Al Gore made another public appearance yesterday. His timing is always impeccable. While the country was in the midst of a late  fall deep freeze that covered everything north of Florida in a blanket of snow, there he was assuring us that global warming was right on track. He had been warning us for 30 years.  The bad news for Gore is that the weather doesn’t cooperate with his predictions. The good news for Gore is that the sycophants in the press don’t seem to care. Global warming alarmism continues apace, even in the face of the recently revealed emails that demonstrate the bogus nature of the science from the “scientists” themselves. The emails, of course, originate from the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. They were published on another wordpress blog: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com. Note that this group is not some minor player in the “sky-is-falling” school. It is the school. The correspondence passed between many of the biggest proponents of the anthropogenic climate fear-mongers, including Phil Jones and Michael Mann, the developer of the “hockey stick.”

I am not a scientist. Heck, I don’t even own a microscope. But I do have some common sense, a handle on logic and a grip on reality.  While that doesn’t qualify me to write in peer-reviewed science journals, it does compel me to ask some basic questions about the environmental crisis du jour. With that caveat, let me step into the global warming debate, or as the proponents have taken to calling it since the weather has not cooperated, Global Climate Change.

We are asked to swallow certain propositions so that we may cede our nation’s sovereignty to an international group of environmental bureaucrats with the power to tax and regulate the United State back to the 19th century. There is much at stake. Here are the propositions we are asked to believe: 1) the planet is getting warmer; 2) this warming is not cyclical, but inexorably one-directional; 3) this warming is global; 4) this warming is man-made (anthropogenic); 5) it is harmful to life on the planet; and 6) we can change it by changing our life styles. All six of these propositions must be accepted for us before we decide to spend trillions of dollars on a “solution” and forgoing much of the modern conveniences afforded by the technical revolution of the last century. If we accept them all but the last, i.e. that we our efforts will indeed effect a change in the direction of the climate, it is pointless to spend the time and fortune to quixotically tilt toward windmills (literally). Let’s examine them one at a time, applying common sense and as sense of history.

1. The planet is getting warmer. The very first proposition is itself much in doubt. The base-line you use will determine your answer. If we use the decade of the seventies as our base-line, we could say things are heating up. If we use the decade of the 1930’s or the 1990’s as our standard, the planet is cooling. Here is where a good memory, or a simple Google search, can do wonders to bring some historical perspective to the discussion. Back in the 1970’s the environmental crisis du jour was global cooling. Typically the same culprit was to blame: Man. The headlines from that epoch have aptly been dropped into a media memory hole. Let us remind ourselves of some of the headlines to articles that were as certain then that we were heading to a new ice age as they are now that we are headed toward global combustion.

Time magazine carried an article titled Science: Another Ice Age? in its June 24, 1974 issue. The story relates how the previous three decades saw temperatures decline and ice caps grow. Though you never hear anyone in the mainstream press refer to such pieces, they were not uncommon. This story may still be found on Time’s web site. It is worth checking out: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

 ”Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin’s Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.” That paragraph set up this warning, “Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic.” So we went from catastrophic cooling, to catastrophic warming in thirty years and nobody in the mainstream press connects the dots.

 

Time  magazine was not alone in beating the drum for a cooling catastrophe. Newsweek had global cooling headlines as late as 1978.  And George Will reminds us, “In the 1970s, ‘a major cooling of the planet’ was ‘widely considered inevitable’ because it was ‘well-established’ that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate ‘has been getting cooler since about 1950′ (New York Times, May 21, 1975).”

We don’t have to go all the way back to the 70’s to read the screed that we were headed toward another ice age. “The advent of the new ice age, scientists say, appears to be guaranteed.  The devastation will be astonishing.”  Gregg Easterbrook  in “Return of the Glaciers,” Newsweek, November 23, 1992. Easterbrook has recently(June 2006) gone on record as accepting that global warming is the unchallenged view of climate scientists (see http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/easterbrook/20060517.pdf).

It seems that the Earth is about 1 degree warmer on average than a century ago. But we were just emerging from what climatalogists called a Little Ice Age that began after the Medieval Climate Optimum and lasted until the end of the 19th century (from around 1400-1900). That the planet would regulate itelf is unremarkable. A 1-degree increase in temperature over a century hardly constitutes a permanent direction in global terms.

 

2. The trend is one-directional, not cyclical. We were in a cooling trend in the 70’s. Alarmists then told us we were headed for catastrophic cooling, projecting a one-directional temperature trend. Since the 90’s the alarmists are just as certain that catastrophic warming is going to be the death of us all.  Is it not more likely that climate is cyclical, not one-directional?

 

If we want to project the trends since 1998 we would have to say we are more likely headed for another Ice Age than a seared earth. But, of course, neither seems to be the case. One of the biggest hoaxes in the whole global warming debate is the “hockey stick.” The “hockey stick” graph was developed by Mann and used by the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change to demonstrate that the planet has never been as warm as it is today. The hockey stick graph shows that temperatures were pretty much stable for the last couple millennia until the end of the twentieth century. Then it shot up. The graph looks lik a hockey stick laid on its side. Scary stuff. Gore used it as part of his horror movie on the coming climate disaster and still sites it as fact. Only problem is, it was totally made up. This was understood by many people prior to the recently unveiled email messages that make that fact clear.  (See Christopher Horner’s, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming.) The data that the alarmists have used to insist that the planet is warmer than ever, have been manipulated to effect the desired result: the hockey stick graph.

 

The hockey stick ignores the widely known period of Medieval warming period as well as the mini-ice age from which we just emerged a century ago. That period is also known as the Climate Optimum, because it had a beneficial effect on life on the globe. I will discuss that further under point five.

 

I still have four points to cover. I will deal with them in my next installment.

It is difficult these days for someone who loves the Constitution and who also wants to get along with people. I don’t like interjecting politics into otherwise pleasant conversation, but my concern for the direction this country is headed often gets the best of me. It is tough to see the current administration and Congress act in ways so far removed from constitutional principles. They no longer even feel any compunction to pretend there is specific constitutional authority for what they do. We must begin to wonder if they have ever read the Constitution of the United States and understand that it puts restraints on their legislative activity.

Mark Alexander sites some specific recent examples of particularly egregious abuses of the Constitution and the unmitigated hubris of congressmen when asked for justification for their behavior (http://patriotpost.us/edition/2009/10/23/digest/). The issue in question is Congress’s proposed mandate to force Americans to buy health insurance as part of “health care reform.” Never before has the federal government mandated that free citizens of this great republic be forced to buy any good or service. Asked about the constitutional basis for this obviously unconstitutional provision, Patrick Leahy and Nancy Pelosi were aghast. How could anyone question their authority to do whatever they seem best for the American people?

Here is part of the exchange with Leahy:

CNSNews.com: Where, in your opinion, does the Constitution give specific authority for Congress to give an individual mandate for health insurance?

Leahy: We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?

CNSNews.com: I’m asking-

Leahy: Why would you say there is no authority? I mean, there’s no question there’s authority, nobody questions that.

Unfortunately he is partly right. He is right about the part that nobody seems to question the constitutional authority for most of what Congress does.

Pressed a bit further, Leahy offered this justification: “Where do we have the authority to set speed limits on an interstate highway? The federal government does that on federal highways.” As Alexander wrote in the Patriot Post, “So to get this straight, Leahy defended Congress’ unconstitutional attempt to take over one sixth of the U.S. economy by citing another unconstitutional law that was justly repealed 14 years ago.”

Pelosi was even worse, offering no justification. Here is her response: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Then she took a different question. An aid later said that was not even a serious question. I don’t know, it seems like a pretty good question to me. After all, the Constitution is austensibly still the law of the land.

Space and time does not allow me to address the Obama administration’s dismissive, no contemptable attitude toward constitutional limits of his power. More proof surfaces each day. We have 30 some unelected, unvetted, unconfirmed “Czars” who have unlimited authority over various areas of your life and mine, who answer only to Obama. Many with bizarre world views, including expressing sympathy for Mao and NAMBLA (Noth American Man/Boy Love Association) a pedafile group.

The word “czar” is a derivative of the word Caesar. Caesar, of course did away with the Roman Republic. It thereafter became the Roman Empire. The new Caesar stands ready to cross the Rubicon when the time is right. That time may come too soon.

       Dan Brown made a fortune devising a very elaborate tale of intrigue and conspiracy that dated all the way back to the early church. The DaVinci Code was a fun read and a blockbuster film. The tale goes that the Knights Templar held a secret that would be devastating to the church. Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had children whose descendents still live today. Leonardo DaVinci was an insider who knew this but could not just come right out and tell people. Being the genius he was, he hid the secret in codes sprinkled throughout his paintings.

Dan Brown unmasked that old myth about Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead. He actually married, settled down in a quiet village, raised a family and opened his carpenter shop. Okay, I made that last part up, but the story is something like that. It was a very ingenious and elaborate tale. Many people came to believe it, to lesser and greater degrees. My own son almost bought some of it because the story was told so well.

We have a new group of Dan Brown’s who have cracked a different code: the Race Code. One of the more recent code-breakers is the inimitable Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. She was able to see the code clearly when Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled, “You lie,” when President Barak Obama lied about the health care plan not covering illegal aliens. What Dowd heard that others missed was the implied racist word “Boy.” What Wilson actually was saying is, “You lie, Boy.” I know nobody else heard it. It was not really verbalized, but a good code-breaker understands the latent racism behind such seemingly racially benign comments. And when Dowd speaks she is cloaked with the imprimatur of the Gray Lady herself. It is very close to speaking ex cathedra, or as close to it as secularists come. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html.)

That opened the door for more code-breakers to speak up about what they have detected in the protests from the Right. Ignore what they are saying. It is all a racist enterprize aimed at the first black president. (Okay, he is really only half black, but all the same…)

Protesters marched on Washington last weekend–”tens of thousands” became the number to the mainstream press, others estimated it to be over a million–to protest a whole dog’s breakfast of budget-busting, extra-constitutional policies being pushed through Congress, from Health Care Reform, to cap and trade, to government takeover of industry. But all the left heard was: these people are racists who hate the president because he is black (or half-black, but we already mentioned that).

The always provocative ex-president, Jimmy Carter (who created an economy as anemic as this one) is the latest racial code-breaker to offer his incredible insight. He determined that Wilson’s comment was based on the racism that, in Carter’s view, still dominates the Southern white mentality. So, when a southern white man calls a half-black president a liar, it is a racist statement. When congressmen like Pete Stark called Bush a liar, it was just an example of robust debate and speaking truth to power.

Carter further stated that he believed “an overwhelming portion” of the protests at the tea parties and last weekend’s 9/12 Protest in Washington D.C., was tinged with racist overtones. White people just can’t accept that a black man is president.

Of course you never hear any overt racial comments coming from the president’s critics. You see, they are much smarter than to speak plainly about their true concerns. Instead they use code. Nobody is sure where and when this racist cabal got together and created the code that is universally understood by its adherents, but Dowd and Carter are now totally onto it. The jig is up! (To be clear there are no racial overtones intended in that last sentence.)

I am listening  on the radio right now to Leo Terrel intone that using the term “radical” is another racist code word. He agrees with Carter “one trillion per cent.” Asked to name these racists, he says simply that they are everywhere. Asked for specifics, he finds none. It doesn’t matter. Facts are irrelevant in the face of such rampant racism. It is all in the code.

Or just perhaps the truth is to be found in one wag’s sign from the Washington event: It doesn’t matter what the sign says, you will still call it racist.

When a Republican president nominates a conservative candidate to the Supreme Court you can expect that the long knives will soon flash to slash.  The knives will be wielded by the Liberal opponents in Congress, for sure, who believe it is their God-given right to pack the courts with other Liberals who beleive the Constitution is so much putty in their creative hands.  Without such creative types on the court we would never have gotten such clear constitutional precepts enacted like abortion on demand and bussing kids to schools in the next county.  Both wonderful ideas that have made all our lives so much richer.  They could never happen if you only had people on the Supreme Court who actually believed it was their job to read the Constitution and judge accordingly.

So when a conservative president nominates his candidate ,Liberals are rightly offended.  How dare he!  But it is not just the opponents in Congress who go on the righteous crusade against this potential interloper on their judicial property.  More significantly, it is the media who draw out, not just long knives, but swords against the would-be usurper.  The pen (as well as the video editing machine) is mightier than the sword.

This is not the case when a liberal nominates a fellow liberal to the High Court.  Then we get treated with the sweet human interest stories about the compelling life story of the candidate who came from nowhere and with nothing to a federal judgeship on the sheer force of his or her intellect and soundness of judgement.

Enter Barak Obama and Sonia Sotomayor.  Enter Good Morning America (whose personalities I like, despite myself).  Were  Clarence Thomas the nominee (and who has a more compelling personal life history than he?) the stories coming from the mainstream are about how he really isn’t black at all.  Well he is genetically, they concede, but not intellectually.  He thinks like a White man!  The background stories find people whom he beat up in the 5th grade and leaders of the Civil Rights organizations he has victimized with his rulings.  The general tenor the viewer or reader is to deduce is that Thomas is a bad man.  He is not worthy to sit in the seat of such giants as Thurgood Marshall.

But the nominee in question is not conservative.  She is liberal.  So the story we are treated with on GMA is the touching human interest story featuring a person totally unbiased: Juan Sotomayor.  He happens to be the brother of said candidate.  It turns out that Sonia is just the most wonderful big sister ever.  Juan gets very touchy if someone accuses her of racism.  He can’t even find a word low enough to describe a person who would characterize his sister such.  He wishes he could write a new dictionary to create a word that could capture the inhumanity of such a comment.  Not kidding.

Asked about the “wise Latina” comment, Juan says it was just taken out of context.  “What did she mean by that?”  He doesn’t have any idea.  He just knows it was taken out of context.  And though nobody is accusing Sonia of being a racist, the comment certainly is, at least to those who read words for what they mean, using standard dictionaries, not ones created by Harry Blackmun or Juan Sotomayor.

So we have nothing to fear from this wise Latina woman.  She will certainly judge more wisely and correctly than some shriveled up White dude. 

Thanks Good Morning America, for always getting to the nub of the story and bringing to the public, hard-hitting truths others won’t touch.

You can view the journalistic gem for yourself at: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7796835&page=1

               

Wickipedia offers this definition of earmark based on its origin:

Earmark is a term that dates to the 16th century, originally referring to cuts or marks in the ears of cattle, deer, pigs and sheep made to show ownership, age and/or gender.

That is where our current use derives.  It was a mark of ownership.  To take the term back in farther, in ancient Israel a slave who wanted to remain with his master, even after his years of servitude were completed, would have a hole bored through his ear with an awl.  The mark said he belonged to the master and was willing to stay with him.  Again, it was a sign of ownership.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the term as used in politics:

In US politics, an earmark is a congressional provision that directs approved funds to be spent on specific projects or that directs specific exemptions from taxes or mandated fees.

Here is the language from the Office of Management & Budget (OMB) web site:

Earmarks are funds provided by the Congress for projects or programs where the congressional direction (in bill or report language) circumvents the merit-based or competitive allocation process, or specifies the location or recipient, or otherwise curtails the ability of the Executive Branch to properly manage funds. Congress includes earmarks in appropriation bills – the annual spending bills that Congress enacts to allocate discretionary spending – and also in authorization bills.

Check out the massive list of earmarks just listed under Transportation/Housing & Urban Development sub-committee here http://earmarks.omb.gov/resources/2009_citation_pdfs/senate_committee_citation_420.pdf

There you will find items for wildlife crossings–how do wildlife know where to cross? Can they read the signs?–to the restoration of the Western Union building in Toledo, Ohio.

I see a connection between the agricultural definition and the political one.  The pig, the cow, the slave, the taxpayers money, are considered to be owned by the one marking the ear (so to speak).  And to the extent that our money represents a piece of our lives, our congressmen believe they own us.  They have the right to take the money from people in Florida, or Missouri and spend it on latest public boondoggle named for Robert Byrd in West Virginia, or perhaps a monument to the  monumental courage of Ted Kennedy.  Congratulations are in order for Teddy.  He just won the Profiles in Courageaward from his niece Caroline.  I am sure there was no nepotism involved.  I suggest the monument (should one come) be erected on Chappaquidick at Martha’s Vineyard.  It is a lovely spot and a great place for diving.  The money could be placed in a sub-committee’s earmark and never noticed by anyone.

When Nancy Pelosi and her gang of reformers took over Congress in 2006 they promised they were going to get rid of this really bad practice of earmarks.  It was really bad at the time because the Republicans were guilty of the practice.  Thanks, Republicans, for acting like Democrats!  I had a young man actually tell me that he was voting for Obama because the Republicans were the big spenders.  That is not how it is supposed to be.  Of course, Democrats are bigger spenders, but why behave like them?  But Pelosi and Co. were going to eliminate the earmarks.  They promised.

Did it happen?  Did Teddy ever report the accident at Chappaquiddik?  The answer to both is “no.” 

But, not to worry, Barak Obama promised not to sign any bill that had any earmarks.  These are new times.  But alas, the omnibus spending bill he just signed was laden with over 9,000 earmarks.  Oops.  Promise not kept? 

My son explained it to me on his voice mail message.  “I guess any earmark that Obama doesn’t like is bad.  Those he likes are good.”  In the era of Obama, that is reason enough.  He only cares for us.  He is not like all those other politicians who have come before him.  He has only the best interest of the American people at heart.  It is not even right to call  him a politician.  He transcends politics.  He stands above it all.

But honestly, why quibble about a million here, or a million there on pet projects designed to get your congressman re-elected.  When we’re spending money to bail-out failing institutions by the hundreds of billions, what’s a friendly million dollar earmark among friends?

That strange pain your in ears may not be from listening to Harry Reid whine.  Your local politician may just be giving you his awl.

 

Jerry Falwell was taking questions after one of his talks at a secular university.  One young lady came to the mic and said, “I am a very liberal lesbian and I don’t agree with anything you said about abortion.”

Falwell aptly replied, “I’m sorry, but I fail to see how you, of all the people in this room should care about abortion.”

I have been thinking about some of the incongruities we have been menaced with recently.  Here are just a few. 

I find it a bit incongruous that most people who worry about vanishing or endangered species are also staunch believers in evolution.  Isn’t that what is supposed to happen in the evolutionary model.  The weaker species die off.  Evolution runs its course.  The weak lose.  The strong survive.  Where is the problem?  Why must man now intercede for the losers?  That should be the question for the consistent evolutionist.  But it is not.  And, ironically, there are not a few who think that man, the crown jewel and highest order in the evolutionary chain, is the biggest bane on the planet ,and maybe it would be best if man just died off, in order to save the planet.  And by “planet” they mean the lower forms of life, like amoeba, worms, whales and Chris Brown.

Another incongruity today’s lap dog media have lapped up is the idea that the same president who just proposed spending more money than anybody in history is now going to get serious about getting the deficit under control.  Need anything more be said on this?

Staying with presidential incongruities, I know I am not the only one who sees the irony in these two examples of Obama’s hypocrisy.   He insisted the “economic stimulus” plan had to be passed immediately or it could mean the end of civilization as we knew it.  Never mind that no senator had the chance (or even the inclination) to read the thing.  Once it was passed, he delayed in signing it while he took his wife to Chicago for Valentine’s Day.   He took the corporate jet.  They call it Air Force One.

This leads to the next incongruity.  It was totally fine for Obama to fly to Chicago on such urgent national business in the people’s jet, but not okay for Corporate executives to do so in jets their corporation purchased for just such reasons.

He is for the working man.  So he devises policies which hurt all those working people. People such as those who manufacture corporate jets, for instance, or those who work in the tourist industry (hotel clerks, waiters, drivers, etc.) who find themselves out of work because the money from the corporate “fat cats” stayed home.  The executives are staying home because Obama calls them out for taking business junkets.  The money is not trickling down like it used to.  But everybody knows that trickle down doesn’t work, so ignore the incongruity.

The press had a massive hissy fit when Bush spent $40 million on his second inaugural while the troops were in Iraq.  How could he do such a thing?  But when Obama spent half a billion on his inaugural, the press celebrated the fact.  The troops were still in Iraq.  The economy was tanking.  Banks were crashing.  But in Washington we were partying.  The composite reaction of the press: “The country needs a party.”  Anybody see the incongruity here?

Here are a few more.

Biggest selling books: cookbooks.  Second biggest selling books: diet books.

 Americans have an obsession with fitness.  More Americans are obese than ever.

The earth has been in a cooling trend since 1998.  The last two years have been exceptionally cold.  Of course this leads to new calls to curb global warming with each day.

And Janeane Garofalo stars in this season of 24 as a dedicated FBI agent concerned with national security.  That is incongruous as a lesbian worried that she’ll be denied an abortion.

 

More examples of incongruities?  Send them by way of comment to this post.

With the Coronation–er–Inauguration in full swing, both on the mall of Washington, and every square inch of every television, it seems somehow unpatriotic to speak a word of caution and moderation into the sycophantic media love-fest that everyone is caught up in.  But a few things must be pretty clear by now.  No man can live up to the hype or the hope this day portends.  As I write, the television is on GMA and Charles Gibson is reporting that the buildings in Washington are a little brighter today and Lincoln is sitting a little taller in his chair at the Lincoln memorial.  No kidding!  He just said that.  Such is the promise of this day to such as this totally objective “journalist.”

It is a wonderful day that the United States has shed (hopefully) the last vestiges of its long and sordid history of racism and will be led by its first black president.  I said led, not ruledby Obama.  (He made the unfortunate comment during the campaign that he would be ready to rule on day one.  Let us hope that he simply misspoke.)  He is not our new potentate.  He is our new president.

Duvall Patrick noted on one of the morning shows yesterday that people said of Obama’s campaign that “hope is not a strategy.”  Said Patrick, “It turns out that it is.”  So, with a nod to Obama’s campaign “strategy” let me offer my hope for Obama’s presidency. 

1.  I hope that he remembers who he is.  It became achingly clear during the campaign that Mr. Obama had a megalomaniacal streak, fueled in part by the cult of personality that grew around him.  I hope he remembers that he is only a man.  He is not the king.  He does not possess sovereign authority.  He is bound by the Constitution of the United States of America. 

2.  I hope he forgets some things he promised.  I hope he chooses not to yank troops home from Iraq before that nation is stable enough to sustain its fledgling democracy.  I hope he forgets that he planned to end the Bush tax cuts.  I hope he forgets that he promised to socialize the health care industry, about 1/7 of the U. S. economy.

3.  I hope he continues to surprise me with some of the decisions he has been making.  Most of his early nominations have been laudable.  He seems to really desire to reach across party lines and get input from others with different view points.

4.  I hope, against hope, that he gets no chance to appoint any Supreme Court Justice who will most certainly reflect his pro-abortion view.

It was recently reported that about 80% of the American people now support Obama.  I suspect that means that people wish him success.  (Remember 55 million people voted against him.) Our country faces many major problems right now.  Every American wants those problems solved.  We want the economy turned around.  We want the troops to come home.  We want quality health care for every American.  But the devil is in the details.  There are socialistic answers and there are free market answers.  The former have been tried and found wanting.  The latter built this great nation that might just be unrecognizable 4 years hence.  I hope that is not prophetic.

I I know it is not popular to say–even among Republicans, not at least among polite company–but I love George W. Bush.  There, I said it.  Do I love everything he has done.  No.  But I choose not to air any of those criticisms because he gets that from every other quarter.  This post is rather about why we should all be grateful to the 43rd president of the United States.

George Bush took office right after the disgraced 42nd president disgracefully left office.  Clinton left office soon after giving pardons to former terrorists and other ne’er-do-wells with the right political connections.  The most notorious being the FLN terrorists and the infamous Marc Rich, who profiteered by selling weapons to our enemies.  Rich went so far as to renounce his American citizenship.  That was just the last of his string of corrupt acts that were commonplace in the White House which began with Whitewater and Travelgate and ended with Pardongate.  “It was just about sex” his supporters always said.  Please.  That was the least of it.

But I digress.  This is not about how bad Clinton was, but the contrast provides suitable context.  Bush’s detractors like to talk about his presidency’s culture of corruption without ever getting specific.  What does it come to?  He may or may not have gotten bad intelligence about WMD’s in Iraq, specifically yellow cake uranium from Niger.  “Bush lied, people died,” they shout.  Seriously?  Scooter Libby is indicted for perjury because he didn’t remember the events in the same order as a journalist about a non-spy who was not outed by him.  This is corruption?  There is corruption there, but not from the Bush administration.

Bush restored order in the White House.  Things ran on time.  Press conferences started just when he said they would, not an hour later as often happened in the previous administration.

Then 9-11 happened.  Well, it didn’t just happen.  Evil men perpetrated this evil terrorist strike on innocent and unsuspecting Americans.  A strike that would never have happened if Clinton had taken out Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance, but balked.

Bush was changed by 9-11.  But the test also brought out the character of the man.  He would remain steadfast against the enemies of America.  He would do what it took to insure that 9-11, or something similar would not happen on his watch.  And it didn’t.  History will remember, if the ungrateful, forgetful citizens don’t. 

In prosecuting the war on terror Bush took down two nations that supported terrorism abroad and imposed it at home.  The Taliban is deposed in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi jury and executed.  Millions of Iraqis went to the polls, at personal risk to their own lives to vote for the first democratically elected government in Iraq’s long history. 

We couldn’t lose the war in Iraq now if we wanted.  It was won in a couple weeks.  Despite the rhetoric we hear about the possibility of losing the war (well, we hear it less now then a year ago) the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was won long ago.  What our troops are doing in Iraq right now is building and protecting the young democracy against domestic and foreign terrorists.  Make no mistake.  Bush won the war in Iraq.

After 9-11 the stock market crashed as business came to a standstill.  It is nothing short of miraculous how the market bounced back, nearly doubling in five years.  This fueled by the Bush tax cuts and the serious commitment to restoring order in the world.  The market would still be rising if not for the ill-advised federal mandates, pushed by the previous administration and Democrats in Congress, on lenders to loan money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back.

Bush has been solidly pro-life, signing the partial-birth abortion ban and supporting the ban on abortions at military hospitals. 

In all of this he has been vilified in the most outrageous terms by his opponents on the left.  He has not returned fire.  If he was unable to change the political culture in Washington, it wasn’t for lack of trying.  It may be true that the nation is more polarized than ever.  That blame lies solely at the feet of the viciously partisan Democrats, many of whom supported him publicly when the war was popular but jumped the fence and began throwing stones in his direction when the political winds changed.  I wish President Bush had done more to defend his own record.  When a charge goes unchallenged, it becomes truth.  At least in the public eye. 

I agree with what one admirer said of Bush.  He has the same stubborn tenacity to principle that Ronald Wilson Reagan and Winston Churchill possessed.  The major difference between George W. Bush and them is his inability or unwillingness to articulate his position and defend it against his detractors.  But, like Reagan, George W. believes history will judge him better then his contemporaries have.  I believe that is true.  But given who writes the history books, that is far from certain.

What is it with liberals that makes them so testy?  Take Barney Frank.  Please!   He begins a conversation civilly enough, but before it is done he is heaving and spitting and slurring his words as he unceremoniously cuts off his interlocutor with spurious charges of having been misinterpreted or slighted in some way.  He doesn’t even seem to know those who are one his side.  He will even berate them with the same level of vitriol usually reserved for people like Bill O’Reilly.

I watched him on Good Morning America interviewed by Chris Cuomo.  No conservative, he.  Chris, of course is the son of the liberal former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo and brother of Andrew Cuomo, former HUD secretary under Clinton and current attorney general of New York.  But when Chris Cuomo asked Frank a few frank questions, the spitting and sputtering began.  (By the way, I thought gay men all had a flair for style.  Not only does Frank sound like he got up out of the wrong side of the bed, he looks like it happened 5 minutes ago.)

He was being asked about the latest planned bailout to, well who can keep up with whom is getting the latest bailout.  “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about serious money,” Everett Dirksen famously quipped.  And what about the money from the last bailout?  Frank, in typical Frank fashion, lied about the history of the financial bailout and stuck to the Democrat script.  The script is pure fiction.  You have heard it before.  You will here it again.  It is the way politics are played these days.  Much like the days of the Soviet Union.  You tell a lie, tell it often enough, and pretty soon, people will begin to believe it.

Here is the basic plot.  Evil predators in the private sector created the real estate crisis and financial crisis by making loans to people who couldn’t pay.  Somehow these institutions believed they could make a killing by giving money to people who couldn’t pay it back.   The Bush administration didn’t believe in regulation and allowed it all to continue as normal. Eventually that bubble burst.

The truth is just the opposite.  In all points.  The crisis was created because of beaurocrats in the Clinton administration including Janet Reno at Justice and the aforementioned Andrew Cuomo at HUD who threatened to sue financial institutions that did not lend to people who couldn’t afford it.  It was done in the name of getting low income and diversity households a chance to buy their own home, whether or not they could actually afford to pay for it. 

Republicans in the House and from the adminstration tried to get things under control.  Democrats were having none of it.  We have video proof.  Barney Frank is on the video arguing that nothing was wrong with Fannie or Freddie.  But now here was Frank, blaming the private sector and the Bush administration for the crisis and trying to straighten his white hat as he rode side saddle into the fray to come to the rescue of middle America.

When Chris Cuomo challenged him, even mildly, Frank came unglued and insisted he needed to have total control of the mic without interruption from the rude host.  Why the people of Massachusettes continue to plague us with this barnicle I can only guess.  Political theater perhaps.

                                                                                      

Ann Curry shows her politically correct creds with her antagonisitc interview with the “controversial” Rick Warren. Of course, the reason the Main Stream Media has dubbed Warren controversial, even though he has sold more books than just about anybody over the last several years, is because he opposes gay marriage. It never seems to register with the MSM that every time the issue is brought up for election, even in liberal California, gay marriage is turned back. It only advances at the behest of activist PC judges who decide to treat the law like so much putty in their creative little hands.

Here is part of the transcript of Friday’s Dateline interview with Rick Warren. As bad as it looks on paper, it doesn’t do justice to the smarmy, “holier than thou” countenance that Curry donned for the cameras, as she treated one of America’s most respected pastors like a member of the Aryan Nation.

Ann Curry: Some people in the gay community wonder why you supported Prop 8. Why you supported taking away their right to love each other in marriage.                                                            

Rick Warren: Yeah, well, I’m not taking away their right to love each other.

Ann Curry: In marriage.                                    

Rick Warren: I am opposed to the redefinition of marriage. First place, to me, it was free speech issue foremost of all. First place, I don’t know any church in America that’s done more to help the gay community, particularly with AIDS, than Saddleback.

Ann Curry: And, in fact, gay people will say that is true.

Rick Warren: Yeah. And my wife and I have given millions of dollars to help people–

Ann Curry: Which is why they’re so hurt.

Rick Warren: Yeah.

Ann Curry: Why many gay people are so hurt because of their faith and and reverence for what you have done in this issue. How have you reconciled yourself with that pain that you’ve caused because of that loss of faith in you?

Rick Warren: Well, because if that hadn’t passed, the pain it would have caused to far millions more, I think, would be more severe. And here’s what I see in this, Ann. For 5,000 years every single culture and every single religion has defined marriage as a man and a woman, not just Christianity [but also] Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism.

Ann Curry: Your position has raised the specter that you are homophobic. (laughter by Warren) And that is why people are angry. Gay people are angry. And how is it possible for them to be civil when someone– maybe deny– you would say, “I don’t like what you are.” You understand that.

Rick Warren: Yeah, I could give you 100 gay–

Ann Curry: Are you homophobic?

Rick Warren: Of course not. I’ve always treated them with respect when they come and wanna talk to me. I talk to them. When the protesters came, we served them water and doughnuts.

But Warren says he’s surprised by the hostile reaction of gay rights advocates.

Rick Warren: The hate speech against me is incendiary.

Ann Curry: So what happened to Mr. Reconciliation?

Rick Warren: Tolerance used to mean, “I treat you with respect even though we disagree.” Some people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That’s nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong.

Ann Curry: If science finds that this is biological, indisputably, not something that can be explained in any other way except that people are born to be gay, would you change your position?

Rick Warren: No. And the reason why–

Ann Curry: Why?

Rick Warren: I’d be happy to tell you why. The reason why is because it doesn’t matter to me. If it’s biological, we’ll be glad to know. We all have biological predispositions. Some people struggle with anger. And other people say, “I don’t struggle with anger, but I sure struggle with fear.” Some people say, “Oh, I don’t struggle with this. I struggle with being shy.”

Ann Curry: You’re saying if it’s part of your biology, it’s your job to struggle against it if, in fact, it’s the wrong–

Rick Warren: Well, here what I’m saying. I’ve had many gay friends tell me, “Well, Rick, why shouldn’t I have multiple sexual partners? It’s the natural thing to do.” Well, just because it seems natural doesn’t mean it’s best for you or society. I’m naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. And why should I reign in my natural impulses and you say, “Well, because I have natural impulses towards the same sex, I shouldn’t have to reign them in.” Well, I disagree. I think that’s part of maturity. I think it’s part of delayed gratification. I think it’s part of character.

Warren says his opposition to same sex marriage is shared by a majority of Americans and by President-elect Obama — and is based on Biblical teachings.

Rick Warren: God said in Genesis 1, a man and woman should cling to each other for life. Now I’m in favor of human rights for everybody…everybody. I’m against redefining marriage historically 5,000 years… because then it’ll be re-defined. What if it’s between a brother and a sister?

Ann Cury: You said that God says in the Bible that a man and a woman should cling to each other for life, but it does not say that a marriage is only between a man and a woman. In fact the Bible says that King Solomon had 700 wives. Leviticus speaks of homosexuality as being a sin, but also orders the death penalty for eating fish that had fins and getting a tattoo.

Rick Warren: The people that make that argument don’t understand there are three kind kinds of law in the Bible that are very different. There’s civil law, which is for the nation of Israel. There’s ceremonial law, which is for the Jewish priesthood. And there is moral law, which is for everybody. The laws about eating fish and stuff, those are civil and ceremonial laws for Israel. No Christian follows those.

Unlike like many opponents of same sex marriage, though, Warren doesn’t see it as a danger to heterosexual married couples.

Rick Warren: I don’t think gay marriage is any threat to marriage. So that’s not why I’m voting the way I did. I think divorce is a bigger problem to marriage than anything else.

Thursday afternoon, the president-elect defended his choice of Warren at a news conference Thursday, saying “It is important for America to come together even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues.”

And Warren issued a statement saying, “I commend President-elect obama (sic) for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn’t agree on every issue.”

Despite the furor, Pastor Rick Warren remains the most influential evangelical in the country and his inspirational messages resonate with millions.
END

You can view the interview to get the full effect of what this “journalist” and this network (NBC) thinks of Christians right here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/28240702#28240702.