March 19, 2006 (CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.
Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.
But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.
Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it.
What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.
Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?
There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.
Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO2, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.
In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public, says Hansen.
Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. … there is a new review process … , the e-mail read. The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases, it continued. Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.
I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better, says Cicerone.
And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.
Climate change is really happening, says Cicerone.
Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all — the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple.
But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled not sufficiently reliable. It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future, President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it. Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster.
Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.
I object to the fact that I’m not able to freely communicate via the media, says Hansen. National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn’t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don’t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science.
Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he’s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.
Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that you should be a spokesman for the administration? asks Hansen. I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.
Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.
The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can’t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies, says Piltz. There’s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.
Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called Our Changing Planet.
Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.
Asked what happens, Piltz says: It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.
Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, Phil Cooney.
Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House, he says.
Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes “may be undergoing change.” “Uncertainty” becomes “significant remaining uncertainty.” One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.
He was obviously passing it through a political screen, says Piltz. He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout. In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line “… the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. …” References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase “earth may be” undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn’t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.
Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting, says Piltz. That’s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they’re retired or unless they’re ready to resign.
Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.
Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river, Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.
The Bush administration doesn’t deny global warming or that man plays a role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says what’s urgent now is action.
We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO2 emissions, Hansen explains. And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we’ve got to be on a declining curve.
If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don’t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we’re going to, that there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can’t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can’t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control.
But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here.
Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.
I think we know a lot more about the tipping points, says Hansen. I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets.
You just used that word again that you’re not supposed to use — danger, Pelley remarks.
Yeah. It’s a danger, Hansen says.
For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president’s science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn’t return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.
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My way of thinking has always been..*better safe than sorry*. So, although some scientists side with Bush on this issue, others dont and I would rather lean to the *better safe than sorry* side. There is no absolute proof that global warming is causing the frightening weather we have seen over the past few years but something definitely is happening. The indigenous Inuit people of Canada and Alaska are telling scientists that the land where they live is melting. They have launched a human rights case against the Bush administration claiming they face extinction because of global warming. The glaciers are melting and will raise the ocean which will eventually cover islands..The ocean temperature has gotten much hotter year round. Part of my philosophy is tread softly on the earth, we are only borrowing if for a little while..and it is imperative that the earth be a little bit better off for me being here.
Global warming
Al Gore and global warming - this is hysterical
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmPSUMBrJoI
Global Warming, Really...
For full story:http://english.pravda.ru/science/earth/106922-earth_ice_age-0
Quote:
The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years.
Global warming is real
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#26578725
Popularity of global warming
The idea that global warming has become a popular rallying cry doesn't make it true. The science behind AL Gore's book was pretty flimsy and many actual climatologists (as opposed to politicians and environmental activists) are saying the science behind it was deeply flawed. Our earth goes through many warming and cooling cycles and how much humans have to do with that cycle is in great debate.
Yet, somehow, anyone who dares to raise an opposing view is immediately ostracized. Why? Because there is big money to be had for those who want to get in line with this idea and put their hand out for government money to try to "remedy" this natural cycle.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1172249/Being-fat-causes-global-warming-say-scientists.html
Global warming and frigid temperatures. Pouring Cold Water On Skeptics' Claims Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report that confirmed and refined what scientists already knew: The recent global warming trend is real, it is caused primarily by human activities, and we can expect further dangerous warming of a few degrees if we don't reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the very high level of confidence that the IPCC placed on this assertion, climate skeptics refuse to allow themselves to be convinced by the facts. Global warming deniers -- desperate for any information that might contravene the science -- have latched onto this month's colder-than-normal temperatures that have gripped much of the United States, particularly the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. In a recent headline, the Drudge Report joked, Hearing on 'warming of planet' canceled because of ice storm. Many on the right have cited the joke as actual proof that climate change isn’t occurring. The right-wing publication Newsmax.com referenced the headline to claim global warming is part of the current media fed hysteria. In fact, the temperature patterns we are currently experiencing are exactly what increasing greenhouse gas emissions predicts: climate destabilization. Still, many wonder why is it so cold if there's global warming? Today's Progress Report tells you what you need to know to counter the skeptics.
DISTINCTION BETWEEN WEATHER AND CLIMATE: To understand why the current cold snap across the United States is occurring during a global warming trend, one must first understand the distinction between climate and weather. Climate is the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years. In other words, climate refers to recorded history. Weather, on the hand, is current events; it refers to the state of the atmosphere at a given time and place. Weather is a snapshot of the climate at any one instant. Although the two are related, their relationship is indirect. The chaotic nature of weather means that no conclusion about climate can ever be drawn from a single data point, hot or cold. The temperature of one place at one time...says nothing about climate, much less climate change, much less global climate change.
WHY ALL THE SNOW?: Scientists have said snowfall is often predicted to increase in many regions in response to anthropogenic [human-induced] climate change, since warmer air, all other things being equal, holds more moisture, and therefore, the potential for greater amounts of precipitation whatever form that precipitation takes. Based on computer models, a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found, As Earth gets warmer, large regions will experience heavier rain and snowfall as weather becomes generally more intense. The reason for the increase in storm intensity is that as the planet warms, the temperatures of the atmosphere and of the ocean surface go up as well, leading to increased evaporation and an increased capacity for the air to hold moisture. As this soggy air moves from ocean to land, the storms that form are heavier with rain or snow. The NCAR climate models have predicted that heavier rains and/or snow would most likely affect regions where large masses of air converge, including northwestern and northeastern North America. Take for instance the record snowfall that has hit upstate New York. This event would be predicted by the climate models because the lake effect snowfalls are greatly influenced by the warm waters of Lake Ontario. As cold Arctic air moves over the warm waters, the water evaporates and cools, it condenses to form clouds, and the clouds ultimately produce snowfall. The warmer the lake waters, the more snow that will be produced. True to form, the waters on Lake Ontario this year were warmer than usual. This winter, there's no way the lake will freeze. Therefore, a cold snap heightens the chance of heavy snow.
A CLEAR WARMING TREND: The long-term trends present clear evidence that climate change is real and serious. The IPCC report noted that the the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1300 years. Of the 12 hottest years on record, 11 have occurred since 1995. The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous United States was the warmest on record and nearly identical to the record set in 1998, according to scientists at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. In 2006, five states had their warmest December on record (Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire) and no state was colder than average. The Japan Meteorological Agency reported that January 2007 was the world's hottest January on record, with temperatures across the planet registering 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. Residents of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area have this week been hit by a gusty wintry wallop and are experiencing below-average temperatures for this month. Yet, the deviation below the average temperature for February is still less than the above-average deviation that D.C. residents experienced during the month of January. While the climate change trend is clear, the weather patterns at different moments in time will be hard to predict.
SANTA FE, N.M. — Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.
"I don't think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.
Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.
"They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.
Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.
Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity.
In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision-making."
Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.
"Not that the planet hasn't warmed. We know it has or we'd all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there's disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."
Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.
Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth's crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.
Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.
In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.
Schmitt said he's heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven't been manipulated by politics.
'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.
By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer June 22, 2006
For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.
Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.
For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.
With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.
In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.
Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.
Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.
Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple —— along with two 6½½-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.
Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.
So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body. Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.
Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown —— as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament —— is as follows:
Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.
Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.
And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope, he added with a sigh. What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.
Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.
Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.
It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.
Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life, said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's Billion Souls Initiative, one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.
As we advance around the world, Davis said, we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.
An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam. O mighty Lord, he said, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.
At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.
For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews —— or proselytizing among them —— to advance the Second Coming.
A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.
Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.
We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church, Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.
In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations, said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.
On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.
Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour, he said. This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.
Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.
I'll never forget that night, Hagee said. I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.'
Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations.
By contrast, Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.
It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity —— while there is still time.
Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times, he said. The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one —— they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return.
Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, are toast.
McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been like plowing cement.
Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns —— and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple —— Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.
I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person —— and quite dangerous, said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.
I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads, Hirschfield said. But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out.
Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews —— hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 —— attempt to haul the 6 1/2 -ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.
Among those turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, Islam is over.
I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us, Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States.
However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea.
What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?
But are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God? Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated.
Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.
For me, he said, the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.
Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism.
But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will.
Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.
Over in Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.
But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.
Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas —— and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East —— he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.
In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer —— a female born in 1993 —— to Nebraska.
Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel. Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.
Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel, Lott said in a telephone interview. But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there.
If not now, when?
If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event, he said. That time is soon. Very soon.
Global warming and the swiftboaring of Al Gore: A timeline
http://scienceblogs.com/drcharles/2006/08/a_timeline_tracing_the_origins.php
Gore's "science" on global warming is flawed....
all one has to do is research the topic. On that basis alone he should not gave gotten the prize, and that has nothing to do with brain washing political propaganda. The fact that so many just buy his theory without looking at both sides is what smacks of political brain washing. No one asked anyone to defend the choice and we are all entitled to our opinions. This is a liberal gimme and has been for years...there was a time when it was a vaulted honor. I don't think many consider it as such anymore...and choosing Gore will not help that downward spiral I'm afraid. And, to be brutally honest...your description "esteemed leader...." and AL Ifoundedtheinternet Gore are diametrically in opposition. Again...in my opinion...to which I am entitled...check the liberal talking points...you are the live and let live people. Right...? Or do you want to just announce that it is liberals live and let liberals live?
Bush's Own Panel Backs Data on Global Warming
Growing Washington acceptance of climate change is seen in the top science body's finding.
By Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan Times Staff Writers
June 23, 2006
After a comprehensive review of climate change data, the nation's preeminent scientific body found that average temperatures on Earth had risen by about 1 degree over the last century, a development that is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.
The report from the National Research Council also concluded that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.
Coupled with a report last month from the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program that found clear evidence of human influences on the climate system, the new study from the council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a growing acceptance in Washington of widely held scientific views on the causes of global warming.
The council's review focused on the controversial hockey stick graph, which shows Earth's temperature remaining stable for 900 years then suddenly arching upward in the last century. The curve resembles a hockey stick laid on its side.
The panel dismissed critics' charges that fraud and statistical error were responsible for the graph's sharp upward swing, noting that many studies had confirmed its essential conclusions in the eight years since it was first published in the journal Nature.
There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change … or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work, said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who requested the study in November.
The finding was a rebuke to global warming skeptics and some conservative politicians who have attacked the hockey stick as the work of overzealous scientists determined to shame the government into imposing environmental regulations on big business.
Geophysicist Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, lead author of the study that debuted the graph, said it was time to put this sometimes silly debate behind us and move forward, to do what we need to do to decrease the remaining uncertainties.
Though scientists have cited various factors as evidence of global warming — including the melting of polar ice caps and measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide — the hockey stick encapsulated the issue in an instantly recognizable way.
It's a pretty profound, easy-to-understand graph, said Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Visually, it's very compelling.
The chart drew little attention until it was highlighted in a 2001 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
After that, the hockey stick was everywhere, Pielke said.
It also became an easy target.
If you are someone who's interested in critiquing climate science, he said, the hockey stick would be a lightning rod.
One prominent attack came from the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), who last year launched an investigation of Mann and his colleagues. Barton demanded information about their data and funding sources — an effort widely viewed as an attempt to intimidate the scientists.
Barton's committee has launched an inquiry into the statistical validity of the hockey stick. Larry Neal, the committee's deputy staff director, criticized the National Research Council panel Thursday for having only one statistician among its 12 members.
The crux of the dispute is that thermometers have been used for only 150 years. To determine temperatures before that, scientists rely on indirect measurements, or proxies, such as tree ring data, cores from boreholes in ice, glacier movements, cave deposits, lake sediments, diaries and paintings.
Mann and his collaborators tried to integrate data from many such sources to produce climate records for the last 1,000 years. Their report was filled with caveats and warnings about the uncertainties of their conclusions — caveats that were overlooked as the research achieved more celebrity.
The panel affirmed that proxy measurements made over the last 150 years correlated well with actual measurements during that period, lending credence to the proxy data for earlier times.
It concluded that, with a high level of confidence, global temperatures during the last century were higher than at any time since 1600.
Although the report did not place numerical values on that confidence level, committee member and statistician Peter Bloomfield of North Carolina State University said the panel was about 95% sure of the conclusion.
The committee supported Mann's other conclusions, but said they were not as definitive. For example, the report said the panel was less confident that the 20th century was the warmest century since 1000, largely because of the scarcity of data from before 1600.
Bloomfield said the committee was about 67% confident of the validity of that finding — the same degree of confidence Mann and his colleagues had placed in their initial report.
Panel members said Mann's conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade since 1000 and that 1998 was the warmest year had the least data to support it.
The use of proxies, they said, does not readily allow conclusions based on such narrow time intervals.
The report said that establishing average temperatures before 1000 was difficult because of the lack of data, but said the trend appeared to indicate that stable temperatures could extend back several thousand years.
Here's one....an interview with a noted scientist in the field:
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.
The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.
There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.
"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.
The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said. Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said. "It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."
Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe." Bryson, 87, was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.
"I have now worked for zero dollars since I retired, long enough that I have paid back the people of Wisconsin every cent they paid me to give me a wonderful, wonderful career. So we are even now. And I feel good about that," said Bryson.
So, if global warming isn't such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it? "Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?" Bryson shot back.
"There is a lot of money to be made in this," he added. "If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"
Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted. And it's not something that he does regularly. "I can't waste my time on that, I have too many other things to do," he said.
But if somebody asks him for his opinion on global warming, he'll give it. "And I think I know about as much about it as anybody does."
Up against his students' students: Reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. "And that goes in the paper as 'scientists say.'"
The word of this young graduate student then trumps the views of someone like Bryson, who has been working in the field for more than 50 years, he said. "It is sort of a smear."
Bryson said he recently wrote something on the subject and two graduate students told him he was wrong, citing research done by one of their professors. That professor, Bryson noted, is probably the student of one of his students.
"Well, that professor happened to be wrong," he said. "There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It's almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts."
While Bryson doesn't think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide. For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.
"The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too," Bryson said. "Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it."
Bryson didn't see AL Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." "Don't make me throw up," he said. "It is not science. It is not true."
Another:
One of the world's leading meteorologists has described the theory that helped Al Gore win a share of the Nobel prize "ridiculous".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, spoke to a packed lecture hall at UNC Charlotte and said humans are not responsible for the warming of the earth.
"We're brainwashing our children," said Gray, 78, a longtime professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie (An Inconvenient Truth) and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."
Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said instead that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - is responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.
However, he said, that same cycle means a period of global cooling will begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Gray said.
"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Gray said.
He said his beliefs have made him an outsider in popular science.
"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
Seeing a link here? They want grants, they have to buy into global warming. Hellooo. Follow the money.
This is from Newsvine (owned by MSNBC, home of Chris Matthews...biased yes, but in your favor), about the "consensus of scientists" who buy into Gore's theory:
Article Source: dailytech.comworld-news, global-warming, study, scientists - of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
Here is another: the scientists quoted are not conservatives.
Gore Slams Global Warming Critics
Reprint Information
Book on Katie Couric Makes Waves
In twin appearances last night former Vice President Al Gore dismissed critics of his global warming theory as a small minority not credible in their opposition.
In an unprecedented, uninterrupted eight-minute monologue on Keith Olbermann’s "Countdown," Gore characterized those scientists who dispute the reality of global warming as part of a lunatic fringe.
Later, on Charlie Rose’s show, Gore went further. Asked by Rose "Do you know any credible scientist who says ‘wait a minute – this hasn’t been proven,’ is there still a debate?” Gore replied, "The debate’s over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.”
NOTE: Again with the consensus...as stated above, the consensus he claims does not exist.
This flies in the face of such challengers as professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia who said: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
Famed climatologist and internationally renowned hurricane expert Dr. William Gray of the atmospheric-science department at Colorado State University went even further, calling the scientific "consensus" on global warming "one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." For speaking the truth he has seen most of his government research funding dry up, according to the Washington Post.
Neither Gray nor Dr. Carter believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie set in Arizona.
Nor does famed Oxford professor David Bellamy who sniffs that Gore’s theory is "Poppycock!"
Writing in Britain's Daily Mail last July 9, Dr. Bellamy charged that "the world's politicians and policy makers ... have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credo of the environmental movement. Humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide – the principal so-called greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up.
"They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is their view that prevails.
"As a result of their ignorance, the world's economy may be about to divert billions, nay trillions of pounds, dollars and rubles into solving a problem that actually doesn't exist. The waste of economic resources is incalculable and tragic."
Wrote Dr. Bellamy "It has been estimated that the cost of cutting fossil fuel emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol would be [$1.3 trillion]. Little wonder, then, that world leaders are worried. So should we all be.
"If we signed up to these scaremongers, we could be about to waste a gargantuan amount of money on a problem that doesn't exist – money that could be used in umpteen better ways: Fighting world hunger, providing clean water, developing alternative energy sources, improving our environment, creating jobs.
"The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact."
In agreement with Dr. Bellamy were a host of other respected climatologists including the 19,000 who have signed a declaration that rejects Gore’s accusation that the rise of greenhouse gasses is caused by mankind’s use of fossil fuels. As has been pointed out, previous ice ages have been preceded by a rise on CO2 levels long before there were humans or fossil fuels or backyard barbecues.
Commenting on the scientists who support Gore’s thesis, Dr. Carter one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change, says, "‘Climate experts’ is the operative term here. Why? Because of what Gore's ‘majority of scientists’ think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to U.S. science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of who know, but feel unable to state publicly, that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."
In April, 60 of the world's leading experts in the field asked Canada’s Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake – either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents – it seems like a reasonable request, wrote Tom Harris in the Canada Free Press.
According to Harris, a mechanical engineer, former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball notes that even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."
Adds Ball, among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not predictions but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."
Canada's new conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his predecessor.
In an open letter that includes five British scientists among the 60 leading international climate change experts who signed the letter, the experts praise Harper’s commitment to review the controversial Kyoto Protocol on reducing emissions harmful to the environment. "Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science," they wrote in the Canadian Financial Post last week.
They emphasized that the study of global climate change is, in Harper's own words, an "emerging science" and added: "If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote.
"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.
"Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.'"
The letter is the latest effort by climate change skeptics to counter Gore's demonstrably false claims that there is a consensus that human activity is causing alleged global warming.
Listening to Al Gore makes one wonder if he is the one who believes that "the moon landing was staged on a movie set in Arizona.”
He also terms global warming "a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge" and adds that "the problem isn't a Hollywood invention," according to excerpts of planned remarks his campaign made available Sunday.
As to the Chicago political machine...google it. The Daleys of Chicago...crooked as a dog's hind leg comes to mind...you don't remember the current Mayor daley's dad?
Can't believe you never heard of the Chicago political machine. Obama was part of it, and he is bringing it with him to the White House. Yeah, that concerns me...and last time I looked, I have a right to be concerned.
The White House Butler guy
Ever see One Life to Live. Remember Asa Buchanan's butler, Nigel? Nigel knew more about Asa than his own family. OF COURSE, I understand what a Chief of Staff is. The position still sounds like a great big butler to me...one who sees all and knows all, exercises great discretion and is trusted by his employer.
To begin, I live in a parallel universe from you. I have no reason whatsoever to Google Chicago politial machine. I have seen the term thrown around here and there in paranoid rants and I am also acutely aware of how Chicago politics has been depicted by the right-wingers ever since the 60s...my mom being my prime source on that one (a Goldwater republican). I do not share this world view. When I think of Chicago politics, I think in terms of ideology, but that is a different story from this.
I was simply trying to get you to explain YOUR take on it and also why it is that you find so much fault ALREADY with Rahm Emanuel. He certainly will not be Obama's only advisor. As a matter of fact, Obama is bound to surround himself with many, many advisors from both sides of the aisle who represent a very WIDE variety of viewpoints, all of which he will listen to, consider, draw conclusions, formulate plans and policy initiatives and execute what he feels best. That's my thing. I was simply trying to get you to explain yours.
Maybe you should e-mail the White House and
tell them GP wants to know!
Bush is out of the White House.
This has nothing to do with Bush. My whole point of this was not to worship Bush here. My whole point was that I was blindsided by our government and I refuse to sit back and not be informed with Obama as president. I want to stay in the know so I can make my own decisions and keep tabs on things. I just think that President Obama has made A LOT of promises already and the man hasn't even been pres for a whole week yet and he has already broken some of his promises. I am going to hold this president and any future president's feet to the fire from now on. I don't care if they are dem, pub, or whatever......
I know for us $25,000 is a lot of money, but in the big picture, that is not a drop in the bucket...
I am sure though if he could go somewhere without all those people going with him that he would be more than happy at this point to do it. I know I would. I do not begrudge him one minute of happiness with his family because the rest of the time everybody in this country is trying to tear him apart. Are you strapped to the White House gate right now
with a lap top and and an explosive, because you sound like a person capable of doing just such a thing. Scary!
Clinton was thrown out of the white house
think you better check your so-called facts.
Massive protest outside of the White House sm
Of course, I am getting it from an international media source. Anyone seen this on TV?
BREAKING: Bush White House to be subpoenaed by wiretap lawyers
08/29/2006 @ 9:55 am
Filed by RAW STORY
Two attorneys representing claimants in a lawsuit over wiretapping by the National Security Agency will subpoena the White House today, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement
Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, who represent hundreds of plaintiffs in lawsuits against Verizon, AT&T, and the US Government, will announnce today that they are serving both the Bush administration and Verizon with subpoenas.
The announcement is due to arrive at 4:30 PM, outside of Verizon headquarters in New York, RAW STORY has confirmed.
The subpoenas come on the heels of two federal court decisions that were seen as blows to the Bush Administration warrantless spying program.
Earlier this month, federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled the entire program unconstitutional and illegal; another federal judge in San Francisco rejected the Bush Administration's attempt to dismiss these lawsuits by claiming they breach national security.
Mayer explained that the subpoena seeks to learn whether the Bush administration has unlawfully targeted journalists, peace activists, libertarians, members of congress or generated an 'enemies list.'
Afran told RAW STORY he expected the White House to again claim that the state secrets doctrine forbade it from answering the subpoena, but called the claim Absolute nonsense.
That's an invitation for presidents to write their own rules and we've had judges multiple times say that state secrets is not a defense, he explained, adding, We hope the White House will realize the need to cooperate.
Do you think Limbaugh and Hannity will have any comments about these Republicans? Don't hold your breath.
CDC Adviser Arrested for Urinal Incident Monday, January 22, 2007(01-22) 14:53 PST ATLANTA (AP) -- A prominent public health expert who is a top adviser to federal health agencies was arrested on suspicion of public indecency in an airport men's room. Dr. Hugh H. Tilson, 67, was arrested Jan. 16 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport after a plainclothes police officer said he saw Tilson masturbating at a urinal while watching other men urinate.
Tilson, a part-time faculty member at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, has advised the government and industry on health issues and co-authored an influential 1988 report on the future of public health in the U.S.
Tilson recently co-chaired a task force advising the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on setting agency priorities and goals. He was visiting Atlanta last week for a senior leadership retreat with CDC Director Julie Gerberding and others.
CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said Monday that agency officials had just learned of Tilson's arrest. The agency had no comment because it's a law enforcement matter, he said.
Tilson could not immediately be reached for comment at his UNC office or Raleigh, N.C., home, or through his university e-mail.
UNC officials issued a statement that clarified that Tilson is not a classroom instructor. The university takes the charges seriously. We think it is important to let the Georgia judicial system resolve the case, the statement said.
Public indecency is a city code violation, which is considered of less consequence than a misdemeanor, according to a police report. Tilson posted a $500 bond and was released, and is to return to Atlanta next month for a court appearance
Sorry, I misquoted about "I've been in the White House..."
looked up the correct quote. A senor advisor, when giving some background to reporters on the plane, said: “It is not going to be a political speech,” said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke to reporters on background. “When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.
“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter reminded the adviser.
Irish PM Brian Cowen left red faced after delivering Obama speech at White House (Shawn Thew/EPA) Brian Cowen was last night a victim of President Obama's love of the teleprompter David Byers Comment Central: O'Bama and Cowen: the new comedy duo
Brian Cowen's critics might say that they've heard all of his speeches before. But last night, they were right.
As the Irish Taoiseach delivered his St Patrick's Day speech at the White House, it emerged that he was accidentally reading off the teleprompter one made by President Obama only minutes earlier.
A startled-looking Mr Cowen – realising he was experiencing more than the usual case of déjà vu – looked back at Mr Obama 20 seconds into his address, and said: "That's your speech!"
Mr Obama is becoming known as the 'teleprompter president' for his excessive use of the prompting screens, which retract when speeches are finished.
Although used for more than half a century, the device was previously employed mainly for set-piece speeches. The current President, however, often uses them for making small introductory statements at the beginning of press conferences.
On this occasion, as a laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium, the script was belatedly switched over to the Taoiseach's text – leaving Mr Obama inadvertently thanking himself for inviting everyone.
The event was one of a series held both in the Republic of Ireland and in the United States, which has a big Irish community, to mark St Patrick's Day yesterday.
The President also met Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, a Protestant, and his Catholic deputy, Martin McGuinness, in his National Security Adviser’s office.
Tensions are high in Northern Ireland after IRA splinter groups killed two soldiers and a police officer this month in the first attacks of their kind since 1998, when the landmark Good Friday Agreement was reached.
In a speech designed to reassure those in favour of peace that the US stood behind them, Mr Obama said: "Not all Americans are Irish, but all Americans support those who stand on the side of peace and peace will prevail."
He's bringing dignity back to the White House!
Yes, I read something similar from a different source. Not that hard to believe when you see him giving unwanted massages and acting like a 9-year-old boy. Perhaps alcohol and cocaine ate more of his brain cells than anyone imagined. He can hardly get a sentence out without stumbling.
George Tenet on White House assertions
Tenet recites various White House untruths regarding Iraq. How many people will it take to point out WH distortions before the public finally takes notice as a whole? It's getting to be a pretty long list with quite a few folks who have credibility. Oh well.
We do not need a woman in the white house we need a qualified person
Okay, I know I'm going to get some feathers ruffled from my statement but I do not believe the US needs a woman president. I read this post and to me it sounds like your saying just get a women in there and everything will be fixed and will be all better". This is not some mommy kissing a "boo-boo" and making it better (that's what the post sounded like). We are a country and we have some serious problems. A strong "woman" is not going to straighten this mess out. A strong PERSON is going to. Sure there are lots of qualified women to run the country (Hillary is NOT one of them), but I do not believe by hiring a woman the country is going to be fixed and on the right road. We need a strong person. If they happened to be woman or man, black, white, blue or green it doesn't matter. Just get someone strong and whose got a back bone. Who will stand up for the American people and not their own interests. I really dislike and get offended when people say a "woman" will fix all the problems or "we need a women to get us out of the mess that men got us in". Men didn't get us into the problems we're in "human beings" did - and there are a lot of women sitting in seats they are not qualified to be sitting in and are part of the problem as to why America is in such a mess. Using the statement that a woman will fix everything is quite childish and very demoralizing, patronizing, and insulting to me as a woman. I do believe there are a few women out there who could probaby do an okay job, but I just want a strong person in there who has some back bone and a conscious and will do the right thing and follow the constitution. Hillary definitely did not and would not. She and Bill were so trying to change history and they ignored everything written in the constitution. Give me someone that truly cares about America. Unfortunately I haven't seen a candidate like that since Kennedy. Okay, that's my gripe for the night.
I say they'll be in the White House by hook or crook
How do you feel about it? I feel its bad timing no matter who the buyer was since the economy is in such a state right now even though the money was donated to the Historical Society to buy them. I know they can do whatever they want with it but it just seems so wrong to me when so many Americans are hurting.
I was reading some on another site and one person made the comment that it would look bad on the US if they had to eat on mismatched plates at their big dinners...and yes she was serious. That comment just doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't it look worse on the US when their are Americans loosing their homes and living on the streets or in cars and not even knowing where their next meal will come from let alone whether or not they even have a plate to eat it on.
There are just some things that just make me want to go huh?
Look, I don't care if Obama's inaugaration party is costing 21 million, but in the light of where our economy is right now, do you think it's a good idea? I mean, can't you have a good party for around 10 million? This is NOT a political question. I'm not attacking Obama, it's more of an economic question.
A senior White House official has denied that the US president, George Bush, said God ordered him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
A spokesman for Mr Bush, Scott McClellan, said the claims, to be broadcast in a TV documentary later this month, were absurd.
In the BBC film, a former Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, says that Mr Bush told a Palestinian delegation in 2003 that God spoke to him and said: George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan and also George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.
During a White House press briefing, Mr McClellan said: No, that's absurd. He's never made such comments.
Mr McClellan admitted he was not at the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in June 2003 when Mr Bush supposedly revealed the extent of his religious fervour.
However, he said he had checked into the claims and I stand by what I just said.
Asked if Mr Bush had ever mentioned that God had ordered him into Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr McClellan said: No, and I've been in many meetings with him and never heard such a thing.
The claims are due to be broadcast in a three-part BBC documentary which analyses attempts to bring peace to the Middle East.
Mr Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister in 2003, claims Mr Bush told him and other delegates that he was spoken to by God over his plans for war.
He told the film-makers: President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.
'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it.'
The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the June 2003 meeting as well, also appears on the documentary series to recount how Mr Bush told him: I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state.
Mr Bush, who became a born-again Christian at 40, is one of the most overtly religious leaders to occupy the White House, a fact that brings him much support in middle America.
History is littered with examples of people doing the most bizarre and sometimes wicked things on this basis, said Andrew Blackstock, director of the British-based Christian Socialist Movement. If Bush really wants to obey God during his time as president he should start with what is blindingly obvious from the Bible rather than perceived supernatural messages.
That would lead him to the rather less glamorous business of prioritising the needs of the poor, the downtrodden and the marginalised in his own country and abroad.
When we see more policies reflecting that, it might be easier to believe he has God on his side. And more likely that God might speak to him.
The TV series, which starts on Monday, charts recent attempts to bring peace to the Middle East, from the former US president Bill Clinton's peace talks in 1999-2000, to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this year. It seeks to uncover what happened behind closed doors by speaking to presidents and prime ministers, along with their generals and ministers, the BBC said.
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 10, 4:55 PM ET
Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was preposterous to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.
Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.
Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.
The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.
A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.
A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls — mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office — between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.
There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.
Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.
Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors tried a very narrow case, said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.
The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day.
While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.
By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.
Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts, White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.
Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.
On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington, Kelner said.
If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day, he said.
Obama Decision to Move Census to White House... GOP Sounds Alarm Over Obama Decision to Move Census to White House A number of Republicans are joining the fight to put the census issue into the political spotlight "before it's too late."
FOXNews.com
Monday, February 09, 2009
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The Census Bureau's U.S. Population Clock (Census.gov)
PEOPLE WHO READ THIS... Also read these stories: Stimulus Package Clears Key Procedural Hurdle in Senate [2009-02-09] gop sounds off on 'spendulus', gop, gop sounds off on stimulus, stimulus, stimulus passes senate test vote 987 visitors also liked this. Private Sector Likely to Have Role in Government Bank Bailout Plan [2009-02-09] 84 visitors also liked this. Leahy Calls for 'Truth' Panel to Investigate Bush Administration [2009-02-09] 72 visitors also liked this. Graham Says Obama Is 'AWOL' on Stimulus Debate [2009-02-05] graham slams obama calls him 'awol on leadership', this process stinks, obama, graham slams obama callshim 'awol on leadership', graham obama 'awol' on stimulus debate 6345 visitors also liked this. Schumer Calls for Ticketmaster Probe Over Suspicious Springsteen Sales [2009-02-09] help find the 'spendulus' pork, help 298 visitors also liked this. powered by BaynoteUtah's congressional delegation is calling President Obama's decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told FOX News on Monday that he finds it hard to believe the Obama administration felt the need to place re-evaluation of the inner workings of the census so high on his to-do list, just three weeks into his presidency.
"This is nothing more than a political land grab," Chaffetz said.
Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the move "shouldn't happen." He and Chaffetz are trying to rally Republicans "before its too late."
"It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy who is infamously political," Bishop said of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who would be tasked with overseeing the census at the White House.
The U.S. census -- a counting of the U.S. population -- is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts
As a matter of impact, the census has tremendous political significance. Political parties are always eager to have a hand in redrawing districts so that they can maximize their own party's clout while minimizing the opposition, often through gerrymandering.
The census also determines the composition of the Electoral College, which chooses the president. If one party were to control the census, it could arguably try to perpetuate its hold on political power.
The results of the census are also enormously important in another way -- the allocation of federal funds. Theoretically, a political party could disproportionately steer federal funding to areas dominated by its own members through a skewing of census numbers.
At this point the White House doesn't seem willing to say what Emanuel's role will be in overseeing the census, and White House officials say census managers will work closely with top-level White House staffers, but will technically remain part of the Commerce Department.
But critics say the White House chief of staff can't be expected to handle the census in a neutral manner. Emanuel ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2006 election, and he was instrumental in getting Democrats elected into the majority.
"The last thing the census needs is for any hard-bitten partisan (either a Karl Rove or a Rahm Emanuel) to manipulate these critical numbers. Many federal funding formulas depend on them, as well as the whole fabric of federal and state representation. Partisans have a natural impulse to tilt the playing field in their favor, and this has to be resisted," Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told FOX News in an e-mail.
Critics note that the method of counting can skew the census. Democrats have long advocated using mathematical estimates, a practice known as "sampling," to count urban residents and immigrants. Republicans say the Constitution requires a physical head count, which entails going door-to-door.
In 2000, Utah, which has three congressmen, was extremely close to landing a fourth House seat based on U.S. Census numbers, but the nation's most conservative state fell short by a few hundred votes because the Census Bureau wouldn't count Mormon missionaries from Utah serving temporarily overseas.
The GOP took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Utah leaders had hoped the 2010 census would rectify the problem, but now worry that they will lose again if the census is managed by partisans.
When Obama nominated New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary -- he was later forced to withdraw -- he indicated that Richardson would be in charge of the census.
The decision to move the census into the White House was announced just days after Obama named New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, to be his commerce secretary. Gregg has long opposed "sampling" by the census and has voted against funding increases for the bureau.
Sabato said moving the census "in-house" will likely set up a situation where neither the Commerce Department nor the White House will know exactly what is going on in the Census Bureau. He said the process is "too critical to politics for both parties not to pay close attention."
"I've always remembered what Joseph Stalin said: 'Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.' The same principle applies to the census. Since one or the other party will always be in power at the time of the census, it is vital that the out-of-power party at least be able to observe the process to make sure it isn't being stacked in favor of the party in power. This will be difficult for the GOP since I suspect Democrats will control both houses of Congress for the entire Obama first term," Sabato said.
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Two attorneys representing claimants in a lawsuit over wiretapping by the National Security Agency will subpoena the White House today, RAW STORY has learned.
