Al Gore's Snowjob - A Video Response

Since so many people were convinced by Al Gore's propaganda movie "An Inconvenient Truth," maybe the best way to refute his claims is visually. The Heartland Institute thinks so.

You Might Call It Cognitive Dissonance

Yahoo published an article which tells how miserable Americans think things are. 88% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans say they think "things in this country are headed off on the wrong track."

However, a top paragraph in the article says: "most in the U.S. say they are personally happy and feel in control of their lives and finances, according to an extensive Associated Press-Yahoo! News survey on the mood of voters."

66% say they are personally happy and feel in control of their lives and finances, but that things are on the wrong track. In other words, "I'm doing okay, but I hear things are bad everywhere else."

The power of the media, folks.


To give you an idea of the overall tone of the poll, two of the questions were:

1) "Do you favor or oppose having the federal government intervene to reduce the income differences between the richest and poorest Americans?" (42% favor! How do you think the "federal government" would go about implementing this idea?)

Consider this: Economist Thomas Sowel wrote an article in which he analyzes income data from the Internal Revenue Service. People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005. The top one percent -- "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left -- saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent. Meanwhile, the average taxpayers' real income increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005.

2) "Do you favor or oppose canceling the tax cuts passed since 2001 for people who are wealthy?" (41% favor.)

This, despite the fact that the tax rate cuts implemented by the Bush administration have increased the amount of taxes the wealthy pay. (The top 25% of wage earners pay 84.6% of all federal income taxes.)

Dante's Eighth Circle of Hell is reserved for politicians who engage in and exploit the politics of envy and covetousness.

How UN "Scientists" Work

Much is made by global warming alarmists about the UN's Intergovernmental Panal on Climate Change (IPCC) and its findings, namely that catastrophic global warming (due to mankind's activities) can only be averted through government action.

An article in the Washington Post discusses a similar "crisis" that the UN has addressed for the last several years: the AIDS epidemic. The Post article is entitled "U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic" with the subhead "Population With Virus Overstated by Millions."

Some quotes from the article:

"JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 19 -- The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

"Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

"The United Nations' AIDS agency, known as UNAIDS....has drawn criticism in recent years [for] being politicized and not scientifically rigorous."

In essence the article says that UN "scientists" have claimed a larger catastrophe than actually existed in order to increase funding and political clout.

Sound familiar?

The Debate Ain't Over Yet, Al

John Stossel started his column "Don't Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet" with a reference to his other job:

Recently on "20/20," I said "give me a break" to Al Gore for
claiming that the global-warming debate is over and suggesting that all dissenters were in it for the money. I interviewed independent scientists who say Gore is wrong.

In this standout column, Stossel also adds a link to the Science and Public Policy Institute, which prominently displays on its website an article titled ""35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore's Movie."

Stossel cites experts who criticize the UN's attempt to promote global warming alarmism. "Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science," says Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute. The scientific process ought to be left to play itself out with as little political bias as possible. Politically influenced research is poison to science.

Part of the problem is the IPCC itself. Reiter points out, "It's the inter-governmental panel on climate change. It's governments who nominate people. It's inherently political. Many of the scientists are on the IPCC because they view global warming as a problem that needs to be fixed. They have a vested interest."

Stossel also cites a member of the UN's "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" (IPCC) who disputes the so-called "consensus" view and reiterates the argument that trying to control CO2 emissions (for the purpose of slowing global warming) is ineffective and a waste of time.

This should be must-reading for everyone, but especially for those who want to clobber those blockheads who insist that the "global warming debate is over" -- blockheads like Al Gore.

Need It Spelled Out For You?

Karl Rove recently wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal opinion page. He succinctly and clearly spells out the failings of the Democrats since they won control of Congress last year:

On the budget. "In 2006, Democrats criticized Congress for dragging its feet on the budget and pledged that they would do better... The new fiscal year started Oct. 1--five weeks ago--but Democrats have yet to send the president a single annual appropriations bill."

Democrats have made clear all their talk about "fiscal discipline" is just that--talk. They're proposing to spend $205 billion more than the president has proposed over the next five years. Only in Washington could someone in public life be so clueless to say, as Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi have, that $22 billion is a 'relatively small' difference."

On the war in Iraq. "Beholden to MoveOn.org and other left-wing groups, Democratic leaders have ignored the progress made in Iraq.... After promising on the campaign trail to "support our troops," Democrats tried to cut off funding for our military while our soldiers and Marines are under fire from the enemy. Democrats also tried to stuff an emergency war-spending bill with billions of dollars of pork for individual members."

On "bipartisanship." "They refused a bipartisan compromise on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead wasting precious time sending the president a bill they knew he would veto. And they did this knowing that they wouldn't be able to override that veto. Why? Because their pollsters told them putting the children's health-care program at risk would score political points."

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At it's best, Congress is like an orangutan trying to solve a Rubik's cube. At it's worst, it's two orangutans fighting over the Rubik's cube. The Democrats have proved that they are more interested in partisan politics than in trying to do the job for which they were elected.

Term limits. I'm a believer.

A Quick Thought On: Al Gore

Al Gore makes much about the so-called "consensus" of scientific opinion that he claims supports his theory on global warming. He has recently begun the campaign to stop the media from presenting both sides of the story. Or, as he says in his propaganda piece An Inconvenient Truth, "The debate is over." In other words, the scientists voted, his side won, and we should stop checking.

The reason he wants to stop the scientific "vote" now is that he's lost every other recount he was involved in.