59 Voting days til B. Steve O. or Willard M. R.

Matt Patterson, American Thinker Sept 9, 2012

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and  disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a
bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest? Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of cliches, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?  In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

285 - Worse off - Rubio

CBS morning news

Jan 26, 2012

Rubio interview

CBS:          you have also called him, Senator, divisive.  What is it about this president that you think is divisive?

RUBIO:        Did you see the state of the union speech where …

CBS:          Indeed, and I saw him honoring the military of America and a lot of other things  … that we should be coming together.  That doesn’t seem to be divisive.

RUBIO:        Well, that part everybody agrees with: but, what about the part that basically implies (and not just in the state of the union, but consistently in his career) that the only way that some people in America can be better off is for other people to be worse off.
Rubio Interview

620 - Federal Reserve (Clueless)

Alan Grayson: Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve?

621 - Union Fable

Look For the Union Fable by Ann Coulter

The good news out of Wisconsin is that public school students' test scores skyrocketed last week, mystifying educators. The bad news is many student-teacher love affairs were hard-hit without access to janitors' closets and locker rooms.

Democrats are acting as if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's demand that public sector employees give up collective bargaining would have George Washington rolling in his grave (a clear violation of Gravediggers' Local 803 regulations concerning the rolling of the dead).

In fact, government employees should never, ever be allowed to organize.

The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers.

Far from being careful stewards of the taxpayers' money, politicians are on the same side of the bargaining table as government employees -- against the taxpayers, who aren't allowed to be part of the negotiation. This is why the head of New York's largest public union in the mid-'70s, Victor Gotbaum, gloated, "We have the ability to elect our own boss."

Democratic politicians don't think of themselves as "management." They don't respond to union demands for more money by saying, "Are you kidding me?" They say, "Great -- get me a raise too!"

Democrats buy the votes of government workers with generous pay packages and benefits -- paid for by someone else -- and then expect a kickback from the unions in the form of hefty campaign donations, rent-a-mobs and questionable union political activity when they run for re-election.

In 2006, 10,000 public employees staged a rally outside the New Jersey State House to protest the mere discussion of a cut to their gold-plated salaries and benefits. Then-Gov. Jon Corzine leapt onto the stage shouting: "We will fight for a fair contract!"

Only later, someone noticed: Wait -- isn't he management? (It takes a special kind of courage to promise 10,000 crazed union agitators that you'll fight to get them more money.)

Service Employees International Union officials openly threaten California legislators. At a 2009 legislative hearing, an SEIU member sneered into a microphone: "We helped to getchu into office, and we gotta good memory. Come November, if you don't back our program, we'll getchu out of office."

It used to be widely understood that collective bargaining has no place in government employment. In 1937, the American president beloved by liberals, FDR, warned that collective bargaining "cannot be transplanted into the public service." George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO for a quarter century, said unions were not appropriate for civil servants. As recently as 1978, the vast majority of states prohibited unionization of government employees.

Anytime there is the slightest suggestion that perhaps in the middle of a deep recession, public school teachers should pay 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their extravagant health care plans for their entire families, suddenly we get television ads of hard-working men doing dangerous jobs on docks and in foundries while being abused by their greedy capitalist overseers.

The unions must be desperately hoping that no one will notice ... Wait a minute! WE'RE TALKING ABOUT TEACHERS! This isn't the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" -- it's Mrs. Cooper's seventh-grade "values clarification" class.

With heavy union dues, labor has plenty of money to pay for propaganda and to threaten and bribe politicians.

On his first day in office, the Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, signed an executive order denying public sector employees the right to bargain collectively -- something that had been granted, naturally, by a Democratic governor.

As a result, Indiana government employees instantly got to take home an extra thousand dollars that no longer went to union dues -- and good employees started getting raises, while bad employees got cashiered.

But government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a "living wage" -- all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements.

There's never a recession if you work for the government. The counties with the highest per capita income aren't near New York City or Los Angeles -- they're in the Washington, D.C., area -- a one-company town where the company is the government. The three counties with the highest incomes in the entire country are all suburbs of Washington. Eleven of the 25 counties with the highest incomes are near Washington.

For decades now, the Democrats have had a good gig buying the votes of government workers with outrageous salaries, benefits and work rules -- and then sticking productive earners with the bill. But, now, we're out of money, no matter how long Wisconsin Democrats hide out in Illinois.
... more

637 - Quantitative Easing Explained

664 New Speaker

1006 New AARP

I joined the NEW AARP.
Yep, the heck with the ultra liberal old AARP.
(American Association for Retired People). :-)
HOW DARE THEY SAY THEY SPEAK FOR SENIORS!!!

Let me get this straight. Obama's health care plan will be written by a committee whose Chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress which hasn't read it, signed by a President who smokes, funded by a Treasury Chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that is nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

1007 Drill baby drill (Brazil)

Wall Street Journal

On a segment of the "Glen Beck Show" on FOX (Fox Cable News) was the following:

"Today, even though President Obama is against off shore drilling for our country, he signed an executive order to loan 2 Billion of our taxpayers dollars to a Brazilian Oil Exploration Company (which is the 8th largest company in the entire world) to drill for oil off the coast of Brazil ! The oil that comes from this operation is for the sole purpose and use of China and NOT THE USA! Now here's the real clincher...the Chinese government is under contract to purchase all the oil that this oil field will produce, which is hundreds of millions of barrels of oil".

We have absolutely no gain from this transaction whatsoever!
Wait, it gets more interesting.

Guess who is the largest individual stockholder of this Brazilian Oil Company and who would benefit most from this? It is American BILLIONAIRE, George Soros, who was one of President Obama's most generous financial supporter during his campaign.

If you are able to connect the dots and follow the money, you are probably as upset as I am. Not a word of this transaction was broadcast on any of the other news networks!

Forward this factual e-mail to others who care about this country and where it is going. Also, let all of your Government representatives know how you feel about this.

Below is the Wall street Journal article to confirm this.


Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling

You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.

The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.

This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.

1012 Sate of ... errrr Campaign Speech

Sarah (credibility gap)

While I don’t wish to speak too harshly about President Obama’s state of the union address, we live in challenging times that call for candor. I call them as I see them, and I hope my frank assessment will be taken as an honest effort to move this conversation forward.

Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.

He called for Democrats and Republicans to “work through our differences,” but last year he dismissed any notion of bipartisanship when he smugly told Republicans, “I won.”

He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.

He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit.

Americans are suffering from job losses and lower wages, yet the president practically demanded applause when he mentioned tax cuts, as if allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is an act of noblesse oblige. He claims that he cut taxes, but I must have missed that. I see his policies as paving the way for massive tax increases and inflation, which is the “hidden tax” that most hurts the poor and the elderly living on fixed incomes.

He condemned lobbyists, but his White House is filled with former lobbyists, and this has been a banner year for K Street with his stimulus bill, aka the Lobbyist’s Full Employment Act. He talked about a “deficit of trust” and the need to “do our work in the open,” but he chased away the C-SPAN cameras and cut deals with insurance industry lobbyists behind closed doors.

He spoke of doing what’s best for the next generation and not leaving our children with a “mountain of debt,” but under his watch this year, government spending is up by 22%, and his budget will triple our national debt.

He spoke of a spending freeze, but doesn’t he realize that each new program he’s proposing comes with a new price tag? A spending freeze is a nice idea, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. We need a comprehensive examination of the role of government spending. The president’s deficit commission is little more than a bipartisan tax hike committee, lending political cover to raise taxes without seriously addressing the problem of spending.

He condemned bailouts, but he voted for them and then expanded and extended them. He praised the House’s financial reform bill, but where was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in that bill? He still hasn’t told us when we’ll be getting out of the auto and the mortgage industries. He praised small businesses, but he’s spent the past year as a friend to big corporations and their lobbyists, who always find a way to make government regulations work in their favor at the expense of their mom & pop competitors.

He praised the effectiveness of his stimulus bill, but then he called for another one – this time cleverly renamed a “jobs bill.” The first stimulus was sold to us as a jobs bill that would keep unemployment under 8%. We now have double digit unemployment with no end in sight. Why should we trust this new “jobs bill”?

He talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” but apparently it’s still too tough for his Interior Secretary to move ahead with Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. If they’re dragging their feet on leases, how long will it take them to build “safe, clean nuclear power plants”? Meanwhile, he continued to emphasize “green jobs,” which require massive government subsidies for inefficient technologies that can’t survive on their own in the real world of the free market.

He spoke of supporting young girls in Afghanistan who want to go to school and young women in Iran who courageously protest in the streets, but where were his words of encouragement to the young girls of Afghanistan in his West Point speech? And where was his support for the young women of Iran when they were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran?

Despite speaking for over an hour, the president only spent 10% of his speech on foreign policy, and he left us with many unanswered questions. Does he still think trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York is a good idea? Does he still think closing Gitmo is a good idea? Does he still believe in Mirandizing terrorists after the Christmas bomber fiasco? Does he believe we’re in a war against terrorists, or does he think this is just a global crime spree? Does he understand that the first priority of our government is to keep our country safe?

In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver. He’s still proposing failed top-down big government solutions to our problems. Instead of smaller, smarter government, he’s taken a government that was already too big and supersized it.

Real private sector jobs are created when taxes are low, investment is high, and people are free to go about their business without the heavy hand of government. The president thinks innovation comes from government subsidies. Common sense conservatives know innovation comes from unleashing the creative energy of American entrepreneurs.

Everything seems to be “unexpected” to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.

He criticized politicians who “wage a perpetual campaign,” but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.

Real leadership requires results. Real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the American people whose voices are still not being heard in Washington.

- Sarah Palin

1034 Security - New US profiling policy

The Taliban

Some interesting observations on the Taliban
by that great American philosopher, Jeff Foxworthy.




"YOU MAY BE A TALIBAN IF..."

You refine heroin for a living,
but you have a moral objection to liquor.

You own a $3,000 machine gun
and $5,000 rocket launcher,
but you can't afford shoes.

You have more wives than teeth.

You wipe your butt with your bare hand,
but consider bacon "unclean."

You think vests come in two styles:
bullet-proof and suicide.

You can't think of anyone
you haven't declared Jihad against.

You consider television dangerous,
but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.

You were amazed to discover that cell phones
have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

You have nothing against women
and think every man should own at least four.

You've always had
a crush on your neighbor's goat.

Your cousin is
president of the United States

1035 Security - Ideal Terrorist Policy

Black Jack

1053 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) Waterloo

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE
Copenhagen: Obama's Waterloo at home and abroad?

examiner.com

Obama Pulling "Victory" From The Jaws Of Defeat

Question: If The Concern On The Left Is Truly Climate Catastrophe, Why Would Obama Compromise The Ultimate Safety Of The World With This Farce Of An Agreement Which Holds Nobody's Feet To The Fire?

Answer: Political Expediency, A Term Used Frequently In Washington. This Phrase Seemingly Makes It Acceptable To Forfeit Any Core Beliefs Or Values, All In The Name Of Remaining In Office. That Or When Trying To Get Signature Legislation Passed When Non-Passage Could Sound A Political Death Knell!

It was billed as a global summit that would result in a binding resolution to control and reduce emissions from countries around the world. Ultimately though, President Obama was forced to run from leader to leader in an effort to attempt to salvage some political face, lest this go down as one more failure for the administration.

With the healthcare bill gutted and on some form of life support, one more policy and diplomatic failure was the last thing that this President, or his party, needed.

Loss of "Face", Loss of Global Standing

At the end of the day, after attempting to use whatever political clout he has left, President Obama walked away with a "non-binding" agreement from only five countries that asks them only for an explanation as to how they will go about reducing emissions. The countries are the United States, India, China, South Africa and Brazil. The other 100+ countries at the Summit refused to sign.

Aware of the strength that even a "binding" agreement would have, this is a transparent political attempt by the President to salvage what is his quickly dwindling popularity and political capital in the U.S. and around the world. This at a time when passage of the unpopular healthcare reform bill needs all that he has got.

Impact At Home On The Obama Domestic Agenda

While the left is predictably calling this a great diplomatic success, nobody is fooled. The need for spin of the Summit debacle is that much greater as the healthcare bill at home faces a self-imposed Christmas deadline for passage. The weaker and less popular that President Obama becomes within the U.S., the greater the chance of voting defections in the Senate where there is no margin for error. As it is, the bill has not completely seen the light of day as the Democrats have cobbled it together behind closed doors. Even in the dysfunctional Senate, there will be holdouts that will refuse to allow a bill whose contents are not fully known to go to a vote. For a bill whose size and impact on the economy and populace would be immense, reading and understanding the content is the least that these Senator's can do for us.

The loss of the clout of the President not withstanding, all polling data shows that the American public does not want this legislation to be enacted. Had the President maintained his 70% approval ratings, the members of his party would be willing to blindly follow him and vote for healthcare reform. As he has slipped below 50% approval, and his leaders in the House and Senate much lower than that, the leverage to force a yes vote has slipped, although still strong.

While most will still go along, particularly given the full-court press being applied by Reid and Pelosi, these are still politicians after all whose main concern is not necessarily legislation and the good of the people, but merely being allowed the privilege to remain in office through the next election cycle.

At least in the case of this healthcare bill, let's hope that political expediency will win out, as it typically does.

1054 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) God's sense of humor

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

Blizzard Dumps Snow on Copenhagen as Leaders Battle Warming

bloomberg.com

By Christian Wienberg

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow.

Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).

DMI defines a white Christmas as 90 percent of the country being covered by at least 2 centimeters of snow on the afternoon of Dec. 24.

1055 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) Gore to hell

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

Dallas News

Rick Perry doesn't like to talk about his days as a Democrat, particularly his role in 1988 as the head of Al Gore's presidential campaign in Texas.

But on Wednesday, after he accepted and endorsement from a group of builders in Dallas, I managed to get out a question about his relationship with Gore and where each stands on Gore's pet issue of climate change.

"I certainly got religion," Perry said. "I think he's gone to hell." That drew big laughs from the construction types gathered for Perry's appearance.

1057 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) no taxation

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

Climate change is not the issue in Copenhagen

examiner.com

As is often the case, the mainstream media has been framing the Copenhagen debate in the context of left versus right, with the "Conservatives" saying it will cost workers their jobs, and the "Liberals" saying it will create them. While it might be worth mentioning how small government conservatism and classical liberalism have both been pushed out of the mainstream dialogue by philosophies which advocate an ever-increasing centralization and expansion of State powers, that is something I will mention in Another article perhaps. The fact is, the economic impact of the Copenhagen treaty is not limited to the impact on employment, nor should the debate be limited to economic ramifications. Ignoring “climategate” and assuming that global warming is a peril which must be tackled, There are issues of sovereignty, morality, accountability, and posterity at stake while the United Nations Climate Change Convention of 2009 is convened behind closed doors by officials who do not answer to the people of the countries they represent by direct representation.

While there has been discussion of jobs being created or destroyed, a mere glance at the discussions shows there will be other economic impact upon this Nation already in a severe recession. On page 48 of the public release of the document “NGO Copenhagen Treaty – Legal Text” one finds the following sentence: “As outlined in the Finance Article, industrialized countries should provide at least
42 billion USD per year to support REDD activities, with the urgent need for immediate funding to build capacity to enable developing countries to meet a high level of MRV and to implement effective national REDD strategies.” (REDD stands for “reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”. Apparently, if you're going to cut down rainforests which convert co2 to oxygen, it's important not to emit co2 in the process.) and on page 52 of the same document, we read “It is the sovereign prerogative to decide how to address REDD, however if countries chose to access international financial support for these activities they should be required to meet international standards ”. This is actually a somewhat amusing case of doublespeak. In other words, while National Sovereignty should be respected, it's sufficient to force obligations retroactively on anyone who accepted the filthy lucre of the UN.

In a summary released by the German website of the organization Greenpeace, the following assertions are made:

“Finance Implementation of the Copenhagen Climate Treaty will need significant financial resources. These resources should be new and additional. A substantial portion of them should be channeled through the Copenhagen Climate Facility and used – particularly with respect to mitigation – to catalyze private investment. “ ...“Overall industrialized countries should provide at least 160 billion US$ per year forthe period 2013-2017” … “The main source of revenue should be through the auctioning of roughly 10% of industrialized countries emissions allocation with additional financing from international levies” ...” A limited share could come from other means if they fulfill criteria.”

In other words, the Copenhagen Agreement doesn't even pretend that it's objective is the elimination of all factors at fault for global warming. What it does propose is restrictions on the expansion of industry, international taxation, and a bureaucracy which, like the united nations itself, is not composed of direct representatives of the people, but rather bureaucrats appointed undemocratically by whomever happens to lead the member nations. Further, while the Copenhagen treaty speaks of “guaranteeing representation of developing nations”, there is a rather grim reality implied by that – unlike the UN as a whole, the CMCP will not represent all the nations of the earth equally. In effect, the Copenhagen treaty is an attempt to lock into place the power balance between nations, with a token nod to those poorer nations who might have military power enough to resist policies they did not have a say in, and while it admits that is merely lays a framework, thus absolving itself of any accountability for the reduced emissions it purports to seek, it will beyond any doubt have one result: the entering into policies whereby money will be channeled into a vague bureaucracy without the consent of those who will be taxed. To a nation whose birth was heralded with cries of “no taxation without representation”, the consent by our leaders to such a mechanism, without a popular vote, or any guarantee that this treaty will solve any problem, should be seen as nothing short of treason.

1058 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) carbon dating

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

telegraph.co.uk

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

see paragraph 9 (carbon dating)

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".

The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.

At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries – Britain excepted – are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week's unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change "saboteurs" reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.

In Copenhagen there was a humbler note among some delegates. "If we fail, one reason could be our overconfidence," said Simron Jit Singh, of the Institute of Social Ecology. "Because we are here, talking in a group of people who probably agree with each other, we can be blinded to the challenges of the other side. We feel that we are the good guys, the selfless saviours, and they are the bad guys."

As Mr Singh suggests, the interesting question is perhaps not whether the climate changers have got the science right – they probably have – but whether they have got the pitch right. Some campaigners' apocalyptic predictions and religious righteousness – funeral ceremonies for economic growth and the like – can be alienating, and may help explain why the wider public does not seem to share the urgency felt by those in Copenhagen this week.

In a rather perceptive recent comment, Mr Miliband said it was vital to give people a positive vision of a low-carbon future. "If Martin Luther King had come along and said 'I have a nightmare,' people would not have followed him," he said.

Over the next two weeks, that positive vision may come not from the overheated rhetoric in the conference centre, but from Copenhagen itself. Limos apart, it is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilised pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism so beloved of British greens.

And inside the hall, not everything is looking bad. Even the sudden rush for limos may be a good sign. It means that more top people are coming, which means they scent something could be going right here.

he US, which rejected Kyoto, is on board now, albeit too tentatively for most delegates. President Obama's decision to stay later in Copenhagen may signal some sort of agreement between America and China: a necessity for any real global action, and something that could be presented as a "victory" for the talks.

The hot air this week will be massive, the whole proceedings eminently mockable, but it would be far too early to write off this conference as a failure.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235262/Copenhagen-climate-change-summit-Angry-clashes-ahead-planned-major-protests-45-000-expected-march-summit-venue.html

1061 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) doomsday video

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

I don't know why they played this at the opening of the conference. (Those jerks already believe this crap)

1063 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) climategate

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

telegraph.co.uk

A week after my colleague James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.

Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation , rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.

Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p & p.

1064 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) human hater

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

Mike Church

And it wasn’t until Al Gore and Tim Wirth and the other human-haters came along and they went [mimicking Al Gore], “There’s a lot of money to be made in demonizing carbon. I mean, everything’s got carbon in it. If we can figure out how to make carbon a pollutant, just imagine the money we can make regulating it.” And I want to just touch on the ClimateGate emails for just a second here because this is important. Daniel Henninger wrote about this on the pages of The Wall Street Journal yesterday that the science community, if you want to call it that, has always been very cognizant and defensive against a recurrence of what happened to Galileo. Does everybody know what happened to Galileo? We had this thing called – it was part of this thing called the Inquisition. Galileo was called a heretic. They were going to burn the guy at the stake. “You can’t say those things. Wait a minute, no no no, everything revolves around Earth. No no no no, we’re the center of the universe.” Galileo almost died, he was almost killed because of his scientific discoveries because religious folks, the Church, the Catholic Church, didn’t believe it. It undermined their authority and their power.

And yet just one of us, just one, only the humans pose a threat. Does that make any sense to anyone? You mean to tell me whales eating too many plankton don’t pose a threat? Hmm? Who speaks for the plankton? You mean to tell me that bears crapping on clover don’t pose a threat to the clover? How’d you like to be covered in bear poo half the days of the year, hmm? I mean, I could go on and on. I think you get the point. Just think of the scientific validity of this, that only one of nature’s creations – now, let’s pretend that we’re all Darwinists. Right? Only one of nature’s creations poses a threat to the planet. Only one. That’s us. No other species. No other creation, just the humans. And as I have argued with egg-headed environmentalists for 18 years on the radio airwaves now, how do you know? “Oh, but you, Mr. Church, you and the humans, you created all these things. You made plastics. You made insecticides and all manner of destructive things. You polluted the environment. You, blah blah blah blah blah.” All that has been done is that molecules have been rearranged by a creation of the organic sphere known as Gaia back in the old days, and now Earth. That’s all that’s happened. Yet our rearranging of the organic sphere is viewed as unnatural, is viewed as somehow foreign.

Well, if we are a product of the same organic processes that created all the other things that we’re supposed to protect, how come the things that we make aren’t as natural a part of the now Earth ecosystem or environment as the other creations? “Well, because it’s plastic. It’s molded.” So? You ever heard George Carlin’s bit about this? About how maybe the plastic wanted to be liberated from the ground? Maybe the oil was just waiting for us to come along and take it out of the ground and turn it into plastic. Maybe the Earth has been smothered for 3 billion years. Maybe the Earth was swimming in oil, and it couldn’t breathe, and was just so thankful that man came along and started pumping the oil out. Finally, I can breathe. And Carlin’s point, the brilliant George Carlin, quite possibly the most underappreciated American Libertarian in the last half century, the brilliant George Carlin just demolishes environmentalism with comedy. And you can find those videos on YouTube.

And now the climate gooks, geeks, nuts, are out there insisting, “Oh, so what, we cooked the – ah, you can’t believe those emails. We need to investigate those guys.” You have a member of the United States Senate, Senator Babs Boxer, quite possibly the third largest disgrace in the history of the Senate, the first being Jabba the Senator from Michigan, Debbie Stabecow, the second being Jabba the Junior Senator from Missouri, Claire Mama Caskill, and then Babs Boxer Bouncer. [Mimicking Senator Boxer] “We need to have an investigation.” I’m sorry, the Hadley Research Unit is in England. What are you, queen of England now? An American, a United States Senator, representative from the state of California, thinks somehow we have – I guess we do rule the world now, literally, ladies and gentlemen, in the eyes of the Senate. We have the authority – oh, no, scratch that. We have the responsibility to go take over Scotland Yard, to put Barbara Boxer and her tree-hugging goons in charge and find out who these thieves were that busted the story. Who these thieves were that leaked out the real story of climate change.

Let me say something to you bark-humping wackos out there. Your days are numbered, buddy. By the time this is over, and by the time the numbers are added up of the destruction that you and your frog-licking ecomania have wielded and have visited upon the heads of innocent people out here who are just as much a part of this environment and have just as much a claim to living in it as the stupid frogs and fish that you want to protect. Your days are numbered, pal. There is an ass-whipping coming your way. If I were you I’d take the green crap off my car because I know what you’ve cost us. I know the liberty and the economic malaise you have singlehandedly caused, the misappropriation of resources that you have engendered with your hysterical religious beliefs. “Mike, no, no, it’s about science.” No, it’s not. You’re the antithesis to science.

A scientist would approach everything they do with great skepticism and would not make a “consensus” until they could unequivocally replicate their results in a laboratory. Can you replicate the climate models in a laboratory? Are they infallible? Do they return the same result every time? “Well, no, but they go in the right....” No, they don’t. They don’t even go in the right direction. Al Gore said we’d be cooking by 2010; remember? In 2002 we had [mimicking Al Gore] “exactly eight years left to save the planet, folks. We don’t do it in eight years, we’re gone. I’m outta here. I’m going to Mars or somewhere because we’re dead, all of us.” Really. And here it is 2010. Oh, I’m still alive, imagine that. They’re still sending Discovery Channel cameras out to the Galapagos to find new species.

1065 Greenscam (C.C.C.C.) intro

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE CRIME CONFERENCE

Mike Church
And it wasn’t until Al Gore and Tim Wirth and the other human-haters came along and they went, “There’s a lot of money to be made in demonizing carbon. I mean, everything’s got carbon in it. If we can figure out how to make carbon a pollutant, just imagine the money we can make regulating it.”

(see the rest of this tomorrow)

U.N. Climate Conference Opens in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN — The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.

The two-week conference, the climax of two years of contentious negotiations, convened in an upbeat mood after a series of promises by rich and emerging economies to curb their greenhouse gases, but with major issues yet to be resolved.

Conference president Connie Hedegaard said the key to an agreement is finding a way to raise and channel public and private financing to poor countries for years to come to help them fight the effects of climate change.

Hedegaard — Denmark's former climate minister — said if governments miss their chance at the Copenhagen summit, a better opportunity may never come.

"This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do," she said.

Denmark's prime minister said 110 heads of state and government will attend the final days of the conference. President Barack Obama's decision to attend the end of the conference, not the middle, was taken as a signal that an agreement was getting closer.

The conference opened with video clips of children from around the globe urging delegates to help them grow up in a world without catastrophic warming.

At stake is a deal that aims to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, and to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.

Scientists say without such an agreement, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures, leading to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather events, drought and the spread of diseases.

"The evidence is now overwhelming" that the world needs early action to combat global warming, said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an U.N. expert panel.

He defended climate research in the face of a controversy over e-mails pilfered from a British university, which global warming skeptics say show scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence that doesn't fit their theories.

"The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC," he told the conference.

Negotiations have dragged on for two years, only recently showing signs of breakthroughs with new commitments from The United States, China and India to control greenhouse gas emissions.

The first week of the conference will focus on refining the complex text of a draft treaty. But major decisions will await the arrival next week of environment ministers and the heads of state in the final days of the conference, which ends Dec. 18.

"The time for formal statements is over. The time for restating well-known positions is past," said the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer. "Copenhagen will only be a success it delivers significant and immediate action."

Among those decisions is a proposed fund of $10 billion each year for the next three years to help poor countries create climate change strategies. After that, hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed every year to set the world on a new energy path and adapt to new climates.

"The deal that we invite leaders to sign up on will be one that affects all aspects of society, just as the changing climate does," said Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. "Negotiators cannot do this alone, nor can politicians. The ultimate responsibility rests with the citizens of the world, who will ultimately bear the fatal consequences if we fail to act."

A study released by the U.N. Environment Program on Sunday indicated that pledges by industrial countries and major emerging nations fall just short of the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions that scientists have said are needed to keep average temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F).