NewsBusters.org - Exposing Liberal Media Bias

Bloviating Dick Cavett Bashes ‘Know-Nothing’ Sarah Palin, Obsesses Over His Brilliance

Scott Whitlock — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:27:20 -0500

[Video to be added shortly] Talk show host Dick Cavett, whose TV show went off the air in 1982, appeared on MSNBC, Friday, to trash Sarah Palin as a "know nothing" and someone who has "no first language." Mostly, however, he seemed interested only in talking about himself, prompting News Live host Norah O’Donnell to chide, "Dick, this segment is about Sarah Palin, not about you, Dick."

John Harwood, New York Times writer and CNBC contributor, co-hosted and kicked off the segment with this condescending question: "Let me ask you what you make of the Sarah Palin phenomenon and, in particular, the argument that some people make, well, she might not be a good President, but she'd be a good talk show host. You think so?"

Cavett clearly wanted to bash Palin, but he really wanted to tout his own brilliance and a column he wrote for the New York Times over a year ago: "The subject is a dear one to me because I wrote a notorious, apparently, column about Sarah Palin called the Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla for my Times Online blog. And, you know, it is interesting. When you are quoted for something you said on the air, it's one thing. But, when they quoted something you wrote, it is in a pleasing way."

Continuing to cite himself, he recounted, "The two things people remember from the column seem to be, A, she seems to have no first language and that I really felt sorry for John McCain because he swung low and missed."

The ex-TV host, who, as the MRC’s Tim Graham pointed out, was last culturally relevant with his cameo in the 1988 film Beetlejuice, claimed he was bothered that John McCain "was willing to put a know-nothing in the White House."

Cavett talked about himself so much that he prompted O’Donnell to jokingly ask about "your column, how many times was it e-mailed around, by the way? How popular was it?" The aging former TV host chided, "I'll send you a list, Norah. Are you still reading these days?" He then quipped, "Hey, and thank you for returning my phone call, by the way. But, we won't go into that."

Is MSNBC this desperate for Palin bashing that the network would highlight a year-old column from a talk show host who hasn’t been on television since Ronald Reagan was in the White House?

A transcript of the segment, which aired at 2:19pm EST on November 20, follows:

NORAH O’DONNELL: Next up on the op-edge, Rogue. American woman. Op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, love her, takes a look at Sarah Palin’s current book tour.

JOHN HARWOOD: Dowd writes, quote, "Of course the subtitle of Sarah Palin's book is an American life. Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans, ordinary, hard working, God-fearing, common sense, good, ordinary, real Americans. If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage living bass-ackwards. Joining us now for more on Sarah Palin is an op-ed contributor for the New York Times. It’s a privilege to have him on. Dick Cavett. Dick, I was watching your show for years and I’m delighted that you’re on. Let me ask you what you make of the Sarah Palin phenomenon and, in particular, the argument that some people make that, well, she might not be a good President, but she’d be a good talk show host. You think so?

DICK CAVETT: No.

HARWOOD: Why?

CAVETT: Oh, should I go on?

HARWOOD: Yes, please.

CAVETT: The subject is a dear one to me because I wrote a notorious, apparently, column about Sarah Palin called the Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla for my Times Online blog. And, you know, it is interesting. When you are quoted for something you said on the air, it’s one thing. But, when they quoted something you wrote, it is in a pleasing way. The two things people remember from the column seem to be, A, she seems to have no first language [Harwood laughs at this] and that I really felt sorry for John McCain because he swung low and missed.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Well, Dick, what did you think about the stuff we showed on the book tour. I mean, I was just out there in Michigan, of course, in Indiana with Sarah Palin and to talk to a lot of the crowds out there. What do you think about her as a communicator and her difference between her and as a communicator and Barack Obama, say?

CAVETT: Well, you have to say that she obviously communicates, because so many people seem to like her. And she looks nice and has got energy and so on. The fact that you can take any five consecutive words out of any long sentence of hers and put them anywhere else in that paragraph without changing the meaning bothers me. And the fact that a presidential candidate was willing to put a know-nothing in the White House leading the leading country of the world must have been popular because my blog was the most forwarded and most responded to piece they have had of the Times of this time.

O’DONNELL: Dick, this segment is about Sarah Palin, not about you, Dick. [Harwood and O’Donnell laugh.]

CAVETT: Did I mention my name once?

O’DONNELL: Yeah. Or your column, how many times was it e-mailed around, by the way? How popular was it?

CAVETT: I'll send you a list, Norah. Are you still reading these days?

O’DONNELL: I hear you. I hear you, Dick.

CAVETT: Hey, and thank you for returning my phone call, by the way. But, we won't go into that.

O’DONNELL: Okay, Dick.

CAVETT: Obama is an excellent communicator as we know, of course. And Oprah, my God. I must confess, Norah and John, I stopped reading in the third paragraph of the Times today that I don't care if Oprah is on network or cable or radar, I just want her available to me and there's still time for me to be the only person in media who has not been on Oprah's show. Is that about me or not?

Foreign Policy magazine: Ft. Hood Happened Because Muslims Aren’t 'Comfortable'

Carolyn Plocher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:23:59 -0500

On Nov. 18, Foreign Policy's Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson wrote an article titled "The Real Shock of Fort Hood." If you thought that the shock of Fort Hood was that an Army Major fired over 100 rounds into a crowded processing center on a military base - killing 13 and wounding 29 - you're wrong. "It's not that the massacre occurred," said the article. "It's that it hadn't occurred before."

According to Simon and Stevenson, Major Nidal Malik Hasan was simply another American Muslim that was the victim of "innumerable stresses, including discrimination and the strain of divided loyalties in their country's eight-year-long war against Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia."

The authors argued that such circumstances would be "enough to inspire conflict in the minds of even the most patriotic of American Muslims in the U.S." So much so that it should be "no surprise" that "one unstable member of this community finally erupted in violence."

It's our fault. Americans aren't making Muslims "comfortable." And the article specifically cited "Christian right-wing rhetoric" as a catalyst in the "Muslim alienation" which led to Hasan's shooting spree.

"Since Sept. 11, Muslims have faced increasing racism, employment and housing discrimination, and vandalism," wrote Simon and Stevenson. "Media coverage dwelling on the violence associated with radical Islam and ignoring the respectable lifestyles of most American Muslims, along with Christian right-wing rhetoric casting the campaign against terrorism as a clash of religions, has contributed to the public's misunderstanding of Islam."

The article applauded the general Muslim population in America for rising above the fray and rejecting "violent protest or reaction," despite the refusal of Americans to open welcoming arms. They warned, though, that if Americans don't learn how to play nice, Muslims may not be able to stand it much longer.

"The Fort Hood massacre arguably showed that the continued civility of the Muslim population against undeniable pressures cannot be taken for granted," they said.

In order to avoid pressuring another Muslim into attacking America, we need to "resist the paranoia to which [the Fort Hood] tragedy could potentially lead." The authors also felt compelled to warn the President of the United States.

"Barack Obama should use his bully pulpit to fight for the better treatment and monitoring of vulnerable Muslim service-members, to avoid another tragedy," they said.

They even suggested that Obama offer a second speech, after his Fort Hood eulogy, to emphasize that "Fort Hood was an anomaly and that the very rareness of such incidents illuminates the overall loyalty of American Muslims and the need to protect that population."

But that's still not enough. According to Foreign Policy, we also need policy changes.

"Soldiers cannot be expected to function well in the service of their country for a cause that they oppose," Steven and Simonson said.

Those policy changes included instituting better "interagency early-warning mechanisms" to detect such internal conflicts before soldiers become "alienated from their country." They also claimed that Hasan's violence was "partly driven by the taunts of fellow soldiers." Since Muslims in the military are "extraordinarily sensitive," the military needs to "to redouble efforts to enforce antidiscrimination standards."

If you thought that the legacy of the Fort Hood massacre was remembering the courageous men and women that protect our country, you're wrong. According to Simon and Stevenson, the Fort Hood massacre should instill in Americans a "greater commitment to ensuring, through accommodation of political and religious sensitivity and equality of treatment, that American Muslims don't suffer for their loyalty to their country."

Correction: The earlier incorrectly identified the article as a Newsweek article. It was a Foreign Policy magazine article, although was posted on Newsweek.com.

CNN.com Doesn't Explicitly Mention Party of Senator Burris (D)

Matthew Balan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:13:22 -0500

An unsigned CNN.com article on Friday noted that the Senate Ethics Committee had reproved Senator Roland Burris “for actions and statements reflecting unfavorably upon the Senate,” but did not directly mention the Illinois senator’s affiliation with the Democratic Party. The article did mention that Burris was “the only African-American U.S. senator.”

The first two paragraphs from the CNN Political Ticker story excerpted the letter that the Senate committee sent to the successor to President Obama: “The Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter Friday admonishing embattled Illinois Sen. Roland Burris ‘for actions and statements reflecting unfavorably upon the Senate’ in connection with his controversial appointment by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. ‘While the committee did not find that the evidence before it supported any actionable violations of law, senators must meet a much higher standard of conduct,’ the letter stated.”

After mentioning his status as “the only African-American U.S. senator” and how he is “serving the remaining two years of President Barack Obama’s Senate term,” the unnamed author continued that Burris “has never been embraced by his party’s leaders in Illinois or Capitol Hill.”

The Democratic Party wasn’t even directly mentioned in the context of Burris, but in an explanation of how party leaders advised impeached former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to not make an appointment to the Senate seat which Obama vacated:

He was appointed to the seat last December by Blagojevich, who was later impeached, removed from office and arrested on federal corruption charges alleging that he tried to sell Obama’s seat to the highest bidder.

Democratic leaders urged Blagojevich, who has maintained his innocence, not to make an appointment. He disregarded those wishes by naming Burris, a former state attorney general and state comptroller, to the seat.

Burris, for his part, was suspected of perjury in connection with his testimony on Blagojevich's alleged “pay for play” scheme to fill the Senate seat. But in June, the state’s attorney in Sangamon County, Illinois, said he would not charge Burris.

The state’s attorney, John Schmidt, said Burris gave incomplete but truthful answers to questions about his conversations with Blagojevich's representatives.

In July, Burris said he would not run for a full six-year term in 2010.

It certainly seems like CNN.com beat around to bush in an attempt to obscure the party affiliation of Senator Burris.

[H/t: Story tip from NB reader Daniel Johnson]

Company Mocks Catholicism to Sell Video Game

Matthew Philbin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:45:39 -0500

As if we needed more proof that Christians are the only group left in America that it’s safe to make fun of. A popular YouTube video purports to be an ad for a Wii-like game system called “Mass: We Pray,” which will be available at Easter 2010. In reality, the anti-religious video is a commercial for a new video game.

In it, viewers see a family at home as a saccharine-voiced narrator reminiscent of the one from the old “Mr. Bill” skit on “Saturday Night Live,” says, “A family shouldn't have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home.”

The family’s two children are then shown pantomiming the movements of priests and congregants during mass, using “the wireless cross controller,” a large white plastic cross with a rosary bead strap. “Every twist of the hand and nuance of a blessing is recreated onscreen,” says the narrator. The point, he explains, is to collect “grace points,” and move a number of pews toward the altar. “Then trade in your Grace points to unlock the Holy Mysteries. Add the kneeler accessory, and get off the couch and into the action.” Players can download the “seven sacraments and holy rituals expansion pack.”

Visitors to the “Mass: We Pray” Web site are encouraged to click the “Pre-order” button as of Nov. 20. That’s when they realize the video and site have been a marketing ploy for an actual game from EA called “Dante’s Inferno.” They can either watch the trailer for the run-of-the-mill violent game based on the 14th Century poem, or they can “Damn thy Fellow Sinners to Hell on Facebook with the Go To Hell Application.”

EA is Electronic Arts Inc., “a leading global interactive entertainment software company.” According to the company’s Web site, in fiscal 2009 it had “31 titles that sold more than one million copies, and three titles that each sold more than five million copies including “FIFA 09,” “Madden NFL 09,” and “Need for Speed Undercover.”

So EA mocks the Catholic rites and sacraments in order to sell a hell-themed video game. Perhaps next year the company will use a spoof ad for an interactive prayer rug or “Jihadi Jump” to sell a “Satanic Verses” game. Don’t hold your breath.

Possible Conspiracy To Falsify Temperature Data Uncovered

Noel Sheppard — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:10 -0500

E-mail messages between high-ranking scientists appear to indicate a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists to falsify temperature data in order to exaggerate global averages.

Those involved allegedly include: James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Michael Mann, famous for Mann's "Hockey Stick"; Gavin Schmidt, NASA climate modeler, and; Stephen Schneider, Stanford professor and Al Gore confidant.

A statement released Friday by the alarmist website RealClimate has confirmed that e-mail servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Norwich, England, were hacked recently with contents illegally made available over the Internet.

Although the authenticity of all these e-mail messages has yet to be proven, what's currently available points to a coordinated attempt to manipulate climate data by those directly involved in advancing the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

New Zealand's Investigate magazine reported Friday that it has verified these e-mail messages are indeed real:

The director of Britain's leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.
In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."

The BBC.com filed this report moments ago:

A university spokesman confirmed the email system had been hacked and that information was taken and published without permission.
An investigation was underway and the police had been informed, he added.
"We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites," the spokesman stated.

The journal Nature got a comment from one of the scientists whose name appears on some of these e-mail messages:

Some climate-sceptic bloggers are already poring over the posted material, which includes e-mails allegedly sent by the CRU's director Phil Jones to fellow climate researchers, including Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Mann is the author of a widely cited assessment of past climate records, known as the hockey-stick graph, which shows a pronounced global-warming trend during the latter part of the twentieth century.

"I'm not going to comment on the content of illegally obtained e-mails," says Mann. "However, their theft constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping that the perpetrators will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows." Jones declined to comment on the matter.

Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun has more:

So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics.

Bolt included a number of these e-mail messages (emphasis his):

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 110';l[5]=' 114';l[6]=' 111';l[7]=' 98';l[8]=' 115';l[9]=' 111';l[10]=' 46';l[11]=' 88';l[12]=' 88';l[13]=' 88';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 97';l[16]=' 102';l[17]=' 102';l[18]=' 105';l[19]=' 114';l[20]=' 98';l[21]=' 46';l[22]=' 107';l[23]='>';l[24]='\"';l[25]=' 110';l[26]=' 114';l[27]=' 111';l[28]=' 98';l[29]=' 115';l[30]=' 111';l[31]=' 46';l[32]=' 88';l[33]=' 88';l[34]=' 88';l[35]=' 64';l[36]=' 97';l[37]=' 102';l[38]=' 102';l[39]=' 105';l[40]=' 114';l[41]=' 98';l[42]=' 46';l[43]=' 107';l[44]=':';l[45]='o';l[46]='t';l[47]='l';l[48]='i';l[49]='a';l[50]='m';l[51]='\"';l[52]='=';l[53]='f';l[54]='e';l[55]='r';l[56]='h';l[57]='a ';l[58]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX
School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX
University of East Anglia
Norwich

Here's a more recent one. See how many prominent climate alarmists are allegedly in receipt:

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

Here's one wherein Jones allegedly told Mann to delete e-mail messages:

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

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.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!

Cheers

Phil

Prof. Phil Jones

Climatic Research Unit

Here's a REALLY juicy one from Mann wherein he allegedly instructed the group to use the website RealClimate, and addressed how comments would be screened to control the message:

From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa
Subject: update
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:51:53 -0500
Cc: Gavin Schmidt

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…

This e-mail lacking a header allegedly from Jones discussed exactly how to manipulate temperature data being sent to climate realist Steven McIntyre as part of one of his Freedom of Information Act requests:

Options appear to be:

Send them the data

Send them a subset removing station data from some of the countries who made us pay in the normals papers of Hulme et al. (1990s) and also any number that David can remember. This should also omit some other countries like (Australia, NZ, Canada, Antarctica). Also could extract some of the sources that Anders added in (31-38 source codes in J&M 2003). Also should remove many of the early stations that we coded up in the 1980s.

Send them the raw data as is, by reconstructing it from GHCN. How could this be done? Replace all stations where the WMO ID agrees with what is in GHCN. This would be the raw data, but it would annoy them.

Finally, here's an e-mail message wherein Jones allegedly celebrated the death of a climate realist:

From: Phil Jones
To: //';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='<';l[4]=' 120';l[5]=' 120';l[6]=' 120';l[7]=' 46';l[8]=' 120';l[9]=' 120';l[10]=' 120';l[11]=' 120';l[12]=' 120';l[13]=' 118';l[14]=' 64';l[15]=' 110';l[16]=' 110';l[17]=' 97';l[18]=' 109';l[19]='>';l[20]='\"';l[21]=' 120';l[22]=' 120';l[23]=' 120';l[24]=' 46';l[25]=' 120';l[26]=' 120';l[27]=' 120';l[28]=' 120';l[29]=' 120';l[30]=' 118';l[31]=' 64';l[32]=' 110';l[33]=' 110';l[34]=' 97';l[35]=' 109';l[36]=':';l[37]='o';l[38]='t';l[39]='l';l[40]='i';l[41]='a';l[42]='m';l[43]='\"';l[44]='=';l[45]='f';l[46]='e';l[47]='r';l[48]='h';l[49]='a ';l[50]='<'; for (var i = l.length-1; i >= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ' ') document.write("&#"+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+";"); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> mann@vxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004

From: Timo H‰meranta
To:
Subject: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:04:28 +0200
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.4510
Importance: Normal

Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.

Cheers
Phil

“It is with deep sadness that the Daly Family have to announce the sudden death of John Daly.Condolences may be sent to John’s email account (daly@XXXX)
“
Reported with great sadness

The Examiner.com found another interesting e-mail message allegedly from a Dr. Tom Wigley to Jones (author's emphasis):

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. Removing ENSO does not affect this. It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”. Let me go further. If you look at NH vs SH and the aerosol effect (qualitatively or with MAGICC) then with a reduced ocean blip we get continuous warming in the SH, and a cooling in the NH — just as one would expect with mainly NH aerosols. The other interesting thing is (as Foukal et al. note — from MAGICC) that the 1910-40 warming cannot be solar. The Sun can get at most 10% of this with Wang et al solar, less with Foukal solar. So this may well be NADW, as Sarah and I noted in 1987 (and also Schlesinger later). A reduced SST blip in the 1940s makes the 1910-40 warming larger than the SH (which it currently is not) — but not really enough. So … why was the SH so cold around 1910? Another SST problem? (SH/NH data also attached.) This stuff is in a report I am writing for EPRI, so I’d appreciate any comments you (and Ben) might have. Tom.

Wow. Scary stuff.

Once again, it is unknown which e-mail messages are real, and which if any are fraudulent. As you might imagine, numerous entities are sifting through the files to connect some dots.

For its part, NewsBusters has sent e-mail messages requesting comment from all of the scientists mentioned in this article. None have responded yet.

However, maybe more importantly, with cap and trade legislation currently before Congress, and an international climate meeting happening in Copenhagen next month, the question is what will America's leading media outlets do with this news.

Should we expect investigative television programs like "60 Minutes" and "20/20" to be all over this story interrogating the scientists allegedly involved in these e-mail exchanges?

Will America's press be as eager to find out the truth of this matter as they were in fact-checking former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's new book?

Consider that at the time of this article's publishing, only FoxNews.com, NPR.com, and WSJ.com have logged printed stories on this subject from this side of the Atlantic.

Will others follow, and if so, how will they report what on the surface appears to be a huge, developing story?

Stay tuned.

*****Update: Readers are STRONGLY encouraged to watch the scrambling going on at RealClimate.

WaPo Buries Faulty GAO Data Story on Page A22; No Mention of Fake Congressional Districts

Ken Shepherd — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:08:19 -0500

In what could easily be labeled the understatement of the week and probably of the entire month of November, the Washington Post today headlined a page A22 story today "GAO warns stimulus jobs data could contain inaccuracies."

The print story is accompanied by a screenshot of Recovery.gov, which the caption beneath it notes "is the government's stimulus-tracking Web site."

Of course, the biggest inaccuracies recently observed on Recovery.gov are non-existent congressional districts purported to have been "saved or created" jobs thanks to stimulus pork sent their way. Yet Post staffer Ed O'Keefe was careful to keep that juiciest tidbit out of his entire 10-paragraph November 19 story.

As Michelle Groat of Examiner.com noted yesterday:

President Obama is claiming success through his $787 billion stimulus package by way of the administration’s website recovery.gov. Visitors to the website will find that hundreds of jobs have been created or saved all across the country. Here are some of the statistics reported by recovery.gov:

• $34 million in stimulus money has been spent in Arizona's 86th congressional district in a project for the Navajo Housing authority, which is actually located in the 1st congressional district.
• In Oklahoma, recovery.gov lists more than $19 million in spending -- and 15 jobs created.
• In Iowa, it shows $10.6 million spent – and 39 jobs created.
• In Connecticut's 42nd district, the Web site claims 25 jobs created with zero stimulus dollars.

The problem is these districts do not exist.

The list of spending and job creation in fictional congressional districts goes beyond just the 50 states. Stimulus money and job creation and saving extend to U.S. territories as well. Here is what territories outside the U.S, have received from tax payers:

• $68.3 million spent and 72.2 million spent in the 1st congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• $8.4 million spent and 40.3 jobs created in the 99th congressional district of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• $1.5 million spent and .3 jobs created in the 69th district and $35 million for 142 jobs in the 99th district of the Northern Mariana Islands.
• $47.7 million spent and 291 jobs created in Puerto Rico's 99th congressional district.

By contrast, O'Keefe not once mentioned the fake congressional district controversy in his story, although he noted that "[r]oughly 10 percent of the recipients of stimulus dollars failed to submit quarterly reports last month."

So the real data is incomplete and that's worth a story, but phony congressional districts receiving pork barrel spending is not?

Given that the story was already buried by Post editors below-the-fold on page A22, it's safe to say the Post is not too eager to hype the controversy. The full Post article is excerpted below:

Government auditors raised doubts Thursday about the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program, but they also said that mistakes reported in recent weeks signal the benefits of government transparency.

Roughly 10 percent of the recipients of stimulus dollars failed to submit quarterly reports last month, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.

"I think missing reports may drive the job numbers up, and I think there are enough inaccuracies in here to drive the numbers down," said Earl E. Devaney, who oversees Recovery.gov, the government's stimulus-tracking Web site. The Obama administration reported last month that the stimulus has created or saved about 640,000 jobs thus far.

Some recipients' failure to report spending data last month "is distressing and must be addressed," Devaney said, adding that Congress should penalize recipients who fail to report.

The doubts expressed by Devaney and acting GAO Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro at Thursday's House oversight committee hearing lend nonpartisan credence to general concerns about stimulus data. Devaney, who assumed his position in the spring, has repeatedly cautioned government officials at all levels that early data would probably contain errors. But some of those mistakes aren't necessarily a bad thing, he said.

"In reality, this data should serve in the long run as evidence of what transparency can achieve," he said. "In the past, this data would have been scrubbed from top to bottom before its release. The agencies would never have released the information until it was near-perfect."

Republicans attacked the jobs figures, referring to the data as "propaganda" and "garbage," and called the entire stimulus reporting process "disgusting."

"The administration continues to misread the economy, misunderstand the nature of economic growth, mislead the American people with faulty jobs claims and miss the steps this country needs to take to get our economy back on track," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

The Obama administration has struggled to clearly define stimulus job creation because -- as Devaney and Dodaro noted -- it is difficult to know what role the funding played.

"This has never been done before," White House stimulus adviser Ed DeSeve said after the hearing. "You can't name another government program that has done this."

MSNBC’s Ratigan Wonders If Americans Should ‘Stop Whining’

Kyle Drennen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:50:17 -0500

Citing a Democratic congressman who recently proposed a no whining day, on Friday’s Morning Meeting on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan asked: “...unemployment, health care, a couple of wars, Americans got plenty to be frustrated about these days...But some people say stop the whining....Is ‘shut up and deal’ the new American mantra?”

Ratigan made that question the topic of discussion for the ‘Trend or Talker’ segment near the end of 9:00AM ET hour of the show with correspondent Contessa Brewer and Financial Times U.S. managing editor Chrystia Freeland. Ratigan explained: “...the congressman, by the name of Emmanuel Cleaver, wants to declare the day before Thanksgiving complaint-free Wednesday.” He wondered: “Worthy proposition?”

Brewer replied: “Yeah, absolutely. Here you get a two-fer. No complaints on Wednesday and Thursday gives you something to be grateful for.” Freeland enthusiastically agreed with the idea: “I think the no whining day is a fabulous idea....What they say in preschools, you get what you get and don’t get upset.”

At the end of the segment, Ratigan asked Brewer and Freeland if the no whining push was a trend or a ‘talker.’ Brewer replied: “The griping continues, it’s a talker.” Freeland disagreed: “It is a trend and it’s related to your favorite subject, Dylan, the economy. Just as the depression generation was a lot tougher than kids of affluence like us who are whiners, maybe the recession will make us tougher.”

In response, Brewer remarked: “Who are you calling a whiner?” Freeland explained: “Generation X, we are, we grew up with everything.” Ratigan admitted: “She’s calling me a whiner....guilty. I’m just whining about the massive generational theft, mind you, but otherwise, you know, I’m going to shut up and deal.” Freeland absolved Ratigan of his daily whining: “That’s not whining, that’s reasoned politics.”

While MSNBC was more than willing to label Americans as “whiners” in the midst of various challenges confronting the Obama administration, when John McCain’s economic advisor Phil Gramm referred to America as a “nation of whiners” during the 2008 presidential campaign, the cable network bashed him for it. Hardball host Chris Matthews opened his July 10, 2008 show by declaring: “McCain’s ‘brain’ calls recession a mental problem, that we’re all just a nation of whiners. But is it smart politics to blame the voter?”

Here is a full transcript of the Friday Morning Meeting segment:

9:53AM

DYLAN RATIGAN: Alright. Time now for a little ‘Trend or Talker.’ Chrystia Freeland joining the conversation, nice to see you, how are you? You’re looking very holiday, actually, today.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Yeah, I guess because we’re moving into Thanksgiving.

RATIGAN: Yeah. No, it’s appropriate, it’s very nice.

CONTESSA BREWER: Yeah, well it is the holidays.

RATIGAN: Alright, well, today’s ‘Trend or Talker,’ unemployment, health care, a couple of wars, Americans got plenty to be frustrated about these days. Unemployment, mortgages, da, da, da. But some people say stop the whining. Time for today’s ‘Trend or Talker.’ Is ‘shut up and deal’ the new American mantra? Joining the meeting with some answers, Chrystia Freeland, Contessa Brewer. They are answer-laden, shall we say. First up, a Missouri lawmaker wants Americans to stop complaining, in fact, he’s actually presented a proposal to the House of Representatives. In it, the congressman, by the name of Emmanuel Cleaver, wants to declare the day before Thanksgiving complaint-free Wednesday. Chrystia’s already nodding. So what about the economy, foreclosures, banks, profits, stealing, taxpayers. Well, on Wednesday, Cleaver says ‘ah, put a sock in it!’ I’ll take him up on that. Worthy proposition?

BREWER: Yeah, absolutely. Here you get a two-fer. No complaints on Wednesday and Thursday gives you something to be grateful for. You’re grateful for a day where you can complain about everything.

RATIGAN: Two good days. Alright, next, the ad wars getting ugly as AT&T loses a legal battle with Verizon. AT&T wanted Verizon’s ‘there’s a map for that’ ads yanked off the air.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN [COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER]: And if you want to know why some people have spotty 3G coverage, there’s a map for that, too.

RATIGAN: Well, at issue, the map showing Verizon has much wider coverage than AT&T. AT&T says they’re blatantly false. Verizon’s response don’t shoot the messenger. The map is true. Truth in advertising? Is this valid?

FREELAND: Well, I think it’s a matter of fact, right?

RATIGAN: Yeah, it is.

FREELAND: So-

RATIGAN: Shut up and deal.

BREWER: Yeah.

FREELAND: Shut up and deal. And I think the no whining day is a fabulous idea. Every mother in the country will agree with it.

RATIGAN: Will sign on.

BREWER: Good luck with that.

FREELAND: What they say in preschools, you get what you get and don’t get upset.

RATIGAN: Shut up and deal.

FREELAND: Good cultural moment.

RATIGAN: I like it, you get what you get, don’t get upset.

BREWER: You can’t say that to preschoolers though.

FREELAND: That’s what they say. No, it’s what they say It’s the mantra for preschool.

BREWER: No, but Dylan’s trying to say ‘shut up and deal,’ I don’t think-

RATIGAN: Would they bring me in if I just said ‘shut up and deal’? That wouldn’t work?

FREELAND: No, that’s not good.

RATIGAN: No, alright. Finally, this week, a former Republican tells his former colleagues to quit complaining about the Guantanamo detainees coming to the U.S. for trial. Bob Barr, 2008 libertarian candidate for president, supports the decision to transfer the terror suspects to federal prisons. He says the GOP needs to stop scare-mongering. Barr, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, and Grover Norqist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, say prominent Republicans should stop whining and fretting over the notion that dangerous terrorists could end up on American soil. So is indeed ‘shut up and deal’ the new mantra, Contessa?

BREWER: The griping continues, it’s a talker.

RATIGAN: Can we get this into the lexicon, ‘shut up and deal’?

FREELAND: Yes we can. It is a trend and it’s related to your favorite subject, Dylan, the economy. Just as the depression generation was a lot tougher than kids of affluence like us who are whiners, maybe the recession will make us tougher.

BREWER: Who are you calling a whiner?

RATIGAN: Yeah. She’s calling me a whiner.

FREELAND: Generation X, we are, we grew up with everything.

RATIGAN: Absolutely. Guilty, guilty. I’m just whining about the massive generational theft, mind you, but otherwise, you know, I’m going to shut up and deal.

FREELAND: That’s not whining, that’s reasoned politics.

RATIGAN: That’s reasoning politics. I'm going to spend some time with Chrystia so I can figure out-

BREWER: What is okay and what’s not.

RATIGAN: Yeah, she’s good with this.

ACORN Controversy Provides Case Study in Combating Media Liberalism

Lachlan Markay — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:11:44 -0500

The scandal surrounding the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has provided a number of case studies in liberal media bias. The initial silence of the vast majority of media outlets on the story, the attempts by leftist commentators to excuse ACORN and discredit the group's critics, and Andrew Breitbart's strategy of rolling out video exposes periodically to counter those commentators, all speak to the liberal media paradigm, and activists' efforts to combat it.

Breitbart and his filmmaking proteges James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have released another video showing an ACORN employee volunteering her help in establishing an underage prostitution business. This employee, Lavelle Stewart, had been trumpeted by liberal pundits as a shining example of ACORN's refusal to aid in criminal deeds. Stewart, they claimed, had refused to help Giles and O'Keefe as many other employees had.

But the new videos (Part 1 video embedded below the fold) tell a different story. "There are ways, people do it all the time," Stewart told O'Keefe when asked if he could launder prostitution money into his congressional campaign. "Yeah there are ways, especially out here in California," she added. Stewart, who works in an ACORN office in Los Angeles, was the latest staffer of the organization to volunteer her services in smuggling underage girls into the country, setting up a prostitution ring with those girls, and laundering the proceeds into a political campaign.

Stewart initially advised Giles and O'Keefe on how to attain financing for a brothel. She suggests they not be disheartened by banks that turn them down for a loan. "Keep pushing. Somebody will say yes," she stated. O'Keefe informed Stewart of his plan to launder money from the "lucrative" sex business into a political campaign. Stewart offered to "do research for you" and "find out what we can do" to eliminate a paper trail from the prostitution business to the campaign fund.

Asked if she had a problem with the smuggling of underage sex slaves from El Salvador, Stewart responded, "you know what, I'm not going to be judgmental... Fourteen and fifteen-year-olds have been traveling overseas for years... I can't control that, it's not my issue."

This new tape contradicts claims from some liberal commentators, who stated before the release of the tape that Stewart had refused to help with the prostitution business. Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey printed an unsubstantiated statement from Stewart that,

she tried to get the "prostitute," who claimed she had been beaten by her pimp, to go to a women's center.
"The fact she was not taking the help I offered her made me think something was not right," Stewart said. "It raised a red flag."

Rainey did not bother to check this claim, but rather printed it as fact in an attempt to discredit Giles and O'Keefe. Ironically, he also criticized center-right media commentators who reported the story, stating "No legitimate news organization can claim editorial integrity if it merely regurgitates information from political activists without subjecting the material to serious scrutiny." This was the same scrutiny he neglected to apply to Stewart's claims.

Breitbart told Patterico that he would have warned Rainey, had he been contacted for comment, "think twice before accepting the word of an ACORN employee for anything. Because every journalist who has done so has ended up with egg on his or her face."

The liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America seized on Rainey's column, stating that Stewart's words "undermine O'Keefe's and Giles' claims" that they were not turned away by any ACORN office.

It is now plainly obvious that Stewart did indeed offer to help the duo. Breitbart's strategy of rolling out the ACORN videos one at a time has succeeded once again in subverting critics who question the filmmakers' integrity and honesty. It seems that every time the liberal media attempts to discredit the filmmakers, another video is released substantiating their claims. Breitbart's strategy has embarrassed a number of pundits who were quick to defend ACORN, not knowing that additional videos would be released contradicting their claims.

The first five videos released on Breitbart's BigGovernment.com led to congressional votes to de-fund ACORN. The Census Bureau severed all ties with the organization. But to date Attorney General Eric Holder has not opened an investigation into the group. Breitbart, Giles, and O'Keefe appeared on Hannity Thursday night to discuss the most recent expose. Breitbart stated,

There's a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they've recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost it's link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn't come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General's office, and they've now realized let's get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that's why we've been forced to offer this latest tape.

Asked by Hannity whether there were more videos yet to be released, Breitbart replied,

Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it's not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it's not just ACORN, and we're going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don't give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

Given Breitbart's track record and his highly successful strategy of anticipating ACORN's defenses and countering them with an additional vide, Holder might be wise to heed his warning and open that investigation before next November.

On MSNBC, Ebony Honoree Dyson: Obama's 'Brought Sexy Brilliance Back to the White House'

Brent Baker — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:58:52 -0500

MSNBC publicized Ebony magazine's “Power 150” picks by bringing aboard two left-wing honorees, Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson, during Friday's 11 AM EST hour.

“To be on any list with Al Sharpton,” Dyson, an author and sociology professor at Georgetown University glowed, “is extraordinarily beautiful.” He proceeded to rejoice:

We have a man in the White House who has made, you know, thinking sexy, who's brought sexy brilliance back to the White House.

Dyson on MSNBC, at about 11:40 AM EST on Friday, November 20:

To be on any list with Al Sharpton is not a hit list but an it list -- is extraordinarily beautiful. He is one of the most magnificent embodiments of the genius of our people to move forward in times of hostility and difficulty so I am honored to be on that list and I'm honored to be cited as an intellectual because in this day and age when we have a man in the White House who has made, you know, thinking sexy, who's brought sexy brilliance back to the White House, it's important for us to move forward on all and in all arenas, in all fields and especially within the academic and more especially within the intellectual arena.

CBS’s 'Early Show' Skips Grilling of Geithner, Lawmakers Calling for Resignation

Scott Whitlock — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:24:14 -0500

CBS’s Early Show on Friday completely ignored the grilling Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner received on Capitol Hill on Thursday and the calls for his resignation by members of Congress. ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today both covered the contentious exchanges.

ABC’s Good Morning America provided the most coverage. Correspondent Bianna Golodryga observed that "a handful of Republicans and one Democrat are calling for his resignation" based on the current economic situation. She then played video of Republican Michael Burgess deriding Geithner: "I don't think you should be fired. I thought you never should have been hired."

Another clip featured Republican Kevin Brady directly asking the Treasury Secretary: "For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?" But, even though the Early Show found time for generous coverage of Oprah Winfrey and the announcement that she’s retiring in two years, the news program skipped reporting on the calls for Geithner’s resignation by these Republicans. (House Democrat Peter DeFazio and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell both have previously made similar announcements.)

CBS’s Evening News also did not cover the story on Thursday, unlike ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News. Both of those shows did and featured the calls for resignation.

GMA correspondent Golodryga on Friday did attempt to defend Geithner. At the close of her report, she asserted, "One year ago, the stock market was on a nose-dive. Major banks were going under. And the economy suffered its biggest quarterly contraction in seven years. Now, all of that has significantly improved today, except for when it comes to jobs." However, Golodryga left out any mention of the deficit, which has been tripled under President Barack Obama.

This Week host George Stephanopoulos appeared next and did admit that the Obama administration’s claim that things could be worse without the stimulus, isn’t "good enough." But, he also dismissed any notion of a growing movement against Geithner: "You have still only got two members of Congress [sic]. One from the far right and one from the far left who have called for him to go. And, also, one Senator, Maria Cantwell of Washington."

NBC’s Today featured a Ann Curry news brief on the topic:

ANN CURRY: The White House is defending Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who came under some heavy fire on Thursday for how he's handling the economic crisis. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill called for his resignation, and at least one Democrat agreed that he should step down. Geithner was criticized for the nation's 10.2 percent unemployment rate and for the slow recovery but the White House later said, that Geithner has helped bring the economy back from the brink.

Then, in a later segment, Meet the Press host David Gregory appeared and briefly touched on the issue. He dismissed the attack on Geithner as a "perception problem," saying, "You've got Wall Street doing better than most American workers in this country, you've got 10.2 percent unemployment and a ballooning federal debt. Those are the problems for Secretary Geithner, and he's just the proxy, because those are really the problems for the President. Overall, it's a perception problem that the administration has to deal with." 　

A transcript of the Bianna Golodryga segment, which aired at 7:10am EST on November 20, follows:

ROBIN ROBERTS: Now, to the political revolt under way over Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the man hand-picked by President Obama to turn around the economy. A handful of Republicans and one Democrat are calling for his resignation. This morning, the White House firing back. And our financial correspondent Bianna Golodryga has more on that.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Rough day, yesterday. It was anything but your typical Capitol Hill hearing. The Treasury Secretary spent the yesterday defending how the administration is handling the economic recovery. The normally reserved Geithner could not hide his frustrations, however, at accusations that became rather personal. And that's when things got heated.

REP. MICHAEL BURGESS (R-TX, Joint Economic Cmte.): I don't think you should be fired. I thought you never should have been hired.

REP. KEVIN BRADY (R-TX, Ranking member, joint economic Cmte.): For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?

GOLODRYGA: The Treasury Secretary took issue with the notion that the Obama administration is to blame for the economic crisis.

TIM GEITHNER (Secretary of the Treasury): You gave this President an economy falling off the cliff. Values of American savings cut almost in half. -I can't take responsibility is, is for the legacy of crisis you bequeathed this country!

BRADY: This is your budget. This is your bailout. This is your stimulus. This is your act. It is time to take responsibility.

GEITHNER: I take full responsibility for those.

BURGESS: My constituents, they're not just anxious. They are mad. They are fighting mad about what has happened in the economy.

BRADY: It's appropriate for the American people to assess how well this administration's economic policies are working. They are not. They have failed.

GEITHNER: I agree with almost nothing in what you said. And I think almost nothing of what you said represents a fair and accurate perception of where this economy is today. If you look at any measure of confidence in the financial system, it is substantially stronger today than when the President of the United States took office.

GOLODRYGA: And it's not just Republicans who are calling for his head. A Democratic congressman started it all on cable TV.

ED SHULTZ: Should he stay in his job, Congressman?

REP. PETER DEFAZIO (D-Oregon): No.

SHULTZ: You think Tim Geithner should be gone as Treasury Secretary?

DEFAZIO: I do.

GOLODRYGA: So, let's look at the facts. One year ago, the stock market was on a nose-dive. Major banks were going under. And the economy suffered its biggest quarterly contraction in seven years. Now, all of that has significantly improved today, except for when it comes to jobs. The unemployment rate back then was 6.6 percent. Today, that's nearly doubled. And that's become the administration's Achilles' heel now.

NBC's Vieira and Gregory Write Off Obama Struggles as Merely 'Perception Problems'

Geoffrey Dickens — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:58:44 -0500

At first glance it appeared that NBC's Meredith Vieira and David Gregory, on Friday's Today show, did a decent job of recounting all of the struggles the Obama administration is dealing with from unemployment to foreign policy, but ultimately the pair concluded, in every instance, they weren't actual problems, but merely problems of "perception." First up Vieira mentioned Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner being criticized on Capitol Hill for 10.2 percent unemployment, something that Gregory wrote off as simply "a perception problem that the administration has to deal with." Then on Obama's recent trip overseas Vieira queried Gregory: "Speaking about perception problems, President Obama just returned from a eight-day trip overseas to Asia. Some critics are saying that it was a failure, more style and no substance. Is that a fair analysis?" To which Gregory responded the Obama team just needed to do a better job of "winning the perception battle."

The following is a transcript of the segment as it was aired on the November 20, Today show:

MEREDITH VIEIRA: And now to Washington and the latest on the fight over health care reform. The first key vote on the Senate's bill is now set for tomorrow. David Gregory is the moderator of Meet the Press. David, good morning to you.

[On screen headline: "Stuck In The Senate, When Will Obama Get Health Care Reform?"]

DAVID GREGORY: Good morning, Meredith.

VIEIRA: Should be very interesting tomorrow, because in order for this bill to make it through to the next round, all 60 Democrats have to be on board, and right now, that doesn't appear to be the case. There are two moderate Democrats who have yet to say which way they will vote, I'm talking about Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. So what does the Majority Leader Harry Reid, need to do to sway these two to at least get some discussion on this bill, some debate on this bill?

GREGORY: Well, to be sure, he's sweating a lot.

VIEIRA: Yeah.

GREGORY: Because remember, this is just the vote to get started on the bill, to get the debate started. But I've been talking to Democratic aides who are reasonably assured, as is Senator Reid, that he does have the votes, that he's got the Democrats together to at least get the process started, to get the debate going. And you're right, they're not gonna get any help from the Republicans on this, but they're pretty confident that they can at least get those wavering Democrats who are not committed to voting for the bill in the end, to at least start the debate.

VIEIRA: You know speaking of sweating, I don't know if Treasury Secretary Geithner was sweating yesterday on Capitol Hill, but he certainly was taking a grilling. One congressman Kevin Brady of Texas actually called on him to resign. It doesn't appear that he is gonna do that, but what does it say about the pressure on the Obama administration to start to really turn this economy around?

GREGORY: You've got Wall Street doing better than most American workers in this country, you've got 10.2 percent unemployment and a ballooning federal debt. Those are the problems for Secretary Geithner, and he's just the proxy, because those are really the problems for the President. Overall, it's a perception problem that the administration has to deal with. Wall Street gets healthier, the American worker does not. What are they gonna do about the jobs? And all of that frustration on Capitol Hill is really just reflecting frustration in the rest of the country that these lawmakers face when they go home.

VIEIRA: Speaking about perception problems, President Obama just returned from a eight-day trip overseas to Asia. Some critics are saying that it was a failure, more subst-, more style and no substance. Is that a fair analysis?

GREGORY: Well, the truth is that substantive gains that he wants to make on big issues like Iran, like North Korea, that he's dealing with in Asia, are just not coming about yet. And the relationship with China, in particular is very, very difficult because the United States is coming at it from a position of weakness, because of how much debt the Chinese hold, and they are knowing that they're in that position, not really willing to cooperate on issues like Iran or North Korea or even climate change, and they think that they're in a much different position than the United States. So the administration will make the argument that they're still trying to change the tone, they're trying to lay the foundation for some gains that they'll make down the line. It makes it more difficult, though, in terms of winning the perception battle of these trips.

VIEIRA: Alright, David. And very quickly, who have you got coming up on Meet The Press this Sunday?

GREGORY: Well, we're gonna be on the health care debate and the war and other big issues like the economy facing the administration, and we'll have a senator showdown. We've got Senators Feinstein, Durbin, Hutchison and Lieberman on the future of the Obama agenda.

VIEIRA: Always like a showdown. Thanks very much, David.

Joy Behar, George Lopez Label Todd Palin a 'Bum' for Being a Stay-at-Home Dad

Colleen Raezler — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:55:54 -0500

After introducing Lopez on her CNN Headline News program last night, Behar played a clip of Lopez's HBO special in which he said, "There are a lot of politicians that would be Latinos and a lot now who are Latino. Sarah Palin, Latina. Believe me. She's got all the signs. She works and her husband don't."

Later in the segment, after commenting about Palin's lack of experience, Lopez stated, "I mean, the concept of Todd Palin being a stay-at-home dad-listen Joy, when I was a kid, those guys were called bums."

"Uh-huh. They're still called bums," agreed Behar.

Funny that even the liberal Washington Post admitted that Todd Palin was anything but a bum in a hit piece on him last year.

...But Todd Palin, 44, the ruggedly handsome four-time winner of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, was already an Alaska star before his wife's election in 2006. Along with his family duties, he held two jobs, working occasional 85-hour weeks as an oil production operator for BP and, for a month each summer, as a commercial salmon fisherman in Bristol Bay.

Lopez didn't simply insult the Palins' division of labor, but opened fire on her looks and other situations regarding her family after Behar asked him, "What other signs are there that Palin is Latino?"

"She has a child and a grandchild the same age, and the tell-tale sign is she needs to get her roots done," Lopez replied.

Not content to leave the insults there, Behar asked Lopez if he lived in Palin's "real America." Lopez stated, in a nod to the infamous Tina Fey parody of Palin's "Russia" answer, "Well, I can't see Mexico from my porch, so I don't think so."

A turn in the conversation where Behar claimed to not know what Palin was talking about when she discusses the "liberal elite" led Lopez to comment on Palin's role as governor and former vice-presidential candidate, and her "bum" husband:

I'm not even sure if she knows what she's talking about at this point. I mean, her whole life is really one of those things where because of the reality and the reality stars and the situations, you know, being a governor of Alaska would have been a great gig if that was it, but to take that thing and try to take it global or through the United States when you haven't been a political figure and you haven't traveled and you haven't gone to Congress and you haven't passed any major bills, it's a difficult pill to have America swallow. I mean, the concept of Todd Palin being a stay at home dad -- listen, joy, when I was a kid, those guys were called bums.

Lopez managed to insert one interesting comment into his exchange, even amidst the Palin-bashing, when Behar asked if he considered himself part of the liberal elite.

"You know, it's funny, because I think I have become, but I wasn't intending that at the beginning," he admitted. "I mean, it's funny that when you talk about political subjects and people that at some point they think you're more intelligent that you actually are."

Psychology Today Writer: Palin ‘A Very Special Liar’

Dan Gainor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:33:28 -0500

The Associated Press "fact check" of Sarah Palin's new book wasn't enough. Now the left is just coming out and claiming Palin is a flat out liar. That was the argument made by Bella DePaulo in a Psychology Today blog entitled "Sarah Palin's Lies."

DePaulo, who has a Harvard Ph.D. in psychology and experience in analyzing lying, claims Palin excels at it. "From my post as an outside observer, it seems to me that Sarah Palin doesn't care much about the truth. In that way, she is a very special liar," she wrote in the Nov. 19 "Living Single" blog.

The article went on to say how "Palin seems to love the effect her disingenuous pronouncements have on her audience" and discounted Palin's comments about Obama "palling around with terrorists." (Apparently Psychology Today never heard about Obama's ties to William Ayers who "helped found the radical Weathermen, launching a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and United States Capitol," according to The New York Times.)

Left-wing pronouncements are nothing new for Psychology Today. The publication, which "has dedicated itself to exploring the connections between mind, body, and spirit" for 40 years, also makes connections with liberal positions on the climate and politics. One Psychology Today blogger, for example, said overpopulation is a huge issue and "we need to lose 4.4 billion people and we need to lose them fast." A study by the magazine made some sweeping statements about conservatives including: "that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics."

DePaulo had the magazine's mindset down pat and even went after Palin's supporters who "roar with approval and fervor when she tosses that red, bloody moose meat to them." She concluded by saying, "I do love the irony of Palin flaunting her authenticity with lies."

The DePaulo comments actually followed an inquiry by another left-wing publication, The Daily Beast. There writer Michelle Goldberg asked a standard, inflammatory liberal question: "Does Sarah Palin suffer from narcissistic personality disorder?" That article didn't address President Obama's me-first attitude, but instead tried to paint Palin as the liar-in-chief. "Palin, however, lies when there's little to be gained by lying, and she lies when everyone knows the truth," wrote Goldberg. She also claimed that Palin's "new book, Going Rogue, coupled with her recent media appearances, evinces a dishonesty that seems as much clinical as opportunistic."

DePaulo, who also writes a column for the lefty HuffingtonPost, is a singles advocate and author of "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After."

Huffington Argues Glenn Beck Should Be Excluded from Constitutionally Protected Freedom of Speech

Jeff Poor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:23:15 -0500

Want to know how the left really feels about free speech? Look no further than Huffington Post editor and co-founder Arianna Huffington.

Huffington appeared on MSNBC's Nov. 19 "Countdown" to discuss a report by the Anti-Defamation League that alleges Fox News host Glenn Beck is "the most important mainstream media figure who has repeatedly helped to stoke fires of anti-government anger" and therefore endangering society.

"It would be nice to think of Glenn Beck just as a joke, as fodder for this show and the "Daily Show" and others that point out how stupid some of this stuff is," "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann said. "But this report, you know, suggests something else, this is - fear-monger-in-chief term is frightening."

Huffington agreed with Olbermann's assertion, but she took it a step further and suggested Beck's alleged fear-mongering warrants an exemption from the First Amendment, otherwise known as the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" precedent.

"It is frightening," Huffington replied. "Well, I would say the fear-monger-in-chief title should still be reserved for Dick Cheney, even in retirement. But barring that, there is something that we need to really pay attention to with Glenn Beck. We cannot just dismiss him. Because the truth of the matter is that there is a good reason why we have an exemption to the free speech protection by the First Amendment when we say you cannot shout 'fire' in a crowded theater."

Huffington declared that likening Obama's policies to ideologies prominent in Europe during the 20th Century, or anything else with an "-ism" attached to it is "irresponsible."

"And he's doing that every night. He's basically using images of violence to bring together with all that he's accusing the Obama administration of, which varies from racism to communism, Nazism and everything else in between. So, all that has definitely an impact. I believe words matter, language matters and he's using it in incredibly irresponsible ways night after night."

CNBC's Santelli Rebuts Lou Dobbs' Populism in Kudlow Appearance

Jeff Poor — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:43:27 -0500

Now that former CNN host Lou Dobbs has been freed of his duties with his former network, he has been making the rounds on other networks - Fox News "The O'Reilly Factor," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and now with his long-time rival's show CNBC's "The Kudlow Report."

One of the issues debated among a panel consisting of Dobbs, host Larry Kudlow, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and CNBC CME Group reporter Rick Santelli on Nov. 19 was the issue of wage stagnation - which Dobbs blamed on outsourcing, immigration policy and technological advancement.

"I believe that the issue of unemployment in this country and job creation fundamentally will have to be taken on as a matter of government policy," Dobbs said. "It will also have to be taken on as a matter of business leadership. As to the idea that wages have been stagnant in this country for 35 year, point of fact, we have to understand what the causes are."

Video Below Fold

"And we have to look at what the - the contributing factors are," Dobbs continued. "I believe those contributing factors are in part increased technological advancements, which has led to productivity. I think it's also without question trade policies which have led to, frankly, an immigration policy that has permitted the competition between our middle class and the cheapest labor in the world. And until we deal with the issue of outsourcing, we are going to be in significant trouble."

Reich contended the answer to the problem was dumping more taxpayer money into the American education system.

"I think raising outsourcing and talking about what we ought to do about outsourcing is a very, very complicated dilemma, but you know as well as I do that a lot of Americans are being - are losing their jobs, not to outsourcing, but to software, to labor-saving machinery, to numerically-controlled machine tools," Reich said. "We've got to upgrade the quality of our workforce and provide better education. Our schools are falling apart, Lou."

Kudlow disagreed with Dobbs' and Reich's arguments that wages have stagnated, lending to the notion that the standard of living in the United States has remained the same. But Santelli poked holes in their arguments and said there is empirical evidence that Americans are better off based on the technological advancements alone.

"Listen, I look all of my neighbors that are middle class," Santelli said. "Larry, they have Plasma TVs, They have at least two cars, maybe three. They all live in houses that have indoor plumbing. I think anybody on this panel who can't look around and see that the standard of living, the way an average middle class family has lived has improved over the last several generations has got blinders on."

And Kudlow cited The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger, who noted that Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists described by Henninger as "rock stars of the intellectual left," have complied data that shows real median incomes have increased.

"It was two French socialists, Piketty and Saez, who created the data which has become the Democratic Party mantra," Kudlow said. "You know, 24 percent increase just in the last 10 years on real median income. That number just came out, I know there are lags. And by the way, some of these numbers show the bottom quintiles have risen the most. We still can climb the ladder of opportunity in this country, Lou."

GMA Over-indulges on CSPI Food Attacks

Carolyn Plocher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:15:39 -0500

As reported on NewsBusters recently, the kill-joy food police are here just in time for the holidays.

On Nov. 19 ABC's "Good Morning America" aired a recycled study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a liberal activist group that, if it were given the power, would ban everything from remote controls to Chinese food to donuts to casual dining. But even without that power, the anti-food activists still have the networks eating out of their hand.

For the third time in just two months, ABC's early morning show devoted an entire segment to a CSPI study. The past two studies reported that health labels were too "confusing" for consumers while "leafy greens" were life-threatening. Now CSPI's latest publication attacks movie theater popcorn.

"On its own, popcorn is a low-fat, low-cal, whole grain food," said GMA's consumer correspondent Elizabeth Leamy, "but the Center says that the way some movie theaters prepare it, it's more like eating a rack of ribs with a scoop of ice cream on top."

CSPI first came out with a popcorn bashing study back in 1994, condemning it because of the "artery-clogging coconut oil" used for popping. The study received a great deal of media attention, and most movie theaters responded by changing how they popped their popcorn. This year CSPI decided to check on them and they're enraged by what they found.

"In the fifteen years since, the two biggest chains have quietly gone back to popping with [coconut oil], according to the CSPI's limited lab tests," said Leamy.

Jayne Hurley, a nutritionist for CSPI, chided movie theater owners, saying, "Coconut oil is the worst thing movie theaters could be using to pop in because it is so bad for our hearts."

It wasn't until the last minute (quite literally) of the segment that you found out why movie theaters have returned to their old ways. Leamy quoted Regal Theaters, the largest chain in America, who said that "it tried offering air-popped popcorn and that customers didn't like it."

Surprise, surprise.

Regal Theaters also pointed out that "most people go to the movies only about half a dozen times a year and that they see movie theater popcorn as a treat, not a staple."

The CSPI study had complained about movie theatre candy packages too, such as Junior Mints, which are "often jumbo sized."

Open Thread

NB Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:02:40 -0500

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Unemployment is higher among Dems and unaligned voters than among Republicans.

Data from Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys shows that 15.0% of Democrats in the workforce are currently unemployed and looking for a job. Among adults not affiliated with either major party, that number is 15.6% while just 9.9% of Republicans are in the same situation.

Correlation or causation?

Al Gore Proposes Using Supercomputer Projections to Scare People on Global Warming

P.J. Gladnick — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:16:22 -0500

ManBearPig!

A funny thing happened on the road to global warming. Mother Nature is simply not cooperating. Germany's Der Spiegel noted this "problem" for global warming alarmists yesterday:

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

...The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Der Spiegel quotes a noted climatologist about this lack of global warming:

The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."

So if you're Al Gore and your entire reputation (and wallet) is invested in the cause of global warming, how do you explain away the fact that there has been no notable increase in world temperatures during the first decade of the 21st century? Simple. You propose using supercomputers to scare people about global warming by presenting them with the convenient projections you desire. And this is exactly what Al Gore proposed yesterday at the SC09 supercomputing conference in Portland, Oregon:

Supercomputing technology, according to Al Gore, will help the human race reverse climate change, both by aiding the expansion of renewable energy use and by creating models that help people understand the severity of global warming.

...Because of the way humans evolved, we are conditioned to react to immediate threats, such as animal predators or other humans who are warlike, Gore said. As a result, we rarely experience a visceral reaction to challenges like global warming in which cause and effect are separated by many years. Polls show that people are concerned about global warming, but do not rank the problem as highly as most other threats, Gore said.

Climate modeling aided by supercomputing, however, can "make impossibly large phenomena small enough to see, and impossibly small phenomena large enough for us humans to see," and thus induce the type of visceral reactions that spur political change, Gore said.

So if the actual obervations such as noticing cooler than usual weather keeps people from buying into the global warming ideology, then scare the folks by using supercomputer projections of a future apocalypse.

One problem here. Weather people still can't do accurate predictions for five days in advance but we are supposed to believe that climatologists will be accurate with a 50 year projection? Supercomputers? Well, the Der Spiegel article covered that as well:

The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the "Arctic hole."

GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out. The supercomputers are only as good as the information being fed into them. And a system as vast as the entire planet would require a lot more information than can be fed into them anytime in the foreseeable future. However, that won't stop Al Gore from issuing dire warnings based on highly incomplete data being fed into the supercomputers.

ManBearPig!

In the same supercomputing article, it appears that Al Gore just can't let go of his claim about fathering the internet:

"One of the pieces of legislation that I look back on with the most pride and satisfaction was the establishment of the supercomputing centers and the information superhighway, and the national research and education network," Gore said. "In a very real way, supercomputers drove the evolution of the Internet because the task of connecting the large machines in order to make it possible for teams to work together without being physically present in the same building was really what led to the higher bandwidth connections that then modeled the incredible value of having high speed data transfer networks."

Ironically this statement was preceded by Gore's claim of ignorance on the subject:

Much of Gore's speech seemed tailored to a general audience, but he did spend a good amount of time discussing supercomputing despite admitting that "I'm the person in the room who knows the least about it."

And probably also the person in the room who knows the least about climatology yet has made a career (and a financial killing) off the subject of global warming.

WaPo Explores the Guilt of the Millionaire Liberal -- or Marxist?

Tim Graham — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:35:27 -0500

On Friday, The Washington Post explored the guilt of the millionaire liberal in a story on the front of the Metro section headlined: "Grappling with a wealth of guilt: Young heirs seek moral balance between inherited windfalls, social responsibilities."

But one subject in Ian Shapira’s story of "moral balance" is working for the Marxists in El Salvador. The caption under his photo read: "Burke Stansbury, who inherited $1 million in stock, works at the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador in the District."

Shapira never explains that CISPES was founded in 1980 to support the Marxist guerrillas of the FMLN, or even that this death-squad-turned-political-party now holds the presidency of that democracy. It’s merely a group "devoted to labor issues," reported the Post:

"Those of us with wealth and progressive values resist the privilege and actually deny it because of this inequality that exists in society," said Stansbury, who has spent his time since college working for a nonprofit organization devoted to labor issues in Latin America.

Shapira writes that these rich leftists are merely idealists: "They are young people who have inherited or stand to inherit big money, and they are spending their post-college years living modestly and working to address the needs of the poor, hungry and politically disadvantaged."

The young lefties have a group called the Resource Generation, who "devote themselves to philanthropic work for social justice, to talk about their guilt and their views on social inequalities without fear of eye-rolling from people who might view them as spoiled rich kids playing at helping the downtrodden."

Stansbury’s Marxist work is routinely downplayed with buzzwords. He was radicalized in Mexico, he explained:

"I saw deforestation. I saw more problems in the world than I saw in my private school. I saw an uprising in Chiapas of indigenous people -- corn farmers -- against trade policies, and I discovered solidarity activism."

When he returned, he transferred to the University of Montana. After graduating, he began working on behalf of Salvadorans. He was making $25,000 a year at the Solidarity Committee and now works there part time.

In the very last paragraph of the story, Shapira mentions the Marx books in the surroundings:

"I'd like to have my kids be exposed to more diversity, something less sheltered than where I went to school," said Stansbury, sitting in his living room and surrounded by books on subjects such as Karl Marx and the farm crisis in Mexico. "It depends on where we live."

The current mission statement for CISPES is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-American, stating that "capitalism is a fundamentally unjust, oppressive and ecologically unsustainable economic system. We join with poor and working people, immigrants and refugees in the struggle against neoliberalism-- the current manifestation of capitalism imposed by the United States government and its state, institutional and corporate allies."

Sally Quinn Says Sarah Palin's a Rotten Christian (Unlike Reverend Wright)

Tim Graham — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:10:17 -0500

Last year, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post found it "devastating" on PBS that Barack Obama would abandon his sulfurous religious mentor Jeremiah Wright, a man "lionized by some of the great white theologians in this country." Quinn questioned how Wright’s allegedly racist opponents can call themselves Christians: They "go to their white churches, and you wonder how they can call themselves Christians and still look at other people as though they are inferior."

In her role as the co-creator of the Post’s "On Faith" blog, Quinn is at it again, suggesting on Tuesday Sarah Palin was a rotten Christian in her book Going Rogue. "Palin's book is a screed against everyone who ever done her wrong." She jokes nastily that maybe it was God’s plan for Palin to "go rogue" from the tenets of Christianity:

Why would she not simply write a book describing her life as full of blessings as they are, forgiving those who caused her pain or discomfort and show God the gratitude she owes him for everything he has bestowed upon her.

But maybe that wasn't God's plan for her. Maybe he decided that he would have her stray from the basic tenets of her religion’s beliefs. The dictionary defines "rogue' as "an individual varying markedly from the standard."

The standard for Palin's God and faith is love, generosity, mercy and forgiveness. Perhaps that's what she means when she says she is "Going Rogue."

Quinn thought it was weird that Palin went to Bible Camp and decided to "put my life in my creator's hands and trust Him as I sought my life's path." Quinn then asked how God worked in Palin’s life, and suggested Palin shouldn’t complain about what God did to her through say, Katie Couric:

Did God plan for her to become Governor of Alaska. If so, did God plan for her to step down. Did God plan for her to run for Vice President? If so why did she and McCain lose?

Did God plan for her to have a child with Down's Syndrome? If so why did she consider an abortion? Did God plan for her to have a huge wardrobe? Then why did she apologize for it?

Did God plan for her to do the Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson interviews and be humiliated by them. Did God plan for her to allow herself to be forced, against her will to do those interviews? If so then why complain?

Did God plan for her daughter Bristol to get pregnant while she was a teenager? Why was she then not thrilled. Did God plan for Bristol to get engaged and then break up, only to be left a single mother, dropping out of school?

Did God plan for Levi Johnson to be the father of her grandchild? Did God plan for Levi Johnson, who she now calls Ricky Hollywood, to pose nude for Playgirl and go into "porn" as she told Oprah. If so, why does she find it heartbreaking?

I find it all very confusing.

Certainly Palin could say that God planned for her to publish a book that would be a huge, bestseller, go on Oprah, and make an enormous amount of money. Why would God choose her? Why would God look at the suffering around the world of so many millions and say, Sarah, I'm going to give you all of this.

Perhaps God wants more out of Sarah Palin.

You would think that God would ask of her to live her life as an example to others of a compassionate loving, caring person. One of the most powerful examples of God's love in the Bible is that of forgiveness. Turning the other cheek. But Palin's book is a screed against everyone who ever done her wrong.

This is not exactly a surprise from Sally Quinn, who suggested last year that Palin was a bad mother to run for vice president.

NYT Discovers That Wars Cost Money

Tom Blumer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:22:26 -0500

Really, who knew?

In what appears to be the opening round of a rearguard action against what leftists used to call "the good war" (only because they felt they needed to pretend they had pro-war bona fides to make their anti-Iraq War arguments look stronger to the general populace), the New York Times's Christopher Drew reported last Saturday for the Sunday print edition that sending more troops to Afghanistan as General Stanley A. McChrystal has requested might cost tens of billions of dollars.

Imagine that:

High Costs Weigh on Troop Debate for Afghan War

While President Obama’s decision about sending more troops to Afghanistan is primarily a military one, it also has substantial budget implications that are adding pressure to limit the commitment, senior administration officials say.

The latest internal government estimates place the cost of adding 40,000 American troops and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces, as favored by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and allied commander in Afghanistan, at $40 billion to $54 billion a year, the officials said.

Even if fewer troops are sent, or their mission is modified, the rough formula used by the White House, of about $1 million per soldier a year, appears almost constant.

So even if Mr. Obama opts for a lower troop commitment, Afghanistan’s new costs could wash out the projected $26 billion expected to be saved in 2010 from withdrawing troops from Iraq. And the overall military budget could rise to as much as $734 billion, or 10 percent more than the peak of $667 billion under the Bush administration.

Such an escalation in military spending would be a politically volatile issue for Mr. Obama at a time when the government budget deficit is soaring, the economy is weak and he is trying to pass a costly health care plan.

.... At a stop at a military base in Alaska on Thursday, Mr. Obama told a gathering of soldiers that he would not risk more lives “unless it is necessary to America’s vital interests.” He added during his visit to Tokyo on Friday that he wanted to avoid taking any step that could be seen as an “open-ended commitment.”

The administration said Friday that it planned to cut up to 5 percent at domestic agencies in fiscal 2011 as part of an effort to reduce the federal budget deficit, which rose to $1.4 trillion with the economic stimulus and financial bailouts.

All of a sudden the administration has found a place where spending money is a problem. They're quibbling over a net spending increase of $14-$28 billion (between $40 billion and 54 billion minus $26 billion), a net amount that would be about 0.4%-0.7% of the government's annual spending rate of $3.5 trillion per year.

Oh, it's not a problem when hundreds of billions go into a "stimulus" program that hasn't stimulated anything except howls of outrage over misdirected funds, exaggerated results, and reports of billions going to non-existent congressional districts. It's not a problem when discussing having the government take over health care. It's not a problem when funneling funds into two failing car manufacturers, one of which just reported a "managerial net loss" of $1.2 billion in its first period under government control despite having walked away from almost $30 billion in debt and getting at least $50 billion in government aid, the vast majority of which was taken into income by its bankrupt predecessor.

And of course the administration has coupled this with telegraphed plans for significant cuts elsewhere that no one believes will ever happen, and the mere mention of which will bring out howls of protest from bureaucrats and leftist constituencies who will make sure they never happen.

This should be seen as yet another stage in the seemingly endless Afghanistan dither that has been on since summer. The president seems to want to find something, no matter how specious and contrived, to justify not giving McChrystal what he wants. That the Times is providing boot-licking assistance should surprise no one.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

GQ Magazine: Barack Obama - Leader of the Year, Sarah Palin - Dangerous, Poisonous

Terry Trippany — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:55:38 -0500

GQ Magazine is telling a tale of two leaders. On the one side you have Barack Obama, champion of the left, leader of the mainstream media; GQ's Leader of the Year. On the other side you have Sarah Palin, pariah of the right, dangerous and poisonous to the American way according to an interview in the very same publication.

Think I'm kidding? I couldn't make this garbage up.

I'm not sure what accomplishments helped the Conde Naste publication come up with these dubious distinctions. Perhaps it is the tripling of the nation's deficit in 10 short months, bungling the swine flu vaccine, overseeing an economy with record double digit unemployment or pitting one American against the other with unpopular proposals such as socializing health care that made them annoint President Obama. Whatever it is, none of that is apparently as terrible as Sarah Palin who the author describes as showing back up on the scene despite having been "driven her back into her hole" after last year's election.

Sarah Palin is like the mole in that addictively frustrating, ultimately futile carnival game whack-a-mole. Just when we think we've driven her back into her hole, out pops the side-swept updo and rimless Kazuo Kawasaki eyeglasses from another burrow. Katie Couric plays her the fool; she discovers Twitter. The hard right champions her as the frontrunner for 2012; she leaves office. Lawsuits threaten to sack her; she comes up with death panels.

This is just the warm up. The real Palin Derangement syndrome starts in an interview the magazine conducted with with "Sarah Palin Going Rogue, An American Nightmare" authors Betsy Reed and Richard Kim from The Nation.

GQ: Sarah Palin isn't in government anymore. Why does she continue to hold such fascination for all of us?

Betsy Reed: Sarah Palin is a microcosm of a certain part of America. She's very good at pressing all the hot buttons—aggrieved Christianity, patriotism, certain people's fears and anxieties. It's important to look at what those hot buttons are, that way you can start to understand the movement that she represents.

Richard Kim: The essays try to explain her appeal and contextualize her in a larger political movement—one that is very dangerous, and that we're very opposed to.

GQ: I'd rather just ignore her, maybe then she'll go away.

RK: I don't think you can ignore her. How do you ignore someone who routinely finishes at the top of Republican Party polls for the 2012 nomination? How do you ignore someone who manages in a month to actually shift opinion against the public option by creating this whole death panel hysteria? How do you ignore someone who has a book that is number one on the Amazon bestseller list, with 1.5 million copies in print, before it's even out?

BR: Sarah Palin is a double-edged phenomenon from progressives' standpoint. She may be catastrophic to her party, but she also has such a poisonous effect on the whole political culture. Just because they're not going to win elections doesn't mean they're not going to impact the ability of Obama to govern.

That is the crux of it really. Sarah Palin, that microcosm of a "certain part of America" is impacting the ability of Barak Obama to implement his agenda. Her and others like her have come out of their holes to stop Mr. unstoppable.This makes them mad. Won't they just go away?

Let's just ignore the fact that none of this explains why a fillibuster proof Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat President can't pass their agenda. But that's fine; we'll let them have their dementia. This is just another in a long list of excuses from the nation's professional excuse makers.

But wait, what would Palin Derangement Syndrome be without lumping her in with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck?

Has the Republican party sown the seeds of its own demise with Palin?

BR: They're freaked out, as well they should be. They have a real problem on their hands. They thought they were going to be able to groom and manage her.

RK: What's lacking with her is a strategy for how this will actually turn into a winning electoral platform for them. Whatever you want to say about Reagan, at least he had [a winning platform], and it actually worked for an electoral coalition for a while. I put her more with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. I look at what they're doing, and it doesn't seem that there's anything more to it than simply torpedoing democracy, rather than trying to exert control and influence of it through democratic means.

Don't you love it when the smart guys on the left tell conservatives what is wrong with their party?

And look at their logic. Here we have an article in this month's GQ with the authors nashing their teeth over Barack Obama's inability to govern, all because of Sarah Palin. Yet next month the magazine is telling us that Barack Obama is GQ's Leader of the Year! That about sums it up in a nutshell.

At the end of the day you would be better off getting a labotomy than trying to make sense of this twisted logic. For me it's just another day, another breakdown. We shouldn't expect anything less because it can't really get much lower.

Terry Trippany is the Watcher at Watcher of Weasels. The image accompanying this article was presented in Politico (hat tip Gateway Pundit) Update: I meant deficit as opposed to debt in the top paragraph; correction applied. Heritage projects a tripling of the national debt by 2019. Follow the Watcher's Council on Twitter.

Flashback: Year Ago MSNBC Riveted by Palin's Turkey 'Carnage'

Brent Baker — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:26:48 -0500

One year ago tonight, Thursday, November 20 -- like today, the Thursday one week before Thanksgiving -- MSNBC ridiculously plastered “BREAKING NEWS” on-screen for video of Sarah Palin at a turkey farm just after pardoning one, running more than three minutes of video of some turkeys being slaughtered by a man in the background behind her. Palin, then just weeks off the presidential campaign trail, was simply answering questions from reporters in her role as Governor of Alaska.

Filling in as host of Countdown, David Shuster scolded Palin: “She neglected to notice what was happening directly behind her -- in clear view of the television cameras. We've blurred out the goriest parts, but here's her interview, from start to finish.”

As the video ran, MSNBC displayed rotating chyrons with hyperbolic declarations, such as:

GOV. SARAH PALIN KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER

GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER

The November 20, 2008 NewsBusters posting, “MSNBC Turns Palin's Pardoning of Turkey Into Means to Deride Her,” recounted:

MSNBC took denigrating Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to a new low on Thursday night's Countdown. With “BREAKING NEWS” ridiculously on screen, MSNBC ended the show, hosted by David Shuster filling in for Keith Olbermann, with more than three minutes of video of some turkeys being slaughtered by a man behind Palin while rotating chyrons hyperbolically declared:
GOV. PALIN PICKS WORST POSSIBLE BACKDROP FOR TV NEWS INTERVIEW

TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA

GOV. SARAH PALIN KEEPS TALKING WHILE TURKEYS GET SLAUGHTERED BEHIND HER

GOV. PALIN APPARENTLY OBLIVIOUS TO TURKEY CARNAGE OVER HER SHOULDER

GOV. PALIN NOT REALIZING INCONGRUITY OF HER WORDS VERSUS HER BACKDROP

TURKEY-KILLING FOWLS PALIN NEWS CONFERENCE
The video aired after MSNBC ran a story on Palin's pre-Thanksgiving pardoning of a turkey at a Wasila poultry farm. Shuster, quite serious, set up the segment with this warning:
We've made every effort to sanitize the video of what happens next, but you still might want to consider getting the kids out of the room right now and anyone who's a little squeamish about where Thanksgiving dinner comes from. Are they gone? Okay, here's what happened next: As Governor Palin stepped outside of the hatchery, to give a post-pardon interview, she neglected to notice what was happening directly behind her -- in clear view of the television cameras. We've blurred out the goriest parts, but here's her interview, from start to finish.
Afterward, Shuster asserted:
And you thought her media outings as a vice presidential candidate were as bad as it gets.
To watch the video in a larger frame -- those interested in the supposed gore, or reading the chyrons, play it on the MRC's Eyeblast site.

Matthews Insults GOP Congresswoman as 'Replicant From Blade Runner'

Geoffrey Dickens — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:31:04 -0500

Chris Matthews, on Thursday's Hardball, took GOP Congresswoman Virginia Foxx to task for claiming that Republicans "passed civil rights bills in the sixties" as he accused her of having a bad memory, going as far as to compare her to one of the androids from the science fiction classic Blade Runner:

Up next wait ‘til you hear the latest from Congresswoman, whoa! Wait ‘til you catch this. Well this is another version of The Dream, let's put it that way. This is Virginia Foxx, in action. She's actually trying to say -- remember this? It was the Republicans, don't you remember? They are the ones that pushed through civil rights back in the sixties. Remember it was not the Democrats, remember that? Interesting memory there. Next in the "Sideshow." I think she's one of these replicants from Blade Runner where they had an imposed memory put into them. [audio available here]

After playing a clip of Foxx claiming it was Republicans "who passed the civil rights bills back in the sixties, without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle," Matthews charged it was the GOP who became the political "winners" in the South for "opposing civil rights." While Foxx's claim wasn't entirely accurate, Matthews also needs a history refresher course as the Republicans were pivotal in getting the legislation passed, something the late Paul Weyrich pointed out in a July 2004 column:

Republicans in the 87th Congress were determined to get the Black vote back in the GOP column. It was they, under the leadership of Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Il.), who drafted a very extensive Civil Rights Bill. They didn't have the votes to pass the bill and there were some in the Republican Party, such as Sen. Karl Mundt (R-SD), who opposed it.
Still, word was out in the Black community that the Republicans were looking after them. President Kennedy, who contrary to current mythology was not a popular President, worried that the Black vote might return to the GOP. In a close re-election, which he anticipated would be the case, that would be fatal to his chances. So he quickly introduced an alternative bill that some analysts at the time said was not as potent as the Republican bill. No doubt that was an effort to win over some Democrats who were not enthusiastic about the legislation.
It is easy to forget, with the disciplined leftwing Democrat caucus in the current Senate in the 108th Congress, that not only were there Southern Democrats back then who opposed the kind of legislation that Kennedy proposed but such Northerners as Frank Lausche (D-OH.), Alan Bible (D-NV), and Mike Monroney (D-OK), were not enthusiastic about it either.
Then President Kennedy was killed. Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner, used the Kennedy death to push for the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in his name.
That did bring in a few more Democrats but not nearly enough to break a filibuster - which back then required only 26 Senators to be successful. It was the Republicans, with Dirksen leading the charge, who helped to vote cloture, end the filibuster and pass the bill. Without the help of Republicans, the Omnibus Civil Rights Bill would have been in the ashbin of history.

The following rants from Matthews were aired on the November 19 Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Up next wait ‘til you hear the latest from Congresswoman, whoa! Wait ‘til you catch this. Well this is another version of The Dream, let's put it that way. This is Virginia Foxx, in action. She's actually trying to say -- remember this? It was the Republicans, don't you remember? They are the ones that pushed through civil rights back in the six[ties]-. Remember it was not the Democrats, remember that? Interesting memory there. Next in the "Sideshow." I think she's one of these replicants from Blade Runner where they had an imposed memory put into them.
...
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Hardball and what a "Sideshow" we have tonight. First, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Remember how the 1964 Civil Rights Bill killed the Democratic Party in the South, which it did? Remember how Lyndon Johnson said that would happen, when he signed the bill? Remember how what he predicted did come true, how the former Dixiecrats all became Republicans? Remember? Well guess who doesn't remember? Or at least says she doesn't. Here's North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx on the floor of the House today, giving her version of recent history during a debate on the environment.
(Begin clip)
REP. VIRGINIA FOXX: The GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this, in this country, just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the sixties, without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle. They love to engage in revisionist history.
(End clip)
MATTHEWS: Well here are the facts. 46 Democratic senators voted for the Civil Rights bill, 46 and 27 Republican senators. Well that's the numbers. I wouldn't say that the Democrats passed it or the Republicans, I would just say more Democrats voted for it than Republicans. But here's the bigger story. LBJ was right. Backing civil rights cost the Democrats the South. And the Republicans were the winners by opposing civil rights. She's wrong, history is right.

Were There 'Tribal Aspects' To The Anti War Protests?

Kathleen McKinley — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:43:13 -0500

As Noel Sheppard pointed out in an earlier post at Newsbusters, Chris Matthews once again accuses the Tea Party goers of being too white:

"This is a largely white -- almost no minorities in this crowd," reported MSNBC's O'Donnell live from the scene.

Matthews reiterated, "Well, they look like a white crowd to me," later claiming, "I think there is a tribal aspect to this thing, in other words, white vs. other people."

Here are pics from the left's Code Pink's latest march on Washington D.C. I don't see ONE face of color. Go ahead and look through their photo stream back into the Bush years and the protests then. Still a sea of white faces. Here are a few anti war protest pics from that time when I pointed this out back in April.

Let's compare. Here are anti-war protests (I warn you, they may be overtly white, but they are also overtly weird). Here are the Tea Party Protests.

I'm wondering if Chris Matthews or MSNBC ever commented on the "whiteness" or the "tribal aspect" of the left's anti-war protests?

I think you know the answer to that.