Two things are elemental to humankind - eating and energy consumption (travel especially). And up until recently there economic ties between food and energy have been limited. But the move to use food products for fuel needs created a pressure on the supplies of food that would not be there if we kept food for eating and other energy sources for energy. By pushing the two largest ‘hungers’ of humanity onto a single resource, we allowed government and corporations to effect the supply by shifting the demand - thus creating price spikes and calls to take over the food and energy sectors of our economy.

Now we learn some are hiding the truth of these failed liberal policies (easily supported by corporations who will make huge profits from them) from we the people:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

In the face of 20 years of global cooling (not warming) why are we forcing starvation on the poorest of humankind? Has the pressure on our food supply lowered energy prices? Of course not - they have tripled since the Democrats took over Congress not even 2 short years ago.

The only ones to benefit from this debacle are those associated with biofuels, who are making a killing - but who also may be killing the most vulnerable among us. Personally, I don’t care how damning the data is to the fools who royally screwed up. Get the data out, figure out where we went wrong and undo the damage before it gets worse. My guess is this data is like the real Global temperature data we have experienced since the IPCC started screaming fire - it totally destroys their theories and credibility.

Again, why should people suffer starvation just to cover up the mistakes of egotists who had no business making the exaggerated claims they made on biofuels and global warming? Their egos are not more valuable than poor starving people in need of food.

Right now the debate is hot and heavy - and completely accurate:

Is Barack Obama close to being shadowed by giant flip-flops and, worse, having the image stick with people all the way to the voting booth?

Four years ago, Republicans branded as a ”flip-flop” even the slightest rhetorical or policy change by John Kerry and sent huge replicas of the casual sandals to bob around the Massachusetts Democrat’s events, feeding an image of him as a wishy-washy panderer.

Fair or not, Kerry never recovered and lost to President Bush.

It’s now the Republican weapon of choice against Obama.

The Illinois senator has excited many with the notion that he is a new, transcendent type of politician. But he is giving the GOP effort ammunition and endangering his ”Change We Can Believe In” motto with several shifts to the center, most recently on the Iraq war, his campaign’s defining issue.

As I pointed out in this previous posts listing all his big flop-flips, Obama’s image has now gone from “Change we can believe in” to “what can we believe about you Senator”?

I seriously doubt Obama is the kind of man that makes clear pledges of intent (unlike George W Bush), so instead of holding our breathe on what Obama stands for I think the debate should ‘move on’ to what is the better symbol for Obama? Is it the casual footwear?

Or is he the slimy fish, out of his element, flopping around in a panic?

Tough choice.

What America needs to understand is those on the ground are ready to finish the job in Iraq with Victory, and they made clear their intentions this weekend in Iraq:

Servicemembers from all over Iraq gathered in the Al Faw Palace rotunda at Camp Victory, Baghdad, to reenlist and celebrate Independence Day.

All 1,215 servicemembers celebrated by raising their right hands and pledging to continue defending the “land of the free” in what is the largest reenlistment ceremony since the all-volunteer force began in 1973 according to Command Sgt. Maj. Marvin L. Hill, command sergeant major, Multi-National Forces - Iraq.

There aren’t 1,215 leading Surrendercrats in the country. It is time to let those doing the job finish their job, and it is time to ignore the hand-wringers on the sideline trying to force us into failure and defeat. They have been pushing their BS for two years now and have been the ones who failed, they were the ones defeated. It is time for them to just sit down and be quiet, and let the professionals do their jobs.

Two decades later, if these folks were even close to being right, that would result in a 0.6° C increase since 1988-90 (within a range of 0.4°-1.0° C). Back in 1988, according to NASA and NOAA, the average global temperature was about same as it is today. Looking at the chart below we see the global temp is about 0.2° C higher from two decades ago,

At the time I was eye-balling some summary charts. Recently, though, some real scientific data has been compiled, and it demonstrates how wrong Dr James Hansen has been for two decades (to put that in perspective - since the end of Ronald Reagan’s last term!). The fact is, as the graph shows, the temperature actually has had a net drop in over those 20 years that the Church of Al Gore/IPCC have been making their now disproved claims (click image to get to original post and second data set graph):

Basically, outside the winter-spring of 1998, we can see there has been very little over-all change and we have landed at a slightly lower global temperature level, with another decade of predicted cooling ahead of us. In fact, few people know (but need to know) that 2007 was one of the coolest years in the last 30 years (that would be when Jimmy Carter was President):

During 2006, the doomsters were predicting that 2007 would be the hottest year on record, so why have we seen no reports about this?

The answer is simple – 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.

Even more dramatic is the fact that the most recent computer model predictions indicate that there will be no more global warming for the next ten years. But the doomsters say that, after this ten-year period, global warming will come back with a vengeance. Why?

Certainly, mankind’s production of carbon dioxide (CO2) has continued to increase since 1998 and will continue to increase, particularly since countries such as China and India say that their economic growth comes first, so they do not intend worrying too much about CO2 production.

As many of us have been explaining the science was never settled on Global Warming. And after 20 years of trying to instill panic (and garnering $billions of dollars in government handouts) the actual measured data now PROVES the IPCC and its blind followers were WRONG. Look, they predicted the Earth would be 0.4-1.0 °C warmer right now, and the fact is it is now cooler. Their estimate had 95% confidence error bars - which means that they were 95% confidently wrong!

The fact is the IPCC and others cherry picked data to fit the preconceptions, and ignored data that clearly showed something other than CO2 was at work. How is it Mars and Jupiter experiencing effects of Global Warming too? What about the shrinking northern ice cap here on Earth and newly discovered massive undersea volcanoes there experiencing historic eruptions not seen since Pompeii (note: these could have been erupting for a year before they blew their tops in 1999 - which maps incredibly well with the warm peak in 1998).

Another study is showing something really stunning - the real record for “Global Warming” in the last three thousand years was actually during the Roman Empire (click image to enlarge at original site):

If one only looks at the period from 1500 to today (as all the alarmists do) then it looks like we are in this massive rise of temperature. But if you look across 3,000 years we see simply a trough in a series of repeating waves. That is the essence of cherry picking data to warp the perspective. Whether it is in the form of self delusion or deliberate misrepresentation do not change the facts.

After 20 years to prove the IPCC theories, the results have proven the IPCC is wrong. That is now established fact. Why it is wrong is a matter of investigation so that humanity does not get led down the wrong path again. Science will work to understand how this grand mistake came about.

It is time to throw out the garbage and start fresh, this time with real science instead of an international, politically motivated, cluster-panic. Mob mentality is not meant to be part of the scientific method, nor is financial gain tied to media headlines.

Update: Forgot to add this link to a study which shows the arctic ice melt is not all the chicken littles claim it is:

One of the most vivid symbols of global warming used by scientists and campaigners to spur society to curb climate-warming emissions is photography of gushing rivers of meltwater plunging from the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet into the depths.

Recent studies have shown these natural drainpipes, called moulins, can speed up the slow seaward march of the grinding ice by lubricating the interface with bedrock below. The faster that ice flows, the faster seas rise. Now, though, a new Dutch study of 17 years of satellite measurements of ice movement in western Greenland concludes that the speedup of the ice is a transient summertime phenomenon, with the overall yearly movement of the grinding glaciers not changing, and actually dropping slightly in some places, when measured over longer time spans.

So, the water running through glaciers is nothing new… Whodathunkit!

Today’s Posts Below

On this troubled Fourth we still should remember this is not 1776 when New York was in British hands and Americans in retreat across the state. It is not 1814 when the British burned Washington and the entire system of national credit collapsed — or July 4, 1864 when Americans awoke to news that 8,000 Americans had just been killed at Gettysburg.

We are not in 1932 when unemployment was still over 20 percent of the work force, and industrial production was less than half of what it had been just three years earlier, or July, 1942, when tens of thousands of American were dying in convoys and B-17s, and on islands of the Pacific in an existential war against Germany, Japan, and Italy.

Thank God it is not mid-summer 1950, when Seoul was overrun and arriving American troops were overwhelmed by Communist forces as they rushed in to save a crumbling South Korea. We are not in 1968 when the country was torn apart by the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. And we are not even in the waning days of 1979, a year in which the American embassy was seized in Tehran and hostages taken, the Soviets were invading Afghanistan, thousands were still being murdered in Cambodia, Communism was on the march in Central America, and our president was blaming our near 6-percent unemployment, 8-percent inflation, 15-percent interest rates, and weakening international profile on our own collective “malaise.”

Our troubles today pale in comparison to what others have had to deal with in our nation’s history. Instead of whining, handwringing and finger pointing this nation should be thankfully working together to keep us safe, prosperous and free. It really is not as bad as those on the political fringes like to make it out to be.

1. Pulling out of Iraq, without any conditions and as quickly as possible. (Got him on video here in the last debate)
2. He claimed he would fight the new FISA-NSA rules enacted after 9-11 and resist immunity for telecommunications companies who supported the government’s investigations of possible (and actual - in some cases) terrorist cells plotting to kill Americans.
3. He clearly supported the DC gun ban law
4. He was opposed to NAFTA
5. He was considered a stalwart on a woman’s right to choose an abortion over birth
6. He was supposedly going to end the hold the Jewish Lobby has on foreign affairs, and give more credence to the Arab/Palestinian side.
7. He promised to use public campaign financing in the general election, demonstrating the principled value of public control of free speech.
8. He was supposedly against the death penalty - another liberal signature issue.

I once said Obama was like the Mirror of Erised, a fictional device in the Harry Potter stories which reflected the deepest desires of the person looking in the mirror. It was a trap, an image of hope that was, in reality just an enticing fiction.

Obama’s vague and vacuous position statements allowed many people on the far left to assume he was the most liberal candidate available, and that he would champion their causes.  It seems they were seriously mistaken.  In the last few weeks Obama has flip-flopped on all these issues and more - turning into an echo of McCain (and Bush as well) instead of a champion against the conservative policies that have been governing this country for over a decade now.

Here are the flop-flips Obama has done since vanquishing Hillary Clinton: who had an actual record of being a liberal stalwart:

1. Obama will be going to Iraq soon, and he knows he faces being handed over an Iraq on the path to victory - therefore he has begun equivocating on his plans.  And he knows he cannot pretend there is no risk to this victory by pulling out forces without any regard to what is happening on the ground. This reality has been explained to him by liberal news outlets in no uncertain terms - his current plans will be a disaster. In fact Obama was recently caught lying to either the Iraq government or the American people on his positions - we still don’t know which.
2. The other signature issue for the far left when it comes to George W Bush is their lame fear mongering that protecting America from attack is actually a front for listening in on the babbling lefties. Most of us find this fear mongering more humorous than scary (see here for an example), but when push came to shove the liberals expected their candidate to stand with them, despite the obvious blow-back that would come from tearing down our protections against planned attacks we know are underway because of a fear of unsubstantiated invasions of privacy. This was the acid test for the liberal standard bearer - and Obama threw them under the bus, not even promising to do a show-filibuster. But its not like this has not happened many times before from other Democrat leaders.
3. Disarming America is a big deal in the far left fevered swamps. And when the Supreme Court ruled to dump DC’s gun ban laws, you would think Obama would simply rail against the decision and stay vaguely neutral. But no, he actually changed his position (and damn near immediately, as I noted here) and supported the court’s decision! Is Obama a threat to ‘bitter’ gun owners or not? Who knows, but he clearly is misleading someone here (and maybe everyone). Here I posted on how he was supposed to be the centrist, but was talking far left behind the scenes.  Now he seems to be the far left candidate who is running full steam to the center, damn the primary voters (aka, dupes).
4. Obama’s opposition to NAFTA has melted into a pool of ambiguity and anger from the left.
5. And in what has to be the biggest blow-off to Hillary Clinton supporters, Obama has now taken up the centrist conservative position on abortion, restricting it’s use to address physical health risks to the mother:
   

   In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

   Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”…

   Boy, all those pro-choice women supporting Hillary must be spitting mad now!

6. Another of Obama’s two-faced flip-flop-flip was on the matter of Jerusalem and whether it would remain the capitol of Israel. Again we have no clue what his views really are because he has made so many conflicting and vague statements.
7. Obama’s flopping all started with his reverse course on pledging to use public funding for his campaign - which irritated the liberal press no end who continue to try and control politics by limiting free speech of average Americans.
8. He has turned his back on the anti-death penalty plank of the liberal base.
9. And then we have some flop-flop’s, which are surprise positions no one knew Obama had, but mirror Bush policies - like supporting federal funds going to faith based institutions.  Though I am not sure America is behind sending their hard earned tax dollars to Rev Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright.

All of this has destroyed Obama’s image as a principled stalwart of liberal causes. His ‘change’ mantra now reflects his ever shifting positions. The ‘change’ we will be getting is going from someone who says what he means, and does what he says, to someone who is a complete cypher on key issues of the day.

And the liberal base is noticing the demoralizing fact that Obama is more than an empty suite, he appears to be the ultimate panderer, like none other seen before in national politics:

New and Not Improved

Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

…

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

We have never seen a candidate abandon so many positions on so many fronts in such a short time. This is complete election ad fodder for McCain and the GOP, using demonstrable examples of Obama’s flightiness on key issues, his inability to hold any resolve, his inability to stand tall and strong on issues. If Obama has to face down threats in a contentious environment, all this has shown America is Obama would crumble into a mess of conflicted, confused and incoherent babble. That fact is now well established. As has been the news symbol for the Obama campaign - the flopping fish!

I have the honor of being grouped with some of the best bloggers in the world on a blog-burst call for action regarding the 9-11 memorial for flight 93. You can visit The Bigsibling Blog here, the site that called for this action.

 

When the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 was unveiled in September 2005, these six high profile conservative bloggers were instrumental in raising the public protest that forced the Memorial Project to agree to a redesign. Charles Johnson stayed with the story until the summer of 2006, and Ace has done twolinks since 2005, but for the most part, these conservative heroes seem to have decided that the “circle of embrace” redesign is okay.

It is NOT okay. Architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent of Embrace design as a broken circle. The redesign is still described as a broken circle, and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was in the original design.

 

Actually, I do not condone the design one way or the other, I sincerely thought the last round in 2005 fixed the problem. My original post is here, with the incoming calls for action from other bloggers filling up the comments section. The original design was a crescent, as the designer named it.  It also was nearly identical to a Muslim Crescent, as can be seen in this design from 2005:

The problem appears to be the redesigned memorial did not go far enough to remove all key vestiges of the original offending design. Bigsibling has many design images that show the redesign effort to be a weak cover up, instead of what was needed: a complete redesign. (old design on left, ‘new’ design on right).

An animation shows just how little was changed from the first, clearly wrong-headed design to the current marginally changed one (click to enlarge):

There is a good statement at Bigsibling Blog as to why there are breaks in the circle and what they are intended to represent:

The trees surrounding this “circle of embrace” are missing, or broken, in two places; first, where the flight path of the plane came overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center) and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).

OK, these features make sense, and the crescent shape is diminished quite a bit. But the fact is the line of the plane and the impact zone are a small area in the circle - which makes the circle basically immaterial and irrelevant. The circle encompasses a lot of land that has little to do with the site. I am at a lost to understand why the circle is so important when the event it is meant to memorialize skims the outer rim.

While I may not be as concerned as others on the shape so much, the basic problem here is that the folks running this design effort forgot who it was for - the victims and their families. Instead of running a process that built consensus, they ran one which shoved one design and designer down the throats of many victims’ families.

The first design was a complete insult to the Americans who died at the hands of Islamist Terrorists (note: not ‘Islamic’). And the folks running the memorial KNOW THIS, which is why they attempted the redesign. There is no way an Islamic Religious symbol should cover the graves of these Americans. If any religious symbols should be visible it should be from the victim’s religions and note who belonged to which. I would wager the only dead Muslims on the site are the terrorist murderers.

If the memorial group realized their mistake then, then they should realize that they made a second mistake in not going back to the drawing board with the many other great designs they had in their hands. This stubbornness to hold onto the circle is just as bad as any issues (real or imagined) people have with the now glossed over crescent.

Whoever is running this thing probably should have been removed when the original design hit problems and the dissensions began. Clearly they need to be removed now, because this has turned into a monumental disaster led by bureaucratic ineptitude. One set of families is adamantly opposed to the designer and the basic design, while others are so fed up with the controversy they just want to get the whole thing over (article link):

Anticipating more protest against the Flight 93 National Memorial design during a meeting today in Somerset, family members of some of those aboard the flight held a news conference Friday in Pittsburgh defending the maligned memorial.
“Rather than standing pat and being quiet, we’re standing up and saying, ‘Enough,’” said Patrick White, vice president of the Families of Flight 93.

…

“There’s no particular ownership of this shape,” she said. “… We felt confident with the notion that the void in the embrace was representative of loss.”

But Burnett, reached by phone in Minnesota, vehemently disagreed. He said a consensus was not reached, that he was among six people who voted against it and that he raised serious questions about Islamic symbolism.

“I spoke out about the symbols and tried to explain to them that the Islamists had been using those symbols for hundreds and hundreds of years,” Burnett said. “… It’s very pretty, but it doesn’t belong there where we lost 40 American heroes, including my son Tom.”

Now some are claiming the ‘crescent’ is not a symbol, and are hiding behind the bureaucratic BS line that nothing can be done now, that it is now too late:

More than 1,000 designs were whittled down to five by the first jury, made up of design professionals, family members and community members.

A second jury selected the design from among those final five.

…

The family members said large changes to the design are out of the question, although alterations are expected as the conceptual drawings become schematic plans.

“I would be wary of making major modifications to a memorial that was selected using the process that was used,” Gordon Felt said. “We can’t satisfy everybody all the time.”

This is a bunch of crap. We can do lots of things, and the first one is to realize the original design, no matter how much some liked it, is just one of many possible designs and it needed to be tossed when the crescent controversy hit. There is always a clean sheet of paper - and they collected thousands of options which they have in hand to select from. The problem seems to be that some refuse to let go of their precious little crescent/circle and are not listening to other family members or other Americans upset by the fact we started this mess with a clearly named red-crescent.

Now the emotions are high and the backs are up and the thing is an unmitigated mess. This can be fixed, but it requires new people willing to bridge differences instead of promote their own views on others who are repulsed by those views.

The answer is to dump the current design and process, and use the 1,000 other entries to create some other concept - sans a circle. There is nothing sacred to America about a circle, unlike those who believe the crescent (aka a broken circle) was a license to kill 3,000 Americans on 9-11, and a license to plan to kill many more since.

Get a clue people, that vacuous circle of irrelevant land is not the sacred element of this memorial - the grave site is. Dump this and start over. Find some other shape to design around and this mess will be over. Remain stubborn and the memorial will be remembered for the bitterness in its development and not the people who died that horrible day in September.

BTW, I located the above article from this site on the memorial itself, which has other information for those interested. A PDF file on “The Bowl” portion of the memorial park can be viewed here.

Update: First off, there is a call for support for Mr. Burnett at the up coming meeting (sounds like a good day to travel to PA to see the memorial site):

Come to the August 2nd meeting

If you can make it to Somerset PA on Saturday August 2nd, come help Tom Burnett Sr. tackle the hijacker!

Secondly, I really begin to wonder about this memorial now. It seems incredibly oversized. I think memorials should be something you can take in, spending maybe a half day at most exploring. Beyond that it becomes a chore, and no memorial should be a chore.

Now, before people go all ballistic on me, I want to put this into context with my favorite memorial on the Washington DC Mall - The World War II Memorial:

This memorial “honors the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the U.S., the more than 400,000 who died, and all who supported the war effort from home”. That is far more Americans, who also died for their country, than those who perished on Flight 93. The WW II National Memorial takes up less than a city block. I wonder how much of the Flight 93 Memorial is meant to be a legacy for those who perished, vs those building the memorial itself?

Another example, the 9-11 memorial at the Pentagon, which will be dedicated this September. It honors 187 deaths.

Anyway, I still say the process tainted the current design and the country needs a fresh start.

But in the face of Global falling temperatures with rising CO2 levels, the prediction of a decade to come of falling temperatures and two decades of unfulfilled doom and gloom predictions masquerading as scientific ‘fact’ we have the followers of the Church of Al Gore/IPCC ready to build an ark in the face of pending world wide floods!

An architect has come up with an innovative answer to rising sea levels - a city that floats around the world.

The self-contained ‘Lilypad’ city will be home to around 50,000 ‘climate refugees’ from the worst hit areas - including London.

Latest research predicts that sea levels could rise by up to 88cm - nearly 3ft - by the year 2100, putting many islands in the Pacific Ocean in danger.

Cool pictures, but an expensive prospect which requires an environmental impact study. Do you know how much waste 50,000 people produce? I assume this will just go into the ocean. Where will it get its power - nuclear reactors? Where will it get its food and water?

Given the fact sea levels have not budged in the 20 years since the IPCC first issued their failed predictions (not one has come true), and now we face another decade of failed predictions as the Global temperatures are predicted to fall, I would want to know for sure we need these “B-Arks” before we start spending money. It may not be just for Global Warming we may want to ship a lot of ‘refugees’ out to sea to fend for themselves!

For those familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, they will appreciate the reference to the B-Ark plan.

Golgafrincham, home of the Great Circling Poets of Arium, decided it was time to rid itself of an entire useless third of its population, and so concocted a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in some great catastrophe. The useless population (consisting of hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitizers and the like) were packed into the B-Ark, one of three giant Ark spaceships, and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. The other two thirds of the population, of course, did not follow and “led full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone”.

Ahh, it all comes clear now. The Church of Al Gore/IPCC plans to scare people out of the beach front property and buy them out for a song, then reap the financial rewards!

Experts claim that the red-fleshed fruit contains an ingredient that affects the body’s blood vessels in the same way as when a man takes the sex drug.

Researchers believe that the juicy fruit could be used to help men who suffer from erectile dysfunction.

Watermelons are loaded with an organic compound called citrulline that can trigger blood vessels to relax, much like Viagra does, according to scientists from Texas A&M University in the United States.

Is this April 1st? As some noted watermelon is the fruit of choice on the 4th of July. Doesn’t matter, I bet if I try to get some at the store today they will be all sold out. Time to open a watermelon farm. (Click image to see original post regarding the ‘Lady in the Melon’)

(Updated Below)

The liberal media and their Surrnedercrat minions have been attempting to claim terrorism is a myth, despite bombings, public statements by terrorists, captured terrorist statements, and all those dead and injured people we have seen as the result of the mythical terrorist. In their poor deluded minds it is the US government that is the threat, listening in on their increasingly hysterical babble. The claim is Bush and others are simply using made-up fear to scare the masses, and as proof they make up fantasies and shop unsubstantiated AND clearly debunked claims of invasions of privacy to make their case.

So the debate has been for years who is making up scary stories to claim they are protecting America, and who is really protecting America from real threats. If this is answered in the minds of Americans one way or the other, that is the path the election will take this year.

The hyper-paranoid liberal chatter today is all about who ‘owns’ the location of your phones, especially cell phones. But before we get to their breathless fear mongering about Bush and company eavesdropping, as if that unproven liberal fantasy is more important than Bin Laden’s suicidal minions publicly claimed efforts to try and blow up American, let’s step back a moment and think - instead of going into a panicky meltdown like these paranoid liberals. They may be screaming ‘fire’, but is there really any smoke in this theatre?

Does the US Government know where you home phone or business phone is located? Why yes they do! Why? Because the phone lines are not yours, they are the phone companies’. And the US government is allowed to know which phone is talking to which through the PIN Register, a type of initial and unobtrusive surveillance warrant that focuses on phone numbers (and locations) of those in contact with a suspect. For example, let’s look at how police use this information to identify a drug dealing network operation:

After receiving information from the City of Orlando Police Department, agents with the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation of Orlando, Florida (MBI) began investigating appellants Marvin Green, Clarence Wheeler, Sr., Clarence Wheeler, Jr., James Wheeler, Frank Wheeler, Frank Sims, Brian Carson, and Anthony Fowler’s involvement in a large scale crack cocaine distribution network. Initially, the MBI attempted to conduct surveillance of a residence located at 907 West Long Street. These attempts failed because the suspects immediately recognized and accosted the agents.

The agents applied for and were granted authority to use a pin register and a trap and trace device for the telephone number assigned to 907 West Long Street. Through use of the pin register and trap and trace device, the agents learned that many telephone calls were being made between 907 West Long Street, 907 West Anderson Street, and 1212 West 22nd Street. The agents also determined that a number of calls were being made between 907 West Long Street and a business known as “Tap’s Pool Room,” which Frank Wheeler owned. Eventually, communications between 907 West Long Street and 1212 West 22nd Street ceased, and heavy communications began between 907 West Long Street and 510 Daniels Street, the residence of Brian Carson.

On July 10, 1991, a state court granted MBI agents authority to intercept oral communications involving the telephone assigned to 907 West Long Street. The MBI also obtained a pin register and a trap and trace for 907 West Anderson Street and for a cellular telephone number that had been identified during a previous pin register and trap and trace period.

Emphasis mine. The first step is to get the PIN Register warrant to see who is being contacted, the second warrant allows authorities to listen in on and record the conversations. The initial PIN Register warrant was on the one set of phone numbers at the residence of the drug dealers. But as clearly noted the other ends of the communications were located as well. There was no ‘warrant’ on these phone numbers and their locations.

We are back again to the definition of a Target of a surveillance - which requires a warrant - and the Contact of the Target, who gets their communications with the Target monitored and investigated.

One of the big myths surrounding the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the NSA and the FISA court is the concept of ‘authority’. For instance, if Bin Laden’s head bomber was in the US and the FIS Court offered a warrant to monitor him, everyone he contacted would be under surveillance. If the warrant was for a PIN Register as in the example above, then the number and location of the phone number (not the contents) would be collected. Then a second warrant is issued to listen in. Note also that the investigation by police started before any of these steps.

So now let’s go to the world of international terrorism and international communications. The ‘authority’ to target suspects overseas lies within the intelligence community, which gives authority to NSA to listen in on the Overseas Targets (OST). This authority is equal to and replaces the need for the first warrant in the domestic version above. The NSA can note who, at a PIN Register level, is in contact with suspected terrorists. In fact, it is impossible not to note both ends of a communication event over modern technology.

Each packet of data (be it voice, text, imagery) is stamped information on the sending and receiving end-points. It has to have this information to route itself through the myriad switches, trunk lines, satellite hops, corporate subnets, etc. Communications today moves incredibly fast through a series of devices. Just open ‘full headers’ on any email you receive and realize the ‘hops’ listed are just those at domain boundaries, they do not include all the intermediary devices data must snake its way through. In my house alone data will traverse 2-3 networks before hitting the outside mesh of devices.

So it is impossible not to collect source and destination. The question is what to do with it recording-wise. In the case of the NSA all PIN Register level information is passed to the FBI to investigate any end point in the US. In fact, the new FISA bill does something unique in America, it does not automatically give non-US citizens physically in the US the same protections legally (see here for that revelation). Basically, never again - like prior to 9-11 - will the NSA have information on terrorists in the US it cannot share with the FBI, thus leading to 3,000 innocent deaths. This is not paranoid fantasy like that from the looney left, that is historic fact.

OK, so we have established that, not unlike domestic surveillance, once authority has been granted to monitor a Target (via warrant inside the US or via intelligence community procedures governed and monitored by the Department of Justice - and now the FIS Court) collecting the PIN Register level data is allowed. And that information is phone number and location (and possibly owner).

So with a logical and though out context in mind, let’s look over at what the paranoid liberals are screaming their heads off about today:

All modern cell phones are equipped with GPS capability that allows your location to be tracked within a few meters at all times. Question: does the federal government have access to this tracking information without a warrant? The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information request to find out but the feds refused to respond.

Short answer - yes. If you become a Contact to a Target and are swept up in authorized surveillance, then your PIN Register details are available without a warrant on you! Everyone can be under surveillance without a warrant against them if they are in contact with Targets.

Now, the real question is whether the location of a cell phone is ‘owned’ by the owner of the cell phone? I hate to bust Kevin Drum’s technologically naive bubble but cell phones don’t require GPS to be located. The same triangulation tracking method GPS employs can also be employed using the cell towers and cell phone RF links to gain position of the phone. And when people buy phones or communications they are surrendering much of their privacy to the company in question, and therefore also to the US government which owns the RF spectrum and has oversight rights as well.

If you are using the public RF spectrum, under lease to communication companies, are you on public property? Interesting question. Here’s is a parallel example for folks to ponder: On*Star from General Motors. This in-dash cell phone with GPS tracking can detect when and where you have had an accident. It is a level of outside visibility into your whereabouts and condition that you paid for, which buys you very useful support for emergencies, etc.

So, if Bin Laden in Pakistan calls his buddy’s Cadillac Deville in NY City on his On*Star phone number it will be picked up by NSA, because Bin Laden is an authorized target of the NSA. The Authorities will know the number and the fact it is a mobile phone, even an On*Star node. There will be no warrant as one is not required. Now, under these circumstances does it make sense to not also provide the ‘address’ of the phone as was done in the drug dealer example above?

Of course it does, since we better be protecting ourselves from terrorists with the same level of tools we protect our children from drug dealers. When we see the paranoid left trying to weaken our defenses against terrorists when compared to what we authorize when we track down drug dealers, it is a clear sign those panicked liberals have jumped the shark.

Note how the ACLU and these other liberals never put context around the question of invasion of privacy? All US Person require warrants when they are the Target of surveillance. The Target can have ALL their communications monitored. Contacts only have those communications monitored that are with a designated and authorized Target. The entire NSA-FISA flap was created over the mythology that there were no “Contacts” in the US when it came to overseas communications and terrorists. It was a naive and suicidal blurring of the reality of today’s threats and communications systems. Why would we allow the concept of a “Contact” to be valid inside the US only? Prior to 9-11 the rule was, when it came to international terrorists overseas, there were no “Contacts” - you could not record the number, the location or the contact.

And that resulted in two things: (a) we, in the form of our fellow citizens at the NSA, had detected the 9-11 highjackers here in America, and (b) we deleted the information that would have probably avoided the deaths of 3,000 innocent people just getting on with their lives one sunny day in September, 2001.

Only fools pretend we are not at war with terrorist and that all efforts aimed at terrorists are aimed at these fools. So, who is fear mongering and who is protecting us? Well, since 9-11 there has been no successful attack on the US (here or on our Embassy soil overseas). There have been plenty of attacks, but no successful ones. Fact vs fiction.

Update: Clearly, this paranoid delusion is not going to fly given some of sane analysis coming out on the internet:

Now just calm down and think for a minute.

• They could follow you without a warrant.
• They could ring your doorbell to see if you answer without a warrant.
• They can set up a stake out across your street and monitor your coming and going without a warrant.
• They can check your garbage and find out where you picked up the take out you had for dinner without a warrant.

If you leave your home, you are by definition “out in public.” Where’s the expectation of privacy when you are in public? If you’re not out in public, you must be at home or where-ever you went when you left home and went out in public to get there.

H/T Stop The ACLU

When 3,000+ lives may be on the line, I would say putting a known terrorist through some waterboarding is an unfortunate but humane option. I would not want to go through it, but then again I don’t plan to kill thousands of people.

Lots of discussions today on whether we could target Bin Laden with a drone if we discovered his hide out (see here and here). From the second link we read this:

Pakistan long ago gave Washington the right to launch an immediate Predator drone strike on Osama bin Laden, without first notifying Islamabad, if he is located in Pakistani tribal areas, The Washington Times reported Wednesday.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf granted this exception to other limits on US counterterrorism operations in his country “early” in the war against Al-Qaeda, launched in Afghanistan in October 2001, the Times said, citing “a knowledgeable official.”

Then, we see news of a US missile strike in Bajaur Agency today, one of the Agencies of the Pakistan FATA region:

Two people were killed and two wounded Wednesday when a missile fired from Afghanistan landed near a border post in a Pakistani tribal area, a senior security official said.

It was not clear if the missile that hit the troubled Bajaur district was launched by Taliban militants in Afghanistan or international forces fighting them, the official said.

Why are these two stories supposedly linked? Well, last year Pakistan President Musharraf admitted Bin Laden could be in Pakistan, and the location he guessed Bin Laden would be hiding was none other than Bajaur Agency:

Talking to The Washington Post , President Pervez Musharraf has stated that Osama bin Laden could be in the area “that borders Pakistan’s Bajaur tribal agency and Afghanistan’s Kunar province”. This statement, still containing elements of uncertainty, brings him pretty close to actually saying that Al Qaeda could be headquartered in Pakistan. It doesn’t take a big leap of the imagination to conclude that Aiman Al Zawahiri, his number two, is also with him.

Why Bajaur? Because, according to President Musharraf, the Kunar province of Afghanistan now has NATO-US forces whereas there were none in the past. Is his view based on solid intelligence? No, he said, but there have been attacks inside Bajaur aimed at hitting the Al Qaeda leadership.

That was from December, 19, 2007. In October 2007 there were reports of AQ number 2 Ayman Zawahiri in Bajaur. Is this all simply coincidence? Who knows, but it really peaked my interest.

Update: Well, it seems I missed a report of an early missile hit in the Khyber Agency a few days back:

An explosion wrecked the compound of a militant Islamic group on Monday, killing as many as eight people. Pro-Taliban militants claimed the explosion was caused by a missile fired by American forces not far across the border in Afghanistan, but a Pakistani officer said it occurred when explosives that had been stored in the compound blew up.

The explosion, which buried bodies in piles of shattered masonry and mud bricks, came during the third day of an offensive by Pakistani paramilitary forces in the Khyber Agency, which is adjacent to Peshawar.

Wonder who we targeted, and who we got.

Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress, according to a report by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The embassy’s evaluation, compiled in May, contrasts sharply with other recent assessments that Iraq has failed to achieve many of the goals that the Baghdad government and President Bush said would be reached by the end of 2007. A report by the Government Accountability Office, released last week, cited little improvement in the political and economic spheres and noted continuing military problems despite a significant decline in overall violence.

The embassy judged that the only remaining shortfalls were the Baghdad government’s failure to enact and implement laws governing the oil industry and the disarmament of militia and insurgent groups, and continuing problems with the professionalism of the Iraqi police.

Emphasis mine. Maliki’s actions against the Mahdi Militia in the last two months as fixed one of the two remaining benchmarks, so we are down to only 2. And I would say Malikis efforts in the last few months took on a lot of the issues with the Police. And I recall the oil distribution plan has been developed, probably only needs to be voted on. Clearly we are within reach of all of these.

Let’s recap some history here, while we enjoy the crow the Liberal Surrendercrats are chewing on at the moment. In June of last year, when the Surge was just beginning and the Democrats had finally realized they could not surrender Iraq to al-Qaeda, the all-seeing, the all-knowing, the Svengali-like leader of the Surrendercrats in the Senate, Harry Reid had this to say:

“As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote.

“The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

“It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

“In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

Boy, you don’t screw up more than that. If he was a surgeon he would be sued for malpractice. Heck, if he was a car mechanic who diagnosed our engine problems this badly he would be sued for malpractice. When, in the fall of 2007 it became clear violence levels were dropping, the Surrendercrats sung a new tune (whilst they attempted character assassination on General David “Betray Us” Petraeus). Then it was benchmarks. As late as February of 2008 the Surrendercrats were still claiming the Surge was a failure because of the lack of political progress given the progress in security. Here is the all-seeing, the all-knowing, the Svengali-like leader of the Surrendercrats in the House, Nancy Pelosi, this last February:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”

“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”

The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”

What has happened since? Well, Prime Minister Maliki took the lead in facing down and dismantling the Mahdi Militia in Basra, Sadr City and Amarah using Iraqi forces in the lead, and he also spear headed the purge of Mosul of the last remnants of al-Qaeda. With the Iraqis taking the lead role in security, and addressing all security issues be they al-Qaeda/Sunni or Shiite or Kurdish, he has built the trust of the various factions.

The Surrendercrats needed defeat. They predicted defeat. They even tried some 40+ congressional votes to mandate defeat in Iraq by pulling the funds on our efforts and sacrifices. Since they have no clue how to win wars they tried what they knew how to do from Vietnam - to lose the Iraq war. But this crop (or should that vowel be an ‘a’?) of Liberal Surrendercrats are so incompetent they couldn’t even pull off another Vietnam. These Neville Chamberlain wannabes couldn’t even paralyze the Europeans from supporting our efforts.

And now Victory in Iraq is close at hand! And the credibility of the Liberal Surrendercrats has been totally destroyed. We now simply pity them and their foolish dreams of defeat for America.