ConservativeChristianRepublican-Report - 20100303

Motivational-Inspirational-Historical-Educational-Political-Enjoyable

Promoting "God's Holy Values and American Freedoms"!



"Daily Motivations"

"We must get good at one of two things: planting in the spring or begging in the fall." -- Jim Rohn

"One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life." -- Anatole France

"Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things." -- Eric Butterworth



"Daily Devotions" (KJV and/or NLT)

Christ has really set us free. (Galatians 5:1)

Our society has tried to cleanse itself from guilt by removing the Ten Commandments from our public schools, building and courts so that no one will be reminded of breaking them. Those who sin try to rationalize all kinds of behavior by blaming it on their background, circumstances, a parent or a spouse. Furthermore, society says, "It's not your fault."

Yet psychiatrists' couches are filled up with so many guilt-ridden people. Why? Because we are all born in bondage to sin and guilt, and only God can break those bonds. Only He can break the chains of bad habits and addictions.

Nick Smith, a 17-year-old who participated in a "Right From Wrong" campaign understood this principle. By attending the meetings, he prepared himself ahead of time to make godly decisions. While he was at an out-of-town track meet, he discovered several teammates glued to a less-than-wholesome movie. He had two choices: to follow the biblical guidelines he had learned or to go along with his friends.

Not only did Nick resist the temptation, he also influenced another young man to do the same. Together, they both walked away. If you turn your temptations over to God and trust in His power, He will help you step out of that pile of chains.

Paul writes in Romans 6:22, "Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life." In Jesus we can live freely and joyfully.

Your View of God Really Matters …

Have you been trying to fix yourself? Has it worked? Turn to God and saturate your mind and heart with His truth. Let Him change you from inside.



"The Patriot Post"

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Thomas Jefferson

"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country." --George Washington, address to the New York legislature, 1775



Editorial Exegesis

"Professional global warming alarmists better think about looking for new jobs. It looks like they're in for a long, cold winter -- and a frigid spring and summer as well. Those who've been spreading global-warming fears must be waking up each morning anxd asking themselves: What's going to happen today? A new revelation about the corruption of climate science has become almost a daily event. On Thursday, the U.K.'s Telegraph reported that India was pulling out of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and forming its own agency to study global warming. Why? Because the Indian government feels it can't depend on the IPCC's work. And why should it? The concerns about the IPCC's accuracy are justified. ... Compounding the headaches for warm-mongers is a probe being launched by the British Parliament into the Climate Research Unit e-mail scandal. The inquiry is intended 'to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.' This isn't terribly fresh news, having been announced on Jan. 22 by Parliament. But news that casts doubt on global warming tends to move slowly, if at all, in the U.S. media. If not for the foreign press, the inquiry would be virtually unknown in this country. That 2007 report helped the IPCC win a share of the Nobel Prize. But its work is looking less credible by the day. Can any of its claims be trusted? Its authors -- who merely compiled others' work and did no research of their own -- sure haven't inspired confidence in their work. In fact, their blunders are quickly pushing the global warming farce toward a grand collapse." --Investor's Business Daily



Upright

"The Left doesn't want to govern, it wants to rule.... The Left is not about principles. It is about itself. It is about power. Now that President Obama has been politically weakened, look for the mask to come back on. The words of sweet reason, the entreaties to 'make a deal,' and feigned affection will now make a surprise reappearance. When the Left cannot rule, it will try to govern. Until the next time." --columnist Richard Fernandez

"Republicans' objection to national health care could be more accurately portrayed as follows: Obama's plan to nationalize health care was a terrible idea because it would turn over one-sixth of the American economy to Washington bureaucrats, who would run the system as competently as the federal government runs everything else, from airport security to the post office to FEMA." --columnist Ann Coulter

"The fate of ObamaCare is starting to have something of the feel of a Greek tragedy. We are not superstitious, but [Rep. Jack] Murtha's death as the result of medical error at a government-run hospital is certainly an eerie coincidence." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

"Today's tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest. Since the 1986 tax simplification, the code has been recomplicated more than 14,000 times -- more than once a day." --columnist George Will

"Obama's budget points to a dismal future in which half of the country subsists on welfare while the other half receives a paycheck for processing welfare claims in the federal bureaucracy." --columnist Jeffrey Folks

"In the first post-primary Rasmussen survey in Illinois for the Senate seat briefly held by President Obama, the Republican Mark Kirk 'holds a modest 46% to 40% lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias.' How embarrassing, how debilitating, would it be if Democrats were to lose Obama's U.S. Senate seat?" --political analyst Rich Galen

"Americans rightly believe that we can build anything that needs building and fix anything that is broken. And, that we can do that by living out our nation's founding principles and values: constitutional government, respect for private property and life, a free market -- and the gumption of hard-working, inventive Americans." --columnist Tony Blankley



Insight

"We can't reduce taxes until we reduce government spending, and I have to point out that government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always needs the money it gets." --Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

"[T]here is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back." --General Robert E. Lee (1807-1872)



Dezinformatsia

A label to embrace: "President Obama [is] on the offensive. He has challenged Republicans to a kind of political truth or dare, a meeting February 25 broadcast on TV to discuss health care reform so the country can decide whether Republicans want action or are just the 'Party of No'?" --ABC's Diane Sawyer (As if saying "No" to socialism is a bad thing...)

Pot and kettle? "A Palin campaign would certainly be different: Appearing before friendly crowds, using Facebook and Twitter to control the message, not answering tough questions." --NBC's Andrea Mitchell (Sounds strikingly similar to the Obama campaign.)

That must be it: "Is Barack Obama just too complex for voters to figure out?" --New York Times columnist Richard Stevenson

World's smallest violin: "Where are they going to go, the Left? Where, actually, are the Left going to go? They may be disaffected.." --former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown (How about communist China?)

It's called national security: "President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. Unfortunately, the president has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan." --White House press corpse reporter Helen Thomas



"The Web"

ADF seeks to appeal conviction of NY Christian arrested while praying

N.Y. court exonerated three other Christians wrongly convicted of ‘disorderly conduct’ at 2007 ‘gay pride’ event

http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/3816

ALBANY, N.Y. — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys have submitted an application to appeal the state’s conviction of a Christian arrested while praying in an Elmira public park during a 2007 ‘gay pride’ event. The status of the appeal is now in the hands of state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals. Earlier this month, a New York county court dismissed the convictions of three other Christians arrested and charged after praying at the same event.

“Christians shouldn’t be punished for expressing their religious beliefs. It’s ridiculous to consider the act of peacefully exercising one’s faith in a public park to be ‘disorderly conduct,’” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster. “The county court was correct in dismissing three of the convictions. They never should have happened. We are hopeful that the New York Court of Appeals will dismiss the fourth.”

On June 23, 2007, seven Christians, including Julian and Gloria Raven, entered Wisner Park in Elmira with their heads bowed to pray for the participants of the “gay pride” event. Materials advertising the event stated that it was open to the public and that all were invited.

The group made their way to an area in front of the stage and began to pray silently while lying prostrate in the grass. A police sergeant had earlier informed Julian Raven that he could not enter the public park, walk through the park, or talk to anyone in the park about his religion. After the group began to pray silently on their faces, all were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

In 2008, the Elmira City Court found all four defendants guilty of disorderly conduct. Additionally, each was charged a $100 fine and ordered to pay court costs.

Attorney Laurence Behr of Buffalo is serving as local counsel in the case, People of the State of New York v. Raven.

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.



Morning Bell: “The American Public Is Not Behind This Bill”

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/02/morning-bell-the-american-public-is-not-behind-this-bill/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

After more than a year of $862 billion dollar deficit stimulus bills, national-debt-doubling federal budgets, and government takeovers of the auto industry, it is difficult to remember that President Barack Obama actually ran as a moderate in many ways. On his way to a 53% – 46% win over Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), then-Sen. Obama promised to “cut taxes for 95% of workers and their families,” expand the Army by 65,000 and the Marines by 27,000, and enact “a net spending cut” for the federal government. Obama promised lower taxes, a strong defense and shrinking the size of government. No wonder independents in nine states that went for President George Bush in 2000 and 2004 switched their vote to Obama in 2008 (CO, FL, IN, IA, NV, NM, NC, OH and VA). But now those independents are beginning to reassess. Public Policy Polling (a liberal polling firm) notes that Obama now has a negative approval rating in every state that he flipped from the Bush column to his in 2008.

And now President Obama has lost one of his biggest and earliest supporters on his signature issue: health care. Yesterday, when pressed on CNBC if he would be in favor of scrapping the Senate health care bill, Warren Buffett responded: “I would be.” Specifically, Buffett believes that the Senate bill will not contain health care costs: “We have a health system that, in terms of cost, is really out of control, and if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So, we need something else. Unfortunately, we came up with a bill that really doesn’t attack the cost situation that much and we have to have a fundamental change.” Buffett is correct on both fronts: 1) the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has reported that the Senate health care bill would raise national health expenditures $234 billion by 2019; and 2) our current system is completely unable to control exploding health care costs.

So why is our current system completely unable to control costs? For the same reason most Americans over-eat at buffets: when you don’t have to pay for each plate of food, you usually eat more. In recent decades, the percentage of health care spending paid “out of pocket” by patients has fallen substantially, from 52% in 1965 to only 15% in 2005. Instead of patients paying for the care they receive, our system is built around a third-party payment system where the government and insurance companies are the ones who actually pay for individual medical expenses. When prices are determined through administrative procedures rather than market processes, both patients and producers are anesthetized from normal market incentives to reduce prices and spending. That is why our health care costs are rising so rapidly.

And every major pillar of Obamacare makes the third-party-payer problem worse: mandates that limit out-of-pocket spending by patients, mandates that extend the minimum benefits insurance must cover, a massive expansion of Medicaid, and lower limits on the tax deductibility of out-of-pocket spending. And the one measure that the left once pointed to as its key cost-reducing measure – the taxing of expensive health insurance plans – has been gutted and pushed back until 2018, when any honest observer knows it will never be implemented. Commenting on the state of health care reform, Buffet told CNBC yesterday:

If it was a choice today between plan A, which is what we’ve got, or plan B, what is in front of — the Senate bill, I would vote for the Senate bill. But I would much rather see a plan C that really attacks costs. And I think that’s what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill. And we need the American public behind the bill, because it’s going to have to do some tough things.

The current system is unsustainable. We do need heath care reform. But not reform that is opposed by the vast majority of the American people and makes the core problem of the current system worse. The President should follow Buffett’s advice, scrap the current bill and start over.



STEYN: Our own Greek tragedy

Mark Steyn

While President Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care "summit," thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter 20 (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter 17 or 18.

What's happening in the developed world today isn't so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they've reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1, or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids - i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 "lowest-low" fertility - the point from which no society has ever recovered. And compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.

So you can't borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don't have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when 10 grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?

By the way, you don't have to go to Greece to experience Greek-style retirement: The Athenian "public service" of California has been metaphorically face-down in the ouzo for a generation. Still, America as a whole is not yet Greece. A couple of years ago, when I wrote my book "America Alone," I put the Social Security debate in a bit of perspective: On 2005 figures, projected public pensions liabilities were expected to rise by 2040 to about 6.8 percent of GDP. In Greece, the figure was 25 percent. In other words, head for the hills, Armageddon, outta here, The End. Since then, the situation has worsened in both countries. And really the comparison is academic: Whereas America still has a choice, Greece isn't going to have a 2040 - not without a massive shot of Reality Juice.

Is that likely to happen? At such moments, I like to modify Gerald Ford. When seeking to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences, President Ford liked to say: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Which is true enough. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give you everything you want isn't big enough to get you to give any of it back. That's the point Greece is at. Its socialist government has been forced into supporting a package of austerity measures. The Greek people's response is: Nuts to that. Public sector workers have succeeded in redefining time itself: Every year, they receive 14 monthly payments. You do the math. And for about seven months' work - for many of them the workday ends at 2:30 p.m. When they retire, they get 14 monthly pension payments. In other words: Economic reality is not my problem. I want my benefits. And, if it bankrupts the entire state a generation from now, who cares as long as they keep the checks coming until I croak?

We hard-hearted, small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. But, as the Greek protests make plain, nothing makes an individual more selfish than the socially equitable communitarianism of big government. Once a chap's enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest. He's got his, and to hell with everyone else. People's sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense.

The perfect spokesman for the entitlement mentality is the deputy prime minister of Greece. The European Union has concluded that the Greek government's austerity measures are insufficient and, as a condition of bailout, has demanded something more robust. Greece is no longer a sovereign state: It's General Motors, and the EU is Washington, and the Greek electorate is happy to play the part of the United Auto Workers - everything's on the table except anything that would actually make a difference. In practice, because Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland are also on the brink of the abyss, a "European" bailout will be paid for by Germany. So the aforementioned Greek deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, has denounced the conditions of the EU deal on the grounds that the Germans stole all the bullion from the Bank of Greece during the Second World War. Welfare always breeds contempt, in nations as much as inner-city housing projects. How dare you tell us how to live! Just give us your money and push off.

Unfortunately, Germany is no longer an economic powerhouse. As Angela Merkel pointed out a year ago, for Germany, an Obama-sized stimulus was out of the question simply because its foreign creditors know there are not enough young Germans around ever to repay it. Over 30 percent of German women are childless; among German university graduates, it's over 40 percent. And for the ever dwindling band of young Germans who make it out of the maternity ward, there's precious little reason to stick around. Why be the last handsome blond lederhosen-clad Aryan lad working the late shift at the beer garden in order to prop up singlehandedly entire retirement homes? And that's before the EU decides to add the Greeks to your burdens. Germans, who retire at 67, are now expected to sustain the unsustainable 14 monthly payments per year for Greeks who retire at 58.

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still just about functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn't pay. You'll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of "the rich" to fund the entitlement state, because in the end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they've run out Greeks, so they'll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

Mark Steyn is the author of the New York Times best-seller "America Alone" (Regnery, 2006).



G.O.P. Aims for California, but Rifts Arise

Pablo Martinez Monsivias/Associated Press

Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democrat, is expected to face a tough re-election fight.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/us/politics/02senate.html?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema1

BURBANK, Calif. — If Republicans are to have a serious chance of capturing control of the Senate in November, they are going to have to win in traditionally Democratic states like California, where Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democrat, is showing signs of vulnerability.

Multimedia - Interactive Map - 2010 Election Ratings

Assemblyman Charles S. DeVore, far left; Tom Campbell, a former congressman; and Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard executive, are competing for the right to challenge Mrs. Boxer.

But before Republicans get a clear shot at Mrs. Boxer, they will have to overcome deep divisions within their own party — divides that reflect both the grass-roots energy surging through the conservative movement and the tensions between the party’s moderate and conservative wings.

There are certainly more vulnerable Democratic Senate seats in the country, but early polls in California suggest that Mrs. Boxer is facing what could be the toughest election of her career. Her difficulties in a state that has for 20 years proved reliably Democratic in national elections suggests how the pendulum has swung against Democrats in just a year. Her potential problems are a function more of this political climate than of any position or vote she has taken.

Still, for Republicans, this could end up being a repeat of a play they have seen before: a promising opportunity escaping them in a state where Democrats have the edge of 1.5 million more voters registered.

Three Republican candidates are in a lacerating battle for their party’s nomination: Carly Fiorina, the wealthy former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard; Tom Campbell, a former member of Congress who fits the moderate profile for the kind of Republican who has won statewide contests in the past; and Charles S. DeVore, a state assemblyman who is presenting himself as the Tea Party candidate.

It is hard to see how Republicans can win control of the Senate without toppling Mrs. Boxer. Democrats control the chamber 59 to 41; Republicans need 10 seats to take control, since in an evenly divided Senate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. would cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats. Eight Democratic seats are considered vulnerable, but Republicans must hold on to at least four of their own seats that appear vulnerable. Even if Republicans won all those highly contested races, they would still need two more victories, and at the moment California might be their best chance to expand the battlefield.

John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said Mrs. Boxer’s previous easy victories in Senate races could be misleading, since they took place in what were more favorable political environments. “She may be more vulnerable than it seems at first,” Professor Pitney said.

Democrats fear that a Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend freely on political campaigns could encourage a flood of advertising against Mrs. Boxer.

She is clearly aware of the threat to her re-election and has moved forcefully to deal with it. She has already raised nearly $11 million.

“If you’re asking me if Republicans have a chance to beat me, I’m going to answer this way: I never take any election for granted,” Mrs. Boxer said in an interview. “It is a tough year. I am going to focus; I am going to work my heart out.”

Mr. Campbell is a self-described fiscal conservative who supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage. “He would have more appeal to moderate voters than any other Republican nominee — other than Arnold or Pete Wilson — has had here for the past 25 or 30 years,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic consultant in the state, referring to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mr. Wilson, the former California governor.

But the positions that might help Mr. Campbell in a general election are a burden in the Republican primary. And the hurdle is not only on social issues. When Mr. Campbell was finance director for Governor Schwarzenegger, he supported temporary tax increases to deal with the state’s worsening fiscal crisis, and Ms. Fiorina and Mr. DeVore have criticized him for that.

“Tom Campbell has a distinctly different point of view than I do,” Ms. Fiorina said. “He believes the way to close budget deficits is to raise taxes. I think that’s the wrong approach.”

Mr. Campbell has also come under attack from his rivals for his ties to a professor who aided Palestinian militants and for being, by their account, insufficiently supportive of Israel. Mr. Campbell has said that he was unaware of the professor’s activities and that he supports Israel.

Mr. Campbell suggested that Ms. Fiorina and Mr. DeVore may split the conservative vote in the June 8 primary, allowing him to slip through. He has also said some conservatives might overlook their differences with him in their hunger to oust Mrs. Boxer.

“She is particularly vulnerable to me,” Mr. Campbell said in an interview. “I’m pro-choice. It’s going to be the first time she’s ever had to run against a candidate with my profile. It’s a huge advantage for me.”

Ms. Fiorina was at one point viewed by Republicans as a formidable candidate because of her wealth (she has put $2.5 million into her campaign) and a compelling personal story: she rose from receptionist to chief executive and is also a breast cancer survivor.

But she has not had an easy transition from business executive to candidate. Ms. Fiorina suggested the other day that California file for bankruptcy; that is legally not possible. Her campaign produced a widely ridiculed Internet attack video portraying the mild-mannered Mr. Campbell as a wolf, with glowing red eyes, in sheep’s clothing. (The point was that he was not really a fiscal conservative.) Mr. DeVore has been unsparing in his attacks on her.

“She has some personal wealth — but she was fired from Hewett-Packard,” he said. “She only voted six times in her life. She has a condo in Georgetown at the Ritz-Carlton that is 13,000 square feet bigger than my house — and she confessed she got it with the golden parachute money she got when she was fired. These sort of flaws will be played up significantly by Boxer.”

Mr. DeVore may be the wild card in the race. He has won the backing of an influential conservative political action committee created by Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina. And his candidacy will offer a test of the strength of the Tea Party movement in this state. A poll taken in California in January found that 70 percent of Republicans had heard of the Tea Party movement, with 52 percent of them identifying with its ideas somewhat or “a lot.”

But Mr. DeVore, who is known as Chuck, is struggling to raise money, and remains barely known by most Californians. He said he hoped that as his profile rose, he would draw a wave of Tea Party contributions from across the country.

“This is eminently winnable for all three Republicans,” Mr. DeVore said of the Boxer race, “but I would argue, counterintuitively, that I am the most dangerous threat. Because I am the guy who is the toast of the Tea Partiers.”



Al's latest global-warming whopper

Alan Reynolds

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/al_latest_global_warming_whopper_TolFbG2ccT5XPtKtXoOx0L

Al Gore's defense of global-warming hysteria in Sunday's New York Times has many flaws, but I'll focus on just one whopper -- where the "Inconvenient Truth" man states the opposite of scientific fact.

Gore says, "The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere -- thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States."

Gore: Still citing predictions that science has disproved.

It's an interesting theory, but where are the facts?

According to "State of the Climate" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "Global precipitation in 2009 was near the 1961-1990 average." And there was certainly no pattern of increasing rain and snow on America's East Coast during the post-1976 years, when NOAA says the globe began to heat up.

So what was it, exactly, that Gore's nameless scientists "have long pointed out"? A 2008 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Climate Change and Water," says climate models "project precipitation increases in high latitudes and part of the tropics." In other areas, the IPCC reports only "substantial uncertainty in precipitation forecasts."

In other words, the IPCC said that its models predicted some increases in rain or snow -- not observed them. And only in high latitudes or the tropics, which hardly describes New York or Washington, DC.

In fact, recent research actually contra dicts Gore's claims about "significantly more water moisture in the atmosphere."

In late January, Scientific American reported: "A mysterious drop in water vapor in the lower stratosphere might be slowing climate change," and noted that "an apparent increase in water vapor in this region in the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated global warming."

The new study came from a group of scientists, mainly from the NOAA lab in Boulder. The scientists found: "Stratospheric water-vapor concentrations decreased by about 10 percent after the year 2000 . . . This acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25 percent."

Specifically, the study found that water vapor rising from the tropics has been re duced, because it has gotten cooler there (another inconvenient truth). A Wall Street Journal headline summed it up: "Slowdown in Warming Linked to Water Vapor."

Moisture in the lower stratosphere (about 8 miles above the earth's surface) has been going down, not up.

Aside from clouds, water vapor accounts for as much as two-thirds of the earth's greenhouse-gas effect. Water vapor traps heat from escaping the atmosphere -- but clouds have the opposite effect (called "albedo") by reflecting the sun's energy back into space. And snow on the ground from the IPCC's predicted precipitation in high latitudes would have the same cooling effect as clouds.

What the new research suggests is that changes in water vapor may well trump the ef fect of carbon dioxide (only a fraction of which is man-made) and methane (which has mysteriously slowed since about 1990).

This raises an intriguing question: Since the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it has the authority to regulation carbon emissions because of their presumed effect on the global climate, why hasn't the EPA also attempted to regulate mist and fog?

Alan Reynolds, a Cato Institute senior fellow, is author of "Income and Wealth."



President Obama eyes cut in U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal

BY Kenneth R. Bazinet

DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/03/02/2010-03-02_prez_eyes_cut_in_nuke_arsenal.html

Miller/News

President Obama wants to cut the estimated 5,500 nuclear warheads the U.S. has stockpiled by about half, an official said.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is moving forward with plans to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, a senior administration official said Monday.

Obama wants to cut the estimated 5,500 nuclear warheads the U.S. has stockpiled by about half, the official said.

"It would set an example for nuclear countries and for countries that are considering going nuclear," the official explained.

Though the plan has been criticized by hawks, the White House is confident there will still be plenty of nukes left to meet any threats.

Obama met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to map out the plans for trimming the stockpile.



"The e-mail Bag"

You Might Be A Redneck

http://www.countryhumor.com/redneck/mightbe.htm

Thank you Jeff Foxworthy!

You think "loading the dishwasher" means getting your wife drunk.

You ever cut your grass and found a car.

You own a home that is mobile and 5 cars that aren't.

You think the stock market has a fence around it.

Your stereo speakers used to belong to the Drive-in Theater.

Your boat has not left the drive-way in 15 years.

You own a homemade fur coat.

Chiggers are included on your list of top 5 hygiene concerns.

You burn your yard rather than mow it.

Your wife has ever said, "Come move this transmission so I can take a bath."