Mott's Blog

2012 Election

2011-12-01T10:26:00.001-08:00

Time for an early election prediction! I will not guess about the Republican nomination yet...probably Romney or Newt.

But the results: GOP will win the Presidency by a wide margin of electoral votes and 3-5% of the popular vote. GOP will hold the House and pickup 5-8 seats. GOP will take the Senate 61-49.

We will get the ball back and better do something with it this time!

Tea Party rally in DC

Green Jobs

2011-11-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

I will post more details on this topic soon. But I am in the renewable energy business (biogas from waste to electricity and heat). This business is capital-intensive and often displaces more traditional energy that is labor-intensive. That may mean less jobs are created not more.

There are good reasons to pursue alternative energy sources, but creating jobs is not one of them. Some research is reviewed in a University of Illinois study.

Election prediction

2010-11-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have to write this down somewhere as a prediction.

House seats - Republican net gain of 68
Senate seats - Republican gain of ten.

Rationale - the House races are breaking to the GOP in 5 out 6 contests. The "likely voter" model will most closely resemble the Gallup version...with a whooping 15 point difference for Republicans.

Second, the Eastern races will demoralize the Western Democratic voters and any close races West of the Mississippi will have some surprising breaks as the enthusiasm gap grows widen as the night goes on. Colorado, Washington and California will be affected. All three Senate seats will go Republican.

That's my story and I am sticking to it........

Warsaw, Poland 7:45 PM local time.

The BP Spill and Obama

2010-06-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in hazardous material and waste matters for thirty-years. Usually on the side of giving advice to the companies with the problems.

So I will do a very brief synopsis. Obama was told early on that the chances of capping the broken wellhead were not good. Estimates of oil volumes privately provided were also much highly that the public heard in the first weeks.

With that set of facts, the first order of the day should have been mitigation measures. That means destruction of the oil while far at sea (fire booms or maybe even military means to ignite it), sand berms and other containment means, and rounding up all of the equipment possible to remove as much as possible before it hit sensitive areas.

None of that happened. Obama played golf and then lectured us. The federal alphabet agencies did what they do best, used red tape to frustrate people who have to deal with the real world. Democrat politicians ought to demonize the oil industry, at the expense of worsening the economic crisis and aggravating our energy security.

If the health care debacle was the beginning of the end for the "new age of Obama liberalism," then the Gulf oil spill has to be the potentially fatal head shot to the staggering and wounded guy who got promoted by the media to a position about three levels above his competence.

The Incredibly Shrinking American Deterrent

2010-06-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

It is no accident, I am sure, that the world seems far less predictable and safe in the last few months. After alienating most of our allies, bowing to foreign dignitaries, and trying to appease our avowed enemies, the Obama Administration is starting to reap the harvest of American contraction.

We have emboldened enemies on almost all fronts. A defiant Iran is now supported in its nuclear ambitions, not only by Russia and China, but by Turkey, a NATO member. Israel is more isolated than anytime since the 1973 war, with its Muslim adversaries feeling a new sense of boldness in their actions. North Korea has engaged in open acts of war with the South and has suffered no adverse consequences or reactions from the global community.

America itself has been subject to an increased number of near misses in terrorist attacks. We have dodged the bullets largely out of luck and human errors on the other side.

Our international popularity has only grown among the Leftist politicians in some European countries, themselves anxious to try to find any vindication of their discredited policies as the welfare state model in industrialized nations collapses. The infamous "Arab Street" dislikes us as much as ever, despite our President's apologizes for our past actions and present existence.

The world as we know is changing dramatically before our eyes. Without American exceptionalism, the place is indeed different. Less safe, less predictable and less democratic.

The only source of optimism is that this new form of American defeatism comes with a shelve life of January 2012.

Suicide bomber turned chicken?

2010-05-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

I have an unusual hypothesis that may explain a lot about the attempted Times Square terrorist attack. Other than remotely triggered IEDs in Iraq, it seems that the specialty of Jihadists is suicide bombers, trained to self-destruct in ways that grossly simply fuse and trigger schemes. Just about all of the information coming out about Shahzad shows that he was hanging around with the varsity of suicide bombers in Pakistan.

So what happened in New York City? I think that Shahzad was supposed to be a suicide bomber and got a change of heart and improvised the trigger mechanism (which is why it was sloppy). It also explains his rather ad hoc escape plan. His apparent willingness to talk about the whole scheme when he was arrested also fits with the reluctant bomber motif.

That the Pakistani Taliban would fund him and send him on this attack also may say a lot about how short of willing and quasi-rational suicide bombers they really are. We had been told by the Left that our War on Terror was just causing the creation of an endless supply of suicide bombers. Since it is impossible to be a veteran suicide bomber, maybe they are hitting the bottom of the barrel in recruits? While jihadists no doubt have ample unsophisticated, uneducated and brainwashed young men who can mingle without suspicion in their native countries, it seems that they might be having trouble getting people who can move around in the Werst without suspicion and yet have the thwarted view that self-destruction along with as many innocent lives as possible is a sound idea.

Awaiting the Administrative SNAFU

2010-03-25T01:37:00.000-07:00

The above chart was used in the healthcare debate to illustrate the bureaucracy that the bill would introduce. Apparently nothing relevant has changed and 159 new agencies and bureaus will be created. It completely defies logic and history that this complex set of regulatory, personnel and factual decisions will produce a rational, intended outcome.

Those banking on the implementation of the healthcare take-over to increase its public support are betting on a lottery ticket in a rigged drawing. Many discretionary decisions must be made under the new law by people that are yet to be appointed, trained, or identified. One of the first "Polish jokes" I learned in Poland was the tale of the new potato inspector. The young man was briefed on what are good and bad potatoes and given a pile of several hundred by his supervisor. He was told to sort them as instructed. Hours later the supervisor returns and see that only eleven potatoes have been sorted. He demands to know why. The young inspector-trainee simply replies: "Every potato is a decision."

No one can imagine the number of decisions or their consequences from the bureaucratic nightmare set out in this boondoggle. We already know that the doctrine of unintended consequences is alive and well in the act. Employers will be incentivized to drop health plans and pay smaller penalties ($750 per employee) in lieu of continuing their employee coverage. Major subsidies to employers cut off at 26 employees, so there is a build-in incentive to keep hiring lower. And, of course, it will be increasingly tempting to move facilities across borders to lower operating expenses. But hundreds of other discretionary decisions of what to include in approved plans, what to tax, and other "command-and-control" mechanisms will replace individual market-based decisions.

We know that the catastrophic insurance option (which is a cost-effective way to cover the risk of major illness), will disappear over the phase-in period, because it will not meet all of the coverages demanded as an "approved plan." Do millions of Americans even know that they will not be able to select the type of insurance that fits their needs anymore? What will the reaction to "one size (and only the most expensive size) fits all"? Obviously millions of young workers have no idea that they will be compelled to buy insurance, especially insurance that covers things that present no health or economic risk to them. Add to this basic inequity built into the act that fact that some bureaucrats will decide what has to be covered and the makings of a disaster seem to lurk under every arrow in the chart.

Imagine the regulations that have to be promulgated. Litigation over the regulations?

Now interpose a Republican House and maybe a Republican Senate that will use every turn of events to stymie the program and advance the cause of repealing it in whole or part.

Anyone who thinks that it was a good idea to try to do a whole-cloth remake of American healthcare against the wishes of a clear majority of American likely voters will obviously join the ranks of fans of the tooth fairy. The new system will not implode, because it will never get to the point where it has enough internal pressure to inflate.

The Hyjacking of Healthcare is now THE Issue

2010-03-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

As I watch the agony of the House Democrats telling their sob stories to try to justify the greatest legislative mistake in modern times, I cannot imagine the incredible stupidity and arrogance that is driving their suicide pact. To think that this vote will somehow put these issues behind us is one of the most naive political hypotheses ever espoused. This issue will dominate the next two election cycles and will create a giant scythe that cuts down hundreds of Democrats at all levels of government. We have come to accept that only about half of the public votes, but conservative voters are significantly more likely to vote even in normal times (hence the inevitable 6-8 point difference in polls of "adults" versus polls of "likely voters"). But now we will see a growing disparity, with conservative voters making the elections a crusade against evil. There may be no counterpart to what is happening in our political history. Congressman Stupak's opponent, just announced apparently, is getting about one new hit a second on his FaceBook page. Expect that new polling in the coming weeks will see an acceleration of the trends of the last year and an emerging certainty that the Democrats will lose the House and probably the Senate. Given voter turnout dynamics, there is no safe seat for the party of Big Govwernment, Big Spending and Big Debt. [Scott Brown only lost Barney Frank's district by 500 votes, so no Democrat will be safe].

The singular issue of the next ten years or more will be federal spending and the deficit. The crisis in Greece is an omen of things to come as the US may join several other nations in a sudden realization that the price of the modern welfare state cannot be sustained with aging populations and the flight of entrepreneurs. The delusional assumptions given to the CBO will not change reality and the impact of passing the bill will itself slow economic recovery even more and lower revenue growth, making the deficit worse. Implementation of the healthcare bill, which appears to be passing, will stretch out for years and create a new controversy every month. The tax burden will kick in immediately and combined with the regulatory uncertainty will have a significant negative impact of job growth, which will only add to the Democrats' political Waterloo.

March 21, 2010 will go down in history as the high water mark of so-called American liberalism. Watching the last week as reluctant Representatives were essentially bribed with our tax dollars and IOUs from out children and grandchildren was painful. The whole notion that government exists to take from the productive public and redistribute the wealth in exchange for political support must stop. More than any other issue, the giant and amorphous healthcare bill has reminded Americans of how far from the proper function of government we have drifting.

The price is not only our liberties, but the solvency of our nation.

We can retake Congress in 2010 and the new Congress can start to repeal this monstrosity by cutting off appropriations, delaying executive appointments to the multitude of new agencies, conducting oversight of the actual program costs, and a dozen other programs that will assure that the will of the American people prevails over the Leftist dream of more dependency on government.

NOTE; If the Sunday night news is correct on the Senate Parliamentarian's view that the Social Security provisions in the House "reconciliation" bill will disqualify it as not in order due to violation of the Congressional Budget Act rules, then the senate bill will be the law. That means that the tax on union benefits and the pro-abortion language will be the law, just for starters. None of the cover that House members thought they had in "reconciliation" will be there and the Democrats will have the Senate version that is unpopular even within their own base. We will then see the Democrats being compelled to go back to Congress and start an amendment process from scratch, since reconciliation is impossible. That means re-voting the whole thing in pieces to get the House changes enacted, including a full Senate 60-vote hurdle. If nervous Democrats think that this vote and a simple Senate vote is the end game, they will be surprised IMO. Healthcare amendments and fixes will likely be a major topic of legislation right up until the election this year. Robbie Burns comes to mind, "Oh what tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

UPDATE: Stupak's opponent's FaceBook page went from a few hundred followers to 11,000 by 2 AM Monday morning. He will get the deserved blame more than most other House Members for this and I expect that every one of his last-minute YES voters will be defeated in the election. Bold prediction, and I have not check the last two election margins, but I cannot help but think that the conservatives in their districts will be on the warpath - beginning today.

No Dr. Jones, there is abundant data for the Medieval Warming Period in the Southern Hemisphere.

2010-02-15T01:18:00.000-08:00

Dr. Phil Jones of East Anglia University was leading the charge by Michael Mann et al. to deny the existence of the Medieval Warming Period for years. This was important because many, many scientists report that it appears to have been warmer that today's climate, making the "unprecedented" recent warming not "unprecedented."
In his recent interview, Dr. Jones still tries to do the alarmist dance by arguing that there is insufficient evidence of the MWP in non-North America data. Coming from the cherry-picking crew of tree-ring data fame, this is a pretty outlandish claim.

First, the IPPC thought that there was a MWP, before they became so thoroughly politically-indoctrinated that science was sacrificed on the altar of grant money:

Second, the Idso website (CO2 Magazine) has a compilation of over 800 studies that support the MWP, including many from outside the Northern Hemisphere. (Note: if Northern Hemispere data is inadequate to generalize from, why did Mann and Jones generalize North American tree-ring data? 2003 paper.). As Ross McKitrick pointed out once he finally got the Mann data:

"It turns out that many of the samples were taken from dead (partially fossilized) trees and they have no particular trend. The sharp uptrend in the late 20th century came from cores of 10 living trees alive as of 1990, and five living trees alive as of 1995. Based on scientific standards, this is too small a sample on which to produce a publication-grade proxy composite. The 18th and 19th century portion of the sample, for instance, contains at least 30 trees per year. But that portion doesn’t show a warming spike. The only segment that does is the late 20th century, where the sample size collapses. Once again a dramatic hockey stick shape turns out to depend on the least reliable portion of a dataset." National Post article.

So we should start from a realization that using scant data is the standard modus operandi of these guys.

But what do the studies show?

Goni, M.A., Woodworth, M.P., Aceves, H.L., Thunell, R.C., Tappa, E., Black, D., Muller-Karger, F., Astor, Y. and Varela, R. 2004. Generation, transport, and preservation of the alkenone-based U37^K' sea surface temperature index in the water column and sediments of the Cariaco Basin (Venezuela). Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18: 10.1029/2003GB002132.
"Based on the degree of unsaturation of certain long-chain alkenones synthesized by haptophyte algae contained in a sediment core retrieved from the eastern sub-basin of the Cariaco Basin (10°30'N, 64°40'W) on the continental shelf off the Venezuelan central coast, Goni et al. determined that the highest sea surface temperatures at that location over the past 6000 years "were measured during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)," which they identified as occurring between AD 800 and 1400. From the graph of their results reconstructed below, it is further evident that peak MWP temperatures were approximately 0.35°C warmer than peak Current Warm Period temperatures, and that they were fully 0.95°C warmer than the mean temperature of the last few years of the 20th century."

Sepulveda, J., Pantoja, S., Hughen, K.A., Bertrand, S., Figueroa, D., Leon, T., Drenzek, N.J. and Lange, C. 2009. Late Holocene sea-surface temperature and precipitation variability in northern Patagonia, Chile (Jacaf Fjord, 44°S). Quaternary Research 72: 400-409. "The authors derived alkenone-based spring/summer sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) from a marine sedimentary record obtained from Jacaf Fjord in northern Chilean Patagonia (44°20.00'S, 72°58.15'W) that spanned the last 1750 years; and in doing so they observed two different regimes of climate variability in their record: "a relatively dry/warm period before 900 cal yr BP (higher runoff and average SST 1°C warmer than present day) and a wet/cold period after 750 cal yr BP (higher runoff and average SST 1°C colder than present day)," which they associated with the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, respectively."

von Gunten, L., Grosjean, M., Rein, B., Urrutia, R. and Appleby, P. 2009. A quantitative high-resolution summer temperature reconstruction based on sedimentary pigments from Laguna Aculeo, central Chile, back to AD 850. The Holocene 19: 873-881.("quantitative evidence for the presence of a Medieval Climate Anomaly (in this case, warm summers between AD 1150 and 1350; ΔT = +0.27 to +0.37°C with respect to (wrt) twentieth century) and a very cool period synchronous to the 'Little Ice Age' starting with a sharp drop between AD 1350 and AD 1400 (-0.3°C/10 years, decadal trend) followed by constantly cool (ΔT = -0.70 to -0.90°C wrt twentieth century) summers until AD 1750.")

Black, D. E., Thunell, R. C., Kaplan, A., Peterson, L. C. and Tappa, E. J. 2004. A 2000-year record of Caribbean and tropical North Atlantic hydrographic variability. Paleoceanography 19, PA2022, doi:10.1029/2003PA000982.

"High-resolution δ¹⁸O records generated from seasonally representative planktic foraminifera were obtained from two ocean sediment cores extracted from the Cariaco Basin off the coast of Venezuela (~ 10.65°N, 64.66°W) to produce a temperature/salinity reconstruction in this region of the Caribbean/tropical North Atlantic over the last 2000 years. Results indicate a general trend toward cooler and perhaps more saline waters over the length of the record. Because of this trend, the authors describe discussion of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age as "complicated," but they nonetheless acknowledge their record reveals "an interval of warmer [sea surface temperatures] prior to ~ A.D. 1600-1900" where the δ¹⁸O data "correctly sequence the relative temperature change between the so-called MWP and LIA." In viewing the authors' graph of G. bulloides δ¹⁸O (25-year mean, reproduced below), and their stated relationship that a δ¹⁸O change of 1.0‰ is equivalent to a 4.2°C change in temperature, we calculate the difference in peak warmth between the MWP and CWP to be 1.05°C, with the MWP being the warmer of the two periods."

Rein B., Lückge, A., Reinhardt, L., Sirocko, F., Wolf, A. and Dullo, W.-C. 2005. El Niño variability off Peru during the last 20,000 years. Paleoceanography 20: 10.1029/2004PA001099.

"The authors derived sea surface temperatures from alkenones extracted from a high-resolution marine sediment core retrieved off the coast of Peru (12.05°S, 77.66°W), spanning the past 20,000 years and ending in the 1960s. From their Figure 11, adapted below, it can be seen that the warmest temperatures of this 20,000 year period (~23.2°C) occurred during the late Medieval time (AD 800-1250). Taking this value, 23.2°C, and comparing it with the modern monthly long-term means in sea surface temperature, which the authors characterize as between 15°C and 22°C, we estimate the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period for this region was about 1.2°C above that of the Current Warm Period."

Huffman, T.N. 1996. Archaeological evidence for climatic change during the last 2000 years in southern Africa. Quaternary International 33: 55-60.

"Growing-season moisture and temperature conditions were inferred from the heat and water requirements of the crops (sorghum and millets) known to have been cultivated in southern Africa (centered at approximately 22°S, 29°E), as demonstrated by archaeological investigations. The Medieval Warm Period occurred between AD 900 and 1290 and was likely warmer and wetter than the Current Warm Period."

Esper, J., Frank, D., Buntgen, U., Verstege, A., Luterbacher, J. and Xoplaki, E. 2007. Long-term drought severity variations in Morocco. Geophysical Research Letters 34: 10.1029/2007GL030844.

"millennium-long temperature reconstructions from Europe (Bungten et al., 2006) and the Northern Hemisphere (Esper et al., 2002) indicate that Moroccan drought changes are broadly coherent with well-documented temperature fluctuations including warmth during medieval times, cold in the Little Ice Age, and recent anthropogenic warming." In addition, they report that the driest 20-year period of their reconstruction was 1237-1256 (with a PDSI of -4.2), while the driest 20-year period of the 20th century was 1981-2000 (with a less extreme PDSI of -3.9). Hence, a strict interpretation of the coherence that exists between Esper et al.'s (2007) PDSI history and European and Northern Hemispheric temperatures suggests that the peak warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was likely greater than the peak warmth of the 20th century over the entire Northern Hemisphere."

Hats off to the Idos at CO2 Magazine for the excellent compilation, or which this is only a small part.

It is completely disingenuous of the alarmists to argue that data is not adequate to support the MWP. This existence of the MWP completely deflates their non-scientific assertion that the recent warming must be manmade because it cannot be explained by natural phenomenon. In fact, the workign group documents of the IPPC in 2007 also destroy this assertion: " Earlier periods, around AD 700 and 1000, are reconstructed as warmer than the estimated level in the 20th century, and may have been as warm as the measured values in the last 20 years." IPPC Working Group 2007.

But most importantly, it is manifestly not scientific to attribute a warming period at any point to an hypothetical cause because one cannot find another explanation. There is so much that scientists do not know about climate that this is the height of sophistry.

We do have abundant non-Northern Hemisphere data on the MWP. This was sufficient in 1991 for the IPPC to include it. When it began politically inexpedient, it was deleted and denied. The "deniers" - if one wants to use a loaded term - are not the anthropomorphic climate change skeptics, but the alarmists.

Obama "Liquidation" Sale? Really!

2010-01-24T00:43:00.000-08:00

Below from Democraticstuff.com

The stimulus is a bust (as anyone with a handle on economics would have expected)(see Hot Air graphic comparing self-recovery of prior recessions with prolonged current recession), the healthcare bill is DOA, Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts have swung over 20 points toward Republicans in about one year's time, rhetorically embracing with our most avowed enemies abroad has only empowered them to be more intractable, this President's popularity has dropped more in the first twelve months than in any other first term, and the 2010-2012 polls look like the word "Democrat" on a ballot may be as popular as the ex-spouse at a second wedding. Der Spiegel has a January headline "The world says goodbye to Obama."

Time to sell off all of your Obama promo butons and tee-shirts at a discount? Yes, literally it is! There is an
official campaign liquidation sale!!!

Democrats like dogs trying to walk on their hind legs?

2009-12-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

Why are the Democrats trying to pass a healthcare bill that meets none of the announced objectives of the White House, that is opposed by an angry majority of likely voters, that will likely cost them control of the House and maybe even the Senate, and that the country manifestly cannot afford? One is reminded of Dr. Johnson's famous statement about dogs who walk on their hind legs: "One wonders not so much how they do it as why their bother?"

Of course, Democrats bother with this leftist drivel because they have convinced themselves that this is the only moment in years where it may be possible. They selectively look at the polls, normally the ones that are of "adults" and heavily tilted toward Democratic Party weighting (using data now quite obsolete and meaningless). Democratic Members of Congress who are in tough districts and states, no doubt, are more nervous. Maybe their aides are telling them that there is time for voters to forget by November 2010.

It is doubtful that anything will pass in my opinion. The longer the matters are pending, the stronger the public opposition. When folks figure out each new proposal it quickly falls into disrepute.

If anything does pass, look to 2010 to be a campaign based on who has the most credibility in claiming that they will vote to repeal it. Passage might actually make 2010 a mandate on these unpopular measures and be the death knell of the "new Democratic Majority," reminding us of Barnum's you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Why did the CRU try to mask the temperature data?

2009-12-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

The fraility of the anthropomorphic climate change theory is illustrated by the very exercise the East Anglia alarmists tried to pull off. Lacking any historical data that shows temperature changes have been caused by elevated greenhouse gas levels, the alarmists are struck with trying to make a weak hypothesis stick: that the warming trend in the last hundred years cannot be explained by other factors, so it must be greenhouse gases.

This hypothesis is about as weak as it gets in science. We do not understand the climate variables well enough to reconstruct past climate changes, let alone explain what is happening now. Several cyclic trends in climate occur with reularity over geological time. These are also affected in major ways by solar cycles, including the notoriously weak solar cycle 24 that we are now experiencing. Various "feed backs" among the many factors involved confound simple linear models.

Lacking any direct evidence that greenhouse gas levels cause any climate impact, the alarmists are left with a negative hypothesis. If we cannot explain recent warming (over a century or more), then it must be from elevated GHGs. Forget the fact that GHG levels have been ten times higher in the past with no climate impact. Forget the fact that we cannot accurately describe climate variables even when we are trying to fit the model to known facts. Forget the fact that climate changes in history take centuries to occur. Forget the fact that most 20th century warming occurred before 1940, before any elevated levels of GHGs due to human activities. Basically make the skeptics prove the negative: show us that it is not human activities that have caused gradual warming since 1850.

Lost in the current controversy over how much, if any, warmer it is getting since the recent peak in the 1930s, is the fact that nothing whatsoever in the alarmists playbook directly associates any of the changes to human activity and/or elevated GHGs.

The real tragedy of the climate scam will be its negative iompact on alternative energy sources, which will be even more necessary with global cooling (which is the projection for the next 15-20 years based on solar cycles).

Why did it take years for Climategate to get press?

2009-11-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

The biggest question for those of us who have been vocal skeptics of the UN process and recommendations is why did it take so many years for anyone in the "legacy press" to pick up on how things worked?

We have seen for years that the governments and foundations that control the research have deliberately sought out alarmist research. For example, glacier studies are typically done on the glaciers that are retreating and not the ones that are advancing (about equal in number); studies on the seasonal ice areas on the poles, ignoring the increased net ice mass in Antarctica for example. There has been a massive thumb on the scales in the academic world that has preordained what the outcome of research was supposed to be.

"Researchers pound the global-warming drum because they know there is politics and, therefore, money behind it. . . I've been critical of global warming and am persona non grata," Dr. William Gray, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, Boulder, Colorado and leading expert of hurricane prediction in an interview for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 28, 1999. Richard Lindzen relates a very specific and alarming incident in research funding: " In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity," Lindzen, Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus – Continued, cited at http://www. admissions.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatechange/ lindzen/lindzen4.html.

Skeptics have routinely been threatened by the academic and NGO establishment. Even called "traitors." Experts working with the UN panel who did not tow the line were ignored. Chris Landsea, the NOAA hurricane expert, resigned due to the politicization of the UN work in 2005.
His story in his words is quite compelling.

The UN IPCC work has long been misconstrued by the "legacy media" and liberal politicians. The final UN report often quoted is the political document, not the scientific one. The final report always scrubs the scientific ambiguity and opts for the politically expedient. Dr. Richard Lindzen from MIT headed the 2001 NAS Panel and described the IPCC work: “The panel was finally asked to evaluate the work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the Summary for Policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted. The Summary for Policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly presented as the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate scientists. Within the confines of professional courtesy, the NAS panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the U.S. government. The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.” Wall Street Journal , June 11, 2001: quoted at http://www.sepp.org//weekwas/2001/Oct27.htm.

There has been a massive amount of scientific dissent over the years. See past blogs here.
See e.g. U.S. Senate sumary of dissenting scientists here. This is even more striking when you consider the personal risks that skeptics have taken by announcing these views, threatening their tenure, his publication, and their grants.

The key issue is not whether there has been recent warming, which there hasn't since 1998. No cogent view of climate change has ever postulated that decades of greenhouse gas changes would have such nearly immediate geological time effects. The average response to changes in geological history has been 900 years. This unfortunately does not support the UN premise, since the temperatue changes generally precede the greenhouse gas level changes. But the climate "prostitutes" have been willing to use year-to-year trends in temperatue and weather whenever they felt it was useful to their a priori conclusions, while dismissing them when they contradicted the hype.

The scandal last year of NASA having "adjusted data" to show continuing warming after 1998 is not dissimilar to the East Anglia data manipulation (but we do not have the internal emails to create evidence of motive). Cherry-picking data and artificial adjustments are the name of the game in "establishment" climate research. Something so basic as keeping in urban temperatue monitoring stations that have clearly been rendered useless predictor by their changed setting ("urban heat islands") being one of the most widespread dishonesties.

I have long wanted to debate someone on this junk science, but the alarmists have consistently frowned on open dialogues and debates. Some have occurred with very predictable reasons (they lose the audience big time).

I hope that every threat, veiled or open, made to skeptics now sees daylight for what it is. I hope that the selective use of data and manipulation of results gets full play in the public forum. While it is dramatic and well-documented, the East Anglia "climategate" is only the tip of the iceberg. And yes, there is a lot of ice still around!

White House Radicals

2009-09-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

Those of us that went through universities can easily remember the wild-eyed radicals that we encountered. They believed in Marx more than the Soviet Politibureau did. If they weren't Marxists, they were often completely irrational anarchists or black nationalists. I spent many an afternoon at the University of Iowa "Soap Box Sound-off" arguing with them. These goofballs seemed real on campus, but as we grew up and went on to other things in life, their crackpot pronouncements seemed more and more remote from our lives and the reality that we lived in.

Barrack Obama never left those days. His autobiography opens describes his infatuation with leftist radicalism. His "community organizing" days were simply the campus radical let loose on the guilible folks willing to blame everyone else for their problems. His rise to big city politics was steeped in the university and black nationalist communities. He sought out Rev. Wright where he, his wife and young children got the same black nationalist, anti-American rants. Obama studied those sermons when he left for law school. When he entered politics, he did so by first having a meeting in an unrepentant domestic terrorist's home. More on Ayres here and here. [Citations only used for underlying facts asserted or linked in the sources. Facts which have not been debunked or refuted].

No one should be surprised that President Obama thought that hiring a black nationalist, former Marxist, 9-11 conspiracy nut was anything unusual. Obama's pastor had preached for years that AIDs was invented by white people to kill blacks. Obama took his young daughters to that church and when he was away in Washington in his short US Senate term, his wife boasted that she and the girls did not miss a Sunday. Barrack Obama never left the naive and unbalanced world of university radicals.

Honestly, a white politician with half of that type of history would never have been elected to any state-wide office. Because of his race, we cannot talk about his own politicization of race. Because he happens to be black, he has been given a pass on anything in his history that does not fit the liberal "narrative" so successfully spun in the campaign.

However, in governing the truth is inching its way out. From the Skip Gates' incident to Van Jones, Obama is gradually having seem for what he is..... an inexperienced glib self-promoter that cannot take criticism well, whose default position is right back there with the old campus radicals. Obama and his advisors know that they cannot or at least should avoid openly describing their views. They know it is important to stick to the narrative. It's even Alinsky's book on radical organizing, i.e. use the other side's terms and frame of reference to keep people confused.

How many times in private conversations within the Obama circle do you think someone said something like Van Jones or Rev. Wright to be met with a smile and a reassuring "yes, we know, but you cannot say that publicly now."

No one, but God, can look into a man's soul, so we will never know how much of this radicalism Barrack Obama truly believes or how much he tolerates where it helps him politically with his base. But any serious politician above the city ward level would have long ago joined the rest of us in leaving the univeristy goofball radicals behind us.

Waterloo: Massive Democratic casualties predicted

2009-08-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

The classic military blunder often revolves around underestimating the enemy's strength and then refusing to adjust the plan, committing troops and assets to a losing proposition. It always starts with a commander convincing himself that the battle is too important to avoid and that fighting another day in better circumstances is somehow not possible. Think about Martin Sheen's portrayal of Robert E. Lee in Gettysburg (1993) as Longstreet (Tom Berringer) tries to convince him to forgo the frontal assault.

Graphic: Hougoumont portion of Battle of Waterloo. Source: timegun.org

Just about everyone, including me, predicted that Obama's reaction to the growing resistance to Democrats' health care legislation would be to try to tough it out. This appears to be happening, perhaps even more stridently than expected. As Victor Davis Hanson notes: "Because of his inexperience and unfamiliarity with political hostility, I think Obama will press ahead on the present course, heightening partisan tensions, dividing the country, and ultimately diminishing his presidency further still." The military analogy is to A Bridge Too Far when ranking British intelligence officers brashly dismiss new intelligence that two German Panzer Divisions are in Arnhem....much like dismissing the town hall protests as "AstroTurf" or "evil-mongers."

An attempt to use parliamentary procedures on budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster would be the political equivalent to becoming a suicide bomber detonating his load two blocks from the target among his fellow jihadists. Yet Obama and Congressional Democrat leaders seem unable to find a solution to keep even their own party on the same page. Intra-party disputes and disorganization seem to be growing not subsiding. So besides charging uphill against an resilient enemy that is pouring in reinforcements faster than his own troops, the Obama forces are seeing growing fratricide.

The "Waterloo" analogy seems more and more apt. Not because of any right-wing conspiracy, but because of vain and inexperienced decisions by the least experienced man to ever hold the office of President. Fortunately, because of the awakening of the American public this summer, the only casualties that this inept commander will inflict will be on his own troops.

2010 Elections: The Surge

2009-08-13T22:27:00.001-07:00

If Republicans stick to the principles of Reagan and add the intensity of the Tea Party movement and town hall crusaders, the 2010 election will be another 1994.

I predicted this a little while back, relying on the increasingly clear exposure of the Obama post-partisan campaign message as the Big Lie. Polls now show even more shifts in the public seeing Obama as a committed liberal, tax-and-spend big government advocate. Morevoer, it is also more clear that he and his Deocrat leftist colleagues on the Hill have little patience for debate, discussion or facts in pursuit of their quest for bigger and more intrusive government. Pundits that said the Reagan message was outdarted, just five or six months ago, hould be hiding under their desks or writing mea cupas en masse.

Besides movement on the generic ballot, something like twenty percent in six months, polls now show voters in all groups believe that Obama will not keep his pledge to avoid new taxes on the middle class. Voters also prefer the GOP to Democrats on eight out of ten issues.

How far will it go? Well,pundits frequently noted, as I did, that if Obama tacked to the center and re-grouped on health care and reduced the stimulus spending, he could co-opt a lot of the new energy among conservatives and independents. This Clintonesque move, however, still seems outside his psychological profile. A true Narcissist cannot admit error and fault and Obama remains us everyday that this may indeed be his unalterable nature. Rather than readjust, the Emperor is throwing more of his troops into the slaughter on the front-lines. Like the general than is out-of-touch with the tactical conditions on the field, Obama continues to issue orders that cannot be carried out without making the situation worse and rolling up th casualties on his side.

Result: likely takeover of the House by the GOP in 2010. The first pollsters to suggest this have been those on the left!

This result will only occur if the Republican party keeps its head in the right place and remembers how it has won every election since Nixon left..... by being the party of smaller government, fiscal responsiblity, limited regulation, and personal freedom. We can harness the energy of the populist revolt on big government only if we stick to the principles of Ronald Reagan and maintain our tradition of being the rallying point for citizens committed to these principles and policies.

Issues: (1) repeal the stimulus bill; (2) use half the money to lower the deficit and half for tax relief to people who create jobs (not a crazy ear-marked cut, but a general business cut); (3) put a timeline of the government's holding of private assets, including not just those recently acquired, but TVA and other things that the Federal Government has no business being involved with, (4) finds ways to increase transparency in the legislative and executive branch, no more midnight proposals voted on the next morning, unless it is a war; (5) take simple, immediate steops with no budget impact to improve health care - (a) allow interstate policies and (b) cap malpractice awards to lower costs; (6) aggressively enforce election and civil rights laws to protect voters and penalize union thugs, black Panthers, and "community" scammers from illegally affecting voting and registration.

Become the unquestioned pro-democracy and pro-free market party again.

Randy Mott

The Mulah Solution: The Wrong Answer

2009-08-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

The majority of almost every demographic now oppose the main tenets of the amorphous Obama health care debacle. While it would be expected that those with jobs and those with insurance would be less than enamored with plans to increase their costs and reduce their coverage, opposition has now extended to senior citizens, who decisively oppose the plans.

From Carol's Closet: read her Tampa report!

The crowds in and recently outside Congressional town hall meetings, reflect a broad consensus among the public, especially the likely voting public, that the Obama grand scheme is a mistake or far worse.Like the polls, Congressional mail is running five or ten to one against the proposals. It is no surprise that angry constituents, especially those of members of Congress that run on fiscal responsiblity, feel angry and betrayed. The classic bait-and-switch" has to be Barrack Obama's campaign promise of "returning to fiscal responsibility." The atmospherics of this duplicity are accentuated by the Administration new heavy-handed reactions.

The Democrats reaction to plummeting polls numbers (they are down on the generic Congressional ballot by 5 points today) has been vitriolic. They have attempted to paint the most vocal opposition as a bunch of paid stooges. They have attempted to intimidate dissent by the beginnings of an "enemies list." Now they are locking the public out of "public" town hall meetings to allow their union recruited crowds to create a good photo op for Democrats under fire for support of these unpopular policies. The next step may as well be to use the union thugs to physically assault the protesters, following the lead of the Administration's favorite "elected" leader in Iran.

Of course, none of these Democratic responses will work. They are simply increasing the zeal of the dissenters and, more in point, raise the public awareness of the unpopularity of the Democratic proposals. The Tampa lock-out and St. Louis lock-out this week may represent a turning point. When union thugs man the door to block the public from a public meeting, shielding elected officials from the adverse public reaction to positions they have taken, the very legitimacy of government can start to be questioned. Hope, change, transparency? The image is anything but and the very fact that the Democrats have elected to attempt this public intimidation will grievously injure their political future.

My 2010 campaign ad would be the Black Panther intimidating voters and showing the Obama Justice Department political guys dropping the case, coupled with some big union thug closing the door to a public Congressional town hall. Both of these images remind us of Obama's Chicago political machine background. They illustrate anything but "hope and change": more likely a throw-back to the days of big city political bosses and rigged elections.

The ads to date for the GOP have been very tame compared to the amunition that the Democrats are giving us.

George W. Bush was regularly accused of having a political tin ear [famous Pelosi faux pas here]. The fact is that Barrack Obama and the liberal Democrats seem to have managed to get everything wrong and apparently lack the political astuteness to figure a way out. I mentioned early on the blog, that this only becomes Obama's Waterloo if he allows to it. Apparently, the White House and its Congressional colleagues think that causing massive desertion from their ranks and huge casualties in their troops will somehow still carry the day, so it appears to be Waterloo.

Randy Mott

Obama's Test

2009-08-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

As the new RNC ad "The Experiment" notes, in just 200 days Obama has dropped to earth from the clouds, losing his halo and his wings. The state legislator (yes, it was just four years ago) propelled into the limelight by his gift for using a teleprompter and a well-conceived, albeit ambigous message, has run aground. Absolutely nothing in his man's background should have trigger any other expectation.
Photo from LewWaters

Having never orchestrated a single major piece of legislation in the state capitol or in Washington, why would anyone be prized at his ineptitude in handling cap-and-trade and healthcare? Why would anyone be surprised that Obama lies and misrepresents about the healthcare bill, when he cannot even tell a straight story about his personal history? It is increasingly obvious that this guy is in "way over his head."

Maybe the best test of his character and ability will be how he handles the specter of defeat. Bill Clinton, a truly masterful politician, rushed to the center of the ideological spectrum, embracing welfare reform and a balanced budget, both often listed by Democrats as his great accomplishments, yet he resisted both until they were pushed on him by a resurgent Republican Congress. Yet Barrack Obama shows little signs of adaptation and improvisation. His famous "glass jaw" clearly shown in one campaign press conference, for example, See Doc Weasel for comment and video. The famous quote, "You are going to destroy my Presidency," reveals a lot about how tightly and fragilely wired this inexperienced radical self-promoter really is.... See JammieWearingFool. The glass jaw really starts showing in how the Obama perpetual campaign organization is dealing with the criticism on healthcare legislation. The response to the Naked Emperor videos exposing his goal of nationalize healthcare is pathetically inept and defensive.

There are few signs that Obama will adapt to the reality that he has lost the heathcare debate as well as the ability to use taxpayers money and federal government IOUs to buy more votes with new programs. Healthcare will only become his Waterloo if he elects to throw his army and resources into trying to take a position that could not be taken.* This appears to be happening and should not be surprising given the man's history, the Chicago machine culture around him, and his simultaneous inflated and fragile ego. The number of fatal mistakes in the world's history made by leaders who came to believe that their own destiny was bigger than all the forces around them has filled many textbooks and treatises.

Rent a movie this week about Hilter's last months and his issuing of delusional orders to military units that virtually did not exist any longer and his criticism of the generals who were telling him the unpleasant realities. I certainly reminds me of the White House reaction to the townhall meetings and Tea Parties. The most salient point to me is that I think Obama and the Left may actually believe that these are "mobs" organized by a tiny minority, rather than evidence of an emerging overwhelming majority that oppose their policies. They have clearly been in denial over the basic conservatism of the electorate, despite their efforts to obsfuscate and confuse the public over what they truly intend to do. The "get tough" advice that Obama got was exactly what he wanted to hear, as he preparing his troops for a hopeless and bloody assault uphill and into a well-prepared and dug-in enemy. His Waterloo.

Randy Mott

* I have war-gamed Waterloo using multiple different systems and believe that it was impossible for Napolean to have won the battle. Attacking left, right or "up-the-gut" all would have lead to a defeat IMO.

Great statement on grass-roots conservatism

2009-08-05T22:22:00.001-07:00

From the Hot Air blog, a truly well-stated summary of "who we are" from Dr. Zero:

"We don’t like having to fight desperate battles to save our freedom and future from socialist politicians every ten or twenty years. We don’t like having our time wasted with trillion-dollar statist fantasies, when our government is already trillions of dollars in the red. We’re tired of checking the papers each day, to see which group of us has been targeted as enemies of the State. We’re growing impatient waiting for the Democrats to come up with ideas that don’t require their supporters to hate someone. We’ve had our fill of “progressives” who act as if we’re living in 1909, and none of their diseased policies have ever been tried before.

"We believe government should be punished for failing to live up to the expectations of its citizens, not the other way around. We don’t think people who destroy thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in market value should get a pass because they meant well. We’ve had enough of dodging a massive State that wants to organize, subsidize, penalize, and divide us. We refuse to pay tithe to a religion we don’t support, including the official State religion of global warming. We demand honesty, humility, and transparency from our public servants, no matter how many elections they’ve won. We won’t settle for making the only important decisions about our futures in the voting booth, once every couple of years.

"We don’t blame people for showing up to grab their share of a government handout. We blame the people who stole the money from the rest of us, and put it on the table for them."

Take a moment to read the whole piece, it is not that long. I only wish that Dr. Zero had a more substantive-sounding moniker!

Randy Mott

2010 Election: Early Predictions? UPDATED

2009-07-29T07:03:00.001-07:00

It is a long way to November 2010. However, the trends lines are starting to get pretty well-defined. Here are some facts that should cheer up Republicans:

1. In mid-year elections, the White House incumbent party almost always loses seats in Congress;

2. Polling in elections where the candidates have been identified for 2009-2010 show Republicans leading in places that traditionally have been held by Democrats (New Jersey and Connecticut() or battlegrounds (Virginia);

3. The generic ballot (what party will you vote for in Congress) has shifted dramatically in favor of Republicans: Rasmussen reports 42% GOP to 39% Dem on July 28, 2009. This is a 3 point GOP lead and has shifted from a seven point GOP deficit in January 2009;

4. The generic ballot always has overstated the Democratic side in recent years. This may be the registered voters vs. likely voters effect, but it should scare Democrats. In 1994, when the GOP retook Congress in a dramatic election landslide, the generic ballot was a mixed bag in preelection polling:

ABC: — 47-46 in favor of the Dems (a 6-point swing in the last week toward the Dems)
Gallup: — 51-44 for the GOP (a 4 point swing in the last week toward the Dems)
NBC: — 46-35 for the GOP (a 2 point swing in the two weeks toward the Dems)
Times Mirror: — 48-43 for the GOP (a 7 point swing in the last month toward the Dems)
Source: National Journal.

5. If the trend continues, it is not inconceivable that Republicans could retake the House of Representatives. Nearly 50 Congressmen/women are up for reelection in Districts carried by McCain last year. The motivation to vote seems to strongly favor those who disapprove of the Democrats 2009 performance to date.

6. Look for the Democrats to bury the votes for the stimulus boon-doggle, cap-and-trade and early health care committee bills. All of these items are unpopular and will grow more so. Their strategy will likely be to create some opportunities for more popular votes on less controversial measures. This will mean that the Obama agenda will get buried as soon as Hill Demopcrats can find a semi-graceful way to hold its head underwater.

7. Unemployment is likely to still be high or even on a downward trend in the summer of 2010. It will lag six months or more behind other indicators, which are themselves still not into positive territory. The stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, and health care proposals will all depress investment and hurt the pace of recovery. The longer that they are on the plate, the longer that they will work negatively on the recovery. Major new investment has to occur mobnths before any positive effects will be felt by the public. That investment is staying home right now.

8. The rage in 2010 will not be RINOs (Republicans in name only) but DINOs (Democrats in name only). Many moderate Democrats may go the route of conservative Democrats, which is to say that only the fossils will remain. Every vote for the Obama agenda will hurt these guys in this election cycle. Continued opposition is likely to encourage either primary challengers (crazy Maxine Waters is already making noises) or result in less financial support from the Democratic campaign committees. Another focus will be why do you want to vote for someone who will vote for Pelosi and Reid to run Congress.

Source: The Flintstones, ABC.

9. The most intelligent political route (moving toward the center and obscuring ideological differences, which worked in the 2008 campaign) will likely not be taken by the key folks on the Left. Obama has a very limited understanding of Washington and very poor instincts when threatened. Putting the Leftist agenda on hold will also infuriate the Democratic party base in many places, which is far left of the general voting public. If this supprtessed turnout by a few points, it would translate into significant losses at the polls.

10. Demographics are still helping the GOP in many ways. The blue states are losing populations, House seats(next cycle in 2012), and have the worst problem in economic recovery efforts. Tax and spend Democrats in these jurisdictions are seeing bigger state deficits, higher taxes, and reduction of the "free lunches" that they used to buy votes for years.

Finally, very few people voted for this extreme agenda in 2008, which was hidden under code words like "hope," "change" and "progressive." The underlying strength of conservatives in the US has been the subject of several other posts here. The GOP needs to tap into these mainstream sentiments, get good candidates, and keep on a message of lower deficits, less government, more competition, more investment and economic growth.

UPDATE: Rasmussen now [August 6] has the GOP up by 5 points on the generic ballot. This is making 2010 look more like a potential 1994!

Obama's Invitation to Consider His Views on Race

2009-07-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Inexplicably the media and the GOP in the 2008 election eventually gave Barrack Obama a pass on his personal history of association with radicals, including race-baiter Reverend Wright. The GOP candidate urged Republicans not to run the videos and use the quotes. All of this despite that fact that this racist Wright character was Obama's minister for 20 years, married the Obamas, that Michelle stated she and the daughters never missed a Sunday service, and that Obama wrote in his book that he took tapes of Wright's sermons to college to study them. Obama even described Wright as his "spiritual advisor" and had him on the campaign in an official capacity before someone figured out who he was.

Now after his apparently premeditated support for Professor Henry Lewis Gates, President Obama has opened up the issue again in my opinion. All of the evidence now slowly emerging indicates that Professor Gates was an arrogant jerk who himself made racist remarks about the police trying to protect his home. Less we get too excited about his Harvard-Cambridge credentials, let's remember his "your mama" epithet.

We know less about Obama than any man elected to the Presidency in modern times (maybe ever). These little windows into who he is and where he is coming from offer more significance than they might otherwise. While his personal history of leftist radicalism, association with domestic terrorists from the Left and black racists, and other extremists were deemed forbidden topics by political correctness during the campaign amidst the hype about "hope and change," this veneer of protection is now gone.

Pragmatically, anyone raising fundamental issues about Obama's background and personal choices of mentors and associates was viewed as sour grapes over the last twelve months. How could a conscientious person inject this nasty stuff into a celebration of "hope and change"? Doesn't the white man's guilt require that we use a separate standard for evaluating black politicians that excuses their indulgence in anti-American and extremist ideologies? Can't we use affirmative action in election campaigns as well as hiring?

Well, the chickens have come home to roost. Obama has opened the door to an examination of his views on black racism. How much of his "redistribution of the wealth" (in his words "spreading it around") schemes are anchored in this radical personal history?The "new car smell" is gone from the continuous, relentless and sophisticated Obama campaign... a campaign that has never stopped. Had we looked harder at the candidate Obama, the public and media would have seen a guy who was the extreme "tax and spend liberal" at the least. Maybe they would have seen a guy whose closest colleagues had an agenda fundamentally different from 90% of the country. Maybe they would have asked why Rev. Wright was so important to Obama when he needed political acceptance in the black Chicago community and was so expendable when he sought national office?

Well, now we can ask. "Hope and change" have proven to be poor measures of governance. Using broad, fuzzy-headed legislative objectives, while giving the detail work to be to the Democratic standard bearers on the Hill, has been an abysmal failure (the stimulus bill, the cap-and-trade bill, and the heath care bill). 24/7 public relations in a campaign mode has not got the job done from anyone's perspective. Approval ratings have flipped. It is a Democratic "brand" that, in only six months, is now a liability. There is no new paradigm that makes old "labels" irrelevant and the old political framework may be more appropriate than ever for viewing the current controversies.

Lead by locally-organized "Tea Parties," the public is resisting the irresponsible growth of government, debt and regulation. While Americans are finally seeing Barrack Obama as another "tax and spend" liberal at best and maybe a real extremist.

Into this setting, the Professor Gates controversy may emerge as one of the defining moments of the Obama presidency. Fate is funny that way. Gates is infinitely more sophisticated and mainstream than Wright. But the common element shared is that both have a black racist slant to their views of reality. Black separatism is a fundament premsie of Henry Gates' view of culture. Can anyone imagine an expert on Caucasian literature? How about the Congressional White Caucus? The majority of Americans have accepted these reverse racism notions out of white guilt. They have nothing in common with Martin Luther King's color-blind dream.

The collective culture that endorses reverse racism has a firm tenet that society owes them. That government should be in the position of picking winners and losers. That government must correct the things that society has wrought. This is the very core of Barrack Obama's personal history and political context.

The Gates controversy is a very small matter. It got "legs" because intuitively folks saw it as a window into a room that they had been locked out of. At minimum, it opens the door to the review of Obama's personal history and the choices that he has made, including Rev. Wright. In a deeper sense, it illustrates how his view of the role of government is fundamentally at odds with the sense of most Americans. With plummeting poll numbers, even the media is now asking more questions of "The One." When we finally start evaluating Obama with the same crieria that we use for white politicians, we will have achieved no small victory.

Conservatism: Let's Quit Apologizing

2009-07-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

As I have noted here in several posts over the past two years, Americans are fundamentally conservative, especially the likely voters. Liberalism - except for a few urban pockets - is largely in hiding. Obama hid his agenda in talk of a new era of non-partisanship. Sotomayer hid her judicial liberalism by parroting all the things that conservatives wanted to hear. Liberals are no longer safe to walk the streets as liberals, but often use a code word - "progressive."

The economic crisis has been, in the White House's words, "too good a crisis to waste." Rather than try to sell their liberal policies on their merits, the Left has use every subterfuge it can grab. The "stimulus" was to save jobs, while it was designed to throw money at Democratic special interest groups, a classic "trickle-down" strategy that has never worked to create jobs. See Mott's Blog, "INCREASING GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON INFRASTRUCTURE WILL NOT FIX THE ECONOMY," January 2009. The cap-and-trade is about creating "green jobs" -although no one making the assertion will mention the data that show more jobs lost than created. The health care "reform" is to "control costs," but CBO and every objective observer notes that it will add to health care costs.

You get the picture: Liberals got back in power by lying about who they are. They have used their power with some success until now by lying about what they are doing.

Conservatives can complain that the traditional media (I do not think that their market share or their ouvert bias can still let them say they are mainstream) has unfairly abandoned any scrutiny of this bunch of liberals in sheeps' clothing. But whining about fairness has never been an effective political strategy.

Let's look at where the public, especially likely voters, seem at odds with the Obama Left. Government spending, more government regulation, rejection of American exceptionalism, and other themes all still have "legs" as issues. Take a page out of Gingrich's book from 1994 and find eight to ten specific issues where we can distinguish ourselves from the Obama Left. Run and that, get elected and do it.

The latest data on the 2008 election illustrate exactly how conservatives have been losing. The "Republican" brand was not tarnished because it was viewed as conservative. Americans still call themselves conservatives by a two to one margin over self-identification as "liberals." [I would like to see a "progressive" poll done!]. But the Republican Party lost credibility with conservatives over government spending. Many voters came to view the two parties as no different (Obama worked as Bill Clinton before him to obscure this difference). The result was a turnout lower in elgiible voters than 2004! The latest analysis of the 2008 election shows that proportionally fewer eligible voters turnd out than in 2004: "more older whites opted to stay home compared with 2004, citing little interest in supporting either Barack Obama or John McCain." AP, July 20, 2009. A key Republican demographic under-performed.

Re-builiding a winning conservative coalition require us to return to our key issues that have as much validity as they diud when Ronald Reagan championed them. The notion that we need a "new set of ideas" is completely caught up in the idea that government has to be doing new things for us. The government has to do some things, but our traditional view is that it can only create a framework for private enterprise, protect the nation, and keep some safety net for those left behind. Making each of these elements work better is a conservative political scope of work.

Using any issue as a lithmus test and dividing ouselves where we have differences of one or two issues will also not work. Get back to the core Republican issues, define a program, and campaign against liberals as liberals and refuse to let them change the terminology or fluff the differences.

Yes, we can......until folks wake up.

2009-07-04T23:43:00.000-07:00

Can the White House double the national debt in less than a year, while making meaningless comments about the need for fiscal discipline? Yes, we can...............

Can we quadruple the annual federal budget deficit after criticizing the previous Administration for running a budget deficit? Yes, we can.........

Can we increase the federal budget that goes just to pay the interest due on government indebtedness from a third of all revenue to half of all revenue? Yes, we can.....

Can we do all of this with no clear plan for how this spending will help the economy? Yes, we can....

Can we use the coercive power of government to force spending on projects that benefit our special interest group friends, political cronies, relatives, and those that we promised to give handouts to in exchange for their votes? Yes, we can....

Can we claim that this massive increase in spending and borrowing will create a net number of jobs, despite all the studies that have shown this has never happened before? Yes, we can....

Can we claim that this stimulus package will hold unemployment down to 8% and then blame the previous Administration when it hits 10% after the stimulus? Yes, we can....

Can we pretend that making negative comments about America will help us win friends among foreign leaders and governments that have been critical of the United States? Yes, we can....

Can we celebrate the fruits of victory in Iraq, won by military efforts that we consistently opposed? Yes, we can.....

Can we bail out auto companies by using government funds to subsidize grossly unproductive work practices in order to help our union friends that provide millions of dollars of political support to us every election cycle? Yes, we can.....

Can we frustrate labor reform and workplace democracy by supporting the end of secret union elections, since an overwhelming number of union elections in recent years, have voted down letting in the union bosses that we politically count on? Yes, we can.....

Can we suppress scientific opinion that challenges the assumption of a major human role in climate change, while claiming to put scientific inquiry back into a decisive role in decision-making? Yes, we can.....

Can we claim greater government openness and transparency, while we see that any Inspector Generals in government that find out bad things about our cronies get fired? Yes, we can.....

Can we make up stories about the health care problems, lie about how much it will cost for our plan, bait and switch on taxing employees private insurance benefits? Yes, we can.....

Can we do all of this without getting significant media criticism and having the major news outlets all over the Administration with negative stories? Yes, we can.....

Can we keep this up for more than a year before someone figures out the giant scam? No, we can't..... someone woke up!

Can we keep voters, who say that they are conservative twice as often as they say they are liberal, believing that we are not liberal hacks with an extreme Left agenda? No, we can't.... someone woke up!

Can we ignore the fact that our "stimulus" package has had no impact on jobs and will make things worse and worse over time as the bills have to be paid? No, we can't....someone woke up!

Can we keep a lid on criticism in the press by stage-managing press conferences, daily "talking points," and running 24/7 in campaign mode? No, we can't...someone woke up!

Can we keep a President in office for a second-term who can never displayed any leadership skills, balanced judgment, or maturity in decision-making? No, we can't.....

Can we keep a party in power that is only united around the notion of buying people's votes by offering them handouts paid for with other people's money? No, we can't.....

"You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." P.T. Barnum

Over-extension: How Obama Ended Up on Thin Ice

2009-06-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defined over-extended as "to extend or expand beyond a safe or reasonable point." The definition applies precisely and accurately to where Barrack Obama is now and the position into which he has financially put the country. Sustainability is ironically a favorite word of the President and many liberals, while the shelf life on their ascendancy to power seems to be starting to show an expire date.

Very basic parts of the Obama Presidency are distinctly minority positions, i.e. massive deficit spending, higher taxes, governmnet-sponsored health care, more cash for corporate bail-outs and take-overs, and the apologetic and tepid foreign policy. This is no surprise to many folks, including me, who have noted that Americans are consistently more conservative than liberal and have not embraced any "new majority" for a Leftist agenda. Gallup reiterated this point this month with a new poll showing the same ideological split. See also Pew Center , "Winds of Political Change Haven’t Shifted Public’s Ideology Balance" (November 2008 wrap-up polling).

Obama got elected by obscuring this point, labeling himself a "progressive" or even asserting that the old labels do not fit anymore. The media indulged this fiction, since most of the liberals involved have always said that the only problem with the low popularity of liberalism was the weakness of its messengers. They finally felt they have a cover-person for liberalism, albeit sub rosa. A good part of the public was simply confused and so eager for a glib and "hipper" leader that they suppressed the little voice telling them that this was a real Leftie. Many conservative minded voters who were concerned about deficit spending, for example, voted for Obama. [Hard to visualize now, but Democrats had essentially drawn even with Republicans in pre-election polling for who would hold down taxes].

Of course, this fantasy world of alternate reality has to have a shelf life. We are now seeing moderate conservatives and independents backing off the Obama agenda in very large numbers. Among "likely voters" (an increasingly important polling demographic going into 2010) Obama now has a net disapproval rating. The June 2009 polls that consistently show disapproval of his policies are not evidence of any new shift in the public on the issues. Rather they are the emergence of the basic policies preferences that were obscured by the Democrats with the more than willing help of the media.

The slickness of the campaign of Barrack Obama and the media savvy is continues to display will also be recorded in history as its fundamental weakness in my opinion. Self-criticism and deeper policy reflection gave way from the beginning to sound-bites and imagery. Shockingly upon coming into office, it now appears that there was absolutely no stimulus plan in the Obama campaign and transition team.... the critical issue of the period was "out-sourced" to party hacks on Capitol Hill, whose "stimulus" was more like a pay-off to local constituents and special interest groups to attempt to cement long-term support. This point was dramatically illustrated in a TV interview of Steny Hoyer, House Whip, who when pressed on why the stimulus bill would really create jobs, just said that "we had to do something" and that "we hope it works." [If public works spending was a ticket to economic growth, FDR would have got us out of the depression before the war started, Japan in the 1990s would have recovered five years earlier, and North Korea and Belarus would be the economic giants in the world].

The long delays in getting serious financial proposals together, the insane number of speeches and press conferences, the TV celebrity infatuation, the aggressive use of political muscle on opponents (Chrysler, Walpin, etc.).... all these points are elements of the triumph of the pursuit of power over the pursuit of effective policy. The systemic lack of a functioning intra-Democratic mechanism to clear proposals, run traps, and fashion effective policy is coupled with a complete unwillingness to let the normal pluralistic system do that job. Compromise is only done where it may be necessary to get the result sought, not due to any innate need to adjust policies to reflect substantive changes warranted on the merits.

Similarly, the lack of real independent press criticism from the mainstream media has allowed very foolish and superficial items to pass through the process, i.e. stimulus bill, GM bail-out, and others. The asset in the campaign, the co-option of the press, actually has become a liability, since it removes another protection of the Administration from its own excesses and mistakes.

The above factors have taken us to the moment of truth for the Obama Administration. The counter-productive big-spending plans are now even described by the Associated Press as "turning out to have the opposite effect." [AP, June 6, 2009, describing the housing market]. The Congressional Budget Office pointed out before the Congressional vote that the stimulus would have a long-term negative impact on GDP. So, if there is a modest recovery occurring, it is doing so despite the Government's efforts. It is unlikely that the unemployment situation which is a lagging indicator, will hit much positive territory until after the 2010 election. It is also clear that additional taxes of some sort will be required to keep up the spending and borrowing pace (since we are hitting the limits of the bond market to take federal paper). Both will be a disaster for Democrats in 2010 (especially since the public never voted for the deficit spending and other liberal policy initatives). This is not a case of public-supported policies going bad and opinion shifting, but more like massive failure exposing a fundamental breach of public trust.

The whole nature of the Obama over-extension seems to foreshadow a very precipitous drop in polling numbers which has started in the last 60 days and is reflected in "likely voter" polls. The media has not, of course, given up, and there will be more New York Times, CBS and LA Times polls of the general public (with very dubious demographic weighting) intended to keep the bubble from breaking. Some liberals have also laid the groundwork for their post-mortem excuses by announcing that Obama is trying to do too much as once. This is, of course, delusional as well: it is more accurate to say that he is trying to do too much that the public never agreed with.

If the United States really went to a European-type system with a "head of state" that was a figurehead and real power in another leader (normally the Prime Minister) who did the heavy-lifting, Barrack Obama would be America's choice right now for a figurehead. But the President must govern, must make decisions, react to a hostile world, and submit budgets.

In some sense, Barrack Obama is not the first black United States President. Morgan Freeman was a U.S. President several times before Obama was elected....although he does seem to have more "gravitas."

Reality Bites...

2009-03-12T11:44:00.001-07:00

During the campaign some of us said that Obama was a con artist, pretending to be post-partisan, but a thoroughly doctrinaire Democratic liberal. A guy who never bucked his party on a single issue. Now it appears he has no stomach at all to stand up to Democrats in Congress who have rushed through giant pork barrel spending bills one after the other in the name of economic recovery (without ever, yet addressing problems in banking and housing, where the crisis started).

We questioned his maturity and experience to be the leader of the free world. Remember when the President of France, Mr. Sarkozy,, suggested that Obama's position on Iran was too weak for the French to accept? Sarkozy described Obama's views as ‘utterly immature’ and comprised of ‘formulations empty of all content.’” Now the President of the United States stumbles on the protocol of a meeting with the Prime Miniser of the UK, looking like the state senator he was but a few years ago.

Remember when Obama promised to change our positions on terrorist detainees? Pull out of Iraq? Now it appears that he is not much different than Bush on the Iraq timetable and - while wanting to close Gitmo, his Administration has not abandoned a signel assertion of government powwer in terrorism cases. Not surprising, since the "Bush" positions were the traditional views of past Presidents from both parties.

Remember the criticism over the Republcians and the growing national debt? Now this guys have doubled it in 90 days, while ignoring the Congressional Buget Office analysis that this will depress not grow GDP over time.

Their credo is to never waste a good crisis and their actions seemed to be destined to prolong it.

But the reality of the situation remains. The stock market and financial centers have not responded well to any of the jive from Washington. The Democrats used their goodwill and political dominance to push through a bunch of junk spending without addressing seriously any economic issues. The enemies of our country are still out there and feeling a bit empowered as we start to reduce defense spending and seem destined to become the Jimmy Carter sequel.

The brillant public speaker appears to have been exposed by his continual reliance on a teleprompter for staff support on tough questions. Although is answers the questions seem almost flippant after-the-fact (i.e.the stock market going up and down).

The hard core radicial agenda of Obama's crwis emerging in the budget and the attack on busniess and the wealthy. His campaign remark about wanting to spread the wealth around seems to have been one of the only honest sound bites from him in the election.

The disorganized, infighting Republican Party seems, neverthless, destined to pick up a major number of Congressional seats and some governorships in 2010. No one seriously expects the economic news to have improved enough to avoid major second thoughts about this novice, extremist Chicago politician that finessed his way into the White House.

The fact that Obama seems to be in peterpetual campaign mode and uncomfortable with governing, not to mention appearing increasingly inept, should make everyone whovoted for him think twice.

SOMEONE PULLED THE CURTAIN BACK

2009-02-09T23:39:00.000-08:00

In the Wizard of Oz, the visit to the Emerald City found Dorothy, her dog Toto, and other companions before the Mighty, All-Powerful Oz. The uncooperative little dog pulled back the curtain from near the huge stage to reveal an elderly man running the mechanical controls to create the illusion of the intimidating Oz.

Just days into office, the curtain seems to have been pulled on Barrack Obama. An unlikely candidate for President, with just 120 days in the US Senate as experience, thrust into an electoral lead by economic events caused by his own party (CRI and federal buy-ups of mortgage paper), Obama has made his first policy push to be the "stimulus package." This package largely came from Obama's party in Congress, eager to start public hand-outs to improve their own political fortunes with constituencies ready for more pork. To those that follow it, what was missing was a really detailed analysis of where stimulus might be effective in the short run and how much it would cost in the long-term. Democrats at all levels saw an opportunity to resurrect spending plans rejected ore postponed in the past by labeling them "stimuli."

To stand up to the Democrats' worst instincts and to work on a consensus to get Republican votes, Obama would have needed to display his hyped "post-partisanship" and to demonstrate that he could stand up to his own party loyalists. Since he has never done either thing in his entire, short career, it is not surprising that we failed to see this skill and determination "in the pinch." Americans instead have seen a "dandy" with no vision to solve the nation's problems other than some cliches and the vain belief in his own near-divinity.

The more the public learns of the stimulus package, the more opposition there is. If the vote is delayed longer, the support seems destined to erode into a island of hard-core big government support from the folks in big cities and their politicians, the last islands of Liberalism in America.

The truly unsettling part of these developments is that this problem was no surprise. It was not a sudden event that may have overtaken an Administration still getting organized. The economic crisis elected Obama and months have passed while he soothed voters with cliches, while apparently doing little behind the scenes to assess the problem or solutions. Two sectors obviously leading the downturn are housing and banking, which - of course- seemed to be ignored entirely in the "stimulus package."

Like Herbert Hoover, whose first reaction to the Depression was to dramatically increase public works spending, Barrack Obama decided that the solution was to unlease his Democratic colleagues "wish-list" for government pork and spending programs and wrap the package in a ribbon that said "economic stimulus." The result is not amenable to cure by amendment, like a lower fat diet of more government spending supported by unsustainable levels of public debt. Congress needs to start with the Republican bill and work out a compromise. Politically, this would require a skilled bipartisan leader experienced in legislative realities backed by a top team of experts with a handle on the solutions required. Unfortunately, neither element seems to be present in Washington right now.

Like the Wizard of Oz, Barrack Obama is getting exposed very early in office as the manipulative and artificial self-promoter that he is. Speeches filled with cliches, skillfully delivered via teleprompter, will not fix what ails us. The man that he pretended to be on television might have a chance, but we did not elect that guy...he does not really exist.

Republicans Figure It Out! No to big government boondoggle!

2009-01-28T23:48:00.000-08:00

To my surprise, Republicans in the House found their voice....finally. They united with some Democrats who flipped to oppose the trillion dollar boondoggle bill.

Last year, before the financial woes, pork barrel was a bad name....now it is the answer to all of our problems if you believe the Left. Uh...excuse me the "post-partisan progressives" as they now want to be called.

The Heritage Foundation has an excellent article echoing my arguments of the futility of using public works spending to create jobs and economic growth. http://www.heritage.org/research/budget/bg2208.cfm

It might be helpful to remember that Hoover's first response to the Great Depression was to enormously increase federal public works spending. FDR picked this up with a fervor and nothing worked to reverse the problems for more than a decade. Good arguments can be made that economic polices of that era lengthened the depression.

Let's go to work creating new investment in long-term better paying jobs and real growth. Bring U.S. business taxes into line with the rest of the industrialized nations (we are the second highest taxer) and watch the private sector surge. It's the advice that the US (even the UN-UNCTAD) gives to emerging economies, which the Dems just cannot seem to apply at home.

INCREASING GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON INFRASTRUCTURE WILL NOT FIX THE ECONOMY

2009-01-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

Randy M. Mott

To allay concerns that they are “tax and spend” liberals, for several years the American Left has referred to government spending on infrastructure or education as an “investment.” In a philosophical sense this is accurate, but it does not change the character or effects of such spending. The Obama Administration coming into office promising to create a massive number of new jobs by government spending programs. Historical data overwhelmingly supports the opposite conclusion, the net effect of government spending is neutral at best and more frequently negatively correlated to employment. While we can “hope” that this broad body of empirical research is wrong, that is unlikely to “change” the results for future spending plans. Another corollary to the liberal creed is that anything stimulating business investment is a “trickle-down” theory that does not work for the poor and middle class: a notion equally at odds with all empirical data. These twin myths remain part of the American liberal’s articles of faith and are evident in the incoming Administration’s pronouncements to date.(1)

The assumption of the Left that government spending can provide an alternative to private sector growth is largely a delusion. Government expenditures are all at the bottom of the list in terms of economic stimulation. Even labor intensive highway building has a dubious net effect on jobs. The money to do the government stuff has to come from the economy- parts of it actually profitable in fact. The overall benefit is negligible and often negative in terms of general economic effects. Even deficit spending must be funded by government bonds, which compete with private capital formation and divert money from the private sector.

“The insidious notion persists that government job creation actually generates an increase in employment. According to this view, if construction companies increase employment by 100,000 jobs due to a $3 billion government spending program to finance highway construction, then employment is 100,000 jobs ahead of what it might be in the absence of the program.” Why Government Can’t Create Jobs October 1993 by Mark Ahlseen, Associate Professor of Economics at King College. He points out that this view ignores the impact of taking the money from somewhere else to fund the highway building. [“Interestingly, from 1960 to 1988 there has been a positive, and statistically significant, correlation between public aid (as a percentage of GNP) and the unemployment rate. Conventional wisdom would have the public believe that as government “invests” in people the unemployment rate decreases.”]

Empirical studies generally find negligible or negative correlations between public works spending and employment. The Congressional Budget Office in 1998 reviewed multiple studies and found no significant job creation effects from Federal Government infrastructure spending in the numerous studies:

“This paper finds that increased federal spending on investment in infrastructure, education and training, and R&D is unlikely to have a perceptible positive effect on economic growth. That conclusion rests in part on the observation that many federal investments have little net economic benefit—either because they are selected for political or other noneconomic reasons or because they displace private-sector or state and local investments. Federal spending can also reduce growth under the following circumstances: when it displaces investment that is more productive; when it leads others to defer investments in the hope of getting federal funds; or when its full costs (including opportunity costs) exceed its benefits. Even federal investments that appear to be economically justified generally have moderate returns, and the supply of those productive investments is limited.” (2)

A 2003 economic study found no substantial positive impact on employment by increased public spending:

“...we studied the impact of public capital on employment in a variety of sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, mining, construction, transportation, wholesale trade, retail trade, finance, and services. In general, we found that public capital either has a negative effect on employment, or no effect at all under the preferred method of estimation that accounted for stationarity problems and simultaneity bias.... Our results indicate that there is no overwhelming evidence that supports the contention that public capital projects reduce the unemployment rate or increase employment for most of the sectors we studied...” (3)

The GAO study released in 1986 on an earlier highway spending “stimulus package” showed very limited net employment gains.(4) Most reports claiming “new jobs” created do not include an assessment of the net effect of the program:

“[T]here is substantial crowding out of private spending by government spending.…[P]ermanent changes in government spending lead to a negative wealth effect.” Shaghil Ahmed, “Temporary and Permanent Government Spending in an Open Economy,” Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 17, No. 2 (March 1986), pp. 197–224.

Public expenditures become increasingly ineffective macroeconomic tools after a percent of GDP is already reached: “This analysis validates the classical supply-side paradigm and shows that maximum productivity growth occurs when government expenditures represent about 20% of GDP.” E. A. Peden , “Productivity in the United States and Its Relationship to Government Activity: An Analysis of 57 Years, 1929–1986,” Public Choice, Vol. 69 (1991), pp. 153–173.

International studies in dozens of countries have shown a negative correlation between government expenditures and GDP growth.(5) Marcelo Soto, “Capital Flows and Growth in Developing Countries: Recent Empirical Evidence,” OECD Technical Paper 160, Paris July 2000. An empirical study of data from 44 developing nations for the period 1986-1997 showed higher government consumption has reduced GNP growth. Some government spending in emerging economies may enhance growth to a point, but the level is only what is needed for basic services, roads, schools, etc. Many studies showed that a curve exists where a point is reached that government spending increases actually cause major negative economic impacts. The Japanese experiment in massive infrastructure government spending in the 1990s helped to cause a slippage in GDP, as should have been expected from the previous economic studies at the time. Similarly, the American economy remained depressed for years under FDR despite massive new public works spending.(6) We certainly cannot claim ignorance of the data at this point.

When the United States and other industrial nations advise emerging economies with bloated public sectors and high tax rates, they always advise to reduce government spending and lower taxes to create sustainable growth. We are advising others, we understand implicitly the value of capital formation and business investment.(7) Many of us just seem to lose objectivity when it is our own businesses that we are talking about. If public works spending created wealth and prosperity, then Belarus, North Korea and Cuba would be the leading world economies.

The old Keynesian idea that "demand" simulation via public transfer payments was an effective tool for long-term economic growth has been soundly refuted. Even Keynes at the time argued it was only a temporary solution for periods of economic downturns. But now we know that the basic math is wrong. (8)

While the United States continues to have the second highest effective tax rates on business in the industrialized world, the Liberal reaction to the crisis is to increase business taxes to pay for more handouts and bail-outs of unprofitable businesses. Thankfully, Obama may have “rendered inoperative” his campaign pledges to increase business taxes, but the idea of reducing those taxes to create investment and new jobs is still not on the plate. There are a legion of studies from all over the world that point to lowering business taxes as a successful and effective route to job creation and sustained growth. This is heresy to the Left and, despite all of the post-partisan charades, there do not appear to be any visible advocates of true growth and recovery policies in the incoming Administration.

So we will get massive pork-barrel spending that will cost the taxpayers hundreds of billions over the future years as we pay off the debt for this knee-jerk, ideological impulse. A year ago, politicians were making points in public by blasting at the same type of pork barrel projects. As the 2003 study concluded: “... we found that public capital projects either raise the unemployment rate in most cases [or have no net effect] ....” (9) The only thing that has changed is the public perception.... a year ago everyone wanted to cut pork barrel spending, now it is applauded as necessary by the Democrats. A more effective policy would be to assess where the economy can prudently get the most sustainable short-term stimulus at the lowest long-term costs, and that answer is not to increase public works spending.

______________________________________________________________
Footnotes:

1 On December 6th, the President-elect announced his plans for "the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s" as well as "the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen." Michael Lind writing in Salon capsulizes this liberal mantra: “public investment aimed at accelerating U.S. economic growth should be domestic reform priority No. 1.” This view is virtually unanimous among the liberals. Louis Uchitelle, “A Trap in Obama’s Spending Plan,” NYT, December 21, 2008: “Mr. Obama’s expenditures will no doubt generate jobs and wages in the construction phase.”

2 Congressional Budget Office, The Economic Effects of Federal Spending on Infrastructure and Other Investments, June 1998, at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/6xx/doc601/fedspend.pdf (March 26, 2008).

3 Raymond G. Batina (Professor, Washington State University), Dr. James Feehan (Professor, Memorial University), Dr. Christopher N. Annala (Assistant Professor, State University of New York - Geneseo). "The Impact of Public Inputs on the Private Economy" 2003.

4 U.S. General Accounting Office, Emergency Jobs Act of 1983: Funds Spent Slowly, Few Jobs Created, GAO/HRD–87–1, December 1986, at http://archive.gao.gov/f0102/132063.pdf (March 26, 2008)[GAO emphasizes the delay in the spending, but the net effect was in the end small].

5 “Beginning in 1991-1992, Japan adopted the spending approach now advocated by many in the U.S. Congress when it embarked on a massive nationwide program of infrastructure investment. Between 1992 and 2000, Japan implemented 10 separate spending stimulus packages in which public infrastructure investment was a major component.” Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D. Heritage Foundation, “Learning from Japan: Infrastructure Spending Won't Boost the Economy,” December 16, 2008. The effects in Japan were the opposite of their intentions: “the relative prosperity of the Japanese has been on the decline as government spending has advanced. After peaking at 86 percent of U.S. income in 1991 and 1992, Japanese income continually fell behind the U.S.” Id. Keiichiro Kobayashi, with the Japanese Research Institute for Economy, Trade & Industry, noted: “Fiscal policies [in Japan] are based on Keynesian economics. When goods do not sell because of recession, the harmful influence of the recession can be eased if the government buys goods by increasing public works. In addition, if the government's purchases are very large, they can "prime the pump" and invigorate the private-sector economy. Such was the way of thinking that formed the foundation of Japan's measures for dealing with recession. Based on this "pump-priming" theory, fiscal expenditures should have brought about sufficient results after just one or two stimulus packages. In fact, policymakers who were in charge of economic stimulus steps immediately after the collapse of the bubble also said they thought, "Only one or two injections of fiscal outlays would be needed. However, in reality, we saw time and again that once the effects of the fiscal stimulus had worn off, the economy swiftly decelerated. In the end, the government had no choice but to continue providing fiscal stimulus practically every year. Such a situation clearly runs counter to the assumptions of Keynesian economics. Under the textbook assumptions, the economy should recover on its own once the pump is primed.” This did not happened, he notes. www.rieti.go.jp/en/papers/contribution/kobayashi/08.html

6 “Nearly a decade of then-unprecedented increases in federal spending on public relief and public works projects never managed during the Depression to lower the unemployment rate into single digits or restore our gross domestic product to the level it had achieved in 1929.” William F. Shughart II, prof. of economics, University of Mississippi, “'New New Deal' likely ineffective, wasteful,” Honolulu Advertiser, January 4, 2009.

7 As the Tax Foundation web site argues: “Recent research has focused on the lower corporate tax rates enacted by OECD nations over the past two decades to explore the link between corporate taxes and wages. This research has found that wage rates have gone up the most in countries with the largest reduction in corporate taxes. This finding is important because is tells a story whereby the corporate tax is borne by workers, through lower real wages, rather than by owners of capital. The intuition is simple: a tax will generally be borne by the input that is the least mobile. In today's world economy, capital flows freely across borders, while labor does. Thus, the corporate tax lowers workers' real wages relative to where they would be set otherwise.”

8 Increases in federal spending were the initial reaction of the Hoover Administration to the Great Depression and they did not work: “After the stock market collapse in 1929, the Hoover Administration increased federal spending by 47 percent over the following three years. As a result, federal spending increased from 3.4 percent of GDP in 1930 to 6.9 percent in 1932 and reached 9.8 percent by 1940.” Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D. Heritage Foundation, “Learning from Japan: Infrastructure Spending Won't Boost the Economy,” December 16, 2008.

9 Batina et al., supra, "The Impact of Public Inputs on the Private Economy" 2003.

The 2008 Election moves into Familiar Territory

2008-09-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

If you ever fired an M-16 you can see that Governor Palin seems to know what shes doing by the picture alone. See her leading arm flexed and tight pulling the weapon into her shoulder and her right arm relaxed on the trigger. This is not just a poise for the photographers, the woman knows how to shoot. Her history verifies this.

Governor Palin's authenicity on this and other issues is the mark of someone who has had a real life outside of politics. Senator McCain similarly has had an heroic life before politics.

Our forefathers envisioned that our political leaders would be citizens first and politicians second. James Madison assumed that Representatives would be "called for the most part from pursuits of a private nature and continued in appointment for a short period of office." David Walker, Comptroller General (head of GAO), observed correctly in a speech in 2006:

          ...the founders didn't believe in full-time politicians.
     After all, our first elected officials were citizen legislators who
     viewed elected office as a form of public service rather than a
     professional job or career. Most of them earned a living as farmers or
    businessmen. Today, many elected officials consider themselves
   "professional politicians," a concept that most of our founders and a
    number of Americans today would consider to be an "oxymoron."

As the election now enters the serious period where voters made the final decision, the 2008 campaign may mark a bold return to the anti-careerist theme of our founders. Both Barrack Obama and Joe Biden are professional politicians who have done almost nothing else in their lives. Obama's community organizing days with ACORN are now exposed as political activities for a radical organization in the main stream news mainly for its felonies. [Googel ACORN and felony!]. Professional politicians look for a issue or a byline that attracts voters, having already made a commitment to seek office they look for plausible justifications. Ted Kennedy likely never became President because in 1980 he could not answer an interviewer's question of why he wanted to be President. Often we see political themes developed soley for media impact, i.e. "hope" and "change" in the Obama campaign will go down as classic buzzwords devoid of content that allowed disaffected voters a chance to identify early-on with a campaign to elect an virtual unknown, until he was exposed as a very traditional liberal.

The "change" that most people want in 2008 is lower taxes, lower energy prices, and more economic growth. All of this being done in a country that can protect us and our allies around the world against new threats to our security. The feeling that politicians betrayed us is no where larger than in the Republican Party, where conservatives have been alienated by the big spending ways of the party that got into office on a smaller government theme. The Gingrich revolution of 1994 turned into the complacency of the last eight years. Republicans tolerated more spending to buy votes (the old Democratic formula) and were blind to abuses of their peers, not wanting to rock the boat. In 2008, it was impossible to find an establishment Republican that could draw voters to the ticket. The establishment had been discredited.

But simultaneous with this development, the underlying politics of the United States had not changed all that much. Self-identified conservatives still out-number self-identified liberals by two to one. All major polling groups verifiy this condition. TheDemocratic candidats themselves also implicitly acknowdge it when they refused to be labelled as a "liberal," knowing that it is a the kiss of death in an election. Now they use the code word "progressive" to try to signal to their base that they are okay and attempt to hide from other voters.

So two facts existed for Republicans in 2008. They needed to run as anti-establishment and they needed to mobilize the "base" - not just in the party, but among voters who identified more with conservative themes and rejected traditional American big government liberalism. It is clear - especially with hindsight - that Sarah Palin's selection on the ticket fit these two themes perfectly. The campaign for Republicans has bee revitalized by drawing on the basic strengths of Republicans, tapping the right-of-center nature of the electorate and runing against government as usual. In many ways, this is a return to the politics of Ronald Reagan, which were founded on the premise that politial leaders were temporary custodians of power facing a permanent government structure that needed reorganization to protect the rights of the public.

When I met one of the McCain campaign principals in the spring, I argued that we should not be so despondent about the election, that we only needed to reorient it to the left-right axis to make it competitive. That was not the prevalent theme of the McCain campaign at the time, when most talk was about how to get independents on board. The fundamental fact is that Republicans win when they remain true to the small government/strong defense/economic growth/good government formula. Democrats win when they obscure their liberalism for the Bill Clinton "third way" for example or the Obama "change" theme.

The outcome this year is still uncertain. But the return to the conservative ideals and government reform themes of our Reagan roots has created an opportunity for victory where none existed before. That victory will be won if we successfully align the election on the classic left/right axis and do not let "progressives" get by with voters as anything but the old "liberals" with the same agenda. We are winning the debate on national security and the need for a strong America in a hostile world. Our candidate was right on Iraq when most others were wrong (including Bush and Rumsfeld trying to win "on the cheap"). With the strongest economy in the G-7 and the highest recent GDP growth in the G-7, we are faring better than most to the spike in energy prices. And more importantly, it should be made clear that our biggest economic woe is energy prices and that the solution is "all of the above" not the liberal's knee jerk ideological answers.

GLOBAL COOLING: THE COMING CRISIS OF CREDIBLITY

2008-08-29T03:39:00.000-07:00

Many politicians have so latched on to the alleged human cause of climate change that a crisis is looming when the data goes the other way. Evidence is now clear that we are experiencing global cooling. Unless the environmental movement and renewable energy business refocus the rationale for their policy arguments, a crisis is looming on the horizon. AccuWeather's Expert Senior Forecaster Joe Bastardi has stated: "People are concerned that 50 years from now, it will be warm beyond a point of no return. My concern is almost opposite, that it's cold and getting colder."

“… as North America emerged from its coldest and snowiest winter for decades, the US National Climate Data Center, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a statement that snow cover in January on the Eurasian land mass had been the most extensive ever recorded, and that in the US March had been only the 63rd warmest since records began in 1895.” Christopher Booker, London Telegraph, May 4, 2008.

“…ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska that month was at its highest level ever recorded. (At the same time Antarctic sea ice-cover was also at its highest-ever level, 30 per cent above normal).” Id.

“Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.” National Post (Canada), February 25, 2008. “The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."” Id.

“NASA satellites found that last winter's Arctic Sea ice covered 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) more than the last three years' average. It also was 10 to 20 centimeters (about 4-8 inches) thicker than in 2007. The ice between Canada and southwest Greenland also spread dramatically. "We have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south," Denmark's Meteorological Institute stated.”

"Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously." Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in The Australian on April 23, 2008. "All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead."

From January 2007 to January 2008, earth surface temperatures measured by all of the separate global monitoring systems (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) showed the largest decline in the history of their record-keeping. The drop measured with close agreement between the four systems is comparable to the entire temperature increase for the 20th century.

Moreover, after recent adjustments in the data, official temperature records show no warming of surface temperatures since 1998, a fact conceded by the head of the UN IPCC Panel.

Lower atmosphere temperatures- where the greenhouse effect should show the most increase- have actually started a pattern also suggesting cooling is going on:

Professors John Christy and Roy Spencer, University of Alabama, Huntsville (a best-fitted spline curve represents longer term temperature trends).

Atmospheric data from the Hadley Climate Center up to August 2008 confirm the cooling trend.

National Public Radio reports instead of warming up over the past four or five years, oceans have actually been cooling slightly. According to NPR, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments that can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the "Argo" system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans, but rather "slight cooling."

"The University of Alabama-Huntsville's analysis of data from satellites launched in 1979 showed a warming trend of 0.14 degrees Centigrade (0.25 Fahrenheit) per decade," Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first Director of Meteorology, told me. "This warmth peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5 percent. Cooling began in 2002. Over the last six years, global temperatures from satellite and land-temperature gauges have cooled (-0.14 F and -0.22 F, respectively). Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003." (emphasis added).

This is not itself significant: annual or even decadal flucuations are meaningless in normal climate science. But the fact that the entire century of increase could be voided by a single year suggests that the century increase is not likely part of any major future trend. Combined with other data, however, the news may be embarassing for the Al Gore subculture of climate alarmists. We may well be posed on the verge of a relatively dramatic drop in global temperatures due to reduced solar activity. This development – if it proceeds as it now unfolding- will shake the foundation of much of the political hype supporting renewable energy. This result will be profoundly unwise in the long-run, since alternative energy development is critical to our future even if the global warming alarmism turns out to be “hot air.” 1

Arctic ice, which was widely reported as just melting away, has also recovered in the last year to its previous level. “Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.” National Post, supra. Studies show that it is still more extensive than in the 1930s. One study shows no changes in Arctic ice thickness in the 1990s. Winsor, P. 2001. “Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s.” Geophysical Research Letters 28: 1039-1041.”Temperature anomalies also exist in Greenland, the largest ice sheet in the Northern Hemisphere, with cooling in the interior concurrent with warming at the coast.” “Direct temperature measurements on Greenland ice cores show a cooling trend between 1940 and 1995 [Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998].” Singer, “Human Contribution to Climate Change Remains Questionable,” supra. Finally, “the Northern Hemisphere would appear to be not much warmer now (and the extent of Barents sea-ice cover not much less now) than it was sometime during the 1700s, when the air’s CO2 concentration was on the order of 90-100 ppm less than it is now.” CO2 Magazine, citing data from Vinje, T. 2001. Anomalies and trends of sea-ice extent and atmospheric circulation in the Nordic Seas during the period 1864-1998. Journal of Climate 14: 255-267. Baffin Bay in Northern Canada has not displayed lower spring sea-ice levels over the last 70 years, but increases similar to ice age conditions. Grumet, N.S., Wake, C.P., Mayewski, P.A., Zielinski, G.A., Whitlow, S.I., Koerner, R.M., Fisher, D.A. and Woollett, J.M. 2001. Variability of sea-ice extent in Baffin Bay over the last millennium. Climatic Change 49: 129-145.

"Reports based on submarine sonar data have suggested Arctic sea ice has thinned nearly by half in only recent decades. Such rapid thinning is a concern for detection of global change and for Arctic regional impacts. Re-examining the inferred thinning while including atmospheric timeseries, ocean currents, rivers runoff, and modelled physics of ocean-ice-snow, we find that inferred rapid thinning was unlikely. Varying winds, which rapidly redistribute Arctic ice, create a difficult sampling problem, dominated by a recurring pattern where ice is expelled from the central Arctic while thickening in the Canadian sector." Is Arctic Sea Ice Rapidly Thinning? Greg Holloway and Tessa Sou, Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney BC, Canada.

"Analysis of records (Figures 2, 3) also shows that long-term ice trends are small and generally not statistically significant…" I. Polyakov, G. V. Alekseev, R. V. Bekryaev, U. Bhatt, R. Colony, M. Johnson, V. P. Karklin, D. Walsh, and A. V. Yulin , "Long-term ice variability in arctic marginal seas," International Arctic Research Center (2003). They conclude that variability is caused by observed wind circulation changes, not recorded temperature changes: "Previous studies showed that at time scales of up to decades sea-ice conditions are controlled by changes in the atmospheric circulation pattern. Our study extends this result, suggesting that even at interdecadal time scales winds remain the major contributor to ice-extent variation in the Siberian marginal-ice zone." Id. "Recent studies show sea conditions in the Arctic today are similar to conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, while average Arctic temperatures are rising almost to their levels of the 1930s." Christy and Spencer, Global temperature Report (2003) citing Przbylak, R., "Temporal and spatial variation of surface air temperature over the period of instrumental observations in the Arctic." International Journal of Climatology, 2000. 20: 587-614. Recent Arctic ice recovery, despite rising CO2 levels, seems to reinforce this analysis.

Left: Australian Antarctic data and best fit curve.

Antarctic ice is generally regarded as increasing. In any event, ice on both poles is still larger than the 1930s, which were the warmest period in recent history. “The latest measurements of Antarctic climate show that the main part of the continent is cooling, and has been for some time (Doran et al, 2002). Changes in Antarctic ice that we do observe are part of the normal post-Wisconsin interglacial process, not a recent artifact of human influence on climate (Conway et al, 1999).” Lee C. Gerhard, Principal Geologist, Kansas Geological Survey, Letter to The Professional Geologist August 2002. “ Our 14-year continuous weather station record from the shore of Lake Hoare reveals that seasonally averaged surface air temperature has decreased by 0.7 degrees Celsius per decade....The temperature decrease is most pronounced in summer and autumn. Continental cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change.” National Science Foundation Study, cited at Nature.com.

A new study is more conclusive: “overall, the total Antarctic sea ice extent (the cumulative area of grid boxes covering at least 15% ice concentrations) has shown an increasing trend (~4,801 km2/yr).” In addition, they find that “the total Antarctic sea ice area (the cumulative area of the ocean actually covered by at least 15% ice concentrations) has increased significantly by ~13,295 km2/yr, exceeding the 95% confidence level,” noting that “the upward trends in the total ice extent and area are robust for different cutoffs of 15, 20, and 30% ice concentrations (used to define the ice extent and area).” Liu, J., Curry, J.A. and Martinson, D.G. 2004. Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea ice variability. Geophysical Research Letters 31: 10.1029/2003GL018732. Another 2005 study found increased ice on the interior.

The most alarming graphic is rural US temperatures, which are a good measure of climate since they do not reflect urban heat island effects (which are localized warming from human activities, not climate change):

So how do we reconcile recent data with Al Gore’s claims that ice core samples show temperatures correlate with greenhouse gas levels, which are increasing? Actually, the data that Gore uses does not support his conclusions at all. See Byrnes, “Facts and Fictions of Al Gore’s "An Inconvenient Truth."

First, we have to look at the data itself from the various ice cores where temeprature and gas levels were analyzed. By using a 50,000 year interval, Gore’s famous road show does show a correlation between temperature (blue) and greenhouse gas levels (green).

But if we use a finer scale and go to one thousand year ticks and superimpose the two lines, then the correlation changes somewhat: temperatures change and hundreds of years later greenhouse gas levels increase!

In summary, “major past climate changes were either uncorrelated with changes in CO2 or were characterized by temperature changes that preceded changes in CO2 by hundreds to thousands of years.” Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen, MIT, former chairman of NAS Climate Change Panel, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 2. 2001. This feature is called the “lag” and shows up the same in all ice core samples taken from various locations in the world! Something causes temperatures to go up and then this causes greenhouse gas levels to increase. “[C]hanges in CO2 concentration cannot be claimed to be the cause of changes in air temperature, for the appropriate sequence of events (temperature change following CO2 change) is not only never present, it is actually violated in [at least] half of the record.” (Idso, S.B. 1998. Carbon dioxide and climate in the Vostok ice core, Atmospheric Environment 22: 2341-2342.) Petit et al. reconstructed histories of surface air temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration from data obtained from a Vostok ice core that covered the prior 420,000 years, determining that during glacial inception “the CO2 decrease lags the temperature decrease by several thousand years” and that “the same sequence of climate forcing operated during each termination.” Petit, J.R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N.I., Barnola, J.-M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V.M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V.Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M. 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature 399: 429-436. Fischer et al. (1999) found that “the time lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three glacial-interglacial transitions.” Fischer, H., Wahlen, M., Smith, J., Mastroianni, D. and Deck B. 1999. Ice core records of atmospheric CO2 around the last three glacial terminations. Science 283: 1712-1714. The latest study concluded: “the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years.” Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J.P., Jouzel, J., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J. and Lipenkov, V.Y. 2003. Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across Termination III. Science 299: 1728-1731. The CO2 history over 500 million years in one study “exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climatic variations at tectonic time scales.” Rothman, D.H. 2002. “Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 99: 4167-4171.

Another new, very thorough analysis of historical data throws a lot of cold water on the GHG hypothesis. Sixteen authors from six different countries looked at fifty globally distributed paleoclimate records to ascertain probable causes of what they dsecribed as rapid climate change (RCC) over the Holocene. Mayewski, P.A., Rohling, E.E., Stager, J.C., Karlen, W., Maasch, K.A., Meeker, L.D., Meyerson, E.A., Gasse, F., van Kreveld, S., Holmgren, K., Lee-Thorp, J., Rosqvist, G. Rack, F., Staubwasser, M., Schneider, R.R. and Steig, E.J. 2004. Holocene climate variability. Quaternary Research 62: 243-255. With respect to the causes of Holocene RCCs, the international team of scientists says that “of all the potential climate forcing mechanisms, solar variability superimposed on long-term changes in insolation (Bond et al., 2001; Denton and Karlen, 1973; Mayewski et al., 1997; O’Brien et al., 1995) seems to be the most likely important forcing mechanism.” In addition, they note that “negligible forcing roles are played by CH4 and CO2,” and that “changes in the concentrations of CO2 and CH4 appear to have been more the result than the cause of the RCCs.” (emphasis added).

As we are now seeing a weaker pattern of solar activity, many solar scientists are projecting Solar Cycle 24 to be weaker than those in recent history. “The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder”type of solar activity minimum -an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity.”K.H.Schattenand W.K.Tobiska, 34th Solar Physics Division Meeting, June 2003, American Astronomical Society. "Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov,
head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.” Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. American Thinker (January 3, 2008). “Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council [Canada], who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.” National Post, supra. See “Scientists Predict Solar Downturn, Global Cooling,” New Scientist magazine, 16 September 2006. “"After a period of exceptionally high activity in the 20th century, our Sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet." Sir David Whitehouse (2007). “Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years."” Whitehouse, supra.

Using recent projections of solar activity, Archibald comes up with this graphic projection of temperatures:

Historical changes in the earth’s climate correlate well with solar activity levels. The two solar cycles on different time scales just converged to record a very high period in the last 100 years. Many solar scientists say that this period is over and the solar activity level is dropping. The January 2007-January 2008 period gives us some evidence that this might be true. Should the trend continue, we will see the climate alarmists scrambling for some explanation. See Dilley, "Global Warming -- Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found," (2008).

It is far better that they simply go dormant in my book. Let’s focus on real issues in alternative energy instead of climate change. The United States and Europe need energy that is not dependent upon Russia, the Middle East or South American dictators. The crisi in Georgia was a real reminder that the world is unstable and current energy supplies are not secure. Energy security is a real and pressing problem. We need to reduce sulfur emissions, which are harmful to health and property, and which stem from burning fossil fuels. We need to be positioned to successfully transition from oil and natural gas to other sources of energy in this century.

Achieving enough reduction in carbon dioxide to affect climate is an illusion, even under the United Nations IPCC models. We can, however, achieve enough alternative energy development to reduce foreign dependence, improve trade balances, foster the transition to other fuels over the long term, and to reduce real air pollution concerns (sulfur dioxide, mercury, NOx, fine particulates).

Please start looking at the other arguments for renewable energy and alternative energy sources. See "The American Energy Security Report" (2006). Let’s not make climate change, a dubious and flakey scientific proposition, the rationale for these otherwise sound and reasonable policies. The widespread collapse of the climate change alarmism may occur sooner than any of us thought possible. What will five or ten years of falling temperatures due to this alleged “consensus”?

_________________________________________________________

1) Cooling actually makes renewable energy spurces more important. The growing season is reduced, energy use to provide for food increases, transportation energy use increases, heating energy use increases, and more. “All of the above” will become even moe imperative.

All that glitters

2008-08-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

The pattern is now getting pretty clear. Democrats nominate a liberal candidate who tries to obscure his tendencies and , for a while, he is successful as long as he is perceived as none of the above. Bill Clinton was a master of obscuring his liberal credentials and displaying a “third way.” Barrack Hussein Obama, who reads a mean teleprompter speech, lacks this finesse.

Voters in the Great American Middle, now the largest group, have been slow to warm up to Obama, despite the press hype and the unprecedented campaign war chest. His strongest support - among young voters - is eroding from loss of enthusiasm as he runs to the middle and reverses himself on many issues, showing to the idealistic that he is indeed what Rev. Wright, his ex-mentor, said, simply “a politician.” Obama ran best as an unknown commodity that could be a vague template for anyone upset about something that wanted “change.” The more familiar he becomes, the more restricted his audience is.

Polling data now show a sharp drop in Obama’s numbers in battleground states. “Likely voter” polls from some leading firms show McCain up in national polling. But more worrisome for Democrats is the pattern of consistent Obama slippage in virtual all battleground states. McCain now has small leads in states rated as leaning Obama by many groups just a month ago. Obama is having difficulty with white voters, male voters, rural voters, independents, and blue-collar voters. Moreover, the “enthusiasm” index is also shifting and the Republican base is getting motivated, as shown by fund-raising numbers, polling data on who says they are likely to vote, and antecdotal evidence from endorsementsof social conservatives and other third-party groups that hestitated to get on the McCain bus up until the last six weeks. The dilemma for Obama as he tries to recast himself (some of us believe that his entire campaign has been a PR stunt) is that his efforts at broader appeal run against the anti-liberal instincts of the voters he must reach. Every effort to appeal to them hurts his standing with his base. It also undermines his ridiculous claim that he is a “new kind of leader,” not another politician.

The dynamics of American politics have not changed enormously, despite the hype this year. The public is still self-identified conservative over self-identified liberal by two-to-one. Both groups are smaller than the middle however. The Democratic Party rules have tilted their process seriously toward activists and their organized special interest groups in the primaries and caucuses. This makes the traditional Leftward lunge to get the nomination a much more dramatic and obvious fact than it ever was in the past. It also makes coming back to the center far more difficult for a Democrat, especially one with a very liberal voting record, radicial associates outside the mainstream of American politics, and frequent gaffes that give us a glimpse “behind the curtain.”

The Democratic Convention will be a studied effort to obscure their policy positions and their Leftist nature. There will be the inevitable “bump,” but do not expect it to be significant or long-lasting. Even four or five to one TV media blitzes and the most biased media coverage in decades was not enough for Obama in Democratic primaries in big, battleground states. He did not “close the deal” with large parts of his party’s base and it is stretching it to think that he will be more successful with undecideds or moderate conservatives.

We are seeing real progress in Iraq and real new threats from old enemies in the world. Obama’s credibility gap as a potential Commander and Chief is growing with every crisis. If he slides too much to the Right, which ironically is now the virtual sole custodian of national defense and security issues, Obama’s idealistic new comer flock will start getting more disillusioned. Look for a Nader bump to go into the 4-6% range in many more urban areas, enough to affect the election results.

The main culprit in the economic slowdown is now widely and correctly viewed as energy prices. Obama’s unwillingness to embrace the “all of the above” approach is hurting him on the economy in a major way. Some polls now show McCain ahead among voters on the generic “economy” question. Whatever the dissatisfaction and worry over economic issues is with a segment of voters, few except the diehard liberals seem ready to believe that Obama’s “change” has much “hope” of solving anything. His anti-free trade pronouncements and protectionist rhetoric threaten the most vital part of the American economy right now, exports. Most people know where the new orders are coming from that they are working on at their jobs. Reducing those orders or creating obstacles for new ones is not going to be helping the average employee.

Lastly, the “Messiah” complex arising from Obama’s over-the-top rhetoric and gaffes, like the revised Obama Presidential seal, have made him the object of ridicule or at least humor to most. He does not handle this very well and seems often to display a political “glass jaw.” We have all known such shameless self-promoters in our own lives and Obama more and more seems to be a characterture of the vain and self-centered conman. A Pennsylvania voter was quoted this week as saying, “I don’t like his commercials — it’s like he thinks we’re stupid,” No surprise, since he really thinks that you are stupid. See San Franciso “bitter” remarks.

I predicted that Obama would implode in the final round of primaries and he lost 9 out of 14 states and all of the big ones. Many political experts concede privately that if the Rev. Wright tapes had come out two months earlier, he would not be the nominee. He will, however, be the nominee and the sense that he is overexposed and overhyped will keep growing as more people figure out who is really is and what he really wants to do.

The main innovations and contributions that Obama has made to politics is a modernization of the process of running for President and the more complete utilization of the tools now available to candidates. Besides writing a best seller about himself, his achievement list is short at best and this is likely be the only enduring contribution he makes to American politics.

The election looks more and more like the Dukasis debacle for the Democrats. This year they can only blame themselves.

Obama's Tire Gaffe: A Gauge of his Veracity?

2008-08-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

The now famous quote by Barrack Hussein Obama that Americans could save more oil by properly inflating their tires than we can get offshore has emerged as a real campaign issue. "There are things that you can do individually though to save energy," Sen. Barrack Obama, D-Illinois, said. "Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." LINK

"The Department of Energy’s designated economist on this issue indicated that, of the 130 billion gallons of fuel that the Transportation Research Board (TRB)2 estimated were used in passenger cars and light trucks in 2005, about 1.2 billion gallons were wasted as a result of driving on underinflated tires." GAO, "Underinflated Tires in the United States" February 2007, p. 2.

Thus, the DOE uses a savings figure of 1% of transportation fuel. Even the environmental group, NRDC, only claims a 2% oil consumption reduction could be achieved by properly inflating all tires, while Obama's claim was that this was completely offset new offshore oil develoment (estimated to be 66 to 1216 billion barrels of oil or 3.6 TRILLION to 9.6 TRILLION gallons.

Left: Graphic from the U.S. Minerals Management Service (2008).

A one percent improvement is oil conservation for passenger cars and light trucks translates into even less of total oil consumption in the United States, because passenger cars used only 40% of for oil. Thus, the real savings of Obama's "plan" versus the total oil consumption in the US is 0.4% [1% of cars/light trucks times 0.4 of all oil used]. Expresed another way, using the lower OCS recoverable oil figure, Obama's suggestion could produce the same amount of oil as the OCS undeveloped potential is about 300 years.

Comparing Obama's tire inflation savings to foreign imports is just as bad. Total U.S. foreign oil imports (58% according to the Washington Post) are annually 140 times more than the hypothetical savings from his suggestion.

Perhaps more telling than his making the original gaffe, Obama's rebuttal (this was prepared) lies about the data, provides no source, and calls the other side ignorant: "The other thing is, they are making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by three to four percent," Obama said. "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant. They think it's funny that they're making fun of something that is actually true."

Then when pushed further, the Obama campaign launches into its anti-big oil diatribe. Obama, at this point, is further lying outright about the facts. His campaign seems to get more big oil money than McCain's. LINK [Note: The biggest American opil company is only 14th largest in the world, so we should be complaining that we need to create more big American oil companies, not about the ones that we already have]. And the point to all of this was that Obama's argument about tire inflation, like all of the energy conservation pitches, has some net benefit but will never be sufficient to make a dent in future energy requirements without much more on the energy production aside.

The Presidential Debates this year will likely feature this Obama, the one with a relaxed attitude about facts and a low opinion of the audience's intelligence, not the teleprompter "animatron." This Obama (version 5.2) grew out of months of adoration by the media and the incredibly over-developed ego of a guy with only months of experience on the national scene. This Obama is slipping in the polls and starting to act like the novice that he is, not the Messiah that he pretended to be.

THE INEVITABLE DECLINE OF POPULARITY FOUNDED ON IGNORANCE

2008-07-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

THE INEVITABLE DECLINE OF POPULARITY FOUNDED ON IGNORANCE

In most recent Presidential contests, the Democratic contender fell from a modest or even large lead in the summer to a tight race or even sound defeat in the November election.

Two factors are at work here in my opinion. One is the fact that later polls are based increasingly on "likely voters," while early polls tend to be registered voters or even "all adults." The latter two measures overstate the Democratic vote by 4-7 percent historically. So early "leads" may not be quite as real as the media hypes them to be. But, second, the basic characteristic of the American electorate has time to emerge. Americans, even with the decline in the GOP "brand" (so widely reported), are still two to one self-identified conservatives over self-identified liberals. Liberals generally cannot even run as liberals anymore, now they call themselves "progressives" even in their own circles. As their liberal positions become know, the appeal as alternative candidates loses its luster. This often occurs despite frantic rushes to the center, as we are now seeing done at an unprecedented pace by Barrack Obama.

Running as an alternative to Bush, Obama could use "change" and "hope" and lofty rhetoric to mobilize voters. The Left knew he was liberal and admired his deft ability to get "the message" out without alienating people. The average voter thought that this sounded like a good idea, change something......when people are unhappy, it sounds right.

Two things happened next. First, Obama finally beat Hillary, despite losing 9 out of 14 of the last state contests in the Democratic primaries. I am not sure that anyone can remember the "presumptive" nominee losing in big, important states by high double digits late in the race. Obama's weaknesses started to show as a candidate, more than on policy. Second, what is now occurring in cumulative over the Hillary hang-over (the dimunition of his "brand"), that is the growing realization by many voters that his "change" is more liberal solutions from the past. In you do not believe that this is a real political problem for Obama, look at the fact that he dodges being called a "liberal" and that his media pals try to remake the liberal-conservative split in the country as now out-dated and being replaced by something else (an ill-defined and confusing "thing" that remains an ambitious liberal theory of selling a wolf in sheep's clothing).

There is a liberal-conservative divide that remains the biggest feature in American politics. It is clear on energy-policy. It is clear on foreign policy. It is absolutely clear on national defense. It is a bright red-line on social issues. While the issues and dialogue changes over time, it is premature at best to say that the Left-Right characterization of the electorate has been replaced by something, still undefined and amorphous.

The "wrong direction" polls and the disapproval polls are also misleading. Democratics in 2004 had pretty strong disapproval polls on George W. Bush and lost bigger than in 2000. A lot of the disapproval was and still is from the right. A vague "change" candidate can benefit from this confusion (you still see a poorly-informed voter in an interview making stupid statements about Obama and change, which you know to them means something completely different than to Obama). But as the campaign wears on and gets to reach more Americans that the party loyalists who pack the primaries and especially the caucuses, slogans are less important and positions, proposals, and individual candidate's personal style's become more important. When voters do not understand the issues, they reflexively look at character.

Obama operates in a niche that is the losing side on most public issuers of the day. This celebrity coming from almost unknown to presumptive President is finally, slowing, and inevitably getting to be known by the public. Even the media with its one-sided coverage has had to start running story-lines that raise issues about him.

What emerges is a self-absorbed glib guy with no personal achievements, other than writing a best-selling about himself. A guy who takes every criticism as unfair and outside the rules. A guy who hides behind his race to try to embarrass the other side into softening their criticism. This "brittleness" shows up repeatedly in the campaign in the encounters that cannot be scripted. When the teleprompter is broken or runs out of text, the guy loses his cadence, runs out of lines, and often makes horrendous factual mistakes. He is so full of himself that he makes things up as he goes along. [His over-inflated tire theory for oil savings being a classic example].

Obama will overwhelmingly carry the black vote and they will turn out. He will carry the under 25 vote but they will not turn out in huge numbers. He will lose the Hispanic vote and get crushed by the white voters. I think that the Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Democratic primaries will prove to be prophetic. Obama cannot "close the deal" when he has an adoring press, an unpopular President, economic woes and a 10 point generic Democratic polling advantage. Once the real campaign starts, Democrats will be reminded on all of the doubts and fears that lurked in the back of their minds about this nomination.

It may end up being a close election, certainly history would seem to predict that result, but it also could be another McGovern or Dukasis collapse by the Democrats. If the election is about Barrack Obama, which seems to be what "the One" is pitching, it may be very disappointing for his party.

Window to His Soul

2008-06-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Why is it that all of the anti-American, racist rants in this campaign seem to come from the close associates and spouse of one candidate?

When his wife says that she "was never proud of America" until he won a primary election, do we think that she never espoused this view at home?

Do we think that Barrack Obama never heard a Rev. Wright racist sermon? Never read the church bulletin? Took those Wright sermon tapes to Harvard, as he wrote, but never watched them?

Now do we think that he never heard Father Pfleger's views about racist America and the reparations that the radical priest thinks are due to black people just because of their race?

Do we think that Obama came out of Chicago politics with the blessing of the local party without making deals that would be considered imprudent at best outside Chicago?

Do we think that Barrack Obama, who launched his first state senate race from the home of William Ayers, never heard the kind of statements that Ayers made as late as last year about bombing American buildings not being enough?

I think that the answer is that Barrack Obama "hopes" that we will "change" our habit of really looking at who a candidate is. The window to his soul is reflected by his closest associations. His public personna was dismissed by his lifelong spiritual adviser, Rev. Wright, as Obama just being a politician.

Some things even Rev. Wright gets right.

Randy Mott

Obama's Now a Regular Candidate with Problems

2008-05-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

If the bubble has not burst, it will likely do so on Tuesday.

The erosion of support for Barrack Obama is eating away at his polling numbers and his ultimate electability. His onetime clear, even double digit, lead over Hillary Clinton is gone in national polling. She now leads for the first time in three months.

His double digit lead in North Carolina is down to mid-single digits. His likely share of the white vote there will undoubtedly hit new lows, perhaps enough for an upset there. He quit gaining in Indiana and Clinton is pushing the lead back up.

His favorability ratings for the general election are also dipping and support among independents is waning. His illusionary support among Republicans is also a thing of the past. He will likely "mobilize the base" of the GOP better than any recent candidate from his party.

More and more people are focusing on the message and his positions, which can no longer by glossed over with "hope and change" generalities. He will likely have to run as a "liberal" in an electorate that self-identified by two to one as conservative (Gallup 2008).

More unfortunately, the Bradley effect may be emerging. I anticipate that a significant number of white voters will not tell pollsters that they are disillusioned with him, but the results will likely start showing up tomorrow. I think that there is an excellent chance of him doing 3-5 points worse than the latest polls would indicate. time will tell.....

This is before the Ayers flap has gotten legs and received the same media attention as Rev. Wright. We also would have to be naive to think that Rev. Wright will be silent for the balance of the campaign. My instincts saythat he will again emerge in some public speeches that will cause more damage.

Superdelegates also know this and have been withholding blanket bandwagon endorsements....but in the end, they will likely have no choice but to endorse him. The Democratic Party cannot be seen to have stolen the nomination from their first black candidate, no matter how flawed and weakened he has become.

Ads in Congressional races have already featured Obama as the target of a "nationalized" campaign. The Louisiana 6th District race went from double digit Democratic leads to 3 points in two weeks. Anyone in politics watching that knows poison when they see it.

Ironically the things that made Obama appear so appealing are the very traits that made the GOP Right reluctant to jump on the McCain bandwagon. His independence, non-partisanship, and willing to work across party lines. McCain has walked the walk, while Obama seems to have seized on the themes from focus groups and political strategists, having never demonstrated any of those qualities in his brief political career.

Weeks ago I started hitting on these themes and I am convinced that they are real issues. They reflect the judgment of the candidate who would be President. Who he listens to and who he relies upon for support. Obama has the problem of going from a Leftist Chicago constituency to a Center Right general electorate. A tough transition for a veteran politician and a near impossible task for a newbie, who has never ran in a tough campaign until now. This latter point demonstrated clearly by his "veneer answers" as we used to call them in collegiate debate: the first layer of a response that is not designed to be probed, a shallow "sound bite" in modern jargon. His Rev. Wright answers reflected this characteristic and then not get better with either age or depth. His "capital gains tax moment" in the last debate was another example. Far from benefiting from a long campaign, Obama wears thin from time and scrutiny. The days of being all things to all people are plainly over.

Randy Mott

Being Eaten by the Duck of Political Correctness

2008-04-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

The Democratic Party consists of the old FDR coalition and the modern special issues groups on abortion, gay rights, antiwar (whatever one is pending), and other one-issue causes. The core constituencies have always been union workers, the elderly, minorities and urban so-called "elites." In recent times there has been a void as to a common issue or theme across these groups, accept for design of retaining or regaining power.

Image from Rush Limbaugh (April 24, 2008).

This election cycle has witnessed the unveiling of the fissures in the old FDR coalition. One group seems to have lost a place at the table altogether, the Democratic pro-free trade internationalist. Strong national defense advocates were quietly shuffled out the door over the last thirty years. Those that remain have learned to lay low or risk the Lieberman treatment. Now we have the minorities and the unions backing opposing candidates and about ready for their own war.

The dilemma that their party faces is that they have created the very nightmare that their Superdelegate rules were designed to stop: a candidate who won the party popular vote but appears destined to be a train wreck in the general election. The Democrats got here by imposing different rules based on race. Barrack Hussein Obama is the first affirmative action Presidential candidate. No one in the party or in the so-called mainstream media dared to air the problems with his past and his singularly uneventful political career because he was black.

Harsh words? Well, I guess so. When anyone makes this suggestion, as Ms. Ferraro did, they are shouted down in public, while privately everyone knows their comments are right on the money. Could a first-term white Senator with no noticeable evidence of leadership on a single issue have gotten as far as fast as Senator Obama?

Obama achieved this incredible rise to power by playing the race card every time someone suggested that he had a fault or a problem. Through surrogates or campaign memos or otherwise, any criticism about him personally being a problem was immediately viewed as racist. So everyone inside the Democratic Party had to keep a lid on the information that everyone knows makes Obama a very flawed and vulnerable candidate.

His preacher (a fact known early last year, when Obama kept him offstage), his Weatherman terrorist buddy (widely known in Chicago and not even slightly obscured), and his shady friends in Chicago business...all of this was no surprise to anyone who looked into his past. His wife's anti-American rants may have been a surprise, but remember she stayed in Chicago when he was elected to the Senate and attended Rev. Wright's circus every Sunday according to her own words.

Obama's lightweight take on the issues and leftist voting record...... widely known in Washington among every member of the Senate. In a country where voters still identify themselves as conservatives about two to one over liberals, Democrats' success in getting elected nationally has depended upon their obscuring their liberalism. Obama tries to do it; Kerry tried to do it. Obama let his liberal cat out of the bag in his San Francisco remarks.

If voters in earlier primaries had seen Rev. Wright's sermon excerpts and Michelle Obama's "never proud of America" confession, does anyone think that Obama would still have a lock on the nomination? How about the unrepentant terrorist that held a fund-raiser in his home for Obama in 1995? Talk about this candidate being part of the "blame America first" crowd is not figurative; it is the literal truth.

Finally, I have to say as someone who has been a public speaker and debater since Junior High School, I am not surprised that a self-impressed orator type of speaker, like Obama, is not good on his feet without a script. We have seen him capable of reading a teleprompter speech and reciting the single answer to a question from the briefing book. He has not demonstrated anything but ineptitude on his feet without a memorized text in his head or on the screen. This is so much a liability for him that asking tough questions is viewed as unfair or even racist by his supporters and the media (oops those are the same thing). Of course, we all knew that he had never had a tough campaign in his life, especially against a Republican who might not be as afraid to highlight the guy's weak spots.

Democrats did this to themselves. Nothing that has come out to date, the information that has polarized the Democratic Party and destroyed Obama's appeal to middle class voters, was a secret. Rev. Wright publicly sold CDs of his rants, which probably helped pay for his $1.6 million house. Ayers has been on the radio in the last year with his radical and foolish 60s syndrome. They did not see it, like every "mark" in a con game, because they did not want to see it. They wanted a charismatic new guy to make them feel good and to justify their "fuzzy-headed" conviction that they have always been right and the public was just too stupid to see it.

For some weeks now, I have been confident that the Obama train was headed for derailment. It is too late to stop him at the convention. The Democrats will never have the power to say no to the black voting block that has been their most reliable constituency. It is truly affirmative action and political correctness to a fault that has gotten them into this mess. It is no accident and no quirk. The problem that their party is in reflects the shallowness and superficiality of their mantra. In the end, they will likely do as much damage to race relations as no one could have imagined possible two years ago.

Somewhere along the road the self-avowed civil rights advocates lost the fundamental premise of color-blindness. Slowly and inevitably now, they are being devoured by their own doctrine, being eaten by a duck, awkwardly and painfully.

Randy Mott

Someone tell the non-urban temperature stations that it is warmer...they don't know it.

2008-04-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

It is widely known by climatologists and ignored by the media that many of the surface temperature stations are now "corrupted" by being locatedin areas affected by "urban heat islands." The systems try to adjust for this and other effects, but it is a subjective exercise in the end.

The objective measure would be to just lookat rural temperatures and if there was major warming, they would show it? Right?

They don't......

Randy Mott

OBAMA DROPS ANOTHER “NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME” BOMB ON HIMSELF

2008-04-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Before one of those famous Democratic fat cat private fund-raisers, when he was free to be myself (or so he thought), Barrack Obama continued to display why the major parties in normal elections don’t let a novice get this close to the Presidential nomination. In a pitched battle for blue collar, small town voters in Pennsylvania, Obama explained his take on the situation: "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Reminiscent of his "typical white person" comment, these remarks illustrate the basic "disconnect" between the Obama campaign pitch and his real self.

Attributing people who hold these views as solely the product of economic problems is a standard liberal line. That Obama would say so is no surprise, as is his refusal to recant the thrust of the remark. The amazing part of the quote, however, is its tone of condescension and elitism. In other words, "these poor stupid people do not know what to think" and their sometimes deeply held views on religion, gun ownership, or illegal immigration are merely delusional, based on their own lack of intelligence or information. This is the part that will haunt his campaign to the end. It flies in the face of his alleged desire to put partisan divisions behind us and take a centrist, high-road.

Senator Obama shares the view of the elitist Left that they know better than other Americans, that increasing the scope and size of government is necessary despite what the average American thinks, because the economically “oppressed” are delusional about religion, gun ownership and secure borders. The liberal argument is that people “cling” to these conservative-associated views because they are ignorant of their own “true interests,” which lie with the Left and the redistribution of wealth through public welfare and handouts.

The attribution of these viewpoints to displaced anxiety over economic misfortunes is just plain inaccurate and not factually supported by the evidence.

As to religion, where Senator Obama’s “expertise” was finely honed under the tutelage of Reverend Wright, the data in the United States simply do not support the simplistic view that educated people are less religious. GSS 1972-2004 Cumulative Datafile [“30.4% of those with a graduate degree attend religious services weekly or more, a statistically significant proportion, higher than any lesser educated group”]. See Burton et al., “Education and Fundamentalism,”30 Review Of Religious Research 344 (1989)(“contrary to our expectations, converts to Fundamentalism were not less edcuated people.”).

Obama’s mantra about religion as a clutch for the desperate is, of course, contradicted his own self-proclaimed Christianity on the campaign trail (outside of San Francisco). The San Francisco speech expresses what I suspect is his real belief that societies as in Western Europe that have evolved to moral relativism away from religion are intellectually superior to the United States (hence Michelle Obama’s “mean country” and "never proud of America" references).

How about those oppressed, bitter people buying guns? “Gun owners, on average, are somewhat better educated than their non-gun-owning peers…” Dizard et al GUNS IN AMERICA: A READER (NYU Press 1999), p. 169. Many people enjoy hunting and many others want the right to defend their families and home. They do not do so because they are misplaced economic anxieties.

Next, how about those “oppressed and bitter” people who oppose liberal immigration laws rewarding those who got to the US illegally? Studies show that concern over illegal immigration does not neatly correlate with economic insecurity. See Burns & Gimpel, “Economic Insecurity, Prejudicial Stereotypes, and Public Opinion on Immigration Policy,” 115 Political Science Quarterly (2000) pp.201-225. In general, those with more education and income feel less threatened by immigration laws that allow more people into the country, but it is totally unclear that this trend applies to tolerance for illegal immigration. See MTSU Poll results (2008)(the lowest income group supported a guest worker program by the highest percent and 73% of those with income under $40,000 supported a path to citizenship for illegals). It is impossible to make cut-and-dry observations about the relationship of income or education to support for controlling illegal immigration. In fact, some data suggest that those who follow public issues are far more likely to oppose illegal immigrant amnesty, for example: “…among those do know enough about the bill to have an opinion, there is roughly a three to one level of opposition over support.”
Newman, Gallup Polling (2007).

Finally, on NAFTA, where Obama has been using his declared “opposition” to woo blue collar voters, while privately having aides reassure Canadian government officials that it is just for popular political consumption, do the “bitter” folks simply reflect economic insecurity? At the time of the NAFTA debate, there was no clear correlation between personal economic levels and support or opposition to NAFTA. See Uslaner, “Trade Winds: NAFTA and the Rational Public,“ 20 Journal of Political Behavior (December 1998). Both Democratic candidates – deeply involved with various union political activitists – have used NAFTA as a whipping boy for economic problems in the Rust Belt states that they need to win the nomination. While Obama cynically tells the San Franciso high-rollers that the anti-NAFTA sentiment is just the low income folks “clinging” to an excuse, he uses the issue for exactly that purpose. NAFTA is not the cause of Rust Belt job losses, which can be traced to Obama's union backers as much as any other cause. NAFTA has caused a net increase in U.S. jobs according to all of the nonpartisan, professional studies. Obama's San Francisco remarks seem to recognize these facts and clearly display his own hypocrisy in using NAFTA as an issue.

So Barrack Obama wants to attribute a variety of religious and political views of small town America to their lack of education and bitterness over their economic plight. This is an important creed of liberalism – coming from the most liberal guy in the U.S. Senate – in that liberals have to explain why lower income people do not support them, despite their innate ability to know better what is good for these voters.

Observations, including those made here, that this candidate is not ready to run for national office seem to be accurate. As he nears a lock on the nomination, despite losing all big primary states but his own, and despite losing the Democratic white vote by a wide margin, Obama is posed to implode. Slippage began with the Rev. Wright flap – which is still a gaping wound ready to reopen as soon as Obama turns onto to the main campaign highway. There is no doubt that when really pressed this candidate will make more slip-ups, principally because he has campaigned as something that he fundamentally is not, a nonpartisan, centrist seeking to accommodate divergent views into a new consensus. Every glimpse we get of the real guy tells us what far from the truth that pitch really is……..

Randy Mott

Michelle Obama and daughters attended every Trinity Church service

2008-04-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

While Barrack Obama went to Washington as a Senator, his wife and two daughters stayed in Chicago. Accordingly to the "fluffy" biographically piece on Michelle Obama, she claims to have attended Trinity Church "every Sunday":

"After Barack was elected to the U.S. Senate, Barack and Michelle choose to keep their children in Chicago, where Michelle continued her career as well. "We made a good decision to stay in Chicago so that has kept our family stable," Michelle Obama told the Chicago Tribune. Every Sunday the family attends services at the Trinity United Church of Christ." http://www.squidoo.com/michelle-obama-pictures-biography

While he may claim, incredibly so, that he never heard this stuff (Obama ver. 3.02), the facts seem to show that he is misrepresenting things at best:

1. His family attended and clearly if Wright's rant were shocking to them, he would have known. He also subjected his daughters to this racist nonsense. A healer?

2. In his first book, Obama says that he purchased and took tapes of Wright's sermons with him to Harvard. If he did not attend the sermons, he certainly heard them later.

3. Before his announcement ceremony, Obama pulled Wright from doing the prayer. Because he knew it could be controversial. If the events in March 2008 were all news to him, why did he do that one year earlier?

4. The church web-site and bulletin routinely included black liberation rants and other extremist information and essays. Obviously Obama knew of the content of what was being handed out routinely at the church.

5. The pattern of these sermons went on for twenty years, not just a few isolated cases . Even the first sermon Obama reported hearing included this nonsense.

Obama's claims that Rev. Wright's racist rants were unknown to him are no more credible than Hillary's Bosnian sniper experience. But the media is giving Obama another pass. The campaign will not do so.

Look for the guy to sink faster than Dukasis did.

Randy Mott

More reaction to Obama's finger in the dike speech

2008-03-19T01:11:00.000-07:00

Several things are now clear from Obama's Phillie speech and the reaction to it.

1. Obama heard Wright's rants and was well aware of the extreme allegations of Wright's radical black theology. Obama's early statements that he had not heard these crazy theories and rants from Wright in his 20 years at the church were LIES. Obama's first instinct in the controversy was to lie about his own involvement.

2. Obama still tries to portray his own tolerance of the Wright's extremism as a decision based on balancing the good and the bad and part of some metaphysical process. The truth, which everyone knows, is that Obama is half-white and an Ivy-Leaguer and was entering politics in a black section of Chicago and needed "black bona fides." He sat and listen, gave money to the church, and supported it and Rev. Wright because doing so HELPED HIM POLITICALLY at the time. Now it doesn't, so he can say that he always disagreed with the extremist rants.

3. Obama still cannot afford to alienate his black base (without their 85-90% turnout for him he would be watching Hillary get the nomination). So he still does not completely disavow Rev. Wright's viewpoints, but tries to explain them in a "broader context." Here is some real pandering, when he compares Rev. Wright's leading a congregation of 4,000 people with this ideological hate with his white grandmother sometimes being uncomfortable walking down the street approaching young black males. The comparison to Ferraro's accurate but politically incorrect observation about his success hinging on him being black is also disingenuous. Obama desperately tried to find white "equivalence" to balance Rev. Wright's accusations against America. In this, while the rhetoric worked for an instant, he failed miserably.

4. Obama, as always, is weakest on the "close." Somehow his experience in tolerating and promoting black extremist theology makes him qualified to lead us to anther place. We will allegedly get to this other place by "uniting" around the policies of the most liberal elements of our society, which have been rejected in every election where they showed their true colors. Unity to Obama means simply for the conservatives to quit criticizing his liberal fixes - which mostly include taking someone else's money and giving it to other groups to buy their votes. "Unity" solves the problems by letting Obama and other liberals use our money to pay the bills for "hope." Obama's "unity" and "hope" are neither. The disconnection between his generic calls for achieving the common good and his policy prescriptions to do so does not go away or get fixed by warm feelings. Obama's relative lack of any significant policy achievements or even original new proposals remains there behind the smoke and mirrors.

In the end, Obama's appeal is for voters to trust him because he has a vision. We are asked to trust him after he lies and obfuscates about Rev. Wright's brutal attacks on America, after his wife's consistent statements saying the same things in softer words, while he offers no new proposals or original solutions to any of these issues and has a mediocre track record for doing anything but making speeches. That is the deal that will not "close."

Randy Mott

Obama's Phillie Speech

2008-03-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

Okay... he still wants to be the uniter...is that a surprise? Nice speech...good rhetoric.

This is undoubtedly make his supporters happy. Senator Obama tries to "turn the corner" as we used to say in debate. But I don't think that the speech ends the controversy or gives him a bye on the situation he allowed to develop.

When Obama needed black community bona fides in Chicago, he sought out this church and Rev. Wright to get them. When he needs to be acceptable to white voters, he rejects the views that he heard for twenty years [after of course, denying that he ever heard them]. Which is it? Was he lying when he said he never heard this type of viewpoint or is he lying when he says that he understood Rev. Wright's viewpoint while disagreeing with it?

Two Obamas- one for the Chicago voters where he started out and one now for his national campaign. Several versions of the Rev. Wright controversy, all of which seem mutually exclusive.

Add in Michelle Obama's speeches - consistent themes that reflect the Rev. Wright take on the country albeit in softer terms - and you should be asking how we can be fooled by this act. I do not think the issue will die this easily.

Randy Mott

Obama's Self-Destruction

2008-03-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

A survey of the blogs' sphere and the news clips suggest that the Rev. Wright story has "legs" and is breaking into a full trot. Tracking polls show Obama slipping dramatically ......

The story is amplified by Michelle Obama's "never proud of America" comment and the Pledge of Allegiance and flag lapel pin stories.

Throw in his own campaign foreign affairs advisor telling an interviewer that he is not ready to be commander and chief......

It really looks like the Democratic Party was done in by its own pedantic political correctness. They just refused to vet this guy because he was black. Affirmative action is not a very effective technique to select Presidential candidates.

I predict that this stuff will spiral out of control at this point. Obama is a very brittle guy when hit with adversity. His responses on this issue get progressively worse and less credible as each new one contradicts the last one. This stuff is particularly poisonous for Obama, who pretentiously tried to say he was above politics and on some kind of mission from above.

My favorite new stuff on this is linked below.

Randy Mott

__________________________________________________________________

Gotcha, ObamaPlus--Psst! It's Holbrooke either way!
By Mickey Kaus SLATE.COM
Updated Monday, March 17, 2008, at 2:05 PM ET

Obvious Non-Trivial Gotcha: These two Obama statements do not sit easily together!

1. "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial."

2. "When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn.

... And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me .... [E.A.]

If he was so agonized "at the beginning" of his campaign that he was thinking of leaving the church, why did he then reassure people during that campaign that his church wasn't controversial? ... [And is this a "new kind of politics."--ed Yes, that one's always there too!]

"It [Trinity United Church of Christ] also helped give him spiritual bona fides and a new assurance. Services at Trinity were a weekly master class in how to move an audience. When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church." New York Times, April 30, 2007:

"Obama's going to have a hard time explaining that I take to be the truth, namely that his relationship with Trinity has been a bit cynical from the beginning. After all, before Obama was a half-black guy running in a mostly white country he was a half-white guy running in a mostly black neighborhood. At that time, associating with a very large, influential, local church with black nationalist overtones was a clear political asset . . . . Since emerging onto a larger stage, it's been the reverse and Obama's consistently sought to distance himself from Wright, disinviting him from his campaign's launch, analogizing him to a crazy uncle who you love but don't listen to, etc." Matthew Yglesias.

Obama big endorsement of Rev. Wright June 2007 video: here.

Obama’s “blow back” – trying to be black in 2004 and using the church and now trying to ditch it:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/16/video-juan-williams-lowers-the-boom-on-obama/

The Obama Bubble is Bursting

2008-03-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

Probably too late for Hillary Clinton, but the Barrack Obama bubble appears to be bursting before it got very far off the ground. He now does worse than Hillary in general election head-to-head polls against McCain. McCain's projected margin over Obama in the somewhat misleading national polls is growing....it is misleading because it does not reflect even more profound state-by-state polls. Ultimately winning one state at a time is all that matters. Ask Al Gore.

McCain is now ahead in polling in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and is winning or in striking distance in many more "blue states" in head-to-head general election polls.

What is happening? The public through the new media is finally getting to "vet" Barrack Obama. The other Democratic candidates have been gentile to a fault by U.S. election standards, both because they feared a racial connotation in any attack and because they were all competing for the very leftist Democratic primary voters. Obama is one of the first candidates in modern times to try to run for President without ever having ran in a tough, truly contested statewide race or any other race for that matter. Only Ike comes to mind with a thinner political resume....and those times were more than a bit different.

The media which used to call itself mainstream ( a misnomer now since a shrinking minority of Americans get their news that way) wanted dearly to have a new hero. They always told themselves that the liberal message was a winner, but the messagers were just not slick enough. Now they thought that they had one. Call entrenched liberalism "change"..... call more "tax and spend" programs "hope." Carry water for every Democratic special interest group, but campaign against special interests. It worked for awhile, didn't it?

Now Americans are finally seeing that the counter-culture "blame America" pathos of the Obamas is their real nature. Forget that his middle name is Hussein and that he is black. The relevant and condemning quality in Barrack Obama is that he is far to the left of 80% of the country. And we can say that even though he is black and even though his middle name is Hussein. His "Global Poverty Tax" or his legalization of marijuana proposal are so far removed from mainstream of American political thought that he epitomizes the isolated and rejected views of our wayward urban elite who seem to prefer the European socialist traditions and post-modern relativism to America's core values.

Obama asks us to believe in something, especially in him, in an alarmingly messianic tone....while he asks us to suspend believe about his ties to a corrupt Arab-American businessman in Chicago who helped him buy a lot for the Obama house at a discount price or a racist, anti-American pastor whom he knew well for twenty years. Neither man was a casual acquintance and neither one seems to have made any effort to hide their nature to Senator Obama. He is monumentally stupid or he is lying to us about his relationship with both of them....about what he knew and when he knew it and what he was doing about it until someone turned on the lights. Being a clever guy, it seems that the latter explanation is the only possible one.

I am sure that Democrats today have no real idea what other items will come up in the coming weeks and months,. They will be running a candidate with the thinnest resume in recent history, with a self-righteous aura that cannot seem to handle any follow-up questions on the tough subjects. He tells voters upset over job losses that NAFTA is to blame (a totally debunked lie) and then privately acts to reassure the Canadians that it was just politics. He tells the vehement and visceral antiwar movement in his party that he will pull out of Iraq starting on Day One, while his foreign policy advisor says maybe the conditions will not warrant that in 2009 and he himself says he might go back into Iraq if "Al Qaeda was setting up a base there." [One of the absolutely dumbest statements made by a candidate in this election cycle]. The once confident Democrats are privately scratching their heads and wondering what blooper may come out next or what other skeleton is in the closet.

I personally do not think that it is any coincidence that Mrs. Obama let it slip that she had not been proud of America until her husband won some primaries and that the Obamas pastor is fond of saying "God d___ America." These folks are counter-culture soreheads, playing the victim game while they all rake in the money. Now they have been caught in the daylight after pretending that they were something unique, uplifting and new.

All of this before the real campaign even starts. Look for the Obama machine to start dropping parts on the road and to begin leaking oil in the coming weeks. Unfortunately the Democratic Party does not have a "voter protection clause" that allows them to promptly void the sale when they find out the product is not something that they bargained for.

Current pollsters find that Americans are self-identified conservatives over self-identified liberals by a two to one margin. Bill Clinton understood this and confused enough voters to pull it off. Obama's amateur act seems incapable of repeating such a sleigh of hand at this point.

Randy Mott
March 17, 2008

John McCain: Conservative enough to protect the naton

2008-02-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

Many of Senator McCain's positions have upset conservatives. His views of global warming are clearly on the wrong side for us. His campaign finance legislation infringed on what many of us considered to be First Amendment rights. His lack of a full appreciation of the problems of accepting a path toward legitimacy of illegal immigrants already here before fully securing the borders enraged many on the right.

A lot of this tension is really a hang-over from George W. Bush, whom conservatives supported and often felt betrayed by. It is a fatal mistake to read the disapproval ratings of President Bush as a vindication of the policies of the Left, after all Congress now scores only a 22% approval rate under the new leadership. We on the right have idolized Ronald Reagan, whom many have pointed out had his own set of compromises and accomodations. We should measure our Presidents and leaders be the fights that they choose to wage and they results they achieve, that's how history records things.

So is John McCain conservative enough? His American Conservative Union Rating is 83. Fred Thompson who was accepted by the conservatives in the party only had an 86. Henry Hyde who was a hero of the right for many years only had an 84. [Note: Hillary Clinton has a9 rating by the ACU].

What are we asking this man to do as President? Up and away the most important duty of the President because it is his alone is to protect the nation and deal with foreign countries who often do not have our national interests at heart. The principal risk in a change of leadership is that foreign foes will test the new guy and miscalculate. I do not subscribe to the view that carrying a rifle around in uniform or flying a jet fighter qualifies you to make decisions well out of your pay grade. But the best test of character is often reaction to extreme situations. We know that Senator McCain has stamina and personal courage. We saw it in his early support for the surge and his refusal to waiver on Iraq, despite the poplar pressure at the time that appeared to make this issue one that would cost him the nomination.

There is no question at all that John McCain is the best choice for Commander and Chief. Simply there is no doubt that this role of the President is the principal function of the office. No one else can do it. Not Congress, not the courts.

Will President McCain support immigration reform without securing the borders? He now says no. His answer has to be at least as convincing as Mitt Romney's sudden conversion to social conservatism.

Will President McCain support some lame brain climate change proposal? Will this support mean anything critical? Not likely on both counts. If the GOP has a platform that covers global warming (which is not caused by human activities), then he will run on it. If he runs on it, will this guy flip?
That seems completely improbable. By the way, it is quite possible to support a carbon tax and still be a global warming skeptic (as I am). The United States' long-term security and economic future depends on finding solutions that do not depend on oil. Our competitors are heavily subsidizing renewable energy and alternative power in major ways. It will be a tragedy to our country if we do not emerge as the leader in alternative energy in the 21st century. There is plainly room for debate on the issue, even if you think Kyoto is a scam.

Will President McCain stand up to federal spending and borrowing money to buy votes (which is what the Democratic agenda is all about)? You bet. We could not ask for a stronger leader in this regard.

This isn't the full agenda for conservatives, but it does cover the points that have been contentious as well as the overriding concern of our security in an unsafe world. There are reasons why very conservative Senators and leaders in the GOP support Senator McCain. One of them is that hundreds of other conservatives will be on the ballot in November. Another 2006 result would push conservatives to the fringe of politics for years to come. A McCain win by the same margin or larger than Bush in 2004 will elect a lot of good people. Right now, Senator McCain leads Hillary Clinton by 8 points among likely voters. Among likely voters he beats Obama decisively as well. The electoral college map looks even better for his candidacy. Can conservatives afford not to win or be competitive in 2008?

Politics is the art of what is possible. You take what can be achieved today and plan to achieve more tomorrow. This election cycle has looked bleak and gloomy for Republicans for months. We have an opportunity to win it and elect conservatives throughout the country. To make up for some or all of the losses in 2006. There is no real GOP alternative a this point, as Romney looks at getting a small minority of the delegates up on Super Tuesday. He also gets devastated in a general election head-to-head against the Clintons or Obama. Only a fool would seize defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Conservatives should shift to the platform and to the steps needed to elect Republicans in 2008. This election could well be a watershed in the modern history of conservatism in America. We can go home with George Bush or continue to work to make government better, smaller and more effective. To think that sitting out would be acting on "principles" is a selfish and erroneous premise. We are the base of the party and we can help elect conservatives in 2008. Let's stop the complaining and get to work.

More on 9-11 Conspiracy Fallacies

2007-09-10T11:32:00.001-07:00

The conspiracy theorists repeat like a chant that allegation that the WTC buildings "fell at near free fall speed." This is taken to provide some sort of support for their theory that it had to be a controlled demolition. Leaving aside the issue that they never provide any engineering support for why this hypothesis explains controlled demolition [a unstated ridiculous supposition that multiple charges on each floor blew out the supporting structures timed to hundreds of a second], there is absoluely no evidence that the buildings free at "free fall speed."

The numerous photographs and videos all show that debris from both WTC Towers was falling faster than the floors were collapsing. See above examples.

The "free fall fallacy" has been debunked for years. See 911 Myths; Debunking 9-11 Conspiracy Theories; and Physics of 9-11 Events.

Randy Mott

9-11 Conspiracy Theories Meet the Debunking Silver Bullet

2007-09-10T10:18:00.000-07:00

The variety of poorly thought-out conspiracies about the September 11, 2001 attacks continues to grow with time, on this the sixth anniversary. The common element to the theories is the allegation that the aircraft that hit the buildings could not have caused their collapse. Many argue that missiles were fired that did "the real damage." Others theorize about demolition charges.

PHOTO: WTC South Tower starts to collapse at point of aircraft impact in anything but "symetrical" manner.

The FACT is that nothing in any of the theories from these fringe groups can possibly account for the explosive force of the actual aircraft involved loaded with nearly full fuel tanks.

The explosive force and kinetic energy of a loaded 757 with the fuel tanks full is more than any missile in the US arsenal, except nuclear: 43,000 liters 0r 387,000 kilograms of TNT (see below).
A cruise missile (Tomahawk) only carries 1000 pounds of explosives and has no particular capabilities to penetrate concrete. Link 1. Link 2. One comparison may be telling: the Marine barracks in Lebanon- truck bomb equivalent to 5 tons of TNT. Ref.

Jet fuel has 38 MJ per liter of energy - TNT has 4.2 MJ per kilogram. One liter of jet fuel is the equivalent of 9 kilograms of TNT. A 747 fully loaded is, for example, the equivalent of 900 tons of TNT. A 757 slightly less. Testimony of Gordon Thompson, Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge, Mass. before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (September 2002). A detonation of jet fuel can act just like a jet-air explosive, creating enormous additional energy, the equivalent of 1000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Id.

The pertinent question is with this much known and proven force applied to the attack on the buildings (WTC1, WTC2 and the Pentagon), does anyone really need to hypothesize that more explosives were involved to account for the damage done? The conclusions of all of the professional engineering analyses argue that no more explanations are necessary. Moreover, the hypotheses that would apply additional or alternative destructive power to the attacks are themselves totally at odds with many known facts. Missiles add pretty much nothing to the force of the attack. There is no evidence supporting the additional installation of tons of explosives in the buildings in advance of the attacks. Concealment of a massive pre-wired set of explosives would be impossible. Even the thermite/thermate theory requires thousands of pounds of the active ingredients in addition to a complex set-up at each juncture to cause the burning to go horizontally into the beams on numerous locations throughout the WTC buildings, in direct contact with exposed steel beams, requiring removal of walls, wiring, and other building fixtures. Of course, none of this happened. See 911 Myths; Debunking 911; Nutty 9-11 Physics; 911 Debunker; Journal of Debunking 9-11 Conspiracy Theories.

So pack up the 9-11 conspiracy files, bookmarks and newsletters, find a safe disposal option, and move on to real world problems. No other physical explanation is necessary and there is no evidence of any other physical explanation in any event.

Randy Mott

THE BILDERBERG CONSPIRACY

2006-11-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

THE BILDERBERG CONSPIRACY: THE TOTALLY BOGUS THEORY OF AN INTERNATIONAL ELITE THAT RULES THE WORLD

For some inexplicable reason, I have found myself drawn to the investigation and debunking of ridiculous conspiracy theories of late. The impetus for this development has been the invasion of the Internet by conspiracy theorists of all stripes. Adherents are invariably folks "out of the flow" of real events. You will not find substantive lawyers, bankers, or serious corporate managers among the conspiracy theorists. They will seldom have viable academic or professional credentials. But the Internet for all of its worth and inestimable value creates a democracy of cyber space, where every man or woman’s opinion can be posted with equal footing. If I have an explanation for doing this article, it is to try to objectively beat back a growing fringe of people who are poisoning the well of ideas with total and unmitigated trash.

The Bilderberg theory holds that a group of international bankers and other elites meets regularly to plan the rule of the world. The theory is rooted, as most conspiracy fantasies are, is some real facts:

Deriving its name from the Dutch hotel where it first met in 1954, the Bilderberg group is an actual, legitimate entity whose members consist of approximately 100 influential European and American figures in politics, business and academia who meet annually to discuss and advocate political, diplomatic and economic policies. Jewish AntiDefamation League web-site (2006).

Some allege that their rule already exists, while others argue that they are just in the operational stages.

Various far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists, however, charge that the group is a shadowy force seeking to control world events, exerting allegedly dominating powers of international influence to promote a "new world order" under their control. The extremists claim that Presidential candidates of both major U.S. political parties are controlled by the Bilderberg group; among those often mentioned in such conspiracy-oriented propaganda are David Rockefeller, the Clintons and Henry Kissinger. Other Bilderberg leaders are said to be members of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations -- groups which themselves are often central players in far-right conspiracy theories of secret efforts at domination of the world's political and financial institutions and the press Id.

If like me, you have been on "the edge" of the world of these elites in your business or vocation, you will be utterly at odds to find a shred of rationality in this theory. From major corporate takeovers to legislation in Washington DC, I have seen no footprint of a secret elite and international ruling class. Putting aside personal incredulity, this article will review their allegations and their nominal support for the paranoid delusion.

The Bilderberg theory is closely related to the general assertion that a group of Jewish bankers control the world. In recent times, the Jewish issue has been de-emphasized and some other movers and shakers have been added to the core of banking elite as the conspiracy theory evolved. "The Bilderberg has been accused of being everything from a Zionist cabal building a single global government to a secret star-chamber that seeks to fix the price of oil and presidential elections." 1 The heart of the conspiracy theory I simple: "They want you to believe they are simply improving international relations. But they are controlling the world and making decisions that influence all of us with absolutely no democratic control on what they do." 2 Other critiques just blast the Bilderberg meetings as elitist and echo the general anti globalism, anti-business line.3 This article will focus on the conspiracy theory, although the knee-jerk leftist critique of "globalism" is just as impervious to the facts.

The history of the conspiracy theory goes back some time and has evolved into a more sophisticated version over time.

I began my investigation of Bilderberg while in Washington, D.C. in the autumn of 1975. I had read bits and pieces on Bilderberg in right-wing literature and so I went directly to its source, the Liberty Lobby, an ultra-conservative political pressure group located a stone's throw from Capitol Hill. There I interviewed one E. Stanley Rittenhouse, Liberty Lobby's legislative aide. Rittenhouse solemnly explained the existence of a Jewish-communist conspiracy to rule the world by way of a 'New World Order', whose eventual goal is one world government. To prove this point Rittenhouse incessantly recited passages from his handy pocket Bible and explained the evolution of this great conspiracy. It all goes back to the Illuminati, a secret society/fraternity formed in Bavaria in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, based on the philosophical ideals of Plato. John Ruskin, 'a secret disciple of the Illuminati' and a professor of art and philosophy at Oxford University in the 1870s, revived these ideals in his teachings. Robert Eringer, The Bilderberg Group... the Trilateral Commission... covert power groups of the West, Pentacle Books, 1980. Extract: Chapter 1 (emphasis added).

The history of the group starts with a meeting in the Dutch hotel, from which it derives its name, and then evolved into annual meetings of Western leaders in government and finance.4

Within the list of Bilderberg attendees, one sees a sample of the major players in government, business and finance in North America and Europe.5 A serious observer also sees representatives of groups that are at odds with one another everyday of the week on a host of serious matters. As a Canadian paper commented amidst speculation that the 2006 meeting would be in Ottawa: "Guest lists typically include names like Kissinger, Rockefeller and Soros."6 Given Mr. Soros’ political activities and activities on and off the record, it strains credulity to suggest that he is really secretly working with Republicans behind the scenes to run the world! In the same vein, Bill Gates seems to have attended the June 2006 session in Ottawa, where a very large number of European Union movers and shakers were present. The next month, Microsoft got hit with another $357 million fine from the EU anti competition agency, on top of the 497 million Euro fine already charged to Gates’ company.7 It is very hard to come up with a convincing story that the nearly $1 billion paid out in EU fines is consistent with Bill Gates being part of a financial conspiracy with the same government leaders who pushed to fine his company. Simply, the chairman of Monsanto, Robert B. Shapiro, attended in 1999, heading the company most committed to generically modified food, before a group of European politicians who then went to great lengths to try to ban all of his company’s products in the EU. It is more than a little difficult to see what Gates and Shapiro "got" out of the Bilderberg meetings.

Many of the attendees have spoken out on the crazy theories that surround the meetings.

"But "privacy, rather than secrecy", is key to such a meeting says Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, who has been invited several times in a non-reporting role. "The idea that such meetings cannot be held in private is fundamentally totalitarian," he says. "It's not an executive body; no decisions are taken there." As an up-and-coming statesmen in the 1950s, Denis Healey, who went on to become a Labour chancellor, was one of the four founding members of Bilderberg (which was named after the hotel in Holland where the first meeting was held in 1954). His response to claims that Bilderberg exerts a shadowy hand on the global tiller is met with characteristic bluntness. "Crap!" "There's absolutely nothing in it. We never sought to reach a consensus on the big issues at Bilderberg. It's simply a place for discussion," says Lord Healey. BBC, supra.

"Norman Spector, a former chief of staff to prime minister Brian Mulroney, says he knew little of the suspicions that surrounded Bilderberg when he attended a conference in the early 1990s. "It's hard to understand the conspiracy stuff. Most of the people were publicly visible," he said. "They weren't like the gnomes of Zurich or shady financiers. They were all people you'd see on a Sunday morning talk show." 8

"Last time I went to a Bilderberg conference, it was held in Athens, about three years ago. Tony Blair was there, not yet leader of the Labour Party [and now, of course, prime minister], Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel were there, the Queen of The Netherlands was there. It was all pleasantly grand. Yet it is hard to think of any subject on which we would be likely to conspire. The Queen of The Netherlands is as Euro-fanatic as Ted Heath, Tony Blair is a modest good European, I have been an anti-Maastricht campaigner and Mr Black is a Canadian neo-realist who owns 500 newspapers. The idea that we all join hands on some witches' Sabbath to manipulate the world is almost as absurd as the belief that I am trying to make the Queen of England the crowned head of Mexico." William Rees-Mogg

" Wall Street, treason and Pat Buchanan," The London Times, March 14, 1996, page 16.9

Other attendees have included those who are not quite on the same page as the alleged Bilderberg "consensus," who presumably would have been well-placed to "blow the whistle" on a conspiracy if it, in fact, existed. "These are carefully selected people of influence, who have been openly critical of globalisation. Examples are Jonathan Porritt (Bilderberg 1999) and Will Hutton (Bilderberg 1997) but there are many others. Most of these kinds of participants are happy to speak about the conference afterwards, and may even be refreshingly critical."10

Conspiracy kooks argue that if the group had nothing to hide, why are their meetings closed to the press and public? The Bilderbergers say that they need to keep remarks off the record to promote a free exchange of ideas.11 There is no reason to question this hypothesis, since anyone who has been involved with serious discussions among high-level people readily will understand this concept. "Contrary to Internet mythology, invitees do not sign blood oaths of secrecy, but they are strongly encouraged not to discuss who said what during the closed meetings, to allow for freer flowing discussions." 12 The corollary question which has no answer from the conspiracy adherents is why would a secret group have just public meetings in the first place. 13

A good question to ask is where is the evidence of this global rule. The self-acknowledged chairman of Bilderberg in 2005, Viscount Etienne Davignon, told the BBC:

Bilderberg does not try to reach conclusions - it does not try to say 'what we should do'. Everyone goes away with their own feeling and that allows the debate to be completely open, quite frank - and to see what the differences are. 14

What policies and decisions allegedly have come from the Bilderberg group? Where is the evidence of their impact?

We have a world that is interconnected by trade, investment, culture, and numerous other factors. The Atlantic community is the dominant global advocate of a rule of law and open economies. We share a vision of a world where everyone can achieve up to their ability and opportunities are open for all to compete. We practically speaking depend upon several mechanisms to allow the normal functioning of commerce, such as international enforcement of contracts and patents as well as multiple currency transactions. That the leaders invited to the Bilderberg meetings would have a stake in the status quo which gave them the power or recognition to be invited is logic and not very unsettling. As Davignon argues: "Business influences society and politics influences society - that's purely common sense. It's not that business contests the right of democratically-elected leaders to lead." BBC, supra.

Major institutions that function in this climate have a serious stake in the status quo and the ordered conduct of international relations, commerce, banking and investment. These commercial relations fuel a good part of the American economy as exports, on the one hand, and foreign investment in our country on the other. This system is very transparent and is subject to the organized and public political systems of each country that is involved. The very transparency and accountability of the elements of the international economic system are what make it attractive to the powerful institutions that function in this system. Checks and balances in the system create stability and help assure that each party’s interest is protected from arbitrary actions. Transparency and accountability are the lynch-pins of the international business world which places the fundamental values of the status quo totally at odds with those projected by the marginal conspiracy adherents. 15 One of the leading conspiracy adherents post alleged minutes of the 1999 Bilderberg meeting which raise the point of whether the IMF is "sufficiently accountable." 16 Policies that stress accountability and transparency are 180 degrees from the policies that any conspiracy worth its name would advocate.

So we have a "conspiracy" that routinely double-crosses its members, like Gates/Microsoft and Shapiro/Monsanto. It also advocates transparent financial and international relations. It includes people from diametrically opposed viewpoints in real life like George Soros and George Bush Sr. as well as European socialists and European free market advocates. So either the entire world as it can be empirically observed is an illusion or the unsubstantiated and illogical notion that there is a secret group of Bilderberg elite that rule the world is bogus. Tough choice......

Randy Mott

______________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

(1) Ottawa to host top-secret meeting -- or maybe not: Rumours run rampant that ultra-influential Bilderberg to come here," Ottawa Citizen , May 24, 2006. http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/240806_ottawa_host_meeting_or_not.html

(2) Jim Tucker, former writer for Spotlight, quoted by Richard Creasy and Pete Sawyer - Punch - issue 55, May 23 - June 5 1998.

(3) "The ideology put forward at the Bilderberg conferences is that what’s good for banking and big business is good for the mere mortals of the world. Silently banished are the critical voices, those that might point out that debt is spiralling out of control, that wealth is being sucked away from ordinary people and into the hands of the faceless corporate institutions, that millions are dying as a direct result of the global heavyweight Rockefeller/Rothschild economic strategies." Link: http://cacan.blog385.com/index.php/2005/04/

(4) Eringer, supra, quotes an alleged Bilderberg organizer in the United States: "'In the early 1950s a number of people in both sides of the Atlantic sought a means of bringing together leading citizens both in and out of government, for informal discussions of problems facing the Western world. Such meetings, they felt, would create a better understanding of the forces and trends affecting Western nations. 'The first meeting that brought Americans and Europeans together took place under the chairmanship of H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, from 29th May to 31st May, 1954. Ever since, the meetings have been called Bilderberg Meetings. 'Each year since its inception, Prince Bernhard has been the Bilderberg chairman. There are no members' of Bilderberg. Each year an invitation list is compiled by Prince Bernhard in consultation with an informal international steering committee; individuals are chosen in the light of their knowledge and standing. To ensure full discussion, an attempt is made to include participants representing many political and economic points of view. Of the 80 to 100 participants, approximately one-third are from government and politics, the others are from many fields - finance, industry, labour, education and journalism. They attend in a personal and not in an official capacity. The meetings take place in a different county each year. Since 1957, they have been held in many Western European countries and in North America as well. 'The discussion at each meeting is centred upon topics of current concern in the broad fields of foreign policy, world economy, and other contemporary issues. Basic groundwork for the symposium is laid by means of working papers and general discussion follows. In order to assure freedom of speech and opinion, the gatherings are closed and off the record. No resolutions are proposed, no votes taken, and no policy statements issued during or after the meetings. 'In short, Bilderberg is a high-ranking and flexibly international forum in which opposing viewpoints can be brought closer together and mutual understanding furthered.'

(5) Gosling published an alleged list of attendees, which reads like a who’s who on both sides of most issues of the day. http://www.unclenicks.net/bilderberg/www.bilderberg.org/1999mins.htm#Participants

(6) "Ottawa to host top-secret meeting -- or maybe not: Rumours run rampant that ultra-influential Bilderberg to come here," Ottawa Citizen , May 24, 2006. http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/240806_ottawa_host_meeting_or_not.html

(7) CIO Magazine, "Microsoft Hit With $357M E.U. Fine" JUL 12, 2006 07:00:06 AM , "The European Commission has fined Microsoft 280.5 million euros (US$357 million) for failing to comply with the terms of a March 2004 antitrust judgment against it, the commission said on Wednesday. Microsoft has already paid a 497 million euro fine as a result of the judgment, in which the commission found that Microsoft had used its near-monopoly in the PC operating systems market to gain advantage in the markets for work group server operating systems and media players." http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=22885

(8)Ottawa Citizen, supra.

(9) London Times, March 6, 1996: http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/congress/7727/reports.htm?200630#treason

(10) Gosling’s site in a headquarters for things "Bilderberg" :http://www.bilderberg.org/bilder.htm#

(11) Lord Healy, an attendee, told the BBC: "Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions. In my experience the most useful meetings are those when one is free to speak openly and honestly. It's not unusual at all. Cabinet meetings in all countries are held behind closed doors and the minutes are not published." BBC, supra.

(12) Ottawa Citizen, supra.

(13) The BBC stated: "No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted." Jonathan Duffy, " Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory," BBC News Online Magazine. June 3, 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3773019.stm

(14)Inside the Secretive Bilderberg Group," BBC, September 29, 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4290944.stm

(15) Indeed, "Transparency International" the group that leads the charge against corrpution and bribery is funded by government agencies and corporations from the same circle as the alleged Bilderberg Conspiracy. See www.transparency.org. The Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation includes all of the "Bilderberg" governments are is also a leading advocate of transparency and anticorruption policies. See http://www.oecd.org/findDocument/0,2350,en_2649_34565_1_1_1_1_1,00.html

(16) Gosling posted the following: "The moderator began by throwing out a number of challenges that set the tone for much of the subsequent discussion. Given the IMF�S increased importance, is it a properly accountable body? What is the G7�s role and is it the right shape? Given the introduction of the Euro, is it really necessary for so many European countries to attend G7 meetings? How can one begin to establish international regulators when there are such conspicuous rivalries between regulators within countries, especially America? And how do you design a system that bails in the private sector?

Several participants returned to the basic theme that the markets have globalised but the regulatory systems have not.’ Link: http://www.unclenicks.net/bilderberg/www.bilderberg.org/1999mins.htm#Participants

If this post is accurate, it contradicts the whole slant of the conspiracy theory: the participants were concerned about IMF accountability and recognized that there was no effective international regulatory system.

THE IMAGINARY PLANS FOR A NORTH AMERICAN UNION:

2006-10-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER CONSPIRACY THEORY FOR THE GUILIBLE AND THE DISAFFECTED

When I first heard someone refer to plans for a new “North American Union” I was enormously surprised and then convinced that someone was not playing with a full deck. No politician in any of the North America countries had stepped up to suggest this idea and the notion that it was being done as a secret conspiracy was totally preposterous.

Now, after investigating every assertion by the extremist web-sites that have fuelled this conspiracy theory, I am convinced that my initial reaction was too charitable to them. This is by leaps and bounds the dumbest conspiracy theory on the Internet. The fact that some folks would deliberately mislead the gullible is probably no surprise. But somehow I remain surprised that anyone could take the bait on this silly and groundless bit of paranoia.

Several sources, mostly on the Internet, have concluded that there is a secret plan in the Bush Administration to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada. (1)Why exactly anyone would want to do this remains unexplained.(2) How it could be done in secret is also left to one’s imagination. Since it is difficult to prove a negative, that there is no secret plan for a North American Union, i.e. it would be a hypothetical secret after all, I will take two approaches. First, let’s ask what exactly would have to be done to achieve a North American Union in the real world. Then we can compare this hypothetical course of action to the known facts. Second, let’s look at each of the “facts” cited by the conspiracy theorists to test their accuracy and probative value for the hypothesis being suggested.

The conspiracy theory asserts that the United States, Mexico and Canada will become one supranational entity, analogous to the European Union.(3) This would entail the surrender of a good deal of national sovereignty, including a general consent to the new entity superceding United States law on some critical issues.(4) Such an arrangement is totally without parallel in United State history. Despite fringe group complaints over the WTO, NAFTA and the United Nations, none of those underlying agreements involved any surrender of U.S. sovereignty. The most that has been conceded in the resolution of trade disputes under the agreements by third-party mechanisms, not unlike arbitration, with compliance ultimately left to the national governments involved.(5) The United Nations Charter has some grand language, but in the end, leaves the United States and other member states with the authority to act in their own best interests.

For an international agreement to be effective in superceding American law, it would have to be a treaty, approved by two-thirds of the Senate and signed by the President. Even then, implementing legislation by Congress would be necessary, since the provisions would not automatically have domestic effect. It is also clear that basic U.S. liberties secured by our Constitution could not be affected by any international agreement, except where there was an explicit Constitutional amendment, including ratification by the states. ''It need hardly be said that a treaty cannot change the Constitution or be held valid if it be in violation of that instrument.'' The Cherokee Tobacco, 11 Wall. ( 78 U.S.), 616, 620 (1871). It is also entirely likely that the surrender of the legal rights of our states in the Federal system would require their consent, possibly even their unanimity.(6)

At minimum, a “North American Union” that truly superceded United States national authority would require one or more treaties approved by the Senate by a two-thirds vote and implementing legislation approved by both Houses of Congress. It is also likely that various Constitutional amendments would be necessary to modify individual and states’ rights in our current system. Only the most legally ignorant observers could possibly postulate that this process could be done in secret. The limitations on Presidential power under our checks and balances would make any secret Executive Branch plan laughable.

Unless the reader is a glutton for punishment, you can stop reading here. There is no proposed treaty. There have been no negotiations. None of the national governments involved have suggested a North American Union. There have been no bills in any of the national legislatures. None of the legal steps that would be necessary to achieve this far-fetched notion have been taken.(7) They have not even been proposed by anyone, probably because no significant part of the population of any of the three countries involved supports the idea. That the leaders of all three countries could somehow subvert both the legal processes and the national will sounds more than a little crazy if you step back and look at the assumptions being made by the fringe groups.(8) When this moonbat theory was raised at a White House press conference, it was flatly denied: “Will the president categorically deny any interest in building a European Union-style superstate in North America? Responded Snow: "Of course, no. We're not interested. There is not going to be an EU in the U.S."

Lacking any steps to actually create such a supranational entity, the conspiracy theorists rely on a series of lies and half-truths. Our second leg of the journey is to go through each of the cited items to test their veracity and probative value. While the conspiracy theorists love to say the government is lying, what in fact emerges is a pattern of huge deception by their own self-appointed spokesmen.

Before we go through the list, I want to reinstate the obvious as background and context. The United States is a huge player in the international stage. We live next door to two of our major trading partners. Mexico and Canada provide a large part of our energy needs (far more than the Middle East) and a major market for our exports. In the security context, our broad borders with these countries are a critical part of defense against terrorism and crime. We have undertaken an international agreement to eliminate tariffs in North America, the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”). U.S. moves to liberalize trade have created enormous benefits to our economy, one of the many facts totally ignored by the xenophobes.(9)

What is clearly not understood or deliberately obfuscated by the “North American Union” conspiracy theorists is the difference between sovereign countries meeting and trying to reach consensus on matters of mutual interest as opposed to surrender the right to make these decisions to a supranational authority. Lacking the existence of such a supranational authority, the conspiracy folks imply that allegedly undue deference to our neighbors’ viewpoints is the same thing. While it is beyond the scope of this article, there is a clear lack of evidence that the United States is even being unduly influenced by the opinions of its neighbors’ governments, much less that it is preparing to surrender resolution of these maters to a new supranational entity.

The place to start any conspiracy theory worth its salt is the Council on Foreign Relations. Portrayed by the fringe groups as some sort of secret alter ego, transnational shadow government, the CFR is one of their historic bogeymen. Somehow the “secret plans” of the CFR are included in their published reports and meetings, according to our kooky pundits. The principal report on North American relations by the CFR that is referred to be the conspiracy theorists is “Building a North American Community: Report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America” (2005). While most of them do not need to even look at the report to be convinced that the CFR is up to no good, the report does not advocate anything close to a “North American Union.” Nevertheless, the lack of any rational basis never stopped a good conspiracy theorist:

In normal daily international relations, not to mention in NAFTA implementation, the United States meets and coordinates matters with our neighbors as a matter of course."Laying the foundation for the Waco meeting, the CFR produced a document entitled Creating a North American Community: Chairmen's Statement Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. The document called for "the creation by 2010 of a community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans." The CFR is proposing nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union. The CFR protests that this is not its intention. "A new North American community will not be modeled on the European Union or the European Commission, nor will it aim at the creation of any sort of vast supranational bureaucracy," the Chairmen's Statement said. But this is exactly the kind of statements that were made about the EU during its earlier phases of development." Dennis Behreandt, “Creating the North American Union,” The New American (October 2, 2006) (emphasis added).(10)

It is clear to any reasonable reader that nothing in the CFR report comes close to suggesting that “regional cooperation” should be the first step toward political integration. Moreover, as Hawkins pointed out, the CFR is not the United States Government in any event and its calls for more cooperation in the continent are only part of a myriad of other advise going to the Bush Administration (the same Administration that just signed the border fence law).

The real NAU conspiracy is alleged to have started when President Bush met with his counterparts in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. This is the date of the “secret agreement” to merge the countries according to those sources who have claimed intimate knowledge of the secret plot. Unfortunately for the peddlers of this nonsense, there was no intergovernmental agreement of the three countries signed that day. There was a press release which typically tried to report areas of agreement by the heads of state and promises of future cooperation. It contains no “North American Union” proposal, no reference to any supranational mechanisms or authority and no departure from the national policies determined before the meeting by each government and openly advocated by the respective leaders.

Most of the hype from the fringe of politics about the “North American Union” comes in reaction to a few real life developments, since as the Waco meeting.(11) Unfortunately, they are so misrepresented as to be unrecognizable. The first is the Security and Prosperity Partnership(“SPP”). The SPP originated at the March 23, 2005 meeting of the three heads of state. The press release from the meeting set out the objective of the initiative, which was no more than to promote an ongoing dialogue aimed at improving international cooperation in trade and security matters in North America. To the fruitcakes, this meeting resulted in a secret treaty to merge the three nations. The meeting, as any international exchange between heads of state, was widely reported in each of the nation'’ represented as was the final press release.(12) The meeting resulted in no plans for a “merger” and did not depart significantly from the long-standing relations between the three countries.(13)

In reality, nothing even close to an agreement occurred: “The SPP is a dialogue to increase security and enhance prosperity among the three countries. The SPP is not an agreement nor is it a treaty. In fact, no agreement was ever signed.” www.spp.gov . The SPP website makes that obvious point to anyone with a modicum of intelligence:

“…the SPP is an opportunity for the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico to discuss common goals and identify ways to enhance each nation’s security and prosperity. If an action is identified, U.S. federal agencies can only operate within U.S. law to address these issues. The Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security coordinate the efforts of the agencies responsible for the various initiatives under the prosperity and security pillars of the SPP. If an agency were to decide a regulatory change is desirable through the cooperative efforts of SPP, that agency is required to conform to all existing U.S. laws and administrative procedures, including an opportunity to comment. “ See www.spp.gov.

This is the major logical fallacy to the whole NAU conspiracy theory, mentioned earlier – the premise that any international cooperation is a de facto merger. Obviously this is total and complete nonsense. But acting on the assumption that any SPP talks are automatically “secret merger” discussions, the kooks use every meeting to fuel their bogus theory.(14) Missing, of course, from the conspiracy websites are things like the SPP Report to the three governments for 2006, which stated: “The SPP initiatives form a comprehensive agenda for cooperation among the three countries of North America while respecting the sovereignty and unique cultural and legal heritage of each country.” No where in any SPP document, report or meeting does the group suggest a “North American Union” or even any steps to assign any legal authority to any supranational agency or organization. Even the wingnuts acknowledge that SPP has no legal authority: “The truth is, to date, there has been no legislation passed by Congress to permit its actions. No taxpayer funds have been appropriated.”(15) The Department of Commerce plays host to the SPP working groups and John Hawkins quotes David Bohigian from the Department on the SPP:

"This is not a treaty and not an agreement. It's like a discussion
you'd have with your neighbors. Nobody is looking to merge our
currency, or our borders, or do any sort of union like the EU. The
United States is working cooperatively with its neighbors to enhance
security and prosperity of our countries." Hawkins, Human Events Online, supra.

The detailed list of SPP accomplishments is nothing more than a series of efforts to coordinate and improve respective national policies that involve common goals.(16) No group or commentator from the fringe where SPP is criticized has made any substantive criticism of these actions themselves.

The leading conspiracy proponent cites the efforts to improve border crossing procedures as evidence of a “shadow government” that is secretly erasing the border itself:

"Evidently SPP has decided to erase our internal borders with Mexico and
Canada," Corsi told WND. "We have no trilateral treaty voted by two-thirds
of the Senate that has authorized North American trusted traveler biometric
cards to be issued to the citizens of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Yet this
is exactly what the shadow administrative branch created within the Bush
administration under the auspices of an SPP working group is doing." WorldNetDaily, September 27, 2006.

The gaps in the logic of this argument are as vast as the American West. Widely quoted as being issued by “a shadow agency,”(17) any proposed passes must be issued by the respective national governments. PERIOD. There is no supranational agency issuing anything to anyone. The SPP does not issue any passes nor does any of the working groups between the three governments: only the lawfully empowered respective national agencies have the legal authority and they were the only ones proposed to issue anything. Actually, the Bush Administration has tightened northern border security by requiring Canadians to present passports for the first time in history.(18) The Canadian take on the biometric border passes (an old story from over a year before the fruitcakes hit the Internet with it) is a far cry from a reduction of border security:

An independent multilateral task force recommended that Canada, the U.S. and Mexico should share a common biometric border pass that would allow smoother passage through customs, immigration and airport security, while ensuring the security of our shared continental perimeter. The U.S. has been working on biometric border control technologies since the September 11 terrorist attacks. In fact, the U.S. has taken many concrete steps to protect its own border while Canada has lagged far behind. Apparently the U.S. has now decided that it cannot keep waiting for our government to do its part to enhance the security of our shared continent, so it is leaving us behind. (19)

Amidst tighter border security measures, the passes are intended to allow normal business discourse to occur with a minimum of disruption, while keeping a stricter border regime in place for general cross-border travel.(20) It is hard to recognize any fraction of the truth in Internet drivel on this point.(21)

Another favorite red herring of the wingnuts is the so-called “NAFTA Superhighway.” Arguing that a free trade zone is, by definition, a precursor to political integration(22) (which would be big news to the multiple free trade areas of the world that never evolved into anything else)(23) , the conspiracy folks figure that NAFTA is a sure bet to lead to a full-fledged trans-national merger. Plans to coordinate highway traffic across the borders, dubbed the “NAFTA Superhighway” by the wingnuts, are alleged evidence of this secret plan:

A measure of the rapidity with which this drive for a North American Union can affect the lives of citizens is the planned super highway linking the U.S.'s northern and southern borders. The plan for this highway is breathtaking. It includes plans to start construction in 2007 on the so-called Trans Texas Corridor, to be built in large part by a Spanish construction company. According to the magazine International Construction Review, the project "would be part of the 'super-highway' spanning the United States from the Mexican border at Laredo, making its way through Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma and connecting with the Canadian highway system north of Duluth, Minnesota. Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway. (24)

“......the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn. Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.” (25)

The facts are, of course, slightly different and occur in a completely different context. If one searches the Federal Budget documents for an authorization for the NAFTA Superhighway, you will not find one. Building roads with federal money does require Congressional authorization. The wingnuts reply that this is a “secret plan” hidden under various other highway improvement projects in the budget. Since no federal highways right now are four football fields wide, that would be a lot of hidden funds to say the least!

The source of the conspiracy advocates’ theory is grounded in at least a half-truth. There is an organization designed to promote the development of a “superhighway” through the Midwest connecting the NAFTA trading partners. The “National Advocacy for Efficient, Secure and Environmentally Conscious Trade and Transportation (NASCO) also goes by the name “North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc.” or NASCO:

North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing the world’s first international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America. We were founded in 1994 as the I-35 Corridor Coalition and in 1996 incorporated into a non-profit organization and became NASCO. NASCO is not a government agency. We have no authority to build or develop anything unilaterally. NASCO will work with our members, state Departments of Transportation and federal and local agencies involved in transportation, trade and security to accomplish our mission. The NASCO Corridor encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and the significant east/west connectors to those highways in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Corridor directly impacts the continental trade flow of North America. Membership includes public and private sector entities along the Corridor in Canada, the United States and Mexico.

However, there is no giant highway planned.(26) NASCO is about coordination and improvement of existing roads(27) and national systems to promote more trade:

"SuperCorridor - not "Super-sized". As defined in Webster's dictionary, "Super" means "more inclusive than a specialized category". NASCO uses the term "SuperCorridor" to demonstrate we are more than just a highway coalition. NASCO works to develop key relationships along the EXISTING corridors we represent to maximize economic development opportunities along the NASCO Corridor, as well as coordinate the development of technology integration projects, inland ports, environmental initiatives, university research, and the sharing of "best practices". NASCO is particularly focused on coordinating the efforts of local, state and federal agencies and the private sector to integrate and secure a multimodal transportation system along the existing "NASCO Corridor." Id.

A group of agencies and private firms trying to improve transportation systems in the United States…. it hardly sounds like a threat. I agree with John Hawkins on this one in his NAU debunking article:

To be honest, this one has always been a little hard to figure out. After all, Canada and Mexico are our two biggest trading partners. Therefore, it's difficult to understand why some people are so adamantly opposed to improving the highways running between those nations, and into the US, or why they believe a road is part of some monstrous conspiracy.
Hawkins, Human Events Online, supra.

So on top of the half-truth, the conspiracy theorists inject a lot of supposition (to put it charitably). The principal assertion is that the ends of the corridor will be open, i.e. security will be reduced in favor of more commerce. The opposite is closer to the truth: it appears that any modernization of border crossings will enhance security, not reduce it. The exaggeration on the size and nature of the project are also intended to cause a visceral reaction in the reader to its alleged scope, i.e. something this big cannot be innocent. Actually, NASCO list accomplishments that seem pretty trivial in the scope of federal highway funding: $234 million in studies, improvements and coordination funding since 1999.(28) PERIOD. The notion that NAFTA waives U.S. safety laws affecting transportation is also a totally groundless myth.(29)

A key element of the conspiracy theory is a new facility in Kansas City to process inter-American freight. Let’s start with the basic idea that “inland ports” are a fundamental part of transportation and economic development:

An Inland Port is a site located away from traditional land, air and coastal borders with the vision to facilitate and process international trade through strategic investment in multi-modal transportation assets and by promoting value-added services as goods move through the supply chain.
[Source: Center for Transportation Research, The University of Texas at Austin.]

The Kansas City “Smart Port” is part of the “corridor” and is intended to facilitate secure freight traffic by preclearance of loads going into Mexico, not coming from Mexico.

The idea is to set up an area in Kansas City, with Mexican and American customs officials there who can examine outgoing vehicles away from the long lines generated at the borders. You heard that right by the way; this facility will only handle outbound freight headed to Mexico, not Mexican vehicles headed into the United States.
Hawkins, supra (emphasis added).(30)

Anyone who has seen trucks lined up at any international border crossing can appreciate the utility of this idea, especially since it is intended to facilitate our exports to Mexico. Mr. Corsi rebuttal to the “Superhighway” debunking is singularly unconvincing. The most that the wingnut theorists can point to is that some improvements on I-35 and I-69 will be necessary because of increased freight and traffic over the next twenty years or so. This is hardly revolutionary stuff. The nutty assertions that the corridor will become part of Mexico or that it will be used to allow illegal immigration or smuggling are total nonsense. A big chunk of the transportation improvements are intended to increase security, not reduce it. No surrender of national sovereignty is involved in any of the plans to improve U.S. highways that will be used by increased North American international trade, along with daily commuters and vacationing Americans.

Like every other “fact” used by the conspiracy wingnuts, the NAFTA “Superhighway” ends up proving nothing about their wild allegations.

Somehow the hysteria over this nonsense will not die a peaceful death. It is a classic conspiracy theory that asks the listener to suspend belief and rely on “secret plans” that have no apparent factual basis. Every effort at international cooperation, especially between closer connected international neighbors, is certainly not a preclude to supranational integration. Every free trade area does not evolve into a political merger of former nation-states. Clearly every highway between nations is not a secret plot to erase international borders.

Despite the frivolous nature of the North American Union conspiracy theory, some in Congress – running for reelection in very conservative districts – have proposed a Congressional Resolution opposing any North American Union.(31) Unfortunately, this will keep the fuel on the fire in the extremist corners of the Internet.(32) In the meantime, in the real world, we are struggling to secure our borders while not placing an undue burden on the flow of commerce. Over 25% of the American economy is now comprised of exports and some of our big trading partners and customers are our neighbors. To maintain a free trade region with fair terms for competition requires coordination and cooperation. It does not entail any loss of our sovereignty and should not precipitate any loss of our rationality.

Our system of checks and balances is alive and well after more than two hundred years of trial and sometimes error. Unlike the parliamentary systems of Europe, the United States has a divided government with three co-equal branches. No branch of government can undertake massive changes without running into barriers built into the system. The United States is simply not constituted in a manner that would allow for secret coups and the preemption of democratic processes on a large scale. None of the requisite steps to create a North American supranational authority have occurred or have even been proposed. None of the actions taken to date amount to anything even remotely similar to a new supranational entity. Not only is the United States devoid of politicians advocating this radical idea, but so are Mexico and Canada. There is absolutely no actual evidence of any merger plans.

The very concept that nationl leaders of three democratic countries could plan a secret new supranational political union and carry out the plan without going through the constitutional processes in each nation is completely frivolous.(33) That this could be achieved without leaving any hard evidence is even more inconceivable.

Hopefully the conspiracy adherents, moonbats and wingnuts will not do any serious damage to the necessary procedures to keep the United States secure and prosperous. We need to expand our trading system and to do so requires some international governmental coordination and cooperation. Clearly our national security requires us to coordinate carefully with our neighbors, one of the conclusions of the 9-11 Commission. Of course, that raises another conspiracy theory……..

Randy M. Mott

________________________________

The author was a practicing lawyer in Washington DC for twenty-six years, frequently bringing lawsuits against the U.S. Government , such as Weinburger v. Rossi, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court. I am indebted to John Hawkins, whom I quote frequently and who inspired the idea of a detailed NAU debunking.

Footnotes

1) "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States." -- Lou Dobbs Tonight.. "President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our orders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration' s true open borders policy....Why doesn't President Bush just tell the truth? His secret agenda is to dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union." -- Jerome Corsi. Both cited by John Hawkins, “Killing the North American Union Conspiracy,” Human Events Online, July 2006 . The leading Internet source for this stuff is WorldNetDaily, which has run a series of articles quoting Corsi and others. See e.g. WorldNetDaily:, September 21, 2006, ; Patrick Wood, The August Review, ; The Liberty Post.

2) The only explanation offered is a quote from the Texas meeting of the three national leaders on March 23, 2005: “"In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient," cited by Liberty Post, supra. How the need for cooperation becomes proof of a merger or a rationale for a merger is left to the readers’ imagination. More on this meeting later….

3) Liberty Post argued that “the three leaders agreed that the United States' north and south borders would be eliminated.” Id.

4) It is impossible for a mere treaty (ratified by 2/3 of the Senate) to change any substantive Constitutional rights, for example. “As statutes may be held void because they contravene the Constitution, it should follow that treaties may be held void, the Constitution being superior to both. And indeed the Court has numerous times so stated.” Congressional Research Service, Annotations on the U.S. Constitution. ''The treaty is . . . a law made by the proper authority, and the courts of justice have no right to annul or disregard any of its provisions, unless they violate the Constitution of the United States.'' Doe v. Braden, 57 U.S. (16 How.) 635, 656 (1853). ''It need hardly be said that a treaty cannot change the Constitution or be held valid if it be in violation of that instrument.'' The Cherokee Tobacco, 11 Wall. ( 78 U.S.), 616, 620 (1871). See also Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 700 (1898); Asakura v. City of Seattle, 265 U.S. 332, 341 (1924). See Willoughby, op. cit., n.294, 561; L. Henkin, op. cit., n.315, 137. In Power Authority of New York v. FPC, 247 F. 2d 538 (2d Cir. 1957), a reservation attached by the Senate to a 1950 treaty with Canada was held invalid. The court observed that the reservation was properly not a part of the treaty but that if it were it would still be void as an attempt to circumvent constitutional procedures for enacting amendments to existing federal laws. The Supreme Court vacated the judgment on mootness grounds. 355 U.S. 64 (1957). In United States v. Guy W. Capps, Inc., 204 F.2d 655 (4th Cir. 1953), an executive agreement with Canada was held void as conflicting with existing legislation. The Supreme Court affirmed on nonconstitutional grounds. 348 U.S. 296 (1955). It is obvious that a mere executive agreement with another nation cannot have precedence over United States law. But see Weinberger V. Rossi, 456 U.S. 25 (1982), (briefed and argued by the author, deciding that a bilateral executive agreement was equivalent to a treaty for specific narrow statutory purposes).

5) Even the very mild forms of international dispute resolution included in NAFTA, for example, are seen by the wingnuts as an invasion of our sovereignty.

6) John Hawkins argues that it would require a Constitutional Convention: “To merge the United States into a North American Union would obviously require a whole host of Constitutional Amendments. In fact, so many would be necessary that the only possible way to accomplish it would be through a Constitutional Convention, an event that hasn't occurred in over 200 years and that would require the support of 34 state legislatures to be possible. So, even if George Bush or any other U.S. President were so inclined to create a North American superstate, he would be powerless to do so unless he were able to rally 2/3 of America's state legislatures to his side. “ Human Events Online, supra.

7) Another lawyer observed: “Having studied the European Union for years, and taught numerous courses on international trade and investment, I can say with confidence that the differences between NAFTA and the EU are so great that it is difficult to know where to begin. NAFTA is far, far closer to EFTA than the EU. And to the best of my knowledge there is nothing in recent proposals that would change that.. Conservative unease apparently centers around President Bush's Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. But if you examine the SPP's agenda, it is far more modest than anything resembling the four freedoms of the EU, much less monetary union.” Roger Alford, “Buzz About a North American Union,”

8) Even Lou Dobbs, who is quoted as the authoritative source by the web-sites, noted: June 21, 2006.“As Dobbs put it on his CNN program, it is "an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value." Liberty Post, supra (emphasis added). This is exactly the reason why the alleged “secret plan” to reach this result is nonexistent.

9) The myth of the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is one of the most pervasive. The major factor that correlates to manufacturing output is 9-11. Using 1997 as 100, US manufacturing output was 60 the year NAFTA passed. It rose to 105 right before 9-11, then fell into 2002. The recovery from the Bush tax cuts and other factors pushed it up in 2003 and every year thereafter. We are now back to the pre-9-11 high points. It rose steadily the first six and half years of NAFTA and only dropped with 9-11. Source: Strauss, Chief Economist, Federal Reserve St. Louis, March 2006. While the percent of the US labor market represented by manufacturing jobs has been declining since 1947 (47 years before NAFTA), the number of manufacturing jobs has averaged a growth rate of 0.1% since 1947. Strauss, supra. The services sector has grown by five-fold over this period, but these are added jobs, not jobs "lost" from manufacturing. Id. Manufacturing output since 1947 has gone up five fold as well with only a small increase in the number of workers employed. Strauss, supra. This is good news, not bad.
The CBO calculated the independent effect of NAFTA - isolated from other economic factors- and on the major issue raised by NAFTA critics (the trade balance) noted: "NAFTA, by contrast, has had an extremely small effect on the trade balance with Mexico, and that effect has been positive in most years." (emphasis added).

10) Apparently missed by the legal scholars in their circle, it is fact that it took a ratified treaty to move the European Common Market into a true supranational entity, i.e. the Treaty of Maastricht: “Following two parallel government conferences on political union and on economic and monetary union, the Council of Europe reached agreement on the Treaty of the European Union in December 1991 in Maastricht; it was signed in February 1992. Following considerable difficulties in ratifying the treaty in many member states (rejection by referendum in Denmark, agreement by referendum with only a slight majority in France and the so-called Maastricht Judgement by Germany’s Constitutional Court), the treaty eventually came into force in November 1993.” Link.

11) The conspiracy folks take NAFTA’s alleged ill-effects as a given, despite the total lack of any evidence that NAFTA has done anything accept help the U.S. economy. The CBO study isolated the impact of NAFTA from other economic developments over the life of the agreement and concludes that it had a positive effect on the US economy. There is no data to suggest that the US has lost more manufacturing jobs than it has gained because of NAFTA. See Congressional Budget Office (2003) . In the first eight years of NAFTA, manufacturing output in the United States rose at an annual average rate of 3.7 percent, 50 percent faster than during the eight years before enactment of NAFTA. " Griswold, Cato Institute, "NAFTA at 10: An Economic and Foreign Policy Success." There has been no major US re-investment in manufacturing plants in Mexico after NAFTA: " In the eight years after the implementation of NAFTA, from 1994 through 2001, U.S. manufacturing companies invested an average of $2.2 billion a year in factories in Mexico. That is a mere 1 percent of the $200 billion invested in manufacturing each year in the domestic U.S. economy." Griswold, Cato Institute:, supra, references deleted. China and Japan have both experienced more manufacturing job losses from 1995 to 2002 than the United States. Strauss, supra. These losses in China are continuing at a faster rate than the US. See also Bloomberg Financial (2006). "... Chinese competition has claimed some US manufacturing jobs. But Oxford Economics puts the losses from 2000 to 2010 as low as 500,000 – no more than the US labour force sheds each week. Their disappearance is also partly a statistical illusion. Many manufacturing jobs are actually in services, such as finance and marketing, which yield far higher returns." Guy de Jonquières in the Financial Times April 3, 2006.

12) See e.g. Mexican Embassy web-site; U.S. Embassy in Canada web-site.

13) See e.g. OpenCRS, “Mexico-United States Dialogue on Migration and Border Issues, 2001-2005," November 30, 2005.

14) The classic example is the recent World Net Daily article “THE NEW WORLD DISORDER: North American Forum agenda: Program of secretive high-level meeting in Canada,” September 21, 2006. The agenda of the meeting is posted on the Internet and utterly fails to deliver any support for the headline. Very typical of conspiracy moonbat tactics, many of the sources cite widely available public facts as brillant secret disclosures, putting an unbelievable amount of spin on their interpretation.

15) Tom DeWeese, MichNews.com LINK.

16) The SPP website makes the obvious point:: “The SPP is legal and in no way violates the Constitution or affects the legal authorities of the participating executive agencies. Indeed, the SPP is an opportunity for the governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico to discuss common goals and identify ways to enhance each nation’s security and prosperity. If an action is identified, U.S. federal agencies can only operate within U.S. law to address these issues. The Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security coordinate the efforts of the agencies responsible for the various initiatives under the prosperity and security pillars of the SPP. If an agency were to decide a regulatory change is desirable through the cooperative efforts of SPP, that agency is required to conform to all existing U.S. laws and administrative procedures, including an opportunity to comment..” www.spp.gov. (emphasis added). Moreover, the proposals to change laws in North America to level the trading field invariably call on our neighbors to change their laws, not the reverse. The United States has been making similar arguments in the WTO and in other trade deals, including items like intellectual property rights.

17) See PHX News; WorldNewsDaily.

18) “Recently we received the news that our American neighbors are placing further restrictions on Canadians crossing the border into the U.S. For the first time in history all Canadians will be required to carry passports.” Guy Lauzon, Conservative Party Member of the Canadian Parliament (2005). Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff: “Congress mandated that the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security work together to implement a Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative which will require travelers to present secure identity documentation when entering the United States. And of course, that applies to U.S. citizens as well as citizens of other countries. As you know, before this enactment, U.S. citizens and some foreign residents of the Western Hemisphere were not required to present a passport, and so as we add these new documentation requirements, as the law has mandated, we want to make sure we're doing it in a way that continues to support the free movement of people and cargo across the border, which has been so important to all of the economies in this region.“ Press Release, January 17, 2006. “[O]ur first step is to develop an inexpensive, efficient, interoperable travel card system. To strike the right balance between security and facilitation, we have to incorporate 21st century technology and innovation, and so by the end of this year our departments anticipate issuing a new, inexpensive secure travel card for land border crossings that will meet the documentation requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative…” Id. “This new People Access Security Service, or PASS system card, will be particularly useful for those citizens in border communities who regularly cross northern and southern borders every day as an integral part of their daily lives. We're talking about essentially like the kind of drivers license or other simple card identification that almost all of us carry in our wallets day in and day out. “ Id. This “secret plan” was announced in a press release months before the Corsi and other articles were published and was done under Congressional authorization and by our own Department of Homeland Security, not a “shadow agency.”

19) Id.

20) See Chertoff press release, supra, January 17, 2006; DHS Fact Sheet .

21) While the latest plans or biometric border passes were publicly announced months before the wingnut articles on the Internet, the concept has been around and tested for years and was never part of some secret plot: “Officials will roll out ambitious new technology today to track visitors to the United States as they enter and leave the country, and eventually verify their identity with electronic scanners that will check fingerprints and other biometric data. Together with machine-readable, tamper-proof visas and a huge computer database of names, fingerprints and photographs, the Department of Homeland Security hopes to be able to check the identity — and record the arrival and departure — of every one of the more than 440 million annual visitors to the United States.” Shaun Waterman, UPI “ Biometric Borders Coming,” Washington Times 2003. “Using technology previously reserved for military and other high security applications, engineers from the Safety and Security Systems Division of the Volpe Center have developed a number of automated biometric systems to speed the processing of frequent travelers through United States immigration and to reduce the dependence on manual immigration inspections. These systems, now in use at selected border crossings by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, may serve as the basis for future automated immigration processing developments, both in the United States and around the world.” Volpe Journal , Spring 1997.

22) See Behreandt, “Creating the North Amedrican Union,” The New American, (2006).

23) The United States alone is a party to numerous other free trade agreements. See CBO, ECONOMIC AND BUDGET ISSUE BRIEF “The Recent Increased Emphasis on Free-Trade Agreements,” 2003. The U.S. now has free trade agreements with Israel, Singapore, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and is working on agreements with the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Needless to say, no political union talks are underway with anyone on the list!

24) Id.

25) Jerome Corsi, Human Events Online, June 12, 2006.

26) “Minnesota Department of Transportation’s John Bray says he’s heard all about the internet article boasting the Bush Administration’s plans to build a Super Highway from Mexico to Canada. “Whoever wrote it, I think I would recommend that they take a couple aspirins, lay down, take a snooze, and get up and write something that has some credibility to it. This thing has no credibility at least as far as our agency is concerned.” Link. The Mid-America Regional Council has a detailed transportation plan through 2030 and no new “superhighway” to Mexico is included.

27) “There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway - it exists today as I-35.” NASCO website (emphasis added). Of course, they could be lying (in the moonbat world), but if they are, how can they use this argument to get Congressional funding for a new, giant highway? Presumably, no moonbat wants to tear out I-35 right now because it has some trucks from Mexico on it.

28) Id. They are, of course, proud of this accomplishment. Whatever its merits, it sure is not funding for a giant highway system.

29) "Access to the U.S. by Mexican motor carriers under NAFTA did not come without obligation to Mexican motor carriers. NAFTA did not change any safety requirements for foreign trucks and drivers operating in the U.S. Therefore, Mexican trucks operating in the U.S. under NAFTA must meet the same safety standards as U.S. trucks. However, Mexico’s regulatory truck safety inspection system is not as sophisticated as the U.S. system and the U.S. maintained that it was inadequate to ensure that Mexican trucks can meet U.S. safety standards." House Hearings, Subcommittee on Highways and Transit (2001).

30) Hawkins also interviewed Tasha Hammes, the Media Relations & Marketing Manager for the KC Smartport project, debunking another wingnut theory that Mexico would run the KC facility: "Kansas City, Mo., is leasing the facility to KC SmartPort. It will NOT be leased to any Mexican government agency or be sovereign territory of Mexico." Hawkins, Human Events Online, supra. Actually, if the KC facility was clearing trucks coming from Mexico, no Mexican customs officials would need to be there at all: so their criticism disproves its own premise.

31) WordlNetDaily, October 1, 2006: “Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., has introduced a resolution – H.R. 487 – designed to express "the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union (NAU) with Mexico and Canada." Co-sponsors are Reps. Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Walter Jones, R-N.C. The same WorldNetDaily article has an amusing footnote: “For a comprehensive look at the U.S. government's plan to integrate the U.S., Mexico and Canada into a North American super-state – guided by the powerful but secretive Council on Foreign Relations – read "ALIEN NATION: SECRETS OF THE INVASION," a special edition of WND's acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine.” Id.

32) The resolution’s sponsors cited several inaccurate and misleading items, including an apparent reference to waiver of truck safety rules, which is entirely fictitious, as noted earlier, and economic “facts” which are misstated or taken out of context at best. Their leading argument aganst NAFTA is that the U.S. balance of trade with Mexico has worsen. Leaving aside the fact that this imbalance is small and that the U.S. has a huge net imbalance largely caused by the growth economic growth in our country at a time when a lot of our trading partners' growth has been flat, the CBO refuted this argument a few years back:

Some observers look at NAFTA's effects on the U.S. balance of trade with Mexico (the difference between the values of exports and imports) as an indication of the economic benefit or harm of the agreement. The balance of trade dropped substantially after NAFTA took effect and has declined further in more recent years, leading some people to conclude that NAFTA has been bad for the U.S. economy.

However, changes in the balance of trade with a partner country are a poor indicator of the economic benefit or harm of a trade agreement. A better indicator is changes in the levels of trade. Increases in trade--both exports and imports--lead to greater economic output because they allow each nation to concentrate its labor, capital, and other resources on the economic pursuits at which it is most productive relative to other countries. Benefits from the greater output are shared among the countries whose trade increases, regardless of the effects on the trade balance with any particular country. Such effects do not translate into corresponding effects on the balance of trade with the world as a whole; for a country as big as the United States, that balance is largely unaffected by restrictions on trade with individual countries the size of Mexico. Moreover, even declines in a country's trade balance with the world have little net effect on that country's output and employment because the immediate effects of those declines are offset by the effects of increased net capital inflows from abroad that must accompany those declines."

CBO also argues that the isolated impct of NAFTA on the U.S.-Mexico trade balance has largely been positive.

Like Mr. Corsi’s comments and articles, these few House members will find themselves in close company with white supremacists and other marginal political groups, who see the “North American Union” as part of the Illumati plot to control the world.

33) In order for the plot to work, all of the SPP, CFR and foreign folks working on the coordinating committees would seem to be “in on it.” Pesumably, large parts of both parties elected represenatives in Congress would also have to be “in on it” – or else why have they been silent? Then the whole federal judiciary in the United States, appointed by the last four U.S. Presidents and confirmed by the Senate, would have to be complicitious, since any federal judge could enjoin the “plot” as unconstitutional. Which also raises the point, that if this is really occurring, why haven’t the moonbats sued? Could it be that no lawyer will sign a complaint fearing Rule 11 sanctions for a frivolous lawsuit? See Fed.R. Civ.P. 11.

AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES IN ENVIRONMENTAL DUE DILIGENCE

2006-03-27T01:52:00.000-08:00

Note: This article is written from the perspective of Polish transactions. (1)

With environmental liabilities becoming an increasing concern in Polish company and land acquisitions, it is time to ask if environmental due diligence is doing its job. Given some publicized cases in Central Europe of embarrassing environmental liabilities coming due after acquisitions that used the classic environmental due diligence approach, it is fair to suggest that current practices are less than adequate. What mistakes and misconceptions exist and how should a company making what could be an environmentally risky investment look at this issue?

First, there is no guarantee from the due diligence firm. The only comfort level that can be achieved is by the design and implementation of an aggressive environmental due diligence effort itself. If something is missed, there is no recourse to the service providers and no insurance against mistakes being made, especially in Poland where no policies are offered.(2) Just saying that a firm uses environmental due diligence does absolutely nothing to protect the buyer, unless the effort being made is effective.

Second, in Poland, we are seeing firms being hired to find environmental problems that have very little experience actually handling environmental problems. Lawyers and technical consultants who have not dealt with complex environmental issues (most likely because the Polish experience has not provided for many opportunities) are being asked to “find” the potential problems. Everyone has checklists and thorough sounding objectives, but with little experience in how operations can environmentally go awry, their “books” may seldom be enough. See “Environmental Due Diligence Procedure.” FMC Technologies (2005):
http://www.fmctechnologies.com/HealthSafetyandEnvironment/_HSEWeb/HSEManual/Section3/31EnvDueDiligenceProced.aspxv.

Third, trying to dodge the bullet by some sort of representations and warranties in the legal documents is a very poor substitute for a detailed and expert due diligence investigation. There is no language that automatically can be used to fit the needs of the buyers and sellers. The seller cannot warrant that no hazardous material was disposed of on the site: small quantities of potentially hazardous material are released from the most harmless operations. The buyer cannot rely on assurances that all operations performed on the site were done under approved permits and legal authorities: because contamination clean-up does not depend on the lawfulness of the initial operations, only on the presence of the compounds above the Ministry’s action level. A seller’s certification that no contamination exists above Ministry levels may create a claim back under the contract, but will not alleviate the liability of the new registered owner of the land. Given that the Ministry’s standards go down to 15 meters and cover multiple substances commonly found in industrial and urbanized areas, it will be difficult for a seller to make this representation with any veracity. So lawyers have to look for more than a “silver bullet” clause.

Fourth, the “analytical fallacy” is the commonly viewed notion that site sampling will assure that nothing serious is present on the site. Random sampling or even sampling of production areas may be completely ineffective at finding serious contamination. Operations as they exist today may be materially different from what occurred twenty years ago, when on-site disposal was a more widespread or even typical practice. Tenants using the owner’s land in past years may have conducted activities that left problems. Some wastes migrate, notably volatile organic compounds, and will not likely be discovered at or even near their original source of release, especially after twenty years or more. The Polish standards go down to 15 meters and cover the whole piece of real estate. No sampling program devised from a visual inspection will be adequate to provide any reasonable degree of assurance than serious contamination, if present, is found.

Fifth, all information requests to a Polish organization should be “front-loaded.” Anything that you want from the buyer should be specified in advance from a top-down detailed memorandum. Polish employees will not normally exercise the normal initiative in supplying information or “filling in the holes.” Unless they have been directed by their boss to provide information, they will be unlikely to volunteer anything or feel compelled to even answer direct requests. This means careful prior planning on what you ask for as well as the need for “back channel” information, described below.

Sixth, potential buyers most often use consultants better designated to quantify and characterize contamination when it is discovered than to find likely contamination spots. Most technical disciplines are a poor fit for qualification as “environmental detective.” On the other hand, some experts can be valuable. Process engineers can provide information of what wastes were generated by the operations. Geologists and hydrologists may be able to make important contributions of what this material might have moved. But the basic question of where contamination is located is a “fact issue” for which witnesses and sometimes documents will hold far more intrinsic value. If the seller has the normal reluctance to volunteer information or his employees feel unsure of their role in cooperating, this can essentially be an adversary proceeding in character. Most technically-trained consultants are a poor fit for the task of “cracking this nut.”

Seventh, the opportunity of the transaction to be used to resolve the environmental issue to everyone’s satisfaction is normally lost on the parties. The seller normally perceives an environmental contamination issue to be a potential “deal stopper.” The buyer may either “bolt and run” if the issue emerges or insist on prohibitively expensive “set aside” funds or indemnification provisions. Both sides may assume the worst case scenario and see the transaction shaped by those assumptions. As discussed below, the transaction may afford the parties the best opportunity to obtain a regulatory approval of a result acceptable to all sides.

Eighth, the parties should have a written agreement on the disclosure and use of any report or samples taken from the property by the buyer’s team. Whatever confidentiality that is possible should be created by the seller restricting the use and distribution of information he provides. Attorney-client privilege over the report itself may be applicable depending on how the deal is done. The question also arises whether the seller will even want copies of reports or tests done. However, to drill a well in Poland, requires approval by a local official and undoubtedly will also be combined with a request for the results of any sampling. So the issues on disclosure and use of data will be complex and will vary in every case. The issue cannot be ignored, however, and should be the subject of an early strategy on both sides that is subject to reassessment as events develop.

So in the light of the above pessimistic picture, what should buyers be planning to do?

The initial step to create a team with the experience to offer the best shot at identifying problems and issues. The actual personnel who will be involved in the environmental due diligence should be looked at by the prospective buyer. Who are they and what have they done before? Lawyers or other experts that have experience with “adversary” type proceedings and hostile or reluctant witnesses may be essential to get the real facts involving past facility operations. It is unlikely that there will be a precise “document trail” to any contaminated location [although one has to ask for documents]: so the work will involve asking good questions based on an understanding of the processes conducted at the site.

Photographs are vital if they are available. Any pictures of the plant from past years can provide an enormous amount of information. Not only may disposal areas show up, but process operations can be identified and located. One old photograph can be one of the most valuable pieces of the puzzle available.

Perhaps the greatest change that can be adopted is for the buyer to accept that finding an environmental problem is not the end of the deal. The buyers’ acquisition team is normally geared, as they should be, to close the deal. They have worked hard on it and they do not want to see the effort go for naught. My experience is that the environmental expert in “deal team” is normally greeted with bare tolerance or even hidden hostility. This distrust has been earned by most of the people involved in the role, because all that they can do is stop the deal or hopelessly complicate it. The environmental due diligence team is seldom conceived of or operated as a “problem solving” group.

Situations ranging from a faulty integrated permit application or final permit to on-site contamination from past operations can obviously be dealt with constructively by the parties. The event of buying and selling the facility or property is not only important to the private parties involved, but also to the community and the government. To the latter it is not only an opportunity to continue economic activities that help the community, but should be viewed as an opportunity to get more resources devoted to addressing any environmental concern. The seller has some leverage to help get a consensus of what steps should be taken to address potential problems. Proposals to address the issues will probably never receive a better audience than at this stage.

While a complete agreement on a final solution may be impossible at this stage, in most cases, it should be sought where possible. If more information is necessary for a final decision, then the information needs can be quantified. A decision-matrix might be agreed upon, if no contamination is above this level or has reached this point, then certain actions can be taken. All of these efforts can dramatically reduce the uncertainty that normally kills the deal. Set-asides or indemnity provisions based on real facts and an agreed course of action can be down-sized to fit the facts. Even agreement on the next steps to be taken by the buyer, if they proceed with the transaction, can be valuable to all parties.

Poland does not provide for an innocent purchaser defense for existing contamination. The mere conduct of environmental due diligence is, on its face, no protection for the buyer. The buyer’s only protection is effective environmental due diligence. A seller with some environmental problems will likely face brutal assumptions on the scope of the problem by the buyer without real expert involvement. Both sides should benefit if the environmental due diligence can tell them not only what is there, but what does it mean.

New laws in Poland make environmental due diligence a more essential prerequisite for investment and real estate projects. Sending in a team poorly equipped to deal with its complexity or relying on some legal contract provisions alone may end up being a serious mistake.

1 All rights reserved. The author is an Environmental Consultant with CEC Government Relations, Warsaw, Poland, and Environmental Advisor to Kalwas and Partners, Warsaw. He has been involved in environmental due diligence and audits since work on the Love Canal in 1978.

2 Lenders can now obtain environmental liability insurance for their risks in a transaction, but this evolved as their industry made a judgment that environmental audits were not adequate protection: “The traditional due diligence process does not provide today’s commercial lenders with the ability to protect their interest adequately or allow for a reliable transfer of environmental risk to third parties.” Alan Bressler, Marsh Inc., “Environmental Insurance Changes the Game for Commercial Lenders,” Intenrational Risk Management Institute, Dec. 2002: http://www.irmi.com/Expert/Articles/2002/Bressler12.aspx

3

Bush did not lie, but the war critics are

2005-11-18T01:36:00.000-08:00

We have heard the littany from the Left from months. "Bush lied, people died." A catchy slogan that is reminiscent of Lenin's observation that "a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." The lie, of course, is that Bush deliberately deceived anyone about the presence and threat of WMD from Saddam Hussein.

We know that the United Nations Security Council in November 2002 felt that Iraq had not accounted for its WMD and cooperated with inspections to verify its obligations under the cease-fire and prior UN resolutions:

FULL TEXT of UN Security Council Resolution 1441: http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/15016.htm

Excerpts:

"Recognizing the threat Iraq’s non-compliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace and security,

"Recalling that its resolution 678 (1990) authorized Member States to use all necessary means to uphold and implement its resolution 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and all relevant resolutions subsequent to resolution 660 (1990) and to restore international peace and security in the area,

"Further recalling that its resolution 687 (1991) imposed obligations on Iraq as a necessary step for achievement of its stated objective of restoring international peace and security in the area,

"Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991), of all aspects of its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with a range greater than one hundred and fifty kilometres, and of all holdings of such weapons, their components and production facilities and locations, as well as all other nuclear programmes, including any which it claims are for purposes not related to nuclear-weapons-usable material,

"Deploring further that Iraq repeatedly obstructed immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to sites designated by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), failed to cooperate fully and unconditionally with UNSCOM and IAEA weapons inspectors, as required by resolution 687 (1991), and ultimately ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA in 1998,

*******

"1. Decides that Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687 (1991), in particular through Iraq’s failure to cooperate with United Nations inspectors and the IAEA, and to complete the actions required under paragraphs 8 to 13 of resolution 687 (1991);

"2. Decides, while acknowledging paragraph 1 above, to afford Iraq, by this resolution, a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under relevant resolutions of the Council; and accordingly decides to set up an enhanced inspection regime with the aim of bringing to full and verified completion the disarmament process established by resolution 687 (1991) and subsequent resolutions of the Council;

********************************

To the time, every nation - whether opposed to the use of military force or not - conceded that Saddam had WMDs:

HANS BLIX: "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament that was demanded of it." Hans Blix (2003), http://www.infoplease.com/spot/iraqtimeline2.html
"...to the issues of anthrax, the nerve agent VX, and long-range missiles, and said that such issues--and I quote myself--"deserve to be taken seriously by Iraq rather than being brushed aside," Blix, Feb. 2002,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/transcripts/blixtranscript_021403.html

FRANCE: "So I don't say that Iraq is disarmed, but has been weakened by the war and the inspections..." Address by Jean-David Levitte, Ambassador of France to the US, at the US Institute of Peace, Washington, February 7, 2003: http://www.info-france-usa.org/news/statmnts/2003/levitte_iraq020703.asp
"...we agree on the nature of the regime in Baghdad. No doubt that we have in Baghdad for too many years a dictator who is a disaster for his own people and has been a threat for neighboring states." Id. "We know from experience that Saddam Hussein doesn't willingly disarm. Nobody has confidence in the man who has lied and cheated for so many years." National Journal correspondent Lee Michael Katz interviewed Jean-David Levitte, Ambassador of France to the United States, Washington, March 3, 2003: http://www.info-france-usa.org/news/statmnts/2003/levitte_nj030303.asp

GERMANY: "The objective now must be to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq and as soon as possible to put the Iraqi people in a position to return an Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction to its former status as a respected and prosperous member of the family of nations." Statement of the German Government on the outbreak of hostilieis in Iraq: http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/politics/speeches/032003.htm

RUSSIA: "...resolutions of the Council are the most reliable way for solving the problem of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by political means. And that all of us want to solve this problem, no one should have any doubt." Statement by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov at UN Security Council Meeting (New York, February 5, 2003) http://www.ln.mid.ru/bl.nsf/0/52629a90f9835a5a43256cc5003b5320?OpenDocument
"Iraq will be a checkpoint for the international community, and for the UN SC, whether it is able to act efficiently - aggressively but peacefully - in tracking and preventing nonproliferation violations." Vladimir A. Orlov, Center for Policy Studies in Russia, http://www.pircenter.org/articles/vb%2001-2003en.html

EGYPT: "The Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar published a scathing attack on Saddam Hussein written by Ahmad Rajab describing Saddam as a "disaster and a curse that befell the Arabs, Arab unity, Arab resources, and Arab oil. Saddam suspended Egypt's membership in the Arab League following Camp David, and did not face any Arab threat, such as suspending Iraq's membership in the Arab League, to dissuade him from invading Kuwait. And now, in a series of stubbornness, conceit, ignorance, and stupidity he paved the way for shredding the Arab homeland and redrawing its map. This is how the fate of the whole Arab nation has been tied to the follies of a bloody, insane despot whose game is destruction." http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iraq&ID=INW1202#VII
"... the representative of Egypt today stressed that Iraq’s compliance and continued cooperation with the inspectors was a "way out of the dark tunnel". The danger of mass destruction weapons, however, was not confined to Iraq. Council members must keep in mind that its credibility would not be served by eliminating the banned Iraqi weapons, while failing to apply the same criteria to all other cases, including those in the Middle East." Press Release, SC/7666, UN Security Council ,4709th Meeting: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sc7666.doc.htm
"Disarming Iraq, he continued, must be the beginning of removing the danger of all mass destruction weapons from the Middle East." Id.

IRAQI MILITARY: Saddam even let on to this generals that he had WMD: "Early on, Saddam sought to foster the impression with his generals that Iraq could resist a Coalition ground attack using WMD." Iraq Survey Group, Final Report,2004. "In March 2003, Saddam created further confusion when he implied to his ministers and senior officers that he had some kind of secret weapon." Id. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/2004/isg-final-report/isg-final-report_vol1_rsi-06.htm

THE CIA: The Direcor of the CIA when directly asked about the issue told the president of the United States that it was "a slam dunk." CNN, "Woodward: Tenet told Bush WMD case a 'slam dunk', " Monday, April 19, 2004 : "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- About two weeks before deciding to invade Iraq, President Bush was told by CIA Director George Tenet there was a "slam dunk case" that dictator Saddam Hussein had unconventional weapons..."

These are the facts. The speculation is whether they were 100% wrong or whether the Iraqis moved what WMD that they still had. Since currency normally moves via wires to Swiss accounts and household effects would not warrant the effort, a lot of us speculate what else could have been in the dozens of "big rigs" that went into Syria in the months up to Operation Iraqi Freedom. I will guess that the missing quantities of WMD or production components that were never accounted for were in the trucks: this is the only rational explanation for why Saddam would and could not account for their destruction to the UNSCOM teams as late as January 2003. The fact that nuclear components from Iraq showed up in subsequent months and that Iraqi WMD facilities had been stripped of equipment in the months before OIF seems to strongly verify this speculation.

But whatever the speculation, there is zero factual basis for saying that Bush lied.

It also imperative to realize that Saddam's threat to actually use WMD was viewed - accurately I think - as larger than any other potential U.S. adversary. Whether he had the WMD in hand or was intent on building them in the future was only a matter of timing, not a matter of the scope of the threat. Everyone agreed to this premise at the time. The quotes from prominient Democrats are now being accurately reproduced everywhere. My favorite is the John Kerry "Position on Iraq, Version 5.01", where I truly believe that he got it right:

"I would disagree with John McCain that it’s the actual weapons of mass destruction he may use against us, it’s what he may do in another invasion of Kuwait or in a miscalculation about the Kurds or a miscalculation about Iran or particularly Israel. Those are the things that - that I think present the greatest danger. He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat." (CBS "Face The Nation" 9/15/02)

This almost unbelievable ability to miscalculate by Saddam ran right up to the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when he thought that Russia, France, and China (dependent upon him for oil deals) could stop the United States and other allies from proceeding. Unlike North Korea and Iran, that enjoy rattling sables, Saddam had actually used WMD and had actually invaded another country in recent times. From plotting to kill George H. Bush in 1998 to launching an operation to blow up our U.S. embassy in Pakistan working with Al Qaeda operatives aftwer 9-11, Saddam showed no fear of retaliation or reprisals.

Based on the intelligence available and the history of this tyrant, the United States and its allies had no choice in 2003 but to act. But to say that reliance on all of the available information - not seriously contested by anyone at the time - was a "lie" is the biggest disingenuous political grandstanding of our time.

Randy Mott

Jefferson Parish: Passing the Buck

2005-09-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

In a widely republished September 4th interview on NBC, Aaron Broussard from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, went into a partisan tirade against the Bush Administration for its failures in hurricane relief. MSNBC story. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790. The interview contained some serious allegations, which were apparently not checked by NBC or any other "so-called mainstream media" source that publish the interview and its allegations. While
I was waiting for Fact Check or a blog site to debunk this politically inspired show-boating, I did a little checking.

The guy's mother may well have drowned in the nursing home. But it is apparent to me that the rest of this allegation is political hype. No federal official was going to reassure him that they would be there "on Wednesday".... It just does not happen that way. The implication was that they were on the way to that building, which is plainly inaccurate. If there were trapped elderly people with cell phone access, why did not local officials respond? Evacuation is their obligation under the official emergency plans. See below. What kind of "local official" waits for federal help to get his mother out of a flooded nursing home in his own community? Duh? I would like to look at the Jefferson Parish Emergency Plan (his jurisdiction) and see who is charged with evacuation responisiblity: I guarantee you that it is not FEMA.

In fact, Jefferson Parish is directly responsible for evacuation under the Louisiana State Emergency Plan signed and approved by the Parish president. State of Louisna Emergency Plan Supplment.http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/plans/EOPSupplement1a.pdf
Under the listed responsiblities: "Parishes: Conduct and control local evacuation in parishes located in the risk area and manages reception and shelter operations in parishes located in the host area." Jefferson Parish was one of the signatories and its population included a very large portion that presumably needed evacuation. The state plan, approved by Jeffersen Parish, called for: "The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating." Id.

President Bush offered early on for FEMA to take over evacuation and Governnor Blanco said no. All of the planning prior to the hurricane and flooding assumed evacuation was a local job: it must normally be done prior to the storm's hitting and in this case was assumed to be ordered (by local officials) 72 hours before the roads started flooding. Could it be that Jefferson Parish joins the City of New Orleans in not properly addressing its duties under the State Emergency Plan to evacuate local citizens who lacked private means to do so?

The Wal Mart trucks, allegedly turned around, were actually sent somewhelse where they were more needed. Redstate blog: http://mikewas.redstate.org/story/2005/9/6/114926/3369. ["Sharon Weber of Wal-Mart called back. She said that last week, FEMA diverted those water trucks to "another location, which [FEMA] felt was in greater need than where they were headed." Weber emphasized that Wal-Mart would not override any FEMA decisions made in emergency situations. So Broussard, who claimed that Wal-Mart's aid was ourtight rejected, was wrong. Based on Wal-Mart's information, their trucks were taken where FEMA thought they were needed most. It would appear that the same story occurred with the Coast Guard fuel issue. Broussard said that FEMA wouldn't release the fuel to Jefferson Parish - but surely that fuel went somewhere else it was needed. Thanks to Wal-Mart's Sharon Weber for tracking down this information"].

The fact that a blogger called Wal Mart and got the real story seems to reflect as badly on NBC as on Broussard. They both plainly wanted to believe the worst and selectively used "facts" for the argument with little or no regard for verification.

I assume that the "line cut" was probably cut to be re-routed in a more intelligent manner. The fact that so many locals decided to go to war with FEMA reflects their problems may largely have been self-created, beginning with the early meeting where Governor Blanco refused to abrogate any power or control over rleief efforts.

This makes the nursing home story highly suspect. We will probably have to wait for blogs to unearth the truth. Don't hold your breath for NBC to do any fact checking.

The State of Mississippi was hit much harder by the hurricane. You do not have the stories of big bureaucratic screw ups coming from there. Why?

Randy Mott

The Junk Science on Depleted Uranium

2005-07-06T04:54:00.000-07:00

The United States military, joined by many other nations, uses depleted uranium in its anti-armor ordinance and in its armor plating due to the material's physical density. It is more widespread as a penetrator, although at least the latest Abrams tank also uses it as a plating material in the composite armor. It is not used due to its radioactivity, which is quite low, i.e. that is why it is called "depleted."

Fortunately, the Leftist criticism of DU is a much of total and complete junk. Utranium oxide is not a gas, it is a mineral. The World Health Organization has been all over this issue since Bosnia as well as the International Atomic energy Agency. It goes nowhere. Depleted uranium is what is it named for- depleted. It contains a tiny fraction of the radioactive variety of uranium isotopes. Its use as a weapon is because of the density of the metal, not its other attributes. There is no impact from "poison gas" on the receiving end of a DU round.

The International Atomic Energy Agency: " DU does not add significantly to the normal background radiation that people encounter ever day. It is weakly radioactive. For example, DU is 3 million times less radioactive than radium still found in many old luminous watches and 10 million times less radioactive than what is used in fire detectors. The extreme density of DU, together with other physical properties, make it ideal for military use in munitions to penetrate thick tank armor and in defensive armor protection. It is not a nuclear weapon." Link: http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Features/DU/faq_depleted_uranium.shtml

"Based on credible scientific evidence, there is no proven link between DU exposure and increases in human cancers or other significant health or environmental impacts." IAEA, supra.

WHO Report, Depleted Uranium: Sources, Exposure and Health Efects," 2001
http://www.who.int/environmental_information/radiation/depluraniumexecsume.htm
"Most (>95%) uranium entering the body is not absorbed, but is eliminated via the faeces. Of the uranium that is absorbed into the blood, approximately 67% will be filtered by the kidney and excreted in the urine in 24 hours. Typically between 0.2 and 2% of the uranium in food and water is absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. Soluble uranium compounds are more readily absorbed than those which are insoluble."

"Direct contact of depleted uranium metal with the skin, even for several weeks, is unlikely to produce radiation-induced erythema (superficial inflammation of the skin) or other short term effects. Follow-up studies of veterans with embedded fragments in the tissue have shown detectable levels of depleted uranium in the urine, but without apparent health consequences. The radiation dose to military personnel within an armoured vehicle is very unlikely to exceed the average annual external dose from natural background radiation from all sources." WHO, supra.

Exposure can be measured:
"For the general population it is unlikely that the exposure to depleted uranium will significantly exceed the normal background uranium levels. When there is a good reason to believe that an exceptional exposure has taken place, the best way to verify this is to measure uranium in the urine. The intake of depleted uranium can be determined from the amounts excreted daily in urine. depleted uranium levels are determined using sensitive mass spectrometric techniques; in such circumstances it should be possible to assess doses at the mSv level." WHO, supra.

"Only military use of depleted uranium is likely to have any significant impact on environmental levels. Measurements of depleted uranium at sites where depleted uranium munitions were used indicate only localized (within a few tens of metres of the impact site) contamination at the ground surface. However, in some instances the levels of contamination in food and ground water could rise after some years and should be monitored and appropriate measures taken where there is a reasonable possibility of significant quantities of depleted uranium entering the food chain." WHO, supra.

"For the general population, neither civilian nor military use of DU is likely to produce exposures to DU significantly above normal background levels of uranium. Therefore, individual exposure assessments for DU will normally not be required. Exposure assessments based on environmental measurements may, however, be needed for public information and reassurance." WHO, supra.

"Long-term studies of workers exposed to uranium have reported some impairment of kidney function depending on the level of exposure. However, there is also some evidence that this impairment may be transient and that kidney function returns to normal once the source of excessive uranium exposure has been removed." WHO, supra.

"Since depleted uranium is a mildly radioactive metal, restrictions are needed on the disposal of depleted uranium." WHO, supra.

"General screening or monitoring for possible depleted uranium-related health effects in populations living in conflict areas where depleted uranium has been used is not necessary. Individuals who believe they have been exposed to excessive amounts of depleted uranium should consult their medical practitioner for examination, appropriate treatment of any symptoms and follow-up." WHO, supra.

There is no "poison gas" from DU: there are articulates of uranium oxide released, but they do not pose any significant hazard:

"When DU munitions hit an armored vehicle they form an aerosol containing fine DU particles that may be inhaled. Most of the contamination stays inside the vehicle that has been struck. However, some of the dust will be dispersed into the environment and spread by wind or deposited on the ground by rain. The bulk of DU dust remains within about a few hundred meters of the hit target. Over time, fine DU dust particles deposited on the ground will be absorbed into the soil, while bigger DU fragments remain intact on the ground and start to corrode. In most cases, no more than 10% of the penetrators hit their intended target. DU penetrators that do not hit a target or hit 'soft' targets (non-armored vehicles) do not generate significant dust. Most munitions that impact on soft ground, such as clay or sand, penetrate intact into the ground (down to a few meters depending on the type of soil). The corrosion of DU penetrators varies. For example, in quartz sand or acidic volcanic rock, high solubilization rates could lead to local contamination of groundwater. However, the risk would be minimal to people living in the area as dose rates are unlikely to be much greater than normal background radiation levels." IAEA, supra.

RAND Corp. Study, April 1999:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/b04151999_bt170-99.htm

GAO Report, confirming low risk from DU exposure of US Army personnel (but critical of Army procedures), January 1993, http://www.gao.gov/ (search: depleted uranium).

New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 335:1498-1504 November 14, 1996 No. 20, "Mortality among U.S. Veterans of the Persian Gulf War," Han K. Kang, Dr.P.H., and Tim A. Bullman, M.S. [ no excess disease among Gulf War veterans]:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/335/20/1498

More from the IAEA: "United Nation's Environment Programme (UNEP) studies in 2001 (Kosovo), 2002 (Serbia and Montenegro) and 2003 (Bosnia and Herzegovina) - to which IAEA experts contributed - found it was highly unlikely that a reported increase in the risk of cancer in the Balkan regions could be associated with the residues of DU munitions used there during the war in the mid-1990s. It found the probability of significant exposure to local population was very low." Supra.

Dr Alex Bordujenko, MB BS, MPH, FAFPHM, for the Expert Committee to Examine Balkan Veteran Exposure to Depleted Uranium
ADF Health 2003 4 (1): 6-11:
"Even in the area immediately surrounding a vehicle destroyed by depleted uranium munitions, the generated dose rate from external radiation is unlikely to exceed 0.3 mSv per year — a tenth of the natural background dose rate for the US. US regulatory limits for public exposure to other than background sources of ionising radiation is 1 mSv per year." Link: http://www.defence.gov.au/dpe/dhs/infocentre/publications/journals/NoIDs/adfhealth_apr03/ADFHealth_4_1_06-11.html

Dr. Bordujenko also reviewed the inhlalation risk:
"The United Nations Environmental Program has estimated that the inhalation and ingestion of depleted uranium contaminated dust, even under extreme conditions shortly after the impact of projectiles, would be less than 10 mSv (based on the amount of dust that can be inhaled in these conditions).12 This represents about half the annual dose limit for radiation workers. For people in open areas near destroyed tanks or near burning depleted uranium, the aerosol dose is considerably less. For people who entered the tanks or the vicinity of the former fire sites after the aerosol had settled, the internal contamination is also much smaller." Id. [Note: Someone inside a vehicle hit by a DU round will not be too worried about the inhalation long-term risk of some particles, since they will likely be fatally wounded from the kinetic and heat impact of the round in a confined space.]

There are now already depleted uranium numbers coming in from Iraq after Operation Iraqi Freedom, which show extremely low levels among potentially exposed military personnel and civilians.

This issue, like so many from the Left, is so colored by their anti-military and anti-American viewpoint that the science gets lost.

Randy Mott

2005-04-13T07:39:00.000-07:00

World Climate Report Graphic of actual vs. Barnett modelled temperature by ocean depth.

Barnett Study Debunked- No Proof of GHG Climate Change

2005-04-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

I was waiting for someone objective to get the data published by Dr. Barnett and to re-run some numbers. While Barnett claimed his "model" reproduced the impact of greenhouse gases on the earth's temperatures, and the liberal press went to town, the sober and analytical look at the numbers debunks his claim.

After a statistical analysis, the World Climate Report shows the above graph that contradicts the claims of Barnett. The Barnett study - like so many with a political motive- "smooths" out the data to fit the hypothesis.

"What we are seeing with the Barnett paper is more of the same. We have claims that a general circulation model can reproduce ocean temperatures when, in reality, it cannot. We have evidence of a human fingerprint in ocean temperature patterns that arises only when the data are substantially smoothed. And we have a press corps that's even more convinced of the certainty of significant human-induced global warming. In fact, however, evidence for the human global warming fingerprint remains elusive."

The advocates of Kyoto do their best work in press releases and in reports that have yet to be peer-reviewed. Several questions occurred to me immediately upon seeing Barnett's wild and highly-publicized claims. If the atmosphere does not reflect the global warming model projections, why would the ocean? Patrick J. Michaels, S. Fred Singer and David H. Douglass,”Settling Global Warming Science,” Washington Times, Aug 16, 2004 [referring to the weather baloon and satellite data that show no warming]. Their recent technical report indicates that the atmosphere is not acting like it is assumed to act in the global warming models.

I still have never received a good answer to my fundamental question: since GHG levels have been twenty times higher in the past and have flucuated over periods where we have reliable temperature proxies, why does no data over 500 million years show a correlation between GHG levels and temperature increases?

Randy Mott

Who was Che Guevara? What if Hilter Had Been Photogenic?

2005-03-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

I will not add much of my prose to that which has been written by many who have spent more time studying the real Che Geuvara. So I will be content to post some excerpts and links that lay out the real story of this pop icon and the fraudulent nature of his glorification.

In the beginning, however, I must observe that Che Guevara's real story contradicts every value held dear by those who glorify him. They oppose capital punishment: he believed in it and practiced it without trials on guilt or innocence. They cherish personal freedom: he sent young people to re-education camps for listening to rock music. They value heroism and personal honor: he was at his best shooting unarmed men. They respect intellectual achievement: his writings are petty regurgitation of Marxist slogans. They try to epitomize personal freedom: he was the master of collective suppression of freedom. They extol love: he preached hate as a political tool.

“The fog of time and the strength of anti-anti-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La CabaÒa, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grace, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El ParedÛn, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens — dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris." Jay Nordlinger, republished by the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, http://www.hacer.org/current/LATAM71.php

On the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries: Tony Daniels: "It is as if someone were to make a film about Adolf Hitler by portraying him as a vegetarian who loved animals and was against unemployment. This would be true, but rather beside the point."

In France, the remarkable group Reporters Without Borders took an image well known in that country: that of a policeman wielding a truncheon and a shield. But it put Guevara's face in place of the policeman's and cried, "Welcome to Cuba, the world's biggest prison for journalists." Nordlinger, supra.

“But facts are not unimportant to Cuban Americans. Imagine being one of them and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine — even further — being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine — further yet — being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.” Nordlinger, supra.

“"Hatred is an element of struggle; relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man and transforms us into effective, violent, selective, and cold killing machines. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy." Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental
1967 cited at http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/che.html.

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary, These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon (The Wall)! Che Guevara, 1959.

Che's slaughter of (bound and gagged) Cubans (Che was himself an Argentine) exceeded Heinrich Himmler's prewar slaughter of Germans – to scale, that is.” Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler – by Humberto Fontova Feb. 23, 2004, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/23/171252.shtml

“Within three months in power, Castro and Che had shamed the Nazi prewar incarceration and murder rate. One defector claims that Che signed 500 death warrants, another says over 600. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El Che!" that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad. In his book "Che Guevara: A Biography," Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first few years of the Castro regime.

So the scope of the mass murder is unclear. So the exact number of widows and orphans is in dispute. So the number of gagged and blindfolded men who Che sent – without trials – to be bound to a stake and blown apart by bullets runs from the hundreds to the thousands.” Fontova, supra.

“But the mass executioner gets a standing ovation by the same people in the U.S who oppose capitol punishment! Is there a psychiatrist in the house?!” Fontova, supra.

“"We will make our hearts cruel, hard, and immovable ... we will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood. Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of thousands; let them drown themselves in their own blood! Let there be floods of the blood of the bourgeois – more blood, as much as possible." Che Guevara, in his “Motorcylce Diaries” quoted at Fontova, supra.

From those who today condemn the use of loud rock music on terrorists detainees in Cuba, the glorification of Che is more than a paradox: “The "acrid odor of gunpowder and blood" never reached Guevara's nostril from actual combat. It always came from the close-range murder of bound, gagged and blindfolded men. He was a true Chekist: "Always interrogate your prisoners at night," Che commanded his prosecutorial goons. "A man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower." Fontova, supra.

During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Che led several thousand troops 300 miles away in response to three boats set up off-shore with roman candles, other firepowers, and tape recorded battle-sounds. Fontova, supra. “Three days later the (literal) smoke and mirror show expended itself and Che's men marched back to Havana. Not surprisingly, the masterful Comandante had managed to wound himself in this heated battle against a tape recorder. The bullet pierced Che's chin and excited above his temple, just missing his brain. The scar is visible in all post-April '61 pictures of the gallant Che (the picture we see on posters and T-shirts was shot a year earlier.) Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante, a Fidelista at the time, speculates the wound may have come from a botched suicide attempt. "No way!" say Che hagiographers John Lee Anderson, Carlos Castaneda and Paco Taibo. They insist it was an accident, Che's own pistol going off just under his face.” Fontova, supra.

“…the century's most celebrated guerrilla fighter never fought in a guerrilla war or anything even approximating one. The few puerile skirmishes again Batista's army in Cuba would have been shrugged off as a slow night by any Cripp or Blood. In Cuba Che couldn't fight anyone to fight against him. In the Congo he couldn't find any to fight with him. In Bolivia he finally started getting a tiny taste of both. In short order he was betrayed, brought to ground and routed.” Fontova, supra.

Read Che? “I defy anyone to actually finish a Guevara book. I defy them to hack their way through the first five pages. Che's gibberish makes Babs Streisand sound like Cicero.” Fontova, supra.

Famous Che quotes:

"The past makes itself felt not only in the individual consciousness – in which the residue of an education systematically oriented toward isolating the individual still weighs heavily – but also through the very character of this transition period in which commodity relations still persist, although this is still a subjective aspiration, not yet systematized." Cited by Fontova, supra.

"To the extent that we achieve concrete successes on a theoretical plane – or, vice versa, to the extent that we draw theoretical conclusions of a broad character on the basis of our concrete research –we will have made a valuable contribution to Marxism-Leninism, and to the cause of humanity." Cited by Fontova, supra.

Great guerilla leader? Folks who decided to leave Che’s little band of murders: “These hapless "deserters" were hunted down like animals, trussed up and brought back to a dispassionate Che, who put a pistol to their heads and blew their skulls apart without a second thought. After days spent listening to Che and smelling him, perhaps this meant relief.” Fontova, supra.

Party guy? “In 1961 Che even established a special concentration camp at Guanacahibes in extreme Western Cuba for "delinquents." This "delinquency" involved drinking, vagrancy, disrespect for authorities, laziness and playing loud music.” Fontova, supra.

Fidel did not like Che: “The one place where I can't fault Fidel, the one place I actually empathize with him, is in his craving to rid himself of this insufferable Argentine jackass. That the Bolivian mission was clearly suicidal was obvious to anyone with half a brain. Fidel and Raul weren't about to join him down there…” Fontova, supra.

To the young people in the Free World that glorify this vapid thug, their ignorance of what Che left for modern young Cubans is appalling. The highest suicide rate in the Hemisphere, more than doubling after 1963. See Juan Tamayo, “Study: Suicide epidemic exists under Castro,” Miami Herald, June 18, 1998, link: http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/suicidepidemic.html and World Health Organization (2004) link:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/303.pdf

“Che Guevara was monumentally vain and epically stupid. He was shallow, boorish, cruel and cowardly. He was full of himself, a consummate fraud and an intellectual vacuum. He was intoxicated with a few vapid slogans, spoke in clichés and was a glutton for publicity.” Fontova, supra.

Randy Mott (Many thanks and much credit to the sources cited, who cared about the truth).

Democracy and change in the Middle East

2005-03-04T02:31:00.000-08:00

The "mainstream press" - which will be mainstream no more at current subscription and viewer rates - widely jeered at President Bush's pronouncements on spreading democracy in the Middle East as a solution to regional warfare and conflict.

Now several years into the Bush policy, a pattern seems to be emerging that even many critics cannot ignore. Elections in Afghanistan (no NYT "quagmire"). Elections in Iraq (no terrorist bloodbath). Coalition building in Iraq across religious and sect lines (no fundamentalist regime). A real Palestinian election and a pro-peace government. Spontaneous outbursts of freedom and tolerance in Lebanon. A possible contested election in Egypt. And don't forget Libya's turn-around. Enormous pressure on the tyrant in Syria, even from Arab governments. Growing resistance to the fundamentalist religious dictatorship in Iran.

This world is obviously not following the New York Times/CBS script!

The growing isolation of the terrorists in Iraq illustrates the trend as well. They are increasedly only foreign, often robbed of passports to keep them there after they see that the situation is wildly at odds with the radical views of Arab media, and frequently under the infuence of narcotics to help their "martyrdom" impulses. There will be more tragedy, more senseless deaths, but the trend is clearly emerging that a new Iraq is taking hold.

As to those who say that these developments are "unexpected" or "unintended" - that the goal of the Iraq intervention changed, etc. Just look at the name of the military operation from February 2003: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Ultimately it is , of course, a political process. Just as accurately, it would not have developed in this pattern, with this intensity, and the new sense of inevitability without sacrifices by U.S. and coalition military and brave Iraqi and Afghan soldiers and police volunteers.

History is made in small moves that taken alone normally do not jump out to contemporary observers. Only with the passage of time does the pattern of change seem apparent. In just two years, we are seeing history unfold before us. Of course, there will be set-backs and delays. There will be frustration, false starts and "rear-guard" actions by the forces that see their end on the horizon. But the trend is already emerging and hope is one of the most powerful forces of mankind. People in a region of the world that most Western elites had written off, now have hope.

Every person of good will should wish them well and continue to do what is in our power to help reshape history and share their hope.

More fraud at the IPCC

2005-02-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

One of the IPCC scientific team members just quit over the obvious lack of ethics by the IPCC Panel. In an open letter, Chris Landsea, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said:

"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound."

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html

Landsea is one of the world's top hurricane experts, who was asked by a lead author of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, to develop a segment on the impact of global warming
on the future intensity of hurricanes. All previous IPCC Assessment Reports said that there is no scientific evidence that there is a relationship between global warming and an increase in hurricane and other severe weather frequency or intensity. Reports by Landsea and others cited in my earlier blog posts provide no scientific evidence to change this conclusion.

In typical fashion for the Kyoto crew , Lead Author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, participated in a press conference that proclaimed: "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity." Landsea had told Trenberth that the science did not support such claims. But the advocates never cared about the data, they are advocates, not scientists.

Trenberth and the IPCC hierarchy ignored Landsea' protest, just like they ignore data that does not support their model.

The popular press picks up all of the "chicken little" headings, but will ignore this story because it is "outside the box." Makes you wonder whatthe next IPCC report will say about severe weather scenarios. We already know what the data says.

2005-02-02T00:56:00.000-08:00

Thousands of Iraqis had to walk miles to vote with roads closed for security reasons. It is difficult to overstate the significance of these images in the Moslem world. How consistently wrong does the Left and its Media buddies have to be before more folks start ignoring them? The trend will accelerate in 2005: you cannot beat hope and inspiration with defeatism and dispair.

2005-01-31T02:26:00.000-08:00

The Left Continues Its Uncanny and Clear View of Threats to America and Our Allies

Iraqi Election Prove Lefties Wrong Again

2005-01-31T02:12:00.000-08:00

One can never express strongly enough the total and absolute failure of the American Left to be correct on any issue. In the last three years, the Left has built on a record of being totally incorrect, even delusional, about the Soviet Union in the Cold War, to a series of emotional, and unfounded, inaccuracies about Afghanistan and Iraq. Never expressing any loss of face or sense of error, the Leftists continue to predict the worst for our country and our allies, as long as their folks are out of power.

This was the crowd that often argued the Cold War was caused by us provoking the Soviets, who were just like us (with the unmentioned exception of 10 to 40 million people they killed in the 20th Century and the complete suspension of free speech, elections and private property).

These pundits were sure that U.S. military action in Afghanstan after 9-11 would lead to an American defeat, like the Soviets' and Brits' failures.

Then they switched to "Afghanistan will be a quagmire"....

Then they vowed that free elections could never happen in Afghanistan....

Then they said that we would suffer major casualties taking on Saddam....

Then they said that he did NOT have WMD, but he would use them on US forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom.....

Then they said that we would be locked in a civil war in Iraq...with all of the factions fighting one another....

Then they said that the elections would never happen... they had no tradition of democracy...

After being wrong on every major foreign action and national security issue in our lifetime, why does anyone take this negative, fuzzy-headed crowd seriously?

2005-01-28T03:08:00.000-08:00

Kilimanjaro in the distance. Despite the lack of recent atmospheric temperature increases, the glacier is retreating at a slow rate. Studies show no correlaton between temperature and glacier behavior.

The Infamous Kilimanjaro Snow Job

2005-01-28T02:47:00.000-08:00

Greenhouse gas Kyoto advocates will use every scare tactic in the book, including the discredited Kilimanjaro theory. One author recently commented: "The Kilimanjaro ice field has melted by 80% it's maximum size photographed in 1912 AD. Projection of the melting rate into the future suggests that the ice cap will most likely disappear by 2015-2020 (10-15 years from now). This result is important because the ice sheet has been stable at this site for many millennia - the observed recent melting rate is exceptionally rapid."

The problem with the statement is that it is totally devoid of factual support at every level. The temperature data for East Africa support no inference of GHG warming: The National Academy of Sciences published a report* last year that defines the geographic regions of warming and cooling during the last 20 years. Surface measurements of East Africa show no warming trend (Fig. 6.2, p. 34). Weather satellites show a pronounced cooling trend of the atmosphere there (Fig. 7.1, p.43). No one has questioned these data. National Research Council. "Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change," National Academy Press, Washington, DC. January 2000.

The implication that the rate of decline at Kilimanjaro is increasing is a lie. "Kilimanjaro's glaciers lost 45 percent of their real extent in that era of non-human warming. If the glaciers had continued on their merry way at the pace established in that period, they would be gone by now." October 26, 2002 "The Snow Jobs of Kilimanjaro," by Patrick J. Michaels, u. of Virginia, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-26-02.html [note: Michaels uses the author of the Kilimanjaro study's own data, Thompson et al, OSU, 2002] Another glaring gap in Thompson theory on Kilimanjaro is that snow there declined during periods of temperature cooling: "From 1953 through 1976, another 21 percent of the original area was uncovered. This was during a period of global cooling-yes, cooling--of 0.13ºF. Ohio State could have accurately written the following hype at that time: "Kilimanjaro's glaciers will completely disappear by 2015 if this cooling trend continues". Michaels, supra.

There is a report that now argues the declines at Kilimanjaro are related to local conditions, the denuding of the slopes of timber that has changed local wind patterns. This makes a bunch more sense that general East Africa air temperatures, which explain nothing.

Use of the Kilimanjaro example tells anyone familar with the field that the source is an advocate, not a scientist. Kaser et al. demonstrate that all relevant 'observations and facts' clearly indicate that 'climatological processes other than air temperature control the ice recession in a direct manner' on Kilimanjaro, and that 'positive air temperatures have not contributed to the recession process on the summit...'" Kaser, G. and B. Noggler (1996): Glacier fluctuations in the Rwenzori Range (East Africa) during the 20th century - a preliminary report. Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie, 32, 109-117. See also Kaser, G., D.R. Hardy, T. Mölg, R.S. Bradley, and T.M. Hyera (2004): Modern glacier retreat on Kilimanjaro as evidence of climate change: Observations and facts. International Journal of Climatology, 24, 329-339, doi: 10.1002/joc.1008 ["climatological processes other than air temperature control the ice recession in a direct manner"]. Link:
http://geowww.uibk.ac.at/glacio/LITERATUR/kaser_et_al_IJC24(2004).pdf

This means that Kilimanjaro studies from 1996 to 2004 have contradicted the global temperature attribution done in the popular press and by Kyoto advocates. So when one hears the Kilimanjaro example, you can bet that the speaker or writer is not a careful scientists or researcher, just a political operative with an agenda.

2004-12-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

Ice keeps growing in the Antarctic, while temperatures have declined.

New Studies on Climate Further Discredit Kyoto

2004-12-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

Another new, very thorough analysis of historical data throws a lot of cold water on the GHG hypothesis. Sixteen authors from six different countries looked at fifty globally distributed paleoclimate records to ascertain probable causes of what they dsecribed as rapid climate change (RCC) over the Holocene. Mayewski, P.A., Rohling, E.E., Stager, J.C., Karlen, W., Maasch, K.A., Meeker, L.D., Meyerson, E.A., Gasse, F., van Kreveld, S., Holmgren, K., Lee-Thorp, J., Rosqvist, G. Rack, F., Staubwasser, M., Schneider, R.R. and Steig, E.J. 2004. Holocene climate variability. Quaternary Research 62: 243-255. With respect to the causes of Holocene RCCs, the international team of scientists says that “of all the potential climate forcing mechanisms, solar variability superimposed on long-term changes in insolation (Bond et al., 2001; Denton and Karlen, 1973; Mayewski et al., 1997; O’Brien et al., 1995) seems to be the most likely important forcing mechanism.” In addition, they note that “negligible forcing roles are played by CH4 and CO2,” and that “changes in the concentrations of CO2 and CH4 appear to have been more the result than the cause of the RCCs.”

Another new study provides more evidence that the Antarctic is getting colder: “overall, the total Antarctic sea ice extent (the cumulative area of grid boxes covering at least 15% ice concentrations) has shown an increasing trend (~4,801 km2/yr).” In addition, they find that “the total Antarctic sea ice area (the cumulative area of the ocean actually covered by at least 15% ice concentrations) has increased significantly by ~13,295 km2/yr, exceeding the 95% confidence level,” noting that “the upward trends in the total ice extent and area are robust for different cutoffs of 15, 20, and 30% ice concentrations (used to define the ice extent and area).” Liu, J., Curry, J.A. and Martinson, D.G. 2004. Interpretation of recent Antarctic sea ice variability. Geophysical Research Letters 31: 10.1029/2003GL018732.

Finally, a study of atmospheric temperatures in the zone where the GHG theory hypothesizes that warming would start has shown no wazrming. “Getting the vertical distribution of temperature wrong means that everything dependent upon that -- precipitation and cloudiness, as examples -- must be wrong. Patrick J. Michaels, S. Fred Singer and David H. Douglass,”Settling Global Warming Science,” Washington Times, Aug 16, 2004 [referring to the weather baloon and satellite data that show no warming]. Their recent technical report indicates that the atmosphere is not acting like it is assumed to act in the global warming models. http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0407/0407075.pdf. The study looked at satellite and weather balloon data compared to surface temperatures: “ the models generally predict an increased warming rate with height (outside of local polar regions). Neither the satellite nor the balloon records can find it.” “Meltdown for Global Warming Science,” by Patrick J. Michaels, S. Fred Singer and David H. Douglass, August 19, 2004, Cato Institute, online. These results are not unusual to anyone who has studied the global warming “greenhouse gas” theory.

As the climate "chicken littles" get further and further away from science, the mainstream press seems to be more and more stringent in its claims. You will never see the real studies on CNN, but they exist and come out in every round of professional journals.