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
Page I of IV
Government & Politics
See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Report Nothing
Glacier? What glacier?
"Avoid the term 'global warming,'" advises New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "I prefer the term 'global weirding,' because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes."
Friedman, who proves that anyone can be a climatologist, goes on to explain that with global warming, "The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous. The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington -- while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought -- is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever."
No matter what happens, blame global warming.
But as Friedman and other dogmatists peddle their propaganda, the case for man-made global warming is collapsing like a weak roof in a Beltway blizzard. In fact, we might call it "man made-up" climate change.
Phil Jones, the former director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and a central figure in the ClimateGate scandal, now admits that for the past 15 years, there has been no "statistically significant" warming. Furthermore, he says the warming trend that began in 1975 is not unlike two previous periods since 1850, and the Medieval Warm Period could have been a global phenomenon similar to the latter three. Yet Jones, who said he has had trouble "keeping track" of information supporting the infamous hockey stick graph, is still a believer in man-made global warming and he calls the last 15 years a blip in a long-term trend.
Meanwhile, John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former lead author on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is also questioning his faith. "The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change," he said. Christy's doubts, like those of other researchers, stem from problems with thousands of weather stations used to collect temperature data. Urbanization and changes in land use, equipment relocation and other factors have compromised the data. "The popular data sets show a lot of warming," he said, "but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development."
These are truly stunning admissions, coming as they do from "the consensus," and cast grave doubt on what we have long been told is "settled science." For their part, U.S. media outlets have reported exhaustively on these developments... scratch that. No, they haven't. As Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters notes, "Despite the seriousness of these revelations, much as what happened when the ClimateGate scandal first broke, with the exception of Fox News -- and a lone report by CNN -- America's media have almost totally boycotted this amazing story."
Similar revelations regarding data manipulation by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have surfaced with little or no fanfare.
Many of these same media outlets, however, found plenty of time to cover the "news" that Tiger Woods has broken his silence, or the fact that Hollywood director Kevin Smith was kicked off a plane for being too fat. As of Tuesday, CNN had reported it 14 times. Light on substance and, er, heavy on fragrance.
This Week's 'Braying Jenny' Award
"[I]t is inappropriate to look at any particular short period of time to discern the long-term trend." --NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, when asked whether she agreed with Phil Jones' assertion that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995
File this one under "Keen Sense of the Obvious." Using short-term observations to make long-term predictions is exactly what the "global warming consensus" crew has been doing for the last 15 years.
Casualties of the Changing Climate
As the case for man-made global warming goes up in smoke, there were more defections from the movement this week. United Nations climate chief Yvo de Boer announced his unexpected resignation, effective July 1. True, he took quite a bit of heat for the abject failure of the Copenhagen summit in December, but he probably just wants to spend more time with his family.
Also, The Wall Street Journal reports, "Oil giants BP PLC and ConocoPhillips and heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. said Tuesday they won't renew their membership in the three-year-old U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a broad business-environmental coalition that had been instrumental in building support in Washington for capping emissions of greenhouse gases. The move comes as debate over climate change intensifies and concerns mount about the cost of capping greenhouse-gas emissions."
Businesses aren't the only ones running away from cap-n-tax regulations. Arizona announced that it, too, will suspend its participation in the Western Regional Climate Action Initiative, which aims to reduce regional greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2012. The initiative is spearheaded by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says she won't bind her state with any emission-control plan that would raise costs for businesses and consumers.
As Terence Corcoran of Canada's National Post notes, "It's hard to tell right now which part of global warming policy is in the fastest free fall -- the economics, the politics or the science."
Hope 'n' Change: Lawyers Still Have Outsized Influence
Battle lines are being drawn for the upcoming health care summit that Barack Obama is orchestrating to save his signature legislative agenda item. The vocal and powerful trial lawyer lobby has made clear that they don't want tort reform on the table when Obama and the Democrats meet with key Republicans on Feb. 25. The American Association for Justice and other trial lawyer groups practically own the Democrat Party, and their power has been felt twice in recent years when the livelihood of these ambulance chasers has been threatened. They killed medical liability reform under George W. Bush, and they have thus far kept meaningful tort reform out of pending legislation.
Obama has signaled a willingness to discuss malpractice reform, though he remains against caps on lawsuits. His supposedly open-minded view on tort reform is light on details, however, and that makes Republicans skeptical about how much he is willing to give on the issue. DNC Chair Howard Dean spoke an inconvenient truth when he said that Democrats "did not want to take on the trial lawyers." If Obama's past performance is any guide, the trial lawyers will be able to keep him right where they want him -- their hip pocket.
From the Left: Bayh, Bayh Evan
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) shocked Washington this week by announcing that he would not seek re-election in 2010. His announcement seemed particularly unsettling for Democrats because, of all the high-profile Democrats that have stepped aside in recent weeks, Bayh was probably the one most likely to be re-elected. He was polling ahead of recent Republican entrant and frontrunner, former Sen. Dan Coats, and he has a $13 million war chest.
Lest you think that this was for the good of Hoosiers, two-term Bayh strategically announced his retirement less than 24 hours before the Indiana filing deadline for nominating petitions, thus affording potential Democrat substitutes no time to obtain the thousands of signatures required to be placed on the primary ballot. Now, the state Democrat Party has until June 30 to pick who challenges the Republican in November. Instead of allowing Democrat voters to pick their own candidate on the issues important to them, party leaders in smoke-filled back rooms will sift through potential names and find the one that best measures up to polls, focus groups and the May Republican primary winner.
Bayh, a former secretary of state and governor of Indiana, was also on Obama's short list for VP. The media has labeled him a moderate, but with an American Conservative Union lifetime rating of 20, it's hard to see where his political moderation actually came into play. Bayh has no immediate career plans, stating that he may go into business, teach, or do charity work. He did make a point of saying, "I do not love Congress," a negative sentiment echoed by many congressional retirees this term. They often cite the bitter partisanship that has evolved in Washington for which they really have no one to blame but themselves.
The rapid and continued centralization of power in Washington in recent years has done much to drive the partisanship that now cripples the political process. The more power Congress takes, the harder they fight to keep it, and the less willing they are to compromise or back down. Bayh's message was lost on his Demo colleagues, though. They were too worried about what will happen to all that money in his war chest.
New & Notable Legislation
"The ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda," reports The Hill. We're shocked -- shocked! Democrats are working to classify unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits as emergency spending that isn't subject to the "paygo" rules. Paygo, which Obama signed into law on Feb. 12, requires that some new spending (the exemption list is long) be offset by spending cuts elsewhere or tax increases.
After devising a $787 billion "stimulus" plan that didn't curb unemployment and -- according to a New York Times/CBS poll -- didn't convince the public that it "created or saved" jobs, it goes without saying that Democrats are keen on lowering expectations on the new $154 billion "jobs" bill which passed the House. The Senate has a smaller measure which spends "only" $15 billion.
The House bill promises job creation through such measures as providing aid to the states, extending unemployment benefits, and infrastructure improvements. Yet the original stimulus included many of these same programs and bailouts, leading to the logical question: Why try something again when it didn't work the first time? Well, that's why this is called a jobs bill, not a stimulus. Clearly, congressional Democrats hope the jobs this bill saves will be their own in November.
Count on Government Waste
If you thought spending upwards of $2.5 million on advertising during the Super Bowl to promote the upcoming census was a waste of money, that's just the tip of the iceberg. An audit of last fall's address canvassing portion of the census, in which workers fixed the GPS coordinates of households in preparation for this spring's count, found that it cost almost 25 percent more than the original estimate of $356 million. The extra $88 million in expenses found during the audit are an obvious concern since the bulk of the work is yet to be done. Among the excuses given were workers who were paid for the training but quit before the work actually began and others who fudged their mileage reimbursements to pad their paychecks.
The census is mandated by the Constitution to determine proportional representation through an accurate count of the populace, but in more recent times states have pushed hard for the largest possible compliance rate in order to ensure they receive "their share" from the federal trough. Consequently, the census questions become quite a bit more intrusive than "How many people live at this residence?" According to the Census Bureau, the count determines the fate of over $400 billion in federal funding. That's where the real fraud will begin.
TEA Party Movement
Find supplies for your local TEA party here from founding documents to stickers, flags and much more!
Conservative Leaders Sign 'Mount Vernon Statement'
Dozens of conservative leaders on Wednesday signed "The Mount Vernon Statement," a declaration that reaffirms first principles and constitutional Rule of Law, much as The Patriot Post has sought to do for the last 14 years, most recently through our Essential Liberty Project.
Read more and tell us what you think here.
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