One – Somehow PETA would focus more on the agony of the geese that were sucked into both of the plane’s jet engines than the safety of the 150 passengers and five crew members, perhaps even suing US Air and hero pilot Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger for animal cruelty.

And Two – Somehow, somewhere, global warming would be blamed.

Well — no word yet from the animal advocates.

But their fellow greenies in the climate alarm department didn’t disappoint.

A piece in yesterday’s Time (hat tip: MM), cited a June report from the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Transportation and Fish and Wildlife Service finding that “the number of bird strikes has quadrupled, from 1,759 in 1990 to a record 7,666 in 2007.” Here’s one of the possible causes for the potentially deadly jet engine stalling phenomenon, according to Time: [emphasis mine]

“While officials use radar and radio collars to track bird populations, habitat destruction and climate change have disrupted migratory patterns. Moreover, the populations of certain species of birds are increasing at rapid rates, thanks to changes in food supply. The Canada-goose population, for example, has grown 7.3% annually from 1980 to 2006.”

Outstanding.

Perhaps after PETA figures out what to do about the freezing iguanas falling from trees in ice-cold Florida, we’ll hear the geese’s side of the story.

Here’s the not unlikely scenario:

In addition to his prominent appearance on the national ballot, Biden quietly ran for and won re-election as Delaware Senator on Tuesday, as provided by his state’s law. Interestingly enough, while the law obviously requires he resign that seat before taking up his loftier duties on January 20th, it sets no actual deadline for such action. If conjecture that he might resign before year’s end holds true, then January’s pre-inaugural cabinet confirmation hearings would amount to Washington business-as-usual. But just last month, Biden reportedly said this: “I wouldn’t resign my Senate seat until I were sworn in as Vice President of the United States.”

Such would open the door to a truly historic convergence of events. As you probably know, Biden is the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and will hold that gavel as long as he holds his seat on Capitol Hill. The committee’s oversight umbrella over all government foreign policy agencies — including the State Department — includes hearings on the nominations of all US diplomats and, more pertinently — Secretaries of State.

Now, there’s talk of Obama feigning his “unity” mettle by reaching out to moderate Republican Senators – like Richard Lugar of Indiana or recently retired Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — for the post. But both Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (who may otherwise replace Biden as SFRC chairman) and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson have made no secret of their yearnings for the position. More importantly, with the media running the same interference on Obama’s political obligations as they have his dubious associations, almost any name might pop up.

But whosoever he puts forth, the president-elect will do so content in the knowledge that his second in command will be there not only in advocacy, but also in charge.

Now, you might wonder what significance this may have beyond the historical, especially with final approval in the hands of the full and Democrat controlled Senate of the 111th Congress.

Perhaps none, but keep in mind: while economic headlines have underscored the urgency of a solid choice for Treasury Secretary, the international news temporarily relocated to below the fold emphasizes the need for a Secretary of State of equal stature. And qualifying such a person in these dangerous times – particularly given the policy changes made inevitable on Tuesday — will require nothing less than the most evenhanded of committee debates.

But once again, the fairness preaching Obama will have an unfair edge.

After explaining how changing “our tax code” to take even more from the rich to give to the poor would “make sure that everybody’s got a shot,” Obama counterattacked his opponents’ blasts at his earlier “spread the wealth” comments:

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

Selfishness? Hmmm. Where have I heard that one part Karl Marx, one part Sesame Street economic bias before?

Oh yeah, it was during his April Philadelphia debate with Hillary. Remember his similarly kiddy-comrade response to Charlie Gibson’s rebuke that his plan to raise the capital gains tax rate would likely decrease revenues? It went like this, with my emphasis added:

“Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness. We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year — $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That’s not fair.”

Not fair? Selfish?

Moving the discussion to the adult table, it appears that not only does Obama’s self-righteous sense of fair-play trump economic efficiency, but anyone unwilling to share the booty of their daily toil with less-productive strangers is immoral.

The socialist experiment has failed all international field-tests miserably. Obama’s Sophomoric Socialism would only spread similar misery to America.

Perhaps he’d think that unselfishly fair.

There was a clever axiom floating around a few months ago that this year’s presidential race would pit the only Republican capable of winning against the only Democrat capable of losing. And while bad choices by the McCain camp are largely responsible for dispelling the first half of that ephemeral adage, credit crunch anxiety actually shares tribute for destruction of the second with what can best be described as useful racism.

Sure, all GOP candidates seeking the White House are forced to deal with a national media so ensconced with de Facto Democratic campaign volunteers, it’s amazing any ever get elected. But the skin color of their current candidate has created an irrational PC ecstasy amongst the fourth estate, one that finds them simultaneously agitating and exploiting racial divides to an extreme that borders slimy.

And, while its impact has been somewhat diminished by the current financial crisis – which ironically was caused largely by similarly quixotic Liberal racial politics – it may still prove quite significant in certain battleground states.

McCain’s Refrains

Ironically, McCain has wisely steered clear of yesteryear’s hot-potato ethnic issues (affirmative action, welfare, crime, et al). The Arizonan even made the arguably honorable but unquestionably imprudent early decision not to unwrap the gift horse that was loudmouth Jeremiah Wright. Yet, even as they tiptoe carefully down the PC high road, neither McCain nor his running mate can make a move or utter a word without stepping in something absurdly spun by either the opposing camp or the MSM as racially evocative.

Back in September, a quite topical McCain Ad [video] questioned Obama’s economic experience and attacked his advisor “on mortgage and housing policy,” former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines:

“Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed ‘extensive financial fraud.’ Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill. Barack Obama. Bad advice. Bad instincts. Not ready to lead.”

Great Ad — and right on target. But amazingly, many in the media, including Time’s Karen Tumulty, cried foul. Why? Because the video contained “sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.” The calculus: One black Obama plus one black Raines plus one white “stuck with the bill” taxpayer equals one subliminal interracial mugging.

Ridiculous? Try this one — the following month, when Sarah Palin mentioned at a California rally that Obama was “palling around with terrorists,” the AP branded the comment as carrying “a racially tinged subtext.” Hmmm. The Alaskan governor was referring to Obama’s still inadequately explained close relationship with unrepentant home-grown terrorist William Ayers – who just happens to be white. Yet the preposterously twisted charge continues its regurgitation on cable news channels ad nauseam.

Such discussion-avoiding dishonesty would seem better suited to racial ambulance-chasers of the Jackson/Sharpton school than to the post-racial savior of man.

But somehow, the Senator has learned to adapt.

The Racism For The White House

Obama’s melanin-empowered suit of armor has also shielded him from questions regarding past affiliations with the voter-fraud felons at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) [must see video shreds his assertions]. The group’s vote-rigging apparatus in 15 states, many of them hotly contested “swing states,” is currently the subject of numerous local and at least one federal probe. Obama dismisses the matter as “a distraction,” and has effectively jumped aboard the Democrats’ dodge that in attacking the highly partisan voter registration group, Republicans are attempting to suppress the predominately minority and low-income votes it facilitates by its community organization actions.

Last week, civil rights veteran Rep. John Lewis of Georgia compared McCain/Palin to uber-racist segregationist George Wallace and condemned their campaign tactics as “sowing the seeds of hatred and division,” adding that “as one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign.”

Amazing – there’s been no mention of Jeremiah Wright’s anti-white, anti-American venom the Obama’s dutifully sat through every Sunday for 20 years. Nor any crowd inciters of the disparity of racial set-asides or the disproportionate incidence of black crime caliber. Inconsequential – as it appears that when running against a candidate of color in 2008, virtually every sentence criticizing your opponent is parsed until non-existent racial “code words” are uncovered.

Peter Beinhart recently explained that the old tactic of spotlighting recidivist freed murders like Willie Horton or inner city “welfare queens” squeezing welfare meal-tickets from their loins has been replaced by a subtler form of modern racism:

“In the past, Republicans often used race to make their opponents seem anti-white. In 2008, with their incessant talk about who loves their country and who doesn’t, McCain and Palin are doing something different: they’re using race to make Obama seem anti-American.”

So it’s not enough that McCain’s strengths of patriotism and great personal sacrifice to his country have been preempted by incredibly inopportune economic realities, they’ve also been denigrated to the status of racist ploys.

How diabolically brilliant — by the standards the media have created, virtually any sales pitch team McCain comes up with must therefore be negative. No wonder we’re being pelted daily with polls claiming a majority of the electorate is tired of McCain’s “going negative.” By pressing the race angle, the media have convinced their intellectually force-fed audience that simply seeking the truth about Obama’s unsavory associations with unrepentant domestic terrorists, felonious merchants of voter fraud, insufferably racist and America-hating spiritual leaders – and let’s not forget convicted corrupt political fundraiser Tony Rezko – is itself unsavory.

They and the Democrats have also fraudulently convinced the worried masses that their miseries — including the almost daily loss of value to their 401(k) — are due to economic policies embraced by McCain — who Barney Frank claims is trying to place the blame on poor black people.

Any questions why Obama never leaves home without his Cheshire Cat grin?

For Whom the Swell Polls

To hear the media tell it, the fact that the clearly superior candidate isn’t commanding a 20 point lead in the polls is only explainable by rampant racism. Just Saturday, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman stoked those fires by asking “how the heck” this isn’t a “colossal blowout?” Even the existing spread worries those who believe that some proclaimed pro-Obama whites might not vote black once cloistered in the comfy privacy of the voting booth. Still others lay claim that hordes of unsophisticated white Neanderthals will never vote for a black candidate under any circumstances.

But the Real Clear Politics National Average currently has Obama leading 49.6 to 43.1. That’s a far greater spread than George Bush enjoyed over John Kerry at any time during October of 2004. The semi-black candidate is on top by 6.5%, despite his nearly unprecedented lack of experience, his dubious distinction as National Journal‘s most liberal senator of 2007 and his admittedly wealth-redistributing tax proposals that will surely decimate small businesses. He’s actually ahead by double digits in many polls despite his socialist leanings, shady past alliances and equally mysterious contemporary allegiances.

And yet, sanctimonious pundits and other assorted political hacks consistently go unchallenged declaring that many preferring the experienced war hero who has demonstrated unwavering bravery, tremendous national security acumen, an independent’s willingness to buck his party, and a penchant for cutting government waste, do so with insidious incentive. Last month, a bunch of AP writers decided it necessary to raise the white guilt bar higher by releasing the results of their recent joint poll with Yahoo News. They announced that “one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them ‘lazy,’ ‘violent’ or responsible for their own troubles” which could “cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close.” And more than a third of white Democrats and Independents “agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks.”

But notice the focus of the poll. Few Republicans would vote for anyone with Obama’s track record. Liberal Democrats would vote for him even if he had tapped Wright for second chair. It’s the likely undecided voters – potential McCain converts — being targeted by this insidious campaign to win an election through racial intimidation. One can only hope that the center and slightly left-of-center electorate is made of smarter stuff, but it’s simply amazing how many people will go to drastic lengths to prove their “tolerance.”

Which segues nicely to our next topic.

Bradley’s Defect

Not a day goes by that some Liberal whiner isn’t raising the Bradley Effect as proof of white racism. But their portrayals of the phenomenon — named for a black Democrat who lost the California governor’s race in 1982 after being well ahead in the polls — are complete shams, crafted to coerce more ballots into the Obama column by further fomenting white guilt.

And it’s the media that – as an upshot of ignorance, deliberate misinformation, or perhaps both — perpetuate the distrust advanced by the effect’s mythology.

For example — in a recent op-ed attempting to explain the term to those she accused of misusing it, LA Times’ Patt Morrison instead managed only to embody the conflation:

“The Bradley effect has come to mean this: Voters lie to pollsters about black candidates, and enough of them lie to create a huge gap between poll results and election results. The Bradley effect asserts that when Americans finally get into the voting booth and see the black candidate’s name on the ballot, they flinch.”

Earth to Patt: those two sentences completely contradict one another. Either they lied in the first place, or they were forthright with the pollster, but “flinched” when they got into the booth. You can’t have it both ways.

Fox News’ generally judicious Juan Williams appears to be equally confused on the issue. On the October 6th Special Report, he told Britt Hume that the Obama camp was working under the assumption they’d need to overcome a 5% false poll lead due to the Bradley effect, because “you have a certain number of people who just won’t admit they refuse to vote for a black man.” But back in August, Williams wrote that “there is no telling how many white voters are lying to pollsters when they say they plan to vote for a black man to be president.”

While these two descriptions might appear accordant with Morrison’s first, and therefore indistinguishable from each other, they actually couldn’t be any less congruent, and this is key.

Both represent the typical Liberal lament that white voters might be less than honest with pollsters when asked their preference between a black and white candidate. But while the first specifically implies racism, the second allows for an entirely different – and more likely — explanation.

For starters, intransigent multi-cultists would rather die that speak ill of even the most loathsome individuals of darker pigment, lest they be branded with the scarlet “I” of “intolerance,” or – gasp — the dreaded “R” word. But given the media’s remarkable success convincing whites that they we are all born accountable for the original sin of racism, the urge to prove one’s virtue can entice even the noblest of men.

Accordingly, along with the self-assured-highly-evolved celebrants of diversity, many otherwise clear-headed poll subjects intuitively spout the name “Obama” whenever asked their candidate preference.

PC programming, not white bigotry.

Truth be told, they’ll likely be many more Liberal morons voting Obama simply because he’s black than redneck simpletons voting against him for the same reason.

Of course, that didn’t stop James Carville from hinting of Bradley-inspired race riots. During CNN’s post-second-debate analysis, the always rational Democratic strategist assured host Anderson Cooper that “if Obama goes in and he has a consistent five point lead and loses the election, it would be very, very, very dramatic out there.”

Nicely played, James — images of Watts and Rodney King to close the deal with white fear. What, no media outrage at the dangerous black man stereotyping?

Score yet another racial-disharmony plus for Sir Obama.

All the Prejudice Men

The Left shares Spike Lee’s vision of the America portrayed in his films — real villains wear white faces and their oppressed black victims ultimately become retaliatory heroes. And now is the time for all whites to accept that vision, admit their guilt, and seek salvation by supporting Obama’s Messianic destiny. And, just as they have in promoting the global warming hoax, the media have worked overtime to label dissenters – who buy neither the white-America-stinks premise nor its thereby superfluous solution — as cretins of self-serving motivation.

And they’ll be no sacred cows. Remember how quickly they downgraded their favorite Arkansan from “first black president” to suspected bigot for the sin of noticing that, like Obama, Jesse Jackson had once won the South Carolina primary?

So we must assume that after helping Obama underhandedly manipulate white guilt in pursuit of ultimate executive power, they’ll make similar attempts assisting his wielding such authority should he achieve it.

How far a stretch would it be for the MSM to help racially intimidate congressmen voting or even presenting floor speeches against a President Obama backed bill? Or decry a pending – albeit highly unlikely — overturning of a President Obama veto as a “racist override?” As always, the potential unintended consequences of their naïve meddling are as endless as the grounds for such interference are baseless. Can you say “No Reparations, No Peace?”

Remember when Chris Matthews asked Obama supporter David Bonoir whether Hillary’s refusal to surrender the Democratic Primary would give “white voters a permission slip to vote against an African-American candidate the longer she’s in the race?”

We don’t need permission from Obama, his cheerleaders at MSNBC or any other insufferable media hacks. History reveals that when the measure of a candidate meets America’s standards, he or she will be elected — regardless of outward appearance. Consider this: In 2000, black Republican J.C Watts earned 65% of the vote to be reelected to a fourth term as Congressman of Oklahoma’s Fourth District, which is only 6.7% black.

If the true racists were silenced, Obama would have much more to worry about.

And we — decidedly less.

But within a century’s time, history will very likely reverse these views — lauding the former and ridiculing the latter.

Never forget.

In this MUST SEE video, the man who would be commander-in-chief promises that, as president, he will not only end the war in Iraq, but will also

While the video was posted on YouTube — with mysteriously modest credential — on February 16th, it has received little attention outside of a few message boards. That is, until yesterday, when it caught the watchful eye of Doug Ross.

But will unveiling the real Obama represent even a crimp in the tracks to this runaway freight train?

Oddly enough, this dangerously quixotic world-view from a man who has promised to sit down unconditionally with Iran’s apocalyptic madman Ahmadinejad, will likely make him even more popular with his Bush-bashing base. In fact, while I wonder when this little slice of military naivety was produced, I just can’t help pondering whose decision it was to consign it to the broom closet.

I suspect that whoever it was soon realized the Frankensteinian general election potential of that which they had created.

But now IT’S ALIVE.

Ironically born Adam Pearlman of mixed Jewish and Catholic blood, Gadahn is best known for his incendiary anti-American videos, one of which demanded that we all convert to Islam or die. But he’s also been tied to meetings with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a number of domestic terror plots.

NBC reports that a “very close friend” told them that “all contact” with Gadahn was lost after the January 31st American strike. Other terrorists known to be traveling with him are also missing. Gadahn had reportedly left for North Waziristan a week before the strike to attend “an important meeting”.

While it remains possible that the group is simply laying low in response to being attacked, there’s good reason to believe that this despicable traitor has made his last video.

Blog scuttlebutt leans otherwise, as many believe that the martyrdom of an American fighting for their Jihad would have prompted an immediate al-Qaeda PR announcement.

But we’ve yet to learn the identities of the 13 people killed in the attacks.

Dare we believe al-Qaeda is better informed?

Whitehouse created quite an outcry among climate hysterics when he suggested that not only had global warming ended, but that we may be entering into a new solar cycle which would begin a period of global cooling. The Sun expert reminded readers that a similar sunspot holiday in the 17th Century (The Maunder Minimum) corresponded with the coldest temperatures of that millennium (The Little Ice Age).

Luckily for the doctor, heretics are no longer burned for blasphemy.

But an article in yesterday’s IBD, cleverly titled The Sun Also Sets, reported that Canadian scientists are seeking emergency funding for equipment to better observe our Sun. To study Global Warming, you’d expect, right? Not quite.

You see, scientists at Canada’s National Research Council are also concerned with the apparent hibernation of old Sol. And they, like Whitehouse, believe we may be entering into another minimum. And they too are concerned, because the shift brought on by Maunder over 300 years ago caused:

“frigid winters and cold summers during that period [which] led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.”

As geologist Professor R. Timothy Patterson explained:

“Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest [11 year] cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth.”

Meanwhile, the Big Green Scare Machine, in complete denial over the glaringly obvious solar factor, continues shoveling the evils of CO2 down our throats. Eco-drones have successfully elevated unproven schemes such as Carbon taxes, Cap-and-Trade, and Carbon capture/sequestration technologies to levels where they are typically found in serious conversations and even proposed law.

How might they respond to a more dramatic climate shift in the complete opposite direction of their current doomsday scenario?

After all, as Patterson points out:

“If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than ‘global warming’ would have had.”

Will this obsession with the greenhouse gas effect end should CO2 levels continue to rise and Earth temperature continue to fall?

Or will their answer to global cooling be to simply pump MORE CO2 into the atmosphere to warm things up?

But in stark contrast to the Green Giant’s appeal, which contained the “signatures” of nearly a quarter million internet denizens of indemonstrable education, it was more than 100 field-leading scientists that signed the letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon which began:

“It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages.”

Yesterday, Gore’s silly electronically-signed whine was presented to the waning UN Climate conference along with his requisite repent-or-perish speech, this time climaxing with these euphoric-applause and hoorah inspiring words:

“My own country the United States is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that.”

The freshly minted Laureate was singling out the country he had once aspired to lead for its refusal to commit to unnecessary and unattainable greenhouse gas abatement goals throughout the 2 week climate festival. Of course, Japan and Canada had stood the same ground, as did “developing” nations China and India. But why quibble? There’re plenty of accolades to go around.

That’s right – three cheers for all nations responsible for gridlocking the progress of the world’s worst idea since Hydrogen-filled blimps.

And the letter to be distributed to Bali revelers on this, the final day, signed by such scientific luminaries as World Federation of Scientists president Dr. Antonio Zichichi and the “Father of Climatology” himself, Dr. Reid Bryson, distinguishes itself from yesterday’s “I Like Al” petition by explaining why.

Declaring the Summaries for Policy Makers the most widely read and quoted of IPCC reports, the climate authorities reiterate that they are prepared not by scientists but rather government representatives. Furthermore, they remind us, contrary to the impression the summaries leave with the reader:

• Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.
• The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.
• Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

The dispatch, which rebukes the conference’s disregard of Kyoto’s failures in attempting to craft severe CO2 restrictions and trading markets, then concludes:

“Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.”

Bona fide experts, dispassionately relating facts and proffering cogent analysis will certainly assuage segments of the quivering heat-fearing masses lamenting a no-deal summit, right? After all, they do appear to react quite passionately to letters of Science.

Remember the hysterical mandatory emissions caps rally-cry letter — signed by 200 likely less objective and categorically less distinguished scientists – that was all the rage at the opening of the conference? And the wide and excited coverage it received from the greenhouse gasbag media-at-large?

Might the fortnight visitors to the Bali of the Folly Green Giant respond similarly to this letter, further authorized by physics legend Dr. Freeman Dyson and Dr. Edward J. Wegman, of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences? As the media is delirious with the same green fever, the degree of the letter’s dissemination will provide a strong indicator.

Try this little experiment over the next few days: Google the words 200 Scientists Bali. Page through the results until you’ve properly appreciated the lay of the land. Now, replace 200 with 100 and repeat.

Any questions?

According to the 1895 will of the Prize’s founder, Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize is to be awarded,

“to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Surely, early winners like Red Cross Founder Jean Henri Dunant, U.S President Theodore Roosevelt and missionary surgeon Albert Schweitzer fit that mold nicely. But the award committee has devolved into a political tool of Europe’s left, and has allowed its personal goals to conduct its judgment.

So, worthy or not, Gore’s victory comes as no surprise at all, particularly with the majority of the media serving as his campaign machine. And naming the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change as his co-honoree only serves to further prove that the selection was made with the left’s cause du jour in mind rather than the intentions of Alfred Nobel.

Besides, with Kofi Annan bringing home the gold in 2001, Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Mohamed Elbaradei in 2004, this has been the century of giving those warmongering right wing Americans the what for they so richly deserve. In such grand Bush-bashing tradition, to whom would you expect them to award the prize, Irena Sendler, the 97-year-old Polish Catholic nominated for saving 2,500 Jews during the Holocaust?

Anyway, even were the committee’s motives pure, their recognition of Al Gore’s work “to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” does no more to “settle” the debate over anthropogenic global warming than did Gore’s recent Emmy award. To the contrary, it’s just another arrow in the eco-maniac quiver they’ll aim at their target of shutting down further discourse on the subject.

Just as both of this year’s Laureates have manipulated public opinion with agenda driven fact manipulation, so, of late, has the Nobel Committee.

Ultimately, Al Gore, the IPCC and the Norwegian commission that chose to honor them are all cut from the same incredulous cheesy cloth.

Stewart Dimmock took the issue to court when he learned that the film he considered “unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and ’sentimental mush’” was to be force fed to England’s secondary school pupils. The Dover father of two stated at the hearing:

“I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore’s film falls far short of the standard required.”

Having heard testimony that the flick contains “a number of inaccuracies, exaggerations and statements about global warming for which there is currently insufficient scientific evidence,” the court is reportedly set to rule that it does promote “partisan political views” rather than science.

And, while the mandatory disclaimer certainly is good news, Dimmock’s attorney, John Day, nailed it when he said:

“’no amount of turgid guidance’ could change the fact that the film is unfit for consumption in the classroom.”

Still — the fact that spoon-feeding it to impressionable children as “settled science” will not be tolerated remains a vital victory for sanity.

Hat Tip: Benny Peiser

According to declarations made by the understandably shaken victim, one of the perps was the Juice himself, so the notorious ex-football star was quietly pinched for questioning.

When the interrogation began, Simpson denied any knowledge of the crime, but politely offered his services to search for the real robbers in casinos throughout Vegas.

Later, when the Detective in charge informed him that he wasn’t leaving until a statement was taken, O.J told them,

“Okay now … I didn’t do this … but if I did, here’s how I would have ……”

Midway through the hypothetical confession, Crime Scene cops returned with a Buffalo Bills jersey, inscribed with the name “Simpson” and the number 32, which they had recovered from the hotel room. Alert detectives, suspecting a possible connection, cleverly tricked the disgraced running back into trying it on.

When the pullover split like a Vegas stripper before OJ’s head had fully negotiated its neck hole, he was released pending further investigation, repeating his vow to find the real felons.

Simpson was last seen staking out the Olympic Garden gentlemen’s club in western Vegas.

Note: While based on actual events, the above was satire.

Blogging for The Nation on today’s House Iraq hearings, Nichols refers to them as “efforts by the White House to cloak administration spin in a military uniform” and Petraeus himself as “statistically-pliable.” He then makes the bizarrely bogus assessment that last week’s Government Accountability Office report,

“detailed how the general and his aides are using doctored data to create the false impression that sectarian violence is declining as a result of the surge.”

I guess such fancy is to be expected from a man who found today’s outrageously obstructive opening remarks by House Armed Services Committee chair Ike Skelton and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos “refreshing.” The former had called Petraeus the right person for the war in Iraq, but three years too late. The latter attempted to bully the General by declaring his mission a failure before he ever got to open his four star mouth.

But it was Duncan Hunter’s reaction to the Dem’s verbal ambush — pointing out that the hearings were not intended to “discredit General Petraeus before he takes the stand” – that incited the loony liberal to wildly accuse our Commander-In-Chief of sedition:

“As it happened, Petraeus discredited himself before he took the stand. The general’s repetition of spun statistics and fantastical assessments merely confirmed the fact of his misplaced loyalty to an administration that has betrayed the troops commanded by Petraeus.”

If the Nation’s intent was to out-outrage Moveon.org ‘s slanderous depictions of a great general today, I’d say the two should share the booby prize. But they’ll also share the all but certain opprobrium their reprehensible words must one day bring.

Betrayal — For a group that has worked so relentlessly toward this country’s surrender to its enemies, liberals sure bandy the word about with great abandon.

Don’t they?

Having voted unanimously for the promotion of the Iraq Multi-National-Force commander in January, Dems now find themselves in the untenable position of labeling this decent man “untrustworthy.” Selling this denigration in order to preempt anticipated positive “surge” news is further complicated by the reality that Americans rightly hold their military leaders in much higher regard than they do their politicians.

Nonetheless, charges of “cooking the numbers” of diminished daily sectarian attacks and “cherry picking” other positive progress stats have been bubbling up ever since the report was announced, and have only crescendoed as we approach showtime.

Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi began referring to today’s Petraeus testimony as “the Bush report presented by General Petraeus.” This intentionally ill-disguised allusion to the General’s words being filtered through some administration spin-machine has been heard echoing through the corridors of Capitol Hill ever since.

On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid actually questioned the General’s honesty, claiming that:

“He has made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual.”

The Nevada Democrat then repeated his House counterpart’s allegations of the report’s true source:

“I have every belief that this good man will give us what he feels is the right thing to do in his report, but it’s not his report anymore. It’s Bush’s report.”

That same day, The Nation raised the sleaze bar a notch or two when it asked the loaded question Will Petraeus Betray the Truth — And the Troops? John Nichols stopped just short of calling the General a scoundrel with the words,

“if Petraeus uses the statistics he and his aides have been citing in the build-up to his appearance, the general will go before Congress with the intent of deceiving the elected representatives of the American people.”

And today, MoveOn.org ran an ad in the New York Times headlined General Petraeus or General Betray Us?, and subheaded “Cooking the Books for the White House.” The left-wing nut-roots activists make the vile and inexcusable accusation that the General will betray the American people by denying “what everyone else knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

The Dems may believe they’ve won round one with this misinformative smear-campaign — a new WaPo poll finds 53% of Americans believing that the report will portray an undeservedly rosy picture.

But, when the dust settles and the General has had his opportunity to put the facts on the record, they’ll quickly lament the third-rail nature of their tactics.

Questioning a commander’s observations and opinions is certainly fair game. Challenging his integrity and loyalty to his country and troops in order to debase his military assessment for political gain redefines repugnancy.

Even for Democrats.

Hastily responding to the media-subdued mini-furor his amendment sparked, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) chief James Hansen reflexively complained that “deniers” were “making a mountain of a molehill” about the “insignificant” revision. The overruled head eco-doomer mulishly denied that the data update had any impact upon “the overall trend.” Ironically, while he’s undoubtedly wrong, he also happens to be quite right.

After all, only his fellow doomsayers ever actually found any trend or anthropogenic evidence in the old numbers to begin with. And while the revisions are, indeed, significant, any enviro-plugged short-term “trend” they mitigate remains resoundingly otherwise.

In fact, Hansen’s smoke-and-mirrors are instantly defogged by basic analysis of the so-called “trend” he continues to find even in the reworked numbers.

The Data Interpretations are Hyped

If you’ll pardon the expression — it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that after a significant (and enigmatic) ascent in 1998, annual averages tended to drop off before an increase in 2005 and a spike the following year. Available 5 year means (5YM) over 10 years tended to climb to an apex in 2000, and then drop off until 2004.

Can this possibly represent a harbinger of boundless warming, as preached before and still by the minister of the eco-apocalypse?

Hardly.

Take a look at the revised 1930 through 1950 data, and you’ll find not only 4 of the 10 hottest years since 1880 occurring in the 1930s, but a 5YM “trend” similar to that building today to boot. You’ll also notice a 2nd zenith is reached in 1940, followed by a gradual drop to below 1930 levels by 1950.

So any alarmist argument that we’ve been getting consistently hotter over the past decade would not only ring disingenuous, it would be of no empirical value whatsoever. And that’s exactly why the subterfuge potential of the hottest ever years clocking in during that time is so essential to their misbegotten crusade.

Now consider that atmospheric CO2 reportedly rose from 284 ppm in pre-industrial 1832 to only 300 ppm by 1911; then remained below 320 ppm until rising precipitously from 1960 to today’s level of over 380 ppm. And yet — there is nothing even remotely analogous in the temperature figures for those same periods. To the contrary, 60% of post-industrial CO2 ascension has taken place since 1960 – that’s 20 years after the last decade with warming patterns similar to the present one. Furthermore, notice that over half of the 15 hottest years took place before 1960 and those 15 are actually spread out over not one but rather seven decades. That’s some trend, my friend.

So then, even if NASA’s figures were rock-solid, they simply don’t advance AGW arguments any more than they do those for, say, cycles of the sun. We are, after all, in the midst of a period of elevated solar activity scientists refer to as the “modern maximum.”

And yet, we’re to accept that hyped projections fueled by deliberate misinterpretation of data are not threatened when such data lose a good portion of their “hottest years ever” propaganda value?

In the words of Reid A. Bryson, the father of modern scientific climatology, what “a bunch of hooey.”

And the Misinterpreted Data are Tainted

But there’s a deeper problem at play here. Frankly, until GISS comes clean, who’s buying any of their numbers anyway?

Truth be told — even prior to Steve McIntyre’s correction of Hansen’s algorithms, the data from USHCN weather stations had been suspect. Both faulty collection methods (e.g. environmental issues of absurdly located sensors) and the proprietary nature of the software which purportedly “fixed” these environmental irregularities had been openly challenged.

These “fudge factors,” which remain unpublished, required McIntyre’s reverse-engineering in order to surface their faults. As the scientist blogger wrote in a must-read article at ace weather-station sleuth Anthony Watts’ site (climateaudit was still recovering from what were likely eco-maniac DDOS attacks),

“… the adjustment methods are not techniques that can be looked up in statistical literature, where their properties and biases might be discerned. They are rather ad hoc and local techniques that may or may not be equal to the task of ‘fixing’ the bad data.”

But it was not only the disproved “adjustments” to corrupt input data, but also the shady manner by which GISS revised that information which warrant our concern. Realizing how the error reported by McIntyre impacted upon individual weather stations, they stealthily updated not only the local station data, but also the oft-cited US Temperature Data, particularly post-1999. With virtually no fanfare, estimates for 2000 through 2005 were lowered by about 0.15 deg C, and 2006 by 0.10 deg C – measures McIntyre suggests still fall short.

So what we have is a “scientific” data-base compiled and maintained by an institute conducted by a true AGW ideologue that uses undisclosed and flawed algorithms to offset admittedly spurious input data. That same organization failed to alert data-base clients (or anyone else to my knowledge) that significant modifications were made to theory and policy-critical data

Consequently, until such time that a satisfactory non-disclosure explanation is proffered and problem station data are resolved entirely at their source or, at the very least – interpretive source-code is published, how can GISS station data and their fruits be regarded as anything but suspect — if not outright poisoned?

Put it together and what have you got?

Every soldier in this vital information war knows it’s difficult enough to do daily battle against dramatically over-hyped propaganda with any optimism of triumph. Enemy warriors wield swords forged from hyped projections, shocking news, cataclysmic films and disinforming TV programs. Ours brave the battlefield armed only with a firm grasp of the facts and the wherewithal to draw cogent conclusions from them.

Now it appears our adversaries may have successfully infiltrated what are imperatively neutral data-bases, attempting to render our only weapons useless.

If the science were truly settled, then why would they so fear a fair fight?

Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and systems analyst. He is a regular contributor to American Thinker, The New Media Journal, Opinion Editorials and Men’s News Daily. He welcomes your feedback.

In a piece entitled Trouble in Climate-Model Paradise, Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso over at CO2 Science tell the fascinating story of a recent attempt to harmonize the model / reality relationship that, instead, yielded “embarrassing results” for the researchers.

The mission was to verify an accepted prediction by the esteemed Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and others that for every degree Centigrade of surface global warming, precipitation would increase by between 1 and 3%:

“Hence, they decided to see what has happened in the real world in this regard over the last 19 years (1987-2006) of supposedly unprecedented global warming, when data from the Global Historical Climatology Network and satellite measurements of the lower troposphere have indicated a global temperature rise on the order of 0.20°C per decade.”

What they found by marrying satellite observations with rain gauge measurements was an actual precipitation increase of 7% per degree C [emphasis added],

“which is somewhere between 2.3 and 7 times larger than what is predicted by state-of-the-art climate models.”

Baffled by the sheer magnitude of the inconsistency, researcher F. J. Wentz and company attempted to reconcile it to global wind speed variations. They failed, forcing them to admit that,

“the reason for the discrepancy between the observational data and the GCMs is not clear.”

Wentz confessed that the disparity his team discovered between the actions of nature and those of virtual simulations “has enormous impact.”

The Doctors Idso agreed, adding:

“And until these ‘enormous impact questions’ are settled, we wonder how anyone could conceivably think of acting upon the global energy policy prescriptions of the likes of Al Gore and James Hansen, who speak and write as if there was little more to do in the realm of climate-change prediction than a bit of fine-tuning.”

Unfortunately, I don’t wonder at all.

Hat Tip: Benny Peiser

In a news conference early Monday morning, Atlanta NAACP President R.L. White charged that the Atlanta Falcons star quarterback’s suspension and sponsor desertion amounted to premature punishment, adding that,

“If Mr. Vick is guilty, he should pay for his crime, but to treat him as he is being treated now is also a crime. Be restrained in your premature judgment until the legal process is completed.”

And, while one can’t deny the merits of avoiding yet another trial by media, neither can one deny the duplicitous nature of White’s “premature judgment” words.

After all, wasn’t it “premature judgment” that motivated the NAACP to launch their campaign to assure the trial and rape convictions of three Duke Lacrosse players in March of last year?

And while we’re at it, just how did the organization’s web page proclaiming no fewer than 82 Crimes and Torts committed by Duke Lacrosse Team Players on 3/13 and 3/14 as Reported in the press, mainly from the Three Players’ Defense Attorneys help complete the legal process?

Yet, those charges – which smelled fishy right from the start and were ultimately revealed to be stinking lies — were rooted entirely on the allegations of one person and the disbarable malfeasance of another.

The far more credible indictment against Vick, on the other hand, accuses him of being involved in virtually every aspect of a hideously inhumane dogfighting operation for more than six years.

As described by Lester Munson at ESPN.com:

“The charges are serious, and the evidence against Vick presented at trial will be nasty. The government’s case includes evidence that Vick and his cohorts ‘tested’ pit bulls for ferocity. If the dogs failed the test, the indictment charges, they were executed by hanging or drowning. In one case, with Vick present, the indictment says a dog was slammed to the ground until it was dead. In another incident, a dog was soaked with a hose and then electrocuted.”

Add the fact that the federal indictment disclosed four ready to testify witnesses plus co-defendant Tony Taylor’s Monday morning plea agreement, and it’s difficult to understand why the NAACP would afford Vick greater doubt benefit than it did the victims of Crystal Gail Magnum’s vile false-witness.

Nonetheless, Georgia NAACP President Edward Dubose never complained, as he did Monday morning about Vick, that any of the Duke 3 was “being prosecuted in the court of public opinion before he has had a chance to defend himself.”

Of course, the fact that Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty, and David Evans are white and both Magnum and Vick are black could never influence the actions of an organization promoting itself as a champion of social justice, could it?

As you’ll likely recall, The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) responded to last November’s Flying Imams Scam by backing civil litigation naming unnamed (John Doe) “whistleblowers” (who dutifully saw something and said something) as co-defendants. While unabashedly frivolous, the potential hazards of such a suit were by no means lost on most security conscious Americans.

Thankfully, this included ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who quickly drafted a proviso to shield the vigilant from such blatant intimidation-by-tort.

King’s so-called “John Doe provision” of the so-called “Sept. 11 Security Bill” passed the House in March by an overwhelming and decidedly bipartisan vote. But the Senate proved a much harder sell, with many PC-minded Democrats echoing Pat Leahy’s reckless concern that such an amendment “could invite racial and religious profiling.”

The Senate Judiciary Chairman and other Tolerance-Over-Public-Safety Dems — including Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers – have used every technical procedure at their disposal to scuttle this crucial anti-terrorism addition.

But, thanks in large part to King’s resolve and willingness to accept silly “compromise language” specifying immunity only to “good-faith” informants – John Doe Lives. What’s more, whenever signed by the President, the bill will be retroactive to November, 2006 – affording immunity to those wrongfully persecuted by the bogus CAIR lawsuit.

In announcing the inclusion of his provision in both the House (HR 1) and Senate (S 4) versions of the bill today, the deservedly jubilant King proclaimed that:

“In a post-9/11 reality, vigilance is essential to security. Despite the Democratic opposition to this important homeland security measure, I’m thrilled to announce that common sense has prevailed and heroic Americans who report suspicious activity will be protected from frivolous lawsuits. The American people were heard and our country is safer because of it.”

Hear hear — and long live the (Peter) King.

Following a week of press leaks, Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich have submitted a paper to Proceedings of the Royal Society A, which admits that:

“There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century.”

However, observe they, the sun’s magnetic field has declined since 1985, even as the world heats up. It is the “rapid rise in global mean temperatures” during this 22 year period ALONE which they claim “cannot be ascribed to solar variability.”

Imagine that– less than a quarter of a century? Even though old Sol has been bombarding us with its warming rays for over 4.5 billion years and clear Sun/Climate correlations have been observed spanning millennia.

Of course, it will take a little time for fellow scientists to absorb, analyze and respond to their 14 page report, right? Well, not quite – particularly when there was a pesky contrarian opinion about to be broadcast to a new continent of potential Gore-bots the very next day.

So, faster than you can say “Solar Resonant Diffusion Waves,” University of Melbourne climate scientist David Karoly smugly blurted out that [emphasis added]:

“These findings completely refute the allegations made by some pseudo-scientists that all recent global warming is due to solar effects.”

Incidentally, Dr. Karoly was scheduled to join a panel arguing the assertions of the documentary immediately following its broadcast on Australia’s ABC Thursday night. Any guesses which side the longtime IPCC contributor might be taking?

And Stefan Rahmstorf, who once referred to awful The Day After Tomorrow scriptwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff as “well-informed about the science and politics of global climate change,” didn’t let any ice melt under his feet either. The ever-alarmed climate scientist from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany claimed an immediate, albeit macabre, victory:

“This paper is the final nail in the coffin for people who would like to make the sun responsible for present global warming”

Ouch — final nail in the coffin? Sure, enviro-mental-case Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently referred to AGW skeptics as traitors, but do he and his fellow alarmists really want us all stood up against a wall and offered a last big-bad-industry-pushed cancer-causing smoke?

Meanwhile, right on cue and despite the fact that these were the freshly published opinions of but 2 men (enough for a consensus?), eager Greenhouse Gas passers set to work on triumphant headlines, exemplified by:

• Sun not behind global warming
• Solar Radiation Didn’t Cause Recent Global Warming, Study Shows
• Solar activity cleared of global warming blame
• Sun’s activity rules out link to global warming
• ‘No Sun link’ to climate change

Not surprisingly, little such fanfare was awarded last month’s fine work by noted Paleoclimatologist R. Timothy Patterson or the myriad others that tell the exact opposite story. But then, why would there be? The sheer simplicity of solar impact makes it public enemy number one to the scare-mongers.

Last weekend’s dismal Live Earth concerts were yet another attempt to forward the green agenda and silence dissent – this time with thunderous overture, silly mantras put to driving beats, and flash-in-the-pan special effects.

Now it seems they fear the truth that one well-made documentary might convey and, therefore, feel the need to squash it beneath more pageantry. How pathetic.

Nevertheless, while tomorrow is sure to bring a world of reasoned retort, I would wager a case of sun-screen that the real hysteria over this paper hasn’t yet begun.

Virtually every news organization (including Fox News) reporting this magnificent milestone is erroneously perpetuating the environmentalist lie that the disappearance of the great bird was due to the effects of DDT and that only the 1972 ban of the insecticide saved the eagle from extinction.

Go ahead and search “Bald Eagle” at Google News. Entrenched in each article lauding its reappearance, you’ll find reference to DDT. But you’ll find little or no mention that the majestic raptors were actually hunted to near extinction decades before DDT was ever used in the U.S. There’ll be no indication that the DDT connection has been refuted in favor of such causes as continued illegal shooting, widespread loss of habitat, power line electrocution, in-flight collisions, and poisoning from consuming lead shot contaminated ducks.

Look closely for mention that prior to 1948, when Dr. Paul Muller won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering that DDT could kill malarial mosquitoes, two thirds of the world lived under the daily threat of death-by-malaria.

Or that in 1955, armed with Muller’s cocktail, the World Health Organization began an extremely successful campaign to eradicate the deadly disease worldwide. As a result, global mortality rates were quickly reduced from 192 to fewer than 7 per 100,000. It actually appeared that the blight which had killed more people than the black plague was to finally be lifted from the planet — until one woman’s silly observations and theories literally changed mankind’s destiny.

In 1962, American Biologist Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, denounced DDT as a threat to human health and, more-to-the-point, bird populations. Carson claimed that the pesticide killed adult birds and thinned their egg shells, decreasing survival likelihood. While her facts themselves were thin and her conclusions downright anorexic, her words sparked a worldwide environmental movement hell-bent on the ban of DDT.

Here’s just one example of the unintended consequences you’re not likely to find extolled in the bald eagle stories. According to the American Council on Science and Health, in what is now Sri Lanka, malaria cases went from 2,800,000 in 1948, before the introduction of DDT, down to 17 in 1964 as a result of its use. Two years after Carson’s book, DDT spraying was abruptly discontinued. Malaria cases then shot back up to 2,500,000 just five years later.

Across the globe, the miraculous success of the WHO malaria-eradication program saw massive and immediate reversals as more and more nations fell for the hype which has yet to be proven even to this day.

Things moved a bit slower here in the states, where malarial mosquitoes have been non-existent since the 1940’s. Carson’s title, which referred to a season bereft of bird song, evoked the perfect imagery to agitate the budding greenies. The newborn activists quickly blamed DDT for the disappearance of bald eagles and peregrine falcons, and, in 1972, pushed for EPA hearings — despite a report from the National Academy of Science a year prior which stated that:

“It is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that would otherwise have been inevitable.”

Those hearings found that, contrary to Carson’s alarm, DDT had no deleterious effect on humans, freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife. And yet, 10 years after publication of Carson’s scare-manual and after 7 months of testimony, the 2 year old EPA banned DDT due to its “unreasonable adverse effects on man and the environment.”

As no other pesticide has proven effective against malarial mosquitoes, this action put the final signature on what would amount to the death warrant of up to 3 million people each and every year.

As a gruesome corollary, unbridled environmental activism killed more people last century than Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Ze-Dong, Hideki Tojo and Pol Pot combined. Granted, the deaths were inadvertent — but then, the perverse consequences of unqualified system meddling generally are. Global warming scare-mongers – pay heed!

So, as you read about the grand rebirth of our winged national emblem this Independence Day — by all means — join in the pride. But when you reach the part applauding the DDT ban, only eco-maniacs need join in the shame.

Email Marc Sheppard