(click for the bigger version)
Consider this analog for a moment in time:
The Tandem master has spent quite some time and money doing a number of things that will allow someone to trust them with their lives. They have made many jumps, they have undergone training for the normal and the many emergency situations, they have been purposely placed in environments replicating, as best is possible, those bad conditions to see how they will react. They are certified to then carrying paying “passengers” for these tandem jumps. He/she is: Accountable, responsible and ready to do all the work, planning a positive experience, but ready for the negative one.
The fake “skydiver” on the front…well, they get about 15 minutes of training, which entails showing them “position 1″ and “position 2″ and when to use them. They show they can do that a time or two to the tandem master They see a short video by Bill Booth (damn lawyers!), get suited up (with help) and are on their way to check the life experience block of being a “skydiver.”
(Note to reader: Fill in here with your best imitation of Ice Man at the first TOPGUN meeting with the hot contractor being told about international relations for the full multimedia experience of this post)
The “pony rider” can keep their eyes shut, put their hands over their face, they can pass out, they can panic and try to grab the arms of the tandem master, but…in the long run, the tandem master makes sure they “arrive alive” at the end of the gravity powered entertainment ride.
So, Hillary would have you believe, because she was strapped to someone, that she is fully experienced as the guy in the back, with years of effort and also the many jumps under many circumstances.
My point is Hillary is merely a poser. She got zip for experience, and all the charity work doesn’t count toward Presidential qualifications, because you can walk away from those “duties” at any time and you’re not accountable.
Life is so much more nuanced when you are the last word, especially when millions and millions of lives are at stake.
Said xformed @ 11:35 am Comments (1) | Permalink
This is interesting, passed on to me by Rotty through email, since he knows I always enjoy a good row.
The standoff beings with begins with the Devil’s Kitchen, pointing to a post by Tom Nelson at Climate Resistance who took on the quest for the holy grail; the qualifications of the IPCC “climate experts” whose “science” we aren’t allowed to question. This, because the “debate is over” and the “science is settled”, despite the 400 dissenters that showed up in Bali. The truth of the matter is, The Church of Global Warming doesn’t want to hear any other opinions, which is not science. Science is supposed to be open to honest testing of a hypothesis. The only why you get a real answer is if you’re open to finding out what the truth is. This isn’t the case in terms of the global warming freaks.
So we downloaded IPCC WGII’s latest report on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. There were 380 contributors to the report [PDF of contributors].
*snip*
..so we focused on the contributors who operate in the UK. Of the 51 UK contributors to the report, there were 5 economists, 3 epidemiologists, 5 who were either zoologists, entomologists, or biologists. 5 worked in civil engineering or risk management / insurance. 7 had specialisms in physical geography (we gave the benefit of the doubt to some academics whose profiles weren’t clear about whether they are physical or human geographers). And just 10 have specialisms in geophysics, climate science or modelling, or hydrology. But there were 15 who could only be described as social scientists. If we take the view that economics is a social science, that makes 20 social scientists. This gives the lie to Dessler’s claim that IPCC contributors are analogous to medical doctors.
Emphasis mine. HA! Just as in the case of Rachel Carson, the marine biologist, we’re supposed to ignore the real data for the purpose of kneeling at the environmental alter and sacrifice blood and treasure on the basis of lies. This also gives the lie to “climatologists’” claims in general about warming, that we’re not supposed to question the holy writ that comes from the IPCC panel, because they’re the ‘experts’.
We were surprised by the results. Was the prevalence of social scientists from the UK representative of the whole group? We decided to repeat the test for the contributors based in the USA.
Of the 70 US contributors, there were 7 economists, 13 social scientists, 3 epidemiologists, 10 biologists/ecologists, 5 engineers, 2 modellers/statisticians, 1 full-time activist (and 1 part time), 5 were in public health and policy, and 4 were unknowns. 17 worked in earth/atmospheric sciences. Again, we gave the benefit of the doubt to geographers where it wasn’t clear whether their specialism was physical, or human geography.
1 full-time activist and 1 part-time! This blows my mind and is an outrage! I’m certain that the same results would be achieved by going down the entire list, no matter where they’re originally from. This is propaganda masquerading as science!
In a follow-up post, Dessler has set about ‘Busting the ‘consensus busters'’ by ridiculing the qualifications of Inhofe’s 400 experts, starting with a certain Thomas Ring. In the comments section he justifies this approach:
I agree it would be quicker to simply note the qualified skeptics on the list (there are probably a few dozen), but, from a rhetorical point of view, I think pointing out these immensely unqualified members of the list is more effective.
Ring’s credentials include a degree from Case Western Reserve University in chemical engineering, still more impressive than the ones the IPCC panel has trotted out. This is even MORE amusing:
Well, we can all play that game… Included as contributors to WGII are Patricia Craig, Judith Cranage, Susan Mann, and Christopher Pfeiffer, all from Pennsylvania State University. It’s not that these people aren’t experts in their field - they probably are. Our problem with their inclusion on the list of Contributors to the IPCC WGII Fourth Assessment report is that their jobs are (in order) website-designer, administrative assistant (x2), and network administrator.
YIKES!
Also on the list is Peter Neofotis who appears to be a 2003 graduate of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Columbia. Are there many experts in anything who graduated in 2003? Would Dessler take his sick child to a doctor, who, according to our understanding of medical training, would have not yet qualified? Also at Columbia is Marta Vicarelli, who is a PhD candidate in ’sustainable development’. Can she be the amongst the world’s leading experts on sustainability? It seems hard to take the claim seriously. Or what about Gianna Palmer at Wesleyan University, who, as far as we can tell, will not graduate from university until 2010?
Dessler has inadvertently thrown a light on what the real problem is with the agenda-driven IPCC ‘climate’ reports.
And yet Dessler insists that
Inhofe’s list is chock full of people without any recent, relevant research on the problem. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why they’re skeptics: people with the relevant experience are immediately persuaded by the evidence. This should be compared to the IPCC, which includes exclusively people with recent, relevant expertise on the problem.
There are, in fact, only about 7,000 climatologists in total, because climate was a stalled profession involving many different disciplines, and climate was considered to be something in constant flux. But still, those that are in Inhofe’s list are at least engineers, instead of administrative assistants, activists, web designers and students who aren’t destined to graduate until 2010, and so on.
Anything which can be thrown at the sceptics can be thrown at IPCC contributors.
That is not to say that social scientists and computer programmers have nothing to offer the world, or the IPCC process. They are crucial in fact. What it is to say, however, is that, when social scientists, computer programmers and administrative assistants comprise a significant proportion of IPCC contributors, the global warmer mantra that the IPCC represents the world’s top 2500 climate scientists is just plain old-fashioned not true.
It’s just a plain old-fashioned LIE, but it’s typical of the pipedreams of leftist environmentalists. Inhofe’s list is comprised of these notable characters:
Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, former director of Australia’s National Tidal Facility and professor of earth sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide; currently adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Dr. R. Timothy Patterson, professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Fred Michel, director, Institute of Environmental Science and associate professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former research scientist, Environment Canada. Member of editorial board of Climate Research and Natural Hazards
Dr. Paul Copper, FRSC, professor emeritus, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ont.
Dr. Ross McKitrick, associate professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph, Ont.
Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology, University of Winnipeg; environmental consultant
Dr. Andreas Prokoph, adjunct professor of earth sciences, University of Ottawa; consultant in statistics and geology
Mr. David Nowell, M.Sc. (Meteorology), fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, Canadian member and past chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa
Dr. Christopher Essex, professor of applied mathematics and associate director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
Dr. Gordon E. Swaters, professor of applied mathematics, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, and member, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Research Group, University of Alberta
Dr. L. Graham Smith, associate professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten, professor and Canada Research Chair in environmental studies and climate change, Dept. of Economics, University of Victoria
Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Dept. of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax
Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan, FRMS, climate consultant, former meteorology advisor to the World Meteorological Organization. Previously research scientist in climatology at University of Exeter, U.K.
Dr. Keith D. Hage, climate consultant and professor emeritus of Meteorology, University of Alberta
Dr. David E. Wojick, P.Eng., energy consultant, Star Tannery, Va., and Sioux Lookout, Ont.
Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C.
Dr. Douglas Leahey, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary
Paavo Siitam, M.Sc., agronomist, chemist, Cobourg, Ont.
Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, The University of Auckland, N.Z.
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, emeritus professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.
Mr. George Taylor, Dept. of Meteorology, Oregon State University; Oregon State climatologist; past president, American Association of State Climatologists
Dr. Ian Plimer, professor of geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide; emeritus professor of earth sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr. R.M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Mr. William Kininmonth, Australasian Climate Research, former Head National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology, Scientific and Technical Review
Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Dr. Gerrit J. van der Lingen, geologist/paleoclimatologist, Climate Change Consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand
Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences, University of Virginia
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics & geodynamics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.
Dr. Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville
Dr. Al Pekarek, associate professor of geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minn.
Dr. Marcel Leroux, professor emeritus of climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS
Dr. Paul Reiter, professor, Institut Pasteur, Unit of Insects and Infectious Diseases, Paris, France. Expert reviewer, IPCC Working group II, chapter 8 (human health)
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, physicist and chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, reader, Dept. of Geography, University of Hull, U.K.; editor, Energy & Environment
Dr. Hans H.J. Labohm, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations) and an economist who has focused on climate change
Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, senior scientist emeritus, University of Kansas, past director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey
Dr. Asmunn Moene, past head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway
Dr. August H. Auer, past professor of atmospheric science, University of Wyoming; previously chief meteorologist, Meteorological Service (MetService) of New Zealand
Dr. Vincent Gray, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001,’ Wellington, N.Z.
Dr. Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics, University of Connecticut
Dr Benny Peiser, professor of social anthropology, Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University, U.K.
Dr. Jack Barrett, chemist and spectroscopist, formerly with Imperial College London, U.K.
Dr. William J.R. Alexander, professor emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Member, United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000
Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences, University of Virginia; former director, U.S. Weather Satellite Service
Dr. Harry N.A. Priem, emeritus professor of planetary geology and isotope geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences; past president of the Royal Netherlands Geological & Mining Society
Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey professor of energy conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University
Dr. Sallie Baliunas, astrophysicist and climate researcher, Boston, Mass.
Douglas Hoyt, senior scientist at Raytheon (retired) and co-author of the book The Role of the Sun in Climate Change; previously with NCAR, NOAA, and the World Radiation Center, Davos, Switzerland
Dipl.-Ing. Peter Dietze, independent energy advisor and scientific climate and carbon modeller, official IPCC reviewer, Bavaria, Germany
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser, physicist/meteorologist, previously with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.; atmospheric consultant.
Dr. Art Robinson, founder, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Cave Junction, Ore.
Dr. Arthur Rorsch, emeritus professor of molecular genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands; past board member, Netherlands organization for applied research (TNO) in environmental, food and public health
Dr. Alister McFarquhar, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.; international economist
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.
Ignoring these people, who are not students destined to graduated in 2010, and whose expertise in the area of science could definitely be greater than that of an administrative assistant, web designer and activists–Dessler concentrated on Thomas Ring, a chemical engineer by training. As if that is an example of someone who’s not ‘qualified’ in comparison with the IPCC nuts behind their exaggerated fictional reports!
DK at the Devil’s Kitchen concludes:
The IPCC are liars and as the whole anthropogenic climate change crap unravels—even on the Left—they cling ever more desperately to their outdated theories by propagating yet more obfuscations, half-truths and outright lies.
Wake up, people!—we are being lied to, and it is so that the political establishment can make complete slaves of us all.
Also see this article at the Wall Street Journal entitled “Not So Hot”.
Said Cao @ 11:24 am Comments (0) | Permalink
After its bitter defeat in Iraq, it is obvious that Al Qaeda’s new goal is to incite as much strife in Pakistan as possible, and murdering the former Prime Minister may be as incendiary as was the killing of Franz Ferdinand (murdered by an Islamist Serb) in sparking ‘The Great War’:
A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October. Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto. Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.
Sowing the seeds of Civil War in Pakistan is exactly what AQ attempted to do when it murdered hundreds of fellow Muslims who committed the sin of praying at the Shiite Mosque in Samarra: AQ was less concerned with innocent Muslims it murdered than it was with doing whatever was necessary to maximize the chances of chaos and Civil War. Fortunately the surge has defeated them there, but Al Qaeda is still a dangerous enemy elsewhere. And they obviously are trying the same strategy in Pakistan, although it is worth mentioning that the bombing also helps the pro-Taliban opposition leader Nawaz Sharif enormously in his war against Musharraf (indeed, it would not surprise me if Sharif were involved somehow in the plot):
Bhutto’s death also makes former prime minister Nawaz Sharif Pakistan’s top opposition figure. Sharif has attempted to appeal to Islamic militants, arguing that Pakistan needs to pare down its cooperation with the United States. Sharif has already capitalized on Bhutto’s death, visiting the hospital where she was declared dead, blasting Musharraf for providing Bhutto with insufficient security, and calling for a reunification of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party and his own Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
Here is the bottom line now: Under no circumstances can we abandon Musharraf the way Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah of Iran when the going got tough (and that worked out real well, didn’t it…). Of course, this is exactly what Al Qaeda is counting on, but withdraw our support now (unless we have already found another pro-American replacement…) would be to put scores of nukes directly into the hands of sworn enemies who have vowed to bring mass murder to as many American, European, and Israeli “Infidels” as possible. At that point a US military option against Pakistan cannot be overlooked. And at that point protecting our borders takes on a whole new ominous meaning. If the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda are able to topple Musharraf, the chances of nuclear war will be greater than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, it does beg the question: with the stakes as high as they are for the entire world, can the United States really afford to elect some rank amateur as President? God help us if we do. (NOTE: as an slight modification to VDH’s list, is being the wife of a President–who didn’t even have a security clearance–more important than strategic defense of American interests–and who like her husband has been getting illegal money from the Communist Chinese and Saudi Arabia–really count as “experience” that Americans would want in the Oval Office facing down our enemies in an Armaggedon scenario? I think not.)
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I do a regular posting on Tuesday on my blog regarding things in technology that catch my attention. Here is my post from today, 12/25/2007:
But a different kind. Today is a day to pay tribute to the Son of God, part of the trinity who hung the stars in the heavens.Technology you ask? Yep, It’s about the Creator of the Universe and all that is in it. Just contemplate the picture of the Tadpole galaxy above for a moment. Consider going to either this or this link to see more pictures from NASA of the universe, or, if that’s too expansive for the moment, our solar system.
How did it all get here, from the Black Holes, to the comets, to the atomic interactions of the star’s inner cores, to the wonder of the “universal acid” that fuels life here on Earth and is sought out elsewhere in the Universe by out scientists, as a signal that life maybe accompanied by the presence of water…
What about photosynthesis? Hydrogen bonding? Brownian motion? asexual replication? Gravity? Lift? Hemoglobin? Gold? The things on the Periodic Chart? The brain, in each and every form?
Consider this: Cosmologists/physicists tell us the Universe formed from an incredibly dense ball of matter. Consider this, too: Black holes, as defined in our understood science are balls of matter, held together so tightly, that even photons cannot escape their grasp. We speculate on their existence be derived observations, where light isn’t coming from. Now, I have heard said “the Bible is not a book of science, but when it speaks to it, it is correct.” Take that how you may, but I’ll reference Genesis 1:3:
And God said “Let there be light” and there was light.
Could that have been the unleashing of the very elemental waves/particles we study as light, from the single core of the only black hole in existence? The “Big Bang” as it were? I attribute it to that, aided by the millenia of understanding mankind has determined, to God Himself. My question to those who aren’t sure: How the heck did that large pile of matter end up being assembled in the center of the universe? Makes you wonder, huh? Now, one I don’t think I have encountered: Who placed the large expanse of nothingness around the place we try to reckon as the center of the Universe? Someone had to clear the lot before a house gets built, right?
Psalm 19:
1The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
2Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
3There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
4Their voice goes out into all the earth; their words to the end of the world.
My question now for you: Doesn’t a look skyward, in day or night, give you a reason to wonder? I would hope so. And when you wonder, who do you say did it all?
Take a few minutes to read Job 38 to 41 for a compendium of some of the things God has done to create the Universe and life. It can give one a greater appreciation of the effort it took to do that. Amazingly, it took a man complaining to God about what he wasn’t doing for us to get the Lord’s “resume” for the record, in much greater detail that presented in Genesis.
Having spent a lot of years observing my physical surrounding and the body of (ever changing) science, I have come to a point, about a decade ago, where I let God get the glory for the creation of it all. We, in my humble opinion, are allowed to discover how it works, like kids peering through the dusty garage windows of that seemingly nutty neighbor down the block who has a workshop full of inventions. Sometimes, while looking in, we even figure out a piece of how something works, but we never will know it all, yet we will be happy to use the outcome to our benefit.
He not only took care of the macro level, He spent time designing everything else. King David remarked thusly in Psalm 139:
13For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Remember the high school biology classes about DNA, RNA, transfer RNA, and the 4 proteins that make up DNA? One could certainly describe that process as “knitting.”
Scientists, on a daily basis, ask us to take their understanding on faith and act on it. Even much of what they know is derived from what they can observe, to help the determine what must have been, so that the circumstances they are studying make sense to them first. Faith, is therefore not an unknown thing, and responsible people use it regularly to operate in life.
This day, picked for some reason as a day in the year to celebrate the giving of a gift to us may not be the actual day of the year that Jesus the Christ was born, but a large portion of humanity has picked December 25th as the day, and the business acumen of some of the rest of the world’s inhabitants have made it a great commercial endeavor. It’s not like parents of adopted children haven’t had to sometimes do the same type of thing, let alone the numerous pet owners happy to also make up a birth date. So why argue over the date, when it’s about the issue.
All in all, it is a day to consider that the Creator of the entire Universe, and all that is in it, cared enough to send His Son so we could look forward to a day when all our pain was gone, all our sadness behind us and a life everlasting stands before us, but also so we might understand ourselves and our fellow travelers on this planet, so that we might enjoy life more abundantly here and now. All you have to do is accept that gift. Even more amazing is that He doesn’t force you at all in the decision. He who created gravity to allow us to sit and type our thoughts to one another on the internet, with out the desk, chair and keyboard floating away. If He could do that, why does He let us decide if we will accept His love? Once I got passed my individual arrogance regarding MY view of MY presence and purpose here and now, I understand how awesome that situation is.
You know, even the Koran said God filled the virgin Mary with God’s spirit in the 66th Sura, regarding the birth of Jesus as something special. It even labels Jesus as the Christ in 2:136, “Christ” being Greek for “Messiah.”
So, in closing, Merry Christmas to all.
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… after I was done picking up the beer cans, cigarette butts, and the assorted discarded underwear, I switched from Blogspot comments to Haloscan. In the process, all of the previous comment threads were lost…Fortunately through the miracle of intertubes nerdiness the Lost Commentinent has been rediscovered and you can go read them here.
TBogg insinuates that the Holoscan snafu is the reason that the restored comment thread is missing the Jaques comment, but he does not actually say it, and for good reason. The Jaques deletion had nothing to do with any comment system switchover.
A commentator at Alec’s Error Theory blog looked up TBogg’s site on the Wayback Machine. Turns out that Wayback was taking snapshots of Tbogg’s comment threads every week. Only Blogspot comments show up on Wayback, but that is all that is needed to tell the tale.
Throughout the period in question (spring and summer of 2006) all of TBogg’s Blogspot comment threads are stable except for the “infamous” one, which actually exhibits quite a bit of activity. Not only did TBogg hand delete Jaques comment, but he was apparently torn about it, changing his mind a number of times over a period of weeks.
Background, for those who don’t know what Kevin Jaques did
It is not known exactly when Kevin Jaques was asked by the Memorial Project to write an assessment of Alec Rawls’s warnings about Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Crescent of Embrace design. Most likely he wrote it in late March of 2006, just before he posted it at the end of TBogg’s January 6, 2006 comment thread.
(If anyone wants to look, go open up the March 31st snapshot of TBogg’s site, then find the January 06 archive page. The Lunacy Abounds post is about a third of the way up from the bottom. Click on the permalink and the comment thread will appear, with the Jaques comment at the bottom. In the previous snapshot, March 28th, the Jaques comment has not yet shown up. Ditto for earlier dates.)
The Jaques comment is important because it shows the blatant dishonesty of the Park Service’s internal investigation. Jaques acknowledged that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent at the center of the design is similar to the Mecca direction indicator (called a mihrab) around which every mosque is built, then he told the Park Service not to worry because no one has ever seen seen a mihrab anywhere near this big before:
Thirdly, most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience. Again, just because it is similar does not make it the same.
The Park Service has released excerpts from Jaques’ comment, proving that the TBogg comment comes from Jaques, but it has never released the revealing parts, like where Jaques says not to worry because one has ever seen a mihrab this big before.
How to get rid of the body? TBogg has second, third and fourth thoughts
TBogg is THE source for the full text of Jaques’ analysis, with its blatant excuse-making for the giant mihrab. Having this analysis publicly available was a problem, both for Jaques and for the Park Service. Since TBogg had no way of knowing that on his own, it seems that somebody must have contacted him, because in the July 21, 2006 snapshot of Tbogg’s Lunacy Abounds comment thread, the Jaques comment is missing from the end.
Blogger allows blog administrators to hide and show comment threads, and it allows them to delete individual comments. Blogger also allows people who comment non-anonymously to delete their own comments. Jaques left his comment anonymously, so only a blog administrator could have deleted his comment. Unless TBogg got hacked, that would have been TBogg.
The August 21st snapshot of the Lunacy Abounds post shows shows TBogg having another thought. Here the entire Lunacy Abounds comment thread is hidden, while all the other comment threads on the archive page remain visible. (About half the posts in Wayback’s August 21st snapshot of TBogg’s January 2006 archive page do not have working permalinks, but of the pages that do come up individually, only Lunacy Abounds has the comment thread hidden.)
If “all of the previous comment threads were lost,” that was a separate incident. The archival record shows that a blog administrator went in and turned off the Lunacy Abounds comment thread by hand. Again, unless TBogg got hacked (or the Wayback Machine is wacked), that was TBogg.
Of course TBogg did not say anything about getting hacked. He insinuated that Haloscan is the culprit. Nope. Haloscan is innocent. Does TBogg want to try pointing the finger anywhere else?
On August 28, 2006, the “infamous comment thread” reappears, again without the Jaques comment. Wayback doesn’t have TBogg snapshots for 2007, but for most of this year the comment thread was again turned off (the Haloscan snafu?), until sometime recently TBogg himself retrieved the comment thread (without the Jaques comment) from the wayback machine and linked it to his original Lunacy Abounds post.
Not quite Hamlet. TBogg consistently wants the Jaques comment “not to be.” He just can’t decide how he wants it not to be.
TBogg’s Monica Lewinsky choice
To complete his Clintonian deception, TBogg makes an over the top admission, pretending it is all a joke:
So, yes. I have been busted. I’ve been getting more payoffs than Bill Bennett with a roll of nickels at Circus Circus. Between George Soros and Osama bin Laden I’ve received so many Miatas, that some of them are still sitting around in the blister packs.
At least he makes it amusing, but the joke is on the Bogglings. TBogg actually meant the “I have been busted” part.
Will TBogg’s legions of vitriolic followers take this Clintonian lie kneeling down? What’s it going to be TBoggers: spit or swallow?
TBogg will have to suffer some embarrassment for duping his readers, but so what? The man embarrasses himself every day. The important thing is that he is in a position to actually be of help in exposing the cover up of Islamic and terrorist memorializing features in the Flight 93 memorial.
Who contacted him? What did they say? Did he knuckle to a plea from Jaques alone, or was he actually contacted by the government?
TBogg could well have been duped himself. Maybe someone at the Park Service told him that this was an internal government document that was not supposed to be available to the public and asked if he could please remove it. Now that he knows a) that the Park Service is accused of perpetrating a cover up, and b) how the document that he himself covered up contains clear examples of dishonest excuse making, TBogg is in the same position as his army of Bogglings. He knows that he has been used.
Is he going to swallow it, or spit it out? Spit TBogg. You’ll feel much better in the morning.
Can’t we all just be against planting a terrorist memorial mosque on the Flight 93 crash site?
There is no reason for a left-right divide over the Flight 93 Memorial. It isn’t the critics of the crescent design that politicized the issue, but the defenders of the crescent, starting with newspapers like the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that knew about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent back in 2005 and decided not to publish it. They were too busy using their editorial page to slam critics of the crescent as right wing bigots. Inconvenient facts could not be allowed to interfere with their chosen story line.
Then there are people like TBogg who politicize everything. Instead of checking the facts, he starts with his presumptions about which side he should be on, then looks for smarmy ways to characterize the opposition. That is not a rational thought process, but he can more than redeem himself if he will just stop deceiving everybody and start helping to expose the facts.
He could also give his moron brigades a chance to redeem themselves by asking them to actually check a couple factual claims about the crescent design:
Is the giant crescent is really oriented almost exactly on Mecca?Is the 9/11 date really inscribed on a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent, placing it in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag?
Is it true that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign?
This is what the blogosphere OUGHT to be good for. If TBogg is too busy to check the facts, why not put his minions to work?
For more on who TBogg has been covering up for, see last week’s post on Dr. Jaques 2001 article, where he argued that we should formulate our response to the 9/11 attacks in accordance with sharia law. How did this advocate for Islamic supremacism become the Memorial Project’s sole consultant on the warnings of Islamic symbolism in the crescent design during a crucial period when the Project’s dismissive posture was set in stone?
If TBogg would tell us what he knows, it might help answer that question, or pose others equally important. No more deception. Just tell the damned truth.
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If you want to join the blogroll/blogburst for the Crescent of Betrayal blogburst, email Cao at caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com, with your blog’s url address. The blogburst will be sent out once a week to the participants, for simultaneous publication on this issue on Wednesdays.
Said Cao @ 5:59 am Comments (0) | Permalink
First of all, I just need to say–for those who have been asleep for the past year–that Harry Reid is a disgrace and an embarrassment. This gnat of a man actually suggested that America was losing the War in Iraq. No, I’m not talking about earlier in the summer; I’m talking about this week. Captain Ed put it perfectly so I will not try and improve on his description:
Harry Reid doesn’t know when to give up, or more precisely, when to give up on giving up. After spending the last several months trying to live down his declaration of America’s defeat in Iraq on the Senate floor, Reid once again gave al-Qaeda a propaganda boost that sounds as if he took it from Ayman al-Zawahiri’s latest video message:
Indeed, Republicans have gotten their way in the battle over spending, have forced Democrats to jettison rollbacks of tax breaks for oil companies, and have beaten back attempts to pay for expanded children’s health care programs with a tobacco tax increase. Even though they’re in the minority, the GOP, backed by President Bush, has used the filibuster to block Democratic priorities over and over this fall.”Who’s winning?” Reid asked a group of reporters. “Big Oil, Big Tobacco. … Al Qaeda has regrouped and is able to fight a civil war in Iraq. … The American people are losing.”
Really? I realize that Reid spends most of his days in denial, but even the media has dropped this meme. The Petraeus surge has driven AQ to the brink of complete disaster in Iraq, so much so that many of them have shifted to Pakistan. The level of violence in Iraq has starkly decreased, avoiding the “civil war” that Reid seems eager to declare.
Remember Hillary’s insult to David Petraeus involving a willful suspension of disbelief? Reid must have a willful suspension of reality.
OK, now that the despicable Mr. Reid has been dealt with, I have a real need to get a few things off my chest here because I am literally about to bust and the holidays are coming. This is my outlet for this kind of stuff, so for those readers who like heavy links and less commentary, tonight is going to be something else. I am angry, and I am not going to over edit this; sometimes you just need to let things fly for a bit of catharsis, so here goes nothing:First of all, let’s stop pretending; these are not Democrats in the traditional mold. That party is long gone. These are out-and-out Socialists, who spit on the Constitution every single day, who use filibusters to bury circuit judges (also unprecedented, but what goes around will come around…) who continue the insanity of trying the same thing (surrender) over and over again, and expecting a different result.
I truly have never been so disgusted in my entire life at a group of so called “statesmen” trying to tear my country apart at the seams; I thought I had seen it all but this is–quite simply–a “renegade” Congress; renegade as in a Clear and Present Danger to the Constitution, to the economy, to our standing in the world, and to our very lives.
They are running Medicare and Social Security into bankruptcy, yet we are supposed to entrust them to take care of all our medical care? Are you kidding me? We already have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the entire world (except countries like Zimbabwe; and that’s worked out real well for them hasn’t it…)–which has already served to send thousands of American jobs overseas–yet what are the Socialist Presidential candidates doing in the name of pandering to the race-baiting class warfare vote? They want to tax American corporations higher. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s send even more jobs overseas to more foreign corporations as the stocks of our corporations plunge and unemployment soars. Because that is the only way American businesses will be able to stay afloat in a hostile Socialist environment. Hey, but at least we’ll all be able to stand in line for six months to see a doctor!
Take the energy companies: they won’t let our energy companies have access to our own boundless sources of energy–which of course would both lower oil prices AND our dependence on foreign oil–so we don’t have to pay our enemies for it.
But no, we can’t possibly go that route: didn’t you hear, the sky is falling, the end of the world is nigh. They have only been saying that for about the last 2000 years–but this time they mean it. They haven’t proven a damn thing–but my how they try and “play on our fears” (hey! that’s Al Gore’s line…) at every turn: “We will all be underwater in 50 years”, they say. And they have been proven wrong by the science.
Here is a question I heard posed on Hewitt’s show the other night and it is a powerful one: If they really believed the world was about to end if we don’t do something drastic, then why in the world would they continue to block nuclear energy? Again: if they actually believed that the world were really coming to an end? Hmmm? Why did THIS “Gloom and Doom” Congress keep a proposal to dramatically shift our reliance to nuclear energy to heat and cool a much greater majority our homes and cities OUT of their energy bill, if moving forward with it would clearly DRAMATICALLY reduce CO2 emissions and thus do more to “save the planet” than any other thing we are doing or could do? Just ponder that for a moment.
No, instead they block nuclear energy, hell, they block American energy companies at every turn, they keep us from getting the plentiful oil out of our own ground–and then they cry “wolf” and “profiteering” when oil prices go through the roof!
And what is the Socialists’ grand idea to fix this problem? Why to raise corporate taxes on the very companies whose job it is to make us energy independent! The same companies who are trying to put research dollars into alternatives even as they also try to wean us off of the tit of Arab oil–which fund weapons and terror to be used against us.
It is madness.
And yet the brain dead American public, led on by the brain dead Socialists in our “compassionate” government and media is buying The Great Lie hook, line and sinker. And buying the propaganda blaming the Republicans for the Democrats’ own policies in action–or the result of the Socialists’ attempts to block the Republicans at every turn from getting us out of this Godawful mess.
And it isn’t just corporate taxes–they want more of your money too. You folks reading this out there might not know it, but if you have a decent job now, you are “the rich” that the class warriors are targeting. What do they care, these “mouthpieces” who have private jets to fly them to Helsinki and Save the Planet concerts and Bali conferences. They have 30,000 square foot houses who burn more energy in a month than most of us burn into an entire year. And these are the people speaking for the “common man”??? Are the Kennedy’s “common”? Gore? Soros? The Clintons? Obama? Oprah? Edwards? Angelina freaking Jolie? These guys “feel our pain”. Who the hell are they kidding?
What do these gazillionaire “feel gooders” care if the mindless non-productive bureaucrats soak up every last penny of our money. They have millions. We won’t have any money to buy gifts or medical care, or vacations, or products that keep Americans empolyed, or to otherwise try and live the good life–but they won’t have to trifle with such problems. They all have their nest egg–much of it from ill-gotten gain or money under the table. But who cares, right? Just think of all the other countries who will love us now–because their companies will then be getting all of our jobs. What kind of world are we setting up for our children and grandchildren?
If you didn’t have a good answer on the “what do they care” question, it is pretty apparent: “they” could care less what happens to you. Because the ugly truth is that the less power (read: “money”) you have over your own lives means the more dependent you will be on THEM. And power is their holy grail; they thirst for nothing less than power over every single aspect of your lives. More rules to tell you how you can and cannot live, what you can and cannot say, who you can and cannot offend by offering a freaking opinion–something much better Americas than these cretins gave their lives to protect.
Talk to a person from Eastern Europe. Ask them about living under state Socialism. Once they finish laughing at you they will say something like: “why in the hell do you think that we–and the entire rest of the world is trying to come to America? Yet you dumb Americans are tying to emulate that model of colossal failure??” And they will look at you like you are insane. Because you are–like it or not–a part of a collective insanity that threatens us all.
France has seen the light. Sweeden has seen the light. Ireland has seen the light. Those countries are reducing corporate taxes (some, like Japan pay NO corporate tax). Those societies can’t wait to actually experience real economic growth and get away from the nightmare of socialism. But we can’t even see past the last episode of The View or Oprah or E!
How proud our forefathers must be of us. Here, in the greatest experiment of capitalism, individual (not collective) rights and freedom that has ever existed on this Earth–we have a real nightmare in the making. And it is not as bad as I make it sound, it is worse; because this bunch of dogmatic anti-capitalist, anti-military, anti-freedom, anti-freedom of religion, anti-growth Marxists are in very great danger of consolidating even more power next year. All they have to do is to pull the wool over the eyes of enough zombie-like American “feel good, think not” automatons, who refuse to use the grey matter between their ears to think for themselves–perferring instead to go along to get along with this magnificent culture of celebrity debauchery we seem to worship–with the help of a willing media; and they get to enslave the rest of us. And I guess the bonus prize for this mental vacuity is that we all get to be flushed down the cosmic septic tank with the rest of them.
Unless we take it back.
Folks, we have got to stop this madness. We have got to pull up our bootstraps, put on our War gear and get out there and fight for what our Founding Fathers and many since have fought and died to give us. Because it is being stolen from right under our noses. And if we don’t stand up now, I’m afraid four years from now will be too late. It is time for us to pick up the baton of sacrifice and to support the only party in America that can put a stop to this madness. That means giving to your candidates. That means volunteering for your candidates. That means not being too damn shy to argue with your mind-numbed liberal friends about the danger we are in. Not relying on others to do it. YOU do it. It is your country–to win or to lose. Franklin’s remark in 1787 has never been more true: “A Republic…if you can keep it.”
Personally, I think it is worth keeping.
I will close this rant with a few quotes from a three of the greatest speeches ever made, given by a great man who stood up against the forces of appeasement in the darkest days of the Battle of Britain:
- I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim?I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”
- “I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.” - Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’
We could do worse right now than to heed the words of Winston Churchill.
UPDATE: Obama is serving Kool-Aid too.
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