One and a half cheers to the NY Times for the article “Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel,” which admits to some of the scientific and ethical problems facing the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri. But the Times being the Times, while it lays out some of the damning facts, it omits key damaging details (especially regarding the egregiously amateurish nature of the IPCC’s errors regarding the Himalayan glaciers) and otherwise spends the rest of the article trying to explain away Dr. Pachauri’s problems, with hilarious results.

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The lack of enthusiasm, drive and willingness to do anything more on ObamaCare is the result of political malpractice on the part of the White House, the Speaker and Senator Reid.

For all their deal making and arm twisting, the public, the interest groups, the staff and Members of Congress are displaying passive-aggressive behavior towards health care reform.

It’s everywhere, but no one sees it. Especially the aforementioned delusionals who refuse to face reality — which is that everyone would rather do nothing at all.

The political liabilities and the policy liabilities for Democratic interest groups are devastating. For example, unions get their health plans taxes and abortion gets restricted, and there is no public option or Medicare buy-in for the progressives — not to mention the fact the public HATES ObamaCare.

Everyone knows the opponents are at NYET. So while the entire world inside the beltway responds with heel-digging-in and blown deadlines, endless and circular “strategy” sessions on ObamaCare, the delusionals see an opportunity to keep bringing it up, feeding the fires of the passive-aggressive behavior all around them.

Who brings up the most hated policy and the single, one thing most responsible for their political losses — in a Superbowl pre-game show? Delusionals, thats who.

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There’s a lot of good news in this WMUR Granite State poll (as of this moment, we’re looking at retaining Gregg’s seat, and picking up both House seats), but Shea-Porter’s numbers are the most immediately interesting. 35/40 approval/disapproval (the worst she’s ever had); and she loses to all four hypothetical candidates:

In a race between Shea Porter and her best known challenger, Frank Guinta, 43% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Guinta, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 2% prefer some other candidate, and 22% are undecided.

In a matchup with Rich Ashooh, 36% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Ashooh, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 3% prefer some other candidate, and 28% are undecided.

In a matchup with Bob Bestani, 36% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Bestani, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 2% prefer some other candidate, and 30% are undecided.

And in a matchup with Sean Mahoney, 39% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Mahoney, 32% would vote for Shea Porter, 1% prefer some other candidate, and 28% are undecided.

“Shea Porter does not break 40% against any of her challengers a sign that she faces an extremely difficult challenge to keep her seat,” said [Andrew Smith, Director of the UNH Survey Center].

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In recent weeks we have been deluged by hand-wringing columns from “progressive” pundits bemoaning the filibuster rules in the Senate - which allow a determined and unified minority to block legislation that has fewer than 60 votes - and essentially declaring the filibuster to be proof that American democracy doesn’t work and should change the way it does business. (See Brian Darling’s discussion of one recent example of the genre from Paul Krugman declaring the filibuster to be the “downfall” of American greatness, and here for Ezra Klein declaring that “The Senate’s problem is not disagreement. It’s elections.”). The immediate cause of the shrieking is the inability to pass Obamacare through the Senate in the form in which it passed the House, which the progressives decry as proof that America can’t be governed, ignoring the alternative possibility that there are better approaches to health care that do not involve an Obamacare-style comprehensive bill at all. For some liberal critics, like Vice President Joe Biden (a man who participated in countless filibusters in 36 years in the Senate) or the New York Times editorial board, this is a posture of pure opportunism diametrically opposed to how they viewed the value of the legislative filibuster during the Bush presidency, while others, like Mickey Kaus, have long argued that the legislative filibuster* should go because of its role in obstructing progressive legislation.

Regardless of their motives, however, the progressive critics are wrong. The legislative filibuster is an essential, traditional check on a particular weakness of democracy - the very weakness the progressives seek to exploit by passing Obamacare before the 2010 elections.

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Here are my few brief, and probably socially unacceptable, words about a Congressman and Ex-Marine who passed away yesterday: John Murtha. In the interest of time, space, and not prolonging nausea, I won’t delve into this corrupt late Congressman’s role in ABSCAM, nor will I spend time lamenting, on behalf of the people of his district, the loss of the Pork King of Congress as their benefactor and representative.

I won’t even go too far into the Haditha Incident, in which Murtha (a military veteran who had long since cast his lot with those who believe that murder, atrocity, and shame are the rule of the military, not the exception) went onto national television, armed with nothing but a deep-seated hatred of America and her military (in place of, you know, facts), and accused several United States Marines of the cold-blooded murder of Iraqi civilians.

I want to use the little digital ink I’ll give the undeserving Murtha on a far worse issue.

Let’s journey back to February 2007. At this time, the U.S. was approaching its 4th anniversary in Iraq, the military death toll had passed 3,000, and Iraqi civilians were caught in the middle of a furious sectarian battle that had been kicked into overdrive by the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

General David Petraeus had just been tapped to take over Multinational Force-Iraq, and was ramping up a “surge” in troops there in preparation for the implementation of his counterinsurgency doctrine in the theater — a comprehensive overhaul of Iraq war strategy that would ultimately prove to be incredibly successful. Democrats in the House had just passed a non-binding resolution condemning the “surge” in troops (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called this a “symbolic victory in the fight over the Iraq War,” despite the fact that the Senate version of the resolution fell 4 votes short of cloture. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said “It’s pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn’t have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries”).

This was the setting for perhaps the most insidious move of Jack Murtha’s career, if not his life: the design and introduction of what he called a “Slow Bleed Strategy” designed to deprive soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Iraq of the supplies — bullets, armor, etc. — they needed not only to push forward in Iraq, but to keep themselves alive while there. The rationale behind Murtha’s aptly — if appallingly — named Slow Bleed Strategy was that, if the supply chain to our troops in combat could be forced to dry up, enough of America’s warfighters would be killed in action that President Bush would have no choice but to “redeploy” our military men and women out of Iraq and back to America.

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First the White House National Security Advisor, John Brennan, said Republicans were briefed on the FBI detainment of the Christmas Day panty-bomber, including that the terrorist had been mirandized. In fact, that was not true.

Now John Brennan says critics of the White House are serving ‘the goals of Al Qaeda.’

When did Barack Obama become a White House critic? Chief among those helping Al Qaeda is Barack Obama.

• The mirandizing of the panty-bomber delayed vital intelligence collection. Shutting down GTMO and bringing those prisoners to the United States not only brings Al Qaeda loyalists closer in, but also creates more domestic targets.
• Giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a civilian trial so he has a soapbox to spew Al Qaeda propaganda before American media gives Al Qaeda a greater media megaphone than Al Jazeera.
• Leaking damaging information to demoralize CIA operatives as they go about trying to protect us from the shadows emboldens Al Qaeda.
• Broadcasting that the CIA sustains a serious setback due to Al Qaeda’s attack in Afghanistan gives Al Qaeda new recruiting PR.

There is no greater aider and abetter of Al Qaeda than Barack Obama’s White House. Through sheer incompetence and arrogance, they are handing over to Al Qaeda vital intelligence and giving them all the PR they need to effectively recruit new terrorists.

How many Americans will die because of Barack Obama’s handling of national security?

Tomorrow, Senator Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund is launching a money bomb for Marco Rubio.

You need to understand specifically why it is important that this be a success.

DeMint is under massive and sustained attacks from establishment Republicans for daring to challenge the hand picked candidates of the Washington GOP crowd. These people think you and DeMint are a joke. These people think that you cannot beat them at what they view as their game.

They blame Jim DeMint for pushing Arlen Specter to the Democrats. Even the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal attacked Jim DeMint for endorsing Pat Toomey. But now Toomey is beating both Specter and Sestak in the polling.

Then there is Marco Rubio, the target of the present money bomb. The Republican leadership in Washington flocked to Charlie Crist. They launched “on background” attacks against Jim DeMint in Roll Call for daring to step out of line and back Rubio.

And all the while they said DeMint could not win. He could not raise the money. You would not give the money. And the conservative effort would fail.

That is why it is important to support this money bomb. That is why it is important to give what you can. Show Washington that Jim DeMint and conservatives across America will take back the Republican Party from the leaders who support compromising with Obama on national health care, who support bailing out automakers, and who support plans like TARP.

If Jim DeMint fails, it will be seen as our failure.

Go here, read the note from Senator DeMint, then give what you can. And if you can give a little extra to help the Senate Conservatives Fund, so much the better.

I’m in for $100.00. Who is with me?

People are policy and while much attention has been focused on the profusion of buffoons and poltroons Obama has installed at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level positions in his administration, the real work of radically changing the character of our government has been entrusted to anonymous apparatchiks.

Some of these have bubbled to the top and have resignd: green czar and self identified communist Van Jones, UN financial reform guru and part time identity thief Jide Zeitlin, performance czar and tax cheat Nancy Killefer. Safe schools czar and pedophile apologist Kevin Jennings remains on the job as do others.

Today, however, we may have won one small battle in the war to keep the adminstrative machinery of the nation out of the hands of people who are opposed to our system of goverment. Obama’s nomination to fill the a vacant seat on the National Labor Relations Board has fallen to a bipartisan fillibuster.

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Chuck DeVore appeared last night on FOXNews with Glenn Beck talking about the role of government and his race for the U.S. Senate. While reiterating his policy of not endorsing candidates, Beck declared: “You intrigue me.” Beck had Assemblyman DeVore on the program for two segments (they will play sequentially):

Early on the in the program Glenn listed the litany of liberal interest groups who have given Chuck DeVore a failing grade for his hundreds of votes in the California State Assembly. As he went down the list he handed Chuck his jar of jelly beans, a bottle of water, and even the infamous red phone. Chuck intoned: “I don’t want the red phone” to which Beck chuckled: “They never call…”

Beck seem unabashed sharing his affinity for the Assemblyman especially as Chuck related his feelings about the history of the progressive movement.

Bottom line: Chuck DeVore is indeed the tea party candidate and, as George Will declared on Sunday, will be the Republican nominee.

Justin
Director, New Media
DeVore for California

The latest in a long line of attacks on the filibuster comes from Paul Krugman of the New York Times.  Krugman, better known professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and and Captain of the Obama Administration Cheerleading Squad, wrote a column arguing that the filibuster is destroying America.  Krugman argued that filibustering Republicans, not international terrorists, not a nuclear weapon seeking Iran, not North Korea, not another economic meltdown on Wall Street, and not the $12.3 trillion dollar national debt, will lead to America being lost.  This fear-mongering by Krugman is the latest attempt to convince liberals in the Senate to abolish the filibuster with a simple majority vote.  From Krugman in the NYT.

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RedState Morning Briefing
For February 9, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

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I’m going to sum this entire thing up, because the sooner we move past this the happier everybody’s going to be.

• Republican Party* (in the person of House Republican Leader John Boehner & House Republican Whip Eric Cantor): Mr. President, you claim that you want bipartisan health care talks.  Do you have the moral courage to commit to junking this existing unpopular, hyper-partisan health care bill and start over from scratch, with a further commitment for transparency and against reconciliation?
• White House** (in the person of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs): No.

And I think that should end it right there: Republican Members of the House of Representatives don’t debate press secretaries, either.

Moe Lane

*H/T: FireDogLake (I know, I know, but there was nothing offensive about this specific post).

**H/T: Hot Air Headlines.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

OK, let’s walk through this. Mind you, I’ve already declared this bill dead anyway.

• Back in November of 2009, the House of Representatives passed a health care rationing bill, 220-215. For the purposes of this discussion, we will note four Congressman ‘yea’ votes: Abercrombie of Hawaii; Cao (R) of Louisiana; Murtha of Pennsylvania; and Wexler of Florida.
• In December of 2009, the Senate passes their version of the bill. It lacks the ‘Stupak Amendment,’ which is the only reason why Cao voted for the House version.
• In January of 2010, Wexler’s retirement becomes official. The effective vote is now 219-215.
• Also in January of 2010, Cao declares that he will not vote for the Senate version of the bill.
• In February of 2010, Murtha dies suddenly. The effective vote is now 218-215.

With me so far? Well, here are the two problems that the Democrats are now facing:

• If the final version of the bill does not include the Stupak Amendment, Cao will not vote for it (and neither will Stupak), thus making the final vote 217-216 against and the bill not passing. If the final version of the bill does include the Stupak Amendment, then every Democratic Senator is going to inundated with screaming progressives. How could they resolve this? By junking the Stupak amendment and making a vulnerable Democrat flip-flop on his previous vote. In a year when it’s a bad idea to be a Democratic incumbent anyway.
• The other problem is Abercrombie. As Philip Klein and Ed Morrissey both noted, he’s supposed to be out the door at the end of the month in order to run for Governor of Hawaii. He had also promised to stick around to get health care rationing passed. The conditions of the special election to replace him - not to mention, the problems in delaying his formal gubernatorial run - are sufficiently complicated that breaking his word on the latter will probably cause him less problems in the long term. So, after February 28th, that puts the regular vote down to 217-215 for, and 217-215 against if Stupak is not passed. In that case, the Democrats need to flip two vulnerable Democrats (if the vote’s a tie, they lose).

Shorter Moe Lane: eight years of karma just caught up with the Democratic party, and it’s charging interest.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

This is troubling.

A 1993 federal law forces about 116,000 voters with unknown addresses to stay on the Kansas voter list. That means almost 7 percent of Kansas voters have addresses where mail cannot be delivered. Kansas has about 1.7 million registered voters.

The number of voters with questionable addresses was as high as 174,000 in May 2008, and is down from November 2007 when it was about 154,000. The numbers vary over time and are reduced when lists are purged after federal elections.

There’s a Senate seat at play in Kansas this year, along with the gubernatorial race.

I know, I know…he had his run and he didn’t really give us much during the second half of his second term to set up an electoral edge for Republicans going in to the ‘08 cycle. He made some things, in fact, worse for us in several fairly big ways…but still-you gotta love seeing the Cowboy in Chief rub it in Bambi and the left’s face just a little… this story out of Wyoming, Minnesota (via Minnesota Public Radio-note-picture comes from the same link):

It was late at night and I wasn’t sure I’d seen the billboard correctly as I whizzed past it on I-35 in Wyoming last week on the way back from Wrenshall. But an e-mailer confirms I saw what I thought I saw.

Who knows if it’s a fake, or a hoax, or the figment of some poor guy’s imagination living up in Minnesota suffering from a little late-night brain freeze. And-who cares? THIS is damn funny stuff.

Consider this an open thread…

Given all the recent talk about Sarah Palin, and specifically whether she’d be a better President than the incumbent, we give you the Slurm® Keys to the Presidency, brought to you by new Slurm® Energy Drink. Keep the energy to party all night, Slurms MacKenzie™ Style!

Character

Under the stress of the job, the personal failings of “the man behind the desk” will come out. It’s no contest on this one. We’ve got a mother whose worst failings were to use the wrong email account and to stand up to a wife beater, versus the cokehead Community Organizer.

Score: Wholesome Mom 1, Chicago Roughhouser 0

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The steady drumbeat for Marco Rubio keeps going on and on. Today he is picking up the endorsement of Congressman Mike Pence.

Congressman Pence said, “I am proud to endorse Marco Rubio for the United States Senate. Marco Rubio’s faith in free markets, limited government and traditional moral values make him the right choice for Republicans in this race. At a time when the American people long for leaders of principle, Marco Rubio will be a courageous check and balance on the current Washington establishment.

“With Washington spending money we don’t have and empowering the government at the expense of individual freedom, we need more leaders like Marco Rubio who are willing to take a stand for the common sense and common values of the American people.”

His full endorsement press release is below the fold. How long before someone starts a Draft Pence-Rubio 2012 website?

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The important practical question following the death today of Congressman John Murtha is what happens to the House seat he held on behalf of the people of Pennsylvania’s 12th District. The good news, so far as I can tell from early reports, is that Ed Rendell won’t get to appoint an interim replacement, but rather the voters will have to choose one in a special election. As the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reports:

According to state law, the governor has ten days once the vacancy is officially declared to decide on the date for the special election, which can come no sooner than 60 days following that proclamation.

That likely means the special election will be held on May 18, which is the date already set for federal primaries around the state. (Special elections costs the state huge sums of money and it’s likely that Gov. Ed Rendell will choose to go with an already established election day to save some cash.)

This is yet another critical election; recall that Obamacare passed the House with a 3-vote margin of victory, and any effort to run it back through the House with the watered-down Senate langauge on abortion will cost at least two of those votes (Bart Stupak and Joseph Cao), while now two others (Robert Wexler and Murtha) have left the House since the vote was cast. Mike Memoli at RCP notes the continuing flux with special elections already coming up to replace Wexler and the yet-to-resign Neil Abercrombie in Hawaii:

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These people never stop generating the laughs.

There are thirty inches of snow in Washington, DC. Here in Macon, Georgia, an area global warming scientists have long predicted would become a desert, we are 24 inches into a rain surplus in the past 365 calendar days.

You know what this all means right? We need a new federal agency to “study and report on the changing climate.”

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

“Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat,” Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, “Climate change is real, it’s happening now.” She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials.

Please tell me, when is the climate not changing? As we orbit the sun orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy our climate will, as it has done since God first said “Let there be light”, continue to change.

There is nothing new under the sun. This is just the 21st century equivalent of the 5000 year old sun worshipping religions.

It should be no surprise that an organization like the New York Times, which is a consistent money loser these day, is in favor of a government take over of the student loan industry. A group of people who have shown no ability to run a successful business tend to hate success. But their reasons for doing so are not just nonsense, but total distortions of reality.

The Times writes, “The direct loans would not be handled by the government, but through colleges and universities, just as Pell grants are now.” That’s nonsense. If a student who has student loans financed via, say, Chase as I do and does not like Chase’s service, the student can go to Wells Fargo. In all cases the colleges and universities handle most of the dealings, but it is the backside of the equation the Times chooses to ignore.

The Times continues, “Some lenders say the new system would lead to more student defaults, but contracts between the government and loan-servicing companies clearly state that the companies will be evaluated partly on how successful they are at preventing defaults.” Actually, there are greater defaults under the federal direct loan program than the private loan program. In fact, I was advised at a former job to just stop paying my direct loan because nothing would happen, unlike with my privately handled loans. I still kept up my payments, but I worked with a number of people who didn’t.

I’ve also heard from friends in the credit reporting industry that credit companies routinely ignore unpaid federal direct student loans because of how the U.S. Department of Education treats students in default, i.e. they do nothing.

The Times concludes with “By redirecting the savings into a variety of federal programs aimed at needy students — including the Pell grant scholarship program — Congress would be putting the money to good use.”

Really? The Times does not define “needy” students. What about middle class students whose parents can’t afford the costs of the loan? And what about the escalating costs of college attendance? As we’ve noted before, the Democrats’ plan also calls for total debt forgiveness after 20 years and after ten years if the student goes to work for the government.

Schools would have no incentive to decrease academic costs because no matter how much a student paid — and their repayment could be no more than 10% of their income — the loan will be forgiven.

The Democrats’ plan makes no economic or financial sense. The New York Times is forced to grossly distort everything about it to make it sound the slightest bit reasonable.