Thomas Sowell - The "Science" Mantra

The batteries in my mouse are dying, so before I get in the shower and start the rest of my day, here's a link to Thomas Sowell's column at JewishWorldReview.com. Binyamin has been getting help with publishing and running the site from volunteers, and I am grateful to all of them.

Mr. Sowell has some great thoughts about the handling and mishandling of ClimateGate. I need no more proof that the arrogance and determination of such people is paving the way to totalitarian government, and an end to We The People...

As for politicians, Senator Barbara Boxer has urged prosecution of the hackers who uncovered and revealed the e-mails! People who have in the past applauded whistleblowers in business, in the military, or in Republican administrations, and who lionized the New York Times for publishing the classified Pentagon papers, are now shocked and outraged that someone dared to expose massive evidence of manipulations, concealment and destruction of data — and deliberate cover-ups of all this — in the global warming establishment.

Zey haf VAYS to make you obey!

It's not a "consensus" in any sense of the word...much less SCIENTIFIC consensus! (with update)

Thanks to SJDoc, one commenter at Townhall.com, for my headline. Jillian Bandes' column is another in a long line of reminders that Congressional majority Dems are as much obstacles as Congressional minority Dems. Obstruction is their best talent, it seems. Paying heed to the Constitution? Not so much.

Hosting a hearing on global warming with no dissenting opinions made Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the Committee, think the Democrats and the Obama administration were just as complicit in the global warming scandal sparked by Climategate as the Climategate scientists themselves.

“What the hearings showed is that the President’s science advisors are at the bottom of the whole climate change debate,” said Sensenbrenner.


Do you still believe that Your Elected Representatives and the Current Occupant really represent your interests and the interests of this Nation? Do you think BarryO the Ditherer and His Merry Band of CongressWeasels even remember the Oath they swore when they took office?

In case they need a reminder of what they said, here's the President's version:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And here's the one Your Elected Representatives take:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Yeah. I didn't think so.

UPDATE! Sometimes I should read the things in my sidebar before I post. Via my friends and fellow grouches at GrouchyConservativePundits comes this - from the Washington Times.

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed its data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for the hottest years, with 1934 listed as slightly cooler.

You knew this was coming, didn't you?

"It is about the accumulation of power by any means necessary."

I have been attacked by a cold, and I feel like last week's lunch. I made two big pots of turkey noodle soup over the weekend, though, and they were SO good. One is almost finished at this house, and the other is being lunch at work for Lovely Daughter. I have more carcass, think this one will probably make turkey rice soup...cuz I'm out of noodles.

I've read Arnold Ahlert's letters to the editor and comments at The American Spectator. JewishWorldReview.com picked him up as a new contributor a few months back and I am pleased as I can be.

Mr. Ahlert's most recent column is SO good, I wish I could reprint the whole thing. Some exerpts:

On the reaction of Old Media to word that the "scientists" involved in pushing the idea of 'global warming' might not be in consensus AND might fudge data?

The reaction to these revelations? Perhaps as revealing, if not more so, than the revelations themselves. Much like the ACORN scandal, the mainstream media—once again with the exception of Fox News—has either avoided the story completely, or sought to focus on the manner in which the emails were procured. This last bit is pivotal, because it is the basis by which the intrepid folks at the New York Times and other media sources have determined that they will withhold the damning evidence from the public: stolen material is unfit for print or broadcast.

Apparently this is a spanking new standard for the Times, whose appetite for disseminating purloined or secret stuff goes back at least as far as the top secret, "not intended for publication" Pentagon Papers in 1971, all the way through to revealing top-secret info about how the Bush administration conducted various aspects of the war on terror.

Mr. Ahlert points out that many Americans simply don't know what they don't know - and what they don't know is a n 800-pound gorilla:

Which brings us to the 800-pound gorilla: you can't learn what you haven't been taught. Or worse, you can't make informed decisions when those decisions have already be made for you by an educational establishment which has been in the liberal tank for decades. With respect to this particular subject, how many school age children have been forced to watch Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and given the impression that a blowhard politician with no scientific credentials whatsoever, a man whose own lifestyle contradicts everything he ostensibly believes in, is the last word on the subject? How many kids have been told global warming is "settled science" without offering them a scintilla of contrasting information? How many have been brainwashed into believing that "living green" is tantamount to the religious mandate to "go and sin no more?"

Every effort mankind has ever undertaken to obliterate individual freedom and increase the power of the state has always included the inculcation of children too young to think independently. This one is no different. If America is going to right itself, the war for our children's hearts and minds must be won.

But in order to win it, more people have to realize it exists. More importantly, they have to do something about it. This is a difficult undertaking for parents who are the front-liners in this fight. At the end of a busy day, very few people want to know—exactly—what their children are learning in school. Unfortunately, such apathy is the mother's milk of progressives for whom raising a generation of school children who disdain American exceptionalism is a prime directive. People with no particular pride in their country are a much more malleable bunch than those with a real understanding of self-reliance, Constitutionalism, and historical perspective.

A long, difficult, and often tedious journey has begun for us - I hope the old dogs are up to learning new tricks - so the next generations will be taught properly.

Five Day Forecast on wokv.com

Five Day Forecast on wokv.com

It's real dry. WeatherGuessers call it "fire weather."

And I don't care what AccuWeather says - 41 - I just watched frost form on the roof of the house and the car in the driveway under the big magnolia tree across the street.

AGW - A Great Waste (of Taxpayer Money)

Yes, I've been following the kerfuffle about the lies, damn lies, and little white lies printed and spoken to "prove" something that facts, figures, and REAL science do not prove. SwampWoman at A1A South uses her talents to explain an opinion much better than I could. Swiped her title, too, because in this case, imitation is the best way to flatter and say thank you.

I'm also working my way through the analysis Boy On A Bike is doing Down Under. He's so good at keeping this simple enough for an uneducated ordinary ol broad like me to understand that I just cannot imagine how the wool has been pulled over the eyes of the world for so long...which tells me there's likely collusion. What's that old line - follow the Money. Cliches are often truth, aren't they?

All Foam...No Beer

I honestly didn't believe I could be more disgusted by BarryO and the Merry Men than I was. I didn't think I could be as nauseated over a "Peace" Prize recipient as I was when the announcement was made that Arafat and Carter had won.

After all, Carter and his Confederates had allowed the country to suffer through the insanity of the hostage-taking in Iran, not to mention helping to drive the country into a deep recession.

Arafat preached and worked toward the destruction of the State of Israel and the death of the Jews, with Jimmuh his willing companion.

I was WRONG.

It seems BarryO has 'won' the "Peace" Prize by his mere existence. Wow. The Nobel committee has handed this jackass the award after less than a full year on the job. Since nothing has changed except the escalation of war in various places around the world, not to mention the world economy - and the AMERICAN economy - going into the sewer, I have to conclude once more that those 'esteemed' geniuses who make up the committee are, in fact, bent on destroying the Free World.

Paco used the term "A World Turned Upside Down." Indeed. You can find the transcript of the official press release at Camp of the Saints.

An exerpt from Meredith Jessup at Townhall.com:

Obama beat out "Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman's rights activist."

I know we're at war right now and that war is bad, but I would just like to point out this bit of irony: if it hadn't been for "the evil one," President George W. Bush, and the U.S. military's efforts in ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban's tyrannic rule, I'd imagine there would be no "Afghan woman's rights activist" around today to even be considered for this award.
...
So correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this essentially mean Obama received this award for making some good speeches? Sure nothing he says has actually been accomplished, but it all sounds good!

All mouth, no ass. All booster, no payload. Yep, that's our BarryO.

Doesn't this make ya PROUD, America?

"Repentence for a misspent youth"

Jonathan Rosenblum at JewishWorldReview.com:

...Western liberals were also prone to the illusion that all dilemmas of public and private life can be resolved by experts, psychotherapists and other "engineers of the human soul." The most learned of men, Berlin nevertheless insisted that intellectual elites have no business presuming that they know better than the man or woman in the street.

Really good column, telling me about a book I'd wouldn't pick up in a hundred years, written about a man I never heard of. The author is Michael Ignatieff. Wow. Explains a LOT about the way BarryO and His Band of Merry CongressWeasels and Their Friends - in the education system, the legal system, the health care system and every government bureaucracy around the country - think, and what they're headed for...not that I didn't know before, but this gives me extra insight.

Belief in a single rational solution to every problem leads as well to nasty politics. Marxists have a term for those who fail to acknowledge the rational solution: "false consciousness." False consciousness can infect entire social classes, and when it does they must either be re-educated or eliminated. In non-totalitarian regimes, ridicule replaces re-education for all those too stupid to accept the consensus. Perhaps that explains why so many writers to the Yale Law Magazine find calling George W. Bush an idiot the height of sophisticated wit. Even "jokes" about Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome son and "retarded" family are not beyond the pale.

Does your government scare you YET?

Thomas Sowell Tuesday - Random THoughts

Random Thoughts from Thomas Sowell. I LOVE Tuesdays.

My favorites:
~Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences.

~Recently I was foolish enough to try to reason with an environmentalist. But it became obvious that he had his mind made up and didn't want to hear any evidence to the contrary. The Pope is more likely to have read Karl Marx than an environmentalist is to have read even a single book that criticized environmentalism.

~How long will it be before the public gets tired of the little know-it-all sermonettes by Barack Obama — especially since nothing that he is doing is actually working?

I don’t have much patience for deliberate lies dressed up in a “science” costume.

SwampWoman, at A1A South, posted a brilliant, thoughtful, and slightly? scathing fisking of the "climate change" report issued by the White House last week. It is, quite simply, priceless. I'm sure glad the woman is on my side! You gotta go read the whole thing, but here's some of my favorite parts:

These f***ing clowns can’t predict what temperature it will be on Monday of next week, so why in the hell should they be considered some kind of experts on what temperature it will be after they’re dead? The temperature trend is DOWN, you morons!
...
Sounds like there wasn’t any evidence before and lots and lots of data falsification has been going on because they know that the Democrats aren’t actually going to check the facts. Hell, they won’t even bother to read the paper. They’ll just have somebody give them a synopsis using one syllable words. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that somebody whose job title is “coordinator of global change science” would find evidence of impacts from climate change. For the sarcasm challenged, yes, that is sarcasm dripping off the keyboard and pooling on the floor in a large, glowing puddle.

Gotta love her!

What AlGore doesn't say...but should

The man(bearpig) is a Professional Politician. This makes him a trained, dyed-in-the-wool Bullshirt Artist. Except for a couple Elected Officials with medical degrees, none of them have any real knowledge of anything outside their protected little circle (Average rent for a family of 4 in their home town? Price of a new set of tires? How to run a family of 4 on $40k?) , and AlGore is possibly the worst of the lot, having been raised in D.C. by a tobacco farmer turned Professional Politician who was also a Communist Sympathizer and worked very hard to promote Socialism in the United States. These people couldn't pour piss out of a boot with directions on the heel, that's how (ohhowIdislikethisphrase) OUT OF TOUCH with American Life they are. And tell the Truth? OhfertheluvvaGod, everything that comes out of their mouths is a Lie or a self-serving piece of refuse!

How soon we forget...the REAL Al Gore and his daddy.

Now comes this article - for some REAL information about this new religion AlGore has manufactured...what AlGore would say if he told the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth...from Thomas Peep's Daily News.