Mr Peanut’s Imaginary Reality

Hume:

A longtime adviser to Jimmy Carter has resigned his position as a Carter Center fellow over the former president’s new book. Emory University professor Kenneth Stein wrote in a letter to Mr. Carter that the title of the book — “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” is “too inflammatory to even print.” Stein — who accompanied Mr. Carter to the Middle East three times — says of the book:

“It is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions and simply invented segments. Being president doesn’t give one the prerogative to bend the facts to reach a prescribed reality.”

And this is a fellow liberal writing.. how much more damning a review can you get? But you watch, now. This book of his will be proclaimed as a great work, and Carter himself as a visionary by the usual suspects.  This would seem in the same vein as the leftist defense of Frisch, as I mentioned earlier today. The same moral debasement, the same disconnction from facts, the same cloudy eyed indifference to the consequences of their position.

“The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed,” NCPA’s Deming Tells Senate Committee

12/6/2006 5:57:00 PM

——————————————————————————–

To: National Desk

Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or [email protected]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ — David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

“In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

“I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” “The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. … The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be “gotten rid of.”

“In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the “hockey stick,” because of the shape of the temperature graph. “Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

“There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed.”

—

The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

And this is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying all along. The problem is, you can’t change the mind of some people who should know better.

Michelle Malkin:

Deborah Frisch, the infamous left-wing blogger/stalker who threatened Protein Wisdom blogger Jeff Goldstein and his family, had an arrest warrant issued against her today. Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft attended the hearing and reports the details:

Many of you will remember the Deb Frisch – Protein Wisdom blog drama.
Dr. Frisch has removed her website, but many of her posts and comments can still be found on Technorati and Google.

After the Frisch-Goldstein drama, Frisch was charged in Oregon with stalking and telephone harassment in a matter unrelated to Goldstein.

Meanwhile, Goldstein obtained a restraining order against Frisch in Denver. Alleging she violated the order, he then obtained a contempt citation against her. When she didn’t appear last week to show cause why she shouldn’t be held in contempt of court, the matter was continued until today.

At the court hearing in Denver this morning, Frisch again didn’t show, although her lawyer did. Despite his efforts on her behalf, the Judge ordered the arrest warrant to be activated.

It’s interesting to note that one of the usual crowd at TalkLeft is DEFINDING this crackpot…. by way of a swipe at Michelle.
How alarmingly typical. Is there nothing… no crime… that the left will not try to defend their own from? I suppose after the Clinton years, nothing should shock me on that line, anymore.

As Michelle says, she must be held accountable for her actions.  And were the usual leftist crowd in posession of any intelectual honesty whatever, they’d be saying the same.

Edit: Link repaired.

Hamas is claiming to have meet with US democratic party delegation:

(IsraelNN.com) Unnamed sources in the Islamist Hamas terror organization, currently holding power in the Palestinian Authority, said today that a Hamas delegation met with senior members of the American Democratic party. According to the Hamas sources, the meeting took place in a third party country that is unwilling to be identified at this stage.

Hamas has by implication accused  democrat officials of violating the Logan Act:

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

One, I call for the Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill rule to be invoked.  That this allegation must be investigated not because of any evidence but soley due the nature of the charges. 

Two I call on democrat leaders like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton to speak directly to these charges, under oath if need be, and to set the record straight.  Hamas has accused the democrats of treason.   The charge must be addressed.
(H/T:  Pam M, Blogmeister )

(Quick, an extra fifty points; What song is the title referring to?  )

When I left the last minute, sitting and listening to the birds peeping away.  My wife, you’ll recall, just picked up a couple.  They’ve become adjusted to the new environment, more Allies, though they’ve been eying Ray the cat rather suspiciously.  Ray, for his part, has been returning the favor , though with some what more enthusiasm.  They are well out of reach, however, so I’m not too worried about it for the moment. 

Their cage resides next to my wife’s desk.  Normal routine around the house is that when my wife gets up she goes out to her desk, fires up her computer and checks for e-mail and her normal web pages to see what’s going on in the world.  So, this morning, my wife got out of bed without waking me up and manage to get out to the desk in started her routine, and as soon as she did that, the bird started peeping.  So, that noise is what will be up this morning. 

I laid there in bed for a good five minutes trying to figure out what in the world the noise was.  I guess that one will take awhile to get used to. 

-=-
I mentioned the cold last night as well, and boy, was it ever.  All three of the cats came back to spend the night on our bed. (A three cat night?) In one way, it’s nice, because you stay warm.  The trouble is, that you’re always worried about whether you’ll roll over on a cat. It’s a good thing and I heavy sleeper because their comings and goings would likely wake me up more often than they do. 

I am reminded, that when our oldest was born, the first week we had in home, we had an ice storm in the neighborhood.  That had power knocked out in our neighborhood for the better part of two weeks.  And what I say our neighborhood, I mean western New York.  Obviously, heat was in short supply.  We ended up sticking the baby in between us in the bed, joking that another man had come between us. I spent the night only half sleeping, worried that I’d roll over on the baby. This situation with the cats is much the same.

But we’re not without precedent, in terms of the cats waking us up.  When we first brought Sam, our oldest cat home, some years ago now, he had found a nice little nest to curl up in some place in the house, and we didn’t see much of him. At 7:00 the following morning, there was the feeling of heaviness on my chest .  As I woke up, Iraq began to realize that it was Sam.  Sam was standing all 4 feet, and 25lbs or so. on my chest.  His nose, was about halfway down my throat.  Apparently, he was trying to figure out where in the world all that noise was coming from.  I briefly considered creating the world’s first flying cat.  I then realized that it was probably not advantageous to a good working relationship with my wife.  So I stood him on top of HER, instead.  She woke up, got up, and fed him.

To this day, we’ve not needed an alarm clock;l he’s always trying to wake us at 6am. I swear he’s more accurate than the clocks, too. When Daylight savings shifted this last time, he was still on EDT, not EST, and tried waking us up at 5am, straight up.

For some reason, though, he’s never tried that standing on my chest thing, again.

-=-

The Christmas light wars, are in full roar, this week. There were at least five neighborhoods, where every house on the street is very highly decorated with lights.  You can probably see these neighborhoods from space.  I can’t imagine what it’s doing to the neighborhood power grid.  It is nice to look at though, and I’ll be taking some pictures for you later this week. 

-=-

I’m running into some problems with WordPress, and how it deals with inserted pictures.  I am not at all happy with how this works.  Anyone with some WordPress experience that knows how to get text to wrap around inline pictures, drop me a note.  What we’re getting right now, is a fairly small picture, inserted as a standalone line, not with text wrapped around it.  One of the minor problems we’ve had with this transition to WordPress.

One of the other problems that we’ve been having, is that the audience has not followed us, in large part.  It’s a cold fact that we were getting better than 50% of our page hits, off of Google searches.  Those Google Links, literally took us years to accumulate.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to transition all of the posts over to the new site.  That’s bad enough.  But we’re missing a large number of hits since the transition.

I do expect most of the spiders to have picked up on the new links by 1/1/07, though.

-=-

I was sorry to see James Kim had died. Nasty way to go.
But his family was found, as he wished, so it wasn’t a total loss.  The situation does however raise a serious point; if you’re stranded like that, and you don’t know where you are, keep your backside in the car. 

-=-

James Joyner, tonight, made note of Dale Franks who, after a bout with the flu road a first article in defense of Paul Krugman, of all people.  James, apparently, finds the connection amusing.  So too wide, but I wasn’t going to say anything.  Frankly, I thought I was the only one in noticed it.
he also issues a backhand to St Andrew, the Excitable, tonight. When James gets into a groove, he’s worth his weight in gold. 
-=-

Billy asks:

What on earth could be exactly as horrible as deliberately setting out to bear a deaf child?

I’d heard the story he relates, before asking this question some hours ago, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. But upon reading his post, and his question, I think I have the answer… and oddly enough, there’s an article about it today…

WASHINGTON -AP- The nation’s premier school for the deaf announced three finalists for the position of interim president Wednesday – a search that became necessary after Gallaudet University revoked its incoming president’s contract in response to student protests.

Now, why would the students have that much of a problem with the incoming president?  The article brushes up against that point:

The protesters said Fernandes was a divisive leader who would not be able to address the school’s lack of diversity, declining enrollment and low graduation rates. Fernandes had refused to resign and said some people didn’t consider her “deaf enough” because she didn’t learn American Sign Language until she was in her 20s and relied on lip-reading through much of her education.

Not deaf enough. Apparently she was guilty of the crime of trying her best to adapt to the world on it’s level. One supposes this would be the deaf he “went to being an “Uncle Tom” in the black world…. not black enough.

Ya know, LeShawn Barber is reporting that the USSC is hearing a case as regards race based schooling. In reading that case, it appears to me that could apply to other cases, too… such as the Galludet case, one presumes.

What I’m suggesting, here, is that the drives for both those situations are quite similar.  You’re right, Billy, it’s sick. But what it also is in the case of your story, is the “parent” not wanting to deal with a child that is substantially different than they, themselves are. 

There’s a word for that; it’s called bigotry. Some people just taken farther than others.  Some people include their own kids in it. 

The Associated Press had demonstrated a fundamental ignorance of biology:

WASHINGTON — Mary Cheney, the openly lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, is pregnant.

Mary Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, 45, are expecting a baby, said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president. The baby is due in late spring.

The AP does not identify the father. However I am quite sure that the baby’s father is not Heather Poe..   Shame on the AP for failing to understand it takes a mother and father to create a baby and shame on Mary Cheney for willfully bringing a babi into the world who will not know her father.

Stossel over at Townhall:

But the idea that liberals give more is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above-average percentage of their income, all but one (Maryland) were red — conservative — states in the last presidential election.

“When you look at the data,” says Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks, “it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more. And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money.”

Researching his book, “Who Really Cares” , Brooks found that the conservative/liberal difference goes beyond money:

“The people who give one thing tend to be the people who give everything in America. You find that people who believe it’s the government’s job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away.”

Conservatives are even 18 percent more likely to donate blood.

I am again reminded of a point I brought up over at Q&O a few days ago, in which I noted the increase in charity giving incidental to the Reagan Tax cuts.

But read that one line from Brooks again:

There’s a word for this… it’s something liberals often charge conservatives with…. it’s called ‘greed’. That puts the whole thing into a frame… and a rather uncomfortable one from the liberal’s perspective.  Such people have no understanding whatever of what constitues ‘charity’. So the next time you hear about how conservatives are ‘greedy’ because they don’t want to ‘invest’ in some government program or another…. show them this article of Stossel’s.

Hume last night:

West Virginia Democratic Congressman Alan Mollohan — who is currently under investigation by the FBI — is in line to take over the House panel that oversees the budget of the justice department — which includes the FBI. Bloomberg reports that Mollohan’s finances are being examined by the Bureau — after he reported an increase in net worth of as much as $25 million from 1999 to 2005.

Mollohan credits an inheritance and prudent real-estate investments. But the FBI has subpoenaed records from his real estate company and is looking into Mollohan’s nonprofit “Vandalia Heritage Foundation.”

The National Legal and Policy Center says Mollohan should be removed from the appropriations committee. The decision is up to Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and she’s not commenting.

Watch this one; it’ll quietly be buried before the end of the year.

NASHVILLE- AP An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a “body odor,” Lowrance said. She had an unspecified medical condition, authorities said.

“It’s humorous in a way but you feel sorry for the individual, as well,” she said. “It’s unusual that someone would go to those measures to cover it up.”

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

OK, two points: She will likely still need to travel, and will now do so by bus.
How’d you like to make a cross country trip on THAT bus?

Lesson learned: No visiting the enchilada house next to the Airport prior to a flight.

David D. Kirkpatrick offers an interesting roadmap for the next two years,  “Power in Congress brings blacks new pressures:”

Here are some raw numbers:

WASHINGTON: The impending Democratic takeover of Congress in early January will elevate more blacks to positions of power in the Capitol than ever: four major House committee chairmen, as many as 16 subcommittee chairmen, the third-ranking House Democratic leader and a senator considered a credible candidate for his party’s presidential nomination.

What must be remembered is that black congressmen come from majority black districts created by the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court.   These districts are not competitive and the consitutients are not moderate.  That is to say black congressional districts tend to be represented by moonbats, for moonbats.

While celebrating their rise to prominence, black lawmakers face conflicting pressures from their traditional supporters on one side and the Democratic leaders on the other. Many African-American lawmakers represent poor, predominantly black districts created to ensure black representation under voting rights laws. Their safely Democratic seats have helped them rise in seniority ahead of colleagues from more politically heterogeneous districts. Many lean well to the left of the Democratic caucus as a whole.

While a congressman is expected to represent the interests of his district, a committee, or subcommittee, chairman is obligated to represent the collective interests of his party.   Can far left wing black congressmen represent the democrats who gained power by running as moderates?  It will interesting to watch.

You’ll recall when I left the last evening my wife was still having problems with a loss of her mother’s canary. She had been saying for years that when those birds went she didn’t want any more.  But, LO and behold when I came home this evening, (and truth to tell, not unexpectedly) there was a brand new cage hanging and Harry’s spot, Along with two young society finches in it.  They’re certainly not singers, but they are cute, and I suppose that there are raucous will keep the love bird that we inherited from Mom happy or at least active. 

Peep, peep, peep. The birds sounds for all the world like my disc changer in the van.  Or, at least that’s the way it sounded the last time it got stuck. 

Actually, I had encouraged her to look into what a canary would cost.  She apparently did just that, and fell in love with the finches instead.  Just as well. 

-=-

We had another series of accidents on the freeway on the way home this evening.  Traffic on interstate 390, as usual, was backed up for several miles.  What I see the traffic backing up, I have a choice; I can dodge and go around and fight the traffic on the surface streets, similarly trying to avoid the traffic jam on the freeway, or I can just be angry, and stay where I am.  Either way I’m not going to get home anytime soon.  Remind me at some point to tell you about Rochester drivers in the first couple of weeks of winter weather, and the accident rate. 

-=-

I note with some amusement, this exchange at the Robert Gates hearing, today:

“Mr. Gates, do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?” Mr. Levin asked.

“No, sir,” Mr. Gates replied, going on to agree with the senator that a political settlement is needed to end the blood-letting, and that the United States needed to convey “a sense of urgency” to the Iraqis about reaching an accord.

Mr. Levin said Mr. Gates’s remarks amounted to a “necessary, refreshing breath of reality.”

Senator McCain pursued the point about victory being elusive. “We are not winning the war in Iraq, is that correct?” the senator asked.

“That is my view, yes, senator,” Mr. Gates replied.

“And therefore the status quo is not acceptable?” Mr. McCain pressed.

“That is correct, sir,” Mr. Gates said.

(BBCT: OTB)

But for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth there’s one thing that everybody seems to be forgetting.  Al-Qaida really doesn’t have to win a war.  And they have no chance of doing so, and never did.  They knew that going in. 

You see, a terror war, by definition, is a war of attrition.  If you’re fighting a terror war, all you have to do is keep up what you’re doing raising a little hell once in awhile killing a few of the enemy and not getting caught, and doing it long enough that the other side finally gets annoyed enough to pull up stakes and go home.  When that happens, the terrorists win.

So it is that our victory or defeat is decided by those who wish to do exactly that; pull up stakes and go home, and not by any actions of our enemy. 

And so also, is it that there are many who are reading far too much into the comments of Mr. Gates.  One also has to consider, along those same lines, the idea that when one is bucking for a promotion , regardless of what that promotion is, one generally tells the boss what they want to hear.  That’s a lesson that Bill Clinton learned rather well, for example. of course, in the case of Clinton, he changed his mind about the promises he made prior to the election before Monica’s knee pads were warm. 

-=-

And no, Billy, I have to disagree; Hanson is correct, in this:

History gives evidence of no civilization that survived long as purely secular and without a god, that put its trust in reason alone, and believed human nature was subject to radical improvement given enough capital and learning invested in the endeavor.

What Robert doesn’t understand is that there is a balance between the two extremes he describes, and that admitting the historical accuracy of what Hanson states in the above paragraph does not lead to a complete denial of reason, any more than my jumping on I-90 west will only take me to Seattle.  There are, after all, a number of points in between here and there. If that were true, if we were really that limited to an either/ or situation… if belief in God erased all reason, this nation’s founders would never have been able to come up with the ideas they did, much less the courage to pursue them to the point of creating a country around them.

-=-

Got the sink in, finally, though I think I want to run a couple lag bolts into the wall to hold it in place better than it is. Which, of course means I’ve gotta take the damn thing back out to sink the holes. But at least all the parts are in, and they fit and work OK.

Next: The Kitchen sink, or so I’m told.

-=-

Getting cold tonight, and colder tommrow night. Supposedly, into the teens.  I try to ignore it.
-=-

Interesting quote from Venlet….

Societies rise or fall depending on how civil its citizens are. The more they associate voluntarily, the safer and more prosperous they are.

The more they rely on force—legal or not—the more pliant they are in the hands of demagogues and tyrants. So resisting the statist impulse is no trivial issue. It is nothing less than the adult thing to do.

I’ll get into this in further detail perhaps this weekend.  But it strikes me that the writer has hit upon the truth I’ve written about previously.  When he speaks about volunteer associations was he talking about?  He’s talking about cultures.  Both in the large sense, and in the smaller sense (mini-culture, micro-culture, whatever you’re going to call it)

The civility of our citizenry in the early years of our country, is precisely why it prospered.  That the citizenry in the early years of our country shared a common culture is precisely why they were civil.

As I say, I’ll expand on this somewhat this weekend. There’s a number of implications here, and I’m too tired to explore them more fully just now.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News , is diving back into the Conservative Grapevine.  this time, he’s bringing it up as a group blog, and I’ve applied over there for author status, and John apparently has agreed. Not quite sure how this is going to work, but we’ll give it a try for a while.  John’s been very helpful to this site over the years, and I think it’s time I returned the favor.  I’ll post you on how this proceeds.  And, when. 

The Radio Equalizer, this morning, hosts a list of idiots who are still trying to prop up the monetary black hole that is known as “Air America”.  he seems to be amazed by the number of idiots that are willing to line up and drop the dime. 

But perhaps they’re not so crazy… Think now; With the Democrats in power in they are at least reasonably assured of getting a tax break (Read that ‘write off”) for their investment.  Thus, I suppose, will Air America become PBS-2.

The continued existence of Air America also presents an interesting challenge for the Democrats in the upcoming two years; We’ve already been hearing noises about how the “fairness doctrine” is going to be dragged out again.  But how to enforce the fairness doctrine, with Air America still drawing ragged breath?

McQ this morning makes a point that I’ve heard before and dismissed… and I’m about to dismiss it again. He makes his point by attempting to draw a parallel between the red scare of the nineteen fifties and what he suggests is the Muslim scare of today.

The conflation of the “Muslim world” with it’s extremists is dangerous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is it resembles the “Red Scare”. Another is it doesn’t make the important separation between those who do and those who don’t believe the extremist Islamist message. It assumes, while actually pretending to deny it, that all Muslims are the same.

…

Making the entire “Muslim world” our enemy is both a mistake and stupid. For one thing it makes enemies out of many who prefer to be our allies and want to assist us in stopping the spread of this malicious form of the religion. Secondly, it grossly oversimplifies a complex problem and because of that oversimplification, severely limits our options about how to honestly address this real problem.

Fine.

So, where are all the objections to this radicalized Islam from inside Islam itself? If we accept that what we’re seeing by the “scaremongers” isn’t the real picture, then we must assume that there is somebody within the world of Islam who objects. Assuming that such people exist, it would seem crucial to support them.

However, we cannot do that until such time as they reveal themselves to us. A quick look across the landscape reveals but a paltry few were willing to do so. Granted, that there could be two reasons for that; The first one is that those who do object to this radicalized Islam have a tendency to be eating their raisins with Allah a little sooner than they’d planned.

The second is somewhat more ominous; there are none to be had.

If the situation is more represented by the former possibility then we have some hard questions in front of us as to how to encourage such dissension, without getting such people killed as examples.

If as I think the situation is the latter ; then we have but one choice. And that is one that I don’t think the party currently in power has the stomach for.

Appendum: (DavidL)   It is interesting, and revealing the liberals would attempt make an analogy to the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism.   The problem was not that Joe McCarthy was chasing phantom Reds but rather that liberals like Harry Truman were ignoring real Reds.  The communist threat was real and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty of treason.   I am not conjecting.  The Soviet era Verona Intercepts prove Soviet inflitration was real and not imagined.

A difference between the communists and the Islamists, is tha latter made serious attempts to hide their intentions.  The Islamists make so such attempts.  The Soviets were content to inflitrate.  The Islamist expect to be welcomed through the front door.  

The Soviet Threat was real.  Denial did not defeat it.  Ronald Reagan did.  The Islamist threat is real.  Denial will not defeat it.