.
The following comes from The Los Angeles Times;
2009, February 18.
“Obama Orders More Troops To Afghanistan”
by Julian Barnes and Greg Miller:
Reporting from Washington -- President Obama ordered his first major deployment of U.S. combat troops Tuesday, authorizing 17,000 additional soldiers and Marines for Afghanistan in what he described as an urgent bid to stabilize a deteriorating and neglected country.
The deployment will double the number of American combat brigades in the nation at a time of tension with Afghanistan's weak government over civilian casualties of the campaign against the increasingly bold Taliban, and concern over neighboring Pakistan's ability to fight Islamic militants based there.
In a statement announcing the troop increase, Obama directed veiled criticism at the Bush administration, noting that a request from Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had been pending for months.
"This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires," Obama said.
. . .
In dispatching the troops for duty in Afghanistan, Obama also expressed concern about the threat from extremists elsewhere in the region, including in havens in Pakistan.
The following comes from Xtremely Un-P.C. And Unrepentant;
2008, August 14.
“It’s Six Of Obama, Half A Dozen Of McCain”
by Stephen T. McCarthy:
In the cover story “Apples To Oranges?” of the July 21st issue of The New American magazine, writer Charles Scaliger accurately says in comparing the proposed policies of Obama to McCain that the presidential contenders have “been winnowed down to two polished posers who offer the American public, yet again, not a choice but an echo.” And I’ll add that even a few of the seeming differences are just a matter of “telling the necessary lies” in order to appease the targeted constituency. For example, those folks who really believe that Obama will recall the troops from Iraq are setting themselves up for a major disappointment: if he ever truly does pull them out of Iraq it will only be to establish them somewhere else in the Middle East. Whether you elect Obama or McCain, the soldiers are not coming home anytime soon, so just get used to the idea!
MASTER OF CEREMONIES: “Holy cow! How ‘bout THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen? How does he do it? How does he do it? How does Stephen know the future? How can he accurately predict today what will happen in days to come? This boy is a wonder! A wonder, I tell you! And not only that, but it doesn’t take TWO people to write his Blog Bits, unlike the L.A. Times which apparently requires a team effort just to write a single news article. Put your hands together for The Uncanny Stephen! How ever does he do it?”
MANNY: “The gods have come down and visited the Earth! Stephen must be a god!”
MOE: “No, he’s psychic! A superpsychic!”
JACK: “He’s no psychic. He just got lucky, that’s all.”
MOE: “Nah. Stephen’s just a little smarter than the rest of you stooges.”
LARRY: “Maybe he’s just a very lucky, slightly smart, superpsychic god?”
CURLY: “A-Woo-Woo-Woo!”
MASTER OF CEREMONIES: “Well, folks, why don’t we simply ask him? Stephen! Tell us, how were you able to foretell the future 6 months in advance? How did you know that Barack Obama would continue to deploy American troops in the Middle East well before he was elected president? Back when he was still giving the American People the impression that he didn't approve of all this war business?”
STEPHEN T. McCARTHY: “No, people, you’ve got it all wrong! I’m NONE of those things you said I am. It’s very smple really; anyone can do it. All you gotta do is turn off the television set and back slowly away from it. Burn all your comic, romance, and murder mystery detective books. Then carefully and gently pull your head out of your... [Assuming you know where I was going with this, I’ll leave the rest of the sentence unwritten.] And now, start spending your valuable time reading REAL big boy and big girl books. You know (or maybe you don’t), informative nonfiction by serious researchers and scholarly writers.
“Anyone can generally know the future in advance; anyone can do it once they come to understand that both political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are just puppets of one, unelected, powerful body: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It’s easy to know where we’re headed because ALL roads lead to the single global government of ‘The New World Order’ being promoted by the CFR. And the Imperialistic American Agenda isn’t going to go away just because a Black Marxist has replaced a White Marxist in the White House. The Red, White and Bully isn’t about to release the stranglehold on Abu, Achmed, and the Mad Muhammad simply because they’re crying “Uncle (Sam).”
“Look, Dogg, if you want to snoop around and discover what’s planned for the immediate future, learn about the CFR’s ‘New World Order’ goals. And if you want to know what’s in the immediate future’s future, then read your Holy Bible – it’s all in there! God hasn’t left us in the dark. Or if you want a crash course on wha’ be hadnin’, then watch two programs: Aaron Russo’s ‘AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM’ and ‘WHEN GREED TURNS TO FEAR.’ The latter is a DVD available free of charge from I.C.A., and while it’s certainly not the most entertaining presentation in the world, it is loaded with important information you need to be aware of. Little or nothing in the future should take us by surprise.
“You don’t need to ‘Hope’ for ‘Change’ because change - REAL change - has been PROMISED… and promised by God, not by some very human god wannabe (who still refuses to show America his birth certificate thereby proving his Constitutional right to hold the highest office in the land). But that’s how I successfully predicted the future about our troops in the Middle East. I essentially killed my TV many years ago and turned my attention to Big Boy Books instead. That’s all there was to it: a lot of research and a little thought.”
JOSE JALAPENO [...on a stick]: “No bueno! Senor Stephen was mucho lucky, I theeeeenk.”
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
GLOBAL WARNING: GLOBAL WARMING AIN'T GLOBAL MOURNING
.
Every butthead who bought into the whole Global Warming scare ought to have their butt warmed by 40 stripes from Joseph Stalin’s coccyx attached to the end of a bear hide strap. Yeah, that means “most Americans” and “ALL Liberals” – yes, ye of the A.B.C. (Atrophied Brain Club).
Right-O, all ya Chicken Littles, the sky is indeed falling, but NOT in the form of Global Warming. Yes, our goose is cooked; yes, our bacon’s fryin’; yes our buns be gettin’ burned. But it’s no more than what we collectively deserve. We’ve earned our R.I.P. in the roaster because of our Godless national immorality and our stinkin’ state stupidity. But don’t be fooled any longer about Global Warming – that’s a sham and not a mechanism in our demise.
NEWS FLASH: Time magazine lied to you. The Democratic Chips And Dipsh#tism (The New York Times) lied to you. Your politicians (both Repugnantcans and Dumb-O-Crats) lied to you. Some so-called “scientists” lied to you. The Green Marxists lied to you. The United Nations lied to you. And that Nobel Peace Prize-winning nerd Al Gore* lied to you. And you believed ‘em all. If you had a brain you’d be brainwashed!
* When I was in school, I used to take the lunch money from twits like Albert Gore, AFTER the tough guys had taken my lunch money from me.
Back on April 10, 2007, I posted at Big Bitch dotcom the most antagonistic and in-yer-face thing I’d ever written. It was titled (link:) “STOP BEING A USEFUL IDIOT.” [I’ve got something in the works that will exceed even that in antagonism and in-yer-faceness, and which should p!ss off just about every last one of you. But that’s something for a future month.] In “STOP BEING A USEFUL IDIOT” I made the following statements:
It would be impossible to institute a global government as long as one nation remains too prosperous. (Why should a wealthy nation accept a new system with new laws, controls, and restrictions on its liberties?) For this reason, it is necessary for the Elite to wreck the American Constitutional system, so that in their desperate times, the American people will embrace whatever (Socialistic) solutions that the Elite offer as a means to salvation. The USA must be financially wrecked in order to establish a relatively equal (and desperate) global playing field. ...
It is no accident that our government enters into international trade agreements that ultimately send many of our best manufacturing jobs to the cheap (and sometimes slave) labor overseas and/or South-of-the-border. It is no act of stupidity when you hear of the military paying $500 for a single toilet seat. There is a damned good reason that so much effort is being made now to convince the people of the dangers of so-called “Global Warming.” The measures that will be installed to stem the imaginary disaster will curtail American manufacturing further and thus slow our economy, our ability to produce wealth. There is a method to the madness you see and read about daily. The Elite use myriad ploys to drain American wealth. There’s foreign aid (i.e., taxpayer money) given to nations - as often as not, America’s ideological enemies. There’s federally-funded grants to conduct useless studies to determine things like whether or not humming birds and honey bees seem to experience enhanced pleasure if Ravel’s “Bolero” or the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” are played while the birds and the bees are doing it. And then there’s the hidden tax of inflation that comes with un-Constitutional fiat money (i.e., Federal Reserve Notes), but I won’t even go there because it’s more complex than a storyline from THE SOPRANOS, so you probably wouldn’t be able to follow it anyway. But these are just a few ways that our Puppeteers siphon off the wealth of our nation and exploit our labor.
I was able to boldly proclaim these things, and denounce the idea of catastrophic Global Warming because I had already perused genuinely objective research on the so-called “Global Warming” issue, and I had been convinced that it was yet another fraud foisted upon the unsuspecting American nimrod by nefarious New World Order Dictator wannabes. (It’s amazing what you can learn if you turn off the TV and start reading big boys’ and girls’ books instead of that Stephen King Krap!) Give those Marxist Maroons an A for effort, as usual, but an F for smarts, as usual. Did these elite little b!tches really think they could forever bully and wooleye REAL scientists? Did they believe that men and women who adhere to the genuine scientific method would remain eternally silent? Not speak up and say, “What is this anthropogenic global warming bovine excrement you’re trying to shove down our throats? What sort of sick game are you international bankers, elite politicians, brainless bureaucrats, green liberal losers and pseudo-scientists trying to play here?” Did the Dick Dawkins-like dips think they could perpetually shout down the Isaac Newton-types?
Well, I’m posting below the most recent cover article from The New American magazine, written by Ed Hiserodt and titled “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?” This brief but to-the-point article puts a fair amount of the scam into a nutshell, so that even a few of you in the A.B.C. (Atrophied Brain Club) will begin to see the non-catastrophic light (i.e., you’ll begin warming to the truth).
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?
By Ed Hiserodt
Now that record-cold temperatures across the globe are making a mockery of human-caused global warming, we look to see if this is merely a "weather hiccup."
Judge: Counselor, do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence on the accused?
Attorney: Yes, your honor. Might I remind you that the victim my client was accused of murdering showed up earlier and is very much alive, sitting there in the front row?
Judge: Sir, this court does not deal in trivialities.
Attorney: But your honor, I'd respectfully suggest that since there is no victim, there has been no crime and my client is obviously innocent.
Judge: Counselor, you are very close to being in contempt of this court. I am the one who determines guilt or innocence here and your client is going to hang.
Attorney: But judge ...
In 1970, I recall New Orleans schoolchildren taking a 185-mile field trip to Jackson, Mississippi, so students might experience something they had never seen before: snow. This year they didn't have to bother, as Southern Louisiana was blanketed with four inches of the white stuff, the first major snow in 45 years, and only two inches shy of the all-time record of six inches set in 1895. It was also the earliest snow since record keeping began in 1850.
Not to be outdone, Las Vegas checked in with what local meteorologist Jerome Jacquest said was the most snow since 1979. With no snow removal or de-icing equipment, the airport was closed along with most roads. Gambling, however, was not affected.
Snow wasn't the only problem. Freezing temperatures in Denver set a new low of minus 18, eclipsing a record from 1901. White Sulfur Springs, Montana, reported 29 below, shredding the previous record mark of minus 17, set in 1922. For the week of December 15, 2008 alone, HAM Weather Service reports 1,537 record low temperatures in the United States and 1,110 record snowfalls — not exactly what one would expect while on the way to climate catastrophe owing to global warming.
Weather watchers know this isn't just an anomaly or freak occurrence. For the past 10 years, the summers have been cooler and the winters more severe. In Little Rock, for example, a chart in the newspaper shows there have been five consecutive months with average temperatures below normal. Since Little Rock is situated near the geographical center of the country, one would suspect that this is not an unusual condition, and indeed, such a suspicion is borne out by satellite measurements that cover the entire globe and are not subject to the "urban heat island" effect that has been shown to add as much as 10°F to recording stations in urban areas as compared to rural counterparts. An NBC crew sent out to show the Northwest Passage was ice free had their icebreaker stranded for three weeks because of thick ice.
With such obvious disputations of "global warming," one might also suspect that the convictions of some honest, objective members of the weather establishment would begin to waver — after seeing the victim alive and sitting in the courtroom.
Tip of the Iceberg
And in fact, it is apparent that more than just a few experts are wavering. When the news was reported of a British court announcing that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was unfit for school "because it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush," CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano — who was off-camera preparing to give the weather report — applauded and said, "Finally, finally!" He was particularly incensed that Gore blamed Hurricane Katrina on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). During the period of December marked by low temperatures, mentioned above, CNN severe-weather expert Chad Meyer commented during Lou Dobbs Tonight, "You know, to think we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant."
In a July 18, 2008 widely circulated article entitled "No Smoking Hot Spot," Australian Greenhouse Office scientist David Evans came out of the global-warming skeptics' closet. Although having written the carbon accounting model used to measure Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, Evans was wrestling with a problem: the greenhouse-gas signature is missing. If CO2 is the cause of global warming, then it must be absorbing solar energy and warming the air, which in turn warms the surface. Both alarmists and skeptics agree that all models predict a "hot spot" at 10 kilometers above the tropics. But there is no such hot spot. Quoting Evans:
We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes — weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever. If there is no hot spot, then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature, then I would be an alarmist again.
The Rest of the Iceberg
A U.S. Senate minority report entitled More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims, subtitled Scientists Continue to Debunk "Consensus" in 2008, was released on December 11, 2008. [The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has made available a downloadable PDF of the full report at their minority website http://epw.senate.gov/minority/. Click on "White Papers and Reports"; the PDF is listed as "Senate Minority Report 2."] These 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the 52 government-supported scientists who gave us the 2007 Summary for Policy Makers — the abbreviated version of the climate assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — to which the major media looks adoringly for news about global warming. (There were, however, diplomats from 115 countries aiding the IPCC, making sure the warnings produced the greatest gloom and fear.)
The Senate report includes names, biographies, academic institutional affiliations, and quotes from hundreds of international scientists who have publicly dissented against man-made climate fears. Here are a few condensed remarks typical of the group as a whole:
• "I am a skeptic.... Global warming has become a new religion." — Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
• "Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly.... As a scientist I remain skeptical.... The main basis of the claim that man's release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system." — Atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been named "among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years."
• Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in ... history.... When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." — UN IPCC Japanese scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D. environmental physical chemist.
• "The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn't listen to others. It doesn't have open minds.... I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists." — Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia of Punjab University, a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
• "So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming." — Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications, and former Greenpeace member.
• "Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time." — Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior adviser to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
• "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming." — U.S. Government atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" — Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130-plus peer-reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
• "The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities." — Award-winning NASA astronaut/geologist and moonwalker Jack Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission and is formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey.
International Panel on Climate Change
The IPCC, the entity that has generated the go-to documents that politicians and most media turn to for global-warming proclamations, doesn't have the credibility of the dissenters. The IPCC was formed in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization. It is a single-purpose, single-interest organization. The entire reason for the IPCC's being is to provide evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Had it not been for the IPCC's activities, it is unlikely you would have ever heard the terms "global warming" or "climate change."
The IPCC has issued four "assessments" about the likelihood of AGW — in 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2007 — and the likely effects around the world should catastrophic warming occur. These assessments are typically 800 pages or so in length and (except for the last one) without indices, making them virtually worthless for any but the most dedicated reader. But one might not bother reading them anyway, as the importance of the reports is completely eclipsed by the "Summary for Policy Makers" (SPM) — or as some would suggest, Summary by Policy Makers. This document is what is released to the media and, as we shall see, is often quite different from the report itself.
Let us look at how the IPCC "Summary for Policy Makers" handled the assessments written by committees of scientists. The following are statements from the original document of the second IPCC report (1996), which had been approved by the scientific writers' committees. The first statement says: "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."
That's pretty clear, so how about this one: "No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of climate change observed to date) to anthropogenic (manmade) causes."
There's not any waffling there, so let's look at one more: "Any claims of positive change of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total nature variability of the climate system are reduced."
As Al Gore would say, that is "UN-EE-QUIV-o-cal."
Yet the three statements above were removed by the political influences, and in their place was substituted: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."
The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, in a June 12, 1996 letter to the Wall Street Journal, accused the IPCC of censoring the scientific content of the assessment report to agree with a position favored by bureaucrats, governments, and NGOs. Said Seitz: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the re-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."
The bias of the IPCC was established by the lead editor of the first three IPCC reports, Sir John Houghton, who set the tone for the organization with the statement, "Unless we announce disaster, no one will listen." If you've been hired by the United Nations to provide evidence of global warming, you can't be pussyfooting around with statements that suggest it is not only unproven but well might not be happening at all. One is certainly comforted by such objectivity.
The IPCC and the Temperature Record
There is general agreement that the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. With the temperature some 20°F below today's norms and continuing that way for about 100,000 years, some 400 feet of the oceans' depth evaporated, fell as snow, was compressed into ice and covered the Northern United States to an estimated depth of one mile. With intermittent backslides and pauses, the Earth has generally been warming since that time. Yet the warming alarmists would have us believe that the warming that we have experienced recently is unprecedented, human-caused, and likely catastrophic. Oh really?
About 7,000 years ago, a warm period known as the Holocene Optimum coincided with the time that agriculture arose worldwide that, in turn, ushered in the Bronze Age. It is a period the IPCC simply ignores, as temperatures then were much warmer than their worst predictions under CO2-generated warming, yet catastrophe did not ensue. Polar bears had been around for the previous 190,000 years and survived the Holocene Optimum quite nicely, thank you very much.
After a few ups and downs, another warm period called the Roman Optimum is considered by historians to be a large factor in the rise of the Roman civilization, as society had the ability to produce more food than required to sustain the farmers, thus allowing others to construct the infrastructure of roads, buildings, and aqueducts upon which the empire was built. The Dark Ages, on the other hand, may not have been dark, but they were cold.
Then warmth came back in the form of what we call the Medieval Warm Period in about 950 A.D., known by historians as the Age of the Cathedrals. The Medieval Warm Period presents problems for alarmists because it can't be simply ignored. It is easy to prove that it was warmer than today. Not only do temperature proxies such as ice cores show it, but the flourishing Viking civilization on Greenland confirms it. Land that today is frozen solid then supported cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats for the "settlers."
Existence of the Greenland civilization is a source of embarrassment to the global warmers as it leads to a logical inconsistency:
Q. Was Greenland warmer during the period 950 A.D. to 1450 A.D. than it is today?
A. Without question. Crops and pastures were grown where today is permanently frozen ground.
Q. Could this be a localized temperature anomaly?
A. Only if such an anomaly can stay around for approximately 500 years.
Q. Were port cities such as London and Venice flooded by high sea levels during this period of high temperatures — temperatures several degrees higher than today?
A. No. [The Tower of London was built in 1078 A.D. on the north bank of the River Thames, a few feet above the high tide mark. Today it remains a few feet above the high tide mark.]
Q. So why would one expect them to be flooded today if temperatures rose considerably, to the level that would allow agriculture again in Greenland?
A. Duh. Because Al Gore said so?
Sadly for our ancestors, the warm climate didn't last. Europe experienced a prolonged cold, wet spell, causing crop failures and famine. Always being on the verge of starvation resulted in a general weakness that is thought to have prolonged and exacerbated the "black death," which killed approximately half of Europe's population. This cool period — from which many climatologists consider the Earth to be still emerging — is known as the Little Ice Age. It too is a difficult period to explain away, as there are records of "frost fairs" on the Thames in London from the early 1600s to 1814, with ice on the order of 11 inches thick supporting tents, wagons, and even a visiting elephant. Since temperatures obviously have been increasing for several hundred years, is it so unusual for them to still be increasing? (Except that they're not.)
In North America the weather was cold enough for New York harbor to freeze so that one could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. During the Civil War, army reports indicated that in Little Rock, for several weeks each year, wagon teams could cross the iced-over Arkansas River, something no one alive today has ever seen.
The period between about 1645 and 1715 was particularly cold and coincides with the Maunder Minimum, where only about 50 sunspots appeared, compared to an expectation of from 40,000 to 50,000. (More sunspots mean greater solar activity. See sidebar on page 16.)
Summing up, the Medieval Warm Period was far warmer than the temperatures global-warming alarmists expect us to reach, without any of the catastrophes predicted by alarmists, and the Little Ice Age clearly shows that Earth had a cold spell from which it has been warming for some 200 years, benefiting plant, animal, and human existence on Earth. Enter the "hockey stick."
The Hockey Stick
The term "hockey stick" refers to the shape of a 1998 graph of temperature versus time as displayed by global warmers Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcom Hughes. It performs several amazing functions for the alarmists, namely:
• Eliminates the Medieval Warm Period;
• Eliminates the Little Ice Age; and
• Shows recent temperatures to be rising catastrophically.
It was a blessing for the IPCC and, according to Christopher Monckton — writer and producer of the informative and entertaining video Apocalypse? NO! [Apocalypse? NO! is available from the Science & Public Policy Institute, http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/.] — the hockey stick was used in full color no fewer than six times in the 2001 IPCC assessment report.
Unfortunately for Mann et al., two Canadians were suspicious of their results and finally were able to obtain sufficient information to challenge the methodology that produced the "convenient" graph. Businessman Steven McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick examined the construction and use of the data set of proxies for past climate that Mann had used to estimate the temperature from 1400 to 1980 and found collation errors, unjustified truncation and extrapolation, use of obsolete data, and calculation mistakes.
Global alarmists challenged the challengers, and the matter was taken to the Academy of Sciences and to a panel headed by Edward Wegman of George Mason University, commissioned by the U.S. Congress. Both referees found in favor of McIntyre over Mann. The Wegman panel fully endorsed the findings of McIntyre and McKitrick. "The NAS panel," as Christopher Horner puts it in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, "specifically repudiated three-fourths of Mann's record, specifically accused the IPCC of misrepresentation, and specifically accused the Mann team of down-playing historical uncertainties." Nonetheless, the once-proud and respected Nature magazine brazenly opined, "Academy affirms hockey-stick graph."
All of these investigations had been completed and were well known by early summer of 2006. Nonetheless, Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, not released until late November 2006, used the hockey stick as the centerpiece of his argument.
Goodbye Free-market Capitalism
If the IPCC and internationalists everywhere were content to let global warming remain an object of discussion and monitoring, its pronouncements would likely inspire the same type of humor as that elicited by an eccentric old uncle who tells about inventing the light bulb and sailing on the Titanic, but such is not the case. They want (demand) worldwide changes - decreasing levels of CO2 emissions through a worldwide cap-and-trade system for CO2. It is difficult to imagine any policy more destructive to our economy than "cap and trade." Today's bailouts are horrid and give government an equity stake in businesses — about as socialist as you can get. But "cap and trade" would gut the very system that has made the United States the wealthiest country in the world.
While there are a number of plans under discussion, most have the same basic elements:
• The government, or governments, would issue "carbon certificates" allowing a commercial or industrial user to consume a specified amount of carbon-based fuel. [Programs to extend this to individuals are already well underway in EU countries.] The total amount would be less than the currently used amount, making these instruments instantly valuable. If, for example, a manufacturer desired to expand or continue production (since the number of existing credits would be continually reduced to meet some Kyoto-type protocol), he would be required to purchase them from another manufacturer or on "the open market."
• The "open market" — the reason Ken Lay and Enron were such fans of global-warming alarmism — could be anywhere in the world. A self-coronated potentate from Cowabunga, Africa, might sell the credits he is given by an international body for not destroying a rain forest (formerly known as a jungle) to an American entrepreneur who wanted to open a shoestring repair business. Or an up-and-coming corporate executive might see a huge profit from moving his manufacturing plant to a Third World country (with no carbon certificate requirements), benefiting nicely from sales of the carbon credits obtained by closing his U.S.-based manufacturing plant.
The possibilities for corruption are endless. It would make all U.S. enterprises beggars to controllers of the carbon-credit apparatus. Carbon producers would become de jure criminals, and de facto criminals would become rich and powerful. Competition for the ever-decreasing credits would increase their value and the power the issuers had over our entire energy-dependent economy.
But in Our Arsenal ...
Saving the day may be a new organization, the NIPCC — the NON-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change. It has hundreds of scientists with varying backgrounds to show its objectivity. With bulldog Dr. S. Fred Singer at the helm, one should feel confident that the position of skeptics to climatic catastrophe will be well upheld.
Underpinning the global realism rebellion is the Petition Project of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Now with signed petitions from over 31,000 scientists with a minimum of a bachelor's degree, but including over 9,000 Ph.D.s, it is a force to be reckoned with now and in the future as the battle lines are drawn between skeptics and alarmists. For more information or to check on qualifications go to www.petitionproject.org.
If you want to hear from the finest minds on the subject of climate change, you should hurry to make reservations for the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in New York City on March 8-10. For the second year, TNA plans to be there for interviews with national and international speakers. For more information or reservations, contact ncomerford @heartland.org
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it, or call 312-377-4000.
Humor: Bane of the Absurd
More and more people worldwide are asking, "Hey, I'm freezing my buns off and the weather is getting cooler every year. But I'm going to have to change my lifestyle and reduce my standard of living because 52 scientist-lackeys say that carbon dioxide is causing global warming? Give me a break." The emperor has no clothes, and it's up to us to reinforce what is already known. Let us take every opportunity to ask, "Whatever Happened to Global Warming?" and at the same time point out that it's not a sin against the planet to drive an SUV or burn a peat bog. And — one last fact — in geologic time, our present level of CO2 is relatively low compared to earlier levels that were some 12 times the amount of concern to alarmists. Plants were very happy then, and oceans didn't boil away. Remember, plants thrive on CO2 — "Trees Love SUVs."
Additional reading: NOT SO FUN IN THE SUN
How Solar Activity Affects Temperatures on Earth
If CO2 didn't cause the warming we experienced through the 1990s, what did cause it? In 1801 astronomer William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus and of infrared radiation, is said to have predicted the price of grain from counting the number of observable sunspots. When the sunspots increased, the weather warmed and the price of grain came down. During periods of low activity, the weather cooled, crops diminished, and the price rose. The relationship between solar activity and temperature has been noted for years, but the increase in solar irradiance can be shown to be too small to account for significant changes in temperature. However, the correlation was far too close to be coincidental and is a far better correlation to Earth's temperature record than CO2 as a climate forcing agent. It seems we were looking in the wrong direction. In 2004, Nir Shaviv and Jan Vetzer of the Hebrew University showed empirical evidence that "cosmic ray flux" had an impact on climate variability.
Though increases and decreases in solar irradiance wouldn't directly produce Earth's measured temperature changes, solar activity appears to have an indirect effect. A supernova sends out swarms of cosmic rays (mostly protons and electrons) that cause small particles in our atmosphere to attract one another, becoming nuclei for cloud formations high in the atmosphere. During periods of high solar activity, solar winds and magnetic fields act to block these cosmic intruders and prevent the formation of clouds. As high clouds reflect sunlight, preventing their formation increases the radiation reaching the surface and increases the global temperature. In other words, high solar activity, evidenced by sunspots, disrupts cloud formation, thus allowing more solar heating of the Earth.
The '90s were a period of high solar activity, but this has slowed down. In fact, it has virtually stopped. The total solar irradiance, as reported by NASA's David Hathaway, is at the lowest point on record — although the record is only a few decades long. Furthermore, sunspots migrate across the sun as the sunspot (solar) cycle matures. Usually a new sunspot cycle would have already been active by this time — but it hasn't started. This is very bad news for the global-warming alarmists, as the data show this is the precursor of a cooling trend. Actually, it is not such good news for skeptics either, as colder weather is much more dangerous and uncomfortable than warmer weather for many reasons. Personally, I'm not a big fan of driving a team of horses across a frozen Arkansas River.
If that wasn’t enough for ya, click on this, Doggs & Doggettes:
PROVED: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS
By Robert Ferguson
OK, Ya got it now, ya ABCers and Low IQers? For future reference – (just pretend we have a “future”) – when the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths call a thing a fact, it’s a lie; when the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths call a thing a lie, it’s a fact. It’s really a very simple formula that even you hapless registered Dumb-O-Crats should be able to follow well enough to avoid mis- and dis- information and steer clear of trouble. Oh, and remember: no matter what a professional Democrat or Republican says to you, always keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your Second Amendment right.
If the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths fooled you once, shame on them. If they’ve fooled you twice, then shame on you, ya Red State Rubes and Blue State Boobs. (No, I wasn’t name-calling; I was roll-calling.)
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Every butthead who bought into the whole Global Warming scare ought to have their butt warmed by 40 stripes from Joseph Stalin’s coccyx attached to the end of a bear hide strap. Yeah, that means “most Americans” and “ALL Liberals” – yes, ye of the A.B.C. (Atrophied Brain Club).
Right-O, all ya Chicken Littles, the sky is indeed falling, but NOT in the form of Global Warming. Yes, our goose is cooked; yes, our bacon’s fryin’; yes our buns be gettin’ burned. But it’s no more than what we collectively deserve. We’ve earned our R.I.P. in the roaster because of our Godless national immorality and our stinkin’ state stupidity. But don’t be fooled any longer about Global Warming – that’s a sham and not a mechanism in our demise.
NEWS FLASH: Time magazine lied to you. The Democratic Chips And Dipsh#tism (The New York Times) lied to you. Your politicians (both Repugnantcans and Dumb-O-Crats) lied to you. Some so-called “scientists” lied to you. The Green Marxists lied to you. The United Nations lied to you. And that Nobel Peace Prize-winning nerd Al Gore* lied to you. And you believed ‘em all. If you had a brain you’d be brainwashed!
* When I was in school, I used to take the lunch money from twits like Albert Gore, AFTER the tough guys had taken my lunch money from me.
Back on April 10, 2007, I posted at Big Bitch dotcom the most antagonistic and in-yer-face thing I’d ever written. It was titled (link:) “STOP BEING A USEFUL IDIOT.” [I’ve got something in the works that will exceed even that in antagonism and in-yer-faceness, and which should p!ss off just about every last one of you. But that’s something for a future month.] In “STOP BEING A USEFUL IDIOT” I made the following statements:
It would be impossible to institute a global government as long as one nation remains too prosperous. (Why should a wealthy nation accept a new system with new laws, controls, and restrictions on its liberties?) For this reason, it is necessary for the Elite to wreck the American Constitutional system, so that in their desperate times, the American people will embrace whatever (Socialistic) solutions that the Elite offer as a means to salvation. The USA must be financially wrecked in order to establish a relatively equal (and desperate) global playing field. ...
It is no accident that our government enters into international trade agreements that ultimately send many of our best manufacturing jobs to the cheap (and sometimes slave) labor overseas and/or South-of-the-border. It is no act of stupidity when you hear of the military paying $500 for a single toilet seat. There is a damned good reason that so much effort is being made now to convince the people of the dangers of so-called “Global Warming.” The measures that will be installed to stem the imaginary disaster will curtail American manufacturing further and thus slow our economy, our ability to produce wealth. There is a method to the madness you see and read about daily. The Elite use myriad ploys to drain American wealth. There’s foreign aid (i.e., taxpayer money) given to nations - as often as not, America’s ideological enemies. There’s federally-funded grants to conduct useless studies to determine things like whether or not humming birds and honey bees seem to experience enhanced pleasure if Ravel’s “Bolero” or the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” are played while the birds and the bees are doing it. And then there’s the hidden tax of inflation that comes with un-Constitutional fiat money (i.e., Federal Reserve Notes), but I won’t even go there because it’s more complex than a storyline from THE SOPRANOS, so you probably wouldn’t be able to follow it anyway. But these are just a few ways that our Puppeteers siphon off the wealth of our nation and exploit our labor.
I was able to boldly proclaim these things, and denounce the idea of catastrophic Global Warming because I had already perused genuinely objective research on the so-called “Global Warming” issue, and I had been convinced that it was yet another fraud foisted upon the unsuspecting American nimrod by nefarious New World Order Dictator wannabes. (It’s amazing what you can learn if you turn off the TV and start reading big boys’ and girls’ books instead of that Stephen King Krap!) Give those Marxist Maroons an A for effort, as usual, but an F for smarts, as usual. Did these elite little b!tches really think they could forever bully and wooleye REAL scientists? Did they believe that men and women who adhere to the genuine scientific method would remain eternally silent? Not speak up and say, “What is this anthropogenic global warming bovine excrement you’re trying to shove down our throats? What sort of sick game are you international bankers, elite politicians, brainless bureaucrats, green liberal losers and pseudo-scientists trying to play here?” Did the Dick Dawkins-like dips think they could perpetually shout down the Isaac Newton-types?
Well, I’m posting below the most recent cover article from The New American magazine, written by Ed Hiserodt and titled “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?” This brief but to-the-point article puts a fair amount of the scam into a nutshell, so that even a few of you in the A.B.C. (Atrophied Brain Club) will begin to see the non-catastrophic light (i.e., you’ll begin warming to the truth).
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?
By Ed Hiserodt
Now that record-cold temperatures across the globe are making a mockery of human-caused global warming, we look to see if this is merely a "weather hiccup."
Judge: Counselor, do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence on the accused?
Attorney: Yes, your honor. Might I remind you that the victim my client was accused of murdering showed up earlier and is very much alive, sitting there in the front row?
Judge: Sir, this court does not deal in trivialities.
Attorney: But your honor, I'd respectfully suggest that since there is no victim, there has been no crime and my client is obviously innocent.
Judge: Counselor, you are very close to being in contempt of this court. I am the one who determines guilt or innocence here and your client is going to hang.
Attorney: But judge ...
In 1970, I recall New Orleans schoolchildren taking a 185-mile field trip to Jackson, Mississippi, so students might experience something they had never seen before: snow. This year they didn't have to bother, as Southern Louisiana was blanketed with four inches of the white stuff, the first major snow in 45 years, and only two inches shy of the all-time record of six inches set in 1895. It was also the earliest snow since record keeping began in 1850.
Not to be outdone, Las Vegas checked in with what local meteorologist Jerome Jacquest said was the most snow since 1979. With no snow removal or de-icing equipment, the airport was closed along with most roads. Gambling, however, was not affected.
Snow wasn't the only problem. Freezing temperatures in Denver set a new low of minus 18, eclipsing a record from 1901. White Sulfur Springs, Montana, reported 29 below, shredding the previous record mark of minus 17, set in 1922. For the week of December 15, 2008 alone, HAM Weather Service reports 1,537 record low temperatures in the United States and 1,110 record snowfalls — not exactly what one would expect while on the way to climate catastrophe owing to global warming.
Weather watchers know this isn't just an anomaly or freak occurrence. For the past 10 years, the summers have been cooler and the winters more severe. In Little Rock, for example, a chart in the newspaper shows there have been five consecutive months with average temperatures below normal. Since Little Rock is situated near the geographical center of the country, one would suspect that this is not an unusual condition, and indeed, such a suspicion is borne out by satellite measurements that cover the entire globe and are not subject to the "urban heat island" effect that has been shown to add as much as 10°F to recording stations in urban areas as compared to rural counterparts. An NBC crew sent out to show the Northwest Passage was ice free had their icebreaker stranded for three weeks because of thick ice.
With such obvious disputations of "global warming," one might also suspect that the convictions of some honest, objective members of the weather establishment would begin to waver — after seeing the victim alive and sitting in the courtroom.
Tip of the Iceberg
And in fact, it is apparent that more than just a few experts are wavering. When the news was reported of a British court announcing that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was unfit for school "because it is politically biased and contains scientific inaccuracies and sentimental mush," CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano — who was off-camera preparing to give the weather report — applauded and said, "Finally, finally!" He was particularly incensed that Gore blamed Hurricane Katrina on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (AGW). During the period of December marked by low temperatures, mentioned above, CNN severe-weather expert Chad Meyer commented during Lou Dobbs Tonight, "You know, to think we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant."
In a July 18, 2008 widely circulated article entitled "No Smoking Hot Spot," Australian Greenhouse Office scientist David Evans came out of the global-warming skeptics' closet. Although having written the carbon accounting model used to measure Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, Evans was wrestling with a problem: the greenhouse-gas signature is missing. If CO2 is the cause of global warming, then it must be absorbing solar energy and warming the air, which in turn warms the surface. Both alarmists and skeptics agree that all models predict a "hot spot" at 10 kilometers above the tropics. But there is no such hot spot. Quoting Evans:
We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes — weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever. If there is no hot spot, then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature, then I would be an alarmist again.
The Rest of the Iceberg
A U.S. Senate minority report entitled More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims, subtitled Scientists Continue to Debunk "Consensus" in 2008, was released on December 11, 2008. [The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has made available a downloadable PDF of the full report at their minority website http://epw.senate.gov/minority/. Click on "White Papers and Reports"; the PDF is listed as "Senate Minority Report 2."] These 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the 52 government-supported scientists who gave us the 2007 Summary for Policy Makers — the abbreviated version of the climate assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — to which the major media looks adoringly for news about global warming. (There were, however, diplomats from 115 countries aiding the IPCC, making sure the warnings produced the greatest gloom and fear.)
The Senate report includes names, biographies, academic institutional affiliations, and quotes from hundreds of international scientists who have publicly dissented against man-made climate fears. Here are a few condensed remarks typical of the group as a whole:
• "I am a skeptic.... Global warming has become a new religion." — Nobel Prize winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
• "Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly.... As a scientist I remain skeptical.... The main basis of the claim that man's release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system." — Atmospheric scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been named "among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years."
• Warming fears are the "worst scientific scandal in ... history.... When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists." — UN IPCC Japanese scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D. environmental physical chemist.
• "The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn't listen to others. It doesn't have open minds.... I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists." — Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia of Punjab University, a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
• "So far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming." — Scientist Dr. Jarl R. Ahlbeck, a chemical engineer at Abo Akademi University in Finland, author of 200 scientific publications, and former Greenpeace member.
• "Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time." — Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior adviser to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
• "It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don't buy into anthropogenic global warming." — U.S. Government atmospheric scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" — Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130-plus peer-reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
• "The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities." — Award-winning NASA astronaut/geologist and moonwalker Jack Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission and is formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey.
International Panel on Climate Change
The IPCC, the entity that has generated the go-to documents that politicians and most media turn to for global-warming proclamations, doesn't have the credibility of the dissenters. The IPCC was formed in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization. It is a single-purpose, single-interest organization. The entire reason for the IPCC's being is to provide evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Had it not been for the IPCC's activities, it is unlikely you would have ever heard the terms "global warming" or "climate change."
The IPCC has issued four "assessments" about the likelihood of AGW — in 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2007 — and the likely effects around the world should catastrophic warming occur. These assessments are typically 800 pages or so in length and (except for the last one) without indices, making them virtually worthless for any but the most dedicated reader. But one might not bother reading them anyway, as the importance of the reports is completely eclipsed by the "Summary for Policy Makers" (SPM) — or as some would suggest, Summary by Policy Makers. This document is what is released to the media and, as we shall see, is often quite different from the report itself.
Let us look at how the IPCC "Summary for Policy Makers" handled the assessments written by committees of scientists. The following are statements from the original document of the second IPCC report (1996), which had been approved by the scientific writers' committees. The first statement says: "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed (climate) changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases."
That's pretty clear, so how about this one: "No study to date has positively attributed all or part (of climate change observed to date) to anthropogenic (manmade) causes."
There's not any waffling there, so let's look at one more: "Any claims of positive change of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total nature variability of the climate system are reduced."
As Al Gore would say, that is "UN-EE-QUIV-o-cal."
Yet the three statements above were removed by the political influences, and in their place was substituted: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."
The late Professor Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, in a June 12, 1996 letter to the Wall Street Journal, accused the IPCC of censoring the scientific content of the assessment report to agree with a position favored by bureaucrats, governments, and NGOs. Said Seitz: "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the re-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report."
The bias of the IPCC was established by the lead editor of the first three IPCC reports, Sir John Houghton, who set the tone for the organization with the statement, "Unless we announce disaster, no one will listen." If you've been hired by the United Nations to provide evidence of global warming, you can't be pussyfooting around with statements that suggest it is not only unproven but well might not be happening at all. One is certainly comforted by such objectivity.
The IPCC and the Temperature Record
There is general agreement that the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. With the temperature some 20°F below today's norms and continuing that way for about 100,000 years, some 400 feet of the oceans' depth evaporated, fell as snow, was compressed into ice and covered the Northern United States to an estimated depth of one mile. With intermittent backslides and pauses, the Earth has generally been warming since that time. Yet the warming alarmists would have us believe that the warming that we have experienced recently is unprecedented, human-caused, and likely catastrophic. Oh really?
About 7,000 years ago, a warm period known as the Holocene Optimum coincided with the time that agriculture arose worldwide that, in turn, ushered in the Bronze Age. It is a period the IPCC simply ignores, as temperatures then were much warmer than their worst predictions under CO2-generated warming, yet catastrophe did not ensue. Polar bears had been around for the previous 190,000 years and survived the Holocene Optimum quite nicely, thank you very much.
After a few ups and downs, another warm period called the Roman Optimum is considered by historians to be a large factor in the rise of the Roman civilization, as society had the ability to produce more food than required to sustain the farmers, thus allowing others to construct the infrastructure of roads, buildings, and aqueducts upon which the empire was built. The Dark Ages, on the other hand, may not have been dark, but they were cold.
Then warmth came back in the form of what we call the Medieval Warm Period in about 950 A.D., known by historians as the Age of the Cathedrals. The Medieval Warm Period presents problems for alarmists because it can't be simply ignored. It is easy to prove that it was warmer than today. Not only do temperature proxies such as ice cores show it, but the flourishing Viking civilization on Greenland confirms it. Land that today is frozen solid then supported cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats for the "settlers."
Existence of the Greenland civilization is a source of embarrassment to the global warmers as it leads to a logical inconsistency:
Q. Was Greenland warmer during the period 950 A.D. to 1450 A.D. than it is today?
A. Without question. Crops and pastures were grown where today is permanently frozen ground.
Q. Could this be a localized temperature anomaly?
A. Only if such an anomaly can stay around for approximately 500 years.
Q. Were port cities such as London and Venice flooded by high sea levels during this period of high temperatures — temperatures several degrees higher than today?
A. No. [The Tower of London was built in 1078 A.D. on the north bank of the River Thames, a few feet above the high tide mark. Today it remains a few feet above the high tide mark.]
Q. So why would one expect them to be flooded today if temperatures rose considerably, to the level that would allow agriculture again in Greenland?
A. Duh. Because Al Gore said so?
Sadly for our ancestors, the warm climate didn't last. Europe experienced a prolonged cold, wet spell, causing crop failures and famine. Always being on the verge of starvation resulted in a general weakness that is thought to have prolonged and exacerbated the "black death," which killed approximately half of Europe's population. This cool period — from which many climatologists consider the Earth to be still emerging — is known as the Little Ice Age. It too is a difficult period to explain away, as there are records of "frost fairs" on the Thames in London from the early 1600s to 1814, with ice on the order of 11 inches thick supporting tents, wagons, and even a visiting elephant. Since temperatures obviously have been increasing for several hundred years, is it so unusual for them to still be increasing? (Except that they're not.)
In North America the weather was cold enough for New York harbor to freeze so that one could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. During the Civil War, army reports indicated that in Little Rock, for several weeks each year, wagon teams could cross the iced-over Arkansas River, something no one alive today has ever seen.
The period between about 1645 and 1715 was particularly cold and coincides with the Maunder Minimum, where only about 50 sunspots appeared, compared to an expectation of from 40,000 to 50,000. (More sunspots mean greater solar activity. See sidebar on page 16.)
Summing up, the Medieval Warm Period was far warmer than the temperatures global-warming alarmists expect us to reach, without any of the catastrophes predicted by alarmists, and the Little Ice Age clearly shows that Earth had a cold spell from which it has been warming for some 200 years, benefiting plant, animal, and human existence on Earth. Enter the "hockey stick."
The Hockey Stick
The term "hockey stick" refers to the shape of a 1998 graph of temperature versus time as displayed by global warmers Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcom Hughes. It performs several amazing functions for the alarmists, namely:
• Eliminates the Medieval Warm Period;
• Eliminates the Little Ice Age; and
• Shows recent temperatures to be rising catastrophically.
It was a blessing for the IPCC and, according to Christopher Monckton — writer and producer of the informative and entertaining video Apocalypse? NO! [Apocalypse? NO! is available from the Science & Public Policy Institute, http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/.] — the hockey stick was used in full color no fewer than six times in the 2001 IPCC assessment report.
Unfortunately for Mann et al., two Canadians were suspicious of their results and finally were able to obtain sufficient information to challenge the methodology that produced the "convenient" graph. Businessman Steven McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick examined the construction and use of the data set of proxies for past climate that Mann had used to estimate the temperature from 1400 to 1980 and found collation errors, unjustified truncation and extrapolation, use of obsolete data, and calculation mistakes.
Global alarmists challenged the challengers, and the matter was taken to the Academy of Sciences and to a panel headed by Edward Wegman of George Mason University, commissioned by the U.S. Congress. Both referees found in favor of McIntyre over Mann. The Wegman panel fully endorsed the findings of McIntyre and McKitrick. "The NAS panel," as Christopher Horner puts it in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, "specifically repudiated three-fourths of Mann's record, specifically accused the IPCC of misrepresentation, and specifically accused the Mann team of down-playing historical uncertainties." Nonetheless, the once-proud and respected Nature magazine brazenly opined, "Academy affirms hockey-stick graph."
All of these investigations had been completed and were well known by early summer of 2006. Nonetheless, Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, not released until late November 2006, used the hockey stick as the centerpiece of his argument.
Goodbye Free-market Capitalism
If the IPCC and internationalists everywhere were content to let global warming remain an object of discussion and monitoring, its pronouncements would likely inspire the same type of humor as that elicited by an eccentric old uncle who tells about inventing the light bulb and sailing on the Titanic, but such is not the case. They want (demand) worldwide changes - decreasing levels of CO2 emissions through a worldwide cap-and-trade system for CO2. It is difficult to imagine any policy more destructive to our economy than "cap and trade." Today's bailouts are horrid and give government an equity stake in businesses — about as socialist as you can get. But "cap and trade" would gut the very system that has made the United States the wealthiest country in the world.
While there are a number of plans under discussion, most have the same basic elements:
• The government, or governments, would issue "carbon certificates" allowing a commercial or industrial user to consume a specified amount of carbon-based fuel. [Programs to extend this to individuals are already well underway in EU countries.] The total amount would be less than the currently used amount, making these instruments instantly valuable. If, for example, a manufacturer desired to expand or continue production (since the number of existing credits would be continually reduced to meet some Kyoto-type protocol), he would be required to purchase them from another manufacturer or on "the open market."
• The "open market" — the reason Ken Lay and Enron were such fans of global-warming alarmism — could be anywhere in the world. A self-coronated potentate from Cowabunga, Africa, might sell the credits he is given by an international body for not destroying a rain forest (formerly known as a jungle) to an American entrepreneur who wanted to open a shoestring repair business. Or an up-and-coming corporate executive might see a huge profit from moving his manufacturing plant to a Third World country (with no carbon certificate requirements), benefiting nicely from sales of the carbon credits obtained by closing his U.S.-based manufacturing plant.
The possibilities for corruption are endless. It would make all U.S. enterprises beggars to controllers of the carbon-credit apparatus. Carbon producers would become de jure criminals, and de facto criminals would become rich and powerful. Competition for the ever-decreasing credits would increase their value and the power the issuers had over our entire energy-dependent economy.
But in Our Arsenal ...
Saving the day may be a new organization, the NIPCC — the NON-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change. It has hundreds of scientists with varying backgrounds to show its objectivity. With bulldog Dr. S. Fred Singer at the helm, one should feel confident that the position of skeptics to climatic catastrophe will be well upheld.
Underpinning the global realism rebellion is the Petition Project of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Now with signed petitions from over 31,000 scientists with a minimum of a bachelor's degree, but including over 9,000 Ph.D.s, it is a force to be reckoned with now and in the future as the battle lines are drawn between skeptics and alarmists. For more information or to check on qualifications go to www.petitionproject.org.
If you want to hear from the finest minds on the subject of climate change, you should hurry to make reservations for the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute in New York City on March 8-10. For the second year, TNA plans to be there for interviews with national and international speakers. For more information or reservations, contact ncomerford @heartland.org
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it, or call 312-377-4000.
Humor: Bane of the Absurd
More and more people worldwide are asking, "Hey, I'm freezing my buns off and the weather is getting cooler every year. But I'm going to have to change my lifestyle and reduce my standard of living because 52 scientist-lackeys say that carbon dioxide is causing global warming? Give me a break." The emperor has no clothes, and it's up to us to reinforce what is already known. Let us take every opportunity to ask, "Whatever Happened to Global Warming?" and at the same time point out that it's not a sin against the planet to drive an SUV or burn a peat bog. And — one last fact — in geologic time, our present level of CO2 is relatively low compared to earlier levels that were some 12 times the amount of concern to alarmists. Plants were very happy then, and oceans didn't boil away. Remember, plants thrive on CO2 — "Trees Love SUVs."
Additional reading: NOT SO FUN IN THE SUN
How Solar Activity Affects Temperatures on Earth
If CO2 didn't cause the warming we experienced through the 1990s, what did cause it? In 1801 astronomer William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus and of infrared radiation, is said to have predicted the price of grain from counting the number of observable sunspots. When the sunspots increased, the weather warmed and the price of grain came down. During periods of low activity, the weather cooled, crops diminished, and the price rose. The relationship between solar activity and temperature has been noted for years, but the increase in solar irradiance can be shown to be too small to account for significant changes in temperature. However, the correlation was far too close to be coincidental and is a far better correlation to Earth's temperature record than CO2 as a climate forcing agent. It seems we were looking in the wrong direction. In 2004, Nir Shaviv and Jan Vetzer of the Hebrew University showed empirical evidence that "cosmic ray flux" had an impact on climate variability.
Though increases and decreases in solar irradiance wouldn't directly produce Earth's measured temperature changes, solar activity appears to have an indirect effect. A supernova sends out swarms of cosmic rays (mostly protons and electrons) that cause small particles in our atmosphere to attract one another, becoming nuclei for cloud formations high in the atmosphere. During periods of high solar activity, solar winds and magnetic fields act to block these cosmic intruders and prevent the formation of clouds. As high clouds reflect sunlight, preventing their formation increases the radiation reaching the surface and increases the global temperature. In other words, high solar activity, evidenced by sunspots, disrupts cloud formation, thus allowing more solar heating of the Earth.
The '90s were a period of high solar activity, but this has slowed down. In fact, it has virtually stopped. The total solar irradiance, as reported by NASA's David Hathaway, is at the lowest point on record — although the record is only a few decades long. Furthermore, sunspots migrate across the sun as the sunspot (solar) cycle matures. Usually a new sunspot cycle would have already been active by this time — but it hasn't started. This is very bad news for the global-warming alarmists, as the data show this is the precursor of a cooling trend. Actually, it is not such good news for skeptics either, as colder weather is much more dangerous and uncomfortable than warmer weather for many reasons. Personally, I'm not a big fan of driving a team of horses across a frozen Arkansas River.
If that wasn’t enough for ya, click on this, Doggs & Doggettes:
PROVED: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS
By Robert Ferguson
OK, Ya got it now, ya ABCers and Low IQers? For future reference – (just pretend we have a “future”) – when the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths call a thing a fact, it’s a lie; when the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths call a thing a lie, it’s a fact. It’s really a very simple formula that even you hapless registered Dumb-O-Crats should be able to follow well enough to avoid mis- and dis- information and steer clear of trouble. Oh, and remember: no matter what a professional Democrat or Republican says to you, always keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your Second Amendment right.
If the Neocon Newtwits and the Liberal Loudmouths fooled you once, shame on them. If they’ve fooled you twice, then shame on you, ya Red State Rubes and Blue State Boobs. (No, I wasn’t name-calling; I was roll-calling.)
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
WHY "THE WILD BUNCH" IS A CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE
.
[*From the STMcC Archive; 2005, February*]
.
.
[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]
THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE THAN THIS,
THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE
FOR THE SAKE OF HIS FRIENDS.
~ Jesus Christ
[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]
.
THE WILD BUNCH: A Cinematic Masterpiece
To refer to “THE WILD BUNCH” as one of the greatest Western movies ever made is to do it a great injustice; no qualifying allowed. It is one of the finest films ever created in ANY genre!
Evaluating THE WILD BUNCH objectively in terms of narrative force, characterization, direction, scope, suspense, and pure excitement, it is unsurpassed in the pantheon of Western films – the “Citizen Kane” of Westerns.
Directed by SAM PECKINPAH in 1969, the story takes place primarily in Mexico during the revolution of 1913.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, 1913 also saw a revolution occurring in the United States. In December of that year, the Federal Reserve Act passed and was signed into law. This gave control of the U.S. economy to private bankers. The Federal Reserve Act began the Socialization of America in earnest. (Read “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin.) I can't help smiling when I hear the movie's principal character, PIKE BISHOP (William Holden), tell the German military advisor, "We share very few sentiments with our government."
'Changing Times' is the great overarching theme in THE WILD BUNCH, which follows an aging outlaw gang, fast becoming an anachronism. But The Wild Bunch is a rich tapestry of interwoven themes and motivations. I've been watching it at least once a year since 1989 and yet I never fail to find new textures in it.
The primary theme is even portrayed in the film's color scheme. While it was shot in color, nearly everything appears to be one or another shade of brown. The viewer is left with the distinct impression that he has just seen an old-time sepia-tone movie. The only other color that manages to occasionally make its presence felt is green. Green, the color of Spring - a new season being born after the dead of Winter. A slowly evolving new era; green life seeping into the lifeless brown.
Independently, the members of The Bunch hope to make one good haul and assimilate into this new epoch. But from the very first images on the screen the viewer is clued in that this is not feasible. The film opens with children (representing this new generation) tormenting a few scorpions by stirring up a swarm of red ants against them. The dangerous scorpions are simpy overwhelmed. This imagery will be reprised at the end of the picture in the form of the few remaining dangerous outlaws, the swarming Mexican revolutionaries, and a small child with a rifle.
Encountering their first automobile, The Bunch express an interest in trading their extra horses for it; encountering his first machine gun, PIKE BISHOP, the gang's leader says, "What I don't know about, I sure as hell am going to learn." These moments hint that The Wild Bunch does not desire to remain outside of the burgeoning new world.
The Wild Bunch consists of murderers and thieves, and excepting ANGEL (Jaime Sanchez) - the young, idealistic member of the outlaw band who is devoted to the people of his Mexican village - this Bunch suffers no allegiance to anything but their own self-interests. "We're not associated with anybody," DUTCH ENGSTROM (Ernest Borgnine) proclaims. The gang's internal squabbles are constant and when Pike chastises them, "When you side with a man you stay with him, and if you can't do that you're like some animal! You're finished. We're finished. All of us!" it remains to be seen whether or not this actually holds any meaning for any of them.
And yet, at times we see a glimmer of true humanity in these desperados:
They assist an old lady in crossing the street on their way to a robbery.
When we first see FREDDIE SYKES (Edmond O'Brien) he's showing appreciation for a Mexican infant.
ANGEL, singing and strumming a guitar, exhibits the ability to convey the sensitivities of a tender ballad.
TECTOR GORCH (Ben Johnson) belies his curmudgeonly exterior when at the sight of starving canines, he scolds, "Hey, Angel, why in the hell don't you tell your folks to feed them dogs?!"
"We're after MEN, and I wish to God I was with them," bemoans DEKE THORNTON (Robert Ryan), former comrade to Pike Bishop and now the leader of the ragtag posse chasing The Wild Bunch. And this is indeed a man's movie, portraying a lost time when men were men and women were ladies - a true rarity in our current era of artificial gender-bending.
Due to a severe case of "male-member envy" amongst women, America currently exists in a monogender culture. The Woman found that She was no longer content to HAVE a man; now She wanted to BE a man! So they utilized steroids and/or hGH, pumped iron, tattooed their bodies, took up sports, acquired pickup trucks, and (after physical standards were lowered to accommodate them) joined the Fire Department, the Police Force, and the Military.
[*2009 NOTE: Have you noticed that about half of all pickup trucks on the road today are driven by women? Have you ever asked yourself why this is so? Do women appreciate the great gas mileage they get with trucks? Have they fallen in love with the sleek lines and sporty look of trucks? Is it because women are forever hauling stuff and require the bed of a pickup truck? Or do they drive trucks because men do? Ah-ha! Why has The Modern Female chosen to be a fourth-rate man rather than a first-rate woman? If you answered, “Mass conditioning by Socialistic social engineers” then give yourself a pat on the back and an “Atta boy, Girl!”]
Some men met the women halfway by coloring their hair and wearing earrings. Hardly a movie, television program, or video game has been produced in the last 15 years that doesn't include at least one occurrence of a woman unrealistically knocking the stuffing out of some man. We managed to save the buffalo, the eagle, the whale, and the seal. But the "lady" seems to be extinct! THE WILD BUNCH harks back to a more natural and realistic era. It is a film about male dinosaurs, made by male dinosaurs, for male dinosaurs.
After accomplishing their goals, discontentment settles upon The Wild Bunch. If they are truly "MEN", why do they now feel like animals?
THE WILD BUNCH is masterful in every respect. Notice:
* The brilliant direction.
* The creative photography and juxtaposition of images.
* The world-class editing which yanks the viewer into the chaos of the action sequences. (According to ‘Wild Bunch’ editor Lou Lombardo, the original release print contains 3,643 editorial cuts, more than any other Technicolor film ever processed.)
* The clipped, conversational style of dialogue indicative of familiarity.
* How much the characters say throughout the film without utilizing any VERBAL dialogue whatsoever! (For Example: Notice how the decision to face off against Mapache and his troops is made particularly poignant because it is expressed in only 4 words: PIKE: "Let's go." / LYLE: "Why not?" Dutch just sees the look in Pike's eyes and he laughs with understanding: This is the showdown we need.)
* The excellent acting: career defining performances from Holden, Borgnine, O'Brien, Warren Oates, Strother Martin, and Emilio Fernandez - who is magnificent as the drunken General Mapache.
When THE WILD BUNCH was first released in 1969, it was highly controversial because of its excessive degree of violence. The graphic, slow motion shots of blood spurting from bodies was unknown in cinema at that time. The violence in THE WILD BUNCH, however, is pretty tame by today's standards. Practically every War and Horror movie released in the last 20 years exceeds this film in terms of gore. While the violence in THE WILD BUNCH is a significant component of the narrative, this is actually a character-driven story. Despite the blood and bullets, it’s really a Western for thinkers.
There are many more nuances in this fine film which I could discuss, but I hesitate to rob others of the chance to explore this masterpiece for themselves.
Not unlike the original "ROCKY" (1976), THE WILD BUNCH tells the story of losers who somehow stumble upon one last opportunity to redeem themselves and justify their existence; to dedicate what little remains of their lives to seeking one moment of honor. But whereas for Rocky Balboa success means avoiding being sent to the canvas for a count of ten, success for THE WILD BUNCH means being sent to the grave forever.
ADDENDUM:
It has suddenly occurred to me that although I wrote, "I hesitate to rob others of the chance to explore this masterpiece for themselves," some readers might not actually know HOW to discover subtext and nuance in a film.
The cast and crew in a film company make Big Bucks - "Time is money!" And it can take an hour (or more) to set up for a single shot that might represent 5 seconds (or less) of action on the screen. If you see it, then know that it's there for a reason because it cost a good amount of money to put it there. So, there is one all-important rule to discovering underlying meaning in a film: ANALYZE EVERYTHING YOU SEE!
Ask yourself, "How might this relate to the theme or themes established in this movie? What additional information does this provide about the character/s?" There is no throwaway action.
The difference between a very good director and a poor one is that the master filmmaker has things to say and knows how to skillfully and creatively convey them - usually in a subtle fashion.
For Example [Warning: one very minor ‘spoiler’ included here]:
THE WILD BUNCH opens with a robbery during which Pike's horse inadvertently tramples a woman in the street. In making his getaway, Pike finds part of the woman's white shawl clinging to one of his spurs and he tosses it to the ground in disgust. THIS IS A DIRECTORIAL STATEMENT! And it gets restated at the end when a woman shoots Pike in the back, after which he wheels around and shotguns her to death. Why do you think Peckinpah spent the time (i.e., money) to show these things? He was using action to say something about the "civilizing" and "socializing" of ruggedly masculine individualists.
Remember: Think about EVERYTHING that appears on the screen. If you're seeing it, you're seeing it for some REASON!
Now enjoy the movie and the bloodied popcorn.
Uhm… I meant “buttered.”
~ Stephen ( T. rex ) McCarthy
.
[*From the STMcC Archive; 2005, February*]
.
.
[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]
THERE IS NO GREATER LOVE THAN THIS,
THAT A MAN LAY DOWN HIS LIFE
FOR THE SAKE OF HIS FRIENDS.
~ Jesus Christ
[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]~~[+]
.
THE WILD BUNCH: A Cinematic Masterpiece
To refer to “THE WILD BUNCH” as one of the greatest Western movies ever made is to do it a great injustice; no qualifying allowed. It is one of the finest films ever created in ANY genre!
Evaluating THE WILD BUNCH objectively in terms of narrative force, characterization, direction, scope, suspense, and pure excitement, it is unsurpassed in the pantheon of Western films – the “Citizen Kane” of Westerns.
Directed by SAM PECKINPAH in 1969, the story takes place primarily in Mexico during the revolution of 1913.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, 1913 also saw a revolution occurring in the United States. In December of that year, the Federal Reserve Act passed and was signed into law. This gave control of the U.S. economy to private bankers. The Federal Reserve Act began the Socialization of America in earnest. (Read “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin.) I can't help smiling when I hear the movie's principal character, PIKE BISHOP (William Holden), tell the German military advisor, "We share very few sentiments with our government."
'Changing Times' is the great overarching theme in THE WILD BUNCH, which follows an aging outlaw gang, fast becoming an anachronism. But The Wild Bunch is a rich tapestry of interwoven themes and motivations. I've been watching it at least once a year since 1989 and yet I never fail to find new textures in it.
The primary theme is even portrayed in the film's color scheme. While it was shot in color, nearly everything appears to be one or another shade of brown. The viewer is left with the distinct impression that he has just seen an old-time sepia-tone movie. The only other color that manages to occasionally make its presence felt is green. Green, the color of Spring - a new season being born after the dead of Winter. A slowly evolving new era; green life seeping into the lifeless brown.
Independently, the members of The Bunch hope to make one good haul and assimilate into this new epoch. But from the very first images on the screen the viewer is clued in that this is not feasible. The film opens with children (representing this new generation) tormenting a few scorpions by stirring up a swarm of red ants against them. The dangerous scorpions are simpy overwhelmed. This imagery will be reprised at the end of the picture in the form of the few remaining dangerous outlaws, the swarming Mexican revolutionaries, and a small child with a rifle.
Encountering their first automobile, The Bunch express an interest in trading their extra horses for it; encountering his first machine gun, PIKE BISHOP, the gang's leader says, "What I don't know about, I sure as hell am going to learn." These moments hint that The Wild Bunch does not desire to remain outside of the burgeoning new world.
The Wild Bunch consists of murderers and thieves, and excepting ANGEL (Jaime Sanchez) - the young, idealistic member of the outlaw band who is devoted to the people of his Mexican village - this Bunch suffers no allegiance to anything but their own self-interests. "We're not associated with anybody," DUTCH ENGSTROM (Ernest Borgnine) proclaims. The gang's internal squabbles are constant and when Pike chastises them, "When you side with a man you stay with him, and if you can't do that you're like some animal! You're finished. We're finished. All of us!" it remains to be seen whether or not this actually holds any meaning for any of them.
And yet, at times we see a glimmer of true humanity in these desperados:
They assist an old lady in crossing the street on their way to a robbery.
When we first see FREDDIE SYKES (Edmond O'Brien) he's showing appreciation for a Mexican infant.
ANGEL, singing and strumming a guitar, exhibits the ability to convey the sensitivities of a tender ballad.
TECTOR GORCH (Ben Johnson) belies his curmudgeonly exterior when at the sight of starving canines, he scolds, "Hey, Angel, why in the hell don't you tell your folks to feed them dogs?!"
"We're after MEN, and I wish to God I was with them," bemoans DEKE THORNTON (Robert Ryan), former comrade to Pike Bishop and now the leader of the ragtag posse chasing The Wild Bunch. And this is indeed a man's movie, portraying a lost time when men were men and women were ladies - a true rarity in our current era of artificial gender-bending.
Due to a severe case of "male-member envy" amongst women, America currently exists in a monogender culture. The Woman found that She was no longer content to HAVE a man; now She wanted to BE a man! So they utilized steroids and/or hGH, pumped iron, tattooed their bodies, took up sports, acquired pickup trucks, and (after physical standards were lowered to accommodate them) joined the Fire Department, the Police Force, and the Military.
[*2009 NOTE: Have you noticed that about half of all pickup trucks on the road today are driven by women? Have you ever asked yourself why this is so? Do women appreciate the great gas mileage they get with trucks? Have they fallen in love with the sleek lines and sporty look of trucks? Is it because women are forever hauling stuff and require the bed of a pickup truck? Or do they drive trucks because men do? Ah-ha! Why has The Modern Female chosen to be a fourth-rate man rather than a first-rate woman? If you answered, “Mass conditioning by Socialistic social engineers” then give yourself a pat on the back and an “Atta boy, Girl!”]
Some men met the women halfway by coloring their hair and wearing earrings. Hardly a movie, television program, or video game has been produced in the last 15 years that doesn't include at least one occurrence of a woman unrealistically knocking the stuffing out of some man. We managed to save the buffalo, the eagle, the whale, and the seal. But the "lady" seems to be extinct! THE WILD BUNCH harks back to a more natural and realistic era. It is a film about male dinosaurs, made by male dinosaurs, for male dinosaurs.
After accomplishing their goals, discontentment settles upon The Wild Bunch. If they are truly "MEN", why do they now feel like animals?
THE WILD BUNCH is masterful in every respect. Notice:
* The brilliant direction.
* The creative photography and juxtaposition of images.
* The world-class editing which yanks the viewer into the chaos of the action sequences. (According to ‘Wild Bunch’ editor Lou Lombardo, the original release print contains 3,643 editorial cuts, more than any other Technicolor film ever processed.)
* The clipped, conversational style of dialogue indicative of familiarity.
* How much the characters say throughout the film without utilizing any VERBAL dialogue whatsoever! (For Example: Notice how the decision to face off against Mapache and his troops is made particularly poignant because it is expressed in only 4 words: PIKE: "Let's go." / LYLE: "Why not?" Dutch just sees the look in Pike's eyes and he laughs with understanding: This is the showdown we need.)
* The excellent acting: career defining performances from Holden, Borgnine, O'Brien, Warren Oates, Strother Martin, and Emilio Fernandez - who is magnificent as the drunken General Mapache.
When THE WILD BUNCH was first released in 1969, it was highly controversial because of its excessive degree of violence. The graphic, slow motion shots of blood spurting from bodies was unknown in cinema at that time. The violence in THE WILD BUNCH, however, is pretty tame by today's standards. Practically every War and Horror movie released in the last 20 years exceeds this film in terms of gore. While the violence in THE WILD BUNCH is a significant component of the narrative, this is actually a character-driven story. Despite the blood and bullets, it’s really a Western for thinkers.
There are many more nuances in this fine film which I could discuss, but I hesitate to rob others of the chance to explore this masterpiece for themselves.
Not unlike the original "ROCKY" (1976), THE WILD BUNCH tells the story of losers who somehow stumble upon one last opportunity to redeem themselves and justify their existence; to dedicate what little remains of their lives to seeking one moment of honor. But whereas for Rocky Balboa success means avoiding being sent to the canvas for a count of ten, success for THE WILD BUNCH means being sent to the grave forever.
ADDENDUM:
It has suddenly occurred to me that although I wrote, "I hesitate to rob others of the chance to explore this masterpiece for themselves," some readers might not actually know HOW to discover subtext and nuance in a film.
The cast and crew in a film company make Big Bucks - "Time is money!" And it can take an hour (or more) to set up for a single shot that might represent 5 seconds (or less) of action on the screen. If you see it, then know that it's there for a reason because it cost a good amount of money to put it there. So, there is one all-important rule to discovering underlying meaning in a film: ANALYZE EVERYTHING YOU SEE!
Ask yourself, "How might this relate to the theme or themes established in this movie? What additional information does this provide about the character/s?" There is no throwaway action.
The difference between a very good director and a poor one is that the master filmmaker has things to say and knows how to skillfully and creatively convey them - usually in a subtle fashion.
For Example [Warning: one very minor ‘spoiler’ included here]:
THE WILD BUNCH opens with a robbery during which Pike's horse inadvertently tramples a woman in the street. In making his getaway, Pike finds part of the woman's white shawl clinging to one of his spurs and he tosses it to the ground in disgust. THIS IS A DIRECTORIAL STATEMENT! And it gets restated at the end when a woman shoots Pike in the back, after which he wheels around and shotguns her to death. Why do you think Peckinpah spent the time (i.e., money) to show these things? He was using action to say something about the "civilizing" and "socializing" of ruggedly masculine individualists.
Remember: Think about EVERYTHING that appears on the screen. If you're seeing it, you're seeing it for some REASON!
Now enjoy the movie and the bloodied popcorn.
Uhm… I meant “buttered.”
~ Stephen ( T. rex ) McCarthy
.
Friday, January 30, 2009
7 Remastered RANDOM THOUGHTS + 1 Previously Unreleased BONUS TRACK And 1 ALTERNATE TAKE
.
#1: One thing that boggles my mind is how Republican voters never seem to notice that their representatives in government talk a great game but never truly act upon the principles they espouse. Boy, when they need your vote, they’re all about “reducing the size of government, releasing the national headlock on American education and restoring liberty to the people by abolishing the tyranny of federal regulations over every aspect of the citizen’s life.” But once in power, these so-called “conservatives” forget all of that, and in fact, often increase the cost and scope of federal government beyond what even their Democrat predecessors had established, while occasionally tossing their lap dog voters a slight tax break bone to keep up appearances (see Reagan and “W"). One would think that the Republican voter would eventually catch on and realize that the movers and shakers within his own political party have been lying to him, but he never does. And when the next election rolls around, the Republican voter will once again buy into the slogans and faithfully put his X next to the name of the man or woman with the “R” adjoined. Why do you suppose the Republican voter never wakes up to the fact that he is being duped? I know the answer and it rhymes with “dimbulb.” Oh, wait! It is “dimbulb.”
#2: In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama made the statement: “America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents.” Well, that’s enough bullsh#t to choke an ox. This country finds itself in so much trouble precisely BECAUSE, for at least a hundred years, we have IGNORED the ideals of our forebears and our founding documents! And I find it ironic that – with a pretense of concern about faithfully following the dictates of the U.S. Constitution - Omama(!) retook the oath of office because a word was misplaced when the oath was originally administered to him, but yet he still refuses to allow the American People to see a copy of his official birth certificate in order to satsify the Article II, Section I demands of that same Constitution. Omama(!) has correctly pegged the mass of Americans as blind maroons. This guy is “too much for Dick Tracy.”
#3: I can’t tell y’all how comforting it is to know that Barack Omama(!) has named former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano as this country’s new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I can’t tell y’all that because it’s NOT COMFORTING at all. I mean, here’s a woman – I guess - who couldn’t even keep illegal immigrants from overrunning her state from South Of The Border, but now she’s expected to keep the entire nation safe from lawbreakers and terrorists? I won’t even begin to tell you how she played a role in wrecking Arizona’s economy. But I suppose she does deserve credit for SOMETHING: she did manage to keep city authorities from placing Christmas decorations on our streets in honor of that mythical principle of “Separation of Church and State.” Only in politics and the movie industry is it possible for a person to fail their way to the top.
#4: I can’t help noticing that, despite his continual promise of “Change”, Barack Omama(!) has named all the usual Democrat suspects to positions of power in his new administration. If your idea of “Change” is replacing a bunch of old Marxist Neocons with a bunch of old Marxist Democrats, then yes, I suppose Omama(!) has brought “Change.” Good on ya, Swami Obamee!
#5: I was speaking with The Great L.C. at work one night last week and we were brainstorming on how to pull this country out of its economic woes. Then I suddenly hit upon a novel idea and I said, “I’ve got it! Why don’t we try capitalism? I mean, nothing else seems to work. Government should just get out of the business of Business and let pure economic forces do their thing.” Look, People, I realize this sounds crazy an’ all, but if the Arizona Cardinals can make it to the Super Bowl then ANYTHING’S possible. "Free Market Capitalism: an idea whose time has come."
#6: Periodically, I’ll listen to a local Phoenix radio station’s political talk show hosted by former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth. He’s just about the only neocon I can stand to listen to. Once in awhile he takes an opposing viewpoint, and he does have a good personality which makes his show somewhat palatable for me. During the presidential campaign, he would do a voice impersonation of Senator John McCain which was pretty good and pretty funny. I mentioned this to my Brother and he said Hayworth also does a good Bill Clinton and Charlie Rangel. Well, I’ve since caught both of those impersonations and my Bro’s right, they are good. But last week he was doing Barney Frank and it really cracked me up. Hayworth makes Barney sound like a gay Elmer Fudd. Frankly, funny!
#7: I had a dental appointment on January 22nd, and while I was in the waiting room waiting for the woman who came in before me to shut her mouth, I was watching the Fox News broadcast of some White House briefing that they were showing in the dental office on their big screen TV teat. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was yakking and I noticed that he’d say “Uh” about very third of fourth word. There was also some female Fox News Talking Head analyzing the situation – I can’t recall her name now… Hedy Lamarr, Suzy Chapstick, Merle Haggard, something like that. Anyway, whatever her name was, every two sentences she would say “You know.” Blah, Blah, Blah, you know. Or, You know, blah, blah, blah. One would think that people making their living by yakking in public would perhaps take some public speaking courses, or at least privately work on polishing their delivery a little in order to present a professionally smooth and pleasant “oralsphere”… yUH know?
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED BONUS TRACK:
The company I work for is now proposing the banning of cigarette smoking anywhere on the property. It’s not enough that smokers have been banished to a small corner in the back 40 of the premises for years, they now want to deny them the right to smoke ANYWHERE. I have never been a smoker, so this won’t affect me in any way, but nevertheless, the proposal ticks me off. How typical of Corporate America. Corporations: where fresh, young minds go to climb, conform and die. And good ol’ America: where a perfectly legal activity like smoking is banned but a woman has a (supposedly) CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to murder her baby in the womb! America, your priorities are in the toilet and you followed them in. One of these days, God is going to flush that crapper and then you’ll get your great comeuppance. Er… GoDowneth.
ALTERNATE TAKE OF TRACK #3
[Presented Here For The First Time In Its Unedited Form]:
Thanks to Swami Obamee, we now have former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as America’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is the same Leftist Democrat who couldn’t even please a good deal of her fellow liberals in her own state. What is it about these Dumb-O-Crat presidents that makes them place manly women named Janet in power over federal “police” departments? With Bubba it was Janet Reno, and with Barack it’s Janet Napolitano.
It’s been a good 32 or 33 years since I’ve held a copy of Elton John’s album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” in my hands, but I recall that on the inside of the cover there was an illustration for the song “All The Girls Love Alice.” Photographs of Napolitano have always reminded me of the matronly woman in that album illustration who seeks the affection of Alice. But now that Napolitano has federal police powers (look out, terrorists!), I think this famous old rhyme is right on time:
Lizzie Janet took an axe
And gave Muhammad forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done
She gave ol’ Ahmed forty-one.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
#1: One thing that boggles my mind is how Republican voters never seem to notice that their representatives in government talk a great game but never truly act upon the principles they espouse. Boy, when they need your vote, they’re all about “reducing the size of government, releasing the national headlock on American education and restoring liberty to the people by abolishing the tyranny of federal regulations over every aspect of the citizen’s life.” But once in power, these so-called “conservatives” forget all of that, and in fact, often increase the cost and scope of federal government beyond what even their Democrat predecessors had established, while occasionally tossing their lap dog voters a slight tax break bone to keep up appearances (see Reagan and “W"). One would think that the Republican voter would eventually catch on and realize that the movers and shakers within his own political party have been lying to him, but he never does. And when the next election rolls around, the Republican voter will once again buy into the slogans and faithfully put his X next to the name of the man or woman with the “R” adjoined. Why do you suppose the Republican voter never wakes up to the fact that he is being duped? I know the answer and it rhymes with “dimbulb.” Oh, wait! It is “dimbulb.”
#2: In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama made the statement: “America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents.” Well, that’s enough bullsh#t to choke an ox. This country finds itself in so much trouble precisely BECAUSE, for at least a hundred years, we have IGNORED the ideals of our forebears and our founding documents! And I find it ironic that – with a pretense of concern about faithfully following the dictates of the U.S. Constitution - Omama(!) retook the oath of office because a word was misplaced when the oath was originally administered to him, but yet he still refuses to allow the American People to see a copy of his official birth certificate in order to satsify the Article II, Section I demands of that same Constitution. Omama(!) has correctly pegged the mass of Americans as blind maroons. This guy is “too much for Dick Tracy.”
#3: I can’t tell y’all how comforting it is to know that Barack Omama(!) has named former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano as this country’s new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I can’t tell y’all that because it’s NOT COMFORTING at all. I mean, here’s a woman – I guess - who couldn’t even keep illegal immigrants from overrunning her state from South Of The Border, but now she’s expected to keep the entire nation safe from lawbreakers and terrorists? I won’t even begin to tell you how she played a role in wrecking Arizona’s economy. But I suppose she does deserve credit for SOMETHING: she did manage to keep city authorities from placing Christmas decorations on our streets in honor of that mythical principle of “Separation of Church and State.” Only in politics and the movie industry is it possible for a person to fail their way to the top.
#4: I can’t help noticing that, despite his continual promise of “Change”, Barack Omama(!) has named all the usual Democrat suspects to positions of power in his new administration. If your idea of “Change” is replacing a bunch of old Marxist Neocons with a bunch of old Marxist Democrats, then yes, I suppose Omama(!) has brought “Change.” Good on ya, Swami Obamee!
#5: I was speaking with The Great L.C. at work one night last week and we were brainstorming on how to pull this country out of its economic woes. Then I suddenly hit upon a novel idea and I said, “I’ve got it! Why don’t we try capitalism? I mean, nothing else seems to work. Government should just get out of the business of Business and let pure economic forces do their thing.” Look, People, I realize this sounds crazy an’ all, but if the Arizona Cardinals can make it to the Super Bowl then ANYTHING’S possible. "Free Market Capitalism: an idea whose time has come."
#6: Periodically, I’ll listen to a local Phoenix radio station’s political talk show hosted by former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth. He’s just about the only neocon I can stand to listen to. Once in awhile he takes an opposing viewpoint, and he does have a good personality which makes his show somewhat palatable for me. During the presidential campaign, he would do a voice impersonation of Senator John McCain which was pretty good and pretty funny. I mentioned this to my Brother and he said Hayworth also does a good Bill Clinton and Charlie Rangel. Well, I’ve since caught both of those impersonations and my Bro’s right, they are good. But last week he was doing Barney Frank and it really cracked me up. Hayworth makes Barney sound like a gay Elmer Fudd. Frankly, funny!
#7: I had a dental appointment on January 22nd, and while I was in the waiting room waiting for the woman who came in before me to shut her mouth, I was watching the Fox News broadcast of some White House briefing that they were showing in the dental office on their big screen TV teat. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was yakking and I noticed that he’d say “Uh” about very third of fourth word. There was also some female Fox News Talking Head analyzing the situation – I can’t recall her name now… Hedy Lamarr, Suzy Chapstick, Merle Haggard, something like that. Anyway, whatever her name was, every two sentences she would say “You know.” Blah, Blah, Blah, you know. Or, You know, blah, blah, blah. One would think that people making their living by yakking in public would perhaps take some public speaking courses, or at least privately work on polishing their delivery a little in order to present a professionally smooth and pleasant “oralsphere”… yUH know?
PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED BONUS TRACK:
The company I work for is now proposing the banning of cigarette smoking anywhere on the property. It’s not enough that smokers have been banished to a small corner in the back 40 of the premises for years, they now want to deny them the right to smoke ANYWHERE. I have never been a smoker, so this won’t affect me in any way, but nevertheless, the proposal ticks me off. How typical of Corporate America. Corporations: where fresh, young minds go to climb, conform and die. And good ol’ America: where a perfectly legal activity like smoking is banned but a woman has a (supposedly) CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to murder her baby in the womb! America, your priorities are in the toilet and you followed them in. One of these days, God is going to flush that crapper and then you’ll get your great comeuppance. Er… GoDowneth.
ALTERNATE TAKE OF TRACK #3
[Presented Here For The First Time In Its Unedited Form]:
Thanks to Swami Obamee, we now have former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as America’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is the same Leftist Democrat who couldn’t even please a good deal of her fellow liberals in her own state. What is it about these Dumb-O-Crat presidents that makes them place manly women named Janet in power over federal “police” departments? With Bubba it was Janet Reno, and with Barack it’s Janet Napolitano.
It’s been a good 32 or 33 years since I’ve held a copy of Elton John’s album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” in my hands, but I recall that on the inside of the cover there was an illustration for the song “All The Girls Love Alice.” Photographs of Napolitano have always reminded me of the matronly woman in that album illustration who seeks the affection of Alice. But now that Napolitano has federal police powers (look out, terrorists!), I think this famous old rhyme is right on time:
Lizzie Janet took an axe
And gave Muhammad forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done
She gave ol’ Ahmed forty-one.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Thursday, January 22, 2009
On DECEIT And DISSENT
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Perhaps my favorite portion of Barack Obama’s inaugural speech was this:
“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
MR. PREZ ~
Hey, guess who I thought of first, Obama, baby! YOU! You cling to power as the country’s new president by deceit and the silencing of dissent. The deceit will be found on your birth certificate, if you ever allow We The People to actually see it. And you silence dissent by hiring lawyers to help you keep that birth certificate hidden away rather than showing it to The People – The People who have a Constitutional RIGHT to see it. Yes, you, Obama. YOU!
When will you extend YOUR hand, Obama, with your official birth certificate in it? Hmmm? Heal thyself, physician.
Heal thyself, messiah:
"Why do you see the splinter which is in your brother's eye, and do not feel the beam which is in your own eye? ... O hypocrites, first take out the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to get out the splinter from your brother's eye."
Or is that particular passage not included in your copy of The Bible, O mighty messiah, O Mr. "Christian" man? [*Cough!-Cough!*]
AMERICA! ~
You deserve Barack Obama. Just like you deserved George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him. You ignorantly elect these wild dogs to lead you and then you cry foul when the dogs turn and bite you in the ass. If you did your research first – and I mean “INTELLECTUALLY HONEST” research – you wouldn’t be casting your vote for your own executioners.
Well, you’re a dying country, that’s for sure. But if it wasn’t for the fact that at least a small minority of your People dislike the taste of Kool-Aid, you would have been laid to rest long before now.
THE END IS NEAR, America. Nearer than you know.
And since I gave up “HOPE”
I feel much better.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Related Links:
Born To Be Filed
What, Is He From The Womb Of The Mother Ship Sent By Planet Malcolm-X?
.
Perhaps my favorite portion of Barack Obama’s inaugural speech was this:
“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
MR. PREZ ~
Hey, guess who I thought of first, Obama, baby! YOU! You cling to power as the country’s new president by deceit and the silencing of dissent. The deceit will be found on your birth certificate, if you ever allow We The People to actually see it. And you silence dissent by hiring lawyers to help you keep that birth certificate hidden away rather than showing it to The People – The People who have a Constitutional RIGHT to see it. Yes, you, Obama. YOU!
When will you extend YOUR hand, Obama, with your official birth certificate in it? Hmmm? Heal thyself, physician.
Heal thyself, messiah:
"Why do you see the splinter which is in your brother's eye, and do not feel the beam which is in your own eye? ... O hypocrites, first take out the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to get out the splinter from your brother's eye."
Or is that particular passage not included in your copy of The Bible, O mighty messiah, O Mr. "Christian" man? [*Cough!-Cough!*]
AMERICA! ~
You deserve Barack Obama. Just like you deserved George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him. You ignorantly elect these wild dogs to lead you and then you cry foul when the dogs turn and bite you in the ass. If you did your research first – and I mean “INTELLECTUALLY HONEST” research – you wouldn’t be casting your vote for your own executioners.
Well, you’re a dying country, that’s for sure. But if it wasn’t for the fact that at least a small minority of your People dislike the taste of Kool-Aid, you would have been laid to rest long before now.
THE END IS NEAR, America. Nearer than you know.
And since I gave up “HOPE”
I feel much better.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Related Links:
Born To Be Filed
What, Is He From The Womb Of The Mother Ship Sent By Planet Malcolm-X?
.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE SON OF A BUSH HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
.
There’s just no good reason to Beat-Around-The-Bush, so I’m going to come right out and say it directly: the King George W(ish I had a brain) Bush presidency was simply the worst presidency in my 49 years. That’s even a bit hard for me to believe considering that I have lived through the Washington D.C. train wrecks known as “The Jimmy Carter Fiasco” and “The Bill ‘Bubba’ Clinton Years Of Treason”, but nevertheless, in my estimation, King George was really bad, and that weren’t good!
Based upon my own knowledge of history then, I rate Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and King George W(ish I had a brain) Bush as the worst U.S. Presidents ever! (But Wilson really takes the cake. America will simply never recover from what that traitor did to it.) After those three, it starts to get a bit murky like it is for a slowly drowning man attempting to dog paddle in the Muddy Mississippi, but certainly the aforementioned C ‘N’ C (Carter & Clinton) would be right there in the mix for biggest White House losers.
Well, good riddance to King George! May we never see the likes of him again. (Although I know we will, and IMMEDIATELY.)
Bush did outlaw partial birth abortion during his Eight Terrible Years (something that Bubba Clinton didn’t have the soul to do), and I feel a great deal of appreciation for THAT! And he did, finally, on his last full day in office, bow to intense pressure from Congressional representatives on both sides of the aisle and the American people in general, and commute the sentences of the unjustly imprisoned Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They will be released on March 20th. But Ramos and Compean ought never to have been sent to prison in the first place. Their prosecution by the Bush Administration was just par for the Pathetic Course.
On December 15, 2008, I wrote to King George for the second time in a couple of years, pleading with him to take proper action in the case of Ramos and Compean. Below is a copy of my December 15th e-mail:
Dear President Bush ~
As you know, unless something of monumental proportions occurs between now and when Barack Obama moves in, you will be leaving the White House with the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a U.S. President.
I know a way that you could do the proper thing AND boost your approval ratings before stepping down: pardon the unjustly prosecuted Border Patrol Agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. I don't believe there is any other single act you could do at this point that would go further in improving the public perception of your presidency!
The average American, such as myself, feels very strongly that what was done to agents Ramos and Compean was a great miscarriage of justice and a black eye for the Federal Judicial System under your watch, and that it needs to be overturned before you leave the White House. This correction made by you prior to closing out your presidency would unquestionably mean a great deal to many Americans and it would go far in improving your presidential legacy.
Please, President Bush, do what the majority of Americans know to be right and pardon the Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean as quickly as possible, for both their sakes and the good of their families, as well as for the memory of your presidency. This right decision made by you will make a large impression on how we remember you in years to come. Believing that you will do what is right, I thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Stephen T. McCarthy
We The People were finally heard by the King. Sort of. The so-called “Christian” Son-Of-A-Bush couldn’t find it in his heart to pardon the Border Patrol Agents, but at least he did reduce their sentences. I guess it’s the best we could realistically hope for from someone like George W. Bush.
Everything else this president did was Nightmare City, like Disastersville, man. The good news is that we are now rid of that Chip Off The Ol’ “Read My Lips” Blockhead, and these eight years of misadventure have come to a close. The bad news is that we are now about to embark on a new misadventure: we’re off to see the Wizard, the Marxist Wizard B.O. Just follow the pinko brick road! Click the heels of your Revolutionary Red ruby slippers together and repeat after me: "There’s no place like Moscow… There’s no place like Moscow… There’s no place like Moscow…"
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
A link to mo’ info ‘bout Ramos And Compean:
Who Would Jesus Send Christmas Cards To?
.
There’s just no good reason to Beat-Around-The-Bush, so I’m going to come right out and say it directly: the King George W(ish I had a brain) Bush presidency was simply the worst presidency in my 49 years. That’s even a bit hard for me to believe considering that I have lived through the Washington D.C. train wrecks known as “The Jimmy Carter Fiasco” and “The Bill ‘Bubba’ Clinton Years Of Treason”, but nevertheless, in my estimation, King George was really bad, and that weren’t good!
Based upon my own knowledge of history then, I rate Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and King George W(ish I had a brain) Bush as the worst U.S. Presidents ever! (But Wilson really takes the cake. America will simply never recover from what that traitor did to it.) After those three, it starts to get a bit murky like it is for a slowly drowning man attempting to dog paddle in the Muddy Mississippi, but certainly the aforementioned C ‘N’ C (Carter & Clinton) would be right there in the mix for biggest White House losers.
Well, good riddance to King George! May we never see the likes of him again. (Although I know we will, and IMMEDIATELY.)
Bush did outlaw partial birth abortion during his Eight Terrible Years (something that Bubba Clinton didn’t have the soul to do), and I feel a great deal of appreciation for THAT! And he did, finally, on his last full day in office, bow to intense pressure from Congressional representatives on both sides of the aisle and the American people in general, and commute the sentences of the unjustly imprisoned Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. They will be released on March 20th. But Ramos and Compean ought never to have been sent to prison in the first place. Their prosecution by the Bush Administration was just par for the Pathetic Course.
On December 15, 2008, I wrote to King George for the second time in a couple of years, pleading with him to take proper action in the case of Ramos and Compean. Below is a copy of my December 15th e-mail:
Dear President Bush ~
As you know, unless something of monumental proportions occurs between now and when Barack Obama moves in, you will be leaving the White House with the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a U.S. President.
I know a way that you could do the proper thing AND boost your approval ratings before stepping down: pardon the unjustly prosecuted Border Patrol Agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. I don't believe there is any other single act you could do at this point that would go further in improving the public perception of your presidency!
The average American, such as myself, feels very strongly that what was done to agents Ramos and Compean was a great miscarriage of justice and a black eye for the Federal Judicial System under your watch, and that it needs to be overturned before you leave the White House. This correction made by you prior to closing out your presidency would unquestionably mean a great deal to many Americans and it would go far in improving your presidential legacy.
Please, President Bush, do what the majority of Americans know to be right and pardon the Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean as quickly as possible, for both their sakes and the good of their families, as well as for the memory of your presidency. This right decision made by you will make a large impression on how we remember you in years to come. Believing that you will do what is right, I thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Stephen T. McCarthy
We The People were finally heard by the King. Sort of. The so-called “Christian” Son-Of-A-Bush couldn’t find it in his heart to pardon the Border Patrol Agents, but at least he did reduce their sentences. I guess it’s the best we could realistically hope for from someone like George W. Bush.
Everything else this president did was Nightmare City, like Disastersville, man. The good news is that we are now rid of that Chip Off The Ol’ “Read My Lips” Blockhead, and these eight years of misadventure have come to a close. The bad news is that we are now about to embark on a new misadventure: we’re off to see the Wizard, the Marxist Wizard B.O. Just follow the pinko brick road! Click the heels of your Revolutionary Red ruby slippers together and repeat after me: "There’s no place like Moscow… There’s no place like Moscow… There’s no place like Moscow…"
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
A link to mo’ info ‘bout Ramos And Compean:
Who Would Jesus Send Christmas Cards To?
.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The CFR: "CHRISTIANS" On FOREIGN RELATIONS?
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Boy Howdy, ya learn something new every day. Well, ya do if you’re as ignint as I is. (Are?)
What’d I learn? Something about the COUNCIL On FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)? Nah. I’ve had a handle on that subject for a very long time. In fact, anyone who’s known me for even just ninety minutes has heard me bitchin’ ‘n’ moanin’ ‘bout the Council on Foreign Relations for what, to them, must feel like ninety years. I have plenty to say about the CFR, and I’ve said it, too! You can read THIS. Or THIS. Or even THIS.
No, it’s not WHAT but WHO. Certainly I’m aware that the CFR Benedict Arnoldian (traitorodoriferous) stench has wafted into every facet of American life because Council members have been found from the Presidency to the Congress, from the Judiciary to the Media, from Wall Street to Philanthropic Foundations, from Academia to the Center Of The Universe (Prescott, Arizona) and all points between and beyond.
Even so, this story I found on the web took me just a leetle mite by surprise. As you will learn, Barack Obama’s choice of pastor RICK WARREN to lead the prayer at the 44th president’s January 20th inauguration isn’t quite the eyebrow-raising “Whatchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout, Willis?” moment that it might at first blush appear to be. Obama isn’t really ‘Incongrutiating’, it only looks that way. I mean, I too initially asked myself: “Why would a Christian like Obama [*Wink!-Wink! Nudge!-Nudge!*] want a (supposedly) Christian’s Christian like Rick Warren to do the ‘God He’p Us’ at his upcoming coming-out party?” But in reading the following article, I got the answer, and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear… and disturbingly dark:
RICK WARREN, THE CFR, AND BARACK OBAMA
Written by Ann Shibler and Art Thompson
Friday, 19 December 2008
Is Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the presidential inauguration purposefully driven? The news media, Evangelicals, the gay community, pro-lifers, and the general public are all agog either positively or negatively, over Obama’s choice of Rick Warren, pastor and founder of the mega Saddleback Church to give the inaugural invocation.
Members of the Saddleback Church are happy about the choice. For them it’s a publicity coup that will bring Warren and his church even greater mainstream visibility.
The gay community, however, is fuming. Rick Warren supposedly supported Prop 8 in California that banned gay marriages and in the past has stated that the traditional marriage really need not be disturbed.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization, said, upon learning of the appointment: "We feel a deep level of disrespect when one of the architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination." The group sent a letter detailing its complaints to Obama, asking him to reconsider.
Obama, meanwhile, has defended his choice, saying, “dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," while noting that in his opinion Warren is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays and lesbians, and will remain so. The president-elect also said a "wide range of viewpoints" will be presented during the inaugural ceremonies. In fact, he enlisted a gay marching band for the parade -- The Gay and Lesbian Band Association. He says he and vice-president elect Biden are proud and honored to have them.
Warren’s pending appearance is also causing pro-life groups and others to wonder why a supposed pro-lifer would want to accept such an invitation from a decidedly pro-abortion minded president-elect. They were equally puzzled when Warren invited then-candidate Obama to speak at his church at a seminar entitled, “We Must Work Together.”
From Ingrid Schlueter’s “Slice of Laodicea,” a website that offers commentary on the modern Christian church, comes this marvelous insight into Rick Warren’s philosophy:
You may have read Warren’s quote this week that the “social gospel is Marxism in Christian clothing.” Really, Rick? There is absolutely nothing so effective in the bottomless bag of tricks of our emerging cultural architects than this ploy. Nobody better embodies the social gospel than Rick Warren. For years, he has been exposed for promoting exactly that—helping people externally minus the exclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet here we have the man who has done more to further the social gospel than any other, actually decrying the “social gospel.”
Schlueter offers more saying that Warren’s message is that one can now “claim to be pro-life while aiding and abetting someone fully committed to continuing the bloodshed of innocents.” Warren, she says, believes that contradictory opposites don’t have to drive each other apart:
This is an irreconcilable difference–being pro-life and pro-death. Rick Warren wants us to believe that out of the two opposing sides, out of the struggle, there can be eventual unity and progress. That there can emerge a synthesis.
Warren’s actions speak louder than his rhetoric. Claiming to be pro-life, he promotes abortion. Claiming to be anti-Marxist, he practices a fundamental tenets of it, that of Lenin’s “unity of opposites.” Claiming to be against modern society’s social gospel, he instead is a practitioner of it.
Human beings cannot look into the soul of man but there are indications that Warren may not be what he seems and that Obama, once again, is getting his marching orders from the New World Order crowd.
The August 18, 2008 issue of Time magazine displayed a large picture of Rick Warren and called him “America’s most powerful religious leader…” The article inside was titled, “The Global Ambition of Rick Warren.” The subtitle read, “How a charismatic Californian became the closest thing to Billy Graham – and why religion in America will never be the same.”
After the movement against the war in Vietnam, the violence driven civil rights activists, plus the charade of the collapse of communism, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other radical terrorist organizations were given instructions to assimilate into the mainstream of America and work there to bring about socialism.
It is interesting to see how many of the former leaders in the SDS, Black Panthers and other communist controlled organizations became religious leaders.
Stokley Carmichael of “Burn, Baby, Burn” fame, as well as H. Rap Brown, leader of the Black Panthers, became leaders of radical Islam to carry forward their Marxism.
Michael Lerner, whom J. Edgar Hoover called the most dangerous terrorist in America, the leader of the SDS in Seattle, became a rabbi.
And, Rick Warren, who led a march on his local courthouse for the SDS, has soared to great heights. Does he still believe what he professed in the 1960s?
Careful reading of the Time article has many hints that his Christianity is not the Christianity of our fathers. But there is one clue that tells us all we need to know.
In America, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the primary promoter of the the “New World Order” internationalism once praised by the first President Bush and is linked with several other similar organizations around the world to promote a one world government under a form of socialism. It is an elitist organization. One cannot be a member of the CFR and not realize that their policies lead to the abrogation of the Constitution, sovereignty, and independence of the United States. David Rockefeller, who has admitted in his biography that he is part of a cabal to bring about a one world government, was the chairman for 15 years.
Rick Warren is a member of the CFR.
Obama has surrounded himself, just as Bush did, with members of the CFR. In addition, Obama has shown a propensity to also surround himself with people who came out of the radical and terrorist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and, in the process the CFR controlled media has made it appear as if it is all centrist politics.
When you know and understand the details, it’s a lot easier to know just who Obama -- and Warren -- are pandering to in all of this, and who’s goals they are furthering.
Say, did you notice how in my opening paragraphs I didn’t call Barack an “Obama-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong” or a “Marxist Maroon”, or anything like that? It’s because I’ve decided to make a New Year’s Resolution to stop calling all these political pinheads “Political Pinheads.” I’m going to give up all the name-calling and from now on, treat everyone with the utmost respect and civility. No more telling the socialist dogs that they’re “a pack of Socialist Dogs.” No more calling Democrats “Dumb-O-Crats” and Republicans “Repugnantcans.” I won’t be reminding the Liberals anymore that they’re a bunch of weenies; or calling the brainwashed pseudo-conservatives “Neoconned Newtwits.”
Yep, that’s all behind me now, folks. The Feminists are no longer “Brain-dead Bean Curd.” (Well, I mean, I won’t be saying that they are.) I won’t be calling the American Civil Liberties Union “a bunch of Commie f—” … Uhm… “a bunch of Commie f—” … Dang it, I’ve already faggotten what I used to call them. But anyway, I’ll no longer be labeling the— Freaks! That’s what it was: “a bunch of Commie freaks!” Now I remember. … Anyhow… I’ll no longer be labeling the New York Times articles “Democratic Chips And Dipsh#tism”, nor referring to TV’s mainstream Talking Head political pundits as “Very Special Olympians.” Heck, I think I’m even going to withhold my criticism of Rush Limboob. Er… that’s “Limbaugh.” (Doh! Old habits die hard.)
But I’m not ready to try embracing MICHAEL MEDVED yet. I mean, there’s no point in overdoing it in a single year only to perish by heart attack trying to display love that I just ain’t truly acquired yet. (Or more embarrassingly, choking to death on my own vomit.) Perhaps I’ll see if I can add “MENDACIOUS MEDVED” to the mix in 2010 (if I don’t explode and die in 2009).
Yes, sirree, good people, I’m going to “do unto others as I would have others do unto me.” I guess many women will be testifying and I’ll be going to prison soon. “But no, but no, but no!” (…to quote my old friend Pooh) seriously, from this point on, it’s exclusively the kinder, gentler Stephen T. McCarthy.
Damn [*sniffle!*] I miss me already.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Psst. Of course, someone could get up a small petition, ya know, like a small petition? And if it said something like “Bring Back The Clown!” or “Can New Coke And Give Us Classic Coke” or “Stephen! Stephen! Come Back!” we here at the STMcC Company would obligingly listen, as we always acquiesce to the will of our readers (when they’re right… or if they’re wrong but we think there’s money in it).
.
Boy Howdy, ya learn something new every day. Well, ya do if you’re as ignint as I is. (Are?)
What’d I learn? Something about the COUNCIL On FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)? Nah. I’ve had a handle on that subject for a very long time. In fact, anyone who’s known me for even just ninety minutes has heard me bitchin’ ‘n’ moanin’ ‘bout the Council on Foreign Relations for what, to them, must feel like ninety years. I have plenty to say about the CFR, and I’ve said it, too! You can read THIS. Or THIS. Or even THIS.
No, it’s not WHAT but WHO. Certainly I’m aware that the CFR Benedict Arnoldian (traitorodoriferous) stench has wafted into every facet of American life because Council members have been found from the Presidency to the Congress, from the Judiciary to the Media, from Wall Street to Philanthropic Foundations, from Academia to the Center Of The Universe (Prescott, Arizona) and all points between and beyond.
Even so, this story I found on the web took me just a leetle mite by surprise. As you will learn, Barack Obama’s choice of pastor RICK WARREN to lead the prayer at the 44th president’s January 20th inauguration isn’t quite the eyebrow-raising “Whatchoo Talkin’ ‘Bout, Willis?” moment that it might at first blush appear to be. Obama isn’t really ‘Incongrutiating’, it only looks that way. I mean, I too initially asked myself: “Why would a Christian like Obama [*Wink!-Wink! Nudge!-Nudge!*] want a (supposedly) Christian’s Christian like Rick Warren to do the ‘God He’p Us’ at his upcoming coming-out party?” But in reading the following article, I got the answer, and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear… and disturbingly dark:
RICK WARREN, THE CFR, AND BARACK OBAMA
Written by Ann Shibler and Art Thompson
Friday, 19 December 2008
Is Obama’s choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the presidential inauguration purposefully driven? The news media, Evangelicals, the gay community, pro-lifers, and the general public are all agog either positively or negatively, over Obama’s choice of Rick Warren, pastor and founder of the mega Saddleback Church to give the inaugural invocation.
Members of the Saddleback Church are happy about the choice. For them it’s a publicity coup that will bring Warren and his church even greater mainstream visibility.
The gay community, however, is fuming. Rick Warren supposedly supported Prop 8 in California that banned gay marriages and in the past has stated that the traditional marriage really need not be disturbed.
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization, said, upon learning of the appointment: "We feel a deep level of disrespect when one of the architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination." The group sent a letter detailing its complaints to Obama, asking him to reconsider.
Obama, meanwhile, has defended his choice, saying, “dialogue is part of what my campaign is all about," while noting that in his opinion Warren is a "fierce advocate for equality" for gays and lesbians, and will remain so. The president-elect also said a "wide range of viewpoints" will be presented during the inaugural ceremonies. In fact, he enlisted a gay marching band for the parade -- The Gay and Lesbian Band Association. He says he and vice-president elect Biden are proud and honored to have them.
Warren’s pending appearance is also causing pro-life groups and others to wonder why a supposed pro-lifer would want to accept such an invitation from a decidedly pro-abortion minded president-elect. They were equally puzzled when Warren invited then-candidate Obama to speak at his church at a seminar entitled, “We Must Work Together.”
From Ingrid Schlueter’s “Slice of Laodicea,” a website that offers commentary on the modern Christian church, comes this marvelous insight into Rick Warren’s philosophy:
You may have read Warren’s quote this week that the “social gospel is Marxism in Christian clothing.” Really, Rick? There is absolutely nothing so effective in the bottomless bag of tricks of our emerging cultural architects than this ploy. Nobody better embodies the social gospel than Rick Warren. For years, he has been exposed for promoting exactly that—helping people externally minus the exclusive Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet here we have the man who has done more to further the social gospel than any other, actually decrying the “social gospel.”
Schlueter offers more saying that Warren’s message is that one can now “claim to be pro-life while aiding and abetting someone fully committed to continuing the bloodshed of innocents.” Warren, she says, believes that contradictory opposites don’t have to drive each other apart:
This is an irreconcilable difference–being pro-life and pro-death. Rick Warren wants us to believe that out of the two opposing sides, out of the struggle, there can be eventual unity and progress. That there can emerge a synthesis.
Warren’s actions speak louder than his rhetoric. Claiming to be pro-life, he promotes abortion. Claiming to be anti-Marxist, he practices a fundamental tenets of it, that of Lenin’s “unity of opposites.” Claiming to be against modern society’s social gospel, he instead is a practitioner of it.
Human beings cannot look into the soul of man but there are indications that Warren may not be what he seems and that Obama, once again, is getting his marching orders from the New World Order crowd.
The August 18, 2008 issue of Time magazine displayed a large picture of Rick Warren and called him “America’s most powerful religious leader…” The article inside was titled, “The Global Ambition of Rick Warren.” The subtitle read, “How a charismatic Californian became the closest thing to Billy Graham – and why religion in America will never be the same.”
After the movement against the war in Vietnam, the violence driven civil rights activists, plus the charade of the collapse of communism, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other radical terrorist organizations were given instructions to assimilate into the mainstream of America and work there to bring about socialism.
It is interesting to see how many of the former leaders in the SDS, Black Panthers and other communist controlled organizations became religious leaders.
Stokley Carmichael of “Burn, Baby, Burn” fame, as well as H. Rap Brown, leader of the Black Panthers, became leaders of radical Islam to carry forward their Marxism.
Michael Lerner, whom J. Edgar Hoover called the most dangerous terrorist in America, the leader of the SDS in Seattle, became a rabbi.
And, Rick Warren, who led a march on his local courthouse for the SDS, has soared to great heights. Does he still believe what he professed in the 1960s?
Careful reading of the Time article has many hints that his Christianity is not the Christianity of our fathers. But there is one clue that tells us all we need to know.
In America, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the primary promoter of the the “New World Order” internationalism once praised by the first President Bush and is linked with several other similar organizations around the world to promote a one world government under a form of socialism. It is an elitist organization. One cannot be a member of the CFR and not realize that their policies lead to the abrogation of the Constitution, sovereignty, and independence of the United States. David Rockefeller, who has admitted in his biography that he is part of a cabal to bring about a one world government, was the chairman for 15 years.
Rick Warren is a member of the CFR.
Obama has surrounded himself, just as Bush did, with members of the CFR. In addition, Obama has shown a propensity to also surround himself with people who came out of the radical and terrorist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and, in the process the CFR controlled media has made it appear as if it is all centrist politics.
When you know and understand the details, it’s a lot easier to know just who Obama -- and Warren -- are pandering to in all of this, and who’s goals they are furthering.
Say, did you notice how in my opening paragraphs I didn’t call Barack an “Obama-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong” or a “Marxist Maroon”, or anything like that? It’s because I’ve decided to make a New Year’s Resolution to stop calling all these political pinheads “Political Pinheads.” I’m going to give up all the name-calling and from now on, treat everyone with the utmost respect and civility. No more telling the socialist dogs that they’re “a pack of Socialist Dogs.” No more calling Democrats “Dumb-O-Crats” and Republicans “Repugnantcans.” I won’t be reminding the Liberals anymore that they’re a bunch of weenies; or calling the brainwashed pseudo-conservatives “Neoconned Newtwits.”
Yep, that’s all behind me now, folks. The Feminists are no longer “Brain-dead Bean Curd.” (Well, I mean, I won’t be saying that they are.) I won’t be calling the American Civil Liberties Union “a bunch of Commie f—” … Uhm… “a bunch of Commie f—” … Dang it, I’ve already faggotten what I used to call them. But anyway, I’ll no longer be labeling the— Freaks! That’s what it was: “a bunch of Commie freaks!” Now I remember. … Anyhow… I’ll no longer be labeling the New York Times articles “Democratic Chips And Dipsh#tism”, nor referring to TV’s mainstream Talking Head political pundits as “Very Special Olympians.” Heck, I think I’m even going to withhold my criticism of Rush Limboob. Er… that’s “Limbaugh.” (Doh! Old habits die hard.)
But I’m not ready to try embracing MICHAEL MEDVED yet. I mean, there’s no point in overdoing it in a single year only to perish by heart attack trying to display love that I just ain’t truly acquired yet. (Or more embarrassingly, choking to death on my own vomit.) Perhaps I’ll see if I can add “MENDACIOUS MEDVED” to the mix in 2010 (if I don’t explode and die in 2009).
Yes, sirree, good people, I’m going to “do unto others as I would have others do unto me.” I guess many women will be testifying and I’ll be going to prison soon. “But no, but no, but no!” (…to quote my old friend Pooh) seriously, from this point on, it’s exclusively the kinder, gentler Stephen T. McCarthy.
Damn [*sniffle!*] I miss me already.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Psst. Of course, someone could get up a small petition, ya know, like a small petition? And if it said something like “Bring Back The Clown!” or “Can New Coke And Give Us Classic Coke” or “Stephen! Stephen! Come Back!” we here at the STMcC Company would obligingly listen, as we always acquiesce to the will of our readers (when they’re right… or if they’re wrong but we think there’s money in it).
.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
BORN TO BE FILED
.
Of all the writers who regularly contribute articles to The New American magazine, my favorite by far is the Constitution law scholar Edwin Vieira, Jr. Vieira has a way of attacking his subject matter by cutting through all the nonsense to go straight to the heart of the issue, leaving the reader a bit embarrassed that he wasn’t able to discern on his own what now seems so blatantly obvious. Vieira is like a bulldog with a bone: he’s going to gnaw on that thing until all of the marrow is exposed for everyone to see.
But does he really know his stuff? View his credentials:
Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).
For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.
He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the country. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume “Pieces of Eight”: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us
His latest work is "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary"
I recently posted a Blog Bit here about Barack Obama’s refusal to present his birth certificate, proving his Constitutional bona fides to assume the office of president of the United States (WHAT, IS HE FROM THE WOMB OF THE MOTHER SHIP SENT BY PLANET MALCOLM-X?)
Well, in the January 5, 2009 issue of The New American magazine is the following article written by Kurt Williamsen, which addresses this same subject, and in the final paragraph, the Constitution lawyer Edwin Vieira weighs in with some encouraging words for the few remaining Americans who still feel that “The Supreme Law Of The Land” should be obeyed and not broken:
COURT WON’T HEAR OBAMA CITIZENSHIP CASE – BUT MAY SOON
On Monday, December 8, the Supreme Court unsurprisingly decided not to hear a case by retired lawyer Leo Donofrio claiming that Obama is not eligible to be president because Obama had dual nationality at birth, so he wasn't a natural born citizen as required under the Constitution to be president. The dismissal should have come as no surprise to anyone — not because, as major-media mouthpieces trumpet, that the case has no merit — because it was clearly evident that Donofrio would either be viewed by the court to not be a plaintiff in good standing or his claim would be found without merit because any child born in the United States, as Donofrio's case assumes to be true for Obama, is considered a natural born citizen — as millions of illegal immigrants who have had children in the United States can attest.
This case was doomed from the beginning because the Supreme Court was sure to agree with multiple findings by lower courts that an average citizen cannot contest a president's eligibility to be president; only those people who are legally "injured" by a presidential aspirant's candidacy — either monetarily, physically, or reputation-wise — may sue. The fact that such findings by the lower courts are absurd because the U.S. Constitution is a contract between the government and the people and contract law stipulates that any party to a contract has the right to enforce a contract was not going to be a reason for the Supreme Court to hear arguments in the Donofrio case.
Neither was the fact that the Constitution itself declares that the only issue to be determined by a federal court for a case to proceed is the case's constitutionality — not a plaintiff's standing — going to stop the Supreme Court from throwing out this case. (For an analysis of the constitutionally correct application of law in this case, see the article by constitutional law scholar Edwin Vieira, entitled "Obama Must Stand Up Now Or Step Down.")
Similar to Donofrio's case, a case by lifelong Democrat Philip Berg that is pending before the Supreme Court is likely to face a quick death for lack of standing, though Berg is arguing that Obama was not born in the United States and, even if he was born here, his mother evidently renounced Obama's citizenship when she moved to Indonesia. During the four years Obama was enrolled in school in Indonesia, enrollment required both citizenship and a renunciation of citizenship in other countries.
At the present time, only one case about Obama's citizenship has a better than a one-in-a-million chance of making headway (only slightly better, in my opinion, because judges regularly find "legal justification" for ignoring the law, even the Constitution). That is the case filed by Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate for the American Independent Party, and Markham Robinson, a California elector. These men definitely have legal standing to sue. And despite protests to the contrary by many, good reason to sue.
The best reason to sue is to uphold the Constitution as the law of the land; the second-best reason is because Obama is hiding something. One doesn't, as Obama has reputedly done, hire three law firms to keep one's birth records and college records sealed unless one has something to hide. (It is speculated that Obama's college records will show that he applied for aid to foreign students.) Like I've said in another article on this topic, I have had on several occasions been required by employers to furnish original birth certificates and college records before they would hire me. To most people, such a request is simply no big deal. There's something wrong here.
Many in the major media, and even some moderately conservative news organs such as NewsMax, have verbally skewered lawsuits to verify Obama's citizenship, claiming that they know Obama is a U.S. citizen because Obama has posted his birth certificate online, an announcement of Obama's birth was in a Hawaiian newspaper, and members of Hawaii's health department have stated that Obama has an original birth certificate on file there. To say the least, I want these guys as my investigators if I ever pull a criminal caper. In truth, Obama did not post a birth certificate online, but a certificate of live birth (a document that would not even meet the standards of the average geneology society as proof of citizenship); the birth announcement merely said that the Obama's had a son (no hospital or place of birth was listed); and in Hawaii, parents of children residing in Hawaii may submit alternate birth documentation to the Department of Health and still be deemed to have "an original birth certificate."
But besides the lawsuits, there are other ways that Obama's impending swearing-in as president could be upset. First, on December 15, state electors will convene to vote for president (Obama is really not the president-elect yet; he has a couple of steps to go), and if the electors are swamped with voter demands to verify Obama's eligibility as president, they may withhold their electoral ballots until Obama proves he is a citizen. And on January 6, Congress must meet to certify the counts of the states' electoral ballots. At that time, any senator or congressman may challenge the ballots for a good reason. If that happens, the Constitution compels Congress to get to the truth underlying the complaint. Again a letter-writing campaign to Congressmen could end in an investigation of Obama's citizenship.
But at least in the short run, Obama's supporters probably will prevail, even though Obama's actions stink with suspicion and the proof given of his citizenship is not proof at all. They will succeed because politicians tend to either be spineless followers or unapologetic dealmakers — at both the state and federal levels (although a writing campaign to constitutional bulldog Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) could yield a positive result), and it is unlikely that congressmen, even if there is a congressional objection, will exert due diligence toward finding out the truth of the matter as they are constitutionally bound to do.
But in the long run, the chances that a federal court will demand that Hawaii allow a forensic inspection of Obama's birth records are better than one might assume. Edwin Vieira explains: "Assume, however, that no inquiry, or only a perfunctory inquiry, or only an obviously tainted inquiry takes place at the stage of counting the Electors' votes. Is the issue then forever foreclosed? Not at all. For a extensive class of litigants who absolutely do have 'standing' to challenge Obama's eligibility will come into existence, and demand relief as a matter of undeniable constitutional right and practical necessity, as soon as Obama's Department of Justice attempts to enforce through criminal prosecutions some of the controversial legislation that the new Congress will enact and Obama will sign — such as statutes aimed at stripping common Americans of the firearms to which (in Obama's derisive terminology) they 'cling.'" So as soon as Obama signs a bill into law that has a negative effect on an American, that American will have standing to sue Obama to find out whether Obama actually has the power to sign the bill. Things could get interesting.
Danged if that last paragraph containing Vieira’s assessment (which I highlighted in red) doesn’t give a fellow a wee bit of “HOPE” that he might see a real “CHANGE” at the White House.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Of all the writers who regularly contribute articles to The New American magazine, my favorite by far is the Constitution law scholar Edwin Vieira, Jr. Vieira has a way of attacking his subject matter by cutting through all the nonsense to go straight to the heart of the issue, leaving the reader a bit embarrassed that he wasn’t able to discern on his own what now seems so blatantly obvious. Vieira is like a bulldog with a bone: he’s going to gnaw on that thing until all of the marrow is exposed for everyone to see.
But does he really know his stuff? View his credentials:
Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).
For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.
He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the country. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume “Pieces of Eight”: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us
His latest work is "How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary"
I recently posted a Blog Bit here about Barack Obama’s refusal to present his birth certificate, proving his Constitutional bona fides to assume the office of president of the United States (WHAT, IS HE FROM THE WOMB OF THE MOTHER SHIP SENT BY PLANET MALCOLM-X?)
Well, in the January 5, 2009 issue of The New American magazine is the following article written by Kurt Williamsen, which addresses this same subject, and in the final paragraph, the Constitution lawyer Edwin Vieira weighs in with some encouraging words for the few remaining Americans who still feel that “The Supreme Law Of The Land” should be obeyed and not broken:
COURT WON’T HEAR OBAMA CITIZENSHIP CASE – BUT MAY SOON
On Monday, December 8, the Supreme Court unsurprisingly decided not to hear a case by retired lawyer Leo Donofrio claiming that Obama is not eligible to be president because Obama had dual nationality at birth, so he wasn't a natural born citizen as required under the Constitution to be president. The dismissal should have come as no surprise to anyone — not because, as major-media mouthpieces trumpet, that the case has no merit — because it was clearly evident that Donofrio would either be viewed by the court to not be a plaintiff in good standing or his claim would be found without merit because any child born in the United States, as Donofrio's case assumes to be true for Obama, is considered a natural born citizen — as millions of illegal immigrants who have had children in the United States can attest.
This case was doomed from the beginning because the Supreme Court was sure to agree with multiple findings by lower courts that an average citizen cannot contest a president's eligibility to be president; only those people who are legally "injured" by a presidential aspirant's candidacy — either monetarily, physically, or reputation-wise — may sue. The fact that such findings by the lower courts are absurd because the U.S. Constitution is a contract between the government and the people and contract law stipulates that any party to a contract has the right to enforce a contract was not going to be a reason for the Supreme Court to hear arguments in the Donofrio case.
Neither was the fact that the Constitution itself declares that the only issue to be determined by a federal court for a case to proceed is the case's constitutionality — not a plaintiff's standing — going to stop the Supreme Court from throwing out this case. (For an analysis of the constitutionally correct application of law in this case, see the article by constitutional law scholar Edwin Vieira, entitled "Obama Must Stand Up Now Or Step Down.")
Similar to Donofrio's case, a case by lifelong Democrat Philip Berg that is pending before the Supreme Court is likely to face a quick death for lack of standing, though Berg is arguing that Obama was not born in the United States and, even if he was born here, his mother evidently renounced Obama's citizenship when she moved to Indonesia. During the four years Obama was enrolled in school in Indonesia, enrollment required both citizenship and a renunciation of citizenship in other countries.
At the present time, only one case about Obama's citizenship has a better than a one-in-a-million chance of making headway (only slightly better, in my opinion, because judges regularly find "legal justification" for ignoring the law, even the Constitution). That is the case filed by Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate for the American Independent Party, and Markham Robinson, a California elector. These men definitely have legal standing to sue. And despite protests to the contrary by many, good reason to sue.
The best reason to sue is to uphold the Constitution as the law of the land; the second-best reason is because Obama is hiding something. One doesn't, as Obama has reputedly done, hire three law firms to keep one's birth records and college records sealed unless one has something to hide. (It is speculated that Obama's college records will show that he applied for aid to foreign students.) Like I've said in another article on this topic, I have had on several occasions been required by employers to furnish original birth certificates and college records before they would hire me. To most people, such a request is simply no big deal. There's something wrong here.
Many in the major media, and even some moderately conservative news organs such as NewsMax, have verbally skewered lawsuits to verify Obama's citizenship, claiming that they know Obama is a U.S. citizen because Obama has posted his birth certificate online, an announcement of Obama's birth was in a Hawaiian newspaper, and members of Hawaii's health department have stated that Obama has an original birth certificate on file there. To say the least, I want these guys as my investigators if I ever pull a criminal caper. In truth, Obama did not post a birth certificate online, but a certificate of live birth (a document that would not even meet the standards of the average geneology society as proof of citizenship); the birth announcement merely said that the Obama's had a son (no hospital or place of birth was listed); and in Hawaii, parents of children residing in Hawaii may submit alternate birth documentation to the Department of Health and still be deemed to have "an original birth certificate."
But besides the lawsuits, there are other ways that Obama's impending swearing-in as president could be upset. First, on December 15, state electors will convene to vote for president (Obama is really not the president-elect yet; he has a couple of steps to go), and if the electors are swamped with voter demands to verify Obama's eligibility as president, they may withhold their electoral ballots until Obama proves he is a citizen. And on January 6, Congress must meet to certify the counts of the states' electoral ballots. At that time, any senator or congressman may challenge the ballots for a good reason. If that happens, the Constitution compels Congress to get to the truth underlying the complaint. Again a letter-writing campaign to Congressmen could end in an investigation of Obama's citizenship.
But at least in the short run, Obama's supporters probably will prevail, even though Obama's actions stink with suspicion and the proof given of his citizenship is not proof at all. They will succeed because politicians tend to either be spineless followers or unapologetic dealmakers — at both the state and federal levels (although a writing campaign to constitutional bulldog Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) could yield a positive result), and it is unlikely that congressmen, even if there is a congressional objection, will exert due diligence toward finding out the truth of the matter as they are constitutionally bound to do.
But in the long run, the chances that a federal court will demand that Hawaii allow a forensic inspection of Obama's birth records are better than one might assume. Edwin Vieira explains: "Assume, however, that no inquiry, or only a perfunctory inquiry, or only an obviously tainted inquiry takes place at the stage of counting the Electors' votes. Is the issue then forever foreclosed? Not at all. For a extensive class of litigants who absolutely do have 'standing' to challenge Obama's eligibility will come into existence, and demand relief as a matter of undeniable constitutional right and practical necessity, as soon as Obama's Department of Justice attempts to enforce through criminal prosecutions some of the controversial legislation that the new Congress will enact and Obama will sign — such as statutes aimed at stripping common Americans of the firearms to which (in Obama's derisive terminology) they 'cling.'" So as soon as Obama signs a bill into law that has a negative effect on an American, that American will have standing to sue Obama to find out whether Obama actually has the power to sign the bill. Things could get interesting.
Danged if that last paragraph containing Vieira’s assessment (which I highlighted in red) doesn’t give a fellow a wee bit of “HOPE” that he might see a real “CHANGE” at the White House.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Friday, January 2, 2009
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
.
Every single year, I read THE HOLY BIBLE from Genesis chapter 1 through Revelation chapter 22. (For my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits: That's a pretty fair chunk of "The Good Book.") You can do it too! You can go through the entire "Word Of God" in one year by reading only 3 chapters a day, but 5 chapters on the Sabbath. (For my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits: The "Sabbath" is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.) That's an investment of a mere 15 minutes of reading time per day in order to complete The Holy Book in just under a year.
Yesterday, January 1st, I read the first three chapters of Genesis (I'm right on schedule for 2009!), and I'd like to share just a bit of that with you now:
GENESIS; Chapter 2
15) Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
16) And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17) "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
18) And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."
19) Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
20) So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
21) And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.
22) Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
AND THAT'S WHEN THE TROUBLE STARTED!
Woman may not have cost Man an arm and a leg, but she did cost him a rib and an eternally easy life spent on a comfy sofa in front of a TV in his eDEN.
Good going, G-o-d!
Is it any wonder then that Man (Adam) gave the name
"d-o-g" to his "BEST FRIEND"?
OK, on a more serious note (before the lightning strikes) . . . . .
Let's examine one more passage here from the book of Genesis:
GENESIS; Chapter 3:
1) Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
Give some genuine thought to that sentence and see if you don't perhaps find some rather surprisingly significant meaning slightly concealed within those simple words. Is there some odd way of interpreting that verse which would add an unexpected wrinkle to it? And if so, do you think there might be some credence we can give to that new interpretation? Are there any other verses in The Bible that might validate it, or can you entertain any logical thoughtstreams that might lead to a previously unseen Ocean of Truth? I'm not sayin'; I'm just askin'.
No, I'm not going to spell this out for you; it's bad enough that I had to spell out that "G-o-d"/"d-o-g" thang above for the benefit of my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Every single year, I read THE HOLY BIBLE from Genesis chapter 1 through Revelation chapter 22. (For my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits: That's a pretty fair chunk of "The Good Book.") You can do it too! You can go through the entire "Word Of God" in one year by reading only 3 chapters a day, but 5 chapters on the Sabbath. (For my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits: The "Sabbath" is sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.) That's an investment of a mere 15 minutes of reading time per day in order to complete The Holy Book in just under a year.
Yesterday, January 1st, I read the first three chapters of Genesis (I'm right on schedule for 2009!), and I'd like to share just a bit of that with you now:
GENESIS; Chapter 2
15) Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
16) And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17) "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
18) And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."
19) Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
20) So Adam gave names to all the cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
21) And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place.
22) Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
AND THAT'S WHEN THE TROUBLE STARTED!
Woman may not have cost Man an arm and a leg, but she did cost him a rib and an eternally easy life spent on a comfy sofa in front of a TV in his eDEN.
Good going, G-o-d!
Is it any wonder then that Man (Adam) gave the name
"d-o-g" to his "BEST FRIEND"?
OK, on a more serious note (before the lightning strikes) . . . . .
Let's examine one more passage here from the book of Genesis:
GENESIS; Chapter 3:
1) Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
Give some genuine thought to that sentence and see if you don't perhaps find some rather surprisingly significant meaning slightly concealed within those simple words. Is there some odd way of interpreting that verse which would add an unexpected wrinkle to it? And if so, do you think there might be some credence we can give to that new interpretation? Are there any other verses in The Bible that might validate it, or can you entertain any logical thoughtstreams that might lead to a previously unseen Ocean of Truth? I'm not sayin'; I'm just askin'.
No, I'm not going to spell this out for you; it's bad enough that I had to spell out that "G-o-d"/"d-o-g" thang above for the benefit of my socially Liberal and politically Socialistic fans, as well as all the Neocon Nitwits.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
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