Crush Liberalism

Liberalism: Why think when you can “feel”?

NASA lied “screwed up” hysterical report about hot October

You know that global “warming” is crap when they have to make up data, especially when people are observing with their own eyes (and skin) what’s really happening outside.  From the UK:

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

There’s just one little problem with that “hottest October” report:

So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Oopsies.  Continuing:

Yet last week’s latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen’s methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.  (Before the Hummer was invented?  No way! – Ed.)

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising “very much faster” than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world’s governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Why is global “warming” so darned cold?

November 17, 2008 Posted by | global warming | 3 Comments

Point to ponder

If, as the leftist Boston fishwrap opines, talk radio is now “irrelevant”, then why is the left still pushing for a reinstatement of the ill-named “Fairness Doctrine”?  I guess “freedom of choice” applies to slaughtering your babies, but not to what you listen to on the radio.

November 17, 2008 Posted by | Fairness Doctrine, hypocrisy | 2 Comments

Obama’s new White House counsel? How about a presidential assassin’s defender?

“Hope”…for thugs.  Sickening details:

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials.

Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations.

The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. 

Ed runs off a partial list of some of Craig’s most notable cases:

Besides defending Clinton through the impeachment process, an effort that Craig lost, who else had the benefit of Craig’s counsel?

  • Elian Gonzalez’s father – Craig represented the father who demanded the return of his son after his estranged wife died trying to take Elian to freedom. Most people saw this as a thinly-veiled publicity stunt from Fidel Castro, attempting to embarrass the US. The dispute got resolved when Janet Reno ordered an armed assault on the house where Elian’s family in the US provided him a home.
  • John Hinckley, Jr – Craig presented and won the insanity defense that allows Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin to spend weekends with his family now.
  • Kofi Annan – The former Secretary-General of the UN hired Craig to defend his interests in the Volcker Commission probe of the Oil-for-Food scandal, which put billions of dollars into Saddam Hussein’s pockets while providing cash for Annan’s son, his deputies, and some allege Annan himself.
  • Pedro Gonzalez Pinzon – A Panamanian legislator wanted for murdering an American soldier in 1992. The Dallas Morning News demanded that Obama force Craig to drop the case during the campaign, but no report of whether he did is easily available.

I doubt that any President has selected the defender of a presidential assassin as White House Counsel before now. Does anyone want to guess how long that takes to become a Trivial Pursuit question?

Pray, my friends.

November 17, 2008 Posted by | Obama, shameful | 5 Comments

Job application for the new administration

Want to work in the new administration?  Be prepared to relinquish your privacy.  Chuckle on this one, folks:

The New York Times first uncovered the 63 topic questionnaire the next administration asks cabinet post candidates to complete. It’s a background check that is more involved than any Presidential Administration before. The goal is to prevent political scandals that have plagued the politics of the past, but some of the questions involve topics you might only consider talking about with your clergy.

Full text of the extensive questionnaire is here (in PDF format).  Some moist morsels of hilarity:

(10) Writings: Please list and, if readily available, provide a copy of each book, article, column or publication (including but not limited to any post or comments on blogs or other websites) you have authored, individually or with others. Please list all aliases or “handles” you have used to communicate on the Internet.

Weren’t we told that anything he wrote while in college was off limits and irrelevant?  The prez’s writings are unimportant, but those of his minions are supremely important.  Got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

(16) Please list each membership, including any board memberships, you or your spouse have or have had with any political, civic, social, charitable, educational, professional, fraternal, benevolent or religious organization, private club or other membership organization (including any type of tax-exempt organization) during the past ten years. Please include dates of membership and any positions you may have had with the organization.

Ayers’ Annenberg Challenge?  Obama’s New Party and Democrat Socialist Party memberships?  Off limits, irrelevant.  Next up:

(27) Please describe the mortgage terms for any properties listed under Question 21, including the rate, date, holder, service entity, and any special circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the mortgage.

Tony Rezko ringing a bell?  Moving right along:

(61) Have you had any association with any person, group or business venture that could be used – even unfairly – to impugn or attack your character and qualifications for government service?

Dude, that one’s too easy.  Moving on:

(63) Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the President-Elect.

You mean like an aunt who’s in this country illegally?  Or a brother living in squalor in Kenya while you live in posh Hyde Park?  Or a wife who is finally, after her entire life, proud of her country?  Lemme guess: Off limits, irrelevant.

Exit question #1:  Why is it that when the Bush administration wants to get intel on terrorist activity, such as e-mails, phone recordings, etc., it’s a massive invasion of privacy; yet when The One wants to go through your personal life (including electronic communications) with a fine tooth comb, it’s kosher?

Exit question #2: Can we get Barry O himself to fill out the questionnaire?  After all, by his own standards, the Obamessiah would not be qualified to serve in his own administration!

November 17, 2008 Posted by | hypocrisy, Obama, shameful | 1 Comment

Night and Day, “Obama loves, no hates, no loves lobbyists” edition

Barry O when running for prez:

To rousing applause, Barack Obama formally announced this afternoon that the Democratic National Committee will follow his lead and begin refusing donations from registered lobbyists and special-interest political action committees.

“They do not fund my campaign,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told a small-town southwest Virginia crowd, after delivering a standard refrain that blames drug and insurance interests for blocking universal health care. “They will not fund our party. And they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I’m President of the United States.”

Barry O now that he’s won:

But more than a dozen members of President-elect Obama’s fast-growing transition team have worked as federally registered lobbyists within the past four years. They include former lobbyists for the nation’s trial lawyers association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, drug companies such as Amgen, high-tech firms such as Microsoft, labor unions and the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress.

“Change”…right, suckers?

November 17, 2008 Posted by | corruption, hypocrisy, Night and Day, Obama | Leave a Comment

MSM not quite done fawning over Obama yet

The Kamikaze Media, drowning in an ocean of red ink, is going to take one for the team, come Hell or high water.  From Howard Kurtz:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there’s nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed “Generation O”?

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. “OBAMAISM — It’s a Kind of Religion,” says New York magazine. “Those of us too young to have known JFK’s Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us,” Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

“Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not,” historian Michael Beschloss says. “Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they’re interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president.”

Well, “being cool” helped Bubba weather a storm of embarrassment and humiliation that would have swamped normal people. Granted, having no scruples or shame helped him, too, but “being cool” meant that being only the second president in the history of the republic to be impeached was a badge of honor. Clinton was the kid in school who was always getting in trouble and getting sent to the principal’s office, smiling all the way there and back…being a trouble-maker was the “in” thing, and what should have brought him shame brought him pride instead.

So yeah, I guess “being cool” has its privileges in that it means never having to say you’re sorry for sullying your reputation and humiliating yourself, your family, and your friends.
 
Anywho, what happens when reality sets in? A preview:

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

“We’re celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think,” says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. “Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course.”

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. “With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations,” its lead editorial says.
…
“The Kennedy buildup goes on,” James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. “The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent.”

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.
…
There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town — new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama’s days of walking on water won’t last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

Nope…no liberal media bias!

November 17, 2008 Posted by | media bias, Obama | 1 Comment

   

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