The Foundation

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” –John Adams

Editorial Exegesis

“Despite no evidence that devastating tornadoes have increased in frequency or intensity due to fossil fuel use, another warm-monger blames the Moore, Okla., disaster on GOP ‘polluters and deniers.’ Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., … took to the Senate floor Monday to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming (known by its acronym, AGW). … ‘So, you may have a question for me,’ Whitehouse said. ‘Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas.’ … According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ‘The 12-month period from May 2012 to April 2013 was remarkable for the absence of tornado activity and tornado impacts in the United States.’ NOAA tornado expert Harold Brooks notes that during that period there were just 197 tornadoes rated EF1 or stronger, the fewest since at least 1954. … During 1953, 519 people died and more than 5,000 were injured. Three tornadoes killed a total of 320 people in Waco, Texas; Flint, Mich. and Worcester, Mass., during May and June of that year. In 1965, 301 people were killed by tornadoes, 260 of those on April 11, Palm Sunday. Like the 1965 Palm Sunday outbreak, the largest outbreak in 1974 occurred on one day, Wednesday, April 3. For 1974 in total, 348 people perished. … As renowned meteorologist Joe Bastardi notes, storm cycles are heavily, and perhaps mainly, influenced by natural ocean phenomena known scientifically as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. When the Atlantic is warming and the Pacific is cooling, as they are now, we tend to see more tornadoes and hurricanes. Unfortunately, we also see more demagogues exploiting tragedy for political and ideological purposes.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“The consensus in Washington seems to be that the [scandal] involving the IRS presents the greatest threat to President Obama, since everyone gets the IRS. But at the White House, the scandal that I sense is causing the most fear is Benghazi. … Four people died. Help was not sent. And nobody really has any idea what the president did or didn’t do about it the night it happened. The administration sought to falsify the story. … Each of these scandals … must be investigated. But Republicans would be remiss if they didn’t get to the bottom of Benghazi, which may have been the greatest dereliction of duty of all. The White House has signaled as much.” –columnist Keith Koffler

“Many countries around the world have introduced government health systems since 1945, but … only in America does ‘health’ ‘care’ ‘reform’ begin with the hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents tasked with determining whether your insurance policy merits a fine. So now not only are your books and Facebook posts legitimate tax issues but so is your hernia, and your prostate, and your erectile dysfunction. … Big Government is erecting a panopticon state — one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great ‘customer service,’ except that you can never get out of the store.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“[T]his will be a scandal like Watergate if it turns out that the IRS was acting under orders from Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett. If the White House’s conduct turns out to be unimpeachable, then it is something far worse: a sign that the government itself has become a threat to the Constitution.” –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

“[T]he left suggests that only greater government can fix the issues that trouble Americans. That’s because, according to the left, one grand, unifying problem underlies all the other problems: Americans are nasty. Some Americans are poor because other Americans are greedy. Minorities are disproportionately poor because white Americans are racist. Women are trapped in socioeconomic oblivion because male Americans are sexist. America is not a melting pot. America is a hell pit designed to consume its non-white, male, Christian inhabitants. How then can the patriarchal, xenophobic majority be defeated? Only with a coalition of victims. … The true American experience, according to Obama … is marginalization. And marginalization justifies massive government interventionism to foster e pluribus unum.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

“For Obama, the only things separating America from redemption are politics, specifically obstruction from unhinged Republicans and others clinging to outdated and vaguely illegitimate motives. Opposition to gun control is irrational because the ‘government is us.’ Reject warnings ‘that tyranny is always lurking,’ he told the graduating class at Ohio State, because a self-governing people cannot tyrannize themselves. But, suddenly, when the administration finds itself ensnared by errors of its own making, the curtain is drawn back on the cult of expertise and the fantasy of statist redemption. … Of course, it was Obama who once said, ‘I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.’ That is, when things are going relatively well. When scandal hits the fan, he goes from ‘the government is us’ to talking of his own agencies the way a czar might dismiss an injustice in some Siberian backwater. The hubris of omnicompetence gives way to ‘lighten up, we’re idiots.’” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

Insight

“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.” –former head of the New York Times’ editorial staff, John Swinton (1829-1901)

“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.” –British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Demo-gogues

That’s racist: “Barriers have come tumbling down, and new doors of opportunity have swung open, and laws and hearts and minds have been changed to a point where someone who looks just like you can somehow come to serve as president of the United States of America.” –Barack Obama speaking to the predominately black Morehouse College, about the fact that discrimination is no longer an excuse for making bad decisions. Unfortunately, he still plays the race bait and class bait cards in order to make plenty of bad choices in government policy.

“I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed. I might not have been able to support a family — and that motivates me.” –Barack Obama in his commencement speech to Morehouse College, many graduates of which face an economy with no jobs

“We’re now poised for progress, but our work is not done, and our focus cannot drift. We’ve got to stay focused on our economy, and putting people back to work, and raising wages, and bringing manufacturing back to the United States of America. That has to be what we’re thinking about every single day.” –Barack Obama (In short: Don’t get sidetracked by so-called “scandals.”)

The IRS is fine: “You know, after listening to all of the discussion and reading all of the information that I’ve read, I am not convinced that this is a great big political conspiracy. I would certainly admit that there has been some ineptitude, there has been some lack of serious management procedures used and adhered to.” –Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)

“[Republicans] make so much of these issues because this president is such a great president. They will use talking points on Benghazi, they will use the IRS, they will use AP, as, I think, subterfuges — evasions — of what the American people want us to do.” –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

Hot air: “This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather: Not just hot weather, but extreme weather. … Carbon could cost us the planet. The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.” –Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) advocating a carbon tax

Dezinformatsia

Keen sense of the obvious: “Now obviously many Republicans and some of whom are not Republicans, think how many other people had to be involved [in the IRS scandal].” –former CBS anchor Dan “fake but accurate” Rather

Say what? “I would say that the president, his administration is floundering because they haven’t, they’ve allowed weapons of mass distraction [i.e., scandals] to dominate because they haven’t found their core agenda for the second term.” –The Nation’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Missing the point: “You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. In a week when they’ve obsessed over scandals, they’ve managed to miss an actual scandal. That’s their 37th vote to repeal the president’s health care law. … They just want to play the political game of repeal, repeal, repeal that will go nowhere. It’s ugly politics, and it shows the continuing power of Tea Party extremism governing today’s Republican party.” –MSNBC’s Al Sharpton

Mockery: “[T]he NRA convention just concluded in Houston. There are legitimate Second Amendment points to be made and some of the points that they make should be part of a reasonable discussion. On the other hand, this extremist absolutist view of the Second Amendment, which they cloak in high-minded talk about freedom and patriotism, they are the true patriots. Forgive me if I doubt that if the founders were reincarnated, that they would say, let’s head to Houston, because that’s where our intellectual and spiritual heirs can be found.” –sportscaster Bob Costas

Non Compos Mentis: “The place for politics today [was] dominated by perhaps the worst tornado in the history of the planet.” –MSNBC’s Martin Bashir

Newspulper Headlines:

We Blame George W. Bush: “Obama’s Disastrous Second Term” –Salon.com

We Blame Barbara Bush: “When in Doubt, Blame the Mom” –Lenore Skenazy syndicated column

Shortest Books Ever Written: “Why You Should Feel Sorry for the IRS” –NationalJournal.com

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Holder Is at It Again: Do These Guys Ever Tell the Truth?” –Washington Post website

Bottom Story of the Day: “Carney Caught Lying to Press Again” –Breitbart.com

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Is that all? “I could take up a whole afternoon talking about [Barack's] failures.” –Michelle Obama

Strange sense of “humor”: “Benghazi is a laughable joke. … Nobody believes that there was a scandal. … There are no serious questions being asked about Benghazi. None.” –former DNC chief Howard “The Scream” Dean

Sensitivity: “This tornado is in Oklahoma so clearly it has been ordered to only target conservatives.” –”The Daily Show” co-creator Lizz Winstead, who did later apologize

Belly Laugh of the Week: “The fact of the matter is that we, that this administration has a record on transparency that outdoes any previous administration’s, and we are committed to that.” –White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

“I dismiss the premise, the idea that these are scandals.” –Jay Carney

Justification for statism: “As President Obama recently reminded us, access to health care is ‘not some earned privilege — it is a right.’ And that means we must work to ensure that everyone has access to the services they need. While expanding access to health coverage is a responsibility belonging chiefly to national governments, it is imperative that the international community fulfill its essential role as champions for universal coverage.” –HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

Lame excuses: “I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who engaged in the practices described in the Treasury Inspector General’s report. … I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.” –IRS acting commissioner Steven Miller

Short Cuts

“Mr. Obama didn’t need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he’d like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.” –columnist Kim Strassel

“While denying involvement in high crimes and misdemeanors, the Obama administration appears to be pleading guilty to lesser crimes of bureaucratic incompetence.” –columnist Ron Fournier

“This administration is as transparent as a burqa.” –Fox News contributor Greg Gutfield

“The White House issued new embassy personnel guidelines. They guarantee rescue. From now on, every U.S. embassy must include a gay basketball player, an illegal alien and a woman in need of free contraception, and the Marines will be there in minutes.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“You know, if Republicans really want to do away with ObamaCare, they should endorse it as a conservative non-profit — let the IRS take it down. … President Obama announced the appointment of a man named Daniel Werfel as the new acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue. The other guy was fired. See, they’re called ‘acting’ commissioner because he has to act like the scandal doesn’t involve the White House.” –comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

After a tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma in 1999, people returned and rebuilt their homes and other structures destroyed by it.

Many of the homes, instead of including a basement, were rebuilt on concrete slabs that offer no protection when high winds tear them loose. The elementary school was believed to be strong enough to protect students, but it wasn’t. No lessons were learned from that tornado, although meteorological systems have been put in place to provide some warning.

I did not have to wait for the usual pronouncements from various environmental organizations and individual “experts” that the tornadoes that struck Oklahoma were the result of “global warming” or “climate change”, but tornadoes are a product of weather systems all around the world and have occurred for the millennia of Earth’s existence.

Typical of the way Greens exploit every dramatic weather event, Solon.com, a liberal website, posted an article by David Sirota repeating all the usual environmental lies. “Was the severe weather system culminating in yesterday’s Oklahoma City intensified—or even created—by climate change? That question will almost certainly be batted back and forth in the media over the next few days. After all, there is plenty of scientific evidence that climate change intensifies weather in general, but there remain legitimate questions about how—and even if—it intensifies tornadoes in specific.” This is the worst kind of balderdash; utterly without merit.

Sirota then went on to blame “sequestration” for increasing the impact, citing “an 8.2 percent cut to the National Weather Service”, claiming falsely that there was no way it “could maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices” and saying it means that its employees “are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings.”

This is the naked politicization of a human tragedy. Sequestration had nothing more to do with the deaths of some twenty children in Moore than the insane killing of children at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut that led to immediate calls for more gun control laws. This is typical of liberals for whom everything is about politics and power.

Sequestration, an idea put forth by President Obama and adopted by Congress as a process so idiotic and drastic that it was believed it would never be allowed to occur. It cuts the rate of federal spending, but not the amount of spending. As with the air controllers and meat inspectors, there have not been, nor will be, massive government employee layoffs. As Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) points out, one result was the curtailment of White House tours, but shortly after it was initiated, the Obama administration was still able to find millions to send to Egypt on top of the two billion it sends annually.

The government has responded to tornadoes and other weather-related events with an alphabet soup of agencies, from NASA and NOAA to FEMA. The National Weather Service (NWS) does its best to track and warn against tornadoes. According to Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, “The National Weather Service estimates that 80% of tornadoes are ‘weak’—EF1 or less—and less than 1% are violent, meaning EF5 or higher.” Such tornadoes are rare. “If the storm is upgraded, it would be only the 59^th EF5 since 1950—and the second in Moore…”

On a page from NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory offering “Tornado Basics”, it asks and answers the question “How do tornadoes form?” It answers by saying “The truth is that we don’t fully understand. The most destructive and deadly tornadoes occur from supercells, which are rotating thunderstorms with a well-defined radar circulation call a mesocyclone.”

Greens love computer models to justify their absurd claims, but the Severe Storms Laboratory says that tornado development “is related to the temperature differences across the edge of downdraft air wrapping around the mesocyclone. Mathematical modeling studies of tornado formation also indicate that it can happen without such temperature patterns, and, in fact, very little temperature variation was observed near some of the most destructive tornadoes in history.” Computer modeling is a poor substitute for Mother Nature.

What is known is that about 1,200 tornadoes annually and they generally occur in a stretch of the Midwest known as “tornado alley.” The worst of them do tremendous physical damage and kill people; which begs the question of why people moved back to Moore and rebuilt despite the 1999 tornado.

The real question is why people believe that humans have anything to do with the weather or the climate? Why does anyone believe that carbon dioxide (CO2) has anything to do with weather events or trends? The answer is that Al Gore, James Hansen, and a raft of other climate charlatans, along with countless Green organizations, have been lying to Americans and others around the world.

Since founding The National Anxiety Center in 1990 as a clearinghouse for information about Green fear-mongering, I have been a guest on countless radio shows. I tell listeners that Mother Nature has a message for mankind. It is “Get out of the way. Here comes a tornado, a flood, a hurricane, a blizzard, a wild fire.”

After the dead are totaled and a cost is estimated, there will still be tornadoes in Oklahoma and the rest of tornado alley. The primary lesson to be learned is that Mother Nature is infinitely more powerful than anything humans are alleged to do to affect it in any way because we have zero effect on it.

The other lesson is that America and other nations have wasted billions of dollars on idiotic “renewable energy” such as solar and wind projects that provide unreliable, costly alternatives to the energy on which a nation’s prosperity depends.

The opposition to “fossil fuels” and nuclear energy that Green organizations generate is an attack on human activity, along with their opposition to beneficial chemicals that can, for example, eliminate malaria and other diseases that afflict mankind demonstrates their core belief that it is humans that are responsible for harming the Earth. They are not.

To be Green is to seek to control and reduce humankind through an extensive matrix of lies.

Tornadoes are a “force majeure.” As Wikipedia explains, is “a common clause in contracts that essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as war, strike, riot, crime, or an event described by the legal term, ‘act of God.”

The Moore, Oklahoma tornado was a force majeure.

© Alan Caruba, 2013.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs .http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Amy Payne ~

Tweet this

Where do food stamps come from?

They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually 80 percent food stamps and other government nutrition programs.

The food stamps sweeten the farm deal for lawmakers, who admit that the combination works for their political purposes. As Heritage experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz explain:

The food stamp portion creates a reason for urban representatives to support farm subsidies, and for farm-state lawmakers to support food stamps.

Talk of de-politicizing agriculture programs and welfare policy is met with stiff resistance. For example, Senator Thad Cochran (R–MS), ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently told the North American Agricultural Journalists group that food stamps should continue to be included in the farm bill “purely from a political perspective. It helps get the farm bill passed.”

Food stamps are there to help “get the farm bill passed.” And the relation of the rest of the farm bill to farming is also questionable. Bakst and Katz note that “Congress has expanded the farm bill over time into a costly compilation of disparate programs. Along with agriculture and food stamps, the legislation includes dozens of forestry, conservation, energy, and rural development programs.”

It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.

Each of these programs deserves to be evaluated on its own, and taxpayers deserve transparency from Congress about how it plans to spend our money.

For example, food stamps are a massive program that needs a careful look. Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration, and participation is at historic highs. Recruiters hold bingo games and other “parties” to try to get more people on the food stamp rolls.

Farm commodity programs are also a major concern and in dire need of reform. Congress may eliminate the egregious direct payment program, which pays farmers for doing nothing. However, instead of stopping there, both the House and Senate farm bills would replace direct payments with programs that could wind up being even costlier.

Food stamps and farming ultimately have to do with food, but that’s about all they have in common. Making the farm bill 80 percent food stamps just doesn’t make sense.

LEARN MORE:

Fact Sheet >> Farm Bill: Ripe for Reform

Amy Payne is Assistant Director of Strategic Communications at  The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  In that capacity, Amy serves as Managing Editor of The Foundry, Heritage’s public policy news blog, as well as the “Morning Bell”, one of Washington’s most widely read and influential e-newsletters.

Read more informative articles at Heritage – The Foundry . http://blog.heritage.org/

Tim Graham ~

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday’s front page that their ABC-Post poll showed Obama’s approval rating remained steady, with 51 percent approving and 44 percent disapproving. Then came the Post polling comparison to uncaring Republicans. Dan Balz and Jon Cohen reported: “A bare majority of Americans say they believe that Obama is focused on issues that are important to them personally; just 33 percent think so of congressional Republicans.” They illustrated that 18-point gap with a graph.

Should we draw from this question that lying to the public and using the imposing powers of the IRS to thwart conservative groups aren’t issues that the people need to care about? Would the Post have asked this question during the Watergate scandal? Or Iran-Contra? Inside the Post, their graphics relayed that 74 percent of the sample felt the IRS targeting was “inappropriate.”’

In a bad sign of the media’s unpopularity, 52 percent felt the Justice Department’s broad seizure of AP phone records was “justified.” But get a load of the question: “As you may know, the Associated Press reported classified information about U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, and federal prosecutors have obtained AP’s phone records through a court order to try and find the source of this information. Do you think this action by federal prosecutors is or is not justified?”

‘This question not only hides any political motives of Eric Holder & Co. behind the neutral-sounding label of “federal prosecutors,” it ignores important facts. The AP only reported the information after being told the Obama people would be boasting about their anti-terrorism success the next day. The question also avoids any description of how vast the DOJ’s phone-records request was.

Liberals like Obama have complained that the media have a bad tendency to let truth and falsehood sit side by side. Well then try this poll question: “Do you think the Obama administration is honestly disclosing what it knows about what occurred in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, or is trying to cover up the facts?” Amazingly, 33 percent picked “honestly disclosing what it knows.”

Any serious media outlet cannot avoid the hard fact that the Obama administration relayed blatantly inaccurate information about Benghazi before the election. This is like taking a poll asking “Does rain contain water?”

The Post headline over these graphs of results was “Obama weathers anti-government storm.” That’s what matters to far too many journalists: getting to the bottom of the story is less important then keeping Obama from the bottom of the polls.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

This is despicable, that while rescue operations are still going on, some people are using this tragedy to push their Climate Change/Global Warming agenda…..TonyfromOz.

Rescuers are still digging children out of a collapsed school, but warmists are already trying to turn the Oklohama disaster into a poster for the climate change/global warming cause, with all the usual compassion:

Oh, sorry, are we “politicizing” the report that up to 75 kids are trapped under debris in their Moore, Oklahoma, elementary school right now? Eat us. Oh, is the science not totally sure yet about tornadoes and climate change? Well we will just wait until 97 percent of scientists agree, then surely the GOP will get reasonable and stop blaming hurricanes on gay marriage, and we can all save the planet! Also, go f*** yourself.

Tim Blair tracks down more examples of the warmist vultures, come to feed on the dead.

If there was really someone to blame for this hideous tragedy, the anger would be justified. But what we are seeing is the deliberate exploitation of grief and fear to perpetrate a lie:

And despite the increasing population density of the US:

The global warmists exploiting this tragedy are utterly disgusting.

UPDATE

Further verification from the Storm Prediction Centre, from last month::

With a preliminary count of 87 EF1 and stronger U.S. tornadoes through April 2013, the year is off to a slow start with about half the average number of tornadoes for this period of the year (153 JFMA tornadoes over the past 60 years). If the preliminary count stands, 2013 will rank 49 out of 60 in tornado activity level (through April) since 1954..

(Graphic via Watts Up With That, which flays a shameless US Senator.)

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

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The enemies of these freedoms, as expressed in the First Amendment, have always been at work to narrow and eliminate them.

A recent, egregious example of this was the subject of an article by Hans Bader, a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. In 2003 he joined the staff of the Competitive Enterprise Institute as CEI’s Counsel for Special Projects after having service as Senior Counsel at the Center for Individual Rights.

On May 10, he wrote an article, “Federal Title IX Enforcers Effectively Define Dating and Sex Education as ‘Sexual Harassment’” based on the views expressed by Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

As we have seen of late, the federal government has been using the powers of the Internal Revenue Service to harass organizations identifying themselves as “Tea Party” groups, “patriots”, and even pro-Israel. The Department of Justice has come under fire for the way it accessed phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors.

The most fundamental fear of the Founders was a central government grown too large and acquiring powers to itself not delineated or prohibited by the Constitution. That document is devoted to limitations on the federal government and the states at the time it was introduced demanded that a Bill of Rights be included before they would ratify it.

It is a precious legacy for all Americans, but it has also been the target for all manner of individuals and groups that want to impose their own interpretation on it and to expand it in ways that actually undermine it.

“In a shocking affront to the United States Constitution,” said Lukianoff, “the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have joined together to mandate that virtually every college and university in the United States establish unconstitutional speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent.”

“In 2011, the Department of Education took a hatchel to due process protection for students accused of sexual misconduct.” Now college students have had speech codes imposed on them that are “so broad that virtually every student will regularly violate them,” said Lukianoff. In essence, the new codes would define as punishable, any expression of sexual topics that offends any person!

In effect this outlaws any expression of opinion regarding sexual activity to include debates about sexual morality, gay marriage, or a classroom lecture on Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” It would outlaw any sexually themed joke that anyone might find offensive for any reason. It would criminalize any request for a date or any flirtation that is not welcomed by the recipient, all defined now as “offenses.”

As Lukianoff warns, “There is likely no student on any campus anywhere who is not guilty of at least one of these ‘offenses.’ Any attempt to enforce this rule evenhandedly and comprehensively will be impossible.”

Bader said “No one would believe you if you made this up, but it’s now actually happened.” The definition is found in a May 9 Title IX Letter of Findings and Resolution Agreement involving the University of Montana” but which now applies to all colleges and universities in America.

Bader notes that what makes this especially troubling is that the Supreme Court has already ruled on this behavior, stating that isolated instances of trivially offensive sexual speech are not illegal and are not to be considered “sexual harassment” in even the broadest possible sense.

Silencing free speech on our nation’s campuses is the official policy of the Obama administration. The mandate must be overturned before countless students find themselves expelled from colleges and universities for the flimsiest reasons. It affects what can be taught and discussed on those campuses. It is in direct contempt of the freedom of speech embedded in the First Amendment.

On May 5^th in a speech delivered to the graduating class of the Ohio State University, President Obama warned students that “Unfortunately you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warm of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems; some of these same voices are also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

No, you should not reject these voices. Some come from the Tea Party movement. Others come from organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Individual Rights, among the many who keep an eye on what appears to be the most corrupt administration to have ever held power in Washington, D.C.

© Alan Caruba, 2013.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs .http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Somebody in our high command let two former Navy SEALs die fighting off 80 radical Muslims. They fought bravely for seven hours and they could have been saved, but someone made a political decision that they should be left to die. Was that our commander-in-chief? Looks to me that it was, but soon we’ll have a full-scale investigation to answer that forty-year-old question: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” This isn’t what I started writing about for my weekly column but after watching our indignant president’s arrogant performance at the press conference Monday, my blood was boiling.

We know he’s a political animal. All presidents are. A huge ego is necessary to even go after the job, but most maintain basic human values and decency while functioning in the Oval Office. Did President Obama? He was running for a second term and election day was six weeks away. He’d been bragging about killing Osama Bin Laden and putting al Qaida on the run. Then, on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, an al Qaida group murdered an American Ambassador the president himself had appointed. Ambassador Stevens’ body was photographed being dragged through the streets, and there are unconfirmed reports that it was degraded in other ways before and after death.

It can’t be proven yet, but it’s obvious to millions of Americans that President Obama made a political decision that it was bad for his campaign for al Qaida to draw American blood again on the anniversary of September 11th, and on his watch. So, he tried to make it seem like it was something other than a terrorist attack, and hoped to ride it out until after election day. With the cooperation of our lapdog Mainstream Media, who either believed or pretended to believe his lies, he did.

This writer is not foreign policy expert or a White House correspondent. I’m a retired history teacher, but I knew right away it wasn’t a “demonstration” against a Youtube video. It was a full-scale terrorist attack by radical Muslims bent on killing Americans. People don’t bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to demonstrations. So, when I watched as President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the families of the slain Americans next to their coffins at the airport, I was enraged. When I watched UN Ambassador Susan Rice go around the Sunday morning talk shows, I knew she was lying too. Right away I got on my laptop and started typing to give vent to my anger. The next day, September 17th, I posted it on my web site and it ran in the newspapers the following Thursday, the 20th.

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Tom McLaughlin  is a (now retired) history teacher and a regular weekly columnist for newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire. He writes about political and social issues, history, family, education and Radical Islam.

Read more excellent articles from Family Security Matters .http://familysecuritymatters.org/

Topics in today’s show:

– Even though Obamacare is not fully implemented, Democrats are asking for it to be bailed out.

– California Congresswoman Janice Hahn says that Obamacare will help save marriages.

– New York City is considering allowing non citizens to vote in elections.

– A new study shows that owning a pet may cut the risk of heart disease.

– Left wing radio host Randi Rhodes called Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity terrorists.

– Youth unemployment in Greece is approaching 60%.

Starring: Jodi Miller
Director: Bruce Roundtower
Executive Producer: Matthew Sheffield

See more videos at the NewsBusted video channel . http://www.youtube.com/user/newsbusted

See and Read more Quality Material at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Andrew Bolt ~

The BBC concedes what The Age still can’t:

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

UPDATE

More unexpected news. Global warming could actually mean fish breed better, says a new paper in Global Change Biology:

Increased CO2 stimulates reproduction in a coral reef fish

Gabrielle M. Miller et al

Abstract: Ocean acidification is predicted to negatively impact the reproduction of many marine species, either by reducing fertilization success or diverting energy from reproductive effort… We investigated the effects of near-future levels of pCO2 on the reproductive performance of the cinnamon anemonefish, Amphiprion melanopus, from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Breeding pairs were held under three CO2 treatments (Current-day Control (430?atm), Moderate (584?atm) and High (1032?atm)) for a 9-month period that included the summer breeding season. Unexpectedly, increased CO2 dramatically stimulated breeding activity in this species of fish. Over twice as many pairs bred in the Moderate (67% of pairs) and High (55%) compared to the Control (27%) CO2 treatment. Pairs in the High CO2 group produced double the number of clutches per pair and 67% more eggs per clutch compared to the Moderate and Control groups. As a result, reproductive output in the High group was 82% higher than the Control group and 50% higher than the Moderate group… This study provides the first evidence of the potential effects of ocean acidification on key reproductive attributes of marine fishes and, contrary to expectations, demonstrates an initially stimulatory (hormetic) effect in response to increased pCO2. However, any long-term consequences of increased reproductive effort on individuals or populations remains to be determined.

UPDATE 2

A competition in which sceptics profit from warmists:

A husband and wife from Kenai were the sole winners of the $318,500 Nenana Ice Classic jackpot on Monday… It was the latest breakup in the 97-year history of the Ice Classic, a contest in which thousands of Alaskans pay $2.50 a chance to guess the exact time and date the Tanana River ice goes out at Nenana. The previous late breakup record was 11:41 a.m. AST on May 20, 1964…

The wooden tripod was sitting on an ice sheet at the edge of an open channel when the ice broke off and floated down the river, triggering a siren in town to notify residents the tripod was moving.

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

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

The Foundation

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” –James Madison

Government

“It turns out that Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as head of the IRS office handling tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012 — when the targeting was going on — is now head of the IRS division in charge of the IRS office policing Obamacare. … The IRS is assigned a lot of work by the Obamacare law. It will impose penalties on Americans who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it. It will impose penalties on companies with more than 50 employees who work 30 hours a week and don’t provide government-mandated policies. It will give tax credits to non-affluent purchasers of health insurance on state exchanges. The IRS says it can also give tax credits to such people in states that have federally run exchanges, though many argue the law does not authorize that. In other words, the IRS is going to possess and process a large amount of information not only on your income but on your health insurance and perhaps your health. The IRS was given these tasks by the drafters of Obamacare because no other government agency had the capability to gain access to people’s personal financial information. They may have thought that taxpayers would trust an agency that they had gotten used to dealing with. That level of trust may not be as high as it was 10 days ago. Chilling effect, indeed.” –columnist Michael Barone

Essential Liberty

“The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He’s shocked, it’s unacceptable, he’ll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you. But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. … It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. … What happened at the IRS is the government’s essential business. … Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don’t, the politicization of the IRS will continue — forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn’t stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again. … This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function.” –columnist Peggy Noonan

Re: The Left

“Imagine for a moment if black civil rights organizations, gay groups or teachers unions loudly complained to members of Congress and the press that the IRS was discriminating against them. How long would it take for the White House to investigate? Answer honestly: Minutes? Hours? … [Y]ou can be sure that the moment [Obama] heard credible allegations of political persecution of liberal groups — outfits with ‘progressive’ or ‘civil rights’ in their names — he would have moved heaven and earth to make things right. But when such allegations came from the right, the response from the president — and from a press corps that until recently acted like a king’s guard — ranged from smirks and eye-rolling to flat-out lies or virtual applause. … The time for democratic debate is always behind us with an administration that began with the mission not to let a crisis go to waste, for as Obama said in his second inaugural address, ‘Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.’ Moreover, President Obama often insists we live in a country where the ‘government is us,’ where there’s no need to fear tyranny ‘around the corner’ because we could never be tyrannical against ourselves.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

Opinion in Brief

“Mr. Obama had promised in his 2008 campaign to ‘fundamentally transform the United States’ and he kept that promise in 2010 when he used this most august, most formal occasion of our republic to deliver a blistering denunciation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the controversial case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The black-robed Justices were seated before him as he tongue-lashed them. They had been invited as honored guests. But Mr. Obama wanted them there as props. He wanted to show the world that he was master in our house. … During the campaign, he had egged on his supporters, telling them to ‘get in their faces.’ The night of his 2010 State of the Union Address, Barack Obama got in their faces. … His arrogant and offensive behavior toward the Supreme Court of the United States … was the opening gun in the race to crush his opponents. It was not a great stretch for middle level bureaucrats at IRS to see that they would please this president if they made life miserable for his opponents. And they did.” –columnists Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison

The Gipper

“The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. … To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world — nothing more and nothing less.” –Ronald Reagan

For the Record

“Liberalism’s agenda has been constant since long before liberals, having given their name a bad name, stopped calling themselves liberals and resumed calling themselves progressives, which they will call themselves until they finish giving that name a bad name. The agenda always is: Concentrate more power in Washington, more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in agencies run by experts. Then trust the experts to be disinterested and prudent with their myriad intrusions into, and minute regulations of, Americans’ lives. … His re-election theme — re-elect me because I am not Mitt Romney — yielded a meager mandate, and he used tactics that are now draining the legitimacy an election is supposed to confer. One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration’s purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate? … Because Obama’s entire agenda involves enlarging government’s role in allocating wealth and opportunity, the agenda now depends on convincing Americans to trust him, not their lying eyes. In the fourth month of his second term, it is already too late for that.” –columnist George Will

Political Futures

“If the media had acted like professionals in 2012, more of this new information would be old news by now. Voters could have made a decision between Obama and Romney with a fuller picture of how corrupt this administration truly is. By refusing to reveal that corruption, they brought that stain of corruption on themselves. Some reporters in this moment are sounding like professionals. But too many reporters are spending too much time pining about how scandals may harm Obama’s ‘legacy.’ Journalists shouldn’t be demonstrating great care for Obama’s historical reputation, like they’re the White House weed-whackers. Obama’s legacy is becoming apparent. He laughably claimed to be above politics, above partisanship and dirty tricks — when the facts are proving he’s really the dirtiest pool player in today’s politics. It’s Chicago-style politics, day and night.” –Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell

Insight

“Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. … And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution … to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.” –President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Reader Comments

“While I always find Mark Alexander’s commentary on Liberty and current events the best anywhere, his analysis on complicated threats to Liberty is better than any columnist anywhere. The Benghazi report last week, and now the outstanding overage of the Obama administration’s use of the IRS to target Patriot and Tea Party groups prior to the 2012 election, covers all the important points, puts them in the correct context, and dispenses with the rest. Too often the MSM does not distinguish between one element of a story and another, while chattering non-stop. I am thankful to a fellow Marine for introducing me to The Patriot Post 10 years ago when we were deployed for OEF. It should be required reading for every genuine Patriot!” –S/F, LtC., USMC

“While the IRS and phone tapping scandals are important, let’s not forget Benghazi. Methinks there may be an effort by the Leftmedia and this ‘most transparent administration evah’ to focus on the first two, hoping the latter will go away, in order to protect Hillary for 2016.” –Glen in California

“The IRS director was supposed to depart in June. What a terrible penalty to leave two weeks earlier than planned. When do these people start serving time in prison?” –Veritas in Reston, Virginia

“In the Navy there are ‘layers’ between the commanding officer and the deck-plate sailor. Yet, even when the captain is asleep in his rack and the ship runs aground due to the actions/inactions of that very sailor, the captain is still held accountable and is relieved of his command. Why is the military held to a much higher standard of conduct than their civilian overseers? Obama has the blood of at least six citizens on his hands at this point. How many more have to die because of politics?” –Brian in Virginia

Culture

“During the Revolutionary War, [Andrew] Jackson volunteered to fight. He was just 13 years old at the time. The British captured him and made him a servant for British officers. When one ordered Jackson to clean his boots, Jackson refused, and the officer slashed Jackson’s hand with a sword. When Jackson became president, he showed off the scar. Jackson had grit. … It shouldn’t surprise me that parents want to shelter their kids from all risk. The parents themselves live in a society where risk is less and less acceptable. We expect regulations to protect us from accidents. We expect police to protect us from every imaginable criminal threat. We demand welfare, unemployment insurance and bailouts to protect every level of society from economic risk. When something goes wrong, we sue. … Grit is the stuff of life. Greatness is often achieved only after repeated failure. … [P]assivity (and America’s welfare state) is a threat to our future. Everyone goes through pain and loss. We face obstacles. It’s the struggle to overcome obstacles that matters. That’s the stuff of life — and the route to happiness and prosperity.” –columnist John Stossel

Faith and Family

“When conservatives talk about a culture of responsibility, we’re not just talking about the personal responsibility of the individual in trouble. We’re talking about the personal responsibility of the rest of us toward that individual. … The left, so called ‘pro-choice’ activists, have an interesting concept of a culture of responsibility. That is to promote a culture that detaches sex from love and responsibility, that minimizes the central importance of family, that justifies youth sex, promiscuity, and the ‘hook-up’ culture. In short, a culture which encourages people to relate to each other in the same callous way as it encourages women to relate to the unborn children that often result from it all. … On the Planned Parenthood website, they call [crisis pregnancy] centers ‘fake clinics … that have a history of giving women wrong and biased information.’ These crisis pregnancy centers are financed and run by committed Christian Americans where women often, for the first time in their lives, experience love and meaning. The information they get, that Planned Parenthood calls ‘wrong and biased,’ is that life should be chosen over death and that responsibility is a community affair. It is not a given that we must live in a country of promiscuity, unwanted pregnancies, and abortion. We do have choice.” –columnist Star Parker

The Last Word

“This is the legacy of the Obama administration: blaming everyone else. It began with Bush. Then it became Congressional Republicans. Now it’s everybody within the Obama administration with the sole exception of the President. Michelle Obama is only moments away from being thrown under the bus should anything happen inside her ‘Let’s Move’ program. To call this unpresidential would be the understatement of the year. It is cowardly. Obama has spent his entire career leading from behind then jumping forward to take credit when things go right. … His entire presidency has rested on the pitch that Americans should trust him. If he hasn’t created jobs, that’s because he hasn’t had enough power to do so — trust him with more power, and he’ll take care of you. If he hasn’t lowered healthcare costs, that’s because Obamacare hasn’t been fully implemented by that discriminatory IRS — trust him with more power, and he’ll make sure you’re cared for. If the entire Middle East has been transformed into a Muslim Brotherhood hotbed, that’s because Obama hasn’t had bipartisan support for his foreign policy — elect him a Congressional majority in 2014, and he’ll fix the problem.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

Alan Caruba ~

One of the goals of Communism is to “Present Homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural, and healthy”.

It comes as no surprise that, during a CBS interview in February, President Obama supported having the Boy Scouts of America open its membership to gays and, presumably, those who lead scout troops as well. “My attitude, the President said “is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does, in every institution and walk of life.” Spoken like a good Communist hiding the true intent of debasing the cultural and moral life of America.

It is worth revisiting the Scout Oath: On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physical strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” The Scout Law is “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

These are attitudes and beliefs that have served generations of Scouts through life, inspiring them to maintain values that we admire in anyone and which benefit society.

On May 23^rd, the BSA board of directors will vote on whether to change its policies to allow openly homosexual scouts as members and/or gay scout leaders. A survey of its members released in early May demonstrated that a majority support keeping the current, longtime policy of exclusion in place, prohibiting homosexuals from joining or leading the organization. Fully 61% favored keeping the current policy while 34% opposed it.

There is a compelling reason, beyond the cultural and moral issues involved. According to the Centers for Disease Control “gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) represent approximately 2% of the population, yet are the population most severely affected by HIV”, the virus that causes AIDS. “In 2010, MSM accounted for 63% of all new HIV infections.”

The Boy Scouts are one of the largest youth organizations in the nation with 2.7 million youth members and more than a million adult volunteers. Since its founding in 1910 as part of the international scouting movement, more than 110 million Americans have been members of the BSA.

Its goals, as the Scout Oath reveals, is to train young men in citizenship, to develop worthy character traits, as well as self-reliance through participation in a wide range of outdoor activities, educational programs, and, for older scouts, career-oriented programs in partnership with community organizations. Cub Scouting is open to boys ages 7 to 10½ years, Boy Scouting for boys ages 10½ to 18 and Venturing for young men and women ages 14 through 21. It also offers Learning for Live that provides in-school and career education. Units are led entirely by volunteers.

The BSA holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code making it among a very small number of other patriotic and national organizations that are similarly chartered. Among them are the Girl Scouts of America, the American Legion, and the American Red Cross.

As attacks mounted against the BSA, the Supreme Court in 2000 ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that it and all other private organizations are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment of freedom of association to set membership standards. In 2004, the BSA issued a statement that “Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations of the Scout Oath and Scout law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word and deed.”

The attacks on the Boy Scouts of America represent the many efforts by progressives to undermine the essential values of the nation and a review of Communist goals reveals the success in part that they are having. Many Americans believe the nation is threatened by moral decline and there is ample evidence to support that belief.

It is my hope that on May 23^rd, the BSA board of directors will reject the inclusion of homosexuals as members and volunteer scout leaders. If it does not, many parents will not permit their young male children to join, nor should they.

© Alan Caruba, 2013.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs .http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Noel Sheppard ~

By virtually any measure, with three scandals exploding on the White House, last week had to be the worst of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Despite this, CNN – the self-described most trusted name in news – released a poll Sunday finding the current White House resident’s job approval rose two points since April and a full six points since March.

According to this poll – released in time for Candy Crowley to begin her State of the Union program touting the numbers – 53 percent of respondents approve of the job Obama’s doing. This compared to 51 percent in April and 47 percent in March.

The poll was taken Friday and Saturday.

As such, despite the ongoing scandal of Benghazi as well as new ones involving the Internal Revenue Service and the Associated Press, CNN pollsters found more Americans approving of Obama’s job performance than they did in prior months.

One could certainly question the methodology as the sample included 24 percent Republicans, 33 percent Democrats, and 43 percent Independents. But this is basically the same as the March poll.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

~

Yup! They opened the Gates of Hell.

Read More by Yaakov Kirschen at Dry Bones . http://drybonesblog.blogspot.com/

Sure, warmists exaggerated the temperature rise so far, The Age finally admits. But we still have to believe they’ll be right about the apocalypse to come:

The rate of global warming caused by rising greenhouse gas levels could be slower than previously thought, but will still result in the same eventual higher temperatures as earlier forecast, new research has found.

Note also the story suggests there has been a “rate of global warming” over the past decade, without actually telling you what it is. If the reporter did, he’d have to admit there’s been no warming at all:

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

Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book  Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by DiscoBar80

I began appreciating music during those heady days of the early and mid sixties as it changed so much. So, knowing that, some might think I’m just a fan of a certain genre of music. Peer pressure in those days meant it may have seemed not very cool to like any music genre out of what was becoming so popular during that time.

What I found was that there was just so much really good music, not just from the genre we were sort of expected to follow, but from all areas of music.

I joined the Air Force here in Australia in 1967, and when I had finished my basic training and Trade training, I was posted to Operational Bases. Being now in my early 20′s, there were always parties to go to. I wasn’t much of a drinking man, and while I would ‘sit on’ two maybe three drinks throughout the night, I tended to gravitate to where the music was being played, and there was always plenty of loud music. I would just go through the records that were there and constantly being changed, and because there were so many of these parties at different homes, there was always a differing selection of music. Besides finding new ‘stuff’, which I would mentally note, and then get my own copy of that album, I learned a very valuable lesson.

Never take your LP albums to a party.

They get all but trashed, and rarely placed back into their sleeves. Because of that, whenever I was asked to bring music to a party, I always took cassette tapes with me. I had a growing collection of LP records now, and what I would do was to play those LP’s just when I was on my own. Anything I liked I would then tape onto those 90 minute Cassettes, because that way you could get one LP per 45 minute side of the cassette.

However, what I was finding that I was beginning to enjoy a greater range of music than what those around me said was the genre to follow. So, some songs that were perceived as being perhaps uncool, I found I liked. The music was always different, the voices were in the main always good,and the songs were actually relevant.

One such case was the singer I have featured today, Engelbert Humperdinck. His voice was so powerful, and resonated, and his choice of songs enhanced and displayed to best advantage that wonderful voice.

He started life as Arnold George Dorsey, and was just a regular journeyman on the music scene, already with a relatively long career of almost 8 years behind him, and with some records released. He was not struggling, but he always had the voice to break into the big time.

A close friend suggested he change his name to Engelbert Humperdinck in the mid 60′s., taking the name of a 19th Century German Operatic Composer. After the name change he was offered a song, Strangers In The Night, but Frank Sinatra got in with that one first.

In 1967, he got his big break with the song Release Me, a song that shot to the top of the charts, and this was at a time when The Beatles were at their peak. He followed that Monster smash hit with the song I have featured today The Last Waltz, and this too shot straight to the top of the charts, and stayed there for five weeks, and this proved to be his biggest hit he had in his very long and distinguished career. Just in the UK alone, this song sold more than 1.2 million copies. It was written by Barry Mason and Les Reed.

His career was now huge, and he followed this hit with a number of songs, all successful, although none as successful as this one, but he became one of the biggest names in popular music, and has been at or around the top virtually since this time.

As testament to that long career, he has released a phenomenal 98 Albums over the years, and even now, aged 77, he is still performing regularly. Just last year, he represented the UK in the famed Eurovision Song Contest, making him the oldest person ever participating in this contest.

There was one thing about today’s featured song that always made Engelbert bristle a little. When it was released, he was almost in a musical category of his own, and was once labelled as a ‘crooner’. Engelbert’s response to that was this, a short statement which contained one of the best ‘comebacks’ in music:

No crooner has the range I have. I can hit notes a bank could not cash. What I am is a contemporary singer, a stylised performer.

I have always liked Engelbert’s songs, and it’s nice to be able to feature just one of them here. The man with the golden voice.

Alan Caruba ~

Among the greatest liars on Earth today is the international organization called Friends of the Earth (FOE). It has engaged in the most scurrilous fear-mongering for decades, along with Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the World Wildlife Fund, while all the time they pulled in billions in funding.

In May 2012, the Daily Caller noted that “The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on ‘climate change activities.’” The leading critic in Congress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked at the time, “Which would you rather have? Would you rather spend $4 billion on Air Force base solar panels, or would you rather have 28 new F-22s or 30 F-25s or modernized C-130s?”

“Would you rather have $64.8 billion spent on pointless global warming efforts or would you rather have more funds put toward modernizing our fleet of ships, aircraft and ground vehicles to improve the safety of our troops and help defend the nation against the legitimate threats that we face?’

On May 9^th, I received an email from Friends of the Earth that repeated all the lies we have heard for years. Painting with a very broad brush that completely ignores the fact that the U.S. climate has always had highs and lows of temperature, FOE complained that “Last year the U.S. experienced record-breaking weather all over the country. But, the nightly news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC barely talked about what was fueling this extreme weather—climate change.”

What FOE failed to mention was a record that was set in 2012-13; as of May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the U.S. had its longest stretch in recorded history—2,750 days—without a major hurricane landfall. The many claims of “extreme” weather are classic fear-mongering. I might also add that, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, the number of wildfires is at a ten-year low. Glaciers are not melting and seas are not rising, unless a millimeter or two worries you.

“Climate change” is the replacement name for “global warming.”  Climate is measured in centuries. The weather is whatever is happening anywhere in the nation on any given day. Around the world, however, there has been a significant increase in cold weather and many are still waiting for spring to arrive.

Typical of the hyperbole that is representative of the lies we have heard from so-called environmental organizations, FOE fumed that “the nightly news programs at the major broadcast networks have largely ignored what is fueling this extreme weather—climate change.” Citing a Media Matters for America study, FOE noted that “ABC’s nightly news program did only one segment about climate change last year. Meanwhile NBC’s news show did only four and CBS just seven segments to this critical issue.” Perhaps this is because these notably liberal news organizations have concluded it is not a critical issue?

It gets better, FOE was angry, saying “What’s almost worse is that when these networks have covered global warming, they have often treated climate change as a ‘two-sided debate’ rather than what it really is; an issue in which there is overwhelming scientific consensus.” These are people who do not want to have a debate because, based on the facts, they would lose. As for scientific consensus regarding either global warming or climate change, there is NONE. If anything, leading scientists around the world have been debunking global warming now for years.

One of the leading think tanks in the effort to end the global warming hoax has been The Heartland Institute. It has sponsored several international conferences in which scientists and others have offered papers and addressed the topic. I recommend you subscribe to its national monthly, Environmental & ClimateNews. Its Managing Editor, James M. Taylor, J.D., provides the latest information on the environmental organizations greatest villain, carbon dioxide (CO2).

Two recent dispatches by Taylor noted in one that “Climate models supporting predictions of rapid global warming during the next century have performed miserably predicting global temperatures during the past two decades”, citing a comparison of computer model predictions and real-world temperatures by climate scientist Roy W. Spencer. In another, Taylor noted that “New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, but global temperatures are not following suit. The new data undercut assertions that atmospheric carbon dioxide is causing a global warming crisis.”

Undismayed by the facts, FOE could only cite the taxpayer-funded PBS News Hour that “devoted 23 segments to covering climate change.” When the President is telling everyone that the climate is the greatest threat to the nation, PBS bureaucrats who know where the money comes from can be depended upon to broadcast his lies.

Ironically, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion by Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer on the same day the FOE email arrived. It was titled “In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.” Schmitt was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. Senator from New Mexico. He is an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy.

“The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

No wonder FOE is upset that even the mainstream media networks no longer want to report on a global warming that does not exist. There’s real science and there’s the fulminations and lies of Friends of the Earth.

© Alan Caruba, 2013.

Alan Caruba blogs daily at Warning Signs .http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/

An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of National Anxiety Center . http://www.anxietycenter.com

Tim Graham ~

By Friday, as the Obama promoters within the network news divisions started spreading the president’s word that three growing scandals are just a blip, they might point to Gallup’s daily job-approval ratings for Obama, which remained at 49 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove.

This result might also reflect that Gallup found that a slim majority of Americans are either “very” or “somewhat” following news of the IRS and Benghazi scandals, “comparatively low based on historical measures of other news stories over the last two decades.”  Low-information voters could still obsess about Angelina Jolie’s surgeries or whether Beyonce is pregnant again:

Despite extensive news coverage of these stories in recent days, the level of attention being paid to each is below the average 60% of Americans who have closely followed more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured over the past several decades. Additionally, Americans appear to be paying almost exactly the same levels of attention to both stories, despite the relative newness of the IRS story during the time in which this survey was in the field.

Republicans are much more likely to say they are following these news stories closely than are independents or in particular Democrats. There is a 21-percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats in terms of following the Benghazi story closely, and a 27-point gap on the IRS story.

Two-thirds of Republicans (67 and 66 percent) said they were following the scandals, while 40 percent of Democrats said they were following IRS-gate and 45 percent on Benghazi.

Here as an important poll number that the networks ought to stare at before the Matthews Tinglers take over the story: Majorities of all Republicans, Democrats, and independents agree or strongly agree that the IRS situation needs investigation. Just under half of Democrats and a majority of Republicans and independents believe Benghazi should be investigated.

When these groups are combined, only tiny minorites disagree or strongly disagree that these scandals aren’t serious and don’t require public attention. On the IRS, only nine percent disagree and eight percent strongly disagree that the story is serious. On Benghazi, it’s a little higher: seven percent disagree, 14 percent strongly disagree.

Journalists should understand that the public thinks this is serious enough for more investigation, more journalism – and not the kind where they start announcing the White House thinks this is “just a blip,” let’s move on.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Michelle Malkin ~

On Sept. 12, 2012, President Barack Obama vowed to “bring to justice” the perpetrators of the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya. On Oct. 26, 2012, Obama said his “biggest priority” was bringing the “folks” in Libya responsible for murdering four Americans to “justice.” Tick, tock, tick, tock.

While White House press secretary Jay Carney sneers at the GOP’s “obsession” with what went wrong at the besieged Libyan consulate, Obama continues to ply his emptiest talking point. On May 13, 2013, more than eight months after the bloody disaster, Obama snippily reminded reporters that he had told us all back in September that “we would find out what happened, we would make sure that it did not happen again, and we would make sure that we held accountable those who had perpetrated this terrible crime.”

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Justice delayed is justice denied.

A little more “obsession” from this administration with hunting down the jihadist killers would be a good thing. How about a little more anger directed at the perpetrators and a little less rage aimed at the conservative press? Nah. Team Obama seems more singularly focused on blaming its opponents, smearing whistleblowers and deriding those who are trying to hold the president to his words, words, words.

Perhaps with their newfound skepticism toward the lying liars of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the former lapdogs of the White House press corps will start asking questions like this: Where the hell is Sufyan Ben Qumu a.k.a. Abu Sufian bin Qumu?

Qumu, a suspected Libyan Islamic Fighting Group militant with ties to the financiers of the 9/11/01 attacks, was held at Guantanamo Bay for six years. The Bush administration foolishly handed him over to the Gadhafi regime on the promise that he would remain imprisoned. In 2010, Qumu was granted amnesty and released.

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 . http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

Part of Lake Bonney Wind Plant, South Australia.
Image Credit – Stuart Stansfield.

THE HIDDEN COSTS WIND POWER WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT.

While this Post specifically discusses wind power in one State of Australia, it is indicative of wind power wherever it is being brought into use. Those hidden costs I mention above are for the cost of replacement power for when wind power is not delivering power because of the variability of the wind itself….TonyfromOz.

There’s been debate recently here in Australia about the cost of power for consumers. There have been a number of rises in the cost for the provision of electrical power, and some wild claims have been made as to why it has become so expensive.

Those supporters of Renewable Power have come out and said that Renewable Power is in fact quite cheap, and the cost rises are not related to the increasing number of mainly Wind Plants being constructed, and supplying power into the grids here in Australia.

So, then are those Renewable Power supporters correct when they say that Wind Power is cheap?

In this Post, I will look specifically at the State of South Australia, (S.A.) because that State currently has the largest number of these Wind Plants of any of the States here in Australia. That State proudly claims that Wind is supplying an ever larger proportion of power to the grid for the State, so we can in fact use that as our guide to actually checking the claim that Wind Power is cheap.

What this shows, and shows quite dramatically is that not only is power more expensive in that State, but there are times when all that Wind is supplying very little power. Because of that, other forms of power have to be brought on line to cover for when that Wind is not supplying power. That adds considerably to the cost of power in that State, and there are times, in fact, quite regularly when South Australia has to have quite large amounts of its power supplied by the neighbouring State of Victoria, and that power is from traditional sources, mainly large scale coal fired power.

Now, it’s easy for me to make this claim that power costs more in South Australia than anywhere else in Australia, but here I can actually back up that claim with data. I can show you this data and explain exactly how this is in fact true.

Recently, in South Australia, there was a sad occasion when a renowned supporter of Renewable Power passed away. She was once the Mayor of Port Augusta, where South Australia’s two main coal fired plants were, and she was an ardent supporter for Renewable Power, and campaigned for the closure if those coal fired plants in here area. One of those plants is now closed for good and the other is in the process of being wound back, with a view to its closure as well. Her sad passing was noted in a special segment on late night TV Current Affairs program Lateline. That segment is shown at the following link, and the video is around nine and a half minutes long.

Solar campaigner dies

I won’t dwell on the sadness of her passing, but the program included some other information with respect to Wind Power especially that is worth mentioning in the context of this Post of mine.

Here, I will mention a couple of relevant points, the first where the interviewer says the following.

KERRY BREWSTER: And this is what’s knocked off coal: the power of wind, which in South Australia on a really blowy day is capable of generating up to 70 per cent of the state’s energy needs. Amazingly, that’s how much was generated over several hours last month.

Over several hours last Month, up to 70% of the State’s requirement. If electrical power is required for 24 hours of every day, then supplying 70% of that for a few hours in a Month on blowy days is not enough. Power is required on a full time basis. The following comment is from one of those Wind Plant operators.

MILES GEORGE, MD, INFIGEN ENERGY: There was a lot of scepticism about whether or not in fact wind farms would be become a serious player. I mean, we were called a cottage industry 10 years ago. Growth has been quite phenomenal, really, much more than we expected, such that we’re now at 25 per cent plus of wind energy generation in South Australia, which is pretty amazing, probably close to the highest in the world.

With all power generation in this State taken into account, Wind Power makes up almost 40% of the total Nameplate Capacity. However, when it comes to power actually being generated for consumption, that figure is closer to 20%. While some times show Wind delivering as high as the earlier quoted 70%, then it stands to reason there are times when power generation from Wind is also quite low.

So, having some basic information here, let’s then look at power costs for the State. The following image is the charge scale for nearly all of Australia. This is taken from the Energy regulator for all this area the Australian Energy Market Operator. (AEMO) This page of data is for the Month of May so far, and is indicative of every Month.

This chart is shown at this link.

What this chart shows is the wholesale cost (the actual cost of power generation that power providers have to buy the power at) of power for virtually all of Australia. The units shown here represent AUD/MWH (Australian Dollars per MegaWattHour) The RRP (Regional Reference Price) is the cost on a 24 hour basis, and the Peak RRP is the cost for the time period from 7AM until 10PM, the main hours of peak power consumption. The states are NSW, (New South Wales) Qld, (Queensland) SA, (South Australia) Tas, (Tasmania) and Vic. (Victoria)

As is plain to see, the cost of electrical power in South Australia is higher than for every other State. There are a couple of times where the cost in one State is close to, or around the same price as for S.A, but what is of most note here is that Peak cost, because that is for the times when People are, well, not actually asleep in bed. This encompasses all residential power consumption for the time people are awake, and also covers the hours when people are at work or out and about in their Community, all times when power consumption is at its greatest, 7AM until 10PM.

Now note the cost of that Peak RRP for S.A. and compare that with every other State. For every day, that cost is higher, and in most cases twice as high and on some, almost three times as high, and almost four times higher than in some States.

This is not just for a few hours, but for 16 hours a day, the time when people are actually up and about, actually consuming power.

So, here you have a State with the highest concentration in the Country for Wind Power, and that same State is paying more for its power than all the other States.

I’ll show you why power costs are so high, and for this I’ll use data from one day, 17th May, the last date mentioned on that image above.

Note the cost of power for S.A. on this day. As I mentioned that RRP is calculated over the full 24 hour period, and the Peak RRP is for the time when most power is actually being consumed, from 7AM until 10PM.

As you can plainly see, the cost for Power ranges from 8 to 12 times more expensive than for other State’s power costs. Keep in mind here that this cost is the wholesale price for electricity. This is the cost that the power retailers have to pay for the electricity. The prices you see there for S.A. equates to 40 and 46 cents per KWH, and while the retail price for electricity in S.A. is the most expensive in Australia, this cost here indicates that those retailers are paying more for the electricity they have to purchase than what they can sell it at for consumption.

So then, why is this day in particular so expensive, and why does it directly relate to wind power?

Firstly look at this load curve for actual power consumption in S.A. for that day.

This load curve is shown at this link. Scroll down to the third curve shown at that page. For the result shown here, under that curve are the States in this covered area. Untick the boxes for NSW, Qld, Tas, Vic, and All, and the resulktant is the red line indicating the total actual Power consumption for the State of S.A.

Now, correlating this curve to the costings above, look at the Peak RRP period of time, 7AM until 10PM. Note that total power consumption is at or around the 1600MW line there. The actual average power consumption for this period is 1610MW.

Now. this following image shows the actual power delivery from all the Wind Plants in S.A. for this same day, Friday 17May2013.

This power generation chart is also shown at this same link. For the result shown here, under that second chart are listed all the Wind Plants in the same covered area as for the total power load curve. Untick all the boxes down the left side for all the other States, and then also untick the box on the right that is titled ‘All’. What you are left with are the coloured lines for all the Wind Plants in S.A. the ones bumping along the bottom of the chart, and the black line above those indicating the total power delivered from all those Wind Plants in S.A. a total of around 560 huge Wind towers with a Nameplate Capacity of 1223MW.

WIND POWERS HIDDEN COSTS

All right then, so what does this tell us?

Let’s look at the period of time for Peak RRP, from 7AM until 10PM, the hours when consumption is at its greatest, and then relate that back to the cost for this same period of time on that same day, that cost of $462.97 per MWH.

I mentioned above that the average total consumption of power during this period of time was 1610MW.

The average total power supplied from all those Wind Plants during that time was 32MW. This comes in at an average of 1.98% of all consumed power being supplied from those 15 Wind Plants totalling 1223MW from 560 huge towers. The best they managed was at 7AM when the total was 4.7%, and the worst was 0.9% at 9AM, and then 1.1% at 8PM, right smack in the middle of the two periods of highest power consumption.

We can also look at the CF (Capacity Factor) for Wind Power calculated over the whole day. Wind Power proudly claims it has a CF of around 30%, in other words, wind can deliver its full rated power for less than one third of the time, when averaged out over time, be that for a day, a week, a Month, or a Year. For this day, the whole 24 hour period the CF for power delivery from wind power for all these 560 towers comes in at 2.8%, meaning that on this day, wind delivered its full rated capacity for just on 40 minutes, and consider a large scale coal fired plant which delivers its full rated power all the time it is running, that’s 24 hours of every day while running.

So, here we have wind supplying what can only be termed a minute amount of power. What this means is that the State’s grid operators now have to desperately find power to make up that total not being supplied from what we are told is a huge wind power total, which, when you take the Nameplate Capacity into account, then Wind makes up almost 40% of S.A. total Nameplate Capacity. Now, those grid controllers have to use all those other plants in the State to supply power for S.A. These plants, are, in the main Natural Gas fired plants, ones that are specifically designed to run at their best efficiency for the short periods of time when power consumption is at its highest, usually around 6 to 8 hours a day at most. On this day, those plants had to be online for the whole day, that’s if all of them were actually available. Instead of operating for those small periods of time, they now had to work for three or four times the required time, and those costs then escalated because of that.

At the same time, because S.A. power generation was in fact so tiny, then they also had to call on the neighbouring State of Victoria to also supply power into S.A. and that interchange is around 100MW of power, and most probably, S.A. was calling on all of that power, and the power in Victoria is supplied mainly from three large scale (brown) coal fired plants.

That is why S.A. power was so expensive for this particular day. Because their supposedly cheap wind power was not available. This is the DIRECT cause of power being so expensive for this day.

Some might say that, hey, this is not wind power that is expensive, because there wasn’t any. That is an absolute cop out, because the lack of wind power is the cause of those higher costs.

Now, relate this back to the quote further up the Post where it was said wind power was supplying anything up to 70% of the State’s power on some blowy days during the Month. Look at that costings chart again. Pick any day and power costs are higher, sometimes considerably higher than for any other State. This costing structure is an actual indicator as to how wind power is more expensive than any other traditional forms of power generation. Look at the cost structures for all those other States, all of them with the bulk of their power provided from coal fired power generation, and every one of them excepting Tasmania (with nearly all its power from Hydro, and note how cheap that is) have considerably lower prices for their electricity, and also note the smaller difference between the RRP and the Peak RRP.

Now, if you watched the video I linked to at the top of the Post, you’ll notice a power company executive telling us that the Playford coal fired plant was closed because wind power is coming into more usage, and that the Northern Plant, also coal fired, is also close to being closed, again due to wind power becoming so cheap. Nothing could be further from the truth. Playford was closed because it is 50 years old. It came on line in 1963, and is typical (really) old technology and has reached its maximum life expectancy, one of the oldest coal fired power plants still in operation in Australia when it did close down. The Northern Plant is not much better coming on line in 1985, so it’s almost 30 years old, again old technology and getting close to its life expectancy also, and you can bet that this plant would have been running and supplying power on this particular day.

So, while we are told that Wind Power is cheap, that is not really the whole truth of the matter.

Wind Power is expensive when it is supplying power, and even more expensive when it’s not supplying power. Supporters of wind power can make all the false claims they wish, but when you see data like this and then have it explained, it is patently obvious that Wind power is not cheap at all.

Wind towers can (occasionaly)  run, but they can’t hide. (when the blades stop turning)