Of Pickpockets and Con Artists

In a recent press conference, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stood in a dignified-looking pose next to ranks of America flags in front of a portrait of one of America's founders and beside a Hollywood-size check that supposedly means that every America will receive "free of charge" over US$1800 of money. Excellent theater.

The reality? It is like a pick pocket's accomplice distracting you in the front while someone takes your wallet out of your back pocket.

Americans do on the whole seem to be so mesmerized by the historicity of Obama's presidency that they are not looking to their own wallets.



This piece of satire by Fred Thompson illustrates the absurdity of what the "stimulus" package that Obama and the Democrats are pushing represents.

Two Ways to Spin Physical Fitness

Here is an article exposing the hypocrisy of the mainstream media's negative treatment of President George W. Bush's focus on physical fitness compared to the way they are responding to President-elect Barack Obama's equally strident diligence in his own exercise regimen.

Bald Assertion Reported as Scientific Finding

At first it was called human-induced fossil-fuel burning CO2 produced "global warming." Al Gore got a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar. Draconian laws to limit industry and fossil fuel usage as well as a punitive tax on the raising of cattle began to become the forced policy directives of many countries. [Update: Since this article was posted, we have learned that some in the U.S. government are trying to do the same thing!]

But then the facts began to fall apart. Glaciers began to grow faster in one year than anyone thought possible. The world began to cool or at least hold steady both in global averages and also to the personal experience of millions of people in different areas. But CO2 emissions still saw an increase. Surely CO2 was not causing the global cooling! Then the Goddard Institute of Space Studies left in its climate models bogus data from Siberia (summer numbers transmuted to fall figures) that vastly increased the purported global temperature averages. Anyone with common sense could tell you that Siberia would be much hotter in the summer than in October. And over the year the phrase changed from "global warming" to human-induced "climate change."

But even that turn-of-phrase could not help the defense of climate-alarmists' perspective. Not only the present, but also historical evidence began to mount that pre-industrial age temperature -- the era before any fossil fuel industry -- had fluctuated significantly from temperatures as warm or warmer than the 1990's, to very cold "little ice age" type climates. And so how could it be cause by human-induced fossil fuel emissions? Evidence of a balmy Greenland around 1000 A.D. suddenly gave a concrete reason for the Vikings' choice of name. No matter; advocates are so sure it must be human-induced. There is an often unspoken (and also unshakeable) belief that our great civilizations have always overused resources and raped environments -- not merely on a local level but on a global scale.

And so now we begin to observe in the media the push to produce evidence that historical climate fluctuations were also human-induced. Witness the Discovery article "Falls of Empires Hastened Little Ice Age." People who see the title of the article without reading closely will be bolstered in their beliefs about global warming. At the very least Discover News should have put the word "claimed" in there because the article is merely assertion occasioned by the weakest situation of a possible correlation.

But note the end of the article: "Nevle and Bird admit that volcanic activity and a decrease in the sun's intensity probably both played roles in triggering the Little Ice Age. Still, Bird said, human activity was undeniably important."

"Human activity was undeniable important." Bird's statement is simply bald assertion with no evidence. Indeed in the same breathe he is forced to admit that volcanic activity and solar cycles probably played roles. These two natural causes have proven causal connections to climate change. But to claim that empires falling must have caused an increase in the rain forest and that must have been so huge that global temperatures fell ignores perhaps hundreds of confounding variables. Could it be that falling temperatures actually influenced the failing of empires? Perhaps the anarchy that result meant more forest fires? Do we really know whether there was a net increase in rainforest coverage? What of the evidence that many rain-forest civilizations did not depend on clear-cutting but rather used forest management strategies? [see 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann.] Could whatever increase in rain forest in one area have been offset by the destruction of trees in another area of the world? The list of other explanations and variables could go on.

These authors pretend objective science when they -- as if with religious fervor -- actually merely assert something founded on nothing but assertion and a few vague possible correlations. Speculation is not science and should not be reported as such. When policies are made on the basis of speculative pronouncement, governments could unjustly destroy people's ways of life, take away their freedom, and cause economic depression.

With regard to The Little Ice Age, there is already evidence for a pattern of cooling caused by natural forces: Along with the bubonic plague mentioned in the article, instead of a reduction in population which somehow caused cooling, the evidence for one major outbreak in the 6th Century is that a major volcanic eruption in 535 A.D. then led to a climate change that then led to movement in wild rodent host populations that led to cross species infection that ultimately led to the human associated rodents carrying plague across the trade routes. For more information, see: Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization Indeed the decline of the Teotihuacan Mayan civilation correlates to the same time.

So you have strong evidence that in the 6th Century global cooling (or climate change) induced plague in Asia and Europe as well as major droughts and collapse of civilizations in Central America was very probably caused by non-human volcanic activity of an enormous eruption from a region in Indonesia.

Then despite this evidence in the 6th century that should at least have some weight in understanding the 16th century, the writers brazenly assert that somehow in the situation in the 1500's had to be caused by the reduction of human activity instead of natural non-human causes.

-- Joel Linton
[more...]

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Links --
Catalogue of things for which some prominent media have blamed global warming

Thoughts by John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel

Manhattan Declaration of the International Climate Science Coalition

The Real Story w/out the Emotional Spin on Cluster Bombs and Land Mines

Here is the real story about the international ban on cluster bombs and land mines. Banning them is a good thing, right? Everyone assumes so. This article explores some unintended devastating consequences of the ban.

When enemy combatants do not follow the rules of war but embed themselves in civilian areas as Hezbollah does when fighting Israel, the use of cluster bombs would allow civilians to live if they take refuge indoors, particularly in cellars. The forced alternative because of the ban would destroy their homes and their lives.

Changing "Bailout" to "Recovery" Program

Here is an excellent analysis from Brit Hume about how word choice is deliberately employed to manipulate people's feelings about policy:

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Democrats, who almost never call themselves liberal anymore (preferring to be known as progressives), have apparently decided that the terms "bailout" and even "stimulus" won't do either. Such efforts will now be called economy "recovery" programs.

The New York Times reports Democrats worried that "bailout" conjured up images of suspects sprung from jails and "stimulus" combined a "bureaucratic wonkiness with the concept of shock therapy."

However, "economic recovery" sounds optimistic and, to them, reminiscent of New Deal initiatives. Incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, "'Stimulus' is Washington talk, and 'economic recovery' is how the American people think of it."

[Special Report, November 26, 2008]
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Losing the trust of readers

With prominent print media organizations losing circulation and some even having to close down their magazine or printed newspaper division, you would think editors, reporters, etc. would do some soul searching.

Here is an article about how owners', editors' and reporters' complacency, condescension and contempt for the reading public have led to the current difficulty in this industry.

Spinning acceptance.

For many years now, there has been an agenda among many groups to have homosexuality accepted on an equal level with heterosexuality. All of the "gay" marriage controversies hinge around this push for acceptance. But there are other sexual behaviors deviating from the standard of one-man one-woman in marriage of traditional societies and religions. Proponents do not stop at acceptance of homosexuality. In the universities, many are pushing the ideas of "transgender" and "post-gender" existence.

For instance in Columbia University's core curriculum that all students must take, often topics in Logic and Rhetoric or Contemporary Civilization or Western Literature will disproportionately include works and assignments related to sexual behaviors and identity. In the late nineties, also, there was a push for a BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism) student group to be recognized by the religious student union. This group could have applied through the regular student societies organization, but in particular seemed to want to force the religious groups to recognize it. During its campaign to force acceptance on campus, all of the Psychiatrist Diagnostic and Statistic Manuals that specified standards of practice for psychiatry were stolen from every single library on campus, probably because the DSM-IV (4th edition) continued to classify sadomasochism as a mental disorder.

Others are exploring opening up "freedoms" for polygamy and polyandry. Still others try to push the boundaries of adult-child sexual interaction: for instance the North American Man-Boy Love Association. All of these groups often will lump together to try to push the envelope of what is accepted.

To bolster support for behaviors deviating from the previous societal sexual norm, different news reports and medical and scientific research studies will be reported with headlines in ways that somehow seem to "prove" that these behaviors are natural. You'll hear reports about "gay genes" in fruit flies, or studies of statistically significant brain morphological differences
in practicing homosexuals. [We'll put up more links here.]

Recently there has been a big issue made about the "pregnant man." The headlines, such as in this ABC News Story will say "Pregnant Man is Pregnant again," or something like that. To further support the headline, pictures of the topless "man" with a bulging stomach will be shown. No woman's breasts can be seen! Proof?

In this case, it is probably done more for the sensational value, but the result is that it distorts the facts and affects people's understanding of the biological reality. The biological reality of this "transgender" man is that she is not a man. Her genes still specify two XX chromosome that make a woman. She still has a uterus. She still has all the biological functions of a woman except perhaps anything surgically removed like her mammary glands so that the child born will not be able to nurse.

The biological reality is that men have an X and a Y chromosome pair in every cell of their bodies. Women have an X and an X chromosome pair in every cell in their bodies. In some extreme cases where the sex cells were abnormal, you might get an XXY where there is more than a pair. This is a result of a cell division error.

One can do surgery to remove sexual organs, and one can artificially take hormones like testosterone that makes a women grow facial hair, but one cannot replace one of the X chromosomes in every cell with a Y chromosome.

But one's thinking that "I've always felt I was not a girl, but a boy," can only be the result of psychosexual developmental problems, or environmental factors. That cannot change the genes.

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for further reading, take a look at chapter 4, Acquiring Tastes and Love: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love -- in The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D. of Columbia University; also you can refer to his paper submitted to a conference at Princeton's Witherspoon Institute.