Most of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity does not remain in the atmosphere, but is instead absorbed by the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems. In fact, only about 45 percent of emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere.In other words, in the past 160 years, the real rate of CO2 in the atmosphere hasn't risen very much...
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say water boarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.We know that much of the early intel that was obtained in Afghanistan was through water boarding KSM, and others who were caught early. The information obtained prevented a number of terrorist attacks...yet weak sister's in Congress has forbid en such interrogation from being used. It's a shame, really, these people have chosen to wake total war on America and we have limited ourselves in the ability to obtain information. Not only that, the New York Times has gone so far as to reveal secret methods to obtain information through tracking terrorists emails, money transfers, and other methods. Yet, this "newspaper" decided to give away those methods...without being punished. Obviously, they don't desire us to win.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.
Rush Limbaugh has said on his show many times that once the government runs health care, there is a threat that life-or-death decisions will be made based on politics, and people will worry that if they criticize the government or espouse the wrong opinions decisions will go against them.UPDATE: When I went back to Politico.com's story...all of the negative comments had disappeared! Imagine that!
As Jim Geraghty quipped, "He's [Mr. Cheney is] beyond condemning [bomber Abdulmutallab]; he wants to waterboard him until his lungs qualify for a federal wetlands status." We all agree al Qaeda's attempts to blow up airplanes are bad -- the question is what is the current occupant of the White House going to do about it?If his prior actions are any measure...NOT MUCH! How about a civil trial? After all, this terrorist surely deserves exactly the same rights as an American citizen!
It can’t be easy to both keep order and protect civil liberties at such events. But that doesn’t mean police and city officials shouldn’t be expected to try. Yes, some protesters damaged some property at the G-20 summit, although there wasn’t much of that this time around. But the presence of a few unruly demonstrators doesn’t give the police carte blanche to crack down on every young person in the general vicinity, nor should it give the city free rein to suppress all public protest. It’s unfortunate that when the global press and the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies came to Pittsburgh, the images that emerged were not of a society that values free expression and constitutional rights but of one willing to grant police powers normally seen in authoritarian states.At what point does Freedom of Speech end? At what point does a police prescence give them the right to squash any and all public dissent? Mr. Balko brings up some very troubling points from a 1st Amendment point of view...
There's a political movement percolating in North Georgia, and it's picking up steam.They're starting small, but building...I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them begin to elect people not just locally, but nationally next year.
Catoosa, Gilmer and Walker counties have tea party groups, and new ones are forming in Dade and Whitfield counties.
"My desire is to go through all of the (Georgia's) 9th Congressional District and organize tea parties," said James Groce, a leader with the Tea Party of Walker County.
But if their candidates do not win Republican primaries, will Tea Party activists support their own third-party candidates in the fall elections, prompting what Republican strategist Bill McInturff conceded would be a "disaster" for the GOP? Will their supporters simply not vote? Or could their movement, born of concern over government spending even when Republicans were in control, end up taking down incumbents of all political stripes?In other words, either you support the goals of the Tea Party, or they will actively work against you...Go Tea Party!
"Right now the Tea Party movement has higher favorables (in polls) than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party," said Democratic pollster Fred Yang. "Eleven months from now, the enemy could be all of us."
GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown has been all but abandoned by the same national Republican committees that pumped hundreds of thousands in campaign cash to former governors Mitt Romney and William Weld during their long-shot bids for U.S. Senate.This is a shame given that the national committees backed Scozaffava in NY-23, even when she was far less of a Republican than Mr. Brown is. This is why I've become very disenchanted with the various national GOP committees.
The snub has outraged local Republicans who say national conservatives should be jumping at the chance to nab the first open Senate seat in decades despite Brown’s tough odds in the Jan. 19 special election.
The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn’t have to face Nebraska voters until 2012.
If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.
Nelson's health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan. Overall, 64% oppose the health care legislation, including 53% who are Strongly Opposed. In Nebraska, opposition is even stronger than it is nationally.
Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters in the state believe that passage of the legislation will hurt the quality of care, and 62% say it will raise costs.
First, President Obama said the following: “As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.” (my emphasis) The language is that of courtroom legalese, carefully indicating that a suspect is only “allegedly” guilty of anything, until such time as a jury is convinced by a trial that he was indeed the party responsible for the crime committed.I think that treating terrorists as criminals is a horrendous idea...unless they'll be placed in "open population" in prison where our lovely (but nearly universally patriotic) convicted felons will make short work of them.
But as the world knows, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indeed very guilty, and only because a Dutch filmmaker sitting near him interceded and subdued him, helping put out the fire at the same time, was the plot unsuccessful. Rather than treat the culprit as a foreign national who became converted in London to the doctrines of radical Islam by mullahs at his local mosque, evidently the decision has been made to treat him as a defendant in a criminal case, with a subsequent trial in which his guilt is not to be prejudged. Although he is a foreign national, evidently he will be treated as if he were an American citizen.
What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high.
Putting aside the stuff that was just plain wrong (this guy's an "isolated extremist" - oh, yeah?), the President's remarks had a horrible desiccated complacency. "Alleged..." "suspect..." "charged..." - because this is no different from a punk holding up a gas station, right? In all their alleged allegedness, this Administration has an allergy to the concept of war, and thus to the tools of war, including strategy and war aims. In essence, they've accepted a Fort Hood model for this challenge: every so often, something will happen and people will die, and we'll seal off the crime scene and take the alleged suspect into alleged custody. But it's reactive, and it cripples our ability to prevent the death of innocents.Again, the emphasis is mine...loved "desiccated complacency" I'll have to remember that.
There's a difference between an alleged suspect (which is what he is is the President's fantasy) and an enemy combatant (which is what he is in reality). If this were a war, we would question him about who he hooked up with in Yemen, who did he meet with in London, and maybe get a lead on attacks to come. Instead, the authorities, having issued the Knickerbomber a multi-entry visa, having permitted him to board the plane, and having failed to detect his incendiary unwear, now allow him to lawyer up and ensure that we'll never know who he knew in Yemen or anywhere else.
This would be a big enough gamble in the best of circumstances. Up against the broader background Derb discusses, it makes disaster inevitable.
When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father in Nigeria reported concern over his son’s “radicalization” to the U.S. Embassy there last month, intelligence officials in the United States deemed the information insufficient to pursue. The young man’s name was added to the half-million entries in a computer database in McLean and largely forgotten.Moreover, the TSA and Dept Of Homeland Security (another useless department) has failed dismally. After all, the best Napolitano can say is they reacted "successfully after the event". Jonah Goldberg says "
The lack of attention was not unusual, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who said that thousands of similar bits of information flow into the National Counterterrorism Center each week from around the world. Only those that indicate a specific threat, or add to an existing body of knowledge about an individual, are passed along for further investigation and possible posting on airline and border watch lists. …
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined GOP critics in asking how the suspect was able to retain a U.S. visa — issued by the U.S. Embassy in London in 2008 — after his name appeared in the terrorist database.
“What happened after this man’s father called our embassy in Nigeria?” Lieberman asked. “What happened to that information? Was there follow-up to try to determine where this suspect was?”
White House officials struggled to explain the complicated system of centralized terrorist data and watch lists, stressing that they were put in place years ago by the Bush administration. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama has ordered reviews of the watch-list system and the airport explosives screening.
I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the previous appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it's fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have "worked" since it has done everything right.The emphasis is mine...
Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patently unqualified hack.
Yes -- in Bizarro World, where up is down, right is left, and a "system" supposedly designed to protect us instead breaks down completely and leaves passengers on a plane utterly defenseless.
What universe is this woman living in? I'll tell you -- it's the world of Washington, D.C., where the main occupation appears to be covering your own a[--]. How she could sit there and say that with a straight face reveals an iron will: too bad she didn't apply that will to actually doing her job.
Consider: the passengers on that plane were left completely on their own: no air marshalls were on board. Also consider that the would-be terrorist got on the plane without a passport (according to a passenger on the flight, one Kurt Haskell), and in spite of the fact that his own father had personally gone to our CIA and the US Embassy to warn them about his son's activities, and that he presented a risk.
We're fighting a war in two countries, simultaneously, on the dubious grounds that we are combatting "terrorism" -- and yet the terrorists apparently have no problem getting into this country. We're protecting the Afghan-Pakistani border from incursions by the Taliban-- but our own borders continue to be among the most porous in the world.
No, what this points out is not that Napolitano is incompetent, but that our elaborate system of security theater is probably next to useless. I cannot imagine where this is going to end. No, actually, I can imagine all too well: with passengers checking all luggage and flying in specially issued hospital gowns. And when some enterprising terrorist manages to sneak through that cordon by swallowing his explosives, the TSA will tell us that "the system works" and start the cavity searches.
1990
THE WANG AFFAIR AND JONES' URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECT PAPER [48]
JONES is the lead author of a Sep.90 paper [46] which concludes (from Eastern China and other data) there is no relevant urban heat island (UHI) effect (warmer temperatures in and around urban centres). However 3 months later, in Dec.90, his co-author, Wang, publishes another paper [47] (using the very same Eastern China data) but arrives at the opposite conclusion: that there is a significant UHI effect and temperature studies must this take into account to avoid skewing results in favour of warming. (Also see {WIGLEY 26.Nov.2009})
Aside from the fact until the contradictory conclusions are resolved, the papers can't be cited as favoring one position or the other another problem arose with the data set used. Both studies stated that the 84 stations were chosen based on their history such that "few, if any, changes in instrumentation, location or observation times".
In February 2007 mathematician Doug Keenan learned from MCINTYRE's blog that data was only available for 35 of them, and of those 35 at least half had substantial moves (eg 25 km). Keenan wrote to JONES asking about the source of location information of the other 49 stations. JONES replied that his co-author Wang had selected those stations in based on his “extensive knowledge of those networks”. So Keenan wrote to Wang, who replied that Zeng (a co-author of [47]) had "hard copies of station histories" but these were not provided to Keenan. However, the problem is that Zeng was also the co-author of a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) study which detailed station moves which noted that the “hard copies” to which Wang referred were not found.
Later in 2007 Keenan publishes "The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang" [49] setting out the matter and despite an investigation by University at Albany (where Wang is employed), and still the "hardcopy" data is not disclosed, nor was the university's investigation report.
In his paper Keenan notes that although JONES may not have known about the fraud in 1990, by 2001 he did due to subsequent papers JONES wrote which addressed the station moves and stated "those relocations substantially affected the measured temperatures" in direct contradiction to the 1990 paper. "Thus, by 2001, Jones must have known that the claims of Wang were not wholly true." Keenan wrote to JONES but received no reply. [49]
The 1990 Jones et al paper has been the major evidence presented by JONES in all of the IPCC reports to dismiss the influence of urban change on the temperature measurements, and also has been used as an excuse for the failure to mention most of the unequivocal evidence that such urban effects exist. The paper was even dragged out again for the 2007 IPCC report. [39] In fact determining the UHI is not complicated at all, for example see [61]: "Picking out the UHI in climatic temperature records - so easy a 6th grader can do it!"
On 31.Aug.2007 WIGLEY e-mailed JONES that Keenan is correct: "Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone ([Wang] at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect." ([1188557698.txt] with more in [1241415427.txt])
A congressional research arm said Tuesday that the left-wing pressure group -- which Congress recently voted to cut off from federal funds after a sting operation caught employees dispensing housing-fraud advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute -- violated no federal regulations.Next we'll see the Democratic majority in Congress (probably in January) quietly restore all of the lost funding. Meanwhile, ACORN will continue to implement it's plans to fraudulently steal elections. Much as they did the Minnesota Senatorial election last year.
This follows a Brooklyn federal judge's ruling this month that Congress' action was itself unconstitutional -- and an "internal review" (read: whitewash) by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger that found "no evidence" of illegal action on ACORN's part.
Indeed, Harshbarger blamed the whole mess on lax standards introduced by the group's disgraced former leader, Wade Rathke, explaining that the scandal "erupted just as ACORN's reform leadership was about to complete an ambitious and professionally directed organizational and cultural transformation."
In Canada, once the wait times for MRIs and hip surgery start creeping up over two years, the government distracts the citizenry with a Royal Commission appointed to study possible “reforms” which reports back a couple of years later usually with recommendations to “strengthen” the government’s “commitment” to every Canadian’s “right” to health care by renaming the Department of Health the Department of Health Services and abolishing the Agency of Health Administration and replacing it with a new Agency of Administrative Health Operations which would report to a reformed Council of Health Policy Administrative Coordination to be supervised by a streamlined Public Health Operations & Administration Assessment Bureau. This package of “reforms” would cost a mere 12.3 gazillion dollars and usually keeps the lid on the pot until the wait times for MRIs start creeping up over three years.It can only get better right? After all, we'll now have a far more efficient and more cost effective health care system...RIIIIIGGGGHHHTTTT! I'll be happy to sell you some beach front property in Arizona, just wait until the next "big" quake in SoCal...
The other alternative is what the British did earlier this year: They created an exciting new “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” promising every Briton the “right” to hospital treatment within 18 weeks. Believe it or not, that distant deadline shimmering woozily in the languid desert haze can be oddly reassuring if you’ve ever visited a Scottish emergency room on a holiday weekend. And, if the four-and-a-half months go by and you still haven’t been treated, you get your (tax) money back? Ah, no. But there is a free helpline you can call which will give you continuously updated estimates on which month your operation has been rescheduled for. I mention these not as a preview of the horrors to come, but because I’ve come to the bleak conclusion that U.S.-style “health” “reform” is going to be far worse.
The people now in charge of our government believe Clinton-era counterterrorism was a successful model. They start from the premise that terrorism is a crime problem to be managed, not a war to be won. Overdone "war on drugs" rhetoric aside, we don't try to "win" against (as in "defeat") law-enforcement challenges. We expect them to happen from time to time and to contain, but never completely prevent, the damage.His point is spot on. The liberal left believes that terrorism is a only a law enforcement problem, not a military/national security problem, and that it can be successfully protected against by only law enforcement methods. Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton's failed prosecution of the WTC 1993 bombing suspects didn't 'prevent' further attacks, the policies instituted under his watch exacerbated them by preventing the CIA and FBI from communicating directly on threats within the national borders. They were in fact the nucleus of the 9/11 attacks.
Here, no thanks to the government, the plane was not destoyed, and we won't get to the bottom of the larger conspiracy (enabling the likes of Napolitano to say there's no indication of a larger plot — much less one launched by an international jihadist enterprise) because the guy got to lawyer up rather than be treated like a combatant and subjected to lengthy interrogation. But the terrorist will be convicted at trial (this "case" tees up like a slam-dunk), so the administration will put it in the books as a success ... just like the Clinton folks did after the '93 WTC bombers and the embassy bombers were convicted. In their minds, litigation success equals national security success.
It is a dangerously absurd viewpoint, but it was clear during the campaign that it was Obama's viewpoint. The American people — only seven years after 9/11 — elected him anyway. As we learn more painfully everyday, elections matter.
This California model is important because Obama is adopting it as a blueprint on a national scale. If he wins (and don’t count him out), life really would be more patterned on an equality of result. New payroll, income, state, local, and health care surcharge taxes would hit those over $200K with about a 70% take of one’s income. The public sector employees double in number, unionize, and demand ever more from “them.” Cap-and-trade charges raise monthly utility bills 20%. Things like SUVs, Winnebagos, and private jet travel are taxed out of reach — except for a guardian class that uses public moneys for a rarefied lifestyle of governance and enforcement (sort of like the jets parked on the tarmac at Copenhagen or Barack’s night out on the Big Apple).So it looks like we can expect our new socialist overlords to begin really taxing us...
"[Under Obama] the federal government has also intervened aggressively in both the financial and industrial sectors of the economy in order to produce specific desired outcomes for particular corporations. It has nationalized America’s largest auto company (General Motors) and intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings of the third-largest auto company (Chrysler), privileging labor unions at the expense of bondholders. It has, in effect, nationalized what was America’s largest insurance company (American International Group) and largest bank (Citigroup), and appears to have exerted extra-legal financial pressure on what was the second-largest bank (Bank of America) to get it to purchase the ¬country’s largest securities company (Merrill Lynch). The implicit government guarantees provided to home-loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been called in, and the federal government is now the largest de facto lender in the residential real-estate market. The government has selected the CEOs and is setting compensation at major automotive and financial companies across the country. On top of these interventions in finance and commerce, the administration and congressional Democrats are also pursuing both a new climate and energy strategy and large-scale health-care reform. Their agenda would place the government at the center of these two huge sectors of the economy…"If the deep-seated dissatisfaction that has been building since the passage of the swollen and mispent "Stimulus Package" continues, it's not out of the question that the Democratic Party could see a tidal wave of voter anger cause them to lose as many as 100 seats in the house and 13 in the Senate.
Rather than make an open and honest argument that, despite persistent uncertainties, there is substantial theoretical and empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that human activity is contributing to a gradual warming
Really? Where? Because all of the “evidence” I’ve seen has been suspect. Do you have a link to any of this “substantial theoretical and empirical evidence”?
The argument always goes like this:
“Sure, the Hockey Stick was shown to be fraudulent, but there is still plenty of other substantial theoretical and empirical evidence.”
“Sure, James Hansen’s NASA climate data was shown to be corrupt, but there is still plenty of other substantial theoretical and empirical evidence.”
“Sure, temperature tracking stations were shown to have had air-conditioning exhausts installed right next to them, but there is still plenty of other substantial theoretical and empirical evidence.”
“Sure, East Anglia CRU is the most influential player in Global Warming research and policy formulation, and has been exposed as a cabal of data-cookers and debate-squelchers, but there is still plenty of other substantial theoretical and empirical evidence.”
“Sure, he hit me a few times, but he’s really a sweet guy when he’s not drinking.”
Quote
It is NOT by accident that we find ourselves in our current situation… it is by design… the result of 40+ years of something called “Ideological Subversion”.
There is nothing secretive or crazy-conspiracy-theorist about Ideological Subversion. It is overt, out in the open, in your face.
There are 4 stages to Ideological Subversion:
1. Demoralization
2. Destabilization
3. Crisis (we are at the beginning of this stage)
4. Normalization (which is anything but normal!).
This cancer has been growing silently and is very close to destroying our country.
Please read this recent American Thinker article and watch this short video/interview. They feature Yuri Bezmenov, an ex-KGB agent and Russian defector, describing exactly how Ideological Subversion works (it should sound eerily familiar).
Video (Interview from mid 1980’s… there are many videos featuring Mr. Bezmenov, if limited on time, skip to 2:12):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk
Recent 2009 American Thinker article:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/from_russia_with_no_love.html
Please share with everyone you know. This video has over 100,000 views, but it needs to have 100 million.
Incumbent Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan may have a serious problem on his hands if Republicans recruit Governor John Hoeven to run for the U.S. Senate in North Dakota next year.
The first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 telephone survey of likely voters in North Dakota finds the popular Republican governor leading Dorgan by 22 points – 58% to 36%. Just six percent (6%) are undecided in that senatorial contest.
Part of the challenge for Dorgan is the health care legislation working its way through Congress. Dorgan, along with every Democrat in the Senate, has voted to move the legislation forward and is expected to vote for final approval of the reform later this week. That’s not likely to be well received in North Dakota where just 30% favor the proposed health care reform plan and 64% are opposed.
Opposition to the health care plan is higher in North Dakota than it is nationally.
Eighty-four percent (84%) of those who strongly favor the plan support Dorgan. Eighty-six percent (86%) of those who strongly oppose it back Hoeven.
It is the year 2011. The United States has become saturated with suspicion and unrest. Since early 2010, President Barack Obama, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and Prime Minister Stephan Harper of Canada have been conducting private meetings with each other and various political heads of the U.N. None of the meetings are open to the media, let alone the public.
Americans, thoroughly disgusted with the socialistic programs that have been thrust upon them over the last few years, vote out seventeen of the nineteen Democrats in the Senate and 178 in Congress that were up for reelection.
The secrecy of the President became an issue tacked onto the political platforms of candidates running for the Senate and Congress in the November 2010 elections. When asked for his opinion on this monumental power shift in favor of liberty-minded Republicans during the November elections, President Obama is quoted as saying the elections were "ultimately inconsequential;" he allowed the cryptic statement to stand alone and said nothing more on the subject until January's swearing-in ceremony.
In January 2011, two days prior to the swearing-in of the new Senators and Congressmen, President Obama holds an emergency conference that interrupts the regular broadcasting of every station in the United States, and is replayed on major news networks throughout the day. The news is horrifying, and the ramifications of what the president has said have a numbing effect on the public.
Private Ownership of firearms has been outlawed, and Obama has promised a new era of equality and peace. Unfortunately for Obama, Americans would not act like the sheep he had taken them for.
Revolution begins.
President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.Living in blue-state Maryland, I've come to hear this kind of thing more and more often. Many of my neighbors voted for Mr. Obama because he ran as a moderate, almost "Clintonesque" candidate. But once elected to office. He didn't just lurch left, he ran there full tilt.
Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions. His rhetorical gifts now serve his loathsome habit of fear-mongering.
"Time is running out," he says, over and again. He said it on health care, on the stimulus, in Copenhagen, on Iran.
Instead of provoking thought and inspiring ideas, the man hailed for his Ivy League nuance insists we stop thinking and do what he says. Now.
His assertion we will go bankrupt unless Congress immediately adopts the health monstrosity marks a new low.
