Thompson to Say: Social Security and Medicare More Important than Global Warming

Former Senator Fred Thompson will make his premiere big screen political appearance at the Lincoln Club of Orange Country, California, where an enthusiastic audience will hear his thoughts on the issues facing the county. There is an excellent chance that he will expound on his belief that there are more important issues facing the American people than global warming, including Social Security and Medicare.

Thompson, still not a declared candidate, routinely places among the top two or three Republican candidates in polls and straw polls and seems to rate more spontaneous web postings than any of the declared Republican candidates.

Fred Thompson has received more attention this quarter, with no staff and no overt campaign effort, than most of the conventional candidates.

He will start his campaign with a far higher face recognition factor than all the others combined.

Perhaps he'll even mention his deep appreciation to our "allies" who seem to have way too much time on their hands:

It bothers Americans when we’re told how unpopular we are with the rest of the world. For some of us, at least, it gets our back up — and our natural tendency is to tell the French, for example, that we’d rather not hear from them until the day when they need us to bail them out again.

The audience in Orange County and we at home can expect to hear much more of Fred's forthright thinking as time goes on. Today, he spends his days much as Reagan did, commenting for others. The day will come, as it did for Reagan, when it's time to do it for himself.

One thing for certain: There'll be an audience.

Global Warming Expands Its Effect Across Millions of Additional Miles

The global warming climate crisis has exploded its effect across millions of miles… of space.

A recent report in The Sunday Times of London explains that the planet Mars has warmed by about the same amount over the same time period as has Earth.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Mars is also losing antarctic ice at a rapid pace.

The cause of the rapid increase in surface temperature on Mars is not known, although one of the Mars researchers

believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

Sounds a little circular: more radiation and higher temperature cause winds which stir up storms which cause higher temperatures?

Meanwhile, rumors that Al Gore has bailed from his energy-glutton home on earth to take up residency on the Red Planet have been denied.

NASA remains confident that the Mars Rover, a solar/battery vehicle could not have produced sufficient carbon dioxide greenhouse gasses to have caused the changes.

Related Links:
Where Was Al Gore When Greenland Got It's Name, III?

George Tenet: A Man Without A Friend

A group of former intelligence officers have taken George Tenet to task, describing him in an open letter as

the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community—a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality.

In other words, just another typical Bill Clinton appointee.

Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war.

Although I disagree with the writers' take on the war itself, it is easy to share their very low opinion of another man, like so many today, who wishes to stand on both sides of the tide of history.

Poor Mr. Tenet, no respect from any quarter, normally the fate of cowards, moral or otherwise.

UPDATE: Villainous Company has much more.
UPDATE: If you lose Sister Toldjah and Christopher Hitchens on the same day, you're toast.

"Progress in Anbar" - No! It Can't Be. Not The NY Times!

RAMADI, Iraq — Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

OK for a neo-conservative rag.

Acceptable from Fox News.

Perfectly understandable as a paragraph from "mad-dog" Cheney.

But as the lede paragraph in the New York Times? No. It's either impossible or a disaster. It's got to be impossible.

First thought: I wonder if the reporter and editor are still working there? What's his name, Jason something? Any chance it was a prank? Have they floated a correction?

Second thought: Where's General Nancy Pelosi? This could be serious. The Times is reporting that there a new military plan in place. What new plan? I wonder if Petraeus covered that in their meeting last week. Oh, right, Pelosi didn't attend the meeting. Damn.

Third thought: Senator Harry Reid (D-Ritz Carlton and former friend of David Broder, the former dean of the Washington press corp don't you know) had better get his rear in gear and work out an honorable surrender before this gets out of hand.

The contrast with earlier coverage from the tired old Gray Lady and reporting from other media is striking. After the obligatory litany of continuing problems, and there are many, the article reports:

Still, the progress has inspired an optimism in the American command that, among some officials, borders on giddiness. It comes after years of fruitless efforts to drive a wedge between moderate resistance fighters and those, like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who seem beyond compromise.

“There are some people who would say we’ve won the war out here,” said Col. John. A. Koenig, a planning officer for the Marines who oversees governing and economic development issues in Anbar. “I’m cautiously optimistic as we’re going forward.”

For most of the past few years, the Government Center in downtown Ramadi, the seat of the provincial government, was under near-continual siege by insurgents, who reduced it to little more than a bullet-ridden bunker of broken concrete, sandbags and trapped marines. Entering meant sprinting from an armored vehicle to the front door of the building to evade snipers’ bullets.

Now, however, the compound and nearby buildings are being renovated to create offices for the provincial administration, council and governor. Hotels are being built next door for the waves of visitors the government expects once it is back in business.

Acts of violence in the region are down about 84% over the past few months, as American and Iraqui forces take, then hold the land.

Anbar is one of the most difficult provinces in Iraq. If, and it is an If, we can succeed there, we can succeed.

The question really is whether the American people have the will and the Democratic leadership in Congress will allow the time.

Neither is certain.

"Experts" Hawk Old Answers on Campus Security

Experts contacted by the Associated Press offer advice from a bygone era to today's college students who wonder about campus security in the aftermath of the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Amazingly, students are told to follow the same ineffective guidelines as in the past. It's almost like a doctor recommending to a patient the placebo over the medicine:

How good is the on-campus mental counseling and how many students are using it?

The AP notes that about 13% of all students and an impressive 25% of liberal arts students use mental health services, but doesn't address whether such numbers should reassure students or drive them to look elsewhere.

The killer at VT was a participant in such a program. Didn't help.

Look at campus crime statistics.

The AP offers the helpful thought that "in some categories, a high number isn't necessarily a bad thing." Nor is a low number necessarily a good thing.

Virginia Tech was a particularly peaceful campus until the day it wasn't. Didn't help.

Think about security on a campus visit.

Do rooms have deadbolts?

Don't worry if they don't, the shooter at VT brought his own. Didn't help.

Get information on the campus police force.

The AP suggests that students ask whether the campus police force is accredited by the Commission of Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, and that if so the student can take some comfort.

The campus police at Virginia Tech are one of 39 with such accreditation. Didn't help.

Ask about emergency communications.

The AP acknowledges the limits of technology here, that emails, IM and texting are not the complete answers and suggests consideration of sirens.

Those campuses that kept their 1950's air raid sirens, emergency rations and wardens will be on the fast track here. Getting the victims all together in one place will cut down on the wasted time.

Finally, the one recommendation that AP didn't make is the one that is proven to be the single most effective for personal security and for reduced violent crime.


For that, students and their parents need to ask:

Are legally armed civilians, professors and administrators allowed to have their personal firearms on campus? Or, like Virginia Tech and the University of Washington the month before, are the bad guys the only ones that can?

The evidence is indisputable that school and other Gun Free Zones attract killers and that including civilians in the equation of their own security significantly improves the odds of never having to act defensively. Bad guys go where their odds are best. Too often today, that means a school.

For the one state where the answer is an unequivocal Yes to student protection and where campus rampages are unknown, check out Utah.

Washington Legislature Passes 522 New Laws

It exhausts a citizen just to think about it, the discovery of why life seems to become more complex each year and why time flies. It's not your imagination or the telescoping effect of age, it's the constant stream, this year a tsunami, of complex new legislation that defines what we do, how we are to do it and how much it will cost.

The State of Washington supports what is mischaracterized as a "citizen legislature," composed of two houses that meet annually but for relatively short sessions, normally either 105 days or 60 days. The original idea was for ordinary citizens to take leaves from their real jobs, spend a short and uncomfortable time in Olympia doing the State's business on a sort of minimalist basis, then returning to their communities for re-immersion in reality.

It hasn't worked that way. In fact, the reverse effect is more likely. Like a bacteria grown resistant to the antibiotic, the politicians grow stronger each session and then return home to spread the infection.

The state government is a one-party machine, centered politically somewhere in the range of John Edwards-to-Dennis Kucinich. This year it was the longer term, 105 days, and they used it to pass 522 separate pieces of legislation, each of which focuses the power of the state to effect change in the lives of its citizens.

And to take an extra few billion dollars from its citizens in order to do good deeds, either buying their way into Heaven or at least buying more leverage in the next election. Now, granted that billions are no longer what they once were, but, still, sucking up an extra few billions every year from a very few millions of people does require more muscle than can be provided by a Hoover.

It's not totally unrelated that State agencies are debating whether to allow emergency vehicles an exemption from paying the toll as they cross the State's newest bridge. At the moment, the pro-toll folks seem to be winning.

So, when you have that coronary caused by the stress of keeping within those 522 new laws, make certain you've got $1.50—correct change will speed your passage!—in your pocket when the ambulance takes you away.

Fleeing car thieves, bank robbers and folks who run afoul of one of the 522 new laws should keep in mind that the penalty for not dropping the toll is only $49, a small price indeed if it allows you to outrun the pursuing State Patrol officer, who will be stopping to drop the toll at the gate.

"Scotty" Gets His Wish With Final Space Launch

Actor James Doohan, famous as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, Scotty on the Starship Enterprise, made his final journey into space on Saturday as his ashes were launched and recovered on a suborbital trip arranged by Space Services, Inc. of Houston.


Doohan, best known as the recipient of the iconic but mythical line, "Beam me up, Scotty," died two years ago. His remains and those of 200 others were rocketed to an altitude of 72 miles before returning for a soft landing outside Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

The flight was the first commercial use of Spaceport America, the world's only private operational spaceport.

Scotty was obviously in the top 5% of the marketplace in terms of intelligence, choosing a(n antique) Macintosh to help with emergency repairs when Enterprise returned to 20th century Earth.

A Taste of Freedom: Stephen Hawking Flies Unbound

Stephen Hawking's mind without restraint routinely explores the limits the four known dimensions that define our universe.

For 160 seconds this week, Professor Hawking's body experienced the freedom that his mind has always known, as he moved without restraint and without support, largely released for the first time in more than 30 years from the physical prison of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS.

What a fitting reward for the man who has done more to expand our perception of our horizons than any other living theorist.

Dr. Hawking plans an even more thrilling experience in two years, when he will be Richard Branson's guest on a Virgin Galactic sub-orbital space flight.

Thoughts for Harry Reid

Hugh Hewitt has posted a bit of verse, Thoughts For Harry Reid, by
Tarzana Joe, that capture the very essence of the craven Senator Harry Reid (D-Ritz Carlton).

Here they are in full:

Thoughts for Harry Reid

Would Rockne be remembered
If the towel he had tossed?
Forget about the Gipper, boys
This game’s already lost.

Would Lincoln be a hero
And on pennies be embossed
If he announced that, after Shiloh
This Union, friends, is lost.

Would Caesar have surrendered
Before the Rubicon was crossed?
Did Ulysses pull the plug
When his barque was tempest-tossed?

Would Perry’s flag be flying
Would hist’ry gip a rip
If, on it, he embroidered
“Do give up the ship!”

If we’d been bowed by setbacks
Or our opponents’ fury
Nothing would have happened
On the deck of the Missouri

So in the battle of our lifetime
If I can be the chooser
I’d rather keep on fighting
Than declare myself the loser.

Uplifting are the memories of the actions of heroic men who built our civilization.

Depressing is the thought of too many of their successors.

Christine's Mom

Somewhere outside of Minneapolis a little girl, little at least in size and young in years, surprised her mother with news.

"Come to Grandparents' Day at school, Mom. I'm going to sing and dance!"

This was news to her mother— who could make a handsome living promising never to sing or dance—on several fronts: Never had she known her daughter to sing or dance. There had been neither lessons nor apparent practice. No mention of an upcoming show. No warnings at all.

So, with trepidation to spare, and fully prepared to pick up the pieces of a disappointed daughter, off they went to Grandparents' Day.



Well, sing she did, and dance she did, and spectacularly well she did, too.

And sparkle she does all the time.

So, with apologies to readers who tune in for weightier matters, here's one for Christine. This is her song, done almost as well as she sang it. If you close your eyes just so, you can almost see her dancing.

Dear Christine, may you always sparkle just as much as you do today.

And this is for her mother, too, who almost sang and danced while she told the story.

Thanks to The Rankin Family for their help with the audio.

Disarm America : Two Easy Steps, 90 Days to 'No Guns'!

Just when you thought that everyone understands that the intellectual argument has been won, along comes a zinger. According to an Op-Ed piece in the Toledo Blade, there is a simple way to disarm the American people:

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.

The immediate goal? Gun Free Zones, similar to Virginia Tech, or perhaps the largest of them all, Washington, DC. After an effective sweep, citizens in the area would be subject to random stop-and-searches:

Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."

America's long land and sea borders present another kind of problem. It is easy to imagine mega-gun dealerships installing themselves in Mexico, and perhaps in more remote parts of the Canadian border area, to funnel guns into the United States. That would constitute a problem for American immigration authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard, but not an insurmountable one over time.

We could just tack this task on to our current longest "war," the one on drugs!

The author has reserved a loophole for hunters, who would be allowed to withdraw their rifles from heavily fortified armories during hunting season, after undergoing an annual background check and an on-site psych evaluation.

The author styles himself a retired ambassador. He must have been an undercover diplomat, as neither Google nor the other major search engines know of him.

He denies that he is a "crazed liberal zealot" but he is a member of the paper's editorial board, which indicates otherwise.

It would be good to know to which country he was an ambassador as it might help with the diagnosis of the infection he brought back with him.

Or, perhaps, this is just a Rovian ploy to motivate the gun guys.

If so, it'll do that!

UPDATE: Mr. Simpson was originally a Johnson administration appointee, who served in several African countries, where he apparently developed his fondness for house-to-house searches and command and control governments.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has a telling analogy at The Volokh Conspiracy.

UPDATE: Captain Ed will be discussing Mr. Simpson's disarmament plan for America on AM 1280 The Patriot from 1-3 CT today. Bar your doors, then listen in!

NY Times Shareholders to Mgmt: "Can You Hear Us Now?"

In a stunning rebuke to management, the public shareholders of the New York Times voted with their feet, withholding a stunning 54% of their votes for Directors of the company. Directors feeling the sting of a very public whipping included a subset of the financial A-list: James Kilts, former Chairman of Gillette and William Kennard, former Chairman of the FCC appointed by Bill Clinton.

Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., denied shareholder demands that the Times give up its unusual dual-class voting arrangement which the Sulzberger family uses to protect and control its satrapy. Earnings and circulation at the Times have been declining and the paper has suffered a number of blows to its reputation for credible reporting.

Mr. Sulzberger volunteered that he won't be changing voting arrangements. He also confirmed that he will not resign as chairman or publisher, adding that they allowed him to "balance the financial and journalistic needs" of the paper.

Well, he is doing a superb job of "balancing," as both the financial and journalistic results are equally in the tank.

Readers, who are abandoning the old gray lady in flocks can only hope to join their voices to those of the shareholders, "Can you hear us now?"

H/T to Sara Ellison at The Wall Street Journal, paper version, "New York Times Holder Protest Grows."

Pelosi Travels to Damascus But Not To Petraeus

Speaker of the House (and part-time General of the Army) Nancy Pelosi, who stands second in line for the Presidency, traveled 5,866 miles for coffee and conversation with tyrannical enemy Bashar al-Assad, but she would not travel 586 feet to meet General David Petraeus, who flew 6,198 miles to brief her on the situation on the ground in Iraq.

For al-Assad:

She's curious about his thinking?
She wanted to pay her respects?
She wanted to show she cares?

For Petraeus:

She knows it all?
She doesn't respect him?
She doesn't care?

Demos Lied, Soldiers Died

Senator Jay Rockefeller, then the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons. And will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years.”

Senator Evan Bayh, then a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:

“I support the president's efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein. I think he was right on in his speech tonight. The lessons we learned following September 11 were that we can't wait to be attacked again, particularly when it involves weapons of mass destruction. So regrettably, Saddam has not done the right thing, which is to disarm, and we're left with no alternative but to take action.”

Senator Dick Durbin, then a ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today one of the dimmer bulbs in the 100-lamp chandelier:

“I was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I would read the headlines in the paper in the morning and I'd watch the television newscast and I'd shake my head. …[T]he information we had in the Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it.

***

“And so in my frustration, I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq thinking the American people are being misled. They are not being told the truth.”

***

“You see, in the Intelligence Committee, we're sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say, ‘The statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that's being given to this Congress."

In a never-ending search for truth, Honest Dick Durbin turns in those liars Bayh and Rockefeller.

This will make for an interesting conversation around the Senate coffee machine.

H/T to NRO

CBS To Get Heavier Anchor?

Katie Couric's tour of duty as anchor at CBS Evening News has been labeled an expensive, unfixable mistake.

According to Rich Hanley, director of graduate programs at the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University,

"The broadcast is an abject failure, by any measure. They gambled that viewers wanted a softer, less-dramatic presentation of the news, and they lost."

Now that CBS has broadened the definition of "broadcast journalist" to encompass talent like Couric's, others may be considered.

Is it entirely coincidental that Rosie O'Donnell is freeing herself up at the exact moment of CBS' great need?

Stephen Spruiell at NRO's Media Blog guessed, before Rosie's announcement

"She's lined up a deal for a show where she can be more overtly political (than she is on The View)."

Where better than on CBS Evening News with Rosie O'Donnell? Talk about win/win. Rosie gets to push the case for her peculiar brand of nutroots leftism and CBS gets the ratings and the bucks.

Ed Morrow, call the office.

H/T to Sister Toldjah

Where in the World is Nancy Pelosi?

On Wednesday at 4 PM, General David Petraeus will brief the senior members of Congress on the state of America's war.

Absent from the briefing will be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker Pelosi has more important matters to attend to than a face-to-face briefing from the man the President and the Senate put in charge of the war just 90 days ago.

Our soldiers and Marines are killing people, breaking things, being killed and wounded. There are legitimate questions whether the strategies that we are pursuing will work, but the opportunity to ask those questions of the man in charge does not rise to the level of Speaker Pelosi's interest.

Where in the world is Speaker Pelosi?

Senator Reid to General Petraeus: You Are a Liar

CNN has the tape:

Question:

General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq. Will you believe him when he says that? (Emphasis in the original.)

Senator Harry Reid (D-Ritz Carlton):

No. I don't believe him.

So, which are we to believe, craven Harry Reid or the man unanimously confirmed just 90 days ago by the U. S. Senate, including a "Yea" from Harry Reid?

Senator: Step Down

H/T to Hot Air
Captain Ed piles on with Five Myths

Senators Reid & Kerry Seek "Last Man" Willing to Die for Their Mistake in Iraq

Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator John Kerry agree that the war in Iraq should end immediately, or over three months, six months, a year, perhaps 18 months, depending on the politics of the moment, the latest poll, or the audience they address.

That gives rise to the need for them to ask for volunteers— since we no longer conscript via draft—for soldiers willing to be the last to die for the failure they are working to impose on America's effort in the Mideast.

Reid and Kerry are attempting to reprise Kerry's earlier political success, built on a question he asked the Senate 35 years ago.

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

The reality is that Reid, Kerry, General Pelosi and team are really wondering

"How do you ask a soldier to be the last man to die for your political advancement, without getting caught?"

The Democratic leadership has repeatedly been too busy to meet with General Petraeus, including during his current visit this week to brief political leaders on the situation on the ground.

Reid, Kerry and Pelosi simply no longer care.

At this point all that matters is that we lose fast enough to fulfill Senator Reid's expectation that the war will be good for his party, a chance to pick up seats in the next election. And if a few American soldiers have to die in the process, well politics is a rough business.

As for Senator Kerry? Well, this time it's not his medals he and his friends are tossing over the fence.

It's his country.

UPDATE: Rush Limbaugh joins The Canticle in calling for craven Harry Reid to step down.

Senator Reid Declares: "Mission Accomplished"

In a surprise development today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Ritz Carlton) announced that the military mission in Iraq has been accomplished.

"The military mission has long since been accomplished. "

Listening to Sen. Reid is a little like listening to a Pong championship from the 1970's. The little hockey puck just bounces off of everything, to the sound of pong… pong… pong.

I wonder what "long since" means?

Senator: Step down.

UPDATE: Welcome Newsbloggers
UPDATE: Welcome Power Line, one of my favorites
UPDATE: Welcome Tigerhawk
Update: David Broder, a thoughtful and erudite commentator on the Washington scene for decades, is coming along. He adds, about Senator Reid:

This has become kind of a pattern for him, and, uh, I think at some point down the road the Democrats are gonna have to have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid. They’ve got able people on the Senate side, and they don’t have to put up with this kind of bumbling performance forever.

H/T to InstaPundit

Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, RIP

Boris Yeltsin led his country along the first steps of democracy. Along the way he managed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of the largest new nation of the 20th century. He substantially reduced the threat of world war and assisted in the march to freedom of scores of millions of non-Russian members of the USSR.

His commitments to free markets and the rule of law were limited.

He was an improvement over his predecessor and markedly less corrupt that his successor.

The world is a far better, safer place because of his courage and his affection for his people.

R.I.P.

Craven Harry Reid Sticks Knife in Troops, Foot in Mouth

The lead sentences in the Las Vegas ReviewJournal, which generally supports Senator Harry Reid, are amazing for their candor.

The Democratic strategy to use the ongoing violence in Iraq to their political advantage in the run-up to the 2008 elections requires some skill and nuance. But it's growing harder to believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- Nevada's own -- actually possesses those skills.

The Democratic strategy is anything but straightforward.

Sen. Reid and his colleagues know there is much political hay to be made by criticizing President Bush's planning and conduct of the post-war occupation. But they also know that while "cut our losses and pull out" plays well in Democratic caucuses, it failed in the Connecticut general election in 2006, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman and his anti-surrender stance handily defeated end-the-war candidate Ned Lamont -- even though Sen. Lieberman had to run as an independent to pull it off.

That's the kind of "poll" that really counts.

Thus, the Democrats' careful strategy requires them to appear to oppose Mr. Bush's ongoing occupation of Iraq (to please their pacifist base), without taking any concrete, "binding" actions to change the status quo.

Enter Sen. Reid, flopping around in big red shoes like Bozo the Clown. (Emphasis added)

First, with friends like that...


But then, what kind of friends would one expect Craven Harry to have? The man is duplicitous as all get out. He is, in a word, craven—so lacking in courage as to be worthy of contempt.

The man voted to send troops to Iraq. He said before last fall's election that he would oppose a pullout. After the election, he spoke in terms of a withdrawal. Now, he wants to declare defeat and get out, all the while licking his chops that the war will be good for his political fortunes and saying so in public.

Of course—point out the painfully obvious—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political strategy is true only if his country loses the war. In years to come our children, if studying history in English and not in Arabic, will learn the name Reid in the same lesson plan as they learn of Chamberlain, Petain and Quisling.

Investors Business Daily has called for Reid to resign:

Reid has instead given moral support to the terrorists. His "leadership" has been to try to cut off our forces' war funding. Now he has told the Islamofascists that victory is theirs if they can just keep blowing up U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens a little while longer.

In aiding and comforting the enemy in wartime, Reid has betrayed the office he holds, shamed the Nevadans he represents and made the Democratic Party he leads synonymous with surrender. There is one way he can repair the damage he's done to the nation: step down.

Mark Levin has done so, too, describing Reid actions as

…actively undermining our fighting men and women in Iraq. His legislative efforts to starve our armed forces in the middle of a war are as contemptible as anything I’ve witnessed in my 25 years in Washington. And yesterday he made a statement that was so disgraceful and brazen that it could have been uttered by Tokyo Rose during World War II or Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War. The difference, of course, is that Reid is the highest ranking Democrat in the United States Senate.

Mr. Reid's politics are beyond political. He is deliberately increasing the risk of harm to our troops in harm's way. He needs to go.

Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit called the ReviewJournal Reid's hometown paper. Maybe once that was so, but in recent years Senator Harry Reid has been a full-time resident of the Ritz Carlton Hotel and only a visitor to his roots in Searchlight, Nevada, the values of which he has so obviously left far behind.

American Trooper Talks Back

Redstate credits this photo to AP with the tagline that the Associated Press, after a number of discredited photos and stories, is no longer highly thought of by our soldiers.

Not so.
I'd like to think that the real story is that the photographer had just said,

"Smile, soldier, this is for Senator Reid back home."

According to Confederate Yankee, this photo was modified. The soldier in question, Staff Sgt. Patrick Lockett, was using correct discipline, keeping his trigger finger outside the trigger guard. No message was intended. No message was sent.

Olympia, WA to Spend $500,000 to Accommodate Global Warming

The city council of Olympia, Washington has voted to spend $500 thousand to raise its planned city hall building by 12 inches. This in order to avoiding flooding the building when Puget Sound rises in response to melting landmass ice from global warming.

Actually, I think they should put the building on wheels so that it can flee the next glaciation, which, according to Where Was Al Gore When Greenland Got It's Name III?, is just as likely as warming.

A less expensive alternative would be to mark the southbound highways as Ice Age Escape Routes. If the odds really do shift along the lines Al Gore is selling, they could be repainted to reflect the rising surf.

Hack a Mac for $10,000?

3COM Corporation announced a winner of the $10,0000 prize they offered to anyone who could hack into a Macintosh computer.

Dino Di Zovie, of New York City claimed the prize.

Organizers loosened the original contest rules and tripled the prize money after there were no winners intially.

Meanwhile, 160,000 hackers have done the same to Windows machines around the world.

For free.

A Little Barnyard Humor

I spent several years in one of the northern tier states, which I came to love and where much of our "ethnic" humor revolved around what we thought of as the unfortunate citizens in the neighboring state to the east.

My wife's home state.

I learned later that their humor was focused on the citizens of the state that is their immediate neighbor to the east, my state being beneath their threshold for notice.

We're going back to visit in a little while and I thought to send this on in advance of our visit.

How do you tell that you're from (her state) (my state)?

You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.

You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.

Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.

You burn your yard rather than mow it.

You think “The Nutcracker” is something you do off the high dive.

The Salvation Army declines your furniture.

You offer to give someone the shirt off your back, and they don’t want it.

You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.

You come back from the dump with more than you took.

You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.

Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.

Your grandmother has “ammo” on her Christmas list.

You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.

You’ve been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.

You go to the stock car races and don’t need a program.

You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.

You have a rag for a gas cap.

Your house doesn’t have curtains, but your truck does.

You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean.

You can spit without opening your mouth.

You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.

Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say “Cool Whip” on the side.

The biggest city you’ve ever been to is Wal-Mart.

Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.

You’ve used your ironing board as a buffet table.

A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvements.

You’ve used a toilet brush to scratch your back.

You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.

You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.

H/T and a Thank You to James at Midwest Pundits, who used this list to describe certain residents of his state.

UPDATE: My wife informs me that my attendance at the family gathering is no longer strictly necessary.

UPDATE: For those who live east of the Mississippi, yes, I know there is no humor in this and that this is largely replicative of what you learned about the West in school, but bear with us, ok?

American Soldiers to Harry Reid: SHUT UP

From an American soldier in Baghdad to United States Senator Harry Reid:

To be brief, your words are killing us. Your statements make the Iraqis afraid to help us for fear we'll leave them unprotected in the future. They don't report a cache, and its weapons blow up my friends in a convoy. They don't report a foreign fighter, and that fighter sends a mortar onto my base. Your statements are noticed, and they have an effect.

Finally, you are mistaken when you say we are losing. We are winning, I see it every day. However, we will win with fewer casualties if you help us. Will you?

Respectfully,

LT Jason Nichols,
USN
MNF-I, Baghdad

Thanks to Michelle Malkin.

Sen. Reid, have you no shame, sir?

Joe Biden and The Good Old Days

According to NewsMax.com

Sen. Joe Biden, a Democratic Party candidate for president in 2008, on Thursday blamed the Republicans for the Virginia Tech killings and a string of events that have made news in the past few years.

"I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what's gone down at Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus. Take a look. This didn't happen accidentally, all these things," he said.

It was just two months ago that Biden praised Obama for being

"the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

Note that Joe got an entire page to himself in Famous Plagiarists.

Jeez, Joe, perhaps you should go back to stealing words from others.

James Carville Agrees With The Canticle

James Carville agrees with The Canticle that Hillary will not win the Presidency.

James' best line, speaking about Hillary and Obama:

"Mama needs more spice, and Obama needs more seasoning."

Does it get any better than that?

Harry Reid to Troops: You've Lost the Damn War

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped send American troops to Iraq in the first place, yesterday accused them of losing the war.

This war is lost.

To Democratic activists, the message was a little, uh, different, Senator Reid's priorities a little more clear:

We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war.

Glad that's settled. The man's got to lose the war. His party is depending on it.

My own humble opinion is that Reid is just negotiating. After all the guy is a wizard at it.
Look how well he's done with Vegas real estate; well enough to live at the Ritz Carlton. I'll bet he just loves public service and self-sacrifice.

Note to President Bush: Offer the guy a 10% over-ride on a new hotel along the Euphrates River in downtown Baghdad.

He'll jump at it. Harry looks out for Harry.

UPDATE: Sister Toldjah has the video.
UPDATE: Our enemies have picked up on the news. Here's Iran TV. Nice going, Harry. What can you do for our troops today?

Fred Thompson Takes Virginia Tech To Task

Take away Fred Thompson's accent and what's left?

Candor.

In 650 words Sen. Thompson brought clarity and candor to Monday's tragedy at Virgina Tech.

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms -- and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain.
***
Virginia Tech administrators overrode Virginia state law and threatened to expel or fire anybody who brings a weapon onto campus. (Canticle Note: Posthumously?)
***
In recent years, however, armed Americans -- not on-duty police officers -- have successfully prevented a number of attempted mass murders. (Canticle Note: I am not aware of a recent incident where a mass killing has been stopped by on-duty police action.)
***
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
***
Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

So, what are we going to trust, the experience of 200 million citizens in 38 states who allow or encourage responsible citizens to carry arms and have reaped the benefit in terms of lower crime, or the folks in places like Washington, New York City, Chicago and the other bastions of safety who prefer that we depend absolutely on others for our personal safety?

Liberals want more of the centralized command and control model where victims dial 911 so that the police will show up later to carry the body bags.

The "me, too" conservatives want… to get along.

It takes a leader like Thompson to point out the obvious:

One of the things that's got to be going through a lot of peoples' minds now is how one man with two handguns, that he had to reload time and time again, could go from classroom to classroom on the Virginia Tech campus without being stopped. Much of the answer can be found in policies put in place by the university itself.

Politicians score points.

Leaders make them.

John Edwards: Too Cute for Words

Presidential candidate John Edwards has reimbursed his campaign the cost of two $400 haircuts.

Mr. Edwards is known for nightmarish hair days, as I've noted, but this may be the hair that broke his campaign's back.

It's not so much the $400. Really. It isn't. Really.

It's:

1. Using someone else's money to pay for it, especially when you're already rich. Oh, I forgot, he's a personal injury trial lawyer. Never mind.
   
2. In a way that you should know the whole world is going to know about it
3. After you've already looked like an absolute idiot on the very same subject.

The man is just too narcissistic to be President. I mean, other than Kim Jong-il, who is reputed to have similar issues, which world leader or potential adversary is going to take John seriously?

All it would take is negotiations outdoors on a windy day and the guy would be sufficiently distracted to give them the western world.

Virginia Tech Gun Control: "Almost Perfect"

For more than 75 years, Procter & Gamble marketed Ivory soap with the tag line 99 and 44/100 percent pure. That was the popular standard for perfection for almost a century, until the 1980's, when Motorola put together a process to achieve near perfection in manufacturing or distribution processes, a standard of 99.99966% success. Motorola named it Six Sigma™. To achieve Six Sigma requires that almost everything goes exactly right. There is no room for imperfection, no room for the vagaries of nature, no human error. It has to be very close to absolute perfection. It is the modern standard for perfection.

Virginia Tech's self-created Gun Free Zone worked even better than Six Sigma, better than the best processes devised by man. Over the past year it achieved a success rate of at least 99.999989%. It was almost perfect. Almost no one carried a gun onto campus. Almost. No. One.

Until Monday, when Evil did. Evil lied to buy his guns. Evil broke the law to get his guns. Evil broke the law ever day he had his guns, every time he touched them, loaded them, took a photo with them. Every one of those acts was a felony for Evil. Evil broke the law a hundred times before Monday.

On Monday Evil murdered two people deliberately, then went back to his room, attended to his press relations, loaded up and went on to really rack up felonies for the next couple of hours.

Almost perfect was not good enough. Centralized command and control defense was not good enough. Depend on us for your safety was not good enough.

The only thing that helped on Monday, that has proven to help time after time, was individual action.

I'll say it again, mass murderers are easier to defeat and to deter than other killers. Because mass murderers don't care who they kill, the simplest, most basic defense will redirect them, dissuade them or convince them to perform their final exit. Time after time, potential mass murderers have been dissuaded or defeated by rudimentary defenses or the intervention of random heroes.

Even Monday, among the worst rampages in American history, Evil was successfully and easily defeated by a 79-year old professor and by an ordinary door blocked with an ordinary table put in place by an ordinary student. These two heroes didn't perform extraordinary feats of marksmanship or use sophisticated tools or hard to learn techniques, but what they did was enough. They saved, between them, dozens of lives.

Even Ivory soap won't be enough to wash away the facts: Almost perfect Gun Control didn't work. In fact, it likely cost lives by removing tools that others have used in the past to prevent or mitigate rampages that would have otherwise been worse.

Individual responsibility and action did work. We need to start encouraging more of it.

Tennessee Hears the Lesson of VT as 9/11

In the first move of its nature in the country, a Tennessee House committee voted today to repeal a law forbidding law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves in governmental offices.

This is a concrete move to prevent the number of murders and reduce the severity of mass murders in what were called "Gun Free Zones," areas like Virginia Tech, where only Evil was armed.

Based on national averages, the great state of Tennessee can expect 60% fewer incidents and 78% fewer casualties on government property than previously.

I wish my state cared as much about its citizens.

VT Killer Lied to Buy Gun

ABC News reports that a Virginia court had found that the Virginia Tech killer was mentally ill and potentially dangerous in 2005, and that the state then let him go.

Question 12 f on the Treasury form that the killer had to certify in order to purchase at least one of his guns last month asks,

"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes being adjudicated incompetent to manage your own affairs) or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?"

"No" is the only acceptable answer for that question on that form. Leaving it blank or answering "Yes" will result in a turndown. It should also result in prosecution for illegally attempting to purchase a firearm, a felony, but it almost never does. The Clinton administration bragged about the thousands of illegal purchases, but said nothing about any prosecutions of those felons.

The area just above the signature on Form 4473 reads in part, in bold:

• I certify that the above answers are true and correct.
• I understand that making any false oral or written statement… with respect to this transaction… is a crime punishable as a felony.

While earthly felonies no longer trouble this murderer, there may be lessons to learn here. Most shooters will not object to including notice of mental health commitments to the existing instantaneous criminal checks accomplished before a purchase.

But I bet others will.

General Pelosi's Nails

Our top military commander in Iraq, Army General Gen. David Pertraeus, the man directly responsible for our 145,000 men and women in the fight and for the victory we seek there, is returning to Washington, D.C. in order to brief congressional leaders on his efforts over the past 90 days.

However, General Pelosi is too busy to arrange a meeting for him with House leaders.

What can possibly be more important to a nation at war?

What's she got, a Botox appointment?

I know. I'm sorry, poor taste, but come on, Nancy, we're fighting a friggin war for pete's sake, killing people, breaking things, getting hurt, dying, stuff like that!

Can you at least make an effort to show some interest?

Heck, maybe General Pertraeus should ask them all to meet at his place, say the Baghdad market at noon?
H/T to Rich Lowry at NRO

Is Virginia Tech Education's "9/11"?

Adults of a certain age will remember what we were told for 25 years about how to behave in the event of an airline hijacking. The training was similar for the aircrews:

• Don't draw attention to yourself.
• Don't look the bad guys in the eye.
• Cooperate.
• Don't resist.

That approach to airline passenger safety, passive non-resistance, died along with the passengers on United 93, who sacrificed themselves so that thousands of others might live. Those passengers, armed with the information that they were most likely not to be hostages but were destined for sacrifice on the altar of Evil, rebelled against both the hijackers and their government's instructions. They chose not be be passive, not to cooperate. They grabbed the fighting tools they could from a weapons-free cabin and fought. Their goal was not sacrifice but victory. Even fighting an enemy who by then held all the advantages, their victory changed history. It also changed the way we look at forceful takeovers in the air. There has no been a hijacking since. As long as passengers are vigilant there will not be another.

The first indisputable lesson from VT is similar: Too often we saw that of the students and faculty in the line of fire yesterday, those who didn't actively resist faced an executor at close range. Those who fought back, even marginally, or who were beneficiaries of others who fought back on their behalf, lived.

Whether Evil stalks an airplane aisle or an university hallway, the lesson remains the same: Help will never arrive in time, your life is yours to protect or to lose.

One of the victims of yesterday's two murders and the following massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute remembered how he had been taught from kindergarten to 12th grade,

"Don't think about resisting. Don't fight. Wait for help.

I felt like a sitting duck. I was a sitting duck. Helpless."

Mass murderers are different from "ordinary" killers, in that mass murderers are easier to dissuade and redirect than those whose focus is on a particular victim. It is a key distinction. They are indifferent as to the exact identity of their victims. Door stuck? Guy with a baseball bat or knife in the way? Oh well, the next doorway down the hall will do just as well.

One of the true heroes of the day, a child of the Holocaust, had learned his lesson then. Professor Liviu Librescu offered all the resistance his 76-year old body could muster when he threw himself against the classroom door, shutting it against the killer. That effort, as limited by his age and slight stature as it might have been, was enough to save Professor Librescu's entire class. Professor Librescu, who survived the Holocaust and lived to fight another day, finally gave his life so that others may live.

Another class was saved in a similar manner by a single student who pushed a classroom table against the door, blocking it. Evil walked by. Because the mass murderer really doesn't care who his next victim is, even minimal resistance will very often cause him to redirect his rampage, until he finally turns it against himself.


We will never be able to sufficiently harden all the vulnerable targets in our neighborhoods. It is an impossible task. By making it our first priority we too often send a counterproductive message, as we have with our schools. Better to harden our people, completely changing the geometry of the mass murderers' risk/reward equation.

Our schools do our students a disservice by teaching them how to be good victims. Elementary, middle and high schools would do better by their students, teachers and our society by instructing young people to resist, to defend themselves within their abilities. More of our students and teachers would fight back and make the killers' tasks more difficult if we were to teach them that sometimes violence is the better choice.

We'll lose fewer students, we'll have fewer mass killings when we teach ourselves and our children to start acting more and cowering less.

UPDATE: Moe Lane at Red State posted a noble sentiment about Professor Liviu Librescu, which I'd like to quote in its entirety:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
'To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods…'

PS: As for his murderer… I know his name, but will not write it. -- Moe Lane

I will follow Lane's examply as I continue to write on the lessons of Virginia Tech.

UPDATE: James Bowman sees it the same way in a forcefully written piece on the i-Pod generation in We Need More Heroes in National Review Online.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin jumps on board with Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense.

UPDATE: Now, this is more like it! This saved lives. H/T Rich Lowry at NRO.

UPDATE: Marc Danziger at Examiner.com is asking the central question: Whether we should be Teaching a New Doctrine in Light of the Virginia Tech Massacre?

VT's Defenseless Victims

Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of the dead and to the injured and their families, as well as to the presumably innocent family of the shooter.

There will be time to consider better answers, later.

Today is for those who suffered and are suffering.

May of the Peace of the Lord be with each.

Patricia Buckley, Den Mother of the Conservative Movement, R.I.P.

UPDATE, February 27, 2008: Farewell, Bill, Peace Be With You

Patricia Taylor Buckley, wife for 56 years to Bill, and Den Mother of the Conservative Movement, died April 15, 2007 after a lengthy illness.

Her life story could be a Canadian-American novel. A debutante from Vancouver, British Columbia, she went on to become a leader of New York Society and pillar of numerous charities, including St. Vincent's Hospital and the New York Museum of Arts.

Pat Buckley was as exacting in her tastes as her husband is with words. A regular on the Best Dressed List, she was inducted into its Hall of Fame in the 1990s. Unable to cook early on, she took lessons from James Beard and later went on to design meals and host dinners for as many as 1,000.

Where Bill is gregarious—at least cerebrally—and very comfortable in the center of the limelight, Pat was shy and more comfortable out of the media focus.

I've known Bill Buckley for more than 35 years, not well but well enough to understand that he adored his Pat, his stalwart partner, constant harbor, and unequaled partner.

When the history of the conservative movement is finally written, its successes and intellectual foundations acknowledged, Bill will receive his due, the founder's praise for his creation, and will quite properly share our gratitude with his beloved Pat. If she had done nothing in life but support their cause, it would have been enough. That she did so much more reflects her unique character.

The world will be a less gentle place for her departure from it.

To Bill, Christopher, colleagues and friends --

Our thoughts and prayers are with you at this time of your loss and her gain of everlasting life.

May the Peace of our Lord be with each of you.

More at National Review
UPDATE, February 27, 2008: Farewell, Bill, Peace Be With You
UPDATE: Captains Quarter's adds a prayer
UPDATE: She Adored Her Husband, Remembering Pat Buckley

Goretoid©

In the Greenland series, below, I've used a term which has caught a bit of attention. It is Goretoid©, defined as

a statement of fact, generally scientific in nature, which appears superficially plausible but is not true.

A Goretoid© is best delivered with a bit of authority.

If authority is not available, arrogance is a satisfactory substitute.

The word is derived from a combination of factoid, a briefly stated and usually trivial fact, and Al Gore, former Senator, Vice President and actor, best known for inventing the Internet and popularizing Global Warming.

Both statements are early examples of Goretoids©.

General Pelosi's Troops

General Pelosi's troops look like this:

They look like you and me.

Here are a couple more of General Pelosi's troops saying what she cannot hear:


General Pelosi has them confused with peanut farmers and other special interests to whom she offered a cut of $24 billion from the military emergency appropriation. $24 billion is enough to pay for 200,000 additional combat troops. Imagine what a difference that would make both to General Pelosi's troops and to us.

Can you hear them?

Will you help them do the job they want to do?

H/T: RedState

Where Was Al Gore When Greenland Got Its Name, III?

Al Gore hears voices. He really does.

Some of them are pretty unusual.

Disappointed after his failed quest to become president, Mr. Gore prayed for guidance.

"In what manner shall I spend my days?" he asked God.

God, who must have been exasperated at the time, allowed as to how He has become a little tired of the constant tinkering His job requires.

He replied, "Al, I can't stand the bickering. Find the thermostat that controls the Earth and set it so that the temperature is exactly right for those to whom I gave dominion.

"Just handle it, Al."

One of the reasons Al and God get along so well is they both speak in Old Testament cadences, only Al is the more ponderous of the two.

And that is how Al began his personal journey from the man who "used to be the next president of the United States" to candidate for Master of the Earth.

Without a scintilla of scientific support but with much more panache than the little man behind the screen in Wizard of Oz, mixed with the magic of the modern technology he eschews for others, Mr. Gore is well on his way to the mount from which he will order the skies to clear, the seas to settle and Earthly temperatures to stop doing what they've been doing for more than 200 million years.

Al Gore will order that Earth's weather stop changing!

Another voice that Al listens to is that of Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University.

Dr. Schneider is widely regarded as the father of the global warming as crisis school of science.

Before that Dr. Schneider served as the father of the global cooling as crisis school.

What Al learned from Dr. Schneider was the perfect lesson, whether one is tilting at global cooling or global warming,

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

And that is how Al Gore came to adopt the iconic photo of polar bears, allegedly adrift in the summer sun of the Beaufort Sea, north of Barrow, Alaska, as his own. The only trouble is, Al's use of the photo to describe global warming is just another Gore-toid, one of those facts that have no more relationship to reality than the Cheshire Cat.

Rather than a graphic example of bears in distress,
clinging to life on the last firm footing on Earth, the two and a half year old photo shows two bears taking a break from seal hunting, resting on a wave-eroded floe a few miles off the coast on a summer Arctic day, at a time and place where such floes are natural and the ice breakup from which they spawn necessary for both the bears and their prey. The bears in the photo were in no danger. Polar bears as a species are in no danger. In fact, their numbers, up between 15% and 25% in recent years , are growing increasingly troublesome to villagers in the far north.

Dishonest photos of bears aside, Gore's real disservice is his adoption of the The Big Lie to deceive and misdirect.

Yes, the Earth is warming.

No news there, as the Earth been warming for about 150 years in its most recent phase, a recovery from a 500-year long mild ice age, which itself was a recovery from the 500-year long Medieval Warm Period. In fact, it was during the MWP that the Vikings occupied, farmed and named Greenland. When the temperatures fell in the 14th century, and Greenland became more white than green, the Vikings retreated to more hospitable climes.

By itself, this chart from Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record, a peer-reviewed article published by the U. S. Global Change Research Institute in 1996 and updated in 2004,would relegate Gore's "greenhouse gases" theory to a level of possibility but not probability. True believers, though, point out that the Industrial Age began late in the 18th century and so could have either started the warming or, at a minimum may be exacerbating it.

They base this theory on two "facts" regarding Earth's history:

1. The rate of warming is atypical; and/or
2. The amount of warming is atypical.

Neither is true.

As is apparent, even in relatively recent times, Earth's climate has seen changes where the rate or magnitude of temperature changes, or both, have equaled or exceeded what we're seeing at the moment. None of these changes can be ascribed to any action on the part of mankind. In the last 18,000 years there have been 4 times when the rate and magnitude was larger and a 5th time when the rate was as great with equal magnitude. In that same period, temperature changes have been larger than at present at least 19 times in the period. To put this in human perspective, 18,000 years ago the land upon which my home now stands was under ice, 5,000 feet of solid ice and had been for more than 100,000 years. So was much of North America and Europe.

Looking at history on a larger calendar does seem to lend credence to Mr. Gore's claim that the Earth is getting warmer. Good thing, too! Note that climatologists have named the two large temperature spikes in the past 200,000 years "Interglacial" periods. Interglacial as in between glaciers. Without the 8ºC global warming of the past 20,000 years we would quite literally not be here, no matter where here is. We can also see from this chart six major warming periods, each of which dwarfs by magnitudes the current experience, as well as dozens of others that are merely substantially greater.

Finally, when we stretch out our willingness to learn to nearly 1 million years, we can see both a warming trend and within that trend a series of warming cycles that appear to be both significant and non-random. Each of the ten major cycles are six- to ten-times as large as the current cycle and every one of the smaller ones are at least twice as large.

There is no evidence of man's involvement in any of these warming/cooling cycles.

None. Nada.

Which is exactly the same amount of evidence supporting Al Gore's perspective on the current warming cycle.

The computer models that Al and his acolytes are using to convince us of their ability to predict the future cannot even accurately "predict" the past.

Scientists use models in a number of very helpful ways. For instance, we rely on a very simple model to predict the time of sunrise tomorrow, or three days from now, or 15 years in the future. In each case we have substantial confidence that the model and its predictions are right. This is because they've been tested against the past, matched against historic records and found to accurately predict sunrise for every single day for which records are kept, whether yesterday, last week or 150 years ago. Imagine for a minute that it weren't so, that the models predicted sunrise a week ago today that was off by 15 minutes. Whoa! The intensity of scientific inquiry to solve that discrepancy would be incredible, and our confidence in future projections from that model and that scientist would be shaken to say the least. Now, imagine using a model that was unable to accurately forecast any past sunrise. Why would such a model gain any currency, any credibility?

It wouldn't.

That's the state of the current global warming/climate crisis discussion. The models being used to predict the future are utterly unable to accurately predict any past warming/cooling cycle. It doesn't matter the time frame, they are inaccurate over the past 20 years, 200 years, 200,000 years. In fact, there is no period for which they have proven to be accurate.

Not one.

We are left with two truly inconvenient truths:

1. There is no evidence whatsoever connecting the actions of mankind with any of the Earth's history of hundreds of climate cycles.
2. There is no evidence whatsoever confirming the validity of the mathematical models supporting Al Gore's vision of the future.

So, which are we to believe: Al Gore or our own lying eyes?

Related Links : Where was Al Gore When Greenland Got Its Name?
Where was Al Gore When Greenland Got Its Name, II?
Al Gore Doubts He Has Political Aptitude