James Hansen: Cooking the NASA Books for Climate Change

NASA's James Hansen:
Pimping Climate Change on the Public Dime

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Meet James Hansen


In America, and perhaps the world, the pre-eminent source for global weather information is NASA. Blessed with three or more temperature measuring satellites, NASA also collects data from NOAA and foreign sources to get a fix on global temperatures. This convergence of resources is unparalleled , and thus much of the world uses NASA's continually-revised data and graphs to determine weather history and policy.

Which is unfortunate.

Particularly, because NASA simply cannot be trusted to provide scientifically unbiased information on this subject. When not demonstrating incomprehensible incompetence, NASA cooks the books.

Chef-in-chief is Dr. James Hansen.




James Hansen's name should sound familiar. He is the fellow who has been screaming about global warming for over 20 years. He famously claimed that the Bush Administration was trying to silence him (huh?).

He is the detached scientists that went to Congress and testified that oil executives should be tried for crimes against humanity. (Wonder what penal statute that is?)

In real life, as opposed to the imaginary one occupied by the marvelous Dr James Hansen, the man is like an incompetent, unthinking, dogmatic, dolt: systematically reducing NASA to a high school-level science fair.

The latest, as reported by the Daily Tech:

Amateur team finds NASA error similar to one they discovered a year ago.

GISS’ most recent data release originally reported last October as being extraordinarily warm-- a full 0.78C above normal. This would have made it the warmest October on record; a huge increase over the previous month's data.

Those results set off alarm bells with Steve McIntyre and his gang of Baker Street irregulars at Climateaudit.org. They noted that NASA's data didn't agree at all with the satellite temperature record, which showed October to be very mild, continuing the same trend of slight cooling that has persisted since 1998. So they dug a little deeper.

McIntyre, the same man who found errors last year in GISS's US temperature record, quickly noted that most of the temperature increase was coming from Russia. A chart of world temperatures showed that in October, most of Russia, the largest nation on Earth, was not only registering hot, but literally off the scale. Yet anecdotal reports were suggesting that worldwide, October was actually slightly colder than normal. Could there be another error in GISS's data?

An alert reader on McIntyre's blog revealed that there was a very large problem. Looking at the actual readings from individual stations in Russia showed a curious anomaly. The locations had all been assigned the exact temperatures from a month earlier-- the much warmer month of September. Russia cools very rapidly in the fall months, so recycling the data from the earlier month had led to a massive temperature increase."

[ABOVE: Russian October 2008]

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I know what you are thinking. Anybody could have made the same mistake: using September data for October. And you might be right. Because the Wonder Boys and Girls at NASA do it all the time.

The really odd thing is: it is a one-way street.

Because such errors, inexplicably, always show the Earth warming.

Even if it isn't.

The correction forced upon NASA last year was even more dramatic because it altered the entire Global Warming premise (although I am sure you have not heard a word about this in the media).

Going over the NASA historical weather graph, Steve McKintyre noticed some severe and unlikely high temperature spikes. He asked NASA for its mathematical model in an attempt to understand the same. A model is necessary because weather averages and means are based upon widely divergent observations, with sparse reporting on the high seas (thus satellites), Antarctica, and Africa.

NASA refused (of course).

McKintyre reverse engineered the model and discovered NASA had fallen victim to a Y2K bug. The result:

"NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding.

The warmest year on record is now 1934.

1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

Revision of data at NASA is all too common.

It works like this: if the data does not support global warming, it is wrong. So it must be revised. From the Wall Street Journal:

For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming. These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records.....There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction.

That direction would be to make the past colder thus making the current temperature appear warmer. Why have surface temperatures warmed? As Dr Alan Watts has long since proved, because of urbanization and the deterioration of locations of the thermometers. They are located in heat wells, near AC vents or at airports.Ridiculous. The background radiation should be measured in a grassy field of an acre or so, with instrumentation in a vented shad shed at least 4 feet off the ground.

Try to find that anymore.

As for NASA, you would think they would be pleased to have bloggers and casual observers correct their incompetence. Actually, we are kidding you there. Again from the Wall Street Journal:

So far this year NASA has issued at least five press releases that could be described as alarming on the pace of climate change. But the correction of its overestimate of global warming was merely posted on the agency's Web site. James Hansen, NASA's ubiquitous climate scientist and a man who has charged that the Bush Administration is censoring him on global warming, has been unapologetic about NASA's screw up. He claims that global warming skeptics -- "court jesters," he calls them -- are exploiting this incident to "confuse the public about the status of knowledge of global climate change, thus delaying effective action to mitigate climate change.

So having been proved wrong, James Hansen, Weather Clown, insists that what was just disproved is still correct.

Wonderful science there.

Hansen recently made headlines when he travelled to London to testify on behalf of a group of environmentalists who had damaged a coal plant in protest against global warming. Hansen also serves as science advisor to Al Gore.

Hansen is a crank. And he should be fired He is a media whore whose boundless ignorance and prejudice have endangered the economic future of this nation and has destroyed the reputation of NASA.



[ABOVE: Hansen Measuring precipitation?]




by pat
images:
dequalss
vladnews
dvdinmypants
sources:
http://www.dailytech.com/Deja+Vu+All+Over+Again+Blogger+Again+Finds+Error+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article13410.htm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/correct_the_corrections_the_giss_urban_adjustment/
http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+Finds+Y2K+Bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118835472067611877.html?mod=most_emailed_day

Mexico Government Attempts to Intervene in U.S. Courts

Mexico, who allows hundred of thousands of its "immigrants" to illegally cross over into the United States each year, has shown its "compassionate" side. The Mexican government has appealed to the World Court to "take urgent measures" to get the U.S. to stay all executions of Mexicans on Death Row in American jails.

Amazingly, President Bush had already agreed with the World Court back in 2004. The court, which resides at the Hague in the Netherlands, ruled that the trials some 50 Mexicans on Death Row were in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention. It was then that Bush did something that was extraordinary for an American president, he not only deferred to a ruling by a World Court but then issued an executive order to the state of Texas demanding they review the case of a Mexican national on Death Row. 

The World Court had ruled that because the Mexicans on Death Row had not had access to their country's consular officials that the Death Row convictions must be overturned and then each case reviewed. Bush issued his own Executive Order based on the ruling of the World Court.  The matter was taken to the Supreme Court, who, in a majority decision, struck down Bush's executive order and ruled that the Constitution "allows the President to execute the laws, not make them".

The Mexican government now asks the World Court to take "urgent measures" and intercede on behalf of the Mexican nationals on American Death Rows. The World Court, also known as the International Court of Justice, is under the aegis of the United Nations. We weren't sure just what "urgent" measures" the Mexican government was referring to, so we looked up the World Court at its website.

The World Court

Jurisdiction:

The International Court of Justice acts as a world court. The Court has a dual jurisdiction : it decides, in accordance with international law, disputes of a legal nature that are submitted to it by States (jurisdiction in contentious cases); and it gives advisory opinions on legal questions at the request of the organs of the United Nations or specialized agencies authorized to make such a request (advisory jurisdiction). Source - International Court of Justice

The World Court states in its "jurisdiction" section that it gives "advisory" opinions on legal questions. Could a World Court ruling supersede decisions made by United States Courts?

According to the United States Supreme Court, the answer is a resounding "no". The courts, when they struck down Bush's meddling in the cases of the Mexican nationals who were on Death Row, ruled that judgments of the International Court of Justice, as the court is formally known, are not binding on U.S. courts and that Bush's 2005 executive order, that courts in Texas comply anyway does not change that".

Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the World Court, nor the "operative part of the United Nations Charter, creates binding law in the absence of implementing legislation from Congress". He also pointed out that Bush did not have the "power to issue a directive that reaches deep into the heart of the state's police powers and compels state courts to reopen final criminal judgments and set aside neutrally applicable state laws".

Read more of Mexico Demands World Court Intercede in American Judicial System at DBKP.com

Source - McClatchy Washington - Mexico Crime Continues to Surge
Source - Washington Post - Justices Rebuff Bush and World Court

Source - Sign On San Diego - Mexico Asks World Court to stay executions in the U.S.

Image - World Court
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page

Bush Will Resist Defeatist Democrats

In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Five years later, President Bush strongly signaled Wednesday that he won't order troop withdrawals beyond what's already been planned.

The president refuses to "jeopardize the hard-fought gains" of the past year.

As anti-war activists demonstrated around downtown Washington, the president spoke at the Pentagon to mark the anniversary of a war that has cost nearly 4,000 U.S. lives and roughly $500 billion. The president's address was part of a series of events the White House planned around the anniversary and next month's report from the top U.S. figures in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. That report will be the basis for Bush's first troop-level decision in seven months.

"The battle in Iraq has been longer and harder and more costly than we anticipated," Bush said.

What did Bush have to say to those who "still call for retreat"?

Read rest of "Bush Speech: Will Resist Democrats Who Call for Retreat".

by Mondoreb
image: RidesAPaleHorse
Source: Bush Speech: Will Resist Democrats Who Call for Retreat
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.

North American Army Created

U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of USNORTHCOM, signs agreement Feb. 14, 2008, with Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command (USNORTHCOM photo)

What is Presidential Directive 51?

In a story that got almost no media attention, either in Canada, or the United States, the U.S. and Canada signed a military agreement that allowed the armed forces from one nation to cross the border and support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency--even one that doesn't involve a cross-border crisis.

The agreement was not announced by the Harper government in Canada.

The move set up the beginnings of a North American Army. The agreement was not okayed by Congress.

From WorldNetDaily:

The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.

In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest.

"It's kind of a trend when it comes to issues of Canada-U.S. relations and contentious issues like military integration," Stuart Trew, a researcher with the Council of Canadians told the Canwest News Service. "We see that this government is reluctant to disclose information to Canadians that is readily available on American and Mexican websites."

The military Civil Assistance Plan can be seen as a further incremental step being taken toward creating a North American armed forces available to be deployed in domestic North American emergency situation.

The move is sure to add fuel to the fire of those critics who warn of American armed forces involved in domestic matters.

When it was signed, the American by U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM, and by Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command--it was held up as a good thing for forest fires and hurricanes.

"This document is a unique, bilateral military plan to align our respective national military plans to respond quickly to the other nation's requests for military support of civil authorities," Renuart said in a statement published on the USNORTHCOM website.

"In discussing the new bilateral Civil Assistance Plan established by USNORTHCOM and Canada Command, Renuart stressed, "Unity of effort during bilateral support for civil support operations such as floods, forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and effects of a terrorist attack, in order to save lives, prevent human suffering an mitigate damage to property, is of the highest importance, and we need to be able to have forces that are flexible and adaptive to support rapid decision-making in a collaborative environment."

Lt. Gen. Dumais seconded Renuart's sentiments, stating, "The signing of this plan is an important symbol of the already strong working relationship between Canada Command and U.S. Northern Command."

"Our commands were created by our respective governments to respond to the defense and security challenges of the twenty-first century," he stressed, "and we both realize that these and other challenges are best met through cooperation between friends."

In Nov. 2007, WND published a six-part exclusive series, detailing WND's on-site presence during the NORAD-USNORTHCOM Vigilant Shield 2008, an exercise which involved Canada Command as a participant.

In an exclusive interview with WND during Vigilant Shield 2008, Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.

In May 2007, WND reported President Bush, on his own authority, signed National Security Presidential Directive 51, also known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20, authorizing the president to declare a national emergency and take over all functions of federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, without necessarily obtaining the approval of Congress to do so.

It is this last part that is particularly troubling.

In what domestic emergency might it be necessary to deploy troops in the USA without getting Congressional consent?

And why hasn't this received more publicity.

We're all for fighting the War on Terror, at home and abroad.

But, we're also for safeguarding civil liberties at home.

And who knows who the next president shall be?

And now a new North American army.

We're looking into the agreement and Directive 51 and will have more to say on both later.

We're not a conspiracy theorist, by any means, but we have to admit, our first thoughts agree with the way one person put it.

"Kinda scary."

by Mondoreb
Source: North American Army created



As if conspiracy theorists didn't have enough to worry about, now a new North American army is being created
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Boulder To Consider "Impeach Bush" Resolution

Municipal Parking Fees Discussion Tabled



Yet another quaint American town takes up the important municipal business of impeachment, this time Boulder, CO.

Boulder's elected leaders are expected to make time in their busy schedules to decide whether to draft and vote on a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Immediately after the decision is made, city leaders are also expected to consider the important business of calling for another Nobel for Al Gore and negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.

An end to world hunger and peace in our time is tentatively on the city council's agenda for the first week of March.

For the past few weeks, activists have been showing up at Boulder City Council meetings, carrying signs, handing out "impeach" pins and asking City Council members to take up such a resolution. Similar measures have passed in cities across the country, including Detroit and Telluride.

Liz Robinson, one of the organizers of the effort, said people hoping to see impeachment proceedings have given congressional Democrats — who won a majority in the fall of 2006 — plenty of time to act.

But since they haven't, she said, locally elected officials should take up the slack.

"Whether or not it's the city's business directly, like potholes, I feel this affects all of us," she said. "We're the ones who are paying the taxes to support this administration's depredations, especially the war."

Ms. Robinson then paused to make sure no one was reading her brain waves via the fillings in her teeth, then continued.

"Impeachment proceedings would be worth doing even if they only put the last few months of Bush's eight years in office at risk. We need to send a message that this all matters to us, whether it's last-minute or not," she said.

Meanwhile, the citizens of Boulder rolled their eyes at another government program not likely to show results, something for which municipal governments are rightly famous.

The group appears to have some support among the City Council, although it's not clear if it has the five votes it would take to get a resolution drafted and subsequently debated.

City Councilman Macon Cowles wrote in a memo to his colleagues that he'll likely make a motion at the Feb. 19 meeting asking that a resolution be drafted.

"I believe that these citizens deserve a hearing," Cowles wrote to the council.

It wouldn't be the first time the City Council has weighed in on matters far outside the city's physical boundaries. In 2006, the council approved a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and in 2003, the council passed a resolution opposing the invasion.

Cheered by the success their previous grand-standing attention-seeking resolutions have enjoyed, Boulder's elected leaders will then gather for a photo-op and complimentary back-patting.

Deputy Mayor Crystal Gray, who helped draft the 2006 resolution, said Boulder has a tradition of debating big-picture issues.

"I'm a believer that the council should be responsive at the level of local government to issues that the residents raise, just like the Iraq war resolution," she said.

Not everyone on the Boulder City Council pretends to be in Congress.

City Councilman Ken Wilson said he's not on board. During a recent retreat, the City Council agreed to priorities ranging from fixing structural problems in the budget to doing better land-use planning.

"We did not identify national issues as a priority for work by council and staff. We are already seeing scheduling problems trying to address our priorities and the immediate needs of the city," he said. "Hours spent discussing national issues will reduce the amount of time we can spend on city issues."

In related news, the city of Gob's Nobbler, KY is expected to vote on a resolution calling for war crimes trials (with torture during testimony) for Boulder's City Council.

"War trials for Boulder's city council would be worth doing even if they only put the last few months of the council's last year in office at risk. We need to send a message that this all matters to us, whether it's last-minute or not," stated Dan Druff, Gob's Nobbler's mayor and Chief of Police.

"We want the newspapers to print articles about us too. We don't want left out."

"We Kentuckians can posture."

by Mondoreb
idea/image: RidesAPaleHorse
Source: Boulder: Impeach Bush?



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Bush Questions FDR Decision Not to Bomb "Auschwitz"

President Bush, during a visit to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, purportedly made statements that questioned the United States' decision to not bomb Auschwitz or the nearby "rail lines" which brought millions of Jews to their awaited fate, of torture, then extermination, during the latter part of WWII. Source - AP

Nazi Camps in Occupied Europe 1943-1944

Throughout German-occupied Europe, the Germans arrested those who resisted their domination and those they judged to be racially inferior or politically unacceptable. People arrested for resisting German rule were mostly sent to forced-labor or concentration camps. The Germans deported Jews from all over occupied Europe to extermination camps in Poland, where they were systematically killed, and also to concentration camps, where they were used for forced labor. Transit camps such as Westerbork, Gurs, Mechelen, and Drancy in western Europe and concentration camps like Bolzano and Fossoli di Carpi in Italy were used as collection centers for Jews, who were then deported by rail to the extermination camps. According to SS reports, there were more than 700,000 prisoners registered in the concentration camps in January 1945. Source - Jewish Virtual Library

Tom Segev, a leading Israeli Holocaust scholar, said the remarks by Bush appeared "spontaneous" and that this was "the first time a U. S. President had made this acknowledgment."

Bush twice had tears in his eyes during an hour-long tour of the museum, said Shalev, who guided Bush through the exhibits.

Upon viewing an aerial shot of Auschwitz, taken during the war by U.S. forces, he said Bush called the decision not to bomb it "complex." He then called over Rice to discuss President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision, clearly pondering the options before rendering an opinion of his own, Shalev said.

Shalev quoted Bush as asking Rice, "Why didn't Roosevelt bomb it?" He said Rice and Bush discussed the matter further and then the president delivered his verdict.

"We should have bombed it," Shalev, speaking in Hebrew, quoted Bush as saying.

Source - Florida Center for Instructional Technology

Briefing reporters later on Air Force One, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush was referring to the rail lines and not the nearby Nazi-German death camp where an estimated 1.1 to 1.5 million men, women, and children perished.

"It is clear now that the U.S. knew a lot about it," Segev said. "It's possible that bombing at least the railway to the camps may have saved the lives of the Jews of Hungary. They were the very last ones who were sent to Auschwitz at a time when everybody knew what was going on."

At the dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington in 1993, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel famously asked, "Why weren't the railways leading to Birkenau bombed by allied bombers? As long as I live I will not understand that."

The Chairman of the museum, Avner Shalev, remarked later that evening that Bush was "not specific about what the Allies should have bombed."

In 1944, Roosevelt's assistant secretary of war wrote about the United States' decision to not take any action during the latter part of WWII when the "evidence" of Nazi death camps was now "clear." And yet, the first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, opened its gates in March of 1933.

"Such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not be warrant use of our resources," he wrote in an Aug. 14, 1944, letter.

Reactions to Bush's statement varied:

A professor of Jewish Thought at Israel's Hebrew University, Eliezer Schweid, said the bombing was "irrelevant in retrospect".

The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington:

"The refusal to bomb Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by the Roosevelt administration to refrain from taking action to rescue or shelter Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Tragically, the United States turned away from one of history's most compelling moral challenges," said Rafael Medoff, the institute's director.

Whether the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz has been a long standing controversy from WWII, according to Mitchell Bard of the Jewish Virtual Library.

David Wyman's The Abandonment Of The Jews argues that the failure of the Allies to take action against Auschwitz was "longstanding indifference to the fate of the Jews rather than the practicality impossibility of the operation."

Other arguments were that the Allies were unaware of the Nazis systematically "relocating" entire populations of Jews from newly occupied territories until late in the war.

One argument is that the Allies did not know about the Final Solution early enough to make plans to bomb the camps and they didn't have reliable intelligence about their location. In fact, the Allies began had information about the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews by 1942. As early as June 1944, the United States had detailed information about the layout of Auschwitz from Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wexler, who had escaped that April. In fact, he cites Richard Breitman, who concluded that prior to 1994 “there was enough generally accurate information about Auschwitz-Birkenau to preclude the argument that the Allies did not bomb the camp because they got the necessary information too late.” Source - Jewish Virtual Library

The Jews were not relocated to other cities, instead they were loaded on cattle cars, shipped to concentration camps located next to quaint little towns such as Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland.

Both the British Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of War, John McCloy, concluded Auschwitz could not be bombed. Erdheim notes, however, that this determination was made without following normal procedures to make such a decision. “The 'could not' assessment, in short,” Erdheim says, “appeared the most expedient way to implement the already established policy of not using the military to aid 'refugees.'” Source - Jewish Virtual Library

The argument that bombing the train lines would have been impossible was countered by the view of former Senator George McGovern, the pilot of a B-24 mission in 1944 that bombed Nazi oil facilities a mere five miles from Auschwitz:

In 2005, he said “There is no question we should have attempted...to go after Auschwitz. There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the Earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to thos death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens." Source - Jewish Virtual Library

This was the second trip Bush has made to the memorial, the first time in 1998, while he was Governor of Texas. During this trip he spoke about the "horror" and "evil" of the Holocaust.

"I was most impressed that people in the face of horror and evil would not forsake their God. In the face of unspeakable crimes against humanity, brave souls — young and old — stood strong for what they believe," Bush said.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it," he said.

The debate over whether the Allies should have bombed Auschwitz or the rail lines that led to it will continue. But in the words of noted Roosevelt historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who believed bombing Auschwitz would have been worthwhile:

“If it had saved only one Jew. FDR somehow missed seeing how big an issue it was.” With the kind of political will and moral courage the Allies exhibited in other missions throughout the war, it is plain that the failure to bomb Birkenau, the site of mankind's greatest abomination, was a missed opportunity of monumental proportions.

By LBG
Image - Artfiles
Image - Auschwitz Railroad Lines
Source - AP - Bush indicates bombing at Auschwitz might have saved lives
Source - Jewish Virtual Library - Could The Allies Have
Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau?




DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Sid Blumenthal Farewell Twofer: Last Story for Salon Is First For Clinton

Goodbye Mr. Blumenthal!

A departing Sid Blumenthal disproves the maxim, "no man can serve two masters". His last piece for old boss, Salon, "Goodbye Mr. Bush" is the same as his first for new boss, Hillary Clinton.

Reading the opening, one suspects that Sid is guilty of double-dipping.

The Republican will to power remains ferocious. It will take a dauntless Democratic leader to win back the White House and restore dignity to the Constitution.

Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government's departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.

Bye Sid

That Blumenthal penned the next sentence without laughing to tears is proof that he's a perfect fit for the Clinton war room.

"The patently perverse notion that weakness is strength is the basis of Bush's remaining credibility within his party."

Coming from someone present during the gutting of the U.S. miltary--Codename: the "Peace Dividend"--this is good stuff. He has the reader hooked. Salon is losing a keeper in Blumenthal.

Goodbye Mr. Blumenthal

This campaign pits two parties running on diametrically opposite ideas of the presidency and the Constitution. There has not been such a sharp divergence on the foundation of the federal system since perhaps the election of 1860.

The farewell's apex is reached in that one paragraph. All before and after are Blumethal/Clinton boilerplate.

Don't Forget to Write, Sidney

"The Democrats at key junctures have been seduced by the illusion of anti-politics to their own detriment."

With this masterpiece of self-parody, Sidney Blumenthal closes his anti-Bush piece with a warning on the pitfalls of anti-politics. He also closes out his regular columns for Salon. One door closes and another one opens.

Goodbye Mr. Blumental.

by Mondoreb



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Spooky Halloween Political Pictures:PIXELANEOUS #15

A trick-or-treat break on Halloween. Here's the spookiest pictures of people in the news we could find. From Jason bin-Laden to Evil Dick Cheney to Evilly Clinton, if you don't find one of these that scare you, you aren't paying attention to the news.


Maureen Dowd's next New York Times column?


Frankindinejad?


To her opponents, she's Evilly Clinton


No wonder they can't find Jason bin-Laden


Palestinians and Israelis alike fear the Condi Witch


Three famous witches prepare toil and trouble for a favorite foe


Everyone's favorite Nobel Prize-winning Enviromentalist

by Little Baby Ginn
& Mondoreb

See more great Halloween Spookies at Freaking News.
Yesterday's PIXELANEOUS:
Contented Cows?



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Children's Health Care & The Veto Showdown: Recalling When Workers Took Home 98% of their Paycheck

FDA concerned?
With adults making up half the insured in some states,
Truth in Labeling laws are being violated.
[image:CNN]


"You may remember that we tried to do that [pass her health care bill] in 1993 and 1994. We weren't totally successful, but I did not give up." --Hillary Clinton

by Mondoreb

As recently as 1962, the average American received 98% of his paycheck. Only 2% was taken out in various taxes, fees, charges and whatnot. There would be a lot of stunned American workers if they opened their paychecks and found that they had gotten 98% of what they had earned.

A showdown over SCHIP and no end in sight to what the bill is or would do. One thing is for sure: it would make it harder than ever for workers to receive more on their paychecks.

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Congress and President Bush are headed to a showdown with no sign of compromise on a popular children's health care bill.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to override Bush's veto of a plan expanding the state-run Children's Health Insurance Program.

Though Democrats have pounded Republicans over the issue for two weeks, House GOP leaders predict they will have the votes needed to uphold the veto.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday, "We are still in this fight."

Harry Reid was answering questions about whether a deal might be reached on the bill, but he just as may have been answering questions on whether American workers might be able to keep more of their hard-earned wages.

"No. No. No," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week when asked if he was open to a deal on the measure that would provide $35 billion for children's health care.

Even though the bill was dressed up in the usual kids' clothing that Democrats have found so appealing, Americans are getting harder to fool. Perhaps it's because they remember that quote from Hillary Clinton on the piecemeal expansion of government.

Maybe even some still dream of those not-so-long ago days of the 98% paycheck.

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