25 November, 2009

CRU Hack “Deniers” Read Here

You know who you are. You have written things like this in the last few days:

This excerpt of excerpts demonstrates my point about e-mail conversations being "out of context" even when messages are quoted in full. People writing to colleagues about "using a trick" to "hide a temperature decline," or that the death of a pesky annoyance is "cheering news," are engaging in things we all do with friends and colleagues.

That’s an actual quote from a mailing list I participate in. I’ve removed the name of the author out of a sense of fair play.

Here’s my response on the mailing list in it’s entirety.

No, I'm tired of seeing this defense. Yes, there are lots of the e-mails that are no big deal, and at the worst just show petty childishness. But, to get the idea that that's the worst of it, you'd have to selectively choose only the least damaging e-mails to review.
Jones and Mann deserve to go down in history right beside Charles Dawson, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, and Clonaid. I'm not engaging in hyperbole here. There's some really bad stuff here, and only willful blindness would allow anyone to come to any other conclusion.

Warning, this is going to be very long. I'm going to quote a lot of stuff in-line.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=146&filename=939154709.txt


From: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,imacadam@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Briffa et al. series for IPCC figure
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 1999 16:18:29 +0100
Cc: k.briffa@uea,p.jones@uea
Dear Mike and Ian
Keith has asked me to send you a timeseries for the IPCC multi-proxy
reconstruction figure, to replace the one you currently have. The data are
attached to this e-mail. They go from 1402 to 1995, although we usually
stop the series in 1960 because of the recent non-temperature signal that
is superimposed on the tree-ring data that we use.

Why is this a big deal? Simply put, the reason tree ring data is used is to extrapolate past temperature by comparing ring width with known temperature variations (i.e. after 1960). The recent data IS the link between thermometers and tree rings. Without the link, there's no reason to assume the older data is in any way representational of anything.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=891&filename=1212063122.txt


From: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 08:12:02 -0400
Reply-to: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

<x-flowed>
Hi Phil,

laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would
have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to
have been true.

I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new email is:
generwahl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

talk to you later,

mike

Phil Jones wrote:
>
>> Mike,
> Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
> Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.
>
> Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't
> have his new email address.


Here Phil Jones is encouraging people to delete emails related to an FOI (freedom of information) request. At the very least this is unethical. At the most, it's criminal. You can't put a positive or even a non-negative spin on this.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=622&filename=1139521913.txt


From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tim Osborn <t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Keith Briffa
<k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: update
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:51:53 -0500
Reply-to: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

<x-flowed>
guys, I see that Science has already gone online w/ the new issue, so we
put up the RC post. By now, you've probably read that nasty McIntyre
thing. Apparently, he violated the embargo on his website (I don't go
there personally, but so I'm informed).

Anyway, I wanted you guys to know that you're free to use RC in any way
you think would be helpful. Gavin and I are going to be careful about
what comments we screen through, and we'll be very careful to answer any
questions that come up to any extent we can. On the other hand, you
might want to visit the thread and post replies yourself. We can hold
comments up in the queue and contact you about whether or not you think
they should be screened through or not, and if so, any comments you'd
like us to include.

You're also welcome to do a followup guest post, etc. think of RC as a
resource that is at your disposal to combat any disinformation put
forward by the McIntyres of the world. Just let us know. We'll use our
best discretion to make sure the skeptics dont'get to use the RC
comments as a megaphone...

RealClimate.org is supposed to be a clearinghouse blog for AGW. It was originally designed to be a rebuttal site to Steve McIntyre's
ClimateAudit.org, but it is also allegedly devoted to science, not opinion. And, as such, should be independent. Basically, what is being admitted here is that it is not an independent blog, and is under the control of CRU, and that Gavin and Mann will censor comments that don't fit the narrative. This has been a common complaint all over the blogosphere for years, that relevant, non-inflammatory, informative skeptic comments get censored. This one doesn't really make CRU look bad, but casts serious doubts on RealClimate.org. Are they a mouthpiece or interested in science? It's also interesting to compare, as ClimateAudit doesn't moderate comments at all. And here I thought healthy debate was part of science? Which side is engaging in debate, and which side is trying to shut it down?


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=485&filename=1106338806.txt


From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: FOIA
Date: Fri Jan 21 15:20:06 2005
Cc: Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

Tom,
I'll look at what you've said over the weekend re CCSP.
I don't know the other panel members. I've not heard any
more about it since agreeing a week ago.
As for FOIA Sarah isn't technically employed by UEA and she
will likely be paid by Manchester Metropolitan University.
I wouldn't worry about the code. If FOIA does ever get
used by anyone, there is also IPR to consider as well.
Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people,
so I will be hiding behind them. I'll be passing any
requests onto the person at UEA who has been given a post to
deal with them.


More about ways to avoid responding to FOI requests. Once again, I have to ask why a legitimate scientific organization should be afraid of FOI? Here hey discuss that the code is intellectual property, and that they don't own the data so they can't release it. If so, CRU should never have entered into such agreements. I can't say this too often. If you don't have reproducible results, you don't have science. If you can't release the data and code, even under NDA (non-disclosure agreement), then your results are not reproducible. If you're afraid of FOI, then you're afraid of the truth.


The FOI e-mails are exceptionally damning, and there's a lot of them. Read the FOI link (http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/willis-vs-the-cru-a-history-of-foi-evasion/) I gave in another post. CRU can't spin their way out of this, and pretending it's not extremely bad is just that: pretending.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=813&filename=1188557698.txt


From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: review of E&E paper on alleged Wang fraud
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 06:54:58 -0600

<x-flowed>
Phil,

Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers
that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW
at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect.

Whether or not this makes a difference is not the issue here.

Tom.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Phil Jones wrote:
>
> Tom,
> Just for interest! Keep quiet about both issues.
>
> In touch with Wei-Chyung Wang. Just agreed with him
> that I will send a brief response to Peiser. The allegation by Keenan
> has
> gone to SUNY. Keenan's about to be told by SUNY that submitting this has
> violated a confidentiality agreement he entered into with SUNY when he
> sent the complaint. WCW has nothing to worry about, but it still
> unsettling!


This is about covering up fraud. There's no other way to describe it. One of the problems with CRU's thermometer data has been the concept of "urban heat islands" (UHI). In other words, for various reasons, the temperature is higher in cities than in the country. No big deal. If you're interested in long term temperature data, just use thermometers from outside cities. Of course, you'd have to use thermometers that stay outside cities, and don't become inside the cities over time as the cities grow. That might make the data unreliable. Well, Wang's (WCW) paper in question said that there was no issue with such thermometers. It turned out to be fraudulent research. Wigley is agreeing here that it's fraudulent, but Jones is telling him to keep quiet about it and that WCW has nothing to worry about.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=136&filename=938018124.txt

This one is long, but is useful for context.


From: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Keith Briffa <k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, "Folland, Chris"
<ckfolland@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, 'Phil Jones' <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: RE: IPCC revisions
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 12:35:24 -0400
Cc: tkarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Thanks for your response Keith,

For all:

Walked into this hornet's nest this morning! Keith and Phil have both
raised some very good points. And I should point out that Chris, through no
fault of his own, but probably through ME not conveying my thoughts very
clearly to the
others, definitely overstates any singular confidence I have in my own
(Mann et al) series. I believe strongly that the strength in our discussion
will be the fact that certain key features of past climate estimates are
robust among a number of quasi-independent and truly independent estimates,
each
of which is not without its own limitations and potential biases. And I
certainly don't want to abuse my lead authorship by advocating my own work.

I am perfectly amenable to keeping Keith's series in the plot, and can ask
Ian Macadam (Chris?) to add it to the plot he has been preparing (nobody
liked my own color/plotting conventions so I've given up doing this
myself).
The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a
reasonable
way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith's,
we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding
mean
values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline.

So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, I would be happy to add Keith's
series. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate
(through comparining an exatropical averaging of our nothern hemisphere
patterns with Phil's more extratropical series) that the major
discrepancies between Phil's and our series can be explained in terms of
spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis (seasonality seems to be secondary
here, but probably explains much of the residual differences). But that
explanation certainly can't rectify why Keith's series, which has similar
seasonality
*and* latitudinal emphasis to Phil's series, differs in large part in
exactly the opposite direction that Phil's does from ours. This is the
problem we
all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this
was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably
concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al
series.

So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment that
"something else" is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps
Keith can
help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series
and the potential factors that might lead to it being "warmer" than the
Jones
et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this
regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting
doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these
estimates
and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. I don't think that
doubt is scientifically justified, and I'd hate to be the one to have
to give it fodder!


This is a case of politics trumping science. By itself, it's not awful. It's not good, but it's not awful. However, note the bit about Keith's series showing the late 20th century decline. This is the decline that Jones talks about hiding in one of the more infamous e-mails from this series, and is the link that shows you that the phrase "hide the decline" is not just an innocent turn of phrase, but an example that the process has been corrupted. The problem here is that they have some actual data that doesn't fit their agenda, so they're working on making it fit, and for justifying why it doesn't fit. Perhaps a scientist without an agenda might wonder if the fact that it doesn't fit is significant and further wonder if it means that incorrect assumptions have been made. Mann doesn't seem to want to go there, and wants to make sure that no one else goes there either.


Once again, what this shows is that CRU is an organization where opinions rule, not science.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=914&filename=1219239172.txt


From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Gavin Schmidt <gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Revised version the Wengen paper
Date: Wed Aug 20 09:32:52 2008
Cc: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

Gavin,
Almost all have gone in. Have sent an email to Janice re the regional
freshening.
On the boreholes I've used mostly Mike's revised text, with bits of
yours making it read a little better.
Thinking about the final bit for the Appendix. Keith should be in later, so
I'll check with him - and look at that vineyard book. I did rephrase the
bit
about the 'evidence' as Lamb refers to it. I wanted to use his phrasing -
he
used this word several times in these various papers. What he means is his
mind and its inherent bias(es).
Your final sentence though about improvements in reviewing and
traceability is a bit of a hostage to fortune. The skeptics will try to
hang on to
something, but I don't want to give them something clearly tangible.
Keith/Tim still getting FOI requests as well as MOHC and Reading. All our
FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions
not to respond - advice they got from the Information Commissioner. As an
aside and just between us, it seems that Brian Hoskins has withdrawn
himself
from the WG1 Lead nominations. It seems he doesn't want to have to deal
with
this hassle.
The FOI line we're all using is this. IPCC is exempt from any countries
FOI - the
skeptics
have been told this. Even though we (MOHC, CRU/UEA) possibly hold relevant
info
the IPCC is not part our remit (mission statement, aims etc) therefore we
don't
have an obligation to pass it on.
Cheers
Phil


More on hiding from FOI requests. They sound like the mob trying to figure out how to weasel out of subpoenas. And they've received advice from the "Information Commissioner" on how to deal with them. My understanding is that the Information Commissioner should be enforcing FOI requests, not telling people how to get around them.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=12&filename=843161829.txt


From: Gary Funkhouser <gary@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700

Keith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central
and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I'll send
it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material,
but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk
something out of that. It was pretty funny though - I told Malcolm
what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating
the response functions - he laughed and said that's what he thought
at first also. The data's tempting but there's too much variation
even within stands. I don't think it'd be productive to try and juggle
the chronology statistics any more than I already have - they just
are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I'll have
to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I'd be
optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time
collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I'll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I'd like
to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably
someday though.


Here Funkhouser is admitting that there's no way he can twist this particular data set into showing global warming. He's tried everything he can think of, but the data refuses to budge. Now, in real science, you don't try to twist the data to fit your theory, you adjust your theory to fit the data. Once again, CRU shows that what they are engaging in is not science.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1016&filename=1254108338.txt


From: Tom Wigley <wigley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer <santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>

<x-flowed>
Phil,

Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly
explain the 1940s warming blip.

If you look at the attached plot you will see that the
land also shows the 1940s blip (as I'm sure you know).

So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC,
then this would be significant for the global mean -- but
we'd still have to explain the land blip.

I've chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an
ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of
ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common
forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of
these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are
1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips -- higher sensitivity
plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.


More on adjusting the data to fit the theory. Wigley seems to think it's ok to adjust the ocean temperature by .15 degC. This way it still looks plausible, but might make it easier to explain this "blip" in temperatures in the 1940s. There's a word for what Wigley is doing here. Fraud.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1003&filename=1249503274.txt


From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: Kevin Trenberth <trenbert@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Grant Foster
<tamino_9@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: ENSO blamed over warming - paper in JGR
Date: Wed Aug 5 16:14:34 2009
Cc: "J. Salinger" <j.salinger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, James Annan
<jdannan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, >b.mullan@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Gavin Schmidt
<gschmidt@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>, Mike Mann ><mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,
j.renwick@xxxxxxxxx.xxx

Hi all,
Agree with Kevin that Tom Karl has too much to do. Tom Wigley is semi
retired and like Mike Wallace may not be responsive to requests from JGR.
We have Ben Santer in common ! Dave Thompson is a good suggestion.
I'd go for one of Tom Peterson or Dave Easterling.
To get a spread, I'd go with 3 US, One Australian and one in Europe.
So Neville Nicholls and David Parker.
All of them know the sorts of things to say - about our comment and
the awful original, without any prompting.

Cheers
Phil
At 15:50 05/08/2009, Kevin Trenberth wrote:

Hi all
I went to JGR site to look for index codes, and I see that the offending
article has
been downloaded 128 times in past week (second). All the mnore reason to
get on with
it.
see below
Kevin
Grant Foster wrote:

Gentlemen,
I've completed most of the submission to JGR, but there are three
required entries I
hope you can help me with.
1) Keyword
Please provide 1 unique keyword

global temperatures, statistical methods, El Nino-Southern Oscillation,
global warming

2) Index Terms
Please provide 3 unique index terms

1600 GLOBAL CHANGE
1616 Climate variability
3309 Climatology
1694 Instruments and techniques



3) Suggested Reviewers to Include
Please list the names of 5 experts who are knowledgeable in your area and
could give
an unbiased review of your work. Please do not list colleagues who are
close associates,
collaborators, or family members. (this requires name, email, and
institution).


This e-mail discusses the perversion of the peer review process. The peers are supposed to be anonymous and unknown. The fact that we're getting names here is somewhat disturbing, as is the comment that they "know the sorts of things to say ... without any prompting". This isn't peer review, it's advocacy. Now Grant was specifically asked to provide names of potential peers, so the first is perhaps forgivable, but Jones' comment is still terrible.


Here: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt


From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: "Michael E. Mann" <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: For your eyes only
Date: Thu Feb 3 13:11:46 2005

Mike,
It would be good to produce future series with and without the long
instrumental series and maybe the documentary ones as well. The long
measurements can then be used to validate the low-freq aspects at least
back to 1750, maybe earlier with the documentary. There are some key
warm decades (1730s, some in the 16th century) which the Moberg
reconstruction completely misses and gives the impression that all
years are cold between 1500 and 1750.
Away Feb 6-10 and 12-20 and 22-25 (last in Chicago - on the panel to
consider the vertical temp work of CCSP).
Cheers
Phil
Cheers
Phil
At 15:26 02/02/2005, you wrote:

Thanks Phil,
Yes, we've learned out lesson about FTP. We're going to be very careful in
the future
what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established
that directory
so that Tim could access the data.
Yeah, there is a freedom of information act in the U.S., and the
contrarians are going
to try to use it for all its worth. But there are also intellectual
property rights
issues, so it isn't clear how these sorts of things will play out
ultimately in the U.S.
I saw the paleo draft (actually I saw an early version, and sent Keith
some minor
comments). It looks very good at present--will be interesting to see how
they deal w/
the contrarian criticisms--there will be many. I'm hoping they'll stand
firm (I believe
they will--I think the chapter has the right sort of personalities for
that)...
Will keep you updated on stuff...
talk to you later,
mike
At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:

Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !
Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents
everything better
this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never
know who is
trawling
them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they
ever hear
there
is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the
file rather than
send
to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to
enquiries within
20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request
will test it.
We also
have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent
me a worried
email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model
code. He
has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be
relevant
here,
but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say
we must adhere
to it !


More on data hiding and fear of FOI requests, including an admission from Jones that he'd delete the data before complying with one. The timeline is interesting here, because this specific data was eventually requested under FOI, and CRU claimed that it had been accidentally deleted. I think Jones would have a tough time convincing a jury that the deletion was in fact, accidental.


Now let's look at some of the comments from the code or from people working on it. This is a very small smattering of comments. I could write a book on the problems with this code.


I don't have links to the code. Either download the whole file yourself and look at it, or trust me that these files exist and have these comments.


From the file data4alps.pro:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring
density' records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer
temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this
"decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means
that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but
have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.


This is pretty much a smoking gun. It's admitting that the tree ring data doesn't match temperature observations recorded elsewhere. The purpose of using tree ring data is to establish temperature variations. If it doesn't do that, it can't be used!


From the file HARRY_READ_ME.txt:

OH **** THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I
thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the
hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's
just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.


Remember science must be reproducible. Their data corruption makes their work unreproducible, even by them!


From the file mkp2correlation.pro:


    function
mkp2correlation,indts,depts,remts,t,filter=filter,refperiod=refperiod,$
    datathresh=datathresh
    ;
    ; THIS WORKS WITH REMTS BEING A 2D ARRAY (nseries,ntime) OF MULTIPLE
TIMESERIES
    ; WHOSE INFLUENCE IS TO BE REMOVED. UNFORTUNATELY THE IDL5.4
p_correlate
    ; FAILS WITH >1 SERIES TO HOLD CONSTANT, SO I HAVE TO REMOVE THEIR
INFLUENCE
    ; FROM BOTH INDTS AND DEPTS USING MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION AND THEN
USE THE
    ; USUAL correlate FUNCTION ON THE RESIDUALS.
    ;

    pro maps12,yrstart,doinfill=doinfill
    ;
    ; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD
reconstructions
    ; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't
usually
    ; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look
closer to
    ; the real temperatures.
    ;

    ;
    ; Plots (1 at a time) yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not)
MXD
    ; reconstructions
    ; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't
usually
    ; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look
closer to
    ; the real temperatures.


"Shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures"???


Another smoking gun admitting to changing the data to fit the theory. This kind of comment appears all over the source code, as does the phrase "applies a very artificial correction for decline".


Look, if the data doesn't stand on its own merits and has to be artificially adjusted then it's useless. Let's say I have a room with walls that are 6', 5'8", 6'2", and 5'6". I've claimed for years that the room is square. But I get the actual measurements and it's not. Well, all I have to do is apply a very artificial correction to the data and all the walls are 5'10" and I can continue to say that it's a square. I'd be lying, but what's wrong with that?

24 November, 2009

Why Obama’s Agenda Must Be Defeated

Yes, I’m going to channel my inner Rush and say that I want President Barack Obama (D-USA) to fail.

I’ll go farther. It’s vital for the future of this country that he fail.

I’m going to talk about numbers and dollars. And you don’t need to be a Nobel Laureate like Paul Krugman to understand. I’m going to lay it out in an airtight argument that a 12 year old could understand. I may even try it out on my six year old.

Ok, here goes.

This country is on a fiscal path that is unsustainable. The United States is responsible for over one-fifth of the world’s debt. Our debt currently makes up over 60% of our annual GDP.  By 2019, it’s expected to exceed 80% of our annual GDP. And you can look at the pictures I’ve linked to before here. The curve isn’t getting any better by 2019, so this number is only going to continue to rise.

By 2019, the projected annual interest on the debt is over three-quarters of a trillion dollars! Remember that the largest deficit for a single year prior to this one was less than five hundred billion dollars.

But wait. It gets worse.

These projections don’t include ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade. They don’t include estimates for the unexpected, i.e., another war in the Middle East, or another Katrina, or another recession. They assume low interest rates will continue forever. Every day we hear about another state or city that may go bankrupt. As much as I, as a fiscal conservative, don’t like the idea, I must face reality. The likelihood that the federal government will decide to bail out one more or more of these states or cities is high. The likelihood of another GM bailout is high. We’re talking about another stimulus package for this recession. There’s a very real possibility of an FHA bailout, which could cost in the trillions of dollars.

In other words, this 80% number is a best case scenario. The betting man would bet on a figure much worse.

And, there’s no indication at all that it’s going to get better after 2019. At what point does the debt burden become crushing? I don’t know. But I don’t want to find out either. Continuing on in this manner guarantees that we’ll find out at some point. Hopefully later, not sooner, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

We had a debt bigger than this right after WWII. But then we had options. We decreased our huge military spending. Defense spending is a pretty small part of the budget now, and projected to get even smaller. In fact, that $774B number for interest on the debt in 2019, accounts for 84% of the projected deficit. The only way we’re going to reduce that interest number is to reduce the debt itself.

So the problem is the debt-to-GDP ratio. There are exactly four ways to reduce it. I suspect that we’ll have to do at least two of them.

1) Grow the economy

2) Cut spending

3) Increase taxes

4) Print money

I’m no Nobel Laureate, but if there’s another way, I sure don’t know about it.

Let’s assume that we’re not going to buy our way out of this by printing obscene amounts of money. You get double and triple digit inflation that way and destroy the economy. Generally, that’s a last resort. And usually fails in any event.

So, looking at the other three in turn.

1) Grow the economy – This helps two ways. It increases GDP, and also increases tax receipts, which would lower the debt. However, the CBO estimates weak to average economic growth over the next 10 years, in the 2-3% annual range. Cap-and-trade and ObamaCare will likely make this worse, not better. Unless Obama has some magic as yet unrevealed plan to grow the economy, this doesn’t appear to be the way out.

2) Cut spending – Remember how I started this? Saying I want Obama to fail? Everything he wants to do as part of his domestic agenda will increase spending. Every. Single. Thing. And the spending increases get worse after 2019.

3) Increase taxes – Ugh. I hate this one. And you have to be careful whenever you increase taxes, because it’s likely going to make it harder to 1) Grow the economy. But we’re probably going to have to do it anyway. Unfortunately, the Democrats already plan on massive tax increases to make their domestic agenda appear feasible. We won’t be able to afford to make the necessary tax increases once the Democrats have already increased them to pay for Obama’s agenda. Note that I could’ve called this one “Increase tax receipts”, which can occur by actually lowering taxes. But nothing on the Obama agenda is going to make it more likely to increase tax receipts by lowering taxes, nor does it appear even remotely possible that he’d even consider such a thing as supply-side economics.

So, in summary, Obama’s agenda will prevent us from being able to solve the debt-to-GDP problem by any of the available means. Therefore his agenda must be defeated. The Democrats must be stopped. It is vital for the future of the country that they fail.

Tell me where I missed something. I dare you.

23 November, 2009

Amateur Hour at the CRU

Here’s an interesting excerpt from the CRU documents, from a file called “HARRY_READ_ME.txt”. The author appears to be someone trying to analyze/debug their code.

17. Inserted debug statements into anomdtb.f90, discovered that
a sum-of-squared variable is becoming very, very negative! Key
output from the debug statements:

OpEn=   16.00, OpTotSq=    4142182.00, OpTot= 7126.00
DataA val =       93, OpTotSq=       8649.00
DataA val =      172, OpTotSq=      38233.00
DataA val =      950, OpTotSq=     940733.00
DataA val =      797, OpTotSq=    1575942.00
DataA val =      293, OpTotSq=    1661791.00
DataA val =       83, OpTotSq=    1668680.00
DataA val =      860, OpTotSq=    2408280.00
DataA val =      222, OpTotSq=    2457564.00
DataA val =      452, OpTotSq=    2661868.00
DataA val =      561, OpTotSq=    2976589.00
DataA val =    49920, OpTotSq=-1799984256.00
DataA val =      547, OpTotSq=-1799684992.00
DataA val =      672, OpTotSq=-1799233408.00
DataA val =      710, OpTotSq=-1798729344.00
DataA val =      211, OpTotSq=-1798684800.00
DataA val =      403, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00
OpEn=   16.00, OpTotSq=-1798522368.00, OpTot=56946.00
forrtl: error (75): floating point exception
IOT trap (core dumped)

..so the data value is unbfeasibly large, but why does the
sum-of-squares parameter OpTotSq go negative?!!

The author here is apparently a high school student, or a McDonald’s reject. The problem is apparently a sum of squares, i.e. x*x + y*y + z*z + a*a, etc. And the person here is stunned that the values go negative. The answer is that the algorithm is obviously using 32-bit signed integers, and he’s experiencing overflow. The result at the point of overflow is 2,494,982,989. The maximum 32-bit signed integer is 2,147,483,647.

Here’s another blogger’s take, with an example of how this could happen, using 4-bit arithmetic for simplicity.

I’m a software developer. I’d hope that any person we’d hire out of college would know this, but the person here is clueless.

And we’re supposed to trust these people’s code and their math. We’re supposed to trust the entire future of the world to it.

Global Warming IS Man-made After All…

…and now we know which men. Their names are Jones, Mann, Osborn, Wigley, and Briffa.

When I was a 20-something, a couple men announced they had achieved “cold fusion”. This turned out to be a hoax. In the early part of this decade, a company called Clonaid announced that they had cloned a human being. This also turned out to be a hoax.

If you haven’t been paying attention the last few days, you’ve missed the biggest science story since these two. E-mails and data from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) were published without their knowledge or consent. This has been referred to constantly by what little media coverage it’s received as a “hack”. That seems to be wrong to me. This has all the smells of a “whistleblower” incident if you ask me. Someone on the inside decided they’d heard/seen enough. I could be wrong. We’ll see.

The folks at CRU are the prime movers and shakers of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) crowd. There’s barely a speech given or paper written on the subject that doesn’t reference their work. Why does this matter?

Well, to put it bluntly, these folks can’t be trusted.

These e-mails discuss elimination of data that doesn’t support the thesis, destruction of records requested under Freedom of Information requests, discrediting critics and prevention of publication of their works.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that a couple months ago, I wrote a post about possible faking of data in one of the main “hockey stick” graphs. The text of the e-mails pretty much confirms this speculation, and this exact issue is even discussed in this e-mail.

Does this mean that AGW isn’t real? No. In fact, the sad thing is these people have made real debate on this subject even harder. I wouldn’t believe any of them now if they told me “2+2=4”. With or without proof. I’ve seen their idea of “proof”.

Of course, this issue has been met with deafening silence from the MSM. The NYT has decided to comment, with one of the most laughable comments I have ever read from a “news organization”.

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

The NYT’s problem isn’t that these documents “were never intended for the public eye”. It’s that they’re An Inconvenient Truth.

30 September, 2009

A VAT Tax? I Hope America Isn’t That Stupid

John Podesta is in favor of a VAT tax. Before I get into what an insanely bad idea that is, let me add a few quotes.

“There’s going to have to be revenue in this budget,” said Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

A so-called consumption tax would “create a balance” with European and Japanese economies and “could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness,” said Podesta. Value- added taxes in Europe and Japan encourage savings by taxing consumption.

Podesta contradicts himself between the first and second paragraph, and hopes we’re too stupid to notice. Or maybe he’s stupid enough that he didn’t notice himself, but I don’t believe that.

He correctly points out that one of the ways out of our coming financial crisis is by increasing tax revenue. Another way out is to decrease spending, but apparently he doesn’t consider that option. Actually, we’re going to have to do both.

Then he says that a VAT tax would “create a balance” with other economies which “could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness”. Well, yes and no. If you notice what Podesta is saying is that he wants to add a VAT tax to our existing tax code. This is another tax burden on the American taxpayer, and directly belies Obama’s promise to cut taxes for 95% of working Americans. But that’s beside the point. However, the reason the above economies are growing more than ours is not because they have a VAT tax in addition to an income tax, but that the VAT has largely replaced the income tax.

You don’t get the economic growth of a consumption tax without getting rid of the income tax. You never get economic growth by increasing the tax burden.

But, as I said, Podesta seems to think we’re too stupid to understand that contradiction.

Now if we were talking about getting rid of the income tax, then a VAT would only be a half-stupid idea as opposed to the completely brain dead idea that Podesta is proposing.

I know what you’re thinking. “But, Chris, you’ve raved about the FairTax a zillion times. Isn’t a VAT really the same thing?”

No. Not remotely. They’re both consumption taxes (and they really are consumption taxes, not “so-called consumption taxes”), but a VAT is largely a B2B tax while the FairTax is a B2C.

And this makes a huge difference. Why? Let’s go to the next paragraph from that article:

Podesta said such a tax may be regressive, but can be balanced by exempting some products and using “the money to support low-wage workers.”

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!!

In one sentence, we have just summed up everything that’s wrong with a VAT tax.

When you start talking about “exempting some products” and being able to “support low-wage workers”, that’s a code. And it’s code for shifting around the tax burden based on lobbyist power and shifting political winds.

See, from the perspective of politicians, VATs are wonderful. They can shift around the tax so that industries they don’t approve of are taxed more heavily, or industries in their state or district are taxed more lightly. Let’s look at the example of building a car.

Car manufacturers buy raw and manufactured materials from companies all over the world. And some of these manufactured materials (your Bose stereo system for example) are built by other companies that also buy raw and manufactured materials from other companies. These are all B2B transactions and eligible to be taxed by the VAT. Eventually, all of these materials are put together and sold to the consumer which is a B2C transaction.

Notice that by the time the car gets to you, the consumer, you don’t know how much tax was involved in the production of this car. And you’re paying the tax. You don’t even know that the reason you can’t get a Bose stereo in your Jeep is because the VAT tax has been structured to make Bose stereos artificially more expensive than JBL. You don’t know that GM has 100% UAW membership because UAW workers receive VAT tax revenue in order to “support low-wage workers”. And of course, you don’t know that your VAT is paying for that too.

Nor do you know that the $25,000 car you just bought only costs $18,000 in Europe because in order to increase international sales, the U.S. government suspends the VAT tax on the material products if the end product is sold overseas (this is a common implementation of VAT taxes in Europe).

Nor do you know why the price of that car jumped from $25,000 to $26,000 mid-year even though nothing on it changed. It was because the VAT tax code changed and some component along the way got taxed more. And the cost got passed on to you.

And you think our tax code is complicated now.

The whole point of having a B2B consumption tax (a VAT) instead of a B2C consumption tax (a sales tax) is to hide what things are being taxed and how much. The only people this benefits are lobbyists and politicians. Lobbyists get paid big bucks to get tax breaks for their constituents and politicians line their pockets with the lobbyist money.

And you, the American taxpayer, get screwed.

In contrast, a B2C tax is highly visible. You know when you’re buying something whether you’re paying the tax and how much. It’s right there on the receipt. When the cost of your item goes up, you’ll be able to see right there on the receipt that the politicians snuck in a tax increase (hopefully you were paying attention beforehand and informed your representatives that if they raised the tax, they better pack their bags for home, but I digress).

This isn’t a left/right thing, or a conservative/liberal thing, or a Democrat/Republican thing. This is a political class/average citizen thing. A VAT should get 0% support from the American public, no matter what their political persuasion. It will never help the American consumer, and will only help our “friends” in Washington D.C.

Again, Podesta hopes we’re too stupid to notice that.

A Picture Still Paints a Trillion Words

 

A while ago, I linked to a picture from the Heritage Foundation on our exploding debt. It also showed the difference between the Bush years and the Obama years. It’s a popular picture, but is several months out of date.

 

Well, here’s an updated one from The American

Chart_9-24-09[1]

Notice the legend. The orange bars are the Clinton/Bush deficits. The purple represents CBO’s deficit projection as of September 2008, before the “financial crisis”. The black represents the CBO’s projections as of January 2009. This includes the $787 TARP bailout funds as well as projections based on estimates of lower tax receipts due to the economic turmoil. The red is CBO’s deficit projection as of August 2009. The red you can blame on President Barack Obama (D-USA) and his policies.

And it’s worse than that. All CBO projections are based on economic outlook and financial outlook based on existing law. In other words, it doesn’t include Cap-and-Trade and Health Care Reform and Immigration Reform. Any or all of these will make these numbers explode.

And the smallest is already larger than the largest under Bush.

These numbers are unsustainable. The people in Washington trying to spend our money and our children’s money and their children’s money must be stopped.

29 September, 2009

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I wanted to call this post “They Faked the Whole Thing” but the current title fits my background better and doesn’t make the assumption that the problems here are deliberate. You decide for yourself.

I also considered calling it “An Inconvenient Truth” for a whole host of good reasons.

Anyway, we have a saying in the world of software development. The saying is “garbage in, garbage out”, meaning that no matter how good a program is, it’s still subject to the reliability of the data. If you input bad data, you’re going to get bad results.

Please read this article on global warming. Or if you have the math/science skills, read the article it’s based upon here.

But if you’re in a hurry, let me sum up. The models showing global warming are based upon bad data. When the real problems with the data are corrected, there is no evidence of global warming.

I’ll quote the first article:

Let me repeat this. The statistical models used by the High Priests of Global Warming are using a newly identified and specific data set which wrongly produces decades of warming where none exists in the raw temperature data 0r other data sets.

Basically, an unrepresentative data sample was used which improperly skews the results. Replacing the unrepresentative sample with a better one fixes the problem. The sample data in question is a set of tree cores in Russia which show a high degree of warming recently.

Look at the chart below:

 

The Y-axis sets 1 as an established baseline, or norm.

The red line indicates the data used in the global warming doom and gloom scenarios. It’s a variation of the well known “hockey stick” graph, and uses 12 suspect tree cores. The black line replaces this suspect data with 34 cores from other trees in the area and appears to actually show global cooling.

But wait, haven’t I done just the same thing I’m accusing the IPCC of? I took out some data I called suspect and replaced it with some other data that might be suspect as well.

Good point. Rather than picking and choosing, let’s look at all the data, shall we?

 

Same graph with a new line. The green line uses all available data. And guess what? No hockey stick. No evidence of any sort of climate change at all.

Garbage in, garbage out.

28 September, 2009

Intemperate Thought of the Day

Since becoming President, Barack Obama (D-USA) has met once with the commander of the U.S. led forces in Afghanistan. Actually, it’s worse than that. He’s met with him once in his entire life.

Since becoming President, Barack Obama has been on the late night talkers twice. Once on Letterman, just last week, and once on Leno back in March.

Nice to know where our President’s priorities are.

19 September, 2009

Play Like a Pirate

Get yer pirate booty here! Them scalawags at LucasArts have buried a free copy of Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal. Lucky for ye, I got me hands on a map to this treasure and I’m sharin’ it with ye.

Follow the link, matey, and be quick about it. The treasure will disappear ‘ere the sun rises on the morrow.

(Did I mention that it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day?)

18 September, 2009

A Simple Question

President Barack Obama (D-USA) is continuing his latest media blitz this weekend with appearances on all the Sunday talk shows (with one notable absence) to talk about health care.

I have a very simple question that I keep hoping some intrepid journalist will pose to him, but I keep being disappointed.

The question?

“Unemployment is now the highest it’s been in more than 25 years. Indications are that it will go even higher. Why is healthcare the #1 priority of your administration?”

I’d like to ask that to 100 Senators and 435 Representatives too, just change “your administration” to “this Congress”.

I actually believe that Obama has an answer to this question. It’ll be Orwellian doublespeak, but he’ll do it. It will be something like “We already passed a stimulus package. The stimulus is working. But in the meantime, the increasing unemployment only increases the need for healthcare for the uninsured.”

I don’t think Congress could come up with an answer even that smart.

Of course, if that is his answer, then the obvious follow-up question is:

“But the problem is that these high unemployment numbers mean both more uninsured and lower tax receipts, which makes it even harder to pay for your program. Wouldn’t it be better to help these people get jobs and reduce the number of uninsured that way?”

Obama has no answer to the follow-up.

Racism In America Up By 110%

Since January 27, racism in America is up by 110%

Ok, that’s obviously ridiculous, but that’s what former President Jimmy Carter (D-USA) and the MSM would have you believe.

These people would like you to believe that all opposition to President Barack Obama (D-USA) is based upon racism.

Well, on January 27, 2009, Obama’s disapproval rating stood at 20%. It’s now at 41.9%. That’s an increase of 110% in less than 8 months. That means America is creating over a quarter of a million new racists every day!

Please.

Let’s get real. Some of us, in fact, most of us, dislike Obama because of his policies, and we don’t give a damn how much melanin he has in his skin. He’s an awful President, and he’d be an awful President if he was an old white guy or a young white woman or a middle aged Hispanic or a youthful looking Oriental Asian.

Data for my numbers can be found here.

UPDATE: Fixed my poor wording for those of Asian descent. Thanks, Roy.

17 September, 2009

Size Matters; So Do Lies

I’m stealing this title from Nate Silver’s laughable post at FiveThirtyEight.com.

Basically, Nate goes on a tirade about “a real whopper”. A “lie” told about the size of the “not particularly large rally”.

Now, I want to say that Nate does a lot of poll analysis and number crunching on his site. And it’s first rate. Possibly the best analysis of such that you can find on the web.

His other posts and posts by other authors on the site are generally not worth the time it takes to read them, but I’m sure some think the same of my posts as well.

But here he discards his usual numerical analysis and speculates on the size of the crowd.

But yesterday, someone told a real whopper. ABC News, citing the DC fire department, reported that between 60,000 and 70,000 people had attended the tea party rally at the Capitol. By the time this figure reached Michelle Malkin, however, it had been blown up to 2,000,000. There is a big difference, obviously, between 70,000 and 2,000,000. That's not a twofold or threefold exaggeration -- it's roughly a thirtyfold exaggeration.
The way this false estimate came into being is relatively simple: Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, lied, claiming that ABC News had reported numbers of between 1.0 and 1.5 million when they never did anything of the sort. A few tweets later, the numbers had been exaggerated still further to 2 million. Kibbe wasn't "in error", as Malkin gently puts it. He lied. He did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long.
Malkin, who to her credit later corrected the error, frets that it might be used to by liberals to "discredit the undeniably massive turnout". She's right to be worried -- it absolutely will be used that way. If you don't want to be discredited, then don't, as Kibbe did, tell a ridiculous (and easily disprovable) lie.

Here’s the problem. There’s actually two points of contention here. Did ABC actually say 2 million? And what was the real size? Nate claims that Kibbe told a ridiculous and easily disprovable lie. Nate’s trying to make you think he’s lying about the size, when all he “lied” about was where he got the information. Bad form, Nate.

But he does make a rather ridiculous claim.

The reason is that if there had in fact been 2 million protesters in Washington yesterday, there would have been no need to lie about it -- the magnitude of the protests would have been self-evident. I was in Washington for the inauguration, an event at which there really were almost 2 million people present -- and let me tell you, it was a Holy Mess

Self-evident. This is a code phrase in an argument. I’ve been a victim of using it myself. When someone uses it, it means that they actually don’t have any evidence for their claim and expect you to take it on faith.

Instead, Nate continues to repeat the real lie here, ABC’s. The claim that there were only 60-70,000 people there.

This was not a small rally. It was also not, in comparison with something like the 2006 pro-immigration protests, a particularly large rally. It was a business-as-usual sort of rally. Mock the protesters at your peril: business as usual suddenly isn't so good for Democrats these days, and the sentiments of the 70,000 people who marched on Washington surely mirror those of millions more sitting at home. They were done a disservice by being represented by a liar like Kibbe.

Since Nate couldn’t be bothered to do the numerical analysis that’s made him so famous, other people have picked up the baton.

Here’s a few links for you, Nate.

More 9/12 Crowd Data: Yeah, It Was Big

  • The estimate widely used in the legacy media is not from an authoritative source, and it isn’t even consistent with itself: “full back to 3rd Street” is around 250,000 by Park Sevice methods, not a quarter of that.
  • Many estimates, using different assumptions and different methods, arrived at numbers well into the hundreds of thousands.
  • This is clearly consistent with the panoramic photo that we can source reliably.
  • With everything above, and with several more estimates, I don’t think there is a plausible argument for any total attendance figure much less that 500,000 to 600,000. That is, nearly ten times the reported attendance.

Here’s a link to the photo that Charles mentions.

March on Washington: How Big Was the Crowd?

Just for comparison, we’ve got the Obama inauguration, which was originally estimated at 2 million and then revised down to about 850,000. Popular Science got GeoEye to take a satellite photo.

Oops. Nate lied about the size of the inaugural crowd too, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

How many people were at the big 9/12 “Tea Party” protest? [UPDATED]

Still, even at our worst case of 522,000 souls, that's way bigger than what was reported

An Impression Of The Protest

I think it’s already very clear, however, that “hundreds of thousands” is the correct description of the size of the 9/12/09 DC protest.

9/12 March Crowd Size

So, my specific answer is 350,000. However, I believe the precise number is somewhat unimportant - what is important is the truthful and accurate reporting; it is clear to me that the real count is "hundreds of thousands". I do not see how any responsible reporter could suggest that there were only "tens of thousands" at the event - let alone the "thousands" that the NYT and AP had in their headlines.

Note that his estimate is the lowest of any I’ve seen, so he blasts the people saying 1.5 to 2 million as well:

Perhaps these people just made a mistake - they heard one person cite a number and then it got mistranslated and misattributed, etc. but if that is the case, they should recognize the problem now and issue a correction and an apology. Being off by 10, 20, even 50% is one thing, but it appears that both the media and FreedomWorks were off by 4-5 fold. That is simply irresponsible reporting.

The Real Number of Protesters - Zac Moilanen

With that, we get 1,782,760 estimated protestors marched in the 9-12 Project.

In conclusion, this number surprised me. I knew there were a lot of people, but researching this, looking at the map, and actually crunching the numbers, it makes sense. I’m not sure all of these marchers stayed at the Capitol, the field surrounding it, or even the mall. But that’s not what we have aerial footage of. Because of this time-lapse street cam, it’s easy to see that in the course of around two hours almost two million people marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building.

Now, most of these links are people who support the movement, and they have reason to be optimistic in their calculations. However, you can find some libs out there too, and even they come up with around 250,000, and they have reason to be pessimistic in their calculations.

My speculation after reading all of the above (and I could do some math too, but I’m too lazy) is that it’s between 500,000 and about 1.2 million. Probably closer to the high side than the low side.

Now let’s go back to that final quote from Nate:

This was not a small rally. It was also not, in comparison with something like the 2006 pro-immigration protests, a particularly large rally. It was a business-as-usual sort of rally. Mock the protesters at your peril: business as usual suddenly isn't so good for Democrats these days, and the sentiments of the 70,000 people who marched on Washington surely mirror those of millions more sitting at home. They were done a disservice by being represented by a liar like Kibbe.

Nate, you’re flat wrong. I won’t call you a liar, even though your own lie is easily disprovable, and Kibbe’s numbers aren’t nearly as wrong as yours. In fact, some people have come up with numbers very similar to this man you repeatedly called a liar.

You owe him an apology and your readers a better post.

And Now The House Defunds ACORN

Hat Tip: BigGovernment.Com

Rep. Darrell Issa  (R-CA) offered the Defund-ACORN bill to the Student Loans bill.  The House vote convincingly to cut ALL federal funds to ACORN.

Vote: 345 to 75.  Complete results here.

Developing…

It’s worth pointing out that this amendment is attached to a different bill than the one that the Senate voted on.

This means that the Senate will yet have to vote on this bill, and the House will have to yet vote on the Senate bill.

And then there’s potential Conference Committees, where either or both of these amendments could conveniently disappear.

And then the President would have to sign one or both of these bills as well.

We’re a long way from calling this a success.

American Pie 2009

A long, long time ago…

I can still remember how
That the news helped me relax.
And I knew if I had to choose,
That I could watch the news,
And maybe I’d learn the facts.

But this summer made me shiver
With every paper I would quiver
No news on my doorstep;
Of ACORN or Van Jones missteps.

I can’t remember if I cried
When I saw what they tried to hide;
But something touched me deep inside
The year that old news died.

So bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck.

Did you write about drama,
And do you have faith in Obama,
When the ‘prompter speaks to thee?
Do you believe in NBC,
Can the truth really set you free,
And can you teach me of what I should see?

Well, we know that you’re in love with him
’cause we saw you bowin’ on a whim
You all showed us the news
Man I dig those reds and blues.

I was a lonely mid-aged news junkie
With an ergo keyboard and wifi speed
But I knew TV was not for me
The year that old news died.

I started singin’,
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck.

Now with internet we’re on our own.
And news moves fast in the YouTube zone,
But that’s not how it used to be.
The Grey Lady wrote for the king and all
In a “scoop” they borrowed from Hardball
With noses that looked down on us all.

Oh, and while writers were looking down,
The Grey Lady lost her news crown.
The Senate was adjourned;
No funding was returned.
And while Obama read Alinsky,
The Post kept his rep orderly
And Rush shouted “why can’t you see?”
The year that old news died.

We were singin’
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck.

Town hall meetings in a summer sweater.
While newsies warned us all of hot weather,
3k miles from coast to coast.
Size of gov’t riled us the most.
Pelosi said we are all compost
With the Grey Lady silent as a ghost

Now the networks continued to fail
While Hannah told her special tale
We all looked to Gibson,
Oh, but ACORN was news to him!
When the ACORN Prez tried to take the field;
James and Hannah refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed
The year that old news died?

We started singing,
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck.

Oh, and there we were all in one place,
Tea partiers come to make their case
We called on Gibson once again
So come now: Chuck be nimble, Chuck be quick!
Chuck’s in Maine ignoring those hicks
Cause ignorance is the devil’s friend.

Oh, as I heard this supposed sage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
Someone would surely tell
And break Obama’s spell
But while we all waited into the night
For the real numbers of our might,
Obama was laughing with delight
The year that old news died.

He was singing,
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck

I read a girl who they call absurd
And the Times on her book has no word
But she just smiled and blew HotAir.
I went to the sacred station
I’d  once watched news of our nation,
And the Wolf there said that FoxNews wasn’t Fair.

And on the webs: YouTubers ruled,
The lib’rals cried, and anchors were schooled.
But not a word was spoken;
Of crowds or ACORN broken.
And the three we once trusted most:
Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather the host,
They caught a fast train for the coast
The year that old news died.

And they were singing.
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck

They were singing.
Bye-bye Miss American Pie
Drove my ‘puter to Drudge Report,
Since the Times was bone dry.
And them good old boys were linking Breitbart and Beck
Singin’, D.C. is as corrupt as heck.
D.C. is as corrupt as heck

Today Is Constitution Day

222 years ago today, the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed and approved the U.S. Constitution.

222 years.

Can our Constitution last another 222 years? 222 months? 222 weeks? I’m pretty sure about 222 days, but less sure about any of the others.

Every school child is taught the preamble, and it’s worth quoting one more time:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A great start, but we should all read the rest, and the Amendments. In particular, the President needs to read Article II, Section 2 and 3 to find out what’s within the scope of his job.

I have some interesting quotes coming soon from our Founding Fathers (yes, I’m not using the politically correct “Founders”) regarding the origins of the Constitution. You’ll want to see these, as they’ll really tell you what the Constitution is all about and you’ll see how much of the original intent has been lost over the years, by both Republicans and Democrats.

 

UPDATE: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has written an excellent article about the Constitution as well.

16 September, 2009

Intemperate Thought of the Day #9

At least after watching all these videos, I now know what a community organizer does.

But don’t miss this post. This doesn’t have anything to do with the videos and may be the most important post on the site.

To start this, we are publishing an internal quasi-employee manual Big Government has obtained. Given to all ACORN employees, it isn’t your normal manual. It doesn’t discuss things like sick leave or vacation time, but, rather, as the title states, the “Principles and Foundations of ACORN.” How an organization communicates with the public is important. How it communicates to its own employees, however, provides a richer understanding of an organization’s nature.

The whole thing is worth a read. I draw your attention to just one sentence (ACORN emphasizes it with italics):

ACORN’s lifeblood is conflicts with targets outside the organization.

Think about that. ACORN’s lifeblood isn’t empowering disadvantaged communities nor lifting people out of poverty. It isn’t concerned about increasing economic growth to improve the lives of its members. It’s lifeblood is conflict. Conflict with targets. It actually thinks of the world outside itself as targets.

ACORN Suspends Operations, Plans Internal Audit

The Washington Times is reporting:

ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees "indefensible," has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.

ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement that she was "ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN's service programs until completion of an independent review."

Jon Stewart asks MSM: Where The Hell Were You?

Unbelievably funny.

Best line: “I’m a fake journalist and I’m embarrassed these guys scooped me.”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Healthcare Protests

Intemperate Thought of the Day #8

We need illegal immigrants to help Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe in their undercover ACORN investigation.

Why illegal immigrants? Because investigative journalism is now apparently a job that Americans won’t do.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #7

Ok, this one I’m stealing from Frank Warner.

While Democrats Rule, 20 things the press won’t report on:

* The failure of Congress leaders to pay their taxes.

* Congress leaders accepting illegal campaign contributions.

* White House pressuring scientists to exaggerate global warming findings.

* White House claiming health care costs are going down when they are going up.

* White House claiming the deficit is not increasing when it is.

* The FBI wiretapping of Americans for purely political reasons.

* The firing of federal inspector generals for purely political reasons.

* The firing of U.S. attorneys for purely political reasons.

* The distorting of NSA, CIA, FBI or Homeland Security intelligence to serve a predetermined conclusion.

* The abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers and contractors (unless Congress decides to surrender Afghanistan).

* Congress leaders accepting kickbacks from General Motors or Chrysler officials in exchange for laws giving GM or Chrysler an unfair advantage over other automakers.

* The continued paying of Congress leaders by officials of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in exchange for favorable regulations.

* The refusal by the Justice Department to prosecute Democrats who discourage non-Democrats from voting.

* The refusal by the Justice Department to prosecute Democrats who encourage voting by dead, fictitious or otherwise unqualified people.

* Subjecting Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors to poor health care at military hospitals.

* The failure of “stimulus” spending to create the jobs the administration projected.

* New health care regulations discouraging the number of breakthroughs in drugs and medical procedures.

* The relaxing of banking regulations after the White House and Congress promised tighter banking regulations.

* The failure of alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

* A Democratic burglary of a Republican campaign headquarters.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #6

Have Libs ever heard of the story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”?

The moral of the story is:

There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.

If you keep claiming racism every time there is criticism of President Barack Obama (D-USA), no one’s going to care if and when it actually happens.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #5

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY28) has released new guidelines for members and their conduct on the floor and in committees.

Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:

• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”

Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:

• call the president a “liar.”
• call the president a “hypocrite.”
• describe the president’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the president has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the president as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the president’s part.”

For the first time in my life, I wish I was a Congressman, so I could request time on the floor and say every one of these things about the President and the majority party.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #4

James Taranto, writing for the online version of the Wall Street Journal (I have no idea whether it’s in the print version) wonders:

How come Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart keep scooping the New York Times?

When I read that, I remembered reading All the President’s Men (one of the two best books on Watergate—the other is Silent Coup by Colodny and Gettlin) by Woodward and Bernstein. The interesting thing about that book is that not only do you learn a lot about the Watergate scandal and how sleazy Washington is, but you also learn how sleazy the news media is. And how they’ll stop at nothing to avoid being scooped or to get the scoop themselves.

Today’s Washington Post and New York Times are scooped almost daily.

And they don’t seem to care…

Intemperate Thought of the Day #3

The House of Representatives officially rebuked Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC02) for shouting out “You Lie!” to President Barack Obama (D-USA) during his speech last week. The vote was mostly on party lines.

Let’s review:

Republican Joe Wilson says “You Lie!” to the President from the House floor and gets rebuked.

Democrat Pete Stark (D-CA13) says “You gonna tell us lies like you’re telling us today?” and “President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq” from the House floor and gets nothing.

Democrat Pete Stark says “I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. I wouldn’t waste the urine.” to one of his constituents and gets nothing.

Democrat Charlie Rangel (D-NY15) continues to stay one step ahead of the law with his ongoing tax problems and gets to keep his Chairmanship of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee.

Those are just a few examples off the top of my head.

Hypocrisy thy name is Pelosi.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #2

ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, of Sarah Palin interview fame, “doesn’t even know about” the ACORN scandal videos that have been flying across the web the last few days.

I bet Sarah Palin could clue him in.

Intemperate Thought of the Day #1

It’s been a little while since I blogged, but I have several thoughts running through my mind today.

Former President Jimmy Carter (D-USA) says that when Representative Joe Wilson’s (R-SC02) said “You Lie!” during President Barack Obama’s (D-USA) speech the other night that his comments were ‘based on racism’.

Well, I doubt that, but I’m certain that Carter’s comments are based on stupidity.

Mickey Kaus is right. Libs need to stop trotting out Jimmy when they need an attack dog. The man’s a moron. Conservatives don’t respect anything he says. I suspect most independents feel the same way.

11 September, 2009

It’s 12:16 PM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

12:16 PM

US airspace is clear of aircraft except for military and emergency flights. Only a few transoceanic flights are still landing in Canada.

Where were you?

2,996 souls were lost on that day, including 343 of New York's Bravest and New York's Finest who gave their lives trying to save others.

Oh, where was I during all of this? In a meeting. No one bothered to interrupt the meeting to mention what was happening. After the meeting, I walked out to my car, somehow managing not to talk to a single person. I got in the car and drove home for lunch, without turning on the radio. I got home, made myself a sandwich, sat down at about 12:05 PM, turned on the TV and discovered that the world had changed while I wasn't looking. Rudy Giuliani has said it best, many times (paraphrasing). "We learned on September 11, 2001 that we were at war. The other side had known they were at war for quite some time, but we didn't know it."

There's a very poignant picture on the NY Times website from 9/11/2006, with the caption "The Hole in the City's Heart"

Where were you?

On September 12, we all promised ourselves that we'd never forget the events of that day. Have you kept that promise?

The times and events listed here are a very small excerpt of what's available at the Cooperative Research History Commons. The whole thing is well worth a read, if you have the time (it's very long).

Where were you?

There's an excellent Flash video tribute here. Please be patient. It's rather large and the server appears to be somewhat underpowered. It'll take a while to load. But it's well worth the wait.

"Freedom and Fear are at War." - U.S. President George W. Bush

"This is a battle with only one outcome: our victory, not theirs." - UK Prime Minister Tony Blair

It’s 10:28 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

10:28 AM

The World Trade Center’s North Tower collapses. It was hit by Flight 11 at 8:46, 102 minutes earlier.

It’s 10:06 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

10:06 AM

United Airlines Flight 93 crashes into an empty field just north of the Somerset County Airport, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, 124 miles or 15 minutes from Washington, D.C.

It’s 9:59 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

9:59 AM

The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. It was hit by Flight 175 at 9:03 A.M., 57 minutes earlier.

It's 9:57 AM September 11, 2001 - Where Are You?

9:57 AM

Two groups of passengers (one containing Tom Burnett who has been on the phone with his wife, and one containing Todd Beamer who has been on the phone with a Verizon representative) apparently working independently attempt to to regain control of United Airlines Flight 93. Todd Beamer leaves his phone connected and at about this time is heard to say "Let's Roll."

It’s 9:45 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

9:45 AM

Ben Sliney, FAA’s National Operations Manager, orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down. All flights at US airports are stopped. Around 3,950 flights are still in the air. Sliney makes the decision without consulting FAA head Jane Garvey, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, or other bosses, but they quickly approve his actions. It’s Sliney’s first day on the job.

My sister-in-law is stranded in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (yes, I know...not a terribly bad place to be stranded, all things considered) after her flight lands safely there, but all outbound flights are canceled.

It’s 9:37 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

9:37 AM

American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. Approximately 125 people on the ground are later determined killed or missing.

It’s 9:03 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

9:03 AM

United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center (Tower Two). Seismic records pinpoint the time at six seconds before 9:03 a.m. (rounded to 9:03 a.m.).

It’s 8:46 AM September 11, 2001 – Where Are You?

I’ve been requested to do this again.

8:46 AM

American Airlines Flight 11 Hits the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Two minutes later CNN would break off a commercial with live news on this. Carol Lin says, “This just in. You are looking at ... obviously a very disturbing live shot there—that is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.” CNN then switches to Sean Murtagh, the network’s vice president of finance, who says in a live telephone interview, “I just witnessed a plane that appeared to be cruising at a slightly lower than normal altitude over New York City. And it appears to have crashed into—I don’t know which tower it is—but it hit directly in the middle of one of the World Trade Center towers. It was a jet, maybe a two-engine jet, maybe a 737 ... a large passenger commercial jet ... It was teetering back and forth, wing-tip to wing-tip, and it looks like it has crashed into—probably, twenty stories from the top of the World Trade Center—maybe the eightieth to eighty-fifth floor. There is smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center.”

Video (requires Windows Media Player)

14 July, 2009

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama’s energy cap-and-tax plan.

Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK), has a beautiful op-ed in the Washington Post today.

It does two things.

  • Slaps all those people in the face that thought Sarah Palin was just going to “go away”.
  • Shows what’s wrong with the President’s cap-and-trade bill.

I love this part:

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

As they say, read the whole thing.