Thursday, December 31, 2009

Why people believe in Global Warming

The Left's End Times, American Thinker

As the informed know, science isn't science unless theories -- if they are that -- are subject to rigorous examination and criticism. Theories stand or fall through a relentless process of challenge and elimination. Call the method scientific musical chairs. The last to have a seat wins...for a while, anyway.

The scientific priesthood that surrounds global warming theory seems far more determined to protect the theory from the rigors of scientific method than to open it up to challenge. This bespeaks a couple of important things: 1) that so jealously guarding global warming theory from scrutiny and challenge means that its advocates have little confidence in it; 2) that it reduces the theory to an article of faith, which anyone is entitled to hold, but not to impose on the rest of us.

It must strike those who are stridently secular as peculiar for anyone to suggest that global warming science is nothing more than a faith, and that their deep need for faith -- as there's a deep need for faith in all human beings -- is being satisfied and expressed through pseudo-science.

Global warming adherents are simply replacing God -- Christian or otherwise -- with constructs of their own. It's quite remarkable that socialism or Marxism -- which are generally hostile to religion or faith, which lay claims to objectivity and reality, and which most global warming adherents are in sympathy with -- should fall into the hands of those who, despite their protestations, are decidedly antagonistic to the openness and dissent that in large part makes science science.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Heckuva Job, Barry


If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

by Maureen Dowd in the NYT

Top Ten reasons it took Obama 3 days to respond to terror attempt


by William Tate on American Thinker

Barack Obama has received considerable criticism for waiting three days to address the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253. In the holiday spirit of giving, I would like to offer Obama ... the Top 10 excuses Obama can use for why it took him so long to speak up.

10. My teleprompter was on vacation last week.

9. Polishing a Nobel Prize takes longer than you think.

8. It was Bush's fault. (Hey, it worked last year.)

7. The waves here in Hawaii are bitchen, dude.

6. Janet Napolitano said the system worked great, even if I couldn't get email on my Blackberry for a while there.

5. This sort of thing just ain't supposed to happen on my watch.

4. It was Bush's fault.

3. Axelrod never told me I'd have to work holidays.

2. I was busy celebrating Festivus.

And the Number One excuse Obama can give for taking so long to respond to the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253:

I was busy looking for my birth certificate.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

What Recession? Michelle Obama Wears $635 Shoes on $4,000 Per Night Vacation



Barack Obama enjoys living like a king, so why shouldn't Michelle Obama live like a queen?

The First Lady was photographed last night in Hawaii wearing $635 per pair designer shoes by Maison Martin Margiela.

The shoe style is called "Leather open toe flat pumps." It features a "thin nude leather strap across the top of the toe."

A woman lucky enough to have a job in this economy and working for the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would have to work 88 hours (without taxes taken out) to make enough to pay for Michelle Obama's shoes. If she can get them on sale, they would only set her back $445 for 62 hours work.

The Obamas are staying at an $8.9 million estate for an estimated $4000 per night. To cover the Obama's ten night stay, the minimum wage worker would have to work two-and-a-half years (before taxes) to come up with the $40,000 Obama is reportedly laying out.

Obama has lectured Americans about how they can not expect to live their lives as indulgently as they have in the past. He has lectured businesses about their travel and pay. Yet Obama and his wife live like kings and queens.

The news media has yet to call him out on his extravagance when there is 10% unemployment with no sign of the employment picture improving this coming year.

H/T maggief

Unhealthy Arrogance


What does calling this medical care legislation "historic" mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.

In short, this is not about the public's health. It is about Obama's ego and his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy.

This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier, to pass the "stimulus" bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that the government doesn't have-- and that may well amount to more than a trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and the next generation to pay off.

Legislation is not the only sign of this administration's contempt for the intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.

The appointment of White House "czars" to make policy across a wide spectrum of issues-- unknown people who get around the Constitution's requirement of Senate confirmation for Cabinet members-- is yet another sign of the mindset that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.

That some of these "czars" have already revealed their own contempt for the values of American society in the things they have said and done only reinforces the point.

In a sense, this administration is only the end result of a long social process that includes raising successive generations with dumbed-down education in schools and colleges that have become indoctrination centers for the visions of the left. Our education system has turned out many people who have never heard any other vision and who can only learn what is wrong with the prevailing vision from bitter experience.

That bitter experience now awaits them, at home and abroad.

Read the entire article here

Healthcare explained..

We were told we had to do it because of the however many millions of uninsured, yet this bill will leave about 25 million Americans uninsured. On the other hand, millions of young, healthy Americans in their first jobs who take the entirely reasonable view that they do not require health insurance at this stage in their lives will be forced to pay for coverage they neither want nor need. On the other other hand, those Americans who have done the boring, responsible, grown-up thing and have health plans Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid determines to be excessively "generous" will be subject to punitive taxes up to 40 percent.

On the other other other hand, if you're the member of a union that enjoys privileged relations with commissar Reid, you'll be exempt from that 40 percent shakedown.

On the other other other other hand, if you're already enjoying government health care, well, you're 83 years old and, let's face it, it's hardly worth us giving you that surgery for the minimal contribution you make to society, so in the cause of extending government health care to millions of people who don't currently get it, we're going to ration it for those currently entitled to it.

Looking at the millions of Americans it leaves uninsured and the millions it leaves with worse treatment and reduced access and the millions it makes pay significantly more for their current health care, one can only marvel at Mr. Reid's genius: Government health care turns out to be all government and no health care. Adding up the zillions of new taxes and bureaucracies and regulations it imposes on the citizenry, one might almost think that was the only point of the exercise.

by Mark Steyn read it here.

The Big Lie


The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once defended the proposition that every statement suggests its opposite. Others have expressed a similar skepticism concerning the trustworthiness of words, especially when those words are not backed by action. From Shakespeare ("The lady doth protest too much, methinks") to Emily Dickinson ("A word is dead/When it is said"), our great writers have always been suspicious of flowery words.

Modern political history offers plenty of examples of words that suggest their opposite. For many who watched the speech, Richard Nixon's insistence that he was "not a crook" immediately heightened the suspicion that he was. Bill Clinton's finger-wagging denial of ever having had "sex with that woman" only whetted public curiosity to find out what he had been doing with that woman.

Taxing and spending may not be sexy, but in fact they are far more scandalous activities than those engaged in by Presidents Nixon and Clinton. They are scandalous because unlike the foibles of his predecessors, Obama's bad judgment will affect the life of every American, including those yet unborn. Unlike the failings of his predecessors, Obama's fiscal recklessness affects what we are and what we shall be for generations. Shall we be a rich and powerful nation with a strong and trusted currency and prosperous markets -- or an unproductive nation dependent on the fiscal dictates of others? Shall we be a nation of affluence and opportunity, or a nation of beggars housed in public shelter, fed with food stamps, heated and clothed with vouchers, educated in dysfunctional schools, and treated within an overcrowded, government-regulated medical system? The choice depends on whether government is able to restrain its spending.

Certainly, Obama wishes to appear to be a fiscally responsible president who will both lower the deficit and hold the line on taxes. He is loud and insistent, even to the point of browbeating opponents, about controlling spending and not raising taxes. But as Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Dickinson understood, "not one penny" is one of those phrases meant to disguise the speaker's intention. It is a classic example "the big lie," a falsehood so outrageous that it cannot easily be challenged. It is, in fact, a rhetorical trick to which Obama frequently resorts.

"Raising taxes next year," says the president, "would be the wrong thing to do." Why would it be the wrong thing to do next year if it is necessary in future years? Does it have anything to do with the November election? What about every year after 2010? The American people recognize lawyerly speech when they hear it. As the American people grow weary of Obama's deception, the moment of truth may finally catch up with him. That is the moment when bluster, deception, and denial no longer work.

With each week that passes, the president's assurances that "spending is saving" ring more hollow. At some future press conference, during some tense interview or angry speech, the moment will surely arrive when the president glowers angrily at the camera and insists that "I am not a wastrel." And at that point, everyone in America will know that he is.

From the American Thinker

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Have you heard Obama has solved the problem of homelessness in America?



He's going to mandate everyone buy a home!

Healthcare reform? In the not too distant future we are going to be paying 'filet' prices, and eating cat food.

Richard Foster, Chief Actuary for Medicare, issued a report on November 13 documenting the severe impact the bill would have on hospitals.

Americans today enjoy the best, most advanced health care in the world. That is why people come here from socialized medicine systems all over the world, when they are really sick and need the most advanced care. And that is why these other health care systems copy our health care innovations and breakthroughs. This is a key component of the high standard of living Americans have enjoyed.

But that will be gone under this Democrat socialized medicine bill. Instead you will suffer the equal sharing of misery that the Democrats mistake for social justice, as our current system is looted and sacked, with the resources redistributed to where the Democrats think they can buy more votes than by spending huge sums on seriously ill people that need truly advanced medical care to save their lives.

President Obama continues trying to sell his government takeover of health care with the counterintuitive claim that it will reduce health costs. "Anybody who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," he said last weekend, a shockingly ridiculous statement given how Congressional Democrats have been hiding the various versions of the bill until springing them just before a vote.

Many other studies now have accumulated to show the same thing. As indicated, younger workers will be hurt the most with their premiums, which they will be required by law to pay, increasing 2 to 3 times. That is because today their health insurance is relatively inexpensive due to their low health costs on average. But the bill would prohibit insurers from continuing to provide this benefit to younger workers, with the increased money from the young, already paying so much for Social Security and Medicare, redistributed elsewhere.

During last year's campaign, President Obama pledged a health reform plan that would reduce health insurance costs by $2,500 per year per family. If health insurance costs soar under his plan instead, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask him to resign for defrauding his way into office?

Notice also that you do not hear President Obama say anymore that if you like your health insurance plan you can keep it. That is because in the face of these soaring costs, employers will have powerful incentives to save substantial costs by dropping their coverage and paying the fines for doing so. The Chief Actuary of Medicare also estimates that 9-10 million seniors will lose their Medicare Advantage plans because of the steep cuts for those plans under the legislation. Would it not be reasonable for those who lose their health coverage under his health plan, contrary to his promises, to ask him to resign?

You can read the whole sad truth here.. most choose not to believe it though. When we all have miserable health care in the future, remember who got us there.

Dubai (an Arab Las-Vegas-without-the-fun)

This should make you think..

Monday, December 21, 2009

Obama’s ‘Cash for Cardigans’ to Cut Carbon Emissions

Posted By Scott Ott On December 15, 2009

(2009-12-15) — President Barack Obama has acknowledged that his new $23 billion weatherization subsidy program will merely slow the leakage of heat from homes.

So today the president introduced what the White House calls “phase II” of an overall program to completely eliminate carbon emissions from residential buildings.


The $37 billion “cash for cardigans” program will help homeowners to pay for sweaters, cardigans, housecoats, even Snuggies (the blanket with sleeves, As Seen on TV), so that they can dial back the thermostat to a setting that would require combustion of fossil fuels “only during the most frigid episodes of global cooling.”

According to experts at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, widespread “bundling up” in the U.S. and U.K. will “unquestionably save island nations from seawater inundation, African nations from utter dessication and polar bears from spontaneous combustion.”

“The data, which we recently misplaced, is irrefutable,” said CRU director Phil Jones, currently on involuntary sabbatical. “By combining carbon-credit trading with weather stripping, vegetarianism, cardigan-wearing, alternate-day respiration, and other simple lifestyle changes, we can stave off the destruction of billions of acres of wildlife habitat, and perhaps save humanity as well.”

Under the Obama “cash for cardigans” program, citizens would receive a one dollar credit toward woolen wear for each degree they reduce their thermostat. The White House said this means a senior citizen, living on a fixed income, could receive a $45 cardigan at no charge, simply by turning the thermostat back to 27 degrees Fahrenheit.

I laughed so hard when I saw this I thought I was having an appendicitis


Honest Leadership??.. Open Government?? oh puleeze.

I thought Obama was going to make the world love us again

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's foreign minister called President Barack Obama an "imperial and arrogant" liar Monday for his conduct at the U.N. climate conference, a reflection of the communist island's increasingly fiery verbal attacks on the U.S. government.

Bruno Rodriguez spent an hour and a half lambasting Obama's behavior in Copenhagen, telling a news conference, "at this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries."

He called the summit "a fallacy, a farce" and said Washington used back-room deals and strong-arm tactics to foist on the world a deal that he labeled "undemocratic" and "suicidal" because it urges - but does not require - major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts.

Read it here.

Obama agrees to 'cap' the global temperature rise

Anyone possessing a personality syndrome which renders capable a belief that world leaders have the power to “cap” the earth’s temperature should not be allowed to serve as president of anything. The U.S. Constitution should be amended to read: “Anyone who believes that he has the ability to cap the earth’s temperature in conjunction with global leaders shall not be eligible to serve as President of the United States. Instead, he shall be remanded immediately for mandatory psychiatric evaluation.”

Nice... read the entire article.

A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve.

60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.


Change Nobody Believes In from the WSJ.