William F. Buckley - RIP

William F. Buckley died today and it's with regret that I note his passing. He was the godfather of today's American conservative movement and a shining beacon in the dark years.

I was thinking of Buckley just the other day and, in particular, one of his earlier books (I believe it was Inveighing We Will Go) where he extolled the virtues of the Swiss confederation and its monthly rotating presidency. There the average citizen was unlikely to even know the name of the current President while in the United States a large group of people of the leftish persuasion constantly look to the President for some sort of salvation. The peculiar and scary Obama cult makes his point all too clear.

When will they apologize for trying to scam us with Global Warming?

On the way to state control of every facet of our lives to prevent the dubious boogeyman of Global Warming, the ecoweenies have run into a roadblock - temperatures are actually going down without the benefit of any of their nostrums:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.

If man-made greenhouse gases have any discernible effect at all except in the computer models of aspiring socialists.

The hustlers have been trying to substitute "climate change" for "global warming" as their problem has become increasingly evident, but with minimal success as even the dopiest general citizen is aware that d'oh, you can't have it both ways. What I want to know, is when the ecoweenies will apologize for trying to foist this egregious fraud off on us. I'm not holding my breath.

Barack Obama, the backdoor Muslim

I had to laugh over yesterday's furor about Hillary's campaign circulating a snap of Barack Obama in a native Somali Muslim outfit and the associated media handwringing over "divisiveness". Heck, the trip to Africa and donning fancy dress are a major part of Obama's foreign policy experience.

Instead, what should make you wonder about divisiveness is Obama's continuing and fervent membership in the strange and racist Trinity United Church of Christ which practices a very odd brand of Christianity. In fact, they bear much the same goofy relationship to Christianity that Louis Farrakahn and the Nation of Islam bear to Islam and I guess that it's no surprise that they love each other. Last year Trinity gave Farrakahn a Lifetime Achievement award and now Farrakhan has endorsed Obama:

Addressing a crowd of some 20,000 people at the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day celebration, Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama represents the "hope of the entire world" that the United States will become a better neighbor to other nations. "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."

Click through for some of Farrakhan's greatest hits including:

Farrakhan also has a long, well-documented history of venom-laced references to the "white devils" and Jewish "bloodsuckers" who purportedly decimate America's black community from coast to coast. He has referred to Judaism as a "gutter religion," and to Adolf Hitler as "a great man" -- though he later claimed that he had meant only that Hitler was "wickedly great." He has made innumerable statements depicting whites and Jews as loathsome, racist oppressors of blacks.
...
In August 1997, the New York Amsterdam News quoted Farrakhan stating, "A decree of death has been passed on America. The judgment of God has been rendered and she must be destroyed."

You can think of reasons why a wingnut like Louis Farrakhan would like Barack Obama, but why is Obama part of a church that idolizes Louis Farrakhan? One has to assume that Obama has no problem with Farrakhan's ravings.

The Obamessiah: Harsh but funny

The Obamessiah:

"Please help us Barack, we're needy bed-wetting inadequates desperate for someone to make it all better with soothing platitudes. Can we count on you? Yes we can."

Who would have guessed that an old time combined revival meeting and faith healing schtick would appeal to the jaded sophisticates in the Democrat party?

More creepy Michelle Obama ravings

Michelle Obama seems to be working overtime not only for the Wackiest Candidate Spouse Award, but also for the coveted Totalitarian Idiot Award. Here's how Michelle describes life under a Barack Obama regime:

Barack Obama will require you to work.
He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism.
That you put down your divisions.
That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones.
That you push yourselves to be better.
And that you engage.
Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Looks like Michelle is bucking for the job of running the Committees for Defense of the Revolution.

Update: I guess I'm not the only one that finds Michelle Obama a tad totalitarian. Chris Muir:

Click to enlarge

Slumlord fun and profit with Barack Obama and Tony Rezko

What is it about Democrat politicos and sleazy real estate deals? No, I don't mean the odd funding for the Obama mansion in Chicago - that's chump change. I mean Barack's assistance over the years for his real estate wheeler-dealer pal Tony Rezko whose trial on charges of perpetuating a gigantic fraud on the taxpayers is due to start in March. The charges raise all kinds of questions which Barack isn't too keen on answering - Obama ducks the questions:

Barack Obama tells us he is the messenger of a new kind of politics.

Open. Transparent. Different.

But put the pedal to the metal and ask Illinois' junior senator new and serious questions about his radioactive, federally indicted, former friend Antoin "Tony" Rezko, and suddenly this gleaming presidential hopeful and paragon of new politics behaves just like any other dissembling, dismissive Chicago pol, ducking the discussion while pretending not to.

The story behind the story of this week's Sun-Times' reports on Rezko, the power broker slumlord, and Obama, voice for the voiceless, is revealing.

For five long weeks, Sun-Times' investigative reporter Tim Novak called, e-mailed, requested, practically pleaded with Obama's press people to provide information about the senator's relationship to Rezko when it came to the development of low-income housing in Chicago. In an abundance of fairness and an excess of solicitousness, Novak sent a list of questions.

For five weeks, no answer.

Then Novak published the reports (Obama and his Rezko ties, Broken promises, broken homes) and it wasn't a pretty sight:

Until Novak began his digging, the most we knew about the Obama/Rezko nexus was the revelation that Rezko, a major Obama donor and fund-raiser, had helped Obama enlarge the property surrounding his South Side mansion by having Mrs. Rezko simultaneously purchase an adjacent lot and then sell off a strip of that property to Obama. At the time, unless Obama never read a paper or watched the news, he couldn't help but know that Rezko was already under federal investigation. Rezko was ultimately indicted.

...

But Novak's reports this week raise new questions about just how much attention Obama, a self-described activist, was paying to the critical issue of affordable housing in the district he used to represent as a state senator. It again involved Rezko, his longtime patron, who had 11 failed or failing buildings in Obama's district.

Though Obama says he, himself, did a mere five hours of work, the 12-person law firm where Obama was a junior partner did significant legal work for Rezko's company which, by 2002, was being sued by the city, state and a bunch of banks for defaulting on loans and doing a downright awful job of providing decent housing. Taxpayers and lenders have lost up to $100 million while Rezko's firm made about $7 million.

I'm sure it will all be cleared up by the billing records. Hmm, where have we heard that one before? Anyhow:

More than five weeks after receiving Novak's questions, the Obama people at last sent a partial written response. It arrived exactly five hours before the Sun-Times went to press.

That's OK -- any answer is better than none. But what about that interview?

Here's a candidate who these days is on camera more than many TV anchors, whose staff is putting out press releases faster than IHOP cranks out pancakes, and yet, the senator just didn't have time, his staffers claimed, to stop and talk on Monday even though he was in Chicago giving a speech at which, conservatively, there were 30 reporters and 15 cameras.

We didn't know it then, but while Novak and I were staking out the senator's big, black SUV parked outside, he was giving a quiet private interview to the Tribune about the wrongheadedness of the Sun-Times' story.

Meanwhile, an Obama staffer, sent to watch us, nimbly Blackberried our movements to someone inside.

Suddenly, bodyguards pulled the SUV down into a parking garage, grabbed Obama, and with wheels squealing, sped out and away.

Maybe it was the image of that getaway, played on the 5 o'clock news, that finally persuaded Obama to hastily call a news conference to which Novak was not invited but managed to find out about anyway.

Obama said while the new allegations about Rezko were "deeply troubling," none of it had ever been "brought to his attention."

Yep, sounds like a crooked Chicago politician to me. Catch the squealing tires on this video:

Today's Hoot: Name a Barack Obama Senate accomplishment

Here's a poser - name any accomplishment by Barack Obama since he has been elected to the US Senate. Stumped? So are his supporters:





Hmmm, the surrogate didn't do too good. How about some average folks?





IQ is clearly not the hallmark of Obama supporters.

(Via Phake Barack Obama).

Barack Obama is actually a parrot, Michelle Obama is a genius too

We knew Barack Obama was an empty suit, but it's kind of neat the way he can repeat what he has heard.



Meanwhile poor Michelle Obama revealed that she had never been proud of her country until her husband the gasbag won a few primary victories.


Not even when slum lord Tony Rezko made it possible for you and Barry to buy a 2 million dollar house, Michelle? I would have thought you would have been real proud of that just like your $300,000 make-work job at the University of Chicago hospitals as a community relations specialist.


Via PhakeBarackObama.com.

Obama's Commie Mommies

We all knew that Barack Obama was the most left wing Senator in the US Senate, but it turns out that he's so left wing that he has Communists staffing the Obama campaign offices in Houston:

Barack Obama won’t wear an American flag on his lapel, but on the wall of his Houston campaign office: a Cuban flag with a picture of Communist mass murderer Che Guevara. (Click picture for video.)

And that flag is no fluke. Here’s another one. (Click picture for video, as again the Houston news anchors don’t even notice the big image of Che Guevara staring them in the face.)

Follow the link for the video or check out the fat-assed apparatchicks in these screen caps I stole from KisP:

I'm sure they'll be hiding the flags shortly, but think about it this way: If the Commies are endorsing an empty suit like Obama, there's got to be something in it for them and that isn't good for you and me.

(Hat tip to Freedom Dogs for the fetching Che Obama logo.)

Catching the Obama buzz

Only now that ole Barack Obama has a chance to win the Democrat party nomination are folks beginning to take a closer look at his record and it's not a pretty sight:

Barack Obama, the senatorial candidate of 2004, might have a bone to pick with Barack Obama, the presidential candidate of 2008.

Videotapes of debates and speeches that were obtained by The Washington Times show that Mr. Obama took positions during his Senate campaign on nearly a half-dozen issues ranging from the Cuba embargo to health care for illegal aliens that conflict with statements that he has made during his run for the White House.

For example, in MSNBC's Oct. 30 presidential debate, Mr. Obama hesitantly raised his hand and joined with most of his Democratic rivals to declare he opposed decriminalizing marijuana.

But as a U.S. Senate candidate, Mr. Obama told Illinois college students in January 2004 he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use or possession, a debate video shows.
...
When confronted with the statements on the video, Obama's campaign offered two explanations to The Times in less than 24 hours. At first, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said the candidate had "always" supported decriminalizing marijuana, suggesting that his 2004 statement was correct. Then after The Times posted copies of the video on its Web site, www.washingtontimes.com, yesterday, his campaign reversed course and declared he does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use.

You can see the videos by following the link and while you are there check out some of the other things Barack used to be for but now opposes (in a nuanced way, of course):

• Giving children of illegal aliens the same benefits as children of citizens including in-state tuition
• Unilaterally ending the Cuba embargo
• Abolishing minimum criminal sentences
• Creating a single-payer, universal health care plan

It takes a big man to fill John Kerry's flip-flops, I guess.