1. It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
1. It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
That thumping sound you hear is the Los Angeles Times moving the goal posts in the global warming debate.
On November 22, while responding to the growing scandal [0] about alleged proof that global warming is a hoax, the Times brushed it off with a puzzling claim that science should have no bearing on climate legislation.
What a difference a few leaked e-mail messages could make: just over a month ago, the exact same paper had insisted science was behind the push for regulation. Now with the validity of that science in doubt, the Times was quick to find a different angle.
In an article [1] titled "A Climate Change Dust-up," writers Jim Tankersley and Henry Chu began with reassurance that the scandal was nothing to fear because the hacked e-mail messages would not make a difference either way:
Is it a "Warmist Conspiracy," or a case of an email being "taken completely out of context"?
Regardless, the latest dust-up over the science of climate change appears unlikely to affect the dynamics of either a pending debate in the Senate or international climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month.
The whole point of the meeting in Copenhagen has been to limit pollution that supposedly destroys the planet based on evidence gathered and purported by researchers specifically involved in the email scandal. If the very premise of global warming has possibly been exposed as a fraud, why would that not be of interest to those who want to legislate global warming?
Because, according to the Times, the fight to stop possibly nonexistent global warming would be about saving the economy:
But advocates of action to curb global warming dismiss those claims, and political leaders and analysts say the Senate bill to limit greenhouse gas emissions will sink or swim based on economics, not science.
"The scientists are going to fight about this for decades," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of several Senate Republicans who say they are open to some form of a climate bill. "We should be doing something to curb our emissions that would not harm the economy, and would in fact boost the economy," he said.
So the Times believed in doing something about emissions whether or not we knew that they were harmful. It was suddenly okay for the science to remain unsettled, and in fact, the Senate was encouraged to limit greenhouse gases even if science was unable to prove a connection between carbon dioxide emissions and temperature.
But if the entire logic of this effort to save the economy was based on the hope that green jobs would put Americans to work, someone should have told the Times that President Obama has already been funding green jobs [2] without a climate bill.
Equally preposterous, nowhere did the article explain exactly how limiting a company's carbon dioxide output would cause it to expand payrolls.
Not to worry, for according to global warming activists it would all work with or without the data to back it up.
Most amazingly of all, though, was an explanation about the data offered by Phil Jones, one of the scientists involved in the email scandal. When asked about his use of the word "trick" when presenting data, Jones told the Times it was just clever wording:
In the 1999 e-mail, Jones wrote of using a "trick" to hide an apparent decline in recent global temperatures on a chart being prepared for use by a meteorological organization. But in a statement posted on the university's website Saturday, Jones said that the e-mail had been "taken completely out of context" and that there had been no misrepresentation of the data.
"The word 'trick' was used here colloquially as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," Jones said.
The hard-hitting journalism force at the Times failed to ask how a trick was taken to mean anything other than a trick. What possible "colloquial" use of the word could have implied a trick that was not really a trick?
Thanks to the Times, Jones got away without having to expound.
This whole notion of scientific tricks being irrelevant to a major debate about international climate legislation represented a major change in thinking at the Times. It was just six weeks ago the paper criticized [3] Bush for hiding scientific data that could be used to sway the debate over legislation.
Back then, science had everything to do with it:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a long-suppressed report by George W. Bush administration officials who had concluded -- based on science -- that the government should begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions because global warming posed serious risks to the country.
The report, known as an "endangerment finding," was done in 2007. The Bush White House refused to make it public because it opposed new government efforts to regulate the gases most scientists see as the major cause of global warming.
When scientific findings were there to warn that global warming would kill the planet, the Times was quick to support it; when science was later found to be riddled with tricks that tainted its credibility, climate legislation was suddenly all about fixing the economy.
This is one more example in the long list of ways the liberal media has played fast and loose with the global warming agenda.
Even when faced with plausible evidence the whole thing might be a fraud, global warming believers simply found a way to assert that evidence was not necessary.
Links:
[1] http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-hacker22-2009nov22,0,913036.story
[2] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/18/BUU81AMKET.DTL&type=business
[3] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/14/nation/na-epa-climate14
ALBANY, December 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On Wednesday afternoon, the New York State Senate voted overwhelmingly to reject legislation that would have legalized same-sex "marriage," handing a humiliating defeat to proponents of the legislation who told the Senate that a vote for same-sex "marriage" was a vote to stand on the "right side of history."
The measure, which would have amended New York State's Domestic Partnership Law and have made New York the sixth state to legalize same-sex "marriage," failed by a broad margin of 24 in favor and 38 against.
The Senate vote finally means same-sex "marriage" is dead in New York for this legislative session: a resounding victory for pro-family advocates in the state, and a heavy loss for Gov. David Paterson and Democratic leaders, who were looking to deliver same-sex "marriage" advocates their first victory after their latest defeat in Maine.
Just minutes before the 3 P.M. vote, Sen. Thomas Duane (D-NY 29), the chief sponsor of the same-sex "marriage" bill, confidently told members of the Senate that he was looking forward to not just being "an old gay" but soon a "married gay."
However, those anticipations were dashed by a coalition of eight Democrats led by Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. (D-NY 32), the leader of the Senate fight against same-sex "marriage," who joined every member of the GOP caucus in a conscience vote against the bill.
Debate began after a short noon recess with Sen. Duane arguing that this "legislation would provide me and tens of thousands of other New Yorkers equal rights in New York State."
Delivering the final speech before the vote, Duane appeared confident of victory and pressed fellow Senators to vote for the bill since, "It's always the time to be on the right side of history!"
Only Sen. Diaz spoke on the floor of the Senate against same-sex "marriage." The Senator and Evangelical minister, indefatigable in his fight against same-sex "marriage," rallied 20,000 Hispanics over the summer in support of natural marriage, forged a broad religious coalition to oppose the bill, and even sacrificed with his wife a cruise celebrating their wedding anniversary in order to attend a special legislative session called by Gov. Paterson, where same-sex "marriage" could have been called to a vote.
Diaz mentioned that adherents of the world's major religions - not just Evangelicals - oppose same-sex "marriage," including Jews, Muslims, and Catholics. Diaz specifically praised those Catholic bishops who signed the Manhattan Declaration as a testament of their opposition to same-sex "marriage."
He proposed that the Senate instead should let New Yorkers decide on same-sex "marriage" through a referendum. New York has no referendum process like Maine, but the State Legislature could pass a bill that allows voters to decide the question via the ballot box.
However, the supreme "irony," Diaz told the Senate, was that the same gay lobby, which fought so hard and spent an enormous amount of money to wrest control of the Senate from the GOP in order to get a bill on same-sex "marriage," now "is depending on them to make this happen."
"The reality is that it has been the Republican Party and their traditional values, and the Republican Party with their moral values, and the Republican Party with their family values, that has been for years and years what has kept the values in this whole nation alive," declared Diaz. "And now they are being asked to throw away these values."
He appealed to the Republicans once again to hold fast to their principles and instead let the people decide the fate of marriage in New York, pointing out that the will of the people has opposed same-sex "marriage" in all thirty-one states where they had an opportunity to vote on it.
"Remember your rules, remember your values: remember your family values, traditional values, moral values," exhorted Diaz. "Go back to the defense of your traditional values. Join me a Democrat, join me a Hispanic, join me a black, join me a Puerto Rican, and join me in bringing a referendum to the people."
However the rest of the speeches proceeded from Democrats speaking out in favor of the bill.
Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-NY 14), President Pro Tempore of the Senate, told the Senate that at stake with same-sex "marriage" was "an individual's right to feel good about themselves."
"For the first time, all men and women will be created equal," declaimed Sen. Eric Schneiderman (D-NY 34), Deputy Majority Leader. "This law will expand the central American ideal of equality."
Sen. Eric Adams (D-NY 20) politely accused Sen. Diaz of not speaking "from his head." Adams compared banning gay marriage to "reaching back to the most ugliest [sic] period of America," when states like Virginia had laws banning interracial marriages until the 1967 US Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia.
The senator also told his colleagues that, "When I walk through these doors, my Bible stays out."
That statement drew a sharp rebuke from Sen. Diaz, who stated that given what he said was the rising scourge of crime in America, "That is the wrong statement to send." Diaz urged Senators to remember their Bibles before voting. "You should carry your Bible all the time," he said.
Freed by GOP Minority Leader Sen. Dean Skelos (NY 9) to vote their consciences, every single Republican joined Sen. Diaz in rejecting same-sex "marriage." The seven other Democrats to vote against the same-sex "marriage" bill were Sens. Carl Kruger (NY 27), Shirley Huntley (NY 10), Darrel Aubertine (NY 48), Joseph Addabbo (NY 15), William Stachowski (NY 58), George Onorato (NY 12), and Hiram Monserrate (NY 13).
Contact information for members of the New York State Senate can be found here.
The execrable CAIR tool and libelblogger Charles Johnson has posted a self-righteous laundry list purporting to explain why he betrayed all his principles, friends, and associates: "Why I Parted Ways with the Right."
You can find it here -- the adolescent libelblogger has blocked direct links from this site, but you can paste this in to your address bar:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/35243_Why_I_Parted_Ways_With_The_Right
The thuggish libelblogger incites his sycophants and whips them into a frenzy of hate with three lies about me and Pamela Geller:
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)
Of course, he does not, and cannot, produce a shred of evidence to support any of these libelous claims, but that is par for the course at this point for this man, who has long since kissed goodbye to the last shreds of his integrity.
One can only wonder what sickness of soul would lead this man to devote so much time and effort to lying about other people and trying to destroy them.
UPDATE: It is interesting that Johnson's hate list appeared just hours after I spoke at length with a New York Times reporter -- excited by his move leftward, they're doing a big story on Johnson. Coincidence? Of course!