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"There is but
one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
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Government Leech Alert: Illegal Immigrant Gets Food
Stamps, Meds, Housing, & Social Security for 20 Years!
Maritha
Nelson’s $240 in food stamps has run out, leaving her $9 in cash and seven
people to feed. The 50-year-old single mother, who entered the U.S. by
swimming across the Rio Grande, has government funded housing, medication, and
$700 a month in Social Security. She’s been on assistance for 20 years, and
wants others to know that help is available. Florida is teeming
with food stamp recruiters…who have a goal: increase federal aid to Florida by
$1 billion a year.
~~~~~~
US Attorney: Anti-Muslim Postings on Social Media Might
Be Criminal
This
could be the straw to break the camel’s back. The First Amendment served us well for a time, but now it’s outdated.
Remember reading that England had arrested a guy for anti-Muslim Twitter
postings in the aftermath of the Woolrich slaughter? And remember thinking, “Well, this is America, that can’t happen
here”? Oh yes it can. Obama’s Attorney for the Eastern district of
Tennessee wants you to know that if you say something untoward about Muslims,
the Federal government may imprison you.
Killian and Moore will provide input
on how civil rights can be violated by those who post inflammatory documents
targeted at Muslims on social media. “This is an educational effort with civil
rights laws as they play into freedom of religion and exercising freedom of
religion,” Killian told The News Monday. “This is also to inform the public what
federal laws are in effect and what the consequences are.” ... Killian said
Internet postings that violate civil rights are subject to federal
jurisdiction.
The posting he offers
as a "for instance" is an egregious one. And yet this country has
long protected, absolutely, egregious speech, such as hardcore pornography, for
a simple reason: Either you are at liberty to say what you will or you are not. If you are
constantly double-thinking every word you might say, for fear of being
prosecuted, you are self-censoring, in anticipation of a possible prosecution
by the government. Rather than having a
system in which people were constantly worried about imprisonment for speech, our country has evolved a simple
bright-line code: Speech of all kinds, with a few exceptions that can be
counted on three fingers, is absolutely protected. Remember, the importance of this bright-line,
no-exceptions rule of free speech was preached to us, even when some of us
might not have liked it so much, as when hardcore pornography was afforded
absolute protection under the First Amendment. In the case of hardcore
pornography, it was argued -- successfully -- that having each artist weigh the
possibility of an obscenity prosecution was too much of a burden on his free
speech rights, and would have, unavoidably, a chilling effect on speech. That was the rule then, and that was the
rationale.
~~~~~~~~
Flailing: The Obama Administration’s Response to IRS
Scandal is Ridiculous by
Todd Cefaratti
President
Obama’s Administration has made so many wrong turns and U-turns in their quest
to try and smooth over the public’s outrage over the many, many scandals that
have emerged that they no longer appear in control of much of anything. The
train is coming off the track and the Obama Administration’s unwillingness to
make a decision on how to handle the scandals and stick to it has made their
situation significantly worse. Flailing. That is the best term I could
use to describe the atmosphere surrounding the Obama Administration. They
have admitted, retracted, mitigated and walked-back culpability in these
scandals so many times, only those who are 24-hour news junkies could possibly
have a vague grasp on what the Obama Administration’s official stances on these
scandals are.
In
the instance of the IRS scandal, the Obama Administration admitted that the
actions were inappropriate. Then, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney
claimed that it was not clear that the IRS did anything wrong. Then, their
stance became, “We’ll wait and see what the IG report says.” And then the White
House went back to a passive admission of inappropriateness. The Obama Administration, it seemed, had
decided to finally land on “wrongdoing had occurred, but it was ‘rogue agents’
and not our fault.” Obama has promised to “hold the responsible parties
accountable,” but then again, we’ve heard that before.
The
day after the State Department’s deplorable failures got four Americans killed
by the hands of Islamic terrorists, President Obama stood in the Rose Garden
and promised that justice would be done.
“Today
we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States
of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is
done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
We’re
still waiting, Mr. Obama…. So, given the complete lack of interest in finding
justice for our murdered Americans, forgive me if I am skeptical of the Obama
Administration’s claim that they will root out those responsible for the
specific targeting of Tea Party and conservative political organizations.
~~~~~~
Brokaw: Obama Scandals Not As Bad As Abu Ghraib
What
a hypocrite. If this would have been Bush with any of these scandals he would
have been impeached already.
How Abu Ghraib compares is ridiculous. Brokaw sounds like I did as a child;
"...everyone else is doing it too so why can't I. And, what they are doing is worse!" Tom Brokaw did his very best to
contextualize the numerous scandals pummeling the Obama Administration by
saying they don’t rise up to the level of Watergate, Iran-Contra or even Abu
Ghraib.
“I was covering
Iran-Contra during the Reagan administration when [Peggy Noonan] was working
for that president, in which we were funding a war illegally. We were trying to
make a deal with the Iranians at the time. That was a pretty big damn scandal.” [because
he said so] Brokaw seems to be employing a tactic common among has-been journalists these days. They
seem to be afraid that any story seen as “bigger” than the stories they covered
in their day somehow diminishes their life work, and therefore any suggestion
to this effect must be smacked down immediately.
~~~~~~
Obama To Sign International Gun Control Treaty
On
June 3, President Barack Obama will sign the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The
ATT passed in the U.N. General Assembly by a vote of 153-4 on April 2. This
treaty is ostensibly aimed at putting an end to gun trafficking across
international boundaries, and both Breitbart News and the NRA have argued
that it will eventually require an international gun registry in order to be
enforceable. The ATT also provides the executive branch of our
government with broad powers for controlling which guns do and don’t come into
the country, and includes ambiguous language that a gun-control-friendly
administration can use to its advantage.
~~~~~~
The
following is rather long. But for those
that need specific information to debunk the political class pushing Global
Warming, it is a good cut and paste.
To The Horror Of Global Warming Alarmists, Global Cooling
Is Here
Peter
Ferrara
Around 1250 A.D., historical records
show, ice packs began showing up farther south in the North Atlantic. Glaciers
also began expanding on Greenland, soon to threaten Norse settlements on the
island. From 1275 to 1300 A.D., glaciers began expanding more broadly,
according to radiocarbon dating of plants killed by the glacier growth. The
period known today as the Little Ice Age was just starting to poke through.
Summers began cooling in Northern
Europe after 1300 A.D., negatively impacting growing seasons, as reflected in
the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317. Expanding glaciers and ice cover spreading
across Greenland began driving the Norse settlers out. The last, surviving,
written records of the Norse Greenland settlements, which had persisted for
centuries, concern a marriage in 1408 A.D. in the church of Hvalsey, today the
best preserved Norse ruin.
Colder
winters began regularly freezing rivers and canals in Great Britain, the
Netherlands and Northern France, with both the Thames in London and the Seine
in Paris frozen solid annually. The first River Thames Frost Fair was held in
1607. In 1607-1608, early European settlers in North America reported ice
persisting on Lake Superior until June. In January, 1658, a Swedish army
marched across the ice to invade Copenhagen. By the end of the 17th century,
famines had spread from northern France, across Norway and Sweden, to Finland
and Estonia.
Reflecting
its global scope, evidence of the Little Ice Age appears in the Southern
Hemisphere as well. Sediment cores from Lake Malawi in southern Africa show
colder weather from 1570 to 1820. A 3,000 year temperature reconstruction based
on varying rates of stalagmite growth in a cave in South Africa also indicates
a colder period from 1500 to 1800. A 1997 study comparing West Antarctic ice
cores with the results of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2) indicate
a global Little Ice Age affecting the two ice sheets in tandem.
The
Siple Dome, an ice dome roughly 100 km long and 100 km wide, about 100 km east
of the Siple Coast of Antartica, also reflects effects of the Little Ice Age
synchronously with the GISP2 record, as do sediment cores from the Bransfield
Basin of the Antarctic Peninsula. Oxygen/isotope analysis from the Pacific
Islands indicates a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature decline between 1270 and
1475 A.D.
The
Franz Josef glacier on the west side of the Southern Alps of New Zealand
advanced sharply during the period of the Little Ice Age, actually invading a
rain forest at its maximum extent in the early 1700s. The Mueller glacier on
the east side of New Zealand’s Southern Alps expanded to its maximum extent at
roughly the same time.
Ice
cores from the Andeas mountains in South America show a colder period from 1600
to 1800. Tree ring data from Patagonia in South America show cold periods from
1270 to 1380 and from 1520 to 1670. Spanish explorers noted the expansion of
the San Rafael Glacier in Chile from 1675 to 1766, which continued into the
19th century. The height of the Little Ice Age is generally dated as 1650 to
1850 A.D. The American Revolutionary Army under General George Washington
shivered at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, and New York harbor was
frozen in the winter of 1780. Historic snowstorms struck Lisbon, Portugal in
1665, 1744 and 1886. Glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana advanced
until the late 18th or early 19th centuries. The last River Thames Frost Fair
was held in 1814. The Little Ice Age phased out during the middle to late 19th
century.
The
Little Ice Age, following the historically warm temperatures of the Medieval
Warm Period, which lasted from about AD 950 to 1250, has been attributed to
natural cycles in solar activity, particularly sunspots. A period of sharply lower sunspot
activity known as the Wolf Minimum began in 1280 and persisted for 70 years
until 1350. That was followed by a period of even lower sunspot activity that
lasted 90 years from 1460 to 1550 known as the Sporer Minimum. During the
period 1645 to 1715, the low point of the Little Ice Age, the number of
sunspots declined to zero for the entire time. This is known as the Maunder
Minimum, named after English astronomer Walter Maunder. That was followed by
the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1830, another period of well below normal
sunspot activity.
The
increase in global temperatures since the late 19th century just reflects the
end of the Little Ice Age. The global temperature trends since then have
followed not rising CO2 trends but the ocean temperature cycles of the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
Every 20 to 30 years, the much colder water near the bottom of the oceans
cycles up to the top, where it has a slight cooling effect on global
temperatures until the sun warms that water. That warmed water then contributes
to slightly warmer global temperatures, until the next churning cycle.
Those
ocean temperature cycles, and the continued recovery from the Little Ice Age,
are primarily why global temperatures rose from 1915 until 1945, when CO2
emissions were much lower than in recent years. The change to a cold ocean
temperature cycle, primarily the PDO, is the main reason that global temperatures
declined from 1945 until the late 1970s, despite the soaring CO2 emissions
during that time from the postwar industrialization spreading across the globe.
The
20 to 30 year ocean temperature cycles turned back to warm from the late 1970s
until the late 1990s, which is the primary reason that global temperatures
warmed during this period. But that warming ended 15 years ago, and global
temperatures have stopped increasing since then, if not actually cooled, even
though global CO2 emissions have soared over this period. As The Economist
magazine reported in March, “The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of
carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all
the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” Yet, still no warming during that
time. That is because the CO2 greenhouse effect is weak and marginal compared
to natural causes of global temperature changes.
At
first the current stall out of global warming was due to the ocean cycles
turning back to cold. But something much more ominous has developed over this
period. Sunspots run in 11 year short term cycles, with longer cyclical trends
of 90 and even 200 years. The number of sunspots declined substantially in the
last 11 year cycle, after flattening out over the previous 20 years. But in the
current cycle, sunspot activity has collapsed. NASA’s Science News
report for January 8, 2013 states,
“Indeed,
the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. Ongoing
Solar Cycle 24 [the current short term 11 year cycle] is the weakest in more
than 50 years. Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term
weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and
William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time
Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if
any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving
helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.”
That
is even more significant because NASA’s climate science has been controlled for
years by global warming hysteric James Hansen, who recently announced his
retirement.
But
this same concern is increasingly being echoed worldwide. The Voice of
Russia reported on April 22, 2013,
“Global
warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may
give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo
Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly
temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US
chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.”
That
report quoted Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory saying, “Evidently,
solar activity is on the decrease. The 11-year cycle doesn’t bring about
considerable climate change – only 1-2%. The impact of the 200-year cycle is
greater – up to 50%. In this respect, we could be in for a cooling period that
lasts 200-250 years.” In other words, another Little Ice Age.
The
German Herald reported on March 31, 2013,
“German meteorologists say that the
start of 2013 is now the coldest in 208 years
– and now German media has quoted Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov
from the St. Petersburg Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory [saying this] is proof
as he said earlier that we are heading for a “Mini Ice Age.” Talking to German
media the scientist who first made his prediction in 2005 said that after studying sunspots and their relationship with
climate change on Earth, we are now on an ‘unavoidable advance towards a
deep temperature drop.’”
Faith
in Global Warming is collapsing in formerly staunch Europe following
increasingly severe winters which have now started continuing into spring.
Christopher Booker explained in The Sunday Telegraph on April 27, 2013,
“Here in Britain, where we had our
fifth freezing winter in a row, the Central England Temperature record –
according to an expert analysis on the US science blog Watts Up With That –
shows that in this century, average winter temperatures have dropped by 1.45C,
more than twice as much as their rise between 1850 and 1999, and twice as much
as the entire net rise in global temperatures recorded in the 20th century.”
A
news report from India (The Hindu
April 22, 2013) stated, “March in Russia saw the harshest frosts in 50 years,
with temperatures dropping to –25° Celsius in central parts of the country and
–45° in the north. It was the coldest spring month in Moscow in half a
century….Weathermen say spring is a full month behind schedule in Russia.” The
news report summarized,
“Russia
is famous for its biting frosts but this year, abnormally icy weather also hit
much of Europe, the United States, China and India. Record snowfalls brought
Kiev, capital of Ukraine, to a standstill for several days in late March,
closed roads across many parts of Britain, buried thousands of sheep beneath
six-metre deep snowdrifts in Northern Ireland, and left more than 1,000,000
homes without electricity in Poland. British authorities said March was the
second coldest in its records dating back to 1910. China experienced the
severest winter weather in 30 years and New Delhi in January recorded the
lowest temperature in 44 years.”
Booker
adds, “Last week it was reported that 3,318 places in the USA had recorded
their lowest temperatures for this time of year since records began. Similar record cold was experienced
by places in every province of Canada. So cold has the Russian winter been that
Moscow had its deepest snowfall in 134 years of observations.”
Britain’s
Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming
hysteria, did concede last December that there would be no further warming at
least through 2017, which would make 20 years with no global warming. That
reflects grudging recognition of the newly developing trends. But that reflects as well growing
divergence between the reality of real world temperatures and the projections
of the climate models at the foundation of the global warming
alarmism of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since
those models have never been validated, they are not science at this point, but
just made up fantasies. That is why, “In the 12 years to 2011, 11 out
of 12 [global temperature]forecasts [of the Met Office] were too high — and…
none were colder than [resulted],” as BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson
wrote in January.
Global
warming was never going to be the problem that the Lysenkoists who have brought
down western science made it out to be. Human emissions of CO2 are only 4 to 5% of
total global emissions, counting natural causes. Much was made of the total
atmospheric concentration of CO2 exceeding 400 parts per million. But
if you asked the daffy NBC correspondent who hysterically reported on that what
portion of the atmosphere 400 parts per million is, she transparently wouldn’t
be able to tell you. One percent of the atmosphere would be 10,000 parts per
million. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 deep in the geologic past were
much, much greater than today, yet life survived, and we have no record of any
of the catastrophes the hysterics have claimed. Maybe that is because
the temperature impact of increased concentrations of CO2 declines
logarithmically. That means there is a natural limit to how much increased CO2
can effectively warm the planet, which would be well before any of the supposed
climate catastrophes the warming hysterics have tried to use to shut down
capitalist prosperity.
Yet,
just last week, there was Washington
Post columnist Eugene Robinson telling us, by way of attempting to tutor
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and
Technology, “For the record, and for the umpteenth time, there is no ‘great
amount of uncertainty’ about whether the planet is warming and why.” If you can read, and you have gotten
this far in my column, you know why Robinson’s ignorance is just another Washington
Post abuse of the First Amendment. Mr. Robinson, let me introduce you to
the British Met Office, stalwart of Global Warming “science,” such as it is, which
has already publicly confessed that we are already three quarters through 20
years of No Global Warming! Booker could have been writing about
Robinson when he concluded his Sunday Telegraph commentary by writing, “Has
there ever in history been such an almighty disconnect between observable
reality and the delusions of a political class
that is quite impervious to any rational discussion?” But there is a
fundamental problem with the temperature records from this contentious period,
when climate science crashed into political science. The land based records, which
have been under the control of global warming alarmists at the British Met
Office and the Hadley Centre Climate Research Unit, and at NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) in the U.S., show much more warming during this period
than the incorruptible satellite atmosphere temperature records. Those
satellite records have been further confirmed by atmospheric weather balloons.
But the land based records can be subject to tampering and falsification.
~~~~~~
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