No Christmas Presents for Malia and Sasha Obama: White House Nativity Scene Almost Got the Boot!

President and Mrs. Barack Obama do not give traditional Christmas gifts to their children. The Politico ran the story during last year's campaign, "Obama Leaves the Gifting to Santa":

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) tells People magazine in the issue out Friday that he and his wife, Michelle, do not give Christmas or birthday presents to their two young daughters.

But on top of that, a story on Crashergate's Desiree Rogers indicates that the First Family was pushing for a "non-religious Christmas," but relented during internal debates on whether to display the holiday crèche (nativity scene) in the East Room at the White House.

See also, "No Christmas Presents for the Obama Kids this Year":

Unlike almost all Americans—including atheists—the Obamas do not give their children Christmas gifts. We know this because Barack bragged about this last year to People magazine. So it should come as no big surprise that he and his wife would like to neuter Christmas in the White House. That’s their natural step—to ban the public display of Christian symbols. Have any doubts?

Last April, Georgetown University was ordered to put a drape over the name of Jesus as a condition of the president speaking there.

If the Obamas want to deprive their children of celebrating Christmas, that is their business. It is the business of the public to hold them accountable for the way they celebrate Christmas in the White House. We know one thing for sure: no other administration ever entertained internal discussions on whether to display a nativity scene in the White House.

Image Credit: Atlas Shrugs, "Obama's 'Non-Religious' White House Christmas and No Christmas Gifts for his Kids."

Now Democrats to Focus on Jobs!

President Obama was elected on economic issues, but the idiot's wasted most of the year on his socialist takeover of the healthcare system, and not to mention his world apology tour for the "evils" of the United States.

So, maybe the dumb Democrats are finally getting a clue. From the Washinton Post, "Entering an election year, Democrats sharpen focus on jobs: Some fear that the most basic of voter issues has been crowded out":

President Obama's renewed focus on the economy underscores an elemental truth of politics. For all the attention the White House and Congress have given to health care and Afghanistan this fall, no problem poses a greater political threat to the Democrats in 2010 than joblessness and slow economic growth.

The clamor in Congress for more attention on the economy has been rising by the week as Democrats look to the opening of a midterm election year with unemployment at 10 percent and forecast to stay in that range for some months. The White House, too, has gotten the message. For the third time in six days, President Obama will put employment at the forefront of his agenda, with a speech Tuesday outlining new ideas to create jobs.

"We've made a huge amount of progress in terms of turning off the flood of job loss," said White House senior adviser David Axelrod. "But there's also a big hole. Over the course of this recession, 8 million people lost jobs. That's a lot of people. We've got our work cut out for us. We're moving in the right direction, but we've got to make more progress."

But will the Democrats' attention to the economy prove to be little more than an exercise in checking a box or the beginning of a sustained and determined focus on a problem that many Americans fear has gotten too little attention from their elected leaders? Will the economy have to compete in the coming year with issues like climate change and immigration reform, which Obama has promised to push once the health-care debate ends, or will the administration delay shifting to those problems until it has dealt more successfully with the economy?

Democratic strategists are keenly aware of the potential problem for their party. "There is a sense that we pick up that people are not only worried about the substantive issue, but they're not sure that Washington is focused on that issue and they'd like to see Washington focused much more on that issue," said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster.

Although the unemployment rate ticked down from 10.2 percent to 10 percent in the latest report, released Friday, about one-sixth of the workforce is either out of work or underemployed. Not since the early 1980s has the jobless rate hit levels this high, and Republicans suffered major losses in the 1982 midterm election. Democrats could suffer the same fate next year.

"Democrats are now scrambling to catch up, not only with public concern but also the facts on the ground, which are pretty dismal," said William Galston of the Brookings Institution, where Obama will speak Tuesday. "This job market has deteriorated far more than anyone thought possible even a year ago."

You think?

More at Memeorandum.

Leftists Democratic Underground, Gawker Hail Tomato Attack on Sarah Palin at 'Going Rogue' Book Signing

Jim Hoft has the story, "Crazed Palin-Hater Chucks Tomatoes at Former Governor– Hits A Cop In the Face." Plus, from Sister Toldjah, "Hater Throws Tomatoes at Sarah Palin, Hits Cop Instead."

Also, MyFOX Twin Cities, Man Chucks Tomatoes at Sarah Palin at MOA. And from the Politico, "Sarah Palin Dodges Tomatoes":

A Minnesota man was arrested Monday for throwing two tomatoes at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

According to police, 33-year-old Jeremy Paul Olson threw the tomatoes at Palin from a second floor balcony in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., while the former GOP vice presidential candidate was signing books at a Barnes & Noble.

Palin was not hit by the flying tomatoes, which instead hit two police officers standing near the former governor. Olson was arrested on charges of suspicion of assault and disorderly conduct.

I'm surprised it was only tomatoes.

But from the comments at Democratic Underground, "Wow. Where do we send money to help with his legal bills?," and "Excellent," and "Shoulda waved a gun."

And at Gawker, "Who is the Hero Who Threw Tomatoes at Sarah Palin?," and "In Defense of Throwing Tomatoes at Sarah Palin."

And here's one of the more sick justifications at Gawker:

Usually, the victim deserves it

Consider this partial list of people who have had food thrown at them, according to Google:

• Roman Emperor Vespasianus Caesar Augustus
• Shitty 19th century actor John Ritchie
• Nixon
• Nick Griffin (British right-wing politician and notorious Holocaust denier)
• Thomas Friedman
• Bill Gates
• Ann Coulter
• David Horowitz
• William F. Buckley
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Sarah Palin

If a group of people who more needed a pie in the face exists, then someone should pie those people, too. Chances are, if people are angry enough to risk incarceration simply to throw food at you, you have done something to deserve it—and then some.

UPDATE: Linked at This Ain't Hell ..., "Tomatoes for Sarah, hugs for SEALs, and unrelated stuff." Also,Phyllis Chesler, "Shameless Leftist Piggybacking on Palin’s Bestseller."

Take It From Me, An Interracial Man in an Interracial Marriage, Robert Stacy McCain is No Racist!

Look, this post is not an attack on Patrick Frey. Sure, I've disagreed with some of the stuff at Patterico, but that's a good thing. My sense is that he's a great blogger who does really inspiring work.

But frankly, his post yesterday, "Is This Racism?," is utterly gratuitous. What perhaps started out as a fascinating debate on Tiger Woods' racial authenticity (an extremely topical AND legitimate issue), the post nose-dives badly into a slanderous fever-swamp of sick insinuations. And for what? All of this mostly works to further spread the LGF smears against Robert Stacy McCain for absolutley no good reason, unless character assassination and the politics of personal destruction generates blog traffic and blogging notoriety. I doubt those kind of things wouldn't be assets to Patrick. The "Is This Racism" post led to another one, with a more discursive exposition of R.S. McCain's alleged "racism." See, "That Quote Most of You Called “Racist” Was Written by Robert Stacy McCain."

I've defended Robert Stacy McCain many times (for example, here and here). I have have done so for matters of principle. Robert's being attacked by people like Rachel Maddow and Charles Johnson because THEY have powerful political motives to further an "evil racist conservative" meme. It's despicable gutter politics, and it's typical of radical leftists who've literally got nothing else.

Now, I've not so much spoken out from a personal perspective, that is, from my background as a black man of mixed-race heritage. People should realize, that for me, politics is color-blind. First, I don't think of myself as "a person of color." I know I am, but I've never for a moment considered that a hindrance to my success, or a ticket to racial shakedown advantage. I've just lived my life, and while I've experienced the deep pain of racism, I don't let race or identity politics define me (unlike folks like, say, Pam Spaulding or Ta-Nehisi Coates). But second, I don't view politics primarily from a racial angle. I attack Barack Obama all the time, but his race is never an issue for me. I deeply appreciate the historic signifcance of Obama's election. I don't like him because he's a radical socialist with a subterranean totalitarian agenda. But to blog that, to call out Obama for the ideological and moral disaster he is for this country gets me branded a racist. And again, that's because the nihilist crazies on the fever-swamp left have got nothing better to do that hang around all day waiting for an off-color political remark, and then, BAM, they've got their prey in the victimology crosshairs.

No, politics is just that for me, politics -- the struggle for power, and competition for the success of one's values over another's. It's the stuff of life, and like anything else with great stakes, folks will use the most wickedly unscrupulous means to win. Allegations for racism are particularly potent to that effect, since they inherently prey on the monumental accumulated guilt-complex of white Americans. No one wants to be called racist. And to be successfully labeled and repudiated as racist is tantamount to banishment from polite society. It can be so potent of an allegation that to be placed on the defense itself causes fits of incredulity, which in turn results in not taking the attacks as warranting a response. "What, me racist? That's preposterous." But as soon as some kind of underground campaign emerges to destroy one's standing, the sociology of the smear builds a life of its own. I'm reminded of Mean Girls, how Rachel McAdams had so much power over others, but then became a victim of her own Machiavellian charms when the gunsights were reversed. Regina George deserved it, because, well, she's mean. But the example is the campaign itself, how Lindsay Lohan besmirched herself just as much by sinking to the pits of scurrility and evil. And so it is with racism. No one wants to be called out as racist, but since so few of Americans are genuinely racist today, if it appears the left really has a genuine one, then, BAM, they pounce like a big game cat. But ultimately it's the accuser who's damaged, most recently Charles Johnson, now having to announce his own exile into puritanical ideological purgatory.

Folks may recall I recently posted my family pictures at the blog, "Halloween 2009." Readers should go back and take a look at them. Diversity begins at home for my family. And my wife gets more of it with her career; my kids more with their diverse school classrooms; and me with my college teaching at one of the most socio-demographically diverse colleges in the nation. You just go with it.

So, when I hear these attacks on McCain, I almost flabbergasted. I've known Robert for two years now. Not a particularly long time, but believe me there's a lot of affinity for this man. One doesn't build the kind of friendships and readership as Robert by deceptively hiding some crazed, barnyard mean Grand Kleagle program of hatred. It doesn't compute. But don't take my word for it. Let's look at what everyone's focusing on, this quote that everybody's all ejaculating over:

As Steffgen predicted, the media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sisterinlaw, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.

This is less racist -- if racist at all -- than politically incorrect. And I'm not seeing this quote for the first time. These attacks on McCain have a long lead time.

I recall seeing this a while ago, from victim's identity-grievance spokesman Michelangelo Signorile's essay from 2002 (I read it back when I first started speaking with Robert in 2008). The quote is offered with a number of others that purport to prove Robert's a seccessionist with a rebel-yell sensibility, who would restore the yoke of that peculiar institution to the Old South. Robert's responded to the broad-brush allegations over and over, so skim around at The Other McCain a while, and you'll see there's a whole lot of context that's being left out of the debate.

But since much of the rest of Signorile's slanders have been debunked or disowned, folks now have that quote above to hang their charges. So, is that racist? Is it racist to feel perfectly well in interacting, working with, hanging out, etc., with minorities, but be uncomfortable -- even revolted -- by the possibility of an interracial marriage in the family?

Well, folks probably aren't being too clear on what they mean by "racism." There has to be some element of white supremacy or white racial superiority -- and particularly an expressed intent to oppress the rights and opportunites of racial minorities -- for real racism to emerge. Slavery was racist; Jim Crow segregation was racist; aparthied South Africa was racist; British imperialism's "white man's burden" was racist. There's nothing in the "altogether natural revulsion" quote to raise either the superiority or the oppression triggers.

So we're left, really, with questions of tastes and preferences. And I again remind folks that if Robert Stacy McCain's racist, then so is every other American who decides not to marry someone outside of his or her ethnic demographic. When my wife met me, she never said "I love you but I don't want to have black babies." And vice versa. We just met. Angela Bassett hadn't strolled into my social orbit at that moment, so I said what the heck. I'm good. Let's see if we can make this relationship go.

And really, it's those who are so occupied by such words, how they find so much confirmation of their political superiority, their moral rectitude, who are totally FUBAR. Charles Johnson, Larisa Alexdrovna, the Media Matters cabal, Firedoglake. Hey, if you're looking for some race-shakedown industry allies, you know where to go. Meanwhile, all of this bulls*** has to STOP. If Robert Stacy McCain's racist, the marketplace of human interactions will sort it all out. He'll be ostracized faster than a Swine Flu patient at a Christmas party hook-up. All these witch hunts do is make the accusers feel good. All folks are doing is dragging someone through the mud for statements made years ago, statements that are simply too honest for the racially-paralyzed Internet lynch mobs to handle.

This is old news, and really pedestrian. And as always, the accusers have little in the way of racial integrity to sustain them. How many of these people are really walking the walk of interracial relations? How many really know what it's like to feel the sting of racism and discrimation. And how many really live life in the trenches of today's demograpic realities?

My bet is very few of the accusers, if any. And hence, it's all a sham really. Mostly sound and fury, signifying hatred and stupidity of the first order.

'Just How Much Was Tiger Swinging?' Reports Link Woods to Nine Women; Elin Nordegren Moves Out

From People Magazine, "Just How Much Was Tiger Swinging?"

It seems like Tiger Woods's roster of rumored mistresses could practically fill a clubhouse.

In fact, publications like the New York Post have noted that, if the reports are true, Woods, 33, may be linked with as many as nine women.

So what's his reported scorecard look like so far?

Check the link for the full roster. But apparently smut star Holly Sampson is said to be the seventh woman. See, "Porn star Holly Sampson is seventh woman linked to Tiger Woods as sex scandal continues to grow."

And at Radar Online, "WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Tiger Woods' Wife Moves Out."

You think?

Secret Service Counts 91 Security Breaches Since 1980: No 'Aura of Invulnerability' Around POTUS

Perhaps the news will generate more urgency for congressional investigators seeking to subpoena White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers.

From the Washington Post, "Secret Service counts 91 breaches: 2003 report has been used as training tool":

Long before a pair of gate-crashers penetrated a White House state dinner, the Secret Service had detailed for its internal use a lengthy list of security breaches dating to the Carter administration -- including significant failures in the agency's protection of the president.

A summary of a secret 2003 report obtained by The Washington Post, along with descriptions of more recent incidents by federal homeland security officials, places Tareq and Michaele Salahi squarely in a rogues' gallery of autograph hounds, publicity seekers, unstable personalities and others identified by the Secret Service as defeating its checkpoints at least 91 times since 1980.

The document, the most complete accounting of recent Secret Service security breakdowns, includes officers mistakenly admitting to the White House grounds a family in a minivan, a man believed to be a delivery driver, and a woman previously known to agents after she had falsely claimed a "special relationship" with Bill Clinton.

The only assailant to injure a president in the past three decades was John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded Ronald Reagan in 1981 from outside the security perimeter established by the Secret Service.

Nevertheless, the list of security breaches exposes significant gaps that could be exploited by would-be assassins, the document states, and erode "one of the best tools for deterring future attempts" -- the aura of invulnerability around the White House.

A Secret Service official confirmed the authenticity of the unclassified document, which was a 39-slide presentation, and said it had been used to train agents and officers in an effort to improve agency operations. "This document reflects a proactive attempt to evaluate our security and obviously raises the awareness of uniformed division officers and agents about their jobs," spokesman Edwin Donovan said. "We have to be concerned about the threats to our protectees at all times, whether at the White House or away from the White House."

Donovan noted that in 2008 alone, the agency successfully protected 34 top U.S. leaders and 222 U.N. General Assembly dignitaries, as well as some of the officials' spouses and relatives, at thousands of locations in the United States and abroad.

The agency is entering what it calls a sustained period of elevated "international, domestic and individual" threats, protecting Barack Obama, the country's first African American president, and its two most recent wartime leaders, former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney.

After the appearance at last month's state dinner by the Salahis, the Secret Service has launched a criminal investigation into the couple and a sweeping internal review of security procedures. Offering a rare public apology for the incident, the agency's director, Mark Sullivan, characterized it as a "pure and simple . . . case of human error" in which three uniformed officers let the well-dressed Salahis pass through gates on a rainy night without confirming their names on a guest list.

More at the link, and quite while quite troubling all around, Johanna Neumann is right about one thing. See, "White House Gatecrashers? So yesterday," with the obligatory SNL video:

It's too bad that NBC's comedy gets more attention the Obama administration's tragedy of errors.

Maybe the House Homeland Security probe will restore some seriousness here. From Garance Franke-Ruta, "Salahi subpoenas will be considered Wednesday."

Hopenhagen?

From Weasel Zippers, "UN Trying to Rebrand Copenhagen 'Hopenhagen' For Climate Change Conference ...":

It's not about hope, of course, it's about power.

At the Washington Post, "Obama administration will formally declare danger of carbon emissions." And from The Hill, "EPA's 'Endangerment finding' Expected Today":

EPA is expected to issue a formal finding today that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, which sets the stage for the agency to regulate the emissions under its existing power.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will make a “significant” announcement on climate change early this afternoon, according to EPA.

The Obama administration is pressing for a new law that would establish a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions from power plants and scores of other sources.

But the administration has also warned that it plans to move ahead with EPA rules absent a final bill. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is urging GOP colleagues to back an emissions bill in part because Congress, not EPA, should decide the contours of a national emissions program.

The so-called endangerment finding stems from a major 2007 Supreme Court decision that enables EPA to limit the emissions if it finds that greenhouses gases are indeed a danger. The agency issued a preliminary finding in April.

The EPA announcement could also give U.S. negotiators more leverage at the international climate talks in Copenhagen that begin today, demonstrating domestic action even though Congress has not completed a final bill to curb emissions.

It's all about power.

Michelle Malkin has more:

Eco-czars of the Obama administration, activate!

Form of…a corrupted “scientific” finding on greenhouse gas “public endangerment.”

Timed for maximum impact on the Copenhagen global warming treaty talks, the Obama EPA is set to announce that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, paving the way for the green bureaucrats to radically regulate emissions.

Keeping an open mind about dissenting researchers? Listening to input from the Hill? Screw them ...

See my previous entry as well, "People Before Profits? State Interests Top Agenda at Copenhagen."

More at Memeorandum.

People Before Profits? State Interests Top Agenda at Copenhagen

The Los Angeles Times reports that profit motives and state interests, the the Copenhagen climate talks, are winning out over more idealistic environmental concerns. See, "Copenhagen climate talks will hinge on economics":

When world leaders gather in Copenhagen today for negotiations on a new agreement to combat climate change, their success or failure will ride on economics, not environmental science.

Theoretically, the two-week conference will focus on measures to limit emissions of the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. But the major debates will center on money: How could emission limits affect major industries and the jobs they provide? How could a new climate treaty reshape the global economic playing field?

Those issues sharply divide some of the most important players at the conference, as they ponder the economic possibilities and pitfalls.

For China and nearly all of Europe, the issue offers tempting opportunities to expand industries and create jobs by developing and selling new technologies for wind, solar, nuclear and other low-emission energy. That is especially the case if there is a strong agreement to move away from the carbon-based energy sources that the world has depended on for more than a century.

Many of those nations, particularly China, devoted huge chunks of recent economic stimulus measures to low-emission energy technology.

"You're seeing a shift in developing countries," said Ned Helme, a climate policy veteran who is president of the Center for Clean Air Policy in Washington. "Rather than looking out and saying, 'How do we protect our old cement kilns?' they're looking forward to clean energy as their new market."

Meanwhile, the most immediate concern of nations such as the United States, Canada and India is the potential economic and political cost of imposing stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions -- particularly for their coal, oil and manufacturing industries.

For example, the Obama administration won more than $80 billion in stimulus spending to promote "clean energy." But its push to combat climate change and create "clean energy" jobs has been slowed by resistance from members of Congress who represent parts of the country that produce coal and oil or depend on those energy sources for power and manufacturing.

Tension between the possible winners and losers of a low-carbon energy future runs through every major negotiating topic, including how deeply individual nations will cut their emissions and how much richer countries are willing to spend to help poorer countries adopt cleaner energy sources and adapt to a warming world.

Should it be any surprise that great power interests -- in a world of independent sovereign states -- are jockeying for advantage in the very institutional regime that supposed to formalize greater global governance?

State interests will prevail in the end. And we may never see a treaty, or at least not a genuinely politcally binding one.

See also, Richard Harris, "For Public, Climate Change Not A Priority Issue," via Memeorandum. Also, from Gallup, "Top-Emitting Countries Differ on Climate Change Threat."

'A Date Which Will Live in Infamy' - December 7, 1941

From Andrew Malcolm post this morning, "How Pearl Harbor changed the U.S. 68 years ago today and what the president told a shocked nation":

Last week we had President Obama's less-than-rousing Afghanistan war speech, trying to have it both ways by dispatching more troops while promising a scheduled departure. And not once using the word "victory."

Today, coincidentally, is the 68th anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, where shortly the 44th president will fly with his family and White House entourage for a holiday vacation. Few Ticket readers will remember the shock that swept the country that quiet Sunday, not unlike 9/11 would do 60 years later. And the millions of lives affected by those events.

So here as a political refresher are two historic videos -- one about the actual attack itself by 350 planes from Imperial Japanese aircraft carriers more than 200 miles away.

Check the post for the videos.

I'm including the video that's strongest in my memory. I was nine years old when I say Tora! Tora! Tora! at the movies. It left an incredibly strong impression on me, still with me today. I'll never forget the end of the film, where Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto laments, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Whether a historically authentic statement or not, it certainly captures the trepidation of the Japanese when striking at the American nation, a people who are invincible when united in common purpose.

Wikipedia's enry for FDR's "Infamy Speech" is here.

Protesting (Against?) Copenhagen

The first image, from 2007, is from the Flickr page for the World Development Movement. The group's part of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, with some affiliates attending Copenhagen (emphasis added at the quote below):

The United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen run from Monday 7 – Friday 18 December. These have been heralded as critical talks in agreeing an international deal on climate change. However, at the moment they are increasingly seen as another way for rich counties to exert their power on developing countries and reinforce an economic system that is failing the world’s poorest people.

These shots are from the coalition's London rally this weekend:

More pictures at the Guardian's website, and the BBC's.

The Guardian's wire report is here, "Climate Change Protesters Take to London Streets"

Thousands of people calling for a deal on climate change at next week's United Nations conference in Copenhagen marched through central London on Saturday, encircling the Houses of Parliament in a human wave of blue-clad demonstrators.

London's Metropolitan Police said about 20,000 people joined the Stop Climate Chaos march, which began at Grosvenor Square and wound its way to the Parliament building on the River Thames. Organizers put the turnout at 40,000.

"We wanted to make a positive statement," said retired teacher Pip Cartwright, 72, from Witney southern England. "It's for the future. It's not my generation that's going to have the problem to solve."

The coalition, which includes groups such as Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the WWF, called the protest "The Wave," and organizers asked marchers to dress in blue. The march ended with a mass "wave" around Parliament. Thousands more people attended climate protests in Glasgow and Belfast, as well as in European cities including Brussels, Paris and Dublin.

The piece rightly addresses the Climategate scandal, but unfortunately adopts the tone of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who's quoted: "Prime Minister Gordon Brown told The Guardian newspaper that the world must not be distracted by 'behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-Earth climate skeptics'."

Right. "Flat-earthers."

Apparently, "Similar protests were staged in Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Dublin."

Der Spiegel reported earlier on the global left's program to incite Seattle-like conditions for Copenhagen, "Climate Change Summit Becomes a Target for Protest."

Is global warming the new globalization? Environmental activists are hoping that demonstrations at next month's climate summit in Denmark can forge a protest movement like the anti-globalization movement seen after the WTO riots in 1999. But the Danish authorities have other ideas.

If you missed Seattle, you won't want to miss Copenhagen. That, at least, is what Tadzio Müller, a political scientist and climate activist with Climate Justice Action -- a global network of activists and non-governmental organizations committed to combating climate change -- is telling people. The mass protest movement, he hopes, is turning green.

He won't have to wait long to see if he's right. In just two weeks, dozens of world leaders will gather in the Danish capital in an attempt to agree on a global deal to halt global warming. But with many politicians dragging their feet, pessimism that a binding agreement will be forged is growing.

Environmentalists would like to do what they can to turn up the pressure. And when it comes to demonstrations they plan to stage during the 11-day summit, optimism is as plentiful as CO2 emissions in the US. Leaders say they expect thousands, if not tens of thousands, to show up in support of what they call "fundamental" change in global emissions practices.

"We feel that right now in Copenhagen there is a real opportunity for things to come together a little bit like they did 10 years ago at the World Trade Organization protest in Seattle," Müller told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

The Danish police are preparing, notes this article:

We are ready," Mogens Lauridsen, head of operations at Copenhagen police, told AFP late Saturday.

"We have mobilised enough force from the entire kingdom to handle the heaviest task the modern police has ever been called upon to assume," he said.

"We have anticipated every contingency, including the worst. We are confident, but we expect excesses because there will surely be protesters looking for violence."

Yep, fundamentally anarchist, these folks are always looking for violence.

Of course, the fundamental stupidity of the protest organizers is inescapable. As Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy notes, at his entry, "Copenhagen: The Next Seattle?":

This seems like a very poor model to follow. First of all, the green movement doesn't need a "coming out party." It's basic arguments are publicly understood in a way that the anti-WTO protesters' issues weren't.

Second, Seattle-style tactics make sense if you're trying to prevent leaders from getting anything done, such as signing new free-trade agreements. But when it comes to carbon emissions, most environmentalists want leaders to reach an agreement. Demonstrations are certainly warranted, but turning Copenhagen into the kind of tear gas-filled battlefield that typically forms outside of trade talks these days is not exactly conducive to political progress.

Actually, these nihilists and Che wannabes are looking for "progress." The want to smash the state system and "imperialist oppression." And that's kind of absurd, since the folks on the inside are global totalitarians who want to bring about "social justice" nearly as much as the activists on the streets. It's a matter of method, really, and all hypocritically evil in the end - a collectivist campaign against the world's humanity.

'One Gift. A Thousand Fantasies': HOT Victoria's Secret Christmas Ad!

This is via Theo Spark, "One Gift. A Thousand Fantasies":

Plus, previously at American Power, "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2009," "Marisa Miller at Victoria's Secret Fashion Show!," and "Victoria's Secret Angel Boot Camp!"

Charles Johnson Descends to Banning LGF Visitors by Blocking ISP Addresses

I visit Little Green Footballs once in a while, mostly to get a look at the latest libel campaign Charles Johnson is waging against someone (today he's running yet another attack against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer). Recall that C.J. came out the other day, basically announcing that he's total flaming Rocky Horror fanboy leftist.

And this past few weeks, King Charles has been defending the IPCC scientists currently involved in one of greatest scientific scandal in decades. No surprise there, it turns out. But don't try to argue Climategate with the Lizard-Master, even by e-mail -- unless you're looking to get ISP-banned, like Lee Doren over at Right Wing News, "Could Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs Get More Absurd?" (with emphasis added):

Within the last two weeks, to help inform Charles about the data, I sent Charles a lecture from Richard Lindzen, Ph.D. M.I.T. Climatologist (a higher quality lecture with better sound will be uploaded next week), and earlier today I sent him phenomenal analysis from the American Thinker about what "Hide the Decline" actually means. I advise everyone to take a look at both.

Well, after sending Charles the American Thinker link this afternoon, I am now banned from Little Green Footballs.

No, I don't mean I cannot comment. I don't mean I cannot share links. I mean I cannot view his website. Instead, I get a 403 Forbidden page.

Evidently, sending Charles a lecture from a professor about climate science, during a week when he is writing about climate science, and a link about the tree ring data to explain what "hide the decline means," conflicts too much with his religious, yes religious, beliefs.

No doubt, Lee's not the first, but C.J.'s going pretty far to control the entire Internet prevent critics from repudiating his lies.

And a liar he is, it turns out that Charles Johnson was for climate skepticism before he was against it. Check Weasel Zippers, "Charles Johnson Shocked, SHOCKED to Learn There are Actually People Who Don't Believe in Man-Made Global Warming ....":

And this is something that's pretty common among ideological opportunists who've switched from (purportedly) right to left. Andrew Sullivan nearly lost all he had with the RawMuslGlutes scandal and his bareback licentiousness; and that's not to mention the demands that Sullivan be deported for criminal possession of controlled subtances (which but for his status as an Obama wannabe-squeeze would have resulted in his expulsion from the country).

There's also the piss-ant E.D. Kain, who possesses the moral backbone of a leech. In speaking about C.J.'s crazed machinations, E.D. suggested, "If you are honestly committed to conservative principles, you simply don’t abandon them because of the reasons Johnson lists." Ha, and that's coming from a guy who used to run a neoconservative blogging platform entitled "Neoconstant," but who burned all his bridges to the writers he recruited there when he developed a man-crush on Andrew Sullivan himself!

The ridicule just writes itself!

It's just obvious that this kind of pathological deceit is routine among the ideological invertebrates who've slithered over to the left, or who just wormed their way back to familiar ground after a period of rank political duplicity.

Either way, these are just really bad people.

Antiwar 'Conservatism'

Reihan Salam has an interesting piece at the left-wing Daily Beast, "The New Anti-War Right."

It's a political analysis of congressional support for the administration's troop surge. Salam notes that while President Obama is under fire from the Democrats' radical base, real foreign policy trouble is likely to emerge from a drop in GOP support for the mission in Afghanistan. Here's a key passage:

Throughout the long presidential campaign, Barack Obama called for winding down the American presence in Iraq to focus on the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, so there is no sense the president is pulling a foreign policy bait-and-switch. But among Democrats, and particularly left-of-center Democrats, there is a pervasive sense that the Obama administration has proved too cautious and centrist on domestic issues. That means there is less willingness to give the president the benefit of the doubt on waging an expensive counterinsurgency, particularly as many of the left’s domestic priorities could well be sacrificed on the altar of deficit reduction.

And so the president is caught in an extremely awkward position. Abandoned by the Democrats, he is relying on the support of a shrinking centrist foreign-policy establishment that, to put it bluntly, has zero political muscle. The conservatives who back the troop surge don’t think the president is going far enough, and most expect that his effort to craft a compromise counterinsurgency will fail. Among grassroots conservatives, there is a growing sense that the U.S. military is too hamstrung by concern about civilian casualties and political correctness to wage an effective military campaign under Obama, which implies that there is little point in offering him political support.

I noticed Salam's article the other day, and had some thoughts about it then, but let them go -- and looking it over now, I disagree with his charaterization of the foreign policy debte on the war. More important is this developing notion of antiwar commentators who claim to be "conservative" (but who end up giving aid and comfort to our enemies); and Daniel Larison was the first to come to mind.

So, no surprise, he's got a totally predicable essay on this now. See, "This 'New Anti-War Right' is Pro-War and Wrong." Checking the entry, we see the classic Larison mindless oppose-war-at-all-costs defeatism. He takes issue with Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, who is calling for a troop redeployment. Chaffetz, saying "go big, or go home," decries a war fought amid the consraints of political correctness. He writes, "our presence in Afghanistan does nothing more than endanger our troops, compromise our readiness, and waste our money."

Larison revolts, nonetheless. As he writes at the post:

Critics of the Afghanistan plan such as Chaffetz want to make Afghanistan into a shooting gallery and call it peace. In this way, they can still pretend that they take national security and strategy questions seriously, when they are just reverting to a default position of advocating less restraint, more force and greater indifference to the moral and strategic consequences of our actions. As Chaffetz’s later remarks on Iran make clear, this is not someone interested in reducing the strain on our military or reducing unnecessary risks to American soldiers, as he actively calls for military action that will greatly strain and endanger all of our forces in the Gulf and central Asia. Neither does he give any hint of thinking strategically about how distastrous an Iranian war would be for U.S. and allied interests.

There's more at the post, disgusting as that may be. What's interesting, reading Larison, is that there's little difference between his natterings (despite his claims to "conservatism") and those of the extremist hardliners on the radical left, folks like Code Pink, who have long provided material support to militants on the ground in America's ongoing deployments -- terrorists who are killing U.S. troops:

Larison sits right along with radicals like Justin Raimondo, who likes to spend time with the America-destroying communists World Can't Wait, International ANSWER, and Cindy Sheehan. Indeed, Larison publishes at Raimondo's hate-filled anti-American portal, Antiwar.com.

And that's the thing, hatred of America's forward role in the world ties radical ideologues together, whether they claim to reside on the left or right. The outcome is the same: An American defeat overseas and greater danger to Americans at home.

The fundamental question, always, is what are our interests in Afghanistan? As I've noted many times here, and as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has argued, "if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan."

And THAT is the conservative position. All the rest, from Larison over to Jodie Evans, Cynthia McKinney, Brian Becker, and E.D. Kain, is a program for leftist revolution. And it should be resisted.

Well, actually, there are some genuine conservatives calling for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and they're folks like Representative Chaffetz who're sick and tired of the dithering administration, and who rightly know that President Obama cares only about his own reelection, not American national security or the fate of our fighting forces. These are folks like Pamela Geller and Ralph Peters, both who have argued to bring the troops home, absent a real military strategy of fighting to kill.

And that, of course, is exactly what so-called antiwar conservatives -- like their buddies on the radical left -- just can't stomach.

Image Credit: Ace of Spades HQ and Don Surber.

Danes Among World's Top Consumers: But, Taxed So Much They Can't Afford Hybrids; Copenhagen's Caviar-Chomping Delegates Won't Tell You That!

From the Los Angeles Times, "Denmark's green credentials obscure some unpleasant facts":

Though lauded for adopting wind power, its high recycling rate and its progressive policies, Denmark generates the most waste per capita in the EU and most of its energy still comes from coal.

Something is rotting in the state of Denmark. Lots of things, actually, and it's a bit of an embarrassment for this Scandinavian nation as it prepares to host a widely anticipated global environmental summit this week.

Denmark is proud of its image as one of the greenest countries in the world; it's probably why it was chosen as the site of the 15th United Nations Conference on Climate Change.

But beneath the gloss lurk some inconvenient truths, including the fact that, pound for pound, Denmark produces more trash per capita than any other country in the 27-member European Union.

The Danes tossed out 1,762 pounds of garbage per person in 2007, the latest year for which EU-wide statistics are available. That's more than the Dutch (1,386 pounds), the Brits (1,258) and the French (1,190); a lot more than the Greeks (986); and double the Lithuanians (880).

It even surpasses the Americans (1,690 pounds), who are often held up as the boogeyman of heedless, needless consumption. By the numbers, Denmark is one of the most wasteful -- in both senses of the term -- societies in the world.

To be fair, the Danes are far more eco-friendly in terms of what they do with all that rubbish. A good portion of it is gardening waste, rather than soda cans and the like. Recycling rates are extremely high, and enormous incinerators around the country don't just burn trash but convert it into energy. About 5% of garbage ends up in landfills, compared with 54% in the United States.

But, critics say, there has been no sustained push here to cut down the volume of trash at its source.

Plus, from the Telegraph U.K., "Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges":

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".

I've highligted that part about taxes being too high for citizens to afford hybred vehicles? That's a look at our future under an Obama-Copenhagen-U.N. cap-and-trade regime.

That's not something the radical left doesn't want you to know, of course.

And Glenn Reynolds adds, "I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis."

Photo Credit: "Panoramic view of Middlesbrough," Wikipedia.

**********

UPDATE: Blue Crab Boulevard links, "Limos, Private Jets, Caviar, Hookers."

Sixth Tiger Woods Floozy Alleged!

I saw the news at Chicago Ray's, "Fourth Tiger Woods mistress to come forward: report." This is Jamie Jungers, a very young-looking woman. She's the alleged fourth mistress:

But the New York Daily News says the tab of hotties is up to six. See, "Cori Rist, Jamie Jungers and Mindy Lawson make it six alleged Tiger Woods mistresses":

Three more women say they have played a round with Tiger.

Two more blonds and a brunette were added to Tiger Woods' sultry scorecard Saturday - bringing the married father of two to six over par on his betrayed supermodel wife.

Sources told the Daily News that Manhattan clubgoer Cori Rist, 31, is yet another blond beauty who has hit the sheets with Tiger.

A Las Vegas cocktail waitress and aspiring model - Jamie Jungers - became the fifth woman linked to the golf pro Saturday.

Jungers, 26, reportedly hired an Orlando lawyer and prepared to dish her story to a British tabloid, RadarOnline.com reports.

Jungers wasn't the only Orlando woman to come out of the deep rough.

A sixth bedmate surfaced last night - a brunette who reportedly romped with Woods in a church parking lot and in his Florida mansion while his then-pregnant wife was away from home.

Mindy Lawton told the British tabloid The News of the World she carried on a year-long affair with Woods that began in the spring of 2006.

The bimbos are erupting so fast that the tabloids can't keep up. RadarOnline is still at four hotties this morning, "EXCLUSIVE SEXY PHOTOS: All Of Tiger's Women." TMZ, normally way out front on the gossip beat, is posting bikini shots of Jamee Grubbs, who's apparently the second woman to come out. See, "Tiger Wood's Alleged Mistress Kills."

And from yesterday, "4th Alleged Tiger Woods Mistress Lawyers Up" -- on Jamie Jungers, I guess? Whew! Hard to keep up. Lots more on this at WeSmirch.

Tiger's supposed to be making payoffs to some of these floozies, but he better save some money for his huge divorce settlement. I'm still scratching my head, in any case. Why, after all? See, CelebBuzz, "This is what Tiger Woods cheated on. (photos)":"

UPDATE: Linked at Carolyn's Closet, "I Guess I'm Just 'Out of Step'."

Global Warming Fraud an Attack on Humanity

Okay, there's obviously a whole bunch of stuff on the Copenhagen convention, which starts tomorrow.

President Obama has changed his schedule to attend the event later in the week. It's an patent attempt to salvage a treaty, but news reports of the schedule change conveniently omitted mention of the Climategate scandal. From yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "Obama to Join Climate Summit on its Final Day." And the Associated Press, "Climate Drama Climax Looks Elusive in Copenhagen" (via Glenn Reynolds).

I'm confident that the tide is turning against the global warming industry, although it's like any political fight, and like few other issues, the global warming debate pits left and right in a manichean battle for the future and soul of humanity. But the mask of deceit is really coming off the global left, as Alan Caruba argues, in "The Global Warming Bulldozer":

To those who think that the revelations about the massive international fraud called “global warming”, now called “climate change”, will deter the efforts of those who have devoted years and millions to convince the public that drastic measures must be taken to “save the Earth”, let me put you straight on that topic.

A vast Green bulldozer of propaganda will be let loose upon everyone watching television, reading newspapers and magazines, or visiting websites in order to smear those standing up against this juggernaut of foundations, environmental organizations, government agencies, and the central organizer of the fraud, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A legion of “science” and other reporters will do everything in their power to “explain” the many emails between the perpetrators of the “global warming” fraud and to repeat the lies that underwrite the passage of laws such as “cap-and-trade” and the Obamacare legislation, both of which are a dagger aimed at the heart of the American economy.

The good news is that it will not work.

The day before Thanksgiving, the Global Warming Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA, Damon Moglen, issued a statement:

“In a statement today, the Obama administration announced that the President will attend the international climate talks in Copenhagen on December 9th…more than a week before international leaders will arrive to show their commitment to shaping an ambitious and comprehensive climate deal,” said Moglen.

“The administration’s announcement proposed the same inadequate emissions targets that were included in the House-passed climate legislation. By taking his cues from a Congress heavily influenced by the fossil fuel industry, Obama continues to shirk domestic and international leadership on climate policy.”

Lies! The Greenpeace “attack” on President Obama is a subterfuge to distract everyone from the FACT that so-called greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, have nothing to do with the equally bogus “global warming.” More to the point, the Earth has been cooling for the past decade!

And you notice the Daily Kos headline above. I've been around academic and blogging debates for a while, but the sheer willful blindness on the left is staggering. Here's the post, "Seas to Rise 4.6 feet by 2100 as Antarctic Melt Quickens."

And the source for that hysteria? Well, the U.K.'s Scientific Committee on Antartic Research, "Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment." And as the Kos diarist points out, "

Accelerated glacial melting will cause sea levels to rise 1.4 meters - 4.6 feet - by 2100, a much greater rise than the IPCC forecast, according to a massive new report on Antarctic Climate Change.

Boy, that's ominous. And notice how "Antarctic Climate Change" capitalized, kinda like the "Great Depression" or the "Middle Ages," historical markers of which there's little doubt.

Not so, of course, with global warming, hence the fearmongering and epic drama.

In any case, check Charlie Martin, "Fast Facts About Climategate: A one-stop source for information about the biggest scientific scandal in a century." Plus, Marc Sheppard, "Understanding Climategate's Hidden Decline":

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an email in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, 17 days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history.

As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for tomorrow’s UN climate meeting, intent on changing the world as we know it based primarily on their now exposed trickery. Add yesterday’s announcement of a UN investigation into the matter, which will no doubt be no less corrupt than those being investigated, and public awareness of how and why that trick was performed is now more vital than ever.

So please allow me to explain in what I hope are easily digestible terms.

Read the whole thing, a quite digestible summary of the epic fraud perpetuate by the leftists climate industry.

And now for a little roundup:

Air Vent, "Shaken."

American Digest, "Global Disastrification (Global Warming Climategate makes this threat #1!)."

Astute Bloggers, "BRRRRRRR! RECORD COLD NOVEMBER IN HONG KONG!"

Blazing Cat Fur, "ClimateDepot - your one-stop source for all things ClimateGate."

Chicks on the Right, "A Global Warming Alarmist Complains About Meanness From Skeptics, Proceeds To Call Skeptic An A$$hole."

Conservative Guy Caught in a Lefty State, "The Climate-Change Travesty."

Copious Dissent, "Richard Lindzen Lecture."

DaTech Guy, "The President's Late Arrival in Copenhagen…"

Don Surber, "New York Times hides the decline."

Gateway Pundit, "Climategate Junk Scientist Calls Skeptic A**Hole Live on TV (Video)."

Fausta, "Obama heading to Copenhagen on conference’s last day."

Fishersville Mike, "Snowy sunrise in Fishersville."

Green Hell, "NY Times Watchdog Whitewashes Climategate."

Hall of Record, "The Climate Elephant In The Room."

Hot Air, "Brown: AGW skeptics are “flat-Earthers”."

Jim Treacher, "Presented without comment."

John Lott, "Climate Gate Scandal spreads to New Zealand."

Kenneth G. Davenport, "Ahhhnold channels Al Gore."

Nice Deb, "Day 13 Of Climategate Scandal; ABC, CBS, NBC Still AWOL."

Noel Sheppard, "ClimateGate: UK Weather Service to Re-examine 160 Years of Data."

Patriot Room, "UN climate chief: hacked e-mails did serious damage."

Pirate's Cove, "About That Melting Mt. Kilamanjaro? Gore Pwnd."

Protein Wisdom, "The Larch."

Power Line, "Dilbert on Global Warming."

RBO, "ClimateGate: Fiddling with Facts."

Snooper's Report, "On The Climaquiddick Street On a Saturday."

Stone Cold Haven, "Free Sex for Copenhagen Conference Delegates."

Voting Female Speaks!, "Climategate bigger than Watergate; Al Gore’s Credibility is Permanently Destroyed."

Watts Up With That, "The Weekly Standard: Scientists Behaving Badly."

Zipline Conservative, "Leftist Manipulation for Momentum and ‘Change’."

As always, leave your Climategate posts in the comments and I'll update, or send me an e-mail.