But the senate looked like a hill too high – until today. If you look at the RCP 2010 election map for the Senate you find DE is now a lost Democrat seat, with AR, IN and NV highly likely lost seats. That brings us to 4 out of the 9 needed to tip the Senate into GOP hands. If we look at tossups it is easy to assume the following would tip GOP in wave election against the Dems: PA & CO.  I would add IL into that pile.

And soon we will be adding CA into that pile as well because Boxer is now polling between 43-46% in CA, which means she is very likely to lose to any of the GOP candidates which only trail her by 3-6% (close to the MoE). If Rossi in WA challenges Dem incumbent Murray we have the makings for an extraordinary election year where the Dems went from a filibuster proof majority to losing control of the Senate in 2 short, painful years.

All I see are people who cannot barely fathom a fraction of the complexities of this modern world – from communications to science to medicine – making life destroying decisions with the skill of an idiot run amok.

We face the end of our democracy this week, as the lazy and lying politicians and their enablers inside the Political Industrial Complex (PIC: consultants, lobbyists, staffers, well connect special interests, compliant news media) refuse to let the people chose their path: either government rationed health care verses pay-as-you-can free market health care. I prefer the latter – it is an incentive to stay in school, focus your energies, avoid the laziness of drugs, computer games, self indulgence. In return for hard work not only will you succeed and have a nice house, nice car and raise a family in decent surroundings – you will also earn world class health care. It makes it my responsibility to me and my family – one I take on humbly and honorably. I do not trust it to anyone else.

On the other side is the PIC, which prefers to play god and decide who is worthy of OUR money. I don’t have the arrogance to presume so much over others. It seems the more naive you are the more insight you have into how to run other people’s lives.

What is worse is now the endless lies. To sell this takeover requires a constant flow of DC BS.

Take for example the woman with cancer President Obama and the liberals in DC shamelessly used as a prop this week. Supposedly she is a victim of our health care system. But when you peak behind the propaganda and lies you find out she has NOT been dumped from her coverage and she is NOT dying without care and support.

Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.

…

Canfield said in her letter that while she was diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer 16 years ago, she had been cancer-free for 11 years. But she said her premiums increased by over 25 percent last year, and that with a maximum deductible of $2,500 she had to pay about $10,000 for care in 2009 — while her insurance company paid just over $900.

After learning recently that her premiums were about to increase by over 40 percent in 2010, Canfield dropped her plan, she said in the letter.

She is dying from cancer, yes. As many have before her and many will after her. Cancer is a painful way to go, but we do not yet possess the medical skills to reverse it. She is dying, nothing in DC will help her or those like her.

The lies about this story surround her medical costs – they are what they are. They have to be paid by someone. They ARE being paid by someone.

It does not matter whether she is covered from insurance, charity or Medicare. What is true is she is being required, now, to carry a lot of the burden. I feel for her, but under any solution that still must be true. She sees the bills, she feels the financial burden. All Obamacare does his hide this cost from HER – not us! Is this all this is about – hiding the cost of life sustaining care?

The woman was not dumped from her insurance, she could not afford to pay and withdrew.  She lost her job 12 years ago and has somehow made do since then. Her cancer was diagnosed 16 years ago. Time has caught up with her and the cancer is taking hold. Her medical costs are going up. Hard facts of life.

Nothing in Obamacare can help her. Nothing. In fact, under rationed government health care she would run the risk of being rejected because she will have used up her lifetime allotment of coverage. She also would not be in a premier medical center, as she is now. And there will be no profits feeding into medical research to find a cure. Under Obamacare the current situation would look insanely marvelous.

This need to fake stories and make up lies to sell this crazy liberal scheme and confiscate our personal health care is why democracy is dying in America. Congress is despised, with less than 20% support and 75% of America in opposition. People want them fired – all of them. And yet they mindlessly continue to push for the destruction of our health care.

And to get there, they plan to destroy our constitution. Obama, Pelosi and Reid are big on talking about an up or down vote on health care. Real big.  All they moan about is getting a vote for their proposals. Something they were free to do (and lose on) for over a year now. But that is all really a lie my friends. There will be no vote:

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

To boil down on past all the misinformation, the Democrats will let their members vote on what they wish was in the bill, but illegally bypass reconciliation by saying that means they passed the Senate bill with all the stuff they don’t like.

It is all a lie, because the Senate cannot go to reconciliation until the President SIGNS the senate bill. That mess has to become law first, then they may get around to fixing it. They will not vote, they will put on a show and then switch the bills out from under are dumb noses. How slick these people are!

Most of us are resigned to the reality DC is completely out of control and needs to be dismantled. Government now exists to please itself, not work for the people. It is still our country, and we will take it back this November. But right now all we can do is watch the fools tear it apart in their mad quest.

So bye, bye now America dies
Let the loonies run DC, now they only spit out lies
Them crooks & liars were drinking whiskey & rye, singing
This will be the day our democracy dies
This will be the day that it dies

(sung to American Pie)

Update: Meant to add this article on a new poll showing just how much opposition there is to Obamacare – in centrist swing districts!

Voters in key congressional districts are clear in their opposition to what they have seen, read and heard on health-care reform. That’s one of the findings of a survey that will be released today by the Polling Company on behalf of Independent Women’s Voice. The survey consisted of 1,200 registered voters in 35 districts represented by members who could determine the outcome of the health-care debate. Twenty of those members voted for the House bill in November but now may be reconsidering. Fifteen voted against the bill but are under tremendous pressure to change their vote.

The survey shows astonishing intensity and sharp opposition to reform, far more than national polls reflect. For 82% of those surveyed, the heath-care bill is either the top or one of the top three issues for deciding whom to support for Congress next November. (That number goes to 88% among independent women.) Sixty percent want Congress to start from scratch on a bipartisan health-care reform proposal or stop working on it this year. Majorities say the legislation will make them and their loved ones (53%), the economy (54%) and the U.S. health-care system (55%) worse off—quite the trifecta.

Seven in 10 would vote against a House member who votes for the Senate health-care bill with its special interest provisions. That includes 45% of self-identified Democrats, 72% of independents and 88% of Republicans.

As I said, we are resigned to this mess playing out and the people cleaning out DC in November.

Update: Today’s Health Care must read. Heck, it is the ‘must read’ of the season.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, Democrats released a 2,309 page health care bill that will start the process of reconciliation — but don’t let that fool you, it’s not the actual reconciliation bill with all the changes you’ve been reading about. Instead, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee, explained to me last week, this is just the “shell” bill — the vehicle that Democrats need to get moving on health care. Once the bill gets approved (likely Monday), Democrats will send this phantom bill over to the Rules Committee, where it will be stripped, and then they’ll insert in all of the actual changes that they’ve negotiated.

See, they will pretend they have shown the country and congress what will be voted on and passed into law, but it really is a prop – a false impression. Somehow I don’t get the feeling a real democracy should be run by pretending to vote on one set of laws and then having a small group commit a coupe d’etat and slip in their own preferred version. That is not the ‘law of the land’ I grew up to admire in this country.

One Obama cabinet member I think is in serious trouble, though he seems to be flying under the radar of the Health Care debate at the moment, is Attorney General Eric Holder. The fact he held back key amicus briefs from his Senate review is very disturbing, and just another sign the Obama administration is anything but ‘transparent’:

During his confirmation more than a year ago, Attorney General Eric Holder failed to notify lawmakers he had contributed to a legal brief dealing with the use of federal courts in fighting terrorism, the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday.

…

Still, the “amicus brief,” filed with the Supreme Court in 2004, resonates years later as Holder finds himself defending the handling of some recent terrorism cases, particularly the interrogation of alleged “Christmas Day bomber” Umar F. Abdulmutallab.

The brief – filed by Holder, then a private attorney, former Attorney General Janet Reno and two other Clinton-era officials – argued that the President lacks authority to hold Jose Padilla, a U.S citizen declared an “enemy combatant,” indefinitely without charge.

In making their case, Holder and the others argued that using federal courts to fight terrorism, which includes providing Miranda rights to terror suspects, would not “impair” the government’s ability to obtain intelligence, which they called “the primary tool for preventing terrorist attacks.”

Clearly this is subterfuge, an effort to hide Holder’s risky and dangerous views from public scrutiny. This was a brief which exposes Holder’s (and Obama’s and John Brennan’s) views that they could dial back our reaction to terrorist threats used under the Bush admininstration. It explains completely why the terrorist investigations into Major Hasan were suspiciously and abruptly shut down before the true nature of the man was discovered. After all, he was an American citizen talking about Jihad and killing soldiers with another American citizen now in Yemen and tied to al Qaeda and 9-11.

In the twisted and limited views of liberals that is called free speech. I guess bombing civilians is also an admirable expression of political views.

The brief also explains the totally bizarre and reckless act of suspending interrogations of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and providing him the right to remain silent and a lawyer – even though he is not an American citizen! An act that could have allowed other al Qaeda killers to sneak by our defenses. It was this same extension of American rights to foreign threats inside our borders that allowed the 9-11 high jackers to ‘disappear’ from intelligence monitoring and kill 3,000 people.

I have written extensively about Hasan and Abdulmutallab, including the on-the-record comments of Eric Holder and John Brennan on how they planned to dial back our reactions to threats. Apparently they defined a new class of threat, the lone wolf, who they could apply new, less reactionary rules to. This is how, in my opinion,  Abdulmutallab’s actions and connections to known terrorist sympathizers slipped by our formally hair trigger defenses. After all, he too communicated with that American traitor in Yemen.

And it is now coming out this was not just one amicus brief, but a whole suite of them:

As a nominee, Holder had “a duty of candor to provide all information requested by the Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with his nomination,” said Stephen Boyd, communications director for Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee. “It is simply unacceptable that briefs in such significant cases were not provided to the Committee so that they could be discussed during his confirmation hearings.”

“We will review the documents carefully,” said Boyd, “and see how they shed light on the Attorney General’s terrorism policies, including his treatment of the Christmas Day Bomber and his decision to prosecute KSM in domestic criminal court in New York City. This will be a significant issue at his hearing in 10 days.”

Holder has a big problem – he was wrong. He can play games all day long, but his premise that we can fight a suicidal enemy through the courts instead of on the battlefield is mind numbingly stupid. And al Qaeda knows it has an opening. It is crafting its attacks very carefully and using new recruits in order to trigger the Obama civil rights blinders. These blinders have been shown many times now to provide sufficient cover to allow the attacker to get in place for an attack, and also provide time for others to go to ground if the attacker is caught.

Obama and Holder have been lucky, but they are also now distracted and back on their heels. The intelligence folks are not sure how far to go in pursuing leads, especially if the lead is an American. I look at the recent arrests of Jihad cheer leaders and I see a new pattern. Either they finally started taking the threat seriously (doubtful) or they are running around in a panic pulling in even the most marginal characters.

Time will tell, but the liberals were wrong. You cannot use the courts and miranda rights to protect Americans from al Qaeda suicide attackers. That is how 9-11 was allowed to happen. It is not a question of if the Obama-Holder-Brennan axis of stupidity will cause deaths (it already has in the case of Hasan), it is only a matter of when al Qaeda will be lucky enough to exploit our now relaxed defenses.

There is no doubt this is a sea change year in America. We have seen decades of hyper-partisan failures, where one side or the other is allowed a period to lead and they head as far left or right as they can, trying to reshape America in their own fantasy world of perfection. Ignoring the fact that America’s perfection is in its embrace of peaceful diversity and the power of the individual.

Along the way these hyper partisans diss and moan about the great center of America – the diverse heart and soul of America. They rant about those who don’t want a black or white world, who don’t think we have all the answers, who don’t fall for simpleton solutions to complex problems. Centrists have endured a lot of grief for stopping the fringes from going too far, and for allowing the other side a chance at moderate, center-out leadership when things get out of hand. The message has been clearly repeated for many cycles now. Get back to the center, stop trying to mandate and control everything.

But this merry-go-round of the fringes is about to end. The reality is Americans don’t want to be taken care of, told how to live, told how to act, told how to think. They want to explore their individual pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. They want to explore their religion, they want to explore their personal relationships (preferably privately, away from our children) and they want to explore their creativity and see if they can succeed in the free market (whether it is a widget, a piece of art or a some helpful service). We want to explore our individuality, our personal diversity. We want to break from the norm or the conventional wisdom or the ‘way it has been’. We don’t want DC hyper partisans picking winners or losers, best or worst, good or bad.

We do want the individual to have the right to self determination, and we do want them to live with the consequences of their decisions. We can pool temporary safety nets for hard times. But I think we are all fed up with covering for people who had opportunities and squandered them. Those who worked hard and achieved something are not going to be the ones footing the bills for other people’s mistakes and corruption.

What we are finally realizing is our big centralized, federal government is no longer a protection to our individual exploration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a threat to all we hold dear. Over the years BigGov, the Orwellian beast we were warned about in the book Nineteen Eighty Four, has tried to tamp out our differences and make us march to the tune of the current minority in power. The truth is politicians, the news media, their consultants and talking heads of the Political Industrial Complex are a tiny minority of what makes up America. They are NOT the heart soul and drive of America. And they have failed to solve almost all domestic problems (the one exception in my mind is engaging the private sector to provide prescription drug coverage to Medicare).

What we would hopefully see this year as centrists come forward to offer their shot at leadership are plans to dismantle the oppressive BigGov and push power (and creativity to solve problems) back to the states and the people. We do need to pool some money for our national defense, for some national endeavors (like exploring space until it becomes economically sustainable) and to fulfill old commitments like Social Security and Medicare. However, for some of these entitlements the commitment will be short lived and for those who cannot move to the new programs that will replace these outdated behemoths.

I don’t need to have the answers because it will take a generation to undo this mess. All I need to know is the path and the promise to do no harm, force no one to make a choice they do not want to make. I live in a business were we can upgrade to the ‘new’ while supporting those on the ‘old’ until they are ready to move on. We can do this for public policy as well.

If the party plank is to pair back the intrusiveness of government, and the horrendous waste of our money that goes with it, I am all for it. And I think the nation is too.

We need to dismantle much of government. We need to cut taxes and spending so the economy can grow and we can fix our own problems. We need to allow the states to innovate on public policies and services. We can even pool some money to help financially strapped districts or regions to keep up with the innovations, but these pools will be small and only for the very neediest cases.

Whatever we do, we need to do it without the heavy hand of the federal bureaucracy. In this information age we can report data and collect results using small, independent groups (more than two) who review the data and report conclusions and make recommendations. We don’t need bureaucracies and mountains of paper. We need independent eyes who cannot be influenced by money.

States can innovate and experiment. The private sector can innovate, experiment and reap the rewards for themselves, their workers and their communities. Pockets of innovation will replace pockets of economic stress. The central reporting function will just communicate to other regions what is working and how it was implemented, or what was not working and why.

The federal government has become the antithesis of America. We don’t need to take back BigGov, we need to take it apart and get back to the Constitution and limited government.

I feel in my bones this is the new path we will embark on, the phoenix that is going to rise from the liberal failures on job stimulus, Obamacare and global warming. They are shining examples of how BigGov has reached the end of its utility.

We need to remove the political know-it-alls who always come up clueless and get back to living our own lives. We need to stop falling for false promises. We need to do this ourselves, and we need to be freed of BigGov to do it.

Update: I do want to comment on the social conservative movement, which I know is being pushed a bit to the side. As long as we remain within the bounds of respecting each other, I think the religious right has an argument that they are singled out and oppressed too much. There should be public prayer, mangers at Christmas and sharing of their beliefs in school (as all should be shared and expressed). Fighting the oppression of the christian right by the intolerant atheists using government to censor them is a cause I champion, even though I am not religious.

In addition, I am pro-life and yet respect the hard choices some have to make when facing medical issues. I am more worried about stem cell industries growing and slaughtering tens of thousands human beings (who happen to be in the embryonic stage of life) than I am about the mother making a choice on one life. We can help women make better choices, pro life choices. We must stop the raising and slaughtering of humans for spare parts for the rich.

It is when the social conservatives attack other people’s life styles, or they want to replace science with divine mythology in school, that they cross the line. To many of us a liberal touting Global Warming is no better than someone touting Intelligent Design. Neither is science.

I would remind our social conservative friends that they have allies when it comes to fighting the oppression they face. We can respect and recall our judeo-christian roots and the meaning of Christmas and share in their view points. That is the boundary of common ground which unites.

Today we have the latest scheme to pass their government take over and destruction of our private health care – just dictate it from the House without any actual vote.

The Slaughter Solution is a plan by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Democratic chair of the powerful House Rules Committee and a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to get the health care legislation through the House without an actual vote on the Senate-passed health care bill.  You see, Democratic leaders currently lack the votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill through the House.  Under Slaughter’s scheme, Democratic leaders will overcome this problem by simply “deeming” the Senate bill passed in the House – without an actual vote by members of the House.

An article in this morning’s edition of National Journal’s CongressDaily breaks the story, starting with the headline: “SLAUGHTER PREPS RULE TO AVOID DIRECT VOTE ON SENATE BILL.”  Excerpts:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

The good news is we now know Obamacare is dead on arrival because it will never pass constitutional muster. Even if the Dems shop some federal courts, the people in enough states will rise up in revolt. The liberals want to go all out – they are about to learn what ‘all out’ means. They have not realized Americas revulsion of government rationed health care is stronger than their doe-eyed groupie love for it.

But one thing is becoming clear to Americans, they will need to eject these corrupt, power-mad people as soon as possible. If the Democrats are crazy enough to jettison our constitution and our democracy (irony: Democrats corrupted to the point they kill their namesake) then Americans will have open to them a slew of legal and political avenues. I cannot fathom what 100’s of millions of creative and angry minds will devise in response to liberal madness – but by going to the “Slaughter” rule democrats have opened the flood gates.

America is in for a rough ride this year, but it will be a cleansing ride. I just hope we keep it civil and legal. More over at Powerline. Also, Jim Geraghty has some amazing polling data on how abysmal Obamacare in the minds of independents and swing voters.

Update: Here is more on the ‘rule’ congress has used to avoid being responsible and on the record for their votes in the past – and which is being used to totally bypass the Constitution in this Congress. Count me in the revolution if this goes down this ugly.

First we have the polls, which like a fine oiled machine keep ratcheting downward every time Onama and the Congressional libs try to push the government taker of our private health insurance (which most of us like just fine, thank you, minus cost). Obama now has twice as many people who strongly DISAPPROVE of him than strongly approve of him. They dislike him, they really, really dislike him. This is not partisan – look at the independents who now strongly disapprove by 3 to 1!

Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 17% Strongly Approve and 45% Strongly Disapprove.

Yeah, that will play well in 2010 and 2012, and I doubt we have hit rock bottom yet. For months the message from America has been consistent and clear. The anger rising at the hyper-partisan power grab is reaching a boiling point. Can the liberals in DC screw up anymore?

Apparently they can. These geniuses in DC don’t even know the rules of Congress- the place they control!

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they were bracing for a key procedural ruling that could complicate their effort to approve major health care legislation, by requiring President Obama to sign the bill into law before Congress could revise it through an expedited budget process.

No one checked to see if reconciliation could be used on legislation THAT WAS NOT LAW YET??? I mean, it makes sense you cannot reconcile something that is not law yet! All this talk for months about this nuclear option and no one checked to see if the trigger could be pulled all at once?

Like I said, clueless.

First off is this guest post over at Roger Pielke Jr’s website that analyzes how much of the latest IPCC report (AR4) is based on ‘peer-reviewed’ science vs grey and black references – along with a great definition for these classes of scientific confidence:

Overall only 62% of the references in the IPCC report are actually based on science, the rest are grey or black. But as we all know, not even the science references are all used accurately, or are even accurate themselves.

Next is this interesting post at Harmless Sky by TonyN, which looks at one of the insane tables produced by Working Group 1 of the IPCC. In it (reproduced below) TonyN notes that we find some bizarre, mathematically impossible conclusions drawn that simply emphasize the fact you can point to all the scientific papers you want, and still come up with garbage conclusions:

[A] Phenomenon aand direction of trend	[B] Likelihood that trend occurred in late 20th century (typically post 1960)	[C] Likelihood of a human contribution to observed trend b	[D] Likelihood of future trends based on projections for 21st century using SRES scenarios
[1] Warmer and fewer cold daysand nights over most landareas	Very likely c [>90%]	Likely e >60%	Virtually certaine >99%
[2] Warmer and more frequenthot days and nights overmost land areas	Very likely d >90%	Likely (nights) e >60%	Virtually certaine >99%
[3] Warm spells / heat waves.Frequency increases overmost land areas	Likely >60%	More likely than not f >50%	Very likely >90%
[4] Heavy precipitation events.Frequency (or proportion oftotal rainfall from heavy falls)increases over most areas	Likely >60%	More likely than not f >50%	Very likely >90%
[5] Area affected by droughtsincreases	Likely in many regions since 1970s >60%	More likely than not >50%	Likely >60%
[6] Intense tropical cycloneactivity increases	Likely in some regions since 1970 >60%	More likely than not f >50%	Likely >60%
[7] Increased incidence ofextreme high sea level(excludes tsunamis) g	Likely >60%	More likely than not f, h >50%	Likely I >60%

Just focus in on the line highlighted in red text. What we have is three columns of confidence levels for three hypothesis (none of which are really proven): (a) a measured trend in the climate data, (b) the trend has a human component (of any size, it could be insignificant or dominant, IPCC never explains here), and (c) a guesstimate the human influence will drive a future trend – or at least that is the implication. The title of the column actually is much more general and useless, it simply provides a confidence Earth will experience this same trend again.

If the world is going through a natural cycle, of course we will see these things again!

Anyway, so we look at “[3] Warm spells / heat waves. Frequency increases overmost land areas“. For the globe to be warming, one would think the frequency of warm spells and heat waves would naturally increase. But look at the confidence levels (if these numbers are even the mathematical variety of the term).

It is only 60% likely that there has been an increase in warm spells or heat waves in the 20th century! Only 60%? I thought this was the apocalyptic end result of AGW? Even more so, there is only a 50% confidence this barely perceptible trend is human driven (remember a 50% confidence means it could be or as easily could not be = no evidence either way). If you were combining uncertainties (the 1’s compliment of confidence) we would say there is 40% uncertainty in warming trends being detected and 50% uncertainty (basically zero) it is human driven. This would lead any real scientist (or HS math ace) to conclude there is enormous uncertainty that human induced warm spells will be seen in the future.

But not those crazy folks at the IPCC – they claim there is a 90% certainty of future human induced warm spells! Or is that just warm spells, which would be the only sane (but useless) conclusion?

As I said, you can have all the scientific references in the world and still produce garbage.

Next is this real scientific paper that attempts to use shellfish shells to discern historic climate. It looks like it is going to replace all other proxies because it can actually measure down to the month or less. Interestingly it shows a Roman Warm Period, a Medieval Warm Period, and A Little Ice Age. What does it show for today? Strangely the entire thing stops in the 1800’s. H/T Bishop Hill.

Speaking of real scientific papers, SPPI has this interesting paper out discussing the possible mechanisms behind the divergence of Satellite & Ground temp data. I find its exploration of UHI effects and detail on how wind speed is a huge factor in cooling at night very enlightening. If you want to truly glimpse the complexity of instantaneous and long term climactic forces and drivers, this paper is a bit of an eye opener.

This article up at WUWT demonstrates how unsettled the ’science’ really is. You have one major national climate organization, the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), refuting the speculative math used by NASA GISS to smear a few warm thermometers over the entire continent of Antarctica and claim there is warming. What is ’settled’ is no one spent any time fact checking GISS, CRU and IPCC until recently.

And finally I want to end with a picture of the pending corruption that is the natural result of all this green madness (and I mean the money type of ‘green’). This starts in the UK and will make its way around the world Australia. First the UK and the fleecing of its citizens for green greed:

Well-off homeowners will be expected to borrow more than £7bn over the next decade to meet ambitious government energy saving targets announced today.

Local authorities will be encouraged to borrow the money needed to make buildings greener and meet local carbon emission reduction targets, for example by entering into public-private partnerships.

Energy suppliers will be required to meet about 60% of the estimated £18.6bn cost of insulating most of the UK’s homes, for which the poorest households will not have to pay. Suppliers will pass these costs on to their customers, but energy secretary Ed Miliband insisted the targets would not lead to additional utility bill rises.

Energy Secretary Miliband must be using that new math, because there is no way to pass on new costs and not see increased rates. Can you see our Federal government mandating we all pay exorbitant prices to insulate our homes? There is more 3rd grade math to come!

Under legislation proposed today, homeowners would be able to take out loans for thousands of pounds to install loft or wall insulation or solar panels. These loans would be fixed against the home, so that if the borrower moved out, they would not have to continue to pay.

The new owner would inherit the annual charge to pay for the green measures, but would also continue to benefit from the resulting lower energy bills.

Do these people understand it can take a decade or more to recoup some of these investments? And if your house is relatively new it will only marginally change your energy use since you can only do so much in upgrading to a modern, energy efficient home. And if it is older, the cost to get it up to par with modern homes is enormous, thus the long time to recoup the investment. This is just silly madness. And when this doesn’t work they will go to energy rationing and the thermostat police will show up.

This is all ripe for exploitation, as we find in Australia from these posts here and here.

Government needs to stop mandating what products we buy. From health insurance, to home upgrades, to the food we want to eat the nanny state needs to be fired. There is no global melt down, stop picking our pockets and lining yours.

Update: Oops! Almost forgot another set of posts I wanted to highlight. This first post is from The Virtuous Republic and ponders some of the effects of the great thermometer die off in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It is my contention you cannot use one thermometer to represent more than 50 km of any region with any accuracy. The Machiavellian has discovered how GISS has trimmed their sensors to a senseless level. Here is another post from the site on the same topic.

Bottom line, anyone who thinks a thermometer in Florida can give you the temperature in VA is pretty much a fool.

I added the difference numbers to illustrate why 50% is still the safe majority number in two way races. 15 of the Senators are green in this category because, even if they are below 50%, the gap between their approve/disapprove numbers is large enough to get them over the top in a two way race. I am not seeing someone with a 45% approval being at risk when their disapproval rating is 10% lower.

It is when the approve/disapprove get within 5% points of each other things look to be bad, and most of the Senators fall into this category. If disapproval turns into energetic opposition at the voting booth, then there is a real risk the voters will jettison the incumbent.

There are three senators with ** marks, showing a slim margin but also huge numbers of people who are  not picking either approve or disapprove. This means these candidates could easily win depending on the mood of the undecideds. What this leaves is 19 senators in clear and obvious deep trouble.

In any event, the erosion in support is definitely bipartisan, though it is clear the majority party is taking a majority of the anger from the American people. And this is only March.

I am still wondering when this crowd of arrogant incompetents will get the message and REPRESENT the wishes of America.  They can begin by stopping Obamacare once and for all and starting over, as Americans across this land have been demanding.

Update: Jay Cost nails this years historic point in time.

The Virginia Legislature this week is poised to become the first state to pass legislation that says citizens cannot be required to have medical insurance.

Dozens of other states are considering similar measures, possibly setting the stage for one of the greatest tests of federal power over the states since the civil rights era.

If states are allowed to opt out of the mandate, the foundation of Obama’s effort would be undermined, turning the nascent revolt here into one with national implications.

You have to keep asking ‘what’s the point of this obsessive madness?” Obamacare is not going to be accepted. There are numerous legal ways to throw up roadblocks even if it is passed by Hyper-Partisan, ruthless measures. All of it can and will be delayed until there is enough change in DC to roll it all back – probably to deafening cheers from the American people.

The madness driving the aging and deluded liberals in DC is just pathetic. They keep pretending that if they just get the votes it will all be set in stone.  It won’t be, but the liberals will have erected the tomb stone for liberalism, that much is for sure. In fact, they may have already set that stone in place and dug the hole. They are simply waiting for the voters to fill it in – and then move on without any regrets.

There is no way to force change from DC. You can get people to agree to change, but you cannot wave your magic wand and tell people they must do what you say. The more you try the more people will stand up to take that silly wand out of your hands and smash it (probably over your thick head).

This Congress is done – it is the lamest of lame ducks. The Democrats are done, and Obama is done. Why continue to fight the majority of Americans? You can’t win. If Obama wants to, he could regain some support, but that would require him to bow down to us. I don’t think he has it in him (he only bows to foreigners).

The Swedes wrote into Parliament to clarify (see here at Climate Audit) that they have no issues with data being public at all. The blog Bishop Hill beat me to the punch, but here is the key point of contention between Jones and the Swedes. This is excerpt is from Jones in his request to Sweden:

We stress that the data we hold has arisen from multiple sources, and has been recovered over the last 30 years. Subsequent quality control and homogenisation of these data have been carried out. It is therefore highly likely that the version we hold and are requesting permission to distribute will differ from your own current holdings.

The Swedes quite rightly were against Jones making his processed data available under the guise it was raw Swedish data. There have been numerous posts by skeptics looking at raw data from that region of Europe noting how the raw data does not line up with CRU and IPCC graphs (see here for one example). What is stunning about this letter (original here) is how Jones clearly is trying to put the Swedish label on his data. As Bishop Hill notes there is no restriction on CRU publishing data it has massaged, it just cannot call it raw Swedish data:

t seems clear to me that Jones does not actually require permission from SMHI to release the adjusted data. This, by his own admission, is different to what SMHI holds and there can therefore be no issues of intellectual property.

…

Having being asked for permission to release, SMHI felt they were being asked to endorse Jones’ adjusted figures. Quite properly, they refused. It is clear that they had no objection to Jones releasing his adjusted data provided he made it clear that it was just that: adjusted.

How many other countries caught this apparent subterfuge? Is this the smoking gun that proves the AGW zealots did ‘adjust’ the data to make it appear there was significant warming in the last 50 years?

And if Sweden was one of a handful of countries to detect the con, how many are now cross checking CRU and about to blow this mess wide open?

Addendum: Let me be clear on what I think this could mean. As I noted on Bishop Hill this could be the beginning of a huge data manipulation scandal for IPCC and AGW theory. If CRU has sent out this form letter to all nations providing it data, and they missed the lawyerly CYA language about CRU putting that nation’s moniker on CRU adjusted data, the entire house of cards comes crashing down.

Right about now a lot of people are looking at what the Swedes caught onto and are checking for themselves. If Jones was dumb and arrogant enough to try and pull this con off (and all indications are he is), then a list of nations will be pulling the alarm bells next week on CRU, and therefore IPCC, NCDC, GISS, EPA, etc.

The only reason I can see for Jones to keep the national moniker on the CRU adjusted data is because those ‘adjustments’ are key to AGW surviving. Otherwise why run the risk? This could be the incident that blows the entire scientific fraud wide open. The next few weeks will tell if I am right.

The battle of darkness and light is still raging in the Middle East. Darkness is using bombs on the peaceful voters:

Iraq’s second parliamentary election since the 2003 invasion has been hit by multiple attacks, with at least 24 people being killed.

Two buildings were destroyed in the capital and dozens of mortars were fired across Baghdad and elsewhere.

The border with Iran was closed, thousands of troops were deployed, and vehicles were banned from roads.

We cannot turn away from this battle. We cannot let the carnage weaken our spine or push us to throw blame at Western Leaders who worked to bring the benefits of Western-like Democracy to war and poverty ravages regions of this planet. The people who assassinated 3,000 in NY, PA and VA on 9-11 are stilling plowing their blood soaked trade. They are still hoping the blood will cause the West to run away from their own values and goals.

They expect liberals to swoon and run.

Instead, we will honor those who braved the carnage, we will stand by the results and the people of Iraq. We will show the world that we did not invest so much of our own blood and treasure in Iraq to run now. We will show that the light is freedom of the individual, and the darkness is the oppression of the many by the mad few.

You can make change from DC, but you have to know the culture and the pitfalls. George W Bush was incredibly adept at getting what he wanted. It wasn’t until his party screwed up and lost Congress (they do the spending, not the president and not one fighting two wars), that Bush started to lose his magic. But if you look at his list of accomplishments and their scope, it is impressive.

Team Obama has taken their turn at this right of passage, and continue to fail to get the message. Their list contains a huge number of failures, not successes. Once you get into DC you need to learn that there is no instant power, and you need to adapt quickly. Your amazement with your fantastic ideas will not last long in the gristmill. Humility is a good starting point. Team Obama clearly demonstrates why in their crash from such high hopes.

What team Obama has yet to learn is you need to do two things to control DC:

• Play the power brokers right – which Obama has had some success in to a point, except he let the power brokers play him a bit too much.
• Keep public opinion on your side.

In this time of economic downturn there was one other rule which applied, and that was don’t experiment with untried ideas – and definitely don’t fail with them! On the economy the liberals in DC experimented – and failed. They failed because the relied on government spending, which is a slow, lethargic process. So slow that is why 85+% of the job creating money in the bill is still stuck inside the bowels of the federal government, not stimulating a single job.

The DC liberals should have known this. But they went with their warped liberal fantasy that slow government spending is better than quick and broad tax cuts.

The fact is most top people inside the failing White House still don’t get it!

“Typical Washington junk we have to deal with,” Mr. Axelrod said in an interview. The president is deft at blocking out such noise, he added, suddenly brightening. “I love the guy,” he said, and in the space of five minutes, repeated the sentiment twice.

Critics, pointing to the administration’s stalled legislative agenda, falling poll numbers and muddled messaging, suggest that kind of devotion is part of the problem at the White House.

…

Mr. Axelrod said he accepts some blame for what he called “communication failures,” though he acknowledges bafflement that the administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy in a crisis, overhaul health care and prosecute two wars have been so routinely framed by opponents as the handiwork of a big-government, soft-on-terrorism, politics-of-the-past ideologue.

“For me, the question is, why haven’t we broken through more than we have?” Mr. Axelrod said. “Why haven’t we broken through?”

A better question is why haven’t you woken up and figured out your errors team Obama? Let’s see the evidence for “big government”

• We have the takeover of GM – now “Government Motors”
• We have the forced sale of Chrysler to a foreign automaker
• We have the cash-for-clunkers disaster
• We have a “pay czar” telling banks and investment companies how much they are allowed to pay
• We have socialists running amok planning various ways to take from the successful and distribute their wealth
• We have a bunch of from the Religion of The Green God who want to tax fossil fuels into oblivion, sending this WORLD into economic disaster
• We have liberals who won’t face facts that Americans do not want the government to take over and ration health care (i.e., bend the cost curve down).

We have seen big government work and fail, recently and over our lifetimes. We have also seen the free market engine of this country explore the farthest reaches of space, discover so many medical cures our biggest economic threat is living healthier and longer, and connect the world through the internet like no other civilization on Earth. Not to mention we saw it lift us out of the dark horrors of 9-11.

We know which avenue works best, and it is not letting another group of know-it-alls play God in DC with our lives.

Let’s jump to the ‘politics-of-the-past’ argument. What we are seeing is the liberals playing hyper-partisan politics, shutting out and denigrating their opponents – just like the scientists caught perverting the scientific method and peer-review process in Climategate. What we see is gross vote buying and corruption to the point there seems to be special set of laws for the DC power brokers.

We see DC ignoring the voters. Our democracy is being destroyed by fragile, stubborn egos who cannot realize they too must succumb to the will of the people, or be thrown out on their backsides. We have not only lost faith in the government, it has now become a threat to the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Trust me Axelrod, it is getting through on this side. Why is the voice of the people not breaking through your delusional, egotistical heads?

And finally, the soft on terrorism claim. From an administration who banned the term ‘war on terror’ this is rich. For an administration that ignored red flags handed to them by the previous administration on Major Hasan, who pushed to prematurely shutdown investigating this traitor turned “soldier of Allah” that is pretty thick denial. He killed and injured almost 50 people.

For an administration which reset our trip wires to react more cautiously to terrorist leads, to respect freedom of speech beyond sane limits (which means you can say any damn thing you want and these fools would give you a mulligan) this confusion is downright scary.

We lowered our response levels to NSA leads and 300 people nearly exploded over the skies of Detroit. We failed to interrogate the would-be bomber and now some unknown number of radicalized and trained American traitors are trying to enter this country and perform mass murder.

We know these things happened due to changes made by Team Obama. They rejected tax cuts and embraced the liberal fantasy of government spending. They rejected letting the markets work out the recession and instead took control of large segments of our economy.  They rejected our message on health care and continue to plow ahead with a government attack on our private insurance. They changed our posture to terrorist attacks right when al Qaeda adjusted to the liberal mind washing on monitoring and interrogation.

We get it Mr. Axelrod – when will you wake up from liberal fantasy land?

Update: Some similar observations at American Spectator

Well one reason may be the administration sees the need in the near future to keep certain information out of the public domain. Like all the opportunities they lost in stopping terrorists attacks when they employed their ‘treat terrorist as criminals’ approach. When the Obama administration failed to interrogate Farouk Abdulmutallab (the Christmas Day Bomber) and Major Hasan (mass murderer from the Ft Hood Massacre) they failed to find and follow leads to other Americans and foreigners on their way to here to Americans on American soil:

The top U.S. diplomat in Pakistan says the Obama administration does not know how many Americans might have disappeared overseas to train with al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

The number is not thought to be large, but Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson outlined a possible “nightmare scenario” — people holding U.S. passports receiving terrorist training then returning legally to the U.S. to commit violent acts.

She said in a speech Friday to the Pacific Council in Los Angeles that the U.S. is working with Pakistan and other governments to figure out how to identify such people.

She said after the speech “there are more out there than we know about.”

Why  would Obama need to keep terrorist trials under wrap? Maybe he fears what future trials might expose? Seems like a very good reason to send Holder to the woodshed to think about his criminal negligence and mistakes.

Update: Steve Hawyward has a must read compendium up at the Weekly Standard, not to mention the above excellent artwork showing the high priest of AGW has no clothes. H/T Powerline.

Update: added link to source article – my bad! - end update

When you have drunk the AGW Kool Aid you see human made global warming everywhere – its like hallucinating on LSD spiked in the Kool Aid. All of sudden winters without much snow are a sign of AGW, winters with record snow are AGW, increased rainfall is AGW, reduced rainfall is AGW, ice falling off one side of Antarctica (near its volcanoes) is AGW, ice growing on the other side is AGW. Earthquakes and tsunamis are AGW, disease and war. It’s quite pathetic really.

Recently a Russian report on methane gas in Siberia came out, and all the Kool Aid drinkers were claiming it was all AGW!

But if one knew what the science was reporting one would see that what we have is more evidence  recent warming is a natural part of the normal Earth cycle. Moreover, much of what we are seeing is the world coming out of the recent Little Ice Age, which supposedly “ended” right before the global temperature record began. I say ’supposedly’ because no one knows when or if we passed ‘the end’. If we assume the ‘end’ was the return to the prior Medieval Warm Period, then we may not have passed ‘the end’ yet. Yes, it is getting warmer since the Little Ice Age – so what?

What we do know is that as the Earth warms from these cold spells it out-gasses. Gases once frozen in the Earth and colder oceans are released as temperatures rise, and that alters the chemical make up of our water and air. Basic chemistry at work here. Why this is a shock to so many PhDs puts into question the quality of some PhDs.

So this study in Siberia discovered one of these geological out-gassing sites producing massive amounts of methane – a much more powerful Green-House Gas (GHG) than little old CO2.

The research results, published in the March 5 edition of the journal Science, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.

Or it could not trigger warming. Ice cores show how green house gas production lags temperature increases (click to enlarge):

The blue line is temperature, and the CO2 is clearly rising after the temp rises, sometime 100’s of years after. Again, basic chemistry at work here.

This is not the first time the Earth has warmed and outgassed, it won’t be the last. The report goes on to note some interesting facts that need to be understood:

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released from previously frozen soils in two ways. When the organic material—which contains carbon—stored in permafrost thaws, it begins to decompose and, under oxygen-free conditions, gradually release methane. Methane can also be stored in the seabed as methane gas or methane hydrates and then released as subsea permafrost thaws. These releases can be larger and more abrupt than those that result from decomposition.

The reasons for my highlights are as follows. The report goes on to show the Siberian Shelf is producing more methane than all the world’s oceans combined. With methane being 30 times stronger than CO2 combined with the theory that GHG is driving the warming (and satellite measurements of heat radiation into space do NOT support this) one has to ponder the role of this large area of methane deposits on climate. Is it the cause of the warming in Eurasia which does not show up in North America (thus not being global)?

There is no proof shown in any of this that the sea-bed has warmed (unless its due to local volcanic action). We don’t have any measurements of the seabed temperature or sea surface anomalies, this study was performed from the air. There is no way to prove this is due to recent warming or has been going on for decades, centuries or millenia.

What we do know from chemistry and physics is this (and why I emphasized the ‘oxygen-free’ note above):

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In deep water,methane gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere.

This statement is inaccurate. When the ice covers the region the methane is trapped and produces large amounts of CO2, which moves with ocean currents to open water and escapes. For this region of the word ice cover is clearly a common state (just ask the 1,000 or so people now stuck n the arctic ice).

What we have is a newly discovered geological phenomena of outgassing. It happened before when this region warmed to these temperature levels (which are not unique in historic time). The fact it is happening again is NOT another sign from Al Gore’s Green God that humanity has sinned and must repent its fossil fuels.

Anymore than the Yellowstone giant volcano (which also is out gassing) is due to AGW.