"The People's.." Fill in the Blank

Anytime someone has a rally or function and calls it "the People's" this or that, bank on it being a socialist rally. 

Case in point, climate change marches happened this week around the world, one big one in New York.  A reporter writing for Grist took a train trip from California to the Big Apple with about 170 attendees of "the People's Climate March" (they called it the People's Train while riding there).  In talking to one of the on board organizers she got this quote:

Make sure you have a lot of grandmothers at your protest, says Marina Skinner, who worked as a deputy field organizer for President Obama’s first campaign. “When you see an 80-year-old person, that is your walking billboard.”

And don’t be afraid to censor the protests that you are in charge of. “You are giving birth to a new movement,” Skinner says, “and one of the things that you learn in birthing class is that you are in control of your own birth.

When Obama and Biden were campaigning, if someone was holding a sign that wasn’t their message, they just told them to take that sign down. It was as simple as that. The civil rights movement did it. You can do it too.”

In other words, do anything or say anything, because the goal is so important that lying, deception or obfuscation are OK. After all it's for the planet!  And the children!  And 80 year old grandmothers!

This ends justify means principle is used by both sides in politics, but generally speaking conservatives tend to feel guilty after doing it while liberals tend to embrace it wholeheartedly.  Case in point, the president's gumby-like handling of the truth leading up to the 2012 election...


It's one thing for this principle to be used with campaign promises. It's quite another for it to be used with factual issues, such as a health care plan or the state of the climate.  Yet there's Al Gore five years ago, giving us science lessons and bold predictions that turned out to be a pile of dog poop.  The pie he got in the face for those gaffes never approached a slow day of news about Sarah Palin.  Contrast it to how Jon Stewart just came down on a few GOP congressmen.   

This week the same president who, as Stephen Colbert might say, was 'truthy' about his own health care plan and threats from foreign terrorists in 2012 will be telling everyone on Earth about the need to 'sacrifice' to save the planet.  What sacrifice?  Well, that's where the People's Climate March comes in, part of which became "Flood Wall Street":  they point to the sacrifice being the end of western capitalism.

Steyer Contradicts Administration on Keystone

Tom Steyer, a Democratic version of the Koch Brothers, told Bill Maher the following on the Keystone pipeline after a question from Maher:

That's a good thing, right, postponing that indefinitely? Did you have something to do with that?

TOM STEYER: No. I think the president made a decision that he wanted to get all the information before he made a decision. There is no route right now through Nebraska because the way that they defined the route has been ruled by a judge to be illegal. So it's being appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court. And so realistically the president said, 'I can't approve a route that doesn't exist. I'm going to wait until it exists, when all of the information is in and then I'll make a considered opinion when the time comes.' I thought it was a very natural thing for the president to do.

The problem with that statement is that the White House denies they made any decision at all on Keystone; that it was John Kerry's State Department that delayed it:



Yet Carney is contradicting reports from February that said Obama himself would decide on Keystone in a few months. So when talking to governors back then it was Obama's call; when talking to the press after the decision has been made it was Kerry's call.  When explaining the delay now it's not about politics, when explaining the delay back in 2012 it was about politics.  Does anyone in the press believe this crap? 

Let the Gulf Drilling Bids Begin

One would think this news would be welcome in a bad economy.. 

The US government offered up new areas of the central Gulf of Mexico for drilling for the first time since the 2010 BP oil spill and received $1.7 billion in winning bids, officials said Wednesday.

One might also think such news would deflate the conservative view of Obama as a socialist/environmentalist focused more on promoting oil fields off Brazil than our own.  Yet for some reason there seems to be almost zero national coverage. Hmmm.

Earth Day Explained

Today is Earth Day.  To explain things a bit better ABC News has an interview with the associate communications director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, asking him 10 questions.  The interview was edited.

But not enough.

Below is another edit of the edited interview that will help to better explain what this thing is really all about..

ABC News: Lots of people say environmentalists are left wing. Do you consider yourself a liberal?

Deans: Absolutely not. I'm a classic independent. I was a newspaper reporter for nearly 30 years, most of that time with the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Like Bill O'Reilly!

ABC News: In your new book, "Reckless," you accuse Republicans of committing an "assault" on the environment. Is there not a single Republican you like?

Deans: Dave Reichert (Washington) pretty consistently votes for a healthy future. Roscoe Bartlett (Maryland) is pretty strong on energy issues. Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tennessee) has been pretty good on clean air. Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) has been good on efficiency.

So four.  Did they ask him which Democrats he didn't like?  If so it was edited out.

ABC News: Have environmental issues sunk into the background because of the bad economy?

Deans: We have 3.1 million Americans working in what they call the green jobs sector. That has been a bright light in a very dark economy.

He probably doesn't realize he just called Obama's economy 'very dark'.

ABC News: There are lots of people who doubt that global warming is caused by people. Do you think that the science behind it might not be perfect?

Deans:  When I go to see my doctor and he tells me I'm looking good, I'm not 100 percent sure he's right. But I will say this: There's no question that our climate is changing.

And in other news, the earth is rotating and revolving around the sun.

ABC News: Does President Obama have a rocky relationship with the environmental community? We've all heard about Solyndra, and the Keystone pipeline, and the forgotten solar panels on the roof of the White House. ...

Deans: I think President Obama has been extremely strong on environmental issues

As a classic independent, of course.

ABC News: Finally, tell us your favorite joke about environmentalists.

Deans:  They said, 'Oh, yeah, well, we had the bear here for you to shoot,' so Teddy Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear, of course.   I was down there right around the same time that Vice President Dick Cheney had gone shooting for birds down in Texas, so some of us couldn't help but think it was a good thing Dick Cheney didn't go down to the Mississippi Delta, because he would have shot the bear, and he would have shot the aide, too. That's not really very funny. I probably shouldn't have said it.

Oh those wild and crazy classic independents, always cracking GOP jokes.

Again, edited for clarity.  You're welcome.

Irene in the Rearview

The storm is moving away, fortunately leaving less carnage than predicted, so now it's time for the eggs to be thrown. The major media shied away from tying Irene to global warming but that didn't stop the Daily Beast from posting a piece by environmentalist Bill McKibben on Thursday night doing just that; some of his broadsides are worth discussing:

As she roars up the Eastern Seaboard, everyone is doing what they should—boarding windows, preparing rescue plans, stocking up on batteries. But a lot of people are also wondering: what’s a “tropical” storm doing heading for the snow belt?

Swing and a miss in the first paragraph. He clearly used 'snow belt' to paint a picture of how rare "tropical" storms should be in this part of the country even though it never snows in New York in August and tropical storms are actually quite frequent in the Atlantic waters offshore.

Category 3 Storms have rarely hit Long Island since the 1800s; one was the great unnamed storm of 1938, which sent 15-foot storm waters surging through what are now multimillion-dollar seaside homes. Normally, says Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, it’s “difficult for a major Category 3 or stronger hurricane crossing north of North Carolina to maintain that intensity, because wind shear rapidly increases and ocean temperatures plunge below the 26°C (79°F) level that can support a hurricane.” The high-altitude wind shear may help knock the storm down a little this year, but the ocean temperatures won’t. They’re bizarrely high—only last year did we ever record hotter water.

And wow, a Cat 3 didn't hit this time, either, despite the ominously warm surface water just offshore. In reality the storm was a category 1 when it reached North Carolina and a strong tropical storm when it made landfall in New York City. His piece was written as if a Cat 3 storm was a certainty, proving the world-changing strength of global warming. Strike two.

Remember—this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in U.S. history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas. Just about the only trauma we haven’t had are hurricanes plowing into the U.S., but that’s just luck—last year was a big storm year, but they all veered out to sea. This year we’re already on letter I—which in a normal year we don’t get to until well into October. Every kind of natural system is amped up, holding more power—about ¾ of a watt extra energy per square meter of the Earth’s surface, thanks to the carbon we’ve poured into the atmosphere. This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.

That's sort of a pop fly single to left. Nobody can deny there has been an almost Biblical level of tornadoes, drought, floods and snow-storms in since October of 2010 but the question is whether they are directly related to higher global temperatures as opposed to say prophesy from The Revelation or the end of the Mayan calendar.

Nobody of science should doubt that world temps are higher now than in the late 1800s, the question is whether this trend was created solely by mankind or if mankind only chipped in a bit on a natural upswing coming off the Little Ice Age. The guilt-ridden enviro-lefties always assume humans are completely to blame then proceed to attack that strawman by suggesting the only correction to the problem is an autocratic world government willing to force enviro-conservatism on the rubes who don't know better. Like Tea Partiers. After all, it's a crisis.

But their gloom and doom predictions on hurricane strength don't always compute. Both the Environmental Defense Fund and Al Gore's websites STILL contain an as-yet proven theory that hurricanes will be stronger on a warmer planet despite that science not yet being 'settled'. McGibben points to the massive amount of rainfall with Irene, which is true, but check out Tropical Storm Jose, currently making it's way harmlessly north past Bermuda as of this writing. On startup it had a neat little circulation but appeared skeleton-like with cloud bands and very little rainfall. Storms like Jose were hard to find in the old days before satellites but now they contribute to the annual storm count, which later translates into a proof of global warming because there are more storms.

McKibben's warming theory about Irene's rainfall can also be challenged by the curious little tropical storm named Don that hit the Texas coast near Brownsville in July then defied prediction by fizzling out within 6 hours of landfall. If higher temperatures allow storms to contain more rainfall (warm air can hold more moisture) then does it also cause them to fall apart quicker when their circulations get disrupted by land masses, the rain being absorbed back into the atmosphere through evaporation? It's far from settled, as yet just another example of how scientists don't completely understand the feedback mechanisms.

At any rate, McKibben eventually gets into the meat of his piece--politics. He tears into the Obama administration for not being liberal enough in citing their tepid environmental report on a pipeline project designed to tap tar sands in Alberta and transport oil south into the US, quoting climate doyen James Hansen:

Those tar sands are the second-biggest pool of carbon on the continent; if we tap into them in a big way, says the federal government’s premier climate scientist James Hansen, it’s “essentially game over for the climate.”

In other words, it's game over if we switch some of our sources of oil from Saudi Arabia to Alberta regardless of whether we use the same amount of energy or not. Rather illuminating because it shows what the enviros really want: world governments stepping in and crushing free-market capitalism due to the emergency. And here we were told that getting off Arabian oil would quell the war machine.

In the end Irene will be a bona fide disaster, already costing billions in lost revenue and likely costing billions to clean up. But it certainly wasn't the historic 100 year storm of our lifetimes as characterized by Obama, Christie and Bloomberg. In retrospect it will be an interesting study in human behavior as politicians felt compelled to run around like headless chickens to make sure they weren't "Katrina-ed" by the press if the worst occurred, while the media ran around like headless chicken-littles trying to create stormageddon to boost excitement and ratings (although not everybody obeyed).

And forecasters, wary of how the media would treat them should they not forecast a worse case and one occurred in a major population area, basically introduced a worse case while knowing (as McKibben pointed out) that climatology doesn't favor one. So everyone has now gone into explain, blame, slash or pretend mode until the next one comes. And it could really be bad!

A NEW MEME 8/29/11

Here's Norah O'Donnell reporting live on president Obama's good response to Irene, including something that's been showing up on several lefty message boards--the notion that Bush did not declare a federal disaster area for Louisiana or Mississippi BEFORE the storm hit as Obama did with the east coast. She made a point to note how Obama's early declaration stood in start contrast.

Just one problem. Bush issued a pre-Katrina state of emergency declaration on Saturday before the storm hit:

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in d in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

So no, Bush didn't declare a federal disaster area before Katrina but he did declare a state of emergency, which was also declared at state level a day prior. For some reason that distinction wasn't worth noting to CBS.

Might as Well Ban People

From the sensational Drudge headline about the European plan to ban cars in all cities by 2050, emphasis added:

Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport.

"That means no more conventionally fueled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."

Oh yes, action will most definitely follow if self-righteous morons like this guy keep pursuing their totalitarian environmentalism nonsense. Personal transportation and paper money are part of what make men free, and mankind will not give up this freedom without a fight. The question is, whatever happened to the can-do spirit of western civilization to solve problems like this and advance society?

President Kick-A......

Well, we finally got the other half of the "taking names" thing...



Guess he took Spike Lee seriously. But will anyone take his false bravado seriously? I mean, just the other day they were running around the White House lawn playing with super soakers.

Strange Things about the MMS Firing

A funny thing was inserted in the CNN article entitled "Charge to Obama: Go off!" (about Spike Lee telling Obama to get mean with the spill). About 2/3rds of the way through the article this paragraph appeared:

The president has been actively engaged in the crisis -- firing the head of the Minerals Management Service, extending the moratorium on further offshore drilling and increasing the federal presence in the region.

Interesting they say he fired Ms. Birnbaum. When asked at last week's presser he appeared to not know exactly how she came to be terminated. One might think if he actually 'fired' someone, he'd know. But now, according to the New York Times (who asked the question at the presser, btw), the MMS Director supposedly fired herself:

Minerals Management Service Director Liz Birnbaum might have kept her job a little longer if she'd stayed in her office and kept her phone on the hook yesterday...

...Someone from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's office called and said the secretary did not want her to attend the House hearing. Following a harsh New York Times profile that highlighted her low profile in the crisis, that might have seemed like a bad omen.

But Birnbaum, the former veteran congressional staffer, was worried more about stiffing a committee chairman than what this meant for her job. She called Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, where she was supposed to testify, to tell him she would not be appearing.

Moran called Salazar, who then walked out of his sixth-floor hallway with Deputy Secretary David Hayes. They went one floor down and four hallways over to Birnbaum's office in 5400 corridor of Main Interior and asked her to resign.

Hmm. So summarizing, "someone" from Salazar's office called and told Birnbaum not to testify; she, apparently being a conscientious type, called the Congressional chair to notify him of her no-show; he then called Salazar, who walked down the hall and fired her? Presumably for not testifying? Or was it in general? Bizarre.

Then, later that day at the presser Obama feigned dumbness about the whole thing while simultaneously declaring himself fully in charge from sunrise to sunset and in between. Odd. It would be interesting to know why CNN said Obama fired Birnbaum.

Just Bad Karma, Man

Hot Air points to this WaPo piece by Anne Kornblut about how important events keep getting in the way of Obama's vacation plans:

The long-awaited Chicago visit comes at the end of a week of "horrible karma," one adviser noted, with the oil spill, the collapsing European economy, an escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula and, on Wednesday, a stock market that closed below 10,000 for the first time in months. ("At least Elena Kagan is doing fine," joked the adviser, referring to the president's Supreme Court nominee.) Perhaps his Chicago friends are in on it: the last time Obama set out to spend vacation time with his inner hometown circle, over Christmas in Hawaii, a young Nigerian man tried to bring down an airplane with a bomb in his underwear.

Yeah, those darn terrorists, always messing up the tee times. Oh well, at least he only gets blamed for bad karma, with Bush it was shirking responsibility by clearing brush. But notice Kornblut didn't include Sestak in the bad karma hit parade.

And Joe will almost certainly come up in today's presser amidst all the talk about the apparently successful mud pie top plug thing capping the oil leak (and giving new meaning to "plug the damn hole"). We'll have to see if he lets this success reopen his opened eyes about offshore drilling in general or whether he sets sail for the Bush Islands by discussing his termination of the MMS Director in ways that bring back the good ole days of industry-friendly regulation.

As to Sestak, Obama can't very well take the position of "well, it happens all the time" after coming into office as a crusader for changing DC so it'll be interesting to watch the spin. Meanwhile Specter is dropping hints about flashing Obama the moon at the end of the gang plank re Kagen and other things. And he's just the bucko to do it. But why would he be mad when Obama was trying to clear the field for him? Could it be Specter thinks he was the victim of an inside job? Maybe some intrepid reporter can ask how Kane, the Philly reporter, got the scoop so he could get this ball rolling. That might be must-see TV.

Of course, all this talk of Sestak and vacations and such would disappear in a New York minute should any of an assorted number of real world events ever get in the way.

BAFFLEMANIA 5/27/10

Looking around there seems to be no big buzz on the mainstream media sites about Obama's first big press conference since he acted stupidly last year. As of this writing even the White House web site didn't have the video (at least front and center) so You Tube to the rescue, although after watching the first two clips it could well be the lost cure for insomnia.

As to the oil spill questions, his was an exercise in bafflegab--far too much information for the questions asked but not necessarily all BS. He's just not concise like Bush and previous presidents, which is helpful not only for Joe and Jane Sixpack but also the press--some in the audience had some pretty heavy eyelids at times. That's probably part strategy and the rest Obama, coming right out of the faculty lounge.

For the record, I think the Feds are doing about as well as can be expected; yes, Obama was slow to the draw and was preoccupied with scoring points about the lost miners on 'day one' but he's a politician, and does what a politician must do (channeling Rev Wright, sorry). These kinds of huge events (like Katrina) will always prove the infallibility of a super competent government the liberals love to believe in. Eventually the industry-government team will come through and plug the damn hole but politicians as learned as Obama simply cannot take the full blame without blaming someone else, even when taking full blame. Today the learned one blamed both Bush and BP.

The action moment, such that it was, came from the Times reporter trying to catch Obama for saying they knew about the abuses in the MMS from day one and Salazar was trying to 'clean house' yet they issued new oil certs and started a new program of drilling anyway. Obama just filibustered until everyone was glassy eyed.

The real interest came last--what did he know about Sestak and when did he know it. Fox News was left to ask he question, of course. He said a report will be coming out soon about what they know; vintage O--surprising he hasn't set up a commission. Sestak was asked about it and claimed he has not been consulted but they spoke to his lawyer brother about the release. Anyway, Memorial Day weekend is always a great time for a document dump or a late night firing.

KANE SPEAKS 5/27/10

We get this:

For months, Kane had been hearing from sources that the White House had been "dangling" a job in front of Congressman Joe Sestak, so long as he would abandon his bid to unseat Senator Specter.

Then after the interview, this:

As soon as the interview ended, he called the White House and played for a press office representative the tape of the interview. He was promised that someone would "get back to you as soon as we can, probably within a couple of hours."

"The phone did not ring from the White House until 6:45 am the following morning, which is about 15 hours later," Kane told me on Wednesday. In that call, a White House spokesperson flat out denied that Sestak had been offered a job. Later that day, according to Kane, the White House issued a second, stronger denial.

That would seem to suggest it wasn't the White House leaking to Kane if he called them afterward to inform and they strongly denied it. That would be the most bizarre inside job ever if they actually were leaking to Kane and didn't expect him to mention it, or did under the hopes it would torpedo Specter, whom Obama was backing. Surely the WH would have better control over a plan. So who else? Camp Billary? Would they dare knife Obama in the back like that? Then again, James Carville was pretty hostile the other day.

Whatever the case, the vice admiral was trailing by 15 points before he answered honestly then he won. Honesty is still the best policy! Specter had to sit on his tongue due to the insidious nature of the charge (collusion between him and Obama), proving that perceived crime that everybody does doesn't pay. But now what?

As the article points out, the White House has already strongly denied a deal so unless they want to claim incompetence themselves it would seem Sestak will have to go under the bus for misunderstanding them. Then again, maybe they shouldn't mess around the Joe.

Spilled Chocolate

Brietbart and Drudge are having fun with this clip of a Democratic congressman using 'spilled chocolate milk' to describe the oil slick. Not sure how that relates to earlier chocolate comparisons made about New Orleans by another Democrat, but overall it's pretty weak tea.

Clearly the congressman was trying to downplay a spill described as worse than the Exxon Valdez, not only for political reasons but most likely economic ones, but maybe he's correct. This CNN animation seems to show the slick shrinking today, and forecast to be even smaller tomorrow..



As the video shows, the slick started small and the Coast Guard was out there downplaying it early on. Obama was clearly being briefed, but sometimes things get out of control and information is wrong. When it grew they responded. There will always be second-guessing.

The criticism here should be more about perception and media coverage. On the former, Obama appeared aloof for a week, only sending subordinates while initially making a big issue out of the mining disaster in West Virgina. There was that big offshore drilling decision to worry about. On the latter, the media is indeed making it a big story but that story isn't so much about Obama or his politics, but about the slick. As it should be.

But we all know that if the oil men were still in the White House the story would be as much about their complicity/incompetence as the spill, with enviros and media hacks holding oil-coated birds while crying into the camera. We might even see someone like Spike Lee preparing a documentary about how a Cheney-led conspiracy including Halliburton probably blew the BOP in an effort to spike pump prices. Evidently the media has entered a world of balance where they no longer find it necessary to openly speculate or inflame such narratives.

Our Kangaroo Congress

Since the Dems took over Congress in 2007 there have been a series of show trials for public consumption. Who can forget the spectacle of Valerie Plame in front of Henry Waxman, or Congresswoman Waters threatening to go all socialist on the oil execs over rising pump prices? They told her that without drilling, prices would keep going up.

Recently Waxman called off a kneejerk hearing designed to berate CEOs of several companies who publicized accounting charges related to passage of the health care bill after it became clear they were actually following the law. That was replaced by a show trial of Goldman Sachs execs. Meanwhile, nary a whimper about government malfeasance on any issue.

Now we have a developing ecological disaster in the Gulf, and after a public letter sent over the horrors of drilling by Congressmen Menendez and Lautenberg, Senator Markey wants to haul in five major oil executives and grill them about the spill from the explosion off the Gulf Coast, as if they did it on purpose.

Meanwhile, we've not heard much from the drill, baby, drill folks, including the head honcho himself.

It's the Holiday Season!

Time for some Chairman Mao Christmas ornaments! And hey, what says Christmas more than transvestites on the tree? Surely there was one with Jesus on it, somewhere.

Boy, some folks really know how to screw up the season. We have Roland Burris making political mincemeat of Clement Moore's famous poem (or was it?); an animated indoctrination film designed to program and scare children into environmentalism--starring Santa Claus; and now this. A rather fitting cap to the year, it would seem.

How about some music? Here's one from way back..



Merry Christmas, comrade!

This Blog Now Part of the "Signature Litter"

It's bad enough that Ugo Chavez is trying to shut down golf courses in Venezuela for being a useless bourgeois endeavor, now 'researchers' and various other nuts in Europe have suddenly discovered the hidden evil of the golf ball itself:

The scale of the dilemma was underlined recently in Scotland, where scientists -- who scoured the watery depths in a submarine hoping to discover evidence of the prehistoric Loch Ness monster -- were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of golf balls lining the bed of the loch.

Hey, maybe the locals were just trying to kill the darn thing. By the way, wherever there is water there will soon be a golf ball. That's a corollary invented by the Scots during the dark ages, right after they invented the 'sport' itself. There are already penalties--and pretty stiff ones at that--for dunking your ball in a pond (Rules of Golf pg 894, sec 3, sub 1 part 5s update 2).

One UK lawmaker even quipped that golf balls are our planet's "signature litter". Well yes, but only for those who can't

"Keep your balls on the fairway or invest in a stock of biodegradable balls."

That vaguely reminds me of an old Johnny Carson joke. Never mind.

Of course this poses yet another problem for the first golfer, who must now bring along an EPA submersible crew to fish out any errant duck hooks or topped slices into the drink lest he be compared to a flat earth believer in a faked moon landing...


Or wait, maybe golf ball decontamination is already in the Stimulus.

Six Degrees of Apollo

Like the Van Jones story, the Apollo story has never been a front page topic in any of America's daily papers. It's easy to dismiss Glenn Beck as a nut, but if you haven't seen this video it's worth watching..



Far left progressives will try to counter this by saying that Apollo "didn't write the Stimulus Bill" as charged by crazies like Beck, but listening closely reveals that Beck didn't say they singularly wrote, just 'helped write it'. And they did.

Why is this significant? It's significant in understanding who is actually running the government and their goals for America. Does all of America know that a group called Apollo drafted a Stimulus package in 2008, before Obama's inauguration, that was very similar to the bill he and Pelosi would later rush through Congress without reading? Does everyone know that Obama's green jobs czar Van Jones was instrumental in setting up Apollo?

Could that be the reason why most mainstream media outlets failed to vet Jones when he entered the administration and why most of them later ignored his embarrassing revelations and apology, only reacting when forced to by the midnight holiday weekend resignation?

And does everyone realize that the leader of Apollo's New York affiliate is former domestic terrorist/Weather Underground founder Jeff Jones? Is he officially 'washed up' like Ayers? And why did the White House ask Fox News to stand down on the Ayers thing just recently? Does Brietbart's coming revelation 'out of left field' have something to do with all of this?

As Beck says in the video, Obama seems to take pains to distance himself from these affiliates as he did just today when asked about the ACORN scandal. For some reason his media tour did not include Fox News. Perhaps they knew what the questions would be.

Look, I'm a democracy guy. If America wants to go in the direction of Apollo, ACORN and the other far left organizations run by hippies and radicals from the 60s that's fine--as long as it occurs honestly and openly via the ballot box. That's certainly not what happened last year.

Farewell Comrade Jones

Ain't no sunshine during holiday weekends at midnight, apparently. The reactions are coming in to the Van Jones resignation. This quip from Ryan Grim at HuffPo seems to catch both the reality and fantasy of this whole thing:

Jones never denied his past affiliation with the radical left. In the '90s, he was involved with the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which sympathized with Maoist-inspired peasant movements throughout the world and was organized to protest police brutality.

Jones, however, left radical politics and made the decision to work within the system, rather than try to overthrow it. For Beck, however, Jones' past statements were evidence that Obama is secretly marshaling a cadre of lieutenants pushing an agenda that is "radical, revolutionary and in some cases Marxist." (Meanwhile, in reality, Obama is backing away from even including a public health insurance option as part of health care reform. How that squares with Obama's Marxist agenda Beck has yet to explain.)

What a splendid spin. Jones didn't leave radical politics--he joined the clandestinely radical Obama administration and only resigned when he was outed by an accused nut, Glenn Beck, whom the media has covered rather extensively. He's now free to carry on the radical politics he left just eight months ago under the cover of environmentalism.

This is more an indictment of the press than the administration. Obama told Joe the Plumber he wanted to 'spread the wealth around', which got poor Joe investigated and maligned in record time with help from the press. Both Jones and Obama have been involved in the 'social justice' movement their entire careers, which seems to be a euphemism for spreading the wealth around on a global scale. Hardly any shock or awe for those paying attention.

If we were still living in real America the mainstream media would henceforth move into full tilt attack mode against this administration for quietly pursuing rank duplicity and disingenuous behavior on the voting public. They won't. So let's rub it in--another maligned Fox News talking head has now been vindicated--Sean Hannity. Like him or not, his comment that "2009 was the year journalism in America died" has now been proven correct.

NEXT 9/6/09

The left will not take this takedown lying down. If Beck can bring down a high-level czar by just reporting facts the major media ignored he can do it again, and again. They have no alternative but to declare war. And the leading clown has already flashed his sword. Beck will undoubtedly have his hands full of defending some trutherish buddies in short order.

DEAN JONES 9/6/09

Sorry, couldn't resist. Here's Howard Dean on Van Jones:



Someone just shoved a petition and he signed it? Well OK, maybe. Radicals like radicals and such. But the choice part of the clip is Dean talking about trutherism. Here's the good Dr in 2003:

Dean: There is a report which the president is suppressing evidence for which is a thorough investigation of 9/11.

Diane Rehm, WAMU (public) radio: Why do you think he's suppressing that report?

Dean: I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can't—think it can't be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is that by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear, the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.

It's worth noting that Dean became the front-runner by engaging the far left anti-war crowd, using the Bush lied meme about Iraq, losing it only with the fabled scream. Kerry then took up that mantle and got nominated. So it's not all too surprising Jones was signing petitions in 2004.

Piracy Apologia

It was bound to happen eventually:

The Somali situation was further complicated by a series of economic and ecological problems that have struck the region in the past decade. In the wake of the government collapse, the Somali coast became a target of illegal commercial fishing. This is a problem across East and Southern Africa but rampant in Somalia. According to one report, some 700 vessels were illegally operating in the region and fishing the local stock to near depletion.

As recently as 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the U.N. that illegal fishing was driving them to the brink of economic collapse. To add to the burden, the coast also became a favorite locale for nuclear waste dumping.

In 2005, U.N. officials confirmed that barrels containing illegally dumped nuclear waste had cracked open during the tsunami that year and begun washing ashore. The situation was widely reported by international news outlets with virtually no consequences.

The above is the from an opinion piece by professor Jelani Cobb at Spelman College, who goes on to argue that we helped create the pirates due to neglect and therefore any outrage about such criminality is, to use one of the left's favorite tactics, 'selective'.

His arguments might have been stronger had he provided evidence on the fishing claim, because let's face it, such are the tools of the criminal. They say nobody in prison considers themselves guilty. Surely the Vikings and other pillagers throughout history have felt morally justified.

Dr. Cobb also didn't go into much detail about the nuclear waste claim other than making it, but here's a report that essentially blames a Somali named Mahdi Mohammed, a man who "worked closely with the UN" during the 90s relief efforts around the time some of the alleged dumping took place (and somewhere around the time our soldiers were being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu). According to the link most of the material consists of non-radioactive waste but the coup de grace was this--it was allegedly European in origin. That would be the very same Europeans Obama is now apologizing to. And whom the left is trying to model our society upon.

This history expert also didn't mention George W. Bush's massive AIDS aid to the continent or his partnership with Ethiopia to root out the precursors of the al-Shabab/AQ factions now running part of Somalia (some reported to have been involved with the East African Embassy attacks during that remarkable time of peace and prosperity called the 90s). Or the fact that Islam contains some convenient verses that justify such pillaging. Or stuff like this.

The curious can dig deeper and find more from Dr. Cobb, like a blog, where he goes a little deeper into the construct with a juicy blame-America-first reminder of America's previous pillaging in Africa (hint-slaves). So there you go.

On the surface it appears to be the same game Barack Obama has been playing on his world tour, reminding foreigners not of our leadership and wonderful accomplishments but that we've often been greedy, warmongering religious bigots (he heard at least one controversial sermon at Trinity United). Thing is, it's quite possible Obama is using such rhetoric as a clever ruse to turn the tables on our detractors by using a sort of reverse-psychology rubric. On the other hand Mr. Cobb, even in his nuanced way, sounds rather serious.

EPA Declares the Atmosphere a Pollutant

Heck, why not--the Supreme Court already ruled on it..

Six heat-trapping gases that contribute to air pollution pose potential health hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday in a landmark announcement that could lead to regulation of the gases...

If CO2 contribute to "air pollution" then God might be the greatest polluter of all time since he made it and placed into the atmosphere. Or if you don't believe in God, then substitute Gaia or that Lizard thing, or Klattu. Whatever the case, air pollution is normally produced by ash, soot, sulfates, black carbon or other smokestack particulates spewing from evil capitalist plants (that save or create jobs), which tends to fan out and hang in the low atmosphere during inversions to produce smog. Like we saw in Red China during the Olympics. CO2 disperses.

Matter of fact in an odd twist of fate the Clean Air Act is the genesis for the current CO2 ruling yet recent research suggests the Act itself might have contributed to global warming simply by clearing the air of pollutants. Imagine CNN's puzzlement. But here's the deal. Pollutants tend to COOL THE PLANET by scattering the sun's rays away from the ground. So in a weird way EPA is responsible for the melting ice caps. Using liberal logic.

Congress is ready to pop on this, of course. The AP has a somewhat misleading article about the pending legislation, tying it with previous bills on air and water pollution as if they're exactly the same. Not really. Back then we had direct evidence--Dennis Kucinich standing in front of a burning river for instance--but fast forward to today and the IPCC still can't tell us the exact percentage of anthropogenic warming versus natural warming.

Nevertheless Waxman's bill will direct a draconian 20 percent cut in CO2 output by 2020 that he says is non-negotiable. So, even though the technology is not here yet we must act. Similar to the closure of Gitmo they're betting on the come. But don't bet against them --as sure as the snow-laden Colorado sunrise we're going to see CO2 regulation.

The article is not without some irony in trying to explain why everybody (bitter clingers) won't be gung-ho to increase utility bills and the cost for everything else during what president Obama described as a worldwide economic crisis:

With climate, “you are asking people to worry about their grandchildren or their children,” he said. “That is why it will be so tough to get something like this through.”

Just ask the tea partiers worried about those trillion dollar deficits their grandkids will be paying back, thanks in part to CO2 regulation.

Anthony Watts has a link on his blog for public comment so feel free to partake--for what it's worth. He also has a quote from renowned scientist Thomas Huxley regards 'settled science':

The pretension to infallibility, by whomsoever made, has done endless mischief; with impartial malignity it has proved a curse, alike to those who have made and it those who have accepted it

Save the Whales?

That was the refrain years ago. It was common to see 'Save the Whales' bumper stickers, especially on VWs and AMCs. They were being saved from overharvesting and environmental pollution, something worthy in principle even if the proponents went just a tad overboard. But it's doubtful any were being threatened by rapidly growing polar ice:

"A couple of weeks ago, when the ice was still moving, there were quite a few narwhal seen out there in the open water," Jayko Allooloo, chairman of the Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organisation, told public broadcaster CBC. "About a week later, they're stuck."

Now that it's been decided by the local hunter/gatherer council that these trapped whales shall be 'culled', exceeding the yearly limit, will we see the enviro-nuts descending on Baffin Island in protest, railing against the policies of Bush for causing the rapidly growing ice or against the natives for trying to make a living in tough economic times?

And what about frightening stories of creeping ice from our media via James Hansen or NOAA or NCAR, or others? What suggestions do they have for stopping it's unchecked growth?

[note to reactionaries--this doesn't mean global warming has stopped. It simply means we don't understand the environment quite as well as we need to yet, certainly not well enough to justify immediate economic destruction under the guise of saving anything]