Liberal Gossip Website Outs CIA Operative Who Tracked Down OBL

Liberal Gossip Website Outs CIA Operative Who Tracked Down OBL catscanner150 | July 29, 2011 at 6:15 pm | Tags: Associated Press, Central Intelligence Agency, Gawker Media, Michael Scheuer, Osama bin Laden | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-8nK

Michael Scheuer: Media 'Anti-Agency, Think it's Fun to Put
People at Risk'

By Eric Ames | July 29, 2011 |
14:47

Fox News's Steve Doocy and former CIA officer Michael Scheuer took the gossip
site Gawker to task Friday for claiming to out the identity of the CIA officer
responsible for orchestrating the bib Laden raid in May. "I think most of the
media is anti-Agency, and they think it's fun to put people at risk," said
Scheuer.

Scheuer also pointed out that the story was not getting nearly as much
coverage as the Valerie Plame scandal. "I think it's much worse. Ms. Plame
probably didn't have a lot of enemies around the world that remember going to
come looking for them. But this fellow responsible for Osama bin Laden's death
or in part for it is certainly at risk." He further noted that the mainstream
media has a history of bias against American intelligence services. "For
example, you know, the Pulitzer Prize for treason, if I remember correctly, went
to the woman at the Washington Post who exposed the Agency's black sites during
the rendition program. So the media and the media establishment rewards this
kind of conduct," said Scheuer.

Doocy also pointed out that there was no
evidence that the individual highlighted by Gawker is even the agent in
question. "Steve, the average high school yearbook staff has more integrity and
common sense than Gawker or AP. They might have put an entirely mistaken
personality on someone's bull's eye. It's an extraordinarily reckless
unprofessional thing to do," said Scheuer. "The news was bin Laden was killed.
The officers in the military and the Agency responsible for that should have
been congratulated, end of story. No one needs to know anybody who was involved
in that operation."

A transcript of the exchange, which aired at 6:51
a.m. on Friday, follows.
FNC
"Fox &
Friends"
07/29/2011

6:51 a.m. Eastern

STEVE DOOCY: CIA
Agents do their jobs without the expectation of big paychecks, fame or
recognition. They don't want the spotlight. So it's not exactly helpful when
your job is all about top secret observations. But the web site called "Gawker"
now trying to expose one particular agent, an agent Al-Qaeda would love to find
and probably kill, the one who tracked down Osama bin Laden. Michael Scheuer is
the former chief of the CIA bin Laden unit and the author of Osama bin Laden
joins us from D.C. Good morning to you.

MICHAEL SCHEUER: Good morning
sir.

DOOCY: The back story is the Associated Press after the bin Laden
kill did a story about this particular unit and they identified that, perhaps,
the guy who was behind it was in this White House photograph and then Gawker
this lousy web site out there did the math, figured out, oh, that's the guy and
then outed a CIA agent!

SCHEUER: Well, you know, it's typical of most of
the American media, Steve, that they're very anti-Agency. The idea that the
Agency was at the center of killing bin Laden probably stuck in a lot of their
throats. And now we see people like Gawker and AP who have previously published
stories about agency officers who are still serving and/or undercover. It's just
an amazing situation in America where people are rewarded for in essence aiding
and abetting the enemy.

DOOCY: Well, the problem for this person and
we're not going to identify who he is in that picture. We've all seen that
picture. We have no idea who most of the people are. But his well being is now
in peril, I would imagine. I mean, if there were an al-Qaeda operative who
learned where the guy lived, he could be in trouble.

SCHEUER: I think
it's very dangerous to expose anybody who was involved with killing Osama bin
Laden. Bin laden was a beloved figure in the community of Islamists. And
certainly, exacting revenge for bin Laden against the person who was involved in
his killing would be a huge feather in someone's cap.

DOOCY: Absolutely.
Let's go back a couple of years, Michael, during the George Bush administration
when Valerie Plane was inadvertently outed as a CIA. operative. There was an
investigation. There was a lot of trouble for people. Why no outrage here? Same
thing happened, didn't it?

SCHEUER: I think it's much worse. Ms. Plame
probably didn't have a lot of enemies around the world that remember going to
come looking for them. But this fellow responsible for Osama bin Laden's death
or in part for it is certainly at risk. As secretary Gates said about the
identities of the SEALS, sir.

DOOCY: Absolutely. So why would this web
site Gawker do this?

SCHEUER: As I said, I think most of the media is
anti-Agency. And they think it's fun to put people at risk. They don't like some
of the things the Agency does. For example, you know, the Pulitzer Prize for
treason, if I remember correctly, went to the woman at the "Washington Post" who
exposed the Agency's black sites during the rendition program. So the media and
the media establishment rewards this kind of conduct.

DOOCY: And
ultimately, from what I understand, Michael, is they published the picture of
the guy and identified, yeah, that's the guy right there. It was completely
unsubstantiated, they didn't have anybody who said "yeah, that's the guy." They
just said "ok, according to what we figured out, that's him."

SCHEUER:
Yeah. Steve, the average high school yearbook staff has more integrity and
common sense than Gawker or AP. They might have put an entirely mistaken
personality on someone's bull's eye. It's an extraordinarily reckless
unprofessional thing to do.

DOOCY: It certainly is. And ultimately, is it
news in your estimation?

SCHEUER: The news was bin Laden was killed. The
officers in the military and the Agency responsible for that should have been
congratulated, end of story. No one needs to know anybody who was involved in
that operation.

DOOCY: Yeah. Absolutely. It's a crazy thing.
Irresponsible thing to do on the part of Gawker. All right, Michael Scheuer
joining us from DC. Thank you, sir, have a great weekend.

SCHEUER: You,
too, sir, thank you.

H/T NewsBusters

Where is the same outrage from the media that accompanied the Valerie Plame fiasco. Considering how insignificant her position at the CIA was as compared to this operative who may have actually risked his life to track down bin Laden. This man's life could truly be in danger from islamic extremists.

Tom in NC

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The Deepening Depression

"The ultimate answer, according to Krugman and the Keynesians, is to find yet another boom, another possible asset bubble that can work its 'magic' at least for a while before it, too, collapses."

The Deepening Depression
Friday, July 29, 2011
by William L. Anderson

While Austrians and Keynesians don't agree on a lot of things, there is one thing on which they both seem to agree: the US economy is sinking into the morass of depression. At that point, however, the agreement ends, as the two schools have very different explanations as to why this is happening.

The Keynesians, through Paul Krugman and his New York Times megaphone, have been claiming that the original Barack Obama "stimulus" was too little, and the current emphasis on budget cutting at all levels of government is exactly the wrong strategy. Austrians, not surprisingly, believe that this explanation is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense.

In a recent column, Krugman lays out his thesis, and it is useful, for it truly exposes the Keynesian mind at work, and a Keynesian mind that allows for no other explanations as to what is happening. The problem is -- and always will be -- a lack of "aggregate demand," and the only solution is for governments to spend as though they have hit the jackpot.

He writes,

The great housing bubble of the last decade, which was both an American and a European phenomenon, was accompanied by a huge rise in household debt. When the bubble burst, home construction plunged, and so did consumer spending as debt-burdened families cut back.

Everything might still have been O.K. if other major economic players had stepped up their spending, filling the gap left by the housing plunge and the consumer pullback. But nobody did. In particular, cash-rich corporations see no reason to invest that cash in the face of weak consumer demand.

Nor did governments do much to help. Some governments -- those of weaker nations in Europe, and state and local governments here -- were actually forced to slash spending in the face of falling revenues. And the modest efforts of stronger governments -- including, yes, the Obama stimulus plan -- were, at best, barely enough to offset this forced austerity.

So we have depressed economies. What are policy makers proposing to do about it? Less than nothing.

If anything describes the Keynesian mindset, it is this: spend, spend, spend. It is a simple thesis, one that certainly appeals to politicians, and even to much of the general public, and has dominated professional economic thinking in the United States since World War II. As Krugman states above, households cannot spend what they don't have, and businesses, because they don't see future demand, are not going to invest (read: spend through capital investment ­ which is always defined by Keynesians as being valuable because of spending, not because of any aspects of capital productivity).

So we are stuck in what Krugman and Keynesians call a "liquidity trap," which Krugman seems to believe ends all other discussion. The notion is that the law of opportunity cost is suspended during a liquidity trap because interest rates are low, resources are "idle," and government can borrow at nearly 0 percent and spend without consuming any resources. As Krugman said in his book The Return of Depression Economics, government spending in this situation can create a "free lunch." (Yes, he actually used that term.)

While most mainstream economists are not willing to engage the Keynesians on the idea of the "liquidity trap," Murray Rothbard did not back away. In his book, America's Great Depression, he takes on the whole notion of the "liquidity trap" head on, writing,

The ultimate weapon in the Keynesian arsenal of explanations of depressions is the "liquidity trap." This is not precisely a critique of the Mises theory, but it is the last line of Keynesian defense of their own inflationary "cures" for depression. Keynesians claim that "liquidity preference" (demand for money) may be so persistently high that the rate of interest could not fall low enough to stimulate investment sufficiently to raise the economy out of the depression.

Rothbard points out a serious problem with that analysis, noting that Keynes never got the theory of interest correct, claiming interest is based on "'liquidity preference' instead of time preference," which then leads to more incorrect conclusions about the state of the economy. Other Austrians have criticized the theory, as well, including William Hutt and Henry Hazlitt.

Both Hutt and Hazlitt took on the whole idea of "idle resources," which is behind the notion that opportunity cost can be suspended during a depression. The idea of idle resources is based on a notion that factors of production are unemployed because of a lack of spending, and that a burst of government borrowing (at nearly zero, which means almost no opportunity cost) will spread to these unemployed assets and put them back to work.

As I noted before, the Keynesian theory is disarmingly simple. Resources are unemployed, so government "stimulates" the economy through more spending; the resources are put to work, and somehow the economy magically sustains itself. On the flip side, Keynesians hold that if new spending does not occur, then deflation will result, making more resources unemployed until ultimately the economy is in a perverse equilibrium in which huge numbers of people are out of work with no prospects for economic improvement.

Krugman is adamant about this point and is so convinced of his rightness that anyone who might disagree does so only because that person wants to see people suffer or because that person is so beholden to the "discredited" Austrian theories that he or she is incapable of adding anything to the public debate. (In fact, Krugman believes there is no debate at all. His position is right, is proven empirically, and cannot be refuted ­ even when it is refuted.)

Thus, even though we have seen an explosion of government spending the past few years, according to Krugman, we really are on an "austerity" plan. Why? Because if the government actually had increased spending on a massive scale, then we would be out of this depression. In other words, because there is only one way out of this morass, and because we are not out of that morass, there hasn't been enough government spending.

What about the Robert Higgs thesis of "regime uncertainty"? Krugman dismisses that one, too, derisively calling it the "confidence fairy." Businesses, he argues, are hoarding cash because they see a lack of consumer demand. If governments spend and spend and spend, then businesses will invest ­ period.

(As for the antibusiness rhetoric pouring out from the White House, the surge in regulation, and the demonizing of the oil and coal industries -- industries that are essential players if this economy is going to recover -- all of that, according to Krugman, either is nonexistent or just white noise, and it certainly has no relevance to our current situation. Why? Because Krugman says so.)

The ultimate answer, according to Krugman and the Keynesians, is to find yet another boom, another possible asset bubble that can work its "magic" at least for a while before it, too, collapses. (Perversely, in a post endorsed by Krugman, Karl Smith hopes that it will be another housing boom.)

In reading Krugman and the Keynesians, I am always struck by their analysis that assets, economically speaking, really are homogeneous. It doesn't matter where new spending is directed, just as long as there is spending. Spend, and everything else falls into place.

Second, the Krugman/Keynesian viewpoint is based on an extremely mechanistic interpretation of human action. People within a market setting do not purchase goods they believe will meet their individual needs; no, they spend, as though the spending itself is the ultimate end of an economy.

This is a view that separates production and consumption, making them independent of one another, with no true, purposeful human action to be found anywhere. There is no meaningful connection between desires of consumers and the valuation of factors of production or the direction that factors go in the various lines of production. It is all something that can simply be described as Y = C + I + G with no need to think further than that tautology.

As I said at the beginning, both Austrians and Keynesians believe we are headed for a steeper economic downturn, perhaps into the abyss of a major depression. However, Krugman and the Keynesians believe that the only salvation is massive spending and intervention by government. Austrians believe that it is the massive spending and intervention by government that make things worse. And while Krugman & Co. never will admit otherwise, it is ultimately the Austrian paradigm that explains these matters, and explains them with accuracy.


William Anderson, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, teaches economics at Frostburg State University.

http://mises.org/daily/5489/The-Deepening-Depression

The Myth of the Voluntary Military

The Myth of the Voluntary Military
Friday, July 29, 2011
by Jeffrey A. Tucker

[Excerpted from It's a Jetsons World (2011). An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by Steven Ng, is available for download.]


Ludwig von Mises summed up the essence of government in words that are particularly vivid in wartime:

Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.… Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

What about those who are called upon to enforce state edicts, whether just or unjust? Every society includes people who are willing to act as the coercive arm of the state, those who are willing to use violence and freely risk their lives as they administer the law. The state has no great trouble recruiting policemen and prison guards. Are there enough such people to amass a huge army of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to risk their lives carrying out destructive foreign wars of dubious merit?

When you see the pictures of American troops fighting their way through sand storms, in a strange land with strange people, seeking to overturn a government and transform a society that posed no credible threat to the United States, being shot at by average Iraqis who are clearly motivated only by the desire to expel the invader, it is not hard to imagine that US troops are wondering how it all came to this.

The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, claims that the coalition armed forces are made up of "men and women who made a free choice to serve their country," whereas Iraqi forces "are motivated either by fear or by hatred." It's hard to say what motivates Iraqi forces (perhaps the desire to repel invasion?), but what he says about coalition troops is simply not true.

The men and women now fighting initially agreed to be in the employ of the military. The United States is not yet conscripting people. And yet how many of these would leave Iraq if they could? What if Donald Rumsfeld announced that anyone now fighting in Iraq is free to leave without penalty? What would become of the US armed forces now attempting to bring about unconditional surrender in Iraq?

It's an interesting question, as a pure mental experiment, because it highlights the essentially forced nature of all modern military service. To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society takes for granted: the right to quit.

Deuteronomy's exhortation to encourage the Israelites into battle includes an invitation to freely leave: "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house."[1] But there is no such right in the modern US military. If you try to leave, you face coercion, particularly if you try to leave in wartime. In this way, the military differs from the police and the ranks of prison guards, jobs from which people are free to walk away without penalty.

Punishing people for attempting to leave the military -- to avoid killing and/or being killed -- is not a new practice. Mises speaks of the "barbarous" practices used in the 18th century to keep soldiers from deserting their units. The more undesirable wartime conditions become, the more necessary it is for the state to force people to continue to endure them.

The scene that shocked me most in the movie Gods and Generals -- and it was clearly not intended to be shocking -- occurs when an assistant to Stonewall Jackson informs the general that some soldiers have been discovered in an attempt to desert the army under his command. The general orders them to be tried in a military court, and, if found guilty of attempted desertion, to be shot. They were indeed tried and shot. Thus did these men die for exercising their God-given right to walk away.

One of those shot in the film was a young man recruited by Jackson himself, the son of a friend who decided to return to the North. The scene was included to demonstrate Jackson's impartiality. This general is no respecter of persons ­ or (more plausibly) personhood. To me, the scene demonstrated the immorality of all modern notions of military discipline.

As the movie shows, the South believed it was fighting for the right of self-government, which required that the states be able to exercise their right to leave an increasingly despotic Union. But the military command would not allow their soldiers to secede. The Confederate generals believed that the Union must be voluntary, but the army itself must be kept together through coercion.

Of course, Northern armies employed the same practice. Many Union troops believed they were fighting against slavery, which amounts to nothing more than forbidding people from exercising their right to flee their alleged owners. But the imposition of the death penalty for soldiers choosing not to fight, that is, to flee their military owners, was assumed to be a normal part of military discipline.

Both North and South claimed they were fighting in order to abolish a form of captivity ­ the right to self-government in one case, and the right to not be employed against one's will in the other ­ but the ability of the military to imprison and kill fleeing soldiers was never questioned. It is not often questioned today.

The scene parallels the opening sequence in the movie Enemy at the Gates, when Russian troops in boats are being bombed from the air by German planes. Russian troops begin to jump in the water to get away. Their Russian commander starts to unload his pistol as they leap. The viewer is rightly shocked by this incredible display of totalitarian brutality. Yet, in essence, what we are seeing is nothing more than a fast-forwarded version of the court-martial, death-penalty scene in Gods and Generals.

Both scenes underscore a reality hardly ever discussed: all modern armies are essentially totalitarian enterprises. Once you sign up for them, or are drafted, you are a slave. The penalty for becoming a fugitive is death. Even now, the enforcements against mutiny, desertion, going AWOL, or what have you, are never questioned.

This is remarkable, if you think about it. Imagine that you work for Walmart but find the job too dangerous, and try to quit. You are told that you may not, so you run away. The management catches up to you, and jails you. You refuse to go and resist. Finally, you are shot. We would all recognize that this is exploitation, an atrocity, a crime, a clear example of the disregard that this company has for human life. The public outrage would be palpable. The management, not the fleeing employees, would be jailed or possibly executed.

Murray Rothbard frames the question nicely: "In what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for 'desertion,' i.e., for quitting the particular employment? If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?"

The military has done a study[2] of what causes people to go AWOL, concluding that the practice "tends to increase in magnitude during wartime" and when "the Army is attempting to restrict the ways that soldiers can exit service through administrative channels."

The same study profiles the deserters, as compared with nondeserters, as less educated, having a lower aptitude, more likely to be from broken homes, etc. ­ all the usual reasons why a person is so dishonorably disinclined to want to be killed. Finally, this study examined the effects of desertion on the individual, concluding that choosing to be disemployed from the ranks of the armed and dangerous causes "loss of self-esteem and confidence" as well as "embarrassment and even shame." Well, what else would you expect from someone who has "chosen a certain path and failed to meet the necessary requirements and/or sustain the fortitude to meet those requirements"?

Now comes the report from Diwaniya, Iraq, heavily cited by a US military spokesman, that

many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.… "The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."

It could be that the captured soldiers are only trying to win sympathy. But it would hardly be surprising if it were true. To force people to fight when they would rather not is the very essence of modern military organization. In modern practice, there is no such thing as a voluntary military. Whether you are forced into the machine or not (via conscription or via payments in tax dollars), once you are a cog, you must stay in no matter how much grinding you do or how much you are ground.

The slave-like nature of the military commitment has no expiration date. Yes, there are contracts, but the military can void them whenever it so desires. Predictably, it desires to void these contracts (through so-called stop-loss regulations) when the enlisted most want to leave: when they must kill and risk being killed. All branches of the military have implemented these stop-loss regulations because of the war on terror. This amounts to the nationalization of human beings.

Still, one wonders how much the ranks of the militarily employed would shrink in absence of antidesertion enforcement. If modern presidents had to recruit the way barons and lords recruited, and if they constantly faced the prospect of mass desertions, they might be more careful about getting involved in unnecessary, unjust, unwinnable wars, or going to war at all. Peace would take on new value out of necessity. When going to war, they might be more careful to curb their war aims, and match war strategies with those more limited aims.

In fact, we might discover through the study of the history of antidesertion statutes the key to the transition from the limited war and decentralized military of the medieval world to the mass murder of the modern total war. The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world.

In the meantime, US officials would do well to stop complaining that Iraqi soldiers are being forced to serve and forced to kill. A press release from the Air Force announcing its new stop-loss rule says, "We understand the individual sacrifices that our airmen and their families will be making.… We appreciate their unwavering support and dedication to our nation."

One might even have a greater appreciation for their sacrifice (even if not their mission) if one knew that it were undertaken willingly.



Jeffrey Tucker is the editor of Mises.org and author of It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes and Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo. Send him mail. See Jeffrey A. Tucker's article archives.

This article is excerpted from It's a Jetsons World, "The Myth of the Voluntary Military" (2011).



Notes

[1] Deuteronomy 20:8.

[2] What We Know about AWOL and Desertion: A Review of the Professional Literature for Policy Makers and Commanders, Peter F. Ramsberger and D. Bruce Bell (Alexandria, Va.: US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, ARI Special Report 51, August 2002).

http://mises.org/daily/3975/The-Myth-of-the-Voluntary-Military

Some Neglected Questions on the Attempted Fort Hood Attack

Some Neglected Questions on the Attempted Fort Hood Attack
by Anthony Gregory, July 29, 2011

AWOL Army private Naser Jason Abdo, a Muslim, has been arrested for plans to attack the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. Two years ago, another Muslim American soldier was arrested for killing 13 people at that base. These and other mass shootings and attempted acts of mass violence have increasingly made the news in the last few years, and the pundits typically have political lessons to teach in their wake. Now is a good time to ask a few questions they will likely neglect.

1. What is terrorism?

Rep. John Carter of the House Army Caucus celebrated the capture of Abdo thusly: "[W]e may well have averted a repeat of the tragic 2009 radical Islamic terror attack on our nation's largest military installation. "

Is an attack on a military installation terrorism? How about the attacks on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 2003 ­ were those an act of "terrorism, " as the U.S. government said they were?

Surely this is a strange definition, because it would seemingly make all warfare, even the most traditional warfare pinpointed against military targets, "terrorism, " and the U.S. government, and presumably Congressman Carter, wouldn 't agree with that. It would mean every U.S. war was terrorism ­ even when it was targeted specifically at army bases and military personnel.

Some definitions of terrorism favored by the U.S. and other governments define terrorism as a private act, and yet in the years since 9/11, we have heard over and over again about "state-sponsored terrorism. " If Saddam Hussein 's government and the Taliban are capable of terrorism, and terrorism does indeed include attacks on military bases, surely the U.S. government can be guilty of terrorism.

Yet even if we include states in our analysis, terrorism is better defined as targeting civilians with the purpose of bringing about political changes. Under this sensible definition, Abdo and Nidal Hassan, the man implicated in the Fort Hood attacks two years ago, would be harder to describe as terrorists, since their primary targets appear to be military. On the other hand, such actions as the U.S. bombing of Hirsohima and Nagasaki and the U.S. sanctions on Iraqi civilians throughout the 1990s would be textbook cases of state-sanctioned terrorism.

When the Norway shootings occurred on Friday, July 22, many jumped to call it terrorism. When the alleged shooter was revealed not as an Islamist but as an anti-Islamist, some conservatives switched to calling him an extremist. Liberals, in contrast, sometimes throw the word "terrorism " around to include rightwing "extremists " who have never lifted a finger against anyone ­ such as the Michigan militia members who were detained in March 2010 for their supposed plot to overthrow the U.S. government.

The definition of terrorism is incredibly tenuous and used to score political points. The Nazi regime called its enemies terrorists but never described its own actions as terrorism. The U.S. government 's effective definition seems to be: "Terrorism is an act of violence, against either soldiers or civilians, whether conducted by private or state groups, so long as the violence is not approved by the U.S. government. "

2. How do these people get through the military recruitment process?

The military supposedly employs the best and the brightest, and yet its screening process is rarely scrutinized when a member of the Armed Forces is implicated in an atrocity or serious crime. Neither the soldiers callously shooting at what turns out to be civilians in the Wikileaks footage from last year, nor the troops caught up in the multiple torture scandals throughout the war on terrorism, nor the numerous instances of soldiers returning from battle engaging in domestic crime, are ever noted as possible evidence that there is a problem with the military itself.

As the war on terror has slugged along, the military has lowered its standards to widen the pool of potential recruits. Americans have tired of these wars, and so we have seen stop-loss orders, the redeployment of soldiers multiple times after their terms expire, and dishonest practices adopted by recruiters on school campuses. The military has loosened standards to enlist illegal aliens and has waived rules against recruiting felons in tens of thousands of cases. CBS reported in 2009 that not only did female soldiers accuse male soldiers of rape in hundreds of cases that were never seriously investigated, but in numerous instances "moral waivers " were used by the Army and the Marines to enlist convicts with felony rape and sexual assault on their records.

It should thus be no surprise that the U.S. government is so desperate for cannon fodder that those who are a bit mentally unstable even before heading into combat make the cut. The state lacks the means or incentives to carefully screen out dangerous people, even if such a process could be undertaken reliably. Let us remember that the first Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hassan, was an Army psychologist.

3. Does the military itself breed violence?

The military is an institution in which the skills of killing are taught and the enemy is dehumanized. When soldiers and veterans resort to violence outside the battlefield, unapproved acts of torture, or terrorism, it is rarely regarded as possibly connected to the military culture itself. The most notable example of this was Timothy McVeigh, the convicted and executed Oklahoma City bomber, who was in the U.S. Army for several years, including a stint in the First Gulf War, where he later said he learned how to turn off his emotions. He considered himself a soldier at war with a U.S. government gone out of control, notably in its conduct in the Waco, Texas, standoff of 1993. Two years later, on the anniversary of the Waco fire, he bombed the Murrah building, seeing his crime as an act of war.

Yet although the connection should be obvious ­ an institution that instills into people the capacity to see other people as subhuman enemies to be killed is going to breed people with problems handling their violent impulses ­ it is never asked outright if the military, and especially its wars, encourage acts of violence. But as long as we are at perpetual war, living with a permanent warfare state, there will be more Abdos, Nissans, and McVeighs.

4. What can we learn from how he was caught?

A review board in the military recommended Abdo 's release from the Army as a conscientious objector in the spring, but his discharge was delayed after he was charged with possessing child pornography. He was then scheduled for court martial. Is it possible that by failing to let him out immediately and to deal with his criminal charges outside of the military system, the military exacerbated the problem and made his attempted attack more likely?

In any event, Abdo 's attack was reportedly preempted by "concerned citizens, " including a gun dealer who alerted authorities about his suspicious behavior. Although we are supposed to think of gun dealers as irresponsible predatory merchants who will sell a weapon to anyone, and the military as a refined organization that find and neutralizes threats with precision, the opposite seems to be true in this case. With the entire military screening process, social infrastructure, and disciplinary system, it took old-fashioned cooperation between the community and local police to detect and cut short the threat. The actual Ford Hood shooter from two years ago, however, succeeded in murdering over a dozen people before he was stopped ­ reminding us that the illusion of military security exists even on the military 's own bases. Had the rules of civil society and common sense prevailed at Fort Hood two years ago, one of the soldiers would have been armed and stopped the rampage. Instead, the shooting lasted for ten minutes before a civilian police officer shot and stopped Hasan.

The media will spin the attempted attack on Fort Hood as a reason to embrace the war on terrorism, governmental efforts to stop threats through psychological profiling, and maybe stricter gun control. Instead, we should consider the many political sacred cows that this instance should bring into question.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1107x.asp

[Fwd: News Alert: Senate Tables Boehner’s Debt Ceiling Bill]

Nicce to see that the Dems are so willing to work with the House to deal
with the debt problem. Not even to discuss the bill shows us exactly
why we need to get rid of the Dem majority in the Senate and finally get
some people in there who really care about the country. Obviously this
crew does not give a damn about us at all.

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Nice to see the NYT feeding info to the WH as to how to deal with conservatives

Can I say that Jennifer Preston has gone way beyond what any reporter
worth dealing with does. Wonder how much she got paid for doing this.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/29/new-york-times-reporter-advises-white-house-media-staff-on-twitter/comment-page-1/#comments

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[Fwd: Education in Seven Questions]

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Education in Seven Questions

Education in Seven Questions
Friday, July 29, 2011
by Aaron Smith

America's system of education is plagued by problems. The natural tendency for politicians and technocrats in search of solutions is to devise grandiose plans that involve more testing, regulation, and spending. However, these schemes do nothing to alleviate the root cause of problems, and indeed only serve to perpetuate them. What our system of education needs is simple: a recognition that children, parents, and educators are diverse and should be treated as individuals.

Below I've highlighted seven key questions that should be asked of our education system. Interestingly, all of the problems they touch on have one common culprit: mass standardization. While left-liberals love to espouse the virtues of diversity, their actions do not follow their words. Real diversity is achieved by respecting the liberties of individuals, not by forcing conformity on them. Real educational diversity requires the freedom to define and pursue education according to one's values, interests, and aptitude. Education will be revolutionized once these liberties are afforded.


Do We Need High-Stakes Accountability Tests?

States spend millions of dollars designing, implementing, and evaluating high-stakes accountability tests. Last year the Texas Education Agency signed a five-year deal with testing contractor Pearson worth an astounding $468.4 million. Such elaborate testing systems are supposed to give administrators objective data to assess performance ­ but in practice these systems do little more than incentivize teachers to focus on rigid state standards, encourage cheating, and disrupt valuable class time. Still, the naysayer objects, how else would we know how schools are performing without them?

It's actually quite simple (and free to the taxpayer): prices.

Market prices are the cornerstone of any healthy economic system. It's easy to take them for granted -- everything we buy has a price as does the labor we sell. In actuality, however, prices are enormously intricate and important ­ without market prices our standard of living would become virtually unrecognizable (e.g., like that of the Soviet Union). Friedrich A. Hayek explains,

I gradually found that the basic function of economics was to explain the process of how human activity adapted itself to data about which it had no information. Thus the whole economic order rested on the fact that by using prices as a guide, or as signals, we were led to serve the demands and enlist the powers and capacities of people of whom we knew nothing.

Essentially, market prices are the culmination of seemingly infinite data points that provide both consumer and producer with a wealth of information. Without these "signals" entrepreneurs would be oblivious to the demands of the market and consumers would be similarly confused as to the nature of the product or service they're purchasing.

In a market system of education where parents have school choice, prices serve the same purpose. Market-based tuition is driven by factors such as teacher quality, parental satisfaction, and operational efficiency (among countless others). If a school underperforms in any aspect of its service, parents can simply choose to enroll their children elsewhere -- thereby signaling administrators that immediate improvement is needed. This is precisely the reason you rarely hear about underperforming private schools -- they either improve or close; they rarely linger in a purgatorial state of "needing improvement" (absent of state meddling, of course).

Signals are virtually nonexistent in our current system of education. In the absence of prices, school administrators are clueless to the types of education that are demanded and whether or not parents are satisfied with their services. This matters little to statists, however, who use the power of monopoly to force consumers to accept only one type of education. Their prohibition of school choice all but ensures that parental opinion is eschewed in favor of some other (arbitrary) system of accountability ­ such as standardized tests. It's only logical to conclude that states have more faith in test results than parental opinion.

Most private schools aren't subjected to state testing, but parents still choose to enroll their children in these institutions even in the absence of "accountability" results. Are these parents making uninformed decisions? Are these school administrators not held accountable for results (real results, not state-test results)? In fact, it's quite the opposite ­ parental decisions are better informed and school administrators are subjected to higher standards in such a system.

State testing is an ineffective and expensive substitute for prices, especially when accounting for their unintended consequences. A market-based system that includes both school choice and prices would provide parents and educators with the signals needed to make effective decisions.


Why Do Kids Hate School?

Parents rarely give thought as to why their children hate school -- after all, aren't kids supposed to? This faulty reasoning relies on the assumption that children are genetically predisposed to detest learning. More likely, however, is that kids dislike the system of schooling they're forced into rather than education per se. What they're subjected to daily, characterized by mass-standardization and conformity, is antithetical to the human spirit, and is likely the source of their utter disdain for school.

Children are cleverer than they're given credit for. They recognize bad teaching just as well as adults can. They know the pace at which they're learning is always too fast or too slow ­ never just right. They realize that much of the material they're learning will be of little value outside the walls that surround them. They're also aware that in the eyes of the state they are (literally) just a number.

This is not to say that in a market system of education every child would enjoy learning equally. They wouldn't. Children are no different than adults -- they will always have to do things that are beneficial to their well-being but not necessarily enjoyable. It is, however, reasonable to expect that if provided with education that is effective (i.e., differentiated instructional methods) and meaningful (i.e., differentiated curriculum) most kids would enjoy their schooling.

Along these lines, a simple rule of thumb should be used when evaluating education: if millions of kids need to be prescribed medication for a system to work, then it's not working.


Why Do Home-Schooled Kids in Pennsylvania Have to Learn about Fire Safety?

Contrary to popular belief, private educators are not completely free of state oversight. Since all states have compulsory-education laws, it is necessary for them to define "education." If private institutions fail to live up to the arbitrary standards imposed on them, their students will not be given credit for attendance and thus will be labeled "truant."

Some states, such as Texas, have less restrictive regulations on private schooling and allow educators to operate relatively freely (not free from harassment, though). Others aren't so fortunate. Pennsylvania has notoriously burdensome home-schooling regulations that dictate laborious reporting requirements and arbitrary curriculum standards. At the secondary level, the preponderance of students (including most homeschoolers) must pursue a course of study that includes the subjects below.

English, to include language, literature, speech and composition; science; geography; social studies, to include civics, world history, history of the United States and Pennsylvania; mathematics, to include general mathematics, algebra and geometry; art; music; physical education; health; and safety education, including regular and continuous instruction in the dangers and prevention of fires. High school credit requirements: 4 credits of English, 3 credits of math, 3 credits of science, 3 credits of social studies, and 2 credits of arts and humanities.

Clearly, such rigid curriculum requirements do grave injustice to a student by arrogantly ignoring his interests and aptitude. Perhaps, for instance, his time is better spent focusing on an area at which he excels, such as economics. Instead, he must continuously learn about fire safety as if he's completely numb to the lessons of common sense.

Market-based reforms cannot begin to occur unless states are stripped of their monopoly on defining "education." Until then, government will be free to impose its bureaucracy and arbitrary standards on everyone. The fundamental question that must be asked is, Who should determine how a child is educated: government or parents? Naturally, the statist who wishes to use his superior intellect and insight to instruct society on how to live will select the former ­ and, in his mind, rescue citizens from ignorance and ineptitude.


Why Are Gym Teachers Teaching Math?

According to myriad news reports there exists a shortage of math and science teachers. While the applicant pool might appear shallow, it has little to do with a lack of qualified minds.

Since the 1960s, state-supported teachers' unions have grown exponentially in power and have been a significant force behind pay compression. In other words, teachers are compensated uniformly with little regard for subject-related aptitude. The result is an abundant supply of applicants with general training (e.g., education majors) and a scarce supply of applicants with specialized training (e.g., math and science majors).

To remedy these "shortages," teacher-compensation systems should differentiate among subject-related skillsets. By responding to the demands of the market, hiring managers will find that the shortage of math and science teachers will gradually dissipate and the oversupply of less qualified applicants will diminish.

There is no reason for gym teachers (or any other unqualified teacher) to be teaching technical subjects, because an obvious economic solution exists to the problem. However, teachers' unions, including the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), make this politically infeasible in the realm of public education.


Why Does No Child Left Behind Have 300,000 words -- Almost 293,000 More than the Constitution?

Neil P. McCluskey astutely observed that the 650-plus page No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is shamefully larger than the Constitution and imposes exceptionally burdensome regulations on states, districts, and schools. So why is NCLB approximately 43 times larger than the supreme law of the US?

The Constitution, which espouses liberty and seeks to protect citizens from government intrusion, did not seek to grant privilege to special interests and create far-reaching regulations. Freedom is simple and doesn't require legalese. By contrast, central plans must be lengthy and convoluted so government can seize power stealthily ­ which is exactly what NCLB aimed to accomplish.

According to McCluskey, NCLB demonstrated that

The political calculus of Washington almost always produces results in education that end up helping the special interests who make their livelihoods off the system, not the parents and children public schooling is supposed to serve.

In other words, the further that decisions are removed from parents and local educators, the more politicized and wasteful the system becomes. Federal involvement only proliferates state problems.

So what has resulted from NCLB? Even education secretary Arne Duncan is at a loss for kind words, saying,

By mandating and prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, No Child Left Behind took away the ability of local and state educators to tailor solutions to the unique needs of their students.

While Duncan correctly recognizes the drawbacks of mass standardization in education, he naïvely advocates for a revamped version of NCLB ­ as if continued federal meddling will empower parents and local educators. Quite simply, a system of differentiated education requires less government involvement, not cosmetic changes to a toxic dose of regulation and bureaucracy.

NCLB has given us nothing but weaker standards, impotent accountability systems, and -- of course -- plenty of wasteful spending. Any effort to reform this failed legislation will be futile. Ron Paul summarized NCLB beautifully: "Everybody passes -- no single child is left behind. Instead, they are all left behind in large groups."


Why Do Parents Fight So Much?

Our system of public education destroys diversity and fosters a hostile environment plagued by forced intolerance. Textbooks, curriculum, and religious expression (to name a few) often incite heated debate about what's permitted inside the walls of schools. On any issue there are always as many opinions as there are parents -- and since they should have the power to determine how their children are educated, the parents are all in a sense "correct."

According to McCluskey, political conflict is inherent in public education because "all taxpayers must support the public schools, but only those able to summon sufficient political power can determine what the schools will teach and how they'll be run." In his paper, he cites nearly 150 inflammatory conflicts that occurred nationwide during the 2005–06 school year, ranging from debates over homosexuality to book-banning controversies.

Such uproars should not be surprising. If one father's child is educated according to the father's personal values, he might be quite tolerant of his neighbor's views on, for example, intelligent design. However, if one common curriculum is forced on both of their children, this tolerance will evaporate rather quickly (and vice versa). As a compromise, both of their opinions might be allotted instructional time in the curriculum. In this instance, the natural bias of the teacher will ultimately decide whose side is given preferential treatment. Even robots programmed by humans could not teach matters of history, economics, and government without invoking their programmers' personal beliefs, however subtly. Ultimately, the neighbors will be engaged in a perpetual state of conflict and forced intolerance.

Mass standardization in education destroys diversity of opinion and forces unnatural conflict on parents. If allowed to spend their education dollars freely (instead of paying "twice" for private education) parents would be able to choose the course of education that best suits their values without the need to politicize every issue ad nauseam. The issue du jour has only one real solution: school choice. Diversity and tolerance would thrive in a system that reflects every parent's opinion, not just the opinions of those who are politically connected.


What Has the Department of Education Done for Elementary and Secondary Education?

When Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979, he gave his bedfellows at the teachers' unions exactly what they desired: easy access to federal largesse. The Department of Education (DOE) has grown exponentially in its brief history, with inflation-adjusted discretionary spending increasing by 53 percent between 1993 and 2001. In 2010 it spent nearly $62 billion in taxpayer money on elementary and secondary education alone. What do they have to show for this? Not much.

Big-government enthusiasts love to espouse the relatively modest increases in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for 4th and 8th graders between the 1970s and today. However, as Andrew J. Coulson points out, this matters little as scores for 12th graders are a more appropriate barometer of outcomes.

Anyone who points to the slightly higher scores in the early grades as cause for celebration is missing the point. What parents care about is that their children are well prepared for higher education and future careers at the end of their secondary education. The fact that scores have risen somewhat in the early grades means little since those gains evaporate for the vast majority of students by the time they graduate.

The DOE has produced nothing but unconstitutional government meddling, and its power will only continue to expand unless it's abolished. Abolishing the DOE would free states of burdensome regulations, deprive special interests of their much-beloved cash cow, and save taxpayers about $107 billion annually.



Aaron Smith is director of knowledge management for YES Prep Charter Schools in Houston, Texas. He has an MBA from Texas A&M University and a BS in business administration from the University of Maine. The opinions expressed in his articles do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

http://mises.org/daily/5482/Education-in-Seven-Questions

The Facts About Spending Cuts, the Debt, and the GDP"

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BruceMajors has shared a video with you on YouTube: Veronique de Rugy: The Facts About Spending Cuts, the Debt, and the GDP Raising the debt limit might put off a downgrade disaster in August, but that still isn't enough—as Standard & Poor's recent warning made clear. Perhaps the most important shot not heard around the world was S&P's other admonition: Namely, that the U.S. bond rating will be downgraded in three months, if not sooner, unless we do something about government spending. Beyond raising the debt limit, S&P laid out clear criteria for avoiding a downgrade: 1) reduce the debt by about $4 trillion; 2) agree to a credible plan within three months; and 3) guarantee that this newfound fiscal discipline will actually stick. If S&P isn't bluffing, then lawmakers should get serious about reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio, and they should do it quickly. But how do we achieve such a task? In her latest appearance on Bloomberg TV, Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy explains the facts about spending cuts, the debt, and the GDP. more By the way, did you know you can rent movies from YouTube? Check it out now: youtube.com/movies.
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Fwd: SenatorRandPaul on Boehner bill

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[Fwd: News Alert: In Party Line Vote, House Passes Boehner’s Debt Plan, 218-210]

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Obama's War on America

Obama's War on America catscanner150 | July 29, 2011 at 1:51 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pKuKY-8nh

WAR is Coming!

Posted: July 28, 2011
10:10 pm Eastern

By Kirk Elliott, Ph.D.
© 2011 WND

Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching the speeches of President Obama, House Majority Leader Boehner, Senator Reid, and a host of other influential power brokers inside the beltway and on Wall Street. The crisis of the debt ceiling has turned into something much worse than a financial problem – it has completely morphed into a political problem, which will ultimately result in a geo-political problem.

There are many parties to blame in this mess, but the fact remains that both sides of the fence have an intense hatred for each other.

President Obama, through his rhetoric, is manufacturing, creating, fertilizing (however you want to say it), class warfare, race warfare and a social uprising that could bring our country down from within.

Forget the debt issue for a moment. Just focus on the words that are being said … [paraphrase of speeches given on Friday, July 22, and Monday, July 25, 2011] "The Republicans won't compromise, they want to keep giving tax breaks to the wealthy and to the jet-setting corporate elite. Instead they would rather tax heavily the poor of society, the people receiving social security, Medicare and Medicaid."

WHAT?!?!?!

 Obviously Mr. Obama does not understand our current tax code. Corporations in America have the highest corporate tax rates in the Western world. We also have a progressive tax (one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto envisioned by Karl Marx) so the wealthiest pay the heaviest burden of taxes already.

President Obama also stated that raising the debt ceiling does not give Congress the authority to spend more money, it is just giving them the money they need to fulfill the bills they have already passed.

WHAT?!?!?!?!

That makes no sense! Giving them more money means they will spend more money. If they have run out (which they have), then they should repeal some of the bills already passed. Chalk it up as an "OOPS! We shouldn't have passed this bill in the first place if we had no money."

I think that the Republicans are trying to do the right thing. They proposed a bill through the legitimate legislative process and passed it, but the president will veto it. So the blame game continues in that nobody is willing to compromise.

These kind of polarized beliefs have the potential not only to fail to uphold the Constitution and the valid legislative process that has been followed, but they could actually accelerate the erosion of our Constitution.

We have a president who is unwilling to follow the mandate of the people who elected the current Congress to cut spending and get America's financial house in order. I'm not saying their cut, cap and balance bill is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

Therefore, a HUGE social spending president who has been seemingly backed into a corner may legislate via executive order if need be.

This scares me. Our beloved country is not on the verge of a financial collapse. It is on the verge of death. This is how nations die. It is a domino effect that once the erosion starts it finishes the cycle.

A dependent state has been created where people continue to expect something for nothing.

"We can't take care of ourselves, so please take care of us Mr. Government" is the mantra of our society. At this late stage in the game people become willing to vote away their freedoms for security.

And Obama, rather than rallying America together and trying to salvage what is left of our great republic, is splitting us apart by playing the blame game – forcing people to choose sides.

Well, Mr. President, I have chosen my side. I am on the side of freedom. I am on the side of fiscal responsibility. I choose the side of Biblical wisdom that says being in debt makes you a slave to your creditors.

It's not enough to cap spending. We need to do much more. We need to repeal and take back some of the spending bills that have been passed previously and get back to a point where we are spending LESS than what we bring in through tax revenues.

Will that hurt? OF COURSE! I'm not saying it won't, but it will hurt less than the other option … the death of our nation. Wake up America! We are on the brink.

H/T  WND

When I read this on WND I could not have agreed more with the author, the liberals say this is a war between the "haves and the have nots" which amounts to hill of BS. The true war thanks to these ass-backwards liberals is between the producers and the parasites. The producers who give us the jobs, products and services that provide the fuel for the engine that runs our economy, vs the parasites that have their jaws locked on the government teat for their income, food and healthcare. No I'm not referring to the elderly or infirmed but rather the healthy that chose not to look for work or do whatever it takes to support themselves or their families and instead depend on the government to support them.

I know that thanks to Obama, the democrats and the RINO's in congress the job market is in the tank, and now that the liberals have doubled down on the war on the producers (or in other words the evil rich entrepeneurs) instead of stopping the out of control spending, our worthless occupant of the White House insists on raising the debt ceiling so he can continue wrecking our economy.

What most people don't realize is that Obama and the liberals have kidnapped our economy and is holding it hostage and if he gets his way, we, the taxpayers  will be paying the ransom through higher taxes and inflation.

The TEA Party Conservatives in congress are making a stand against Boehner and the RINO's debt plan and we need to support them, because as Mr. Elliott stated and I have stated in the past, OUR COUNTRY IS ON THE BRINK OF DEATH!  We must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to bring our nation back from the precipice of destruction and if that means rising up against our corrupt government...so be it.  

Tom in NC

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Remember this guy???

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EX_LOUISIANA_GOV_WEDDING?SITE=OHMOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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and NASA is the only agency budget Obama cut

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

By James Taylor | Forbes – Wed, Jul 27, 2011

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  New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxidetrap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is "not much"). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA's ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.

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