Scientists to the left of the aisle and those on the tax financed research dole, take a gander at this!

The supposed “consensus” on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Is this what they mean by “another one bites the dust“?

****Addition 31 January****

Input by Wes Pruden, one of Hard Astarboard’s favorite columnists:

Global warming: Been there, done that. Forward-looking folks are adjusting their fretting machinery now to something called Cycle 25. Button up your overcoats. Ice is on the way.

Global warming, which was mostly a scam invented by researchers looking for government grants, is over. The great warming phenomenon, which was supposed to have sent polar bears to vacation in Miami Beach by now, ended in 1997.

Britain’s Met Office, which tracks weather and makes forecasts, and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the source of much global warming research (some of it faked, some of it not), agree, according to the London Daily Mail, that Planet Earth could even be heading for an icy patch “to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the [frozen-over] Thames in the 17th century.” They call this Cycle 25.

Read on….

From the front end of (this last) New Year’s weekend, Oliver North in Town Hall…

…This week, as we prepare to ring out 2011 and welcome 2012, President Barack Obama asked for Congress to authorize yet another increase in our national debt — the third such rise in less than 15 months. Housing prices continue to slide; more than 13 million Americans are unemployed; government spending continues unabated; and America’s credit rating is at risk of another downgrade. In January, barring action by Congress and the White House, U.S. defense spending cuts totaling $1.1 trillion over the next four years will begin to take effect. Such an outcome in the midst of these perilous times ought to be unthinkable.

Instead of putting tens of thousands of Americans to work building new ships, submarines, aircraft and a missile shield to protect the American people from nuclear attack, the Obama administration wants the federal government to create temporary jobs repaving highways, painting bridges and re-roofing public schools. Rather than have unemployed construction workers build a petroleum pipeline from Canada (and improve U.S. energy security), the Obama White House wastes billions on phony “green jobs.” The administration has to hope we all will forget the word “Solyndra.”

Ollie North looks like better presidential material than anyone running in the current field.

In a burst of year-end euphoria, progressive politicians, pundits and government economists are predicting that the worst of the “Bush-era recession” is behind us and that good times are just ahead. They pin their economic hopes for 2012 less on American entrepreneurs than they do on German taxpayers.

The experts are praying Berlin will continue to bail out European PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) and prevent an Old World financial collapse that would drag down the sale of U.S. goods and services on the Continent. Expect to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel feted at a White House state dinner early in the new year. A million or so American jobs could well depend on whether she likes the soup.

{In the Truth Hurts Department} OUCH!

Jobs — the word used most often by politicians running for office in 2012. Regardless of party, whether challenger or incumbent, every office seeker tells us he or she has a way of “creating,” “protecting,” “saving” or “improving” jobs for American workers. What few of our elected officials ever mention is how vulnerable these “well-paying” and “secure” jobs are to factors far more threatening than the European debt crisis. Here are the top three issues that should concern those who purport to care about our economic well-being in the year ahead:

1) An Iranian nuke. Just before Christmas, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told us Iran could have a workable nuclear weapon in 2012. He also knows — but didn’t say — that the theocrats in Tehran already have the means of delivering it. Tel Aviv, Israel, is target No. 1. American civilians are No. 2 on the ayatollahs’ hit parade. To Israelis, the expression “Never Again” isn’t a political slogan. It’s a way of life. They are not going to wait to be incinerated.

The Obama administration could stop the Iranians from building atomic weapons and perhaps even bring about regime change by forbidding any company doing any business in Iran from doing any business in the U.S. But unless the O-Team takes such a step, the Israelis will have to act pre-emptively to prevent annihilation. If you think the “2008-11 global recession” hurt, you don’t want to contemplate what the world economy would be like after an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons sites.

2) The jihad. The “Arab Spring” — once so proudly proclaimed to have been instigated by Obama’s soaring rhetoric — has become a nightmare for democratic aspirations in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and Anwar al-Awlaki are dead, but the jihad being waged by radical Islamists is stronger than ever. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Sudan are headed for Shariah rather than secular governance in 2012. Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Jordan, Nigeria and even Saudi Arabia could follow suit soon. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom forecasts that Christianity could be eradicated in these countries. The economic impact of such an upheaval is potentially catastrophic.

3) The collapse of Russian democracy. Vladimir Putin is presiding over a dying country — and he knows it. Though Russian energy exports to Europe and China currently fill the coffers of Moscow’s kleptocracy and help rebuild Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the future for the land of the czars is bleak. Russia’s population — now 141.7 million — drops by nearly 1 million per year. With an average male life span of just 59 years, look for 2012 to be the year Putin and his cronies do all they can to line their pockets — at our expense.

You have to wonder what all those people we presently pay to think about these things and govern accordingly have been doing with their time, you know? Are they so busy working on getting reelected, lining their pockets via insider trading and figuring out new perks and benefits to give themselves that they haven’t got any time for America, their employer whose shareholders are the taxpayers?

Note to all running for office in 2012: The word “entitlement” does not appear in the Constitution. The words “provide for the common defence” do. Happy new year.

Yes, to all, Happy New Year.

You betcha!

One thing Seth has said in the past that he liked about California is that on election day, Californians get to vote on the passage of issues that concern them. They get propositions to “yea” or “nay” on the voting ballot. When something really socialistic passes out there, it generally means that that’s what the people want, what they voted for, but at least you can know that right or wrong, it’s what the majority of the people wanted.

That, whether the result is good or bad, is democracy.

New Yorkers, however, prefer to simply elect others to do all their thinking for them, then kvetch when taxes are raised or oppressive laws are enacted, then simply grit their teeth and go along with whatever it is.

So…

There is California, supposedly the most gay, most liberal state in the nation last year voting down an initiative to legalize marijuana, and… wow, the people also continue to vote down a same sex marriage amendment, while here in New York…

…the politicians get to make such decisions in their “smoke filled back rooms” with or without the approval of the sheep majority.

Even the Republicans in New York (these people are desperately in need of a visit from the Tea Party) are sheep, to judge by what they’ll tolerate from Republican politicians here.

From World Magazine (a Christian publication):

New York conservatives were thinking through their next steps after four Republican state senators on June 24 joined Democrats in a 33-29 final vote that made New York the sixth state in the nation (plus the District of Columbia) to legalize same-sex marriage. The new law, which takes effect on July 25, will double the number of people now eligible for same-sex marriage in the United States.

Conservatives are likely to hold responsible at the polls the four Republicans who broke ranks to vote for the bill, along with majority leader Dean Skelos, who sent it to the floor for the final vote. But they are equally outraged by the closed-door tactics used to bring the controversial legislation to a vote—and what it means for future deliberations in a statehouse where Republicans hold only a slim majority in the Senate.

“All lobbyists were shut out for two weeks, then it was rammed through the voting process,” said Duane Motley, a pastor who is founder and senior lobbyist of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedom. During the vote, he said, state troopers guarded the chambers, with senators locked in while the public remained locked out: “They [Republicans] even let Cuomo’s chief of staff on the floor to hurry the process so it was done for 11:00 news.” Governor Andrew Cuomo orchestrated the campaign and brought together unlikely allies who may bolster his Democratic base—and national profile for a 2016 White House run.

Motley said lawmakers also failed to follow normal rules of debate on the question of a religious exemption. “This was the executive branch telling the legislative branch how to operate,” he said, something he’s not seen in 29 years of closely following statehouse politics.

The entire column can be found here.

For all the blustery toughness associated with our fellow New Yorkers, that’s the long and short of it: They’re sheep, and elect politicians not to serve them, but to lead them around by the nose.

In an Op Ed by Michael Reagan from today’s Washington Times:

More than three decades ago, my father took ownership of the smoking ruins of the American economy armed with nothing more than four very basic principles: Keep taxes low, restrain government spending, minimize the amount of regulation on private enterprise and keep the money supply sound.

His approach may have appeared basic, but the results were unassailable. Over the next eight years, more than 16 million new private-sector jobs were created, a payroll expansion of 17.6 percent.

It was called the “American Miracle” and was replicated by world leaders across the globe, who met with similar success.

Looking back at it from a distance, it’s remarkable to me that the concepts that worked so amazingly well just a short time ago have fallen so far to the wayside.

Well, the rest of the column speaks for itself.

During a time when most companies appear to be insecure about adding to their payrolls because of the uncertainty surrounding our economy, this country would be wise to carefully study why Texas employers seem to be largely immune to this insecurity.

Ay men!

There’s something in one of Seth’s email inboxes that I’ve been delegated to monitoring when I have time, called The Robbins Report, that has an interesting piece within that I’d like to share.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have been posted to the web outside mailings to subscribers and I can’t get a link yet, so:

I’ll copy and paste it into this post and hope a link becomes available quickly.

Enjoy

Sarah Palin’s critics routinely mock her intellect, so when the state of Alaska released 24,000 emails she wrote while serving as governor, “AOL Weird News,” an offbeat component of AOL.com, had a representative sample analyzed to see how well she wrote. They expected the results to confirm their anti-Palin bias, but they were in for a surprise.

Far from being an illiterate bumpkin, the standard Flesch-Kincaid readability test showed that Ms. Palin’s emails were written at an 8.5 grade level. This was “an excellent score for a chief executive,” AOLWN reported. To put some perspective on this number, Martin Luther King’s August 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech — much more heavily edited than Ms. Palin’s emails — ranked at 8.8 on the same scale, while Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address came in at 9.1.

A study by Smart Politics on the readability ratings of recent State of the Union addresses also showed Ms. Palin in good company. President George H.W. Bush’s average SOTU score was 8.6. Bill Clinton came in at 9.5. Ronald Reagan, who like Ms. Palin was heavily criticized by liberals and regarded as a doddering old fool, logged an impressive 10.3 rating. And George W. Bush, who earned even more left-wing contempt than Mr. Reagan, if that’s possible, edged the Great Communicator with a10.4 ranking.

Then there is President Obama, heralded as the smartest president and the most gifted orator in living memory, but whose 2008 “Yes we can!” victory speech came in at a comparatively anemic Flesch-Kincaid rating of 7.4. Some numbers just speak for themselves.

Well, well.

And speaking of President Obama…

As President Obama shifts increasingly into reelection mode, he is feeling persistent anger and discontent from the left as well as the right.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer was heckled and booed Friday at the annual Netroots Nation conference in Minnesota, a gathering of liberal activists from the online political community. When Mr. Pfeiffer reminded the audience that the president championed an equal-pay law, the moderator replied, “Frankly we’re a little sick of hearing about that one.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley heard heated complaints from business leaders about burdensome government regulations at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington. As Mr. Daley listened to tales of the administration’s unnecessary interference in industry, he replied, “Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible.”

Indeed you can’t.

No, despite his getting the credit for it, Barack Obama had little responsibility for it, other than authorizing the mission.

As Ann Coulter puts it:

American intelligence operations located Osama by following his trusted couriers, whose names were given up by al-Qaida members during harsh interrogations at CIA black sites under President Bush.

Say it, Ann!

It’s great that we got bin Laden, but if the last Democratic administration had been doing its job, there would have been no Osama bin Laden and no 9/11 attack to begin with.

Democratic presidents are always too busy feverishly redistributing wealth at home to devote serious attention to our national interests abroad.

Obama gets to reap the rewards of Bush-era terrorism policies — policies that he, his fellow Democrats and Jane Mayer hysterically denounced at the time — while Reagan and Bush had to deal with the consequences of Carter’s Iranian policy and Clinton’s bin Laden policy.

According to Michael Scheuer, who ran the bin Laden unit at the CIA for many years, President Clinton was given eight to 10 chances to kill or capture bin Laden but refused to act, despite bin Laden’s having publicly declared war on the United States and launched various terrorist attacks against us, murdering hundreds of Americans.

(If only one of those opportunities had presented itself on the day of Clinton’s scheduled impeachment, instead of Clinton’s bombing Iraq, he might have postponed his problems at home by finally taking out bin Laden.)

Clinton’s CIA director, James Woolsey, never once met with Clinton in a one-on-one meeting. This is in contrast to Monica Lewinsky, who got about a dozen face-to-face — or face-to-something — meetings with the president.

That’s why Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, was caught stealing documents from the National Archives during the 9/11 commission hearings. That’s also why Clinton blew a gasket and forced ABC to cancel the DVD release of the docudrama “The Path to 9/11″ — based on the commission’s report.

Bush had to deal with the ticking time bomb of Osama bin Laden left by Bill Clinton.

All presidents have had to deal with the ticking time bomb set by Carter’s passive acceptance of the Iranian revolution in 1979, giving Islamic lunacy its first nation-sponsor.

What ticking time bombs are being set around the globe by our current Democratic president?

Read the entire column.

While we’re in reading mode, here’s one along a similar vein that just goes to show…something about Obama and his ilk.

Hmmph…

Obama’s home loan modification program was talked up by the bailout-friendly news media as a potential “ray of light” for struggling homeowners.

But on June 21, Associated Press reported the mortgage assistance program is “falling flat.”

The broadcast networks supported the mortgage modification and housing bailout when Obama launched it in 2009, after criticizing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan for not doing “enough” to fix the problem. ABC, CBS and NBC haven’t mentioned the new figures since AP reported them.

“More than a third of the 1.24 million borrowers who have enrolled in the $75 billion mortgage modification program have dropped out,” AP said. “That exceeds the number of people who have managed to have their loan payments reduced to help them keep their homes.”

Not surprising; It seems that the “progressive” elements within the government are so wrapped up in their other-wordly reality that true reality eludes them. So they create a mostly wasted program that benefits only a few of those interested or in need of such a venue, then, together with their tame mainstream media, announce the sheer brilliance, greatness and necessity of the waste of time and allocated treasure.

The “ambitious” Home Affordable Modification Program was supposed to help 3-4 million people. As of last month the number of dropouts (436,000) exceeded the permanent modifications by almost 100,000 (340,000).

This was part of the same housing bailout Rick Santelli condemned on CNBC saying “the government is promoting bad behavior.” Santelli’s rant against the housing bailout helped inspire thousands of Americans to protest bailouts and runaway government spending at Tea Parties around the country in 2009 and 2010.

But Santelli’s opposition to a bailout was an exception among the pro-bailout news media. As recently as Feb. 18, 2010 ABC’s Robin Roberts was praising the program as “what may be a ray of light for the millions of homeowners struggling to hold on to their piece of the American dream.”

The rest of the article.

Most Americans don’t want what the Obama Administration and the far-left run House and Senate are hanging on us. That’s why there were so many intraparty shake-ups during recent primaries and why the Tea Party, despite the belittlement, courtesy of the leftist mainstream media, that no one took much notice of once it became obvious that the Fourth Estate and the Alphabet networks were shilling for anything that was “progressive” out of pure party politics rather than any attempt at responsible reporting. What’s new, right?

I’ve had more than one fellow conservative tell me that they are actually glad that Obama got elected.

Why?

Because as president, his agenda has served to wake up millions of sleepy, daydreaming, uninformed and otherwise unaware Americans to the reality of socialist doctrine the far left, through their dominance within the Democratic Party, has been stealthily forcing upon us and in so doing, activate that good old spirit of liberty that defines us as a people; defines our heritage and our way of life and as a result, We, The People are now united and, eyes wide open to the threat among us, fighting back.

That “American Dream” cannot be provided by government programs, government spending and government regulation, it must be worked hard for by people who cherish their freedom and want to build a good life wherein they are independent and beholden to no parentally structured political body for what they have.

The perfect explanation as to why “progressives” vote as they do, and those they vote for are as they are.

It’s one of those dispatches from the world of social science that leave some gloating and some fuming: A pair of researchers have concluded that when it comes to grasping basic economic concepts, liberals and Democrats are significantly less “enlightened” than conservatives and libertarians.

Researchers Daniel Klein and Zeljka Buturovic put forth their analysis in a recent article in Econ Journal Watch, an online scholarly journal, and in a subsequent column Mr. Klein wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, it has elicited a less-than-favorable peer review from liberal economists.

Americans describing themselves as conservative, very conservative and libertarian “do reasonably well” when asked about basic economic questions involving supply, demand and the effects of regulation, concluded Mr. Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, and Ms. Buturovic, an associate researcher with the polling firm Zogby International.

“But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics,” the two write.

The entire story.

In the bad old days of my military service, I had occasion to witness the self inflicted deaths of more than one adolescent. Those deaths were death by explosives, those kids self-detonating in order to take the lives of others.

The incidents did not occur in or near the United States or even on the North or South American continents, but in third world countries oceans away.

Even though these children died commiting murder, I felt heartache at people in such an early stage of life dying needlessly. And it was needless, there is little doubt in my mind that they were either compelled to do what they did or persuaded to do so by cowardly adults who preferred to use kids as weapons to crawling out of their holes and fighting like men for the causes they espoused.

When I read about this incident, I was just as depressed.

The teenager died needlessly.

Not because a Border Patrol agent saw fit to shoot him (I was not there, and the circumstances as reported are still apparently a bit muddy), but because the kid was there to begin with.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent fatally shot a 15-year-old Mexican boy after a group trying to illegally enter Texas threw rocks at officers near downtown El Paso, U.S. authorities said Tuesday.

The shooting, which happened Monday evening beneath a railroad bridge linking the two nations, drew sharp criticism from Mexico, where President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday that his goverment “will use all resources available to protect the rights of Mexican migrants.”

The above quoted paragraphs indicate the blame for the incident, investigation results notwithstanding, and tell us exactly who is to blame for the boy’s dying there.

Calderone: the rights of Mexican migrants

People his government should be stopping on their side of the border, except that the corrupt sleazeballs, including Calderone himself, see it as being in their best interests to palm off their poor on the U.S. so they can pocket more of the money they’re not spending looking after their own citizens.

Mexican migrants? How about “criminal aliens?” Felony trespassers upon sovereign U.S. soil?

What rights? These people were crossing our border illegally, they did not belong on this side of the border, therefore they had no rights.

Americans who employ undocumented aliens: illegals sneak across the border because they can get work up here from criminals who, in order to obtain cheap labor, ignore the laws that prohibit them from hiring these people.

“Progressive” U.S. Politicians: These folks are just as criminal as the scumbags that hire illegals, because instead of allowing their law enforcement agencies to apprehend illegals, they provide sanctuary cities and states. They speak out in favor of illegal immigrants, sending them a message that they’re welcome here.

In California, well, just look at L.A. County alone. There’s a corrupt, greasy, anti-American L.A. mayor named Villarago — Villarai — whatever, who champions the cause of illegals and condemns a state like Arizona for protecting itself by enforcing immigration laws. There are boulevards like Olympic in Santa Monica where the city actually puts out porta-cans along the roadsides where the illegals stand around waiting for contractors to pick them up, so the felons will feel more comfortable waiting there.

Isn’t that nice…

Meanwhile, illegal aliens are putting hospitals out of business in California, contributing to the bankruptcy and unemployment and crime, and these “progressives” ignore it all.

The Federal Court System: What happened to Tyson and others when they were caught red-handed with plants overflowing with “undocumented” workers?

Nothing.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Where the hell are they?

The President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, all the Democrats on the Hill, and, of course,

The Mainstream (lefty) Media: For their heartfelt support and encouragement both of illegal immigration and the lack of enforcement thereof.

Naturally, the blame will fall on the Border Patrol agent who pulled the trigger, although in the scheme of things, he is the least responsible, for that boy dying, of any of the above.

This was 50% surprise…

IDF forces piloted the Rachel Corrie to the port of Ashdod early Saturday evening after boarding the ship earlier in the day.

None were harmed in the military operation as the international activists on the ship cooperated with the boarding party. The activists went as far as lowering a ladder to the soldiers patrol boat to allow them to board, army sources have revealed.

…And 50% expected.

The boarding of the Rachel Corrie containing activists and aid for Gaza was described by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday as a quiet operation. Netanyahu was quick to distinguish between the boat of Irish and Malaysian activists and the Turkish-sponsored Mavi Marmara which was boarded May 31 in an incident that left nine dead and scores wounded.

“The different outcome we saw today underscores the difference between peace activists who we disagree with but respect their right to express their different opinion and flotilla participants [on the Mavi Marmara] who were violent extremist supporters of terrorists,” said Netanyahu.

IDF navy forces boarded and took control of the MV Rachel Corrie Saturday afternoon. The troops did not meet any resistance from activists attempting to break the Gaza blockade, and the operation was completed without violent incidents.

Why half expected?

Because during their forerunners’ foray last week into blockade running, they learned from the others’ sampling of an old Hank Williams, Jr. remedy.