It’s one thing to arrive on the platform after the train has left the station.  It’s quote another to want to change its direction once it’s left.  But that’s what ol’ Ma’am Boxer is trying to do.

With two of the leading scientists behind the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) either under investigation or stepping down (while under investigation) and the Australian Senate rejecting “Labour party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s carbon emissions bill by a vote of 41-33“, the debate on global warming has shifted, yet Mrs. Boxer, the chairman of the Senate committee which considers climate issues, its Environment and Public Works Committee, acts as if little has changed in the past two weeks.  She finds the real problem is the stolen e-mails, not the doctored data on which she has based her complex cap and trade bill:  ”“You call it ‘Climategate’,” the Democrat inveighed, “I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate’”.

And on she blustered, “”Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not?”  No, Ma’am, that’s not the main issue, the main issue is whether if there is global warming, it is caused by human activity.  And the temperatures these past ten years don’t show much of a warming trend.

She does want to investigate the hacking.  And is right to do so.  But, try as she may, by making that the focus on her inquiry, she blinds herself to the reality of the climate science.  With each passing day evidence drips out showing calling into question the AGW theory.  The original data have been destroyed.  Other raw data haven’t been released.  AGW proponents have attempted to suppress the work of skeptics while trying to intimidate and/or discredit them and the journals where they publish their findings.

The hacked e-mails are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg which doesn’t seem to be melting, but solidifying.  And the e-mails only help bring to light information that was already out there, but which folk like Mrs. Boxer have been ignoring.  And they help confirm theories that skeptics of global warming have been putting forward. (more…)

Remember, back in February, when our junior Senator, Ma’am Barbara Boxer promised us that the “stimulus” was all about jobs.  Well, in metro areas in the once-Golden State, it’s become all about job losses.

Of the fifteen metropolitan areas recording “jobless rates of 15 percent or worse in October,” nine are in California and three in Michigan.  Let’s do some math here.  Approximately 12% of Americans lives in the Golden State, yet 60% of urban areas with the highest employment are in our state.  One wonders what Mrs. Boxer has been doing for the past seventeen years in the Senate.

While the Democrat has been busy writing books, the people she represents have been losing work.  And she keeps proposing laws which would place additional burdens on those institutions which create jobs: businesses. Regulations of the type she has supported and currently proposes are particularly onerous on small businesses.  And from 1987-2005, small businesses created the most net new jobs.

I do hope Mrs. Boxer will be telling us how she plans on easing the federal burden on small businesses, so innovative individuals and enterprising entrepreneurs can create new companies and/or expand their operations in the Golden State.

I first saw this video on Instapundit, then on PlanetGore, now on Michelle Malkin, and felt that, well, it was too fun not to link here:

According to Wikipedia, while the Empire State recognizes same-sex marriages performed in a different state, it, like most Northeastern states, does not have a domestic partnership program.

Gay marriage advocates ever eager to have states recognize same-sex marriage without making a case to the people why gay marriage is a good thing, have been trying to push the New York State legislature to enact legislation providing for such recognition.  Well, today, “the Democrat-controlled New York State Senate resoundingly killed a bill to legalize it that Governor Paterson would have signed.”  They might have had better luck had they, in the wake of last month’s election returns in the Evergreen and Pine Street states, considered a bill recognizing same-sex civil unions.

They wouldn’t get the name they wanted, but they would have provided benefits to same-sex couples, currently unavailable.  Let’s hope that in the wake of this defeat, they consider that option.

Almost three years ago, finding a coupon in my mailbox for discount maid service, I called the company and secured a special rate for two hours cleaning.  When the women arrived, I specifically requested that they first clean the bathroom and kitchen and once those were done there, move on to other priorities.

After they had begun their work, I returned to mine, researching a paper for my graduate program.  When I needed a certain book, I went to my bedroom to fetch it, finding one of the women languidly dusting the windowsill there.  I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t interested in having the windowsill cleaned, but wanted her to first clean the bathroom (her colleague was hard at work in the kitchen).  Unable to speak English, she nodded her head, then returned to further polish the sparkling windowsill.

To get her to work on the bathroom, I had to ask her colleague (who spoke English as well as Spanish) to instruct he co-worker on my priorities.  Now, the first woman may well have been the world’s best windowsill washer (I grant she did do a good job), but I didn’t hire her to clean my windowsills, but to first tackle the bathroom and kitchen.

So, it is right now with Barack Obama.  He may want to focus on health care and cap and trade, but the American people have other priorities.  They first want him to address the job situation and federal spending, then to move on to other issues, much as I wanted my windows cleaned, but only after the kitchen and bathroom were spotless.

No wonder Scott Rasmussen’s “latest telephone poll found that 71 percent of those surveyed are at least somewhat angry at the current policies being pursued in Washington, with fully 46 percent ‘Very Angry.’”  Obama’s priorities are not America’s priorities.

As Mark Tapscott points out in commenting on the poll:

Three-fourths of the public looks at the nation’s capital and sees special interests feasting with their friends in government at the public till, according to Rasmussen. Nearly as many, 68 percent, believe Big Government and Big Business work together against the public interest.

Obama didn’t bring change; he just brought us more of the same.  And as his poll numbers continue to sink, he, like that expert windowsill washer, doesn’t seem understand the complaints on those who hired him.

Alas that we booked him for a term of service considerably longer than two hours.

If you’re going to be in the Los Angeles area this coming weekend, please join us for our holiday party. E-mail me for details.

Last night’s speech may well have been the first Barack Obama delivered which put forward a policy better than the delivery of the speech itself.  Generally, his words soar above the standard liberal policies he proposes.  Last night, his words, save for a few passages, obscured the policy he was poromoting.

The speaker seemed cold, not connecting with his audience.  The delivery was stale, if rushed at times.  The rhetoric mundane, the organization lacking.  The speech had no theme and had, as Jim Geraghty put it, a kind of “kitchen sink quality to” it.  The President put in far more than was necessary to make his point.

At times, it seemed he was going through the motions, speaking without conviction, saying what he had to say.  He was merely dispensing with an obligation to which he needed to attend before moving out, what were to him, more pressing matters.  He wanted to get this over with.

I’m sorry, Mr. President, this is the most pressing matter.  And on the whole, you have acquitted yourself well, though belatedly, in the choice you have made.  In the past, your rhetoric made up for an absence of agenda.  Last night, you might have done better to make absent the rhetoric and let your aides provide the details of the agenda.

In large part, because of his absence of conviction, I won’t be increasing the count of cheers I have already offered you.  For my part, I grant you that one cheer for making a decent choice and withhold a further cheer because of the way you justified it last night.  Yet another might have been forthcoming had you not offered a timetable for the operation and provide instead an assurance of victory.

Indeed, that word, “victory” was strangely absent from the speech.  Yet, talk of himself was omnipresent as well as attacks on his predecessor’s failings.  Seems some habits are hard to break.  Did that predecessor ever, in a prepared speech, brag about the letters he signed to the families of soldiers who gave their all for our country?

Victor Davis Hanson who, like Charles Krauthammer, found the speech “strange,” wondered that the President deplored “partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point.”   (more…)

Inhofe Asks Boxer to Investigate Possible Scientific ‘Conspiracy’ in ‘Climategate’:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is calling on Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to conduct hearings on a possible conspiracy between some of the world’s most prominent climatologists to, among other things, manipulate data on so-called global warming.

The speech lacked focus.  He did not deliver it with much conviction, kept contrasting what happened “in the past” and how those days are over.  His tone never wavered.  He didn’t pause for effect.  I don’t think he ever used the noun, “victory,” or any form of the verb, “to win.”

Don’t get me wrong, there were some good things it, especially the points he made about Pakistan, but it was as Charles Krauthammer put it, a “strange speech.”

UPDATE:  I’m pretty happy with the president’s plan, saved for his insistence on an “Exit Strategy.”  He just seemed too defensive and didn’t really make the case for this plan, doing more to respond to the naysayers, more like the way a blogger responds to a critical comment than to the way he writes a post.

UP-UPDATE:  Krauthammer pretty much summarized my thoughts.  Ok, right now, I really don’t watch to blog about this.  May watch the second part of a miniseries about a more determined leader.

I had started typing notes, but his first line caught my attention:  about bringing “this war to a successful conclusion.”

Will he ever say, “victory”?

Do appreciate that he said terrorists on 9/11 “murdered” Americans.  But, wait, did he call them terrorists?

Yup, using the expression “terrorist network.”  But, is at pains to talk about “international legitimacy.”

Also, he seems to be rushing this speech.

Why is he bringing it Iraq?  And the rifts it caused?  Bringing that war to a “responsible end.”  Hasn’t yet used the word, “victory” or any form of the verb “to win.”

Like the line about “hard-earned milestones” in Iraq.

Back to typing notes for a later post, but I’ll just say that I’m really not liking this speech, it seems to be more about his decision-making process than about the decision itself.  Has he yet said “defeat” Al Qaeda, focusing too much on turning over to Afghanis.  Shouldn’t we first defeat Taliban/Al Qaeda, then turn it over?  Did FDR turning over power to Germans before we had conquered the Nazis?

So, as I click on AOL to check my e-mail, I’m treatedd to yet another Palin-bashing headline in their “Top News” column.  Sarah Palin, we are told is flying into a “New Controversy With Her Book Tour“. The gist of the story: the former Alaska Governor sometimes uses a “Gulfstream II private jet, which rents for $4,000 an hour” to jet between stops as she traverses the country to sell her book.

Wonder if AOL ever had a headline in their top news favorable to this this accomplished and charismatic conservative woman.

In her pointless piece, Dana Chivvis repeats a lie repeatedly told by left-wing critics of the 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee:

Luxuries like the official jet that came with the position, which, as she declared in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, she had sold on eBay. (In reality, the plane was sold through an aircraft broker to a businessman, according to FactCheck.org.)

Sorry, Dana, in that speech, Palin never said she sold the plane on eBay. She said, “I put it on eBay.” If Miss Chivvis were interested in reporting honestly on this good woman, instead of looking for excuses to attack her, she might have checked the speech online to make sure she was quoting the Republican accurately.  (Or maybe she did and doesn’t understand the difference between putting something on ebay and selling it there.)

To confirm that this featured writer on AOL got her facts wrong, I did a simple google search, “sarah palin speech republican national convention” and, in under a minute, had accessed the speech and found the passage quoted in the previous paragraph.

And since Miss Chivvis is so concerned about Sarah Palin’s supposed hypocrisy for flying a private jet, I’m sure she’ll next be blogging on all those warning us to lower our carbon footprint as they jet around the world on their private planes.

While I have faulted the President in private conversations for his “dithering” on Afghanistan, I have barely touched on the subject on this blog.  It’s not that I don’t think the issue is important, it’s just that I think pundits and other bloggers have pretty much said all that needs to be said.

I am somewhat heartened to read that he has “issued orders to send about 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan“.  While I was hoping he would send the full complement that General Stanley McChrystal had requested, this may well be enough to secure victory in that troubled land.  I will wait until after hearing (or reading, depending on my schedule) his speech at West Point this evening (and perhaps even later than that) before offering a more complete opinion on the matter.  But, for now, it seems to be a step in the right direction.

While Obama did dither, resembling the dissembling George McClellan more than the more straightforward Abraham Lincoln, in the end, he will be judged not by the time it took to make the decision, but by the decision itself.  Should we see the victories in Afghanistan similar to those which followed the “surge” in Iraq,  the dithering may soon be forgotten (or least downplayed), while the successes will make headlines.  Should our armed forces succeed in defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, then President Obama will have won a great victory for our nation, the Afghan people and the free world.

It is one achievement for which I am ever eager to praise this Democrat.  And hope that all Americans are prepared to offer him such accolades.  For he will achieve them not for himself alone, nor for his party, but for the country.  We wish him every success in this endeavor.

Google “Palin lie ‘bridge to nowhere’” and you get tens of thousands of hits, many to left-wing blogs (and even a few “news” articles) telling us that that good woman lied when she said “Thanks, but no thanks” to the “bridge to nowhere.”  You see, while campaigning for Governor of the Last Frontier n 2006, that Republican supported the bridge.  But, she, like many of us, from time to time, changed her mind.  And did so long before she spoke that line at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

Indeed, the Alaska Democratic Party credited that reformed-minded Republican for killing the bridge.

Now, if changing one’s mind amounts to a lie, well, then Barack Obama is the biggest liar of them all.

When each of his promises reaches its “expiration date,” well, then the Democrat tells another whopper.  He lied about using public funding for his campaign.  He lied about delivering a “net spending cut.”  He lied about going line by line through the federal budget and eliminating programs that don’t work.  And on and on it goes.

So eager are some to “get” Sarah Palin that they apply a standard to her which, if applied to any one of their political allies, would make them look far worse, far, far worse than than accomplished conservative.