Nightly Ramble Wednesday

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• POLS AS PROBLEM SOLVERS: You should read Thomas Sowell’s column today. A taste:
  

  No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems– of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

  Time was, when Republicans understood this relationship better.  They seem to be getting an education on the subject just now, however. With the exposure of the electorate to what the Democrats have done under the guise of “helping us”, the mood of the electorate is decidedly swinging toward the reduction of the role of government in each of our lives.  The Democrats, who despite the evidence in front of all of us still think government is the way to solve our problems, Wilmer understand that mode, nor react properly to it, and therefore will never be able to capitalize on it.  The Republicans, on the other hand, have a somewhat better chance than zero of being swept back into power on the wave that’s coming through here in 2010 and 2012 .  How well they do these two election cycles is, I suggest, precisely commensurate with how well they understand that government is not the friend of the individual, nor, in the end, of the collective.  Then, too, understanding it, and reacting appropriately, are two different things , also.

• INSANITY? So, I see Nidal Hassan will plead insanity , as regards the charges of murder at Fort Hood.  I suppose, that from our perspective, his actions could very easily be labeled as signs of insanity. To my mind, however, the question that needs to be asked revolves around an awful lot of Islamic terrorists, anymore.  I submit that Hassan is one of these, at least.  And I wonder how many other terrorists will use insanity as a legal defense, once they are brought to the shores to stand trial?
• IT’S BAAAAAACCCCKKKKK….. once Eliot Spitzer officially became “client number nine” the trooper gates Kendall was pretty much forgotten about.  However these days that scandal is still being investigated.  Now, though  Spitzer himself is busy giving lectures on ethics.  That seems to me rather like Don Imus giving lectures on sobriety.
• BUSTED AGAIN: The New York Times is known for it’s leftie staff… and Founding Bloggers has one on the hook apparently. I’ll toss the link, but since Founding Bloggers seems to be under attack, I’ll post the whole of the post, at least for now.
  

  A few minutes ago, we received the following comment attacking Glenn Reynolds for his observation that “every promise has an expiration date” (Emphasis added in red):

  “Regardless, Glenn Reynolds is correct when he says, “every promise has an expiration date.”

  Say what? Didn’t you mean to say, Glenn Reynolds is taking a false cheap shot at Obama, today like every day?

  What kind of idiot didn’t notice that Obama campaigned on escalating the war in Afghanistan?

  Did the same idiots not notice that Obama has already DOUBLED the number of troops in Afghanistan since taking office?

  If you don’t know what in blazes you are talking about, then by all means, STFU, Glenn Reynolds.

  Sometimes when we receive a comment or email that contains a personal attack, or unwarranted vulgarity, we run the IP address of the commenter to see where the comment might be coming from.

  Imagine our surprise when the IP address for the above comment (IP: 170.149.100.10) resolved to the New York Times!

  NetRange:   170.149.0.0 - 170.149.255.255
  CIDR:       170.149.0.0/16
  NetName:    NYTCO
  NetHandle:  NET-170-149-0-0-1
  Parent:     NET-170-0-0-0-0
  NetType:    Direct Assignment
  NameServer: NS1T.NYTIMES.COM
  NameServer: NYDNS1.ABOUT.COM
  NameServer: NYDNS2.ABOUT.COM
  Comment:
  RegDate:    1994-05-18
  Updated:    2008-06-03
  
  RTechHandle: ZT84-ARIN
  RTechName:   The New York Times
  RTechPhone:  +1-212-556-1234
  RTechEmail:  [email protected]

  OrgName:    The New York Times
  OrgID:      NYT-1
  Address:    229 West 43rd Street
  City:       New York
  StateProv:  NY
  PostalCode: 10036
  Country:    US

  Our question… is this an intern or a staff member who is trolling blogs, sticking up for Progressive ideologues and telling Glenn Reynolds to “STFU?”

  At a way to keep it real classy NYT!

  (Shrug) Yeah, well, given the site is nigh on inaccessible now I have to wonder if someone isn’t playing the protector of all things left.

• MORE ON SPARKMAN: What I didn’t mention about Sparkman yesterday I didn’t know myself… he rigged his death to look like a lynching. Insurance money, being the reason. So far no comment from the leftards… and certainly nothing resembling a retraction.

“More British soldiers were killed during the “Cyprus emergency” in the 1950s than have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. So why has it been forgotten and what hope is there of reuniting the island?  On Remembrance Sunday, about 500 relatives and veterans watched as a new memorial was unveiled in Kyrenia, in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, to recognise the 371 British servicemen who lost their lives on the island between 1956 and 1959.”  Read more at BBC News!

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• CLIMATEGATE? That’s what Iain Murray is callling it, and I suppose it fit was well as any moniker.
  

  This may seem obscure, but the science involved is being used to justify the diversion of literally trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon Papers.

  Exactly what I called it in Friday’s Ramble.
  Murray then goes on to explain in some detail why this revelation is of far greater import than the guys like George Monbiot make it. Oh, speaking of Murray, you may want to examine his recent NRO column as well.

  Oh… and Doctor Tim Ball adds his two cents here:

  
  One point that Doctor Ball makes clear in this interview is the idea that these people are all here reviewing each other’s work.  The idea of pure review was to make sure that honesty was prevailing.  In this case, it appears as we have long suspected that “peer review” means “giving support to the other writers lies” .

• OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN: Obama’s reportedly agreeing to 34,000 troops to Afghanistan… some 8000 less than his commanders… McChrystal, particularly, are asking for if I recall right. He waits for three months with his finger in the political winds and still comes up with this?   And of course he’s going to raise taxes over it, too.  When you’re a Democrat, I guess any excuse to raise taxes will do.All the while short-changing the troops trying to win the war he said all through the campaign, that we ‘must win’.  Ed Morrissey isn’t happy… and with some justification:
  

  

  Ed Morrissey

  The new plan contains the “off-ramps” Obama demanded from his national security team. Those begin to arrive as early as June, according to McClatchy, giving the US a few easy outs if Obama chooses to retreat. If the “political side” or the war itself doesn’t improve, Obama apparently wants to get out altogether. In other words, this looks like McChrystal’s last stand. Next week, McChrystal will return to DC in order to help Obama roll this out, where Obama will almost certainly get significant pushback from Democrats in Congress over the cost and the need to keep fighting.

  The increase in troops is a good decision, but the off-ramps almost completely undermine it. The point in extending our footprint is to win the trust of the local communities and prove our reliability in providing them security, which is the central thrust of McChrystal’s COIN strategy. By getting them to trust our commitment, we can get them to help fight the Taliban themselves, as we did with the Anbar Awakening in Iraq against al-Qaeda, and greatly improve the intel we get from the locals. If we send 34,000 more troops but give ourselves a six-month time frame for success or bug-out, the locals will very quickly come to the realization that allying with us will be suicide. The COIN strategy only worked in Iraq because George W. Bush was adamant that we would stay until we won.

  A Commander in Chief doesn’t need “off-ramps.” Any President can call an end to a deployment based on his own judgment. Putting these conditions into the American strategy signals weakness — a desire to pull out without getting blamed for the decision. Obama wants to be off the hook for an eventual withdrawal by claiming that he’s forced to do it because of these benchmark failures. And if Obama’s that keen to retreat, he should just do it now.

  Well, look… I tend to agree with Ed, here but let’s be honest about the reason for this ‘offramps’ nonsense.   They are the political cover Obama and his minions have spent three months worth of dead soldiers trying to find.  From Obama’s narrow visual, he’s protected politically, either way the war falls out so long as his stick to the policy… as if he’s actually answerable to the policy he himself sets. Andhe wonders, I suppose why his numbers are falling like (…fill in the blank…)

• THE REAL JOBLESS RATE:  According to CNBC, it’s up around 18%.  Among black males, the unemployment rate is in the 30’s.  (BBCT Lorie Byrd via Facebook)  Of course, I have a rather impertinent question to add to this; what would the unemployment rate be if we didn’t have a few million illegal aliens , I wonder?
• AS IF IT NEEDED THE HELP: Saint Andrew (The Incontinent) Sullivan’s credibility, that is. (Used the cahce in case Bedwetting Andy gets a case of the guilts. )  Yep… Turns out the death of Bill Sparkman down in Kentucky was in fact a suicide not a lynching and not the “Southern Populist Terrorism” he tried to say it was. Interestingly, Stacy McCain notes the same thing and ups the ante a bit with Rick Ungar who uttered those famous words “Send the body to Glenn Beck”. Stacy also adds the official report, along with much addtional commentary and roundup.

“Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: “I’m going to be stubborn on this.”  Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a “public option,” or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won’t vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.”  Read more at WSJ Politics!

George Monbiot, who is likely the biggest global warming propagandist in the press today, looks at the Global Warming emails that have been the topic of so much discussion lately and admits:

It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

The trouble is, he’s still playing the party line:

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally.

As I told you yesterday and Friday, as well, I suspect this was an inside job, and there is no credible evidence that suggests that the messages were illegally obtained.  Rather, they were distributed by someone who had legal access to them.  If you’re going to claim then that illegality was involved say they were illegally distributed rather than illegally obtained.  Unless, of course, that is , you’re trying to project yourself in the public eye as the victim.

The fact of the matter is that this is damaging to the global warming religion, because of the pattern which has already been laid down over a period of decades.  The misbehavior of the scientists being quoted in those emails, is quite consistent with what global warming skeptics have always charged, myself included.

Monbiot goes into “Damage Control Mode”:

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.

Now, recall, please, what I said in Friday afternoon’s Ramble:

In reality, the contents of these emails should put the stake through the heart of the global warming nonsense. Thing is, it won’t. The same leftists, remember, who are pushing the global warming mantra, are still convinced that Communism will work, if given a chance. Ignoring, of course, that it never has.

You go ahead.  I mean it; Tell me about how I didn’t call this one.

The bottom line is that the facts simply do not support the myth that Monbiot would have us all believe. There are no amount of facts, however derived, that will change the man’s mind into something less bizarre, and more obvious.  His efforts in the convoluted defense of the religion of AGW are certainly understandable.  He has an awful lot invested personally in terms of effort and credibility into the maintenance of that religion / myth.   It’s understandable.  The man will have no credibility whatsoever if he now accepts the fact that what he’s been feeding us for the last decade or so can be found on any stable floor in smaller amounts.  He would have us believe, in spite of all the evidence in front of us, that global warming is occurring in its all man’s fault.

The thing is, he would also have us believe that to be a hoax, there has to be an organized conspiracy.  Monbiot , I think, knows little of his history if he really considers that a damaging movement must be organized as such.  (Godwin be damned, I’m going to say this…)   Even a casual observation pre-world war two  Germany and its decline into Nazism shows us that all that’s really necessary to carry a myth into horrible reality, is momentum.  Certainly, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that there was some organization involved with the spread of the NAZI myths.  The we also see with that beneficial hindsight that all the myths who really needed to get going was governmental power.  And who can deny that the religion of global warming has obtained that, particularly these last few years?

The fact is that increasing numbers the peoples of the world understand that they have been had on the subject of global warming.  They have been lied to, manipulated, and endangered for the progress of a political goal masquerading as an environmental problem.

The backlash against the global warming preachers has begun.  Do not mistake me, here; I do not suggest that we have killed this beast.  I say again, there will always be the true believers, such as Monbiot. there will always be a minority, of whatever size, who like Chicken Little believe the sky is falling… And that there is some action that we can take to rectify that problem.  The trouble is, for them at least, the pattern has been identified by the vast majority of the world.  The solutions offered for the imagined problems always seem to end up being an abandonment of the western lifestyle. A loss of jobs, a crippling of economies, and so on.  Notice that the countries and philosophies involved in the spreading of the global warming myth, don’t stand a chance in a free market society.  The goals of those philosophies have always been to weaken the strong.  AGW Gives such countries, cultures, and philosophies the leverage to legislate their way to this goal.  all that has been identified as such, Monbiot’s protests not withstanding.

I suspect that the end effect  of this is going to be that in majority the global warming religion will be buried in somebody’s compost heap.  Except for some few “true believers” such as Monbiot.

George Monbiot, who is likely the biggest global warming propagandist in the press today, looks at the Global Warming emails that have been the topic of so much discussion lately and admits:

George Monbiot

It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

The trouble is, he’s still playing the party line:

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally.

As I told you yesterday and Friday, as well, I suspect this was an inside job, and there is no credible evidence that suggests that the messages were illegally obtained.  Rather, they were distributed by someone who had legal access to them.  If you’re going to claim then that illegality was involved say they were illegally distributed rather than illegally obtained.  Unless, of course, that is , you’re trying to project yourself in the public eye as the victim.

The fact of the matter is that this is damaging to the global warming religion, because of the pattern which has already been laid down over a period of decades.  The misbehavior of the scientists being quoted in those emails, is quite consistent with what global warming skeptics have always charged, myself included.

Monbiot goes into “Damage Control Mode”:

But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory? Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence. To bury man-made climate change, a far wider conspiracy would have to be revealed.

Now, recall, please, what I said in Friday afternoon’s Ramble:

In reality, the contents of these emails should put the stake through the heart of the global warming nonsense. Thing is, it won’t. The same leftists, remember, who are pushing the global warming mantra, are still convinced that Communism will work, if given a chance. Ignoring, of course, that it never has.

You go ahead.  I mean it; Tell me about how I didn’t call this one.

The bottom line is that the facts simply do not support the myth that Monbiot would have us all believe. There are no amount of facts, however derived, that will change the man’s mind into something less bizarre, and more obvious.  His efforts in the convoluted defense of the religion of AGW are certainly understandable.  He has an awful lot invested personally in terms of effort and credibility into the maintenance of that religion / myth.   It’s understandable.  The man will have no credibility whatsoever if he now accepts the fact that what he’s been feeding us for the last decade or so can be found on any stable floor in smaller amounts.  He would have us believe, in spite of all the evidence in front of us, that global warming is occurring in its all man’s fault.

The thing is, he would also have us believe that to be a hoax, there has to be an organized conspiracy.  Monbiot , I think, knows little of his history if he really considers that a damaging movement must be organized as such.  (Godwin be damned, I’m going to say this…)   Even a casual observation pre-world war two  Germany and its decline into Nazism shows us that all that’s really necessary to carry a myth into horrible reality, is momentum.  Certainly, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that there was some organization involved with the spread of the NAZI myths.  The we also see with that beneficial hindsight that all the myths who really needed to get going was governmental power.  And who can deny that the religion of global warming has obtained that, particularly these last few years?

The fact is that increasing numbers the peoples of the world understand that they have been had on the subject of global warming.  They have been lied to, manipulated, and endangered for the progress of a political goal masquerading as an environmental problem.

The backlash against the global warming preachers has begun.  Do not mistake me, here; I do not suggest that we have killed this beast.  I say again, there will always be the true believers, such as Monbiot. there will always be a minority, of whatever size, who like Chicken Little believe the sky is falling… And that there is some action that we can take to rectify that problem.  The trouble is, for them at least, the pattern has been identified by the vast majority of the world.  The solutions offered for the imagined problems always seem to end up being an abandonment of the western lifestyle. A loss of jobs, a crippling of economies, and so on.  Notice that the countries and philosophies involved in the spreading of the global warming myth, don’t stand a chance in a free market society.  The goals of those philosophies have always been to weaken the strong.  AGW Gives such countries, cultures, and philosophies the leverage to legislate their way to this goal.  all that has been identified as such, Monbiot’s protests not withstanding.

I suspect that the end effect  of this is going to be that in majority the global warming religion will be buried in somebody’s compost heap.  Except for some few “true believers” such as Monbiot.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere….The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• NOTE TO BILL LANNING: I have to say, Bill, I do like the idea of auditing the stimulus funds to see where that money is going, or has gone.  My suspicion is that it has gone to places that we the people would rather it not go.  That said, on what basis do we consider it possible, much less likely, that the auditing numbers are going to be any more accurate than the numbers that the White House has come up with so far as regards “jobs saved”, global warming, and health care?  You see, the real problem is not that we’re not being given numbers to justify the actions of the government, but that we don’t trust the numbers that we’re being given, because we don’t trust the government and those in it at the moment.
• MORE ON THE CRU HACK (Yes, “Global Warming”): Andrew Ian Dodge over at Belmont Club has additional commentary on the hack of the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, and the implications. As I told you the other day, I am firmly convinced that this should , but probably will not, label the global warming fraud as such.  Notably, Andrew quotes from a Telegraph article, saying:
  

  

  Andrew Ian Dodge

  James Delingpole at the Telegraph thinks it may be “the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming'” but adds “there are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.” While the leaked documents and emails strongly suggest that Global Warmists have been taking the public for a ride, the news is as likely to be welcomed as a belated discovery that Karl Marx was actually a stockbroker.

  Quite so. When there is religious fervor at work, and global warming is certainly that, facts really don’t mean much to the discussion.

• JONAH NAILS IT: Well, look, he usually does but this is outstanding:
  

  Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:

  “The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.”

  Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”

  But soon, the original contributor confessed: “I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It’s taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,’ written by Barack Obama.”

  The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.

  And that, dear reader, doesn’t include just the left, I’m afraid.

• MORE FALLOUT FROM THE GLOBAL WARMING MYTH: I do note a story floating around today about how Global Warming is supposedly responsible for pushing young women into prostitution. It only took a minute or so to come up with a reason why that’s so.  Can you imagine all the money to be made from prostitution in Copenhagen, as a result of all those people attending the global warming conference there?  No need to imagine it. It’s already on record.
• I DO HOPE I”M NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL SORRY FOR THIS GUY: Word from ABC News over the weekend, that utterly magnificent bastard, Major Nidal Hasan, is paralyzed from the chest down and is in serious pain, needing constant medical attention.  This news, incidental to an argument from his defense attorney that he is not a flight risk.  You’ll pardon me if I care little about whether not the guy will try to run away or has the physical ability.  You also pardon me, of course, if I consider his situation a small price to pay for what he has done.  I suspect, of course, that there is more to come.  So there should be.  There and, lies the largest part of the concerns of western society.  Pain or not, paralyzed or not, he is alive.  That he should live to see his punishment, should be the stated goal.  Keep in mind, that I am usually quite vocal about enforcing the death penalty.  In this case I am not.  In my view, he needs to live inside of a jail cell as long as possible.  This is one instance, I think, where the death penalty does not suit the crime.  The reason is, Hassan would be considered a martyr were he to be executed.
• ALL THAT’S WRONG WITH US IS WE”VE NOT SPENT ENOUGH YET: Rich Lowry says:
  

  

  Rich Lowry

  Dems have talked themselves into the ludicrously self-delusional notion that what ails them and the president is that they haven’t yet passed the hundreds of billions of dollars of tax hikes and Medicare cuts that finance (albeit incompletely) ObamaCare.

  And of course, they’re trying to deal with that lack just now. Says Lowry:

  They believe that Obama can’t afford failure, that’s it’s the defeat of ClintonCare that killed the Democrats in 1994

  Actually, it wasn’t the defeat of Clintoncare, but rather that it was on the Democrat agenda at all that gave Gingrich and company the edge they needed in 1994. Indications are that support for the Democrats is dropping not because of their not being able to get Obamacare into place but because they’re trying to.  The mid-terms this time are going to make ’94 seem a small thing by comparison.. assuming that the Republicans can cure the recto-cranial inversion they’re currently experiencing… and that to my mind remains an open question, frankly.

• WHEN YOU LOSE “TINGLES”…. it’s game over.
• CONGRATS, MEL:   Congrats to BitsBlogger Mel Douglass, who has a new grand niece. Mazel tov!
  

  Mel's new Grand Niece. Moments after the delivery and already adopting the correct attitude 🙂

• BITSBLOG BUMPERSTICKER OF THE DAY: This one come to us from internetbumperstickers.com

James Joyner says:

Ed Driscoll, Jonathan Adler and Glenn Reynolds take the New York Times and other mainstream outlets to task for their decision to not republish the stolen emails from climate scientists on the grounds that they were illegally obtained and written with the expectation of being kept private.  After all, these outlets famously publish illegally obtained classified national security information at the drop of a hat.

James Joyner

While that’s a pretty persuasive critique on its face, the comparison is ultimately false. In the case of the East Anglia listservs, the victims are private individuals.  By contrast, the Pentagon Papers and various intelligence leaks published during the Bush era were owned by the United States Government and arguably kept secret partly to shield elected leaders from political fallout.

I  tell him:

I dare to suggest to you that the real contrast here is who such documents would expose. In every case when the new York times has decided to run with supposedly stolen documents it has been at the expense of the right, and to defend the left and it’s mantra. As such, their cries of morality regards all of this lose all credibility at the off.

Says George Will –

For many years, most oil was used for lighting and lubrication, and the amounts extracted were modest. Then in 1901, a new well named for an East Texas hillock, Spindletop, began gushing more per day than all other U.S. wells combined.

George Will

Since then, America has exhausted its hydrocarbon supplies. Repeatedly.

In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said that U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said that the world had 13 years’ worth of petroleum reserves. Then a global war was fought, and the postwar boom was fueled. In 1951 Interior reported that the world had . . . 13 years of reserves. In 1970, the world’s proven oil reserves were an estimated 612 billion barrels. By 2006, more than 767 billion barrels had been pumped, and proven reserves were 1.2 trillion barrels. In 1977, scold in chief Jimmy Carter predicted that mankind “could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.” Since then the world has consumed three times more oil than was then in the world’s proven reserves.

It gets better:

Edward L. Morse, an energy official in Carter’s State Department, writes in Foreign Affairs that the world’s deep-water oil and gas reserves are significantly larger than was thought a decade ago, and high prices have spurred development of technologies — a drilling vessel can cost $1 billion — for extracting them. The costs of developing oil sands — Canada may contain more oil than Saudi Arabia — are declining, so projects that last year were not economic with the price of oil under $90 a barrel are now viable with oil at $79 a barrel.

Morse says new technologies are also speeding development of natural gas trapped in U.S. shale rock. The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia through Pennsylvania and into New York, “may contain as much natural gas as the North Field in Qatar, the largest field ever discovered.”

So, can someone please explain to me why we’re still listening to the Chicken Little crowd?

I mean, far be it from me the two take at face value anything that George Will comes up with any more.  But a careful examination of what he’s saying here, makes a great deal of sense, and the implications of that are far broader, I think, than he intends.

It seems to me that the entire basis of overt governmental control on energy usage rests on two prongs; the first being oil shortages.  The second being complaints about “pollution” , and “global warming”. Certainly, the global warming thing was dealt a fatal blow over the last weekend, being exposed a fraud.  But why would they be pushing such a fraud?

In answer, let me suggest that it doesn’t take a great genius to observe that these issues are key to the Democrat Party, and their agenda.  All of them have one thing in common; the demanded solution to each supposed crisis is more governmental power inside the beltway.

Their handling of those issues are of a piece with their handling on other issues which we are dealing with today.  The economy, health care, and so on.  Each is sold to the American public in “emergency mode” always by Democrats , and each invariably gathers more power within the DC Beltway.

When examined, though, in each case, the crisis never existed in the first place, and was simply being offered as a gambit for more power for Washington politicians…. mostly Democrats.

As I described to you yesterday, the American public is beginning to notice the pattern, and is responding to the pollsters accordingly.  The twelve months between now and midterm elections are going to be a very interesting time, me thinks.

From  the NewsReal Blog:

Toymaker Mattel Inc. has given its best-selling Barbie doll a makeover in honor of her 50^th anniversary.

Meet Burkha Barbie, garbed in traditional Islamic Dress. On sale now.

I have to say that it is amusing to listen to the gender feminists’ silence on this monstrosity.  Just a short while ago, they were complaining that are beat with her rather generous figure presented an unrealistic demand on girls and what they were supposed to physically look like when they became adults.  I wonder if they consider Burka Barbie to be less demeaning to women?

Byron York raises an interesting point:

The extraordinary thing about the dramatic events surrounding the health care bill in the Senate is that there was any drama at all. Lawmakers were simply voting to begin debate on the Democratic version of health care reform.  Just begin debate — not end it, and not move on to a final vote.

Byron York

If Democrats, with a 60-vote majority in the Senate, had not been able to begin debate on the top Democratic policy priority in a generation — well, that would have been a devastating turn of events, both for the party and for President Obama. And yet just starting debate proved difficult, and only on the last day did the 60th Democratic vote fall in place in favor of beginning the process.

I asked a high-ranking Republican Senate source whether it was really that hard to get the Democratic votes together. Could it have been a media-fed story, with reporters looking to inject some unwarranted drama into the proceedings? No, I was told. “It really was that hard for them to get to 60 just to proceed,” the source said. “Very telling.”

And judging by the statements of four moderate Democrats — Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Nelson — it will be far, far harder when the process comes to the really important vote, the one that would bring debate to a close and move on to an up-or-down vote on the Democrats’ health care plan. On Saturday, all four of those Democrats publicly threatened to side with Republicans and kill the bill before it can move to a final vote, unless their concerns are met

I suspect that at least some of this is media fed, anyway. The press will never pass up an opportunity in their efforts to make the left look good, after all… that’s a factor we’ve seen at work time and again.

That said, York has a point, and it bottom lines at a place I’ve been writing to for months, now;  They’re never going to get this monster through the Senate.  The reason is as I said yesterday… the voters are catching onto the fact that they’ve been had.

“The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope agreed to seek closer relations between Anglicans and Catholics at a meeting in Rome, the Vatican has said.  It follows tensions over the Vatican’s offer to welcome disenchanted Anglicans into the Catholic fold.  Pope Benedict’s proposal would allow Anglicans to convert while preserving many of their traditions and practices.”  Read more at: BBC News

The record of the Democrats since attaining office has not been good, at least from the perspective of the average American. Let’s look at their key agenda points:

• Global Warming, as such has long been seen as a lie. That lie was unarguably exposed as such the other day.
• We’re told that the bailout spending that the Democrats have done has helped the job situation, while jobless rates continue to mount to record levels. Oh, and of course, the ‘jobs created’ was exposed as a lie, as well.
• The American people are being told that rationing isn’t part of the healthcare ‘reform’ but already signs of lowering the quality of care by the government are showing up. For example,  Mammogram guidelines now being offered by the government will certainly save money, but clearly at the cost of women’s lives.  Similarly, guidelines about Pap smear tests are being offered which clearly will produce less healthcare and more needless death. In both cases, such ‘guidelines’ would have the force of federal law and thus once again the spin that better healthcare can be had if the government runs it, is exposed as just another Democrat Lie.

There is a pattern developing here that is both undeniable, and disturbing.  At every opportunity, and on every subject, America is going the wrong direction at the hands of the Democrats.  And increasingly the American people are starting to openly question why they’re being lied to by the Democrats. And so now, with the bailouts having failed and the Democrats exposed as liars in both that and ‘global warming’, we come to the Democrat Party lies surrounding Obamacare. David Broder commented on this point at The Washington Post in tomorrow’s column:

David Broder

The day after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave its qualified blessing to the version of health reform produced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Quinnipiac University poll of a national cross section of voters reported its latest results.

This poll may not be as famous as some others, but I know the care and professionalism of the people who run it, and one question was particularly interesting to me.

It read: “President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?”

The answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters — 19 percent of the sample — think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink. By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely.

Apparently, there’s a limit even among Democrats, of how many lies they can be told before they stand up on their hind legs, crying BULL$#!+!!!!

And yet, the Democrats in Congress, and in the White House as well, are still pushing this Obamacare as if they have some huge mandate on the matter that is not being reflected in the polls.

There’s a reason for that.  Put simply, this is not about bettering healthcare, this is about political power; about creating and enforcing a Democrat Party constituency by means of federal law. They know they can’t do that once the voters get ahold of the truth of the matter, and actually have a say in it.

Martin Luther King:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Jesse Jackson, via Project 21:

“You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.”

Deneen Borelli, idib:

“Ironically, Jackson is acting like a slaveowner trying to keep blacks on his ideological plantation, where they are required to support government programs that increase public dependency on a bureaucracy.”

Kevin L. Martin, idib.

“It’s no mystery why Jackson consistently failed to win broad appeal for his goals and must instead resort to ugly racial politics.”

If as Jackson argues, being black is not a matter of genetics, but rather only a mindset of adopting attitudes which meet with Jackson’s personal approval, the the black socioeconomic disparity is not a result of either nature, nurture, or white anti-black discrimination, but rather only a result of conforming to Jackson’s plantation mentality.

As Eric rambled:

AL GORE… RED COURTESY PHONE PLEASE… I’ve mentioned a couple of times over the years that if we ever managed to get into some of the internal documents, and the real behind the scenes discussions of the global warming crowd, that the whole thing would be clearly revealed as a fraud.  Turns out, I was right.  Watt’s Up With That broke this story open this morning and the Usual gloating and denials have both been coming down hot and heavy ever since.I guess that it should be a surprise to nobody, the timing of this thing.  We are what, a week or  two way from Copenhagen?

Just a few tidbitw from the ‘Spherel first  Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters:

For its part, NewsBusters has sent e-mail messages requesting comment from all of the scientists mentioned in this article. None have responded yet.

However, maybe more importantly, with cap and trade legislation currently before Congress, and an international climate meeting happening in Copenhagen next month, the question is what will America’s leading media outlets do with this news.

Should we expect investigative television programs like “60 Minutes” and “20/20” to be all over this story interrogating the scientists allegedly involved in these e-mail exchanges?

Has there ever been a more devastating series of no comments?

Next, the fact that the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fraud, is good news for human rights, from the Kansas City Star, via Thomas McClanahan,  Midwest Voices:

When Hillary Clinton made her first visit to Beijing as secretary of state, she remarked that human rights could not be permitted to “interfere” with larger concerns, such as global climate change and financial-market mayhem.

It was an unfortunate way for the new administration to begin its relationship with China. Sadly, this week President Obama only reinforced the message.

Now Mrs. Clinton and Obama adminstration do not have to sacrifice human rights to protect the polar bears.

Lastly, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry no longer have a need, or an excuse,  to destroy our economy with Cap and Tax.   The exposure of AGW as a fraud and massive scale represents, as Abraham Lincoln would say, a new birth of freedom.