Views from Laguna Beach

Scranton Police Union File Grievance After Chief Makes Off-Duty Arrest

2011-04-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Scranton police file grievance after chief makes off-duty arrest
By Steve McConnell (Staff Writer)Published: April 19, 2011
see http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-police-file-grievance-after-chief-makes-off-duty-arrest-1.1134453#axzz1K5ygE8II

The Scranton police union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the city for an off-duty drug arrest made by Police Chief Dan Duffy in March.
The complaint, which was filed with the state Labor Relations Board on April 14, takes issue with the chief arresting a man who was allegedly in possession of marijuana because the chief is not a member of the collective bargaining unit and was "off duty" when the March 20 arrest was made.
"I think it's absurd. I'm not going to turn my head on crime that takes place," Chief Duffy said. "I took the same oath (as a police officer) that everyone else took.
"On my day off and I'm driving around as the police chief, and that's wrong?" he asked.
The complaint states that "the work of apprehending and arresting individuals has been the sole and exclusive province of members of the bargaining unit," and that the city did not inform or negotiate with the union that the chief would be "performing bargaining unit work."
Because of this, the union says the city violated the state Labor Relations Act and the Policemen and Firemen Collective Bargaining Act.
While the chief has been known for several off-duty arrests in the city, the complaint only makes mention of the March 20 incident.
On that day, Chief Duffy said he was not scheduled to work but decided to check on citizen complaints about possible drug activity in a part of West Scranton.
While driving through the area, he arrested a man who had an outstanding bench warrant issued by Lackawanna County Court. The chief also searched the man and allegedly found he possessed a marijuana joint and drug paraphernalia, leading to the man's arrest on drug charges.
Sgt. Martin acknowledged that the chief is "morally and legally obligated" to act if he sees a crime happen and to make an arrest if necessary.
But, the union president said the chief, as member of management, should not actively root out crime or randomly patrol neighborhoods while off duty because it violates union agreements that protect rank-and-file officers' employment. The union is concerned city administrators will have more leverage to lay off police officers because "Chief Duffy will step in" and do the work, Sgt. Martin said.
"It's a perception and it leads to that," he said. "We're threatened with layoffs."
The union is asking an agreement be drawn up about the chief making the arrests.
Chief Duffy said he will not stop patrolling neighborhoods or making arrests if he receives reports from citizens, whether on or off-duty, because of the complaint.
"It's not like I am getting the information and keeping it to myself and playing hero," the chief said. "I will continue to do this. I'm a public servant."
On March 20, while not on duty, Scranton Police Chief Dan Duffy decided to take a drive through West Scranton, following up on complaints about drug activity. He saw a man he had arrested before walking on Division Street, according to arrest papers. Chief Duffy ran his name, confirmed there was a bench warrant issued for his arrest, and pulled him over. "I consider myself always on duty," Chief Duffy said at the time.

Green Energy -Oregon's Electricity Prices to Increase 23.9 Percent

2011-03-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

March 25, 2011, see http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20472&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD

Economic Effect of Oregon's Renewable Portfolio Standard
"In 2007, Oregon passed Senate Bill 838 (SB 838) which established a state renewable portfolio standard (RPS). The RPS mandates large utilities (those providing 3 percent or more of the state's electricity load) to supply a minimum percentage of electricity sold to retail customers derived from new renewable resources. Specifically, SB 838 requires that Oregon's public electric utilities increase the percentage of electricity generated from new renewable energy sources, say researchers at the Cascade Policy Institute and the Beacon Hill Institute.

Since renewable energy generally costs more than conventional energy, many have voiced concerns about higher electricity rates. Moreover, since Oregon has a limited ability to generate new renewable energy, the state will start from a low power generation base. In addition, some renewable energy sources (wind and solar power in particular) require the installation of conventional backup generation capacity for cloudy, windless days. The need for this backup further boosts the cost of renewable energy.

In the aggregate, the state's electricity consumers will pay $992 million in 2025.
Oregon's electricity prices will increase by an average of 1.73 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), or 23.9 percent, in 2025.
By 2025 the Oregon economy will lose an average of 17,530 jobs, within a range of between 10,025 jobs under the low-cost scenario and 24,630 jobs under the high-cost scenario.
In 2025, the RPS mandate will reduce annual wages by an average of $275 per worker, within a range of between $157 per worker $385 per worker."

Source: David G. Tuerck, Michael Head, and Paul Bachman, "Economic Impact of Oregon's Renewable Portfolio Standard," Cascade Policy Institute/Beacon Hill Institute, March 2011.

Senate Never Approved Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention

2011-03-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal Op/Ed article by Douglas J. Feith at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703858404576214412589911054.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

"This month, President Barack Obama declared he has a "legal obligation" to treat wartime detainees according to provisions of a treaty that the United States has never ratified. The maneuver raises a basic question: Who makes law for Americans?

The treaty Mr. Obama cited is Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war. Drafted in the mid-1970s, the Carter administration signed Protocol 1, but President Ronald Reagan, after years of interagency review, concluded that it is "fundamentally and irreconcilably flawed," because it contains provisions that would "undermine humanitarian law and endanger civilians in war."

Reagan noted that one of its provisions would undo the traditional distinction between international and non-international conflicts. Another would grant prisoner-of-war status and other privileges to irregular forces—even if they fight in civilian garb and violate the laws of war by using terrorism."

Japan Proves Nuclear Power is Safe

2011-03-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal Notable and Quotable, Wednesday March 23, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216473287331538.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

"Writer George Monbiot in the Mail and Guardian online, March 22:

"You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear- neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation."

Miami Mayor Recalled - Raised Property Taxes 14%

2011-03-15T22:47:00.001-07:00

See http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-usa-florida-election-result-idUSTRE72F0EC20110316
Reuters March 15, 2011 article by Kevin Gray

Angry voters oust Miami-Dade mayor in special vote
■ "Voters in Miami-Dade, one of the most populous U.S. counties, removed Mayor Carlos Alvarez from office in a special vote on Tuesday triggered by popular anger over a hike in property taxes."
■ "Official results showed 88 percent of voters backed the effort to oust the once-popular mayor, who is his second four-year term."
■ "The Cuban-born Alvarez came under criticism last year when Miami-Dade, saddled with record high 12 percent unemployment and the same budget deficits faced by many local and state governments, introduced a property tax increase to help fund vital services including police and public schools."
■ "The 14 percent tax hike was imposed despite double-digit declines in real estate values as south Florida was hammered by the U.S. housing and mortgage foreclosure crisis."
■ "Alvarez, 58, was also criticized for raising salaries for some county employees as well as backing a deal to use nearly $350 million in public funds to build a new stadium to house the Florida Marlins baseball team in Miami's Little Havana district."

Obama Spent $740.6 Million to Win Presidency Outspent McCain 4-to-1 Last 9 Weeks

2011-03-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

See Bloomberg at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=anLDS9WWPQW8
Spending Doubled as Obama Led Billion-Dollar Campaign
By Jonathan D. Salant - December 27, 2008

■ "In capturing the presidency, Obama, 47, became the first major-party nominee to reject federal funding for the general election. He spent $740.6 million, eclipsing the combined $646.7 million that Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry spent four years earlier."
■ "McCain spent $227.7 million; among Republicans, that was second only to Bush’s $269.4 million in 2004."
■ "Arizona Senator McCain, unlike Obama, accepted $84.1 million in public financing for the general election, a decision that barred him from raising money privately. Obama outspent him by a 4-to-1 margin from Sept. 1 through Nov. 24, FEC records show."
■ "The League of Women Voters, Democracy 21 and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group are among the organizations urging congressional overhaul of campaign financing. 'The way Washington works is not going to change until we fundamentally change the nation’s campaign finance laws,' they said."

North Dakota Economy Booming 3.8% Unemployment - California 12.4%

2011-03-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal MARCH 15, 2011 Why North Dakota Is Booming By JOEL KOTKIN
■ "They're drilling for oil, attracting high tech, and keeping the tax burden moderate. Result: 3.8% unemployment"
■ "progressives in California—which sits on its own prodigious oil supplies—abhor drilling, promising green jobs while suffering double-digit unemployment, higher utility rates and the prospect of mind-numbing new regulations that are designed to combat global warming and are all but certain to depress future growth."
■ "Between 2002 and 2009, state employment in science, technology, engineering and math-related professions grew over 30%, according to EMSI, an economic modeling firm. This is five times the national average."
■ "North Dakota now outperforms the nation in everything from the percentage of college graduates under the age of 45 to per-capita numbers of engineering and science graduates. Median household income in 2009 was $49,450, up from $42,235 in 2000. That 17% increase over the last decade was three times the rate of Massachussetts and more than 10 times that of California."
■ "North Dakota is a right-to-work state, which makes it attractive to new employers, especially in manufacturing"

400,000 Birds Killed Every Year in America by Wind Turbines

2011-03-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

400,000 Birds Killed Every Year in America by Wind Turbines
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704296604576197023673837168.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
NOTABLE & QUOTABLE Wall Street Journal MARCH 15, 2011
Raffi Khatchadourian on the BP oil spill in the New Yorker, March 14:

"It is possible to fight a forest fire and not be distracted by how the calamity was caused, and whether the cause taints the integrity of the people who deal with it. But oil spills are saturated in blame and political confusion—and opportunity. There is a sense that they are not accidents but accidents waiting to happen, and thus acts of greed. As a result, oil-soaked birds and fish come to symbolize a reviled industry's heedless behavior. Every year, as many as four hundred thousand birds are killed in America by electricity-generating wind turbines, but they do not make the cover of Time."

Why North Dakota Is Booming? 3.8% Unemployment

2011-03-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal Op/Ed piece by Joel Kotkin
MARCH 15, 2011 Why North Dakota Is Booming
They're drilling for oil, attracting high tech, and keeping the tax burden moderate. Result: 3.8% unemployment..

■ "progressives in California—which sits on its own prodigious oil supplies—abhor drilling, promising green jobs while suffering double-digit unemployment, higher utility rates and the prospect of mind-numbing new regulations that are designed to combat global warming and are all but certain to depress future growth."
■ " Between 2002 and 2009, [North Dakota] state employment in science, technology, engineering and math-related professions grew over 30%, according to EMSI, an economic modeling firm. This is five times the national average.
■ " North Dakota now outperforms the nation in everything from the percentage of college graduates under the age of 45 to per-capita numbers of engineering and science graduates. Median household income in 2009 was $49,450, up from $42,235 in 2000. That 17% increase over the last decade was three times the rate of Massachusetts and more than 10 times that of California."
■ " North Dakota is a right-to-work state, which makes it attractive to new employers, especially in manufacturing"

Los Angeles Community College District's Green Energy Program

2011-03-06T16:55:00.000-08:00

Surprise. This was a front page story, page 1 of the Los Angeles Times March 6, 2011 regarding the Los Angeles Community College District's green energy program?

See "Grand dream loses sheen in glare of daylight" at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-build6-20110306,0,4909175.story.

I could goal: "Not only would the nine colleges sever ties to the grid, saving millions of dollars a year, they would make money by selling surplus power. Thanks to state and federal subsidies, construction of the green energy projects would cost nothing upfront."

There was a giveaway that they were spending somebody else's money: "cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills."

The article doesn't connect the dots with our national policy, but I think you can replace "Larry Eisenberg" with the name "Barack Obama" and that's basically what the President is doing to the United States.

Regional Nuclear War Offsets Global Warming

2011-02-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

See National Geographic February 22, 2011 article at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/
Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years
Regional war could spark "unprecedented climate change," experts predict.

by Charles Q. Choi

"Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models.
Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate."

"To see what climate effects such a regional nuclear conflict might have, scientists from NASA and other institutions modeled a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, each packing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT—just 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal."
"The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn't be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but "the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented climate change," research physical scientist Luke Oman said during a press briefing Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C."

Also a very interesting comment / question:
erikleeolson
February 28, 2011
I have a question about the "Scenario" where 100 15KT bombs are used in this war. I'm just wondering about the numbers. That would be 1.5 Megatons of energy, whereas many above-ground atomic tests had a much higher yield, such as the 5,000Kt Tsar Bomba which was 1,400 10 times the combined energy of all explosives used in WWII, yet just one quarter of the estimated yield of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. Did any of these events change the climate of the whole planet?

Michael Barone on Americans' Reaction to the Expansion of Government

2011-02-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

See Wall Street Journal FEBRUARY 28, 2011 Notable & Quotable at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703933404576170404203823980.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Michael Barone writing Feb. 26 in the Washington Examiner:

"It's a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats' policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the Tea Party movement?

It's not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get. . . . [But people] are entitled to base their vote on the things they think important. . . .

The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension . . . It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing "anger at those unfairly getting rich—at the taxpayer's expense."

Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public-employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.

A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.

Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks."

Federal Workers Have No Collective-Bargaining Rights

2011-02-26T11:42:00.000-08:00

See Feb 26, 2011 Wall Street Journal by John Fund
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166034245532792.html

“[Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker] The governor knows he has become a national lightning rod, but he says he was nonetheless surprised when President Obama jumped into the fray last week by saying that the governor's proposal to limit collective bargaining sounded like "an assault on unions." He finds it ironic that Mr. Obama criticized his collective-bargaining changes when federal workers lack the power to bargain for wages or benefits—a fact demonstrated last month when Mr. Obama imposed a wage freeze on all federal workers. Under Mr. Walker's proposal, Wisconsin unions could still bargain for cost-of-living raises or more if approved by a voter referendum.”

Obama Budget Doubles National Debt to $26.3 Trillion in 10 Years

2011-02-15T21:55:00.000-08:00

See http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-budget-nearly-double-national-debt

CBS News Monday, February 14, 2011 by Matt Cover

(CNSNews.com) – "If the federal budget released by President Barack Obama today is implemented, it will double the national debt over the next 10 years. The current national debt is $13.56 trillion (end of FY 2010). By the end of 2021, that debt would rise to $26.3 trillion under the White House budget.

The figures reflect the effects of Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget priorities, particularly a federal deficit that never falls below $500 billion in any year between 2010 and 2021.

The national debt – both debt held by the public and debt held by “government accounts” (the Social Security trust fund chief among them) – was $13.56 trillion on Sept. 30. 2010, the end of fiscal year 2010. (The national debt today, Deb. 14, 2011, is $14.08 trillion.)

In 2021, the national debt will have risen to $26.3 trillion, increasing by $1 trillion every year until 2021. Obama’s budget does not contain any plans for balancing the federal budget or reducing the national debt."

Sarah Palin on ObamaCare "Death Panels"

2011-02-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

Statement on the Current Health Care Debate
by Sarah Palin on Friday, August 7, 2009

See http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434

"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

Repeal ObamaCare

2011-01-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

Read January 5, 2011 article at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/05/obamacare_an_unacquired_taste_108442.html
Obamacare: An Unacquired Taste
By Michael Tanner

It includes:
"two years of almost continuous debate on the issue, it is far more likely that the public really does understand the bill. They know, for example, that, despite the president's reassurances, they are not going to be able to keep their current health insurance, even if they like it. They understand that outside experts now predict that Obamacare will cost at least $2.7 trillion over its first ten years of actual operation, not the $950 billion originally predicted, adding more than $350 billion to the deficit over that period, despite massive new taxes. They've seen their insurance premiums skyrocket in response to the law's new mandates and regulations. Their common sense tells them that imposing the employer mandate will increase the cost of hiring workers and mean fewer jobs at a time when unemployment is still a national crisis. They oppose the unconstitutional individual mandate as an assault on their personal liberty. And they are rightfully concerned over how the law will affect the quality of the care they receive."

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are Keynesians

2010-12-30T07:51:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are Keynesians. John Maynard Keynes encouraged deficit spending during economic downturns to increase aggregate demand. This is a hard theory to resist particularly for politicians who address every problem or potential problem with the same solution, to increase the power and size of the government. Keynes postulated that the multiplier effect would boost the economy. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi have stated many times that government money going to people who would immediately spend it was best, that is propensity to consume. So the candlestick maker gets some government money, and spends it promptly buying items from an Indian Chief, who promptly makes purchases from the baker, and on and on. The theory is that the economy grows.

Unbelievably, there is no consensus if President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Keynesian policies worked. Roosevelt took office March 4, 1933, and five years later the country still had 15% unemployment. Prior to the Great Depression, the U.S. economy suffered numerous financial panics and recessions. Despite little Federal Government intervention, the economy bounced back more quickly. So many economists believe that Roosevelt's Keynesian policies prolonged the Depression and delayed recovery.

More recently, Japan embraced Keynesian policies, primarily “investing” in infrastructure. A 2.4% budget surplus in 1991 turned into a deficit of 4.3% by 1996 and 10% by 1998, with the national debt to GDP ratio reaching over 200%. The Keynesian policies did not work and the two decade period is referred to as Japan’s lost decade.

Of course, if Keynesian theory worked, the government really does have to make payments, it could just drop money from helicopters and the economy would grow. Or the government could hire half the unemployed to dig ditches and then hire the other half to fill the ditches back up. The formerly unemployed having a high propensity to spend would then have the candlestick maker, Indian Chief, and baker’s businesses booming. If Keynesian theory worked, Zimbabwe would be a wealthy country.

During the 1930s depression, President Herbert Hoover and Roosevelt kept on increasing tax rates. Roosevelt kept on increasing regulations. Without certainty and a stable tax and regulatory environment, businesses cannot plan and determine which business expansions or new business enterprises will pencil out. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi have continued these practices. Imagine you have a business idea, and are using a spreadsheet to forecast your projected revenue and expenses. What do you put down as your expenses for taxes, health care costs, and thanks to proposed cap and trade legislation, energy costs?

The Bush tax cuts have been in place for nearly a decade. Some progressives have referred to this as Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich. However, President Obama said in his December 7, 2010 press conference "A typical working family faced a tax increase of over $3,000 on January 1st".

Congress and President Obama have agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years. Hopefully, the Keynesian policies are at an end, and the government has now provided some certainty to taxpayers so entrepreneurs can consider expanding their current business or to start a new business. Let's hope so.

Yours truly,

Gene Felder

Government Unions vs. Taxpayers

2010-12-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

See Wall Street Journal Monday, December 13, 2010 op/ed piece by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703766704576009350303578410.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
"Government Unions vs. Taxpayers The moral case for unions—protecting working families from exploitation—does not apply to public employment"

It includes:
"Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of liberal politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into liberal campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion."

"First, we need to bring public employee compensation back in line with the private sector and reduce the overall size of the federal civilian work force. Mr. Obama's proposal to freeze federal pay is a step in the right direction, but it falls well short of shrinking government and eliminating the pay premium enjoyed by federal employees.
Second, get the numbers right. Government should start using the same established accounting standards that private businesses are required to use, so we can accurately assess unfunded liabilities.
Third, we need to end defined-benefit retirement plans for government employees. Defined-benefit systems have created a financial albatross for taxpayers. The private sector dropped them years ago in favor of the clarity and predictability of defined-contribution models such as 401(k) plans. This change alone can save taxpayers trillions of dollars."

Bush Tax Cut for the Typical American Family

2010-12-06T10:19:00.000-08:00

From the President's press conference:
"Allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for the typical American family,"
"And that could cost our economy well over a million jobs."
President Barack Obama Dec 6, 2010

What happened to always calling it Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich?

Obama Sabotages Republican Leaders Press Conference

2010-12-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Is President Obama cool? Or is he cold? Or is he quite petty, hypocritical and disingenuous?

What do you make of this in Dana Milbank’s column?

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113005458.html

“Slurpee Summit full of empty calories” by Dana Milbank Washington Post column Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Includes:
“Republicans made plans to speak to TV cameras in the White House driveway immediately after the session, but then the White House announced that Obama would be making a televised statement at 12:20. Republican leaders, in response, announced a news conference on Capitol Hill for 12:30. Obama then delayed his 12:20 statement, and, before Republicans could complete their news conference, he began his dueling statement - forcing the cable networks to ditch the GOP event.
The White House, in turn, did its best to make sure the visiting Republican leaders wouldn't get a chance at the spotlight. Photographers and TV cameras were not admitted to the room for the customary ‘spray’ - a few seconds to shoot photos or roll tape. And the ‘stakeout’ location in the West Wing driveway - the spot where White House visitors address the cameras - was rendered inhospitable by a fleet of backhoes and cement trucks working on a construction project.
That was about the time Obama began his competing statement, which included a lament about the ‘hyperpartisan climate’ in which ‘both sides come to the table. They read their talking points. Then they head out to the microphones, trying to win the news cycle instead of solving problems.’ Obama called that ‘a game that we can't afford.’
The statement might have carried more weight if Obama hadn't just preempted his opponents' news conference.”

Liberal Eleanor Clift on Obama and Change

2010-11-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

See "Halfhearted Soul-Searching at the White House" by Eleanor Clift, Newsweek Nov 21, 2010
at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/19/the-problem-with-the-cult-of-obama.html

It includes:
"Obama is an undefined figure to much of the country, and to his fellow Democrats. Though he’s portrayed as a liberal, it’s not clear what he’ll fight for, and he keeps that deliberately vague, perhaps hoping to deliver on the post-partisan promise his election represented. The fight over whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts is a perfect example. The White House needs to settle on a strategy and then execute it, whatever it is. Hope is not a strategy, and the extent to which Obama seems to weigh the political considerations of whatever decision he makes reinforces the voters’ disillusionment that rather than leading, he has instead become part of the government—an implicit admission of his failure to bring about the change he ran on."

Democratic 2010 Off Year Election Effort

2010-11-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

"This was about the volunteer effort, not the election result," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse. "The party made 86 million voter contacts, we had staff or volunteers in 435 congressional districts, we raised and spent more money than ever in a midterm, we had the lergest midterm field effort ever, we ran or staffed virtually all the coordinated campaigns in all the key states."

From ABC News Jake Tapper, Nov 19, 2010 "Huh? President Obama Tells Volunteers That In Midterms "You Guys Turned 'Yes We Can' Into 'Yes We Did'"

See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/11/huh-president-obama-tells-volunteers-that-in-midterms-you-guys-turned-yes-we-can-into-yes-we-did.html

Irvine Bowl Park Needs Signs

2010-11-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

Regarding the Friday, November 19, 2010 articles "FOA Facelift in the Works" by Rita Robinson in the Laguna Beach Independent and "Festival's façade redesign in the works" by Barbara Diamond in the Coastline Pilot, I hope new signage will include "Irvine Bowl Park". The Festival of the Arts ground uses the City of Laguna Beach's "Irvine Bowl Park" and the park should be properly identified.

While most people do not realize that it actually is a public park, ironically, the Irvine Bowl Park is the largest municipal park in the City of Laguna Beach. Unfortunately, if you stop by on most any day, you will likely find the area where exhibitors stalls are used during the summer deserted and unused.

From "History Of Laguna Canyon" written by Laguna Beach Historical Society President Emeritus Belinda Blacketer May 2001:
"The site of the Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters was to be a community park, which was chosen in 1938. In April 1940, the citizen’s of Laguna Beach passed a 'Park, Music and Advertising Tax' of 10 cents on each $100 of assessed valuation to purchase and develop the Irvine property.
The area that is now the festival grounds was shown on a map of the proposed park site as the 'play area', the canyon where the police firing range is now was to be used for 'rustic trails' and the Amphitheater the Festival wanted to build was to use a very small portion of the park land.
The original deed stated that the City 'shall use said real property for the following purposes only, and for no others, to wit: for the construction, enlargement, improvement, maintenance and operation of the outdoor amphitheater now situated thereon and known as Irvine Bowl, for the production and holding of public concerts, theatrical performances, festivals, exhibits and any all forms of public entertainment and recreation'."
"In 1947, after James Irvine’s death, the park was donated to the City of Laguna Beach by the Irvine family. The community planned a community center, a children's playground, and community kitchen along with many other civic uses. These facilities do not exist today. In the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s the park was used for the community Easter Egg Hunt, carnivals, the Orange County Goat Show, the Scottish Festival, and various other community group events. The park served as the only real community park for the City of Laguna Beach for many years. In the 1950’s a restaurant was built on the former playground terrace."

Obama Copies Japan's Economic Mistakes

2010-11-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

See "How to avoid Japan's economic mistakes" By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, November 15, 2010 Washington Post
See http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/11/15/learning_from_japans_mistakes_107948.html

■ "Japan's mistakes that resulted in a 'lost decade' of economic growth."
■ "There is no substitute for vigorous private-sector job creation and investment"
■ "Despite massive stimulus, rapid growth hasn't resumed two decades later."
■ " government debt soared from 63 % of the economy (gross domestic product)…now around 200 percent."

Green Energy Transmission Costs

2010-11-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

See " The Great Transmission Heist" Wall Street Journal Editorial Monday, November 7, 2010
The latest scheme to subsidize solar and wind power to the detriment of rate payers.
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558400606672006.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
■ "Transmission lines … long-standing user-pays policy would be replaced with a policy of everyone pays under FERC's plan."
■ "wind and solar projects that tend to be in remote areas, like the desert or offshore. In many cases, thousands of miles of new transmission lines would have to be built to get the power to the end user."
■ "Wind and solar proponents insist that renewable energy standards can only be reached if transmission costs are shared by everybody. This sounds like an admission that these energy sources are inefficient sources of power that can't compete in the marketplace without subsidies."
■ "renewable energy projects already receive tens of billions of dollars of loans, grants, tax credits, earmarks, renewable energy mandates, stimulus money, and on and on. According to a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy study, wind and solar already receive subsidies that are more than 20 times greater per kilowatt of electricity than conventional power sources. But as with ethanol, even these subsidies are never enough."

One Union Spends $87 Million on Democrats

2010-10-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

Former George W. Bush campaign adviser Mark McKinnon, writing at The Daily Beast, Oct. 24, 2010:

"A record $87.5 million has been spent by one union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to elect Democrats. Paid not by voluntary contributions from its members, but by forced union dues from workers—who are paid by taxpayers. . . .

Contrary to what Obama and the Democrats would have us believe, the Tea Party is largely fueled by small- dollar donations from American citizens in amounts of $200 or less. Beyond being untrue and unproven, the Obama money charges against Republicans are completely hypocritical. The guy who promised to "change Washington" completely reversed his promise during the campaign to abide by the limits of public financing. The Obama campaign spent almost $1 billion—and $400 million was spent by outside groups on his behalf, most of which did not disclose their donors. Now we discover unions are the largest outside spenders in this election, not the Chamber [of Commerce] or groups tied to Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie."

Obama Faces Ungrateful Electorate

2010-10-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

See Washington Post Friday, October 22, 2010 column by Charles Krauthammer "Obama Underappreciation Syndrome" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/21/AR2010102104856.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

It includes:
"Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the "New Foundation" of a more regulated, socially engineered and therefore more humane society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition. Here he gave them Obamacare, the stimulus, financial regulation and a shot at cap-and-trade -- and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful."

Who's Against Disclosure? Supreme Court Unanimous Ruling NAACP v. Alabama (1958)

2010-10-18T08:36:00.000-07:00

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), was an important civil rights case brought before the United States Supreme Court.
Alabama sought to prevent the NAACP from conducting further business in the state. After the circuit court issued a restraining order, the state issued a subpoena for various records, including the NAACP's membership lists. The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's demand for the lists had violated the right of due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
See http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=357&invol=449 "Petitioner has a right to assert on behalf of its members a claim that they are entitled under the Federal Constitution to be protected from being compelled by the State to disclose their affiliation with the Association. Pp. 458-460. [357 U.S. 449, 450]"

■ Alabama wanted to know who was supporting and financing the NAACP
■ In 1958, Supreme Court ruled unanimously that was unconstitutional
■ "they are entitled under the Federal Constitution to be protected from being compelled by the State to disclose their affiliation with the Association"
■ Barack Obama is the worst constitutional lecturer in history

Kyoto Fraud Revealed

2010-10-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

See http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/10/14/kyoto-fraud-revealed/ and October 14, 2010 article by Walter Russell Mead. It includes:
■ "When the idiotic Kyoto Protocol was put before the US Senate, 95 senators voted against this confused and destructive initiative on the grounds that, as designed, the measure would simply ship American jobs to China and other countries without reducing greenhouse gasses."
■ "For years, green activists have mourned and bemoaned the shortsightedness of the US. How could we sit out from something so noble, so planet saving, so wise as the sacred Kyoto Protocol?"
■ " The EU ratified Kyoto, and Americans were then treated to years of vainglorious Euro-puffery about the nobility, the wisdom and the self-sacrificial idealism of the cutting edge eco-warriors of the Green Continent."
■ "But a couple of recent studies now seem to show that Kyoto was as big a fraud as the most militant enviro-skeptics ever suspected. The much heralded Protocol was a singularly stupid piece of counterproductive social engineering that encouraged the migration of good jobs to China and other low wage countries — without helping the environment at all."
■ "while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus. If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses."

Tax System Explained in Beer

2010-10-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Tax System explained in beer….
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers,' he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.
So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $ 5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the
restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
'I only got a dollar out of the $ 20,'declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!'
'Yeah, that's right,' exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a Dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more
than I!'
'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. 'Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the
breaks!'
'Wait a minute,' yelled the first four men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!'
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay thehighest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia
For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

Radical U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Take Power from Central Government and Give to the People

2010-10-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Oct 6, 2010 speech. What a speech, see http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/conference/2010/10/government-work-society-money

In it he said: "We are the radicals now, breaking apart the old system with a massive transfer for power, from the state to citizens." "Not about a bit more power for you and a bit less power for central government - it's a revolution."

Cameron also said:
• "An emergency budget to balance the books in five years.
• For our new entrepreneurs - employees' tax reduced.
• when more and more countries have or want nuclear weapons, we will always keep our ultimate insurance policy, we will renew our nuclear deterrent based on the Trident missile system.
• the man responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, the biggest mass murderer in British history, set free to get a hero's welcome in Tripoli. No. It was wrong, it undermined our standing in the world, and nothing like that must ever happen again.
• Labour [party] left us with massive debts, the highest deficit, overstretched armed forces, demoralised public services, endless ridiculous rules and regulations and quangos and bureaucracy and nonsense.
• The old way of doing things: the high-spending, all-controlling, heavy-handed state, those ideas were defeated. Statism lost ... society won. That's what happened at the last election and that's the change we're leading.
• It's about government helping to build a nation of doers and go-getters, where people step forward not sit back, where people come together to make life better.
• Yes you, Labour. You want us to spend more money on ourselves, today, to keep racking up the bills, today and leave it to our children - the ones who had nothing to do with all this - to pay our debts tomorrow? That is selfish and irresponsible.
• Many government departments will have their budgets cut by, on average, 25% over four years. That's a cut each year of around 7%.
• make sure kids from the poorest homes go to the best schools not the worst, recognise marriage in the tax system and, most of all, make sure that work really pays for every single person in our country
• Taking more money from the man who goes out to work long hours each day so the family next door can go on living a life on benefits without working - is that fair?
• if you can work, but refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.
• a new enterprise allowance that gives money and support to unemployed people who want to start their own business.
• We're going to start by taking power away from central government and giving it to people.
• More freedom for local councils to keep more of the money when they attract business to their area, to finance big new infrastructure projects and to run new services.
• More power for neighbourhoods to keep local pubs open, stop post offices from closing, to run local parks, to plan the look, shape and feel of their area.
• This is not about a bit more power for you and a bit less power for central government - it's a revolution.
• if anyone tells you that all we need to improve our hospitals and schools or keep our streets safe is more money, tell them, been there, done that and it didn't work.
• Saying to the people who work in our public services - set up as a co-operative, be your own boss, do things your way.
• Saying to business, faith groups, charities, social enterprises - come in and provide a great service.
• There is such an appetite out there for people to play their part. Our job is to help them, encourage them, break down the barriers that stop them.
• A government that believes in people, that trusts people, that knows its ultimate role is not to take from people but to give, to give power, to give control, to give everyone the chance to make the most of their own life and make better the lives of others."

'94 Again - Republicans to Gain 100 House Seats - 1894!

2010-10-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

See Michael Barone October 4, 2010 column "Gallup’s astonishing numbers and the Lake Superior congressional districts"
Gallup came out with new numbers on the generic ballot question—which party’s candidates would you vote for in the election for House of Representatives?
House of Representatives, Gallup polls
"Under its 'low turnout model' Republicans lead 56%-38%"

In 1894, Republicans picked up 130 seats

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/gallups-astonishing-numbers-and-the-lake-superior-congressional-districts-104321583.html#ixzz11c23oKU6

Back from the dead: One third of 'extinct' animals turn up again

2010-10-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

See Daily Mail Sept 29, 2010 article at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315964/One-extinct-animals-turn-again.html by David Derbyshire Environment Editor
• “Conservationists are overestimating the number of species that have been driven to extinction, scientists have said.”
• “A study has found that a third of all mammal species declared extinct in the past few centuries have turned up alive and well.”

Next, Michelle Obama's health reform plan for the nation's restaurant menus and families dining out

2010-09-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

See Los Angeles Times Sept 14, 2010 at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/09/michelle-obama-obesity-restaurant-menus.html
"Next, Michelle Obama's health reform plan for the nation's restaurant menus and families dining out"

"First Lady Michelle Obama, who has been unable to convince the Smoker-in-Chief to give up that dreadful habit, now has some health suggestions for other American families and for restaurant menus across the country,"

[Michelle] "Obama would like to see more healthy choices for Americans dining out, even if it means a restaurant deleting a best-selling menu item.
The Democrat suggested that Americans are "programmed" by taste and advertising to eat many things that the government and health professionals know are not healthy for their bodies. So she wants to facilitate a nationwide re-programming of personal tastes by having restaurants start serving less of what customers ignorantly want and more of what they should have."

Could Panic Have Been Prevented? Did Government Regulation and Judgement Fail?

2010-09-13T08:55:00.000-07:00

See Robert Samuelson coulmn September 13, 2010
Could Panic Have Been Prevented? at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/13/could_panic_have_been_prevented_107118.html

WASHINGTON -- It's been two years since Lehman Brothers failed (Sept. 15, 2008), and we still can't conclusively answer this question: What if the government had saved Lehman? Its bankruptcy was pivotal. Until then, deteriorating housing and mortgage markets had triggered what seemed a serious -- but not unprecedented -- recession. Once Lehman failed, the economy went into a frenzied free fall. It's hard not to wonder whether some of the ensuing turmoil could have been avoided.

Consider what happened after Lehman:

Receive news alerts

Sign Up

Robert Samuelson RealClearPolitics
Lehman Brothers Barclays

Ben Bernanke Henry Paulson
Timothy Geithner US Federal Reserve
Washington
[+] More
-- Credit tightened. Banks wouldn't lend to each other, except at exorbitant interest rates. Rates on high-quality corporate bonds went from 7 percent in August to nearly 10 percent by October.

-- Stocks tanked. After its historical high of about 14,100 in October 2007, the Dow Jones industrial average was still trading around 11,400 before the bankruptcy. By October, it was about 8,400; by March 2009, 6,600.

-- Consumer spending and business investment (on machinery, computers, buildings) -- together about four-fifths of the economy -- declined sharply. Already-depressed vehicle sales fell a third from August to February.

-- Employment collapsed. Five million payroll jobs disappeared in the eight months following Lehman's collapse. The unemployment rate went from 6.2 percent in September to 9.5 percent in June 2009.

Lehman's failure had dire consequences because it suggested that government had lost control of events. No one knew which financial institutions would be protected and which wouldn't; AIG soon received a massive loan. Uncertainty rose; panic followed.

Worried they'd lose normal credit, companies hoarded cash by cutting jobs, investment and inventories. Disappearing work and wealth (stock losses from September 2008 to March 2009 totaled $3.9 trillion, reports Wilshire Associates) caused consumers to postpone discretionary purchases: cars, homes, appliances.

The explanations of why Lehman was allowed to fail have subtly shifted in two years. Over that weekend of Sept. 13 and 14, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner desperately tried to organize a private-sector rescue. They almost succeeded. They persuaded a consortium of other banks to assume $30 billion worth of Lehman's weakest investments. It seemed that Barclays, a major English bank, would buy Lehman, but British regulators raised last-minute objections.

At that point, only the U.S. government could have saved Lehman, which faced a self-fulfilling crisis of confidence. Its customers and lenders were fleeing because they feared they might not be paid. Someone with deep pockets had to stand behind Lehman to assuage these anxieties.

The standard explanation now from Paulson and Bernanke of why they refused is that legally they couldn't do otherwise. The Treasury said it lacked authority to make an investment; the Federal Reserve could lend but only if Lehman had adequate collateral, which was allegedly missing. That's the story now, but after Lehman's bankruptcy, the emphasis was different.

"I never once considered that it was appropriate to put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman Brothers," Paulson said. Indeed, his position initially drew praise as standing up to Wall Street. Bernanke gave similar justifications. Testifying to Congress Sept. 23, he said that "the troubles at Lehman had been well known ... (and) we judged that investors ... had had time to take precautionary measures."

In truth, an informal consensus had formed against using government funds to save Lehman. Harsh criticism of the earlier rescue of Bear Stearns -- done with Bush administration support and Fed money -- had left a deep scar. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has published e-mails reflecting the mood. On Sept. 9, Treasury chief of staff Jim Wilkinson wrote that he couldn't "stomach us bailing out lehman (sic). Will be horrible in the press." Given this bias, there was no Plan B once Barclays withdrew its offer.

Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner later performed commendably in preventing a wider financial collapse and restoring confidence that, arguably, averted a second Great Depression. Though their measures (TARP, government loan guarantees and Fed lending facilities) were unpopular, they ultimately calmed markets. But the lingering question is whether Paulson & Co. were cleaning up a mess they helped create. Even now, it's unclear whether Lehman lacked sufficient collateral to justify a loan. There was a "senseless panic" argues William Isaac, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in a book with that title.

Or perhaps not. Maybe saving Lehman would merely have postponed panic and requests for broader powers to deal with a weakening financial system. Citigroup and Bank of America, among others, needed help. The nature of crisis is that people are surprised and overwhelmed by events, and in that sense, the mistakes made in dealing with Lehman might have been unavoidable. One way or another, the first draft of history is still being written -- and it remains very rough.

Gangster government stifles criticism of Obamacare

2010-09-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

See Michael Barone column "Gangster government stifles criticism of Obamacare"
at http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Gangster+government+stifles+criticism+of+Obamacare+%7C+Washington+Examiner&expire=&urlID=435692247&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonexaminer.com%2Fpolitics%2FGangster-government-stifles-criticism-of-Obamacare-811664-102642044.html&partnerID=376964&cid=102642044

September 10, 2010

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius sent millions of senior Americans a brochure that is packed with blatantly false claims about Obamacare. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
"There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

That sounds like a stern headmistress dressing down some sophomores who have been misbehaving. But it's actually from a letter sent Thursday from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans -- the chief lobbyist for private health insurance companies.

Secretary Sebelius objects to claims by health insurers that they are raising premiums because of increased costs imposed by the Obamacare law passed by Congress last March.

She acknowledges that many of the law's "key protections" take effect later this month and does not deny that these impose additional costs on insurers. But she says that "according to our analysis and those of some industry and academic experts, any potential premium impact . . . will be minimal."

Well, that's reassuring. Er, except that if that's the conclusion of "some" industry and academic experts, it's presumably not the conclusion of all industry and academic experts, or the secretary would have said so.

Sebelius also argues that "any premium increases will be moderated by out-of-pocket savings resulting from the law." But she's pretty vague about the numbers -- "up to $1 billion in 2013." Anyone who watches TV ads knows that "up to" can mean zero.

As Time magazine's Karen Pickert points out, Sebelius ignores the fact that individual insurance plans cover different types of populations. So that government and "some" industry and academic experts think the new law will justify increases averaging 1 or 2 percent, they could justify much larger increases for certain plans.

Or as Ignagni, the recipient of the letter, says, "It's a basic law of economics that additional benefits incur additional costs."

But Sebelius has "zero tolerance" for that kind of thing. She promises to issue regulations to require "state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases" (which would presumably mean all rate increases).

And there's a threat. "We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: Those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014."

That's a significant date, the first year in which state insurance exchanges are slated to get a monopoly on the issuance of individual health insurance policies. Sebelius is threatening to put health insurers out of business in a substantial portion of the market if they state that Obamacare is boosting their costs.

"Congress shall make no law," reads the First Amendment, "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Sebelius' approach is different: "zero tolerance" for dissent.

The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone's business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration's transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government.

"The rule of law, or the rule of men (women)?" economist Tyler Cowen asks on his marginalrevolution.com blog. As he notes, "Nowhere is it stated that these rate hikes are against the law (even if you think they should be), nor can this 'misinformation' be against the law."

According to Politico, not a single Democratic candidate for Congress has run an ad since last April that makes any positive reference to Obamacare. The First Amendment gives candidates the right to talk -- or not talk -- about any issue they want.

But that is not enough for Sebelius and the Obama administration. They want to stamp out negative speech about Obamacare. "Zero tolerance" means they are ready to use the powers of government to threaten economic harm on those who dissent.

The closing paragraph of Sebelius' letter to AHIP's Karen Ignagni gives the game away. "We worked hard to change the system to help consumers." This is a reminder that the administration alternatively collaborated with and criticized Ignagni's organization. We roughed you up a little but we eventually made a deal.

The secretary goes on: "It is my hope we can work together to stop misinformation and misleading marketing from the start." In other words, shut your members up and play team ball -- or my guys with the baseball bats and tommy guns are going to get busy. As Tyler Cowen puts it, "worse than I had been expecting."

Maureen Dowd on Obama

2010-08-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Obama - Going Mad in Herds by Maureen Dowd New York Times Aug 21 2010
Obama and Islam: How can America know so little about this president?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22dowd.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd&pagewanted=print
“How can a man who has written two best-selling memoirs and been on TV so much that some Democrats worried he was overexposed be getting less known and more misunderstood by the day?
The president who is always talking about wanting to be perfectly clear is ever more opaque. The One, who owes his presidency to the intense feeling he stirred up, turns out to be a practical guy who can’t deal with intense feeling.
He ran as a man apart and now he must deal with the fact that many see him as a man apart.
Too lofty to pay heed to the daily bump and grind of politics, Obama has failed to present himself as someone with the common touch. And to the extent that people don’t know him or don’t get him, he becomes easier to demonize. Obama is the victim of the elevated expectations he so skillfully created in 2008. He came as a redeemer and then … didn’t redeem. And nothing bums out a nation that blows with the wind like a self-appointed messiah who disappoints. If we’re not the ones we’ve been waiting for, who are we?”

Missouri pops the ObamaCare-media bubble

2010-08-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

See August 4, 2010 HotAir.com at
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/04/missouri-pops-the-obamacare-media-bubble/

It includes:
"If anything, this shows that opposition to ObamaCare is growing, not receding".

"Bear in mind that over 315,000 Democrats turned out to cast ballots in the primary that nominated Robin Carnahan, while over 577,000 Republicans hit the polls. That is about a 65/35 split — which means that a significant amount of Democrats either supported the ballot measure repudiating ObamaCare, or didn’t bother to cast a vote to defend the program. Actually, Prop C got more votes than the combined voting in both Senate primaries — which tells us something even more about the passion in the electorate."

Stop ObamaCare - Go Missouri

2010-08-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

See http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Missouri_Health_Care_Freedom,_Proposition_C_(2010)

Missouri Health Care Freedom Proposition C statewide is to block the federal government from requiring people to buy health insurance and bans punishment for those without health insurance. It protect the individual’s right to make health care decisions.

August 3, 2010 Election Results, YES 75% No 25%

A "yes" vote is a vote to amend current Missouri law to deny the government authority to "penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful healthcare services." A "no" vote is a vote to reject the proposed referendum.

Calif. Rep. Devin Nunes's nuclear proposal would do more to reduce carbon emissions than any Democratic plan on the table

2010-07-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal Friday, July 30, 2010 by Kimberly Strassel

at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703578104575397652539348486.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

"Mr. Nunes's interest is how to answer these concerns in a more free-market way. The Californian's road map is the product of years of work, most recently with Mr. Ryan and a handful of Republicans with energy expertise—Illinois's John Shimkus, Utah's Rob Bishop, and Idaho's Mike Simpson. It's a bill designed to produce energy, not restrict it. It returns government to the role of energy facilitator, not energy boss. It costs nothing and contains no freebies. It instead offers a competitive twist to government support of renewable energy.

The bill is unabashedly focused on allowing America to responsibly access more of its own low-cost resources. It opens up more of the Outer Continental Shelf, and takes another run at opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It restores the leasing for Western oil shale that the Obama administration has squelched.

Rather than throw federal loan guarantees at uncertain nuclear plants, the legislation attacks the true problem: bureaucratic roadblocks. It streamlines a creaky regulatory process, requires the timely up-or-down approval of 200 plants over 30 years, and offers new flexibility for dealing with nuclear waste. Mr. Nunes likes to point out that his nuclear provision alone would do more to reduce carbon emissions than any Democratic proposal in existence. And it would in fact create, ahem, green jobs."

Public Service Pensions Unsustainable Says NJ State Senate President

2010-06-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Public Service Pensions Unsustainable Says NJ State Senate President June 30 2010

Federal stimulus funds used "just like throwing it away".

KCRW public radio program "To the Point"
WED JUN 30, 2010 "Stimulus or Austerity?: That Is the Question"
Host: Warren Olney

Listen to this Los Angeles public radio interview show by Warren Olney June 30, 2010 at
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp100630stimulus_or_austerit

I downloaded it to attached to this email. After seeing it was 23 megabytes, I removed it.

Stephen Sweeney, President, New Jersey State Senate and also an official in New Jersey’s Iron Workers' Union

This guy is great. Sounds like a Democrat who gets it.

It is so hard to believe. His portion is towards the end of the program starting at 37 minutes.

Here's some of Stephen Sweeney's comments, not a great transcript, but pretty close:
• 37 minutes "elected officials bypassed the collective bargaining process, the costs of elections and gave benefits, expanded benefits, that they could not pay for"
• "basically the politicians gave the workers what they asked for and they destroyed the system"
• "our pensions will be bankrupt probably in another five or six years" .. "for political purposes enhancing benefits and to sustain favor with people, in the long run hurting their workers"
• 38.4 "our system we have is not sustainable"
• 38.5 the federal aid to states "plans that I've seen pass out of Washington…used billions of dollars what we did was use the money to plug shortfalls in existing programs instead of dealing with the issues"
• 39.1 "infrastructure improvement, building schools was a better plan, when they turned the money over to the States it was just like throwing it away"
• 42.2 stimulus money should "not to States to fund their budgets, why I said the money was thrown away, state governments and local governments did not have to deal with the financial crises, they pushed it off. If we had taken the money for improving infrastructure, building roads, and schools where you would actually have something for years to come made more sense to me"
• 43.1 "The billions of dollars that we spent in the State of New Jersey basically we were just trying to hide the inevitable"
• "This year we cut $800 million dollars out of school aid; you know, we should have cut a billion dollars last year"
• Question from Warren Olney "And you're an official in the Iron Workers Union? Are you a Democrat as well? Response from Stephen Sweeney "Yes, I am".
• 43.4 "I come from the private sector unions where my employers can go out of business. There's a thought process where because we're government you cannot go out of business. You can always tax more. That model is not working anymore."

The whole program is good including comments by a Harvard professor wanting to slow down federal spending.

Too Few Animal Spirits by Robert Samuelson Washington Post

2010-06-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Obama Policies Discourage Jobs
See Washington Post
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/14/too_few_animal_spirits_105944.html
June 14, 2010
Too Few Animal Spirits
By Robert Samuelson

"What's missing are "animal spirits," in the famous phrase of economist John Maynard Keynes. In the boom, surplus animal spirits spurred speculation. Scarce animal spirits now hinder recovery. Given the magnitude of the housing and financial carnage, most of today's cautiousness and risk aversion -- by both businesses and households -- were unavoidable. But the Obama administration's anti-business rhetoric and controversial health "reform" may have compounded the effect. These policies created uncertainties and fanned partisan rancor. In the case of health "reform," they raised the cost of future full-time employees.

The administration believes these various policies don't hamper economic recovery. It ignores contradictions and inconsistencies. Historians, more detached and better informed, may conclude otherwise."

Obama Grants Environmental Waivers to BP Gulf Off Shore Drilling

2010-06-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
The New York Times June 5, 2010 front page article "In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig" by Ian Urbina includes:
Minerals Management Service
■ "Investigators have focused on the minute-to-minute decisions and breakdowns to understand what led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 people and setting off the largest oil spill in United States history and an environmental disaster. But the lack of coordination was not limited to the day of the explosion."
■ "a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig"
■ " Of roughly 3,500 drilling rigs and production platforms in the gulf [of Mexico], fewer than 50 are in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. But the risks and challenges associated with this deeper water are much greater."
■ "BP officials [for] Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate."
■ "BP engineers … had to get permission from company managers to use riskier equipment because that equipment deviated from the company’s own design and safety policies"
■ "when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception'
■ The Obama administration Minerals Management Service "shares responsibility for oversight of drilling in the gulf with many others. The Environmental Protection Agency and others review offshore drilling for potential damage to wildlife and the environment"
■ "On the Deepwater Horizon, for example, the minerals agency approved a drilling plan for BP that cited the 'worst case' for a blowout as one that might produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day, federal records show. But the agency did not require the rig to create a response plan for such a situation."
■ "The rig’s 'spill response plan' … includes…the importance of protecting walruses, seals and sea lions, none of which inhabit the area of drilling. The agency approved the plan."
■ "Michael J. Saucier, an official with the Minerals Management Service, said that his agency 'highly encouraged' — but did not require — companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency.
■ "With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded."
■ "BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer.”
■ "at least a dozen federal agencies have taken part in the spill response, making decision-making slow, conflicted and confused, as they sought to apply numerous federal statutes.”
■ "For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore, officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach. They ultimately approved the use of only one barrier, called a berm"
■ "Louisiana state officials spent much of May repeatedly seeking permission from the federal government to construct up to 90 miles of sand barriers to prevent oil from reaching the wetlands."
■ "It took more than a week after the explosion for the homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, to declare, on April 29, 'a spill of national significance' a legal categorization that was needed before certain federal assistance could be authorized."

Obama Lies but Voters Projection of What They Wanted to Believe

2010-06-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

See June 4, 2010 Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284693139359582.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Author and blogger Virginia Postrel, in an interview in the June issue of Reason magazine:

"Glamour is a particular form of illusion. It's an illusion that tells a truth about the audience's desires, and it requires mystery and distance. During the campaign people projected onto Barack Obama whatever they wanted in a president or even in a country. Lying is usually a bad thing, but they would project onto him that he was lying about his positions because he secretly agreed with them: 'Anyone that smart has got to be a free trader at heart. He's just saying this to pander to those idiots. He can't really mean it.' . . . [T]here is always this capacity for disillusionment. People have projected so much of what they think, including things that are sort of impossible, onto a glamorous figure, that when any flaw shows up the glamour is dispelled and suddenly he becomes terrible."

No Family Making Less Than $250,000 Will See "Any Form Of Tax Increase."

2010-04-12T13:43:00.000-07:00

See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/515/no-family-making-less-250000-will-see-any-form-tax/

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." Presidential candidate Barrack Obama

Obama and McCain at the Al Smith Charity Banquet in 2008

2010-04-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Did you see Friday April 2, 2010 Wall Street Journal Best of the Web at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304871704575159950742887316.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Regarding Accountability Journalism, and "What do you love most about Barack Obama? If you're like the Associated Press's Mark S. Smith, the answer is the president's sense of humor". It strains credulity that evidence included the noted "annual Al Smith charity banquet in 2008".

One cannot watch the YouTube video clips and believe that a person thinking humor was important in casting a vote for president would not then become a McCain voter.

Of course, the assembled basically laughed at all joke attempts, and Senator Obama was funny, but not anywhere as funny and clever as McCain. See Obama at Al Smith Dinner -Part 1- at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKaAQ-6BiU and Obama at Al Smith Dinner -Part 2- at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBQf4FJi-o&feature=related

See Senator McCain's who somehow is funnier while able to make some touching and important comments. His introduction "raising expectations" of Senator Obama is a classic.
John McCain Brings Down The House - Al Smith Dinner Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goaj5V4tZoc&feature=related
John McCain Brings Down The House - Al Smith Dinner Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBQf4FJi-o&feature=related

Laguna Beach Cartoonists

2010-03-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

Photo: Phil Interlandi Cartoon from Pete Fulmer 1965 Book
"Frank Interlandi dies at 85; former L.A. Times editorial cartoonist" is the title of the February 10, 2010 Los Angeles Times article by Dennis McLellan (see http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/10/local/la-me-frank-interlandi10-2010feb10) "The Laguna Beach artist drew cartoons for the paper from 1962 until 1981."
The article includes "The Interlandi brothers [identical twin brother cartoonist Phil Interlandi of Playboy magazine] were among a gaggle of newspaper and magazine cartoonists in Laguna who began taking midday bar breaks together in the 1950s. Over the years, the group included Virgil (VIP) Partch, John Dempsey, Dick Oldden, Ed Nofziger, Don Tobin and Roger Armstrong."
The Laguna Beach Historical Society just received as a donation the 1965 book by Laguna Beach Post columnist Pete Fulmer "Laguna's My Studio" In it he wrote on page 28:
"There have been a wealth of cartoonists in Laguna Beach as they gravitated to the Community Playhouse putting into words on stage and activities about the theater the talents that they applied to the drawing board.

Phil Interlandi long ago found that the stage complemented the lonely way of life in his studio and in addition to his Post cartoons, Phil's work has been seen at one time or another in all major magazines in the country.

Ed Nofziger, also known for his many stage appearances, has done freelance cartooning for major publications, written children's comics, done many of the Magoo stories for UPA and is currently editorial artist for the Post.

Others who are members of the Playhouse, participating in various departments of the Players' activities, are Frank Interlandi, Phil's identical twin brother, whose Below Olympus cartoons appears daily in the Los Angeles Times.

Don Tobin created "The Little Woman" daily cartoon syndicated in King's Features; Pete Winters, also a Playhouse member, sketched "Toodles," the comic cartoon story. Roger Armstrong, currently director of Laguna Art Gallery Association, was a comic creator for many years and left his drawing board behind for the role of the general in the Playhouse production in 1959 of 'Romanoff and Juliet.'

When Armstrong was sitting at his drawing board, he created the comic strips of Ella Cinders and Napoleon."

Believe President Barack Obama?

2010-03-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

"Consider the president’s basic promises about his health overhaul:"
■ "it actually would save money"
■ "the only new taxes would be on the very wealthy"
■ "individuals would be free to keep their present coverage and doctors"
San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Nov 5, 2009 "Fear of Health ‘Reform’ Is Warranted"

Campaign-finance disclosure rules have encouraged harassment of donors and coarsened public debate.

2010-03-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

See Wall Street Journal March 10, 2010 Notable and Quotable at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487362609722156.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion#printMode

Notable & Quotable
Former Federal Election Commissioner Bradley A. Smith on campaign-finance disclosure rules.

"Campaign-finance disclosure rules have encouraged harassment of donors and coarsened public debate.

Imagine if the George W. Bush administration, in its waning days, had introduced something called the Patriot II Act. To prevent terrorists and foreign agents from influencing American governments and political parties, the act would require political campaigns and other groups to report the names, addresses, and employers of their supporters to the federal government, which would enter the information into a database. The act would also give businesses access to this database, enabling them to make hiring decisions, credit determinations, and other choices based on political activity. Can anyone doubt that Patriot II would be widely considered a gross violation of civil liberties?

Fortunately, the government never passed such a bill. Unfortunately, it didn't need to: this is already the law, and it has been for over 30 years. It is, in fact, one of the most popular laws in America: the Federal Election Campaign Act, which does indeed require campaigns, political parties, and certain citizens' groups engaged in politics to report the names, addresses, and employment information of their financial supporters. This information is maintained in a government database that is available to anyone—businesses, union bosses, local officials, nosy neighbors, and whoever else might be curious about somebody's politics.

The idea of limiting financial support of politics remains deeply controversial, even seven years after the passage of the so-called McCain-Feingold bill, which extended many of the Federal Election Campaign Act's limitations on contributions to previously unregulated political activities. Yet even the most ardent opponents of McCain-Feingold seldom question the disclosure requirements of the original 1972 act. So widely accepted is the idea that campaign contributions and personal information about donors ought to be public that many people don't even consider it regulation. When the First Amendment counsel for the ACLU, the late Marv Johnson, met in 2006 with a prominent congressional reformer to argue against a proposal to regulate grassroots political activity, he was assured that no new "regulation" was contemplated—"just disclosure."

But it's far from clear that the forced disclosure of political contributions has benefited society. Disclosure has resulted in government-enabled invasions of privacy—and sometimes outright harassment—and it has added to a political climate in which candidates are judged by their funders rather than their ideas."

President Barrack Obama Expectations

2010-02-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

“That This Was The Moment”
■ “began to provide care for the sick”
■ “good jobs to the jobless”
■ “rise of the oceans began to slow”
■ “our planet began to heal”
■ “when we ended a war”
Barrack H. Obama II June 3, 2008

See http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/2008/06/this-was-moment-when-rise-of-oceans.html

Why Bayh Is Quitting the Senate - Unions and Congressional Leadership Forces Push to the Left

2010-02-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Here's is a great explanation of why senator Evan Bayh is not running again and the Democrats liberal overreaching leading to Republican comebacks.

See Wall Street Journal February 16, 2010 column by John Fund at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069383425796398.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
Why Bayh Is Quitting the Senate
'I do have a sense of deja vu,' the senator says, 'and the movie doesn't have a happy ending.'

By JOHN FUND
"Before Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh suddenly announced he will not seek re-election in November he had issued several warnings to fellow Democrats. Last month, for example, he told Gerald Seib of this newspaper that his party's liberals were "tone deaf" to the fact that they'd "overreached" in their agenda. "For those people," he said, "it may take a political catastrophe of biblical proportions before they get it."

Mr. Bayh knows something about high-water political floods. As a 24-year-old law student he helped run his father's 1980 Senate re-election and saw him go down to defeat under the Reagan landslide. In 1994, Mr. Bayh was governor of Indiana and thankful he wasn't before the voters when they revolted against Bill Clinton. "Every 14 or 16 years we seem to have to relearn this lesson," Mr. Bayh said. "I do have a sense of deja vu, and the movie doesn't have a happy ending."

He isn't the first observer to note the misfortune that befalls modern Democrats when they gain control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. After Jimmy Carter won the White House, Ronald Reagan assembled a group of his former aides in Los Angeles in early 1977 for a pep talk about how the GOP loss would only be temporary if they learned from the party's mistakes and returned to first principles. He quoted from a John Dryden ballad memorized as a youth: "I'm a little wounded, but I am not slain. I will lay me down for to bleed a while. Then I'll rise and fight again."

Conservatives, he said, should be of good cheer. Democrats win the White House when they campaign as moderates, but once in office they find it impossible to do so even if they want to "because the unions and their Congressional leadership won't let them."

But governing as liberals meant Democrats undermined the trust voters placed in them. They also enacted policies that increased economic uncertainty and retarded job creation. "When liberalism fails, people notice. They may even protest," Reagan told his aides, pointing to California's nascent Proposition 13 tax revolt—the "Tea Party" of its day. "And it's then they'll listen to you again if you have a clear set of ideas based on sound principle."

Read other articles by John Fund. .Aides such as Peter Hannaford realized he was planning to run for president again envisioning just such a scenario. The rest is history.

In early 1993, before he succumbed to Alzheimer's, Reagan met with some of his appointees in New York City. The circumstances were remarkably similar to those of 16 years prior—Republicans had lost heavily in the last election due to scandal and economic miscalculations. Larry Kudlow, a Reagan budget official who is now a CNBC host, recalls that the Gipper reminded those at the meeting of what he'd said in 1977.

Bill Clinton had also campaigned as a moderate but was already governing as a liberal—and Reagan said it wouldn't fly with voters. "He said the failure of liberalism would again present Republicans with an opportunity if they ran on a pro-growth, antitax agenda that reasserted America's place in the world," Mr. Kudlow says.

And now, once again, Democrats have overreached and are in danger of suffering a historic defeat.

All of this makes one wonder if Democrats will ever have a "Tony Blair" moment and make a conscious return to the political center. After his Labour Party suffered three straight defeats, Mr. Blair took over as leader. He marginalized its left-wing extremists so the middle class could trust his party with power.

Mr. Blair told the Times of London he realized the "default mechanism" of Britain was closer to that of the Conservative Party, and that his party must move to the center. He then won three straight elections. Now that Labour is returning to its class-warfare roots under Gordon Brown, it once again faces electoral defeat.

So far, Democrats show no signs of thinking the U.S. is a country whose "default mechanism" in politics is to the center-right. They retain faith that Barack Obama can work some magic and make things better. But should he continue to slide in polls and the horror movie Mr. Bayh refers to is replayed this fall, they may want to rethink matters.

At age 54, Mr. Bayh is leaving Congress but declines to rule out another run for office. Should Democrats ever be open to a Tony Blair message, no doubt Mr. Bayh could be persuaded to return to the arena. He's won five times in a red state while compiling a voting record significantly more liberal than Arlen Specter's or Olympia Snowe's. Yet today he's viewed by many Democrats with disdain as a conservative collaborator.

Nothing better sums up the Democrats' self-inflicted problem."

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.

Climategate U-Turn as Scientist at Centre of Row Admits: There Has Been No Global Warming Since 1995

2010-02-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

See U.K. Daily Mail February 14, 2010 article "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995" by by Jonathan Petre at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#

- Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
- There has been no global warming since 1995
- Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes

"Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.

Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.

Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.

That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.

According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.

Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.

Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.

‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.

He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.

Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.

But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.

Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.

Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.

Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.

He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.

He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled."

Rich Lowry Explains Why President Obama Cannot Govern

2010-02-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

Rich Lowry tells all in his column at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/12/the_presidents_reality_problem_100278.html Read it all; it explains Obama.

See New York Post column posted at RealClearPolitics.com

February 12, 2010
The President's Reality Problem
By Rich Lowry

It might have been the most revelatory moment of the Obama presidency. In an interview with Time magazine, a chastened Pres. Barack Obama talked of his sputtering Middle East peace initiative. "This is just really hard," he explained. "This is as intractable a problem as you get."

As an observation, this is as banal as it gets. After all the wars and all the terror attacks against Israel and all the frustrated American diplomatic forays across the last two administrations, no one should be surprised at the intractability of the Israeli-Arab conflict. But Obama sounded as if it were painful new information that had forced an unwelcome adjustment in his worldview.

This speaks to either an astonishing historical ignorance (did he not know?) or a stupendous self-regard (did he not care because he thought he was so special?), or both.

There is already a debate over what went wrong with the Obama presidency. Is his team of advisers - nearly universally considered the best and the brightest until the day before yesterday - serving him poorly? Has he failed to communicate effectively, even though almost all his speeches have been critically acclaimed? Did he fail to "pivot to jobs" fast enough?

Actually, Obama has a more worrisome problem: a reality gap. During the campaign, Obama could throw rhetorical pixie dust over all the difficult choices inherent in governing and the contradictions of his own program, making them fade into a beguiling vision of a sunlit post-Bush America. This magical realism sustained him until November 2008, but couldn't withstand governing.

Consider Obama's most elemental appeal as a candidate: He excited the base of his own party while winning over the center with talk of "post-partisanship." On the stump, he could maintain this balance. In office, he had to choose either partisanship, in the form of his powerful Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, or post-partisanship, in the form of concessions to Republicans that would anger and disappoint his own side. He chose Nancy Pelosi, and watched independents flee from him.

On fiscal policy, Obama could promise massive new programs while at the same time, in one debate, asserting his approach would mean "a net spending cut." A laughable contradiction, it wasn't fully exposed until Obama had to write a budget. With $1 trillion deficits now stretching off into the horizon, his answer is appointing a commission to study the matter.

Obama is still the same illusionist from the campaign on his signature health-care initiative. The new $1 trillion entitlement will reduce the deficit. It will insure millions more people while bending the cost curve down. The hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts will be utterly painless. There's no trade-off or sacrifice in sight, and - not surprisingly - people don't believe it.

Obama came to office under fundamental misapprehensions that hamper him still. It's not true that all that was keeping the Israelis and Palestinians apart was the lack of U.S. engagement, or that the Iranians were amenable to getting talked out of their nuclear program, or that Guantanamo Bay was a pointless contrivance.

Nor is it true that government is a sustainable source of economic growth, or a more efficient allocator of capital than the market. This is why Obama's stimulus program - inevitably, a dog's breakfast of politically driven priorities - is such a shambles that his aides never utter the word "stimulus" anymore. It is on to the next program, a nearly $100 billion "jobs" bill that reflects the touching belief that to work as intended, a program only has to be named appropriately.

Obama's advisers want him to pull out of his downdraft by getting back to campaign mode. It's governance as performance art. He's hosting a bipartisan health-care summit on Feb. 25. Surely, he'll sound great and spin gorgeous webs of fancy - as the reality gap yawns beneath him.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
© 2010 by King Features Syndicate.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/12/the_presidents_reality_problem_100278.html at February 12, 2010 - 01:03:52 PM CST

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC Process is Started and Finished by Political Officials Who Steer the Information

2010-02-11T08:27:00.000-08:00

See February 11, 2010 Best of the Web Today by James Taranto
"Hot Enough for You? Global warmists used to love talking about the weather" at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059270348147154.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

"To be sure, the global warmists are right to distinguish between weather and climate. A short-term condition sometimes can run counter to a long-term trend".

"The problem is that for years, global warmists have claimed that the weather proved their claims about the climate. This is a New York Times story from June 24, 1988:

"The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today.
Until now, scientists have been cautious about attributing rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the "greenhouse effect." But today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.
Dr. Hansen, a leading expert on climate change, said in an interview that there was no "magic number" that showed when the greenhouse effect was actually starting to cause changes in climate and weather. But he added, 'It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here'."

"the classic of the genre is a piece from the Boston Globe, dated Aug. 30, 2005, which begins: 'The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming'."
The author, Ross Gelbspan, writes "For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations."

London's Guardian, a left-wing paper that has long been squarely in the global-warmist camp, carried a damning report titled "How to Reform the IPCC" see Fenruary 10, 2010 article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/10/ipcc-reform :
"The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says its reports are policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. Perhaps unknown to many people, the process is started and finished not by scientists but by political officials, who steer the way the information is presented in so-called summary for policymakers [SPM] chapters. Is that right, the Guardian asked?

'The Nobel prize was for peace not science . . . government employees will use it to negotiate changes and a redistribution of resources. It is not a scientific analysis of climate change,' said Anton Imeson, a former IPCC lead author from the Netherlands. 'For the media, the IPCC assessments have become an icon for something they are not. To make sure that it does not happen again, the IPCC should change its name and become part of something else. The IPCC should have never allowed itself to be branded as a scientific organisation. It provides a review of published scientific papers but none of this is much controlled by independent scientists'."

Obama Plan: The Jimmy Carter Jobs Credit

2010-02-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Jimmy Carter Jobs Credit
Congress's latest stimulus idea is a bust from the past.

See Wall Street Journal editorial Feb 10, 2010 at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704820904575055394016616742.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

"Stimulus Plan A didn't work to create jobs or reduce unemployment. That was the $165 billion of tax rebates and money for states in February 2008.

Plan B flopped too. That was last February's stimulus that has devoted $862 billion into mostly government programs. The unemployment rate climbed steadily until last month, and the main lasting impact has been nearly $1 trillion added to the national debt.

Now comes Plan C, another February stimulus, though this time everyone has been instructed not to use the "s word," lest it scare the voters. This one is a "jobs bill," as if Plans A and B were about something else. Don't expect this one to work any better than the last two.

View Full Image

Associated Press

Former President Jimmy Carter
.This latest Senate Democratic bill will cost $85 billion and is shaping up to be largely a rehash of last year's stimulus: extended unemployment insurance, Medicaid cash for the states, and some public works spending. The one new twist is a proposal for a one-year $5,000 tax credit for small businesses for each new worker hired. President Obama calls the credit "the best way to cut taxes" to help small businesses.

But we've also seen this economic movie before—in 1977 under Jimmy Carter. During the two years it was in effect, a jobs credit worth about $7,000 in today's dollars became a $20 billion free lunch as businesses claimed the handout for one of every three new employees.

In the short term, the Jimmy Carter jobs credit appeared to reduce unemployment. The jobless rate dropped by 1.2 percentage points (to 5.8% in 1979 from 7% in 1977). But that effect was short-lived, and when the subsidies ended two years later the layoffs resumed and the unemployment rate rose again and by 1980 was back to 7.2%."

UK Paper Reports New Errors in IPCC Climate Change Report

2010-02-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

See UK Feb 6, 2010 article "New errors in IPCC climate change report"

See United Kingdom Feb 6, 2010 article at The Telegraph newspaper at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7177230/New-errors-in-IPCC-climate-change-report.html by Richard Gray and Ben Leach

■ "The United Nations panel on climate change is facing fresh criticism today as [UK] The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual errors and poor sources of evidence in its influential report to government leaders."
■ "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming. But this paper has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:
• The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.
• Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.
• New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.
• More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups."
■ "They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007."
■ "Last month, the panel was forced to issue a humiliating retraction after it emerged statements about the melting of Himalayan glaciers were inaccurate."
■ "Last weekend, this paper revealed that the panel had based claims about disappearing mountain ice on anecdotal evidence in a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.
■ "The IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency."
■ "Despite these checks, a diagram used to demonstrate the potential for generating electricity from wave power has been found to contain numerous errors."
■ "It can also be revealed that claims made by the IPCC about the effects of global warming, and suggestions about ways it could be avoided, were partly based on information from ten dissertations by Masters students."
■ "The IPCC also made use of a report by US conservation group Defenders of Wildlife to state that salmon in US streams have been affected by rising temperatures. The panel has already come under fire for using information in reports by conservation charity the WWF [World Wildlife Fund]".

President Obama Hits Lowest Approval Mark

2010-02-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

February 8, 2010 see http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/02/obama_hits_lowe.php

"Independent voters see Pres. Obama in a negative light by a nearly 2-1 margin, according to a new Marist College survey, while almost half of voters say he has failed to meet their expectations.

The poll, conducted Feb. 1-3, showed just 44% of registered voters approving of Obama's job as president. 47% disapprove. But among indie voters, Obama's approval rating sits at a terrible 29%, while his disapproval rating is at 57%.

Obama's 44% job approval rating is the lowest he has scored in any non-internet poll since moving into the WH, according to a review of data compiled by Pollster.com.

And while GOPers strive to avoid attacking Obama personally, for fear of offending voters who see him in a favorable light personally, even that aura of invincibility is wearing off. Independent voters view Obama negatively, too, by a 39% favorable to 52% unfavorable margin. All registered voters still see Obama favorably by a 50%-44% margin, but that's down 5 points in just 2 months.

Voters are disappointed in what they got with Obama's first year. The poll shows 47% believe Obama has failed to meet their expectations -- including a quarter of Dems, 65% of GOPers and 53% of indie voters -- while just 42% say he has met their expectations. 38% say Obama's policies are moving the country in the wrong direction, while 37% say they're making the country better.

Meanwhile, members of Congress should brace for a difficult election year. 42% of registered voters said they would back their current member of Congress, while 44% said they would support someone else -- a drop of 9 points in support of the incumbent in just 2 months.

The Marist College poll surveyed 910 registered voters for a margin of error of +/- 3.2%."

Obama Has Accepted Money Directly from Corporations

2010-02-03T14:17:00.000-08:00

See " Hypocrisy in Citizens United chatter" in a Politico op-ed piece Feb 3, 2010 by David Bossie president of Citizens United, notes that Obama has accepted money directly from corporations, which remains illegal for candidates for federal office at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32331.html

"Many states, including Illinois and Maryland, allow corporate contributions to state candidates. As an Illinois state senator, Obama accepted direct contributions from the corporate treasuries of Citigroup and London-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, among others. As a Maryland state legislator, Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen, one of the more hysterical critics of the decision, accepted from business entities about 10 percent of his campaign funds during the four years leading up to his election to Congress.

If, as these detractors and their allies would have us believe, corporate money is by definition corrupting, why did they accept these funds when doing so benefited them? "

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine - Canadian Premier Comes to US for Heath Care

2010-02-02T14:14:00.000-08:00

See Great Moments in Socialized Medicine from John Taranto Feb 2, 2010 Best of the Web Wall Street Journal blog at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041482614796218.html#U10467664188tD

"Newfoundland and Labrador is one of Canada's smaller and lesser-known provinces. Danny Williams is its premier, so his rough equivalent in "the states" would be the governor of Delaware or South Dakota. CBC reports Williams is having some heart trouble, for which he will be having surgery--in the United States!

Why? The report doesn't say, but we can rule out geographic proximity, as Newf-and-Lab is the remotest of Canada's 10 provinces. According to Google Maps, getting from the capital, St. John's, to Portland, Maine, the nearest half-decent-sized U.S. city, is a 2,242 km drive, including a 176 km ferry to Nova Scotia. We don't know what "km" means either, but the point is, Williams is going a long way.

Why? We thought Canada had a great system of socialized medicine for all! Apparently even a provincial premier can get better care in America. What would Williams have done if ObamaCare had passed and turned out to be no better than CanucKare?"

Officials say stimulus bill to cost $75B more

2010-01-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

See http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9DFNU4O1&show_article=1

Officials say stimulus bill to cost $75B more

Jan 26, 2010
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - "Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus bill is going to be even more expensive—$75 billion more.

The new Congressional Budget Office estimate, released Tuesday, provides more ammunition for Republicans who say the stimulus has been long on spending and short on creating promised jobs. The additional cost also eats into the savings forecast from the budget freeze President Barack Obama is expected to propose Wednesday night during his State of the Union address.

Almost half of the additional cost, $34 billion, is because the food stamp program won't be able to take advantage of lower-than-expected inflation rates and will instead have benefits set by the stimulus bill.

Higher unemployment insurance costs added $21 billion to the bill, and stimulus-subsidized bonds to pay for infrastructure projects have proven more popular than expected with state and local governments.

The $75 billion increase would erase one-third of the $250 billion in 10-year savings that would come from the partial domestic spending freeze being proposed by Obama. The boost in unemployment payments alone would more than erase the $10 billion to $15 billion in first-year savings from such a freeze.

Democrats say the beleaguered stimulus measure, a mixture of tax cuts and lots of spending, has helped keep the economy going and has produced up to 2 million jobs.

The nonpartisan CBO said five programs were responsible for most of the $112 billion in stimulus spending between last February and October: Medicaid; a $250 payment to almost 53 million Social Security recipients; Pell Grants; and fiscal relief for state governments. Tax cuts added $88 billion.

The stimulus is expected to add about $400 billion to the deficit in this budget year.

Democrats are pressing for another stimulus measure and top Senate Democrats have drafted an $82.5 billion jobs plan that would help small businesses, boost spending on road construction and mass transit, and give local governments money to retain teachers.

A draft document obtained by The Associated Press proposes $20 billion for a job creation tax credit and $12.5 billion to retrofit homes and businesses to make them more energy efficient.

The House passed a so-called jobs bill last month, costing about $174 billion. That plan was heavy with safety net spending such as a six-month extension of unemployment benefits and subsidies to help the jobless buy health insurance.

Democrats claim their proposals are partly paid for by repealing $150 billion worth of Treasury Department bailout authority to claim $75 billion in budget savings. But CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said those claims are based on outdated estimates.

Since the remaining bailout money won't be used, it can't be claimed as savings, he said.

"There really isn't money there to be saved," Elmendorf said."

ABC: Drone Strike on Al Qaeda Scrapped Because Officials Feared Prosecution

2010-01-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

From http://biggovernment.com/ See ABC News

U.S. Mulls Legality of Killing American al Qaeda "Turncoat" at http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9651830

Opportunities to "Take Out" Radical Cleric Anwar Awlaki In Yemen "May Have Been Missed" by MATTHEW COLE, RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS Jan. 25, 2010

"White House lawyers are mulling the legality of proposed attempts to kill an American citizen, Anwar al Awlaki, who is believed to be part of the leadership of the al Qaeda group in Yemen behind a series of terror strikes, according to two people briefed by U.S. intelligence officials.

One of the people briefed said opportunities to "take out" Awlaki "may have been missed" because of the legal questions surrounding a lethal attack which would specifically target an American citizen.

A spokesperson said the White House declined to comment.

While Awlaki has not been charged with any crimes under U.S. law, intelligence officials say recent intelligence reports and electronic intercepts show he played an important role in recruiting the accused "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Awlaki also carried on extensive e-mail communication with the accused Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, prior to the attack that killed 12 soldiers and one civilian.

According to the people who were briefed on the issue, American officials fear the possibility of criminal prosecution without approval in advance from the White House for a targeted strike against Awlaki.

An American citizen with suspected al Qaeda ties was killed in Nov. 2002 in Yemen in a CIA predator strike that was aimed at non-American leaders of al Qaeda. The death of the American citizen, Ahmed Hijazi of Lackawanna, NY, was justified as "collateral damage" at the time because he "was just in the wrong place at the wrong time," said a former U.S. official familiar with the case.

In the case of Awlaki, born in New Mexico and a college student in Colorado and California, a strike aimed to kill him would stretch current Presidential authority given to the CIA and the Pentagon to pursue terrorists anywhere in the world.

Where Anwar al Awlaki Might Be Hiding
Awlaki's father told reporters in Yemen last week that his son had gone into hiding in the mountains of Yemen and was being protected by al Qaeda, even though, the father claimed, his son was not part of al Qaeda.

He told reporters he was pleading with the United States, "Please don't kill my son."

The question of what limits apply to an American with suspected operational ties to al Qaeda comes as the U.S. steps up efforts to track any American with ties to Yemen.

Hundreds of FBI and other federal agents will fan out this week as part of a secret operation to pursue leads about Americans with connections to Yemen that were previously dismissed as not significant, according to law enforcement officials."

Corrupt Global Warming Scientists Deliberately Misled on Glaciers and More

2010-01-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

Too bad, this is not in the U.S. press, but see UK DailyMail.co.uk January 24, 2010 article by David Rose at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html
"Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified"
■ "The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders."
■ "Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research."

And more, see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece The Sunday Times turns up more errors in a January 24, 2010 article by Jonathan Leake:
■ "The United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods."
■ "It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny--and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough."

Designate the Christmas Day Bomber as an "Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent"

2010-01-25T15:18:00.000-08:00

See Commentary.com Jennifer Rubin January 25, 2010 entry at http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/223751

■ "Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins have written a letter today to Attorney General Eric Holder and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan urging them to designate Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, as an 'unprivileged enemy belligerent' so he can be 'questioned and charged accordingly'. The senators note that Obama himself has declared that 'we are at war with al-Qaeda'. However, Abdulmutallab was read his Miranda rights and, as others have reported, provided only 50 minutes of conversation to FBI agents who lacked the needed detail to elicit all the helpful material he might possess. The senators note that last week, Dennis Blair and other officials conceded in congressional testimony that the Justice Department 'did not consult with leadership in the intelligence community and the Department of Defense for their input on whether or not to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal and read him his Miranda rights'. Senators also learned that the 'High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which the Department of Justice announced last August -- more than four months ago -- is not yet operational'."

■ "The senators conclude that the president’s repeated admonitions that we are at war do not appear to 'be reflected in the actions of some in the Executive branch'. But they note that the president can “reverse this error” and transfer the Christmas Day bomber to the Department of Defense.”

Gallup: Obama Most Polarizing President Ever

2010-01-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

See http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-gallup-polarizing-gop/2010/01/25/id/347929?s=al&promo_code=9609-1 January 25, 2010 article:

- "President Barack Obama is the most polarizing president in American history, according to a poll released by the Gallup organization Monday."

- "The average difference in Obama's approval ratings between Democrats and Republicans turned out to be 65 percent -- the highest first-year gap of any president so measured."

How Is President Obama Doing?

2010-01-25T09:21:00.000-08:00

How Is President Obama doing?

See January 25, 2010 Wall Street Journal "The President's Bank Reforms Don't Add Up" op/ed piece by Peter J. Wallison at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704509704575019333516533828.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

"Restricting loans to real estate virtually guarantees another bank crisis in the future."

"After the Democrats' disaster in Massachusetts last Tuesday, President Obama appears to be flailing. Gone is the cool and measured demeanor that made him look presidential when the financial crisis struck during the 2008 campaign. Instead, the financial reform proposals he advanced later in the week seem to reflect political panic—a desperate attempt to appeal to the populist sentiment against Wall Street. Unfortunately, they also reflect a limited understanding of good financial or banking policy."

Pachauri Must Resign at Once as Head of Official Climate Science Panel

2010-01-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

See UK Telegraph January 24, 2010 article by Geoffrey Lean at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100023489/pachauri-must-quit-as-head-of-official-science-panel/

- "It is time for the embattled Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC), He is steadfastly refusing to go, but his position is becoming more and more untenable by the day, and the official climate science body will continue to leach credibility while he remains in charge."

- "the latest IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers that contained the notorious – and now withdrawn - claim that they would disappear by 2035."

- "there are now reports that it erred in relying on an unpublished report in linking natural disasters like flood and hurricanes to global warming. All appear much less serious than the original Himalayan howler, but they add to the impression of sloppiness at the IPCC."

- "

Did Obama Buy the Election?

2010-01-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

From FactCheck.org November 3, 2008 at http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/who_spent_more_money_on_advertising_mccain.html
■ "Public financing limits candidates to spending $84.1 million on their general campaign. The money is provided to them in the form of a grant from the U.S. Treasury." "Obama's choice to turn down public financing and McCain's choice to accept it helped create a relatively large campaign fundraising disparity.

■ "Overall, Obama has outspent McCain by nearly 3-to-1, but in the closing week it's been closer to 5-to-1."

■ "According to figures supplied by the campaign Media Analysis Group of TNS Media Intelligence, Obama has spent an estimated $280 million on TV advertising since Jan. 1 of last year through Nov. 1. McCain has spent less than half as much, just under $134 million, according to CMAG, which tracks advertising in the top TV markets."

■ "Those figures include amounts spent in both the primary and the general election campaigns. Since the two candidates clinched the nominations of their respective parties, the spending disparity has been greater, reflecting Obama's greater ability to attract private donations, and his decision to do without public funds or the spending limits that go with them."

■ "There's no question that Sen. Barack Obama, who opted out of the public financing system, has raised more money than anyone in the history of U.S. politics. As a result, Sen. John McCain, who opted to receive public financing, was at a stark financial disadvantage to his Democratic rival."

President Barack Obama on Health Care Death Panels

2010-01-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

This is from April and August 2009.

From April 29, 2009 see Bloomberg article by Hans Nichols at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aGrKbfWkzTqc
"Obama Says Grandmother’s Hip Replacement Raises Cost Questions"
■ "President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a 'sustainable' model” for health care."
■ "Obama said 'you just get into some very difficult moral issues' when considering whether 'to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill'."

See New York Times April 28, 2009 "After the Great Recession" article by David Leonhardt see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03Obama-t.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
President Barack Obama said:
■ "So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right? I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here."
■ "Well, I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now."

From August 2009 at http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/11/a-debate-we-didn-t-have-to-have.aspx
■ "Gee, where could the misinformed town hall crazies have gotten the idea that Obama was thinking about saving money by denying expensive procedures toward the end of life?

President Obama - It Has Been a Year of Fecklessness, Amateurism, and Posturing

2010-01-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

See Conrad Black at National Post, January 22, 2010 article
"Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge" at http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/22/conrad-black-the-lessons-of-massachusetts.aspx

"The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and it is an old, passe leftism, that is authoritarian, deviously presented and was discredited in this country decades ago; the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become 'New Democrats.' He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.

The second of these problems seems to prevent the president from appreciating the last. The only serious domestic initiative to show for the last year is an obscene stimulus bill that has had to be defended by the spurious supposition of 'jobs saved' since, contrary to promises, unemployment has risen by over five million after it was enacted. That target could have been attained without squandering 787 billion borrowed dollars.

Current economic projections call for massive debt increases of $1 trillion a year for a decade, with huge money supply increases that will make history not only by their size but, according to forecasts, by their non-inflationary nature, accompanied by tax increases that will, also miraculously, not retard recovery from the recession. No audible sane person believes this arithmetical fairy tale, including, one dares to hope, the president himself. It is a recipe for guaranteed stagflation and currency devaluation.

The administration bought wholly into the unproved claim that carbon emissions are causing global warming, but global warming has not, for the last ten years, been happening. The president padded around the Copenhagen global warming conference trying to generate enthusiasm for $100 billion annual transfers to the Mugabes and Chavezes, as well as the Chinese (the world's largest carbon emitters), as conscience-alleviating payments for the carbon emissions of the economically advanced countries."

"It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing."

Public Employee Unions Are Sinking California

2010-01-22T16:37:00.000-08:00

See Wall Street Journal January 22, 2010 op/ed piece by Steven Greenhut at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575017182296077118.html includes:

- "Approximately 85% of the state's 235,000 employees (not including higher education employees) are unionized. As the governor noted during his $83 billion budget roll-out, over the past decade pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period. A Schwarzenegger adviser wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the past few days that, "This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs." There are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year, according to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility."

- "Many of these retirees are former police officers, firefighters, and prison guards who can retire at age 50 with a pension that equals 90% of their final year's pay. The pensions for these (and all other retirees) increase each year with inflation and are guaranteed by taxpayers forever—regardless of what happens in the economy or whether the state's pensions funds have been fully funded (which they haven't been)."

- "A 2008 state commission pegged California's unfunded pension liability at $63.5 billion"

- "Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a well-known liberal voice, recently wrote this in the San Francisco Chronicle: 'The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians—pushed by our friends in labor—gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages. . . . [A]t some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact'."

- "State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, another prominent liberal Democrat, told a legislative hearing in October that public employee pensions would 'bankrupt' the state."

The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama

2010-01-22T11:05:00.000-08:00

See Mort Zuckerman January 21, 2010 article "The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama" at http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/mzuckerman/2010/01/21/mort-zuckerman-the-incredible-deflation-of-barack-obama.html?PageNr=2
which includes:
President "Obama, the theoretician in a hurry, made no allowance for the normal resistance to dramatic change and the public's distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits. He didn't seem to realize that Americans understand in the most personal terms that excessive debt has real consequences, given how many have mortgages that exceed the value of a home and credit lines that are too much to carry. Yet this was what the president seemed to be getting us into. Over 60 percent of the country believes that government spending is excessive; Obama's lowest approval ratings come from his mishandling of the present and future deficits."

"Unfortunately, there is not much solace in international affairs either, where, again, expectations were so pumped up. America's image is better, no doubt, but uncertainty and procrastination prevail. One major international political leader recently put it well: 'Not only does the leadership of this region not think that Obama is strong enough to confront his enemies; they aren't sure he is strong enough to support his friends.' The administration seems 'hopelessly naive,' according to one Arab foreign minister, and unable to face the full truth about Islamic terrorism. The public frustration over the administration's mismanagement of the latest jihadist attempt to blow up a plane with all its innocent travelers (on Christmas Day) was captured in the New York Daily News headline 'Mr. President, it's time to get a grip!'"

NO LAW ABRIDGING POLITICAL SPEECH

2010-01-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

U.S. Constitution First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
They were talking about political speech, so it is OK to regulate pornography or misleading commercial advertisements.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission "One issue in particular that likely contributed to the Court's desire to have the case reargued was the statement by then-Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart, representing the FEC, that the government would have the power to ban books, if those books constituted express advocacy and were published by a corporation or union."

The position of the Obama administration is the government has the right to censure and burn books. That the government allows newspapers to write editorials and endorse candidates, but that the government could withdraw that privilege. The government could make it criminal for a newspaper to write editorials or for endorsing candidates.

Mort Zuckerman on President Obama "He's Done Everything Wrong"

2010-01-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a great article from an Obama supporter.
See
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-19/hes-done-everythin
g-wrong/ He's Done Everything Wrong by Mort Zuckerman who "I'm very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately."

He's Done Everything Wrong
by Mort Zuckerman

"Obama punted on the economy and reversed the fortunes of the Democrats in
365 days.

He's misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There's the saying, "It's the economy, stupid." He didn't get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn't address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It's now worse than it was. I've now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I've never seen before. It's politically corrupt and it's starting at the top. It's revolting.

Five states got deals on health care-one of them was Harry Reid's. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I've never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It's a bizarre form of political corruption. It's bribery. I suppose they could say, that's the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.

Even that is not the worst part. He could have said, "I know. I promised these things, but let me try to do them one at a time." You want to deal with health care? Fine. Issue No. 1 with health care was the cost. You know I think it was 37 percent or 33 who were worried about coverage. Fine, I wrote an editorial to this effect. Focus on cost-containment first. But he's trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much. This is not leadership.

I don't consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster.

One business leader said to me, "In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines."

I'm very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.

I hope there are changes. I think he's already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn't do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?

He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, "This is it.
No changes. Don't give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency."
Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

It's very sad. It's really sad.

He's improved America's image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. "We are convinced," he said, "that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned," he said "that he is not strong to support his friends."

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what's happening in Massachusetts.

It's really interesting because he had brilliant, brilliant political instincts during the campaign. I don't know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It's unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can't believe how dismayed people are. That's why he's plunging in the polls.

I can't predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won't be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic."

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News. He is also the co-founder and chairman of Boston Properties Inc. He is a trustee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

Large Majority Of Americans Say They Want A Smaller Government

2010-01-18T07:50:00.000-08:00

See http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59933

What Washington Post Didn’t Tell You about Its Own Poll: Most Americans Say They Want a Smaller Government
Monday, January 18, 2010
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

(CNSNews.com) - A large majority of Americans say they want a smaller government that provides them with fewer services, according to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News. But the Washington Post story about the poll makes no mention of this fact.

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, would you say you favor smaller government with fewer services, or larger government with more services?”

Fifty-eight percent said they favor a smaller government with fewer services, and only 38 percent said they favor a larger government with more services.

Obama's Goal to Permanently Increase Government's Grasp on the Nation's Wealth

2010-01-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

See George Will Washington Post January 17, 2010 column at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/01/17/off-the-cliff_but_catching_on_99924.html

"Year one of the Obama administration was devoted to deliberately exacerbating the fiscal crisis. The gusher of spending, combined with the new multitrillion-dollar health care entitlement, is half of liberalism's plan to radically and permanently increase government's grasp on the nation's wealth."

Let the Market Work - Government is Part of the Problem

2010-01-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

See January 2, 2010 The New York Times article by Peter S. Goodman
"U.S. Loan Effort Is Seen as Adding to Housing Woes" at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/business/economy/02modify.html

"The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people but has largely failed to provide permanent relief. Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes. "
A question asked to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner “Are we creating a program in which we’re talking about potentially spending $75 billion to try to modify people into mortgages that will reduce the number of foreclosures in the short term, but just kick the can down the road?” she asked, raising the prospect “that we’ll be looking at an economy with elevated mortgage foreclosures not just for a year or two, but for many years. How do you deal with that problem, Mr. Secretary?”
A good question, Mr. Geithner conceded. “What to do about it,” he said. “That’s a hard thing.”

Global Warming Alarmists Adjusted Raw Temperature Data and Then Threw It Away - Now It's Trust Us

2009-11-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

From Best of the Web Wall Street Journal Monday, November 30, 2009; see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567780798946274.html

From The Sunday Times November 29, 2009 "Climate change data dumped" at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

"Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. . . .
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals--stored on paper and magnetic tape--were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. . . .
Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. 'The CRU is basically saying, 'Trust us.' So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,' he said."

Al Gore Used Michael Mann's Global Warming Hockey Stick Chart in "An Inconvenient Truth"

2009-11-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

See Hockey Stick Hokum, a July 14, 2006 Editorial at the Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115283824428306460.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

It includes:
■ The assertion "that the 1990s were the 'warmest decade in a millennium' and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000. … is often recited without qualification, and even without giving a source for the 'fact'."
■ "The claim originates from a 1999 paper by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann. Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the U.N.'s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus, as shown in the first of the two IPCC-provided graphs nearby, held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day."
■ "Mr. Mann's 1999 paper eliminated the Medieval warm period from the history books, with the result being the bottom graph you see here. It's a man-made global-warming evangelist's dream, with a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. In 2001, the IPCC replaced the first graph with the second in its third report on climate change, and since then it has cropped up all over the place."
■ "Al Gore uses it in his movie."
■ "In 2003, two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, published an article in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Mr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from even random, trendless data."
■ "three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University -- are not climatologists; they're statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann's methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann's papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt."
■ "Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. 'As analyzed in our social network,' Mr. Wegman writes, 'there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis.' He continues: 'However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility'."
■ "published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. 'As analyzed in our social network,' Mr. Wegman writes, 'there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis.' He continues: 'However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility'."
■ "climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. …the dismissive reaction of the climate-research establishment to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique of the hockey stick confirms that impression."

Michael Mann Hockey Stick Chart and Embarrassing Global Warming Emails

2009-11-27T13:52:00.000-08:00

See Steven McIntyre's web site http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7810 and post about the embarrassing emails regarding global warming "Mike’s Nature trick" written by by Jean S on November 20, 2009. It shows a November 16, 1999 email from Prof. Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia to including Mike Mann. The email includes "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

Who is Michael Mann? A Professor at Pennsylvania State University, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann "Michael E. Mann (born 28 December 1965) is an American climatologist, and author of more than 80 peer-reviewed journal publications. He has attained public prominence as lead author of a number of articles on paleoclimate and as one of the originators of a graph of temperature trends dubbed the "hockey stick graph" for the shape of the graph. The graph received both praise and criticism after its publication in an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report."

Did Mike Mann use a trick to manipulate the data? I bet he did. He was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal editorial "Kyoto by Degrees" way back on June 21, 2005 See http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111931466624264760,00.html It includes:
■ "Most global warming alarms are based on computer simulations that are largely speculative and depend on a multitude of debatable assumptions."
■ "there's the famous "hockey stick" data from American geoscientist Michael Mann. Prior to publication of Mr. Mann's data in 1998, all climate scientists accepted that the Earth had undergone large temperature variations within recorded human history. This included a Medieval warm period when the Vikings farmed Greenland and a "little ice age" more recently when the Thames River often froze solid. Seen in that perspective, the slight warming believed to have occurred in the past century could well be no more than a natural rebound, especially since most of that warming occurred before 1940."
■ "Mr. Mann, who suggested that both the history books and other historical temperature data were wrong. His temperature graph for the past millennium was essentially flat until the 20th century, when a sharp upward spike occurs -- i.e., it looks like a hockey stick. The graph was embraced by the global warming lobby as proof that we are in a crisis, and that radical solutions are called for."
■ "But then, in 2003, Canadian mathematician Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick published a critique calling Mr. Mann's work riddled with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculations of principal components, and other quality control defects." Correct for those errors, they showed, and the Medieval warm period returns."
■ "Mr. Mann has never offered a serious rebuttal to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique. He has refused to fully explain his methodology, claiming he's the victim of "intimidation." That's odd when you consider that the sine qua non of real science is independently verifiable and reproducible results."
■ "There's also the matter of the alleged melting of the Antarctic ice cover, threatening a catastrophic sea level rise. In fact, recent data suggest the ice is thickening and temperatures are dropping in most of the continent. Finally, an increasing number of scientists are concluding that variations in solar radiation associated with sun spots -- that's right, the heat of the sun -- play a major role in Earth's climate."

Global Warming Alarmists Ignore and/or Manipulate the Facts

2009-11-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

I wrote this letter to the editor October 16, 2007.

Concerned and want to be informed about global warming? Where can one get accurate information?

See linked to the NASA website at http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=17087 It says” The high temperatures of 2004 make it the fourth hottest year since the late 1800s, the time that most scientists recognize as the start of accurate meteorological record keeping.” But that was written February 9, 2005. What does NASA say now?

See the NASA website http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html It says “The year 2005 was the warmest year in over a century, according to NASA scientists studying temperature data from around the world.” But that was written January 24, 2006. What does NASA say now?
From http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/1998_no_longer_the_hottest_yea.html “Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates www.climateaudit.org and began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies”.
See http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200708/CUL20070816b.html “on Aug. 4, 2007 blogger Steve McIntyre of the ClimateAudit.org website, sent an email to NASA asserting that the data collected by the agency after 1999 was not being adjusted to allow for the times of day when readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations”. “NASA climate modeler Gavin Schmidt …said the data analysis was then adjusted accordingly, and a note of thanks emailed to McIntyre”. Corrected data is at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt

“According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is. Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999).”
Well, at a minimum, it’s complicated.

Gas Could Literally Transform The Global Energy Equation

2009-11-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

See important Letter to the Editor Nov 9, 2009 Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/public/page/letters.html

Note: "Despite the conclusion of [President Obama's] own Energy Information Agency that fossil fuels will still account for 79% of energy demand in 2030 regardless of how many tax incentives are thrown at solar, wind, algae, biodiesel and the like.

"Gas could literally transform the global energy equation because North America is endowed with huge shale formations in virtually every part of the continent. But while technology, price and demand are important factors in the prospects for higher production, new drilling will only occur if Washington and the various states provide an accommodating fiscal and regulatory environment. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be the case.
For example, President Barack Obama wants to hike taxes on the oil and gas industry and use those revenues to subsidize renewables, despite the conclusion of his own Energy Information Agency that fossil fuels will still account for 79% of energy demand in 2030 regardless of how many tax incentives are thrown at solar, wind, algae, biodiesel and the like. Opposition to gas drilling from environmentalists will also retard new gas supplies, as evidenced by New York's decision to ban drilling in the New York City watershed. Plans to drill on Colorado's Roan Plateau are also meeting stiff resistance.
New technologies now enable us to potentially extract trillions of cubic feet of natural gas from domestic shale formations that, in turn, can reduce our dependence on imported energy. Let's not squander this unique opportunity."

Bernard L. Weinstein
Maguire Energy Institute

Fear of Health ‘Reform’ Is Warranted

2009-11-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama - Do you believe him?

See Thursday, November 5, 2009 editorial at http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/05/fear-health-reform-warranted/
■ "Consider the president’s basic promises about his health overhaul:"
■ "it actually would save money"
■ "the only new taxes would be on the very wealthy"
■ "individuals would be free to keep their present coverage and doctors"
■ "save money is largely based on the preposterous assumption that hundreds of billions of dollars would be cut in Medicare and Medicaid programs"
■ "an IRS-administered and collected levy on individuals without health insurance is really a tax. The bills before Congress call it a tax. But apart from this semantic debate, there are also new taxes on insurers, drug makers, health care providers and medical devices that would be passed along to consumers. Of course middle-class pocketbooks would take a big hit."
■ "The claim that people happy with their present health care would be unaffected ignores the fact that if the 'public option' were available, employers would have a financial incentive to drop private insurance in favor of cheaper government coverage. And even if the final bill didn’t include this option, private coverage would be microregulated on what it has to provide — and lawmakers swayed by contributions from medical specialists have already indicated plans to vastly expand what services must be provided. The inevitable result would be far costlier private insurance."

What Caused the Economic Crises?

2009-10-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

see Wall Street Journal October 28, 2009 op/ed piece by Jeremy J. Siegel at http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703573604574491261905165886-lMyQjAxMDA5MDIwODEyNDgyWj.html#printMode

■ "Neither the rating agencies' mistakes nor the overleveraging by financial firms was the fault of an academic hypothesis."

■ " According to data collected by Prof. Robert Shiller of Yale University, in the 61 years from 1945 through 2006 the maximum cumulative decline in the average price of homes was 2.84% in 1991. If this low volatility of home prices persisted into the future, a mortgage security composed of a nationally diversified portfolio of loans comprising the first 80% of a home's value would have never come close to defaulting. The credit quality of home buyers was secondary because it was thought that underlying collateral—the home—could always cover the principal in the event the homeowner defaulted. These models led credit agencies to rate these subprime mortgages as "investment grade."

■ " But this assessment was faulty. From 2000 through 2006, national home prices rose by 88.7%, far more than the 17.5% gain in the consumer price index or the paltry 1% rise in median household income. Never before have home prices jumped that far ahead of prices and incomes."

■ " As home prices continued to climb and subprime mortgages proliferated, Mr. Greenspan and current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke were perhaps the only ones influential enough to sound an alarm and soften the oncoming crisis. But they did not. For all the deserved kudos that the central bank received for their management of the crisis after the Lehman bankruptcy, the failure to see these problems building will stand as a permanent blot on the Fed's record."

Why ObamaCare is Unpopular

2009-10-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

See Wall Street Journal October 26, 2009 op/ed piece by Arthur C. Brooks at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704335904574495131591949574.html

■ "Americans recoil at policies that strip choices from citizens and pass them to bureaucrats. ObamaCare systematically does so. The current proposals in Congress would effectively limit choice across the entire spectrum of health care: What kind of health insurance citizens can buy, what kind of doctors they can see, what kind of procedures their doctors will perform, what kind of drugs they can take, and what treatment options they may have."

■ "Americans are cold to a health-care system that effectively rewards individuals for waiting to get insurance until they get sick—subsidizing their coverage by taxing those who responsibly carry insurance in good times and bad."

■ "Already, the Census Bureau tells us that 21% of the uninsured are in households earning at least $75,000"

■ "ObamaCare discourages personal ambition. The proposed reforms will institute a set of government mandates, price controls and other strictures that will make highly trained specialists, drug researchers and medical device makers less valued now and in the future. Americans understand that when you take away the incentive to make money while saving lots of lives, the cures, therapies and medical innovations of tomorrow may never be discovered."

■ "An April 2009 survey conducted by the polling firm Ayers, McHenry & Associates for the conservative nonprofit group Resurgent Republic asked respondents which of the following statements about the role of government came closer to their view: (a) "Government policies should promote fairness by narrowing the gap between rich and poor, spreading the wealth, and making sure that economic outcomes are more equal"; or (b) "Government policies should promote opportunity by fostering job growth, encouraging entrepreneurs, and allowing people to keep more of what they earn." Sixty-three percent chose the second option; just 31% chose the first."

■ "The health-care debate is part of a moral struggle currently being played out over the free enterprise system. It will be replayed in every major policy debate in the coming months, from financial regulatory reform to a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions. The choices will ultimately always come down to competing visions of America's future. Will we strengthen freedom, individual opportunity and enterprise? Or will we expand the role of the state and its power?"

Hoover & Roosevelt Tax Increases Prolonged Depression

2009-10-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

Let's make permanent the Bush tax cuts. Let's learn from history. President Obama increasing spending and taxes is not the way to get private employers to create jobs and hire employees.

See September 22, 2009 op/ed piece by Taxes, Depression, and Our Current Troubles by Dr. Arthur B. Laffer at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402822202944230.html

The sub headline is "Tariffs, rising state and federal taxes, and currency devaluation ruined the 1930s, and they could do the same today."

■ "The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn."
■ "The Smoot-Hawley tariff of June 1930 was the catalyst that got the whole process going. It was the largest single increase in taxes on trade during peacetime and precipitated massive retaliation by foreign governments on U.S. products."
■ "Huge federal and state tax increases in 1932 followed the initial decline in the economy thus doubling down on the impact of Smoot-Hawley."
■ "There were additional large tax increases in 1936 and 1937 that were the proximate cause of the economy's relapse in 1937."
■ "beginning in 1932 the lowest personal income tax rate was raised [under Hoover] to 4% from less than one-half of 1% while the highest rate was raised to 63% from 25%."
■ Under Hoover "The corporate rate was raised to 13.75% from 12%. All sorts of Federal excise taxes too numerous to list were raised as well. The highest inheritance tax rate was also raised in 1932 to 45% from 20% and the gift tax was reinstituted with the highest rate set at 33.5%."
■ "In 1934, during the Roosevelt administration, the highest estate tax rate was raised to 60% from 45% and raised again to 70% in 1935. The highest gift tax rate was raised to 45% in 1934 from 33.5% in 1933 and raised again to 52.5% in 1935. The highest corporate tax rate was raised to 15% in 1936 with a surtax on undistributed profits up to 27%."
■ "In 1936 the highest personal income tax rate was raised yet again to 79% from 63%"
■ "in 1937 a 1% employer and a 1% employee tax was placed on all wages up to $3,000."
■ "In 1929, state and local taxes were 7.2% of GDP and then rose to 8.5%, 9.7% and 12.3% for the years 1930, '31 and '32 respectively."
■ "the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2011; and additional taxes to pay for health-care and the proposed cap-and-trade scheme are on the horizon."

Al Gore's First (and Probably Last) Q&A - A Nobel Prize winner takes a few questions

2009-10-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469310880671246.html

October 12, 2009 by JOHN FUND

"Before President Obama won his Nobel Peace Prize, the real signal that the Norwegian Nobel committee had become politicized was its 2007 prize to Al Gore, largely for his global warming film 'An Inconvenient Truth'."

For a public figure, Mr. Gore has been strangely reluctant to answer questions or debate the more controversial parts of his work. But over the weekend, he deigned to take a few questions during a meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin.
Irish documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer was in the line. A former Financial Times journalist, his new film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong," is a direct refutation of Mr. Gore's thesis and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor. When his turn came, Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about a court case in Britain in which a parent had objected to "An Inconvenient Truth" being shown to British schoolchildren because it was largely propaganda, not science.

Mr. Gore swatted away the question by claiming the judge had found in favor of his film. He also briefly addressed one of the objections to his film by scoffing at claims that polar bears weren't an endangered species. Mr. McAleer tried to follow up by pointing out that polar bear populations were increasing, but his microphone was quickly cut off. Organizers insisted that several other people were waiting with questions and they had to move on.

In fact, Mr. Gore didn't answer Mr. McAleer's question and was wrong on the facts. The British court found that An Inconvenient Truth "is a political film" riddled with scientific errors. The judge also held that requiring the film to be shown in schools would be a violation of law, unless accompanied by "guidance" pointing out its errors. The judge concluded that the claimant who objected to the film "substantially won this case by virtue of my finding that, but for the new guidance note, the film would have been distributed in breach of sections 406 and 407 of the 1996 Education Act."

As for polar bears, Mr. McAleer was correct: Surveys show their numbers are increasing.

Mr. McAleer, whose film premiers this weekend, says he's more disappointed in the environmental journalists who give Mr. Gore cover than in the former vice president. Mr. Gore is simply doing what any propagandist with a weak case would do -- avoiding serious debate or exchange. To quote the late William F. Buckley, There is a reason that baloney rejects the grinder'."

President Obama Wobbliness Has Done Incalculable Damage

2009-10-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574469561899482856.html

Robert D. Kaplan writing in the Atlantic:

"Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama's public agonizing.

Meanwhile, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani military, opposed to the recent crackdown against local Taliban, are also taking heart from developments in Washington. . . .This is how coups and revolutions get started, by the middle ranks sensing weakness in foreign support for their superiors.
Obama's wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India's geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with Bush, Obama's dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington's indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. "

Laguna Beach Historical Society Program Monday October 19th "Growing Up in Laguna During the Great Depression" by Peter Kaye

2009-10-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

See Photo Main Beach Pier destroyed in 1939 by so-called hurricane and photo of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Laguna July 16 1938

The next Laguna Beach Historical Society program will be Monday, October 19th "Growing Up in Laguna During the Great Depression" by Peter Kaye. The program is from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and will be held at the Laguna Beach City Hall Council Chambers which is at 505 Forest Avenue. The public is invited and there is no charge.

Peter Kaye, author of the book Contrarian, will read and expand upon portions of his book Contrarian with special emphasis on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's stopover in Laguna Beach in 1938, the hurricane of 1939 and how Laguna Beach reacted to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Peter Kaye is former newspaper reporter, television producer and commentator, campaign aide and participant in sixteen national political conventions, Kaye has released Contrarian, a fast-paced memoir detailing his fifty-five years in politics and reporting.

The Laguna Beach Historical Society has a new web site to view historic photographs at www.Laguna-Historical-Society.smugmug.com. For those having treasured historic photographs or printed material, the Historical Society is happy to scan them electronically and return them to the owners. This way there will be a record preserved for future generations without the necessity for the owners to relinquish the item. Viewers are invited to leave comments to help the Society better identify or date the photographs. At the web site, prints can also be purchase; for example an 8” by 10" glossy for $6.97 plus tax and shipping.

Questions on photographs or Laguna Beach history are invited to be sent to info@LagunaHistory.org.

Step back into 1920s Laguna by visiting the Laguna Beach Historical Society Murphy-Smith Bungalow which located at 278 Ocean Avenue and which is opened to the public at no-charge every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Volunteers are needed to greet visitors to the Murphy-Smith Bungalow and should call 939-7257.

Those interested in supporting and joining the Laguna Beach Historical Society should send $15 per individual, $25 per household or $50 per business/organization to 278 Ocean Avenue, Laguna Beach CA 92651. The Laguna Beach Historical Society is a section 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Tax ID #33-0519882.

French President Ridicules Obama

2009-10-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

"Since 2005, Secretary-General, the international community has called on Iran to engage in dialogue. An offer of dialogue was made in 2005… 2006…2007…2008…2009…But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing. More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and on top of that, a statement by Iranian leaders proposing to wipe a UN member State off the map."

Nicolas Sarkozy 9/24/09 at UN

Cash for Clunkers Comes Crashing Down

2009-10-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

See http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/02/cash-for-clunkers-comes-crashing-down/

"The dramatic decline in sales reported Thursday by the Big Three automakers suggested the extent to which the stimulus act has propped up the economy. The government’s wildly popular 'Cash for Clunkers' program drove consumer spending to its highest level in eight years in August. But after it ended, so did the growth in auto sales.

General Motors’ sales plunged 36 percent in September compared with August. Ford plummeted 37 percent. Chrysler dove 33 percent.

Cash for clunkers 'was a one-time boost of sales followed by a crater,' said Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers. The firm forecast that the program was likely to have no effect as a stimulant for national economic output.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Ridicules President Barack Obama at UN

2009-09-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

See http://ambafrance-us.org/spip.php?article1432

Speech by Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France to the United Nations Security Council New York, September 24, 2009

"The people of the entire world are listening to what we're saying, to our promises, our commitments and our speeches, but we live in a real world, not a virtual world.

We say: reductions must be made. And President Obama has even said, 'I dream of a world without [nuclear weapons]'. Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council resolutions. Since 2005, Secretary-General, the international community has called on Iran to engage in dialogue. An offer of dialogue was made in 2005, an offer of dialogue was made in 2006, an offer of dialogue was made in 2007, an offer of dialogue was made in 2008, and another one was made in 2009. President Obama, I support the Americans' outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing. More enriched uranium, more centrifuges, and on top of that, a statement by Iranian leaders proposing to wipe a UN member State off the map."

Obama on the Surge in Iraq

2009-09-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

■ "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
■ "Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment would have been correct."
Senator Barack Obama II (D-IL)

White House Collects Web Users' Data Without Notice

2009-09-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/16/obama-wh-collects-web-users-data/

White House Collects Web Users' Data Without Notice by Audrey Hudson in Washington Times:
"The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet. "

Imbecilic Support Materials Soliciting Students to Write Fantasy Letters to ‘Help’ the President

2009-09-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

“imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to ‘help’ the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure)”

See Sept 9, 2009 article “Too late for Obama to turn it around?” by Camille Paglia at http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/

Includes: “This column has been calling for heads to roll at the White House from the get-go. Thankfully, they do seem to be falling faster -- as witness the middle-of-the-night bum's rush given to "green jobs" czar Van Jones last week -- but there's a long way to go. An example of the provincial amateurism of current White House operations was the way the president's innocuous back-to-school pep talk got sandbagged by imbecilic support materials soliciting students to write fantasy letters to "help" the president (a coercive directive quickly withdrawn under pressure). Even worse, the entire project was stupidly scheduled to conflict with the busy opening days of class this week, when harried teachers already have their hands full. Comically, some major school districts, including New York City, were not even open yet. And this is the gang who wants to revamp national healthcare? “

Who’s Going to Get More Publicity Palin or Obama Joint Session of Congress Speech?

2009-09-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama will today, Sept 9, 2009 address a joint session of Congress. I wonder how well he will do? I bet as he walks down the aisle, he will reek of cigarette smoke; I bet he is smoking about two packs a day now.
I’ll listen for Obama “this was the moment…” What a truly audacious fellow. From June 3, 2008 St. Paul Minnesota, after cinching the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, Barack Obama said:
“generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”
But can the Press not cover former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin even more? See her op/ed piece to day Sept 9, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400581157986024.html
Governor Palin may make news in writing:
- “We also know that our current health-care system too often burdens individuals and businesses—particularly small businesses—with crippling expenses. And we know that allowing government health-care spending to continue at current rates will only add to our ever-expanding deficit.”
- “How can we ensure that those who need medical care receive it while also reducing health-care costs? The answers offered by Democrats in Washington all rest on one principle: that increased government involvement can solve the problem. I fundamentally disagree.”
- “Common sense tells us that the government's attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats' proposals "will provide more stability and security to every American."
- “ask yourself whether the government that brought us such ‘waste and inefficiency’ and ‘unwarranted subsidies’ in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn't think so..”
- “Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He's asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of ‘normal political channels,’ should guide decisions regarding that ‘huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .’ Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats' proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels?”
- “the Democrats' proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we've come to expect from this administration.”
- “Only in Washington could a plan that adds hundreds of billions to the deficit be hailed as a cost-cutting measure.”
- “let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.”

The Convenient Fantasies of President Obama

2009-09-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

So true. See Michael Barone's Sept 9, 2009 column "The convenient fantasies of President Obama" at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/The-convenient-fantasies-of-President-Obama-8215470-57862907.html

"the administration seems enamored of his "green jobs" concept. There's an understandable political reason. Legislation to restrict carbon emissions that is supported by the administration would undoubtedly kill a large number of jobs by increasing the cost of energy, and so you can see why its advocates might want to argue that there will be a compensating number of "green jobs" created -- at least if the government spends a lot of money on them.
But this sounds like fantasy. If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already."

"Yesterday Baucus came out with his own plan, which includes a tax on high-value health insurance policies. But this is likely to be rejected by the Left, by labor unions that have negotiated such benefits from employers, and by members of Congress from states like New York, where, because of state policies, almost all health insurance costs that much.
There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it."

"The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits."

Obama's Crisis: Credibility

2009-09-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

Good point. See Sept 9, 2009 article by Michael Gerson at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/09/the_crisis_of__health_care_reform_98217.html

"And so Barack Obama's address to Congress on health care, at a minimum, must answer the question: What is the crisis? When an individual can't get needed health care, it is certainly a crisis for them. This, Obama might argue, creates moral responsibilities for the rest of us to help. But this would argue for a more incremental approach, adding coverage for the working poor instead of remaking the American health system for everyone."

"Obama abandoned his pledge to reduce the government's health costs long ago; now he only aims at budget neutrality. But every pending health reform bill in Congress increases both short-term and long-term deficits, failing even on Obama's modified terms. Americans get the joke. While Obama has made cost control a centerpiece of his public message, only about 20 percent of Americans, in one poll, believe Obama will keep his promise not to increase the deficit with health reform."

"America has an ongoing crisis -- an economic crisis of rising unemployment and negative economic growth. Obama clearly believed the economic emergency would give him the opportunity to do anything on the progressive agenda that he wished. Actually, it gave him the burden to do one thing well -- responding to the economic emergency. Insofar as health reform is seen as complicating this task -- particularly by the addition of massive, inflationary debt -- the narrative of crisis will continue to work against Obama instead of for him."

Polar Ice Growing - UN BanKi-moon Should Resign

2009-09-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

See UK paper Telegraph Sept 5, 2009 article by Christopher Booker “Arctic ice proves to be slippery stuff”; “The extent of the sea-ice is now half a million square kilometres [size of Texas] more than it was this time last year” at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6143587/Arctic-ice-proves-to-be-slippery-stuff.html

I hereby call for the resignation of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Mr BanKi-moon who said: "100 billion tons" of polar ice are melting each year, so that within 30 years the Arctic could be ‘ice-free’. This was supported by a WWF claim that the ice is melting so fast that, by 2100, sea-levels could rise by 1.2 metres (four feet), which would lead to ‘floods affecting a quarter of the world’.”

According to Christopher Booker “Everything about this oft-repeated item was propaganda of the silliest kind. Standing 700 miles from the Pole, as near as the stubbornly present ice would allow his ship to go, Mr Ban seemed unaware that, although some 10 million square kilometres (3.8 million square miles) of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. And the extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq m) greater than it was this time last year – which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see the Cryosphere Today website). By April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km (5.4 million sq m) or more.”

Catholic Church Does Not Teach That Government Should Directly Provide Health Care

2009-09-02T17:08:00.000-07:00

Iowa bishop R. Walker Nickless in a message issued by the Diocese of Sioux City:
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574387002761694162.html

"[T]he Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care.

Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good—it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible—health care should not be subject to federal monopolization.

Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined "best procedures," which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens. The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect. "

Jim Hall's Book "Through the Eyes of a Tiger, An Army Flight Surgeon's Vietnam Journal"

2009-08-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a book "Through the Eyes of a Tiger, An Army Flight Surgeon's Vietnam Journal" written by Laguna Beach's own Jim Hall. Heck, I have never addressed Jim as Doctor.

The book is a captivating story of a brand new medical doctor sent to Vietnam for a year 1962-63. This is early in the US’s involvement in the Vietnam War, however, there is plenty of fighting and injuries to attend to. Captain Jay Hoyland (pen name for Laguna Beach's own Jim Hall) is not assigned to a hospital where he can confer and learn from other more experienced doctors, but he is assigned to a base being the only doctor south of Saigon in the Mekong Delta.. As the commanding officer of the lab at the Soc Trang airfield, he has to care for the military at the base including the helicopter pilots who become his best buddies. In addition, he provides the Vietnamese town medical care, inspecting restaurants and the house of prostitution, and assisting the leprosarium and the nuns at the local orphanage.

What a busy year, learning as he tends to the medical needs, from stitching up soldiers getting too close to the base's mascot Taffy the tiger to putting helicopter buddies and a subordinate into body bags, and at the same time, being the chief fundraiser for projects like the officers’ club expansion, a washing machine for the orphanage and more.

I did not have any particular interest in learning about 1962 Vietnam or the adventures of a brand new Army flight surgeon, but what a most remarkable story. That story is written so each page reveals interesting and exciting details with the author sharing his emotions as the ups and downs warrant. Also, the personal narrative is intertwined with official Vietnam progress communiqués which are quite illuminating and particularly so since by the end of 1963 a US acquiesced coup involves the killing of South Vietnam’s President Diem.

I have always known Jim Hall to be a complete gentleman, and now know much more about him and his early accomplishments. A fun and enthralling read.