It’s Obama spreading panic

TheHill.com

It’s Obama spreading panic

President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic. To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later.
Instead of being a firewall, reassuring Main Street even as Wall Street crashed, he has become a conduit of panic, spreading the mood of desperation from the stock exchange floor to kitchen tables across the world.

Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor

Bloomberg.com: News

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area...

Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology - washingtonpost.com

Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology - washingtonpost.com

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Yes, but were the "O"s missing from all the keyboards????

Get used to it Obama.  This is what technology looks like when you have national security and freedom-of-information to worry about at the same time.  The giant US bureaucracy doesn't run on Facebook and Blackberries...

Will Obama break 1981 Reagan record for inauguration Nielsen ratings? No.

Updated: Will Obama break 1981 Reagan record for inauguration Nielsen ratings? No.

Amazing isn't it?  What has been purported to be the most significant inauguration in history was watched by 4 million LESS people than watched Ronald Reagan take the oath in 1981.  Two factors to also consider here:  there were 80 million LESS people (about 26% less) in the country in 1981 and DVRs didn't exist (yes, they count in the ratings if they are watched the same day...)

On the Money Trail: Inauguration Perks Go To the Rich

ABC News: On the Money Trail: Inauguration Perks Go To the Rich

President-elect Barack Obama billed his inauguration an event "for all Americans." But in the nation's capital this long weekend, wealthy visitors are finding themselves a bit more equal -- and warmer -- than others.

Feds Say Obama Prayer Leader Is From Group Linked to Hamas

Feds Say Obama Prayer Leader Is From Group Linked to Hamas

A Muslim scholar chosen to speak at President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural prayer service Wednesday is the leader of a group that federal prosecutors say has ties to terrorists.

It didn't seem to matter with Bill Ayers. Why should we think the public will care about this? Ties to terrorists? All the better to negotiate with them....right?

Obama Hosting Pricey Party in Hard Times

Obama Hosting Pricey Party in Hard Times

WASHINGTON - Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. Let's party.

The price tag for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million. Despite the bleak economy, however, Democrats who called on President George W. Bush to be frugal four years ago are issuing no such demands now that an inaugural weekend of rock concerts and star-studded parties has begun.

Pelosi Reverses House Fairness Rules

Pelosi Reverses House Fairness Rules - HUMAN EVENTS

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.
Pelosi’s rule changes -- which may be voted on today -- will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”

EU's new figurehead believes climate change is a myth

EU's new figurehead believes climate change is a myth - Times Online

The European Union's new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con

Environment minister Sammy Wilson: I still think man-made climate change is a con - Environment, News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

“I think in 20 years’ time we will look back at this whole climate change debate and ask ourselves how on earth were we ever conned into spending the billions of pounds which are going into this without any kind of rigorous examination of the background, the science, the implications of it all. Because there is now a degree of hysteria about it, fairly unformed hysteria I’ve got to say as well.

“I mean I get it in the Assembly all the time and most of the people who shout about climate change have not read one article about climate change, not read one book about climate change, if you asked them to explain how they believe there’s a connection between CO2 emission and the effects which they claim there’s going to be, if you ask them to explain the thought process or the modeling that is required and the assumptions behind that and how tenuous all the connections are, they wouldn’t have a clue.

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

 

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved - Telegraph

...Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions...

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'

CNN Meteorologist: Manmade Global Warming Theory 'Arrogant'

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers is the second CNN meteorologist to challenge the global warming conventions common in the media. He also said trying to determine patterns occurring in the climate would be difficult based on such a short span.

“But this is like, you know you said – in your career – my career has been 22 years long,” Myers said. “That’s a good career in TV, but talking about climate – it’s like having a car for three days and saying, ‘This is a great car.’ Well, yeah – it was for three days, but maybe in days five, six and seven it won’t be so good. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

“We have 100 years worth of data, not millions of years that the world’s been around,” Myers continued.

Halperin at Politico/USC conf.: 'extreme pro-Obama' press bias

Thanks for pointing it out, Mark.  Now, go look at the last 20 issues of your own magazine and take a hard look in the mirror.  Some in the mainstream media now have buyer's remorse and are trying to undo the damage they caused to their own reputations.  It ain't gonna work.

Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.
"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

Halperin at Politico/USC conf.: 'extreme pro-Obama' press bias - Alexander Burns - Politico.com

Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden

 

Zogby International

UTICA, New York -- Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film "Blocking the Path to 9/11" and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign. An answer of "none" or "Palin" was counted as a correct answer on the test, given that the statement was associated with a characterization of Palin.

Obama voters did not fare nearly as well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

In addition to questions regarding statements and scandals associated with the campaigns, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey also included a question asking which political party controlled both houses of Congress leading up to the election -- 57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

For content, contact: John Ziegler at talktozig@aol.com.

 

Zogby Statement on Ziegler poll

"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby

The world has never seen such freezing heat

The world has never seen such freezing heat - Telegraph

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

GOP road sign: Keep Right

Jonah Goldberg

By now you've probably heard: The GOP is becoming too regional, too white, too old to compete at a national level. Democrats look like a merging of the cast of "Rent" and Up With People, while Republicans look like diehard fans of "Matlock" and "Murder, She Wrote."

Fine, fine. The GOP needs to win over more Hispanics, young people, suburban women. That sounds perfectly plausible. But what does "win over" mean? ...

Obama quits Senate after 46 months - - 21 of them seeking another job - Los Angeles Times

 Just had to post this - simply for the headline...

Obama quits Senate after 46 months--21 of them seeking another job | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Ayers Says He Is a 'Family Friend' of Obama

 

Well look who decides to come out of hiding right after the election...

Ayers Says He Is a 'Family Friend' of Obama

ABC News: Campaign Boogeyman William Ayers Talks to 'GMA'

(ABC/AP Photo )

"We knew it was wrong. We knew it was illegal. We knew it was immoral," he said, but the group's members felt they "had to do more" to stop the Vietnam War.

...Despite Obama's attempt to portray their relationship as a distant one, Ayers, in a new afterward to his book "Fugitive Days," describes Obama as a "neighbor and family friend."

...Ayers remained silent during the presidential race, but his proximity to Obama was highlighted on Election Day when the two men nearly ran into each other in the same polling place.

...Obama and Ayers have several connections. The two men have also served on boards together, including the Woods Fund of Chicago and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

...Ayers acknowledged that he held a reception in his home when Obama began his political run for state office.

...Ayers defended his bomb-throwing past and repeated a statement that has infuriated his critics: "I don't think we did enough."

...The college professor also argued...that the bombing campaign by the Weather Underground, the group he helped found, was not terrorism.

To all of you who claimed Obama shouldn't be ashamed of his connections to Ayers - you're fine.  You're sick, but you're fine.

To all of you that claimed this wasn't true - eat it!

 

Lucianne.com News Forum

Question posed to the blogosphere...

Mad Sociologist bring up a good question. See below and comment at will.

What will be your criteria for assessing the effectiveness of an Obama Presidency. Obviously yours will be much different from mine.

I ask because I'd like to break away from the cult of personality style politics that is the norm. My criteria applied to Bush shows such a dismal record that I have a hard time understanding how anyone can stand up for him. Obviously, the criteria is different. So what is the criteria? Can we design a presidential report card by which to hold our candidates accountable? That's going to be my next project.

An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage - washingtonpost.com

 

awwww.  how cute...the Washington Post comes out AFTER the election to admit they were in the tank for Obama.

File this one under "tell us something we dono't already know"...

Deborah Howell - An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage - washingtonpost.com

The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace

 

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace - WSJ.com

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

AP

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Post-partisan Obama, my ass...

 

My Way News - Obama's choice of Emanuel shows switch in tone

CHICAGO (AP) - Barack Obama is signaling a shift in tactics and temperament as he moves from candidate to president-elect, picking sharp-elbowed Washington insiders for top posts. His choice Thursday for White House chief of staff - Rahm Emanuel, a fiery partisan who doesn't mind breaking glass and hurting feelings - is a significant departure from the soft-spoken, low-key aides that "No-Drama Obama" surrounded himself with during his campaign.

Political Cartoon

 

I can't help it - this is too funny...

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are