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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (72311)	6/9/2009 3:23:28 AM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

The Collapsing Global Left By Bruce Walker American Thinker Conservatives can take heart from the crushing blow that taxes and spenders received in the California election. Six propositions were on the ballot in May. All six passed the California Legislature easily. Republicans in the legislature generally opposed them. The five supported by the Left were defeated by huge landslides. Four of those five were defeated in every single county in California (the fifth barely carried the San Francisco area.) The proposition to limit legislative salaries while the state ran a deficit, however, carried every county in California and won 75% of the vote across the state. Was this a victory for conservatives? It was in this sense: It was a crushing defeat of the Left. Other elections in May brought more gloomy news for the Left and enemies of the West. India held elections in mid-May. Polls showed that the Left might well win control of the Indian Government. Instead, the ruling Congress Party won a sweeping victory, which is very good news for the United States. At the same time, the Kuwaiti people were casting votes for their parliament. The big story was that four women were elected to the parliament, two of whom were educated in America – and they were elected by an overwhelmingly male electorate. The lesser story was that non-religious political parties – political parties that look more like what a party in Holland or Canada would look like – finally gained a majority in the Kuwaiti Parliament. Western pluralism is taking root in the most Islamic parts of the world. It is taking place because of America. June brought even more terrible news for the Left. England held regional elections. The Labour Party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is bland, staid Leftism. An exception example of its almost casual Leftism was the decision of the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to include conservative talk show host Michael Savage on a list of the twenty-two undesirables too hateful to enter the United Kingdom. The minister responsible for that Orwellian action is out of the cabinet now (though more because her husband charged his personal porn purchases as a government expense.) The Labour Party, in many ways, is the oldest Leftist party in the world. It is certainly one of the most significant. Under the sunny smile and glib words of Tony Blair, Labour did pretty well. But not now. The government of Great Britain is in free fall. The Labour Party has the confidence of practically no one. Polls for the last several years have shown that if the general election were held today, the Labour Party would be swept from power. It is even conceivable that Labour, after the next election, will be only the third largest party in the House of Commons. The mere fact that Brown has not called a general election, when practically no one believes in his ability to govern, is a disgrace to the parliamentary system. Another disgrace – a big one – popped up a few weeks before the June 5, 2009 elections. Members of Parliament were caught in the same sort of personal abuse of the government parliamentary administration that the United States House of Representatives was caught doing twenty years ago in the House Banking Scandal. Labour Party members sinned, but so did Conservative MPs and others. How would the British people react? The results were breathtaking in their scope. The Conservative Party, which already controlled most of the local councils in England, gained control of seven more local councils. Tories won 30 of the 34 councils up for election. The number of Conservative Party local council members in England, which already was greater than Labour, increased dramatically. Most democracies and Britain is no exception. Although Labour was the big loser, the next largest party, the Liberal Party, lost seats too. The voters of England, who in 2008 local elections had already given Conservatives a big victory, gave Conservatives in 2009 an even more sweeping victory. A couple of days later, Britons went to the polls again, this time to elect members to the European Parliament. The Conservative Party won more seats than any other party, and other conservative parties like the Independence Party and British National Party scored dramatic gains. The results were a clear restatement by the British people that the Right, not the Left, should be governing them. What happened in Britain happened across Europe. Angela Merkel in the September 2009 election appeared certain to be able to form a Right-Center government with its Free Democrat Party, and end the Right-Left coalition government she heads now. Every poll for several years has shown that result. State elections in Hesse earlier this year showed that. Now, the European Parliament elections show that too. The Social Democrats, the primary party of the German Left, received an historically low 21% of the vote. Across the width and breadth of Europe, the more conservative political parties were drubbing the parties of the Left. It means in a few months, every major nation in Europe will have a political party of the Right in power. Europe is not having a Reagan Revolution or even a Thatcher Revolution. But Europe is giving the Left an F- on its electoral report card, Does the smashing victory of the Conservative Party, and these other victories mean that the democratic world is suddenly embracing our conservative principles? No: not at all. But does it mean that voters, almost everywhere they can vote, are rejecting the message of the Left? Yes. Real conservatism is not winning elections yet; but the Left is clearly losing. American voters are bombarded by their media with the message that conservatism is dead, because a Democrat got 52 perecent of the presidential vote. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Left proceeds apace elsewhere in the world. Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity. americanthinker.com

To: Sully- who wrote (72311)	8/20/2009 12:18:18 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 90947

NOAA: More tropical storms counted due to better observational tools, wider reporting. Greenhouse warming not involved. As I’ve been saying for some time when it comes to the imagined link between AGW and more tornadoes – there is none. I blame Super Mega Doppler StormTracker 7000 HD. It seems the lead scientist at NHC agrees that our new weather toys make a difference in seeing what we would not have noticed before. From NOAA NEWS – Study: Better Observations, Analyses Detecting Short-Lived Tropical Systems August 11, 2009 A NOAA-led team of scientists has found that the apparent increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes since the late 19th and early 20th centuries is likely attributable to improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques that better detect short-lived storms. High resolution (Credit: NOAA) The new study, reported in the online edition of the American Meteorological Society’s peer-reviewed Journal of Climate, shows that short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes, defined as lasting two days or less, have increased from less than one per year to about five per year from 1878 to 2008. “The recent jump in the number of short-lived systems is likely a consequence of improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques,” said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, and lead author on the study. “The team is not aware of any natural variability or greenhouse warming-induced climate change that would affect the short-lived tropical storms exclusively.” Several storms in the last two seasons, including 2007’s Andrea, Chantal, Jerry and Melissa and 2008’s Arthur and Nana, would likely not have been considered tropical storms had it not been for technology such as satellite observations from NASA’s Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT), the European ASCAT (Advanced SCATterometer) and NOAA’s Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), as well as analysis techniques such as the Florida State University’s Cyclone Phase Space. “We do not dispute that these recent systems were tropical storms,” said Landsea. “In fact, the National Hurricane Center’s ability to monitor these weaker, short-lived storms provides better warnings to mariners of gale force winds and high seas.” According to Dr. Brian Soden, a professor at the University of Miami’s Rosentiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, “The study provides strong evidence that there has been no systematic change in the number of north Atlantic tropical cyclones during the 20th century.” Co-authors Gabriel Vecchi and Thomas Knutson, both of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, developed a sampling methodology to measure whether meteorologists missed medium- to long-lived tropical storms and hurricanes from the late 1800s through the 1950s. They found that about two of the medium- to long-lived storms per year were unaccounted for in the late 1800s. By the 1950s, forecasters missed less than one per year. When the researchers discounted the number of short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes and added the estimated number of missed medium- to long-lived storms to the historical hurricane data, they found no significant long-term trend in the total number of storms... wattsupwiththat.com tigerhawk.blogspot.com