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….

If only every state had someone like this man representing its right thinkers.

Bravo, and Bravo again!

That is, referring to a vote for Gingrich being a vote for Obama or, as she has titled her latest column, Re-elect Obama, Vote Newt

To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning. They denounce Mitt Romney as a candidate being pushed on them by “the Establishment” — with “the Establishment” defined as anyone who supports Romney or doesn’t support Newt.

Gingrich may have spent his entire life in Washington and be so much of an insider that, as Jon Stewart says, “when Washington gets its prostate checked, it tickles [Newt],” but he is deemed the rebellious outsider challenging “the Establishment” — because, again, “the Establishment” is anyone who opposes Newt.

This is the sort of circular reasoning one normally associates with Democrats, people whom small-town pharmacists refer to as “drug seekers.”

Anyway, read the rest of her column.

On another, unrelated matter:

A prominent group of Muslim advocates is calling for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his chief spokesman’s resignations over what they allege was an “attempted cover-up” of Kelly’s participation in an anti-Islamic video.

In a story posted late Tuesday, the New York Times quoted Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne saying that Kelly had indeed participated in the filming of “The Third Jihad,” on Browne’s recommendation.

The admission came a day after Browne told the paper that clips of Kelly in the video had been lifted from an old interview and that he had not cooperated with the controversial film, which was reportedly shown “on a continuous loop” to nearly 1,500 police recruits without Kelly’s knowledge.

Kelly’s role and the apparent reversal have left Muslim advocates fuming, following a year of increasingly strained relations.

“We’re at a breaking point,” said Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), which is expected to call for Kelly and Browne’s resignation Thursday morning.

“For the Police Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne to be caught taking part in and helping in the production of an anti-Muslim propaganda film is just so mind-boggling that there really cannot be anything short for resignation,” he said, adding that had the film portrayed any other ethnic group, “heads would be rolling.”

Nermeen Arastu, a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and a member of MACLC has called on the NYPD to retrain all of the officers who watched the film.

The latest incident comes after a year of growing tension between the NYPD and Muslim community, fueled by a series of reports alleging that the NYPD has been involved in a comprehensive domestic surveillance program, targeting Muslims.

Browne told the Times that Kelly found The Third Jihad “objectionable” and said he “should not have agreed to the interview” with the filmmakers, whom he described as having been “part of an ‘Emmy-nominated ‘Dateline NBC’ team.”

The NYPD did not respond to questions about Kelly’s participation.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg slammed police for exercising “terrible judgment” when they repeatedly played the film to new recruits.

A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment on Kelly’s involvement in the film Wednesday.

This looks to me like more of that same interference running muslims always do for terrorism. Anytime anyone speaks the truth about so-called “radical Islam”, there is a PC-related backlash from the usual suspects CAIR and other Islamic groups intended to make people afraid to tell the truth, on the theory that a population and its protective arms that are dumbed-down about the threat of Islamic terrorism remains more vulnerable to attacks than a well informed society.

It never fails to amaze me that, like our not-so-beloved liberals “progressives”, factions like those composed of or supporting malevolent Muslims of foreign origins can so easily get away, through proper intimidation, with censorship in America, a supposedly free country whose freedoms, it seems, only extend to those who wish to bring this great nation to her knees.

One of Seth’s observations about conservative voters and the GOP itself for that matter has been that those on our side of the political aisle, unlike the Democrats, do not always display the same level of campaign marketing savvy that the people over there on the left do.

Meaning?

While the liberal media “reports” and comments in such a way as to make one believe that the vast majority of voters in America are “progressives”, they sugar coat their candidates to deceptively make it appear that they have something for everyone.

While…

The Republicans always seem to assume that most voters want the same thing they do, generally someone with a stauchly right wing reputation, ie when we ran Bob Dole against incumbent Clinton in 1986, which was a beeg meestake, as those middle of the road voters who actually decide the elections were scared leftward by Dole’s perceived “extremism”.

Well, here we see where Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primaries: If he wins the nomination, with the right wing rep he has, we will be assuring an Obama reelection.

Better give that some thought…

In The half grovel at the urinal, Wesley Pruden hit the proverbial nail right on its proverbial head regarding the infamous, nefarious, dreaded, um, whatever other adjectives might be applied now well known video of U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of newly killed Taliban terrorists.

Yes, I know, one (wo)man’s terrorist is another (wo)man’s freedom fighter, but when you stop to consider the kind of hell-on-earth oppression the Taliban represents for anyone unlucky to be governed by them, especially women, and the fact that they’ve enthusiastically provided a home, cover, protection and support for the monsters of al-Qaeda, these “people” hardly qualify as any kind of combatants for liberty. NO, they’re more like filthy, obscene, satanic animals.

That said, courtesy of Jewish World Review (same link as above), heeeere’s Mr. Pruden!

Where’s a Porta-Potty when a few good men need one?

This is the question Leon Panetta, the secretary of defense, ought to concern himself with, instead of trying to top Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, with over-the-top “outrage” over a Marine patrol taking a leak on the bodies of several freshly killed terrorists in Afghanistan.

If Mr. Panetta had been doing his job, he might have found enough Porta-Potties to spell battlefield relief for the Marines. This should teach him a needed lesson. Battlefield rest rooms are important, and will become even more important when women are dispatched to the battlefield. Lady grunts will expect something more than toilet-seat etiquette or an inconvenient bush or tree stump to protect their modesty.

The defense secretary and the secretary of state were each eager to out-deplore, out-lament and out-bewail the other, playing for the cameras a ferocious game of “can you top this?” Mr. Panetta said what the Marines did was “utterly deplorable.” It’s hard to get beyond “utterly,” but Mrs. Clinton called in her crack linguistics team at the State Department — where plain speech is utterly frowned on — and she soon pronounced herself in “total dismay” on hearing the news, and was sure that the “vast, vast” majority of “American military personnel” would never, ever do what those awful Marines did.

Mrs. Clinton’s description of that “vast, vast” majority, and not merely a “vast” majority, was taken to be an indication that she thought the Marines’ offense must have been twice as bad as the offense of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” tormenting Bubba for indulging in inappropriate merriment with a regiment of big-haired ladies at the White House. A secretary of state must use language precisely, and carefully ration her vasts.

Nevertheless, urine is rarely a proper salute even to dead terrorists, and the four Marines who relieved themselves on Taliban corpses should be properly disciplined. Americans, instructed by a culture informed by the certitudes of Jewish and Christian faith, are better than that. Still, sending two senior Cabinet officers do what a second lieutenant could have done was just short of a full grovel. The Obama administration stopped just short of sending the president himself to deliver a deep bow and a fulsome apology to the Taliban terrorists.

Mr. Panetta, who served two years as an Army intelligence officer several decades ago, knows better. Mrs. Clinton, whose hands-on knowledge of warfare and weaponry is limited to the lamps she threw at Bubba in the White House, has no knowledge of what Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, the infamous Civil War firebug, was talking about when he famously said “war is hell.”

Dehumanizing the enemy is the first task of the men who send boys to war, men who never have to learn that war is more than merely a policy option. “But of course [these Marines] have dehumanized the enemy,” Sebastian Junger, a documentary filmmaker who spent a year with an Army platoon in theKorengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan, observes in The Washington Post. “Otherwise they would have to face the enormous guilt and anguish of killing other human beings. Rather than demonstrate a callous disregard for the enemy, this awful incident might reveal something else: a desperate attempt by confused young men to convince themselves that they haven’t just committed their first murder — that they have simply shot some coyotes on the back 40.”

Rick Perry got it right when he said the Obama administration’s rhetoric showed “a disdain for the military.” The incontinent Marines should be reprimanded, but filing criminal charges against them is unreasonable. “Kids, 18- and 19-year old kids make stupid mistakes all too often and that’s what occurred here. To call it a criminal act is over the top.”

An anonymous veteran of the Vietnam war makes a similar point in an Internet blog. “I was on the line in the A Shau Valley with the 101st Airborne Division. At Camp Sally, not a Club Med place to be. Nor for the faint of heart. You must understand that those who live war are a different breed. Perhaps later, much later, maturity rearranges one’s focus.”

What we need now is the rearrangement of the focus of the old men who send young men to war. They don’t have youth and inexperience to excuse their sins, miscalculations and misjudgments. Old men should keep this in mind when deciding how to discipline the Marines they sent across the seas to defend and, if need be die, for the rest of us.

Having been married to a career warrior for going on four decades, I will say this: While my Wolf could not discuss most of his work with anyone not directly involved in it, we have had discussions on the psychological effects of combat on those young men sent to alien places to fight for our country; There is a mortal ferocity to war that I won’t pretend, even after hearing my husband’s first-hand observations on the experience, to understand from the viewpoint of a combatant who is essentially over there fighting not only to achieve victory for his country, but also trying to survive, to stay alive, and to look after his comrades as well.

Acording to the Wolf, different people react differently to combat, these reactions boiling down to “whatever helps the psyche cope with the killing, the fear and the inevitable massive adrenaline overdose that is crucial to staying alive in battle”.

The “utterly deplorable”, “total dismay” and other rhetoric employed by the usual suspects are nothing more than left wing politics by totally deplorable, vastly, vastly left wing liberals more concerned with trashing our country and our military at every opportunity rather than supporting a striving for the excellence of the former or the gallantry and patriotism of the latter.

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.