Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
I hope this works - Tea Party in Dallas
This young lady was one of the voices at the Dallas Tea Party last week. While she said a few things I think in error, the message was the most important part. Folks like this are an insiration to us all. Hope you enjoy this like I did
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Time for some controversy
Ok this post may cause some heart palitations but I hope you can spend the time to watch it. Of course it has an agenda, and the use of language and music to set tone produce an inherant sense of dread, but some of the info in this doc, is worth further investigation.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
another blatant theft, this time, form the men and women in power.
UN Blowback: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'
POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]
Full Senate Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…
A hint of what the upcoming report contains:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.
“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata. # #
In addition, the report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears and a heavy dose of inconvenient climate developments. (See Below: Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History')
The Senate Minority Report is an update of 2007’s blockbuster U.S. Senate Minority Report of over 400 dissenting scientists. See here: This new report will contain the names, quotes and analyses of literally hundreds of additional international scientists who publicly dissented from man-made climate fears in just 2008 alone. The chorus of scientific voices skeptical grow louder as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses and real world data challenge the UN and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus." The original 2007 U.S. Senate report is available here: Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…
Meanwhile, while the UN climate conference is in session here in Poznan, the bad scientific news for promoters of man-made climate alarm just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The data presented below is just from the past week.
#
Peer-reviewed study: Half of recent warming was solar! - December 10, 2008
Excerpt: In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical climatological literature, we follow Climate Research News. The blog was intrigued by a new article in Geophysical Research Letters that was accepted on Friday, December 5th. Eichler, A., S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski: Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing - Recall that the Siberian Altai Mountains are found at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The authors looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes. It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that "Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun." Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too. Note that if 0.3 °C or 0.4 °C of warming in the 20th century was due to the increasing CO2 levels, the climate sensitivity is decisively smaller than 1 °C. At any rate, the expected 21st century warming due to CO2 would be another 0.3-0.4 °C, and this time, if the solar activity contributes with the opposite sign, these two effects could cancel. Even if you try to stretch these numbers a little bit - but not unrealistically - you have to become sure that the participants of the Poznan conference are lunatics.
Flashback: New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK)
Dr. Bruce West, A U.S Army Chief Scientist, Says Sun, Not Man, Is Driving Climate Change – June 3, 2008 – (LINK)
21 spotless days and solar magnetic field still in a funk – Meteorologist Anthony Watts Excerpt: We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.
New Arctic ice analysis reveals ‘No clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or the start of the late winter/early spring melt’ – Excerpt: Based on analysis by William Chapman, author of The Cryosphere Today website, graciously prepared an analysis of the dates of the minimum and maximum Arctic sea ice coverage since 1979.
Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools – December 9, 2008 Excerpt: A cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights continues to dominate the tropical Pacific, ringed by a horseshoe of warmer waters. The continuation of this long-term cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation stacks the odds against a wetter-than-average winter/spring in the southwestern United States. The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. […] Sea-surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mirror Jason sea-surface height measurements, clearly showing a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . "This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can cause La Niña-like impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. […] This cool phase will likely persist this winter and, perhaps, beyond.
Report: Sea Level rise 'has stumbled since 2005' – Meteorologist Anthony Watts – December 5, 2008 Excerpt: We’ve been waiting for the UC web page to be updated with the most recent sea level data. It finally has been updated for 2008. It looks like the steady upward trend of sea level as measured by satellite has stumbled since 2005. The 60 day line in blue tells the story. From the University of Colorado web page: “Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change. The measurement of long-term changes in global mean sea level can provide an important corroboration of predictions by climate models of global warming. Long term sea level variations are primarily determined with two different methods.” - Yes, I would agree, it is indeed a variable of considerable interest. The question now is, how is it linked to global climate change (aka global warming) if CO2 continues to increase, and sea level does not?
Peer-Reviewed Study: Recent worldwide land warming' NOT 'a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land' - WorldClimateReport.com – December 3, 2008 ‘Rethinking Observed Warming?’ Key quote: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”
Alert: 2008 will be coolest year of the decade!- December 5, 2008 Excerpt: This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07. [Note: For evidence of the panic apparently gripping the promoters of man-made climate fear, read the quotes in the article from the warming partisans absolutely assuring everyone that cool temperatures are “absolutely not" evidence that global warming is on the wane. Those same voices are usually absent when it comes to linking heat waves to global warming. ]
Flashback: Global Cooling? - 'Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof' - National Post – October 20, 2008
Report: NASA’s James Hansen "adjusts" a cooling trend into a warming trend - December 9, 2008 Excerpt: "[H]ere is what the data looks like before and after NASA GISS adjusts it. These are the USHCN “raw” and “homogenized” data plots from the GISTEMP website. The before and after is quite something to behold. ... What was down, is now up." "How not to measure temperature, part 79"
Geophysist: ‘It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history’ – ‘Alarmists are in denial and running for cover'- Washington Times
By Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles. Excerpt: Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom. Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. […] To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence.
Climate Chancellor' No More – Der Spiegel Excerpt: Angela Merkel is facing withering criticism for remarks she made on Monday that seemed to back away from her earlier commitment to tackling climate change.
Alert: Under the Weather: Internal Report Says U.N. Climate Agency Rife With Bad Practices - Fox News – December 4, 2008
Excerpt: As more than 10,000 delegates and observers gather in Poznan, Poland, to discuss the next phase in the battle against "climate change," a U.N. agency at the center of that hoopla badly needs to do some in-house weather-proofing. […] But the WMO, the $80 million U.N. front-line agency in the climate change struggle, and the source for much of the world's information in the global atmosphere and water supply, has serious management problems of its own, despite its rapidly expanding global ambitions. The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by FOX News, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds. The inspection was carried out by a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), a small, independent branch of the U.N. that reports to the General Assembly and is mandated to improve the organization's efficiency and coordination through its inspection process. […] WMO did not respond to a series of questions from FOX News regarding its future programs, sent on the eve of the Poznan meeting.
16-year-old suggests sheep dung can help save planet Card business has really dung good - Daily Post North WalesExcerpt: The company makes its products at the Twll Golau Papermill in Aberllefenni Slate Quarry using sustainable fuel and materials. Every sheet of paper is made from recycled materials, including sheep dung, waste paper and discarded rags, using processes designed to affect the natural environment as little as possible. […] Katie 16, from Tal-y-Bont, Conwy, was appointed to help spread the word on how Wales can reduce its carbon footprint and is urging other North Wales businesses to follow Creative Paper Wales’ example and adopt innovative approaches to the design and manufacture of products and the delivery of services.
Lord Christopher Monckton: 'Companies could be sued over climate change' Excerpt: The alarmist faction knows that, if it were to bring a case against a corporation whose executives were not minded merely to believe in the extremist presentation of "global warming" just because it is temporarily in fashion, they would lose. The case of Dimmock v. Secretaries of State for Education and for the Environment in the UK in 2007 was a very clear warning. The UK Government threw all of the resources of the taxpayer and of the Meteorological Office at the case, attempting to defend Al Gore's sci-fi comedy horror movie against the plaintiff's allegation that it was serially and seriously inaccurate. The Government failed and was humiliated. The judge, having heard both sides, said bluntly of Al Gore, and particularly of his unscientific allegation that sea level was about to rise by 20 feet, that "the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view". A few more judgments like that and the "global warming" fantasy would rapidly collapse. End of scare.
OOPS, We Forgot Siberia! (M4GW) - Weather Stations in Coldest parts No Longer Reporting
Excerpt: The thing that these skewed chart never take into account is that when the Soviet Union fell in 1990 the number of reporting weather stations went form a high of 15,000 in 1970 to 5,000 in 2000. This takes some of the coldest places on the planet out of the equation like Siberia. # #
Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History'
POZNAN, Poland - The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. [See Full report Here: & See: Skeptical scientists overwhelm conference: '2/3 of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC' ]
Full Senate Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…
A hint of what the upcoming report contains:
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.
“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.
“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.
“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata. # #
In addition, the report will feature new peer-reviewed scientific studies and analyses refuting man-made warming fears and a heavy dose of inconvenient climate developments. (See Below: Study: Half of warming due to Sun! –Sea Levels Fail to Rise? - Warming Fears in 'Dustbin of History')
The Senate Minority Report is an update of 2007’s blockbuster U.S. Senate Minority Report of over 400 dissenting scientists. See here: This new report will contain the names, quotes and analyses of literally hundreds of additional international scientists who publicly dissented from man-made climate fears in just 2008 alone. The chorus of scientific voices skeptical grow louder as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses and real world data challenge the UN and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the "science is settled" and there is a "consensus." The original 2007 U.S. Senate report is available here: Full Report Set To Be Released in the Next 24 Hours – Stay Tuned…
Meanwhile, while the UN climate conference is in session here in Poznan, the bad scientific news for promoters of man-made climate alarm just keeps rolling in. Below is a very small sampling of very inconvenient developments for Gore, the United Nations, and their promoters in the mainstream media. Peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and prominent scientists continue to speak out to refute climate fears. The data presented below is just from the past week.
#
Peer-reviewed study: Half of recent warming was solar! - December 10, 2008
Excerpt: In this dose of peer-reviewed skeptical climatological literature, we follow Climate Research News. The blog was intrigued by a new article in Geophysical Research Letters that was accepted on Friday, December 5th. Eichler, A., S. Olivier, K. Henderson, A. Laube, J. Beer, T. Papina, H. W. Gäggeler, and M. Schwikowski: Temperature response in the Altai region lags solar forcing - Recall that the Siberian Altai Mountains are found at the intersection of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. The authors looked at 750 years worth of the local ice core, especially the oxygen isotope. They claim to have found a very strong correlation between the concentration of this isotope (i.e. temperature) on one side and the known solar activity in the epoch 1250-1850. Their data seem to be precise enough to determine the lag, about 10-30 years. It takes some time for the climate to respond to the solar changes. It seems that they also have data to claim that the correlation gets less precise after 1850. They attribute the deviation to CO2 and by comparing the magnitude of the forcings, they conclude that "Our results are in agreement with studies based on NH temperature reconstructions [Scafetta et al., 2007] revealing that only up to approximately 50% of the observed global warming in the last 100 years can be explained by the Sun." Well, the word "only" is somewhat cute in comparison with the "mainstream" fashionable ideology. The IPCC said that they saw a 90% probability that "most" of the recent warming was man-made. The present paper would reduce this figure, 90%, to less than 50% because the Sun itself is responsible for 1/2 of the warming and not the whole 50% of the warming could have been caused by CO2 because there are other effects, too. Note that if 0.3 °C or 0.4 °C of warming in the 20th century was due to the increasing CO2 levels, the climate sensitivity is decisively smaller than 1 °C. At any rate, the expected 21st century warming due to CO2 would be another 0.3-0.4 °C, and this time, if the solar activity contributes with the opposite sign, these two effects could cancel. Even if you try to stretch these numbers a little bit - but not unrealistically - you have to become sure that the participants of the Poznan conference are lunatics.
Flashback: New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK)
Dr. Bruce West, A U.S Army Chief Scientist, Says Sun, Not Man, Is Driving Climate Change – June 3, 2008 – (LINK)
21 spotless days and solar magnetic field still in a funk – Meteorologist Anthony Watts Excerpt: We are now at 21 days with no sunspots, it will be interesting to see if we reach a spotless 30 day period and then perhaps a spotless month of December.
New Arctic ice analysis reveals ‘No clear evidence of a delay in the start of the later summer/early fall freeze up or the start of the late winter/early spring melt’ – Excerpt: Based on analysis by William Chapman, author of The Cryosphere Today website, graciously prepared an analysis of the dates of the minimum and maximum Arctic sea ice coverage since 1979.
Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools – December 9, 2008 Excerpt: A cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights continues to dominate the tropical Pacific, ringed by a horseshoe of warmer waters. The continuation of this long-term cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation stacks the odds against a wetter-than-average winter/spring in the southwestern United States. The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. […] Sea-surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mirror Jason sea-surface height measurements, clearly showing a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . "This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can cause La Niña-like impacts around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. […] This cool phase will likely persist this winter and, perhaps, beyond.
Report: Sea Level rise 'has stumbled since 2005' – Meteorologist Anthony Watts – December 5, 2008 Excerpt: We’ve been waiting for the UC web page to be updated with the most recent sea level data. It finally has been updated for 2008. It looks like the steady upward trend of sea level as measured by satellite has stumbled since 2005. The 60 day line in blue tells the story. From the University of Colorado web page: “Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change. The measurement of long-term changes in global mean sea level can provide an important corroboration of predictions by climate models of global warming. Long term sea level variations are primarily determined with two different methods.” - Yes, I would agree, it is indeed a variable of considerable interest. The question now is, how is it linked to global climate change (aka global warming) if CO2 continues to increase, and sea level does not?
Peer-Reviewed Study: Recent worldwide land warming' NOT 'a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land' - WorldClimateReport.com – December 3, 2008 ‘Rethinking Observed Warming?’ Key quote: “Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.”
Alert: 2008 will be coolest year of the decade!- December 5, 2008 Excerpt: This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the Met Office. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07. [Note: For evidence of the panic apparently gripping the promoters of man-made climate fear, read the quotes in the article from the warming partisans absolutely assuring everyone that cool temperatures are “absolutely not" evidence that global warming is on the wane. Those same voices are usually absent when it comes to linking heat waves to global warming. ]
Flashback: Global Cooling? - 'Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof' - National Post – October 20, 2008
Report: NASA’s James Hansen "adjusts" a cooling trend into a warming trend - December 9, 2008 Excerpt: "[H]ere is what the data looks like before and after NASA GISS adjusts it. These are the USHCN “raw” and “homogenized” data plots from the GISTEMP website. The before and after is quite something to behold. ... What was down, is now up." "How not to measure temperature, part 79"
Geophysist: ‘It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history’ – ‘Alarmists are in denial and running for cover'- Washington Times
By Geophysicist Dr. David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma who has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles. Excerpt: Environmental extremists and global warming alarmists are in denial and running for cover. Their rationale for continuing a lost cause is that weather events in the short term are not necessarily related to long-term climatic trends. But these are the same people who screamed at us each year that ordinary weather events such as high temperatures or hurricanes were undeniable evidence of imminent doom. Now that global warming is over, politicians are finally ready to enact dubious solutions to a non-existent problem. […] To the extent global warming was ever valid, it is now officially over. It is time to file this theory in the dustbin of history, next to Aristotelean physics, Neptunism, the geocentric universe, phlogiston, and a plethora of other incorrect scientific theories, all of which had vocal and dogmatic supporters who cited incontrovertible evidence. Weather and climate change are natural processes beyond human control. To argue otherwise is to deny the factual evidence.
Climate Chancellor' No More – Der Spiegel Excerpt: Angela Merkel is facing withering criticism for remarks she made on Monday that seemed to back away from her earlier commitment to tackling climate change.
Alert: Under the Weather: Internal Report Says U.N. Climate Agency Rife With Bad Practices - Fox News – December 4, 2008
Excerpt: As more than 10,000 delegates and observers gather in Poznan, Poland, to discuss the next phase in the battle against "climate change," a U.N. agency at the center of that hoopla badly needs to do some in-house weather-proofing. […] But the WMO, the $80 million U.N. front-line agency in the climate change struggle, and the source for much of the world's information in the global atmosphere and water supply, has serious management problems of its own, despite its rapidly expanding global ambitions. The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by FOX News, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds. The inspection was carried out by a member of the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), a small, independent branch of the U.N. that reports to the General Assembly and is mandated to improve the organization's efficiency and coordination through its inspection process. […] WMO did not respond to a series of questions from FOX News regarding its future programs, sent on the eve of the Poznan meeting.
16-year-old suggests sheep dung can help save planet Card business has really dung good - Daily Post North WalesExcerpt: The company makes its products at the Twll Golau Papermill in Aberllefenni Slate Quarry using sustainable fuel and materials. Every sheet of paper is made from recycled materials, including sheep dung, waste paper and discarded rags, using processes designed to affect the natural environment as little as possible. […] Katie 16, from Tal-y-Bont, Conwy, was appointed to help spread the word on how Wales can reduce its carbon footprint and is urging other North Wales businesses to follow Creative Paper Wales’ example and adopt innovative approaches to the design and manufacture of products and the delivery of services.
Lord Christopher Monckton: 'Companies could be sued over climate change' Excerpt: The alarmist faction knows that, if it were to bring a case against a corporation whose executives were not minded merely to believe in the extremist presentation of "global warming" just because it is temporarily in fashion, they would lose. The case of Dimmock v. Secretaries of State for Education and for the Environment in the UK in 2007 was a very clear warning. The UK Government threw all of the resources of the taxpayer and of the Meteorological Office at the case, attempting to defend Al Gore's sci-fi comedy horror movie against the plaintiff's allegation that it was serially and seriously inaccurate. The Government failed and was humiliated. The judge, having heard both sides, said bluntly of Al Gore, and particularly of his unscientific allegation that sea level was about to rise by 20 feet, that "the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view". A few more judgments like that and the "global warming" fantasy would rapidly collapse. End of scare.
OOPS, We Forgot Siberia! (M4GW) - Weather Stations in Coldest parts No Longer Reporting
Excerpt: The thing that these skewed chart never take into account is that when the Soviet Union fell in 1990 the number of reporting weather stations went form a high of 15,000 in 1970 to 5,000 in 2000. This takes some of the coldest places on the planet out of the equation like Siberia. # #
Thursday, October 23, 2008
why I could never vote for a democrat (if I was American)
this post I just blatantly stole from the always talented and supremely sharp brother Bob Parks. It's long, and to some it may seem boring. But this is the history of the Democrats and race both at a federal level and state level. This is not to say I would always vote Republican as I have disagreed with more than a few lately but the party of the white man ain't party even if they changed their signage.
Imagine what the next two weeks would be like if Democrats had to explain why they say they "are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws" while having to explain why they terrorized and oppressed blacks, voted against most of the civil rights laws, and lied about it for decades…?
October 13, 1858
During Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) states: “I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever”; Douglas became Democratic Party’s 1860 presidential nominee
April 16, 1862
President Lincoln signs bill abolishing slavery in District of Columbia; in Congress, 99% of Republicans vote yes, 83% of Democrats vote no
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
July 17, 1862
Over unanimous Democrat opposition, Republican Congress passes Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”
January 31, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. House with unanimous Republican support, intense Democrat opposition
April 8, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition
November 22, 1865
Republicans denounce Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting “black codes,” which institutionalized racial discrimination
February 5, 1866
U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduces legislation, successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
April 9, 1866
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Johnson’s veto; Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans, becomes law
May 10, 1866
U.S. House passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens; 100% of Democrats vote no
June 8, 1866
U.S. Senate passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens; 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
January 8, 1867
Republicans override Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of law granting voting rights to African-Americans in D.C.
July 19, 1867
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans
March 30, 1868
Republicans begin impeachment trial of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who declared: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men”
September 3, 1868
25 African-Americans in Georgia legislature, all Republicans, expelled by Democrat majority; later reinstated by Republican Congress
September 12, 1868
Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and all other African-Americans in Georgia Senate, every one a Republican, expelled by Democrat majority; would later be reinstated by Republican Congress
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
October 7, 1868
Republicans denounce Democratic Party’s national campaign theme: “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule”
October 22, 1868
While campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan
December 10, 1869
Republican Gov. John Campbell of Wyoming Territory signs FIRST-in-nation law granting women right to vote and to hold public office
February 3, 1870
After passing House with 98% Republican support and 97% Democrat opposition, Republicans’ 15th Amendment is ratified, granting vote to all Americans regardless of race
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
May 31, 1870
President U.S. Grant signs Republicans’ Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American’s civil rights
June 22, 1870
Republican Congress creates U.S. Department of Justice, to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South
September 6, 1870
Women vote in Wyoming, in FIRST election after women’s suffrage signed into law by Republican Gov. John Campbell
February 28, 1871
Republican Congress passes Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters
April 20, 1871
Republican Congress enacts the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed African-Americans
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
October 10, 1871
Following warnings by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto murdered by Democratic Party operative; his military funeral was attended by thousands
October 18, 1871
After violence against Republicans in South Carolina, President Ulysses Grant deploys U.S. troops to combat Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan
November 18, 1872
Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting, after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “the Republican ticket, straight”
January 17, 1874
Armed Democrats seize Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate government
September 14, 1874
Democrat white supremacists seize Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg; 27 killed
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
March 1, 1875
Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, signed by Republican President U.S. Grant; passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition
January 10, 1878
U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduces Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage; Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it 4 times before election of Republican House and Senate guaranteed its approval in 1919. Republicans foil Democratic efforts to keep women in the kitchen, where they belong
February 8, 1894
Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland join to repeal Republicans’ Enforcement Act, which had enabled African-Americans to vote
January 15, 1901
Republican Booker T. Washington protests Alabama Democratic Party’s refusal to permit voting by African-Americans
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
May 29, 1902
Virginia Democrats implement new state constitution, condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing African-American voter registration by 86%
February 12, 1909
On 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, African-American Republicans and women’s suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-found the NAACP
May 21, 1919
Republican House passes constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85% of Republicans in favor, but only 54% of Democrats; in Senate, 80% of Republicans would vote yes, but almost half of Democrats no
August 18, 1920
Republican-authored 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, becomes part of Constitution; 26 of the 36 states to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures
January 26, 1922
House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
June 2, 1924
Republican President Calvin Coolidge signs bill passed by Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans
October 3, 1924
Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention
June 12, 1929
First Lady Lou Hoover invites wife of U.S. Rep. Oscar De Priest (R-IL), an African-American, to tea at the White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country
August 17, 1937
Republicans organize opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman andDemocrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black, appointed to U.S. Supreme Court by FDR; his Klan background was hidden until after confirmation
June 24, 1940
Republican Party platform calls for integration of the armed forces; for the balance of his terms in office, FDR refuses to order it
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
August 8, 1945
Republicans condemn Harry Truman's surprise use of the atomic bomb in Japan. The whining and criticism goes on for years. It begins two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when former Republican President Herbert Hoover writes to a friend that "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
September 30, 1953
Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, nominated to be Chief Justice; wrote landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education
November 25, 1955
Eisenhower administration bans racial segregation of interstate bus travel
March 12, 1956
Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemn Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and pledge to continue segregation
June 5, 1956
Republican federal judge Frank Johnson rules in favor of Rosa Parks in decision striking down “blacks in the back of the bus” law
November 6, 1956
African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy vote for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President
September 9, 1957
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
September 24, 1957
Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools
May 6, 1960
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming 125-hour, around-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats
May 2, 1963
Republicans condemn Democrat sheriff of Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 African-American schoolchildren marching for their civil rights
September 29, 1963
Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defies order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate Tuskegee High School
June 9, 1964
Republicans condemn 14-hour filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who still serves in the Senate
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
June 10, 1964
Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticizes Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act, calls on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a staggering majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists—one of them being Al Gore Sr. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.
August 4, 1965
Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94% of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27% of Democrats oppose. Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law; higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats vote in favor
February 19, 1976
President Gerald Ford formally rescinds President Franklin Roosevelt’s notorious Executive Order authorizing internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII
September 15, 1981
President Ronald Reagan establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase African-American participation in federal education programs
June 29, 1982
President Ronald Reagan signs 25-year extension of 1965 Voting Rights Act
August 10, 1988
President Ronald Reagan signs Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for deprivation of civil rights and property during World War II internment ordered by FDR
November 21, 1991
President George H. W. Bush signs Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen federal civil rights legislation
August 20, 1996
Bill authored by U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari(R-NY) to prohibit racial discrimination in adoptions, part of Republicans’ Contract With America, becomes law
And let's not forget the words of liberal icon Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood…
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population….
So while we hear accusations of racism by partisan journalists, hints of a lack of pride by those admonishing blacks who won't vote Obama, calls of voter disenfranchisement from groups attempting to rig the vote and using poor blacks as cover to do so, remember which party did everything they could to keep blacks down and would never envision a black man heading their ticket 100 years ago.
The kneejerk response from Democrats always is that they've"grown". They kneejerk about the DIxiecrats becoming Republicans. However, that is also a lie.
Former Democrat Senator Bob Kerry maintained that all the Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert (former Klan recruiter) Byrd, Fritz (Confederate flag on the SC state house) Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.
Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.
I contend that until Democrats acknowledge their past and continue to deny blacks their true history in this country, racism will always be used as a wedge, causing economic turmoil and social alienation, while making the very blacks who recite this revised history look like fools.
Imagine what the next two weeks would be like if Democrats had to explain why they say they "are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws" while having to explain why they terrorized and oppressed blacks, voted against most of the civil rights laws, and lied about it for decades…?
October 13, 1858
During Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) states: “I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever”; Douglas became Democratic Party’s 1860 presidential nominee
April 16, 1862
President Lincoln signs bill abolishing slavery in District of Columbia; in Congress, 99% of Republicans vote yes, 83% of Democrats vote no
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
July 17, 1862
Over unanimous Democrat opposition, Republican Congress passes Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”
January 31, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. House with unanimous Republican support, intense Democrat opposition
April 8, 1865
13th Amendment banning slavery passed by U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition
November 22, 1865
Republicans denounce Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting “black codes,” which institutionalized racial discrimination
February 5, 1866
U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduces legislation, successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
April 9, 1866
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Johnson’s veto; Civil Rights Act of 1866, conferring rights of citizenship on African-Americans, becomes law
May 10, 1866
U.S. House passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens; 100% of Democrats vote no
June 8, 1866
U.S. Senate passes Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens; 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
January 8, 1867
Republicans override Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of law granting voting rights to African-Americans in D.C.
July 19, 1867
Republican Congress overrides Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting voting rights of African-Americans
March 30, 1868
Republicans begin impeachment trial of Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who declared: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men”
September 3, 1868
25 African-Americans in Georgia legislature, all Republicans, expelled by Democrat majority; later reinstated by Republican Congress
September 12, 1868
Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and all other African-Americans in Georgia Senate, every one a Republican, expelled by Democrat majority; would later be reinstated by Republican Congress
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
October 7, 1868
Republicans denounce Democratic Party’s national campaign theme: “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule”
October 22, 1868
While campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) is assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan
December 10, 1869
Republican Gov. John Campbell of Wyoming Territory signs FIRST-in-nation law granting women right to vote and to hold public office
February 3, 1870
After passing House with 98% Republican support and 97% Democrat opposition, Republicans’ 15th Amendment is ratified, granting vote to all Americans regardless of race
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
May 31, 1870
President U.S. Grant signs Republicans’ Enforcement Act, providing stiff penalties for depriving any American’s civil rights
June 22, 1870
Republican Congress creates U.S. Department of Justice, to safeguard the civil rights of African-Americans against Democrats in the South
September 6, 1870
Women vote in Wyoming, in FIRST election after women’s suffrage signed into law by Republican Gov. John Campbell
February 28, 1871
Republican Congress passes Enforcement Act providing federal protection for African-American voters
April 20, 1871
Republican Congress enacts the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democratic Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed African-Americans
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
October 10, 1871
Following warnings by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting, African-American Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto murdered by Democratic Party operative; his military funeral was attended by thousands
October 18, 1871
After violence against Republicans in South Carolina, President Ulysses Grant deploys U.S. troops to combat Democrat terrorists who formed the Ku Klux Klan
November 18, 1872
Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting, after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “the Republican ticket, straight”
January 17, 1874
Armed Democrats seize Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate government
September 14, 1874
Democrat white supremacists seize Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg; 27 killed
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
March 1, 1875
Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, signed by Republican President U.S. Grant; passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition
January 10, 1878
U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduces Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage; Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it 4 times before election of Republican House and Senate guaranteed its approval in 1919. Republicans foil Democratic efforts to keep women in the kitchen, where they belong
February 8, 1894
Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland join to repeal Republicans’ Enforcement Act, which had enabled African-Americans to vote
January 15, 1901
Republican Booker T. Washington protests Alabama Democratic Party’s refusal to permit voting by African-Americans
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
May 29, 1902
Virginia Democrats implement new state constitution, condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing African-American voter registration by 86%
February 12, 1909
On 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, African-American Republicans and women’s suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-found the NAACP
May 21, 1919
Republican House passes constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85% of Republicans in favor, but only 54% of Democrats; in Senate, 80% of Republicans would vote yes, but almost half of Democrats no
August 18, 1920
Republican-authored 19th Amendment, giving women the vote, becomes part of Constitution; 26 of the 36 states to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures
January 26, 1922
House passes bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime; Senate Democrats block it with filibuster
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
June 2, 1924
Republican President Calvin Coolidge signs bill passed by Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans
October 3, 1924
Republicans denounce three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at 1924 Democratic National Convention
June 12, 1929
First Lady Lou Hoover invites wife of U.S. Rep. Oscar De Priest (R-IL), an African-American, to tea at the White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country
August 17, 1937
Republicans organize opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman andDemocrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black, appointed to U.S. Supreme Court by FDR; his Klan background was hidden until after confirmation
June 24, 1940
Republican Party platform calls for integration of the armed forces; for the balance of his terms in office, FDR refuses to order it
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
August 8, 1945
Republicans condemn Harry Truman's surprise use of the atomic bomb in Japan. The whining and criticism goes on for years. It begins two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when former Republican President Herbert Hoover writes to a friend that "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
September 30, 1953
Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, nominated to be Chief Justice; wrote landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education
November 25, 1955
Eisenhower administration bans racial segregation of interstate bus travel
March 12, 1956
Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemn Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and pledge to continue segregation
June 5, 1956
Republican federal judge Frank Johnson rules in favor of Rosa Parks in decision striking down “blacks in the back of the bus” law
November 6, 1956
African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy vote for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President
September 9, 1957
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
September 24, 1957
Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools
May 6, 1960
President Dwight Eisenhower signs Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming 125-hour, around-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats
May 2, 1963
Republicans condemn Democrat sheriff of Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 African-American schoolchildren marching for their civil rights
September 29, 1963
Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defies order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, to integrate Tuskegee High School
June 9, 1964
Republicans condemn 14-hour filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who still serves in the Senate
"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we’ve worked to pass every one of our nation’s Civil Rights laws… On every civil rights issue, Democrats have led the fight."
June 10, 1964
Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticizes Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act, calls on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a staggering majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists—one of them being Al Gore Sr. Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.
August 4, 1965
Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94% of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27% of Democrats oppose. Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law; higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats vote in favor
February 19, 1976
President Gerald Ford formally rescinds President Franklin Roosevelt’s notorious Executive Order authorizing internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII
September 15, 1981
President Ronald Reagan establishes the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, to increase African-American participation in federal education programs
June 29, 1982
President Ronald Reagan signs 25-year extension of 1965 Voting Rights Act
August 10, 1988
President Ronald Reagan signs Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for deprivation of civil rights and property during World War II internment ordered by FDR
November 21, 1991
President George H. W. Bush signs Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen federal civil rights legislation
August 20, 1996
Bill authored by U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari(R-NY) to prohibit racial discrimination in adoptions, part of Republicans’ Contract With America, becomes law
And let's not forget the words of liberal icon Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood…
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population….
So while we hear accusations of racism by partisan journalists, hints of a lack of pride by those admonishing blacks who won't vote Obama, calls of voter disenfranchisement from groups attempting to rig the vote and using poor blacks as cover to do so, remember which party did everything they could to keep blacks down and would never envision a black man heading their ticket 100 years ago.
The kneejerk response from Democrats always is that they've"grown". They kneejerk about the DIxiecrats becoming Republicans. However, that is also a lie.
Former Democrat Senator Bob Kerry maintained that all the Dixiecrats became Republicans shortly after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another big lie. Richard Russell, Mendell Rivers, Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert (former Klan recruiter) Byrd, Fritz (Confederate flag on the SC state house) Hollings and Al Gore Sr. remained Democrats till their dying day.
Most of the Dixiecrats did not become Republicans. They created the Dixiecrats and then, when the civil rights movement succeeded, they returned to the Democratic fold. It was not till much later, with a new, younger breed of Southerner and the thousands of Northerners moving into the South, that Republicans began to make gains.
I contend that until Democrats acknowledge their past and continue to deny blacks their true history in this country, racism will always be used as a wedge, causing economic turmoil and social alienation, while making the very blacks who recite this revised history look like fools.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Black Republicans
This video reminds me much of my own fathers position on conservatism. It echoed so clearly I had to post this as this point of view has coloured my own worldview for many years.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Orson Scott Card's latest musings ... borrowed
I visit Orson Scott Card's website monthly, a fan of his writing, and a fan of his work in the world of comic books, my personal favourite medium when I came across this. I was dumbfounded at how eloquently he stated a position I have long held, largely due to my Vincentian immigrant father. Having come from the old school in a 3rd world country like St Vincent, he instilled a set of values in me that instantly recognized the truth in Mr Card's writing. I have copied it here so people may look back in acknowledgement of his accuracy and prescient prose. Like him I have no fear of Obama, but rather the people behind the senator. Not being American my point of view is somewhat different, I think Obama needs to be elected to prove the vapid nature of these neo libs. Already the voices of grass roots conservatives and republicans are finding each other on the net. I think Barrack is the catalyst that will wake us up, to unite, and provide actual vision for the future. No utopian plan, just common sense approaches to policy and development. It is a shame that the sacrifice must first be made. That Mr Obama's ties to, and influence by far left neolibs, the modern day incarnation of socialists and communists alike, will bring about decline before we as conservatives of multi ethnic origins can unite under the banner of Conservatism to bring about true positive change. Maybe it is my youth, recently reaching 29, but I feel that like a drug user or alcholic our increasingly left of liberal north american culture must first hit bottom, rock bottom, from these same socialist politcies in order for the next shift to be ushered in. All that said here are Orson's words to clearly state what 10 pargraphs of my runon sentences can't as clearly and concisely.
By Orson Scott Card August 10, 2008
Nobody Was Listening
It's not enough for someone to tell you the truth -- you have to be willing to hear it.
I learned of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn when his books began appearing on bestseller lists and as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. I read Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and August 1914, and I knew I was reading the words of a hero -- a man unsparing in his vision, who spoke truth to power.
Then Solzhenitsyn was ejected from the Soviet Union. In a rare moment of cleverness, the Communist overlords whom Solzhenitsyn exposed and criticized realized that the best way to silence him was to send him to the West, where the American Left, which already dominated our cultural elite, would find him just as uncomfortable a fellow citizen as the Communists had found him.
They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists?
Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.
"Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life."
He saw this in 1978. It is so clear today that he was right -- but how many of us saw it then?
Our intellectual elite today has only the courage of bullies. They can jump on individuals who dare to depart from their absurd and contradictory dogmas, calling them vicious names and doing all they can to silence them. But they haven't the courage of their own convictions.
They thrill at causes like saving Darfur, saving the desaparecidos of Argentina, saving just about everybody. The problem is that all this "saving" can only be done by the use of or the threat of America's overwhelming military force. All the "negotiations" they call for to solve such problems are absurd if there is no credible threat of force behind them.
Yet they cannot bear any actual use of force. A young intelligence officer I know well told me of his work in excavating the mass graves of Saddam's victims in Iraq. "That was when I knew that President Bush was right to invade this country," he told me. But the intellectual elite, which should have championed the liberation of Iraq from a genocidal dictator, still excoriates George W. Bush for having done what they keep calling for "someone" to do -- he put a stop to a vile dictatorship that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents.
The intellectual elite is full of screamers and name-callers, accusers and slanderers. President Bush is accused of doing too much and doing too little. But with rare exceptions they don't volunteer for the military; when in office they don't support the military; they don't have the personal or institutional courage to recognize the real-world implications of their own moral poses.
In short, as Solzhenitsyn saw thirty years ago, America has decided to strut like an imperial power even as our supposed intellectual "finest" refuse to be the kind of people who deserve to lead.
The whole world would love to have our prosperity. But the whole world does not admire our moral emptiness, our hedonism, the stupidity with which we destroy our core institutions in the name of transient fads, our undependability, and the cowardice of those who vote for war and then undercut their own troops so they can appear "peace-loving" at election time.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died last week. For the last thirty years of his life he was almost unheard-of. He was dismissed by our media elite as a has-been, a grumpy old man who dared to criticize them as scathingly as he criticized the Communists. They declared him No Longer Interesting.
But he is as important as he ever was. He was mostly right about the Soviet Union; he was mostly right about us.
In the Soviet Union, he was seen as dangerous.
In America, he was rendered powerless by sheer inattention.
Just as Americans who speak the truth to the elitists who want to be our overlords are dismissed as cranks, fanatics, madmen. Supposed defenders of liberty want to pass laws that would destroy their opponents on talk radio. Supposed defenders of tolerance seek to silence any who would express their religious views as part of our political conversation. Unsupported assertions are taken as facts by people who claim to be intellectuals. The edicts of judges, unfounded in law, are worshiped, while they treat democratically enacted laws with contempt. They want to have their way without a breath of dissent; they refuse to admit that anyone who disagrees with them might know something useful.
And when someone says the kinds of things I am saying right now, their response is never reasoned argument. Instead they make personal attacks, call for boycotts, or seek to marginalize their opponents. I have seen it myself this week, as my attempts at a reasoned examination and defense of marriage has raised a firestorm among people who count themselves as intellectuals but give no evidence of any ratiocination beyond repeating the slogans of groupthink.
We are what Sozhenitsyn accused us of being. Unwilling to listen to and learn from him, we are acting out the tragicomedy of national decline. Is there still greatness in us? Just as the dying British Empire, led by the genuinely brave Winston Churchill, had one last paroxysm of greatness in World War II, we may be enacting our last spasm of courage under the leadership of George W. Bush.
In the election coming in November, we face the kind of choice that shapes the future of nations. On the one hand, we have an irascible Republican who is wrong as often as he is right, but at least has the courage to act according to his conscience often enough to earn the enmity of party hacks.
On the other hand, we have a candidate who has shown himself to be a complete captive of the intellectual elite, voting their party line in Congress, sneering in private at ordinary citizens that he does not even try to understand, wrapping himself in ersatz victimhood, changing his mind whenever it seems politically prudent while denying that he ever had any other view.
We are at the great political divide, and most Americans -- especially the young, who have been so grossly miseducated by the intellectual elite -- are getting their news from comedians who parrot the slanders of the elitists.
Solzhenitsyn saw what we seem determined to ignore: Power is fleeting, and so is freedom. The "world's only superpower" can only maintain the current world order if it acts with courage and vigor to stop the enemies of freedom and prosperity.
The great network of trade that creates the prosperity of our nation and the rest of the world rests entirely on the Pax Americana that is enforced by American arms and American honor.
The mad views of our intellectual elite are a luxury that is utterly dependent on our incredible prosperity and on the freedom enforced by the American military. The self-discipline and sacrifice of our soldiers are treated with disdain by the very people who seek to have the control of them.
Obama doesn't even have the courage to admit that he was wrong about Iraq, and that his long-touted plan to withdraw from Iraq immediately was insanely self-destructive all along. Now he adopts exactly the position that President Bush has always had, and pretends that he has not changed his mind.
And the media, supposedly the guardians of truth, let him get away with it. President Bush is constantly called a liar when they know he did not lie; Obama is never called a liar when the comparisons between past statements and present ones are there to be seen by anyone.
Thus the intellectual elite embraces lies and frauds, posing right along with the poseurs, not even interested in the statements of those who recognize the patterns in history that Solzhenitsyn saw.
We have decided, as a nation, to break ourselves, even to die, like children leaping off the roof with a superman cape tied around our necks, because we refuse to consider the consequences of our choices. We follow fashion and refuse to listen to sober warnings. We leap into vast social experiments with no evidence of their efficacy or necessity, while demanding the end to a war against relentless foes determined to destroy precisely those aspects of our culture that the intellectual elite most treasure.
The intellectual elite blithely accuses its foes of being fools, liars, madmen; but when someone correctly names their plans and dogmas as foolish, false, or insane, they are quick to call such criticism unfair and intolerant.
History is on Solzhentsyn's side. Nations that behave as large portions of our population are behaving do not long endure. Fools say that Obama, as president, would raise our stature in the world; they do not understand that our stature in the world depends entirely on the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, under the leadership of the courageous President who did what was right and necessary to uphold the freedom of the West.
If we elect a president who behaves like our intellectual elite, full of talk but afraid to take necessary action, slave to fashionable dogmas but incapable of questioning any of the dogmas of the Left, happy to let courts dictate against the will of the people, creating contempt for democracy, and unwilling to admit error even when the evidence of error is overwhelming, then we will deserve, as a people, the inevitable outcome.
I fear that the line we would cross by choosing the candidate of the intellectual elite may be one across which we may never return, try though we might. We would end up with lifetime judges eager to destroy fundamental institutions, a demoralized military incompetently led, and a national policy without principle or purpose.
Not because Obama himself embodies all these negatives, nor because McCain embodies all virtue, but because Obama would bring with him into office the cynical, reckless, cowardly, and willfully blind intellectual elite to which he owes his first and greatest allegiance ... and McCain would not.
Solzhenitsyn is dead. His messages did not die with him. But if it is not heeded, what difference does it make that some of us keep trying to issue the warning?
Democracy is the best form of government only when the people take responsibility for making wise, informed decisions with forethought about their consequences. Not that any form of government will be better; but when the people choose bad leaders and throw away good ones, the democracy will not last.
It can be argued that in America, democracy is already almost gone anyway. But what remains is worth defending to the last breath of possibility. Is this election that last breath?
I fear yes; I hope not. Meanwhile, too many Americans continue to think that empty slogans are a substitute for courage and honor.
By Orson Scott Card August 10, 2008
Nobody Was Listening
It's not enough for someone to tell you the truth -- you have to be willing to hear it.
I learned of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn when his books began appearing on bestseller lists and as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. I read Cancer Ward and The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and August 1914, and I knew I was reading the words of a hero -- a man unsparing in his vision, who spoke truth to power.
Then Solzhenitsyn was ejected from the Soviet Union. In a rare moment of cleverness, the Communist overlords whom Solzhenitsyn exposed and criticized realized that the best way to silence him was to send him to the West, where the American Left, which already dominated our cultural elite, would find him just as uncomfortable a fellow citizen as the Communists had found him.
They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists?
Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations.
"Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life."
He saw this in 1978. It is so clear today that he was right -- but how many of us saw it then?
Our intellectual elite today has only the courage of bullies. They can jump on individuals who dare to depart from their absurd and contradictory dogmas, calling them vicious names and doing all they can to silence them. But they haven't the courage of their own convictions.
They thrill at causes like saving Darfur, saving the desaparecidos of Argentina, saving just about everybody. The problem is that all this "saving" can only be done by the use of or the threat of America's overwhelming military force. All the "negotiations" they call for to solve such problems are absurd if there is no credible threat of force behind them.
Yet they cannot bear any actual use of force. A young intelligence officer I know well told me of his work in excavating the mass graves of Saddam's victims in Iraq. "That was when I knew that President Bush was right to invade this country," he told me. But the intellectual elite, which should have championed the liberation of Iraq from a genocidal dictator, still excoriates George W. Bush for having done what they keep calling for "someone" to do -- he put a stop to a vile dictatorship that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocents.
The intellectual elite is full of screamers and name-callers, accusers and slanderers. President Bush is accused of doing too much and doing too little. But with rare exceptions they don't volunteer for the military; when in office they don't support the military; they don't have the personal or institutional courage to recognize the real-world implications of their own moral poses.
In short, as Solzhenitsyn saw thirty years ago, America has decided to strut like an imperial power even as our supposed intellectual "finest" refuse to be the kind of people who deserve to lead.
The whole world would love to have our prosperity. But the whole world does not admire our moral emptiness, our hedonism, the stupidity with which we destroy our core institutions in the name of transient fads, our undependability, and the cowardice of those who vote for war and then undercut their own troops so they can appear "peace-loving" at election time.
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died last week. For the last thirty years of his life he was almost unheard-of. He was dismissed by our media elite as a has-been, a grumpy old man who dared to criticize them as scathingly as he criticized the Communists. They declared him No Longer Interesting.
But he is as important as he ever was. He was mostly right about the Soviet Union; he was mostly right about us.
In the Soviet Union, he was seen as dangerous.
In America, he was rendered powerless by sheer inattention.
Just as Americans who speak the truth to the elitists who want to be our overlords are dismissed as cranks, fanatics, madmen. Supposed defenders of liberty want to pass laws that would destroy their opponents on talk radio. Supposed defenders of tolerance seek to silence any who would express their religious views as part of our political conversation. Unsupported assertions are taken as facts by people who claim to be intellectuals. The edicts of judges, unfounded in law, are worshiped, while they treat democratically enacted laws with contempt. They want to have their way without a breath of dissent; they refuse to admit that anyone who disagrees with them might know something useful.
And when someone says the kinds of things I am saying right now, their response is never reasoned argument. Instead they make personal attacks, call for boycotts, or seek to marginalize their opponents. I have seen it myself this week, as my attempts at a reasoned examination and defense of marriage has raised a firestorm among people who count themselves as intellectuals but give no evidence of any ratiocination beyond repeating the slogans of groupthink.
We are what Sozhenitsyn accused us of being. Unwilling to listen to and learn from him, we are acting out the tragicomedy of national decline. Is there still greatness in us? Just as the dying British Empire, led by the genuinely brave Winston Churchill, had one last paroxysm of greatness in World War II, we may be enacting our last spasm of courage under the leadership of George W. Bush.
In the election coming in November, we face the kind of choice that shapes the future of nations. On the one hand, we have an irascible Republican who is wrong as often as he is right, but at least has the courage to act according to his conscience often enough to earn the enmity of party hacks.
On the other hand, we have a candidate who has shown himself to be a complete captive of the intellectual elite, voting their party line in Congress, sneering in private at ordinary citizens that he does not even try to understand, wrapping himself in ersatz victimhood, changing his mind whenever it seems politically prudent while denying that he ever had any other view.
We are at the great political divide, and most Americans -- especially the young, who have been so grossly miseducated by the intellectual elite -- are getting their news from comedians who parrot the slanders of the elitists.
Solzhenitsyn saw what we seem determined to ignore: Power is fleeting, and so is freedom. The "world's only superpower" can only maintain the current world order if it acts with courage and vigor to stop the enemies of freedom and prosperity.
The great network of trade that creates the prosperity of our nation and the rest of the world rests entirely on the Pax Americana that is enforced by American arms and American honor.
The mad views of our intellectual elite are a luxury that is utterly dependent on our incredible prosperity and on the freedom enforced by the American military. The self-discipline and sacrifice of our soldiers are treated with disdain by the very people who seek to have the control of them.
Obama doesn't even have the courage to admit that he was wrong about Iraq, and that his long-touted plan to withdraw from Iraq immediately was insanely self-destructive all along. Now he adopts exactly the position that President Bush has always had, and pretends that he has not changed his mind.
And the media, supposedly the guardians of truth, let him get away with it. President Bush is constantly called a liar when they know he did not lie; Obama is never called a liar when the comparisons between past statements and present ones are there to be seen by anyone.
Thus the intellectual elite embraces lies and frauds, posing right along with the poseurs, not even interested in the statements of those who recognize the patterns in history that Solzhenitsyn saw.
We have decided, as a nation, to break ourselves, even to die, like children leaping off the roof with a superman cape tied around our necks, because we refuse to consider the consequences of our choices. We follow fashion and refuse to listen to sober warnings. We leap into vast social experiments with no evidence of their efficacy or necessity, while demanding the end to a war against relentless foes determined to destroy precisely those aspects of our culture that the intellectual elite most treasure.
The intellectual elite blithely accuses its foes of being fools, liars, madmen; but when someone correctly names their plans and dogmas as foolish, false, or insane, they are quick to call such criticism unfair and intolerant.
History is on Solzhentsyn's side. Nations that behave as large portions of our population are behaving do not long endure. Fools say that Obama, as president, would raise our stature in the world; they do not understand that our stature in the world depends entirely on the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, under the leadership of the courageous President who did what was right and necessary to uphold the freedom of the West.
If we elect a president who behaves like our intellectual elite, full of talk but afraid to take necessary action, slave to fashionable dogmas but incapable of questioning any of the dogmas of the Left, happy to let courts dictate against the will of the people, creating contempt for democracy, and unwilling to admit error even when the evidence of error is overwhelming, then we will deserve, as a people, the inevitable outcome.
I fear that the line we would cross by choosing the candidate of the intellectual elite may be one across which we may never return, try though we might. We would end up with lifetime judges eager to destroy fundamental institutions, a demoralized military incompetently led, and a national policy without principle or purpose.
Not because Obama himself embodies all these negatives, nor because McCain embodies all virtue, but because Obama would bring with him into office the cynical, reckless, cowardly, and willfully blind intellectual elite to which he owes his first and greatest allegiance ... and McCain would not.
Solzhenitsyn is dead. His messages did not die with him. But if it is not heeded, what difference does it make that some of us keep trying to issue the warning?
Democracy is the best form of government only when the people take responsibility for making wise, informed decisions with forethought about their consequences. Not that any form of government will be better; but when the people choose bad leaders and throw away good ones, the democracy will not last.
It can be argued that in America, democracy is already almost gone anyway. But what remains is worth defending to the last breath of possibility. Is this election that last breath?
I fear yes; I hope not. Meanwhile, too many Americans continue to think that empty slogans are a substitute for courage and honor.
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