It is becoming quite apparent that some zealots in the federal government have been rigging their data to create the false impression there is an ecological emergency – where there is none:

When first implemented in 1990 as USHCN version1, it employed 1221 stations across the United States. In 1999, NASA’s James Hansen published this graph of USHCN version 1 annual mean temperatures:

About which Hansen correctly noted: “The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.”

…

The difference between the NOAA NCDC USHCN version 2 and GISS shows that NOAA’s new algorithm fails to correct for urbanization warming. In fact the NCDC changes have introduced a warming of 0.75F in the 75 years since 1930. Man made warming indeed but the men are in Asheville, NC.

It is a stunning find which is just one of many irregularities in a recently released report from the forensic scientists who have been challenging the cult of Al Gore/IPCC. To summarize, the data in 1999 showed no global warming (this was even after the peak warm year of 1998!). But after some manipulation all of a sudden the Earth was in trouble – right before Al Gore’s bid for the Presidency. What a striking coincidence.

And in other news, a far left liberal concludes the same thing I have for years – Wind Turbines are an eye sore which cannot meet our energy needs:

With his 90th birthday in July, a trip into space scheduled for later in the year and a new book out next month, 2009 promises to be an exciting time for James Lovelock. But the originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of humanity. 

…

Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt – that’s an awful lot of countryside.

Occasionally a little sanity shines through the misty haze.

McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America!

There are many kinds of greed in this world. On Wall Street we can glimpse the “hoarding of treasure” greed, the greed to pull in as much money as fast as possible and then waste the rest of your life as the uber consumer showing off your trinkets and comparing them to the trinkets of others.

There is also ideological greed, a need to be the answer to all humanity’s problems of the day. For some reason people cannot just look at problems and face the myriad of gears and interconnections and trip wires that make them nagging problems in the first place. Instead the dumb down the situation and see simple minded solutions (trust me, as an engineer with a deep scientific background I see the human trait all day, every day). Once the obvious and clear solution has been created in the mind, all who stand in the way of our pending hero are simply part of the problem, or agents of evil.

This is how liberal ideological greed met up with Wall Street greed and created CRA, and later the loosing of lending requirements on mortgages and the current financial debacle. The Wall Street types took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and with the support of liberal democrats in Congress who thought if you give a person a home they will take care of it (instead of earning it), people in Fannie and Freddie went on a dangerous lending spree – all the time lining their pockets with mortgage money based on how many bad mortgages they could sign up.

Democrat and Obama allies Raines and Johnson turned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the ACORN of lending institutions. They raked in billions of dollars, recklessly invested that money in people who had no idea what they were getting into, and  walked away millionaires. This is what happens when liberal ideological greed meets Wall Street greed.

And America is waking up to the realization that we don’t need to change America, we need to fix DC to remove the Wall Street greed from the equation of government. We don’t need to ACORN-ize our energy sector (as Maxine Waters threatened to do recently) or our Health Care system.

But that is what is going to happen if the liberals get their hands on all three centers of government. I think America is smart enough to play forward the worst case scenario with Obama and Co. And I think they got a clear glimpse of that when Obama finally admitted he wanted to share our wealth (aka hard earned money) with the less fortunate. Presumably to include a sea of illegal workers who already tap into every public service in this country while avoiding the full responsibilities.

Michael Barone summed the election up well this morning in one paragraph:

Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That’s one question that was raised at the third presidential debate. Wurzelbacher is the man who, in a moment caught on YouTube, confronts Barack Obama on his plan to raise taxes on people like him. Obama, sotto voce, replies that he wants to “spread the wealth around.” In the third consecutive week in which the headlines of the financial crisis have prompted both candidates to denounce “Wall Street greed,” the image of those whom Obama would tax higher was suddenly not an investment banker but a plumber.

To be fair it is not Joe who has to do anything, it is America. We all have learned how the nexus of Wall Street and DC conspired to destroy around 40% of this nation’s wealth in a couple of weeks time. Liberal policies enacted with gusto by the money handlers who became rich – and who donated some of that ‘wealth’ to politicians and invested in the DC Political Industrial Complex. Obama plans to FURTHER cripple this economy by spreading our wealth. His liberal allies want government take over of our energy and health care private sectors. They want control of our information flow and free speech.

Obama needs America’s resources because, contrary to what you may think, he is not going to be spreading our wealth inside our borders – he has different plans for our money folks:

Barack Obama vows to ‘change the world’
Barack Obama has vowed that he will “change the world” even as he urged his supporters to guard against complacency.

Obama has a lot of foreign policy plans to feed the poor and raise them up. To do that he needs to surrender our wars and cut back the military. But even that is not enough to ‘change the world’. He will be taxing our ‘greedy’ companies to make retributions to all those we have wronged. He is as naive as he is stupid.

The only thing worse than Wall Street Greed is DC greed. The latter comes with the force of law and the ability to force the people to act. At least in the free market the choice is left to the consumer how and where to spend their money. Do not think DC greed is the lesser of two evils – it has never been.  And never trust a politician with a God-complex.

 

 

McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America!

Where is the runaway global warming caused by human activity and driven by our ever widening Carbon Footprints? Ever since 1998 we have seen global cooling.  In 1998 we hit a relative high global temperature – but not as high as humanity has seen before (see graph below) – and that is when the Chicken Littles inside the Church of Al Gore/IPCC began clucking the loudest about the pending end of the world.

Well, the Church of Al Gore/IPCC really need to get their heads out of the screwed up Global Models and do the unthinkable – look at the data. For example, Chicago is seeing one of the coldest decade in a century:

There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That’s by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.

This summer’s highest reading to date has been just 91 degrees. That’s unusual. Since 1928, only one year—2000—has failed to record a higher warm-season temperature by Aug. 13.

Facts are stubborn things. And it takes true religious zealotry to ignore and deny facts when they show mounting evidence to the contrary of one’s beliefs. You would think a decade of cool summers in Chicago would be a sign that things are not as warm as they are being reported in the science challenged liberal media.

It has long been my contention the last military battle of this War on Terror might happen in the lawless region of the tribal areas of Pakistan, from where Taliban and al-Qaeda militants are raiding the southern regions of Afghanistan.  The number of border incidents have been increasing, culminating in the battle which began in Afghanistan and then flowed into Pakistan last week (see here for a sample post on the incident).  The news media and some in the Pakistan military tried to claim – along with the Taliban – that Afghanistan had invaded Pakistan.  One version of the propaganda is that Afghanistan forces attacked a Frontier Corps (FC) outpost (for what purpose, no one attempted to explain and no one asked) and it was the Taliban who came to the rescue of FC and beat back the invading enemy. 

The US was then accused of destroying the FC outpost using missiles.  This absurd version was mostly debunked by US aerial imaging from drones in the area, which were tracking the source of weapons fire on coalition forces.  The drones helped target these sources with bombs.  I said a week ago this story would fall apart and Pakistan would back (sheepishly) away.  And so it has:

Advisor to the Prime Minister on Interior, Rehman Malik Monday said Pakistan had begun monitoring of its Western borders via satellite. He said there was no missile attack on June 14 by the U.S. or its allies on Mohmand Agency and the incident was misreported.

This is being handled quietly, but I suspect some in the Pakistan government who were sources for the more spectacular claims are being investigated.  The sources came from the intelligence group – or ISI.

It seems the US led coalition in Afghanistan is stepping up its efforts against the last militant strongholds  – now the Iraq, Lebanon and nearly all of Afghanistan are now liberated from the terrorists’ control.  And it seems we are not letting things like borders get in our way anymore:

Two military helicopters of the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan intruded into Pakistan’s Khyber tribal region, triggering panic among local residents, reports said on Monday. Local residents said the helicopters intruded deep into the Landi Kotal area of Khyber Agency, adjacent to Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province on Sunday afternoon and hovered over the town for more than 10 minutes. This was the first intrusion by helicopters of the coalition forces into Khyber Agency, the Dawn newspaper reported. 

The incident occurred almost a week after an air and ground strike by coalition forces on a Pakistani post in the adjacent Mohmand tribal area killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary personnel and 10 tribesmen. The spy planes of coalition forces have increased their flights over Pakistan’s tribal belt since last week. Spy planes and fighter jets have also increased their flights over North and South Waziristan tribal regions over the past four days.

Bill Roggio at Long War Journal has much more on the detail actions that have been taking place:

The US military may have targeted Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud Several in an airstrike on June 14, according to several reports from Pakistan.

Baitullah’s hideout in the town of Makeen in South Waziristan was hit with three missiles, according to Geo TV and the Daily Times. Only one person was confirmed killed in the strike. Baitullah is not believed to have been killed.

Inside Afghanistan there is also an increase in activity on both sides.  The Afghan and coalition forces have been taking out more and more Taliban cells recently:

Thirty-five insurgents were killed by Afghan and US-led coalition forces over the weekend in two separate clashes sparked by militant ambushes, the coalition said on Monday.

Emphasis mine.  Just as we saw a last gasp for al-Qaeda in Iraq before the final fall, we may be seeing the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants (supposedly there are not very many) in this region of the world attempt a Battle of The Bulge – a last ditch effort to gain some momentum and get the liberal news media to cry for the US to surrender and run away from Afghanistan.  These attacks by the Taliban are more suicidal than threatening – as the report linked above shows.  35 Taliban killed with no casualties on the coalition side.

Now there are reports of a massive putsch by the Taliban in the southern regions of Afghanistan:

Hundreds of Taliban fighters have swarmed into a strategically important district just outside Kandahar, the biggest city in southern Afghanistan, apparently in a push for control just days after 400 Taliban members escaped in a spectacular breakout from the Kandahar prison, officials said Monday.

Afghan military reinforcements arrived in Kandahar on Monday and have already deployed in Kandahar Province, said a NATO spokesman, Mark Laity. The soldiers flew from Kabul and more can be expected to follow, he said. NATO forces based in Kandahar Province have also redeployed to be better prepared for any potential threat, he said.

A government spokesman, Parwez Najib, confirmed the news that Taliban fighters had infiltrated parts of the district, Arghandab. “There is not fighting yet,” he said. Afghan and foreign forces are aware of the presence of the Taliban, he added.

It was unclear whether any of the fighters were among the prison escapees.

The move by the Taliban on Arghandab, a district that is critical to the security of the city of Kandahar and therefore to the entire south of Afghanistan, comes amid an increased sense of crisis in Afghanistan. Kandahar is still reeling from Friday’s brazen attack by the Taliban on the prison, in which they released some 1,200 inmates, 400 of them members of the Taliban, including some district commanders.

Sorry if I am not impressed.  Every time the Taliban seize real estate they are beaten back with huge casualties.  They don’t have the training, numbers or fire power to resist the combined forces of the Afghanistan and NATO forces.  They are simply fish jumping into the barrel.  Once exposed like this, once they climb out of their holes into the open, they become easy targets.  

What will be interesting to see is how many of those we round up are from Pakistan, and how many are foreign fighters from al-Qaeda.   

Update:  More here on the Taliban force spreading in Afghanistan and the soon to come response:

“There are hundreds of them (Taliban) with sophisticated weapons. They have blown up several bridges and are planting mines everywhere,” Mohammad Usman, a taxi driver who evacuated a family on Tuesday from the district, told reporters in Kandahar.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council and a brother of President Hamid Karzai, said about 600 Taliban had positioned themselves in Arghandab district, which lies 20km to the north of Kandahar city, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities.

…

NATO troops have dropped leaflets by air warning people to leave the district, fleeing villagers said.

Haji Agha Lalai, a member of Kandahar’s provincial council, said 300 families have left so far and more were leaving their homes.

Witnesses said Afghan troops were stationed in many parts of Kandahar city, the birth place of the Taliban who US-led troops drove from power in 2001.

…

The flareup comes despite the presence of more than 60,000 foreign forces under the command of the US military and NATO as well as about 150,000 Afghan forces.

The Taliban will fail in the coming days, and they will take a beating (600 vs 210,000?).  The fact they have new weapons is disturbing.  These weapons could come from Pakistan allies or Iran (which shares a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, though the Pakistan border region includes Pakistan tribes which bridge the border and is ripe for smuggling).  Pakistan is in deep trouble if it doesn’t get its house in order.

BTW, please note this post is completely free of content from the-news-source-that-shall-not-be-named!

The lust for political power can be all consuming. It can be so consuming some people are willing to sacrifice thousands of strangers in foreign lands to ugly and brutal deaths to obtain power here at home. It is amazing to what lengths and lies some will go for power.

In politics the most common tactic used is to minimize the opposition’s strength while distracting the masses to some marginal issue where the pol believes they have an edge. The distraction includes hyping the personal strength so when it is casually compared to the opposition’s strength (which is being minimized in parallel) it appears there are greener grasses available with little risk to the voter. It is, in essence, the creation of an illusion.

Sadly this is a lie meant to trick voters, just as telephone hucksters trick people out of money or the bank account IDs by sounding reasonable. Same game, different purpose.

We hear constantly about the anti-children GOP, the anti-poor GOP, the anti-middle class GOP. The war on the middle class is a classic example of exaggerating liberal causes that most Americans would rather the government stay out of. The government is not waging ‘war’ on the people of America.

The game is to exaggerate conservative policies to the point those promoting them would appear to be mad, evil and greedy. Remember all the people who would be on the streets if welfare had time and money limits on it for the able bodied? Classic example of liberals crying “wolf”. Remember the quagmire in Afghanistan? Remember the failed Surge in Iraq?

In 2008 we are fighting pure evil – an enemy that needs no exaggeration. They have killed thousands of us, and tens of thousands of their fellow Muslims to try and gain power. In the brutal aftermath just after 9-11 it was impossible to play this diversionary power grab game. There was no inflating some domestic issue to the level of al-Qaeda’s brutality, and there was no wide to marginalize burning funeral pyres in NY, VA and PA.

However, as we took on al-Qaeda and their ilk in their homeland, and as we learned to stop threats by removing ridiculous barriers to the flow of information between those who watch our borders and those who police our streets (more on this in a later post), the threat on the streets of America dissipated, and appeared to disappear from view. We became accustomed to the new rules for boarding airlines to the point we have forgotten what it was like to walk on a plane with a pocket knife.

As the threat dissipated (but did not really disappear) an opening arose for the political hucksters to try and garner votes through the tried and true sham of marginalizing their opponents strengths (in this case the huge progress in Iraq) and trying to emphasize the importance of some silly little sound bite back home (tax the rich). But al-Qaeda and their ilk are not so easily papered over. There is no amount of lipstick the liberals can put on the pig of Islamo Fascism.

This was proven again recently when detailed al-Qaeda papers were discovered providing a glimpse into a real government of evil – not a pretend one coming out of spinmeisters in DC and NYC. If you want to see how cold and calculating a government bureaucracy can be, just look at the efficiencies of al-Qaeda in Iraq and realize the danger if such an organization did take over a well resourced and educated country like Iraq.

Flowing from the memo approving Operation Desert Shield, a stream of reports follow.

On January 7, 2006, a memo called for Iraqis who’d infiltrated various U.S. bases to conduct site surveys to help identify the camps that would be hit. The two-page note also spoke of placing ammunition stores well in advance of the attacks so the fighters could resort to them during the battles.

The January memo also commented on training and rehearsals for the offensive and the extraction routes their fighters would use after the attacks, and it dictated the need to obtain pledges from the foot soldiers of their willingness to die.

In another memo, reports were compiled from al Qaeda field commanders recommending which U.S. Army and Marine bases or Iraqi checkpoints or police stations should be targeted. Baghdad International Airport was one of the targets named. Beside each entry were notes on weapons each target would require: Grad surface-to-surface missiles, Katyusha rockets, roadside bombs and suicide bombers.

…

“It reveals,” Driscoll said, “first of all, a pretty robust command and control system, if you will. I was kind of surprised when I saw the degree of documentation for everything — pay records, those kind of things — and that [al Qaeda in Iraq] was obviously a well-established network.”

That network is now under enormous stress, primarily from the more than 100,000 nationalist insurgents who formed the Awakening Council militias and initiated an extremely effective assassination program against al Qaeda, but also from recent U.S. and Iraqi government strikes into their strongholds.

…

“These are the application forms filled in by the people who join al Qaeda,” Abu Saif said, holding one of the documents obtained by CNN. Until recently, Abu Saif was himself a senior-level al Qaeda commander.

“They took information about [the recruits], and if the applicant lied about something — because they were investigated — they would whip him,” Abu Saif said.

Induction into al Qaeda, he said, would take up to four months. In one case, Abu Saif recounted, an applicant lived for four months at the home of what he thought was a local supporter of the organization providing a safe house. Finally accepted and called to a cell leaders’ meeting, he discovered that his host was actually a senior recruiter who’d been studying his every move for those four months.

Al Qaeda’s bookkeeping was orderly and expansive: death lists of opponents, rosters of prisoners al Qaeda was holding, along with the verdicts and sentences (normally execution) the prisoners received, plus phone numbers from a telephone exchange of those who’d called the American tip line to inform on insurgents, and motor pool records of vehicle roadworthiness.

Liberals wail constantly about the NSA spying on America (again, this lie will be addressed in a later post), hinting at evil right-wingers in military uniforms gathering information on innocent civilians. The reality in Iraq is this future Islam of al-Qaeda’s used spies, informants and taps to find even the smallest dissent – and killed those they discovered, maybe with a pretend show-trial thrown in for good measure.

Liberals whine about how only the poor and uneducated fill the ranks of our military, to die as pawns to the powerful. But al-Qaeda forced support by threatening or killing family members, and beat its ‘recruits’ into submission so they would go off to die for the cause a suicide bombers. In the US we do all we can to protect our soldiers, who do all they can to avoid civilian casualties. How the liberal mind can conflate the two organizations and their approaches is beyond me. But clearly it is a symptom of power-blind madness.

There is one Islamo Fascist State that does have this kind of organizational evil built into it – Iran. Yet you listen to the liberals and to Obama you would think Iran is some minor, incapable, non-threat. There is no threat in Iran, but we need to invade Pakistan? Is sanity still required to run for higher office in the West?

Make no mistake. This is a regional threat that knows no borders and is trying to gain real estate and power by taking over countries. Only CNN could call a foreign run organization in Iraq an Iraqi enterprise because the middle managers were Iraqis. Check out the level of denial in this self conflicted ‘report’:

According to the internal al Qaeda correspondence in the files, Iraqis have taken to, and effectively run, al Qaeda in Iraq. Foreign fighters’ roles seem mostly relegated to the canon fodder of suicide attacks.

Though the upper tiers of the organization are still dominated by non-Iraqis, in Anbar, at least, all the princes and brigade and battalion commanders are homegrown.

…

Documents from 2005 and 2006 show that top-ranking leaders feared the imposition of strict religious law and brutal tactics were turning their popular support base against them.

One memorandum from three years ago warned executions of traitors and sinners condemned by religious courts “were being carried out in the wrong way, in a semi-public way, so a lot of families are threatening revenge, and this is now a dangerous intelligence situation.”

That awareness led al Qaeda to start killing tribesmen and nationalist insurgents wherever they began to rally against it, long before America ever realized that it had potential allies to turn to.

Yes, there were Iraqis willing to sell their soul and their nation and their families for power. There were Iraqis who would literally make a pack with the devil to become ‘leaders’. But most of the Iraqis in Anbar rejected this deadly arrangement, and have instead taken up arms and purged Iraq of al-Qaeda’s sick and brutal control. There are always those who either embrace or ignore deadly evil for personal gain. Always.

Which brings me back to the point of the post. We and the Iraqis stopped a truly evil governing model from taking hold in the world. One built on suspicion, control and monitoring of the individual, violent and brutal coercion, purity to the one world vision, obedience to power. In essence the real deal of all those liberal bogey-men stories we have heard for years. AQ is the real evil empire built upon religion.

Yet liberals have called for us to surrender Iraq to these animals for years now. To the point of predicting failure in the face of amazing success. They were and are willing to give AQ a base of power so large it resembles Germany in the 1930’s when Hitler rose to power. It even comes with strong and dangerous allies in Syria and Iran (representing Japan and Italy in WWII). This looks like a mass suicide plot of epic proportions!

Al-Qaeda had many blind Muslim followers who, after 9-11 who would have sold their souls into Islamo-Fascist Hell to see America beaten and bloodied. Now, after years of seeing AQ in action most Muslims are rejecting this evil. Why are we not recognizing this?

We are succeeding in Iraq and in our war against a truly evil ideology. Look at how methodical al-Qaeda was in recruiting animals who could behead a man for not following orders and then tie his four year old son to his body and throw them both in the river to demonstrate who had the power to govern. Think about organized evil and you will find the best modern model of this in al-Qaeda and Iran. Yet liberals think we should let this disease flourish and gain strength, so they can focus on government take over of energy, health care, CEO salaries, the foods we should eat, how much we should drive, what we can say …

There are days when I wonder if the two groups, liberals and al-Qaeda, coordinate or are just so blind in their lust for power they will use each other synergistically to gain their desires. Not surprisingly this too has precedence in WWII. Not only did Neville Chamberlain try and appease Hitler and give him time to arm his forces and make his plans for dominating Europe, at one time Nazi Germany’s ally was Russia. It wasn’t until the evil intentions of Hitler drove him to turn on Russia did the alliance of convenience finally shatter. People lusting for power use other people – welcome to reality.

Convenience. It is the siren’s song to all sorts of evil and crime and suffering. It may be convenient to surrender Iraq in the short term. It may help, in the short term, to forget how deadly some people in the world are (and that they are targeting us at this very moment) by pulling our troops off the battle field. But it is all an illusion that simply allows our enemies to grow strong, and increase the price in blood and treasure we will require when we face our survival later.

Stay the course, honor those who sacrificed to bring us to this point, defeat our enemy with pride that we destroyed one of the most evil organizations ever created on Earth. Don’t be deluded or confused with simple minded solutions that seem miraculous. Don’t let someone’s lust for power fool you into a false hope. The grass is just as green on this side as the other – most people understand that.

Glenn Reynolds asks an interesting question today:

SO IF THE REPUBLICANS ARE IN TROUBLE, WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE SO HAPPY? I’m at the NRA Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. I haven’t been to a big gun event in probably a decade, and the change in mood is striking: People are, well . . . not ebullient, really, but noticeably cheerful and confident. The defensive crouch of a decade ago is gone. Will that change if the Democrats take the White House?

They don’t seem to think so here. Ten years ago, gun rights were under siege. Now the two Democratic presidential candidates are bending over backward to try to paint themselves as pro-gun. It’s a lie, of course. But it’s a lie that shows where the political balance of power, er, lies on this issue. The Democrats are electing new members of Congress, too — but, again, they’re running as pro-gun. People here, I think, feel like they’ve got the momentum regardless of what happens in November.

They are happy Conservatives (and I mean the broader, more diverse, more pragmatic conservatives – not those ‘true’ conservatives who denounce compromise with the democrats, let alone voting for them) because they have choices. They are being wooed by the Democrats and GOP. And as has been shown in the Special Elections this year they are voting for Dems over the GOP in heavily conservative GOP districts.

While the ‘true’ conservatives (who come to this site and claim I am left of Hillary Clinton and a closet Democrat – supposedly as a way to woo my support!) have destroyed the GOP lock on conservatives. They chased those who believe in conservative issues – AND believe you can progress them through reasonable compromise with dems – out of the GOP. No compromise! The far right can deny this all day long, but it won’t change the reality. The GOP told the moderates there was no more common ground and called them traitors for defying the will of ‘true’ conservatives on issues such as comprehensive immigration reform.

Those nasty one-time GOP voters who would talk to dems, work with dems, compromise with dems and now – yes – vote for dems are by definition not ‘true’ conservatives. They were the cancer that had to be purged from the GOP and the right. They had become traitors to ‘the cause’. Of course these nasty people are the moderate, psuedoconservative, independent … whatever name the far right uses to try and shore up their own superior conservative ideology.

So how is it these happy centrists, being wooed by left and right, are taken as both evil and desired? I have seen all sorts of warped logic from the far right on how the moderates have destroyed the party. But it is these very moderate voters the far right needs to get back in order to win elections. Yet all they do is insult them for being so, well, moderate! (side note: I love my typos some days. My latest was “far fright” for “far right”. How ironically true was that one!).

Why are conservatives happy – they are no longer tied to one party which can take them for granted – to the point they can insult their beliefs and still expect their vote each fall. Well the last laugh is on the ones not smiling, the ones looking shell-shocked and scared because they realized they told their constituents their views were not wanted or respected. Guess what, those happy moderate conservatives now have choices because more than one party is wooing them. Well, actually only one party is wooing them now, their old party just can’t seem to find one nice thing to say about them and their ilk. Duh!

Addendum: Just finished reading Peggy Noonan stab Bush and our troops in the back again. Sshe now seems to claim we needed to surrender and run, since that would ‘break with the administration’ position to stay and win. Same old pretzel logic: ‘the GOP is not far enough to the right’, which is why the voters are electing conservatives that are to the left of center (Blue Dog Democrats). ‘The GOP is not far enough to the right’, which is why GOP voters selected McCain over a sea of far right candidates. ‘The GOP is too soft on immigration’, which is why voters in the GOP and in general elections have dumped all the hard liners out of office.

The far right talks of rebuilding by becoming more of what the voters are rejecting – call me naive but if the voters don’t like it, more of the same won’t help change their minds. What the GOP needs is to stop tearing itself apart like Noonan does. Right now no sane person would trust her to stand by them when the going got tough. She runs away saying “its all their fault!”. Yeah, if this is showing the voters what a true conservative is I am sure the voters are paying attention and taking notes. Amazing to watch a party devour itself like this.

What is poor Al Gore to do? He is not scientifically competent to begin with, and now he is facing the reality his credibility is being shot on a global scale. Let’s just imagine what Gore and his minions want – they want to cool the globe off (which means shorter crop growing seasons and harder times husbanding animals for meat and dairy products in the higher latitudes). We are getting a good lesson on what that means this year:

Last week, virtually unreported in Britain, the extraordinary winter weather of 2008 elsewhere in the world continued. In the USA, there were blizzards as far south as Texas and Arkansas, while in northern states and Canada what they are calling “the winter from hell” has continued to break records going back in some cases to 1873. Meanwhile in Asia more details emerged of the catastrophe caused by the northern hemisphere’s greatest snow cover since 1966.

In Afghanistan, where they have lost 300,000 cattle, the human death toll has risen above 1,500. In China, the havoc created by what its media call “the Winter Snow Disaster” has continued, not least in Tibet, where six months of snow and record low temperatures have killed 500,000 animals, leaving 3 million people on the edge of starvation.

It makes one wonder how bad would this winter have been if the Global Warming fanatics had been able to reduce the temperature by that 1 degree they are so panicked over? Thankfully, despite all their hype, Gore’s minions do not actually have the power to change the climate:

It might have seemed timely that in New York an array of leading climatologists and other experts should have gathered for the most high-powered international conference yet to question the “consensus” on global warming. After three days of what the chairman called “the kind of free-spirited debate that is virtually absent from the global warming alarmist camp”, the 500 delegates issued the Manhattan Declaration, stating that attempts by governments to reduce CO2 emissions would “markedly diminish further prosperity” while having “no appreciable impact” on the Earth’s warming.

In fact, the scientists here see something that may make us all wish for more warming soon enough:

This inevitably attracted the kind of hysterical abuse that has become so familiar from warmist fanatics, tellingly contrasting with the measured arguments put forward by the scientists present. One was Anthony Watts, the meteorologist who last year famously forced Nasa’s Goddard Institute to correct a fundamental error in its data on US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

On his website, Watts Up With That, he is currently posting a corrected version of the global temperature graph, combining satellite and surface data from all four main official sources. A measure of his scrupulous reporting is that although this shows a recent dramatic dip in temperatures, he cautiously explains that it is not yet conclusive evidence that the world has entered a new cooling phase (as he points out, there was temporarily an even sharper drop after the “peak” El Niño year 1998).

These scientists corrected the garbage coming out of the Goddard Institute – and the institute agreed to the corrections because they updated their results. Now, all of a sudden with accurate math, we are not facing imminent melt down. Imagine that! Al Gore can’t.

I sometimes feel I am living in a parallel universe and seeing things that no one else can see, which typically makes me feel like I must be on the wrong side of things. I find it interesting today that the news out of Pakistan and its elections are on how the opposition parties can find a two thirds majority coalition to impeach Musharraf, when in fact the people voted for an end to terrorism in their midst. Am I the only one who sees the coming train wreck for those just swept into power? These people ran an Obamish campaign on peace and handing out money to all, so why are they plotting for a constitutional showdown and ignoring the growing Islamo Fascists rising up all around them?

The obsession with gaining power which consumes the responsibility to focus on protecting the people you serve is a common cancer found when humanity pools it resources into governments. It is this misdirected and self serving effort that has the left turning into the Surrendercrat Party here in the US. They will risk boosting the power and prestige of Bin Laden by surrendering Iraq to gain power. They will tear down our national defenses based on false stories planted in the press to gain power. They will negotiate with those last few rogue states backing our enemies to gain power. They have decided we can all sacrifice for their greater good. A truly bizarre and unsustainable rationalization few sane people (on the ‘to be sacrificed’ side) will support.

I noted late last night that Pakistanis had rejected the Islamic Extremists who have been wreaking havoc across the nation for months leading up to the elections last Monday. I also noted previously (and it is being reported again today) that polls in Pakistan show the Taliban and al-Qaeda as popular as the Democrat led Congress is here in the US – which is pretty well loathed by a vast majority of the people. It is a 80-20 tilt away from these bloody extremists in Pakistan.

So, do the polls and the votes show an interest in getting rid of the elected President or getting rid of the murderous al-Qaeda and Taliban? Even if one wanted to argue that the people may want both removed, the fact is Bhutto’s power hungry widower wants to open negotiations with the murderers who have massacred Pakistanis by the thousands:

The Pakistan People’s Party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, now headed by her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, says the parliament should decide on the fate of the embattled president and the deposed judges.

…

Zardari has said he wants to open dialogue with al Qaeda- and Taliban linked militants — a sharp departure from Musharraf’s hard-line approach.

Ironic how this ‘husband’ wants to negotiate with the assassins of his wife. I guess I must be totally cynical to note that for the one person who benefited most from the death of Bhutto – the now powerful Zardari – is also one of the few insiders who could help the assassins take out his beloved. So I guess his plan now is to work with these thugs to do what?

The Islamo Fascists don’t negotiate – they take and control. They dominate by any means possible. Their brand of democracy is to hold guns at the heads of the voters (or their loved ones):

Two days before parliamentary elections, a suicide car bomber attacked members of Benazir Bhutto’s opposition party Saturday at an election office in Parachinar in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 37 people and wounding dozens more.

Other stories of violence here. Call me naive but I don’t think the Pakistanis will let al-Qaeda and the Taliban continue their reign of terror, and I don’t think al-Qaeda and the Taliban have the self control to curb it. Either they are using the naive peace movement or some in the movement are traitors to the fascists – but it won’t last even a few weeks if the Taliban and al-Qaeda start to come forward to either quash the new fledgling democracy or take control of it.

This is not Germany in the 1930’s – though I am sure some think it is. Unlike when the fascists took hold of that country Pakistanis do not support the oppressors in their midst. What seems to be brewing is a train wreck for the newly elected parties. They must do something about the terrorists – but the terrorists are not going to go quietly or live peacefully amongst the infidels.

I give the current anti-Musharraf focus coming out of Pakistan another couple of weeks before al-Qaeda and the Taliban arise again and demonstrate the impotency or complicity of the new leaders. Bin Laden needs a win, and he needs territory to restart his war against the West. Whatever ‘liberal’ brain trust guiding these fools to focus on impeachment instead of securing the safety of the people is so far from reality it cannot survive. Much like the liberal mindset here in America, to ignore the threat of Islamo Fascism is to commit political suicide.

Some news broke yesterday that did not seem to cause the ripple of concern it should have. It follows the news that the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist was in meetings with Syrian, Iranian and Islamic Jihad representatives to plan for attacks on neighboring Arab countries – one of which could easily be Iraq and US forces there. The news that created so little discussion was the fact that South Korean sources had confirmed the fact that the facility Israel destroyed a few months back in Syria was indeed a nuclear plant being built with the help of North Korea:

North Korea helped Syria build an underground nuclear reactor in the Middle East country, a South Korean news report said Monday.

“The U.S. government has circumstantial (evidence) that the North provided technology assistance to build an underground reactor in Syria,” South Korea’s Hankook Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified diplomatic channel.

My bet is that unidentified channel leads through the South Korean government. More here on the story. But that is about all I have seen on this news. If true we have a problem I described at the time where Iran and Syria and North Korea could be performing a head fake. With all eyes on Iran and their ‘civilian’ nuclear program it seems the weapon’s program – supposedly abandoned by Iran in 2003 – may have simply been moved to Syria. One group working on the fuel (Iran) and another on the weapon design (the easier part, Syria).

To people who do not understand how nuclear weapons work it might seem backwards to say the weapon is easy once you have the nuclear material for the bomb – but the mechanisms and designs to trigger a mass of nuclear material is actually quite straightforward after the basic approach was worked out during WW II. But don’t take my word for it. David Kay, who is a UN Nuclear Inspector who searched Iraq, discusses this fact in a recent interview regarding the infamous NIE that came out about Iran’s nuclear program last fall:

There was a footnote to it that a lot of people missed if they were reading just the press reports of it. It turns out what they call a “nuclear weapons program” is just the design work on the actual warhead itself. Actually, the U.S. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell testified this week that the weapons design work, particularly for an early- generation weapon, is the least important part of a nuclear-weapons program. What’s important is the fissile material and in the case of Tehran, the enriched uranium. That’s the real core of a nuclear-weapons program. And there’s no doubt that activity continues.

It also may not be a big challenge to build the nuclear trigger if rumors are true that Bill Clinton’s bungling administration actually gave Iran plans to build the trigger – which means they have the pieces they just need to see if they can design a version that flies on a missile.

An alliance of Syria, Iran and North Korea working together to arm the Middle East with nuclear weapons (and area fond of ‘martyring’ its people to prove a political point) would demonstrate an alliance as dangerous as the Nazi-Italian-Japanese Axis of the 1930’s and 1940’s, which gave us WW II. To try and obtain those kinds of weapons in a coordinated inter-state manner like the one I described would be a very serious threat to the world. And it seems the region knows it is a threat:

Syria is facing turbulent times in its relations with the outside world and its place in a region where rival powers have been competing for power and influence.

It is technically in a permanent state of war with one of its neighbours and has seen wars rage in two of its other neighbours lately.

Its closest ally is often threatened with war over its nuclear programme and its relations with the Arab world’s heavyweights have been far from cordial.

…

Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia look at Syria’s relations with Iran with deep concern, and their leaders have at times spoken publicly about it. This has even been reflected in news media affiliated with the governments of the trio, which have harshly criticised, and at times attacked, the Syrian government and its top officials.

Given al-Qaeda’s endless blood lust and willingness to massacre Muslims it would unnerve anyone to contemplate these brutal savages looking to martyr themselves armed with nukes of any variety. What I fear is how the world will test the next President and Congress – which seems to regular right of passage for each of our elections. For the Democrat Congress we saw the bloodshed in Iraq skyrocket so they would perform as al-Qaeda wanted and would run in full retreat. It was a test they failed and Bush won, because it is now al-Qaeda who is the enemy of Islam in Iraq, not its future. I am sure the next round of tests for the free world will be even more difficult to pass.

I find little reason for the world economies to be panicking. We have had years of growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. We have needed adjustments coming in Housing and fuel prices, but nothing to cause a case of the vapors. The US economy made it through 9-11 and two foreign wars since. And it has had to make it through much worse times (Carter and WW II come to mind). So what caused the ripple in the markets?

I noted today George Soros, father of Bush Derangement Syndrome and all around rich liberal nut case (which just proves anyone can make money if they are willing to sell their soul), is out with commentary on the markets today:

The worst market crisis in 60 years
By George Soros

Published: January 22 2008 19:57 | Last updated: January 22 2008 19:57
The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

Today’s ‘crisis’ is no worse than the weeks after 9-11, nor the dark days of gas rationing and Jimmy Carter. No where near as bad. Not even close. It is not the Great Depresssion or the 1930’s. So why is Soros out talking about the economy? I found this article from 2004 quite interesting:

International financier George Soros is worth $7 billion – and he so desperately wants to oust George Bush from the White House he says he would even give away his whole fortune to do so.

…

Here’s the real worry: Could the master currency trader manipulate the financial markets to create a panic, collapsing the stock market or the U.S. dollar on the eve of the November election?

The thought of such a scenario – dubbed a “Financial October Surprise” – has some worried.

Soros is a serial exaggerator. Do you all remember the horrible financial crisis of the late 1980’s? Yeah, neither do I. Here is what Soros said in 1987 about a market correction that year:

“Technically, the crash of 1987 bears an uncanny resemblance to the crash of 1929. The shape and extent of the decline and even the day-to-day movements of stock prices track very closely.”
-George Soros in The Alchemy of Finance

Somehow 1987 correction never looked like 1929 and the 1990’s did not look like the 1930’s. In fact, the one day 22% drop to a DOW of 1,738.40 looks small compared to a current DOW sitting over 10,000. Soros is in this for the money folks. He thinks he can make more with liberal presidents than conservative ones. This ain’t rocket science.