SUNDAY,  NOVEMBER 29,  2009 

CLIMATEGATE EXPANDS - AT 7:39 P.M. ET:  Our wonderful correspondent, Renee Nielsen, who did those poignant reports during the Mumbai terror attack, alerts us to the latest in what is being called "climategate," the falsification of data on climate change.  From The Times of London:

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 UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

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.

Why do I get the feeling that this is the tip of the iceberg?

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

COMMENT:  It is time for major investigations, not only involving East Anglia, but the entire field of climate change.  The nations of the world have been asked to alter their economies, spend trillions, and reshape lifestyles, based on calculations that are increasingly suspect.

The dissenters, often described by the global-warming guys as crackpots or even Holocaust deniers, look increasingly good.  Polls show that the American people, no dummies, are becoming suspicious.

Congress should act.  But look who controls Congress. 

November 29, 2009   Permalink 

IRAN DEFIANT - AT 7:13 P.M. ET:  Iran is escalating its conflict with the civilized world, as The New York Times reports:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran approved plans Sunday to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities, a dramatic expansion of the program in defiance of U.N. demands it halt enrichment and a move that is likely to significantly heighten tensions with the West.

The decision comes only days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency censured Iran over its program and demanded it halt the construction of a newly revealed enrichment facility. The West has signaled it is running out of patience with Iran's continuing enrichment and its balking at a U.N. deal aimed at ensuring Tehran cannot build a nuclear weapon in the near-term future. The U.S. and its allies have hinted at new U.N. sanctions if Iran does not respond.

The White House responded with its usual mush:

The White House said the move ''would be yet another serious violation of Iran's clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.''

COMMENT:  Negotiations with Iran have failed, utterly and completely.  The Iranians have dribbled the ball into Mr. Obama's court.  Iran and Afghanistan are coming due at the same time.  And the president's own party in Congress won't support anything but an appeasement policy.

Welcome to 2010.  We've all heard the old Chinese curse:  "May you live in interesting times."  The times are getting very interesting.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

FASCINATING - AT 11:29 A.M. ET:  The Politico has a fascinating take on the president's upcoming (Tuesday night) speech on Afghanistan.  Will there be a return to...to....Bushisms?

As President Barack Obama prepares to make the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan, some allies are urging him to return to a line of argument little heard since the Bush years: the United States has a moral obligation to protect the Afghan people, particularly women, from the Taliban.

Obama ran on a promise to restore cold-eyed calculations of national interest to American foreign policy, a reaction against President George W. Bush’s tendency to cast a confrontational foreign policy in terms of the freedoms it would achieve for nations that did not have them. And he has governed without the public appeals to human rights that marked American foreign policy ventures from Kosovo to Iraq.

But realism has proved, at times, a hard political sell. Bloodless talk about “engagement” has left the Obama administration without a compelling story to tell or argument to make. And its emphasis on process has only increased the pressure for more tangible results.

In Afghanistan, the White House was reluctant to play up the Taliban’s excesses and the plight of Afghan women while it considered withdrawing from an active role in the country’s governance. But as Obama moves toward sending additional troops – reportedly more than 30,000 more – to the country, supporters of the policy are urging him to stress human rights in an effort to revive support for an increasingly unpopular war.

COMMENT:  You mean, it's possible Bush was right?  Y'think?  Isn't it remarkable that the man sold to us as the most pure, the most idealistic, the most high-minded leader in the history of humankind has to be reminded of human rights? 

Will Obama move closer to...BUSH (!!)?  Look, he's accepted most of the Patriot Act.  Miracles happen.

But there's a problem.  Some of the people trying to sell Obama on the "human rights" approach say it would have appeal to the left wing of his party, which is resisting a buildup of American troops in Afghanistan.  That I doubt.  The left does human rights these days only when convenient.  I suggest that the human rights argument will have greater resonance on the right, where, in recent decades, there's been far more attention paid to idealism in foreign policy.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

     
QUOTE OF THE DAY - TEACHING VALUES TO IMMIGRANTS - AT 10:58 A.M. ET:  Directly related to the story below, Britain's great columnist, Janet Daley, remarks on the need to teach immigrants the values of the societies they're entering, something not always done.  From The Telegraph:

How do you create a home-grown terrorist? For a while, Britain seemed to hold the copyright on the formula for this. First, you import a huge number of people from places where there are unresolved historical conflicts, with no stipulation that they learn anything about their adopted homeland (not even its language). Then you make no attempt to integrate these groups – which are large enough to constitute self-sustaining communities – into the culture and political traditions of the country that is now their home, nor do you advise the schools to inculcate any sense of pride or pleasure in the new national identity to which they are entitled...

...So eager are you to show that you accept other cultures whose attitudes and assumptions (on, for example, the treatment of women) are opposed to the official values of your society, that you benevolently overlook what is being taught in their schools even when those schools are being supported by government funding.

Daley points out that this has been the British way.  She notes that America thought that "it can't happen here," until recently.

When the Muslim American Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, he did not just murder his military colleagues: he killed the American illusion that "it couldn't happen here."  And he unleashed an argument not just on practical topics such as racial profiling but on the much wider question of how much America's foreign policy decisions – how it should conduct itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example – should be influenced by the feelings of minority groups within the US itself.

The left, led by its journalistic shock troops, argued that Major Hasan was just a stressed-out shrink who snapped.  Nothing to do with militant Islam, nothing to do.  At the same time, the left argues that our "policies" inflame Muslims and lead to things like this.  Daley notes the left's problem:

The Left-liberal camp is now in the rather uncomfortable position of holding two contradictory interpretations of Major Hasan's actions. There is the one that Mr Krauthammer describes: this incident is a one-off act of lunacy, so the fact that Hasan was a Muslim is of no importance (even if he thinks it was – after all, he is insane).

But the other argument made by the Left puts Hasan's religion at the centre of his action: Muslims, even ones born and bred in the US, are being driven to violence by American foreign policy.

Daley concludes:

What a miasma of moral confusion we are succumbing to – all for the sake of avoiding a question that must be asked: how does a liberal society cope with a minority in whose name acts of violence are carried out in its midst? Surely the answer must involve a much more muscular liberalism: a robust belief in the values that permit people of different beliefs to live together peaceably and an unapologetic determination to enforce those values in every quarter of the country.

COMMENT:  That's what liberalism used to stand for, but no more.  Now it's a term that's often a euphemism for something much further left.  That is especially true in Britain and Europe.

Daley nails it:  How do we welcome people of "other cultures," while at the same time demanding that they adhere to American values?  Or British values?  Strange, but we did it so well at one point.  When I was growing up, and attending school in the once-great New York City school system, it was expected that we would pledge allegiance to the flag, sing patriotic songs, and learn, without apology, about the great ideas that are the foundation of this country. 

If you were an immigrant, you were expected to become an American.  Yes, the melting pot never fully melted.  People clung to old cultures, but, at the same time, they wanted their children to be fully American, while respecting the traditional ways. 

Today, we've become far too accepting of the notion that an immigrant group can stay foreign and not accept their new country.  There can be no America if that attitude persists, but "no America" would be just fine in some precincts of the left.  They relish the thought.

We don't want to go backward, but a return to a higher notion of immigration would not be a bad thing.  The motto of the United States - "Out of many, one" - should guide us.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

BACKLASH - AT 10:27 A.M. ET:  So much for European tolerance and liberalism, as AP reports:

GENEVA (AP) -- Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

And...

The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland.

Get your watches while you can.

There is indeed a backlash building in Europe.  While it is understandable, given the behavior of some Muslim groups, in the context of European history it could get very ugly.  Despite all the yapping of the chattering classes, Europe down deep is not very welcoming.  The Europeans may love to chide the Americans, but we do multiculturalism far better than they ever did. 

Now that Switzerland has voted, look for similar measures to be proposed in other countries.  With the possibility of a Europe/Muslim clash on the horizon, at least a clash between traditional Europeans and Muslim immigrants, a nuclear-armed Iran, with missiles capable of hitting Paris, takes on an entirely new and chilling meaning.

November 29, 2009   Permalink

TO OUR HEALTH - AT 10:09 A.M. ET:  Now that we've all added to the excess calorie problem in America, let us not forget that the Senate takes up the health "reform" bill tomorrow.  But it is not the season to be jolly among Democrats, for they've run into trouble, as Fox reports:

WASHINGTON - The 60 votes aren't there any more.

With the Senate set to begin debate Monday on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing.

Some Democratic senators say they'll jump ship without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage.

Others say they'll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

There's no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to President Barack Obama. You can't make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don't count on Republicans helping him.

COMMENT:  And in the midst of this, President Obama will announce his Afghan plan on Tuesday, which is almost certainly going to enrage more liberals, as the president is expected to send more troops to the war zone. 

The liberals may need the kind of calming drugs that only the Congressional health plan will cover.

November 29,  2009   Permalink

SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER 28,  2009

THE GLOBAL WARMING "FALSE DATA" SCANDAL SPREADS - AT 8:47 P.M. ET:  Reader Jeanette Kemper alerts us to still one more story about falsification among the clergy in the church of global warming.  This one is from New Zealand:

The New Zealand Government’s chief climate advisory unit NIWA is under fire for allegedly massaging raw climate data to show a global warming trend that wasn’t there.

The scandal breaks as fears grow worldwide that corruption of climate science is not confined to just Britain’s CRU climate research centre.

In New Zealand’s case, the figures published on NIWA’s [the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research] website suggest a strong warming trend in New Zealand over the past century:

But analysis of the raw climate data from the same temperature stations has just turned up a very different result.

Gone is the relentless rising temperature trend, and instead there appears to have been a much smaller growth in warming, consistent with the warming up of the planet after the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850.

The revelations are published today in a news alert from The Climate Science Coalition of NZ.

COMMENT:  There are now enough of these stories, from credible sources, to warrant major investigations.  There are also enough dissenters with excellent credentials to force us to question the whole "science" behind global warming.  Is it real science or political science? 

The Democrats won't do a thing.  They are tied to global warming the way ancients were tied to the concept of a flat Earth.  And with about as much logic.  But polls show that the American people are turning against the "consensus" on global warming.  The president would be wise to appoint a blue-ribbon commission, or even more than one, to conduct major investigations and get at the truth.

November 28, 2009   Permalink

IRAN BALKS, AGAIN - AT 8:15 P.M. ET:  From AP, via The Washington Post:

TEHRAN, Iran -- A conservative Iranian legislator warned Saturday that his country may pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty after a U.N. resolution censuring Tehran - a move that could seriously undermine world attempts to prevent Iran from developing atomic weapons.

Iran's official news agency quoted a hardline political analyst who made the same point, another indication the idea could be gaining steam.

If Iran withdraws from the treaty, its nuclear program would no longer be subject to oversight by the U.N. nuclear agency. That in turn would be a significant blow to efforts to ensure that no enriched uranium is diverted from use as fuel to warhead development.

COMMENT:  The report is significant because the legislator involved often reflects the government line. 

The story, though, is strange, and tilts leftward.  You'd think, based on what the reporter wrote, that UN efforts have been oh so successful in restraining Iran.  In fact, the success rate is zero.

Talks with Iran over its nuclear program have gone nowhere.  We are one month away from President Obama's publicly declared deadline for progress.  The UN nuclear agency's resolution censuring Iran is nice, but little more than that.  It has no teeth, no enforcing mechanism.

The president announces his Afghan policy on Tuesday, and it is likely to be opposed by the left wing of his party, which dominates the party in the House.  Then, in the fact of this same opposition, he will have to confront Iran, and that ultimately may involve military action.

The president is going to need Republican support, and that may be one of the most fascinating developments yet to come.

November 28, 2009   Permalink   

TERROR IN RUSSIA - AT 12:30 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

MOSCOW —The cause of the crash of one of Russia’s most illustrious trains was identified on Saturday as a homemade bomb that went off on the tracks between Moscow and St. Petersburg, killing more than 25 people, wounding scores of others and raising fears of a new era of terrorism here.

Officials called the explosion on Friday the worst terrorist attack in Russia in years, outside volatile Muslim parts of the North Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya. There were no immediate credible claims of responsibility.

COMMENT:  Once again we see the vulnerability of modern societies to terrorism.  And yet, we here in America are returning to a pre 9-11 mentality, under the tutelage of The One and his chief lawyer, Eric Holder.  It is only a matter of time before a price is paid.

November 28, 2009   Permalink

STUNNING PIECE ON SARAH - AT 12:11 P.M. ET:  Sam Indorante and other readers alert us to a piece from the great American Thinker website, on the "wilding" of Sarah Palin.  You don't have to consider Sarah to be presidential material to be affected by this essay, written by "Robin of Berkeley," a psychotherapist and former committed feminist. 

(CAUTION:  The full version of this piece, but not the segments quoted here, contains sexual language that some may find offensive.  The writer writes from the viewpoint of a trained therapist.)

Robin recalls her fears about the vulnerability of women, and what those fears led her to do:

The answer: seek safe harbor within the Democratic Party. I even became an activist for feminist causes, including violence against women. Liberalism would protect me from the big, bad conservatives who wished me harm.

Like for most feminists, it was a no-brainer for me to become a Democrat. Liberal men, not conservatives, were the ones devoted to women's issues. They marched at my side in support of abortion rights. They were enthusiastic about women succeeding in the workplace.

As time went on, I had many experiences that should have made me rethink my certainty. But I remained nestled in cognitive dissonance -- therapy jargon for not wanting to see what I didn't want to see.

There were hints: 

One clue: the miscreants who were brutalizing me didn't exactly look Reagan-esque. In middle and high schools, they were minority kids enraged about forced busing. On the streets of New York City and Berkeley, they were derelicts and hoodlums.

Another red flag: while liberal men did indeed hold up those picket signs, they didn't do anything else to protect me. In fact, their social programs enabled bad behavior and bred chaos in urban America. And when I was accosted by thugs, those leftist men were missing in action.

The moment:

What finally woke me up were the utterances of "bitch," "witch," and "monster" toward Hillary Clinton and her supporters early last year. I was shocked into reality: the trash-talk wasn't coming from conservatives, but from male and female liberals.

I finally beheld what my eyes had refused to see: that leftists are Mr. and Ms. Misogyny. Neither the males nor the females care a whit about women.

Women are continually sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. If under radical Islam women are enshrouded and stoned and beheaded, so be it.

And...

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous...

...They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House.

The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote Democrat.

And...

These "progressives" are so alienated from the sacred that they perceive nothing as sacred. And they will destroy anyone whose goodness shines a mirror on their pathology. The spiritually barren must annihilate the vital and the fertile.

It has been almost two years since I woke up and broke up with liberalism. During these many months, I've discovered that everything I believed was wrong.

But the biggest shock of all has been realizing that the Democratic Party is hardly an oasis for women. Now that it has been infiltrated by the hard Left, it's a dangerous place for women, children, and other living things.

In the wilding of Sarah Palin, the Left shows its true colors. Rather than sheild the vulnerable, leftists will mow down any man, woman, or child who gets in their way. Instead of a movement of hope and change, it is a cauldron of hate.

COMMENT:  I'm afraid this piece reveals some fundamental truths.  But elements of modern liberalism have become a religion, and the practitioners will never question it.

November 28, 2009   Permalink 

HERE IT COMES - AT 10:50 A.M. ET:  Three days before President Obama's speech at West Point, in which he will reveal his new, improved, 104-point quality-checked Afghanistan policy, we have this from The Washington Post:

KABUL -- Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.

The accounts could not be independently substantiated. But in successive, on-the-record interviews, the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait suggesting that the abusive treatment of suspected insurgents has in some cases continued under the Obama administration, despite steps that President Obama has said would put an end to the harsh interrogation practices authorized by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

COMMENT:  I don't know if this is true or not, but the timing of the report certainly raises legitimate suspicions.  You don't think it could have anything to do with trying to influence public opinion before the president's speech, do you? 

Nah.  Who would do that?

I still remember all the breathless stories during Vietnam on how corrupt the South Vietnamese government was.  Why, anyone who worked with us had to be corrupt.  All crooks.  All sinister.  As compared with the devoted, dedicated civil servants of North Vietnam, that workers' paradise.

But, at the end of the war, we invited thousands of those who worked with us to come to the United States.  They came, and formed an intelligent, enterprising and successful community, without a whiff of corruption.  I guess it was the ocean voyage.  We all know that the smell of salt water makes you honest.

Moral:  There are no doubt things we do that need to be corrected.  But don't believe every story, or think every story represents some wider truth.  There are agendas out there, and they pop up at the most interesting times.

November 28, 2009   Permalink

A WARNING FROM BRITAIN - AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  Reader Tom Wharton alerts us to a piece in London's Telegraph, warning of what Britain's National Health Service has become:

One of Labour's great triumphs with the National Health Service is that people now go into hospital to die rather than to be cured. It seems to render the whole debate about assisted suicide utterly pointless. Who needs a Dignitas clinic when you can check into a hospital in Basildon and be relatively certain to be taken out in a box?

And...

This exposes one of the great pretences of the NHS: that it is there first and foremost for the benefit of patients. It isn't. It exists these days mostly for the benefit of various trade unionists who are fully paid-up members of the Brown clientele, and who earn good money as petty bureaucrats trying to "manage" things that, if they need to be managed at all, could be far better done by fewer people in much more efficient systems.

COMMENT:  And yet, that is the system that the most vocal elements of the Democratic Party aim for, and they do so without apology.  They believe we can do what Britain has not been able to do, and what other nations do poorly - make a national health system work well for the critically ill.

Why do they dream the things they dream?  Because this is what they've been taught, by an increasingly ideological educational system, by a breathtakingly shallow knowledge of foreign countries, and by partisans in the press.

November 28,  2009   Permalink

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