Libertarian Leanings

More Of This, Please

In fact, this is what should happen any time the majority forces a vote on legislation no one has had a chance to read.

To make matters more complicated, the Senate stumbled into health care gridlock after a Republican senator forced the clerk to read aloud a 767-page amendment.

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had sought approval to require that any amendment considered by the Senate must be offered 72 hours in advance and with a full cost report.

When he was rebuffed by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, Coburn invoked his right to require that an amendment by another Democrat be read aloud. That sent the Senate into limbo, since the amendment by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders is 767 pages long. It calls for guaranteeing coverage to all through a public program similar to Medicare.

According to Ed Morrissey it took eighteen minutes to get through the table of contents.  And it's just an amendment.

Key Excerpts

In November 2007 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a National Intelligence Estimate entitled, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.  Its most prominent Key Judgment was this:

A.  We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program.

This set the liberals atwitter.  Lefty star blogger Matthew Yglesias quoted his favorite candidate:

Barack Obama says:

By reporting that Iran halted its nuclear weapon development program four years ago because of international pressure, the new National Intelligence Estimate makes a compelling case for less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy.

On the other side John Bolton highlighted the NIE and warned:

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

Candidate Obama is now President Obama, and we now get to see how his strategy of less saber-rattling and more direct diplomacy has worked out.  The Washington Post reports today:

The accumulating evidence of Iran's nuclear momentum emerges as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Monday that the White House has little to show for nearly a year of diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. "I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians," Clinton told reporters.

The internal documents and expert analysis point to a growing Iranian mastery of disciplines including uranium metallurgy, heavy-water production and the high-precision explosives used to trigger a nuclear detonation. Although U.S. spy agencies have thought that Iran's leaders halted research on nuclear warheads in 2003, European and Middle Eastern analysts point to evidence that Iran has continued to hone its skills, as recently as 2007.

Funny how it was the Bush administration that was always accused of cooking the intelligence.

Obama's Accelerating Slide

Over the last couple of days Obama's popularity has taken a dive, according to Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index.  The Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the percentage of those who strongly disapprove of the president's performance from the percentage of those who strongly approve.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18.

That’s a one point improvement from yesterday when Obama’s Approval Index rating fell to the lowest level yet recorded. Prior to the past three days, the Approval Index had never fallen below -15 during Obama’s time in office (see trends).

The dip in popularity almost certainly comes about because of the speech he gave to the Nobel Committee upon acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize last Thursday.  I say this because the decline in Obama's popularity has occurred among those who strongly approve of his performance.  On Sunday it was down to 23% before rising a point today.  Meanwhile the percentage of those who strongly disapprove of his performance has bounced between 38% and 42% since November 24th.

But the speech did it, sending Obama to a record low of -19 on Sunday.  Here is a sample of what most likely has drawn the ire of his supporters.

I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions - not just treaties and declarations - that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest - because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

What could Obama have been thinking!  To suggest that America has accomplished good things in the world is bad enough.  But then to compound the sin and say that America has sometimes done it through the use of military force is simply way to much for his left-wing base to swallow.  It comes as very little surprise that Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech won praise from conservatives and libertarian leaning Republicans.

In the long run the president's position on Afghanistan and the War on Terror will win him more support than it will cost him.  That presumes he will stick to his pledge to actually win it, which I believe he will, even though he never actually said the word, "Win." 

Now if he would just come around on domestic issues and embrace market oriented reforms, the American people would come squarely behind him.  We don't need a government takeover of the health insurance industry, and we don't need to kneecap our manufacturing industries with cap and trade taxes.  Especially when it is becoming increasingly clear that Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fraud.

Lieberman Says No To Any Public Option

Joe Lieberman said he will vote no on Harry Reid's latest rendition of health care reform. 

Lieberman Rules Out Voting for Health Bill

By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: December 13, 2009

WASHINGTON — In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.

Lieberman has been giving the progressives fits for years now. 

Rather, Bad Nelson and Holy Joe have simply “thought up a new excuse” to oppose real health care reform.

Until we stop pretending these two men are brokering in good faith, we will never get to the point in the discussion of how we get the best health care reform without some industry mole spiking the reform.

There is no such thing as disagreement with our friends in the progressive movement.  If you are not on board, you're obviously being dishonest. 

Lieberman, you may recall, cruelly crushed liberal delusions of electoral grandeur when he ran as an independent and trounced Ned Lamont in the general election, this coming right after liberals thought they had engineered his demise in the Connecticut Democratic primary. 

Environmental Shakedown (updated)

Charles Krauthammer recognizes environmentalism for what it is -- corruption.  Socialism has failed as a economic model.  When choice is available it is routinely rejected by the very people it is purported to help.  No problem for socialists.  The holy grail of environmentalism is the new mandate for keeping the governing elite governing in the name of sharing the wealth.

The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

The left leaning Obama administration is doing its part with the EPA's "endangerment finding."  On the eve of the Copenhagen climate conference, a power hungry Obama administration went ahead with it in order to demonstrate that it has the upper hand over a congress that is reluctant to pass cap and trade legislation to regulate CO2 emissions.  Since congress wouldn't give Obama the bona fides of a cap and trade to take with him to the conference, he simply made up his own by having the Environmental Protection Agency declare CO2 a hazard to human health and giving itself power to regulate it.  It's a power grab.

Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Kim Strassel has the good news.  She doesn't think it's going to work out.  The threat to regulate CO2 emissions through the Clean Air Act is not likely to encourage congress to move forward on cap and trade, nor is it likely that the EPA will have any success exercising its new regulatory muscle.

No one can say Washington isn't doing something; the EPA has it under control. The agency's move gives Congress a further excuse not to act.

"The Obama administration now owns this political hot potato," says one industry source. "If I'm [Nebraska Senator] Ben Nelson or [North Dakota Senator] Kent Conrad, why would I ever want to take it back?"

All the more so, in Congress's view, because the EPA "command and control" threat may yet prove hollow. Now that the endangerment finding has become reality, the litigation is also about to become real. Green groups pioneered the art of environmental lawsuits. It turns out the business community took careful notes.

So there's the upside for Democrats.  The heat is off on cap and trade.  The upside for the rest of us is potentially huge. 

Industry groups are gearing up for a legal onslaught; and don't underestimate their prospects. The leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in England alone are a gold mine for those who want to challenge the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming.

Anthropogenic Global Warming may be headed for its moment of truth in court.  Which is not to say the fact or fiction of it will be decided there, but possibly enough sunlight will shine in to curtail the hysteria and scour out some of the corruption. 

Health Care Reform's Growing Opposition

This morning FOX News reports the results of its most recent poll.

Fox News Poll: 54 Percent Prefer Congress Do Nothing on Health Care

Thursday, December 10, 2009
Dana Blanton

Congress is working nights and weekends to pass legislation that Americans don't like, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday.

A majority — 57 percent — oppose the health care reform legislation being considered right now. About a third of Americans — 34 percent — favor the reforms.

The poll results show the highest level of opposition to the health care bill to date.

Boycott Copenhagen?

Fat chance, but that's what Sarah Palin urges Barack Obama to do in an editorial column in today's Washington Post.

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

As you might expect, I would agree.  Obama shouldn't be dragging American into some treaty that is going to put us at a competitive disadvantage, particularly when unemployment stands at 10%.  But if anything has been made clear by the email scandal, fighting climate change is not about the climate or the weather.  It's all about extending the reach of government, and that continues to be Barack Obama's primary goal. 

Washington Post Campaigns For The Public Option

Yesterday Power Line took the Washington Post to task for its partisan portrait of Joe Lieberman. The post was titled, The Washington Post hates Joe Lieberman.  Apparently Post reporters Lois Romano and Alec MacGillis are on board with the House version of health care reform, since virtually every source for their article is someone strongly supportive of a public option, including Yale Political Science Professor Jacob Hacker.  Who, you may ask, is Jacob S. Hacker?  Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent who caucuses with his former party, says he is feeling "relevant" as he threatens to withhold his vote -- potentially the decisive 60th -- on health-care reform legislation if it includes a government-run insurance plan. And it is hard to dispute that as Capitol Hill moves farther from the "public option," to the consternation of liberals. "There is no question he's taken pleasure in this role," said Jacob S. Hacker, a Yale political scientist who helped craft the initial proposal for the public option. Lieberman has assumed such a central role despite what health-policy experts say have been serial misstatements about reform proposals. But, Hacker laments, "No one's called him on anything." Lieberman has helped push the debate far from the public option, which was conceived as a way to force competition.  [My emphasis above] So the public option was conceived as a way to force competition, was it?  Watch the video below, featuring Professor Jacob S. Hacker.

Isn't it funny that the good professor accuses Lieberman of "serial misstatements." Can you picture the smirk when he said it? Watch him in the video as he explains why the public option is not a Trojan Horse.  "Well, it's not a Trojan Horse, right?  It's just right there.  I'm telling you." And listen near the end of the clip where Professor Hacker explains about the competition: "One of the virtues of it is that you can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and private sectors."

It's unfortunate, but the Post has obviously chosen to go into the tank for Democrats.  Quite possibly Post editors have decided that federal subsidies for the newspaper industry represent their only way to survive, and such subsidies are not likely if Republicans control the House and Senate.

No Stopping Them Now

It's on.  The big power grab, that is.  Carbon Dioxide, that odorless, colorless gas upon which life as we know it on this planet depends, has already been defined as a pollutant by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Yesterday the EPA has taken it one giant step further by declaring carbon dioxide a threat to human health. 

EPA claims right to cut greenhouse gases

By Edward Felker

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday formally declared that greenhouse gases, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, pose a threat to human health and need to be reduced.

The declaration clears the path for the Obama administration to begin regulating emissions from power plants, factories, automobiles and other major sources of carbon dioxide pollution, perhaps starting as early as next year. The announcement, called an "endangerment finding," also makes it clear that President Obama considers climate change legislation to be a top priority, despite opposition from some elements in Congress and on the world stage.

That this EPA finding comes on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit comes as no surprise.  It gives Obama great credibility among the world leaders he would like most to impress.  When he speaks of cutting emissions they'll know he has the power. 

That it comes in the face of the megabytes of devastating private emails, data, and code leaked from University of East Anglia the Climate Research Unit is breathtaking in its arrogance and desperation.  Today's Wall Street Journal editorial explains.

With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon. With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.

This reckless "endangerment finding" is a political ultimatum: The many Democrats wary of levelling huge new costs on their constituents must surrender, or else the EPA's carbon police will inflict even worse consequences.

The gambit is also meant to coerce businesses, on the theory that they'll beg for cap and trade once the command-and-control regulatory pain grows too acute—not to mention the extra bribes in the form of valuable carbon permits that Democrats, since you ask, are happy to dispense.

Time is of the essence.  The EPA rejected any suggestion that it delay its endangerment finding until after the East Anglia the Climate Research Unit email controversy is resolved.  There is good reason for that, since the controversy is unlikely to be resolved in a way that supports treating CO2 as a hazard.  Here is a sample.  My emphasis below.

From: Phil Jones xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: ray bradley <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx


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

Marc Sheppard explains in American Thinker, exactly what "decline" was being hidden.

So please allow me to explain in what I hope are easily digestible terms.

First and foremost -- contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. Certainly, the simple fact that the e-mail was sent in November of 1999 should allay any such confusion.

In fact, the decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists -- those determined by proxy reconstructions.

In a nutshell, proxy reconstruction techniques that were used to arrive at what temperatures might have been centuries ago, were invalidated by comparison to actual temperatures.  Mr. Sheppard found the smoking gun in the program code.

Skimming through the often spaghetti-like code, the number of programs which subject the data to a mixed-bag of transformative and filtering routines is simply staggering. Granted, many of these "alterations" run from benign smoothing algorithms (e.g., omitting rogue outliers) to moderate infilling mechanisms (e.g., estimating missing station data from that of those closely surrounding). But many others fall into the precarious range between highly questionable (removing MXD data which demonstrate poor correlations with local temperature) to downright fraudulent (replacing MXD data entirely with measured data to reverse a disorderly trend-line).

In fact, workarounds for the post-1960 "divergence problem," as described by both RealClimate and Climate Audit, can be found throughout the source code. So much so that perhaps the most ubiquitous programmer's comment (REM) I ran across warns that the particular module "Uses 'corrected' MXD - but shouldn't usually plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures."

Obama presents what could be the last best chance for lefties to impose their version of social justice on the rest of us.  Yesterday through the regulatory power of the EPA, he assumed the authority to regulate emissions from power plants, factories, automobiles and other major sources of "carbon dioxide pollution."  Given past example he will use that power impose his value judgments.  His Pay Czar determines what is appropriate compensation for financial industry executives.  His Car Czar sees fit to dictate who is an acceptable CEO for General Motors.

No need for a House of Representatives.  The Senate is extraneous.  Obama has grasped the power to dictate using the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. 

ObamaCare in a Nutshell

From the Wall Street Journal:

As Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon accurately put it in September, "The problem with the health-care market in this country is that it doesn't really function as a market—leaving major consumer needs unmet, costs unchecked by competition, and basic practices untouched by the productivity revolution that has transformed every other sector of the economy."

Yet in Congress the market-based policies that could encourage such changes have been ignored, dumped or converted into timid pilot programs. Instead of increasing the competition and consumer choice that would result in better value and reduce the annual double-digit cost increases in health spending, ObamaCare will simply expand the status quo and make it more expensive.

The solution:  Scrap it and start over.