Congress has an approval rating of 18%, the lowest since Gallup has taken these types of polls. The “leader” of the House of Representatives from the Liberal bastion of Leftist, Socialist, Marxist, and Lenin Lovers is one Nancy Pelosi.

Ms. Pelosi has played Secretary of State visiting rogue countries and terrorist minded leaders while playing extreme politics with the troops.

President Bush requested $178 billion to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan until summer of 2009. Funding the troops should not be a huge question but any debate on the matter should come to the floor of the House and at the very least be formally discussed in the proper committee for appropriating such requests. 

Yesterday Liberals in the House pulled the stunt of approving the domestic spending but voting down the war money, on a 149-141 vote. Most Republicans withheld their votes to protest the way the bill was handled; it was written out of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, bypassing Republicans on the Appropriations Committee.

Ms. Pelosi declared that

“The legislation provides for a new direction in Iraq that will end this sad chapter in America’s history and bring home our brave men and women in uniform.”

Pelosi has nerve fixing a bill to refuse funding of the Armed Forces and then telling us how brave they are. Ms. Pelosi talks about brave troops who are in harms way fighting terrorists while demonstrating her cowardice to placate her Left-Wing constituency who view gay marriage as more important than national security.

Let’s be fair with this, the Democrats did some “funding” for the troops by approving entitlements that would encourage men and women in uniform to use the military as a means for benefits by leaving the service in 3-years instead of considering a career in a branch of the Air Force, Army, Navy or Marines or staying in at leaset 6-years to increase their benefits.

Ms. Pelosi and her ilk, using the troops as pawns, voted for $120 million as a downpayment on a new GI Bill for veterans, which would create a permanent benefit that would be around long after the Iraq war is over. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost $51.8 billion over 10 years – a vast new entitlement.

Certainly we are not against improving or expanding benefits to Veteran’s but they must be cost effective, encourage service as the benefits are expanded and increase based on the time in service of each individual.

Robert Gates restated a long-standing Pentagon opposition to GI Bill educational benefits that are too generous, making it more likely for service members to leave the military to attend college. “Serious” retention issues are expected if benefits exceed the average monthly cost for a four-year public college, including tuition, room, board and fees, Gates said.

“Congress must understand that the volunteer force relies for its very life on retention — not departure incentives,” the Pentagon said.

Anti-war thug Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced the 21st Century GI Bill — S 22 in 2007 is similar to the House bill.

“Those defending S 22 seem to think that getting out is the only way to get an education. Nonsense. DoD is spending $700 million annually to fund 400,000 troops who advance their education every year, while still in the service.”

I have a son serving in the Army and he is taking college courses while at his duty station - paid for by the Army. This deal encourages longer service and helps increase retention, which is vital to maintaining a solid professional armed force. It also encourages members of the military to pursue higher education for advancement and promotion.

Compromise on any benefits for Veteran’s is essential but cowards like Nancy Pelosi shouldn’t be using the military as political pawns to raise taxes, increase spending, buy votes and pander to the anti-military Left. Indeed!

Republicans in Congress love the earmark as much as their fellow Democrats and haven’t learned a thing since their political drubbing in 2006.

While showing concern for climate change GOP leadership (if you wish to call it that) has missed the political climate change in early 2008 special elections.

• Mississippi - Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers (D) won election 51 to 49 percent over Southhaven Mayor Greg Davis (R). Mississippi’s 1st district had long been a conservative stronghold.
• Louisiana - Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins 49 to 46 percent for the 6th District seat.
• Illinois - Rookie candidate Bill Foster (D)  scored a comfortable victory over Republican dairyman Jim Oberweis (R) taking over the seat of former Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, 53 to 47 percent.

The excuses are many including a need to blame President Bush, the war in Iraq, the economy, gasoline prices, housing crisis and the beat goes on. Republicans fail to look into the mirror and see a Liberal face, embracing earmarks and refusing to believe voters are very tired of a higher cost of living while Congressional spending goes through the roof.

Democrats now hold a 236 to 199 majority in the House, up from 203 seats they controlled two years ago and prospects in November are worse.

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, has been badly damaged by scandals in Alaska. Sen. John E. Sununu (NH) is defending a seat in a state where Democratic fortunes are on the rise, and other Republican senators — including Susan Collins (ME), Norm Coleman (MN.) and Gordon Smith (OR.) — are seeking reelection in states leaning Democratic in a presidential election year.

Retirement announcements from Senate Republicans in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia have created prime pickup opportunities for Democrats. In total, 23 Republican-held Senate seats will be on the ballot this fall compared with 12 for Democrats.

“Since the 2006 elections, Republicans have done absolutely nothing to redefine themselves. We can’t even get behind an earmark moratorium bill,” proclaims Rep. John Shadegg (AZ).

While John McCain says he will veto every earmark loaded bill that comes to his desk if he is President the Republicans are failing to see his message and continue to vote for pork.

“Rather than promoting the principles of consumer choice, individual responsibility and provider competition that would transform our broken health-care system, key Republicans are bowing to political pressure and signing on with the government-run health-care Democrats,” writes fiscal Conservative Dick Armey, majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.

Karl Rove claims part of the problem is the GOP had “bad candidates” but the bad habits and failed promises of Republicans is the real culprit and Mr. Rove shouldn’t be so easily fooled. Rove also suggests, “public revulsion at GOP scandals was a large factor in the party’s 2006 congressional defeat” and the Republican brand name is damaged by Iraq and the economy. Democrat scandal doesn’t seem to have the same negative effect on voters.

Yes the current economic conditions don’t bode well for Republicans but let’s face the facts that the GOP has failed miserably in following Conservative values and have trashed the premise that small government and fiscal responsibility will be recognized by the voting public.

The fall elections will come down to independent voters making a decision that Democrats and Barack Hussein Obama are too far left or Republicans have failed to prove they stand for past core values of fiscal and social Conservatism.

There is a wide opening for Republicans if they understand that Hillary Clinton captured a constituency that is not crazy about Liberalism or Barack Hussein Obama.

The Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid-led House and Senate is in the tank as far as the public sees things and President Bush is not on the ballot this fall. It’s time Republicans rebuild the GOP brand back to Conservative values and the public will take notice.

There is progress in Iraq and this should be prominently advertised. Moving to stop spending, discussing immigration and protecting the borders, pushing to enlighten the public on the benefits of drilling in ANWAR and off the US coast for energy deposits are necessary to open the discussion in areas Liberals can be put on notice.

It’s time for the GOP to make the tough political choices and return to Conservativism. Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia said of the GOP,

“They are canaries in the coal mine.”

The election shouldn’t be handed to the Democrats and time is of the essence. Indeed!

See also: Unleash the RINO’s - The Enemy Within the GOP

Green acres is the place for me.
Farm livin’ is the life for me.
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.

New York is where I’d rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue.

I’m afraid this one isn’t about the TV classic starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor but more about Nancy Pelosi and her farm-aid package to keep the Democrats control of the House intact.

2008 farm income is projected to hit an all-time high of $92.3 billion, an increase of 56% in two years.

A close look at subsidized farming makes farmers the largest welfare recipients in the US at the expense of the taxpayer who is paying for this charade.

The five-year legislative package is filled with subsidies for everything from bio-fuels to historic-barn preservation. It includes a dubious sugar-to-ethanol program and billions of dollars for a permanent disaster relief fund that essentially pays farmers to grow crops on land too dry to sustain them.

The bill allows farmers to lock in price-support payments at the lowest possible market price, and then sell their crops later at the highest possible price, and then pocket the high price and a payment from the government for the difference between the two. They in effect get paid twice for the same bushel of wheat. Nice work if you can find it!

Adding insult to injury the annual income cap, which President Bush wants set at $200,000, will be an astounding $750,000 and allows spouses to get in on the action too. Utilizing creative accounting some farmers can have incomes of up to $2.5 million and still get a taxpayer handout. Imagine that!

While Liberals complain about the rich and the need to soak them with increased taxes Democrats are now busy soaking the middle-class to pay off the rich in agriculture.

Hundreds of millions of dollars will go to landowners based on their “historical planting average” even if they haven’t planted a seed in years.

Got Milk? You won’t have as much if the farming welfare state continues and President Bush doesn’t veto this welfare reform bill in reverse.

Sugar is one of the biggest winners with an 85% guarantee for price supports. Surplus sugar that is produced domestically for $.23 a pound is then sold for use in producing ethanol for $.03 per pound. Not to worry, taxpayers are on the hook for this absurd math calculation so Democrats can keep their power in Congress and continue to soak middle-class constituents while demanding higher taxes on the rich. None of this will cause food or gasoline prices to drop but will have the opposite effect.

Let’s not simply blame the tax and spend Democrats when Republicans may allow this bill to become veto proof. John McCain will vote against this bill while Barack Hussein Obama will prove once again his hypocrisy by supporting it. Mr. Obama still has the opportunity to put his rhetoric where is mouth is. We anxiously await the vote to see who supports subsidizing the wealthy at the expense of the middle-class and then blames the President for higher food and gasoline prices.

This is an open book test where tax and spend politicians will have their fiscal irresponsibility vividly exposed. Indeed Dah-ling!

Watching the gas prices is an introduction for the consumer to the futures market and it may seem like blood and guts while you sweat out the daily fluctuations.

Is this another George W. Bush cause and effect, some Right-Wing conspiracy or is Dick Cheney secretly helping OPEC to energize his bank account?

We’re not here to blame the Liberals on this one but as an equal opportunity pundit we intend to go to the truth of the matter and call in all the politicians past and present who have presented the current energy fiasco.

There are approximately 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska’s ANWAR and this knowledge has existed close to 30 years while Congress has prevented any drilling.

For 31 years Congress has prevented the building any new oil refineries and the US could certainly use these facilities now to increase supply to meet the needs of demand.

Congressional Democrats defeated any bill that would let the US drill in the deep sea 100 miles out from the US coast. However, China is drilling in these waters and taking the oil to their mainland.

Since the 1980s Congress has stopped all building of nuclear power plants. While being so in love with our allies while blaming America first we’ve watched France, Germany, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, build nuclear plants who now receive 20% to 80% of their energy from these plant investments.

America’s nuclear energy plants reduce electric utility emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent, or 128 trillion tons per year. Without our nuclear power plants, electric utility emissions of nitrogen oxides would be 2 million tons per year higher. Emissions of sulfur dioxide would be 5 million tons a year higher. Thus, nuclear energy drastically cuts our use of imported oil and more nuclear plants would reduce dependency on oil as well as pollute the environment less.

From 1990 to 2000, U.S. crude oil demand rapidly accelerated by 7.41 quadrillion BTUs, according to Department of Energy data. The US rate of foreign oil dependency increased while domestic oil production steadily declined.

President Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling bills that would have made Alaska our No. 1 state in the production of the US oil supply.

Under the eight Clinton-Gore years, U.S. oil production declined 1,349,000 barrels per day, or 19%, while our foreign imports increased 3,574,000 barrels per day, or 45%.

Most politicians are ignorant of the law of supply and demand and the fact it determines the price of all commodities such as oil, steel, copper and lumber? They have little business experience and in many cases are simply incompetent.

When the laws of economics and free markets are micro-managed by politicians the unintended consequences are the average consumer is hurt and we are witnessing this fact with the move towards “green” energy policies, bio-fuels, refusal to capture domestic energy that exists and to build facilities that will provide more fuel, use less fossil fuel and have reduce pollution.

The villains reside in Congress and the finger pointing and political posturing is exceedingly detrimental to progress and safety in America. Instead of allowing oil companies to invest profits into exploration and building facilities to increase supplies the geniuses in Congress want to tax “windfall profits” of these companies as punishment for making money for their stockholders and running efficient businesses. Taxing big oil will remove any incentive to grow and produce more gasoline or explore for energy.

If we wish to investigate ways to preserve America’s greatness, protect our interests and lower energy costs and dependency the grass roots voter should demand an investigation of the irresponsible politicians they elect to office. Less government would mean more energy. Indeed!

Barack Hussein Obama is now focusing his campaign to the general election as he gains steam as the presumptive Democrat Socialist Party candidate.

What are Mr. Obama’s values and will he and his campaign surrogates define the “new” Obama or will his history define the truth. We prefer to stick with facts and Mr. Obama will have trouble defining anything else with savvy speeches and a big smile.

After all, when you associate with a God Damn America spiritual advisor and domestic terrorists who teach in prominent universities and a real estate developer born in Syria who is under federal indictment for wire fraud, bribery, money laundering, and attempted extortion and you’re married to a women who after all these years is proud of America for the first time in her adult life, funding by George Soros and you don’t like wearing an American Flag lapel pin or placing your hand over your heart during America’s national anthem………….so on and so forth and we’re just getting started.

Let us not forget Barack Hussein Obama’s voting record in the Illinois legislature, his left-wing voting record in the US Senate, his plans for bigger than ever government, micro-managing the lives of US citizens who have gotten used to the idea of freedom under a Constitution that has served the country well for over 200 years.

As many of us cling to our religion and guns we will not buy into the new Obama theme his campaign will march out, we will not succumb to Mr. Obama’s new look to convince us he wants us to hope for his change so we can move much closer to Socialism, closer than during the time of FDR.

To a true Conservative the term “Progressive” does not mean moving forward in a positive manner but code for Liberalism, code for Socialism, code for big government and loss of freedom. We are not buying it and will do whatever legally necessary to stop Mr. Obama from becoming President of the United States.

We will, in fact, look at Mr. Obama’s history and not listen to his rhetoric about forgetting the past and moving to the future. A future with Mr. Obama means his past, his upbringing, his formal change as he moved into the South Side of Chicago, joined a radical church and hung out with terrorists who proclaim “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country” after escaping the law for ten years for bombing the Pentagon, police cars and assorted places owned by the hated “establishment.”

Mr. Obama may start wearing the flag lapel pin and we should suddenly believe he is a patriot?

Mr. Obama should suddenly support the earned income tax credit; provide tax relief to the working poor and to continue transferring people from welfare to work? But Mr. Obama has already suggested building government housing for the poor, which translates into “projects” that become fortresses for drug dealers and gangs. Chicago’s Richard Daley could give some advice to Mr. Obama on the merits of eliminating “projects” for the big city landscape.

Should Mr. Obama suddenly refute his stance to surrender in Iraq and negotiate with rogue regimes? Mr. Obama is already on the record that he disagrees with General Petraeus and will directly hold talks with our enemies. Does a sudden change of heart mean Mr. Obama has a new, realistic plan or is he simply trying to win votes?

Should Mr. Obama reach out to the evangelical community and the right in an attempt to prove his belief in Christianity and mainstream religion? Are we to believe a sudden switch is meaningful and Mr. Obama is truly an “American Dream?”

Douglas Schoen, 1996 campaign manager for Clinton-Gore in Tennessee and Kentucky, writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Most Americans know that Jeremiah Wright’s views are not those of Barack Obama; they do not need a point-by-point refutation of Mr. Wright’s comments. But moderate-to-conservative voters who once had confidence in Mr. Obama now have doubts, because he has been so close for so long to someone whose values are so inimical to theirs. What Americans need to know, once and for all, is that Mr. Obama stands with them on cultural issues they care about.

Pardon us Mr. Schoen, if we remain skeptical about the spin coming out of Mr. Obama’s eloquent speeches, do we all seem as done as you must presume? Where does Mr. Obama stand with anything Conservative on cultural issues? Mr. Schoen puts words in the “moderate to conservative” voters and expect us to believe it. What nerve this Liberal has for us!

Mr. Obama believes in government run healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy, which will trickle down on the middle-class, higher taxes on business, controlling CEO pay, tighter gun laws, bailing out mortgages for individuals who took high risks, amnesty of illegal immingrants, abortion and the list of Socialism goes on.

Is the average American supposed to suddenly buy into a Barack Hussein Obama speech and then participate in a “We Are the World Fest” holding hands and singing? Are we to be suddenly relieved Mr. Obama tells us he will create a “Nanny State”, call it “Progressive” and then salute the image of Vladimir Lenin?

May we suggest “Caveat Emptor” when listening to Barack Hussein Obama. Let the buyer beware. Indeed!

CODE PINK!

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley’s controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center.

The women’s anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for “Witches, clowns and sirens day,” the last of the group’s weeklong homage to Mother’s Day.

“Women are coming to cast spells and do rituals and to impart wisdom to figure out how we’re going to end war,” Zanne Sam Joi of Bay Area Code Pink told FoxNews.

In February, the Marine Corps Recruiting Center was the site of fierce pro- and anti-war protests. It made national headlines when Berkeley’s city council voted to send a letter to the recruiting station advising the Marines they were not welcome. Council members later moderated their position, saying they oppose the war in Iraq but support the troops.

Code Pink — which was given parking and noise permits by the city council and is allowed to protest during the recruiting center’s business hours — has been protesting daily since September.

The group frequently announces bizarre theme weeks in front of the office, but their numbers have been dwindling and the events get little media attention.

“Ironically, it’s actually helped us by putting our name out. We’re now well known. And people know who we are, and where we are, and they come in to talk to us about enlisting. They’ve gotten us the publicity that we could’ve never afforded to pay for ourselves,” Marine Capt. John Paul Wheatcroft told FOXNews.com.

“Just in the last three weeks, 10 people came in looking to apply, looking to become Marine officers, and that’s much higher than normal,” he said.

Moonbat is a special feature of Liberally Conservative and posted each Saturday. For previous awards visit Moonbat Awards.

RINO - Republicans in Name Only!

Pat Toomey, President of “The Club for Growth” and former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, has recently laid out the truth about “Liberal Republicans” and some so-called “Conservative” names are glaring.

I am a member of “The Club for Growth” and I’m sick and tired of the pundits claiming to be Conservative and the term “Neo-Conservative” when most of these people are Liberals who have demonstrated their hypocrisy on a national level.

These people in the media and government claim to be “Reagan Republicans” and troopers against the war on Liberalism or as I call it, Socialism. The Club for Growth is based on real Conservative principles and its goals are simple.

I was amazed with some who claim to be Conservative, write at places like National Review and The Weekly Standard but have promoted candidates with little true Conservative credentials. Rooting for Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or John McCain doesn’t qualify you as a Conservative, maybe voting for the worst of all the evils seething around the Conservative banner.

Let’s have a look at Mr. Toomey’s diagnosis:

• In 2000, Pennsylvania Rep. Jim Greenwood called the Club “cannibals.” When the Club ran ads against Ohio Sen. George Voinovich and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe for resisting President Bush’s 2003 tax cut, Karl Rove deemed the ads “counterproductive.”

• Newt Gingrich, the man who ushered in a conservative Republican majority in 1994, once denounced the Club. “Their strategy is explicitly wrong,” he said. “The key is to elect more Republicans and have a bigger majority and be more inclusive.”

• In 2000, Rep. Tom Davis, then the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, denounced the Club for supporting Scott Garrett’s challenge to New Jersey Rep. Marge Roukema. Mr. Cole and the entire Oklahoma establishment backed Tom Coburn’s primary opponent in the 2004 Senate race, Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys, viewing Mr. Coburn as too conservative to be electable.

• Led by President Bush, the GOP cavalry rallied behind liberal Arlen Specter in 2004, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Joe Schwarz of Michigan in 2006.

  Mr. Chafee is the same senator who refused to vote for the president in 2004, and voted against the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and Justice Sam Alito’s nomination.

• This year, Mr. Gingrich and conservative favorite former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele stumped for liberal incumbent Rep. Wayne Gilchrest against conservative state Sen. Andy Harris in a primary. Mr. Gilchrest was also defended by the Service Employees International Union. He lost by 10 points.

The GOP has gone Left because of Senators like Chafee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania. This is a short list while John McCain is on this list, Mitt Romney qualifies, Rudy Giuliani makes the grade and Newt Gingrich has trouble making a serious effort he is not a RINO. Karl Rove appears in the Wall Street Journal and on FOXNews with analysis and I sometime wonder who he’s working for behind the scene.

My short list of Conservatives is similar to Mr. Toomey’s:

Senator Tom Coburn (OK), Senator Jim DeMint (SC), Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ), Rep. Jeff Flake (AZ), Rep. John Campbell (CA), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX), Tim Walberg (MI) and Rep. Mike Pence (IN).

“A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.” - Ronald Reagan - 1975

The GOP has lost seats from corruption but more importantly from acting like Liberals, and spending worse than the Democrats. Until they learn the lessons of being a minority party maybe the GOP will return to true Conservative principles and realize what President Reagan already knew.

Getting rid of RINO’s would certainly be winning one for the Gipper and real Conservatives.
Indeed!

We’ve posted on William Ayers in “Obama’s Weathermen - Explosive Past, Radical Future.”

In August 2001 Professor Ayers provided an interview for ChicagoMag.com, complete with the picture to the right.

The “War on Terror” didn’t begin under President George W. Bush, it actually began in the 60s with radical groups known as the “Weather Underground“, Students for A Democratic Society (SDS), Chicago Seven and assorted groups known as “radical” who promoted violence, use of bombs, anti-American sentiment as a method to freedom of speech and the right to assemble, however, not peaceably.

These groups carried civil disobedience to a level of domestic terrorism, which continues today by groups within the United States.

ChicagoMag writer Marcia Froelke Coburn describes Mr. Ayers this way:

At 55, Bill Ayers, the notorious sixties radical, still carries a whiff of that rock ‘n’ roll decade: the oversize wire-rim glasses that, in a certain light, reveal themselves as bifocals; a backpack over his shoulder—not some streamlined, chic job, but a funky backpack-of-the-people, complete with a photo button of abolitionist John Brown pinned to one strap.

Yet he is also a man of the moment. For example: There is his cell phone, laid casually on the tabletop of this neighborhood Taylor Street coffee shop, and his passion for double skim lattes. In conversation, he has an immediate, engaging presence; he may not have known you long but, his manner suggests, he’s already fascinated. Then there is his quick laugh and his tendency to punctuate his comments by a tap on your arm.

How quaint, the erstwhile Professor enjoys his latte’s and still has a problem with America, which of course is his right. Nothing is perfect but Bill Ayers and Barack Hussein Obama are more then neighbors and our previous article lays that out.

“Imperialism or globalization—I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it,” says Ayers during the interview.

However the author asks Ayers why he frequents Starbucks if he hates “globalization.”

“Oh,” he says. “I have an addiction to caffeine.”

I’ve been to the University of Illinois in Chicago and can attest you can buy coffee on campus or other spots that don’t have a “global footprint.” Ayers is a hypocrite much like his “neighbor” Barack Hussein Obama.

Professor William Ayers a man who once tried to overthrow his country’s government and now works for a state university; an opponent of the bourgeoisie who has been married for 20 years; a left-wing radical who loves a good cup of imperialist coffee.

Maybe he’s always known how to choose his battles writes Coburn. Once one of his sons wanted to hear about how Ayers had been a draft card burner. “Tell me again how you burned your credit card, Pop,” his son confusedly asked.

“I’m not that radical,” Ayers retorted.

Ayers can’t hide from his past nor does he wish to. Neighbor Obama would like us to forget his past but that won’t happen in the near future.

Mr. Obama’s neighborhood will get more scrutiny and his past will be thoroughly vetted including that of Mr. Ayers and his wife.

In his own words upon escaping jail Ayers said:

“Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country.”

While reading Audacity of Hope you might wish to pick up a used copy of Fugitive Days by William Ayers.

I won’t place in exact words (expletives) about Ayers and his wife to keep with my own policies. Indeed!

High gas prices, Iran and the Mullah’s are building centrifuges in defiance of the allied Democracies, feckless U.N and the new great orator telling some Americans what they wish to hear and see as their President.

Gasoline shortages, OPEC, hostages in Tehran and a feckless President with Socialism on his mind and a wonderful speech telling Americans he feels a general sense of depression or unease across America.

FLASHBACK!

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy….

I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.

Liberals enjoy pulling at the public’s heartstrings, Socialists like Jimmy Carter and Obama enjoy creating big government policy that will last for generations and ensuring citizens they will be taken care of by the “Nanny State.”

Barack Hussein Obama knows how the “economic crisis” happened:

“We do need a government that stands up for families who are being tricked out of their homes by Wall Street predators”.

Yes, FDR would be proud for it was the Roosevelt administration that prolonged the Great Depression, built a government that despised banks, big business and created public works programs to put America back to work.

Let us not forget Social Security, a program taking hard earned money from citizens for the government with a promise to pay it back at little or no interest and a plan assuming the citizenry would die before it could collect. OOPS! Life expectancy in America grew and the coffers were empty.

Barack Hussein Obama believes citizens aren’t smart enough to make decisions for themselves and when things go bad it was a conspiracy by big business and people were “tricked.”

The under 30 crowd is mesmerized with fancy talk and speeches that have no substance but promise hope and change. The word Socialism is never used and Mr. Obama would like us to forget his past and look to the future.

Michelle Obama is currently proud of America but of course that could change with an Obama defeat in November. It would be a “Right-Wing Conspiracy Redux” and racism across the country. You know, the KKK of A and the stereotypes and resentment of “typical white people.”

The academia and “elite” upper crust Democrats are really Socialists who are for “change” more than “hope” although they hope to drive the Neo-Bolshevik Revolution to a community near you.

Barack Hussein Obama thinks America is in a “malaise”, an economic funk, in a quandary with the rest of the world, America has lost respect and we need to cozy up to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, collector of centrifuges.

Barack Obama said he assumes the American people will see it is “not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies, like Roosevelt did, Kennedy did, and Truman did.”

Mr. Obama would propose a “Grand Enemies Tour” as President Obama having brunch with Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Assad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, an al Qaeda “diplomat” from Osama bin Laden, Sudan’s Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, and Burma’s junta.

Life would be grand and we could all have the respect of the world while the enemy continues to plan America’s destruction. Much like Neville Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler we could take solace that President Obama is doing his best to make America respectful  and liked again.

Much like the Munich Agreement and current agreements with Kim Jong Il we could have hope that things will change for the better with a President Obama.

Health Care would be universal, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid could whip the earmarks into shape, more corn would be grown to fuel our cars, and the “Shining City Upon A Hill” would forever be remembered as part of a farewell address from another era where appeasing an enemy was not seen as an option and entrepreneurial vision was seen as opportunity and self-sufficiency not a handout by government. Indeed!

Hillary Clinton barely pulled out Indiana in the Democrat primary and was beat into submission in North Carolina. Mrs. Clinton appeared with a “stiff upper lip” at the “victory” podium in Indianapolis but her eyes told a story of “I’m finished.”

African-Americans pulled Barack Hussein Obama across the finish line in North Carolina with the help of upper crust Liberals within the Research Triangle.

Gary, Indiana nearly provided Obama with an upset victory pulling him within 20,000 votes and only a one-percent margin of victory for Clinton.

Michigan and Florida remain on Clinton’s wish list but she is only dreaming that Democrats will succumb to Bubba’s pressure as the light is dimming for the Clinton legacy of lies, deceit, mistrust and trysts.

The Democrats will have a full-fledged Socialist as their nominee for President of the United States making Jimmy Carter and George McGovern proud. It remains to be seen if the glow of victory remains for Mr. Obama as the process becomes more difficult and he is thoroughly vetted.

Discussing race may seem difficult but does anyone truly believe race won’t be a huge factor in the general election campaign? Obama does miserably with middle-class white voters and Rev. Jeremiah Wright will not go away. The group of voters Mr. Obama needs to become President is unlikely to vote Democrat when there is a middle of the road “maverick” in John McCain.

The Clinton’s may go but they won’t go quietly. Will Clinton, Inc. cooperate and promise to “come together” with a party that has dumped her? Will Clinton, Inc. stump for Mr. Obama? Will Hillary Clinton be the VEEP candidate?

“Some people have youth, some have beauty - I have menace,” famed actor Edward G. Robinson once explained with a sly smile. 

Hillary Clinton does not have youth or beauty on her side and the menace of Clinton, Inc. has “come home to roost.”

Another famous line of Robinson’s was:

“It’s curtains for you, Mugsy…”

And for Hillary Clinton - Indeed!

Fresh from his presidential campaign and his splashy endorsement of Barack Obama, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has now been to Venezuela to meet with President Hugo Chávez and seek the release of three Americans held hostage by Colombian guerrillas.

Mr. Chávez clearly enjoyed the role he was asked to play as the magnanimous host, empathetic listener and potentially heroic intermediary. For his part, Mr. Richardson undoubtedly relished the chance to continue playing on a global stage, compared to which administering the state of New Mexico must seem unglamorous. Unfortunately, the only thing his trip accomplished was to clarify why the governor’s bid for the U.S. presidency flopped.

For starters, Mr. Richardson came off looking ignorant about the realities of Venezuela. Intelligence agencies have long known that the FARC, which is holding the American hostages, makes a good part of its income by running illegal drugs through Venezuela. If Mr. Chávez wants to force the FARC to hand over the hostages, he needs only to threaten to cut off its transit routes.

He won’t do that, of course, because he is ideologically, tactically and strategically wedded to the FARC. On his return to the U.S., Mr. Richardson only further advertised his ignorance by explaining to the media that negotiation was “difficult” because “you’re dealing with a rebel group that’s out in the jungle. You don’t know where they are. You don’t know what they want.”

Huh? As the world knows, a captured laptop belonging to slain rebel leader Raul Reyes has already exposed not only the extent of Mr. Chávez’s complicity with the Colombian rebels – he obviously knows how to communicate with them – but also what FARC is seeking in exchange for the hostages, namely a safe haven inside Venezuela where they can build bombs, store weapons and otherwise plan for attacks on civilians.

Mr. Richardson may want to position himself in U.S. politics as a cool Hispanic statesman with a sophisticated understanding of the region. But after this trip, he’s looking like just one more naïve gringo.

– Mary Anastasia O’Grady at WSJ Political Diary

Mr. Obama would speak to our enemies, tyrants, and dictators providing them with legitimacy similar to efforts of Nancy Pelosi and Jimmy Carter. As Mr. Richardson discovered “diplomacy” with the enemy is more difficult than campaign rhetoric and sound bites. Indeed!

Go to your Yahoo mail but first you’ll see headlines crying out for the “melting” ice in the Artic and Antarctic. Read the story and you begin to wonder where the facts are and how true could this be. World Ends!

Then I will write one more time as a “Global Warming” skeptic and the comments will role in discussing my ability to decipher the “truth” and why don’t I succumb to the Al Gore fiction parade.

A German study, published by Nature last week, claimed that, while the world is definitely warming, it might cool down until 2015 “while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions”.

Spring has recently sprung in the United States although we did receive frost and “winter-mix” forecasts as late at April 30th. As North America emerged from its coldest and snowiest winter for decades, the US National Climate Data Center, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a statement that snow cover in January on the Eurasian land mass had been the most extensive ever recorded, and that in the US March had been only the 63rd warmest since records began in 1895.

A graph published last week on the Climate Audit website by Steve McIntyre.

Tracking satellite data for the tropical troposphere, it showed March temperatures plunging to one of their lowest points in 30 years.

Mr. McIntyre is the computer expert who exposed the infamous “hockey stick” graph - that icon of warmist orthodoxy, which showed global temperatures soaring recently to their highest level for 1,000 years. He showed that the computer model that produced this graph had been so designed that it would have conjured even random numbers from a telephone directory into the shape of a hockey stick).

On April 24 the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), another body of “global warming enthusiasts, published a study warning that Arctic sea ice was melting so fast that it may soon reach a “tipping point” where “irreversible change” takes place. This was based on last September’s data, showing ice cover having shrunk over six months from 13 million square kilometers to just 3 million.

However, by March 2008 the ice had recovered to 14 million sq km (see the website Cryosphere Today), and that ice-cover around the Bering Strait and Alaska that month was at its highest level ever recorded. (At the same time Antarctic sea ice-cover was also at its highest-ever level, 30 per cent above normal).

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently announced that an immense slow-cycling movement of water in the Pacific, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), had unexpectedly shifted into its cool phase, something which only happens every 30 years or so, ultimately affecting climate all over the globe.

Watts Up With That website, run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts, shows how the alternations of the PDO between warm and cool coincided with each of the major temperature shifts of the 20th century - warming after 1905, cooling after 1946, warming again after 1977 - and how the new shift to a cool phase could have repercussions for decades to come.

Mr. Watts points out that the West coast of the United States might already be experiencing these effects in the recent freezing temperatures that have devastated orchards and vineyards in California, prompting an appeal for disaster relief for growers who fear they may have lost this year’s crops.

“Global Warming” enthusiasts will tell you these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities - or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.

Politicians are committing citizens to spending unimaginable sums on wind farms, emissions trading schemes, absurdly ambitious biofuel targets, and every kind of tax and regulation designed to reduce our “carbon footprint” - all based on blindly accepting the predictions of computer models that the planet is overheating due to our output of greenhouse gases. The headlines then tell us about food shortages but we can see the increase in food prices during our shopping experiences while the hysteria continues.

On the other hand, a growing number of scientists are producing ever more evidence to show how those computer models are based on wholly inadequate data and assumptions - as is being confirmed by the behavior of nature itself (not least the continuing non-arrival of sunspot cycle 24).

We are given computer models and “hockey stick” graphs that can change at a software engineers whim or to provide evidence for more taxpayer funded grant money. Al Gore will continue to sell carbon credits while he exceeds the average citizens “carbon footprint” of one-year within a 24-hour period. Indeed!

UPDATED 3 pm EST:

Obama told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday that he only said that he would look more closely at the issue.

“I wouldn’t make any blanket commitments,” he said. “What I have said is I would examine what is going on in terms of the federal oversight that is taking place but it has been in place for many years. The union has done a terrific job cleaning house and the question is whether they are going to be able to be treated like every other union, whether that time has come and that is something I will absolutely examine when I am president of the United States.” [Earlier Story Below]

James A. Hoffa, President of the Teamsters Union, and Barack Hussein Obama have become great pals. Mr. Obama never misses a chance to rake in money and his pro-union stance certainly has Mr. Hoffa out on the campaign trail as an Obama surrogate.

A politician doesn’t get huge support from a big name without a promise and the teamsters want less federal oversight imposed to root out corruption from the Teamsters. Imagine that!

An independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union and the oversight is a matter for the Justice Department.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Hoffa stresses Sen. Obama’s criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement as the big factor in winning the 1.4-million member union’s support. However, the plot thickens and the truth seeps through as the Wall Street Journal reports:

But John Coli, vice president for the Teamsters central region, who brokered the Teamsters endorsement, said Sen. Obama was “pretty definitive that the time had come to start the beginning of the end” of the three-member independent review board that investigates suspect activity in the union. Mr. Coli said that Sen. Obama conveyed that view in a series of phone conversations and meetings with Teamsters officials last year.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed the candidate’s position in a statement, saying that Sen. Obama believes that the board “has run its course,” because “organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined.” Mr. Vietor said Sen. Obama took that position last year.

Mob influence has “run its course” because of Justice Department oversight not because Mr. Hoffa and his hacks are providing their own due diligence in the matters.

“When we have a case involving a member of organized crime and we send that to the union, the union automatically sends that back to us because they can’t handle it,” said John Cronin, who has been the administrator for the review board since it was created.

Mr. Hoffa wants oversight to go away and he really would like to see NAFTA disappear faster than his daddy went missing. Shortly after the union’s founding a century ago, ties emerged to organized crime.

“The Teamsters are in the kind of industries that the mob would be,” such as transportation and garbage hauling, said Kate Bronfenbrenner, a labor expert at Cornell University.

By the 1950s, the union had begun diverting assets of its pension plans to help organized-crime members fund development of Las Vegas, and the AFL-CIO expelled the union. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy aggressively investigated Mr. Hoffa’s father, who was convicted of witness tampering in 1964.

The review board’s caseload has dropped significantly over the years, to eight cases in 2007, from 70 in 1992. In 2006, one union member was permanently barred from the union for associating with a known member of organized crime. Some things never change but the Bush Justice Department seems to have enforced what the Clintons didn’t.

A direct reason why the oversight of the Teamsters should stay in place comes from within the union itself. In 1999, Mr. Hoffa hired Edwin Stier, a lawyer with experience fighting union corruption, to create an internal program to root out mob ties and help end the consent decree. Mr. Stier quit in 2004, saying Mr. Hoffa wouldn’t fully support his efforts.

“I haven’t seen anything that the union has done internally that comes close to self-policing,” Mr. Stier said in a recent interview.

Why would a union boss spend so much time and capital to campaign for a candidate for US President? Ending oversight of mob influence is the answer and Mr. Obama seems to embrace people with sordid histories of corruption, hate and terror. Indeed!

Tony Zirkle

Indiana GOP Candidate

2nd Congressional District

Ambulance chasing lawyer by trade, racist, bigot, anti-Semite, Nazi sympathizing candidate in the Indiana 2008 primary for the 2nd Congressional District in his spare time.

How did the Indiana GOP, who denounces Zirkle, allow this maniac on the ballot?

Zirkle, who is seeking the GOP nomination for the state’s 2nd Congressional District, believes — among other things — that whites are victims of a “genocide,” that the races should be segregated into different states and that pornography is a Jewish plot against women.

Zirkle accepted an invitation to address a group of swastika-wearing, Sieg-Heiling Nazi party members at a celebration of what would have been Adolf Hitler’s 119th birthday on April 20 in Chicago — birthday cake and all.

“We now have a small army of male black porn stars that are sifting through five, ten, fifteen thousand women,” Zirkle said.

“One man can now genocide the wombs of thousands of women,” infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases that leave them barren.

Zirkle calls it “Porn mule womb slaughter . . . the most effective weapon of mass destruction.”

“The original Republican party” felt the same way, Zirkle said.

“Abraham Lincoln called for African-Americans to be deported back to Africa.”

“What most people don’t know about me is that I’m the father of three beautiful Jewish Christian children,” he said, explaining that his wife had converted from Judaism to Christianity.

“I’m obviously not going to be out for gassing innocent Jews.”

Yet Zirkle blames Jews for much of the plight of white women in America.

“The massive number of Jews in the [pornography] industry basically brag about it,” he said, asserting that “most of the early porn stars were Jewish men.”

Zirkle attended the Naval Academy, he has a master’s degree from Georgetown University, and he went on to be a top prosecutor in Indiana, crusading against Internet pornography, amongst his sick private and public crusades. Indeed!

Source: FoxNews

Moonbat is a special feature of Liberally Conservative and posted each Saturday. For previous awards visit Moonbat Awards.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama trudge through the Hoosier State discussing the “housing crisis”, high gasoline prices, food price surges and assorted citizen pain sharing topics to lure voters into their camps.

I occasionally visit Indiana and notice the “Ditch Mitch” bumper stickers on cars wondering why these people ignore the fact that Republican Governor Mitch Daniels inherited a tax ridden state with enormous fiscal problems.

Indianapolis had a very popular Democrat Governor (70% approval) until Bart Peterson toyed with tax rates before the last election and found out that “Hoosier Hospitality” has its limits.

Open up the Indianapolis Star on any given day and you will be hard pressed not to find stories on property taxes and wonder if the next “tea party” won’t happen on the banks of the Wabash.

Mr. Peterson raised Indianapolis taxes to 1.65% from 1% telling the fine citizens it was for crime fighting. Voters rebelled and threw Mr. Peterson out of office and continue to fight the good fight over the tax and spend politicians of Indiana.

Tax may seem like a popular issue for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton but they should wake up to the signs on bumpers and lawns demonstrating the discontent Hoosiers have with taxes and their “public servants.”

It’s quite surprising the erstwhile Liberals are touting the need to increase taxes across the board to a constituency that is fed up with paying the tax collector. Republicans have been ousted from office in Indiana and with the exit of Bart Peterson it’s evident Democrats are not immune to voter disgust. Hoosiers have voted 21 mayors out of office around the state in recent primaries.

In 2007 Oregon, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington and North Carolina shot down referendums to hike taxes and politicians have not always gotten the hint.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal reports:

At an outdoor rally in the rural, southern Indiana town of Princeton, Mrs. Clinton railed against “Wall Street” money managers, promising to hit them harder. In Indianapolis’s Garfield Park, chatting with a small group of families, Mr. Obama matched her, vowing yet again to “roll back the Bush tax cuts” that went to the “wealthiest individuals” and “wealthiest corporations.”

An ensuing Rasmussen poll found that 65% of likely voters opposed a capital-gains rate hike; 52% said such a hike would hurt the economy. And 60% felt a candidate who would raise capital gains taxes would increase other taxes.

Voters are wiser than politicians give them credit for and in “Red State” Indiana Liberals may find their tax and spend message is falling on angry ears. Indeed!

Democrats and Liberals (is there a difference?) are not logical but they will tell you they have backgrounds from the elitist academic worlds of “intellectuals” and therefore, know what is good for the rest of us.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University misses Mitt Romney. What she really misses is Mr. Romney’s religion although the Ivy League Professor may need a history lesson. We at LC are very glad to oblige.

Ms. Harris-Lacewell writes at The Root:

I never thought I would say this, but I miss Mitt Romney. 

After three full days of having to interpret, explain and apologize for Reverend Jeremiah Wright I am feeling a little religiously defensive.  So I started fantasizing how different this would be going down if Mitt Romney were still challenging John McCain for the Republican nomination. 

Instead of us Obama supporters sweating, Romney and his supporters would be fielding calls all day to explain Mormonism, polygamy and the relationship of Romney’s faith to the cult compound in Texas.  Does Mr. Romney believe that 14 year-old girls should marry? Does Mr. Romney plan to take additional wives in order to fulfill the moral requirements of his religion? If not why has Mr. Romney stayed affiliated and raised his children in a church with whom he so vehemently disagrees? 

Maybe a little black liberation theology would have looked tame next to the FLDS.

By the way, I have special permission to tease about Mormonism. Although my mom left the Mormon church 40 years ago, she did graduate from BYU in 1964 and I even have a great,-great grandfather who was imprisoned for polygamy. But that is a story for another time.  For now it is fun to just imagine how nice it would be if Mitt were still in the race.

Ms. Harris-Lacewell is white, and like Barack Hussein Obama who threw his white grandmother under the proverbial bus, the professor has done the same with her mother and great, great-grandfather.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originally sanctioned polygamy, but historically that is very old news. The LDS Church Web site defines polygamy as follows:

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. At certain times and for His specific purposes, God, through His prophets, has directed the practice of plural marriage (sometimes called polygamy), which means one man having more than one living wife at the same time.

In obedience to direction from God, Latter-day Saints followed this practice for about 50 years during the 1800s but officially ceased the practice of such marriages after the Manifesto was issued by President Woodruff in 1890.

Since that time, plural marriage has not been approved by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and any member adopting this practice is subject to losing his or her membership in the Church.

The FLDS, to which Harris-Lacewell refers, is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group that split with the Mormons precisely because of the LDS rejection of polygamy.

Ms. Harris-Lacewell is attempting to compare “Black Liberation Theology“, which we discussed previously, to Mormonism and Mitt Romney, which is not a part of LDS or Mitt Romney’s core beliefs.

And this is what we call ”higher education”, indeed!

A new U.S. government report projects Iraq’s oil revenue will top a record $70 billion this year. It’s now time to have the Iraqi government to assume more responsibility for rebuilding their country.

The report from Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, which will be released today, highlights the windfall Iraq stands to reap this year because of soaring oil prices. The cost of a barrel of Iraqi oil has increased by 250% since 2003, and Iraq earned more than $18 billion from oil sales in the first quarter of 2008, the report found.

If Iraq is able to maintain its current levels of production and exports for the entire year, its oil revenue will be double what the Iraqi government had anticipated even a few months ago.

“Iraq’s oil income, forecasted in 2003 to be the primary pool of capital for post-war reconstruction, now has become the chief funding source,” the report found.

Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine), Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) and Evan Bayh (D., Ind.) are drafting legislation requiring future U.S. reconstruction aid to Iraq to come in the form of loans, rather than grants.

“The time has come to end this blank-check policy and require the Iraqis to invest in their own future,” the senators wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The report noted Iraqi ministries in Baghdad spent 51% of their capital budgets for 2007, or about $4 billion. The figures were even lower at the provincial level, where local officials spent an average of 31% of their capital budgets.

The inspector general’s report, based on data from American officials monitoring the industry in Baghdad, highlighted two records: Exports for March averaged slightly more than two million barrels a day, the highest average since the start of the war. And production for February hit a high of 2.5 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. data.

The report also found Iraq’s output in the last two quarters held steady at 2.38 million barrels a day.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Enjoying the frost on your early April garden? Enjoying the cold rain storms followed by forecasts of an “icy mix”? Ahhhhhhhh Spring following by one of the coldest years in recent memory.

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. Here are some points from Mr. Chapman on global warming and the coming ice age:

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

Mr. Chapman’s Solution:

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.

Reality:

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Indeed!

Source: The Australian