Mood:  not sure

Physical chemist Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) spent most of his career in the research laboratories of General Electric.  He won the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1932 for or his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry, which evolved into the field of thin film physics.

Four years before his death, Langmuir gave a talk at General Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory on what he called "pathological science" - things like perpetual motion (most recently asserted to have been achieved by a Mississippi inventor named Joseph Newman ), Kirlian photography, Trofim Lysenko's theory of environmentally-induced hereditary changes in plants and animals, René Prosper Blondlot's "N-rays," and many other "discoveries" which turned out to be self-delusions on the part of the scientists reporting the phenomenon in question.

Langmuir, after reviewing a colleague's upcoming talk on something called the "Davis-Barnes Effect," found that he got the same results whether or not his apparatus was working properly, or at all...  it was not a case of fraud, but of honest self-delusion and observational errors which were systematically - but unconsciously - made by otherwise highly professional, careful researchers who were so excited by what they thought was a new phenomenon that they overlooked alternative explanations for their results and miscounted events in a way which affirmed their hypothesis by making allowances for data which denied their hypothesis as being due to problems with their experimental gear.

Looking back at earlier examples of such incidents, Langmuir analyzed the work of René Prosper Blondlot's reports of "N-rays," shortly after Roentgen announced his discovery of X rays, and found remarkably similar sources of experimental error.  Langmuir studied the errors of his colleague, Blondlot and other researchers who'd made similar errors, and found that there were significant common features in these experiments.

These Langmuir called Symptoms of Pathological Science:

1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
   
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
   
3. Claims of great accuracy.
   
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
   
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
   
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.

Reader, does this remind you of something?  A certain climate change theory, perhaps?

"Global warming" exhibits several of the symptoms Irving Langmuir described:

- while there have been recent changes in world climate, they don't correspond to carbon dioxide levels (the claimed causative agent) in any fashion that can be described with consistency;

- statistical analysis of the relation between climate change and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not reveal a relationship that is significant by the standards of science;

- while proponents of global warming claim predictive power for their theories, so far reality isn't cooperating with them;

- the predictions of future climate trends fly in the face of what has been observed about behavior of the Earth's climate until now;

- the ability of proponents of global warming theory to rationalize counter-intutitive developments such as the sharp DROP in world temperatures while the Earth is supposedly warming is truly remarkable.

So far, the only missing symptom is the sharp fall in the number of supporters of global warming theory.  There is no shortage of people who profess to agree with this theory despite its troubling inconsistencies, and it has become popular with politicians at the national and global level, as evidenced by Al Gore's having won the Nobel Peace Prize for espousing global warming and having promoted it as tirelessly as he has.

Of course, we've seen things like this before - eugenics was once universally accepted as received wisdom.  Compulsory sterilization was once promoted not only for those who were assessed as being mentally or physically subnormal, but those who exceeded the intellectual norm by too high a degree ("excessively high" intelligence was considered to indicate a tendency toward mental instability).  Supreme Court decisions were based on eugenics theory, state laws written based on it, and history shows how the Nazis abused it to justify murders (passed off as "euthanasia") - killings which may have happened in other countries, even the United States, as eugenics enthusiasts began trying to emulate the German example before World War Two.

After the war, the Nuremberg Trials tore the veil away from the atrocities committed by Nazi doctors in the name of eugenics; suddenly very few people outside Nazi Germany believed in eugenics any more, and papers on work done here in America involving those unfortunate enough to be considered "defective" suddenly were put away, spiked by scientific journal editors.  But it took not only years, but a catastrophic world war and grisly excesses committed by a psychotic regime run by a madman to overthrow the hold of eugenics on the world's intellectuals.

So it may well be with global warming.  As long as people are willing to squint a little when they see data that disagrees with the consensus that the Earth is inexorably getting warmer, and believe that a hundredth of a degree increase in temperature worldwide (the rise predicted by most global warming models) will have the catastrophic effects predicted by the people who have hitched their professional and political wagons to the global warming star - then it will be fashionable, perhaps even mandatory in the future to parrot the global warming credo.

But eventually the world will stop squinting.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:16 AM MDT

Updated: Friday, 11 July 2008 1:05 PM MDT

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Election years are bad for our perspective.  We in the blogosphere tend to give people who don't deserve very much thought or attention a lot of it, trying to point out why they shouldn't run the United States of America.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the we're so passionate on who runs our country because our country is worth it.

I'm not interested in comparing America with other countries.  I'm interested in living here, because I love my country.  I love this place because it is where people come from all over the world to be free, and as much as we can, we let them.  There are limits to how many people we can let in from overseas, and we always err on the unsafe side, letting more in than we should, because we're not cold-blooded and uncompassionate.  We're just not idiots.

I love my country because we are never satisfied with "good enough." America tries hard to be better to our own citizens and to everyone else, every day.   We argue with each other constantly about how best to do that, but notice that we do try and we do get better.  And there are times when we screw up badly - and we hash it out in the open when that happens.

I love my country because when it would be simpler to just close our borders and leave the rest of the world to its own devices, we go out and try to save the world instead.  Sometimes, as Saul Bellow illustrated in his allegorical novel "The Rain King," we blunder into situations where we don't know what's going on or what we're doing - but we're quick studies.  We learn fast.  (And we're forebearing enough that when a toffee-nosed little snot like Prince Edward presumes to lecture us on how naive and stupid we are in our attempts to wring right out of wrong, we let him into our country anyway, because his Mom's a nice lady.)

One of the proudest moments of my life was when someone in Parliament was bad-mouthing the United States and demanding to know why Tony Blair was so committed to the alliance between our countries. 

His answer: "Two people have offered to give their lives up for you - Jesus Christ and the American GI."  When the Prime Minister of Great Britain says this to his own countrymen by way of rebuke, we must be doing something right. 

In my family's case, it was a particularly touching tribute because my son did give his life in Iraq for his comrades, for the other Coalition soldiers in that area (including some British servicemen), for us in America and for everyone else who would prefer to live in peace and freedom than under the kind of tyranny which the 9/11 hijackers were working to impose on us.

Not a day passes I don't think of my son Luke.  And every fourth of July, I thank him for his sacrifice, and God for making him the brave, strong man he was.  I wish he were still here, but I also remember that just before he died, we spoke on the phone and he told me how much he believed in what he was doing over there.  And anyone who tells me he died for a lie is risking getting knocked on his ass, because I may be 50 years old with cancer, but I'm not dead yet.

My dad went to Germany during World War II for the same reason his grandson went to Iraq - because his country needed him to go.  I was lucky enough that there was no war when I came of military age; I enrolled in ROTC in college anyway, because military service is a strong tradition in both sides of my family.  Because my back X-rays look sort of like a road map of downtown Dallas, I didn't pass my ROTC physical but I worked as a police officer for three years, so I wound up carrying a gun as a young man anyway.

I think that it would be a good thing for most of our young people to put in some time in either the police or the military, if only to give them perspective on what it takes to make life safe for others.  Freedom is not free, and public safety requires that someone not be safe in order that others may live in safety.  It's easy to say that; somewhat more difficult to know what it really means.  Sometimes it can be very difficult.

It's difficult sometimes to understand other people's perspectives.  I can't understand why some people want to come here from other countries and impose their old way of life on those of us who were already here.  If these people want to do honor killings and keep sex slaves in their basements (like some of our Muslim guests from Saudi Arabia), people should stay where those loathsome customs are not felonies. 

We set up a country where women can expect to be treated decently, and I can't see why the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with all the religious laws they enforce on visitors to their country, can't understand that their filthy way of treating women is not only frowned on here, it is a crime.   We don't stop enforcing the law on people because their homelands float on oil.  As much complicity as the Saudi royal family had in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they should be sincerely grateful to their distorted vision of God that we didn't just decide to use nuclear weapons on them to deliver justice.

I don't understand people who come here with a sob story about how hard life is where they're from, then expect to get away with crapping on other people once they're here.  In America, we ALL follow the law.  If you come here and think you're above the law, that you can mistreat other people for the hell of it, expect to see the inside of a jail cell - or to be sent back home if you're not from here.  The same rules apply where you're from, guys.  We don't need crooks and we don't need people who don't think the law applies to them.  If you can't deal with that, go home.

I think sometimes that we set fireworks off on the Fourth of July because they are a contentious way to celebrate, and we're a pretty contentious nation.  We don't worship consensus; we arrive at consensus after contending, more often than not.  Not necessarily warfare, and not necesarily gunfire, but even our marriages can resemble war at times.

When you think about it, freedom means that people sometimes have conflict.  Resources can be limited at times; not everyone can have what he or she wants if there's not enough to go around.  The test of a viable society is how it handles conflict, not whether or not there is any. 

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, like it or not, acknowledges that conflicts can sometimes be so heated that people require weapons to defend themselves from the strong and the politically powerful.  All the hand-waving about monopolies of armed force for the state, and the Second Amendment applying only to the National Guard, are nonsense. 

Our Founding Fathers had just come from a long conflict that started when they had had to pick up weapons because their conflict with the British government could not be solved by reason or law.  They fully intended (or at least George Mason and Thomas Jefferson did) that if that situation were to happen again, that the American people would be able to defend themselves from their own government. 

(It's ironic that left-wingers love gun control when they are so fond of shrieking about "rights" that don't even exist in the constitution, such as the "right" to privacy, the "right" to have federally-funded abortions, the "right" to compel employers to grant spousal benefits to same-sex couples and to compel governments to extend the legal protections of marriage to relationships which are not marriages.  I guess the idea of defending these "rights" with guns is ridiculous on the face of it, while defending your right to be secure in your property or your life with a gun makes instinctive sense, even to someone who believes in artificial "rights" that do not flow from a natural understanding of the proper relationship between man and society.  Liberals just instinctively realize that their "rights" will ultimately conflict with authentic rights as the Founding Fathers recognized them.)

Liberals are so wedded to the idea of gun control because they believe the government has the answer to every question and should be able to impose those answers on every citizen.  That was their perspective.  We've just allowed the courts to lie to us about the situation because we have been too lazy to fight for every one of our rights, every time.  When we decide not to contend for our rights, we should expect to lose them.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:42 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 4 July 2008 9:50 PM MDT

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In the 2004 election, the Democratic Party served us up John Kerry and made a great deal of noise about his military record. 

Never mind that ALL of his unit commanders attested to Kerry's being a hot-dog who fired off grenades for the hell of it, then signed up for one of his three Purple Hearts for self-inflicted shrapnel wounds; never mind that John Kerry was also one of the organizers of the discredited "Winter Soldiers Committee" who went around lying both about their military service and about atrocities in Vietnam that never happened; never mind that Kerry got together with the VC and the North Vietnamese before the Paris Peace Talks to help them cut the best deal they could (which they then went back on).

Never mind that John Kerry was a legend in his own mind.  The Democrats went for it.  Thank God the rest of us didn't - as dismal as W's been, Kerry would have been much worse - a Jimmy Carter with an attitude (well, Carter had an attitude too, he just took it out on the White House staff, who had to stand there and take abuse from that pathetic little man).

But the Democrats told the rest of us that we had to prefer a man who had actual military service under fire to someone, who like the President, served stateside (although flying air defense missions in old Delta Dart jet fighters as Bush did struck me as risky enough - the outfit that made them, Convair, had disappeared in a series of defense contractor mergers by the time George W. Bush was flying them).

But let's look at how the 2008 candidates shape up against John Kerry.

John McCain flew missions over North Vietnam for the Navy.  He put his butt on the line over enemy territory every time he went up.  Anti-aircraft fire got him and he was captured by the Communists, placed in the infamous Hanoi Hilton POW camp, where he was tortured for five years.  He refused an early release (the Communists wanted to show that because McCain's father was an Admiral in the Navy, he would get preferential treatment) unless every prisoner in the camp with him was released.  Then they beat him most of the way to death until he wrote a phony "confession," then threw him in solitary for two years.

Of course, McCain wouldn't get any sympathy from the Democratic leadership unless he'd been suspected of Islamic terrorism and thrown into Guantanamo Bay or Al Ghraib - but we know what they're all about.

But after he and most of the other POWs were returned to America, McCain didn't do what many of us might have and take a well-deserved medical retirement.

"He remained on active duty, undergoing months of treatment and physical therapy for his injuries, attended the National War College during 1973-1974, and had his flight status reinstated in 1976 when he became commanding officer of a training squadron in Florida. He turned around a low-performing unit and won the squadron its first Meritorious Unit Commendation.

Barack Obama was 15, attending high school in Hawaii.

McCain retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981, after 21 years on active duty. He had been awarded the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star, and the Navy Commendation Medal, for conduct before, during, and after his years as a POW.

McCain passes the John Kerry Test with all flags flying.

Obama doesn't."

Of course, this cuts no ice with weasels like retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who opined on a Sunday morning talk show that he didn't think "getting shot down and spending five years as a POW qualifies a man to be president."

Let's put Clark's fat, stupid ass in a fighter, punch him out over enemy territory, leave him in a torture palace for five years, then check back with him.  Clark's own duty consisted mainly of making crappy decisions when he was with NATO, during Bill Clinton's Balkan Adventure. 

You can look in vain through Clark's own record for signs of courage or a backbone.  Wesley Clark was a paper pusher in a pretty green suit.  I can think of worse invective to describe this pitiful poser, with his glib dismissal of better men than he will ever be, but let's get back to the main purpose of this essay.

Are the Democrats going to switch stories on us now?  Of course they are.  They've built up another tin god with feet of clay, and at Denver this August they are going to fall down before him and worship at those clay feet.  The "John Kerry" test goes out the window, in favor of their new... lie.

Then they will imperiously tell the rest of us to vote for a cheap lawyer for a convicted felon and Chicago slumlord, instead of a man who has given most of his life to serving us, risked it, almost given it up out of loyalty to the rest of us.  And they will be wrong again.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 3:57 PM MDT

Updated: Thursday, 3 July 2008 6:20 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

We hope not, but the fact remains that from January 5th (judging from the date on the Web page) to March 19th of this year, Barack Hussein Obama's Web site had this page:

For those who DON'T remember the Black Panthers (from Wikipedia.org):

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panthers or New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose formal name is the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a U.S.-based black supremacist organization founded in Dallas, Texas in 1989…

The NBPP attracted many breakaway members of the Nation of Islam when former NOI minister Khalid Abdul Muhammad became the national chairman of the group from the late 1990s until his death in 2001. The NBPP is currently led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, and still upholds Khalid Abdul Muhammad as the de facto father of their movement…

Although it says it sees capitalism as the fundamental problem with the world and “revolution” as the solution, the new party does not draw its influences from Marxism or Maoism as the original party did. Instead, in a carefully-worded, roundabout form of ethnic nationalism,  they say that Marx himself based his ideology and teachings on indigenous African cultures, and that the NBPP therefore need not look to Marxism or Maoism as a basis for their program, but can look to ideologies that stem directly from those African origins. The NBPP says it fights the oppression of black and brown people and that its members are on top of current issues facing black communities across the world. Also, it points to not all of its members being NOI, though the group acknowledges universal “spirituality” practices within the organization…

Members have referred to “bloodsucking Jews”, and Khalid Abdul Muhammad “has blamed slavery and even the Holocaust on the ‘hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, perpetrating-a-fraud, so-called Jew’.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad in his statement [said] that “there are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes."

 ____

And once again, Obama's campaign accepted that endorsement until it was reprinted in conservative blogs and began to attract unfavorable attention.

Thanks to chacha and the "Sweetness and Light" blog for the above.

The graphic above and the Wikipedia quote were from:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/new-black-panther-party-supports-obama

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 2:25 PM MDT

Updated: Wednesday, 2 July 2008 2:50 PM MDT

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Mood:  irritated

(quoted from"The Audacity of Truth," Caroline Glick, the Jersualem Post)

"Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama's spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright's anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam - fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright - who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church's anti-Israel invective.

OBAMA'S affiliation with Wright aligns with his choice of financial backers and foreign policy advisors. To varying degrees, all of them exhibit hostility towards Israel and support for appeasing jihadists.

As Lasky notes, Obama has received generous support from billionaire George Soros. In recent years, Soros has devoted himself to replacing politicians who support fighting the forces of global terror and supporting Israel with politicians who support appeasing jihadists and dumping Israel.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama opposed defining Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. He calls for the US to withdraw from Iraq - only to return if genocide is being carried out and then, only as part of an international force. He also supports opening negotiations with Iran even if the Iranians continue to enrich uranium. In forming these views, he is assisted by his foreign policy team which includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mark Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert Malley."

All of these people are known either for their anti-Israel views or their pro-Arab views - or both. Malley, a Palestinian apologist invented and propagated the false claim that the 2000 Camp David summit between the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then prime minister Ehud Barak failed because Israel wasn't serious about giving the Palestinians a state. This view is disputed by Barak and Clinton.

For her part, as chief foreign policy advisor to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential elections, Susan Rice reportedly convinced Kerry to announce that if elected he would appoint Jimmy Carter and James Baker to serve as his envoys for Middle East peace.

Mark Brzezinski has openly called for unconditional negotiations with Iran...."

"But even in this atmosphere Obama stands out - for not only does he theoretically support appeasement, he is actively advancing the interests of Islamists seeking to take control over a state allied with the US.

Kenya currently teeters at the edge of political chaos and civil war in the wake of the disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections. Those elections pitted incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga who leads the Orange Democratic Movement. While the polls showed the public favoring Odinga, Kibaki was declared the winner. Odinga rejected the results and his supporters have gone on rampages throughout the country that have killed some 700 people so far. Fifty people were murdered when a pro-Odinga mob set ablaze a church in which they were hiding.

Kibaki is close ally of the US in the war against Islamic terror. In stark contrast, Odinga is an ally of Islamic extremists. On August 29 Odinga wrote a letter to Kenya's pro-jihadist National Muslim Leaders Forum. There he pledged that if elected he would establish Sharia courts throughout the country; enact Islamic dress codes for women; ban alcohol and pork; indoctrinate schoolchildren in the tenets of Islam; ban Christian missionary activities, and dismiss the police commissioner, "Who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists."

Although Odinga is an Anglican, he referred to Islam as the "one true religion" and scorned Christians as "worshipers of the cross." Obama strongly supports Odinga who claims to be his cousin. As Daniel Johnson reported recently in the New York Sun, during his 2006 visit to Kenya, Obama was so outspoken in his support for Odinga that the Kenyan government complained to the State Department that Obama was interfering with the internal politics of the country. After the Dec. 27 elections Obama interrupted a campaign appearance in New Hampshire to take a call from Odinga."

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 1:51 PM MDT

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Mood:  mischievious

One of the mistakes the Obama people have made is to conflate their candidate with other Democratic front-runners, and imply that somehow his not being George W. Bush will translate (if he's elected President) in greater respect for the United States in Europe.

But as this front page headline from a German newspaper shows, this ain't necessarily so: the headline literally translates to "Uncle Barack's Cabin."

This could be explained by German press having a different view of political correctness than ours (maybe, like the British press, none at all).

Another reason that Europeans aren't overly excited about Obama is that he's ignored them when an overseas junket and a photo-op weren't part of the deal. 

An important part of his job in the United States Senate is chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs.  This subcommittee deals with our relations with NATO, the European Union, the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe - and all the countries of Europe, regardless of whether they are members of the EU or NATO (a number of them are politically neutral and not EU members yet).

The chairman of a Senate subcommittee has incredible scope to work for significant change - if he just shows up for work.   Obama hasn't. 

Let's say, for example, that there was a chance to encourage the European Union to admit Turkey - publicly recognizing Turkey as the anchor for moderate, secular government in predominantly Muslim countries and increasing Turkey's influence and power in the Muslim world.  If Sen. Obama were active in that way or any number of other ways, it would give us some badly needed credentials as a friend of moderate Muslims.

But Barack Obama hasn't held a single policy meeting of this crucial subcommittee according to Steve Clemons, contributor to the "Washington Note" blog. (http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002589.php)

Not one meeting.  Nothing. Nada. Zip.

NOT a good way to make friends and influence people in Europe. 

By way of contrast, Obama has spent a lot of time traveling to Kenya to campaign for Raila Odinga, the failed candidate for the presidency of that country whose supporters have murdered 700 people in protest over his loss of the election - 70 of them burned to death in the church where they were confined by Odinga supporters.  Obama has spent so much time supporting this radical Islamist that the government of Kenya officially complained that he was interfering in Kenyan internal affairs.

(If Obama really wanted to avoid being tagged as a radical Islamist himself, you'd think he'd refrain from backing a murderous thug who is trying to turn a valued strategic ally like Kenya into another Islamic republic - Odinga has publicly promised Muslim groups that he specifically would impose sharia law, conservative dress codes for Kenyan women, mandatory instruction in Islam for Kenya's children, and everything else that would set the stage for the conversion of Kenya into another Muslim tyranny.  And this is what Obama has tried to make happen.)

---- 

Obama's unpopularity in Europe could also be explained by the average European's growing disgust with simplistic leftism, both at home and abroad. 

By and large, the only good press I've seen Obama get overseas that wasn't orchestrated by the international left has been from radical Muslims. Oddly, the backers of Muslim terrorists overseas seem to share the American right wing's impression that Obama in the White House is going to see things from a radical Muslim perspective.  (Given his support for Raila Odinga in Kenya, it's hard not to reach that conclusion.)

Europeans have had all of the radical Muslim influence they care to have.  You only have to blow up six or seven buses and trains to get their attention, and now it has been gotten.  Not in a good way.

Finally, the weathervane of European politics seems to swing away from anti-Americanism now.  Pro-American political leaders Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Nicolas Sarkozy in France recently wound up in charge of their respective countries by comfortable majorities - a sign that the predictions of permanently damaged relations with Europe as a result of Bush's unilateral actions in Iraq were wrong. 

So all those people who were ready to slit their wrists because their European seat mates on Air France flights were giving them funny looks over wearing American flag lapel pins should pay attention.  The Stars and Stripes are back in good color with most of the European public - or at least they are for now. 

If we elect Barack Obama, the man who seems to have gone out of his way to slough off dealing with Europe while overseeing our relations with them was his job in the Senate, we shouldn't expect Europe to thank us.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 4:58 AM MDT

Updated: Friday, 4 July 2008 6:45 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

I've talked about Barack Hussein Obama's empty committments not to take money from "special interests" when he's been proven to be in the pocket of Big Law and Big Corporate Lobbying firms. Elsewhere in this blog there's confirmation - most of it in liberal magazines and blogs - that he's accepted three times the number of contributions that McCain has, twice as many as Hillary Clinton (Senator Clinton is praying HARD that she can run as vice-president on the Obama ticket in order to pay off millions of dollars which her campaign still owes - he out-raised her, too - look at the table compiled by opensecrets.org lower in this page to see what a money-taking machine Barack Obama is).

Even many of Obama's fellow leftists are disgusted with the way that Barack Obama is selling himself to corrupt labor unions, to Big Business, to the trial lawyers' lobby and the big national banks who did so much to help the foreclosure crisis happen.  Obama's claims that he refuses to take money from these guys are lies, pure and simple.

_______

But Barack Obama is also chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, a body with direct responsibilty for our relations with NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the alliance in which American servicepeople are helping to fight terrorism in three fronts around the world, from Bosnia to Afghanistan.  Obama's responsibility as chairman of this subcommittee is also to provide the Senate with oversight on our relations with the European Union and all the countries in Europe whether they are part of NATO or the EU (Switzerland being the most prominent European country which is part of neither organization). 

You'd think a Senator who wanted to be President would jump on the chance to prove how diligently he could work to maintain the crucial military, diplomatic and economic alliances on which our conduct of the war on terror and much of the rest of our foreign policy depends.  You'd think so, wouldn't you?

But Obama hasn't taken this opportunity.  He hasn't convened a SINGLE MEETING of this subcommittee.  Not one.

Don't take my word for it.  In fact, I'm not going to ask you to believe a conservative on this at all.  I'm going to point you toward a critique of Obama's defense experience - his utter lack of it, more to the point - by someone who thinks Hillary Clinton's a GREAT candidate for President (and compared to Obama... she is.  Depressing, no?)

Steve Clemons, in the "Washington Note" blog, has expressed exactly the same concern I have about Obama's failure to do ANYTHING to discharge his oath of office where our military committments to NATO are concerned.  Read what he has to say:

(http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002589.php has the entire article, I'm just quoting relevant excerpts)

"I get the sense that Barack Obama is also extremely intelligent, though I've not had the same kind of encounters with him that I have had with Hillary Clinton and thus can't give personal commentary.

But I am convinced of something about Hillary Clinton's commitment to use every lever and every aspect of government machinery to push her legislative and policy work that I'm disappointed to say that I can't find as strongly in Barack Obama's profile. My concern has to do with the fact that as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations' Subcommittee on Europe, Obama has held zero hearings -- at least that is how the record appears to me.

Compare this to the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe, which is having constant hearings -- or to the Senate Subcommittee's work before Obama became Chair -- or to a comparative commitment of Hillary Clinton on a Subcommittee she chairs, and the zero hearing detail is disconcerting...

...I'm not trying to find a minor, nuanced difference between Obama and Clinton and inflate that to inappropriate levels. I am a fan of some of Obama's foreign policy positions -- though I think that I tend to appreciate his speeches influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski that reflect tough-minded thinking and hard choices rather than those influenced by former Clinton National Security Adviser Anthony Lake that seem to want America to rush into every global cause without clear delineation of priorities and an accounting of potential costs and consequences to our national interest."

Brzezinski followed his old boss Jimmy Carter in currying favor with the Saudis (for which Carter was well-paid under the table), and with the louder critics of America in Europe.  Since then, Chirac has been replaced by Sarkozy in France, Berlusconi is back in charge in Italy - the socialist leaders who Carter, Brzezinski and their friends wanted to placate are being pushed out of power by ordinary people in Europe who see the writing on the wall now about trying to sell out to the Muslims in hopes of suing for peace.  That dog won't hunt; they know it.

"Senator Obama has a great team. Some of his staff are friends and former colleagues of mine -- though i can say the same about every one of the presidential candidates in both parties.

But his not calling any hearings in a Senate Subcommittee he chairs ought to raise some questions that he needs to respond to. His Subcommittee deals with Europe, with NATO, with various related political and security matters -- and he's got the gavel and can set the agenda.

Given the stress NATO is experiencing today on many fronts -- from the question of Europe's evolving security identity, to NATO's deployments in Afghanistan, to the evolving question of how to deal with Russia, Kosovo, and other common challenges -- it seems inconceivable that Senator Obama would not want to highlight important policy concerns by way of hearings.

I hope Senator Obama looks at this post as something to respond constructively to -- as we need to understand how this gap would be fixed or translate into a White House setting."

Those are the words of a liberal who also thinks Obama's inattention to national security - his willful neglect of the duties of his job by failing to do the business necessary to make sure our people fighting under NATO commands are as well-taken care of as possible - is scary.

Obama's fitness to be President of the United States isn't a partisan issue. It never really was.  This guy is being as diplomatic as he is to make a Democratic ticket with Obama leading it more palatable - but his heart's not in it.

Liberals, conservatives, moderates and libertarians (like me) ALL think that Obama's scary.   He's sold out to precisely the sort of special interests he's accused everyone else of dealing with; now we find that he hasn't even done a crucial part of his job dealing with national security - we trusted him to hold meetings which he hasn't held.  

If Barack Obama were working for me and not the people of Illinois, I'd have fired him.  Any good boss would.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 8:29 AM MDT

Updated: Friday, 4 July 2008 10:01 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

When I look at arms control and things related to arms control, I think I've seen everything that could shock and amaze me; and then I find out I'm wrong.

From the Associated Press:

"North Korea nuclear accounting won't include bombs

By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 18 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea is expected this week to turn over its long-delayed accounting of its nuclear weapons activities, part of a chain of events leading to a unique photo opportunity: the destruction of the cooling tower at Pyongyang's main reactor.

One item that won't make the declaration, which the White House says is due Thursday, will be North Korea's nuclear bombs. The omission means the world will have to wait for an answer to the question at the heart of the nearly six-year-old standoff: Is the North ready to give up its nuclear weapons?

North Korea has invited foreign TV stations to broadcast the toppling of the cooling tower to demonstrate its plan to give up its nuclear ambitions. Sung Kim, the top State Department expert on Korea, will travel to North Korea for the planned destruction of the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, an official at South Korea's Foreign Ministry said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing ministry policy.

U.S. officials who earlier insisted North Korea's declaration should be "complete and correct" have repeatedly scaled back expectations for the document in the wake of resistance from Pyongyang, which failed to meet a deadline for submitting the list at the end of last year.

Already, the declaration that the White House says is due Thursday is not expected to include details of the North's alleged attempts to enrich uranium — the dispute that sparked the nuclear standoff in late 2002. The list also will not describe how the North allegedly helped Syria build a nuclear plant.

Instead, those thorny issues will simply be "acknowledged" by Pyongyang, with the U.S. hoping that it can get more information in later discussions with the North, given that it has few other ways to dig for intelligence from the world's most closed country.

The main U.S. envoy to nuclear talks with North Korea affirmed this week that the communist nation's bombs also will not make the cut for the declaration. Instead, details on the bombs will be left to the next stage of the talks, when Pyongyang is supposed to abandon and dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

"The North Koreans have acknowledged that we have to deal with the weapons," Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in Beijing. "We're going to deal with it as soon as we sit down again to begin to map out the remaining piece of this negotiation."

The White House said Wednesday it will move quickly to lift sanctions and remove North Korea from the U.S. blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for handing over the declaration.

The North is expected in the declaration to say how much plutonium it has produced at its main reactor facility. The next step in the disarmament talks will be to verify that claim, through procedures that Hill said would be set up within 45 days.

That verification will not mean the U.S. or any other country will yet actually see the weapons-grade plutonium, or that nuclear inspectors will roam the countryside peeking into the North's vast network of secret underground tunnels to track down traces of radioactive material.

Instead, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this month that verification at first will simply mean reviewing documents and inspecting the reactor to infer how much plutonium was produced, to be compared with the amount that the North claims in the declaration.

"Once we have a clearer view of how much plutonium has actually been made, I think we'll also have a clearer view of what might have happened to it," Rice told an audience at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

In a report earlier this year, the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security estimated the North has between 61 and 110 pounds of plutonium, which could be enough to build from six to 10 bombs. The North proved it could build a working nuclear bomb when it carried out an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006.

The fireworks at the reactor will be a mostly symbolic move signaling that North Korea does not intend to make more plutonium for bombs. The reactor was shut down last year and already largely disabled so that it cannot easily be restarted.

What happens next with the bombs and fissile material the North already has stockpiled will be the real test of Pyongyang's commitment to disarm."

___

Burt Herman is chief of bureau in Korea for The Associated Press.

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 6:25 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 12:54 PM MDT

Updated: Friday, 4 July 2008 10:27 PM MDT

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Mood:  incredulous

According to an article on The Hill.com, Democratic Senator John Conyers plans to bring a bill before Congress during what many people see as an upcoming Obama presidency to require Congress to study paying African-Americans reparations for slavery.

Patient Conyers hopes to move slavery bill during an Obama administration

Posted by V.P. Frickey at 1:11 AM MDT

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