Today’s music video is ‘On The Turning Away’ from Pink Floyd.

This video was posted to You Tube by RaggedTiger70

I hope you’ll grant me this small indulgence of playing one of my absolute favoutite songs from my favourite band, Pink Floyd.

This highlights another example of how each generation thinks that they are the ones who invented music.

When I first heard the song, I was still in the Air Force. I was at the Royal Australian Air Force’s  Trades Training School in Wagga Wagga, teaching the Electrical trade to new guys, and in this case, it was a class of 15 young Apprentices, all aged around 17 or 18.

It was December of 1987, and getting close to that time of year when the young guys were preparing for their Christmas leave break away from training. It was a Practical based subject, with no desk bound theoretical component, so I used to allow the guys to play music while they were doing their Practical work. I came back after morning tea and the guys were already into their work. This exact song was playing and I stood almost dumbfounded when I heard the guitar work. One of the guys came up to me and asked if it was too loud. I told him, no, that was how David Gilmour should be played. Now it was his turn to look dumbfounded. The album had only just been released here in Oz, and he asked how I knew it was David Gilmour, you know, me being so old at 36, in the eyes of a 17 year old. He handed me the cassette case. He had taped the album, so it just the handwritten titles of the songs from the album ‘A Momentary Lapse Of Reason’, and he seemed struck dumb that I actually liked Pink Floyd. He told me that he also had their first album, ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, as well as the band’s double opus, ‘The Wall’. I just smiled and he asked what seemed so funny, and then I told him that the ‘Dark Side’ album was in fact the band’s eighth album, not including the 5 Compilation albums, all prior to that one. He just shook his head that an ‘old guy’ liked the same sort of music as he did, as well as all the other guys in the room, who also seemed stunned as well, as some of them had gathered round.

That album got played a lot in that last week, and I eventually dropped a successful hint for a Christmas present.

This album was the first studio album after Roger Waters had left the band in 1985. Waters said that Floyd was becoming a spent force, and he struck out on his own. Gilmour now gathered around him a tight group of musicians to join him and Nick Mason (drums), and Rick Wright. (keyboards) This was a distinct move away from the Waters led Floyd sound of so many years, and is credited almost as a Gilmour solo album. There was legal problems over use of the name Pink Floyd, stemming from Waters himself, and the bad feeling between him and the other three. Waters was well into a very strong solo career, and had released a big selling solo album at around the same time as this Floyd album. After the legal impasse was worked out, this was the first time back in the studio as Floyd, and this album is the result from that. It received widespread critical acclaim, mostly because reviewers all assumed Floyd could not actually be Floyd without Waters. Notwithstanding, it sold extremely well, and the album was a huge chart success, even if it did not make Number One that five earlier Floyd albums did, this one topping out at Number 2. It sold enough to make the album four times multi platinum.

The band took the album on tour in 1987. The tour was originally scheduled for 11 weeks. The first part of the tour was in the UK, and also North America, and lasted 18 weeks. The band took a 6 week break over the Christmas of 1987, and then resumed the tour with this time a World tour that lasted a further 7 months, so that original 11 week tour turned into a more than 200 concert tour lasting just under 12 months, and the tour was reprised in 1989 for a further 2 months through Europe. That tour was made into a hugely selling Video and later DVD as well as a double album of songs taken from the tour and released as ‘The Delicate Sound Of Thunder’ album, the last Floyd album to use primarily vinyl as the main release for their albums.

This clip features an extended guitar break from Gilmour, and in my opinion is the best version of this song. As you view the clip, be aware that this tour was in 1987, 88, and 89. The light show behind the band is still as good as some you see these days from the big band tours, so for 12 years ago, this was THE best light show going around. It’s a long clip, and wonderfully shows Gimour’s expressive guitar work that is immediately recognised as his style alone. The Guitar he is using here is his Candy Apple Fender Stratocaster 1957 reissue, this version made in 1984, and the one he used after the Waters split. His most used guitar is a 1969 Fender Strat, modified over the years. The tone from this guitar especially is distinctive of the way Gilmour plays especially here with his use of the phrasing and sustained notes, and his use of the Tremolo arm.

The acrimony between Waters and the rest of the band persisted for some time, and it was only for the Live 8 concert in 2005 that all 4 members appeared on the same stage again, after a hiatus of 25 years since the last live performance.

When asked what he thought of this first Pink Floyd album without him, Waters said that it was a pretty fair forgery. Later his opinion mellowed, and he said that there was some music from it that he could have worked with.

Sadly original founding member Syd Barrett died in 2006. He left after Floyd’s second album replaced by his good friend David Gimour.

Two years later Richard Wright also passed away, and here’s the link to that post.

The name of the band itself is something always discussed. The name is a compilation of two men who Syd Barrett had in his vast record collection, the legendary Blues artists Pink Anderson and Floyd Council from the 50’s and early 60’s. Originally the band name selected was ‘The Pink Floyd Sound’, soon just to become just Pink Floyd.

Satire by  Shawn Goodwin

One of the most common complaints about President Obama is that he spends more time apologizing for America than standing up for it. The man gives off the impression that America is no better, and in fact, somewhat worse than, the other countries of the world. The term “American exceptionalism” cannot be found in the president’s mental dictionary, because he believes in that about as much as he believes in unicorns, leprechauns, and tax-cutting Democrats. Besides, it is difficult to explain American exceptionalism when you are always face-to-waist with other world leaders, a position Barack Obama found himself in last weekend when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito:

Obama on Monday was in China, having wrapped up the Japan leg of his Asia trip two days earlier. But Washington’s punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the US president had disgraced his country two days earlier by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan’s Emperor Akihito.

Calling the calisthenics that President Obama performed, a “deep bow,” is like calling Jessica Simpson “a little dim.” The term just doesn’t even begin to cover it. Most casual observers figured the president was either going to clean Emperor Akihito’s shoes or pick up the shiny penny that must have been on the sidewalk. Of course, considering the vanity of Chairman Bow, he is probably just enjoying his own reflection in the newly-waxed floor. Nevertheless, the event has given comedians weeks of material, and has pundits on both sides of the aisle breaking out the face palm.

Political talk shows have played and replayed the moment from the second day of Obama’s week-long Asia tour, which set the blogosphere on fire and chat show tongues wagging.

“I don’t know why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan. But it’s not appropriate for an American president to bow to a foreign one,” said conservative pundit William Kristol speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, adding that the gesture bespoke a United States that has become weak and overly-deferential under Obama.

With all due respect to Mr. Kristol, that statement is incorrect. America passed “overly-deferential” about three exits back. Since January 20, the nation has been boldly going where no one in America has gone before. Welcome to Submissiveville. Population: Us.

You see, the president has a problem understanding protocol, and he has little to no desire to learn. Why else would he fold his hands above his belt during the Pledge of Allegiance? Heck, that is not even Obama’s worst offense. Some anonymous sources (read: Bill Clinton) claim that the president flushes tattered American flags down the toilet, puts on a hat during the National Anthem, and moons the Jefferson Memorial at every opportunity. A story like that has got to be true!

Part of this is President Obama’s fault and part of it is not. It is his fault because when he is at a cocktail party with Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and the guy who invented “Mr. Microphone,” Barack Obama believes he is the smartest man in the room. So, when some pimply-faced diplomatic geek with an “I (Heart) SecState” tie tells the president that he is not supposed to bow to a foreign leader, Obama ignores him. Global hilarity ensues. On the other hand, it is not his fault because he is so thoroughly unprepared for the job. Community organizing does not usually lend itself to state dinners with political giants, so Obama makes things up as he goes along.   Again, hilarity ensues.

To modify a famous movie quote, “Scrawny, arrogant, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” For all of President Obama’s alleged smarts, the man is just not that bright. He tells the world that America is a bad place filled with bad people, but forgets that his remarks are seen and heard by Americans immediately afterward. He tells America that he is tough on terrorism, and then dishonors the memories of those who died on September 11th by bringing the architect of the attacks to New York City for a civilian trial. He cheats at Scrabble, and then expects to get a triple word score with a made-up word. No one is dumb enough to believe that “ZQAJ” is an acceptable word. The problem arises when Obama believes we are stupid, and sadly, he believes this every waking moment.

In the grand scheme of things, President Obama’s bow is pretty small potatoes. However, when combined with his other miscues – including a bow to the king of Saudi Arabia in April – they add up to a big pile of lima beans. Unfortunately for us, our current president treats America like leftovers.

FamilySecurityMatters.org’s official satirist, Shawn Goodwin, is a blogger and police detective from Philly.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

By William Warren

See more Cartoons by William Warren, and Great Articles at NetRight Nation Blog

By Alan Caruba

I never cease to marvel at the environmental alarmists who create one “crisis” after another using wretchedly bad “science” to support their scams. On Tuesday, November 24, the Global Footprint Network is going to “release new data on the Ecological Footprint of 100 nations and humanity as a whole, and the current ledgers are sobering.”

Well, of course, they’re sobering. Everything the Greens announce is sobering because, as you well know, the oceans are rising, the glaciers and polar caps are melting, we’re running out of oil, every animal on Earth is endangered, incandescent light bulbs and global warming will destroy all life on Earth, yada, yada, yada.

“The figures provide a data-driven look at some of the most pressing issues facing humanity, from climate change to equitable distribution of resources.”

Is the “equitable distribution of resources” the same as Barack Obama’s “redistribution of wealth”? Is this shorthand of every liberal’s wet dream, communism? Oh, yeah. Been there, seen it, don’t want any part of it. After giving communism a try for over seventy years, the Soviet Union imploded because it doesn’t work, never has, and never will.

After Chairman Mao Zedong introduced communism to China, his various programs managed to kill off several millions through starvation until his death allowed a revision toward capitalism that initiated the transformation that holds out vastly improved lives for its 1.3 billion citizens.

However, according to the Global Footprint Network, “Humanity now requires the resources it would take almost one and a half planets to sustainably produce, according to figures to be released.”

The Greens have an established pattern. They use bogus computer modeling to conjure up scads of “data” that take years to debunk and dispute. In the meantime, billions are wasted on their schemes.

This new hogwash conveniently debuts just before the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. The many delegates will wine and dine their way through tons of champagne, caviar, and other delicacies while trying to convince everyone the Earth is doomed unless virtually all industrial activity is ended

They will warn that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are responsible for “global warming”, but there is NO global warming beyond what the Sun provides and CO2 plays no role whatever in climate change.

The phony “carbon footprint” ignores the fact that carbon compounds form the basis for all known life on Earth!

Their bogus “carbon footprints” ignore the fact that CO2 is vital to life because it is to all vegetation what oxygen is to all animals. It is food! More CO2 is better than less because it would provide for more abundant crop yields, healthier forests, and would reduce the spread of deserts.

The “carbon footprint” and the mountains of phony data built around it provides the Global Footprint Network the ability to announce that “The new numbers also reveal a growing disparity between those countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per capita and those with the smallest.” This is their way of saying that nations that produce more food and more commodities have an unfair advantage over those that do not.

It ignores the fact that “poor” nations are famous for despotism, oppression, and corruption, none of which have anything to do with whether they have abundant resources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. It has everything to do with encouraging class or tribal warfare, religious strife, and all the ills common to humanity.

The key to spotting the Big Green Lie is the word “sustainability.”

Sustainability is a subterfuge for the destruction of property rights, a concept so essential to success in America that it is protected by the Constitution.

Wherever you see the word “sustainability”, you know that the Greens are emphasizing “renewable energy” (solar and wind) which cannot begin to compare with oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable energy is responsible for a mere one percent of all electricity generated in the United States and reliance upon it will leave people in nations such as Great Britain freezing to death in the dark.

The Greens want to replace hydrocarbon fuels with “biofuels” such as ethanol which diverts real food like corn into a useless form of energy that reduces mileage and actually emits more CO2! The Greens want to pack humanity into crowded cities, forbidding people from living in suburbs filled with trees and lawns. They want to reduce vehicle size and encourage the use of electric vehicles.

There is little evidence that the Earth is running out of oil or other sources of energy. Oil not only provides for transportation, but is the basis for fertilizers and other beneficial chemicals that ensure more crop yield to feed humans and livestock. It has a thousand other uses as well. Coal is so abundant that its use is calculated in centuries.

In short, the Greens want to impose the most stupid and evil standards and restrictions on human life. They would drag humanity back to an age when horses and oxen were the modes of transportation and means of agriculture.

This is the goal of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and its treaty to impose a One World Order with its incumbent oppressive government structure to deprive its victims of privacy, dignity, and initiative. And, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, of life itself.

The “carbon footprint”, along with “global warming”, should be consigned to the dustbin of failed and false economic and schemes known as socialism and communism. They are a synonym for suffering and death.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

By Anna Edney and Dan Friedman

The Senate voted 60-39 along party lines Saturday night to take up sweeping healthcare overhaul legislation, a victory that belies the tough haul ahead to assuage lingering Democratic concerns that threaten final passage.

Four moderate Democrats – Sens. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut – have made clear they will help Republicans thwart final passage if Majority Leader Reid does not change the opt-out public plan in his $848 billion bill. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, did not vote.

“I’ve already alerted the leader, and I’m promising my colleagues, that I’m prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included,” Lincoln said Saturday afternoon.

Lincoln, preceded by Landrieu by about two hours, was the last Democratic holdout to reveal she would vote for cloture on the motion to proceed, giving Reid the 60th vote he needed to move forward on the bill.

Senators will now scatter to their home states for Thanksgiving break and return Monday, Nov. 30, to begin debate on amendments. President Obama wants the Senate to pass the bill before Christmas. Saturday night’s cloture vote, which doubled as a motion to proceed to the bill, allowed Reid to bring up his proposal as a substitute amendment.

Immediately after the vote, Reid suggested the version of a public option in his bill could be altered.

Asked in a post-vote press conference how he can line up 60 votes for his bill in the face of the moderates’ opposition to its proposed national public option with a state opt-out, Reid appeared to open the door to a less-robust alternative being developed by Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., Landrieu and others.

Reid said the group, which also includes Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., hopes “to find a public option that is acceptable to all the Democrats.” Asked if he had requested the alternative, Reid said, “No, it is my understanding that Senator Landrieu said today that she is working with Senator Schumer and Carper.”

Carper’s alternative would require a public option be established the same day exchanges created in the plan take effect, but only in states that do not meet a yet-to-be determined affordability standard for coverage. It would begin under HHS direction but eventually have a nonprofit, presidentially appointed board, Carper has said.

But such an option would face opposition from liberals who could defect, public option backers said. “Four members of the Senate aren’t gonna tell the other 55 what to do on these issues,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “I expect this bill to pass with a public option.” Brown said he would not draw “lines in the sand” but said other liberals might. “We’ve compromised four times already,” he said.

Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., another backer of a public option, downplayed Reid’s statement, saying, “Harry has always said that. And he has always meant it.”

Landrieu insisted that any public option resemble a trigger approach championed by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Landrieu wants the version to be a “free-standing, premium-support, competitive community option,” rather than the national, government-run plan in the bill.

Lincoln said private insurers can be held accountable without the public option.

“We can still force private insurance plans that participate in the exchanges to provide standard benefit packages that are easy to compare and more fairly priced,” she said. “We will be bringing millions of new customers to the exchanges so insurers would be motivated to lower their prices and be competitive.”

Lieberman previously said he would not support final passage of the bill if it includes a public option, and Nelson has expressed similar concerns.

Nelson also has said he has concerns the legislation permits federal funding of abortions. The Senate overhaul proposal does not allow federal funds to be used for abortion except in extreme cases and tasks HHS with deciding if and how the public option might cover abortions.

Senate Republicans presented a unified front in what aides described as a coordinated attack on Reid’s bill in the past two days of floor debate and in media appearances, blasting the bill’s size, cost and outcomes. In an effort directed by Senate Minority Leader McConnell and assisted by Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, leadership aides arranged for about 15 GOP senators to appear on their local television and radio stations, while all but seven GOP senators spoke on the floor Friday and today, GOP aides said.

“There has really been a team effort on making that happen,” said a Republican leadership aide. “That doesn’t always happen.”

McConnell said a vote in favor of this bill “is a vote in favor of tax burden of the American people in the middle of double-digit unemployment” raising “health insurance premiums on people who were told they should expect their health insurance costs to go down” and of continuing “the out-of-control spending binge Congress has been on all year.”

Reid said the vote was only a vote to debate the overhaul, not in support of anything.

“Let us negotiate. Let us deliberate. Let us debate,” Reid said. “Our country needs this debate.”

Republicans also lamented the party-line vote. The vote represents “the first time in half a century that a historic piece of legislation … was enacted on party lines,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, whose vote Democrats still hope to win. “That would be a sad commentary on the political process.”

Snowe said it is one thing to debate these public option alternatives and “another thing whether or not they’re prepared to incorporate bipartisan proposals.”

The vote came before a packed gallery, with senators sitting quietly in their seats, even though the outcome was effectively determined. Breaking the somber mood during the vote, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., laughing, in a voice audible in the press gallery, joked “What’s going to happen?”

TonyfromOz adds …..

Watch as the Pork starts to get loaded onto this to win key votes. This is going to be the biggest bacon bonanza in history.

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily and the National Journal

By Peter Cohn

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA)

Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley took a swipe today (Fri) at the White House and congressional Democrats for not taking nominees’ tax troubles seriously enough.

“The bar has definitely been lowered with this administration’s nominees, in regard to tax compliance,” Grassley said at the outset of a hearing on Treasury Department nominees.

The panel heard testimony from three Treasury nominees at the sparsely attended hearing, including that of Lael Brainard, President Obama’s pick for undersecretary of international affairs. Brainard’s nomination has been held up for months by the committee’s vetting of tax records, which revealed that she and her husband had been late making several payments to the tune of about $1,300.

There were also questions about documents verifying the immigration status of household employees and an in-home office deduction Brainard claimed.

Grassley did not say the issues would hold up Brainard’s nomination. But he did express frustration with the pattern he has seen from the Obama administration, including with Treasury Secretary Geithner and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who withdrew from consideration as HHS Secretary-designate after it was disclosed he owed over $100,000 in back taxes.

“Prior to this administration, we had never seen nominees with more than $100,000 tax problems, or the inability to accurately respond to committee questionnaires multiple times, or the lack of straight answers from nominees,” Grassley said. —-

“Anyone watching this process closely now knows that a nominee can get away with not paying taxes, or consistently pay them months late, or not follow normal procedures and still be confirmed. All they have to do is blame it on their incompetent accountant, their spouse, or computer software or hardware,” he added.

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, who presided over the hearing while Finance Chairman Max Baucus was home with his ailing mother in Montana, called the tax discrepancies “troubling.” But he noted all taxes and penalties have been paid in full. Conrad told Brainard “no one disputes your talents” and praised her “reputation for honesty and integrity.”

Lawmakers pressed the nominees on issues such as tax reform, the swelling federal debt burden and China’s currency devaluation, which has fueled the country’s export boom and widened the U.S. trade gap. Other Treasury nominees testifying were Mary John Miller to be assistant secretary for financial markets and Charles Collyns to be assistant secretary for international finance.

The panel was also slated to vote on four other nominees: Ellen Murray, to be assistant HHS secretary for resources and technology; Bryan Samuels for HHS commissioner on children, youth and families; Islam Siddiqui for chief agricultural negotiator at the office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and Michael Punke, for ambassador to the World Trade Organization. The holdup means Obama might be without two key trade negotiators at the Nov. 30 WTO ministerial in Geneva. But it could not vote on them because a quorum was not present.

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily

By Michelle Malkin

The Boy Scouts’ motto is: Be prepared. Who knew it meant preparing to defend themselves against purple-shirted union thuggery over community service? Kids, pay attention. This is a teachable moment for all of you on power, politics and Big Labor’s culture of corruption.

Last week at a city council meeting in Allentown, Pa., a top official of the local Service Employees International Union chapter ranted about 17-year-old Scout Kevin Anderson’s park cleanup work. Anderson devoted some 200 hours to the job in order to earn an Eagle Scout badge. He picked up trash and helped clear a 1,000-foot walking path with fellow members of Boy Scouts Troop 301 of Center Valley.

But SEIU’s Nick Balzano gave them hell instead of thanks.

Balzano disparaged altruistic efforts in city parks and asserted that “there is (sic) to be no volunteers” since his union members were laid off. He then issued a witch hunt threat: “We’ll also be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails. We may file another grievance on that.” Citing union rules, he gave the Allentown city council, the Boy Scouts and all potential volunteers an iron-fisted ultimatum: “None of them can pick up a hoe. They can’t pick up a shovel. They can’t plant a flower. They can’t clear a bicycle path. They can’t do anything. Our people do that.”

That’s right. Balzano was ready to bludgeon the Boy Scout because his gung-ho volunteerism posed a threat to the SEIU labor monopoly. The outrageous display of Boss Balzano’s union protectionism provoked a national furor. SEIU headquarters in Washington immediately blamed “the disreputable Fox News and other right-wing outlets like Michelle Malkin’s accuracy challenged blog” for the backlash. While decrying their critics’ “fiction,” SEIU distanced itself from Balzano, denying that he was a top union leader and dismissing his remarks as “unauthorized.”

Fact: U.S. Department of Labor records from 2008 (their most recent filing) show that Balzano is no rogue rank-and-file member. He currently serves on the SEIU local’s executive board and previously served as president.

Fact: The union tried to minimize Balzano’s grievance threat as “inappropriate.” But the dirty open secret is that public-sector unions have routinely attacked volunteer workers who threaten their stranglehold.

Last June, union officials in Baraboo, Wis., filed a complaint against volunteer firefighters who built sandbag barricades to protect the city from record flooding. They whined that city Department of Public Works employees should have been called first and demanded overtime pay (for work they didn’t do) to compensate them.

Yes, kids, the city was knee-deep in water and the government union got mad that other people scrambled to work together in an emergency to put sand in bags, save homes and help their neighbors. Public-sector unions aren’t about serving the public interest. They’re about serving their people, their power and their self-preservation.

In Montpelier, Vt., several years ago, the teachers union went after a superstar educator, Bill Corrow. The students, staff and supervisors at his school loved the social studies teacher and Vietnam veteran. But the Vermont Education Association hated him because he was a volunteer who did not accept payment for his elective course. Teachers unions are all for parents and schoolchildren volunteering their time to engage in political lobbying and power-expanding initiatives on the union’s behalf. But God help the community service-oriented individual with a passion for sharing his knowledge in their classrooms.

In California, union heavies in the Sacramento area sued a nonprofit environmental group for using college-age volunteers on a state-funded project to clean up a canyon and build a community trail. Big Labor dusted off an old law that requires community service volunteers to be paid prevailing wages for doing the same kind of cleanup that Allentown Boy Scout Kevin Anderson was punished for doing freely. The law was finally repealed, but not without a brass-knuckles fight.

As National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix, whose group monitors forced union abuses, pointed out during the battle: “Discerning California union bosses’ real agenda … is not hard. Volunteer workers don’t have to pay compulsory union dues to serve their communities, but most paid workers on public projects in California do. … (It) is yet another example of how government-authorized compulsory union dues corrupt the political process and furnish unscrupulous union officials with an enormous incentive to act against the public interest.”

SEIU President Andy Stern in Washington speaks for all of Big Labor when he describes his organizing philosophy: “We prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.” President Obama, who has made national service an administration priority, has been and will continue to be silent about the Big Labor bullies who make public enemies of Scouts with trash bags and hoes.

You see, kids, Obama owes Stern (his most frequent White House visitor) and his union brethren. SEIU alone poured more than $60 million in compulsory membership dues into Obama’s campaign and leaned on its workers to “volunteer” to knock on doors, place phone calls and send out mailers for the Democratic Party. No good deed goes unpunished by union bosses — unless it benefits their political empire.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2009).

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters

By Alan Caruba

Other than the complete destruction of the U.S. economy, one sixth of which is generated by the healthcare profession, I cannot see any reason for the bill that Harry Reid is pushing for a Saturday evening vote in the Senate.

It has taken less than a year for the Democrats, led by Barack Obama, to saddle Americans with such enormous debt that your grandchildren will be paying it off. The so-called “bail-outs” have proven to be a bonanza for Wall Street firms on good terms with the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, whose mantra is “It’s all Bush’s fault.” The “stimulus” bill has not stimulated anything except lies about “jobs created and saved.”

Rush Limbaugh calls Congress a “Kamakazi Congress” and the “Suicide Bomber Congress” because it is obvious that any Democrat Congressman or woman and any Senator who votes for this atrocious bill, probably without having read it, will be thrown out of office. And should be!

Ignoring all the town hall protests, the tea parties across the nation, and the massive September 12 rally in Washington, D.C. has to come with a penalty, but by then it will be too late for most Americans.

The November 23 edition of Business Week had a cover story by Catherine Arnst titled “Why Wait for Health Reform: Ten Ways to Cut Costs Right Now.” It makes clear that all the so-called reforms contained in the 2,000-plus page bill could be achieved in ways that do not require a monster piece of legislation intended to impose socialized medicine on America.

In brief, here’s how to achieve an improved, and more affordable healthcare system:

1. Crack down on fraud and abuse. The amount of fraud in the Medicare system is estimated to cost $125-175 billion every year. Since the system operates as a kind of honor code, the government has been unsuccessful in detecting fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, private insurers such as the Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association report its anti-fraud efforts resulted in a savings of $350 million last year, a 43% increase from 2007.

2. Develop a healthy workforce. Wellness programs pay real dividends for the companies that sponsor them.

3. Coordinate care through family doctors. A patient suffering from one or more chronic diseases may depend on several doctors and “rarely do they communicate with one another.” This results in waste, often due to duplication of treatments. By designating a primary care doctor to organize care with specialists, pharmacists, and physical therapists, sharing medical records electronically, it is estimated that $250 to $325 billion could be saved.

4. Make health a community effort. Campaigns to encourage people to eat better, get more exercise, and other options could greatly reduce health-related costs.

5. Stop infections in hospitals. Every year, 1.7 million patients develop infections while in hospital and 99,000 die as a result. They can be reduced if hospitals put more emphasis on solving the problem.

6. Get patients to take their medicine. Three out of four Americans do not take their medicine as directed. Noncompliance leads to more doctor visits, hospitalizations, and treatments that add an estimated $177 billion a year to the nation’s health-care bill.

7. Discuss options near the end of life. End of life care can be especially costly. When patients and the families are informed they can choose pain management, nursing care, and psychological support, all of which reduce costs.

8. Use insurance to manage chronic disease. In 2009, UnitedHealthcare introduced a Diabetes Health Plan that offers rewards to patients who manage their disease properly. The idea is to contain costs by giving patients financial incentives based on their particular health issues rather than a one-size-fits-all approach…something the proposed healthcare reform will impose on all Americans regardless of their particular health problems.

9. Let well-informed patients decide. Too many Americans think that drastic surgery and other procedures are the only way they can survive a healthcare crisis, but such procedures extend lives or prevent heart attacks in only a tiny minority of especially sick patients. Few really know this. Educating patients can reduce wasted health spending by up to 37%.

10. Apologize to the patient. When hospitals reveal mistakes to patients and their families, investigate the cause, and offer a settlement, it takes the lawyers out of the process. Honesty really is the best policy.

Instead, Congress is getting ready to impose a massive bureaucracy that will be put in charge of healthcare, increasing the nation’s deficit and debt as millions are added to the Medicare ranks and private insurance companies are driven out of business. The loss of freedom will be beyond calculation as Americans must deal with bureaucrats instead of their physicians and other healthcare professionals.

It is the worst possible “reform” imaginable. We’re running out of time to call our Senators, mostly Democrats, and demand they vote NO!

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at Warning Signs. A business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Read more thought provoking articles at Warning Signs

by Anna Edney, with Dan Friedman contributing

One of three Democrats who held out saying whether he will vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to healthcare overhaul legislation Saturday today said he will vote in favor of the motion, making it likely Democrats will have the 60 votes they need to begin debate.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he will vote for cloture but cautioned that does not mean he supports the bill.

“It is only to begin debate and an opportunity to make improvements,” Nelson said. “If you don’t like a bill, why block your own opportunity to amend it?”

He added he retained his prerogative to join an expected Republican filibuster to block a final vote on the bill if changes are not made.

For his part, Senate Majority Whip Durbin backed off a statement he made earlier today when asked whether Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., another moderate withholding her vote along with Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., had shared how she will vote. “She’s told Sen. Reid,” he responded.

Durbin said his remark was misinterpreted.

“Sen. Lincoln has had a number of conversations with Sen. Reid about the healthcare reform legislation,” he said. “But Sen. Lincoln has not yet signaled her intention as to how she will vote on tomorrow’s cloture motion.”

Lincoln’s office said she is reviewing the bill, and a spokeswoman said, “No other senator speaks for Sen. Lincoln.”

Lincoln appears to have embraced the party leaders’ argument that Democrats should vote to move to the bill, even if they oppose it, and try to change it on the floor. “Knowing that not all 100 of us are going to be able to agree on anything, you have got be able to depend a little bit on the process,” Lincoln said Thursday. “It gives you an opportunity to make the case and move things forward.”

Landrieu has not revealed how she will vote but appeared in the last few days to be leaning toward approval to allow debate to begin.

“We’re not assuming a thing,” Durbin said. “We’re working hard to bring all Democrats together.”

Republicans will have a chance to offer an alternative bill if they want to, Durbin said, but leaders will work to unite Democrats to keep the GOP from dragging out the amendment process.

“That will mean changing some of the current provisions in our bill, I’m sure, before we get to final passage,” he said of getting Democrats on board. “If you think we’re just going to sit here 30 hours after 30 hours after 30 hours until it’s Jan. 1, it’s not going to happen.”

As Reid works to bring Democrats on board, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announced a deal today with the leader to include in the overhaul his proposal to open the exchange to some people with employer-sponsored insurance.

The legislation originally exempted people earning 400 percent of the federal poverty level or less from a requirement to have coverage if their premiums total between 8 and 9.8 percent of income. Wyden’s proposal allows them to convert their tax-free employer health subsidies into a voucher to purchase insurance on the exchange.

11-20-09: (L-R) Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) hold a news conference about health care reform legislation

Republicans today used fresh guidelines from a government panel regarding breast cancer screening to claim the Democrats’ bill will lead to rationing of care. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the looser guidelines are a peek at what will happen when the government is more involved in health care and influences insurance coverage decisions to the detriment of women.

“This is how rationing starts,” Senate Minority Whip Kyl said.

Durbin pointed out today that many experts, including those in the administration, have rejected the mammogram recommendations. Asked how that rejection will bode for the overhaul’s attempt to employ comparative effectiveness research to cut down on unnecessary care, Durbin said, “Just because a panel of doctors comes to a conclusion doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the right conclusion.”

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily

By Andrew Bolt

Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Union.

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

I’m beginning to find this theme a little odd in the lead up to this Copenhagen Conference. Have you noticed how it seems that some World leaders (and it always seems to be the European leaders) seem to be having roughly the same ’slip of the tongue’. Surely they can’t all be just making the same mistake. Do they know something that we are not being ‘drip fed’?

Sure, this talk of the warmists at Copenhagen planning a new “world government” is crazy. I just wish the warmists wouldn’t talk of it themselves. Take the new and first president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy:

The Climate Conference in Copenhagen is another step forward towards the global management of our planet…

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

By Conn Carroll

On his radio show yesterday, former Sen. Fred Thompson upped his criticism of President Barack Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan, predicting:

It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost. I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

Our enemies are now emboldened and our friends are discouraged. We cannot prevail if the American people are not willing to make the sacrifices necessary for an extended effort. The case has not been made to them to justify this effort. The case can only be made by the president. This president is unable or unwilling to make that case.

Thompson is half right. If the Obama administration chooses to deny its field commander’s request for the troops and resources necessary to fully implement a counterinsurgency strategy, the results would likely be disastrous. Half measures are guaranteed to fail.

But all hope is not lost. On the campaign trail President Obama showed he has the leadership and the rhetorical skills necessary to inspire Americans. As a candidate last year, and even as recently as this August, President Obama acknowledged the centrality of defeating the Taliban to American security. That President Obama could win this war.

Victory is still possible. It all depends on whether the President’s heart is in it.

Conn Carroll is the Assistant Director of Strategic Communications at The Heritage Foundation and is also an Editor at The Foundry.

Read more from The Heritage Foundation at The Foundry

Harry Reid claims his 2,000-page bill will reduce the deficit. He's quite the comedian

The Patriot Post  - Friday Digest

The Foundation

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” –Thomas Jefferson

Government & Politics

Health Care Cost Nightmare

It’s an accepted fact that no government program comes in on budget, and this maxim likely won’t change with the health care legislation that recently passed the House. Republican analysis of the bill in the Senate Budget Committee reveals that a more realistic price tag for the House version, after the benefit provisions are figured in, comes to $3 trillion over 10 years, not $1 trillion as Democrats claim. The disparity comes from the fact that the taxes and fees meant to pay for the bill occur immediately, while major aspects of “reform” won’t be implemented until at least 2013. Thus, the true cost of the plan won’t reveal itself until well after the current president has stood for re-election.

Despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) assurances that the bill will lower health care costs, another report released this week by the nonpartisan Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services found that the House plan would actually raise costs by $289 billion over 10 years. Furthermore, Medicare would be cut by half a trillion dollars, leading to reduced benefits and services. —-

On that note, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Senate’s 2,074-page, $849 billion version of the health care takeover plan. Reid has laid out an ambitious plan to pass HarryCare by Christmas.

The Senate bill clocks in a tad cheaper than the House version in part because many major provisions, such as the public option, would be delayed until 2014 — one year later than the House bill. Reid also claims the bill will reduce the federal deficit by $650 billion in its second 10 years. A 2,000-page bill will reduce the deficit? That Reid is quite the comedian. Besides, while the Congressional Budget Office says the bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, CBO cautions that its effect on the deficit over the following decade would be “subject to substantial uncertainty.” That’s comforting, isn’t it?

Notably, the Senate bill includes a 40 percent tax on high-deductible “Cadillac” insurance plans (though, naturally, Congress’ Cadillac plan is exempt) as opposed to the House’s tax on the “rich.” It also includes a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgeries (how will Nancy feel about that?), which apparently helps pay for providing — surprise — federal subsidies for abortion.

Reid wants to hold a vote to begin debate as early as this weekend. He has “promised” not to use the procedural tactic of reconciliation, which would allow him to pass the bill with only 51 votes instead of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — but experience shows how little we should trust Democrats’ promises.

As for that prized debate, Harkin referred to a Republican call to read the full bill on the Senate floor as a political tactic, and he threatens that Democrats will hold a live quorum to keep everyone in the chamber while the reading is taking place — which sounds awfully like a political tactic to us.

It’s interesting that both parties seem to view the public reading of the bill as some sort of parliamentary game. Perhaps if public readings of proposed legislation took place all of the time, we would actually know what Congress is up to. What a novel idea.

Democrat senators who pride themselves as being deficit hawks will have a tough choice to make in the coming days and weeks. Will they support HarryCare, which makes them look like hypocrites when they face the voters next year and in 2012? Or will they do the right thing and stop this runaway entitlement before it shoots out of the gate?

The BIG Lie

Where is the constitutional authority for a federal mandate that individuals must buy health insurance?

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) says that one’s easy: “The very first enumerated power gives the power to provide for the common defense and the general welfare. So it’s right on, right on the front end.”

For those who don’t follow Sen. Merkley’s brilliant explication, he refers to the Constitution’s Preamble, which, among several other things, says that the Constitution was written to “promote the general Welfare,” though the Preamble doesn’t list enumerated powers.

Furthermore, James Madison, primary author of the Constitution, vehemently disagreed, writing, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

Thomas Jefferson likewise stated that if Congress could “do anything they please to provide for the general welfare … [i]t would reduce the whole instrument [the Constitution] to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.” For the simpletons in Congress, Jefferson concluded, “Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them.” Regardless of what Senator Jeff Merkley says.

This Week’s ‘Braying Jackass’ Award

“We even have blacks voting against the health care bill. You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.” –race hustler Jesse Jackson, calling out Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus who dared to stray from the Democrat Plantation by voting against PelosiCare

Faith and Family: Shut Up, She Explained

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), like every other Democrat, could use a constitutional education. Oddly enough, though, the part of the Constitution DeGette needs brushing up on is the Left’s favorite part: The First Amendment. Leftists have abused it for decades to hammer their agenda into our laws and culture. But they have also intentionally ignored its guarantee of the free exercise of religion. To them, the Constitution is just a scrap of paper written by dead white men. It’s old and irrelevant today except for the few phrases that can be used to promote their socialism.

Regarding the health care legislative monstrosity working its way through Congress and the input of religious groups, DeGette said that “religiously-affiliated groups … should be shut out of the process” because of their opposition to federal funding of abortions. “Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country,” she sulked. “I’ve got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn’t have input.”

As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins observed, “According to her, if a group of people who are in association with one another because of their Christian faith, they should not have a voice in the crafting of public policy. What she is asserting is that if your ideas and actions are a product of your faith, you’re a second class citizen and your voice should not be heard.”

New & Notable Legislation

The House passed Medicare “doc fix” by a vote of 243-183 Thursday. The bill would permanently fix the way doctors who provide care for Medicare patients are reimbursed. The projected cost of the fix is $210 billion over 10 years and it doesn’t include a way to pay for it, meaning that while Barack Obama has changed his tune and is now decrying the deficit, the House is busy adding to it.

Legacy of the American Revolution

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. … A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” –John Adams

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Bowing to a Perceived Legacy

He’s at it again. While in Japan as part of his eight-day trip to Asia this week, Barack Obama greeted Emperor Akihito of Japan with a deep bow. While protocol dictates that his (Akihito’s, not BO’s) subjects bow before the emperor, heads of state are considered equals and need not bow — in fact, most don’t, instead simply shaking hands with Akihito. In February 2007, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney greeted Akihito with a warm handshake. Obama’s deep bow signifies great deference to a superior — a seemingly strange act for a narcissist.

Earlier this year, Obama all but scraped his forehead on the floor before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as well, another mark of the jarring trend in his revamped foreign policy. President George W. Bush’s foreign policy was considered by the world’s elite and diplomatic striped-pants crowd to be that of an uninformed American cowboy hick, but Bush’s successor is certainly making up for any strength the U.S. showed in the last eight years. The story behind the bow is obvious then: Obama is simply continuing his World Apology Tour.

From the Left: Cold Cash Placed on Ice

Friday the 13th was indeed an unlucky day for former Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA). It was the day he was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for his participation in a bribery scheme involving a Nigerian politician — a scheme which led to additional charges of money laundering and racketeering.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III handed down the sentence, which was less than the 27 years sought by federal prosecutors, after calling the case “the most extensive and pervasive pattern of corruption in the history of Congress” and “a cancer on the body politic.” Jefferson was also ordered to repay over $470,000 to the government, but prospects of repayment are slim as the former congressman and his wife recently filed for bankruptcy.

Jefferson has 10 days to appeal; otherwise, he’ll be movin’ on up to a federal corrections facility to begin his sentence. To borrow from an old lawyer joke, what do you call one corrupt Congressman in jail? A good start.

Clinton Judge Impeached

A federal district judge who overturned a Louisiana law banning partial-birth abortion is now on trial himself, facing impeachment charges before Congress. G. Thomas Porteous Jr., a Clinton appointee, is accused of seeking money and gifts from attorneys with cases before his court, stretching back to the 1980s when he was a state judge. By 2000, Porteous had run up credit card debts — mainly cash advances at casinos — exceeding $150,000. Other allegations against Porteous include declaring bankruptcy under a false name in 2001 and filing false financial disclosure statements.

The obvious question beckons: Was justice for sale? It’s unfortunate that Porteous appears to have a gambling problem because his questionable integrity could also have tainted his decisions. Porteous ruled against the partial-birth ban, calling it a “back-door effort” to limit abortion, despite overwhelming front door legislative support for the measure, and used his power on the bench to supplant that of the legislature. The system of government we hold dear depends on integrity in all three branches, and it seems that Louisiana doesn’t have the best track record on that front.

Army Corps of Engineers Blamed for Katrina Flooding

Let’s make it three-for-three with Louisiana and judges. “A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims,” reports The Washington Post. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled in favor of six residents who blamed the Army Corps for flooding in the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish, and he awarded $720,000 to the plaintiffs. Two residents of eastern New Orleans were not so lucky, as Duval said the Army was not at fault for flooding there. The Post notes the most important factor here: “The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.” Talk about windfall profits.

National Security

Bringing the Mountain to Mohammed

“Can you give me a case in United States history,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked of Attorney General Eric Holder this week, “where an enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?” Holder, the chief surrender-facilitator, was outlining to Congress the administration’s latest ploy to appease its über-Left base, namely, moving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) — the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11 — and four other al-Qa’ida 9/11 planners from Guantanamo to New York to be tried like ordinary civilians in a Manhattan federal court. When Holder hemmed and hawed (“I don’t know. I’d have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I’ve made…”), Graham shot back, “We’re making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I’ll answer it for you. The answer is no.”

The courtroom is located just a few blocks from what was once the World Trade Center.

What on earth could Holder be thinking? Okay, perhaps we’ve overstated our case a bit. After all, it’s not as though trying KSM in a U.S. court will be seen as a sign of weakness by America’s enemies — oh no, wait: it will. And it isn’t that doing this will put American lives in NYC at risk from potential al-Qa’ida attacks against the “Great Satan” — oh, um, guess it’ll do that too. So much so, in fact, that Sen. Chuck Schumer is seeking $75 million from the administration to cover terrorist shipping and handling. But at least it will keep the line between unlawful enemy combatants and common domestic criminals from blurring … or not. You get the picture.

Let’s also not forget that KSM, et al., will now enjoy our civil justice system’s constitutional protections — the same ones U.S. citizens get. Will waterboarding be considered “duress” for confession purposes under the U.S. civil justice system? How about a lack of Miranda warnings? (Holder refused to answer this question.) What about the federal rules of evidence and their impact on disclosure of sensitive intelligence collection methods? Will any issues be raised on appeal if a change of venue from Ground Zero is denied? These are merely a few of the countless questions that are now fair game for KSM and his lawyers. Eleven months ago, these thugs were ready, willing and able to plead guilty and to get their heavenly rewards. Now? Not so fast.

Before Holder’s decision, another option having a rich tradition in U.S. history and international law had been readily available: military tribunals. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s bizarre decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), which effectively — albeit temporarily — struck down military tribunals, Congress passed the 2006 Military Commissions Act specifically to reaffirm this judicial due process for illegal combatants, including KSM. Unfortunately, that option is now foreclosed.

As it is, whether he knows it or not, the Chosen One is betting his presidency on these trials. That’s because the American people understand one thing: As an illegal enemy combatant, KSM should not be entitled to the same rights and privileges as the innocent U.S. citizens he murdered on 9/11.

If these despicable vermin aren’t convicted, sentenced and put to death, America will not forget who allowed it to happen, “Chosen One” or not. That’s quite a gamble.

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“I don’t think it will be offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.” –Judge Barack Obama

When questioned later on being judge, jury and executioner, he clarified, “What I said was, people will not be offended if that’s the outcome. I’m not pre-judging, I’m not going to be in that courtroom, that’s the job of prosecutors, the judge and the jury. What I’m absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”

Support the Props, er, the Troops

Barack Obama traveled to Osan Air Base in South Korea Thursday on his way back from an eight-day trip to Asia. The Washington Post reports on the president’s interaction with the troops: “Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures. ‘You guys make a pretty good photo op,’ the president said.” Once again, it’s all about Obama. But he “supports” the troops!

The Post also noted, “He got a huge cheer when he told them he was increasing military pay. ‘That’s what you call an applause line,’ he said, before boarding his jet and taking off.” Could the commander in chief be any more out of touch with the troops he ostensibly leads?

Hurry Up and Wait

Last Saturday, President Obama asked Congress to delay investigations into the attack on U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood by jihadi Nidal Malik Hasan until federal and military authorities complete their own probes. Maybe he wants the investigation on the same timeline as his decision on troop levels in Afghanistan.

Obama asked lawmakers to “resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater,” apparently wanting to save that for KSM’s civilian trial in New York. Fortunately, Congress and the Pentagon are pressing ahead anyway. In the Senate, Joe Lieberman’s Homeland Security Committee opened its investigation Thursday, and in the House, Rep. Howard McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said he also will press ahead with an investigation. While Obama has said he is not opposed to congressional hearings, his delay request looks like he’s appeasing radical Muslims and avoiding the obvious conclusion in this case: That the Ft. Hood incident was a traitorous jihadi attack on military targets on American soil.

According to Obama, we have to wait for the current probes to “look at the motives of the alleged gunman, including his views and contacts.” Well, Mr. President, as we recounted last week (Warfront With Jihadistan: Right Here at Home), Hasan had “Soldier of Allah” printed on his business cards, he screamed “Allahu Akbar” while gunning down our soldiers and he exchanged emails with a radical Muslim cleric who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops.

So we already know all about Hasan’s motives, views and contacts. The dead of Ft. Hood deserve justice, but in today’s United States, especially under the Obama regime, that justice may be a long time in coming.

Immigration Front: Amnesty Back on the Table

If you felt an invisible slap in the face over the weekend, it was probably Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s announcement of plans to provide amnesty to the 14 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. She explained that everything’s different now that the Southwest border has been secured and fewer immigrants are entering. “[T]he federal government has dedicated unprecedented resources … and it’s made a real difference. … [S]eizures in all categories … are up dramatically.” Just this year over $34 million in cash has been seized.

The bitter 2007 debate over illegal immigration occurred “during a period of historically high levels of illegal entry,” Napolitano claimed. Now, however, with the recession and “better” enforcement, immigration numbers have dropped by more than half. “Requiring illegal immigrants to register to earn legal status … will strengthen our economy as these immigrants become full-paying taxpayers,” Napolitano said. Then, our newly minted citizens can come out of the shadows, join unions and end the cause of strife between them — the fact that illegals work for a fraction of the pay of union members. “Think about it: unions will never achieve the best terms for workers when a large part of the workforce is illegal and operates in a shadow economy,” Napolitano said. She has seen a “major shift” in the immigration landscape that the Obama administration hopes will make it easier to pass the Grand Amnesty.

Business & Economy

Hope ‘n’ Change: Stimulus Games

Folks in Arizona’s 15th Congressional District sure are happy right now. Or at least they would be if that district actually existed. But details shmetails! Obama’s Recovery.gov Web site reported 30 jobs saved or created in the nonexistent district. Fantasy districts didn’t stop there: 15 jobs were created in imaginary Oklahoma districts, 39 in phony Iowa districts and 25 in Connecticut’s fictional 42nd district — all at a cost of almost $30 million. Responding to the “unrealistic data,” the Obama administration cut 60,000-plus jobs from its most recent stimulus report. Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Rob Nabors hilariously claimed, “[T]hese are cautious, responsible steps to ensure that the information provided to the American people is accurate and reliable.”

One thing all too accurate is the number of Americans losing jobs at an alarming rate. The Associated Press reports that more than 15 million taxpayers — including many retirees – may “unexpectedly owe taxes … because the government was too generous with their Making Work Pay tax credit.” In other words, Uncle Sam goofed in administering a program — unheard of, we know.

Income Redistribution: Ponzi Motors

In the first volume increase since January 2008, sales at government-owned GM rose 6.6 percent last month. To celebrate the temporary sales bump driven by the government’s Cash for Clunkers rebate debacle — the one that paid taxpayer money to taxpayers who purchased vehicles — GM will repay $6.7 billion of the $49.9 billion in federal aid it received. GM has lost $88 billion since 2004 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June.

Consistent with the circular reasoning so in vogue with liberal visions of funding ObamaCare by taxing ObamaCare, GM is robbing Peter to pay Peter by repaying the government with money from a government contingency fund. While a glaring departure from the usual liberal schemes of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the ridiculousness of GM’s plan is too rich. What’s the logic in repaying taxpayer loans with taxpayer dollars? The astounding size of this automotive Ponzi scheme would make even Bernie Madoff blush.

In other automotive news, Ford, the only American car manufacturer that isn’t beholden to the Obama administration, reported a third-quarter profit of $1 billion. Have you driven a Ford lately?

Around the Nation: About Those Energy Savings…

Two expressions in pop culture of conflicting principles are Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” and Robert Heinlein’s TANSTAAFL — “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” When pitted against each other TANSTAAFL wins every time.

The latest example comes from Ohio, where electric utility FirstEnergy planned to leave two energy-saving compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs free on customer doorsteps. But the “free” bulbs are not actually free, despite lower energy consumption costs. The utility bought the bulbs for $3.50 each. How effective was the utility in negotiating a price for the bulbs? Not very. An Ace Hardware Web site advertises a five-pack of similar bulbs for $13.99, or $2.80 a bulb.

Is the overpriced bulb really free? No. The utility will charge average users an extra 60 cents per month on their electric bills for the next three years, or $21.60 altogether, to cover the cost of the bulbs and the electricity not sold because of the more efficient bulbs. Customers will pay the surcharge whether they use the bulbs or not, and the utility is protected from revenue loss.

Not surprisingly, this scheme has customers howling, which, in turn, caught the attention of politicians. Ohio’s governor wants to postpone the bulb distribution over concerns about passing the cost along to consumers without notice. Even Leftist nutcase Congressman Dennis Kucinich has asked the FTC to investigate. Just goes to show, in a rational society, that TANSTAAFL is the natural winner — which is not to say that we’d bet on this society’s being rational.

Culture & Policy

Climate Change This Week: Copenhagen Crash

“Delay is no longer an option,” said Barack Obama. Believe it or not, he wasn’t referring to health care “reform.” He was president-elect Obama at the time, and he was talking about climate change. The Promised Land was to be next month’s conference in Copenhagen, where, in glorious unity, nations would come together to save the planet from carbon emissions.

A year later, however, the world-saving plan is still on the back burner. At a breakfast in Singapore attended by Obama, the conference’s attendees announced that they are setting a more realistic goal for Copenhagen — namely, it will be a meeting to prepare for another meeting next year.

The envirofascist community blames the U.S. for this, in particular the Senate, which has — until now, at least — refused to force feed the American people yet another unwanted policy in cap-n-tax. But there is also the issue of what the world’s biggest carbon emitters, India and China, would agree to. In the past, President George W. Bush refused to consider the Kyoto Protocol because these nations would not adhere to the same environmental limitations. Bush rightly concluded the treaty would give them a huge economic edge.

Obama, knowing he had nothing concrete with which to go to Copenhagen, shrewdly agreed to the less aggressive approach but stated that world leaders should not let the “perfect be the enemy of the good.” That’s not exactly how we would put it.

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

Captain Planet, a.k.a. Al Gore, warned this week about the temperature of the earth’s core, saying, “People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, ’cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot….”

According to National Review’s John Derbyshire, however, “The geothermal gradient is usually quoted as 25-50 degrees Celsius per mile of depth in normal terrain (not, e.g., in the crater of Kilauea). Two kilometers down, therefore, (that’s a mile and a quarter if you’re not as science-y as Al) you’ll have an average gain of 30-60 degrees — exploitable for things like home heating, though not hot enough to make a nice pot of tea. The temperature at the earth’s core, 4,000 miles down, is usually quoted as 5,000 degrees Celsius…. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is around 6,000 degrees Celsius, while at the center, where nuclear fusion is going on bigtime, things get up over 10 million degrees. If the temperature anywhere inside the earth was ’several million degrees,’ we’d be a star.”

But, again, Gore couldn’t be bothered to check his facts. He was too busy Photoshopping the earth to add hurricanes.

Judicial Benchmarks: NFL Team Can Keep Name

In 1992, the Washington Redskins were fresh off a Super Bowl championship season when a small group of Native Americans began a court fight against the team to vacate its trademark name and Indian head logo. As the NFL franchise has since had its ups and downs on the field, so has the case in court. The plaintiffs’ lone victory in 1999 was overturned in a 2003 appeal, and the saga was finally put to rest this week when the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that ruling.

Washington fans haven’t had many chances to sing “Hail to the Redskins” this year. Indeed, after seeing the Redskins so far this season, one can understand why the Native American groups might want the logo rescinded, but fans can rest assured that the team, which has held the “Redskins” moniker since 1933, will retain that identity, even if its play on the field of late has been anything but “brave.”

The Union Label

A 17-year-old aspiring Eagle Scout in Allentown, Pennsylvania, recently spent 250 hours clearing a 1,000-foot walking path in a local park. “I decided to do my part in completing this part of the trail. In that way, others could enjoy walking along the river without having to walk on the busy road,” the Scout said. Who could possibly have a problem with that?

The Service Employees International Union, that’s who. Nick Balzano of the local SEIU said that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing the Scout to do a job that only union members should be doing. After the city laid off 39 SEIU workers earlier this year, Balzano said, “We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails” because “[t]here’s to be no volunteers.” Of course, instead of voluntarily working on the trail (or Balzano’s grammar), the union will be working on the grievance.

Fortunately, common decency may yet prevail. After the mayor publicly announced his support for the Scout, Balzano hedged, saying that the union will likely “let this one go.” What generosity.

To Keep and Bear Arms

As Margaret Parrish of Georgia headed outside to see what her puppies were barking at, things immediately took a turn for the worse. As she opened the door, an unidentified intruder grabbed her by the hair and placed a gun to her head. Margaret’s husband, 83-year-old John Parrish, watched as the suspect told her, “If you make a sound I’ll blow your brains out.” He then proceeded to duct tape the arms and legs of both Margaret and John and then left to begin searching through their home. Danny Carlson and a 10-year old girl were also among those in the house and soon found themselves being tied up as well. This bought John time to get free of the duct tape as he remembers thinking, “I had to get my gun.” Once free, John grabbed his .22-cal revolver and began firing at the suspect who promptly fled the home.

And Last…

Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize recently despite not having done much for peace during his short (but oh so long) nine months in office. During his trip to Asia this week, he added another trophy to his case. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak presented Obama with a Tae Kwan Do outfit complete with the coveted black belt. It remains to be seen whether the black belt will give Obama the courage to win in Afghanistan or to handle terrorism as an act of war rather than a crime, or even to speak without a teleprompter. Still, the president was grateful, considering that his Tae Kwan Do training has encompassed zero long years. Then again, he does have some pretty extensive experience with bowing…

Read more insightful articles at The Patriot Post

Kill the BILL Today – Stop ObamaCare In The Senate!

Alert: We Have the Chance to Kill Socialized Medicine TODAY –

Reid and Senate Democrats announced they will file cloture today on the motion to proceed regarding ObamaCare. He will go to the floor for cloture on the motion to proceed to a House-passed tax bill, to begin the Senate debate on ObamaCare. SEND YOUR FAXES NOW! —

This vote will require 60 votes and will likely occur on Saturday.

Several Democrats have said they will not vote for the bill. Remember cloture is a three day process – file on day one, day two is an intervening day and the vote occurs on day three. Reid is using a House-passed tax bill as a “shell” allowing him to offer up the language he released tonight as a substitute amendment if he gets cloture on the motion to proceed.

Reid’s Senate version of ObamaCare calls for:

• Hiding the $1.8 Trillion price tag by not accounting for actual costs.
• Major reductions in Medicare befits to seniors.
• Major Tax Increases on every American to pay for it all.
• Reid called for increasing the Medicare payroll tax.

Select Below to Tell the Senate to REJECT ‘ObamaCare’:
Select Here – SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298
ALERT: We all know that “ObamaCare — the two thousand page Democrat healthcare bill — passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week… by THREE VOTES.

The radical leftists in the House were able to squeak their bill through…

But we have STILL have a chance to stop them in the SENATE…TODAY!

TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
BETTER KNOWN AS “OBAMACARE”:
SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298

Even after a final barrage of over eighty thousand faxes from our members that POURED in to the U.S. House… a slight majority of Congressmen stilldestroy our freedom in health care. voted to

Those legislators will be feeling the WRATH of voters next year — but WE still have our work cut out for us NOW!

WE HAVE NOT LOST. The bill pushed by Obama, passed by leftist Democrats in the House — and rejected by all but one turncoat Republican — must now head over to the U.S. Senate…

And we CAN defeat it there!

In fact… we can stop this bill COLD TODAY. Here’s how:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last Tuesday laid the groundwork for the Senate’s healthcare reform debate to start TODAY – Tuesday, Nov. 17th. Reid filed a motion to introduce the bill yesterday, Monday, Nov. 16. Anticipating a Republican objection, the bill would be pushed onto the Senate calendar.

BUT… Reid’s action last Tuesday sets up a critical vote this week on a motion to proceed to the bill. Such a motion would require 60 votes to succeed — and there’s a GOOD CHANCE that Reid does NOT have those 60 votes!

Reid needs a majority (51) to pass the motion to proceed so the Senate can begin debating and amending the bill.  If Republicans filibuster this motion, he will need 60 votes to invoke cloture and shut off debate.

THIS IS IT — one of our BEST chances to kill this bill, before it even gets off the ground!

TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
BETTER KNOWN AS “OBAMACARE”:
SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298

Remember, this bill is the worst of all possible bills. It’s chock full of every far-left special interest socialistic dream imaginable. Here’s some of what’s in its TWO THOUSAND PAGES:

• The CBO estimates that H.R. 3962, the health bill that the House passed, would cost $1.2 TRILLION over 10 years, including the cost to states for mandated Medicaid expansion ($34 billion), the “Doc Fix” ($245 billion), and authorized discretionary spending for grants, public programs, changes and funding for a variety of agencies that would be responsible for implementing H.R. 3962.
• The bill protects trial lawyers. The bill gives money (authorized at “such sums”) to states that enact “certificate of merit” (a document signed by a medical professional that says there is a probability that the standard of care was violated) and / or a certificate of “early offer” (an early, confidential apology) laws, as long as the states don’t limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.
• The current version will give billions of dollars of taxpayer healthcare benefits to ILLEGAL ALIENS in America. It would allow illegal aliens to use the new healthcare “exchange” and would not require verification to keep illegal aliens out of the other parts of the proposed federal healthcare system. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus fought back against reports that leaders would add Senate language to block illegal immigrants from participating in the insurance exchange.
• It will create a nationwide federal government program, the “public option,” which will pay for abortion on demand — with federal funds, of course, because that is what federal agencies spend.

Liberals in the House AND the Senate ignored us when the majority said, “NO BAILOUT.” They ignored us when the majority said, “NO FAKE STIMULUS.” Now, they’re trying to ignore us when the majority demands with a clear voice, “NO GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF HEALTH CARE!”

TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
BETTER KNOWN AS “OBAMACARE”:
SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298

We all remember when President Obama stood in front of a joint session of Congress — and LIED. He LIED when he said they weren’t planning to set up “end-of-life panels” — his cronies have promoted

the idea for a long time now. He LIED when he said his “reforms” wouldn’t insure illegal aliens — it has been clearly shown that there would be NO WAY to prevent this from happening. He LIED when he said that his “government option” health care plan would not force taxpayers to pay for abortions — the Obama-backed House bill would explicitly authorize the federal government insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and would explicitly authorize taxpayer subsidies for private abortion insurance.

The American people are TIRED of being lied to — which is why over ONE MILLION of us went to Washington, D.C., to bring the voice of the MAJORITYaren’t going back to sleep… not while our own government tries to cram a socialist health care plan down our throats! to the doorstep of Congress. You see, the “sleeping giant” in America has been awoken… and we

And on top of all of this… the fact remains that we can’t AFFORD this plan! In the face of an estimated $1.85 trillion federal budget deficit for FY2009 and projected trillion dollar annual deficits for the foreseeable future, how can anyone in Congress vote for this health care plan, which will cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years? Plus, Congress is facing at least $53 trillion of unfunded liabilities due to its passage of the previous entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the recent addition of prescription drug coverage for Medicare. How can anyone in Congress vote for a new entitlement program for health care when Congress has not even begun to face up to this unfunded liabilities problem?

Well, they’re trying to — but WE can stop them, with YOUR help!

TAKE ACTION: Even the Democrats are now admitting that it’s conceivable that we might not even get passage this week on the usually perfunctory motion to proceed to debate. That’s because Republicans will filibuster even that, requiring 60 votes… and there are at least two Democrats who could join that filibuster.

BUT THEY NEED TO HEAR FROM US TO BE CONVINCED!

We CANNOT let the radical liberals in Congress — and the White House – force this plan for socialized health care on the American people! That’s why we’ve set up our website to enable you to send a strong message to every single member of the U.S. Senate, OPPOSING this outrageous plan.

For about what it would cost you in time and telephone charges, you can send Blast Faxes to Democrats, Republicans, Independents — EVERYONE in the U.S. Senate, DEMANDING that they REJECT this socialized health care plan NOW

We CAN do this! In 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to force a less radical form of socialized health care down our throats, thinking that they could do it since the Democrats controlled Congress AND the White House.

What was the result? 1994, and the Republican Revolution. The liberal Democrats are “shooting themselves in the foot” again by trying to pass even more radical socialized health care this time — but we CAN stop them!

TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
BETTER KNOWN AS “OBAMACARE”:
SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298

The vote is scheduled for TODAY! Please, take action right away to STOP this bill dead in its tracks!

Defend America,

Alan Gottlieb
AmeriPAC
President and Founder
www.Ameripac.org

P.S. According to a survey of 1,000 likely voters released by the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, 53 percent of those who say they are likely to vote in the November 2010 election oppose the “public option” type of plan just passed by the U.S. House, compared to 39 percent who like the idea.

THIS ATTEMPT BY LIBERALS TO SHOVE “OBAMACARE” DOWN OUR THROATS IS OUTRAGEOUS — and it MUST be stopped! Send your faxes right away to make sure these Senators get a STRONG message, to REJECT the socialized plan of “Obamacare” NOW — Thank you!

TELL THE SENATE TO REJECT SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE
BETTER KNOWN AS “OBAMACARE”:
SEND YOUR FAXES NOW!
https://secure.conservativedonations.com/ameripac_obamacare3?a=3298

Please make checks payable to AmeriPAC:
American Political Action Committee (AmeriPAC)
PO Box 1682
Dept Code 3298
Bellevue, WA 98009-3298

By Nancy Morgan

I’m a proud White-Irish-American and I’d like to celebrate my unique culture and heritage. Though I personally had no part in it, my white European ancestors were the ones who founded the greatest country the world has ever known. For all of you progressives out there, I’m referring to America.

Yup. My white ancestors founded and conquered it. Just like countries, states and tribes have been doing since time immemorial.

My white European ancestors then established a framework (hint: the Constitution) that allowed immigrants from all over the world a place where they could be free of tyrannical dictators and oppressive government. Its called America -and it stands for freedom. My ancestors fought and died for it and then offered it to the world.

Since man is not perfect, (except for Obama) there were a few hitches along the way. But hey, I’m willing to forgive the ignorant few that followed the cultural dictates of the past – the ones who posted signs saying ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ That bigotry was a product of the times and America finally did the right thing by abolishing it.

Of course, there are still those who choose to dwell in the past. Just last week a Nigerian rights group sent a letter to African chiefs demanding they apologize for the role they played in the slave trade. “We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless.”

Personally, I believe trying to address historical grievances is counter-productive. Progressives have repeatedly stressed the importance of ‘moving-on,’ and I think they have a good point.

With the coming of Obama and the progessive agenda, all groups, countries, and cultures are deemed equal. Now its totally OK to celebrate my own group-identity. Especially since taking pride in belonging to the broader, more inclusive American culture is looked upon with such disfavor.

Since I’m not willing to identify myself solely by my sexual orientation, or my gender, or my politics – or as a victim, or as one of the disenfranchised, that leaves only one group with whom I totally identify: The politically incorrect group of Americans who demand to be judged strictly on merit.

Unfortunately, that’s a no-no in today’s political and cultural environment. I guess I’ll have to be content with just celebrating the color of my skin, like everyone else does.

I’m proud to be white. There, I’ve said it. But I’m getting confused…. A Tennessee state trooper who sent an e-mail proclaiming white pride, has just been suspended for 15 days without pay and will have to attend diversity training. Does this mean white people can’t celebrate their own culture?

Not very long ago, before the Nazis came along, white pride was, well, pride in being white. People like myself whose ancestors were white Europeans used to take pride in the accomplishments of fellow whites. That pride was acceptable and celebrated. The tremendous influence and contributions made by white Europeans has, alas, been lumped into the discredited category of ‘colonization,’ which we all know is bad. Acknowledgment of white European accomplishments and culture is now deemed racist, which is worse.

The fact that many of the countries that were once colonized by Britain are now worse off than when Britain was calling the shots is an inconvenient historical fact. After all, white people of European descent represent a, gasp, superior culture, and that’s not allowed to be discussed or studied. Which is why courses on Western Civilization have been removed from college curriculums in favor of gay studies, Black studies, Chicano studies, women studies, etc.

Never having had the time to study diversity and multiculturalism, however, I remain somewhat confused. Hate crime laws require me to take note of the color of a persons’ skin in order not to offend them, while political correctness demands I ignore a person’s race and their culture when forming an opinion of them. This does not compute.

Maybe I should join that Tennessee trooper in diversity training so I’ll know for sure what I am allowed to think, feel and say. After all, I don’t want my white skin and American opinions to offend anyone.

Or better yet, why don’t we all just take Martin Luther King’s advice and judge people based on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin? That way we could do away with all those groups that focus on skin color, like the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Hispanic ‘La Raza,’ and start celebrating what we all have in common. Our very own unique American culture, in which we all can and should take tremendous pride, regardless of what color we are.

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and news editor for RightBias.com and she lives in South Carolina.

Read more from Nancy Morgan at Right Bias

21 months ago, I contributed my first post to this site. I was pretty sure that subject I chose would tap out after a few posts, but now, nearly 600 posts later, I can still contribute posts about this subject without the subject going stale. The reason is that there is just so much to say about it.

In that first post, I mentioned how the use of the per capita emissions was used as a bludgeoning stick to make us feel guilty, and in that way, the real intent of this subject could be covered with fog by those who have an agenda to pursue. Numerous times over that period, I have come back and again mentioned just how this bogus statistic is being used to give a completely false impression.

The Australian Government is again attempting to pass legislation to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme, cleverly (and wrongly) titled the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. (CPRS) The Government has the majority in the House of Representatives, but not in The Senate. The Bill easily passed through the Lower House, on the Government’s numbers, but was easily defeated in the Senate where they do not control the numbers. The Bill has again come before the Parliament, and in an effort to get it passed this time, the same old talking heads are trucking out the same tired old arguments. Hopefully, The Senate will again see reason and throw out this Bill.

To that end, the good old per capita head emissions argument has been reprised for another try at making us feel guilty. Here is the link to that story in the Australian ABC media outlet.

With this post, I will show you exactly how this statistic is in fact 100% correct, and at the same time, 100% wrong that it should be used in this context. The main reference point in any argument like this always comes back to China and also India. For context, keep right at the forefront of your mind these important numbers, and I’ll use the U.S. in this comparison as well, because that statistic very closely correlates with the Australian number as well.

Australian Population – 21 Million.

U.S. Population – 304 Million.

China Population – 1.33 Billion.

India Population – 1.14 Billion.

So, just using the U.S. population as the base, then China’s population is greater by a factor of 4.38, and India’s is greater by a factor of 3.8, so that statistic is already skewed by such a large ratio. I haven’t included the ratio for Australia, because the per capita argument for Australia, is very close indeed to that for the U.S.

Electrical power generation alone makes up between 30 and 40% of all (man made) emissions, so then let’s look at the statistics for power, and those emissions mainly stem from the (perceived) main culprit in this argument, coal fired power, and to a lesser extent natural gas fired power generation.

There are readily available figures for this from the U.S. Government’s own site, that of the Energy Information Administration. (EIA)

The database is just that, a huge spread sheet listing of detailed power statistics. For those who do wish to check, here is the link, but be aware you need an understanding of electrical power generation, and it is a huge spread sheet. This is more user friendly link to the latest figures from the U.S. (Total consumption is at the bottom right hand corner)

Power generation Figures.

U.S. – 3.973 Trillion KiloWattHours. (KWH)

China -3.75 Trillion KWH

India – 0.60 Trillion KWH

Australia – 0.24 Trillion KWH

World – 18.43 Trillion KWH

Just from those figures alone, you can see that just for China alone, while their population is 4.38 times higher than for the U.S. they consume less power, so the ratio now becomes 4.64. For India it is a more astounding 25.16., because while the population is nearly 4 times larger, they consume in total only 15% of the electrical power.

For Australia, the ratio is roughly equivalent to that for the US, considering the considerably smaller population, and also the considerably less power consumption. The figures for the whole World are even further skewed, because of the huge population also.

In the U.S. electrical power is distributed to the 3 sector consumers, Residential (37%) Commercial (35%) and Industrial (27%)

In China, the figures are Residential (9%) Commercial (10%) and Industrial (80%)

In India the figures are roughly the same as for India.

So, in China, only one quarter of the generated power goes to 4.34 times the number of people, and in India it is considerably less again.

So now you can see the absolute wrong application of this per capita emissions ratio.

The reason the figures for the U.S. are so high is that the U.S. is a developed Country with access to a constant, reliable source of electrical power.

So, when these environmentalists wrongly attribute this bogus per capita argument, what they are in effect doing is telling us that are guilty of having that access to electrical power readily available. The intent of what they say is that we are intentionally doing this as environmental vandals, and to make us feel guilty for that.

So then what really is their intent?

If as they say, those emissions are to come down, then access to reliable cheap electrical power cannot just increase, so, the construction of power plants to bring that power to people who have none is out of the question, because that would only increase emissions, and increase them dramatically.

So, what they really mean is that we should then go without that cheap reliable and 24 hour a day access to electrical power.

They tell us that we are in fact greater emitters than those in the rest of the World, and even China by a factor of 4 to 6.

So, here I will give them the benefit of doubt and work with the lower number 4.

I need to show you how this directly sheets home to you the reader. You live in a house. There is one house to the right of where you live and two houses directly across the road. Go out onto the road in front of your house right now so you can see those four houses. Which three of those four houses do you select to do without electrical power from now on?

Look into your large city at the high rise buildings. Which three out of every four would you select to do without electrical power from now on?

Four places of work. Which three are you going to close down?

Four shopping malls within driving distance of where you live. Which three will do without power from now on?

Four hospitals. Which three do you close down?

Four intersections you drive through controlled by traffic lights. Which three get to do without those traffic lights?

That’s 3 out of every 4 workers now with no place of work that can operate.

Cities will become ghost towns.

This is dramatic I know, and will never come pass, but is used specifically to highlight how this per capita argument is completely and utterly bogus.

Keep in mind that of all the electrical power generated in the U.S. 65% of all of it is required absolutely, 24 hours of every day. This is Base Load Power.

65%

Not the 25% that the environmentalists tell us is the future if we are to cut emissions.

So when some environmentalist points the accusing finger at us and say we are 4 times bigger emitters than those other people, do not dare even consider feeling guilty for a fraction of a second. Those environmentalists sit on their high moral perch and sneer at us for the lifestlyle we have as part and parcel of a Developed Country. While expecting us to give that up, in the same breath, they deny that lifestyle to the World’s Billions who have no access whatsoever to any electrical power, let alone the coal fired power that they rail against. They are accusing us, literally, of HAVING the lifestyle that they themselves even take utterly for granted.

No. No. No.

Shame on you environmentalists for using this argument. Shame.

THE PER CAPITA EMISSIONS ARGUMENT IS COMPLETELY BOGUS, AND IN FACT IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE.

By Elaine S. Povich

Frustrations boiled over today (Thursday) at Treasury Secretary Geithner’s appearance before the Joint Committee on Taxation, with Republican members lambasting him for a sluggish economic recovery and calling on him to resign.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX)

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, led the charge against Geithner, blaming him for a litany of problems, including the high unemployment rate and what he said was uneasiness among Americans about lending, housing, energy prices and health care.

“The public has lost all confidence in your ability to do the job,” Brady said. “Will you step down?”

Geithner disagreed, citing decreased job losses from a year ago and more availability of credit to small and medium-sized firms. He said he would not resign.

The two talked over each other as Joint Committee on Taxation Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney failed to gavel them into silence.

After the hearing, Brady acknowledged he did not really expect Geithner to say he would step down but said he was expressing Americans’ dissatisfaction with the way things are going. “He’s failing,” Brady said. “He needs to step down and give the president a chance to restart.”

Geithner appeared before the joint committee to press for his proposed overhaul of the financial sector, called “resolution authority,” which would give the government the power to take apart large failing financial firms, rather than propping them up with federal money. Geithner said such a reform was imperative to assure that a financial meltdown like last year’s never happens again.

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R – TX)

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, said he did not think Geithner should be fired. “I think you should never have been hired,” he said.

Burgess said part of the reason the economy is stagnant is that small business is frightened to add jobs right now due to uncertainty over financial regulation, energy policy and healthcare reform. “We need to provide tax relief and get out of the way,” Burgess declared.

Geithner referred back to the Bush administration years. “We had a pretty good test of those policies, and they did not serve the country well,” he snapped.

Maloney reminded Burgess that during the Bush administration real median income fell.

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS)

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., criticized the healthcare reform bill unveiled Wednesday by Senate Majority Leader Reid, telling Geithner the plan amounts to a “multimillion-dollar entitlement” paid for by cuts in Medicare that are unlikely to happen. “The likelihood of that happening is between slim and none, and slim just left town,” Brownback said. “The likelihood is you are going to add to the deficit. This is a wrong idea at a horrific time.”

Geithner insisted that, over time, the health bill would bring down costs, citing the CBO’s analysis. “Over 10 years, it does not add to the deficit,” he said. “At the heart of reform, you need to bring down those costs.”

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily

By Amy Harder

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

This post deals with the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. I have used this project in numerous earlier posts, detailing the futility of a reliance on this form of power to actually take the place of the conventional power plants currently supply a constant supply of electrical power. Those posts have also detailed costings as well. Just three posts of the many are at this link, and also this link and also this link.

Depending on what side you’re on, Rep. Edward Markey’s recent endorsement of a controversial offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast is either a boon or a bane. But what’s certain is that it’s a sign the political winds are shifting more than two months after the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The beloved — and influential — Democrat had staunchly opposed the Cape Wind project, which would erect 130 wind turbines a few miles off Nantucket Sound, the backdrop of the Kennedy family vacation compound. The wind farm has also faced opposition from Rep. Bill Delahunt (D), whose district includes the sound. Sen. John Kerry (D) still hasn’t taken a stand, nor has Sen. Paul Kirk (D), who is filling Kennedy’s seat until a January special election. Kirk’s office said in a statement that he believes the administration should implement a national ocean policy with zoning requirements before “green-lighting major developments in such sensitive areas.”

Markey (D) had been silent himself until last week, when he wrote a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar urging him to approve the project before the U.N. climate change negotiations next month in Copenhagen. “Approving the Cape Wind project as the nation’s first commercial offshore wind project before the start of the U.N. conference would send a strong message to international negotiators about the United States’ commitment to developing sources of clean energy and reducing global warming pollution,” Markey wrote.

Markey’s endorsement comes after the state’s top historic preservation officer ruled that Nantucket Sound is eligible for a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, a ruling that Gov. Deval Patrick (D) criticized. It’s one more episode in the confluence of events that have put Cape Wind back on the political radar.

But activists on both sides of the debate agreed that the man who isn’t there still casts a long shadow.

“Certainly, Senator Kennedy — as powerful and effective as he was — people were deferring to him. This was his backyard, literally and figuratively,” said Barbara Hill, executive director of Clean Power Now, the group spearheading the advocacy efforts for the project. “Out of respect for him, Markey and Kerry have deferred to his opinion on this. And now that he’s no longer with us, maybe they feel that they can relook at this.”

Audra Parker, chief operating officer of the Alliance To Protect Nantucket Sound, which opposes the wind farm, conceded that Kennedy was “clearly our most significant champion.” She fell short of saying, though, that the project would move forward because other key lawmakers are no longer influenced by the late senator’s opposition: “If the project decision is made on its merits and not on politics, it won’t go through.”

Hill said it would only be natural for Markey’s endorsement to influence Kerry. “They are leading the charge on climate change legislation in the House and Senate. They are consulting with each other on where we need to go on climate legislation,” Hill said. “I can’t imagine they haven’t been discussing this. It’s in their own back yard.”

Parker maintained that the ruling by the historical preservation officer should affect Kerry’s position more than Markey’s endorsement.

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily and the National Journal

Inhofe Calls 2009 “The Year of the Skeptic”

TonyfromOz prefaces …..

Two days back, we contributed this post showing the 5 biggest opponents to the Climate Change Bills. One of them, Senator James Inhofe spoke before the Senate yesterday. The following is the text of that speech. The video shows just the first part of that speech. For those of you who do read the whole speech, further down, you’ll see how he expressly mentions Andrew Bolt, the Australian journalist who contributes posts to our site here. It’s well worth reading the whole speech just to see how we are being misled by people who have other agendas, and that finally, the real truth of this subject is starting to gain a foothold among so much misinformation.

Sen. Inhofe Says UN Cap and Trade Effort Dead, Urges New Path Forward

Mr. President -

Next month, thousands of UN delegates from over 190 nations, members of the press, and eco-activists from around the world will descend upon Copenhagen, Denmark as part of the United Nations Conference on Global Warming. Yet, even before it begins, the UN conference is being called a “disaster.”   —-

Just this morning, the Telegraph, a UK newspaper, noted, “The worst kept secret in the world is finally out – the climate change summit in Copenhagen is going to be little more than a photo opportunity for world leaders.”

Not too long ago, however, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed as the time when an international agreement with binding limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would finally be agreed to. Eco-activists believed a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress would finally push through mandatory cap and trade legislation and that the United States would finally be ready to succumb to the demands of the United Nations.

The reality, of course, is that Copenhagen will be a disaster. The failure comes at a high cost. Despite the millions of dollars spent by Al Gore, the Hollywood Elites, and the United Nations, climate alarmism has failed.

Perhaps the Wall Street Journal said it best in their editorial this morning titled, “Copenhagen’s Collapse – The Climate Change Sequel is a Bust.” The editorial states:

“‘Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all,’ President-elect Obama said of global warming last November. ‘Delay is no longer an option.’ It turns out that delay really is an option-the only one that has world-wide support. Over the weekend Mr. Obama bowed to reality and admitted that little of substance will come of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. For the last year the President has been promising a binding international carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol, but instead negotiators from 192 countries now hope to reach a preliminary agreement that they’ll sign such a treaty when they meet in Mexico City in 2010. No doubt. The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen’s pre-emptive collapse on the Senate’s failure to ram through a cap-and-trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that ‘the world’ won’t make commitments until the U.S. does. But there will always be one excuse or another, given that developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West’s climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don’t actually have to be met.”

Mr. President, through my position as the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2003, I have been the lead Senator standing up and exposing the science, the costs, and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism. And I will be travelling to Copenhagen, leading what I call the “Truth Squad” to say exactly what I said six years ago in Milan, Italy: The United States will not support a global warming treaty that will significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and impose the largest tax increase in American history. Further, as I stated in 2003, unless developing nations are part of the binding agreement, the US will not go along. Given the unemployment rate of 10 percent, , and given all of the out of control spending in Washington, the last thing we need is another thousand-page bill that increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate change.

I also said in Milan that the science is not settled. That was an unpopular view back then.  But today, since Al Gore’s science fiction movie, more and more scientists, reporters, and politicians are questioning global warming alarmism. I proudly declare 2009 as the “Year of the Skeptic”-the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.

Rather than continue down a road that will harm the U.S. economy, the international community should forge a new path forward that builds on international trade, new and innovative technology, jobs, development, and economic growth.

Kyoto – Destined for Failure

If you follow the U.S. Senate, you will know that the Senate’s position on global warming treaties couldn’t be more clear. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 for the Byrd-Hagel resolution.  Byrd-Hagel stated that, among other things, the U.S. should not sign any international climate change treaty that would:

1) mandate greenhouse gas reductions from the U.S. without also requiring new, specific commitments from developing countries over the same compliance period; and

2) result in serious economic harm to the United States.

I think Byrd-Hagel still commands strong support in the U.S. Senate.  Therefore, any treaty President Obama submits must meet its criteria, or it will be easily defeated.

Proponents of securing an international treaty are slowly acknowledging that the gulf is widening between what the United States and other industrialized nations are willing to do and what developing countries like China want them to do.  The gulf has always been wide and will continue to widen.

And with Copenhagen a certain failure, it’s safe to say that cap-and-trade is dead.  Just look at the record: the Byrd/Hagel vote in 1997, the defeats in the Senate in 2003 of McCain-Lieberman, 2005 McCain-Lieberman, 2008 Warner-Lieberman, and no bill on the Senate floor in 2009.

The Economics of Cap and Trade

From my very first speech on the Senate floor as Chairman of the EPW Committee on July 28, 2003, I outlined the staggering costs of global warming “solutions” like Kyoto. In my speech, I said,

“The most widely cited and most definitive economic analysis of Kyoto came from Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, or WEFA. According to WEFA economists, Kyoto would cost 2.4 million US jobs and reduce GDP by 3.2%, or about $300 billion annually, an amount greater than the total expenditure on primary and secondary education. Because of Kyoto, American consumers would face higher food, medical, and housing costs-for food, an increase of 11%, medicine, an increase of 14%, and housing, an increase of 7%. At the same time an average household of four would see its real income drop by $2,700 in 2010, and each year thereafter. Under Kyoto, energy and electricity prices would nearly double, and gasoline prices would go up an additional 65 cents per gallon.”

I went on to note that CBO found that cap and tax is a regressive tax, arguing:

“As the CBO found, ‘The price increases resulting from a carbon cap would be regressive–that is, they would place a relatively greater burden on lower-income households than on higher-income ones.’ As to the broader, macroeconomic effects of carbon cap and trade schemes, CBO said, ‘A cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions could impose significant costs on the economy in the form of welfare losses. Welfare losses are real costs to the economy in that they would not be recovered elsewhere in the form of higher income. Those losses would be borne by people in their roles as shareholders, consumers, and workers.’ Now some might respond that government can simply redistribute income in the form of welfare programs to mitigate the impacts on the poor. But the CBO found otherwise: ‘The government could use the allowance value to partly redistribute the costs of a carbon cap-and-trade program, but it could not cover those costs entirely.’ And further: ‘Available research indicates that providing compensation could actually raise the cost to the economy of a carbon cap.’”

That’s what I said back in 2003. Yet, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  CBO, EPA, DOE, CRS, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, NAM-everyone now agrees that cap-and-trade will be extremely costly and destroy jobs.  No matter how hard alarmists try to recast their cause-whether it’s “green jobs” or “clean energy jobs” or “clean energy revolution” the facts remain: cap-and-trade is a loser for America.

All Pain, No Climate Gain

Mr. President, I have also pointed out the inconvenient fact that cap and trade “solutions” are all pain for no climate gain. In that first speech back in 2003, I noted that even Al Gore’s own scientist admitted that Kyoto would do nothing to “solve” global warming. Here’s what he said:

“Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, found that if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented by all signatories- now I will note here that this next point assumes that the alarmists’ science is correct, which of course it is not-if Kyoto were fully implemented, it would reduce temperatures by a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050, and 0.13 degrees Celsius by 2100. What does this mean? Such an amount is so small that ground-based thermometers cannot reliably measure it.”

I also mentioned in the 2003 speech everyone’s favorite alarmist, James Hansen:

“Similarly, Dr. James Hansen of NASA, considered the father of global warming theory, said that Kyoto Protocol ‘will have little effect’ on global temperature in the 21st century. In a rather stunning follow-up, Hansen said it would take 30 Kyotos-let me repeat that-30 Kyotos to reduce warming to an acceptable level. If one Kyoto devastates the American economy, what would 30 do?”

Those following the climate debate closely know that James Hansen went on record this summer against Waxman-Markey-Kerry Boxer saying the following:

“Cap-and-trade is the temple of doom. It would lock in disasters for our children and grandchildren. Why do people continue to worship a disastrous approach? Its fecklessness was proven by the Kyoto Protocol.”

Now we have top Obama Administration officials making these same points.  EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained to me before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing in July that US action alone would do nothing to address climate change. As she said: “I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart are that U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.”

Of course, I am encouraged that Administrator Jackson agrees that unilateral action by the U.S. would effectively do nothing to affect climate change.

Logically, any unilateral action by the US would increase emissions as industry would be forced to relocate overseas where nations have lower emissions restrictions.

Bipartisan Concern Over Cap-and Trade

Mr. President, over the last several years, we’ve seen a growing number of Democrats-yes, Democrats-agreeing with my position. Today, with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, some may be surprised by the number of Democrats who want nothing to do with cap and trade.

Politico reported on Monday that, “lawmakers from coal and manufacturing-heavy states aren’t happy that more liberal Democrats are using the Copenhagen negotiations to ratchet up pressure to move the bill forward. ‘I’m totally unconcerned about Copenhagen,’ said Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). ‘I’m concerned about West Virginia.’”

They also reported, “Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb said on Monday he would not back the cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer, (D-Calif.), another blow to the troubled Senate climate change bill. “In its present form I would not vote for it,” he said. “I have some real questions about the real complexities on cap and trade.” Webb is the latest in a series of Democratic moderates to raise significant concerns with the climate bill, which has floundered since passing the House in late June.”

Or Consider Democratic Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska. The Hill recently reported on a CNBC interview with Sen. Nelson, writing,

“A cap-and-trade bill to address climate change cannot pass the Congress this session, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) claimed Friday. Nelson, a centrist Democrat whose vote is key to leaders wielding its 60-vote majority in the Senate, said he and his constituents had not been sold on the cap-and-trade system proposed in House and Senate bills to address global warming. ‘No,’ Nelson simply responded when asked if those cap-and-trade bills can pass through this Congress during an interview on CNBC. ‘I haven’t been able to sell that argument to my farmers, and I don’t think they’re going to buy it from anybody else,’ Nelson said. ‘I think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch on at home will be disadvantaged.’ The pessimistic assessment makes Nelson a thorn in the side of his party’s leaders on climate change legislation, one of their top priorities, as they assiduously court his vote on another key proposal, healthcare reform.”

Perhaps the biggest blow to any Senate climate bill came last week from 14 Senate Democrats, primarily from the Midwest, who, in a letter, challenged the allocation formula of Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey. The letter was signed by Senators Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Udall, Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.

And what about the prospects for 2010? As Lisa Lerer with Politico reported last week:

“An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change legislation will stay on the back burner next year. ‘There is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be doing more to spur job creation and not necessarily tackle cap and trade right now,’ said a moderate Democratic Senate aide. White House officials told POLITICO on Friday that President Barack Obama plans curb new domestic spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid has hinted that Democrats plan to take up a job-creation bill, in the wake of the announcement of a 10.2 percent unemployment rate. In the House, some lawmakers are beginning to push a major highway bill for next year to focus on job creation. None of this is promising for a major climate change bill.”

Also, Darren Samuelsohn with E&E News reports this week that:

“Next November’s midterm elections loom large, leaving the climate bill sponsors until about the end of March to notch the 60 votes necessary to pass their bill off the floor and into a conference with the House that would best be finished before the summer. ‘Conventional wisdom is that you have until the spring to get controversial issues moving,’ said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a lead co-author of the climate bill that the Environment and Public Works Committee passed earlier this month. “If not, it’s difficult to see getting through closer to the elections.”

In an interesting side note, Mr. Samuelsohn reported that the Democrats fear a repeat of the disastrous 1992 BTU Tax vote.  He quotes Al Gore as saying, “‘Yes, I think the Btu PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is a factor in this debate.’”

Samuelsohn also writes that according to Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, ‘the ‘talk on the street’ was that an election year cannot be good for passing the climate bill in the Senate, even though he did not agree with that opinion. ‘There’s some possibility of people saying that it’s too controversial a bill in an election year,’ Rockefeller said. “Which is sort of the opposite of how a democracy ought to work. You go ahead and take your chances on that and you get re-elected. But people’s business comes first.’”

By now the message should be clear: it’s not just Republicans, but Democrats who are blocking passage of cap-and-trade in the United States Senate. The sooner we are honest with the international community of the impossibility of the Senate moving forward with cap and trade, the sooner we can begin work on an all-of-the-above energy bill to develop domestic energy resources, create jobs, and provide consumers with affordable, reliable energy.

The Tipping Point: Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth/Scientists Call To Action

Of course, from the most memorable tidbit from my two-hour global warming speech in July of 2003 were my comments about the science behind global warming. Now, six years later, and as I head to the next UN global warming conference, I am pleased by the vast and growing number of scientists, politicians, and reporters all over the world who are publicly rejecting climate alarmism. When I made those comments on the Senate Floor, few people were there to stand with me. Today, I have been vindicated and I am proud to share the stage with all those who now dare question Al Gore, Hollywood elites, and the United Nations.

Early in my 2003 speech I said, “Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science. Global warming alarmists see a future plagued by catastrophic flooding, war, terrorism, economic dislocations, droughts, crop failures, mosquito-borne diseases, and harsh weather-all caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.” For the next two hours I presented arguments by a number of leading scientists who disputed that picture of the future and I argued that activists attempting to propagate fear would fail to convince the American public.  I then concluded my remarks stating, “With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.”

My remarks were immediately ridiculed by alarmists and the main stream media. Alarmists then and ever since have used every name in the book trying to discredit me. Nevertheless, I continued to make my case in speech after speech on the Senate floor, highlighting arguments by numerous scientists that contradicted the notion that the science behind global warming was “settled.”

In fact, the first time the McCain-Lieberman bill came to the Senate Floor in 2003, I stood alone on the Senate Floor for over fifty hours working to expose the bill as the largest tax increase in American history. Fortunately, the Senate defeated the bill. Fast forward to 2008 for the Warner-Lieberman bill, twenty three Senators joined me in speaking out against a bill that was all cost, for no climate gain.

What do I credit for the reversal? You might be surprised my answer: it’s none other than the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar.  It’s AL Gore.

The media blitz of 2006, which included an avalanche of magazine covers, hour long global warming documentaries, celebrity rock concerts around the world, and of course, Al Gore’s very own science fiction, caused an unprecedented response from scientists from around the world.

Later that year, I took to the Senate floor to give my next two hour long speech debunking much of Al Gore’s movie and the media hype. I said then that:

“In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.”

I noted a report that appeared on June 27, 2006 by Seth Borenstein of AP that boldly declared, “Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore’s movie.” I took issue with the Borenstein article, pointing out that,

“The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore’s science, despite AP’s having contacted over 100 scientists. The fact that over 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore’s brand of climate alarmism.  I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President’s film. Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT has written about “An Inconvenient Truth”: ‘A general characteristic of Mr. Gore’s approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.’”

In that same 2006 speech, I then proceeded to give a brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promoted in either an inaccurate or misleading way:

• He promoted the now-debunked “hockey stick” temperature chart in an attempt to prove man’s overwhelming impact on the climate.
• He attempted to minimize the significance of Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age.
• He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most scientists believe does not exist.
• He asserted that today’s Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930’s were as warm or warmer.
• He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice, but failed to note that this is only true of a small region and that the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.
• He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland’s ice is in danger of disappearing.
• He erroneously claimed that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices.
• He made assertions of massive future sea level rise far afield of any supposed scientific “consensus” and not supported in even the most alarmist literature.
• He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier’s retreat is due to global warming, ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing.
• He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa’s Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits.
• He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving.
• He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

In each and every case, Gore was shown to be exaggerating, misleading or flat out wrong.

At the end of that speech, I challenged those in the media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices in the scientific community questioning the so-called consensus, and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.

The reaction by the American public was so overwhelming that my Senate website crashed, as thousands of people came to my site to read and watch my speech. In fact, I was flooded with emails supporting my work.

I also noted in that 2006 speech that many scientists were just starting to speak out against the so called consensus on global warming.  In April of that year, 60 prominent scientists who questioned the basis for climate alarmism sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister.  They wrote: “If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

I soon discovered just how many prominent scientists were disputing the claims of global warming alarmism. In 2007, I released my first report detailing over 400 scientists who didn’t buy the consensus.  After that report, the list continued to grow and more and more scientists began publicly challenging global warming fears.  In 2008, I updated the report with over 650 scientists, and today that list stands at well over 700 skeptical scientists.  The chorus of skeptical scientific voices continues to grow louder every day as the “consensus” collapses.

This momentous shift has caused the mainstream media to take notice of the expanding number of scientists serving as “consensus busters.”

A November 25, 2008, article in Politico noted that a “growing accumulation” of science is challenging warming fears, and that the “science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.”

Canada’s National Post noted on October 20, 2008, that “the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly.” New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin noted on March 6, 2008, “As we all know, climate science is not a numbers game (there are heaps of signed statements by folks with advanced degrees on all sides of this issue).”

In 2007, Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics “appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.”

2009 – The Year of the Skeptic

Yet, it will be 2009  that is remembered as the “Year of the Skeptic.”

Until this year, any scientist, reporter, or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked.

Who can forget, for example, Dr. Heidi Cullen with the Weather Channel, who in 2007 advocated that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their “Seal of Approval” for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

“If a meteorologist can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn’t give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn’t agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns,” Cullen wrote in her December 21 blog on the Weather Channel Website.

Cullen continued, “It’s like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It’s not a political statement…it’s just an incorrect statement.”

And of course, there was Robert Kennedy Jr., also in 2007, who called anyone who didn’t agree with his views on global warming “traitors.”

Speaking at a Live Earth Concert in July 2007, Kennedy stated:

“Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company. These villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

Al Gore, of course, said anyone who dares question the science should be equated with those who question the moon landing.

Aside from the distasteful and derogatory ridicule by such alarmists, a major statement by a man-made global warming believer severely undercut their claims. Just this year, one UN IPCC climate scientist told more than 1500 climate scientists gathered at the UN’s World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland:

“People will say this is global warming disappearing. I am not one of the sceptics. However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.”

And remember, this quote comes from Mojib Latif, who Andrew Revkin of the New York Times describes as “a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, in Germany.”

This remarkable admission of the need to “ask nasty questions,” comes nearly two years after I first pointed out these very facts on the Senate floor. In my October 26, 2007 Senate Floor speech, I noted:

“It is important to point out that the phase of global warming that started in 1979 has itself been halted since 1998. You can almost hear my critics skeptical of that assertion. Well, it turns out not to be an assertion, but an irrefutable fact, according to the temperature data the UN relies on.  Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, who has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, noted on June 18 of this year: ‘The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stability has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 parts per million (17 %).”

The very people that had long called the science settled, and those that went so far as to say the science behind global warming was “unequivocal,” are now admitting that “nasty questions” must be raised.

Well, those questions are now being raised by the media.  On October 8^th, the BBC stunned the journalism community with an article by their climate correspondent Paul Hudson.  The headline of that article asked “What happened to global warming?” Hudson wrote:

“this headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might the fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.  But it is true.  For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.”  The article continues to note the lack of global warming recently and mentions the fact that many scientists are predicting a coming global cooling.

Following the BBC, other British news outlets have ran similar headlines.  The UK Sunday Times wrote “why everything you think you know about global warming is wrong.”  The Daily Mail also had the headline “Whatever happened to global warming? How freezing temperatures are starting to shatter climate change theory.”

Australia’s Herald Sun has picked up on the trend as well.  Columnist Andrew Bolt, noting the turning tide of media around the world, wrote, “this is like the moment in the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which the boy calls out “but he’s naked!”

But let’s be clear: some in the media were already beginning to question the consensus even before this announcement.

Television personalities are even coming around as well.  In April, Charles Osgood, the host of CBS News Sunday Morning and a noted environmentalist, questioned global warming projections.  He asked, “Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises the question: Could another minimum activity period on the Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?”  Osgood later scolded himself for even questioning global warming before stating “I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this solar dimming business, now that the story is out. Remember, you heard it here first…”

Lou Dobbs, formerly with CNN, has also joined the chorus questioning the alarmists consensus. In January, Dobbs compared the belief in man-made global warming to a religion.  He stated “they bring this thing to a personal belief system. It’s almost a religion, without any question…” Dobbs also criticized what he called “crowding out of facts and objective assessment of those facts…there’s such selective choices of data as one discusses and tries to understand the reality of the issues that make up global warming.”

In September, another dramatic announcement came from Houston Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger.  He stated that, “Earth seems to have, at least, temporarily stopped warming.  If we can’t have confidence in short-term prognosis for climate change, how can we have full confidence in long-term?”

The bright light is also fading on the UN IPCC.  In August, the New York Times ran the headline, “Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel.”  The article notes that, “as the panel gears up for its next climate review, many specialists in climate science and policy, both inside and out of the network, are warning that it could quickly lose relevance unless it adjusts its methods and focus.”  Weeks later on September 23, the New York Times again acknowledged a shift in public moods and scientific evidence when it stated that the UN faced an “intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.”

Given the media’s track record, this is hardly surprising.  As I noted in my 2006 speech, the media runs hot and cold in their coverage of climate change. As I said at the time:

“Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate’s fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years. Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Last year, the vice president of London’s Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism. During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which link every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy.”

Maybe one reason that the media is starting to come around is that the public is shifting as well.  It is easy to sell magazines, books, and movie tickets when you have everyone eating out of your hand, believing that a climate catastrophe is right around the corner.  But once the audience isn’t buying that story anymore, it might be time to start acknowledging the other side.

The polls are showing an unprecedented shift in public opinion on the science of climate change, as well as cap-and-trade proposals in Congress.  Only a few weeks ago, in October, as Politico reported,

“As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45 percent rated the economy as the most important issue in deciding their vote if the congressional election were held today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending, 20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent ranked climate change as the top issue. Economic worries also led a majority of Americans to place jump-starting the economy ahead of concerns about the environment. Even as the Obama administration is pushing for climate protection legislation, 62 percent of those polled agreed that “economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.” The remaining 38 percent believed that “protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth.”

Further, Gallup earlier this year released a poll that found that 41% of people believe that global warming claims are exaggerated, which is the highest number yet.

What about the effect of Al Gore’s climate scare campaign?  Gallup Poll Editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Gore’s is winning. Newport said, “It’s just not caught on, they have failed.  Any measure that we look at shows Al Gore’s losing at the moment. The public is just not that concerned. [...] Ask people to name their biggest concerns, and just 1 percent to 2 percent cite the environment. The environment doesn’t show up at all, it’s Al Gore’s greatest frustration.  We seem less concerned than more about global warming over the years…Despite the movies and publicity and all that, we’re just not seeing it take off with the American public. And that was occurring even before the latest economic recession.” He adds: “As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data.”

Polls also show that when looking at environmental issues only, climate change continually ranks dead last among concerns.  A Gallup poll in March found global warming ranked last in the U.S. among environmental issues.  Air and water pollution, toxic waste, animal and plant extinction and loss of tropical rainforests all ranked as a greater concern than global warming.  As Gallup stated, “Since more Americans express little to no worry about global warming than say this about extinction, global warming is clearly the environmental issue of least concern to them. In fact, global warming is the only issue for which more Americans say they have little to no concern than say they have a great deal of concern.”

The public is also unwilling to accept legislation on climate change that would cost them money.  Rasmussen found that 56% of Americans said they are not willing to pay any additional taxes or utility costs to fight global warming.  And only 21% of Americans are willing to pay $100 or more per year.

New Talking Points

The clear rejection of fear and hysteria is leading many on Capitol Hill to change their tune on climate legislation. Turning away from using scare tactics, the left is now trying to sell cap-and-trade as “clean energy legislation.”

Don’t say “climate change” or “global warming,” or even worse, “cap-and-trade,” anymore; use “clean energy economy.” As the New York Times and LA Times have recently reported, the White House, concerned by the lack of support for their cap-and-trade initiatives, is using poll-tested talking points to help push one of the President’s biggest priorities.

The New York Times caught on to these new talking points earlier this year, reporting, “The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is ‘global warming.’ The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.”

The LA Times also reported, “Scratch ‘cap and trade’ and ‘global warming,’ Democratic pollsters tell Obama. They’re ineffective…Control the language, politicians know, and you stand a better chance of controlling the debate. So the Obama administration, in its push to enact sweeping energy and healthcare policies, has begun refining the phrases it uses in an effort to shape public opinion. Words that have been vetted in focus groups and polls are seeping into the White House lexicon, while others considered too scary or confounding are falling away.”

Despite his long time work on cap-and-trade, Senator John Kerry actually went so far as to say he didn’t even know what cap and trade is, saying in September, “‘I don’t know what ‘cap and trade’ means. I don’t think the average American does,’ adding, ‘This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it’s a pollution reduction bill.’”

While Senator Kerry says he doesn’t know what cap-and-trade is, the American public knows what it is: a massive new energy tax, plain and simple.

Conclusion

Mr. President, let me conclude by saying just how encouraged I am to say that the tide has turned. The skeptics’ challenge has been heard, and I am glad to see that more and more journalists are no longer reporting the hyped fears that many want the American public to believe.   Media outlets around the world are more skeptical today of man-made climate fears and they are also more aware of the enormous costs of climate legislation.  And more importantly, polls are showing that the people are no longer buying the hype either. The bottom line is that efforts to pass the largest tax increase in American history have clearly failed, handing the American people a tremendous victory.

Read more at U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works

Contact:

Matt Dempsey matt_dempsey@epw.senate.gov 202-224-9797

David Lungren david_lungren@epw.senate.gov 202-224-5462

By Anna Edney and Dan Friedman, with Billy House contributing

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)

Majority Leader Reid said today (Thu) the Senate will vote Saturday on moving to healthcare overhaul legislation, adding he will not use reconciliation to pass the measure.

“We’re not using reconciliation,” Reid said, even though it is unclear he will meet the 60-vote threshold to move to the bill.

Senate Majority Whip Durbin said senators are weighing options for what time the Saturday vote would be held. One option is to set the vote in the afternoon but hold it open until Saturday night, senators and aides said.

That approach would follow one used in February on the economic stimulus bill, when Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, needed time to return from his mother’s wake. Keeping the vote open Saturday would accommodate members such as Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, who is in Montana with his ailing mother, and Sen.Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., an Orthodox Jew.

Lieberman said his observation of Shabbat would not prevent him from voting during the day Saturday, but it would require him to walk to Congress from his Georgetown home. “That’s the latest I’ve heard,” Lieberman said of the plan to hold the vote open.

But a Reid spokesman said no final decision on timing has been reached.

Reid will file cloture today on a House bill that will be used as a shell. He will offer his bill as a substitute if he gets cloture on a motion to proceed, aides said.

Reid did not say today whether he will have the votes Saturday. “We will find out when the votes are taken,” he said.

If the Senate passes the cloture motion Saturday, senators might vote Sunday on the motion to procede to the bill, which requires a simple majority vote.

The votes of three Democratic moderates for Saturday remain in question: Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a liberal, said today his support for the bill is up in the air, although he will vote for cloture on the motion to proceed.

“My vote for final passage of this bill is not at all guaranteed until I see a final bill that is strong and effective for working families and taxpayers in Vermont and America,” said Sanders, who supports a single-payer system. Sanders said he wants a final bill that allows states to form single-payer systems.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Pelosi indicated today that abortion language in the House bill will not survive when the chambers’ bills are combined. The House language, added at the last minute, is much more restrictive than the Senate version, which aims to maintain current law.

“We all have agreed — on all sides of this issue — that we would maintain the status quo, that we would have no federal funding for abortion, and that we would pass health care reform,” Pelosi said.

“We’re going to pass a bill. For those who want to use any excuse not to pass a bill, well, that’s another story,” Pelosi added. “This is not a bill about abortion. This is a bill about health care.”

Read more timely articles at Congress Daily

(Images added by ed)