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The current list of 31,072 petition signers includes 9,021 PhD; 6,961 MS; 2,240 MD and DVM; and 12,850 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.
All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.
~~~
Outlined below are the numbers of Petition Project signatories, subdivided by educational specialties. These have been combined, as indicated, into seven categories.
1. Atmospheric, environmental, and Earth sciences includes 3,697 scientists trained in specialties directly related to the physical environment of the Earth and the past and current phenomena that affect that environment.
2. Computer and mathematical sciences includes 903 scientists trained in computer and mathematical methods. Since the human-caused global warming hypothesis rests entirely upon mathematical computer projections and not upon experimental observations, these sciences are especially important in evaluating this hypothesis.
3. Physics and aerospace sciences include 5,691 scientists trained in the fundamental physical and molecular properties of gases, liquids, and solids, which are essential to understanding the physical properties of the atmosphere and Earth.
4. Chemistry includes 4,796 scientists trained in the molecular interactions and behaviors of the substances of which the atmosphere and Earth are composed.
5. Biology and agriculture includes 2,924 scientists trained in the functional and environmental requirements of living things on the Earth.
6. Medicine includes 3,069 scientists trained in the functional and environmental requirements of human beings on the Earth.
7. Engineering and general science includes 9,992 scientists trained primarily in the many engineering specialties required to maintain modern civilization and the prosperity required for all human actions, including environmental programs.
The following outline gives a more detailed analysis of the signers’ educations.
The Salem-News weighed in on the petition’s progress back in June, saying:
As the Senate prepares for floor debate on global warming legislation, the list of scientist signatories to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s petition against global warming alarmism is growing by about 35 signatures every day, announced OISM’s Art Robinson.
~~~
Signatories include such luminaries as theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, MIT’s atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen and first National Academy of Sciences president Frederick Seitz. More than 40 signatories are members of the prestigious national Academy of Sciences.
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1951, Seitz served as president on a part-time basis for three years before assuming full-time responsibilities in 1965. Among his numerous honors and awards, Seitz received the Franklin Medal in 1965; Stanford University's Herbert Hoover Medal in 1968; the United States Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award in 1968; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Distinguished Public Service Award in 1969 and 1979; the Compton Award, the highest award of the American Institute of Physics, in 1970; and the James Madison Medal of Princeton University in 1978. Rockefeller University awarded him an honorary doctor of science degree in 1981 and the David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service to The Rockefeller University in 2000. In addition to Rockefeller, 31 universities in the United States and abroad awarded him honorary degrees.
Seitz was a member of numerous scientific organizations, including the American Physical Society (president, 1961), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Society for Metals, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum Engineers, the American Crystallographic Society, the Optical Society of America, the Washington Academy of Science and a number of European scientific academies. From 1978 to 1983 he served as vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Robinson, himself a biochemist specialist, is described by SourceWatch as an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools” and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war. The entire history by the site offers the usual progressive “snear” in flavor, but provides a career overview that reveals a man with a more than interesting past.
SourceWatch’s dated commentary on the petition, states:
When questioned in 1998, OISM’s Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, “and of those the greatest number are physicists.” This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM’s website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all.
What a difference a decade makes, along with the AGW religion shoved down the world’s throats. A settled science and consensus? Not by a long shot. And as time marches on, the temperatures fall, the JPL’s Auru satellite measuring systems start filling in stratosphere data not previously measured, the numbers of skeptics grow.
Richard Cohen, a man not known for his conservative beliefs, asks a important question in his editorial today at The WaPo:
“Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire,” I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.
We’ve heard this kind of question before and each time its quite amusing to listen as the Obamamites hem and haw. Great speaker they utter. He’s a uniter they sputter. Nevermind the man has no experience other then being a community organizer. Nevermind the poor judgement he has shown in befriending terrorists, racists, and corrupt politicos. Nevermind his oft stated beliefs that are just an inch or two away from Marxism on the political philospophy dial.
John Gibson asks the question regularly. Most recently yesterday when he got into the fact that most Obama supporters are supporting him for no other reason other then his race?
That last caller towards the end of the audio is classic. He supports Obama over Hillary because he is more informed in foreign policy! Yeah….
One thing Obama seems to hang his hat on policy wise is his opposition to the war in Iraq. Cohen tackles this subject in his editorial:
Obama argues that he himself stuck to the biggest gun of all: opposition to the war. He took that position when the war was enormously popular, the president who initiated it was even more popular and critics of both were slandered as unpatriotic. But at the time, Obama was a mere Illinois state senator, representing the (very) liberal Hyde Park area of Chicago. He either voiced his conscience or his district’s leanings or (lucky fella) both. We will never know.
And we will never know, either, how Obama might have conducted himself had he served in Congress as long as McCain has. Possibly he would have earned a reputation for furious, maybe even sanctimonious, integrity of the sort that often drove McCain’s colleagues to dark thoughts of senatorcide, but the record — scant as it is — suggests otherwise. Obama is not noted for sticking to a position or a person once that position or person becomes a political liability.
All politicians change their positions, sometimes even because they have changed their minds. McCain must have suffered excruciating whiplash from totally reversing himself on George Bush’s tax cuts. He has denounced preachers he later embraced and then, to his chagrin, has had to denounce them all over again. This plasticity has a label: pandering. McCain knows how it’s done.
But Obama has shown that in this area, youth is no handicap. He has been for and against gun control, against and for the recent domestic surveillance legislation and, in almost a single day, for a united Jerusalem under Israeli control and then, when apprised of U.S. policy and Palestinian chagrin, against it. He is an accomplished pol — a statement of both admiration and a bit of regret.
Granted, Cohen wrote about his support of McCain because of issues that most conservatives don’t support him, but when liberals like Cohen are wondering just what Obama stands for, it doesn’t bode well for the Democrat party.
Karl at Protein Wisdom has some issues with Cohens editorial, specifically some of Obama’s “experience” that he overlooks:
As previously noted here, Obama's public record is almost entirely undistinguished, so it is not as though Cohen could discover the same. Cohen might also have looked at Obama's ineffectual efforts on public school reform in the 1980s and 1990s, especially given that Obama manages to get the issue of school choice exactly backward and is clinging to the failed policies of the past in this current campaign.
Cohen could also have looked at how Obama, as an ambitious pol, was so busy plotting his ascent that projects in addition to those education plans were not given follow-through or oversight. As a "community organizer," Obama's work at a housing project called Altgeld Gardens left a potholed trail of boarded-up buildings. As a state senator, his housing policies enriched donors like Valerie Jerrett and Tony Rezko, but spawned uninhabitable slum properties and homelessness in and around his district. As a Congressional candidate, his proposed Englewood Beautification Plan left "a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage and broken pavement." During his short tenure as a US Senator, Obama has failed to honor the pledges of assistance that he made to a Kenyan school named in his honor when he visited there amid great fanfare two years ago.
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Usama bin Laden(Osama bin Laden) one of the largest organizers of terrorist activity, and similarly the largest leaders of terrorist organization of Al Kaeda, detained American soldiery force in Iraq.
Ben Ladena consider participating to a number of diversionary acts: to encroaching upon the American citizens in Adene (Yemen) (1992), to the attack on the American servicemen in Somali (1993), to the explosion in the World shopping center in New York (1993), to murder of the American servicemen in Er-riyade and Dakhrane (Saudovskaya Arabia, 1995-1996), to shooting of tourists in Luksore (Egypt, 1997), to the explosions at the American embassies in Nayrobi (Kenya), Dar-es-salame (Tanzania) (1998), to encroaching upon the president of Uzbekistan of Islam of Karimova (1999), to injury of ship VMS of the USA in Yemen (2000), to the explosions of dwelling-houses in Moscou, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk, support of the Albanian separatists in Bosnia and Kosove and chechenskikh hits, in particular islams Khattaba, Abdully Maleka, Mukhammeda Sharifa and Salakh ÜÄ-Dinah. Ben is Well-built is an organizer of monstrous acts of terrorism in New York and Washington of September, 11 2001, taking away lives more than 5 thousand of persons after elimination by the airplanes taken the terrorists of two towers of the World shopping center.
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Quite interesting that in this article from the NYT’s about black radio talk show hosts being the answer to Limbaugh, they never mention black talk show hosts like Larry Elder. Shocker! But the article is something that should be read for no other reason to see how much race is a factor in this election. If you are black and NOT behind Obama then something just has to be wrong with you….right?
Warren Ballentine, one of black talk radio's new stars, was on a tear against Senator John McCain as he broadcast from the Greenbriar Mall here last week, blithely dismissing Mr. McCain's kind words about Senator Barack Obama at the recent N.A.A.C.P. national convention.
"He came out talking about how good of a race Barack Obama was running, and how proud he was of Barack," Mr. Ballentine said. "You know he went back home and said, 'I can't believe I spoke in front of all those Negroes today!' "
Yeah, thats what McCain did. How insulting and ignorant.
The article goes on to note how some in the black community are upset that Obama has sorta shunned them as the general election got underway in an effort to get the white vote which in all honesty makes sense. The black community are behind Obama because he is black, period. Doesn’t matter that he is the closest thing to a Marxist we’ve seen come around in a long time….no, what matters is his skin color. Examples are given in the article itself:
One caller to Mr. Ballentine's show last week laid out some boundaries for him, as well: "All of us coming down on him and criticizing him before we give him a chance, you know, that might hurt his campaign — let's get him in there first," the caller said. Mr. Ballentine responded, "Brother, I would never criticize him — until he's in the White House."
Good news. We got one of the big guys in al-Qaeda today during a missile strike in Pakistan:
Al-Qaeda chemical weapons expert Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar was believed to have been killed Monday in a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan, security officials told AFP.
“We believe he was killed in this strike,” a senior intelligence official based in the northwestern city of Peshawar told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“It was his hide-out and information that has been shared with us says he was targeted in this strike,” the official said.
The Egyptian, 54, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, had a five-million-US-dollar bounty on his head and allegedly ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
Ed Morrissey notes how a video of Khabab doing chemical weapon tests on dogs shocked the world:
Khabab may be most remembered for his experiments with chemical weapons. In video that shocked a world grown somewhat used to terrorism, the AQ terrorist exposed dogs to chemicals used for weapons and watched them die horrible deaths.
Which is a bit perplexing to me. Show pictures of Kurds being gassed, mass graves, rape rooms and acid baths and we got shrugs from the left. But dogs being hurt? Damn them!
But whatever, the five million dollar man is now dead and we have one less terrorist to deal with.
41 years ago tomorrow, on July 29. 1967 a missile accidentally fired from an aircraft on the deck of the USS Forrestal. It flew across the flight deck, slammed into another plane, detonated that aircraft, its fuel, and its weapons. Shrapnel from that explosion punctured a dozen other aircraft that were waiting at the aft end of the ship-fully fueled and loaded with bombs for a massive airstrike. In the cockpit of the one of those planes-sitting right next to the plane that had accidentally launched the first missile, was John McCain. Less that 2 seconds after that first missile launched, the entire flight deck was an inferno. Pilots who had been strapped into their planes waiting for their turn to launch were trapped and surrounded by burning jet fuel, launching missiles, a hailstorm of shrapnel, and thousands of pounds of bombs.
John McCain unstrapped himself, climbed out on the nose of his A4 Skyhawk plane, jumped, and rolled through burning jet fuel. On his way to safety, some of the bombs on the burning planes began to explode, and he was knocked down by the shockwaves and by shrapnel piercing his body.
The crew and airwing of the USS Forrestal who were there that day deserve to have this day remembered and honored. That includes Senator John McCain. Is this a matter for the Presidential campaign? Well, it is an item on Senator McCain’s resume, and it says a lot about the man’s service to this nation, his heroism, professionalism, committment, and more. It’s worth mentioning in the campaign in the same way that one might point out that Senator Obama was a community organizer.
Think about it, and more importantly, remember the crew and aircrew of the Forrestal who fought and died that day.
One of the greatest accomplishments of Senator Obama and the past few years has been the bi-partisan effort w Sen Lugar (R) to contain the spread of loose nuclear weapons to rogue states and to terrorist groups that might be used by rogue states as a deniable/stealthy means of attack. Once a terrorist-delivered nuke destroys a city-like Los Angeles, it will happen w/little or no warning, and take months of forensics to determine the possible nation responsible for the matl. However, nukes tend to destroy most evidence, so it could take longer-particularly if the forensic facilities were destroyed.
QUESTION:
If a President DOES know who is responsible via human intelligence reporting, and/or electronic intercepts (as was the case w the 911 attacks), then would President Obama, or President McCain have the resolve to order a massive retaliatory strike capable of deterring the nation the sponsored the attack as well as other nations? Would he be willing to launch bombs knowing there’d be civilian casualties? Would Senator McCain (who has already, personally and repeatedly dropped bombs on civilians back in Vietnam) be capable of giving the order to kill millions of people?
It’s a thought worth considering especially since the purpose of a terrorist delivered nuke is to 1) provide no warning 2) provide no trace to the state that also benefits from the attack and sponsored it 3) impose terror
Imagine the terror in American cities as days and weeks went by without any forensic reporting as to who was responsible for destroying an American city? Would people stay in the cities? Would the economy survive if they left? So many questions. So few visuals. Here is one in almost real time where a state blows up LA, and the US instantly (best case circumstances) knows who is responsible.
“They know we’re going to fight for their freedom and they don’t want to try and help us at all with the situation.” - Chessa Horvath
While the government poises to bail out those “homeowners” who made bad decisions, here we have a Texas couple who have been called up by the Texas National Guard to serve a second tours of duty in Iraq. So how are they being treated for the noble act of serving their country? They were forced to pay for breaking their apartment lease. They shipped out last Saturday.
Army couple upset over apartment lease fees (Created: Thursday, July 24, 2008 9:14 PM CDT)
Horvaths said they found out they were charged early move-out, maintenance fees during week of deployment to Iraq
BY DANNY GALLAGHER, McKinney Courier-Gazette
Chris and Franchesca Horvath, both of whom are sergeants in the Army National Guard, will ship out to Iraq Saturday to serve their second tours of duty.
Less than a week before they are scheduled to ship out, they had to pay a much smaller price for their service.
The Horvaths lived at the El Lago Apartments on Craig Drive since August 2007 on a year-long lease. Chris and Franchesca were called back to active duty in Iraq and had to break their lease early, something a previous manager said wouldn't be a problem and that they wouldn't have to pay any early moving fees.
Always wise to get such agreements in writing.
When Chris checked back with the apartment earlier this week, he said he was told he owed the complex money for early termination, cleaning and maintenance fees.
"They pretty much got us and we can't do anything," Chris said. "We just wanted to make it known that we don't think it's right and we don't feel like we were being treated right."
Chris said he and his wife first received orders from the military in the middle of April that they might be deployed a second time after serving their first tour more than three years ago. Chris said he went to Iraq and his wife served in Afghanistan as a medic. Chris said he could not say where he would be deployed or what his duties will be when he gets there.
Chris received his orders at the beginning of May that he would have to report to duty for training in Fort Polk, La., in two weeks and would have to move out of his apartment early to prepare for his deployment. A manager named "April" told Chris that she would be able to get him out of his lease without any problems as long as provided military documentation to back up his claim. Chris claims he paid April the rest of his lease and was told he would receive half of it back once the paperwork cleared.
Chris and Franchesca left for their training and were relieved on July 2. They took the time off to visit with family and friends in Louisiana and East Texas before their deployment.
He claims he never received a notice or a letter concerning unpaid debts from the time he left the complex until Thursday.
"We went in yesterday (Thursday) to find out where our check was from the rest of our rent check," Chris said. "They ended up telling us we owed them $200 and they kept the whole month's rent because we didn't give them 30 days notice. All I had was two weeks before I had to leave [in May]. I couldn't give them 30 days."
He went to the complex to ask about his lease and found a new person sitting in the manager's office. April had left the company after he left the complex.
He said the old manager claimed it wouldn't be a problem, but the new manager produced a letter from their corporate office saying April did not have the authority to do that.
"They showed us a letter that [April] wrote to the corporate office asking if she could do that after I had already left and they responded back no, that it's against corporate policy," Chris said. "There was no notification. We're sitting here during the last 20 days at home with our family waiting to see if we would get that check. Now we're getting billed $200."
Chris said it would have been difficult to handle credit issues while they were on tour had they not paid the amount that was due.
"Where we're going, there is no internet access," Chris said. "We can't call the credit bureau and explain to them what happened over the phone. We were left with no options. We didn't want this on our credit. We want to buy a house so we can't have bad credit when we get back."
Chris and Franchesca said they paid the money the complex claimed they owed and consider the matter closed, even if they don't agree with how it ended.
"Had we not paid it, it would have gone to creditors," she said. "It's just not right that they don't contact us."
Officials at the El Lago Apartments declined the opportunity to comment.
Can anyone dig up a contact number for El Lago Apartments? They should be publicly shamed and raked over the coals for how they’ve handled this situation.
Not likely you’ll hear much about this culture of corruption in the “news” media!
New York attorney and Founder of “Voter March”, Louis Posner, used the now defunct Bush hating group to launder money from an illegal sex club he operated in New York City by the name of Hot Lap Dance Club.
The club was busted after an investigation which revealed drug dealing and prostitution were common at the establishment.
The female “employees” also complained that the Bush hating, money laundering Posner was a total leech who demanded sex of the women.
“He treated the girls as if they were property,” one employee, a New Jersey resident in a tube top and skirt, told the NY Daily News. Another employee told the NY Post “Lou is a scumbag. I hope he burns in hell.”
Employees of the Hot Lap Dance Club appear in court.
No word on whether former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer(DEMOCRAT), who resigned in March after it was learned he had his own setup with prostitutes, was among the clients.
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Dick Morris reminds us that Obama’s liberal policies may be just as big a problem for voters than his character:
The Debate McCain Must Force By Dick Morris Real Clear Politics June 25, 2008
…In our new book, Fleeced, we try to bring the debate back down to earth, focusing on the specific plans that Obama has announced during his presidential primary campaign and discussing the consequences. This is the debate Barack Obama hopes he can avoid.
Consider his proposals:
• In effect, he would legislate a 60 percent tax bracket for upper-income Americans, killing all initiative and innovation. He’d raise the top bracket to 40 percent. He’d apply FICA taxes to all income, not just that under $100,000 as at present. So add 40 percent plus FICA’s 12.5 percent plus Medicare’s 2 percent plus state and local taxes averaging, after deduction, at 5-6 percent, and you have a 60 percent bracket.
• He would double the capital gains tax, saddling the 50 percent of Americans who own stock with dramatically higher taxes.
• He’d double the dividend tax, hitting elderly coupon-clippers now retired and depending on fixed incomes.
• He wants to cover 12 million illegal immigrants with federally subsidized health insurance, dramatically driving up costs and forcing federal rationing of healthcare. As in the U.K. and Canada, you will not be permitted certain medical procedures if the bureaucrats decide you are not worth it.
• He proposes requiring Homeland Security operatives to notify terror suspects that they are under investigation within seven days of starting the investigation.
• He says that unless they can establish that there is “probable cause to believe that a certain individual is linked to a specific terrorist group,” Homeland Security cannot seize his documents and search his business. The current standard is only that the search be “relevant” to a terror investigation.
And let’s not forget that Obama is just fine with higher gas prices and opposes all new coal, petroleum and nuclear energy.
Not All Foreigners Love Obama
I’m sure that readers are bored with the last week’s Obama world tour. But if you’ll indulge me for a few seconds, it’s important to know that not all foreigners love Obama. The following Canadian writing in the Toronto, Ontario Globe and Mail had this view:
Obama’s audacity of hubris By REX MURPHY The Globe and Mail July 26, 2008
…The missing element may be the candidate’s equally sterling appreciation of himself. The rally in Berlin was the cue for this line of thought. As far as I know, this was his first visit to Germany. I could see him, on a first visit, as a candidate for the presidency, making calls on the Chancellor, meeting with opposition politicians, doing - as the Windsors call it - a bit of a walkabout.
But what was the idea behind a nominee for the highest office of the United States conducting a campaign rally in Berlin? Throw away those disclaimers from the Obama camp that the rally wasn’t political. Mr. Obama doesn’t knot his tie without politics providing the mirror.
It’s strange to have to note this, but, he isn’t yet president. He has absolutely no record at all of involvement in foreign policy.
Correction: He did offer unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge in Iraq, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain “it cannot be lost.” In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right, Mr. Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong.
And it’s less than two months ago that, ever so narrowly, he managed to edge Hillary Clinton out of contention for the nomination yet to be confirmed. It was razor close.
Yet, there he was on Thursday, acting in every way as if he were already president delivering, Urbi et Orbi, a proclamation. There was something almost glorious about the presumption: Call it the audacity of hubris. There was also and equally something very reckless about it. The only set who seem more enraptured than a good part of the U.S. media about the Obama campaign is the Obama campaign and the candidate himself.
The self-assurance, the commanding confidence of his campaign may turn out to be a transcending dynamic that rockets him into the White House while Mr. McCain is still trying to find a reporter to talk with. On the other hand, he may be signalling millions of voters that this untested candidate is just a damn sight too cocky for his own, and their, good.
As Curt points out in his post a round up of the AGW and energy news, the debate is raging in Australia , where they are finding resistance to their AGW mandates in the wake of Dave Evans (the man who designed FullCAM - the model that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol) - switch from proponent to skeptic
Meanwhile, enviros and agenda driven pols around the world do their level best to halt any constructive means of affordable, clean energy production, as well as increasing the world’s supply of oil.
There’s no dearth of “cures” offered by “the debate is settled” crowd. And one of these is everyone’s favorite - the electric car. To this I can only say… where is the logic?
To draw the parallel between the “problem” and “cure”, we need to talk water vapor. According to the pro AGW EurCarbon
Greenhouse gases (GHG) are gaseous components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes between 9-26%; and ozone, which causes between 3-7%, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, and chlorofluorocarbons. The greenhouse gases, once in the atmosphere, do not remain there eternally. They can be withdrawn from the atmosphere:
Some of the beef of many skeptics is that water vapor is not included as mitigating factor in the IPCC’s “consensus” of perceived global warming - now called “climate change” since the 10 year global cooling, most likely to protect the activists/alarmists’ credibility.
EurCarbon argues that naturally occuring water vapor isn’t a factor since it’s duration in the atmostphere is short term (days) and is removed via condensation and precipitation (assuming that we are not in drought conditions, I would guess) while CO2/carbon dioxide is a variable. Again, according to them…
CO2 duration stay is variable (approximately 200-450 years) and its global warming potential (GWP) is defined as 1. Methane duration stay is 12 +/- 3 years and a GWP of 22 (meaning that it has 22 times the warming ability of carbon dioxide) Nitrous oxide has a duration stay of 120 years and a GWP of 310 CFC-12 has a duration stay of 102 years and a GWP between 6200 and 7100 HCFC-22 has a duration stay of 12.1 years and a GWP between 1300 and 1400 Tetrafluoromethane has a duration stay of 50,000 years and a GWP of 6500 Sulfur hexafluoride has a duration stay of 3,200 years and a GWP of 23900.
Despite CO2s low rating, and ratio compared to water vapor, per the pro AGW proponents, it’s the main culprit attacked. Which now brings me to one of their solutions… electric cars for everyone.
Yet the hydrogen/electric car engineering emits… uh… water vapor… the single largest greenhouse gas effect. Should the world revert to all electric cars, that’s a lot of water vapor emitted that is dependent on condensation and rain for removal.
So the question that comes to my mind… just what bright lightbulb thinks it’s a great idea to change the world to cars emitting an increased amount of water vapor (the largest contributor to warming), and then depend on preciptation to remove that water vapor?
Let’s pile on more to their arguments… AGW proponents seem to suggest that our action is necessary to reduce reduce tropical storm activity (BS in itself) and other weather disasters Yet those typhoons and hurricanes they wish to control are a natural factor in cleaning out the high content of water vapor, burying it in the oceans. And if we’re adding more water vapor to the atmosphere, exactly how do they propose this will dissipate without falling back to the earth, producing more violent snow and rain storms, flooding, and other natural disasters?
This strikes me as counterproductive, especially since they are talking about adding massive amounts of water vapor with the electric car emissions.
There are many atmospheric greenhouse gases, some naturally occurring and some resulting from industrial activities, but probably the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. Water vapor is involved in an important climate feedback loop. As the temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere increases, the atmosphere is able to hold more water vapor. The additional water vapor, acting as a greenhouse gas, absorbs energy that would otherwise escape to space and so causes further warming.
Then we come to the known anomalies of measuring water vapor, and in which level of the atmosphere it is concentrated. It’s variance in not only amounts, but the distribution over the globe, can be seen in as little as minutes, to decades. Again, from the AGU website on water vapor, they fully admit that better ways to study measurements and the water vapor distribution is required to assess the largest contributor to greenhouse gases and it’s effect on climate.
There are questions about how well the current models, both those used in climate studies and those used in forecasting the daily weather, treat water vapor. Modeling would be improved by systematic examination of models’s treatment of water vapor in light of what is now known of its distributions. Some of the questions arise because of the lack of good water vapor observations. The likely benefits of improved water vapor data include better weather forecasts as well as improved climate models.
Different types of measurements are complementary and useful. The challenge is how best to merge the available information on water vapor distribution into an improved description of the time and space variations of water vapor to enhance climate studies.
Since water vapor represents the largest contributor, it seems that is further proof that alarmists are jumping the gun with proposed “cures” for climate control… a rather lofty goal in itself.
Instead… in the effort to curb the global warming that is really global cooling in the past decade… we’re planning on releasing vast amounts more water vapor into the atmosphere. And all without a full understanding of how this will affect climate.
I’m no scientist nor chemist, but there’s something that strikes me as odd here. If the atmosphere will hold less water vapor if we cool the planet, but yet we’re planning on releasing more of it that may end up in the upper atmosphere, aren’t we risking a man-made ice age?? Read more to see how I get to that…
ScienceDaily has a couple of articles about the dangers of increasing water vapor levels… not only those we are proposing with a world filled with electric car emissions, but also methane (which turns to water vapor in the atmosphere). From an April 2001 article, NASA has warned that increasing water vapor in the stratopshere may delay ozone recovery, and accelerate climate change. And this is from a AGW believer, as he states:
“Climate models also indicate that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane may enhance the transport of water into the stratosphere. Though not fully understood, the increased transport of water vapor to the stratosphere seems likely to have been induced by human activities.
“Rising greenhouse gas emissions account for all or part of the water vapor increase,” said Shindell, “which causes stratospheric ozone destruction.”
“Half the increase in the stratosphere can be traced to human-induced increases in methane, which turns into water vapor at high altitudes, but the other half is a mystery,” said Mote. “Part of the increase must have occurred as a result of changes in the tropical tropopause, a region about 10 miles above the equator, that acts as a valve that allows air into the stratosphere.”
Readings of water vapor increases 3 to 10 miles up are more ambiguous, Mote said.
~~~
“A wetter and colder stratosphere means more polar stratospheric clouds, which contribute to the seasonal appearance of the ozone hole,” said James Holton, UW atmospheric sciences chairman and expert on stratospheric water vapor. “These trends, if they continue, would extend the period when we have to be concerned about rapid ozone depletion.”
Atmospheric heating happens when the Earth’s atmosphere and surface absorb solar radiation, while cooling occurs when thermal infrared radiation escapes the atmosphere and goes into space. If certain key gases that absorb and emit infrared radiation, the most important being water vapor and carbon dioxide, were not present in the atmosphere, Earth’s temperature would cool to minus 19 degrees celsius, or minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The global annual mean temperature is 14 degrees celsius.
Consider that statement… CO2 and water vapor keep us from being at a mean average of 2F degrees… I’d say that’s an ice age. Yet here we are, sans complete science on water vapor, in a race to increasing water vapor, and decreasing CO2…. two necessary ingredients for our liveable climate. How do we know what that change in balance will do? Ice age? Or perhaps even more warming instead?
“It’s hard to tell if those great international agreements [to ban CFCs] work if we don’t understand the other big things that are going on in the stratosphere, such as increases in greenhouse gases and water vapor,” Shindell said. The stratosphere is a dry atmospheric layer between 6 and 30 miles (9.7 and 48.3 kilometers) up where most ozone exists.
~~~
One simulation isolated the impacts of CFCs on ozone, and showed that as CFCs decline, by the year 2040 overall ozone makes close to a full recovery from current low levels. When CFCs, water vapor and temperature changes were all combined in a computer model, by 2040, overall ozone levels recovered only slightly from their current low point.
These computer simulations suggest that climate change from greenhouse gases may greatly slow any anticipated ozone recovery. Shindell said the effects of climate change need to be better accounted for as scientists and others try to track the success of international agreements, like the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned CFCs.
The paper appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres.
It can be simply said that what we know most of water vapor is that we know very little … nor have we had adequate technology and accurate measurements to use to study of it’s effects with any degrees of accuracy.
With this increased focus on water vapor, we can also conclude that legislative mandates and cures thrust upon the global community - all with very damaging economic repercussions - are extremely premature. Needless to say, it’s entirely possible their cures are worse than the problem they suggest exists.
She’ll be OUR eyes and ears in Minneapolis in September!
When Mike’s America named Skye at Midnight Blue Blogger of the Year it was because of her eagerness to get out there be part of the action and give her readers live reports from the scene at events in Washington, DC or her own Victory Coalition in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
So, it should suprise no one that Skye’s desire for adventure and generosity in sharing with readers shouldn’t take another bold new course.
Skye: Official blogger at the GOP Convention!
Skye will be filing on the scene reports from the 2008 GOP Convention in Minneapolis and giving those of us who stayed at home a taste of how much fun a convention can be.
Here’s her announcement video:
Readers will be invited to interact with Skye online throughout the convention, September 1-4.
Support Skye-Live
It’s not cheap to have your own personal blogger on the ground in Minneapolis, so we’re hoping the generosity of our readers will be equal to the generosity of spirit Skye puts into every one of her blog posts.
Here are a few suggestions on how you can help:
$5 buys Skye a drink at one of Minneapolis’s better watering holes as she grills nervous delegates on their choice for McCain’s V.P. $20 buys Skye a reasonable lunch near the convention site while she hobnobs with the press and asks “why ARE you people so in the tank for that lightweight Obama?” $50 buys Skye a fine meal at a swanky restaurant while she needles sheepish RNC officials on their general timidity. $100 goes a long way towards buying Skye a comfortable, yet fashionable, pair of shoes so she can catch the shuttle bus back to her hotel room and tell us all the inside scoop before trotting off to another party.
A little roundup of global warming news that should perk some interest. First there is Christopher Bookers editorial in The Telegraph about the fraud known as James Hansen:
There are four internationally recognised sources of data on world temperatures, but the one most often cited by supporters of global warming is that run by James Hansen of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen has been for 20 years the world’s leading scientific advocate of global warming (and Al Gore’s closest ally). But in the past year a number of expert US scientists have been conducting a public investigation, through scientific blogs, which raises large question marks over the methods used to arrive at his figures.
First they noted the increasingly glaring discrepancy between the figures given by GISS, which show temperatures continuing to race upwards, and those given by the other three main data sources, which all show temperatures having fallen since 1998, dropping dramatically in the past year to levels around the average of the past 30 years.
Two sets of data, from satellites, go back to 1979: one produced by Dr Roy Spencer, formerly of Nasa, now at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, the other by Remote Sensing Systems. Their figures correspond closely with those produced by the Hadley Centre for Climate Studies of our own Met Office, based on global surface temperature readings.
Right out on their own, however, are the quite different figures produced by GISS which, strangely for a body sponsored by Nasa, rely not on satellites but also on surface readings. Hansen’s latest graph shows temperatures rising since 1880, at accelerating speed in the past 10 years.
The other three all show a flattening out after 2001 and a marked downward plunge of 0.6 degrees Celsius in 2007/8, equivalent to almost all the net warming recorded in the 20th century. (For comparisons see “Is the Earth getting warmer, or colder?” by Steven Goddard on The Register website.)
Hansen's monthly temperature reports are wildly out of line with every other global temperature measure, and the delta increases each month
Three of the four global temperature measures have shown world temps flat or cooling since 2001, with Hansen the exception
Hansen's NASA rejects satellite temperatures, relying instead on ground-based mercury systems, while the other three would kill for the NASA satellite data
Satellite data–of both temperature and ocean levels–increasingly disagree with Hansen's reports
Hansen, unlike the leading scientists of the other three bodies, stands alone in calling for international dictatorship to combat global warming
Hansen is the most politically active of the leading scientists in the field
Hansen has a lifetime's reputation to lose if he's wrong
In Australia the debate over a proposed Emission Trading System is fast becoming one on the cost of the program, and if its worth it to do if the worlds worst polluters are not doing it also:
DESPITE breathless expectations to the contrary, Malcolm Turnbull will not turn this week’s two-day Liberal Party debate on the shape of an emissions trading system into a defacto leadership contest with Brendan Nelson.
If Turnbull loses the fight inside the shadow cabinet over Nelson’s bid to make the introduction of an Australian ETS conditional on the big emitters China, India and the US committing to a global ETS framework first, the shadow treasurer will fall into line. The word committing is important. Nelson will only be demanding timetables - not action from the global giants - as his price for introducing an Australian ETS.
~~~
Meanwhile furious work is under way behind the scenes ahead of Tuesday’s shadow cabinet meeting and then a gathering of the full party room on Wednesday to find a compromise between the position being argued by Turnbull and environment spokesman Greg Hunt on one side, and Nelson on the other.
Turnbull and Hunt want a 2012 start-up date for an ETS with no conditions, the original position recommended in the Shergold report commissioned by former prime minister John Howard.
But there is a fall-back option for the Coalition: an in-principle acceptance of Nelson’s conditionality regarding the US, China and India, but tempered by the introduction of a slow-track ETS in Australia with both low carbon pricing and implementation trajectories as the trade-off for the big emitters not making the grade post Copenhagen 2009.
Nelson is prepared to consider this option, but only as one among others. Hunt, wanting to avoid a splintering confrontation between Turnbull and Nelson, will be pushing this hard.
The search for compromise marks a dawning recognition inside the Liberal Party that Nelson may have instinctively read the politics of the issue better than Turnbull; that while his condition-based stance on an ETS may be opportunistic it may also be more in tune with community sentiment than the hairy-chested approach taken by Kevin Rudd: an ETS by 2010 and damn the torpedoes.
~~~
Former CSIRO scientist Dennis Jensen has been leading the charge against an ETS inside the Liberal Party room during the past few weeks. Jensen isn’t just opposed to an ETS. He doesn’t believe climate change necessarily exists.
“First, on the science,” Jensen told me. “The data on global temperatures, sea ice extent, tropical upper tropospheric heating and ocean temperature suggests the danger to these do not match with predictions made by the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Having said that, even if you agreed with the IPCC position, Australia going it alone, or becoming involved in an ETS without India, China and the US is pointless.
“The danger for us becoming involved in this scheme is that we will damage our relative trading and economic position compared with those nations that continue to emit. Even if our industry does not go offshore, the economic competitiveness of our industries will be reduced due to increased costs. I am not in favour of sacrificing Australian industry, and Australian jobs and economic competitiveness, on the basis of dubious science, potential increases in the emitted carbon dioxide ‘problem’ and certainly any improvement in the overall ‘global warming’ situation, even accepting the orthodoxy.”
Then there is the news that the corn boom for ethanol has lessened interest in sustainable farming and is resulting in a increase of fertilizer and pesticide use:
MES, Iowa - Most farmers would be pleased with the yields Matt Liebman can get from his corn field - 200 bushels an acre or more.
The average yield last year in Boone County, where Liebman’s head-high corn is growing this summer, was 181 bushels per acre. The national average last year was 151 bushels.
Better yet, Liebman gets his strong yields with far less fertilizer and pesticide than conventional growers use. Applying less fertilizer saves money and reduces polluted runoff.
But Liebman, a Berkeley-trained professor of agronomy at nearby Iowa State University, knows few farmers are going to pay attention to his methods. Not when corn is selling for $6 to $7 a bushel, triple what it did just three years ago.
Farmers are planting more corn than they have in decades, raising concerns that the heavy use of chemicals needed to produce the crop will worsen pollution in rivers and streams.
Following Liebman’s sustainable farming practices would mean a farmer could only plant corn every three or four years on the same ground. Other years, they’d have to plant soybeans and crops like alfalfa and red clover to replace the nitrogen the corn has sucked out of the soil.
“I don’t tell people this is what they should do. I tell them this is something they can do,” Liebman said. “We need to be cognizant of not just production but quality of life and quality of the environment.”
The eastern Colorado wind turbine tapped for the Democratic National Convention’s carbon-offset program has one problem: It doesn’t generate any electricity. Convention organizers are now being questioned for their eagerness to market those credits to delegates.
The DNC has contracted with Vermont-based NativeEnergy to offer delegates “Green challenge” carbon offsets to soften the environmental impact of convention travel. That money is then invested in carbon-free “green” energy sources around the country, including a wind turbine installed this year by the Wray School District RD-2. But a Face The State investigation reveals the district’s turbine has never produced marketable energy due to massive equipment malfunctions.
Amid the rolling hills and verdant pastures of south central Virginia an unlikely new front in the battle over nuclear energy is opening up. How it is decided will tell us a lot about whether this country is willing to get serious about addressing its energy needs.
In Pittsylvania County, just north of the North Carolina border, the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States — and the seventh largest in the world, according to industry monitor UX Consulting — sits on land owned by neighbors Henry Bowen and Walter Coles. Large uranium deposits close to the surface are virtually unknown in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. And that may be the problem.
Virginia is one of just four states that ban uranium mining. The ban was put in place in 1984, to calm fears that had been sparked by the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island outside of Harrisburg, Pa. in 1979.
Messrs. Bowen and Coles, who last year formed a company called Virginia Uranium, are asking the state to determine whether mining uranium really is a hazard and, if not, to lift the ban. But they’ve run into a brick wall of environmental activists who raise the specter of nuclear contamination and who are determined to prevent scientific studies of the issue.
~~~
James Kelly, who directed the nuclear engineering program at the University of Virginia for many years, says that fears about uranium mining are wildly overblown. “It’s an aesthetic nightmare, but otherwise safe in terms of releasing any significant radioactivity or pollution,” he told me. “It would be ugly to look at, but from the perspective of any hazard I wouldn’t mind if they mined across the street from me.”
The situation is rich with irony as well as uranium. While you can’t mine yellowcake, it is perfectly legal in Virginia to process enriched uranium into usable nuclear fuel, which is somewhat dangerous to handle. A subsidiary of the French nuclear giant Areva operates a fuel fabrication facility in Lynchburg 50 miles from Chatham. It has been praised by Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, as a good corporate citizen. The state is also home to four commercial nuclear reactors, which provide Virginians with 35% of their electricity. And, of course, the U.S. Navy operates nuclear ships out of Norfolk, Va.
Across the country, there are 104 commercial nuclear reactors. They consume 67 million pounds of uranium annually, the vast majority of which is imported from Australia, Canada and former Soviet republics. The 200-acre Coles Hill deposit (Mr. Coles’s family has lived on the spot since 1785) is thought to contain nearly twice that amount. For Messrs. Bowen and Coles, with the long-term price of uranium near $80 per pound, that means they are sitting on about $10 billion worth of ore. But for the rest of us, it means they are sitting on an opportunity to make the U.S. more energy self-sufficient.
And finally this letter to the editor in The Province is an excellent smackdown of the elitism shown by the man-made global warming crowd and Max Cameron in this editorial:
The earth’s climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years, and there’s nothing he and his like-minded crowd can do to stop it.
But the earth has not warmed since 1998. We have entered a cooling phase, and all the warming of the past 100 years has been wiped out.
None of this showed up on any of the climate-change models.
For Cameron to insinuate that skeptics do not care about the environment or the future of our children shows an unbearable elitist’s arrogance.
Skeptics agree that we have to work hard to gain efficiency and become less reliant on oil, coal and gas. But they do not want to hear half-truths or pseudo-science trumpeted by eco-activists and gravy-train-riding scientists.
The single biggest enemy of the environment and planet Earth, Mr. Cameron, is poverty. Nothing else comes even close.
Just a few of the stories over the last few days that provide some fodder for discussion on the merits of AGW.
The Sheepdogs made for a fabulous presentation against the anemic peace protesters; perhaps they are spreading their dwindling membership too thin with multiple day protests?
We had our Sheepdog motorist make an eyecatching appearance, circling around the block several times to show his support for the troops and America. We cheered loudly every time he drove by, the peace protesters were not amused.
Every week we welcome new friends into our midst. John and Nina were driving past our rally and were compelled to come back at join us. It was a pleasure to meet two such enthusiastic patriots and look forward to seeing your smiling faces at future rallies. Mary Lou and Harry held a family reunion at our rally, introducing their son, Matt accompanied by his girlfriend, and Uncle Bill. We also welcomed today: Howard, John and Jeri - we look forward to sharing many more rallies with you!
Like what you see? Proud of America? Come join us! We rally every Saturday in West Chester, Pa at the corner of High and Market Streets - 10:45am till 12:15pm.
If you can’t make the West Chester Rally, below are other pro-troop rally’s occuring weekly in neighboring counties:
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By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
No one likes war. War is a horrific affair, bloody and expensive. Sending our men and women into battle to perhaps die or be maimed is an unconscionable thought.
Yet some wars need to be waged, and someone needs to lead. The citizenry and Congress are often ambivalent or largely opposed to any given war. It’s up to our leader to convince them. That’s why we call the leader “Commander in Chief.”
George W.’s war was no different. There was lots of resistance to it. Many in Congress were vehemently against the idea. The Commander in Chief had to lobby for legislative approval.
Along with supporters, George W. used the force of his convictions, the power of his title and every ounce of moral suasion he could muster to rally support. He had to assure Congress and the public that the war was morally justified, winnable and affordable. Congress eventually came around and voted overwhelmingly to wage war.
George W. then lobbied foreign governments for support. But in the end, only one European nation helped us. The rest of the world sat on its hands and watched.
After a few quick victories, things started to go bad. There were many dark days when all the news was discouraging. Casualties began to mount. It became obvious that our forces were too small. Congress began to drag its feet about funding the effort.
Many who had voted to support the war just a few years earlier were beginning to speak against it and accuse the Commander in Chief of misleading them. Many critics began to call him incompetent, an idiot and even a liar. Journalists joined the negative chorus with a vengeance.
As the war entered its fourth year, the public began to grow weary of the conflict and the casualties. George W.’s popularity plummeted. Yet through it all, he stood firm, supporting the troops and endorsing the struggle.
Without his unwavering support, the war would have surely ended, then and there, in overwhelming and total defeat.
At this darkest of times, he began to make some changes. More troops were added and trained. Some advisers were shuffled, and new generals installed.
Then, unexpectedly and gradually, things began to improve. Now it was the enemy that appeared to be growing weary of the lengthy conflict and losing support. Victories began to come, and hope returned.
Many critics in Congress and the press said the improvements were just George W.’s good luck. The progress, they said, would be temporary. He knew, however, that in warfare good fortune counts.
Then, in the unlikeliest of circumstances and perhaps the most historic example of military luck, the enemy blundered and was resoundingly defeated. After six long years of war, the Commander in Chief basked in a most hard-fought victory.
So on that historic day, Oct. 19, 1781, in a place called Yorktown, a satisfied George Washington sat upon his beautiful white horse and accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, effectively ending the Revolutionary War.
If you wanted us out of Iraq a few years ago, if you wanted us to run like cowards because the going was a bit tough, if you uttered the words “not in my name”whilespeakingabout Iraq, then you cannot claim the victory that pretty much everyone has now come to the conclusion Iraq is. When the AP, the news organization that did its best to spin and misinform any news on the war to prevent anyone from saying Bush was right, writes that we have won in Iraq….then you can be pretty sure that the left has no where else to run to except their echo chambers at DummiesU and KOS.
The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.
Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had (ed. they still can’t help themselves….spin spin and more spin). The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.
I think a section of Senator McCain’s recent speech is worth putting up here right about now:
If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheikhs who had begun to cooperate with us, and the “Sunni Awakening” would have been strangled at birth. Al Qaeda fighters would have safe havens, from where they could train Iraqis and foreigners, and turn Iraq into a base for launching attacks on Americans elsewhere. Civil war, genocide and wider conflict would have been likely.
Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened. Our military, strained by years of sacrifice, would have suffered a demoralizing defeat. Our enemies around the globe would have been emboldened. Terrorists would have seen our defeat as evidence America lacked the resolve to defeat them. As Iraq descended into chaos, other countries in the Middle East would have come to the aid of their favored factions, and the entire region might have erupted in war. Every American diplomat, American military commander, and American leader would have been forced to speak and act from a position of weakness.
Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.
And his latest ad:
Its going to be quite amusing to watch as the left backpedals on this war and tries to tell us they were for victory all along. Everyone just misunderstood them you see. Just watch as Obama spins his prior statements on the surge to get an example of what we will be hearing for years to come.
The Iraqi people should be very happy that the left in this country lost in their attempt to make us a lose this war.
July 22, 2008 - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, (D-Ill.) arrives at Marka Airport in Amman, Jordan. Obama delivered a speech in Amman calling for a political solution to the Iraq War. AP
Estimated to have drawn a crowd of 200,000 (oops! My participle’s dangling), only that son of a beach, David Hasselhoff might have drawn a larger crowd during his Germany Concert Tour last year. Rock on!
July 24, 2008 - Obama greets an excited sea of Berliners. Jae C. Hong-AP
Apparently, sixty-two percent of Germans want Citizen Barack to be the next U.S. president, this according to a Gallup poll released the other day (even as Germans might have seen that the speech was all hype, airbrushed with the semblance of substance). Just who does he think he is? I mean…c’mon, the black kennedy didn’t even address the Berliners in German!
I wonder if Americans will appreciate Obama’s deprecation of the United States on foreign soil for his own self-aggrandizing purposes.
As Dean Barnett pointed out on the Hugh Hewitt Show Friday, when Citizen Barack started, “Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.”, it’s a bit off-history, as it was America- not “we”- that did the heavy lifting, and Germany benefited. Barnett:
Now on the one hand, you know you’re going to go to Germany and say nice things about the Germans- that’s a given, you’re going to be diplomatic; there’s no question about that. But…there is this other issue that everything in his worldview is funneled down into teammwork; that everyone of his speeches has the same narrative arc. David Brooks pointed this out in today’s New York Times, that there’s a problem, people come together, people solve the problem, and everybody lives happily ever after.
So, in South Africa there’s a problem, people come together, they defeat Apartheid, everybody lives happily ever after. But it doesn’t work like that in the real world. The problem in Germany in 1948 with the Soviet Union trying to take over all of Germany and trying to suffocate the western half of Germany wasn’t overcome by people coming together; it was overcome by President Harry Truman’s resolve; it was overcome by Harry Truman risking war to overcome it. And to refer to it as something as nebulous as a partnership is an inaccurate way to think of it. And we face the same sort of dynamics as we go forward into this election season that concerns the war on terror. That whether or not the world comes together, America has to win in Iraq, it has to win in Afghanistan.
Germany is one of our Coalition partners in Afghanistan and again, I don’t mean to rag on the Germans, obviously Barack Obama shouldn’t have gone there to rag on the Germans; but our Coalition partners- the Germans- in Afghanistan, they aren’t allowed to engage the enemy. So that’s something worth noting. That the progress we are going to achieve in Afghanistan in all likelihood is not going to be because of “the world comes together”. It’s not going to be because free countries come together. It’s going to be because America leads the way. It’s been that way for almost a century. A lot of us are very proud of America, a lot of us believe in America, and the thing that is really noteworthy of Obama’s speech is how it veered away from those things; how it didn’t acknowledge American exceptionalism. It talks about the Berlin Airlift like it was a partnership, which is a ludicrous way to think of it.
Barnett went on to analogize how Germany and the world benefited from the Cold War policies that Reagan enacted and which were opposed at the time. Hundreds of thousands protested his “tear down this wall” speech.
Also, blogger Z has a good friend, Klaus Lewin, who experienced the Berlin Airlift firsthand, as a little boy. Read about his memory and impressions. Here’s an excerpt:
Suddenly, unexpected relief came and it came from people who Adolph Hitler had declared our enemies: The Americans and the British. In an ingenious and forward-looking humane decision, the United States administration began to bring West Berlin much needed supplies through the air! The Brits went along with this action and the French, too, agreed to it but their military engagement in Indochina kept them from very actively participating.
On June 26, 1948, the first aircraft took off from Frankfurt and brought supply goods to Berlin. We Berliners could only be amazed and felt such deep thankfulness not only for the necessary help but also for the sign of a democratic new start for us and a return to feeling like one of a family of countries, something the Americans showed us through this wonderful action.
Also, we as children sensed the city starting to breathe again. We followed with gratefulness each announcement of the astonishing performances which our former "enemies" did for us. This was the birth hour of the German/American friendship and partnership which, despite all prophecies of gloom which always come from the same political side of both our countries, has achieved an unbreakable status.
Ok, admittedly, Klaus Lewin used the word “partnership” there; but the point was in highlighting American exceptionalism and the gratitude he feels to this day regarding America. He ends his letter to Z this way:
I had fourteen years to go before I could go to America for the first time. I stood on the Empire State Building, looked down at the city, and wanted to embrace every American. Thank you for your spirit and for being such an incredible role model of aid and friendship.
Obama appeared on large TV screens in front of the massive audience. He warned America could not quell violence in Afghanistan alone, and called on Europe for more troops and funding to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Sebastian Willnow-AFP/Getty Images
“American presidential elections are not 'home affairs’. American decisions have repercussions all over the globe…. Hence, the world should be given the right to vote.”
John Bolton hits it out of the park with his editorial today about Obama and his “big” speech in Germany:
SEN. BARACK OBAMA said in an interview the day after his Berlin speech that it “allowed me to send a message to the American people that the judgments I have made and the judgments I will make are ones that are going to result in them being safer.”
If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.
Bolton tackles a couple of Obama’s points such as his explanation for the fall of the Berlin Wall.
People of the world — look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.
Bolton attacks:
The wall fell because of a decades-long, existential struggle against one of the greatest totalitarian ideologies mankind has ever faced. It was a struggle in which strong and determined U.S. leadership was constantly questioned, both in Europe and by substantial segments of the senator’s own Democratic Party. In Germany in the later years of the Cold War, Ostpolitik — “eastern politics,” a policy of rapprochement rather than resistance — continuously risked a split in the Western alliance and might have allowed communism to survive. The U.S. president who made the final successful assault on communism, Ronald Reagan, was derided by many in Europe as not very bright, too unilateralist and too provocative.
But there are larger implications to Obama’s rediscovery of the “one world” concept, first announced in the U.S. by Wendell Willkie, the failed Republican 1940 presidential nominee, and subsequently buried by the Cold War’s realities.
The successes Obama refers to in his speech — the defeat of Nazism, the Berlin airlift and the collapse of communism — were all gained by strong alliances defeating determined opponents of freedom, not by “one-worldism.” Although the senator was trying to distinguish himself from perceptions of Bush administration policy within the Atlantic Alliance, he was in fact sketching out a post-alliance policy, perhaps one that would unfold in global organizations such as the United Nations. This is far-reaching indeed.
Second, Obama used the Berlin Wall metaphor to describe his foreign policy priorities as president: “The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.”
This is a confused, nearly incoherent compilation, to say the least, amalgamating tensions in the Atlantic Alliance with ancient historical conflicts. One hopes even Obama, inexperienced as he is, doesn’t see all these “walls” as essentially the same in size and scope. But beyond the incoherence, there is a deeper problem, namely that “walls” exist not simply because of a lack of understanding about who is on the other side but because there are true differences in values and interests that lead to human conflict. The Berlin Wall itself was not built because of a failure of communication but because of the implacable hostility of communism toward freedom. The wall was a reflection of that reality, not an unfortunate mistake.
Tearing down the Berlin Wall was possible because one side — our side — defeated the other. Differences in levels of economic development, or the treatment of racial, immigration or religious questions, are not susceptible to the same analysis or solution. Even more basically, challenges to our very civilization, as the Cold War surely was, are not overcome by naively “tearing down walls” with our adversaries.
Bolton makes a great point here. Walls exist not because of misunderstandings or fear but are the result of very real differences in values, beliefs and interests. In the real world these are not overcome by implementing the “we are all one” garbage taught in college international relation classes. Being nice to our enemies will not tear down the walls. Defeating our enemies, such as the USSR, will tear down that wall. Doesn’t matter how much he wants to believe singing kumbaya around the campfire will make us all safer, history is littered with the carcasses of appeasers who thought the same thing.
Jails and universities aren’t enough of a breeding ground for the serious Caliphate agenda driven…. A group of youth from the Muslim Brotherhood has gotten permission from from the Brotherhood’s second-in-command, Muhammad Habib to spread their message via the Internet. Their message?
The creators of the project decided to call themselves an “electronic student cell of the Muslim Brotherhood” and their aim to to push for the return of an Islamic Caliphate [a Muslim state].”
~~~
Their political activity is also not limited to Egypt either but is aimed at Muslims all around the world.
The new discussion forum on Facebook is based on five points.
The first is the organisation of protests in all Muslim countries for the salvation of Islam and issues of the Islamic nation.
The second issue refers to the spread of the stories of the Prophet Mohammad with regards to the caliphate and the third point is a request to all imams to talk about this issue in their sermons.
The fourth and fifth points are spreading of leaflets to remind Muslims of the importance of the caliphate and to sensitize all Islamic parties and organisations to support this initiative.
Loathed by the west as radicals, and disdained by al Zawahiri as wusses, the Brotherhood is not likely to be swapping recipes for car bombs on their Facebook forums. Instead, this more “moderate” Brotherhood is even more stealth, and thereby more dangerous. Afterall, it’s easy to despise and reject outright advocation of violence. But luring in to Islam and the Caliphate design, and attempting to achieve Islamic law by converting the masses and achieving power via elections? Subtle.. and very do’able. It’s easy to dazzle the young, impressionist youth that frequent Facebook.
Over the past year, we have met with dozens of Brotherhood leaders and activists from Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. In long and sometimes heated discussions, we explored the Brotherhood’s stance on democracy and jihad, Israel and Iraq, the United States, and what sort of society the group seeks to create. The Brotherhood is a collection of national groups with differing outlooks, and the various factions disagree about how best to advance its mission. But all reject global jihad while embracing elections and other features of democracy. There is also a current within the Brotherhood willing to engage with the United States. In the past several decades, this current — along with the realities of practical politics — has pushed much of the Brotherhood toward moderation.
Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke - authors of this report (of which only a certain part if viewable free) - believe the US makes a mistake in not seeking out and engaging parts of the Brotherhood as moderates. I have to wonder - what the heck are they thinking? What is a common thread - despite their “moderation” by achieving the Caliphate by elections and non violence - is rule under Islamic law. A governance that promotes third world conditions, human rights abuses, and sets women’s right back centuries.
Certainly Egypt, outlawing their homeland group, recognizes this perceived “moderation” as dangerous - arresting 39 Brothers just days ago ranging in ages from 18-35, suspected of seeking reorganization of the group.
(Abd-al-Rahim - interviewer) Is this not a clear violation of the citizenship?
(Akif) It is not a violation at all. This is the culture of the citizen who lives in a Muslim country that has its values and principles, which ought to be respected.
~~~
(Abd-al-Rahim) Then, you still plan to apply the Islamic shari’ah as soon as you ascend to power?
(Akif) If we ascend to power, this will mean that the people believe in our vision. Moreover, do we live for anything other than the shari’ah? The Egyptian Constitution itself says this.
~~~
(Abd-al-Rahim) Then, in your opinion, how do you honor women while you do not believe in their right to ascend to the senior positions; moreover, women are far from even the leading positions within the Muslim Brotherhood?
(Akif) Should I place them in positions that would expose them to imprisonment?! The activity of the Muslim Brotherhood women through which they satisfy God is to bring up their children well. Let me give you a living example; when some female members of the Muslim Brotherhood were nominated as candidates in the parliamentary elections, what happened to them? Moreover, do you not know that the woman is under the guardianship of the man, who does not want her to be “trampled upon?”
~~~
Abd-al-Rahim) What about your stance toward democracy, have you crystallized a clear stance, or are you still within the realm of the talk about Shura [consultation]?
(Akif) Shura [consultation] is the highest level of democracy in its respect of the human being.
(Abd-al-Rahim) This claim is rebutted, because Shura [consultation] has nothing to do with democracy as it is not binding, and the ruler is the unilateral decision maker. Therefore, how can it be the highest level?
(Akif) Shura [consultation] is the perfect democracy if it is done properly and respects shari’ah. I distinguish between Shura and western democracy that allows man to do whatever he wants, and to do the things that God has not ordered. Among us, the leader comes only through Shura, and the final word is up to the Guidance Bureau and not to me. I am talking about democracy here, in the society and not within the group!
(Abd-al-Rahim) Then, are you, as it is circulating, riding on the wave of democracy in order to fulfill your aims despite the fact that you do not believe in it, and after that you will show your dictatorial face, and implement the policy of closed doors?
(Akif) We now are back to using the words of the secularists! I reject this logic, because it judges the intentions, and it has no aim other than muddying the issues.
“muddying the issues”… uh, is that like a “distraction”?? LOL
Needless to say, whether Islamic law is achieved via propaganda, brain washing and elections - or via violent methods - Islamic law and western freedoms and lifestyle are completely incompatible. So forgive me if I’m still not appalled at their presence on Facebook.
I looked around to see who else was on top of this story… Or was it only me who was concerned that the Brotherhood are now on the other side of the computer screen from western our children, seeking to advance their cause of the Caliphate and Islamic law in an Internet social network that caters to the young? JihadWatch has it posted, but sans any comments. Other than that, quiet as a church mouse.
Have kids? Or have friends with kids haunting Facebook? You may want to give them a heads up.
Personally, I’m all for food handlers wearing head scarfs (or should I spell it “scarves”?), hair nets, hats…anything that keeps hair and sweat from falling onto food they are preparing. But I’m also of the belief that businesses should have the freedom to discriminate (for the most part) who they hire. You don’t like it? Don’t do business there.
DEARBORN — Two Muslim women say the manager of a McDonald's restaurant refused to hire them and insulted them during job interviews because they wear traditional Islamic dress.
Toi Whitfield, 20, of Detroit, and Quiana Pugh, 25, of Dearborn, filed a lawsuit Thursday in Wayne County Circuit Court against McDonald's, the owner of the local franchise and its unnamed manager. Their representative said they are considering filing civil rights complaints with the federal and state governments.
"I applied for the McDonald's position maybe two weeks ago and he simply (told me) I had to make a choice and remove my hijab, or I would not be able to establish employment there," Pugh said. "When I walked away, I was definitely hurt by it and disturbed. I was confused that it could happen here in Dearborn, with so many Muslims."
Hijab is an Arabic word meaning "cover." It refers to traditional Islamic dress, intended to encourage modesty, in which women often cover everything but the hands and face. Finley Management Inc., which runs the franchise, said in a statement it has not been notified of the lawsuit.
"Finley Management has a strict policy prohibiting any form of discrimination with regard to race, gender, religion or national origin, in hiring, or in any other aspect of employment," the statement read. "We would caution anyone from jumping to conclusions without having all the facts."
McDonald's publishes a corporate handbook with a chapter titled "Our Commitment to Employees," which says that the world's largest fast food chain forbids discrimination in employment.
"Each of our employees throughout the world deserves to be treated with fairness, respect and dignity," the policy statement reads. "We provide equal opportunity for employees and applicants."
The restaurant in question sits amid one of the largest concentrations of commercial businesses for Arab-Americans in the country. Like many of the national chain fast-food establishments in the area, it has long served some halal food, which conforms to Muslim dietary requirements. "This manager must have just stepped off of some spaceship to think he can do this in this back yard, in Dearborn," said Nabih Ayad, a civil rights lawyer who represents the women.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan, said that he has eaten at McDonald's restaurants in Turkey that cater to Muslims and employ them, including numerous women who cover.
"It is extremely disturbing that such discrimination could take place at a location which does not mind collecting Muslim dollars, yet places restriction on Muslim women who wear hijab." Whitfield said the manager told her she could not wear her headscarf because, "It gets too hot back there."
"I hope that they learn from their mistakes," she said. "They should not discriminate against people. Everyone should have an equal chance to work at McDonald's."
Traditional Muslim dress doesn’t bother me. People should have the freedom to dress how they wish to…on their own time. If business owners want to make accomodations and allowances on behalf of religious sensitivity, more power to them. But I’m sick of people and their lawyers suing for millions, due to “hurt feelings”. Just suck it up and go elsewhere. After all….do you folks really want to end up like this guy (he’s in Michigan, btw):
Wordsmith Confession: The only reason why I’m doing this post, is it gave me an excuse to post this video on a political blog.
Usama bin Laden(Osama bin Laden) one of the largest organizers of terrorist activity, and similarly the largest leaders of terrorist organization of Al Kaeda, detained American soldiery force in Iraq.
Ben Ladena consider participating to a number of diversionary acts: to encroaching upon the American citizens in Adene (Yemen) (1992), to the attack on the American servicemen in Somali (1993), to the explosion in the World shopping center in New York (1993), to murder of the American servicemen in Er-riyade and Dakhrane (Saudovskaya Arabia, 1995-1996), to shooting of tourists in Luksore (Egypt, 1997), to the explosions at the American embassies in Nayrobi (Kenya), Dar-es-salame (Tanzania) (1998), to encroaching upon the president of Uzbekistan of Islam of Karimova (1999), to injury of ship VMS of the USA in Yemen (2000), to the explosions of dwelling-houses in Moscou, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk, support of the Albanian separatists in Bosnia and Kosove and chechenskikh hits, in particular islams Khattaba, Abdully Maleka, Mukhammeda Sharifa and Salakh ÜÄ-Dinah. Ben is Well-built is an organizer of monstrous acts of terrorism in New York and Washington of September, 11 2001, taking away lives more than 5 thousand of persons after elimination by the airplanes taken the terrorists of two towers of the World shopping center.
Rule One of the mainstream “news” media: One set of standards for reporting on Republicans, another for Democrats!
When the National Enquirer broke the story that former presidential candidate John Edwards was caught in a Beverly Hills hotel with what was described as his mistress and their love child the mainstream “news” media looked the other way.
Even when Fox News confirmed that a security guard summoned by John Edwards to rescue him from reporters as he as besieged in a hotel bathroom confirms that Edwards was at the scene and reportedly turned “totally white” when he learned the story reporters were following; the media still remained silent.
The Associated Press went so far as to run an article featuring the words of Cindy McCain and comparing her reaction to that of other political spouses with cheating husbands.
No one is suggesting that the media push a microphone in the face of Elizabeth Edwards, who is terminally ill. But that doesn’t mean that the same standard of reporting shouldn’t apply to John Edwards that was applied to McCain. After all, Edwards had vehemently denied rumors of the affair on previous occasions: “The story is false. It’s completely untrue, ridiculous” Edwards said.
Writing at Slate.com Jack Schafer points out that 24 hours after the news broke of Senator Larry Craig’s (R-Idaho) arrest for footsie in an airport restroom the media pounced on him for hypocrisy and at least 36 daily newspapers in the U.S. had published the story. Citing Craig’s hypocrisy was their justification. Edwards hypocrisy and lies doesn’t seem to faze the media at all.
Liberal Editor at LA Times Covers It Up for Edwards
Not only did the story not appear in the main print editions of newspapers or magazines, Mickey Kaus writing at Slate.com finds the email that the editor of the Los Angeles Times sent to the newspaper’s online bloggers directing them to hush it up:
From: “Pierce, Tony”
Date: July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT
To: [XXX]
Subject: john edwards
Hey bloggers,
There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.
If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to ask
Keep rockin,
Tony
Frankly, the revelations about Edwards are less interesting than the media’s reaction to the news. I’d have no problem if they treated all such stories with the delicacy and tact that they are currently treating the Edwards’ story. But that’s just not the case now is it? If the subject here was Mitt Romney or any other Republican the story would be entirely different.
I heard it just as recently as this weekend, when a local conservative blogger on my favorite radio station said something to the effect that "we now know there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." And every time I hear that I always wonder do we? So much becomes considered common knowledge without the slightest bit of of investigation. Think about all the things like trans fat, WMDs in Iraq, anthropogenic global warming, the goodness of "organic" food…all of these things we take our knowledge of for granted. But in every case there are issues with what is perceived to be true, with what those talking heads on tv believe to be true. And these talking heads or whoever writes their material never bother to look at these issues or bother to apply the tiniest bit of skepticism to their story. If they did, they would find out what Ken Timmerman, author of Shadow Warriors discovered: credible sources with no agenda believe that WMDs were removed from Iraq to Syria, sometimes on a stripped down 747 or 727 othertimes by unmarked trucks. Eyewitnesses to these programs are quoted in his book. Also there is evidence that there is an as yet unexplored underground uranium enrichment facility, called site 555 or the al Fajr facility.
There is no need to change what the Iraq war was fought about. We didn't go there to free the Iraqi people, though our mission was titled "Iraqi Freedom." This was about national security, and for good reason: Iraq had WMDs and even if they wouldn't use them against us, they certainly wouldn't balk at terrorists using them against us. Furthermore, everyone knows that Iraq didn't have ties with al Qaeda. Of course, "everyone" is wrong. While Saddam Hussein might not have been directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, it appears he was a supporter of al Qaeda, this also from Shadow Warriors. On page 260, Timmerman notes "Another document, dated January 18, 1993 transmitted Saddam Hussein's order, delivered through his personal secretary, 'to hunt the Americans that are in Arab lands, especially Somalia, by using Arab elements or Asian [Muslims] or friends.'"
Timmerman continues, "In response, the head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service informed Hussein that Iraq already had ties with a large number of international terrorist groups, including 'the Islamist Arab elements that were fighting in Afghanistan and [currently] have no place to base and are physically present in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.' In other words al Qaeda." (emphasis his)
In George W. Bush's speech shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush laid down the gauntlet: you're either with us or against us in the war on terrorism, a declaration of such honest and profound objectivity it no doubt still gives mealy-mouthed liberals and wishy-washy moderates nightmares. There can be no debate on which side Saddam Hussein fell. And because of his own hubris he brought on his own destruction. If liberals had their way (though many would have to go back in time to change the way they felt before the invasion of Iraq) Saddam would still be charge in Iraq and Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and terrorists in general would know that the USA didn't have the will to enforce their demands.
Liberalism has destroyed the United States' ability to defend itself, not through disarmament (though the Clinton administration certainly did a significant amount of disarmament) but through the destruction of the political will of the people of the United States. It is only through politics, the peace movement and the resulting loss of morale that the United States has ever lost a war, it is only through military strength that we can ensure peace.
The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman had a little ditty yesterday, “End of the Affair”, documenting the BHO press offices rather terse emails to Nagourney, complaining about the Times conclusions of a poll showing Obama’s not making much headway against JSM in closing the divide between Americans, based on the constituents’ race. The email text is not provided, and we do not know what the BHO press types were attempting to accomplish with their complaints specifically.
Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama’s press office. The campaign was irked by the Times’ latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee’s accompanying front-page piece titled “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race,” which was running in the morning’s paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.
But, the next morning, Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers like The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico’s Ben Smith. Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. “I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ ” Nagourney recently recalled. “I really flipped out.”
Later that afternoon, Nagourney got permission from Times editors to e-mail Sargent a response to the Obama memo. But the episode still grates. “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others,” Nagourney tells me. “I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”
Apparently, Talking Points decided to act as the campaign’s mouthpiece, publishing a rebuttal in their words, and on their behalf, in a piece with the Greg Sargent byline story, “Obama Campaign Criticizes New York Times Story On Poll”.
“The NYT story about their poll ignores multiple and significant pieces of data that actually indicate a trend much different from that which the story suggests,” the critique reads. It goes on to list “some straightforward points from their data that are omitted from the story.”…
… followed by why they felt the conclusions were in error. Or perhaps more aptly put in Seinfeld-eses….yada yada…
Nagourney came up with his own retort to the Obama press office retort (that masqueraded as a Greg Sargent article), published as a counterpoint on TPM.
The New York Times’s Adam Nagourney has sent me a long and detailed response to the Obama campaign’s complaint that his story today on the paper’s big poll on race omitted key info that would have been more favorable to Obama.
While Nagourney says he is “comfortable” with the story, he does concede that he left out one key data point about Michelle Obama that he should have included. He allows that headline was imperfect, in that it implied some sort of failure on Obama’s point to close the racial divide:
This was a long and detailed poll that yielded a lot of interesting results. We could have chosen to focus on any number of themes; we decided to focus mainly on what we could learn from the poll about how blacks, whites and Hispanics view politics and society at the critical moment. The critique from the Obama campaign seems to be directed at findings from the poll that we did not address in much depth in the story, particularly the head to head matchups between the two candidates. We make our polls public in the spirit of transparency and so that others can take a look and draw their own conclusions. In this case, there’s plenty of data to consider on about questions we did not include in our story, and there are other valid ways of framing the results.
But we are comfortable that our story accurately captured the results on the questions that most struck us, those that sought to illuminate how blacks, whites and Hispanics see the United States at a moment when Senator Obama’s candidacy is putting race front and center in a new way.
One last point: I do think there is room for discussion about the headline - “Poll Finds Obama Candidacy Isn’t Closing Divide on Race”. The point of the story is that black respondents apparently do not see the fact of Mr. Obama’s candidacy as evidence of significant improvement in race relations. The story does not suggest that there is some onus on Mr. Obama himself to be closing this divide. I also, on a smaller matter - and the one matter the Obama campaign did raise with me - should have included, in saying that 20 percent of white voters had a favorable view of Michelle Obama, the fact that 72 percent either have no opinion about Mrs. Obama or hadn’t heard enough about her, to avoid any suggestion that 80 percent had an unfavorable view of her.
If this is to be their response to what little criticism BHO receives from the MSM… busy following up and emailing reporters who give less than glowing reviews… just what will he do to the press corps if he wins the Oval Office?
And I guess we have now determined what TPM is…. a press outlet for BHO propaganda and complaints.
This is what the War on Terror has come to after the Boumediene ruling:
The driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday.
~~~
The military commission trying Hamdan has ruled he has no rights against self-incrimination.
Hamdan, a Yemeni father of two with a fourth-grade education, is the first Guantanamo prisoner to face trial before the controversial tribunal at the remote base on Cuba. He faces life in prison if convicted. His trial is the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
Prosecutors are seeking to portray Hamdan as a close associate of bin Laden who was aware of plotting for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and supported them with his efforts. Defense attorneys have characterized Hamdan as a simple employee.
Seven agents, six from the FBI and one from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, testified on Thursday about questioning Hamdan in sessions from shortly after his capture in November 2001 to 2003 at Guantanamo.
Just unbelievable. It’s like a bad dream. Just utterly ridiculous. Imagine our soldiers on the battlefield readin Miranda rights to a captured terrorist to extract time sensitive information. Its like a bad Ben Stiller movie.
I hate to say I told you so, but this has been coming for three years — ever since the McCain amendment. Everybody pooh-poohed it because it sounds too absurd. Alien combatants having constitutional rights used to sound absurd too. So did al Qaeda having Geneva Convention rights. So did the U.S. courts entertaining lawsuits by the enemy against the officials Congress authorized to fight the war. It all sounds crazy … until it happens.
Our fighting men and women are not law enforcement and this is not a law enforcement issue. The Supreme Court and the liberals in this country our forcing us to act like it is which can only lead to bad, bad consequences.
Govt. report estimates massive energy find in Alaska and Democrats won’t let us touch it!
The U.S. Geological Survey just released a summary of a new report showing an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil to be found above the Arctic Circle. That is enough oil to fuel the entire American economy for 12 years. Along with the oil, an estimated 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are available for the taking.
But taking it is the problem. The technology is there to safely extract these resources with little to no risk to the environment or wildlife. What stands in the way is the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, the Canadians, the Russians, the Norweigans and anyone else with a valid territorial claim is rushing to the Arctic to drill, drill, drill. But the largest pot of gold in Alaska sits there untapped while the price of gas in the United States go up, up and up.
For months now, Republicans in both the House and Senate have been trying to get a vote on a variety of energy legislation that would increase supply, encourage conservation and assist in the development of alternative energy supplies. Their requests have been refused.
Instead, Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House have shut off debate on any plan that would include more drilling of American energy resources.
Senator Reid offers a bill that would reign in oil speculators. That’s it. Not one drop of new oil brought to market. Speaker Pelosi demands that President Bush release 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and refill it at a later time. Her cry is “Free our oil” yet she won’t let American companies drill for American oil to free the American consumer from the daily negative impact of high gas prices.
Earlier this month, we highlighted efforts that the GOP Senate has undertaken to force the issue and bring a vote on their plan the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008. It would lift much of the ban on offshore drilling, remove the ban on oil shale development, tighten regulation of oil speculation and foster development of electric cars and trucks.
Led by House Republican Leader John Boehner, House GOP members gathered to show support for the “all of the above” plan to help lower gas prices for the American consumer.
The House GOP unveiled it’s comprehensive “all of the above” plan called The American Energy Act on July 23, 2008. House Republicans gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in a show of support for a plan that goes one better than the Senate GOP bill and permits drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico near Florida.
Compare the Democrat’s “no drill” plan with the “all of the above” GOP plan:
House Republicans Energy Fact Finding Trip
While Barack Obama was beginning his whirlwind global campaign rally, nine house GOP members led by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) embarked on the American Energy Tour. Beginning in Golden, Colorado they first visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to highlight developments in cutting-edge solar, wind, fuel cell, biomass, and other emerging energy technologies.
From Colorado they ventured north to Alasaka where they toured the Prudhoe Bay oil production facilities and the area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Congress set aside for oil exploration when it ititially set up the wildlife refuge. For readers who are interested, a photoset of the entire trip is here.
Jim Angle of Fox News went along for a portion of the trip and filed this report from ANWR:
Is one environmentalist standing on a mountaintop peering dozens of miles into the distance and seeing a tiny building on the shore pumping oil enough to force the American people to pay $4 or more for a gallon of gasoline?
Leader Boehner Demands a Vote!
House Republican Leader John Boehner has been very out front in demanding that Democrats permit a vote on energy alternatives that are not solely dictated to the Congress by the environmental lobby. If you have missed his noble efforts, here’s a rundown.
And the effort seems to be paying off. This editorial in the Washington Post says it all:
No Drilling, No Vote Speaker Pelosi won’t let the House debate the merits of offshore drilling. Washington Post Friday, July 25, 2008; Page A20
WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won’t be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won’t find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.
Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? “What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy,” she said yesterday when asked that very question. “What we’re saying is, ‘Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.’ . . . It is the economic life of America’s families, and to suggest that drilling offshore is going to make a difference to them paycheck to paycheck now is a frivolous contention. The president has even admitted that. So what we’re saying is, ‘What can we do that is constructive?’ ”
If there is an explanation buried in there about why that makes offshore drilling off-limits for a vote, we missed it. Ms. Pelosi is correct that drilling is no panacea for the nation’s energy woes. The short-term effect of lifting the moratorium, if there were any, would be minimal. That doesn’t mean the country shouldn’t consider expanded drilling as one of many alternatives. There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?
When they took the majority, House Democrats proclaimed that “bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the Minority the right to offer its alternatives.” Why not on drilling?
Meanwhile, the dispute has snarled progress on spending bills for fear of having drilling amendments attached. Citing “the uncertainty in how the oil and gas drilling issue is currently playing out on the Senate floor,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) called off committee consideration of spending bills on which Republicans were threatening to offer drilling amendments. The result threatens to be the first time since at least 1950 that lawmakers will go home for the August recess without either chamber having passed a single appropriations bill.
If drilling opponents really have the better of this argument, why are they so worried about letting it come to a vote?
Democrats know that if the Republican energy plans in both the House and Senate came to an up or down vote they would pass. But do the voter’s know that Democrats are still blocking ANY plan that would increase supply?
Harry Reid lost it with reporters today after their failed attempt to produce a energy bill without legislation that would end a Congressional moratorium on off-shore drilling. Republicans vowed to defeat any bill that did not include this, and they did. Which sent Reid into a bit of a tizzy:
At a "pen and pad" — a more casual, off-camera chat with reporters — Reid attacked and scolded correspondents in attendance, telling them he's "really disappointed" in how they have been writing his energy plans, which include a bill to reign in speculation in the energy futures markets.
According to two Senate Democratic aides, Reid and other Democratic leaders were particularly stung by an article Thursday in The New York Times. It followed on several other reports that have highlighted Democrats' attempts to fend off defections from their ranks to GOP-sponsored amendments, measures that would permit new drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the West for oil shale.
~~~
Reporters tried to pin Reid down Thursday on the amendment issue.
In the exchange, Reid told one reporter she should "watch the [Senate] floor more often. … You might learn something."
Another reporter explained she had watched the Senate proceedings and said it was not clear he was … offereing separate amendments, to which Reid asked the reporter if she "spoke English."
"Turn up your Miracle Ear," Reid added.
Democrats have become so used to the MSM fawning over everything they do that they don’t know what to do with this. This issue will be a huge loser for them if they do not listen to American people and increase oil production inside our borders, the Republicans know this, and so does the MSM:
Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? “What the president would like to do is to have validation for his failed policy,” she said yesterday when asked that very question. “What we’re saying is, ‘Exhaust other remedies, Mr. President.’ . . . It is the economic life of America’s families, and to suggest that drilling offshore is going to make a difference to them paycheck to paycheck now is a frivolous contention. The president has even admitted that. So what we’re saying is, ‘What can we do that is constructive?’
If there is an explanation buried in there about why that makes offshore drilling off-limits for a vote, we missed it. Ms. Pelosi is correct that drilling is no panacea for the nation’s energy woes. The short-term effect of lifting the moratorium, if there were any, would be minimal. That doesn’t mean the country shouldn’t consider expanded drilling as one of many alternatives. There are legitimate concerns about the environmental impact of such drilling — environmental concerns that, we would note, exist in other regions whose oil Americans are perfectly happy to consume. But have technological improvements made such drilling less risky? Why not have that debate?
When they took the majority, House Democrats proclaimed that “bills should generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the Minority the right to offer its alternatives.” Why not on drilling?
Senate Republicans want to have that debate. On everything from offshore drilling to nuclear power to plug-in hybrids. The Democrats? They stamp their feet and yell no, no, no!
The Ranking Member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, my good friend from New Mexico, put it this way: He said that in his 37 years of service in the Senate, he has never seen a bigger problem met with a smaller solution. I'd put it this way: Americans are saying the house is on fire, and the Democrat Leadership is showing up at the scene with squirt guns.
Keep it up Dem’s….this issue will definitely come back to bite you in the ass.
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The Nigerian light sweet crude oil lines are again under fire by MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), as the militant thugs threaten to destroy “the Chanomi creek pipeline and other major pipelines” within the next 30 days.
Tho the crude represents only about 8% of the US imports, the Nigerian disruptions by the militants, disgruntled about the lack of oil revenue sharing, affects the global supply. The Nigerian government’s oil firm, NNPC, said they had paid what is tandamount to extortion funds in the amount of $12 million to the militants to protect the supply lines. But according to the militants, that check in the mail hasn’t arrived.
According to Paul Richter, in a June 29th, 2008 LA Times article, the gangs are armed with surface-to-air missiles, bazookas, and have mastered the art of siphoning thousands of gallons to barges, where they then sell it on the black market. Their most recent activity has cut the output by 1 million brls daily.
Even the off shore rigs in the area are not immune to their attacks, with a Shell rig shutting down after a midnight raid by the militants in speedboats. The non stop violence, combined with the corruption on both sides in the area, has got the oil companies thinking twice about their current investments… or, for that matter, considering any others in the petroleum rich region for the future.
Some senior U.S. military and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials have urged the Bush administration to build up Nigeria's weak coastal navy, or even use U.S. naval vessels along with other regional forces to patrol Nigerian waters, said officials who spoke about the internal discussions on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials say they are taking limited steps to strengthen the Nigerian military. But, despite intermittent reports in the Nigerian news media, they said the United States has no intention of intervening militarily.
The Bush administration has tried to spur a political settlement with the rebels. But U.S. officials have complained that the efforts have met with resistance, in part because civilian and military officials are content with the situation, which provides revenue and helps maintain their influence.
"All the actors in the delta are benefiting from the status quo," said one U.S. official, who declined to be identified because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue. "They'll do their best to stop any peace process; it threatens their business."
There have been accusations that the Bush administration has not done enough to appease the situation… wow, how much of a surprise is that? However if ever there was a perfect example of a “war for oil”, military action in Nigeria would fit the bill. And the likelihood of public support is slim at best.
Perhaps a cut off is just what the Nigerians and their militants need… sans oil, they are left to fight over nothing, and their corrupt leaders would find themselves in peril of losing their perks. But replacement of light sweet crude is not easy… especially when US Congressional leader, Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow the GOP “all of the above” energy plan to come to the floor for a vote.
NOTE: The liberal regulars here will love that I use the left wing McClatchy sourced article INRE Pelosi’s super ego on her Speaker power… or as the Speaker says herself:
Acknowledging her ability to influence decision-making, Pelosi said in the CNN interview that she gets to operate differently than her Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid must reach out to Republicans to muster 60 votes — enough to stop a filibuster — to get anything done.
“In the House, the power rests in the speaker, the power of recognition, of setting the agenda. . . . Very different rules,” Pelosi said.
"We want to bring more American-made energy. We want to make sure Americans know who is for it and who is opposed to it. I know [Speaker Pelosi's] members are getting a lot of heat because her members are no different than me. I go out in my district, I go out in other members' districts, where I'm going and I hear from everybody I talk to. $4 gas has woken up the American people to this issue and Nancy Pelosi and the liberals who run the Congress, they worship at the altar of radical environmentalism and as a result will do everything they can to block a vote. They won't allow us to vote… What do we have to fear in Democracy in letting the Members of Congress vote on this issue because if there is a vote, I'll tell you it will pass this time, there's no question it will pass." (AUDIO)
~~~
"We've got to do all of the above. We've got to conserve as much fuel as we can, we need biofuels, we need to develop our alternative fuels whether it be wind, geothermal, hydropower, all of those. We need to have nuclear energy. Today, almost 80 percent of France's electricity comes from nuclear energy. It's the cleanest form of energy, there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing more of it here. And we need to drill more. We can't keep making excuses, blaming the oil companies … blaming people who buy big cars and that's what the liberals want to do. They want to blame everybody. And the fact is, we've got to drill. We've got to do all of the above if we're serious about taking steps toward energy independence. And here we are on the eve of Independence Day and here's Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid doing everything they can to block a big step toward energy independence." (AUDIO)
Shortly after 6 pm Central time — just a few hours after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gave his speech in Berlin, which his campaign insisted was not political — his campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent out a fundraising solicitation using the speech to raise campaign cash.
"As you may have heard, Barack has been in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia this week," reads the email, with a big red "DONATE" sign. "Today, he spoke in Berlin, Germany. In a city where a wall once divided the free from the oppressed, he talked about tearing down the walls that divide all peoples so we can address our common problems — the threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, global warming and genocide, AIDS and poverty. Watch Barack's historic speech and share it with your friends."
Nothing about Obama’s campaign surprises me anymore. Not even the fact that during his campaign stop err…visit to Afghanistan he blew off quite a few soldiers. UPDATE
This part of the email (from the link above) from a soldier who was present for Obama’s visit to Iraq should surprise no one:
95% of base wanted nothing to do with him. I have met three troops who support him, and literally hundreds who regard him as a buffoon, a charlatan, a hindrance to their mission or a flat out enemy of progress. Even when the rumors were publicly admitted, almost no one left their duty sections to try to see him, unless they were officers whose presence was officially required.
In January 2007, the war in Iraq was in need of a new strategy.
A year and a half later, violence is down dramatically, the Iraqi political system is beginning to work, and there's a belief the U.S. and Iraq have achieved an outcome that seemed out of reach just a year earlier.
So why can't Barack bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, thought it would? What does that inability to admit he was wrong say about him?
In recent comments, Obama has grudgingly conceded that the troops helped lessen the violence, but he has insisted that the surge was a failed policy because it allowed the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate and did not produce the political breakthroughs in Iraq that he believes should have occurred. Even knowing the outcome, he told CBS News Tuesday, he still wouldn't have supported the surge.
Even if you believe that the invasion of Iraq was an error, the U.S. should still make every effort to leave behind a stable Iraq. Barack repeatedly states that he was right to oppose the war while at the same time paying lip service to efforts and sacrifices by our troops. Barack Obama's statement, "it was a tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder."
We don't expect our president to be right all the time. We do expect a president to change course when it is proved he is wrong.
Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East this week.
McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota while the Illinois senator has a more comfortable double-digit edge in Wisconsin, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com… and the Wall Street Journal during the past week. Only in Colorado, however, does McCain hold a greater percentage of the vote share than Obama.
Meanwhile Allah points to this Fox poll, with the same oversampling of Democrats as the last one, which show Obama gaining NO bounce from the Maliki comments supporting his plan for withdrawal:
Conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, three days after Maliki's Spiegel interview dropped, with the same percentage of Democrats sampled as in their last poll (42%) and actually fewer Republicans this time than last (33% versus 35%). Head to head: Obama 41, McCain 40. On handling Iraq: McCain 47, Obama 39, a two-point gain since June. Maybe Obama's position on the surge is starting to penetrate? There's circumstantial evidence in the crosstabs. A quarter of independents and 15% of Democrats perceive "major improvements" in Iraq from the surge; many more see "minor improvements." The fact that Obama's popular with Europeans likewise is a wash. Democrats see it as positive, Republicans negative, and indies are split 26/25 — although people calling themselves "independents" these days are apt to include more disaffected Republicans so weigh that accordingly.
This question is classic tho:
What kind of change does he stand for? Coming in second is the answer, “don’t know”.
Check out the rest of Allah’s post to see how even the majority of Democrats believe the media is in the tank for Obama. Then, check out the latest Rasmussen poll that shows 63% believe this European political rally trip doesn’t make him appear any more Presidential.
Obama’s arrogance and constant changing of position in a vain attempt to always appear right, coupled with the obvious media lovefest for the man, may be starting the hurt the guy. It does appear that many people are falling out of puppy love for him.
“For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?” –Charles Krauthammer
Obama in Berlin: “Ich bin ein beginner”
For all Obama’s rhetoric about Americans visiting Europe and not being able to say anything more than “merci beaucoup” is it arrogant of Obama to go to Germany and deliver a speech entirely in English?
Apparently, the only foreign language Obama knows is Bahasa, the language spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia. No doubt something he learned while at the Muslim Madrassa he attended while living in Indonesia.
The speech itself (transcript here) was mostly pap. Hardly up to the soaring standards of speechifying that Obama is famous for when there is a teleprompter present.
He spoke as if he was running for President of the world: “People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.”
The crowd, which was estimated at up to 200,000 loved it all. But then, Germans have been known to go a bit overboard for messianic speakers in the past.
Glenn Beck summed it up perfectly: “Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for president of the United States or Mr. Universe.”
Even before Obama’s trip, some in the media began to see through the style over substance campaign that has typified Obama’s efforts.
As usual, Charles Krauthammer sees through the fog and smoke:
The Audacity of Vanity By Charles Krauthammer Real Clear Politics July 18, 2008
In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone. … Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
The Messiah Trumps Judaism’s Holiest Place?
Early Thursday morning before leaving Jerusalem for Berlin Obama visited the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. A handful of his supporters showed up with banners and signs in Hebrew to welcome the new messiah. When Jerusalem Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld was asked if this was typical behavior for candidates visiting the Wall he replied simply “No.”
One man at the Wall who apparently didn’t buy the “change and hope” snakeoil repeatedly shouted: “Obama, Jerusalem is our land! Obama, Jerusalem is not for sale!”
Dems Nervous as Obama’s Poll Numbers Flatten?
It seems some in the “news” media cheerleading section for Obama are getting a bit nervous.
Lots of speculation on the web, and in whispering circles, about why Obama’s foreign trip–a slam-dunk success substantively and in photo-op terms (Obama laughing with Petraeus in the helicopter was the best)–hasn’t resulted in a polling bump. The emerging conventional wisdom seems to be that the trip is a bit too grand, too…presumptuous and voters are wary of that. (And presumption, of course, always comes with the subterranean tinge of racism.) Maybe so.
Oh yes… voters aren’t buying the snakeoil so that makes them racist! How predictable. Klein goes on to beg commenters at his blog to “calm down” suggesting that surely Obama’s poll numbers will rise just as the anointed one has promised the waters of the ocean will recede!
Demonstrating the objectivity for which the “mainstream” “news” media is famous for, Michael Scherer, another reporter at Time had this to add:
As we all huddle around our televisions to watch the German masses cheer, as we prepare to read yet another magazine cover story featuring Obama’s awesome good-lookingness, as we remind ourselves once again that this is a once-in-a-generation change election….
Remember now, these are “real journalists.” Not like those guys at “Faux” News.
Related News
Death Row Killer’s Last Words are Plea for Obama Vote
Moments before he was put to death for participating in the savage killing of Marcus Gentry, Dale Leo Bishop urged Americans to vote for Barack Obama. “For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice,” Bishop said.
Bishop had requested the death penalty when found guilty of the murder of Gentry, but later changed his mind… Bishop was executed by lethal injection Wednesday evening. One less vote for Obama!
The Missing Obama Thesis
Obama and the case of the missing ‘thesis’ By Jim Popkin, NBC News July 24, 2008
Conservative provocateurs have been hunting for it. Investigative journalists have been on the prowl, too. Even a former professor has been searching through old boxes for his copy of it. But today Barack Obama made it official: He doesn't have and can't release any copies of the thesis-length paper he wrote 25 years ago while a senior at Columbia University. … Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document. Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. … "A thesis entitled Soviet Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations)," he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News.
So what does the missing paper say, and could it be politically damaging to Obama?
Not all of us can make it to Pennsylvania next week to help Tom Burnett Sr. stop the re-hijacking of Flight 93, but if anyone needs another reason to try…
The crescent memorial to Flight 93 will have the 9/11 date inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag.
Check it out. As can be seen on our blogburst logo, there will be a copse of trees that sits roughly between the tips of the giant crescent (roughly in the position of the star on a crescent and star flag). That is the Sacred Ground Plaza, which sits just above the crash site. Inside the Sacred Ground Plaza is a two part Memorial Wall that follows the flight path down to the point of impact:
Elevation view of Memorial Wall. (Click picture for larger image. Source document here.)
The lower section of Memorial Wall (on the left) contains forty "translucent marble" blocks, inscribed with the names of the 40 murdered heroes (including Tom Burnett Jr.)
Next there is a gap marked "trail," then the separate upper section of Memorial Wall has three more translucent blocks, inscribed with the 9/11 date. (There is one more translucent block on the flight path: the huge glass block that dedicates the entire site. It sits at the upper crescent tip, at the end of the Entry Portal Walkway. That bring the glass block count to 44, equaling the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists.)
The path that divides the wall into two parts can be seen on the Crescent of Embrace site plan:
Purple: the path that divides the Memorial Wall into separate upper and lower sections. Aqua: the separate upper section of Memorial Wall, inscribed with the 9/11 date. Red arrow: the centerline of the giant crescent (points to Mecca).
Just by looking, you can see that the upper section of section of Memorial Wall is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag. (Click picture for larger image.)
The date goes to the star on the Islamic flag. The date goes to the terrorists.
Just one of many Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the planned memorial, and all of it remains completely intact in the Circle of Embrace redesign, which only disguises the giant crescent with a few irrelevant trees.
August 2nd
At about 1PM (when the Memorial Project meeting lets out) Mr. Burnett and Alec Rawls will host a press conference and a rally outside the Somerset County Courthouse (where the meeting will be held).
Saturday evening we will have dinner someplace that can be flexible about our numbers (probably a big buffet style restaurant). Sunday morning we will visit the crash site. (Alec is making arrangements with the Park Service now, in case we get a large turn out.)
The only reason to try to make it to the meeting itself (10AM-1PM) is if you want to sign up to speak during the public comment period at the end. Otherwise the meetings are pretty dreary.
The larger purpose is to make a statement to the national news outfits that Mr. Burnett’s presence will likely bring. (Fox news gave Mr. Burnett some nice coverage a couple of months ago.) A substantial rally would help that cause, hard as that will be to achieve out in the hinterlands of Pennsylvania.
Somerset is a long way to go to make a statement, but the crash site is well worth visiting in its own right. If you’ve been thinking of making the trip, the weekend of August 2nd would be the time. It is a chance not just to pay a visit, but to in some small way honor the heroes of Flight 93 by following their footsteps and tackling our own hijacker.
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Not likely you’ll hear much about this culture of corruption in the “news” media!
Obama in Berlin: 
Early Thursday morning before leaving Jerusalem for Berlin Obama visited the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. A handful of his supporters showed up with banners and signs in Hebrew to welcome the new messiah. When Jerusalem Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld was 
