Barrel Strength

I got a letter — I got a note today from one of my staff — they forwarded it to me — from a woman in St. Louis who had been part of our campaign, very active, who had passed away from breast cancer. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t afford it, so she had put off having the kind of exams that she needed. And she had fought a tough battle for four years. All through the campaign she was fighting it, but finally she succumbed to it. And she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.  (Laughter.)

As is His wont, He chose not to name her and at the end of the Revelation, the Doubters laughed.  Barrack Hussein Obama is pictured below with the ever present halo.

The women in question was Melaine Shouse who died on Jan 30th, 2010 Anno Domini or 2 After Obama, in Overland, Missouri.  These then are the humble origins of Shroud of Overland.

One of the oft repeated remarks during the US presidential campaign was the Obama was qualified to be the president by virtue of managing the presidential campaign.  It was another one of long list of self-referential statement during the campaign which was devoid of common sense.   Financial Times wrote an interesting article that examines the success Obama is having in actually doing the job.

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief….

“Clearly this kind of core management approach worked for the election campaign and President Obama has extended it to the White House,” says Mr Podesta, who managed Mr Obama’s widely praised post-election transition. “It is a very tight inner circle and that has its advantages. But I would like to see the president make more use of other people in his administration, particularly his cabinet.”…

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration’s position. “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser…

The same can be observed in foreign policy. On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel prizewinning Stephen Chu, energy secretary, were left cooling their heels while Mr Gibbs, Mr Axelrod and Ms Jarrett were constantly at the president’s side.

The White House complained bitterly about what it saw as unfairly negative media coverage of a trip dubbed Mr Obama’s “G2” visit to China. But, as journalists were keenly aware, none of Mr Obama’s inner circle had any background in China. “We were about 40 vans down in the motorcade and got barely any time with the president,” says a senior official with extensive knowledge of the region. “It was like the Obama campaign was visiting China.”…

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”…

Give a child a hammer and lots of things need hammering down.  Give the child a screwdriver and lots of things need screwing down.  Obama is the same.  Everything is a campaign issue because that is all he knows.

This is the trial of the century. The increasingly popular Dutch politician, Geert Wilders is on trial for saying offensive things about Islam, and truth, apparently, is not going to be a defence.

The Dutch Prosecution Office replied to Wilders’ attempts to call witnesses thus:

“In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.””

And what does our National Post do? Show Wilders snubbing his own nose with a pencil. The letter about Wilders which the Post printed was favourable, but the picture makes him look repellent, and thse things do not happen by accident.

Where are our conservative and libertarian bloggers? Asleep? And what’s up with the National Post? You came to the defence of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn with our own thought control commissions. Why is Wilders the exception?

And while we are on the topic of Mr Wilders, the following are important:

• Atlas Shrugs shows trial has been postponed, to resume at an unknown time at the whim of the Dutch government.
• National Review Online started to cover the trial.

Wake up, people! This is your issue!

When the climategate emails started to come out last fall, I wrote to a warmist colleague of mine for whom I have a high regard.  He deals in such matters as user-owned networks and other net-headed concerns. We have been on the same side in several carrier versus net-head issues. He is also obsessed with AGW and what the information technology  industry can do to help. Okay, so no one is perfect. But making energy use more efficient is the goal of all rational people, and if you can just leave aside the AGW thing, there is much that can and should be done.

I suggested that in the light of the HadleyCRU leaked emails that he might wish to back off a bit. I received in turn a tongue lashing for my impertinence and the crude imputation of stupidity and unworthiness for my position. I replied that this was no fair, and that one of the most odious  attrtributes of the AGW true believer was that no rational discussion would be tolerated. People might not be persuaded of AGW but they were convinced that believers in it were fanatics, and of the two phenomena, political fanaticism was more to be feared.

So now it is payback time. Actually it is just beginning to be payback time. Matt Ridley, who is a highly-successful and serious science writer, has just come out with this in the Spectator.

He makes several points:

• the complete failure and connivance of the mainstream media in this fraud
• the power of the Internet, and the amateur, to foil this plot.

The amateur has been the hero of this story: Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Andrew Montford,

“Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made. Prejudice and ignorance abound too, but the good blogs get rewarded with scoops and guest essays so they tap into rich seams of knowledge.”

And the response of the MSM has been late, but they are starting to get there.

“When Climategate broke, the mainstream media, like knights facing archers at Crécy, mostly ran dismissive pieces reflecting the official position of the Consensus. For example, they dutifully repeated the line that the University of East Anglia’s global temperature record was vindicated by two other ‘entirely independent’ records (from Nasa and NOAA), which was bunk: all three records draw from the same network of weather stations. Editors then found — by reading and counting the responses on their blog pages — that there was huge and educated interest in Climategate among their readers. One by one they took notice and unleashed their sniffing newshounds at last: the Daily Express went first, then the Mail and the Sunday Times, last week the Times and this week even the Guardian.”

And now perhaps even the Globe and Mail.

I am waiting for Geoffrey Simpson, master of the Glebe Consensus on Everything Important, and ridiculous shill for AGW, to confess to error. Also for hell to freeze over.

Count on the New York Times to remind The One that, like Ulysses, he is forced to “mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not [him]“. The only solution? Talk down to the poor fools in their own crude tongue:

The president simply couldn’t seem to escape his professorial past, to convey his passion and convictions in the plain words of plain folks, and to breach the chasm between the People’s House and people’s houses.

[...]

The president must communicate within the environment he inhabits, not the one he envisions. The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, “Mr. President, we’re down here.”

Fortunately, Charles Krauthammer steps in to smack down this arrogant fop and his co-Obamaists.

Pat Condell’s matchless outrage has to be seen. Bravo!

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I have just learned from Lawrence Auster’s site that Wilders’ trial has been postponed for many months.

The second stage booster rocket on the climate change story has just ignited, and everybody here at the Cape is holding our breath.  IPCC’s Pachauri accused of falsifying applications for money … Greenpeace wants him to resign … Phil Jones has been suspended for weeks and may not be able to avoid criminal charges … Michael Mann investigation enters second phase at Penn State … the British media, all of it, including the Guardian and the Times, smelled blood in the water and is now ripping away pieces of its thrashing victim.  The North American media, with some few exceptions, has literally been suicidal on this story.  Not only have they failed to provide the service they promise, they have sided with fraud artists who seek to confiscate my money to enrich themselves and their clans.  Delingpole of the Telegraph has it right: “I’m in no mood for being magnanimous in victory. I want the lying, cheating, fraudulent scientists prosecuted and fined or imprisoned.”

See what Ignatieff has to say about abortion in this clip from his press conference:

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The AGW conferences seem to more about preening than science, but it is still important to get at least the basic facts right.  One hears frequently about how US is the largest emitter of green house gases on a per capita basis, but is that really the case?  The following two graphs provide data on methane and carbon dioxide emissions.

Like everything about the AGW “settled science”, it seems facts differ from perception.

Pay attention people. This is vitally important. Imagine the leader of a rising political party in Canada being put on trial by the government for anti-Islamic statements.

Geert Wilders is the Dutch politician who is saying Islam is violent. He is on trial in the Netherlands right now. Read all about it.

My recent conversations with European lefties in various forums have convinced me that Europe is far gone into cultural dissolution.

Changed conceptions are as real as changing the direction of your search beam. They have the same effect, of illuminating what was previously not seen.

Take, as an example, the increasing flood of findings which have shown shown that the AGW scare was false. Moreover, I suspect that journalists, finally awakend from their doctrinal slumbers, will show how it was a concocted, long term, well-funded international campaign of  thought-control, with specific intentions to empower new ruling classes to govern the capitalist economies on the basis, for want of a better word, of a Gaian religion.

All from a change in perspective.

Today’s sermon arises from the sudden flood of damaging information on the fundamentals of AGW – man-caused global warming. The whole thing is going up in smoke before our eyes, for those who have eyes to see. Go to Climate Depot for the evidence of what I mean.
The story is as big as the fall of the Berlin Wall. It prefigures the complete collapse of the scam behind it.

This is not an inquiry into how it happened, nor is it intended to lay any more blame than I have already. The sudden revelations of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit emails showed to anyone who could read that the data was faked, the science was as cooked as your grade 12 science lab results, and worse, that a crew of enthusiasts has decided to blacklist those who did not breathe the same fumes. All true. But not what I am getting at.

It was Einstein who said “theory determines what is observed.” He meant that, until you can conceive of light being bent in a gravity field, you will not search for it. You will not assemble the instruments, go fo the funding, make a fool of yourself, if necessary, to disprove or prove a proposition that has not yet been framed.

As soon as the theory is properly framed, it can be tested.

The theory now being tested is that AGW is a scam, and suddenly vast amounts of false science are being exposed.

 The ordinary skepticism which journalists apply to statements of politicians regarding their noble motives is being applied to internationally important dignitaries preaching AGW. The miracle is that it took 15 years for them to begin asking skeptical questions.

But I am not asking you to notice the effect of the change of focus; I am asking you to notice the change of focus itself. I can think of no better demonstration of the power of our minds to change “facts”. The change starts in the mind and goes outward into the world.

So if you tell me that there is nothing in the universe but matter and its vibrations, I ask you to think, how do these vibrations of matter cause such huge change of perspective? Would not an upward evaluation of matter be appropriate if it were seen capable of such magical transformations? And if there is a second distinct substance in the universe, of which mind is the foremost example, would you be able to find a better demonstration of the power of mind to shape events, than the difference in the AGW juggernaut between last September, when it could not be stopped, and now, when it is broken and burning?

Moral: If you do not like your life, change your theory.

Roger Scruton nails it.

 I interrupt him in the middle of a portrait of conservative and liberal attitudes:

“Those two portraits are familiar to everyone, and I have no doubt on which side the readers of this magazine will stand. What all conservatives know, however, is that it is they who are motivated by compassion, and that their cold-heartedness is only apparent. They are the ones who have taken up the cause of society, and who are prepared to pay the cost of upholding the principles on which we all — liberals included — depend. To be known as a social conservative is to lose all hope of an academic career; it is to be denied any chance of those prestigious prizes, from the MacArthur to the Nobel Peace Prize, which liberals confer only on each other. For an intellectual it is to throw away the prospect of a favorable review — or any review at all — in the New York Times or the New York Review of Books. Only someone with a conscience could possibly wish to expose himself to the inevitable vilification that attends such an “enemy of the people.” And this proves that the conservative conscience is governed not by self-interest but by a concern for the public good. Why else would anyone express it?”

Read more.

Fanaticism is shouted out by Cabinet ministers and policy choices continue to be made for purely political reasons, despite the collapsing “science”  of man-caused global warming. The zombie stumbles on.

 
Britain’s Climate Change Minister, Ed Miliband, declares war on climate change skeptics.

“Mistakes and attempts to hide contradictory data had to be seen in the light of the thousands of pages of evidence in the IPCC’s four-volume report in 2007, said Miliband. The most recent accusation about the panel’s work is that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, may have known before the Copenhagen summit that its assessment report had seriously exaggerated the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

“However, Miliband was adamant that the IPCC was on the right track. “It’s worth saying that no doubt when the next report comes out it will suggest there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied,” he said.”

“The danger of climate scepticism was that it would undermine public support for unpopular decisions needed to curb carbon emissions, including the likelihood of higher energy bills for households, and issues such as the visual impact of wind turbines, said Miliband, who is also energy secretary.

Yep, I guess it would.

Worse, in a way, is Canada’s Jim Prentice saying Canada will reduce its CO2 emissions by 17%.

 ”Canada has formally notified the United Nations that it has embraced the Copenhagen Accord and will cut its carbon emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice says it was the federal government’s plan all along to align its position with that of the United States.

Prentice has said that the first step towards a binding international treaty on climate change is for countries to outline their own emission-reduction targets before the UN’s official deadline of Jan. 31.

He says that although reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent will be challenging, he believes it is attainable.”

 In the case of Prentice, does he believe a word he is saying? Or is he just talking for the microphones?

A great source of left wing insanity is Open Left. It helps me guage the extent to which Climategate and the implosion of global warming doctrine has made any progress in leftist mindshare. Zilch. Nada.

In a recent posting, Paul Rosenberg of Open Left cited NASA’s latest figures, courtesy of James Hansen.

[These figures are trashed in Watts up with that here]

The alarmist figures show a one degree Celsius rise of global temperature since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. [Never mind the conceptual difficulties of a "global" temperature and the statistical underpinnings thereof].

This one degree rise in temperature since 1850 shows, according to Rosenberg:

“No rational person can pretend that there’s any doubt about global warming. It’s way too late for that. By now it’s clear that the “let’s hear both sides” crowd is openly pro-lie, and in fact, pro-end-of-human-civilization. They are moral monsters. Period.”

So, let us get this straight. A one degree rise in global temperature (forgetting all the measurement issues associated with the declining number of weather stations), since the end of the Little Ice Age (1300-1850) means that the world has warmed up by one degree centigrade. And this is a moral catastrophe!

Did human-generated carbon dioxide emissions play any role in this?  What role? What proportion of this quite insignificant rise of one degree centigrade have to do with us? This question is never asked.

Never mind, you hideous moral monster! My feeling trumps your fact! In the instant case, the hideous moral momonster is George Will. This does not suffice to temper author Rosenberg’s vitriol. The problem is – you guessed it – the System. (How many times have you hear a leftie use the words “the system” to prevent rational thought? But I digress.)

Speaking of George Will and how he was not censured enough, Open Left rants to its true believers:

“The problem …is the system.

“And not “just” when it comes to global warming. The problem is the system when it comes to everything. The “war on terror”, the financial system, the broken Senate, the dictatorial Supreme Court, all of these are ultimately nothing more than symptoms of the underlying fact that the system is the problem. Because the system simply does not care about the truth. Which means it doesn’t care about anything or anyone, other than covering its own sweet sociopathic ass. “

Open Left then proceeds to castigate Obama for not being pur et dur enough.

Conclusion: Any time you are tempted to think that you are being too harsh in your understanding of the political Left, read their blogs. Confirm and strengthen us, Lord, in our faith. And confirm and strengthen us, lefties, in our rejection of your doctrines and self-righteous  moral posturing, by better acquaintance with what you think and how you behave. Amen.

James Delingpole of the Telegraph has a charmingly sly proposal for the retention of Rajendra Pachauri, in order to complete the destruction of the IPCC.

“Joshua, when fighting the battles of the Lord, prayed fervently that the Almighty would continue the light of day, that he might complete the overthrow of his enemies.”

Delingpole writes:

“But let’s not underestimate the scale of the struggle we climate rationalists have ahead of us. AGW is the biggest and most far-reaching scientific scandal in history, whose tentacles spread into almost every aspect of our lives, from how we dispose of our trash and how we light up our homes, to how we travel and how we are taxed and regulated. Big business stands to make a fortune out of the scam; for governments it’s a way of extending their control and increasing power; for eco-fascists it’s a way of destroying industrial civilisation.

“This conspiracy is much, MUCH bigger than one unfortunate bearded troll-impersonator.”

Unfortunately, none of the heavy hitters in the global warming establishment appear to have come to his defence.