Back to Basics

It’s rare to come across a newspaper editorial in which virtually every assertion is false, but is absurdly titled “Face Facts.”

Since 1988 the movement behind the global warming fraud has labored long and hard to mislead the citizens of the world to believe what is surely the greatest “science” hoax ever perpetrated.

However, when the leak of emails between the handful of climate scientists who conjured up the deliberately misleading data the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used hit the Internet, the November 2009 event was quickly dubbed “Climategate.” In one exchange, they worried over the fact that, since the late 1990s, the Earth was demonstrably getting cooler.

It is hard to believe that any journalist could not know about Climategate or the subsequent failure of the IPCC’s Copenhagen climate conference that even the President attended as the entire hoax came unraveled.

“The wildfires in Russia, the floods in Pakistan and the record heat this summer in New Jersey have one thing in common: They are exactly the kind of symptoms scientists predicted we’d experience as global warming occurs.”

Only there is no global warming. The Earth has been in a decade-old cooling cycle.

Which scientists are being cited? What kind of scientists? The current IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri began his career in an Indian diesel-locomotive factory. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that, “As an academic, he staunchly defended his country’s right to burn coal.”

And what do isolated natural events that occur in a brief time span have to do with alleged climate trends that can only be measured in centuries? Did the editorial writer ever hear of the Medieval Warm Period or of the Little Ice Age that followed it? Both were spread over centuries, not a single summer.

“Glaciers that have been stable for centuries are now melting at an alarming rate.” No, they’re not. Indeed, many are melting less as the result of the current cooling cycle. The cooling is due to lower solar activity; the result of a significant reduction in solar storms that are commonly called sunspots. This is the stuff they teach in Meteorology 101.

“Hurricanes are becoming more severe as ocean temperatures rise.” You mean like the Category 4 Hurricane named Earl that in a matter of two or three days became a Category 1 and then fizzled out as a tropical storm? The hurricane named Katrina was an anomaly, a category 5, and they don’t occur that often. Consider the relatively tame hurricane seasons we’ve had since then.

“A rational person would look at this evidence and listen to the scientists who are warning of catastrophic impacts over the next few decades, such as coastal flooding and the collapse of rain-fed agriculture in many regions, especially Africa.”

It’s too bad the writer of this editorial didn’t display enough rationality to even question what the unnamed “scientists” were saying; much in the same way Al Gore has been telling everyone the same thing only to be revealed as a charlatan seeking to enrich himself from hoped-for climate legislation.

Every year for the past few years, I’ve noted the annual Al Sharpton Suck-Up — the annual grievance-mongering convention held by the race hustler’s non-profit “National Action Network.” It’s a purported grass-roots activist network that only seems to surface in the news once a year when Democrat leaders — and at least one RNC chairman — show up to the convention to pay homage and kiss Sharpton’s ring.

Biggest non-shocker of the year: The “National Action Network” is a fiscal mess, delinquent on taxes, and has run afoul of campaign finance laws. The NY Post reports:

An accounting firm hired by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network found the civil-rights group in such financial disarray that it flunked its record-keeping — and may not even survive, The Post has learned.

The scathing critique was spelled out in a hard-hitting internal audit of NAN’s books, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

“The organization has suffered recurring decreases in net assets — and has been dependent upon advances from related parties and the nonpayment of payroll tax obligations — to maintain continuity,” the firm KBL concluded in an April 2 audit of NAN’s 2008 financial records, the most recent available.

The audit, which was submitted to NAN’s board of directors, warned, “These circumstances create substantial doubt about the organization’s ability to continue.”

KBL said it was “unable to form an opinion” on the accuracy of NAN’s financial figures “because of inadequacies in the organization’s accounting records.”

In 2008, federal prosecutors decided to drop a criminal probe into the finances of Sharpton and NAN. But Sharpton — who also has a lucrative syndicated radio show and a speech-making and consulting business — agreed to pay back more than $2 million in overdue personal and NAN taxes.

The audit said NAN still owed $1.348 million in delinquent city, state and federal taxes and penalties at the end of 2008. The IRS has filed dozens of liens against NAN over the past decade, including one as recently as April of this year.

Last year, the Federal Elections Commission slapped Sharpton with $285,000 fine, in part for illegally using NAN funds to cover the costs of his 2004 presidential campaign.

Thanks to Sharpton’s race shield, NAN has engaged in financial monkey business for years with impunity.

Yes, monkey business. Sue me.

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Heh. JWF on Sharpton’s money troubles: “This ought to qualify him as a financial adviser to his pal Obama.”

Last night Obama delivered a speech about a war that he exploited for political advantage during the election, and ignored the rest of the time. A war that he tried to sabotage as a Senator, and neglected once in the White House. Where Bush conducted constant conferences with commanders in the field, Obama has let the clashing egos of former Clinton Administration staffers, and a few imported radicals, determine how the war will be conducted. Of all the charges leveled at Bush over the war, he could never be accused of just not giving a damn. Yet that is exactly the case with Obama. He just doesn’t give a damn.

While US soldiers are still dying in Iraq, Obama did his best to take credit for ending combat operations. And used his speech as a opportunity to show off his new Oval Office decor. The level of tone deafness involved in using a wartime speech to show off your new office furnishings, while most Americans are cutting back is completely incomprehensible. It shows a profound contempt for both topic and audience, and a self-involvement that borders on the pathological. It’s as if Obama only managed to interrupt his countless rounds of golf and his vacations, just to put on his best sad face and show off his new rug.

Obama has never had much patience for doing the hard work of governing the country. Instead he shuttled from country to country, golf course to golf course, and resort to resort– while shifting the real work onto congress and his aides, who shifted it onto their aides. What America got was the unlimited power fantasies of immature radicals with no responsibility given flesh in legislation that hardly anyone in the majority party seemed to even bother to read. Meanwhile, having confused his job with that of a King or a Pope, Barry dispensed his wisdom on every random topic from police procedures in Massachusetts to sports picks in the NBA and the NFL. It was as if Obama did not understand that he had won the right to do a very difficult and unpopular job. Instead like the contestant who is picked out of the audience at a game show, he only seemed to understand that he was suddenly very rich and famous.

The Obama Administration hopelessly blurred the lines between Reality television and politics, giving us a self-indulgent child in the Oval Office, who is always eager to pose for photos and be fawned upon, but does not understand that he has responsibilities, rather than unchecked powers. The difference between Barack Obama and Levi Johnston, is not in intelligence or ethics, it’s in marketability. Obama was the ultimate marketable candidate. And the equivalent of the economies of some small countries were spent marketing the hell out of him. But how do you market failure? And what do you tell customers when the product they bought turns out to have nothing inside?

Automatic Data Processing is a payroll giant that cuts checks to employees. The company publishes a national employment report with Macroeconomic Advisers. Its latest stats show that the nation lost 10,000 private sector jobs last month. It’s not what economists expected. Via the WSJ:

Economists had expected ADP to report a jobs gain of 17,000 in August. The estimated change in employment for July was revised to a gain of 37,000 from an increase of 42,000 first reported. The ADP survey tallies only private-sector jobs, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ nonfarm payroll data, to be released Friday, include government workers. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expect that continued layoffs of government workers hired temporarily for the Census will mean a drop of 110,000 jobs from total August nonfarm payrolls. Among those economists forecasting private-sector jobs within the BLS data, the median projection is for a gain of just 28,000.

The ADP number may cause some forecasters to change their Friday expectations. The August unemployment rate is projected to edge up to 9.6% from 9.5% in July.

The reasons for weak job growth? The WSJ cites “market volatility, regulatory uncertainty and weak demand has curtailed economic growth” and “business concerns on regulations, taxes and future health-care costs, plus job mismatch,” and lack of demand.

A separate jobs report by Challenger is getting positive spin: “Announced U.S. Job Cuts Fell 55% From Year Ago.” But: “While companies are cutting fewer workers from payrolls, larger job gains are needed to bolster consumer spending and sustain the recovery. Waning demand and concern over the economic outlook are causing companies and policy makers to cut their forecasts for growth.”

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Related: Results from an economists’ survey show that most favor extension of the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. And this:

“Fully three-quarters of economists said Congress shouldn’t enact another stimulus package to jumpstart growth.”

Departing Obama economic adviser Christine Romer digs in: White House economist calls for more stimulus.

Not only did a lot of people show up at the Lincoln Memorial and around the reflecting pool on Saturday, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s famed “I have a dream speech”, but the mainstream media drew criticism for reporting the obvious. They were mostly white.

Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention in the weeks leading up to the event, but I assumed Glenn Beck was going to use the platform to call attention to the key issues with which the nation is struggling and which will influence the outcome of the forthcoming November midterm elections. Obviously I was wrong.

I have been to an evangelical tent meeting. I actually met the late Oral Roberts long ago in Columbus, Georgia where he invited me to attend. I can still recall the fervor of that evening and I was reminded of it while watching Beck.

There was a lot of talk of God, but I don’t recall that Dr. King, a preacher of astonishing power, was preaching Christ Jesus that day forty-seven years ago. King focused on the problem that had been troubling the soul of America since the days of the Revolution, the days of the Civil War, the Reconstruction, and the hundred years that had passed since then.

I knew what Dr. King was talking about. I had spent enough years in the South to know what it was like to see Whites Only drinking fountains, a separate room at the bus station where blacks had to wait, and all the other wretched reminders of Jim Crow. In time I even met Dr. King after he gave a speech at Drew University in New Jersey.

I was covering the event as a freelance journalist for a black newspaper and Dr. King was greatly amused that the newspaper didn’t mind a bit that a white reporter would write the story. Being cheeky, I told him that greenbacks can be spent by white and black alike. He laughed, we shook hands, and he moved into history.

I am sure that Glenn Beck is sincere about his faith, but I can understand why even a charlatan like Rev. Al Sharpton was unhappy that the day and the place had been usurped by a wannabe preacher who was a television personality.

To be candid, I have a real problem when I occasionally and briefly watch Glenn Beck when he does his show each evening on Fox News. I know he has a huge following and I know he has exposed a lot of bad people in high office, but I cannot muster the same confidence I do when others address the same topics. Veering back and forth between outrage and tears, I find him creepy.

I think the Beck-a-Palooza that took place on Saturday will fade quickly from public memory and I think it should.

This should be a doozy. Stay tuned for updates.

It begins at 10am Eastern. You can watch live on CSPAN here.

Latest Mad Maxine Waters scandal coverage: LATimes looks at Waters’ grandson and chief of staff, Mikael Moore, and at the sordid record of OneUnited bank and its chairman, Kevin Cohee.

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10:04am Eastern. Still waiting for Mad Maxine’s arrival. Staffer tells press that she will be presenting a Powerpoint slide presentation.

Maybe someone could slip this into the slide show, via Hyscience:

10:29am Eastern. Waters playing up the “increasing minority access” card that she emphasized on Al Sharpton’s radio show.

Waters: “No one should question my devotion to public service.”

Flashback from my column last week:

On the Reverend Al Sharpton’s national radio show on Tuesday afternoon, Waters played the persecuted champion of Urban America to perfection. She claimed the meeting was arranged on behalf of all black banks in the country. Sympathizers are now framing the matter as a threat to “advocacy for black businesses” and whispering loudly about a “racial profiling” campaign against Waters, her embattled colleague Rep. Charlie Rangel, and other ethically-challenged members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But congressional investigators concluded that “OneUnited’s exclusive representation at the meeting” was the “cause for concern,” not Waters’ noble-sounding social justice agenda. Stonewalling by OneUnited top officials Robert Cooper and Kevin Cohee exacerbated the Office of Congressional Ethics’ concern. As did fellow Democrat Rep. Barney Frank’s ignored warning to Waters to “stay out of” the matter.

In her defense, Rep. Waters pooh-poohs the OneUnited Bank rescue as a pittance compared to the rest of the monstrous TARP bailout. She’d have a teensy more credibility on the fiscal responsibility front if she had opposed TARP from the start, instead of playing an instrumental role in throwing the Congressional Black Caucus’s full support behind it.

As is usually the case in Washington, these alleged violations dwarf the wheeling and dealing Rep. Waters has continued to broker as an entrenched incumbent and senior member of the House Financial Services Committee. The so-called financial “reform” bill law she helped shepherd is stuffed with color-coded-based mandates and favoritism. From “We Shall Overcome” to “Get Mine:” Ah, racial progress.

Back at the press conference, Waters takes a break to admonish photographers for hurting her eyes, then introduces grandson Mikael Moore to present slideshow.

Moore’s closing refrain: “No benefit. No improper action. No failure to disclose. No case.”

Waters goes back to defending creation of Office of Minority and Women Inclusion carveouts and color-coded preferences in financial reform bill.

11:07am Waters: “I won’t cut a deal.”

Waters attacks ethics panel workings, suggests office shouldn’t be allowed to issue findings before an election.

Reporter questions Waters’ timeline on discussions with Barney Frank. Waters stumbles, says her staff is still looking into it and says maybe Frank’s office will help her out.

Reporter asks Waters if her husband still owns OneUnited shares. “Yes, no one wants to buy them.”

11:26am Eastern. Reporter hones in on question of why no other member banks of National Banking Association except for OneUnited met with Treasury. Waters plays dumb.

My column today hits again on Maxine Waters’ brewing ethics scandal. Her supporters are ratcheting up the victim-card rhetoric. She appeared on the race-hustling Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show yesterday to stoke the fires and re-cast the ethics probe as an attempt to squelch advocacy on behalf of all black businesses. Another guest bemoaned the House Ethics panel’s “racial profiling” of Congressional Black Caucus members. Even liberal WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus is tired of the House “culture of entitlement.” And the culture of corruption.

More on the case from Politico here.

In related minority bank bailout news, here’s a follow-up on the Shorebank bailout (background here). Yesterday, Chicago Breaking News reported on the bank’s deepening financial hole: “ShoreBank’s capital deficiency worsened in the second quarter, according to newly submitted financial results to regulators, and the Chicago-based lender now needs to raise at least $190 million just to meet targets set out in March by state and U.S. banking regulators. The South Side bank has arranged a capital infusion of about $150 million from Wall Street investment firms, big banks, insurance companies and philanthropic groups. It’s hoping that private investment will then make it eligible for about $75 million in bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury Department…About a quarter of its loans continue to be seriously delinquent. ShoreBank declined to comment.”

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Mad Maxine’s minority fat-cat bankers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters of California is notorious for her high-decibel rants against corporate executives and career exploitation of identity politics. Class warfare and racial division are her two-decade-long stock and trade. She would normally be first in line (and in front of the cameras) to lambaste the very kind of Porsche-driving, luxury beach house-partying bank officials who begged her for a government handout. If they were white, that is.

But the minority fat cats who lobbied her during the fall 2008 financial meltdown represented the black-owned OneUnited Bank. They were her longtime friends, donors, and fund-raisers. Her husband was an investor in one of the banks that merged into One United. He later served on the company’s board of directors. Both Woman of the People Waters and her hubby have owned six-figure sums of OneUnited stock at various times over the last six years. Mr. Waters remained a OneUnited stockholder at the time Waters went to bat for the company. However, that indelible conflict-of-interest odor didn’t stop Waters from intervening to arrange a high-powered meeting between OneUnited and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and 20 of his minions, who engineered a special federal rescue of the teetering company behind closed doors.

The taxpayer price tag of this textbook case of cronyism of color? $12 million in TARP bank bailout cash.

On Monday night, the House Ethics Committee filed three charges against Waters for using her influence to gain special favors for a woefully mismanaged financial institution run by politically correct suits living high on the hog.

Stephen Bainbridge and David Klinghoffer have both authored their respective pieces complaining about how the conservative has been taken over by vulgarians like Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Breitbart, and pining for the days of “smart, well-read, articulate leaders” like William F. Buckley, Jr. The problem with most people who turn once living men into stone idols and then worship them, is that they discard the reality of what those men really did, to bemoan the situation today. And when they do that, they discard useful lessons that might serve them in the present.

But the real Buckley was a different man than the icon of conservatism he’s been turned into.

That Buckley had more than a little in common with Andrew Breitbart in his confrontational style, media savvy and casual arrogance. This was the William F. Buckley who ran for mayor of New York, only in order to defeat left wing Republican John Lindsay, who traded in incendiary rhetoric, while cleverly mocking both parties and the entire process while doing it. Tactics that have more than a little in common with Breitbart, Limbaugh and the Tea Party movement.

It is important to understand that Buckley did not play a vital role in the conservative movement by sitting in a drawing room and delivering the occasional bon mot. Instead he grappled with the confrontational tactics of the left, and met them on both intellectual and activism grounds. The complaints about stupid and vulgarian conservatives, is essentially a complaint about activists who are actually relevant because they viscerally confront the other side, as opposed to sitting back and moaning that the whole movement has gone to hell. It is ridiculously easy to fall backward crying, “o tempora, o mores”, it is a little more difficult to actually fight the good fight and try to make a difference.

William F. Buckley has become a stand-in for a ridiculously mannered conservatism, but that was not the Buckley who became such a force, and it was not why he managed to be relevant at a time when the sun seemed to be setting on conservatism. Instead the mannered Buckley is often summoned by conservative snobs and liberals who pine for their romantic idea of an impotent drawing room conservative who never leaves his velvet chair. The real Buckley however was a fighter, he was provocative, controversial and at times outrageous. He understood the value of theatrics and putting on a good show. He knew that as the underdog you have to be confrontational, rather than defeatist.

The idea that Buckley should be the model, rather than Limbaugh or Breitbart, misses the point. All three men were effective in a particular communications medium and era. Breitbart wouldn’t work on the radio, but he understands the internet. Limbaugh wouldn’t make much of a difference in print, but he’s spectacularly effective on the radio. The man has to be matched to the medium. So does the language, the tone and the message.

Poor Charley Rangel.

At age 80 and after 40 years of “Service” in the U.S. House, the gentleman from Harlem has been thrown under the bus by America’s first combined African-American president and mongrel.

In doing this dastardly deed, President Obama remarked that the 13 ethics charges against Rangel are “very troubling” and went on to add that perhaps it was time for Charles Rangel to end his career “with dignity.”

Dignity?

Where and when has Charles Rangel ever been confused with even a smattering of dignity?

Even so, Rangel was owed more respect than Obama was able, or willing, to muster on the occasion of Rangel’s official demise.

Rangel thus joins the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and a host of other friends and family whose dealings with Obama are no longer worth it to The One.

In Rangel’s case, love him or hate him, Charles was always good for laughs, unless you happen to be a liberal suffering anxiety attacks when pondering the November 2 elections, and the prospects that John Boehner will pry the Speaker’s gavel from the cold, wrinkled fingers of a deposed Nancy Pelosi.

A bit of free advice for the president: Do not look now, but there is another mongrel headed your way, this one a female from California. Save some room under that bus for Maxine Watters as she is also headed to trial this September.

President Obama calls African-Americans a ‘mongrel people’

By Sam Youngman – The Hill

NEW YORK — President Obama waded into the national race debate in an unlikely setting and with an unusual choice of words: telling daytime talk show hosts that African-Americans are “sort of a mongrel people.”

The president appeared on ABC’s morning talk show “The View” Thursday, where he talked about the forced resignation of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, his experience with race and his roots.

When asked about his background, which includes a black father and white mother, Obama said of African-Americans: “We are sort of a mongrel people.”
More…

As they say in the military: BOHICA.

On ABC’s This Week today, tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner championed the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and pooh-poohed the economic impact of tax hikes on the highest earners in the country. It’s “responsible” to punish the wealthy, he argued.

Because after spending America into oblivion, Team Obama now wants to show the world that we are “willing as a country now to start to make some progress” on deficit reduction.

On NBC’s Meet The Press, Geithner crusaded for raising the capital gains tax rate.

Then, to show his commitment to fiscal responsibility, he said the administration is going to kick the can again on behemoth fiscal black holes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Speaking on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Geithner says he supports allowing the top capital gains tax rate to revert to 20 percent. It’s 15 percent now.

He also addressed the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage buyers whose bailout has cost taxpayers $145 billion so far. The financial overhaul didn’t address their future.

The Obama administration has said it wants to wait until next year to determine their future.

“I think we’re not going to preserve Fannie and Freddie in anything like the current form,” Geithner said on “Meet the Press.” “We’re going to have to bring fundamental change to that market.”

Investor’s Business Daily makes clear that it is not just the “rich” who will pay for Obama redistributionism:

Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.

But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.

Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.

The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.

But the damage doesn’t stop there.

The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.

Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000.