This Is a Real Motivator

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

From Russ Vaughn, a new version of the classic Christmas tune, dedicated to Al Gore, climate maven extraordinaire: 

Oh the weather in Denmark’s frightful,
But the irony’s so delightful,
That everywhere Al Gore goes,
It just snows and it snows and it snows.

When will Al ever see the light?
Will he ever go out in the storm?
Or does his tin hat still fit too tight?
And he still thinks the world’s gettin’ warm.

The conference is slowly dying,
And the moonbats are all good-bying,
Global warming has no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Al Gore Catches the ClimateGate Spirit

As if ClimateGate has not already done enough damage to the AGW movement, Al Gore adds his own made-up numbers to the mix.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. . . .

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Gore just can’t help himself. He’s been throwing out wild numbers like this for so long — and getting by with it — that it’s the only thing he knows to do. Unfortunately for him, the rubes are finally beginning to catch on to how the game is played, and his extreme assertions are now met with raised eyebrows rather than gasps of horror.

Tiger: The Metaphor

Lisa Schiffren sees the shocking implosion of Tiger Woods’ persona as a metaphor for what’s also happening to Barak Obama. Both men were carefully groomed by outside interests who had a lot to gain by having them succeed. But eventually the mortal failings of both men came to light, in entirely different ways, and the carefully constructed images fell apart. And the betrayed public will exact a terrible revenge.

If I were watching the public disgust with the newly revealed Tiger Woods from an office in the West Wing, I’d be concerned. Because Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record, or accomplishments, and the public’s willing suspension of critical evaluation of his resume allowed his handlers and the media to project what they wanted to on his unfurrowed brow. . . .

Voters who believed in the Obama magic — both from the center and from the far left, are increasingly dismayed watching the human god fall to earth. This is a major problem because . . . the impulse of the betrayed is to tear their fallen deities to shreds.

I would offer one caveat to this outcome. A contrite confession, followed by genuine repentance (change), can go a long way toward rebuilding a tarnished reputation. Maybe Tiger can do it; I have serious doubts about Obama.

Climategate and the Media

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, doubts that we will ever hear anyone in the MSM utter the three most important words in character-building: “I was wrong.”

He predicts the media will stubbornly stay quiet on the Climategate story until it fades away. But there is one possible development that will make this story so huge that it will overwhelm them.

Read the article to learn more . . . .

The Gore Effect Strikes Again

There was a lecture on global warming scheduled for today at the University of Texas in Austin. Unfortunately, it had to be postponed — due to snow. Blame the Gore Effect!

How about “Why it’s snowing in South Texas and making us look retarded” as a topic of discussion?

“The Emperor Has No Clothes!”

Rosslyn Smith sees a profound irony in the location of next week’s climate summit: Copenhagen, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen’s story, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

It begins, after all, with two con men who promise they can weave cloth of unsurpassed beauty to the enlightened but which would be invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid. They would then tailor that fabric into a fabulous suit of clothes for the emperor. The emperor invested in the venture because such traits would be useful to someone like himself as emperors tend attract both sycophants and self serving manipulators.

Smith notes that the real lesson of the story is not the arrogance of the emperor, but the willingness of his courtiers to suspend reason in support of an obvious lie. The parallels to the current global warming crusade are remarkable.

I can almost excuse the politicians and the speculators who promoted AGW.  Like Anderson’s emperor, they invested in a tool that would advance their self-interest. Representative democracies are supposed to have checks and balances to help keep such self-interest within reasonable bounds. In addition to the way the researchers themselves violated scientific standards, the actions of our journalists and educators who jumped on the AGW bandwagon made matters worse.  People in these positions are supposed to promote healthy skepticism. Journalists see themselves as the guardians of transparency in government and educators in the pursuit of enlightenment.  In fact, our legal system grants special rights to journalists because of their role as the watchdogs and whistle blowers.

But like the emperor’s court, our media and academia have chosen to play along with the scam. Now, finally, someone has had the courage to lay bare for all the world to see that, indeed, the whole enterprise was fabricated out of thin air.

ClimateGate: The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

Regular readers of this blog know that many of my posts on the global warming controversy end with this prediction: “The current approach to the global warming issue will someday be taught in universities as a good example of how not to do science.”

Perhaps we have reached that point much sooner than I expected. Andrew Revkin (NYT) links to a published essay by Dr. Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, that directly addresses young climate scientists, encouraging them to learn a lesson from the Climategate scandal that is still unfolding.

If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.

From the comments to Revkin’s post:

The sad thing is that scientists are supposed to be skeptics. The minute someone becomes convinced that they know it all is the minute they make the transition from scientist to ideologue. To question, to doubt, to double-check, to scrutinize: this is what it is to be a scientist. A scientist should accept someone else’s statement as the unvarnished truth simply out of respect for them or their position. And a scientist should never ridicule someone for expressing doubts about the accuracy of the data, the methodology for collecting them, the methodology for interpreting them, and the conclusions drawn.

True science has never been the issue in this controversy. Practiced with integrity and openness, science is humanity’s friend. It is when science becomes tainted with political ideology that it becomes corrupted and harmful.

Ft. Hood: Ignoring the Obvious

Dorothy Rabinowitz dissects the loony political correctness that has scrambled to exonerate Islam following the Ft. Hood massacre. The unwillingness of so many in power to state the obvious bodes ill for the security of our nation.

It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.

If our intelligentsia, both in government and in the media, cannot bring themselves to admit the ongoing threat to our civilization from radical Islam as a coherent movement, then we will not succeed in defending ourselves against it.

Obama’s Staff Problem

Dan Gerstein takes a hard look at Obama’s inner circle in the West Wing and sees a campaign organization, not a governance council. The stifling political mindset is setting up the Chief for failure.

The president’s top advisers are not just overly political, they are almost totally political. Indeed, this West Wing is stacked with “hacks”–campaign professionals who are acculturated to think, act and win in the hothouse environments of elections, not to govern a bitterly divided country in extremely difficult times.

Of course, this is precisely the opposite of what we were promised last year.

Stossel on Journalistic Bias

John Stossel documents his transition from a typical left-wing government-knows-best journalist hack to a thoughtful free-market libertarian — and the price he paid to make that journey. The experience has given him a unique perspective on the issue of bias in journalism.

Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view. So why am I the one called biased?

Rush, the NFL, the MSM . . . and Integrity

Only one of the three has it.

The double-standard shown by the NFL and the media in the recent flap over Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy ownership in the St. Louis Rams is over-the-top shameless. John Hawkins draws five important lessons from the episode. The last one is directed at conservatives:

Maybe conservatives should actually start raising a lot more hell about issues like this one. When Hollywood, the NFL, and the mainstream media conclude that conservatives aren’t suckers who will still hand them money even as they’re insulted, maybe the insults will stop. . . . If conservatives do nothing else in the next few years — well, besides taking back Congress and defeating Barack Obama — we should insist on an end to that double standard.

Global Warming Tipping Point?

No, not the tipping point Al Gore has warned us about. Rather, the tipping point in the media’s move away from AGW alarmism toward skepticism. Marc Morano documents the media’s gradual shift toward a more balanced coverage of the science behind the issue. The result is a growing number of skeptics.

The science is so overwhelmingly obvious, that sooner or later the questions could no longer be avoided.

Energy Crisis Called Off

Recent advances in technology for extracting natural gas from shale and methane beds have dramatically changed the global outlook on energy supplies.

The claims of BP and Statoil are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century.

Please note: The free market is making these advances, without a trillion-dollar government program dictating outcomes.

Obama Wins Nobel: Tough Break

Nancy Gibbs worries that the Nobel Peace Prize just awarded our Dear Leader might hang like an albatross around his neck.

The Nobel committee cited “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” . . .  But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have.

Gibbs points to Greg Mortenson, who has devoted his life to building schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a far more worthy candidate for a peace prize — someone whose actions are more eloquent than any of Obama’s speeches.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has collected some great zingers relating to this “accomplishment.”

UPDATE: How did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? He was the tenth caller.

Obama Smacked Down — On a World Stage

Obama’s high-profile play to get the 2016 Olympic Games in Chicago not only failed, it failed spectacularly. The fact that Chicago got booted in the first round of voting suggests an international message to our President of “Get lost, loser.”

Dan McLaughlin fears more was lost here than merely an Olympic host bid.

This is why you don’t publicly stake your prestige on something that’s not (1) hugely important (2) a done deal or (3) ideally, both. All presidents suffer defeats and embarrassments, but you generally don’t walk right into one on an issue of purely local importance to your home city. Obama’s and the nation’s standing in the world can’t help but be chipped away by this; the next time he goes jetting off to a summit or some other international event, people won’t be so quick to assume that he has all figured out in advance how he’s going to get what he wants. That aura, that mystique is a thing of value that the President is supposed to husband carefully for when the nation really needs it.

Obama assured us that if he was elected, he would restore respect for America in the world community. Looks like the exact opposite has happened.

UPDATE: From the (UK) Times Online:  “A stunning humiliation for this President.”

ACORN: Shakedown Racket

Tristan Yates documents ACORN’s history of shaking down banks for millions, with the help of The Community Reinvestment Act.

ACORN perfected this “pay for protection” business model in the 1990s. And it is a business. While some of the ACORN organizations are non-profit, others are not, which means that by working together they can get the best of all worlds: political actions, union-style organization, tax-exempt status, privacy, and profit.

And the politicians who enabled this racket get gobs of votes. What’s not to like about it?

The Obama Youth Vote Gets Kicked in the Groin

The unemployment rate among young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-WWII high. And there is little likelihood of the picture improving over the next several years.

Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn’t see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.

“There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country,” Angrisani said in an interview last week. “All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses.”

The delicious irony here, of course, is that it was these same young people who overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Now they are learning a hard lesson in how socialist economics works. And the learning is just beginning. These young Americans will inherit the trillions of dollars in debt that Obama has created. It will likely be a miserable life for these folks.

If the Republicans had any sense, they would build their election strategy in upcoming campaigns around this increasingly disillusioned demographic.

Global Warming: Science or Politics?

The next time someone argues that global warming alarmism is driven by science, refer them to the sad case of Mitchell Taylor, a polar bear research expert who was recently uninvited to the Polar Bear Specialist Group at the upcoming Copenhagen meeting. The reason? Mitchell does not share the prevailing opinion on the cause of global warming. An excerpt from the letter informing him of the decision:

I do believe, as do many Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) members, that for the sake of polar bear conservation, views that run counter to human induced climate change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions taken by the PBSG. . . .

Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your research on polar bears – it was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.

In other words, politics trumps science. When political considerations shape the scientific debate, truth is the first casualty.

Some day the current global warming scare will be taught in universities as a good example of how not to do science.

Finding Truth in a Post-Journalistic Age

With the mainstream media becoming increasingly irrelevant,  and the rise of extremely partisan bloggers on the left and right, how can the average citizen find a balanced source of information to determine the truth on critical issues of the day? Ron Radosh looks at the challenges that face the news consumer trying to sort out the facts on a story like the recent ACORN scandal.

Is there any truth to the charges either side makes? If one listens simply to the TV talking heads, no one will know what is true or what is false. You watch the side you already agree with, and take the argument of those who you listen to in order to reinforce the opinion you already have.

Radosh has a point here. With partisans on both sides retreating deeper into enclaves of rigid group-think, the process of debate and compromise — which is the genius of our democratic system — becomes ever more difficult.

Radosh, however, sees a glimmer of hope in a handful of television programs that feature spirited dialogue among representatives with opposing views. As much as we might disagree with those of opposing views, it is important that we take the time to listen to each other.

The Tea Party Dog

Smart dog — refuses a government handout.

NEWS FLASH!! Tea Party Erupts in Violence!!

This just in . . . A tea party in Pittsburg has turned violent!

These wacko conservative Republicans have begun throwing rocks at police cars, smashing plate glass windows, and engaging in other forms of anarchist behavior! Go here to see the shocking photos of these out-of-control freaks on a rampage.

What we in the media have long feared has finally come to pass — the Tea Partiers are a powder keg that can explode at any moment. Clearly, they pose the gravest threat to the Republic since Ronald Reagan.

UPDATE:  Stand by . . . okay, it appears that this is not a tea party at all, but anarchists exercising their constitutional right of free expression at the G-20 summit. No news here, move along to the next story . . .

(via Instapundit)

Hillary’s Downfall

Heard from Hillary lately? Nope, me neither.

Jennifer Rubin turns the spotlight on yet another example of Hillary’s poor decision-making: Her decision to accept the Secretary of State position.

Had she stayed in the Senate, she might have inherited the mantle of liberal leadership from Ted Kennedy. Clinton might have been the one to pull a rabbit out of the hat to save health-care reform. But once again her ambition got the best of her and her self-image of super-smart, super-capable policy wonk led her to a poor career choice. Now, politics is filled with second and third acts, and maybe her political career will recover. But I’m not sure her reputation ever will.

I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Hillary. But from now on she will be relegated largely to the late night joke circuit.

“More Fun than Winning the Lottery”

That was the reaction of an amateur treasure hunter in Britain who stumbled upon a hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure in a neighbor’s field. Archaeologists are proclaiming it the greatest collection of medieval treasure ever found in Great Britain.

“This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue,” Roger Bland, who managed the cache’s excavation, told The Associated Press. “It will make us rethink the Dark Ages. That’s basically what it’s going to do.”

The seventh century hoard, found by 55-year-old Terry Herbert on farmland in western England two months ago, consists of about 1,500 pieces of gold and silver, some inlaid with precious stones. So fine is the craftsmanship that experts say it could have belonged to Anglo-Saxon royalty.

The treasure will likely be sold to a museum, making the finder (and his neighbor) very rich men.

UPDATE: A much more detailed account of the story can be found here.

When Is a Tax Not a Tax?

When Obama sez so, that’s when.

Jake Tapper dissects Obama’s twisting and turning during his interview with George Stephanopoulos yesterday. Stephanopoulos pressed Obama to explain why a federally enforced penalty on those who choose not to sign up for the individual health program is not a tax.

Stephanopoulos cited Merriam Webster’s Dictionary definition. “Tax — ‘a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.’”

“George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now,” said the president. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition….I absolutely reject that notion” that it’s a tax increase.

But as Tapper reveals, the proposed bill itself specifically uses the phrase “excise tax” to describe the penalty.

It’s all right there on page 29 of the bill: “Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

So the Jedi Master waved his hand and declared, “It’s not a tax.” And it was so.

UPDATE: Even the AP gets it.

Bidenisms

Slate has created a web page for collecting what it calls “Bidenisms” — verbal malapropisms of the Vice President. The inaugural list is already quite long.

A statement becomes Bidenesque when his over-the-top attempts at folksiness fail. Unlike their distant cousins, Bushisms and Palinisms, Bidenisms generally stem more from arrogance or obliviousness than from difficulty with the English language or ignorance.

Joe Biden has always struck me as a goofy old uncle who enjoys being the center of attention at family reunions, but whose verbal mishaps leave relatives rolling their eyes. His penchant for saying dumb things makes him a fitting poster child for the Obama administration — cocksure and incompetent.

Our Clueless Leaders

Salena Zito warns the political class that their dismissive attitude toward the surging protests will cost them.

The Tea Party phenomanon has moved Americans to mobilize and protest as never before, which makes you wonder why the media and elected officials downplay it so much.

As for racism, the majority of the electorate is white, and a majority of it voted for Obama — and people are now demonstrating because they think our country is going off a cliff, not because our president is black.

“The Kamikazi Media”

That’s the label that John Nolte places on the mainstream media, who have passed far beyond mere bias into irrational behavior in their support of the Dear Leader. They will sacrifice themselves rather than let the truth be told.

The Palace Guards know full well how the “narrative” works and each of the stories they’ve ignored at crippling expense to their own integrity and relevance represents what terrifies them most … a string that could unravel The Whole Thing.

The Battle of Teutoburg Forest: A Movie?

Some time ago I wrote about the battle of Teutoburg Forest, a disastrous loss of several Roman legions in Germania in A.D. 9.

Now a Dutch filmmaker is considering making a movie based on the battle. It’s not a done deal yet, but the concept trailer looks pretty good. I’ll have to keep an eye on this one. (You can read more about the project here — but only if you can read Dutch).

9/12 Tea Party: Back to the Future

Barbara Curtis participated in the Sept. 12 Tea Party march in D.C. She sees it as the beginning of a major movement that will have an historic impact on our nation. She should know — she was once a leftist hippie radical in the vanguard of the last such movement in the 60s.

What I observed — no matter how ignored or spun by the increasingly irrelevant dinosaur media — tells me that this spontaneous and improbable gathering of conservatives is just the beginning of a movement that in the end will be as culturally revolutionary as the Woodstock generation.

It’s ironic that the same baby boomers who turned the country upside down in the 60s are about to turn it upside down again. Groovy!

Barbara blogs at http://mommylife.net/.