Climategate, White House Gate Crashers, and More Obamacare

The Drudgereport.com Headlines say a lot!

PAPER: CLIMATE CHANGE 'FRAUD'...
CLIMATEGATE: Scientist at center of e-mail controversy to step down...
Penn State Professor also under investigation...
Inhofe Asks Boxer to Probe Potential Scientific 'Conspiracy'...
Australia's Parliament defeats global warming bill...
'It's all unravelling now'...
North Texas Wakes to Big Snowflakes...
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Ann Coulter humorously says: having claimed to have collected the most complete data on the Earth's temperature for the last half century, the CRU's summary of that data was used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its 2007 report demanding that we adopt a few modest lifestyle changes, such as abolishing modern technology, reverting to hunter/gatherer status and taxing ourselves into servitude.
Even if the Earth were warming -- which apparently it is not -- the idea that humans using energy-efficient lightbulbs would alter the temperature of the globe is approximately as plausible as the Aztecs' belief that they were required to wrench the beating heart out of living, breathing humans in order to keep the sun on its path.
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Howard Rich of Townhall.com reports other payoffs given (using our money) above and beyond the $300 million that was used to buy Mary Landrieu's vote for Obamacare:

You’d have to multiply that dollar amount dozens of times over to arrive at the $10 billion in so-called “reinsurance” money that has been tucked away for organized labor in the $2.6 trillion House bill. What’s that “reinsurance” money for, exactly?

That’s simple - it’s a bailout for union leaders who have grossly “mismanaged” funds that were supposed to pay for their retirees’ insurance claims.

Of course in a bitterly ironic pill for taxpayers to swallow, at the same time Obama is hoping to shower money on these labor leaders for their ongoing corruption and incompetence, he has removed any accountability whatsoever over their future actions by rescinding Bush-era disclosure requirements on top union officials.

They actively seek the forced unionization of the entire health care industry.

In the $2.5 trillion Senate proposal, for example, a union-stacked “personal care attendants workforce advisory panel” would be established under the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). This panel would have the authority to compel union affiliation – and payment of union dues – in exchange for allowing “private” providers access to federal reimbursements for community care.

Another scam works like this: In order to become eligible for federal reimbursements, employees who provide home care must agree to be “reclassified” as federal employees, with the strings of compulsory union membership and dues attached, of course.

[The more we read this health care bill, the more there is to disgust us.]

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Townhall's Jillian Bandes reports: The Democratically-controlled Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing yesterday to examine the science behind global warming. Two climate experts from the Obama administration testified, but when Republicans asked to have a global-warming skeptic at the hearing, Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) refused to allow it.
Chairman Markey did not even hold the hearing for the purpose of exploring the Climategate scandal. Rather, it was held to explore the “urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse” in advance of the President’s trip to Copenhagen. Sensenbrenner also complained that the two witnesses who were called, Dr. John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, an administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were not put under oath at the hearing. Markey said that the reason they were not put under oath was because it would be “grandstanding.” [And I bet you thought that evidence of fraud in the science of global warming would slow down Obama's attempt to take Americans' money to "spread our wealth" thru Cap and Trade and such laws. When will we ever learn? Just follow the money - given to Al Gore and his company, to university and private researchers for their studies, etc.]
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As for the government stepping in [to bail out the failing (mostly liberal) newspapers] Murdoch said he feared, and others should too, the growing drumbeat for government assistance should be as alarming as overregulation. That includes providing taxpayer funds for journalism or giving them nonprofit status in exchange for giving up the right to endorse political candidates.

He said that would only prop up those who produce what customers don't want, subsidizing failure and penalizing success. He said that government inserting itself into commercial journalism should be "chilling" to anyone concerned about the First Amendment.
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Don't you just love this? The NYT is reporting that The White House on Wednesday invoked the separation of powers to keep Desiree Rogers, President Obama’s social secretary, from testifying on Capitol Hill about how a couple of aspiring reality television show celebrities crashed a state dinner for the prime minister of India last week. And the couple will not testify, either, according to a statement released late Wednesday by a public relations firm. [I will say here that some time ago when my husband and I were in the White House and attempted to give our names to the person holding the list of invitees, we were told that they KNOW who we are, and the photos would be sent to our home in several weeks. We knew then and there that we had been thoroughly vetted. We can't say the same for current visitors to the White House, and that comes with great risk.]

The War President, the College Professor & the Party Host

Today I bring you news that some in our government are actually considering a $3600 tax credit for all dog owners, for having a dog promotes health in the owners. Wait a minute! I thought we need to decrease CO2 emissions, flatulence and body discharges in order to tame our rapidly growing environmental destruction! And think of all the plastic bags which will have to be used to clean up those messes! Another problem I see here is that our government already encourages those without much money to have ever more children so that they are eligible for more government money. Won't this do the same - encourage the poorest people to get a dog in order to get even more money? The Law of Unintended Consequences would surely be in play.
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Following is part of a tongue in cheek interpretation of Obama's speech to the nation last night, according to the American Spectator: "President Obama delivered an historic speech to the nation and to the world on his plans for Afghanistan. Here, in sum, is what the president said: I really don't want to be commander-in-chief, but I'll do it if I have to -- at least for a little while, and then we'll see. Just so long as it doesn't cost too much, or take too long, or interfere with my plans to nationalize healthcare and fundamentally change America.
I myself never served in the military, but let me tell you: These guys -- and especially the marines -- are a little nuts. I mean, they're all volunteers; they all believe deeply in America -- and in America as it is, and not in America as I will soon remake it -- and they all have this touching but wild-eyed optimism in America's ability to change the world."

[I'm sure glad he got this decision behind him, for December will be a very busy month for him. It has been announced that in addition to his trip to Copenhagen, he and his wife will be entertaining 50,000 guests at the White House, holding 28 parties or open houses. One does have to wonder when he will have time to get ANY work done. And once more, while telling the world that "we" must begin to cut our deficit, he continues to spend massive amounts of our money.]
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From The Atlantic comes the following: What timing: President Obama and Tiger Woods will appear together on the cover of the January issue of Golf Digest.

It could be the most politically charged Golf Digest cover ever. Woods is dealing with a swirl of rumors and media scrutiny after crashing into a fire hydrant outside his house at 2:30 a.m. and his wife bashing his SUV's window with a golf club. Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and trying to pass a health care bill.

On the inside spread, the cover story is titled: "What President Obama could learn from Tiger Woods--and vice versa." Seriously.
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The National Review opines that "The thing to understand about the scandal surrounding the e-mails leaked from Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is that it is actually three scandals. There is a scientific scandal, in which the leading lights of the climate-research cabal conspired to fudge data and silence skeptics. There is a media scandal, in which reporters and editors on the “climate beat” at the world’s most prominent news organizations acted as stenographers for the cabal and ignored the scandal when it broke. And there is a political scandal, in which officeholders here and abroad used the bunk science as a pretext for expanding their control of (and take from) the world’s energy markets.
Nor can the “uncorrected” data be recovered from CRU, which threw much of it away, allegedly to “save space.” The darker possibility, which Jones hinted at in an e-mail to Mann, is that the data were intentionally erased. “If [global-warming skeptics] ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K.,” he wrote, “I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.”
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Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com points out the reasons why polls done by different agencies have different outcomes: [I've always said that it's all in the way the questions are asked.]
1. "Likely Voters": Rasmussen narrows its field of respondents to "likely voters," whereas most other firms use registered voters or all adults. "Likely voters" don't usually include young, minority, or marginal voters more likely to support Obama.

2. The four-category question: instead of "approve or disapprove," Rasmussen asks respondents whether they strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove. This yields fewer "I don't know" answers, which, typically, leads to higher disapproval numbers

3. Automated polling: Rasmussen doesn't use live interviewers. People could feel more comfortable saying they don't like Obama to a machine, or hardcore partisans could be more likely not to hang up the phone. Regardless of theory, firms that use automated polling tend to give Obama worse numbers.

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The Wall St. Journal reports that the head of the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday the agency will study whether government should aid struggling news organizations, which are suffering from a collapse in advertising revenues as the internet upends their centuries-old business model. FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz's comments came during day one of a two-day "workshop" sponsored by the agency that became a forum for arguments among the heads of a diverse array of news organizations over the future of journalism. [Can you all see a bailout coming - we Americans bailing our the biased left-leaning newspapers which are losing their audiences?]

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It's business as usual for this President. He is holding a "jobs summit" this Thursday, as if he thinks he is a college professor. However, in order to promote his agenda, he has barred from the summit those who would actually have an opposing view as to how jobs may be created.

The Washington Times has discovered that: missing from a partial list of attendees released by the White House are the self-proclaimed voices of business - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business - both of which have been critical of Mr. Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

Confirmed attendees include liberal economists credited with shaping the $787 billion stimulus package, union leaders, environmental advocates and executives from Google and other blue-chip firms.

Representatives from NFIB and the Chamber of Commerce said their organizations were not asked to attend, but representatives from some of the country's largest unions, Change to Win and the United Steelworkers, will participate.

In an open letter to Mr. Obama on Tuesday, Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue outlined a series of proposals to stimulate job growth, including eliminating protectionist trade barriers, reducing the deficit and eliminating unnecessary regulation.

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Climategate

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H. L. Menken.


James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph has reported that the Kiwis may have been at it too – "tinkering with raw data to make “Global Warming” look scarier than it really is. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That; Ian Wishart)

The alleged villains this time are the climate scientists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NiWA) – New Zealand’s answer to Britain’s Climate Research Unit. And to judge by this news alert by the Climate Science Coalition of NZ, both institutions share a similarly laissez-faire attitude to scientific accuracy."

Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

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The NYT is finally reporting something about "Climategate" Part of their report covers this quote from one of the scientists: “This whole concept of, ‘We’re the experts, trust us,’ has clearly gone by the wayside with these e-mails,” said Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology."

It goes on to say: Dr. Curry and others said that if nothing else, the e-mail correspondence suggested that climate scientists needed to show more temperance in dealing with their critics.

“We won the war — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, and climate and energy legislation is near the top of the U.S. agenda,” Dr. Curry said. “Why keep fighting all these silly battles and putting ourselves in this position?" [As Barack Hussein Obama so famously said, "I won!" - now don't question me.]

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The UK Telegraph reports: There is a series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offense.

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programs, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming.
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John Hinderaker states: there's no question that it's a fraud, but whether the "scientists" who have been promoting the global warming hoax have committed felonies is not yet clear. They have taken countless hundreds of millions of dollars in government money and used it to produce fraudulent results, which may very well violate criminal statues both here and in the U.K. And the "scientists'" destruction of data that was subject to valid Freedom of Information Act requests may have been criminal under British law. [One wonders if Al Gore, who has steadfastly refused to actually debate the subject of his pet project and who has made multi-millions from his efforts and his cap and trade company, is liable to face criminal charges as well.]