Monthly Archives: November, 2009

The duplicity surrounding news coverage of bisphenol A, a common and long-used chemical component of plastic, is evidenced by the media’s penchant for lavish coverage of specious claims of danger and a paucity of interest in peer-reviewed research showing no harm from the chemical.  This double standard extends to taxpayer funding of BPA research and raises questions about the pending research.

A particularly curious tale begins with a September 21 letter to Margaret Hamburg, the new Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director Linda Birnbaum who, among others, was copied on the correspondence.  The letter was penned by Thomas Zoeller, a member of the 2007 Chapel Hill Consensus that advanced theories of danger associated with BPA, and 32 additional signatories.  The letter opens by stating that its signatories are “a group of independent (mostly university) researchers with extensive experience working with endocrine disrupting compounds and in particular bisphenol A (BPA)” but then gives a curious warning to Commissioner Hamburg regarding plans for $10 million in BPA studies by FDA.

“We find it troubling that the FDA is proposing to spend such a large amount of money on such a well-researched chemical,” the letter notes.  It goes on to claim that plans to further research BPA are “disturbing” and that “there is sufficient research and independent review available for the agency to make a decision as to whether, as the law dictates, there is ‘reasonable certainty’ that this chemical is ‘not harmful.’”

At first blush, one might be inclined to give credit to these researchers for their noble stance in defense of government frugality with taxpayer money.  But a cursory understanding of many of the signatories’ past efforts raises an intriguing issue.  Close to half of the signatories had been part of the Chapel Hill Consensus, and some of those have had questions raised about their research methods and the incestuous nature of their scientific work.

The curiosities of the September 21 letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg are compounded by an October 28 news release from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences announcing 10 grants funded by federal economic stimulus money to pay for two years of additional research on BPA.

The NIEHS news release explains, “While recent assessments by authorities in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan agree that current food contact uses of BPA are safe, these assessments have identified the need to address data gaps.  For these reasons, NIEHS prioritized BPA research as a Signature initiative in the grants program undertaken with stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

The language of the NIEHS announcement is standard government boilerplate, but its meaning becomes almost surreal when a review of grant money recipients reveals that seven of the ten grants are to be awarded to signatories of the September 21 letter to FDA Commissioner Hamburg.  Although the press release referred to an October 6 meeting of researchers receiving stimulus funds, no mention is made in their letter to Hamburg about having applied for any NIEHS grant money or whether any of the signatories had been informed that they were to receive such grants.  They only mention that “the NIEHS has initiated a $7 million program (GO grants) to address several key data gaps.”

According to an analysis by Trevor Butterworth of the George Mason University Statistical Assessment Service, some of the recipients of the stimulus funds and participants in the Chapel Hill Consensus seem to have an “incestuous” relationship.  The scientists who signed the September 21 FDA letter had claimed “there are already over 900 peer-reviewed studies in the published literature,” but the NIEHS press release states, “The innovative two-year grants [of $14 million] provided through the Recovery Act will support human and animal studies that address many of the research gaps identified by expert scientific panels, and provide a better understanding of how this chemical may impact human health.”  Which is correct?

The letter signers wrote, “We are deeply troubled that the agency would announce these research plans in light of its decision to release a reassessment of BPA by November 30^th.  This disconnect between research and reassessment raises concerns about whether the FDA is striving to resolve the critical public health issues raised by widespread exposure to BPA, or is avoiding making a decision because of the pending research, the results of which will not be available for review for many years.”  But will the expected announcement of a “reassessment” declare the dangers of BPA just as an expensive two-year study gets underway?

In justifying the money allocated to the study of BPA, Birnbaum, in the press release was quoted as saying, “’We know that many people are concerned about bisphenol A and we want to support the best science we can to provide answers.’”  This brings up the legitimate and larger question of whether these “concerns” can be adequately addressed by taxpayer research grants to those who raised the concerns in the first place.  And is this going to be “the best science,” when we know that serious questions have been raised about the incestuous nature of some of these scientists?  Is this research going to be done to fit the headlines generated by some of these same scientists?

It took a computer hacker to reveal the less-than-scientific consensus on global warming.  We need a full disclosure on how the “consensus” was arrived at Chapel Hill and how the decision was made to use funds intended to stimulate the economy to continue to fund what seems to be less than objective scientific research.  We need to be sure that we are not paying for the fox to guard the henhouse.

Hey, Claire McCaskill!… Are you paying attention?
Barack Obama’s approval rating dropped to 33% in swing state Missouri.
The Campaign Spot reported, via Patriot Room:

Via Soren Dayton, I learn SurveyUSA polls adults in Missouri, and finds Obama at 33 percent approval, 65 percent disapproval among independents, and at 27 percent approval, 67 percent disapproval among those ages 18 to 34.

Wait until they find out he’s drained the US treasury…

Malcolm Turnbull has just been toppled as leader of the Aussie Liberal party (ie, "liberal" in the classical sense rather than the leftie control-freak statist sense) and successor to John Howard over his bipartisan support for the Labor Government's ETS -- that's "emissions trading scheme" or, as the new party leader Tony Abbott calls it, "energy taxation scheme." I sat next to Mr. Turnbull at a conference Down Under a couple of years back and found him very agreeable. Like me, he's a demography junkie and, during my presentation, was passing me various napkin doodles of inverted pyramids showing projected population declines for different fertility rates. On most other things, we don't agree. Signing on to the climate hooey in effect deprived the Australian people of any choice on the most pressing issue of the day. (By "pressing," I don't mean the impending ecopalypse but the gazillion-dollar shakedown of taxpayers allegedly required to prevent it.)

Meanwhile, at Westminster, the wearyingly modish David Cameron, leader of the British Conservatives, is still hot for Copenhagen, but you don't get much sense from the comments on his latest effusions that rank-and-file Tories are with him -- other than Mr. Ross J. Warren who suggests:

Perhaps we might consider making climate change denial a criminal matter.

I think he's essaying a joke, but it's an unwise jest, given that most of the House of Commons, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice, and the U.N. would gladly take him up on it.

An Associated Press article Sunday read like a virtual advertisement for global legislation on climate change: completely oblivious to the ClimateGate scandal and failing to give one drop of ink to anthropogenic global warming skeptics.

The piece, written by the AP's Ben Fox, announced its intent with the headline "Leaders Say Momentum Building on Climate Change." Readers were then treated to 570 words exclusively about these political leaders and their claims.

This idea of momentum was not about growing public support, or any increase in likelihood that local governments would enforce a global treaty. Proof of this building momentum? The fact that more politicians like President Obama have suddenly decided to attend Copenhagen in spite of public skepticism at home:

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, making rare appearances at a Commonwealth meeting to help drive the climate discussion, portrayed the joint declaration as further evidence of the growing momentum for next month's summit.

"I will leave Trinidad fully convinced that it will be possible to reach an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen," Loekke Rasmussen told reporters after the Commonwealth leaders issued their statement following a private meeting.

Some 90 countries have agreed to attend the summit in Denmark.

The AP gave no thought to the very strong possibility that many of these leaders are attending for show while knowing a treaty would never be accepted back home. Australia's ABC News outlet reported last week that Senators are resigning there in protest over climate legislation. Here in the States, moderate Democrats have stalled cap and trade for fear of public backlash, leaving more doubt that they would be willing to ratify a global treaty.

Thus the true story was that politicians gave in to pressure from the left and agreed to attend a meeting while knowing full well it would be a waste of time to the voters back home. That was what the AP saw as momentum for a global climate plan.

Also not mentioned was the growing call for investigation into the science behind supposed climate change. James Delingpole from the UK Telegraph revealed recent fighting in the ranks at the IPCC over allowing discredited scientists to still have influence in the political discussion. Worse yet,

NewsBusters reported Saturday that Penn State University agreed to investigate Michael Mann for his role in the e-mail scandal, a major development that has thus far been ignored by the AGW-believing media.

Predictably, the AP went on reporting climate change as if it were fact:

The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.

At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.

"Climate change is the predominant global challenge," the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. "For some of us, it is an existential threat."

This is a stunning case of media malpractice. In the face of actual investigations of the very science around global warming, politicians continued insisting that the threat was real, and the AP repeated the quote with zero attempts at rebuttal.

Unfortunately, as Copenhagen approaches, we can expect more of this kind of journalism to keep the myth of a consensus alive and stonewall information about discredited science.

Michael Totten writes a half obituary, half-paean to Dubai, that Secret Dubai termed the “’strict Muslim emirate’ [that] is akin to describing Amsterdam as a ‘puritanical Christian state’”. It’s a glittering city with a cosmopolitan and unreal air.

“People in the region who visit Dubai,” he writes, “return home wondering why their governments can’t issue passports in a day or provide clean mosques and schools, better airports, airlines and roads, and above all better government.”

He’s right. Most Beirutis I know look down on Dubai as artificial and gimmicky, but just about everyone else in the region who isn’t a radical Islamist thinks it’s amazing.

It’s different geopolitically, too. The government is more sincerely pro-American than the nominally pro-American governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Michael Yon put it this way when he visited in 2006 on his way to Iraq: “Our friends in the UAE want the Coalition efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to succeed, and they are vocal about it. While much of the west, including many of our oldest allies, postures on about how the war on terror is a horrible mistake, the sentiment in the UAE is that it would be a horrible mistake not to face the facts about our common enemy, an enemy that might be just as happy to destroy the UAE as America.”

Maybe it was unreal. The main problem with Dubai is that it may be about to go bust. As late as November 27, the Times Online reported that investors were consoling themselves with the idea that Abu Dhabi, one of Dubai’s guarantors, was going to ride to the rescue. But now the New York Times reports that it ain’t gonna happen:

The Dubai crisis began last week, when the emirate said Dubai World would not be able to make on-time payments for some of its $59 billion in debt. The company invested in lavish real estate projects, including artificial islands in the shape of a palm tree and a globe, and spent heavily to acquire stakes in glittering properties like Barneys in New York and the MGM Mirage in Las Vegas….

Last week, investors fled the stocks of banks with outstanding loans to the tiny emirate and its investment arm, Dubai World. Now, analysts will be watching to see whether investors desert other highly indebted companies.

While Dubai is not big enough to set off financial repercussions outside the Middle East, the main fear is that investors could flee risky markets all at once in search of safer havens for their money.

The NYT wrote in horror that unlike the US government, which intervened following the failure of Lehman Brothers, the government of Abu Dhabi is not planning to intervene. The investors are going to be left to fend for themselves.

Indeed, the director general of Dubai’s Department of Finance told state-run Dubai TV that the emirate’s government has not guaranteed Dubai World’s debt, and that creditors must share in the pain that comes with any reorganization.

“The company received financing based on its project schedule, not a government guarantee,” the director general, Abdulrahman Al Saleh, said in response to whether the government was backing the debt. “The lenders should be part of the responsibility.”

The extent to which the federation and its wealthiest member-state, Abu Dhabi, which has vast oil reserves, appear to guarantee Dubai’s debts could affect how investors view many other companies previously believed to have the implicit backing of their governments.

“There are plenty of people around in world capitals who are tired of bailouts,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

But maybe not for the best of reasons. The underlying motivation for letting the devil take the hindmost is that is the way the world operates there. Zerohedge says that while Abu Dhabi “is the Anti-Fed/Anti-Treasury that some Americans have been lusting for” it comes at the price of “information assymetries” in which foreign investors essentially never know what’s really up. “Particularly in the Middle East that’s usually a hint that foreign investors are going to get their lunch money lifted, find themselves framed for the crime by local authorities when they complain, imprisoned by the uncle-of-the-thief (who also happens to be a judge) immediately before being repeatedly raped while in custody, caned and then deported “accidentally” to Azerbaijan.”

The Emirates Economist calls this “information assymetry” the ‘never mind syndrome’, a phenomenon in which a long established and well-trodden policy regime can suddenly vanish into thin air as if someone said, ‘never mind’. “I’ve not quite figured out the dynamics, but it’s pretty common in the UAE for one body to come with a new decision or rule, and then for a sheik to announce at the last moment that no we won’t be doing that.”

The close cousin of ‘never mind’ appears to be now-you-see-now-you-don’t. The Wall Street Journal described how the UAE removed the Sunday London Times from the local newstands because it “featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai’s ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt”. It was a senseless act in an era when many if not most people get their news over the Internet. But simply because something is senseless doesn’t mean its not going to happen.

The Times of India writes that a “a lot of people are pretty freaked out”. That includes some people who think Dubai is in trouble because it has succeeded.

“A lot of people are pretty freaked out,” said one American businessman with long experience in the region, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions. “They’re all watching CNN and going: ‘Is Dubai going to default?”’ Many in Dubai have a shockingly different perspective. “Dubai is a victim of media distortion,” wrote one reader to a Web forum of one of the Emirates’ most popular newspapers. “All the Western countries have ganged up on Dubai. Why? Because it has succeeded.” Another reader wrote, “This is all because of jealousy from the Western world.”

But before anyone dismisses the events in Dubai as the result of the overheated fantasy of desert dreamers, it’s probably useful to ask how different in principle it is from the the subprime crisis in the US and America’s headlong gallop into Obamacare and Cap N’ Trade.  That makes sense too, doesn’t it; and if Abu Dhabi has Dubai Washington can have Copenhagen. Who knows but that the Arabs may get the better deal? At the end of the day Dubai may have beautiful buildings occupied by goat herders, but the result of Western fantasy may be millions of people living in self-imposed darkness lit only by the light of Triana and walking around barefoot, holding on to little pieces of paper in the expectation that they’ll someday be worth something.

Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) (formerly known as Triana) is a NASA satellite proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore for the purpose of earth observation. It is intended to be positioned at the Earth’s L1 Lagrangian point, at a distance of 1.5 gigameters. At this location it will have a continuous view of the Sun-lit side of the Earth.

The satellite’s original purpose was to provide a near-continuous view of the entire Earth and make that live image available via the Internet. Gore hoped not only to advance science with these images, but also to raise awareness of the Earth itself, updating the influential The Blue Marble photograph taken by Apollo 17.

We live in strange times. Yahoo reports that a Japanese gamer liked his virtual girlfriend so much he married her for real “in what must have been the weirdest ceremony in the history of ceremonies. We can only assume that Ms. Pac-Man was the maid of honor.”
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I don't think we've commented on the announcement last week that Israel will implement a 10-month freeze on private building in the West Bank. The key to understanding this decision, I think, is to recognize the limited nature of the freeze.

Jeff Barak, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, makes the point:

[T]he 10-month settlement freeze will not change the reality of construction work in the West Bank in any meaningful way. The settlers knew what was coming and prepared accordingly. According to Defense Ministry data, around 2,500 housing units are presently under construction and so will not be affected by the freeze, which only refers to new building starts. On top of this, Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently approved the construction of another 490 units, which will also escape the freeze. The security cabinet's decision also permits the building of public facilities such as schools and synagogues, as opposed to private housing, and almost immediately after the security cabinet vote, Barak authorized the construction of 28 new public facilities in the settlements.

So. . .whoever thinks he won't be seeing tractors and bulldozers working in Judea and Samaria over the next 10 months is deluding himself. Furthermore, east Jerusalem, the most sensitive of all areas in the territories, has not been included in the settlement freeze.

This is not to say that the freeze is meaningless. Netanyahu modified his previous, entirely rejectionist position on a "natural construction" freeze. And he did so without receiving any concession from the Palestinians. In a world with a real "peace process," Netanyahu's move would be regarded as a step, albeit a small one, in the direction of peace. Indeed, that, more or less, is how the Obama administration, which perceives such a world, seems to be characterizing the move.

We do not inhabit such a world, though. So, through no fault of Netanyahu's, the limited freeze is not a move in the direction of peace. Rather, it is a clever decision that (1) enables Netanyahu to maintain and even broaden his appeal with the Israeli center and (2) puts the Obama administration in a position where its best move is probably to portray the "freeze" as not devoid of meaning, if for no other reason than to save a little bit of face.

Fox News's Brit Hume Monday said the growing ClimateGate scandal suggests manmade global warming may be a fraud.

As NewsBusters has been reporting since e-mail messages from the British Climatic Research Unit were first revealed ten days ago, the only television news network that has been regularly informing viewers about this matter has been the Fox News Channel.

On Monday, Fox's "Special Report" continued this trend, and brought Hume on to offer his thoughts (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

BRET BAIER, HOST: Well, let's get some thoughts now from senior political analyst Brit Hume on the scandal some are calling ClimateGate.

Good evening, Brit.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Bret. As you heard Wendell Goler's report, a large collection of e-mails exchanged among weather researchers at the University of East Anglia in England have gotten out and caused a scandal. The reason that university's Climate Research Unit matters is that it has been heavily relied upon by the U.N. in reaching its alarmist conclusions about the threat of global warming. The reason it's a scandal is that the e-mails vividly portray leading scientists there scheming to suppress or discredit data and analysis contrary to their dire predictions.

The whole idea that the earth is warming dangerously and that man, by burning carbon fuels is the cause, rests on computerized projections of future temperatures based on vast amounts of previously observed climate data. But there's a huge problem.

There has been no apparent increase in global temperatures over the past 11 years, and the computerized climate models failed to predict this and the global warming alarmists can't explain it. The obvious conclusion would be that there's something wrong with the computer models.

Now it has come out that the original raw data used to create these models has been destroyed or otherwise disposed of. The response of the alarmists to these revelations has been that the e-mails were taken out of context and that the destruction of all that raw data was done for space reasons. There's a one-word answer to all of that -- Please. Bret.

BAIER: Brit, do you think that these revelations have the potential to slow or even stop the push for action on climate change?

HUME: Well, the momentum for that was already declining, because global warming, climate change has been dropping lower and lower in people's list of priorities for a long time now, and doubts about whether man is causing it and about the whole theory of it have been rising. So this can only further that and only add to the sense that this is not a politically urgent matter, and that perhaps it may all even be a fraud.

BAIER: All right, Brit. Thanks.

HUME: You bet.

In the end, if we had an honest news media rather than the advocates so prevalent on television and in print, such sentiments concerning this scandal would be quite commonplace.

Of course, the same would be true if climate change was a conservative agenda, and the Republicans controlled the White House and Congress.

Alas, no matter how you slice it, integrity in journalism is just as lacking as it is within the community of scientists advancing the global warming myth.

How sad for all of us.

The Washington Post is showing great interest in the Republican Party these days. To me, that's a bit like Leopold and Loeb showing great interest in one of your children.

Unlike some entries in the Post's series of occasional "whither the GOP" articles, today's article at least has the virtue of being written by adults. Even so, its effort to paint the Party as plagued by lack of leadership and discord is not very persuasive. In fact, I was reasonably encouraged by the Post's findings, which are based on polling and a series of focus groups.

The Post found that the Republican Party has no clear leader. That's true, but inconsequential. It doesn't need one right now.

The Post found that Sarah Palin tops the list, in the eyes of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, as the leader who "best reflects the core values of the Republican Party." 18 percent of those polled view her that way. John McCain was second at 13 percent, followed not very closely by Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich in that order. Although I don't consider Palin well qualified for the presidency, I think she reflects the core values of the Party as well or better than any other prominent Republican politician. The fact that she tops this list tends to show that the Party remains conservative and essentially Reaganite, which to me is encouraging.

The Post found that only 55 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that congressional Republicans understand their problems and that only 60 percent share their personal values. These numbers strike me as healthy. They show that Republican voters haven't completely forgotten how poorly congressional Republicans performed when they were in power. Presumably, congressional Republicans will keep these sobering results in mind.

As for serious discord, the Post has to drill pretty deep to find even a hint of it. Indeed, "discord" only appeared when the pollsters shifted the focus away from the issues and more in the direction of process. For example, there was division on whether Republican members of Congress should seek compromise with Democrats in trying to solve certain problems, notably energy policy.

This disagreement is probably less about policy and more about how Republicans view Democrats, a fairly trivial matter in the scheme of things. Indeed, the disagreement is largely academic, since congressional Democrats have shown no willingness to compromise with Republicans unless they happen to be Senators from Maine.

There is also disagreement about whether the Party is focusing too much or too little on certain issues. For example, on same-sex marriage, 27 percent think there is too much focus, 32 percent think there is too little, and 38 percent believe the right amount of attention is being paid. This sort of division seems inevitable and of no great moment.

On the other hand, the fact that around 60 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe not enough attention is being paid to federal spending, illegal immigration, and the economy and jobs warrants a closer look. The dissatisfaction regarding the attention being paid to the economy and jobs is probably inevitable in an economic downturn. The dissatisfaction regarding federal spending is, again, a timely reminder to congressional Republicans that their base is still sore at them. Only the dissatisfaction regarding immigration is potentially worrying from a political standpoint because the Party can address this dissatisfaction only at the risk (how much risk is a matter of debate) of alienating Hispanic voters.

To put all of this into context, it would have been nice if the Post had done parallel polling among Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. Do they think the Obama administration is paying enough attention to same-sex marriage? How about gays in the military? For that matter, how about federal spending and creating jobs? After tomorrow night, will most Democrats think Obama is paying too much attention -- i.e., devoting too many resources -- to Afghanistan? I suspect so.

The Post, however, seems not have set its sights on this particular political child.

“Now notice something curious: not one of the initial publicly identified signatories of the Manhattan Declaration is Mormon… [...] Read the rest »

“[S]oftball treatment,” declares the boss, wondering what happened to the patented O’Reilly third-degree vis-a-vis Huck’s long, infamous record of clemencies while governor. [...] Read the rest »

Mike Huckabee was on The O’Reilly Factor tonight and took responsibility for releasing cop killer Maurice Clemmons from prison as governor in Arkansas.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee: First of all the tragedy of this, if I could have known nine years ago that this guy was capable of something of this magnitude obviously I would have never have granted the commutation. It’s sickening. The two people in this country that I value the most are soldiers and police officers because they are the only ones standing between our freedom and total anarchy. And, in the case of this particular individual he was sentenced to 108 years for two crimes when he was 16. The post prison transfer board, they recommended to me as governor for his commutation which didn’t release him it simply cut his sentence to 47 years. That would give him parole eligibility. That was the commutation. I am responsible for that and it’s not something I’m happy about at this particular moment.

Michelle Malkin called the interview a whitewash.

More… Clemmons reportedly told acquaintances the night before the attack to “watch the news” because he was going to “kill cops.” No one reported his comments to police until after the attack.

The ruling class blithely assumes that government can fix America’s problems. They say they will “solve” global warming, spend away the recession, educate the kids, reduce foreclosures, take over health insurance, student lending, etc.

But government repeatedly fails in its most basic tasks. The Miami Herald reports that child abuse hot-line workers now ignore thousands of abuse calls:

A Broward sheriff's deputy calls the Florida child-abuse hot line to report that a 4-year-old had been molested by a babysitter as the sitter's boyfriend videotaped the assault. A hot-line counselor declines to forward the report to an investigator...

A school guidance counselor reports a mother who had repeatedly missed doctor's appointments for her daughter, whose sickle-cell disease is so severe she is losing her hearing and needs a new liver. The report is rejected...

A father is attempting to break into his estranged wife's home. He says he will kill his children. That call, too, is not accepted.

Why would bureaucrats reject such calls?

(T)o reduce workload -- and the system-wide stress that high case loads generate.

Oh that. I knew there must be a good reason.

Over time, civil servants tend to protect themselves before they protect the public. Yet soon they may preside over our health care...

.

No no, just kidding: There’s no “maybe” here. [...] Read the rest »

An online story notes the following about government-supplied food stamps:

Nearly half of Americans, and 90 percent of blacks, now receive food stamps at some time before reaching 20, according to an analysis of 30 years of national data that sociologists at Washington University in St. Louis published in early November.

By a remarkable coincidence, nearly half of Americans, and over 90 percent of blacks, subsequently become Democrats.

'Nuff said.

And yet, it targets structures used by … [...] Read the rest »

Read this post »

Saddam stockpiled weapons in Prague for a terror strike on Radio Free Europe headquarters.

Czech officials confirmed on Sunday that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons, including Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers, for a terrorist attack on the Radio Free Europe Headquarters in Prague in 2003.

Radio CZ reported, via Islam in Europe:

On Sunday, TV Nova aired an exclusive report with information that in 1999, Saddam Hussein ordered a terrorist attack that was to strike the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe, located at the time on Wenceslas square, in the heart of the city. In 2003, Czech intelligence officers discovered the plot and confiscated the weapons that Iraqi secret agents had stockpiled. Jan Šubert is the spokesman for BIS – the Czech counter-intelligence service.

“The weapons that we secured included 11 pistols, 4 Kalashnikovs, two Heckler-Koch submachine guns with silencers, some 2,000 rounds with magazines, and the most important thing, a portable, anti-tank rocket propelled grenade weapon also known as an RPG-7.”

Saddam Hussein spent significant amounts of money on these weapons, which were to be used in an attack on the US-financed radio station from where programs criticizing Mr. Hussein’s regime were broadcast around the world.

Saddam Hussein had a long history of funding and organizing terror attacks and offering a safe haven and training to terrorists. He also reached out to Al-Qaeda.

A palate-cleansing treat for Romero fans, in which a loooong-running Internet meme finally become video reality. [...] Read the rest »

The Obama White House still believes in non-existent global warming.

The 2009 hurricane season just ended with zero hurricanes.
The Hill reported:

The White House on Monday made exceptionally clear that it wants nothing to do with the furor over documents that global warming skeptics say prove the phenomenon is not a threat.

Despite the incident, which rocked international headlines last week, climate science is sound, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed this afternoon, and the White House nonetheless believes “climate change is happening.”

“I don’t think that’s anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore,” he said during Monday’s press briefing.

Climate change skeptics have asserted over the past week that the publication of more than 1,000 private e-mails and documents once housed in the University of East Anglia’s computer system refutes most modern global warming evidence.

The planet has been cooling down since 1998.

For the record… The White House also believes if you talk nice Iran will give up its nukes.

I love beginning posts with personal anecdotes, which you can deduce from the fact that I never do it. No time like the present to start!

One week in high school, my all-time second-favorite social studies teacher, Lyle Thornton Wolf, presented us with a fascinating unit:

On Monday, he passed out forty-eight distinct high-school and college level American history textbooks (there being 48 students in the class). Each of us got a different textbook, though some were merely later versions of an earlier text that somebody else had. Each of us took his book home with instructions to read and "brief" (like a lawyer would) the factual events -- not interpretations or speculations -- recounted in his book about the Boston Massacre.

Then on Wednesday, Mr. Wolf began going through the incident, student by student, making a "comparison table" on the blackboard using every important fact from each book... e.g., the number of colonists killed by the redcoats, the number wounded, how many lobster-backs and Yankee doodles were present, what provocation (if any) did the colonists give to the soldiers, how long the shooting lasted, who was the first shot, and so forth.

As a court trial followed the shootings, and that trial took eyewitness and forensic evidence (future President John Adams defended the soldiers), one would expect nearly all the facts to be reported the same way in every textbook. Not so; there was significant variation in the details taught to students about that infamous eruption of anti-democratic violence.

But Mr. Wolf didn't stop there, and this was his genius; he was more interested in teaching us good researching skills than specific numbers of people killed in the Boston Massacre. Thus he also made each of us read the footnotes, endnotes, and any other errata indicating the source of the supposed facts reported in his assigned book; he then put up a posterboard list of all the textbook titles arranged like a matrix.

As we reported the sources for each book, Mr. Wolf drew an arrow from the source to the book that cited it. After about ten books, we quickly realized that not a single one of the 48 textbooks cited any primary document or original source material; each cited only other high-school or college textbooks. In fact, only a couple of them cited texts not already in our hands (both times older editions of books we did have).

Worse, the entire set of citations was a snarl of textbook "daisy chains": Textbook A (let's say it was the 1962 edition) would have an arrow pointing to B (1964); B pointed to C (1965), which pointed to D (1968)... but D then pointed to a later version of textbook A, say the 1970 edition.

In other words, there was no "ultimate source": The books just referenced and reinforced each other.

Thus it was hardly a surprise that, variations aside, all the books agreed on the core issues: The colonists were disorderly but didn't provoke the shooting; no colonist used a firearm; the British were almost entirely to blame; and they only got off because of the eloquence of Adams. The issue was closed; no need to rethink any basic premise. After all, if that interpretation of the data wasn't perfectly true, what are the odds that all those textbooks would just happen to agree with each other?

On Saturday, as Climategate really began to heat up, the princes of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) started to get their backs up. They were driven to agree, at long last, to release the raw data behind their predictions... or as much of it remained after they deliberately destroyed most of it in the 1980s.

Faced with the charge that the data they destroyed could have shown that globaloney theory was built on sand (and fabricated sand at that), one of the university's vice chancellors concocted a novel counterargument:

Professor Trevor Davies, the university's Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research Enterprise and Engagement, said yesterday: "CRU's full data will be published in the interests of research transparency when we have the necessary agreements. It is worth reiterating that our conclusions correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies."

Like a speech by Barack H. Obama's teleprompter, it sounds good out of the corner of your ear; but in reality, this argument is a complete non-sequitur. And the inability of Professor Davies to apprehend his own paralogia speaks volumes about the real failure of the anthropogenic global climate-change (AGCC) cabal.

The charge against the CRU is not that they know their theory is unfounded, nor yet that they deliberately and with malice aforethought suppress the opposing view, nor that they do so for sinister, political reasons. Not a bit of it.

The real charge is that certain scientists have utterly bought into AGCC; they consider themselves the "anointed," and they're so adamant in their cosmic certainty that they reject any contrary claims or findings as so much nonsense, unworthy even of an answer. The anointed treat AGCC heresy as they would treat Holocaust denial or creationism.

But while no reputable scientist denies the Nazi mass murders or rejects evolution by natural selection, AGCC hardly enjoys such universal acceptance. In fact, it is quite controversial, with reputable, published, peer reviewed scientists in relevant fields on both sides of the issue.

AGCC proponents insist that they are more numerous than AGCC critics; but scientific consensus is not settled by voice vote. In order for a "consensus position" to form on man-made climate change, it's not enough to have 75% of scientists agree, or 80%, or even 95%. Rather, every respected scientist in a relevant field must agree; and every objection or demur lodged by such a respected scientist in the atmospheric sciences must be fully and completely answered to the satisfaction of the entire field. So long as that remains undone, the hypothesis remains controversial, and there is no consensus.

Scientific consensus is very different than, say, political consensus, which can mean at little as a two-to-one majority; mistaking the one for the other is scientific malpractice.

But that is precisely what to call a process where supposed "consensus" is achieved by patently unscientific means -- by extorting scientists into pledging undying support for the AGCC thesis and renouncing all dissenters as unscientists, on pain of never getting another grant, publication, or university position if they refuse.

This isn't a scientific argument, it's a street brawl!

To the anointed (I deliberately use the Thomas Sowell term from his seminal book, the Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy), denying the obvious cosmic truth of AGCC brands the denier as a pseudo-scientist; since pseudo-scientists are just quacks and charlatans, there is no need to answer any of his objections, conveniently enough.

Ergo, all respected scientists agree with AGCC theory... because by definition, if you don't agree, you're not a respected scientist.

Given that explosive charge -- that AGCC theory has become a scientific cult -- it's immediately apparent that if the charge is true, we would expect to find the identical problem rampant at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Indeed, Goddard is in fact run by James Hansen, who was one of the first major scientists to sound the globaloney alarmism klaxton, even before the Kyoto Protocol, and has been perhaps the biggest booster of the idea that there is a scientific "consensus" on AGCC (and that anybody who disagrees is not a real scientist).

But if the NOAA and ISS are completely controlled by the anointed, just as the CRU appears to be, then it's hardly surprising that they come up with similar global temperature timelines; more than likely, they all link to and cite each other.

Such a "consensus," based upon shared computation, methodology, and analysis, is purely artifactual... just like the "consensus" of the core story of the Boston Massacre: an artifactual consensus forced by incestuous linkages between ostensibly independent publications.

With such deep links of people, methods, and funding between all three groups, it would be astonishing were they not completely in synch with each other.

What is needed to make the argument that Professor Davies evidently wants to make is the following:

• AGCC supporters within the community should push for full funding of respected atmospheric scientists who are AGCC skeptics.
• Skeptics must be given access to all raw data used by supporters to make their case.
• Skeptics must be allowed to pursue different methodologies and new data streams beyond those used again and again (changelessly) by supporters.
• Results discovered by skeptics must be treated fairly in the scientific literature, not rejected as "pseudo-science" merely because they come to a different conclusion on a controversial, cutting-edge topic.

There are of course limits and caveats; let's take a small detour into another field of science to see the right way to answer skeptics. Recently a new attempt is underway to destroy the edifice of evolution by natural selection; its supporters call it "intelligent design" (ID). Its thesis is that some biological processes are too complex to arise naturally, so they must have been consciously designed by an intelligent being.

The alert reader will immediately realize that, window dressing aside, the "intelligent being" must exist outside the normal confines of physical law -- else how could it manipulate the biology of an entire planet -- and outside the timeline of the universe... else where did the intelligent being itself come from? Thus, whether IDers are willing to admit it or not, they're talking about God, and this is a variation on Creationism tarted up as science this time.

The same reader will also recognize that such a thesis is literally untestable:

1. Just because we cannot explain how a particular biological system evolved doesn't mean it's inexplicable, nor that it's too complex to have evolved naturally. It just means we can't explain it today. No system can ever unambiguously satisfy Michael Behe's requirement of "irreducible complexity," so no evidence can ever be produced to prove ID;
2. No claim of ID can ever be falsified, even in theory; if a designer is so intelligent, so powerful, and so remote as to be invisible that it can manipulate the entire biological spectrum of life on Earth, then it's also clever enough to be able to hide its own tracks. So there is no possible experiment that can disprove it, either.

Logically, then, since Intelligent Design can neither be proven nor disproven, it is not science. But wait, what about everything I said about consensus above? Very well: Despite the logical problems of ID, evolutionary biologists have answered ID's questions anyway. Behe presented numerous examples of what he called "irreducible complexity" -- a system so complex that its individual components would have no function, hence confer no evolutionary advantage, hence the system itself -- the sum of the components -- could not have evolved.

But scientists have in fact broken down each of these systems (e.g., the eye, the bacterial flagella) into components and shown how each really did have a function... albeit a different function than what the system eventually evolved to perform. They have answered all of Behe's questions, and he has not responded to any of their counterarguments.

Thus at some point, the field of biology must cease considering Behe and his fellow IDers to be "respected scientists"... not out of prejudice or because the biology mainstream disagrees with them, but rather because the IDers refuse to play by the rules of science everyone else must follow. Their own actions (and inaction) brands them pseudoscientists.

By contrast, while some AGCC supporting scientists make an effort to respond to the arguments of the skeptics -- for example, about the role sun activity plays in forcing temperature changes -- very few of the skeptical counterarguments have been answered satisfactorally, even to scientists who more or less support AGCC: They agree that skeptics are playing by the rules of science, using proper methodology, taking all previous results into account, and so forth; they admit the counter-argument is powerful and must be answered; they agree it hasn't been so far; but they have confidence that it will eventually be shown to be in error.

(Note, I'm not saying the skeptics have "proven" that AGCC is wrong; only that supporters have not proven it is right... and the supporters have the burden.)

That is not the sign of scientific consensus; that is the sign of scientific controversy. And that is the difference between those scientists skeptical of AGCC and those contrarians who refuse to accept evolution by natural selection.

There is no requirement to respond to ill-performed experiments that purport to overturn long-settled science without any willingness on the part of the contrarians to engage in scientific debate. There simply isn't enough time to debunk them every time they bubble up again, lest we be dragged into a creationism-like endless loop of demanding an infinite number of "missing links." But honestly performed experiments by scientists ready and willing to engage in proper debate, using data not denunciations, must be answered; that is the scientific method in action.

Similarly, nobody outside a particular journal can mandate that it publish submitted paper. But journals need to be forcefully reminded that their mission is to discover reality -- not mold it into a congenial shape.

Finally, it's important to bear in mind that there are "anointed" on the anti-AGCC side as well; it's entirely possible that a "skeptical" inquirer may actually be a true believer in the opposite of AGCC. He might reflexively reject pro-AGCC evidence, even from his own experiment, because he "knows" it's a crockobaloney. Such charlatans who have ceased being scientists (on both sides) should be shunted aside; but we mustn't throw out honestly interpreted experimental results that produce alternative, natural explanations for recent temperature rises (or deny such rises altogether).

Only after skeptics get their day at bat can the scientific community truly get its mits around what is really happening to the Earth's temperature, what effects (bad and good) that might have, and what, if anything, we can do about it -- and whether we should if we could.

I am quite disappointed that a vice chancellor at such a highly respected venue as the University of East Anglia would be unable to reason through to a scientific solution... and would lunge instead for the classic "teen logic" argument: "But Mom, all my friends are doing the same thing!"

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

A Wednesday New York Times story by reporter Rachel Swarns on Obama's first state dinner was an overflowing feast of praise -- over 1,000 words celebrating the Obamas.

Swarns is Michelle Obama's chief attendant when it comes to flattering coverage, and she provided it for both the first lady and her husband with a prose style so breathless you'd think there "had never before been a state dinner at the White House," as the Weekly Standard observed of the paper's coverage in the December 7 issue.

Swarns gushed:

It is an old tradition, a White House dinner governed by ritual and protocol that happens to be this city's hottest social event. But at their first state dinner on Tuesday night, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, made sure to infuse the glittering gala with distinctive touches.

They hired a new florist, Laura Dowling, who bedecked the tented outdoor dining room with locally grown, sustainably harvested magnolia branches and ivy. They selected a guest chef, Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit in New York, an American citizen who was born in Ethiopia, reared in Sweden and cooks up melting pots of flavors and cuisines.

....

And at the tables, the meatless menu included a mix of Indian and American favorites, including some African-American standards. Collard greens and curried prawns, chickpeas and okra, nan and cornbread were served to the 320 guests -- including some well-known Republicans and prominent Indian-Americans -- who started off with arugula from the White House garden and finished up with pumpkin pie tart. (After a tasting at the White House on Sunday, the Obamas gave the dishes their stamp of approval, Mr. Samuelsson said.)

And don't forget the dinner plates. For an administration that publicly prizes bipartisanship, what could be finer than an eclectic mix of Clinton and Bush china?

"He wants to set a tone that's different," Vishakha N. Desai, a dinner guest and the Indian-born president of the Asia Society, said of the president. "Obama's celebrating not just his African-American heritage, but the cultural diversity of America. And that's a powerful message to send to the world."

....

The evening was a potent mix of politics, diplomacy and glamour, with the administration's favored donors mingling with lawmakers from Congress, cabinet secretaries, Indian dignitaries and Hollywood celebrities decked out in tuxedos and designer dresses. The first lady wore a golden sleeveless gown created by Naeem Khan, an Indian-American designer.

For Mr. Obama, it was also a rare break from the bruising business of governance, allowing him to showcase his role as a world leader (and a gracious host) at a time when he is managing battles over health care legislation and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- all while watching his standing falling in the polls.

In contrast, Christopher Marquis's September 6, 2001 story on Bush's first state dinner was much shorter and far more sedate. It got the job done in under 400 words, with a straightforward run-down of the menu and defiantly non-flowery imagery:

President Bush, smiling and stiff-backed in a black tuxedo, drummed his fingers absently as Mr. Fox's limousine pulled up to the White House north portico.

It seems the Bushes were no match for the Obamas when it came to glamorous and glittering state dinners.

I thought of writing about Michael Moore’s cri de coeur instead, just to give you something to beat up on in the comments, but (a) Moore hasn’t been relevant for five years and (b) his screed clunks along with so many anti-war cliches that it reads more like an attempt to start a drinking game than a serious argument. [...] Read the rest »

Tens of thousands of TSA screeners to receive government bonuses, including millions of dollars paid to more than 10,000 who have been rated poorly

Government bailout watch: Despite receiving $5.5 billion in stimulus funds, Government Services Administration’s backlog of deferred maintenance projects now totals $8.8 billion and the agency is proposing billions of dollars in new projects

As stimulus money doubles Wisconsin’s weatherization budget, a review finds weatherization work done on hundreds of low-income homes failed to meet federal standards; Inspectors found projects done in a way that could threaten the safety of residents or did not save enough energy

Stimulus funds pay to replace “unattractive” streetlights; The new lights “aren’t especially energy-efficient, and the old ones work”

Federal Reserve tries theater ads to improve its image

Las Vegas’ $4.1 million housing plan built on federal stimulus money stalled over squabbles about how to hand out the money and to whom

Illinois using eminent domain to obtain private property to build a bike path intended to be funded with federal stimulus dollars

IRS employees bought unauthorized first-class plane tickets

If you were a Congressman, these numbers would make you tremble: Scott Rasmussen finds that an astonishing 71 percent of voters describe themselves as angry at the current policies of the federal government. That's up five percent since September. A plurality of 46 percent say they are "very angry" at the federal government. That's up 10 percent since September.

Not surprisingly, voters continue to reject the Democrats' health care proposals by, currently, 53-41 percent.

And, while the Republicans have not been able to take advantage of voter disenchantment with the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats as effectively as they might, voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on eight of ten issues, including the economy (48-36), taxes (47-36) and national security (50-37).

The Democrats have less than a year to turn those attitudes around. Currently, voters' negative views of the Democrats are hardening, not softening.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg devoted most of her article in Sunday’s New York Times detailing the concerns of radical feminists over the future of legalized abortion, specifically its support among the younger generations. Stolberg tried to downplay the larger opposition to abortion in the 18-30 year old demographic, and only one of the pro-abortion activists that she quoted in her article belonged to this group.

The New York Times correspondent began her article, “In Support of Abortion, It’s Personal vs. Political,” with a sympathetic personal anecdote from one of the aging radicals, Representative Louise Slaughter of New York: “In the early 1950s, a coal miner’s daughter from rural Kentucky named Louise McIntosh encountered the shadowy world of illegal abortion. A friend was pregnant...and Ms. McIntosh was keeper of a secret that, if spilled, could have led to family disgrace. The turmoil ended quietly in a doctor’s office... Today, Louise McIntosh is Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York. At 80, she is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus — a member of what Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, calls ‘the menopausal militia.’”

This so-called militia, and the wider “abortion rights movement,” according to Stolberg, has been “forced...to turn inward, raising questions about how to carry their agenda forward in a complex, 21st-century world.” The reason: “a generational divide — not because younger women are any less supportive of abortion rights than their elders, but because their frame of reference is different.” The correspondent continued that “[p]olls over the last two decades have shown that a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30, but the vocabulary of the debate has shifted with the political culture.”

Actually, contrary to Stolberg’s assertion, polls from recent years has pointed to a substantive gap between the generations over the abortion issue. Earlier in 2009, Pew Research found wider support among the 50-64 group (58%) than in the 18-29 group (52%). Another poll, conducted by Harris Interactive in August 2007, found that 45% of those in the 18-30 group supported “abortion rights,” versus 55% in the 31-42 (Generation X) group, and 54% amongst Baby Boomers (the poll also found declining support for baby-killing procedure in all demographics). The 2006 General Social Survey, asking a more specific question (support for abortion for any reason), found 36.2% support in the 18-30 age group, versus 39.7% in the 31-44 demographic and 43.7% in the 45-64 group.

Later in her article, the New York Times correspondent quoted extensively from two liberals- Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, and the aforementioned Nancy Keenan. She included only one quote from a pro-lifer, Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life:

“Here is a generation that has never known a time when abortion has been illegal,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who studies attitudes toward abortion. “For many of them, the daily experience is: It’s legal and if you really need one you can probably figure out how to get one. So when we send out e-mail alerts saying, ‘Oh my God, write to your senator,’ it’s hard for young people to have that same sense of urgency.”

Polls over the last two decades have shown that a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30, but the vocabulary of the debate has shifted with the political culture. Ms. Keenan, who is 57, says women like her, who came of age when abortion was illegal, tend to view it in stark political terms — as a right to be defended, like freedom of speech or freedom of religion. But younger people tend to view abortion as a personal issue, and their interests are different.

The 30- to 40-somethings — “middle-school moms and dads,” Ms. Keenan calls them — are more concerned with educating their children about sex, and generally too busy to be bothered with political causes. The 25-and-under crowd, animated by activism, sees a deeper threat in climate change or banning gay marriage or the Darfur genocide than in any rollback of reproductive rights. Naral is running focus groups with these “millennials” to better learn how they think.

“The language and values, if you are older, is around the right to control your own body, reproductive freedom, sexual liberation as empowerment,” said Ms. Greenberg, the pollster. “That is a baby-boom generation way of thinking. If you look at people under 30, that is not their touchstone, it is not wrapped up around feminism and women’s rights.”

Abortion opponents are reveling in the shift and hope to capitalize. “Not only is this the post-Roe generation, I’d also call it the post-sonogram generation,” said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who notes that baby’s first video now occurs in the womb, often accompanied by music. “They can take the video and do the music and send it to the grandmother. We don’t even talk anymore about the hypothesis that having an abortion is like having an appendectomy. All of this informs the political pressures on Capitol Hill.”

Stolberg also highlighted the efforts of two other pro-abortion women- Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Serena Freewomyn (yes, that’s her actual name):

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida and chief deputy whip of the House, blames what she calls the complacency of her own generation for the political climate that allowed Mr. Stupak to prevail [specifically, the passage of his pro-life amendment to the House health care “reform” bill]. At 43, the mother of three children, she has taken up the abortion rights cause in Congress, as she did as a state legislator.

But if she had to round up her own friends “to go down to the courthouse steps and rally for choice,” she said, she is not certain she could. When older women have warned that reproductive rights are being eroded, she said, “basically my generation and younger have looked at them as crying wolf.”

That is not to say all younger women are indifferent. Serena Freewomyn (a name she adopted to reflect the idea that “I don’t belong to any man”) is a 27-year-old administrative assistant at an H.I.V. service provider in Tucson who was inspired, she said, by reading “The War on Choice” by Gloria Feldt. When George Tiller, a doctor in Kansas who performed abortions, was killed in May, she started a blog, Feminists for Choice.

“I think that a lot of younger women do take for granted the fact that they’ve come of age in a time of post-Roe v. Wade, where they have access to lots of different birth control options,” Ms. Freewomyn said. “But I don’t think it’s fair to say younger women are not engaged; I think younger women are mobilizing in different ways than what people in current leadership positions are used to.”

...Ms. Wasserman Schultz sees the debate as a chance to rouse women of all generations, and Ms. Slaughter warns that if Mr. Obama signs a bill including the amendment, it will be challenged in court. She says she has worried for years about what would happen “when my generation was gone.”

Monday’s CBS Early Show featured two stories on the security breach at last week’s White House state dinner, but each made only scant reference to Obama administration officials being partly to blame. Instead, both segments faulted the couple themselves, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, as well as the Secret Service.

In the first story, White House correspondent Bill Plante placed blame squarely on the Salahis, referring to them as “notorious” and “probably delighted with the attention.” Plante even noted how “some members of Congress are calling for charges to be brought against the Salahis.”

Only near the end of the report did Plante make any mention of the White House staff being responsible: “The Secret Service has admitted it made mistakes, but several people who attended Wednesday night’s dinner suggest the agency shouldn’t shoulder all the blame. Because the White House was also at fault.” Washington Post reporter Amy Argetsinger explained: “Procedure would have dictated that someone from the social office should have been at the door. These are the people who recognize the people on the guest list.”

Later in the show, co-host Harry Smith interviewed former Secret Service Deputy Director Bruce Bowen about the breach and wondered: “From the perspective of the times we live in and the almost omnipresent threat to the White House, this kind of a breach, how – is it explainable and is it excusable?” The headline on screen used the same label Plante had used to describe the Salahis: “White House Party Crashers; Latest On DC’s Most Notorious Duo.”

Smith did point out the fault of the White House as well: “And under normal circumstances for an event like this is there not also supposed to be somebody from the social office of the White House?” Bowen replied: “Yes, there is.” Smith continued without elaborating on the social office failure: “And in this case, there apparently was not. So if people come in and present themselves and say ‘we’re supposed to get inside,’ what do you think went wrong then?”

Bowen acknowledged blame for the Secret Service: “I think there was an initial breakdown at a check-point that was manned by a Secret Service uniform division officers. The Secret Service recognized the short coming and has admitted their fault. And most importantly, they have sought to rectify this immediately.” He went on to defend their protection: “...the important thing to remember is that the President or any of our other protectees were never in any danger by virtue of those other layers of security....the Secret Service has vetted over 7 million people in the recent past, during the campaign, and has acted almost flawlessly.”

Washington cop killer Maurice Clemmons told Mike Huckabee that he had turned his life around before he was released from prison in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Blog reported:

The Seattle Times has posted documents from the state parole board that bear on the decision by Gov. Mike Huckabee to commute murder suspect Maurice Clemmons’ 108-year-prison sentence to immediate parole eligiblity. He said he’d fallen in with a bad crowd after moving to Arkansas, but had turned his life around. He said he’d prayed Huckabee would help him. Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey, who is also a Presbyterian minister, supported the clemency application.

Clemmons wrote in an appeal to Huckabee that he’d been sent to prison after an extended crime spree that started in 1989 when he was a teenager — and that he was a different person now.

At the time of the crimes — which included aggravated robbery, firearms possession and burglary — Clemmons claimed he was 16 years old and had moved from Seattle to a high-crime neighborhood in Arkansas.

“I succumbed to the peer pressure and the need I had to be accepted by other youth in my new environment and fell in with the wrong crowd and thus began a seven (7) month crime spree which led me to prison,” Clemmons wrote in his application to Huckabee.

Clemmons said he came from “a very good Christian family” and “was raised much better than my actions speak (I’m still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought to my family name.),” he wrote.

“Where once stood a young (16) year old misguided fool, who’s (sic) own life he was unable to rule. Now stands a 27 year old man, who has learned through ‘the school of hard knocks’ to appreciate and respect the rights of others. And who has in the midst of the harsh reality of prison life developed the necessary skills to stand along (sic) and not follow a multitude of do evil, as I did as a 16 year old child.”

Via Greg Hengler. [...] Read the rest »

A liberal Washington Post columnist laments today of the loss of civility in the public discourse. Strange that he is suddenly outraged that Americans would dare call Obama a socialist or a fascist, given that Bush-Hitler comparisons were widespread during the previous administration.

Liberals in the media spent the summer and early fall bemoaning signs at town hall protests and tea party rallies calling Obama a socialist or communist comparing him to Hitler (incidentally, many of these signs were actually created by supporters of uber-leftist Lyndon LaRouche, as reported by Seton Motley here and here). These pundits had no such admonitions for signs at anti-war rallies during the Bush administration comparing him to Hitler and the Devil, and calling the president a fascist.

So the Post's E.J. Dionne's complaints about the loss of civility in the debate over federal politics fit right in with the narrative liberal pundits have been pushing since last year: comparing an American president to a murderous dictator is unacceptable...if that president is a Democrat.

Wrote Dionne in The New Republic yesterday,

The most surprising and disappointing aspect of our politics is how little pushback there has been against the vile, extremist rhetoric that has characterized such a large part of the anti-Obama movement.

President Obama's administration has largely ignored those accusing him of "fascism" and "communism," presumably believing that restraint in defense of dignity is no vice.

Dionne quotes former Congressman Jim Leach, R-Iowa, to illustrate the horrific degradation of the national discourse:

There is, after all, a difference between holding a particular tax or spending or health care view, and asserting that an American who supports another approach or is a member of a different political party is an advocate of an 'ism' of hate that encompasses gulags and concentration camps.

Might that same characterization have applied when MoveOn.org considered airing an ad contrasting images of Bush and Hitler, and stating "What were war crimes in 1945 is foreign policy in 2003"? Searches on Google News and Nexis show no complaints from Dionne about the petty Bush-is-a-Nazi attacks that pervaded his presidency.

The five latter years of the Bush presidency were rife with Nazi comparisons. As Byron York reported in 2003,

"It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933," writes Dave Lindorff in "Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear," which appeared in February on the far-left site Counterpunch.org. "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear- mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels are not at all out of line."

Liberal author Wayne Madsen, reported York, accused Bush of "borrowing liberally from Hitler's play book," and said that the Nazi dictator "would be proud that an American president is emulating him in so many ways."

The American Thinker also documented scores of Bush-Nazi comparisons. NPR's Garrison Keillor called Republicans "brownshirts in pinstripes." George Soros said Bush "reminds me of the Germans," as "my experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me."

Hugh Pearson, writing in Newsday, compared the 2004 Republican National Convention to "Nazi rallies held in Germany," Republicans who display American flags to Nazis who were "obsessed with endless displays of swastikas," and the war on terrorism to "pre-emptive war to protect the self-interests of the Third Reich."

Even elected officials have toed the Republicans are like Nazis line. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., referring to the 1994 Republican Revolution, stated, "When I compare this to what happened in Germany, I hope you see the similarities to what is happening to us."

He also compared the GOP's drive for tax cuts to the Ku Klux Klan's racist ideology. "It's about race and a certain costume change. Where once it was the sheets and hoods of the Klan, it's now the black suits and red ties of conservative politicians. It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. They say, 'Let's cut taxes.' "

One must wonder where Dionne has been for the past decade or so that he is only now starting to notice classless and crude comparisons of an American president to a murderous dictator, and a major political party to violent racists and genocidal regimes.

From protest rallies to advertisements from far-left advocacy groups to statements from Democratic legislators, liberals have never hesitated to smear prominent conservatives as members of this hate group or that murderous regime. Dionne and his fellow lefty pundits only seem to notice such characterizations, or find them objectionable, when they are directed at a Democrat.

Ed and the boss have already covered the bases on this one, but it’s worth revisiting this relic from last year’s GOP primaries to remind you how much the issue dogged Huckabee even then. [...] Read the rest »

President Obama is heading to Copenhagen, Denmark empty-handed as he tries to lead the world to a global warming solution without having accomplished any policy solutions in the U.S. With the recent exposure of emails indicating that the global warming books were cooked, the president ought to expect rough skies ahead.

I wish I could wish him well, but carbon taxes and carbon capping schemes would cost our economy trillions of dollars with little to no real environmental benefit.

July 10, 2009 – Enrian:
G8 leaders believe there is little time left for dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program, the Italian prime minister said Friday after a summit in Italy’s L’Aquila.

July 16, 2009 - Aljazeera:
The US government has sent a strong message to Iran, saying it is running out of time to engage in dialogue over its nuclear programme to avoid further isolation or even military action.

September 18, 2009 – FOX News:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that Iran’s refusal to prove that its nuclear intentions are peaceful has “profound consequences” for world security… She also said that time is running out for the country to show it is serious about addressing concerns about its nuclear program.

November 15, 2009 – Reuters:
U.S. President Barack Obama said Sunday time was running out for diplomacy to resolve a crisis over Iran’s nuclear program

November 30, 2009 – Radio Free Europe:
The United States says “time is running out” for Iran to address international concerns about its nuclear program.

Related… The Iranian regime took 5 British sailors hostage today.

Ben Stein made an indirect reference to the ClimateGate e-mail scandal during a face-off with Democratic strategist James Carville on Wednesday’s Situation Room: “The truth is, we’ve now got a lot of data coming out that the scientific community who are on the side of anthropogenic global warming were cooking the data and were suppressing data to those requesting their data.”

Stein and Carville appeared on the program’s regular “Strategy Session” segment 46 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour, less than an hour before CNN aired a slanted report on the e-mail scandal. Substitute anchor Suzanne Malveaux first raised President Obama’s upcoming trip to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change Conference with the Democrat: “Obviously, this is a political issue. This is up to Congress. What can the President do on this issue?”

Carville went on the offensive out of the gate: “Well, unfortunately, I hope I’m wrong, but not very much, and I hope that talk radio and the pollution lobby are right that global warming is not a problem and 940 peer-reviewed scientific articles are wrong. That’s about all we can hope for because, right now, I have to tell you, that the pollution lobby and talk radio is winning this battle, and the will in the United States to do something about this is not what where I think it should be. But that’s the reality of the political situation as I see it right now.”

Stein rebuked his opponent for his labeling, and made his first reference to ClimateGate:

STEIN: Well, calling the people who want to keep Americans free to use the kind of energy they want to use the ‘pollution lobby’ is a wild smear...But it’s not the pollution lobby- it’s a lobby for the truth. The truth is that the global temperature peaked around 1998. It’s not gotten any hotter. Instead, it’s gotten cooler. The truth is that there have been periods in the past, 1,000 years ago, 2,500 years ago when it was warmer than it is now when there was no manmade burning of carbon. The truth is that we don’t know the exact interaction between all those events and effects and what they do to the weather....The truth is, we’ve now got a lot of data coming out that the scientific community who are on the side of anthropogenic global warming were cooking the data and were suppressing data to those requesting their data. So, I think the whole thing of fighting global warming may be based on a false premise. Maybe it isn’t, but the fact is we just don’t know at this point.

For the remainder of the segment, Carville and Stein mainly stuck to their talking points on the climate debate:

MALVEAUX: Well, the truth is, too, is that Americans are divided politically over this issue. If you look at the poll, Washington Post/ABC News here, among Republicans, 54 percent believe that global warming is really happening, but Democrats, 86 percent believe it is really- it is taking place here.

CARVILLE: Look, again, I hope that talk radio and the pollution lobby is right, because I- but I’m afraid that 950-something peer-reviewed scientific articles and almost the entirety of the non-paid- for by polluters- the people had studied this- think that this is- this climate change is real. I hope they’re wrong for the sake of my children, and it seems as though that they spent a lot of money and have been very successful here.

MALVEAUX: Well, what do you make of that, Ben? Do you think it’s just a lobbying effort?

STEIN: There are huge- no, there are huge numbers of scientists who are questioning that. When you say 950 peer-reviewed articles. We now learned that the peers are in a kind of cabal and not all of them- some of them are in a kind of a cabal to suppress any information that challenges the consensus on global warming and the man-made effects on the climate. We- there are many, many scientists not paid for by the energy companies. In fact, the energy companies have pretty much have backed off and washed their hands of this. They find they just don’t want to question the conventional wisdom on this. This is being done- this questioning about the effects of man-made activity on the climate is being done by brave, independent souls, and it's not just proved.

MALVEAUX: We could debate whether or not this is real or not, but I covered Bush for eight years, and he said that global warming did not exist, that science didn’t back it up. But here is a poll that shows that a lot more people are actually agreeing with the former president. Three and a half years ago, 76 percent of Republicans believed it was happening. Well, now, it’s down to 54 percent. Take a look at the independents: 86 percent thought it was happening. Now, it’s down to 71 percent. Democrats, 92 percent. Now, it is down to 86 percent. Is that not going make it even harder for the President to convince the rest of the world that we need some sort of global initiative here for climate change?

CARVILLE: Yes.

MALVEAUX: Climate change?

CARVILLE: The answer is yes.

MALVEAUX: What does he do?

CARVILLE: Yes, the pollution lobby is winning. They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re winning.

MALVEAUX: So, what does he do? What does the President do?

CARVILLE: The point is that every peer-reviewed scientific article says that this is true. (Stein unintelligible in the background)

MALVEAUX: If you could give him some sort of advice, could you advise the President? What does he need to do if he’s going to change this and he’s going to turn this around, or is it hopeless?

CARVILLE: Well, I don’t know if it’s hopeless. Still, you got a majority of the people believe in that, and in the end, scientific truth is going to win out. But right now, you got to say- ExxonMobil was paying tens of thousands of dollars for any, quote, ‘scientists,’ unquote, that would dispute these facts. In over a period of time, this is building up, and they’re winning, and I don’t know why you’re not happy about it, Ben.

STEIN: But, you know, James, with all due respect, I hate to say this, because I respect you very much and I always love it when I’m on with you, but you just made that up about ExxonMobil. They’re not paying tens of thousands of dollars to any scientists-

CARVILLE: Sure they did. They did.

STEIN: Who will dispute global warming. There’s a cabal of global warming- anthropogenic global warming scientists who are suppressing anyone questioning them. It’s not the pollution lobby versus the clean air lobby. It’s the truth lobby versus those who want to suppress the truth lobby. Look, I don’t like pollution either. I don’t like these little micro-particles that go up in the air and they get in my lungs and they cause cancer. But whether or not- and I’m all for cleansing the air of as much as possible- but whether or not man-made activity is changing the climate of the earth, that is very much in dispute, and whether or not we should have giant global policies based on suppressing something which may be a hoax, that’s very much up in the air.

CARVILLE: It’s very much not up in the air by the scientific community. But again, nobody is suppressing you. You’re right here saying this, and you all are winning. The scientific community and the evidence is losing, and that happens, you know? That happens.

STEIN: James, I’m not trying to get something published in a peer review journal.

CARVILLE: I know.

STEIN: If I were trying to get it published in a peer review journal, they wouldn’t let me.

MALVEAUX: But we do know that the president is-

CARVILLE: They got tenure- go ahead, sorry.

MALVEAUX: But we do know the President is going to Copenhagen. It’s going to be at the beginning of the summit. He’s already received some criticism that he’s not going to be able to get a lot done because he’s going to be there on day one of the summit as opposed to the end. But, clearly, speaking with senior administration officials today, they say at least we’re going to try to get some momentum with this debate and perhaps this move forward. So, that’s where we’re going to leave it right there.

Spectacular!

Has longtime PBS anchor Jim Lehrer listened to Rush Limbaugh – ever? Has he ever sat through a talk program on cable news? The answer seems to be "no" from Lehrer’s interview with Howard Kurtz in Monday’s Washington Post. Lehrer wants his show to be up-to-date, but his take on the New Media is stunning in its ignorance:

"The shouting and opinion and jokes don't exist if there isn't first a story," he says. "If you start at the end with Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann -- I'm not knocking these people, but they're at the end of the reaction chain. All you know is what Beck or Bill O'Reilly or Rachel Maddow or Rush Limbaugh said. But what was actually in that legislation? Where are you going to get that piece? You go to a serious news organization."

You can’t water down the inaccuracy of that quote with an "I’m not knocking these people," I’m only suggesting that we at PBS are the makers of fine food, and the talkers, well, they come out at the other end of the food cycle.

Does Lehrer think Rush Limbaugh doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of a health-care bill? Did Lehrer miss that Glenn Beck broke open the ACORN story and forced the resignation of Obama aide Van Jones on the front-end of the news cycle?

Lehrer’s ignorant crack isn’t even fair to Olbermann and Maddow, who have been quite clear about their offense at the pro-life Stupak Amendment in the House health bill, and quite aggressive in attacking the wimpiness of the "public option" being proposed.

Lehrer needs to do his homework and listen to talk radio and TV before he sings this snobbish Done Somebody Wrong song again. Get out of your taxpayer-subsidized cave, anchor man, and see how the other half talks.

Cavid Aksin, an Istanbul metalworker, was angered that the referendum coincided with the end of one of the most important religious feasts in the Muslim calendar. "I think Turkey should have a referendum on whether to close down its churches," he said.

You mean churches like Hagia Sophia? Or the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross? Or the Halki Seminary? After 1,400 years of closing down churches, the gall is unbelievable.

Wasn’t it just last week that we were told that 34,000 was the magic number, replete with a confidence-boosting report from NBC News that McChrystal himself was satisfied with that amount? [...] Read the rest »

On August 6, 2009 two Service Employee International Union (SEIU) leaders and a volunteer for Organizing for America (OFA) assaulted Kenneth Gladney outside of Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town hall meeting on health care.  The perpetrators were arrested at the scene of the crime, and three months later charges have finally been filed.

Much has been said in the past three months about this incident.  Here at Big Government calls have been made for justice, for formal charges and mostly for the mass media to follow the story and delve into the government’s role in this violent attempt to intimidate and silence dissent.  We can no longer wait for the establishment journalists to connect the dots and bring to light the insidious relationships between the SEIU, OFA, Russ Carnaham’s office and the Obama Administration.

Was this assault merely a flare up of tempers during a heated exchange of rival political camps?  Or was it a coordinated attempt to silence the scores of protesters who had been so effective at swaying public opinion against the President’s health care scheme?  Today, Big Government will bring to light documents that read like an instruction manual for the SEIU forces in St. Louis the evening of August 6^th.  We will also show that on the very same evening of the St. Louis assault, an almost identical scene played out in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Also involving SEIU and OFA.  Also resulting in hordes of union members shouting down and physically evicting protesters from a U.S. Representative’s Town hall meeting.  Finally, we will introduce all of the various players in leadership roles at these organizations, what they said in instructing their members in how to fight back against the Town hall protesters, and how these individuals all connect to each other and to the Obama Administration.  As I said, we’ve been waiting for the “Real” journalists to do this, we’ve waited long enough.

On June 1, 2009 President Obama enjoyed a 64% Job Approval rating with a disapproval rating of 30%.  As Summer approached, the President began the plans for the roll out of his comprehensive plan to overhaul the entire distribution system for America’s health care services.  As the messaging began, the talking points were clear:  “If you like your current health plan, you can keep it”, “This plan will cover the 40 million Americans who have no insurance”, “This plan will not add to the deficit and not raise taxes”.  It all seemed too good to be true.   The House Committee on Energy and Commerce promptly passed the first version of a reform bill in June.  President Obama planned multiple town hall meetings across the country including an unprecedented event televised live on ABC and everything seemed moving toward a major victory for the President and the Democratic Party.

In late June and through the month of July, members of congress held scattered town hall meetings in their districts to get their constituents’ feedback on the proposed health care bill.  The clusters of semi-organized protesters who had rallied at “Tea Parties” earlier in the Spring took these meetings as opportunities to rejuvenate their energies with passionate opposition to these congressmen.  YouTube videos began circulating showing outraged citizens challenging their representatives and showing those representatives completely unprepared for any legitimate questions about the proposed bill.  It was clear in many cases that the representatives were not well versed on these bills beyond the boiler-plate talking points the administration had handed them.  They were not used to being questioned.

By the beginning of August Sarah Palin had caught headlines by describing certain policy discussions that evaluate a patients “level of productivity in society” and how it relates to the level of prioritized care they would receive as ‘death panels’ , Rep. Michelle Bachmann had delivered a stinging speech on the House floor tearing apart the President’s advisors on health policy, Sen. Arlen Spector was caught flat-footed at a town hall meeting and protests began cropping up all around the country at various town hall meetings of Senators and Congressmen.  President Obama’s job approval rating had now plummeted to  52% with a disapproval rating of 41% (an unbelievable 23% swing in approval loss and disapproval gain combined in 60 days).  The White House had seen enough.  It was time to take action and engage the opposition.

Somewhere between August 2^nd and August 6^th a strategy was devised that put all tools at the administrations disposal in line and firing at the protesters.  August 4^th seems to be an important day in the roll out of this strategy.  The White House famously posted a new aggressive offensive on their blog calling out what they described as “mis-information” about the proposed bill and directed true-believers to report any sources of these “lies” to a special e-mail address:  flag@whitehouse.gov.  Also on the 4^th, an organization called Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a document that became a blueprint for intimidation and, ultimately, violence under the guise of confronting the tea party protesters at these town hall meetings.

HCAN is an organization funded by various unions, most significantly SEIU, whose main purpose is to promote and push the effort for government-provided, universal health care.  (To understand the SEIU’s reasons for pushing for this government health care, read this post.)  The National Field Director for HCAN is Margarida Jorge.  Margarida Jorge used to work for the SEIU as an organizing director.

On August 4^th Margarida Jorge released a four page memo instructing members of HCAN on how best to combat the mounting opposition on display at the town hall meetings.  On the HCAN web site, the new tactics were filed on a post under the heading “Fight Back Against the Right”.  A subsequent HCAN call to action on August 5^th was under the benign headline “The Guns of August: A Call to Arms for Progressives and Obama Activists” likening the debate to World War I.

The entire memo can be seen here.

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The memo features instructions and tactics for the left on how to dominate the meeting and marginalize the protesters from the right:

• Their side will be smaller but noisier. You must bring enough people to drown them out and to cover all our bases so as to marginalize their disruptive tactics.
• We need to stack our folks in the front to create a wall around the Member, and we need to stake out the best spots for visibility and signs. Reconnaissance on the venue and an understanding of the staging will be important here. Make sure you do your homework so you can position your folks most effectively.

It features ideas on how to manipulate the media:

• Make sure you have people holding signs in every place where a TV camera is likely to be and that next to every right wing sign, there’s one of your signs with your message.
• Don’t wait for the reporter to approach you. You must approach the reporters and be assertive in shaping the narrative that they write. Have someone assigned to greeting the media or checking in media as they arrive. That way you will know who they are and be able to work with them both during the event and afterwards.

It has ideas about how to dominate the conversation by asking the congressman prepared, rehearsed questions:

• Line up a number of people who feel comfortable interrupting and prepare them with statements like:
  • Excuse me, I came today to listen to Representative XXX explain how this bill is going to make health care more affordable for me and my family. We’re being gouged by insurance companies that just want to make more profits while we struggle to keep up with premiums and co-pays. Representative, how are you going to fix that?”
  • “I’m retired and can’t afford my prescription drugs because I’m on a fixed income. Representative, how is this bill going to affect me?”
  • “I want to hear the Representative speak. He’s the one voting on the bill. Representative, how will this bill help people who already have insurance at work?”
  • “What I’m worried about is how we’re going to keep the insurance companies from continuing to charge people more for being sick and keep them from taking away coverage when we need it most. What’s the plan for that?”

And, on page four of the memo written by Margarida Jorge of HCAN are instructions for hosting a town hall meeting.  These instructions include:

• One advantage to organizing your own Town Hall or public event with Members of Congress is that you will have much more control over the event and limit the other side’s opportunities for disruption.
• Make sure you turn out a substantial number of people from your base and that everyone signs a sign in sheet upon entering the event. Give everyone name tags so they are easily identifiable. If you want to ensure greater control over turnout, you can ask attendees to rsvp or even issue tickets to the event and require presentation of the ticket at the entrance.
• Choose a venue that is difficult for the opposition to access without being noticed. Get to your location early and make sure you set up the venue in a way that ensures that the attendees you want are at the front and that any protesters who come are sequestered as far as possible from the stage.
• Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave.
• Another way to limit protesters’ ability to hijack your event is to confiscate signs or leaflets that they may bring into the venue from outside. The best way to do this is to make a blanket rule that no one can bring signs or leaflets and to advertise this fact as you do turn out in the weeks preceding the event. You can distribute your own signs in the event and offer them one as they enter if you choose to allow them to enter.
• It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend.

On August 5^th the DNC released a video advertisement calling the protesters an “angry mob” and showing a photo of one alleged protester hanging a congressman in effigy.  Also on August 5^th we had Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi derisively calling the protesters “Astro-turf” and claiming that they were carrying signs with swastikas.

By August 6^th liberal web sites like Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos were cheering HCAN’s instructions and the stance taken by Organizing For America (The left-wing volunteer web site evolved from the Obama Campaign) urging liberals to call congress (providing them instructions on how to do this) and then to register the call at the OFA web site.  Huffington Post celebrated the new bold move with a post urging the unions to get more involved (an astounding 11,000 comments appear on this post in just 6 days, many of them from early in the day on August 6^th show that the readers of HuffPo knew exactly what this union engagement meant and what the results would be).

Finally on August 6^th, hours before the Carnahan town hall meeting where Kenneth Gladney was assaulted by members of the SEIU, David Axelrod and Jim Messina gave a pep talk to Senators on Capitol Hill prior to their leaving for the August recess.  According to Politico:

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.  And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

”If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting

Two days after the instructions on how to manage and control protestors at town hall meetings were released by Margarida Jorge at HCAN, one day after the Speaker of the House likened protestors to Nazis and mere hours after President Obama’s top political advisors assured Congressional Democrats that “If you get hit, we will punch them back twice as hard”, Kenneth Gladney lay beaten and bloody on the ground outside Rep. Russ Carnahan’s Town Hall meeting.

Tomorrow we will show how the people who are now charged with assaulting him are connected to SEIU and HCAN, how they followed HCAN’s instructions perfectly which inevitably led to the violence, and we will show how St. Louis was not the only meeting that followed HCAN’s template and ended in much the same way.

Hopefully, this brings down the curtain on a shameful episode, which I've detailed here and here (and for my theory about why DOJ has been so anxious to disclose all manner of classified information related to Bush-era counterterrorism, see here). Jen Rubin has thoughts at Contentions. As she notes, Senators Lieberman and Graham have issued a statement praising the ruling. The senators thank President Obama for working with Congress on this provision. They are being polite: Under the Freedom of Information Act, Obama could have issued an order at any time that would have protected the photos from disclosure. Doing so would have angered the Left, so he sat on his hands, waiting for Congress or the Supreme Court to act. Not exactly profiles in courage.

The New York Times’s Jason DeParle and Robert Gebeloff published a long Saturday report on the Food Stamp program that went into print on Sunday.

This is the second of three posts on their coverage; the first went up earlier today at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog. It addressed the pair's seeming happiness with the massive increase in program participation, their apparent unhappiness that 15-16 million who could be getting Food Stamps aren't, and their sense of relief that the "stigma" attached to being on a form of government dole has significantly dissipated.

This post will deal with something that should have been right in front of the Times pair's faces: Even before considering loosened eligibility standards (the third post will deal with that), Food Stamp benefits (gross and net) have increased by much more than the rate of food inflation during the past couple of years, especially in the past year, during which the increase in net benefits has been a whopping 30%.

Here are a few article excerpts from the Times report that deal with benefit levels (the first excerpted paragraph originally appeared in between the two other sets of paragraphs presented):

Now nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid —28 percent of blacks, 15 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of whites. Benefits average about $130 a month for each person in the household, but vary with shelter and child care costs.

.... With most of his co-workers laid off, Greg Dawson, a third-generation electrician in rural Martinsville, considers himself lucky to still have a job. He works the night shift for a contracting firm, installing freezer lights in a chain of grocery stores. But when his overtime income vanished and his expenses went up, Mr. Dawson started skimping on meals to feed his wife and five children.

He tried to fill up on cereal and eggs. He ate a lot of Spam. Then he went to work with a grumbling stomach to shine lights on food he could not afford. When an outreach worker appeared at his son’s Head Start program, Mr. Dawson gave in.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Mr. Dawson, 29, a taciturn man with a wispy goatee who is so uneasy about the monthly benefit of $300 that he has not told his parents. “I always thought it was people trying to milk the system. But we just felt like we really needed the help right now.”

.... Sarah and Tyrone Mangold started the year on track to make $70,000 —she was selling health insurance, and he was working on a heating and air conditioning crew. She got laid off in the spring, and he a few months later. Together they had one unemployment check and a blended family of three children, including one with a neurological disorder aggravated by poor nutrition.

They ate at his mother’s house twice a week. They pawned jewelry. She scoured the food pantry. He scrounged for side jobs. Their frustration peaked one night over a can of pinto beans. Each blamed the other when that was all they had to eat.

“We were being really snippy, having anxiety attacks,” Ms. Mangold said. “People get irritable when they’re hungry.”Food stamps now fortify the family income by $623 a month, and Mr. Mangold, who is still patching together odd jobs, no longer objects.

“I always thought people on public assistance were lazy,” he said, “but it helps me know I can feed my kids.”

This chart of gross and net benefits for fiscal years beginning October 1, 2007, 2008, and 2009 tells the story (data sources identified below):

The Maximum Monthly Allotment is the USDA's term for the gross benefit. It is what an individual or household receives if there were no other resources available as determined under program eligibility rules for that person or household to pay for food. October 1, 2009 figures are at the USDA's site. Previous posts documented the MMAs as of October 1, 2008 and 2007, respectively. Note that 2008 benefit levels corresponded very closely to what the USDA considers the cost of its "Thrifty Meal Plan" budget.

The Net Per-Person benefit is an estimate sourced as follows:

• As of October 1, 2009, it is the $130 the Times pair cited in their report.
• For the previous two Octobers, it is the $23 and $21 per-week average benefit cited by the purveyors of the "Food Stamp Challenge" converted into a monthly amount.

The Net Per-Person benefit is the result of subtracting resources deemed available to pay for food. The general rule is that 30% of beneficiaries' "net monthly income" -- an amount that is determined, as seen at the same USDA fact sheet, only after deducting several items from one's income or net pay -- is expected to be available to pay for food.

The food inflation figures came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as of September 2009 and September 2008. Although annual MMA benefit adjustments are actually based on a slightly earlier 12-month span than identified here, the points being made here wouldn't substantially change.

Based on the figures presented, it's pretty darned obvious that gross benefits have ratcheted up significantly, while the average deductions against MMA/gross benefits have actually shrunk a bit. The 2007-2008 change was not much different than real food inflation, and may have matched it pretty closely if the adjustment was based on a mid-summer 2007-2008 measurement. But the 2008-2009 increase is off the charts, even though the cost of food eaten at home has gone down.

Most of the 2008-2009 increase actually took effect six month earlier in April as a result of the stimulus package passed in February. A Massachusetts social services site has the details.

Times reporters DeParle and Gebeloff never mentioned that the increases were stimulus-driven in their report; in fact, they didn't discuss year-over-year increases at all. They never considered that the 30% higher benefit levels might be drawing more government dependents into the program. They never addressed why, if previous benefit levels were sufficient under a thrifty meal plan approach, taxpayers should be expected to pay for what is now clearly more than that.

The Food Stamp program has apparently morphed from an "eat well, but watch your pennies" approach to "eat as you're used to eating (or close to it)" design without one iota of notice or debate. Heritage's Robert Rector, who told the Times that the program has devolved into something that is "really not different from cash welfare," is at least partially vindicated.

But it's even worse than that. Earlier this year Ohio's Warren County exposed how liberalized eligibility rules are allowing many households who reasonable people would contend have no right to receive Food Stamp benefits to get them. That, and journalistic errors the Times committed in reporting it, will be the subject of Part 3.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com

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The first question in a poll conducted by CBS’s 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair magazine asked Americans to nominate a fifth face for Mt. Rushmore and included Barack Obama among the contenders. While President Kennedy took the lead with 29%, Obama came in fourth with 16%, just behind Franklin Roosevelt at 18% and Ronald Reagan at 20%.

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez discussed the poll with CBSNews.com’s Cali Carlin and Vanity Fair’s Michael Hogan. Smith thought the Rushmore question was “terrific” and guessed that “it’s got to be between Kennedy and FDR.” Rodriguez made the same prediction: “if you know anything about history, you’d have to do FDR because he served four terms. But I think given our current population, most people probably said Kennedy.” Neither of them suggested Republican choices Reagan or Eisenhower would earn such a place of honor.

Carlin confirmed those guesses: “You’re right, it is JFK. People want to further that Camelot feeling and they would add him.” She then added: “But about 16% wanted our current president, Barack Obama, even though he hasn’t even served a full year in office. He got fourth place.” Rodriguez observed: “That’s unbelievable. Maybe just because of the historic significance of him being African American.” Carlin expressed skepticism: “Yeah, it could be a little premature though, maybe like that Nobel Prize.”

When the previous edition of the poll came out in September, it featured a question asking women who they would like to switch lives with for a week. First Lady Michelle Obama was listed among the choices. While discussing the poll on the September 28 Early Show, Rodriguez enthusiastically answered that question: “Hands down, Michelle Obama.”

On Monday, Rodriguez went on to ask Hogan about another poll result that found that only 26% of Americans could explain the ‘public option’ in current health care legislation. Hogan explained: “Only 26% of people were confident they could explain it. 66% said no, they can’t explain it. So a little bit of a problem there for something we’re all supposed to be debating, that there’s this lack of understanding.”

Rodriguez followed up: “...is there a nut shell definition that you like to give people of the public option?” Hogan offered one: “It’s a government-run health plan that is supposed to compete with the private insurers to establish affordable rates for health insurance.” Smith liked that rather optimistic definition: “...we have a ding-ding-ding that we sometimes use for right answers...I think you actually did deserve a ding-ding-ding.”

The final poll question discussed during the Early Show segment was one about which music Americans would not want to listen to a “painfully high volumes.” Carlin explained the inspiration for the question: “And this actually spawns from a serious question, though, because there’s reports that detainees at Guantanamo had to listen to music at painfully high volumes. And the musicians want to if their’s were – was used.” Smith added that those musicians “want to sue.”  

NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard earlier reported that the poll also found that radio host Rush Limbaugh was considered to be the most influential conservative in America.

Here is a portion of the Early Show segment:

HARRY SMITH: The CBS News magazine 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair magazine are out with a brand new poll, taking the pulse of America on all sorts of interesting matters. And here with the results are Cali Carlin of CBSNews.com and Michael Hogan, executive editor for Vanity Fair online. Good morning.

CALI CARLIN: Good morning.

MICHAEL HOGAN: Morning.

[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: The Pulse of America; New 60 Minutes & Vanity Fair Survey]

SMITH: So we have a bunch of interesting questions that you polled to get answers to. Maggie is back on the couch with us now. I want to start with this very first one, which I think is terrific, which is who would be the next face to put on Mt. Rushmore?

CARLIN: We gave Americans seven options for this hypothetical fifth slot on the South Dakota sculpture, including our current President, Barack Obama, as well as FDR, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson, and Lyndon Johnson. So what do you guys think?

SMITH: So – go ahead, do you want to guess first?

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think if you know anything about history, you’d have to do FDR because he served four terms. But I think given our current population, most people probably said Kennedy.

SMITH: It’s – I’ve got to believe it’s got to be between Kennedy and FDR. Because I’m just trying to guess – out-guess the poll.

CARLIN: What Americans would think. You’re right, it is JFK. People want to further that Camelot feeling and they would add him. But surprise – and Ronald Reagan got second place, so he was the highest of the Republicans. But about 16% wanted our current president, Barack Obama, even though he hasn’t even served a full year in office. He got fourth place.

[ON-SCREEN GRAPHIC: Kennedy 29%; Reagan 20%; Roosevelt 18%; Obama 16%; Eisenhower 6%; Jackson 2%; Johnson 0%]

RODRIGUEZ: That’s unbelievable. Maybe just because of the historic significance of him being African American. Right? Maybe.

CARLIN: Yeah, it could be a little premature though, maybe like that Nobel Prize.    

[LAUGHTER]

RODRIGUEZ: Ooo, Cali, going for it. Alright, number two, let’s bring in Michael here, you asked people about the two words we now hear constantly, ‘public option.’ And you asked if people can actually explain what the public option is. Can they?

HOGAN: That’s right, yeah, it was a yes or no question. Yes, they can, but not that many. Only 26% of people were confident they could explain it. 66% said no, they can’t explain it. So a little bit of a problem there for something we’re all supposed to be debating, that there’s this lack of understanding.

RODRIGUEZ: So is there a – like if you’re at party and you want to impress your friends, is there a nut shell definition that you like to give people of the public option?

HOGAN: Yeah, I think so. It’s – I mean, in a nutshell, it’s pretty simple. It’s a government-run health plan that is supposed to compete with the private insurers to establish affordable rates for health insurance. Now, we’ll see if it passes or not and we’ll see if it has those qualities when it does pass.

RODRIGUEZ: And a lot of people say there’s a lot more to it, but, yes, that is a nut shell definition.
    
SMITH: We should have given – we have a ding-ding-ding that we sometimes use for right answers.

CALI: Does he deserves it?

SMITH: I think you actually did deserve a ding-ding-ding.

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Now that we are learning prominent leaders of the global warming movement destroyed the data they claim to have used to construct their climate models, and only the most rabid environmental fraud deniers still cling to the authenticity of their “science”, a serious moment of truth is fast approaching.

That moment is Copenhagen, which has always been about much more than so called “man-made global warming”. Copenhagen has always been about striking a “Global New Deal”.

Last month, we compiled and posted extensive evidence of years-long Democratic party coordination with the Party of European Socialists (PES). Click here to see our detailed examination of this special relationship, including then Party Chairman Howard Dean’s full address to the 7th Congress of the PES.

If you do not have the time to examine the detailed account linked above, just take a look at the video below for a quick and horrifying taste of what the global Progressive movement has been cooking up for Copenhagen. It’s a promotional video for the “Global Progressive Forum”, an event created and organized by the PES.

President Clinton makes his remarks in the beginning of the video. At approximately (3:15) Howard Dean makes an appearance. Toward the end (4:45), the president of the PES talks about the “Global New Deal”.

We are going to learn just how far our leaders are willing to go to continue this “green” charade, despite overwhelming legitimate doubt about the credibility of the source of alarm regarding anthropogenic global warming.

Only people with a political agenda to fulfill would continue to wield the social-moral bludgeon of man-made global warming despite the apparent corruption of its rationale revealed thus far.

Copenhagen should, therefore, provide us with rare insight on the extent of the symbiotic corruption between the scientific and political communities.

What a sad state of affairs for any genuine environmental pollution issues, which have had all of the air sucked out of them by this giant red smokescreen, and are now tainted by association.

Has anyone examined if this axis of corruption held sway on other popular social-science issues? 2nd hand smoke? Trans-fats? Poverty? Violence?

A sprawling piece of graffiti at a school in a poor Tegucigalpa neighborhood warned: “Your Life is Not Worth a Vote!” The intent of the message was to scare voters away from the November 29 national elections in Honduras.

As I rode around town in my capacity as an electoral observer, I turned on a pro-Zelaya radio station, Radio Globo. It was broadcasting endless reports about repression, massive absenteeism, and government intimidation. At first I thought I should flee to the safety of my hotel, but instead I turned off the radio when I realized it had nothing to do with the reality around me.

Across Honduras, people did what they normally do on election Sunday. Voters voted, officials officiated, and the police and military kept away hooligans and drunks. A soccer-hungry nation watched Barcelona battle Real Madrid, while Sunday strollers laughed at the antics of clowns before the cathedral in central Tegucigalpa.

In general, the media-induced sense of crisis contrasted starkly with the reality of a pro-American nation anxious to put Manuel Zelaya and his Hugo Chavez-like antics behind it.

The Honduran electoral process, with its carefully controlled paper ballots, tamper-proof national identity/voter cards, and bevy of domestic and foreign observers, was filled with checks and safeguards to prevent electoral tampering. The electoral process had begun well before the June 28 removal of Manuel Zelaya, and it moved forward largely independent of the political turmoil that was churning the country.

Even the U.S. State Department, as Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela said before the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 23, recognized that

this was not an election invented by a de facto government in search of an exit strategy or as a means to whitewash a coup d’état. To the contrary, it is an election consonant with the constitutionally mandated renewal of congressional and presidential mandates permitting the Honduran people to exercise their sovereign will.

When the dust settled, the voter turnout appeared to have exceeded the turnout of 2005 -- despite the campaign of the so-called resistance aimed at scaring people away. Unlike in 2005, there is a clear winner, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the National party. Lobo won with a huge mandate, one that makes Latin American populists like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua extremely jealous.

The bottom line for Honduras is that radical, pro-Chávez populism represents a faction of its population, but not a majority. This populist radicalism can prosper only when government officials subvert the checks and balances and protections built into the Honduran constitution of 1982. Zelaya tried it and failed. That should be a lesson to his successors.

For the time being, Mad Mel Zelaya will live on in the diplomatic space of the increasingly leftist-dominated OAS; in the double-standardism of a Brazil that warmly welcomes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but refuses to send observers to, and repudiates a free and fair election in, Honduras; and in the propaganda machinery of the “Bolivarian” ALBA alliance, with its media arms like Radio Globo and the Telesur network.

On November 29, the Honduran people voted for sanity, normality, and a chance to make their own future. It is time that Washington and the inter-American community woke up to this fact.

-- Ray Walser is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

In other words, illegal immigration is the area where the largest number of Republicans feel the party isn't doing enough (and note that only 9 percent thought there was too much emphasis on it). One conclusion is practical -- the Republican party simply can't embrace amnesty, any more than the Democratic party can endorse the Human Life Amendment -- certain individual politicians can get away with it, depending on their specific districts, but the respective institutions' very identities are partly rooted in those positions.

But also, look at the other two issues where GOP voters think there's been too little emphasis -- federal spending and the economy and jobs. This suggests that lots of Republicans see the immigration issue at least partly in the context of the economy, meaning it's a jobs issue. This is why congressmen Lamar Smith and Steve King held a quasi-hearing earlier this month on immigration and American jobs ("quasi" because the Democratic majority wouldn't agree to a hearing, so the minority called an unofficial one). As Steve King said at the hearing, "When the federal government has been engaged in [immigration] enforcement, the boon to American workers has been obvious." Or, in Lamar Smith's words, "The most effective means we can have of making these jobs [held by illegals] available to American citizens and legal immigrants is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, worksite enforcement actions."

To see the immediate economic benefits of immigration enforcement for American workers, see the work of my colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jerry Kammer, here and here.

One simple measure Republicans could champion would be to permit employers to use E-Verify to screen their existing workforce (current law permits its use only for new hires). There would be little political downside and a lot of upside -- employers wouldn't have to do it, and if they did they'd have to screen everyone, not just the ones with dodgy paperwork. But the benefits could be significant, not only by putting the Democrats on the spot, but also, depending on how many employers participated, tens or hundreds of thousands of job openings for legal workers -- real jobs with real employers, not phony ones in non-existent congressional districts.

In any case, as David Frum wrote last week, "It's time for Republicans to revisit the actual economics of immigration rather than the slogans."

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Published in the New York Post on November 30, 2009

The “health-care reform” bills in Congress would hit 39 states hard with new expenses, by raising Medicaid eligibility above the current income cutoffs.

The only states that won’t have to raise eligibility because of the Senate bill are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin (plus the District of Columbia). And the House bill would force even Massachusetts and Vermont to pay more.

(more…)

USA Today has a piece today on honor killings in the United States:

Muslim immigrant men have been accused of six "honor killings" in the United States in the past two years, prompting concerns that the Muslim community and police need to do more to stop such crimes.

"There is broad support and acceptance of this idea in Islam, and we're going to see it more and more in the United States," says Robert Spencer, who has trained FBI and military authorities on Islam and founded Jihad Watch, which monitors radical Islam.

Honor killings are generally defined as murders of women by relatives who claim the victim brought shame to the family. Thousands of such killings have occurred in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Palestinian territories, according to the World Health Organization.

Some clerics and even lawmakers in these countries have said families have the right to commit honor killings as a way of maintaining values, according to an analysis by Yotam Feldner in the journal Middle East Quarterly.

The story cites Phyllis Chesler, a professor of psychology and author (Women and Madness, Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, The Death of Feminism) who has been studying honor killings for The Middle East Quarterly. Chesler elaborates on the shameful reality to NRO:

Honor killings are escalating in a statistically significant way in the West and . . . they are primarily Muslim-on-Muslim crimes and crimes against girls and women. (Hindus and Sikhs also commit such family murders but to a far lesser extent.)

She continues: “Even if honor killings are a ‘tribal’ or pre-Islamic custom -- Muslim religious authorities have done very little to teach Muslims that such murders are, indeed, ‘anti-Islamic.’ Indeed, in Sharia-compliant and Islamist countries or territories such as Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Gaza, etc., honor killings are public, ‘legal,’ and valorized; their perpetrators are rarely tried or given serious sentences.”

Chesler explains that:

In pre-Islamic times in the Middle East, when the Biblical Dinah was kidnapped and raped by a local lord in what is now Nablus (Shechem), her brothers killed her rapist and all the men in his tribe. They did not kill the presumably dishonored Dinah. (True, they engaged in overkill and were severely criticized by other Jews for having done so. Also true: There are other examples in the Old Testament that show that adulteresses were also stoned to death.) 

“But,” she says, “that was then -- it does not happen now among Jews.” Where you see “honor killings” today is “in Islamic countries and among certain Muslim immigrants in the West,” Chesler says. “Today, a Muslim girl or woman who wants to assimilate, integrate, and Westernize is seen as a prostitute, and her murder is planned and executed by her family of origin or, to a lesser extent, by her husband and either his or her family of origin.”

Chesler makes clear that “not all Muslims kill their young daughters or murder their wives when they want to leave a violent marriage.” But “some do. Such murders, unpunished, or lightly punished, serve as terrorizing object lessons to all other Muslim girls and women.”

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Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world’s leading climate scientist has told the Observer.

Rajendra Pachauri? Hey, if you're manning the VIP lounge at Heathrow, that name may ring a bell:

Dr Rajendra Pachauri flew at least 443,243 miles on IPCC business in this 19 month period. This business included honorary degree ceremonies, a book launch and a Brookings Institute dinner, the latter involving a flight of 3500 miles.

Wow. 443,243 miles. How many flying polar bears does Dr. Pachauri kill in an average quarter? Well, not to worry, he probably offsets his record-breaking ursocide with carbon credits from carbon billionaire Al Gore.

And in any case it's okay to devastate the planet on IPCC business -- plus the occasional cricket match:

So strong is his love for cricket that his colleagues recall the time the Nobel winner took a break during a seminar in New York and flew in to Delhi over the weekend to attend a practice session for a match before flying back. Again, he flew in for a day, just to play that match.

And why not? Aside from a slight increase in the risk of polar bears dropping from the skies onto stray Indian bowlers and wicket-keepers, where's the harm?

P.S. I like the headline on Dr. Pachauri's climate'n'cricket story: "Heat On Cricket Pitch Warms This Climate Change Laureate." If you're waiting for some journalist to ask him about the contradictions between his lifestyle and the one he wants the rest of us to submit to, that sound you hear is cricketers chirping.

Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.

Below is a page from ACORN’s 2005 Annual Report. In it, they tell the story of how one of their employees teamed up with NBC Dateline to do a ‘video sting’ on tax-preparer Jackson Hewitt.

Pages from 2005-ACORN-Annual-Report-web -

Somehow we missed the missives from the Columbia Journalism Review condemning NBC for staining journalism. We also can’t find James Rainey’s cliche-riddled scolding of NBC for taking part in ACORN’s intentional deception. We can’t imagine the journalism mandarins would approve of such tactics only because they approved of the target. Surely, the criticism of NBC must be out there. If our readers find any links to these critiques, please include them in the comments.

For greater context on the long history of hidden-camera videos and other forms of aggressive investigative journalism, see Michael Walsh’s piece here.

This story may be ho-hum, but yawn along with it for a minute anyway. The Clare College Choir, from Cambridge University, plans to do a Christmas tour of Israel. Their itinerary includes a Christmas Eve performance at the Church of the Nativity (Bethlehem, natch). And they are catching hell from swaths of the British elite. One sentence from the linked-to article: “Signatories of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign include several notable figures, including the historian William Dalrymple, playwright Caryl Churchill, Oxford academic Karma Nabulsi, and Garth Hewitt, Honorary Canon of the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr in Jerusalem.”

Have another sentence, too. The article quotes an “Irish composer and political activist,” Dr. Raymond Deane: “Those of us involved in culture can’t stand back and pretend that we inhabit some ethereal realm remote from the real world. Tours by artists such as the Choir of Clare College will be exploited by the lavishly funded Israeli propaganda machine as proof of the ‘normality’ and ‘acceptability’ of the Israeli rogue state -- which is neither normal nor acceptable.”

Yes, this story is ho-hum, because the vilification and ostracism of Israel are de rigueur. But the vilification and ostracism are not without danger: because, when you delegitimize a people -- make that people a pariah, unfit to be sung to -- you leave them especially vulnerable to attack or destruction. Imagine what Israel’s enemies must think: “What do we have to lose? The whole world’s against them. No one will weep.” This was one reason that so many of us were horrified by the Durban conference, held just before 9/11. (And remember that President Obama awarded the czarina of that conference, Mary Robinson, the Medal of Freedom.)

I hope that Clare College’s choir sticks to its guns, and proceeds with that tour of Israel. A final word: The linked-to news article comes from Varsity, “The Independent Cambridge Student Newspaper since 1947.” The article states that, in the Israeli operation carried out in Gaza last winter, “1,400 Palestinian people were massacred.”

These student journalists will be just perfect for the BBC.

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Update: 2:56 p.m.: Tevi Troy analyzes the effect of the new CBO scores on Reid's battle for 60 votes here. 

*   *   *

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released new estimates that suggest individual premiums would rise under the Democrat health-care bill currently being debated in the Senate.

According to the findings, by 2016 the average per-person premium on individual health-care plans would be 10 to 13 percent higher under the Senate bill than they would be under current law. Americans enrolled in small or large group plans under the proposed legislation would see modest cost changes in premiums, ranging from about +1 to about -3 percent.

The new scores provided ammunition to Senate Republicans as the floor debate on the bill began today.

“The bottom line is this: after 2,074 pages and trillions more in government spending, massive new taxes and a half-trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare for seniors, most people, according to the Congressional Budget office, will end up paying more or seeing no significant savings," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell during remarks on the floor.

This is not what the American people are asking for. And it’s certainly not reform.”

Two-thirds of registered voters who responded to a recent survey say the federal stimulus packages has not resulted in the improvement of the Western Illinois economy

The poll, commissioned by QuincyNews.org, was conducted by We Ask America on November 22 between 4:30 PM – 6:30.  In all, 15,000 random residential phone numbers of registered voters in the 17th Congressional District were dialed, resulting in 1,278 people taking the poll. The numbers dialed were randomly selected.

The results have a margin of error of ± 2.74 %.

Of those who responded, 66.7 % say the stimulus package hasn’t improved the economy. Just under 22 percent said there had been an improvement while 11.5 percent were not sure.

The poll also showed a skepticism toward health care reform and also a dissatisfaction with the incumbent 17th District congressman, Democrat Phil Hare of Rock Island.

Pollster Gregg Durham said the data tells him a ‘throw the bums out’ mentality is emerging for 2010.

“This is happening in the rest of the country,” Durham said. “It’s a little stronger in Illinois…this dissatisfaction with politicians with one governor in prison and the last one impeached and in legal trouble. The meter is being pegged in this state.”

“What is very telling is the independents are very strongly against the incumbent. There is a tendency to look for something else. There is a dissatisfaction with an incumbent.

“While even the democrats said they really don’t see the impact of stimulus spending, the real surprise is that the independents broke most closely to the Republican view points,” said Gregg Durham, who conducted the poll.”There’s some programs that we call eyerollers. Health care reform is one of them.”

“The pendulum swings both ways.  When you combine the major economic woes, plus the emotionally charged programs that are being discussed…health care, cap and trade, card check…there is a hastening of that pendulum swing and party affiliation doesn’t matter. “

Durham said the frustration is mounting.

“People are becoming weary,” he said. “They are holding their hands up and asking how we’re going to pay for this, couple that with a bad economy and not enough jobs you have the potential for a quantum shift. “

Click here to go to QuincyNews.org and read the polling information.

This was weird.
Chris “Tingles” Matthews says Barack Obama needs to act a little less like Neville Chamberlain and more like Winston Churchill.

Via NewsBusters from this weekend’s “The Chris Matthews Show”:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Will this long deliberation, Anne Kornblut, you’ve got the tough question here to start with. Whip around here. It took three months to make this decision. Will he look smart and deliberate for having taken all this time, or will the dithering shot still being cast in by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney, is that still going to hurt?

ANNE KORNBLUT, WASHINGTON POST: The gamble they’re making is that he’ll look smart and he’ll look like the anti-Bush for having thought about it for so long.

JOE KLEIN, TIME: The anti-Bush part is really important because Bush really needed to do a strategy re-evaluation about Iraq six months in there and he never did.

MATTHEWS: Andrea, will it look good if he takes all this time?

ANDREA KRAMER, NBC: I agree. I think it will look good if he takes his time, if taking his time he comes out with something that adds up. If he doesn’t then people will say you took so long and what did you deliver?

DAVID IGNATIUS, WASHINGTON POST: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is, he is going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young men and women are going to go there, fight and get killed and I think this is not…

MATTHEWS: So, too much Chamberlain and not enough Churchill.

IGNATIUS: Well, too much, too much college professor.

For the record… It’s been at least 93 days since the Ditherer in Chief was asked by his top general in Afghanistan for reinforcements.

Just in time for Christmas…
Sarah Palin is the heroine in the upcoming children’s book, Help Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country.

From the author of the bestselling Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, Katharine DeBrecht, comes Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country! – a hilarious and entertaining way for parents to sit down with their children and teach them the origins of the new Tea Party movement and the importance of standing up for liberty and the American Dream.

The Polish News reported, via Free Republic:

While the former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate has achieved success with record book sales and support for a 2012 presidential election bid, she has also achieved something else few public figures ever have: heroine status in a children’s book.

In a cameo appearance, “Governor Sarah,” a Palin lookalike character, attempts to help two boys with a struggling swingset business hang onto the American Dream despite high taxes, burdensome regulations and 246 czars in the recently released children’s book Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country!, by bestselling- author Katharine DeBrecht.

“I am trying to let all Americans know that these radicals are killing the American Dream and I want to stop them from hurting people that produce products and provide jobs,” the Palin character consoles the frustrated boys.

Five British sailors are being held hostage in Iran after their racing yacht may have inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters.

The Foreign Office confirmed that a racing yacht owned by Sail Bahrain and crewed by five British sailors was detained by the Iranian Navy on November 25.

The yacht is believed to have been on its way to the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race which began on November 25 and may have 'inadvertently' strayed into Iranian waters.

The vicious killing of the police officers in Tacoma, Wash., may well have political repercussions for Mike Huckabee, as others have noted here. The primary suspect is Maurice Clemmons, who in 1989 received a 95-year prison sentence that was later commuted, in 2000, by then-Governor Huckabee. Whenever Clemmons has been free, he seems to have perpetrated still more violent crimes, according to the news stories.

I would, however, caution against a blanket condemnation of pardons, as well as any hasty move to simply abolish parole. The American criminal-justice system is thoroughly swamped. Right now there are more than 7 million people under criminal-justice “supervision.” About 2.5 million are behind bars, and about 4.5 million are on probation or parole. This system is greatly overburdened by non-violent drug offenders. Conditions vary by jurisdiction, but in general there is no prison space left. So it is unrealistic for us to say, “If a prisoner violates parole, send him back to jail immediately!”

Of course, there are sensible ways in which to “triage” our overburdened system. The priority ought to be keeping violent thugs like Clemmons behind bars, not sending drug offenders back to prison for failing urine tests. Arkansas and Washington officials who failed to comprehend this basic point should be condemned and held to account.

But that is not enough. Given the overall state of our system, I would stress these facts: (1) prison space is limited; (2) tens of thousands of prisoners are released from prison every year; and (3) even the best wardens and parole officers can’t stop recidivists who are bent on a life of crime.

Bottom line: Take government officials to task for dumb calls. More important, let’s get our dysfunctional system on a better track. That means giving up the futile drug war so that our limited resources (police time, court time, prison space, parole system) can focus on the violent offenders.

-- Tim Lynch is director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice.

Today, on the Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), Kevin McCullough joins us again to discuss the intersection of faith and politics. [...] Read the rest »

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In a 10,500 word story on the state of the Republican Party, Washington Post staff writers on Monday waited until paragraph 36 of a 37 paragraph article to highlight the overwhelming belief that the press is biased against Republicans. Jon Cohen and Dan Balz belatedly noted, "One rallying point for the GOP, though, is a broad perception among moderates, conservatives, and younger and older Republicans alike that television news is biased against the Republican Party and tilted highly in favor of Obama and Democrats." [Emphasis added.]

Additionally, the print edition of the paper featured 15 charts about what respondents thought of Republicans in Congress, what issues they saw as important and other topics. Unsurprisingly, the Post did not create a graph to highlight the fact that 74 percent of poll-takers who lean Republican think "television news" is biased in favor the Democratic Party. (It’s unclear why the poll question only surveyed the biases of television. Was the liberal paper afraid of what people might say about the Post?)

87 percent of GOP supporters found coverage of Sarah Palin to be unfair. This, too, did not warrant a chart. And considering that many people will not read all 10,000-plus words, these salient points will be missed by many.

Balz and Cohen did manage to highlight, in the second paragraph, one poll result embarrassing to President Obama:

Republicans and GOP-leaning independents are overwhelmingly negative about Obama and the Democratic Party more broadly, with nearly all dissatisfied with the administration's policies and almost half saying they are "angry" about them. About three-quarters have a more basic complaint, saying Obama does not stand for "traditional American values." More than eight in 10 say there is no chance they would support his reelection.

Once again, however, this fact did not make it into any of the numerous charts accompanying the article. Instead, both the article and the graphics focused on whether or not the Republican Party is focusing too heavily on issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Balz and Cohen wrote:

About a third of Republicans and GOP-leaners say the party is putting "too little" emphasis on same-sex marriage, but nearly as many say it is spending "too much" time on it. Here, there are big divisions by group, with younger people evenly divided between whether the party overemphasizes or underemphasizes the issue. More than four in 10 moderates say too much, with a similar proportion of the very conservative saying too little.

The complete poll results can be found here.

The budget for "Brothers," per director Jim Sheridan, is $25 million, which probably doesn’t include marketing for promotion and … well, tell me again how Hollywood is driven by profit and not ideology? We’re a month away from 2010 so it’s hard to argue “Brothers” went into production before everyone was well aware that every single war film flopped miserably.

But who does the snob Sheridan choose to blame in advance should his war-themed film flop? Not his own bonehead decision to jump into a genre with a 100% failure rate, not the investors who dove in with him … no, he blames We The American People: 

Midway through a conversation with director Jim Sheridan about his latest film, “Brothers,” he abruptly asks, “Do you think anybody will go see this movie?”

I say what I think he wants to hear – that a cast led by Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal is sure to draw people. But we both know that movies that so much as touch on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be tough sells. …

“I think the American people just don’t think there is a war on, so why should they have to go to a movie about something that doesn’t exist? Their state of denial is hard to overcome,” Sheridan said.

Unbelievable.

The Leftist Hollywood Playbook:

1. Make movie no one wants to see.
2. Insult audience prior to flop.
3. Blame audience after flop.
4. Receive ”brave” tag by fawning entertainment media.
5. Position on Hollywood cocktail party circuit remains firmly in place.

But as is always the case with a Hollywoodist, you can take Sheridan at his word and still come to the same conclusion: If you’re a director who wants to make a profit – a film people will want to see — and you believe Americans are in denial over the war — why spend $25 million on a war-themed film?

Predicting what will hit and miss at the box office is a fool’s game. Maybe “Brothers” will be the genre’s outlier, who knows. But how tired and played does this description from the original Danish version of “Brothers” sound:

Then Michael comes home with a full-blown case of post-traumatic stress disorder…

The trailer tells the rest of the story.

Am I the only one who eagerly awaits the $25 million film — a serious drama like “Brothers” – where the screwed-up brother returns from a tour of duty transformed into a responsible, resourceful and mature man ready to take his place in the world? That would not only be an inspiring and more accurate story worthy of the brave men and women who serve our country … it would finally be a fresh idea from an industry drowning in their own leftist cliches.

Originally published on November 30, 2009, at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog, where Nolte serves as editor-in-chief.

Photo above of "Brothers" director Jim Sheridan, taken by Lorey Sebastian for the San Francisco Chronicle. 

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President Obama has finally made a decision on Afghanistan, which he will communicate to an anxious nation tomorrow night. The White House announcement no doubt has already fueled many kitchen-table conversations during this Thanksgiving weekend, maybe even heated debates. For the sake of our national security, let’s hope most families have concluded that abandoning Afghanistan without achieving our aims is not an option.

Some will still waver of course, which is why the president must use his bully pulpit to explain why it is in the vital interests of the United States to defeat the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and establish a free, sovereign Afghanistan that can govern itself and look after its own people. He will be speaking from West Point, and his audience surely knows what is at stake.

Failure to achieve these goals is not an option, for it would be a direct threat to our national well-being. That’s not theory; it’s historical fact. We’ve already walked away from Afghanistan once, in the early 1990s, thinking that what happened there couldn’t possibly hurt us here. We were wrong.

The alternative to victory in Afghanistan is a return to chaos and, quite possibly, genocide. Al-Qaeda and its local Taliban enablers would immediately fill the ensuing power vacuum, turning that benighted land into an apocalyptic failed state. This would recreate the exact conditions that produced the 9/11 attacks.

Only this time, things could be worse. We could witness a regional conflagration that quickly turned nuclear and went global. Afghanistan borders on Pakistan, a nuclear nation with many Taliban sympathizers (especially among its ethnic Pashtuns).

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan could easily inject further instability in Pakistan, strengthening extremist forces in the region that also threaten India. The likelihood of war between India and Pakistan -- a war that could potentially go nuclear -- would rise significantly. Remember, these two countries have already fought three wars since the partition of British India in 1947, and enmity between the two still abounds.

These are the stakes in Afghanistan. Defeating our enemies there and leaving behind a stable state is a national-security priority. President Obama must make this case without hesitation, obfuscation, or qualification.

Unfortunately, the president has thus far displayed irresoluteness on this key security issue. The publicized uncertainty in his decision-making augurs ill on several fronts.

It is inexcusable that he has taken so long to reach a decision on troop levels. The man requesting more troops, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was personally chosen by President Obama to lead the operation in Afghanistan. His request for troops was based on months of quite deliberative strategy reviews.

Yet the president has indulged in many more months of “review,” involving more and more people with less and less knowledge of the military situation in Afghanistan. The needless delay has put the mission in graver jeopardy and left the lives of American servicemen unnecessarily at risk.

Then there’s the matter of troop strength. News reports based on White House leaks indicate that the president will tell the nation he is sending somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 troops, possibly arguing that these are only 5,000 fewer than General McChrystal asked for.

The political calculation is that sending a smaller number of troops would pacify the Democratic party’s leftist base, which wants an immediate U.S. withdrawal. But the military calculation should take precedence.

The New York Times has revealed that Gen. McChrystal’s original assessment called for an additional 60,000 to 80,000 troops to maximize the chance of success. A decision to send in less than that incurs a greater risk of failure.

General McChrystal was quickly muzzled by a White House apprehensive that he was asking for bigger numbers of troops. Some Democrats even called for the president to fire his general if McChrystal continued speaking to the press. None of this, however, should make us forget that the president reportedly will announce that he will send in fewer troops than his commander on the ground says is needed to achieve maximum success.

Whatever troop level is announced, the president should refrain from confusing the nation with talk of “an exit strategy.” We all want our troops to come home. But the president’s strategy should focus on creating the conditions for that outcome -- which is a stable Afghan government capable of preventing Taliban and al-Qaeda safe havens.

Talking about “exits” rather than “victory” sends the wrong message to our enemies. It tells them that we are not in the war to win, and that we may very well throw in the towel if they offer more resistance.

One final point: Yes, it will be extremely disappointing if the president fails to commit all the troops requested by the field command. But even if that happens, we should be wary of the argument that “if we’re not in to win, we should pull out now.” That’s a false choice, because a pullout is a de facto defeat.

This war is winnable if the president will deploy the resources and strategy to achieve victory. If he does not, then a choice will indeed have been made. Defeat carries dire consequences.

-- Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state, is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.

President Obama has finally made a decision on Afghanistan, which he will communicate to an anxious nation tomorrow night. The White House announcement no doubt has already fueled many kitchen-table conversations during this Thanksgiving weekend, maybe even heated debates. For the sake of our national security, let’s hope most families have concluded that abandoning Afghanistan without achieving our aims is not an option.

Some will still waver of course, which is why the president must use his bully pulpit to explain why it is in the vital interests of the United States to defeat the Taliban, destroy al-Qaeda, and establish a free, sovereign Afghanistan that can govern itself and look after its own people. He will be speaking from West Point, and his audience surely knows what is at stake.

Failure to achieve these goals is not an option, for it would be a direct threat to our national well-being. That’s not theory; it’s historical fact. We’ve already walked away from Afghanistan once, in the early 1990s, thinking that what happened there couldn’t possibly hurt us here. We were wrong.

The alternative to victory in Afghanistan is a return to chaos and, quite possibly, genocide. Al-Qaeda and its local Taliban enablers would immediately fill the ensuing power vacuum, turning that benighted land into an apocalyptic failed state. This would recreate the exact conditions that produced the 9/11 attacks.

Only this time, things could be worse. We could witness a regional conflagration that quickly turned nuclear and went global. Afghanistan borders on Pakistan, a nuclear nation with many Taliban sympathizers (especially among its ethnic Pashtuns).

A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan could easily inject further instability in Pakistan, strengthening extremist forces in the region that also threaten India. The likelihood of war between India and Pakistan -- a war that could potentially go nuclear -- would rise significantly. Remember, these two countries have already fought three wars since the partition of British India in 1947, and enmity between the two still abounds.

These are the stakes in Afghanistan. Defeating our enemies there and leaving behind a stable state is a national-security priority. President Obama must make this case without hesitation, obfuscation, or qualification.

Unfortunately, the president has thus far displayed irresoluteness on this key security issue. The publicized uncertainty in his decision-making augurs ill on several fronts.

It is inexcusable that he has taken so long to reach a decision on troop levels. The man requesting more troops, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was personally chosen by President Obama to lead the operation in Afghanistan. His request for troops was based on months of quite deliberative strategy reviews.

Yet the president has indulged in many more months of “review,” involving more and more people with less and less knowledge of the military situation in Afghanistan. The needless delay has put the mission in graver jeopardy and left the lives of American servicemen unnecessarily at risk.

Then there’s the matter of troop strength. News reports based on White House leaks indicate that the president will tell the nation he is sending somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 troops, possibly arguing that these are only 5,000 fewer than General McChrystal asked for.

The political calculation is that sending a smaller number of troops would pacify the Democratic party’s leftist base, which wants an immediate U.S. withdrawal. But the military calculation should take precedence.

The New York Times has revealed that Gen. McChrystal’s original assessment called for an additional 60,000 to 80,000 troops to maximize the chance of success. A decision to send in less than that incurs a greater risk of failure.

General McChrystal was quickly muzzled by a White House apprehensive that he was asking for bigger numbers of troops. Some Democrats even called for the president to fire his general if McChrystal continued speaking to the press. None of this, however, should make us forget that the president reportedly will announce that he will send in fewer troops than his commander on the ground says is needed to achieve maximum success.

Whatever troop level is announced, the president should refrain from confusing the nation with talk of “an exit strategy.” We all want our troops to come home. But the president’s strategy should focus on creating the conditions for that outcome -- which is a stable Afghan government capable of preventing Taliban and al-Qaeda safe havens.

Talking about “exits” rather than “victory” sends the wrong message to our enemies. It tells them that we are not in the war to win, and that we may very well throw in the towel if they offer more resistance.

One final point: Yes, it will be extremely disappointing if the president fails to commit all the troops requested by the field command. But even if that happens, we should be wary of the argument that “if we’re not in to win, we should pull out now.” That’s a false choice, because a pullout is a de facto defeat.

This war is winnable if the president will deploy the resources and strategy to achieve victory. If he does not, then a choice will indeed have been made. Defeat carries dire consequences.

-- Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state, is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.