason to believe he was going to do himself harm. Mr. Carter decided to prove them wrong by slicing open his stomach and disgorging his intestines, which he proceeded to throw at the police.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/29/wayne-carter-threw-intestines-at-officers-stabbed-self-new-jersey_n_1554126.html One wonders if he isn't a member of Occupy Wall Street.

These two stories were enough to make radio talk show host Dana Loesche proclaim a zombie apocalypse. Little did she know it would keep getting worse!

Word has reached the American heartland that the Conservative Party of Brian Harper has received the regards of some liberal zombies (no doubt members of the Labour Party) in the form of human body parts.
http://news.yahoo.com/canada-investigates-2-body-parts-found-mail-142830681.html

Yes, a hand, a foot, and other asundry parts were mail-ordered to the government. A human torso was discovered in an apartment complex later, thus leading investigators to speculate that this was the particular contributor in question.

But the final sign of the coming of Son of Perdition has been found; 70lbs. Justin Bieber stands accused of beating up a photographer, and may perhaps get six months jail time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2150862/Justin-Bieber-battery-investigation-Singer-roughs-photographer-Selena-Gomez-date.html

Clearly, the 70th Week of Daniel has come. Soon the sun will be black as sackcloth and the moon as red as blood. Face eating zombies, self-disemboweling madmen, and asundry body parts are all signs of the times, but when Bieber kicks someone's darrier...

No More He or She in Sweden

Timothy Birdnow

According to Pravda, a kindergarten in Sweden has banned the use of the pronouns He and She, replacing them with It.

From the article:

http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/20-07-2011/118541-gender_equality-0/

"
The category of gender was canceled at one of Swedish kindergartens. The words "boy" and "girl" are no longer used there, while pronouns "he" and "she" were replaced with "it". Kindergarten teachers believe that they are successfully breaking the gender stereotypes so that the people of two sexes would not feel predominant towards each other. Experts say, though, that such seeming equality may lead to the genetic rebirth of the population and to the decline of human civilization.

The bizarre mission is taking place in the Swedish preschool called "Egalia." In this kindergarten, pronouns 'han' (he) and 'hon' (she) were replaced with genderless 'hen'.

"We use the word "Hen" for example when a doctor, police, electrician or plumber or such is coming to the kindergarten," said school director Lotta Rajalin (52). "We don't know if it's a he or a she so we just say 'Hen is coming around 2pm.' Then the children can imagine both a man or a woman. This widens their view."

End excerpt.

And the school hates traditional fairy tales, banning them as sexist.

This is the future, folks. This is the endgame for the LGBT movement.

Obama Wagging Dogs Again

Brian Birdnow writes about the Wag the Dog strategy of the Obama Administration in a great piece at Townhall.
http://townhall.com/columnists/brianbirdnow/2012/05/30/coming_soon_to_a_theater_near_you_wag_the_dog_ii/page/full/


From the article:

"Now the material point in this emerging story is quite simple. Did the Defense Department bend National Security rules in a bid to assist the Obama re-election effort?

The answer is undoubtedly “Yes”. Contrary to the DOD spokesman’s assertion the department has been quite selective in the past with the help they extend to filmmakers. During the fifth anniversary commemorations of the 9/11 attacks ABC-TV expressed frustration over the non-cooperation they received from the Defense Department when making a movie that expressed mild criticism over the Clinton Administration’s malfeasance in ignoring Bin Laden, and turning a blind eye to his infernal activities in the late 1990s. It is truly unprecedented that moviemakers were given access to highly secure areas at CIA headquarters at Langley Air Force Base. Finally, the military never allows “planners” to discuss operational matters with civilians who lack security clearances.

What is to be done, particularly if SONY pictures moves the release date of the movie forward by two months, or so? Certainly, Congressman King should pursue this issue by issuing subpoenas if necessary. DOD Secretary Leon Panetta can be invited to Capitol Hill to discuss this matter at a mutually convenient time. What, however, will the GOP do in the event of Democratic chicanery on this issue? Unfortunately the answer is probably nothing. The public should expect very little from candidate Romney, now that he has had a taste of the media lynch mob. History also teaches us that the Republicans fumble most issues due to the lack of a unified Party message.

The real story here is that a political Party and a candidate who will compromise national security secrets in an effort to gain partisan advantage will stop at nothing to win. This comes as no surprise to seasoned politicos, but never ceases to shock the ordinary citizen. Welcome to campaign 2012, just in time for Memorial Day."

End excerpt.

Read the whole thing. http://townhall.com/columnists/brianbirdnow/2012/05/30/coming_soon_to_a_theater_near_you_wag_the_dog_ii/page/full/

America’s actual health and welfare crisis

It is EPA rules that most gravely threaten our energy, economy, health, welfare, justice, and civil rights progress

Paul Driessen                            

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says we face grave threats to human health, welfare and justice. She’s absolutely right. However, the dangers are not due to factory or power plant emissions, or supposed effects of “dangerous manmade global warming.”

They are the result of policies and regulations that her EPA is imposing in the name of preventing climate change and other hypothetical and exaggerated environmental problems. It is those government actions that are the gravest threat to Americans’ health, welfare, and pursuit of happiness and justice.

By hyper-regulating carbon dioxide, soot, mercury, “cross-state air pollution” from sources hundreds of miles away, and other air and water emissions, EPA intends to force numerous coal-fired power plants to shut down years before their productive life is over; sharply reduce emissions from cars, factories, refineries and other facilities, regardless of the costs; and block the construction of new coal-fired power plants, because none will be able to slash their carbon dioxide emissions to half of what average coal-fired plants now emit, without employing expensive (and nonexistent) CO2 capture and storage technologies. 

EPA has also issued 588 pages of rules for hydraulic fracturing for critically needed oil and natural gas, while the Obama Administration has vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline and made 95% of all publicly owned (but government controlled) energy resources unavailable for leasing, exploration, drilling and mining.

These actions reflect President Obama’s campaign promises to “bankrupt any company that tries to build a new coal-fired power plant,” replace hydrocarbons with heavily subsidized solar, wind and biofuel energy, make energy prices “necessarily skyrocket,” advance rent-seeking crony-corporatism – and “fundamentally transform” America’s constitutional, legal, energy, economic and social structure.

Energy is the lifeblood of our nation’s economy, jobs, living standards and civil rights progress. Anything that affects energy availability, reliability and price affects every aspect of our lives. These federal diktats put bureaucrats and activists in charge of our entire economy – seriously impairing our health and welfare.

Moreover, the anti-hydrocarbon global warming “solutions” the Obama Administration is imposing will bring no real world benefits – even assuming carbon dioxide actually drives climate change. That’s largely because China, India and other developing countries are increasing their use of coal for electricity generation, and thus their CO2 emissions – far beyond our ability to reduce US emissions. These nations rightly refuse to sacrifice economic growth and poverty eradication on the altar of climate alarmism.

Even worse, the health, welfare and environmental justice benefits that EPA claims will result from its regulations are equally exaggerated and illusory. They exist only in the same dishonest computer-generated virtual reality that concocted its alleged climate change, health and environmental cataclysms, and in junk-science analyses that can best be described as borderline fraud.

Implementing EPA’s regulatory agenda will inflict severe economic dislocations and send shock waves through America’s factories, farmlands and families. Far from improving our health and welfare – they will make our economy, unemployment, living standards, health and welfare even worse.

EPA’s new automobile mileage standards alone will result in thousands of additional serious injuries and deaths every year, as cars are further downsized to meet its arbitrary 54.5 mpg requirements. Its anti-coal and anti-fracking rules will severely impact electricity generation, reliability and prices; factory, office and hospital operations and budgets; American industries’ competitiveness in global markets; employment, hiring and layoffs; and the well-being of families and entire communities. Especially for areas that depend on mining and manufacturing – and the 26 states where coal-based power generation keeps electricity rates at half of what they are in states with the least coal use and toughest renewable energy mandates (6-9 cents versus 13-17 cents per kilowatt hour) – it will be all pain, for no gain.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a White House letter to House Speaker John Boehner inadvertently acknowledged that EPA alone is still working on new regulations that the agency itself calculates will impose $105 billion in additional regulatory burdens and compliance costs. Win or lose in November, the Administration will likely impose these and other postponed rules after the elections. We, our children and grandchildren will pay for them in countless ways.

Utilities will have to spend $130 billion to retrofit or replace older coal-fired units, says energy analyst Roger Bezdek – and another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance and extra fuel for energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment, to generate increasingly expensive electricity.

Duke Energy’s new $3.3 billion coal gasification and “carbon dioxide capture” power plant will increase rates for its Indiana customers by some 15% the next two years. Hospitals, factories, shopping malls and school districts will have to pay an extra $150,000 a year in operating expenses for each million dollars in annual electricity bills. That’s four or five entry-level jobs that won’t be created or preserved.

Nationwide, 319 coal-fueled power plants totaling 42,895 megawatts (13% of the nation's coal fleet and enough for 40 million homes and small businesses) are already slated to close, the Sierra Club joyfully proclaimed. Illinois families and businesses could pay 20% more for electricity by 2014, the Chicago Tribune reports. Chicago public schools may have to find an extra $2.7 million a year to keep the lights and heat on and computers running.

Higher electricity prices will further strain refineries already struggling with soaring electricity costs and EPA’s sulfur and other regulations, restrictions on refinery upgrades and construction, constraints on moving crude oil to East Coast refineries, and other compliance costs – all for dubious environmental or health benefits. Three East Coast refineries have already closed, costing thousands of jobs and causing the Department of Energy to warn that pump prices are likely to soar even higher in Eastern states.

When we include discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs, and people who have been forced to work fewer hours or at temporary jobs, our unemployment rate is a whopping 19 percent – and double that for black and Hispanic young people. America’s labor force participation rate is at a 30-year low. Our nation’s 2011 economic growth rate was a dismal 1.7 percent.

Well over a million US workers age 55 and older have now been out of work for 27 weeks or more. Not only do prospects plummet for re-employment of older workers. The longer they are unemployed, the more they are disconnected from society, the further their living standards fall, the more their physical and emotional well-being deteriorates, and the more likely they are to die prematurely.

The cumulative effect is that families have even less money to buy food, pay the rent or mortgage, repair the car or house, save for college and retirement, take a vacation – and keep people comfortable (and alive) on frigid winter nights and sweltering summer afternoons. Workers lose jobs. Health and welfare, family relationships, future prospects and psychological well-being plummet. Because they spend the highest proportion of their incomes on energy, poor and minority families suffer disproportionately.

And yet the EPA and White House regulatory agenda, regulatory onslaught and horse-blinder definition of health, welfare and justice ignore these realities – and ensure that this unconscionable situation will only get worse. In fact, the only welfare EPA’s rules will ensure is the expansion of our welfare rolls, unemployment lines and already record-setting food stamp programs.

EPA is also giving billions of taxpayer dollars to activist groups, to advance its agenda and dominate our media and hearings with false or misleading information about the costs and benefits of its programs.

Worst of all, our Congress and courts have completely abdicated their obligations to provide oversight and control of this dictatorial agency and Obama Administration. If this is the hope, change and future we can look “forward” to, our nation’s health, well-being and justice will be rolled backward.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

                                      

The World of Commander Barack

Timothy Birdnow

One year ago I posted this, the title song from the 1960's cartoon Commander McBragg, and noted the eerie resemblence McBragg has to Barack Obama. Considering Jack Kemp's revelation that Obama is STILL trying to claim his uncle liberated Auschwitz, and considering the way he has taken personal credit for killing Bin-Laden (as if he flew over in a hypersonic jet and did the job personally aka James Bond) it has become more appropriate than ever.

Here is the original, and below is my new improved version:

- The World of Commander McBragg

This is the World of Commander McBragg
Your hair will curl in the World of McBragg.
He fights monsters galore
And then asks for still more
Or so says the brag of McBragg.

When on the hill the marines plant a flag
They may be led by Commander McBragg.
With a cannon in hand
He can beat any band
Or so says the brag of McBragg.

Fencing and fighting and round table knighting
And slaying of dragons, too.
Shipping and sailing and great harpoon whaling
There's nothing McBragg can't do.
Hunting and trapping and gold miner mapping
And flying to Timbuktu.
Roping and riding and Indian guiding
Commander McBragg comes through.

This is the World of Commander McBragg
Your head will whirl in the World of McBragg.
He can do anything
In his world he's a king
Or so says the brag of McBragg

End

Now, here is my own particular version of the song:

This is the world of CommanderBarack
And you know that it's all a big crock
He fights monsters galore
and all day he shouts "fore"
or says says the brag of Barack

When Navy Seals go into Pakistan
and all the dirt's 'bout to hit every fan
He'll lead where they've trodden
and he'll kill old Bin-Laden
or so says the brag of Barack


as tough as it gets with an unc at Auschwitz
he can play a mean game of Horse too
with his fantasy sons who look just like Trayvon
and his bottles of White House hommebrew
he can cut all the troops and not even say "whoops"
he can flip his bird to every Jew
while his gal takes a chill in lovely Seville
bleeding America blue.

This is the world of Commander Barack
and all the taxpayers get sticker shock
he can do anything
in his world he's a king!
while he puts all of us into hock!

Planned Parenthood supports aborting U.S. females

Jack Kemp

Go to original article URL at Red State to see all the outside article and YouTube links.

http://www.redstate.com/breeanneh/2012/05/29/sex-selection-abortion-in-america/
Sex Selection Abortion in America
Posted by Breeanne Howe (Diary)
Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

...The House of Representatives will vote tomorrow on H.R. 3541 (also known as the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act – PRENDA), a bill to ban sex-selection abortions in the United States.  Although the US has strongly condemned China for their sex-selection abortion practices, only four states (AZ, OK, PA and IL) currently have laws banning the procedure.  Sex-selection abortions have long been an issue around the globe, most notably in China and India, and studies show they are rampant in the US.  A series of videos, the first of which was released by Live Action this morning, exposes the role Planned Parenthood plays in America’s sex-selection abortion problem.

The first video, shows a woman visiting a Planned Parenthood facility in South Austin, Texas.  The woman, undercover for Live Action, spoke at length with a Planned Parenthood employee about how to proceed with an abortion should she find out that she is pregnant with a girl.  The employee’s instructions included how to use local OB/GYNs to find out the sex of the baby and how to defraud Medicaid to pay for all the costs associated.  She also advised the woman that many “regular” doctors would not provide an ultrasound should she indicate her desire to abort, as sex determination is usually made 5 months into the pregnancy and pretty much everything (including the brain) is already developed.

SECTION OMITTED

The Huffington Post also came to the defense of Planned Parenthood, claiming that Live Action heavily edits their videos in their efforts to misinform the public. Yet, Live Action has also posted the original, unedited video that shows no conflict between it and the final video.

Further, when Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) first introduced PRENDA, Planned Parenthood was quick to come out in strong opposition of the bill.  ...Planned Parenthood claims the bill will “further isolate and stigmatize some women — particularly those in the Asian American and Pacific Islander and African American communities.”  In fact, a study of the 2000 US Census showed that, unless there was already a boy in the family, the number of boys born outnumbered girls by 50%.  The majority of sex-selection abortions in the US appear, according to the study, to be by Chinese, Korean and Asian-Indian women, in keeping with cultural heritages that traditionally favor boys.

In a 2011 study, 89% of Asian-Indian participants chose abortion when they found out they were carrying baby girls.  Many admitted to being victims of physical violence and starvation by their families in efforts to coerce the women into abortion.  Planned Parenthood’s willingness to provide sex-selection abortions only helps to further victimize these women.

Rules of Engagement and PTSD

Jack Kemp

While reading the 2010 book "Once a Warrior Always a Warrior" by Charles Hoge, MD, a former Army Colonel, Iraq War veteran, and "director of the research program on the mental health and neurological effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2002 to 2009 at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research," this was revealed on pages 24-25:

There are some unique situations in which warriors will acknowledge feeling helpless, and it appears that these can contribute to them developing serious PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) symptoms on return from combat.

These are situations in which warriors are unable to respond militarily, either because the enemy is elusive or because they're constrained by the rules of engagement (ROE)...Here are some examples:

     Watching IEDs (remote controlled bombs) go off, locking and loading but not firing due to the ROE, left me feeling helpless.  - Junior Enlisted Soldier, Iraq

     The most stressful part of my job is going out every day and wiating to get blown up. When / if someone gets hit, ROE prohibits us from doing what should be done. Everyone here is "innocent." Yeah, right. If someone dug up the road in front of YOUR house and buried a bonb there, YOU would know about it. - Senior NCO, Iraq
END OF INTERNAL QUOTES

In the last quote, this soldier is expressing anger at not being allowed to attack or detain Iraqis living in homes close to where a roadside bomb was planted. But the important underlying emotion being expressed is helplessness. In several assessments of warriors deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, nearly half reported being in threatening situations where they were unable to respond due to ROE (the Rules of Engagement). There is evidence that this may play a role in developing mental health problems after coming home. This feeling of helplessness - being unable to respond because of ROE - has been a prevalent theme throughout multiple operations over the last twenty years (e.g., Panama, Somalia, Haiti, the Balkans), where warriors have been in situations where they've been unable to help civilian women, children, or elderly suffering in the operational environments.
END BOOK QUOTES


What the good doctor - and the good soldiers - are essentially saying is that an exploding remote controlled bomb, which would likely qualify in American stateside FBI civilian police work as at least grounds for knocking on the door to talk to the home owners next to the explosion, if not a Homeland Security basis for probable cause to investigate the entire building, now results in no entry into the houses near the explosion under the Rules of Engagement. Many other accounts of the war in Iraq tell of a number of these IEDs exploding on open supply route highways with no houses nearby, but what is being described by Dr./Col. Hoge is pathetic.

In the last war that the U.S. won outright, World War II, did we refuse to enter someone's house in France or Germany if our soldiers thought that sniper fire or artillery coordinates and corrections were being called in by the enemy from that house? I believe the answer is no.

Civilians make certain logical assumptions about the generals and the politicians in our current wars. They assume that they don't hamper the troops - and some civilians assume that those in the military that describe these severe limitations are whiners. And many civilians just don't want to know the "post-modern" Rules of Engagement. But the effects of those current rules come back to our cities and small towns either walking, hobbling or in a casket.

While politicians such as Hillary Clinton have debated the need for extra body armor (a difficult tradeoff which limits mobility and is swelteringly hot to wear), http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=3228  the thought of the military THEMSELVES doing a (roadside) house investigation - rather than a House (of Representatives) investigation in front of television cameras on Capitol Hill - is beyond the comprehension of many in Washington.

This ROE situation needs to change - and fast, for that would truly be Change We Can Believe In. A nation can only LOSE a protracted politically correct war.

Memorial Day

Timothy Birdnow

A quick commentary for this Memorial Day.

What is it that distinguishes America from so many other places? All nations have had armed services of some kind or other, but America was and is still fundmentally different in character. See, America was settled by people who left their homes in a jaded and settled Europe to find opportunity in a wilderness, or at least in a land where the frontier butted up to the settled regions, and the job of security fell to the settlers themselves, since there were no soldiers present to defend them. These citizens banded together into groups of militia, and for the defense of their families and neighbors, not for profit, or glory, or conquest. They simply wanted to be safe, and free to pursue their lives.

Britain maintained a policy towards her colonies often refered to as salutary neglect; they left the colonies alone and the colonies provided the materials the Empire needed. It was a good system. But inevitably power politics between the British and French led to war, and in America that war was fought between the French and her allied Indian tribes on the one side and the British military with rather luke-warm assistance from the colonial militias on the other. (Interestingly enough, George Washington was allied with the Indians until they tired of his ineptitude as a commander. Only later did Washington blossom as a general. Also, Washington fired on a peace delegation he mistook for invading French, thus starting the French and Indian War.)  The militias weren't especially thrilled with British regulars traipsing about - and with the demands the British put on the farmers who had to protect their families and farms.

Later those same militia would form the backbone of the Revolution against Britain.

See, in America the soldier is a citizen first and foremost. He does not fight for glory, nor honor, no booty. He does not fight because he was conscripted, forced to become a warrior or hang. He does not fight for any reason except the love of his family and his home. The soldiery of other lands was far different; either conscripts or in it for the money. Mercenaries. Americans have traditionally been a military of free men who love their homes and families and friends.

That's not to say there aren't people who go into the army because they need a job, but the army molds them into the types of soldiers who place duty and honor to country first. It is a culture created by the citizen soldier, not the other way around. And while the President may be the Commander-in-Chief, he is not above the Constitution, which the soldiery swears an oath to uphold. A tyrant in the POTUS can be removed by his own military if the need should arise; that won't happen elsewhere.

And those soldiers have given far more than anyone can ask, laying down their lives at places like Saratoga, Bunker Hill, Vera Cruz, Gettysburg, Omaha Beach, Chosen, . They have stood against all enemies, and walked into the mouths of death willingly. They have fought not for king or power but for the security of our God-given rights to freedom.

So, on this Memorial Day let us remember the many who have given their very lives to keep us free. God bless them!

Obama's Sons: They Are Real for Him

Daren Jonescu

(This first appeared at American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/obamas_sons_they_are_real_for_him.html)

Much has been said, here at American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons.

Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it.  http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/what_the.html Selwyn Duke suggests it might indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use.  http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/is_this_obamas_brain_on_drugs.html (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice but merely to presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.)  David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a teleprompting prankster/saboteur. v

All of these are reasonable speculations -- which is, in itself, reason to be perturbed about America's current devolved state.  However, I would like to throw one more possibility into the mix, more straightforward, but no less bizarre, than the others.  I believe it is likely that Obama compared the future prospects of "my daughters" to that of "my sons" precisely according to a sincerely prepared and carefully vetted script.

Watching the two instances on video, it is clear that he does not blink in either case, suggesting that he doesn't think he is making an error.  True, he didn't blink when he heard himself talking about 57 states, either.  But of course that one could plausibly be chalked up to genuine ignorance.  After all, why should a 47 year-old man, serving as one of the 100 elected members of a body comprised of exactly 2 people from each U.S. state, himself famously (and presumably) born in the 50th state, and running for President, necessarily know how many states there are?

Arguing, as Selwyn Duke does, that every American school child, "when very little," knows there are 50 states, misses the point, in as much as Obama was not an American school child when he was very little.  When he was very little, he was (presumably) studying in Indonesia, where his homework on American history was, presumably, very little.  Thus, Duke's point that Obama ought to have known how many states there are by the time he ran for President is the height of unfairness.  And we all know how Obama feels about unfairness.  (Which reminds me of another possible explanation for offering imaginary sons to match his real daughters: equality, as in familial justice, a "fair" distribution of genders in the Obama home.)

To display a similar level of ignorance about the composition of one's own immediate family, however -- and to do it in exactly the same way, in exactly the same context, on two different occasions -- now we're into the realm of the supernaturally strange.  This is why I doubt it was a mistake.

So what to make of it?  Here is the text of one of the two almost identical references:

I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons -- we're not turning back the clock.

He wants his daughters to have the same economic opportunities as his sons.  He wants to be born in Kenya when it's more advantageous than being born in Hawaii.  He wants to give detailed intimate descriptions of composite girlfriends who never actually existed in concrete reality.  He wants to be a Harvard intellectual among middle class voters, and a cokehead seeker of his African identity among black voters and anti-American leftists.

And if he wants all these contradictory things, why can't he have them?  After all, he is (presumably) Barack Hussein Obama.  In what sense, then, to get down to brass tacks, does he think he has sons to match his daughters?  In the same way, and for roughly the same reason, I suspect, that he thought it was perfectly okay to have an imaginary birthplace to match his real one: he is a megalomaniac, in the literal, clinical sense.

He is not a liar, or not simply a liar.  He envisions himself as more than a man.  Not a god, exactly, but a kind of ethereal, roving force -- a collective (or collectivist) energy enveloping the world.

The historical "majestic plural," colloquially known as "the royal we," is the manner whereby those perceived as ruling by divine dispensation refer to themselves.  When such a man -- a king, for example, says "we," he represents himself as the symbol of his entire kingdom, all things together in one person.  Obama turns this around.  When he says "I," he seems to be trying to portray the world -- or at least the world of desirable possibilities -- as a mere symbol of himself.

Think of his supra-Gore campaign promises to lower the waters, speed up the planets, pay your mortgage, and so on.  Could any normal man, or even any politician, speak of himself this way?  Yes, of course, someone else wrote those words for him, just as someone else likely wrote the script about "my sons."  But they wrote what they thought their mouthpiece could say -- what he would say.  And, sure enough, he willingly said it.

Perhaps, in seeking the explanation for this inexplicable "gaffe," we have all been focusing on the wrong words.  Perhaps the relevant question is not what he meant when he spoke of "my sons," but rather what he meant when he spoke of "my daughters."  Given that he has no actual sons, but that he mentioned them anyway, why should we presume that he was talking about his actual, biological "daughters" when he used that word?

On the contrary, isn't it more likely that he meant both "sons" and "daughters" in the same sense that he meant "Kenya" in that literary biography; in the same sense that he meant "my Muslim faith," when George Stephanopoulos was forced to cover for him embarrassedly; in the same sense that he meant Bill Ayers was merely "a guy in my neighborhood"; and in the same sense that he means the myriad other mind-bogglingly peculiar things he is wont to say.

In short, isn't it likely that he meant no sons or daughters in particular, but all sons and daughters in general?  Isn't it likely that where you or I, speaking of society as a whole, would say "our daughters" and "our sons," Obama the Great, through his megalomaniacal reversal of the royal "we," speaks of "my daughters" and "my sons"?

He is not "all of us," in monarchical fashion.  Rather, we (by which I mean all things in the known universe) are all him.  Thus, he can legitimately lay claim to having sons, for all fathers are Obama.  He can refer to himself as both Muslim and Christian, for all faiths are Obama.  Composite girlfriends can be discussed in detail in a supposed work of non-fiction, for his romantic past includes the infinite list of all possible girlfriends, as all boyfriends are Obama.

He is the world spirit and the end of history.  When Hegel said it, people thought, and still think, he was a madman.  But Hegel, at least, was a great intellect.  His defense against such critique was, in effect, "According to my reasoning, someone must embody the end of history, so why not me?"  And dang it all if he didn't have a point.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is an intellectual, moral, and historical lightweight, a manufactured man of significant accomplishments on paper which somehow don't match up with anything one can point to in reality.  If his delusional understanding of his relationship to the world were true, and we were all him, the world would be in a heap of trouble.

Come to think of it....

Money has no Impact on Climate Change Science - Really!

Timothy Birdnow

Anyone who has argued with Climate Change Alarmists knows the accusation that is inevitably to come; Climate Change skepticism is funded by Exxon-Mobil and "Big Oil" and so any science that contradicts the "consensus" by the IPCC is somehow biased. We used to be told ad-naseam that filthy polluters were buying pet scientists like Patrick Michaels or Roy Spencer or S. Fred Singer, paying them to lie about research in order to prevent "sensible" controls on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. For a long time that line of argument worked, too, until the vastly superior amounts of money coming from environmentalists groups, liberal think tanks, liberal corporations, and most of all governments came to light. Now the argument has shifted, as the public understands who really has the funding for propaganda and false or shoddy science - and why scientists will be eager to endorse and promote the conventional wisdom.

And the Warmists are losing the argument, leading some of them to swing about wildly. Take this, for example. http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/accusations-that-climate-science-is-money-driven-reveal-ignorance-of-how-science-is-done/?source=science20.com

John Timmer makes the argument that there has been no real increase in funding of Climate Change alarmism, and that it does not matter anyway.

Timmer devotes time to claiming that money spent on research has no strings, essentially, and that it's just aimed at ascertaining the truth.
Well, if that's the case, why did the Nazis fund Eugenics research? Why was Eugenics a major science in the first half of the twentieth century? OF COURSE money matters. It matters at the Universities where Deans push their researchers to come up with spectacular apocalyptic papers to get attention and keep the tap flowing. It certainly mattered to James Hansen who made over a million dollars promoting Global Warming theory (a poorly paid civil servant http://junkscience.com/2012/02/22/flashback-nasa-employee-jim-hansen-mades-1-million-for-outside-climate-work/) It makes a difference to the editors of journals who were being strong-armed by boycotts of their publications for publishing "denier" papers by the Hockey Team (and thus hurting their financial outlook, forcing the editors to toe the line.) It makes a difference to men like Timothy Ball, who was sued for slander to shut his mouth and who needs money to exercise his right to free speech. It matters to young researchers looking to attain tenure. It matters to researchers who cannot afford to lose their positions.

He who pays is the boss.

How does Timmer think budgets get handed out by government? How do grants get awarded? It's not the guys who say "nothing to see here, folks" but the people who shout "doom". And if that doomsaying can be used to promote more government, more taxes, more control, well, what does Timmer think is going to happen? OF COURSE scientists are going to buckle, or at least find marginal evidence far more convincing.

Timmer seems to hold a very different standard where money going to "deniers" is concerned. He had this to say about the Heartland Institute when documents were allegedly leaked to Desmog Blog (and were actually forged):

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/02/leaked-docs-heartland-institute-think-tank-pays-climate-contrarians-very-well/

"The documents include a detailed financial statement, which lists all the sources of income. The Heartland is generally antiregulatory (issues its tackled in the past include everything from smoking laws to telecom regulations), and its list of small donors reflects that. Time Warner Cable and AT&T both show up, as does Microsoft. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies also make appearances, along with the Koch brothers and GM. Combined, these large donors ($10,000 or more) provided about three-quarters of the Heartland's $4.5 million budget last year. A single anonymous donor provided about another $1 million.

A glance through the documents (their authenticity has yet to be confirmed; see below), however, quickly reveals that this broad range of donors isn't involved in the Heartland's climate activities. The NIPCC reports, for example, consume about $300,000 a year, but all of that comes from two donors. Half of the cost of Watts' new website (which is rather pricey, at $88,000) comes from a single donor. Another donor has pledged $100,000 towards the school curriculum project."

[...]

"Wojick isn't the only individual who will be paid well for his role in contesting climate science. Craig Idso, a former coal lobbyist who now helps manage the NIPCC, is getting $11,600 per month for doing so. Fred Singer, a former scientist who often writes editorials that contest the scientific consensus, gets $5,000 a month. A number of others, some still in academia, receive smaller amounts."

End excerpts.

He seems to believe that money spent on advocacy or direct funding of research is bad, but government funding for research is unbiased.

And that money is staggering. Jo Nova has documented http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/climate_money.pdf the titanic funding of the Climate Change Alarmism industry. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/03/the-climate-industry-wall-of-money/ yet Timmer dismisses this with a simple wave of the hand, because he does not believe that the science is being skewed by it.

But he is quick to believe science that opposes his view is skewed by the money, as his diatribe against Heartland surely attests.

What does Timmer think the vast sums of money the U.S. has used to support the IPCC went toward? The U.S. paid out $31.1 million, or half of the IPCC's annual budget. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-taxpayers-cover-nearly-half-cost-un-s-global-warming-panel The IPCC was in the business of doing science, or so they claimed; what did the government expect to get for the money? What did the IPCC produce, for that matter? We know they included the work of grad students and environmental activists, as well as made ridiculous predictions such as the Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035. If money doesn't affect the science being done, then why did we give so much of it to a doddering U.N. institution?

Timmer doesn't argue that the money is there, just how it is spent and its effects. The centerpiece of his argument is a graph showing rising expenditures on Global Warming, and his claim that most of this money goes to satellites, research stations and the like. Physicist Lubos Motl destroys this argument: http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/05/is-follow-money-argument-correct.html#more

"But Timmer ultimately admits that the funding for the research is still about $2 billion a year these days but, he emphasizes, it hasn't grown too much since the early 1990s. But note that the previous sentence contains the words "since the early 1990s" and that's the very main point in this discussion.

In the scientific community, the corruption began exactly in 1988±1. It began with James Hansen's notorious 1988 testimony in the U.S. Congress in which he predicted a 3-times-faster warming for the following 25 years (take e.g. the 1985-2012 jump in the scenario A – which was followed because the CO2 emissions continued to rise exponentially – by 1.2 °C) than what was actually observed later (0.4 °C in the 27-year window).

You may see that as early as in 1989, the funding for the climate change research stood at around $200 million a year; the 1989 budget hasn't reflected Hansen's testimony yet. It grew discontinuously and it grew purely because of the politicization of the discipline. The funding got tripled within a year, quadrupled within two years, and grew by an order of magnitude within 2 decades. The climate change hysteria continued to grow exponentially between the early 1990s and late 2000s (a few years ago) but it was mostly a growth in the media; the scientific community got already bribed and reshaped in the late 1980s and very early 1990s."

End excerpt.

This piece by Timmer is a measure of the desperation that those of the Gang Green, the radical environmentalists, are feeling. They are flailing about, trying to find some way to break out of the trap they've fallen into. It's just not working, and they are sounding increasingly shrill and dense.

But they aren't going down without a fight; too much time, money, and hope was invested in this generation long War of the Worlds scare. They are growing increasingly unpleasant in their death-throes.

Before the Star Spangled Banner

Jack Kemp

Since we are celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the War of 1812, here are some interesting little facts for you.

Before he penned the "Star Spangled Banner" to commemorate the defense of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812,  Francis Scott Key wrote another song in 1805 also based on the same musical rhythm as a popular song "To Anacreon to Heaven." The earlier song is called "When a Warrior Returns" and it commemorated the American servicemen who returned from the Barbary Coast War against present day Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. It, Key first used the term "Star Spangled" which became famous in the National Anthem. It included this verse below. Yes, the reference to "Crescent" in the song is the Muslim crescent moon symbol.

From "When the Warrior Returns"
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw340.html

 In the conflict resistless, each toil they endured,
        'Till their foes fled dismayed from the war's desolation:
    And pale beamed the Crescent, its splendor obscured
        By the light of the Star Spangled flag of our nation.
    Where each radiant star gleamed a meteor of war,
    And the turbaned heads bowed to its terrible glare,
    Now, mixed with the olive, the laurel shall wave,
    And form a bright wreath for the brows of the brave.

END QUOTE

Reference: Pamphlet from the USS Wasp (LHD 1), now in New York Harbor for Fleet Week 2012

So Goes America So Goes the World

Timothy Birdnow

More evidence that U.S. power and influence is on the decline around the world. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/NE26Dh01.html

So South Korea is actually moving into the Chinese orbit, ditching the U.S. and our staunchest oriental ally Japan. What this tells us is that the world is losing confidence in America, and South Korea is certainly a bellweather for this confidence, as they physically in close proximity to China while the U.S. is far away. If they believed the U.S. could provide them with adequate security that does not mean that the U.S. WOULD provide such security, and given the Obama track record it would be folly for South Korea to hope that we will somehow come to their aid.

But, lest we think China's star is rising too high, it should be noted that North Korean pirates seized some Chinese fishing boats recently, and the pirates spoke perfect Mandarin and were wearing North Korean military uniforms. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/NE26Dh01.html

What does this tell us? It suggests that North Korea may not be as respectful of her mighty neighbor as one would expect.

What is not well understood by those claiming this will be the Chinese century is that China's economy is intimately tied to that of the U.S., and chinese power is tied to Chinese economic growth. China has gargantuan sums of cash invested in U.S. debt - a terrible investment that is likely to cost them money in the end. The Chinese sell their cheap merchandise to America, and the economic crisis in the States has caused a slowdown in the Chinese economy, one that has fueled fears of a Chinese recession or total meltdown. http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/07/02/chinas-coming-era-of-slower-growth-are-western-economies-prepared/ Should the U.s. economy tank again, the Chinese economy could go down the drain with it. They are too closely tied to our economic prosperity.

Doubtless the rules in Pyongyang understand this, too. They have been cozying up with the Russians and quietly asserting their independence from China.

I think this is a stunning development, because China is looked upon here in America as somehow omnipotent. But not everyone agrees, and we may be seeing the first cracks in Chinese Asian hegemony.

This is also a very dangerous development, because the Chinese aren't going to give up their dreams of power so easily. If they see their hopes about to die they may do something rash.

I'm already worried about the Russians; their whole national policy was predicated on a monopolistic domination of energy supplied to Europe, and the hydraulic fracturing revolution is about to make that strategy mute. Russias entire post-Soviet success comes from oil and gas, and if the Bear can't use energy to influence events she will likely turn to the old tried-and-true method of military confrontationalism. If Russia were to try to impose control of energy through military adventurism the Chinese, desperate for a steady flow of energy, could react badly. Things could spiral out of control.

Where would that happen? I fear Iran could be the lynchpin.

Iran is Russia's strategic partner in the energy monopoly game. Iran is also nearing the endgame on it's nuclear program, and even Obama won't be able to ignore this much longer. I suspect Obama is waiting to use a strike on Iran as an October Surprise and the surprise could be Russian military intervention, which could lead to Chinese intervention. We could end up in a world war if everything breaks wrong.

I wonder if Obama didn't kill the XL Pipeline for this reason; Canada has been shipping its oil to British Columbia, then on to China. Was this a sop to the Chinese? Perhaps, but I don't see Obama thinking that strategically. Mr. Obama is, after all, a dogmatist, a man with bigger fish to fry than geopolitics. He, like Woodrow Wilson, thinks the international community will right all wrongs in the end. His job, as he sees it, is to get that community in a position of authority.

At any rate, American power is waning, but Chinese power does not appear to be growing. The most dangerous times come when the ball is up for grabs, when every power thinks it can seize world leadership. That time appears to be coming.

National Academy of Science Lies by Omission

Timothy Birdnow

In yet more evidence for the encroachment of leftist politics into the scientific community, former Reagan science adviser George "Jay" Keyworth was not invited to a symposium held by the National Academy of Science (NAS) on communicating science to the government and the public.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/05/a-partisan-look-at-us-science.html?source=science20.com

What is interesting is that NAS invited every living science adviser EXCEPT the conservative Keyworth, including Jimmy Carter's advisor Frank Press. When pressed for a reason for failing to invite Keyworth, NAS President Ralph Cicerone claimed they "didn't want to go back that far" despite having invited the 87 year old Press.

What set Keyworth apart from the other attendees? Doubtless his conservative views.

I direct your attention to Dr. Cicerone's testimony before Congress on Climate Change:

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/Global_Climate_Change_Policy_and_Budget_Review.asp

"The Earth is warming. Weather station records and ship-based observations indicate that global mean surface air temperature increased about 0.7oF (0.4oC) since the early 1970’s (See Figure). Although the magnitude of warming varies locally, the warming trend is spatially widespread and is consistent with an array of other evidence (e.g., melting glaciers and ice caps, sea level rise, extended growing seasons, and changes in the geographical distributions of plant and animal species). The ocean, which represents the largest reservoir of heat in the climate system, has warmed by about 0.12oF (0.06oC) averaged over the layer extending from the surface down to 750 feet, since 1993.

Laboratory measurements of gases trapped in dated ice cores have shown that for hundreds of thousands of years, changes in temperature have closely tracked atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Burning fossil fuel for energy, industrial processes, and transportation releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now at its highest level in 400,000 years and continues to rise. Nearly all climate scientists today believe that much of Earth’s current warming has been caused by increases in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, recent analyses of measurements of the Sun’s total brightness argue against any detectable long-term trend in the energy Earth receives from the Sun, making it difficult to conclude that the Sun has been responsible for the warming observed over the past 25 years."

[...]

"The task of mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change will require worldwide collaborative inputs from a wide range of experts, including natural scientists, engineers, social scientists, medical scientists, those in government at all levels, business leaders, and economists. Although the scientific understanding of climate change has advanced significantly in the last several decades, there are still many unanswered questions. Society faces increasing pressure to decide how best to respond to climate change and associated global changes, and applied research in direct support of decision making is needed."

End excerpts.

Now, Dr. Cicerone's statements to Congress are at best misleading. He knows that the baseline chosen for his claim of warming (the 1970's) was an ebb in temperature, a cold period where scientists were warning of a coming Ice Age. Naturally the planet has warmed since. He also surely knows that the antarctic ice sheet is growing rather than melting, and some glaciers are growing while others melting, so his claims about melting ice are untruthful. Sea levels have been rising, and the rate has not materially accelerated - something else he knows. Perhaps, since this testimony was given in 2005, he was unaware that overall warming of the oceans hasn't been occuring. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/09/while-suns-in-a-funk-no-hint-of-resumed-warming-in-the-oceans/

He surely must know, too, that CO2 levels in the atmosphere follow warming periods and do not proceed them, yet he misleads Congress by claiming they "closely track". That is true, but in the reverse of how he suggests. This is an onerous lie. His claim that CO2 levels are at their highest in the last 400,000 years is, shall we say, disingenuous; he surely knows that carbon dioxide levels rise after an ice age, and we have been coming out of an ice age for the last 400,000 years, so naturally that level is higher. One must ask, too, why it is that the Medieval Warming Period was warmer than the present with so much increased CO2 in the atmosphere? He also argues that solar irradiance does not account for the warming of the Earth, something he cannot prove. He ignores solar-related phonomena such as cosmic rays or magnetic reconnection events.

At the conclusion he argues for government, government, government.

IF he is really this ignorant he has no business being President of NAS, and if he is that dishonest he has no business in science. Science is about the facts, and ALL of the facts.

So why was Keyworth not invited to the symposium?

NAS put out a comprehensive argument for human influence on the climate in the the Climate Change Science Program, or CCCP, er, CCSP report back in 2009. http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-3/final-report/default.htm I debunked this in a lengthy and overwhelmingly redundant (arguing against Anthropogenic Global Warming is always redundant) post here. http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/cccp_er_ccsp_climate_change_report_raw_review_part_i

This bloviating bit of blather on the part of NAS was purest propoganda - from a once shining example of scientific integrity. This document was produced under the tenure of Dr. Cicerone, who has been at the reins of NAS since 2005.

In short, we have liars running the National Academy of Science, and there is little in the way of pretense by those in charge of key institutions to present both sides of politically charged scientific disputes.

We are witnessing the corruption of science in a spectacular fashion. It's little wonder that the public no longer trusts the word of scientists, because they simply aren't straight with us any longer. And today with the internet scientists whose voices would have been silenced can speak out. Cicerone tried doing things the old fashioned way, simply ignoring a dissenter. Won't work any longer.

Bullet Trains; a Low Caliber Idea

Timothy Birdnow

"Hawk. Goin' for the Musselshell. Take me a week's ridin', and he'll be there in... hell, he's there already"

From the 1972 Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson


For millions of years the dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and yet in a short span of time they died out, leaving the Earth to some furry little upstart critters that had previously hidden from the great beasts. Now dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes, and we now know they were warm blooded and moved quickly. Why did they die while their mammalian cousins survived?

Well, not all of them died. The birds are the remnants of the Lords of the Earth.

For some reason the land-based dinosaurs went kaput, while the winged varieties (at least some) survived. Granted, the bigger winged dinos are gone; no pteradactyls to peck at a wayward traveler (although Hilary Clinton may be mistaken for one) and the birds we know certainly bear a less horrific visage than the former flying dinosaurs, but they are plenty lethal (consider an eagle or other bird of prey). But the question remains; why did the land based dinosaurs die out and the flying ones make it? They more than made it, they thrived so well that they form the majority of the creatures of the air (other than insects); mammals took to flight as bats and semi-flight as flying squirrels (giving us such great cartoons as Rocky and Bullwinkle, the latter rather resembling Michelle Obama). But when one thinks of flying critters we invariably think of birds, the survivors of the dinosaurs.

There are enormous benefits to flight.

It's faster. You can move with the air currents at terrific speeds, and as there is nothing in your path (unless you fly too low) you don't have to worry about crashing. You don't need a road or trail, don't have to cross rivers or mountains (except below, and thus they form no barrier), don't have to worrry about anybody sneaking up on you. (You do have to worry about predators, but you can generally see them.) If you can fly high enough you can get out of bad weather, or fast enough you can outrun it.

Crawling around on the ground is inefficient.

That's why the Left's object of affection for transportation - the bullet train - is such a low caliber idea.

Liberals the world over love the notion of a high-speed rail system. They tout the great speed (as high as 125 miles per hour) and all of the self-anointed cool kids are doing it.  In every blue state projects are underway to build these wonderful transport systems. Of course, a railway means people have to move on the scheduSuch levels of control are made to order for the liberal. al of the railway, and have to be squeezed together in a controlled setting. And trains are a ground-based alternative to that greatest of all evils, the privately owned automobile.

The Federalist Patriot had this to say about bullet trains:

"It began as a $33 billion dream, but has ballooned into a $100 billion nightmare for a state that's already staring at a $16 billion shortfall in next year's budget. California Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown wants to press ahead with a bullet train that's supposed to eventually traverse the 432-mile route between San Francisco and Los Angeles in just over two-and-a-half hours. Yet the hoped-for $50 billion contribution from Uncle Sam is probably now a pipe dream.

Touted as part of a "green" initiative by a Moonbeam who hates cars as much as Algore, the train will, ironically, depend on electricity created from fossil fuels. However, the real concern is the lack of private investment and willingness by contractors to bid on the project, fearing they might be stuck when the state runs out of money. While voters approved an initial $9 billion in bonds in 2008, they're having second thoughts now. Unfortunately for them, Democrats won't place another referendum on the ballot because voters now oppose the bullet train by a 2-1 margin. So it's state taxpayers that have to bite the bullet if Brown has his way. It seems the only thing moving on this railroad is the debt total."

End excerpt.

And indeed bullet trains are fading away like the morning dew the world over. http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/19/end-of-the-line-for-the-bullet-train

Why would a vehicle capable of moving large numbers of people and cargo at 125 mph not succeed? 

Because it is totally unnecessary. For trips longer than four hours one simply takes a shuttle flight. Flying is so much faster, safer, and, well, a cleaner job in terms of travel. If you are going to have the inconvenience of going through a congested station, passing security, waiting on departure time, and being a passive participant then why bother with a train? Trains are notorious for delays - moreso than planes because they have to move on a set track, something the plane just doesn't have to do. A plane can drop lower, move higher, go left or right while the train has to use two rails, and those rails only. If you are going to the trouble of using mass transit you may as well fly.

And at the end of the trip you STILL have to find your way to your destination from the station, just as you have to find your way from an airport. Unless the trip requires a quick transit time it's worth it to you to simply drive. It takes three hours to get from St. Louis to Kansas City by car, and you could perhaps cut that to an hour and a half by bullet train (were we to have a bullet train between the two cities) but it will take another two hours to get through the hassles of parking your car (and paying for the privilege) waiting for the train, disembarking, and finding transportation to your final destination.

And speaking of final destinations, there is a danger of getting there prematurely, as in your final, final destination; trains derail, and one of the reasons they aren't used much for transportation these days is that there is real danger. Remember, they can't dodge and they are enormously massive, so if something goes wrong you are going down. A derailed train is different than rolling a car; my mother rolled her Volkswagon Beetle years ago, and walked away just fine. In fact, they rolled the car over and my father drove it home. You can do that because it isn't massive; a train derailing is MASSIVE.

They are subject to inevitable delays, too. Once I took Amtrac to Hermann Mo. Hermann is a town in the center of Missouri wine country, and my wife booked us passage for my birthday. Hermann is only about 80 miles from home, but it took about 2.5 hours to get there (I would have been there in a little more than an hour had I drive). We were supposed to be picked up at 6 p.m., and the train didn't arrive at the station until 10. It was empty, and smelled of disinfectant. My wife mentioned to the staff that it was my birthday (hoping to get a free drink or something) and they just rolled their eyes. Of course, when we got back to St. Louis I still had to get the car and drive home (early in the morning).

Also, trains hit things. The wedge-shaped bumper on the front of the old trains was called a cow-catcher, because it often took wayward cattle with it. Now you are talking about building miles and miles of track, and roaring through at high speed. What will get in the way of the trains? How much wildlife will be made into rail pizza by high speed trains? 

They might makes some sense had they been done using high tech, too; a magnetic levitating train (no danger of metal wheels coming off of the tracks) in a vacuum tube moving at over 250 miles per hour in complete safety would perhaps be worth building. But bullet trains aren't this type of high tech, and won't be because this embodies exactly what the environmentalists and other liberal moonbats hate. They want trains partly because they are low tech. The point is to condition us to accept less, to be satisfied with a world that is without growth or advancement, and trains are old technology. Making them competitive with airplanes would defeat the whole purpose.

That, and getting people accustomed to be hearded like cattle in cattle cars. It is to teach us that we cannot move about independently.

Remember when Senatorial candidate Spouting Bull aka Elizabeth Warren (she who speak with forked tongue) said that the wealthy only acquire wealth by using the roads and railways built by others, so don't really achieve anything on their own? http://www.theblaze.com/stories/elizabeth-warren-on-class-warfare-there-is-nobody-in-this-country-who-got-rich-on-his-own/ This reminds me of a quote from another of my favorite movies, the 1975 film "Rollerball" starring James Caan:

"the purpose of the game is to teach the futility of individual effort".

Mr. Bartholemew to Jonathan E.

This film is set in a world ruled by megacorporations, a fascist state where the corporate and the government are one. John Houseman (Mr. Bartholemew) stars as one of the corporate executives trying to force Jonathan E. (Caan) out of the game of Rollerball, an ultraviolent sport in which he has become to dominant. See, Rollerball was intended to get aggression out of the public through vicarious means, and to teach that you fail as an individual. Jonathan defies the corporation, leading to a bloodbath at the end as the championship game is played with no rules and no time limit - a battle to the death.

I suspect that mass transit is intended to serve a similar purpose; to teach that one must depend on the state, that individual action is pointless. In a world without cars or other private conveyances, one where there never had been such things, the public would be baffled by the notion that you could come and go as you pleased, that it would be possible to simply up and leave.

The ability to control the movement of people is the ability to control them. I wrote about this a while back. http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0708/0708drillingconsright.htm

In the end, high speed rail is inefficient and stupid. Why ride on rails fast when you can simply fly?  It makes no sense, yet it is something that the Left will never give up on because it serves an ulterior motive. It's about control; it always is about control.

Mexico's War on Catholicism

Jack Kemp


I found this is 26 min. video that introduces a major new movie coming out, on the true forgotten/hidden story of the 1926 Mexican Govt. (Pres. Calles) attempt to outlaw Catholic practices. No priests garb seen in public, closing churches, killing priests, etc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EnPi5cXlVHo#

This is where socialism leads.

The Politically Correct Assault on our Minds

Timothy Birdnow

In a recent post by Dana Mathewson, Dana linked to an essay by David Kupelian about political correctness as a form of mind control. Our good friend from Down Under, Morris, replied quite positively to Kupelian, and he left the following message:

"An excellent article by David Kupelian.  I've read his book 'The Marketing of Evil' - it's a masterpiece.  He's absolutely right about PC - it's a deliberately introduced changing of language.  I've known since almost the beginning of when it started that it's deadly to freedom.  Even before I understood it I had an instinctive hatred for it."

This was interesting because I had spent last evening watching the old Crocodile Dundee movie, and it brought some interesting thoughts into my head - well, at least I thought they were interesting. I posted the following comment:

"Thanks, Morris!

Anyone who remembers Newspeak from 1984 should understand that PC is thought control; that was the whole purpose in the novel, to make it impossible to think certain things.

And they have had success. I was watching the movie Crocodile Dundee last night (I bought the DVD a while back because it was on sale) and at one point Dundee is told by a friend at a bar that the girl he thinks he's making time with is a man "a fag" as the cabbie puts it. I was SHOCKED at that word, because it's become something unspeakable.

That was banned because it had a negative image, and the plan was to paint homosexuality with kittens and sunshine.

Whether one thinks it impolite to use that word or not, the point is it was not impolite back when this movie was made - which wasn't all that long ago. They have succeeded in banning it through political correctness. There are plenty of others that have been banned, too.

Is it any surprise that gay marriage is now a hot topic here in America and terms with negative images associated have been extracted from our language?  This is a tool designed to promote thought control. If any pejorative phrases are expunged from our vocabulary over a given thing, that thing then becomes a positive, or at worst a neutral. The word gay was promoted because that has a positive image; gay meant happy, fun, bubbly. To be gay suggests one is in a blessed state. The redefinition of that term has shorn the English language of a once useful word, coopted it to promote a form of behavior that was traditionally discouraged. Now it's hip to be gay to the younger generation, like being a natural blond used to be to girls. They have banned any less flattering terms for this, and the younger generation simply cannot think there is anything wrong with being gay because they have no words that suggest it.

You could do that with anything. Pimples, say; start calling them beauties, or sexmarks or whatnot, and say the word pimple or zit is unkind, and in a few years you have teenagers walking around with grease on their faces hoping to break out in a mass of pustules.

In short, it is mind control indeed!"

End comment.

And indeed this is a subtle way to twist the American mind (and the Australian, too.)  Now, I am not advocating making people feel bad by using onerous stereotypical language, but some of this language is hardly onerous and yet it will be expunged in coming years as the Left seeks to recreate the way we think. Human beings think in language. It's the key to our ability to reason and to understand. Change that and you change the abilities to grasp certain aspects of things.

Consider the number zero. Mathematics was largely limited to arithmatic without it, and nobody invented the zero because there was no easy way to say it. It was an abstract concept that required a new word or two. Once we had it mathematics became possible. Without a formal word for it people sensed it was there, and understood the concept of nothing, but didn't have any way to manipulate that concept.

I know; mathematical symbols aren't words, but they function in a similar fashion. Were the keepers of wisdom in academia to decide that zero was an offensive idea and would demand we stop using it our entire system of science would crumble.

There are other concepts, too, that could well be erased by political correctness. In Crocodile Dundee Mick explains to Sue (his love interest) that the Australian Aborigines don't have words for owning land. They see it as ridiculous, the notion that somebody can own the land, since the land was there before you came and will be there after you leave. Of course, the Aborigines lived at the most primitive of subsistence levels, not even building houses to keep the sun off their heads or the rain away. They were dirt poor by any material standards, and that is because they had no conception of private property. They never developed the langauge for it, so they never developed the concept of it, so they never had it.

If the modern Progressives could somehow make the words about private property taboo, they could expunge the concept from post-modern Man. But they would never do that, would they? (Oh, wait; capitalism is a four letter word these days. As Glenn Beck chronicled, the OWS people were chanting "5,6,7,8 eat the rich, smash the State" and a whole generation has grown to quasi-manhood with ridiculous romantic notions of economic anarchy as somehow a wise policy. http://attackthesystem.com/2011/10/18/markets-not-capitalism-individualist-anarchism-against-bosses-inequality-corporate-power-and-structural-poverty/ Why? Because they have had the terms "rich" and "capitalist" and others redefined as horribly negative. So much of this comes not from reason but from the recreation of language. Evil images have been associated with terms that should be positive, while positive images have been associated with what should be negative. Marxism, for instance, has been a gigantic curse on Mankind (as, indeed, Karl Marx claimed in his play Oulanem "Soon I shall embrace eternity to my breast, and soon. I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind", and he's done a fine job of it!) That's why the Left changes names so frequently; they fear overcoming a negative image. But that image is there not because of some prejudice on the part of the public but because they have howled curses repeatedly on Mankind. People come to associate a certain aspect of Leftism with those curses, and so ACORN changes names, for instance, to avoid the work of overcoming the negative stereotype.

But what of a concept? Sometimes the name change can be made, and effort must be taken to redefine it as a positive. Socialized Medicine becomes "affordable health care" and yet it is still a pig in lipstick.

It's why the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case played out the way it did; the media and many on the liberal side have had the term minority come to mean innocent, pure, and mistreated, and so the very thought that perhaps the minority teenager was perhaps at fault for what happened simply did not register. There has been a definition of minorities to be eternally mistreated. 

At any rate, George Orwell understood where this was leading, and he illustrated it with his concept of Newspeak, where language would be changed in such a way that it would be impossible to even think a seditious thought. This is what political correctness is attempting in modern America and elsewhere - with some degree of success.

There is also the breakdown of formal grammar and sentence structure. Yes, kids used a shorthand on the computer because it was easier, but it was easier because they have never learned to express themselves with proper sentence structure and grammar and eloquent vocabulary. The concept pushed in the schools has been self-expression and not the rules of speech. This has been catastrophic, because we cannot think logically if we cannot formulate a sentence or punctuate properly. Imagine, if you will, an equation thrown together without proper structure. How about this MeC=exp2.
This is completely meaningless because it has no structure. It's supposed to read e=MCexp2 - the famous equation of matter energy equivalency formulated by Einstein. Without proper structure it is meaningless. Ditto language. If language is not structured properly it degrades in meaning; after a certain point it means nothing. This is a form of political correctness that is being foisted off on our children, a way to keep them from thinking for themselves. There was a good reason for school teachers to ask "I don't know, can you?" when a student asked if he can go to the bathroom; the proper word was MAY. We often smile at this as unusually peevish, but the reality is it served a real purpose. Poor language skills make for a cluttered and jumbled mind.

The Left understands this, and promotes poor language skills for this very reason.

A nation that loses its language loses its ability to think. That plays into the hands of the Leftist Bourgeouisie, the new aristocracy.

This is a huge effort we must undertake. Reclaiming our language is reclaiming our culture. Without it we are lost.

Nutter's Nutty Spending Analysis

Brian forwards this piece by Ann Coulter. Apparently a guy named Rex Nutting (the name is not a joke) is blaming most of the Obama spending on George W. Bush, putting most of the stimulus into the Bush category.

http://www.humanevents.com/www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=51706

Oh, by the way, the Wall Street Journal is rated as one of the most liberal papers in terms of content. It's conservatism is on the editorial pages only.According to a study by Tim Groseclose, Poli-Sci Prof at UCLA:

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1922/article_detail.asp

" The most liberal newspaper is the Detroit Free Press (S.Q. = 81.5), the New York Times is very liberal (67.3), and the Wall Street Journal is left of center (55.1). The Journal? Yes, because the news section and the editorial sections of that newspaper are opposed to one another. As one observer put it, the editorial and news sections are "as politically polarized as North and South Korea."

Figures don't lie: Democrats do
by Ann Coulter


It's been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: "Federal spending under Obama at historic lows ... It's clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." There's even a chart!

I'll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on ...

This shocker led to around-the-clock smirk fests on MSNBC. As with all bogus social science from the left, liberals hide the numbers and proclaim: It's "science"! This is black and white, inarguable, and why do Republicans refuse to believe facts?

Ed Schultz claimed the chart exposed "the big myth" about Obama's spending: "This chart -- the truth -- very clearly shows the truth undoubtedly." And the truth was, the "growth in spending under President Obama is the slowest out of the last five presidents."

Note that Schultz also said that t he "part of the chart representing President Obama's term includes a stimulus package, too." As we shall see, that is a big, fat lie.

Schultz's guest, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston confirmed: "And clearly, Obama has been incredibly tight-fisted as a president."

Everybody's keyboard OK?

On her show, Rachel Maddow proclaimed: "Factually speaking, spending has leveled off under President Obama. Spending is not skyrocketing under President Obama. Spending is flattening out under President Obama."

In response, three writers from "The Daily Show" said, "We'll never top that line," and quit.

Inasmuch as this is obviously preposterous, I checked with John Lott, one of the nation's premier economists and author of the magnificent new book with Grover Norquist: "Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future." (I'm reviewing it soon, but you should start without me.)


It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.

That's not a joke.

That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.)

Nutting's "analysis" is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama's spending. And he's testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama "is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill."

Nutting acts as if it's the height of magnanimity to "attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush ..."

On what possible theory would that be Bush's spending? Hey -- we just found out that Obamacare's going to cost triple the estimate. Let's blame it on Calvin Coolidge!

Nutting's "and not to Bush" line is just a sleight of hand. He's hoping you won't notice that he said "$140 billion" and not "$825 billion," and will be fooled into thinking that he's counting the entire stimulus bill as Obama's spending. (He fooled Ed Schultz!)

The theory is that a new president is stuck with the budget of his predecessor, so the entire 2009 fiscal year should be attributed to Bush.

But Obama didn't come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush. This included a $410 billion spending bill that Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009. Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch's Nutting says that's Bush's spending.

Obama also spent the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). These were discretionary funds meant to prevent a market meltdown after Lehman Brothers collapsed. By the end of 2008, it was clear the panic had passed, and Bush announced that he wouldn't need to spend the second half of the TARP money.

But on Jan. 12, 2009, Obama asked Bush to release the remaining TARP funds for Obama to spend as soon as he took office. By Oct. 1, Obama had spent another $200 billion in TARP money. That, too, gets credited to Bush, according to the creative accounting of Rex Nutting.

There are other spending bills that Obama signed in the first quarter of his presidency, bills that would be considered massive under any other president -- such as the $40 billion child health care bill, which exten ded coverage to immigrants as well as millions of additional Americans. These, too, are called Bush's spending

Frustrated that he can't shift all of Obama's spending to Bush, Nutting also lowballs the spending estimates during the later Obama years. For example, although he claims to be using the White House's numbers, the White House's estimate for 2012 spending is $3.795 trillion. Nutting helpfully knocks that down to $3.63 trillion.

But all those errors pale in comparison to Nutting's counting Obama's nine-month spending binge as Bush's spending.

If liberals will attribute Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus bill to Bush, what won't they do?