From Power Line: 

 Earlier this month, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York. The Conference differed from most such events in that it was devoted to science, not politics or propaganda. Heartland has now made the materials presented at the conference available online, here. You can review the agenda, watch videos of the keynote presentations, read transcripts of some of the speeches, and see the Power Points that were presented by the speakers. More information will be posted as it becomes available.

These are a few of the many slides that I found interesting. This one, by Dennis Avery, puts the climate swings of the last 12,000 years (i.e., since the last Ice Age) in perspective; click to enlarge:

This one, by Syun Akasofu, also takes a long-term view, and compares the politically-driven prediction by the UN’s IPCC with the historical trend as the earth has recovered from the Little Ice Age:

Don Easterbrook makes the basic point that, contrary to the hysterical predictions of the alarmists, the earth is cooling, not warming:

This one by Dennis Avery shows the lack of any correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperatures in the atmosphere:

Don Easterbrook compares the correlations of solar activity and CO2 concentration to temperature. It seems pretty obvious where the explanation for fluctuations in temperature lies:

Due to the efforts of Heartland and others, the public is beginning to catch on to the cosmic scam that Al Gore, James Hansen and others–mostly not scientists–have been perpetrating. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, seemingly determined to inflict the maximum possible damage on the economy in the shortest time, is trying to ram a cap-and-trade carbon tax through Congress before opposition can be mobilized. It’s easier to do that, of course, when you know that Congressmen won’t read the statute before they vote on it. So our only hope is an informed citizenry.

 Diana West also writes about what’s going on behind the smokescreen [see our post below]:

Sigh. Dear American Taxpayer: If only you knew how easily you have been gulled, played like a greenhorn, a rube, a Madoff mark. This $165 million scandal may have unleashed the first genuine feeding frenzy of the Obama administration, but it is a distraction, a sideshow, a smokescreen over what is really going on: namely, the Bush-initiated, Obama-Pelosi-Reid-led incursion into the private sector designed to nationalize the workings of the economy in order to take over, capture and enslave enough of the free market to transform the fundamental character of this nation. Remember what our 44th president said back in 1995: "In America," he told the Chicago Reader, "we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations." That is exactly what’s going on behind the $165 million smokescreen – truly, a masterpiece of misdirection. I have no reason to believe it was planned, although I am open to suggestion. After all, it is notable that the nearly $4 billion in Merill Lynch bonuses, doled out just before the dying firm’s Jan. 1 takeover by Bank of America (which received bailout funds partly due to the takeover), failed to churn the same national waters. But I digress. Up in arms about the AIG bonuses, the body politic remains calm, cool, practically collected about the trillions of taxpayer dollars Obama & Co. are drawing on to buy out the economy, expanding the population’s dependency on Biggest Government in the process. There are simply too few of us seeing red, for example, over the surprise Federal Reserve decision (announced this week at the height of Bonus Rage) to pump another $1 trillion into the economy, money the International Herald Tribune said the Fed "will create out of thin air." Still, there is good in Bonus Rage. It’s a sign of life… For several days this week, the influential Senate Banking chairman – he who never met a sweetheart deal he didn’t find irresistible – lied about his role in writing legislation that protects AIG’s bonuses. Repeatedly, Dodd insisted that he had had nothing to do with the bonus-protection language in the, ahem, Dodd Amendment until, mirabile dictu, he remembered that he had. As he finally told CNN on Wednesday evening, he actually wrote the provision himself with, he added, input from the administration. Did I mention President Obama was the No. 2 recipient of AIG largesse? Dodd received $103,100. Obama received $101,332. Now Dodd, after being scorched by these disclosures, says he’ll give his AIG money back. Will Obama? Does it matter? The proof is already in the pudding, even if the burnt offerings go back to the kitchen. Fume, baby, fume. But there’s more. The nationalization of AIG is not just bankrupting the country by throwing billions of our dollars at AIG’s toxic assets. The nationalization of AIG is forcing the American taxpayer to support a very different kind of toxic asset. I refer to AIG’s promotion of Sharia (Islamic law) in its Takaful division, the Sharia-compliant insurance sector of AIG. Since we the people own 80 percent of AIG, we the people now promote Sharia, too. Don’t believe me? Takaful insurance, our very own AIG Takaful Web site explains, "avoids prohibited elements in accordance with the Sharia law," adding: "We do not invest in anything that is haram (prohibited under Sharia). We do not borrow, lend or enter into any financial transaction that is unIslamic." At the very least – aside from promoting from the law of the Koran, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran, the clerics of Saudi Arabia (not to mention Afghanistan, whose Sharia-supreme "justice" system recently upheld a journalist’s 20-year prison sentence for "blasphemy") – taxpayer support for AIG is by definition sectarian and therefore in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. It is on these grounds – that the American taxpayer is now directly funding sectarian Islamic religious activities – that a lawsuit, conducted by the Thomas More Law Center, has been filed against the government. Recently, the Justice Department, another U.S. taxpayer-funded entity last time I checked, entered the case to defend the AIG bailout, filing a motion to dismiss, the Thomas More Law Center notes, based on this being a time of "crisis." You better believe this is a time of crisis – but not the crisis envisioned by Justice officials charged with safeguarding gross government fecklessness. Only two of our elected officials – Reps. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., and bless them for it – have publicly decried the government’s AIG Sharia-bailout; that’s a crisis. Chump change bonuses arouse the wrath of the nation – not the nefarious movement to nationalize the marketplace; that’s a crisis, too. The American people are angry, good. But we need to understand there are far more important things to be angry about.

 

 … Obama and the Democrats are steadily pursuing their sinister agenda. 

Michelle Malkin writes (see the whole article here):

I ask you now to turn away from the bogus bonus smokescreen over $165 million in taxpayer-backed compensation packages for AIG employees. It is a pittance compared to the gargantuan spending spree happening right under our noses. The AIG bonus price tag amounts to one tenth of 1 percent of the total AIG giveaway ($85 billion in September, $37.8 billion in October; $40 billion in November; $30 billion in early March), which took place with the assent of a Republican administration, a Democratic administration and the congressional leadership of both parties.

Taxpayers might be less skeptical of the born-again guardians of fiscal responsibility if these evangelists were actually practicing what they preached. While the Obama administration now issues impassioned calls to stop rewarding failure, they moved Thursday to dump another $5 billion into the failing auto industry. That’s on top of Thursday’s announcement by the Federal Reserve to print $1 trillion to buy Treasury bonds and mortgage securities sold by the government – which no one else wants to buy.

Financial blogger Barry Ritholtz tallied up $8.5 trillion in bailout costs by December 2008 between Federal Reserve, FDIC, Treasury and Federal Housing Administration rescues (not including the $5.2 trillion in Fannie and Freddie portfolios that the U.S. taxpayer is now explicitly responsible for). Then there’s the (at least) $50 billion proposed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in February to bail out home owners and lenders who made bad home loan decisions, which would be just a small sliver of the $2.5 trillion he wants to spend on the next big banking bailout, which would draw on the second $350 billion of the TARP package over which an increasing number of Chicken Little lawmakers are having buyer’s remorse.

Phew. We’re not done yet: As AIG-bashing lawmakers inveighed against wasted taxpayer funds and lamented the lack of accountability and rush to judgment that led to passage of the porkulus bill that mysteriously protected the bonuses, the Senate quietly passed a $10 billion lands bill stuffed with earmarks and immunized from amendments. GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, fiscal conservative loner, pointed out that none of the provisions for special-interest pork projects – including $3.5 million in spending for a birthday bash celebrating the city of St. Augustine, Fla. – was subject to public hearings. That’s on top of the pork-stuffed $410 billion spending bill passed two weeks ago.

Oh, and did I mention that the House passed a $6 billion volunteerism bill (the "GIVE Act") on Wednesday to provide yet another pipeline to left-wing advocacy groups under the guise of encouraging national service?

Also coming down the pike: the Obama administration’s "cap-and-trade" global warming plan, which Hill staffers learned this week could cost close to $2 trillion (nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate) and the administration’s universal health care scheme, which health policy experts reported this week could cost about $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

It is no wonder that when earlier this week Vice President Joe Biden told local officials in Washington that he was "serious, absolutely serious" about policing wasteful spending in Washington, he was met with the only rational response his audience could muster: laughter.

The guilty men accuse.

This is by Mona Charen in Townhall:

Rep. Barney Frank played Madame Defarge on Capitol Hill. AIG’s recently installed CEO, Edward Liddy, agreed to testify before a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, which Frank chairs. Liddy was actually a poor choice for scapegoat as he has only been on the job since September. Additionally, he is serving as a dollar-a-year man hoping to rescue the company and our financial system from a downward spiral.

These facts slowed the momentum of some committee members. But most plowed ahead. Here’s Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York: "There’s a tidal wave of rage throughout America right now, and it’s building up and it’s expressing itself at this latest outrage, which is really just the tip of the iceberg. And that rage is because the taxpayer knows that they are the ultimate sucker on the list of who pays for all of the greed that has been going on in the marketplace for years and years."

There was a lot more along those lines, but the most sinister move came from Frank. He demanded that Liddy reveal the names of the 73 executives who had received retention bonuses. Liddy said he would do so if he could receive a promise of confidentiality. Frank refused and threatened to subpoena the names. Liddy said if subpoenaed he would obey the law, but he then read to the committee some of the death threats his company had been getting over the past few days. Some threats spoke of hanging the executives with piano wire, others of finding where their kids went to school.

That is the sort of ugliness and criminality that Frank is willing tacitly to encourage by demanding the names. And for what? The bonuses amounted to just one tenth of 1 percent of the AIG bailout (to say nothing of the stimulus bill and the gargantuan budget bill Congress and the president are hanging around our necks). If politicians want to metaphorically flay away at evil businessmen, well, that’s regrettable. But when they cross the line into encouraging the targeting of actual individuals, they are no longer "honorable gentlemen," but leaders of a mob.

 From the Heritage Foundation: 

Remember ACORN? The Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), which has been plagued by allegations of voter fraud and abuse? It appears the chips just keep getting cashed in for the group that President Barack Obama once counseled as an attorney [and whose personnel he trained – JB] First it was discovered that they were going to literally ‘cash in’ on the $800 Billion “Stimulus” bill that lawmakers ensured would give them access to hundreds of millions of dollars. Not really the ’stimulus’ people were expecting. Then it was discovered that the White House and Congressional leaders were pushing for a new ‘Fairness Doctrine’ at the behest of ACORN.

Now we learn that President Obama has recruited them as “National Partners” to the 2010 U.S. Census. Remember the Census? The Census was one of the reasons Senator Judd Gregg withdrew his name from consideration for Commerce Secretary after he learned the White House would be moving the ‘non-partisan’ agency under the control of the ‘ultra-partisan’ White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

And this from the American Spectator:

In recent months demands for ACORN to be investigated under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for repeated incidents of electoral fraud have been growing. But voting-related fraud is just the tip of the iceberg. ACORN runs a mob-style "protection" racket known within the radical direct-action group as the "muscle for the money" program, a lawyer told the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties today… The taxpayer-subsidized ACORN network, which owes millions of dollars in back taxes, also played a major role in the subprime mortgage mess that has undermined Americans’ support for free market problem-solving and set off a worldwide chain of financial troubles. And then there’s ACORN’s eight-year-long coverup of the million-dollar embezzlement by founder Wade Rathke’s brother. When ACORN board members Marcel Reid and Karen Inman demanded to see the financial documents, they were expelled from the group. What else is ACORN hiding?

But Congress is giving them more money and more power. The ideal people, ACORN, to trust with the Census?

 Of course the networks have brought it on themselves having (with the exception of Fox) dedicated themselves to bringing an exhibitionist child to power.  

‘Twinkle-toes’, ‘The Teleprompter Kid’, ‘The Affirmative Action President’, ‘The One’, ‘The Messiah’, ‘the Child’, are some of his more common soubriquets, not all of them aired by the networks. 

‘I am making a speech, I am being filmed, I have an adoring crowd about me, therefore I AM,’ is his philosophy, his frequent performances imply.  

From The Live Feed:

Networks are pulling their shows over to the side of the road to make room for the lights and sirens of president Barack Obama’s latest primetime address.

Obama will take to the air next Tuesday evening on four broadcast networks and bump the most popular series on television, Fox’s "American Idol."

Fulfilling their scheduling civic duty is starting to seem increasingly cumbersome to broadcasters, however. Between a struggling economy and ratings sagging in midseason, every interruption costs networks advertising dollars and momentum. 

"At a time when we’re struggling not only financially but to build audiences, this doesn’t help on either front," one network executive said. "These repeated interruptions – and the rumor of even more to come – really make it difficult to build audience flow and loyalty. We will all lose one or two million dollars for this."

The presidential election resulted in a fall season regularly interrupted by political news coverage, followed by primetime inauguration coverage, then two primetime speeches about the economy. The White House requesting yet another primetime slot, during sweeps and right after several shows dropped to new lows in last night’s ratings, has some executives exasperated.

"I believe in the president and his policies, and as broadcasters we have a responsibility to provide the airtime," said another network insider. "But these frequent primetime requests are wreaking serious havoc with our schedule and our advertisers. Ratings are down everywhere and the airtime is costing us all significant dollars when we can least afford it."

More about the British National Health Service. A cautionary tale.

Dear Americans,

You may have read my article in January which urged you not to emulate our National Health Service.  I described how it doesn’t work, it is too expensive (100 billion pounds a year), too big, it allows the state to exercise unacceptable power over the individual, it bribes the medical profession to collude,  it makes the individual patient powerless and small and guilty for being sick, it abandons the sick and old, it is filthy beyond description, it is run on a target performance model that distorts patient care, it is the church of Socialists who use it to preach class war. The sermon goes like this: the goal is equal treatment for all.  The original aim – a minimum not an equal standard – has been forgotten. All this is combined with an old fashioned paternalism which treats the patient with yet more disdain. And on top of all this, the service is expansionist, planning to control other aspects of our lives and behaviour with the excuse that this will improve our health.

Well if you didn’t read it; that was a fair summary. And now a postscript: I told you so.

This week a report was published about Stafford Hospital by the Healthcare Commission. The Commission described the hospital as “appalling and chaotic”.  When you allow for official British understatement on top of this, your jaws should be dropping.  Up to 1200 patients may have died because of the failures pointed out in this report.   Patients were left hungry and thirsty for days.  They drank the flower water.  They were not given pain-killers as they lay dying.   There was neglect, according to the report, at “virtually every stage” of treatment.  Wards were filthy with blood and excrement.  People had to sit in soiled bedding. Nurses turned off heart monitors because they did not know how to use the equipment.  Receptionists with no medical training decided the order of treatment for arrivals in Accident and Emergency.  One patient with a bone sticking out of his elbow waited for hours for treatment with no pain relief.

Patients were ‘dumped’ in “clinical decision units” for days in order to avoid breaking the performance targets.  Operations were postponed for four days and patients starved for those four days.  

A wonderful woman,  Julie Bailey, who slept in a chair next to her mother as the mother died over eight weeks, set up the campaign group which has shed light on this terrible hell of ‘care’.  However, it all took time because the organisation running the hospital said that anomalies in the death rate were the result of  “problems with recording data not problems with quality of care”.  

The man in charge of the place while all this happened is still receiving his full pay.   May he get old and sick and sent to the loving embrace of Stafford Hospital!

 M. Westrop.

We have no respect for Gordon Brown personally, but he is the Prime Minister of Great Britain – America’s closest ally –  and as his country’s representative he should have been treated with respect and courtesy by the President of the United States on his recent official visit to the US. Instead, Obama was off-hand and rude to him, later making the silly and childish excuse that he was ‘tired’.  Obama is not, however, too tired to court the heads of Islamic states, and even travel abroad to confer with them.   

Frank Gaffney writes:

On Friday, President Obama reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a “new relationship” with the Muslim world.  On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of “destroying Western civilization from within.”

As part of Mr. Obama’s “Respect Islam” campaign, he will travel to Turkey in early April.  While there, he will not only pay tribute to an Islamist government that has systematically wrested every institution from the secular tradition of Ataturk and put the country squarely on the path to Islamification.  He will also participate in something called the “Alliance of Civilizations.”

The Alliance is a UN-sponsored affair that reflects – as, increasingly do most things the United Nations is involved in – the views of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).  The OIC is made up of 57 Muslim-majority nations. Thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and its proxies, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a driving force within the Conference and their agendas largely coincide.

For example, in 2005 a communiqué issued after a summit in Mecca declared: “The Conference underlined the need to collectively endeavor to reflect the noble Islamic values, counter Islamophobia, defamation of Islam and its values and desecration of Islamic holy sites, and to effectively coordinate with States as well as regional and international institutions and organizations to urge them to criminalize this phenomenon as a form of racism.”

Ominously, as part of its bid to “criminalize” Islamophobia, the OIC is seeking “deterrent punishments.” It insists that not only freedom of expression but all human rights be circumscribed by the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which concludes with the caveat that, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shariah.” Translation: Liberties enshrined in the UN’s foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights are largely rendered null and void.

Not that the UN has been a great upholder of liberty in practice. Quite the contrary, in fact. It is now such a threat to liberty, the best thing that could happen to it is its total abolition, before it evolves into an Islamic World Government imposing Shariah on us all. 

 From the Heritage Foundation:

During the debate over the unconstitutional bill that would give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) each sponsored amendments with major implications for the First Amendment. DeMint’s amendment banned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine which, prior to 1987, was used by the government to stifle free speech on our nation’s airwaves. DeMint’s amendment passed 87-11. Score one for free speech.

However, Durbin’s amendment also passed, although by a much narrower 57-41 margin. And what does Durbin’s amendment do? It forces the FCC to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest.” In other words, Durbin wants to bring the wonders of government enforced affirmative action to our nation’s airwaves. Sen. James Inhofe warns: “The revocation of broadcaster licenses [under the Durbin Doctrine] is a real possibility, which at the very least will threaten the willingness of broadcasters to appeal to conservative listeners.”

The true intention of the Durbin Doctrine could not be more clear. Its language is modeled after a Center for American Progress report that aims to fix “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio.” And just two years ago, Durbin told The Hill: “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”

Durbin’s commitment to squelching free speech has not diminished at all since that 2007 statement. But Durbin has gotten smarter. He knows that reinstating the old Fairness Doctrine is a non-starter so he has come up with a new but equally pernicious law that will accomplish the exact same thing. Conservatives need to wise up in the fight for free speech. The Fairness Doctrine is dead. The real threat is the Durbin Doctrine.

 From the Mail Online:

Twice in two years they have fought in Iraq. Twelve of their regimental comrades paid the ultimate price there and in Afghanistan.

Over the past two years they have spent day after day patrolling hostile territory, where every passer-by could have a gun or a bomb. 

So the 200 men of the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment perhaps had a right to expect a heroes’ welcome yesterday on a homecoming parade through Luton.

Instead, they were faced with the hate-filled jeers of [Muslim] anti-war protesters waving placards saying: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra,’ and ‘Anglian soldiers: cowards, killers, extremists.’

There was a furious reaction from the hundreds lining the streets to support the soldiers – known as the Poachers. Shouting ‘scum’ and ‘no surrender to the Taliban’, they turned on the Muslim demonstrators.

Police were already out in force to protect the anti-war group and arrested two men among the soldiers’ supporters.