June 17, 2008
April 25, 2008
One on global warming .. from 2003 books of note
Go ahead, guys! Believe the soft fasicst Al Gore who stands to make billions off your gulliblity, I don't believe a WORD he says. Yes, greenhouse gases are BAD, but what's HE doing about it?
Nothing. Nothing at all. But the TRUTH will out eventually.
Same goes for the nasty Thomas Friedman. Trying to profit off your stooopidity.
Veeger.
Wipeout
New Scientist vol 178 issue 2392 -
26 April 2003, page 38
A major catastrophe 251 million years ago left life teetering on the brink of oblivion. Now for the first time we have a clear picture of what caused it, says leading palaeontologist Michael Benton
251 MILLION years ago, at the end of the Permian period, life on Earth was almost completely wiped out by an environmental catastrophe of a magnitude never seen before or since. All over the world complex ecosystems were destroyed. In the sea, coral reefs, fishes, shellfish, trilobites, plankton, and many other groups disappeared. On land, the sabre-toothed gorgonopsian reptiles and their rhinoceros-sized prey, the dinocephalians and pareiasaurs, were wiped out forever. Only 5 per cent of species survived the catastrophe, and for the next 500,000 years life itself teetered on the brink of oblivion. What terrible event could have wrought such havoc?
Two theories have been proposed - the impact of a huge meteorite or comet over 10 kilometres in diameter, or a massive and prolonged volcanic eruption. Up to now the evidence has been equivocal. But the data has been accumulating over the past 10 years, and the picture is now clear enough to say with some certainty what happened.
An impact might seem a tempting model. A massive catastrophe demands an extraordinary explanation - something unexpected, something from outer space. And we know that impacts can cause mass extinctions. It seems that the dinosaurs and many other groups of animals and plants were wiped out 65 million years ago by the impact of a huge meteorite in modern day Mexico. The crater has been found, there is good evidence for the shock wave, and for the fallout rocks and dust all round the world.
In February 2001, a team of scientist
s claimed they had found clear evidence that the mass extinction at the end of the Permian was also caused by a meteorite impact. Luanne Becker of the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues from NASA and other institutions announced in a paper in Science (vol 291, p 1530) that they had found extraterrestrial helium and argon in rocks from the Permo-Triassic boundary in China and Japan.
The gases were trapped inside the fullerenes or buckyballs that are often associated with impact debris. When Becker and her team looked closely at the helium and argon they found isotope ratios like nothing else on Earth, but similar to those found in meteorites. On this basis they argued that the fullerenes - and their entrapped gases - must have come from an impact.
The claim was splashed all over the press. On 23 February 2001, The New York Times reported "Meteor crash led to extinctions in era before dinosaurs". The Times said, "Asteroid collision left the world almost lifeless".
But later in 2001, several learned journals published critiques in which other geochemists tried and failed to replicate Becker's results. Other samples from the same boundary bed in China apparently contained no buckyballs, argon or helium, and a Japanese geologist, Yukio Isozaki of the University of Tokyo, pointed out that the Japanese sample came from a rock formation that didn't even include the Permian-Triassic boundary.
But Becker and her team still stand by their results. They repeated their analyses from the Chinese samples, and confirmed the helium result. They also have support from an independent source. In September 2001, Kunio Kaiho of Tohoku University in Japan reported that sediment grains from Permo-Triassic boundary sections in China show evidence of compression by impact, as well as geochemical shifts indicative of a huge impact - though his data is far from conclusive.
All in all, the evidence for an impact at the Permo-Triassic boundary is limited when compared with the mass of evidence for an asteroid hit at the end of the Cretaceous: the iridium anomaly (a worldwide spike in the abundance of iridium, an element derived from meteorite impacts); shocked quartz (grains showing evidence of high-pressure modification); glassy spherules (melt particles derived from sedimentary rocks); and above all an enormous crater of the correct age. The discovery of a Permian equivalent of any of these could confirm the impact theory at any moment. But for now, most geologists do not accept the impact model for the crisis at the end of the Permian.
Instead, their attention has focused on Earth-bound processes. The idea is that massive volcanic eruptions, sustained over half-a-million years or more, caused catastrophic environmental deterioration - poison gas, global warming, stripping of soils and plants from the landscape, eruption of gases from their frozen locations deep in the oceans, and mass deoxygenation. The evidence for this version of events is compelling compared with the impact hypothesis.
First and foremost, the end of the Permian was indeed characterised by huge volcanic eruptions. The remains of these are preserved in the Siberian Traps, a vast accumulation of basalt lavas some 3 million cubic kilometres in volume and covering 3.9 million square kilometres of what is now eastern Russia. Precise dating of the Siberian Traps shows that they span the boundary between the Permian and the Triassic, with the eruptions beginning perhaps 500,000 years before.
The Siberian Traps were not formed by explosive eruptions from classic cone-shaped volcanoes. More commonly, basalt is erupted through fissures, long cracks in the ground, as happens on Iceland today. Such eruptions last for a long time, and the lava bubbles up in huge volumes, spreading sideways from the fissure. They are accompanied by prodigious outpourings of gases, mostly carbon dioxide.
The effect of these gases was devastating. The full story of the havoc they wrought is written in the sedimentary rocks that span the Permo-Triassic boundary. Until the 1990s, geologists had to rely on incomplete or hard-to-date sections in northern Italy, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Reputedly excellent sections in southern China were not available to overseas geologists, mainly for political reasons.
Nothing daunted, British geologists Tony Hallam of the University of Birmingham and Paul Wignall of the University of Leeds obtained a modest travel grant from the Royal Society, and went to China in 1991. What they found amazed them: the rock record was complete, and it told the story of the crisis millimetre-by-millimetre as they worked their way through the rocks from bottom to top.
Hallam and Wignall focused on sections around the Meishan township. Working up through the succession, the last rocks deposited in the Permian were limestones containing diverse and abundant fossils, such as foraminiferans (microscopic shelled protozoans), brachiopods (lamp shells), and conodonts (jaw elements from primitive fish-like vertebrates). Rarer fossils include cephalopods (coiled molluscs that are distant relatives of the modern squid and octopus), sea urchins, starfish and small crustaceans called ostracods, all typical of warm, shallow seas. Near the top, there is extensive burrowing in the limestones, indicating conditions of full oxygenation. Clearly, life at this time was diverse and abundant.
Then, suddenly, everything changes. The thick, burrowed limestones disappear, and with them the abundant fossils. The limestone is capped by a mineral-rich layer containing lots of pyrite - a classic marker of very low atmospheric oxygen. On top of this are three layers of limestone, mudstone and clay, encompassing about half a million years. These layers, numbered as beds 25, 26 and 27 in the Chinese system, tell how the crisis unfolded, so let's look at them in more detail.
The oldest layer, bed 25, is a thin band of pale-coloured clay 5 centimetres thick in which fossils are very rare, just a few foraminiferans and conodonts. Under the microscope, this clay contains small iron-rich pellets and decayed pieces of quartz that indicate it was formed from an acidic "tuff", an amalgam of volcanic fragments and ash from an explosive volcanic eruption - presumably the Siberian Traps.
The next bed up, number 26, consists of 7 centimetres of dark, organic-rich limey mudstone in which fossils are slightly more abundant - there are brachiopods, clams and cephalopods. Based on the relatively diverse fossils, and on geochemical evidence, oxygen levels during deposition of bed 26 were low but not anoxic.
Together, beds 25 and 26 form a distinctive dark-on-light marker band that has been detected elsewhere in China, which is useful for geologists who wish to make correlations from location to location. This "ash band" has been detected so far in 12 provinces throughout China, covering at least a million square kilometres. Whatever created it was extremely far-reaching.
Bed 27 indicates some degree of environmental recovery. The 17-centimetre-thick layer of limestone is full of burrows, so bottom conditions were not especially low in oxygen. The lower part of the bed contains occasional Permian brachiopod fossils near the base. Near the top, the conodont Hindeodus parvus appears for the first time: this is the globally accepted marker for the beginning of the Triassic period. (Geological boundaries are marked by the appearance of fossils, not their disappearance. The major event happened at the base of bed 25, but no significant new species appeared until the middle of bed 27.)
What does it all mean? One of the stories the Meishan section tells is of a dramatic extinction event. In the late 1990s, Jin Yugan and his colleagues from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and Doug Erwin from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, undertook a huge sampling programme. They found that at the base of bed 25, 116 marine species suddenly disappeared, representing 94 per cent of the total. Then, in the following 500,000 years stretching to the top of bed 27, new species appear then disappear with alarming speed. Overall a further 45 species dropped out, one at a time. Clearly something terrible happened at the base of bed 25 and its ramifications continued for half a million years.
But what exactly happened? Fortunately, the Meishan rock section, and other sections elsewhere, contain a record of environmental changes through the Permo-Triassic crisis, in the form of isotopes of oxygen and carbon. Both elements have two stable, naturally occurring isotopes whose ratios fluctuate depending on environmental conditions. The isotope ratios are locked into the skeletons of organisms during their lifetimes, so careful recordings from the shells of bivalves or foraminiferans, for example, can give a detailed picture of atmospheric and oceanic conditions through time.
Oxygen isotopes are used as a palaeothermometer. Oxygen occurs in two forms, oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. These are incorporated into the calcite skeletons of marine creatures at different rates depending on the water temperature, more oxygen-18 at low temperatures, and more oxygen-16 at high. At the base of bed 25, the main mass extinction level, there was a sudden shift in the oxygen isotope ratios indicating a worldwide rise in temperature of 6 °C. This may not sound much, but it would have a profound effect on the world's ecology. Climatologists have been getting very excited recently about a half-a-degree rise in global temperatures.
The carbon isotopes suggest what might have caused the temperature increase. They show a massive shift towards the light isotope, carbon-12, exactly at the time of the big extinction. Pulses of carbon-12 in the geological record are usually indicative of a volcanic eruption or a large die-off (plants, animals and bacteria concentrate carbon-12 in their bodies and release it when they die). Both certainly happened at the end of the Permian. But the carbon-12 pulse is far too big to be explained by these mechanisms alone. Calculations of global carbon budgets have suggested that, even if every plant, animal, and microbe died and was buried, altogether they would only account for about one-fifth of the observed carbon shift. The Siberian Traps would have added another fifth. Where did the remaining three-fifths come from?
The extra carbon-12 was probably buried, frozen deep under the oceans in the form of gas hydrates. These are extraordinary accumulations of carbon-12-rich methane locked up in cages of ice at very high pressure. If the atmosphere and oceans warm up sufficiently, these gas reserves can suddenly melt and release their contents in a catastrophic way. The explosion of gas through the surface of the oceans has been termed a "methane burp". A very large methane burp at the end of the Permian could have produced enough carbon-12 to make up the deficit.
The cause of the burp was probably global warming triggered by huge releases of CO2 from the Siberian Traps. Methane is a greenhouse gas too, so a big burp raises global temperatures even further. Normally, long-term global processes act to bring greenhouse gas levels down. This kind of negative feedback keeps the Earth in equilibrium. But what happens if the release of methane is so huge and fast that normal feedback processes are overwhelmed? Then you have a "runaway greenhouse". This is a positive feedback system: excess carbon in the atmosphere causes warming, the warming triggers the release of more methane from gas hydrates, this in turn causes yet more warming, which leads to the release of more methane and so on. As temperatures rise, species start to go extinct. Plants and plankton die off and oxygen levels plummet. This is what seems to have happened 251 million years ago.
The effects were profound and long-lasting. In the Meishan section, the Permo-Triassic boundary in bed 27 is followed by a succession of dark limestones and shales containing sparse fossils. This seems to represent a post-apocalyptic world, in which CO2 levels were still very high and the oceans and atmosphere were starved of oxygen. The 6 per cent of species that survived the initial onslaught were struggling. Normal recovery processes had not yet kicked in. When oxygen levels fall, plants and photosynthesising plankton in the sea normally replenish it by absorbing excess CO2 and generating oxygen. After the crash at the end of the Permian, perhaps oxygen levels had been driven so low, and so much of plant life had been killed, that this was impossible.
The surviving species were a very poor sample of what had lived before: thin-shelled molluscs that required very little food and swam languidly over the black, deoxygenated muds, and the "living fossil" Lingula in its shallow burrows. Near the end of the Permian period, each region of the world had its own fauna and flora. Afterwards, the survivors became cosmopolitan. It took 20 or 30 million years for coral reefs to re-establish themselves, and for the forests to regrow. In some settings, it took 50 million years or more for full ecosystem complexity to recover. Geologists and palaeontologists are only just beginning to get to grips with this most profound of crises.
Michael Benton Michael Benton is head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. His book on the end-Permian crisis, When Life Nearly Died, has just been published by Thames & Hudson, price £16.95
April 23, 2008
Environmentalist PR Firms In Green Propaganda Offensive
The corporate CEO's and investors profiting from global warming fear
Steve Watson | | ||||||||
Nowhere is this more evident than on Yahoo.com where pages and pages of articles devoid of any actual scientific reality have been collated into one giant green offshoot website.
Any visitor to Yahoo.com will today notice that the tech giant has "gone green" in recognition of Earth Day, a long running observance intended to inspire environmental awareness.
However, a closer look at the information provided on the website along with the people pushing it signals that the move represents nothing more than a huge profit making PR exercise.
Upon attempting to access my Yahoo email I was intrigued by the green Yahoo logo. Little did I know that when clicking on it I would be instantly bombarded with reactionary propaganda in it's crudest form.
Take Yahoo's "Global Warming Myths and Facts" page for example.
The agenda here is simple, they tell you what the FACTS are about global warming and remind you that any scurrilous rumours you may have heard to the contrary are MYTHS. The problem is, there is no actual evidence, just statements:
Fact: There is no debate among scientists about the basic facts of global warming.
That's strange, because last time I checked there was a raging debate with vast amounts of scientists questioning the UN backed IPCC "consensus" of just a handful of scientists and a boatload of politicians.
Fact: Any beneficial effects [of increased CO2 levels] will be far outweighed by damage and disruption.
And this is according to who? Some scientists , including the man dubbed "the father of the greenhouse effect" have postulated that the temperature increases predicted by climate models will benefit the planet, without causing any significant damage. What makes their projections MYTHS?
Fact: The global warming we are experiencing is not natural. People are causing it.
It is widely understood that CO2 constitutes a mere 0.038 percent of the atmosphere. Human CO2 production accounts for a mere 3 percent of the total CO2. The remaining 97 percent is produced naturally. Volcanic eruptions, CO2 releases from the oceans and even flatulence from cows cause more CO2 emissions than humans. Furthermore, data from all four major global temperature tracking outlets shows that the Earth is no longer getting warmer and that we are now actually in a post-warming period of global cooling.
Fact: Putting the word "fact" in front of a sentence does not make it an actual fact.
The Yahoo green onslaught is jam packed with paragraphs of such unsubstantiated claims. Highlights include:
The only information that even mentions alternative scientific explanations for global warming trends serves to shoot them all down as dissent by focusing on lesser known fringe theories. The article linked here was written by Lime.com, a website that makes a living from peddling all manner of green accessories. Very scientific and absolutely no bias there then."The only debate in the science community about global warming is about how much and how fast warming will continue."
"a mandatory cap on emissions could spur technological innovation that could create jobs and wealth. "
"The best way to lower temperature and thus reduce water vapor levels is to reduce CO2 emissions."
Why don't these self appointed experts try refuting the now widely accepted evidence that there has been no warming since 1998?
Why don't they write about the fact that carbon emissions have never driven climate change because as ice core samples clearly show, carbon dioxide is a consequence of temperature increase and not a cause of it, sometimes lagging behind by as much as 800 years?
Why don't they address the fact that during the most recent period of warming on Earth, there has been warming throughout the solar system due to increased sun activity?
Instead of raging about temperature rises in the Arctic, why don't they provide an opposing viewpoint to counter the scientific evidence that proves Antarctica has actually cooled since 1979?
Of course, they wouldn't dare draw attention to the more prominent dissenting views on the so called global warming "consensus".
Another featured article, Can Mutant Plants End Climate Change? suggests that some scientists believe genetically altering plants to take in more CO2 is a possible solution to the certain death we all face. Perhaps the vast swathes of cash that Monsanto, Aventis and the other biotechnology companies have pumped into "friendly" scientific studies is paying off for them.
The enviro takeover of Yahoo also calls for handy hints on how to shoot down "climate denialists," and "poor fools whose heads are in the sand".
A cursory check into the sponsors of and contributors to a large chunk of the Yahoo pages, the Environmental Defense Fund, reveals that its board of trustees is infested with corporate investors, CEO's and big business representatives.
- Chairman N J Nicholas Jr, is a renowned investor, director of Boston Scientific Corporation and Xerox Corporation, as well as having held many positions with Time Warner.
- Vice Chair Robert W. Wilson, another Wall Street investor, made his fortune in hedge funds.
- Kirsten J. Feldman is an Advisory Director for Morgan Stanley.
- Robert E. Grady is a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group.
- John H. T. Wilson is an Advisory Director for Morgan Stanley
- Roger Enrico is a former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Inc.
- E. John Rosenwald, Jr. was the Vice Chairman of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. (oh dear).
Another Contributor to the Yahoo green binge is the Natural Resources Defense Council, and it's a similar story with their board of trustees.
We have previously reported on warnings about the big money behind global warming propaganda.
For example, last month Howard C. Hayden, emeritus professor of physics from the University of Connecticut, was prompted to speak out after a visit to New York where he learned that scaremongering billboards about the long-term effects of global warming were being purchased at a cost of $700,000 a month.
We have also carried reports that detail how many of the world's richest and most powerful banks are pushing hard for the introduction of a 'no caps' world trading market for carbon.
So called "Carbon traders" have predicted that emissions permits could become the world’s largest commodities market.
Morgan Stanley announced last October that it “plans to invest in approximately $3 billion of carbon/emission credits, projects and other initiatives related to greenhouse gas emissions over the next five years.”
Another big winner may be Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs, part owner of the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Exchange – the exclusive marketplaces for trading carbon credits.
Big businesses are now buying up smaller firms which saw the coming boom in the green movement years ago.
As the London Guardian's Nick Davies has pointed out, there is a very inconvenient truth about the carbon offset industry, greenhouse gas credits do little or nothing to combat any actual global warming.
We are witnessing the emergence of carbon cartels and the rise of a phantom industry.
Warming disciples routinely accuse skeptics of kowtowing to energy giants and mega global corporations, yet the very delusion they labour under, that humans are destroying the earth, is being pushed by those they believe they are fighting against. The globalists love global warming.
This aggressive profit making propaganda offensive is a perfect example of how the environmental movement has been completely hijacked by big business and corporate investors who know when a good cash cow is ripe for milking.
Fearmongering about an imminent climate doomsday hogs news coverage and important environmental issues like GM food, mad scientist chimera cloning, deforestation, toxic waste dumping, and the usurpation and abuse of corporations like Monsanto are flying under the radar.
Just as globalist politicians, power brokers and big government have co-opted the environment movement to do what they do - secure greater draconian control measures on society and centralize power - big business has co-opted it to do what it does - make huge sums of money at the expense of the little man.
April 13, 2008
The Bilderberger QUEEN BEE, HiLIARy is being forced into retirement at long bloody last ..
It's Obama, stupid: Carter and Gore to end Clinton bid
Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats.
"They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence."
An appeal by both men for Democrats to unite behind Clinton's rival, Barack Obama, would have a powerful effect, and insiders say it is a question of when, rather than if, they act.
Obama has an almost unassailable lead in the battle for nomination delegates, and is closing the gap with Clinton in her last stronghold, Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22.
Clinton remains publicly defiant, insisting she will continue the battle with Obama all the way to the Democratic convention in August – when superdelegates, or party top brass, will have the chance to add their weight to primary votes.
But the party's top brass have concluded her further participation in the race can only harm the party as Republican nominee John McCain strives to take advantage of her increasingly bitter battle with Obama.
Both Carter and Gore occupy the rarefied position of elder statesmen – in addition to their White House past, both are winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, giving them additional gravitas to carry the party with them.
Neither of them is likely to object to the role of bringing down the curtain on Clinton. While neither man has formally endorsed either her or Obama, both have clashed in the past with the Clintons.
Gore blames his loss to George Bush in the 2000 presidential election on the impeachment of Clinton triggered by his White House affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Carter, who has carved out a successful career as an international mediator, is believed to detest the flashy style of the Clintons. He recently told an interviewer that his entire family are committed Obama supporters.
A number of options are being considered by the higher echelons of the Democrats, but they fall roughly into two categories. One is for Carter and Gore to go to Clinton privately and ask her to step down. The other is for both men to appear in public and endorse Obama – a move which would see a majority of superdelegates go with them.
The campaign to force Clinton to make an early exit is being masterminded in Congress, home to the most influential of the superdelegates. Senate Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have called on superdelegates to hold an unofficial congress in early June to anoint a winner, rather than waiting for the convention in Denver.
Pelosi has drawn withering fire from the Clinton camp for saying that these superdelegates must follow the national vote, with Clinton insisting that they should "vote with their conscience".
Yet some in the Democratic elite are wary of moving too soon. Polls show that 30% of Clinton's supporters would vote for McCain if she fails to become the nominee. To close off Clinton's bid before millions have had the chance to vote risks causing the very split that officials are desperate to avoid.
But a loss to Obama, or even a single-digit victory, in Pennsylvania will seal Clinton's fate. Pennsylvania is the last big state left in the race, and the last chance for Clinton to claw back Obama's delegate lead. "If he (Obama] wins (Pennsylvania] flat out, I think the big foot will come down," a source said.
Anything less than a resounding victory by her will probably see the race choked off ahead of the final primaries on June 3.
In the 10 remaining primaries, only a catastrophic loss of support by Obama will see Clinton overcome his lead of 160 delegates.
She admits she has little chance of winning the public vote, and is basing her strategy on convincing party-appointed superdelegates that she is, in her own words, the more "electable" of the two candidates.
Clinton enjoys strong support among superdelegates, many from a party elite who worked for her husband Bill during his years in the White House. There are more than 350 superdelegates who have yet to show a preference, potentially enough to rub out Obama's lead and give the presidency to Clinton.
But historically, superdelegates have never gone against the public vote, and party insiders say they would face a revolt, or even riots, if they were to do so now.
Obama's campaign has been a phenomenon in American politics, bringing in record numbers of new voters and record funding, and few think the superdelegates would dare deny him victory if he wins the popular vote.
It would also invite the unedifying spectacle of a mostly white elite denying an African American candidate a chance for the presidency. "It would cause a scandal to do that," says one party official. "To turn around to the black community and say, 'You got the most votes, but no'? Unlikely."
Clinton insists she will see her campaign through to the final primaries in June, and then on to the national convention, where her supporters have powerful lobbies in the organising committees.
But a chain of events in the past two weeks has worked to undermine this strategy, pulling the rug from under her claim to be more experienced and better organised than Obama.
It began with her extraordinary suggestion that she braved sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996, a statement contradicted by TV footage showing the event was peaceful.
There are suggestions that the long list of wealthy benefactors may be expecting favours to be returned once Hillary is in the White House, suggestions sharpened by the Clinton's refusal to release the list of donors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.
Such conflict-of-interest issues came into the open last week when it emerged that Clinton's chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, was lobbying for the Colombian government to secure a free trade agreement with America, despite Clinton's public opposition to such a deal. Penn stepped down, the second high-profile sacking of a campaign manager this year.
Together with reports that Clinton's money troubles have left her unable to pay event organisers and even the health insurance of her staff, the impression is of a campaign in trouble.
These issues have undermined Clinton's claim to be more "electable", with her own stormy campaign contrasting with the disciplined control of Obama's organisation.
Obama himself has refrained from criticism on these issues, his staff keen to portray their candidate as "presidential" and above the fray.
Conspiracy theorists among her opponents claim Clinton is prolonging the race not because she hopes to win, but to inflict such damage on the party that a weakened Obama loses to John McCain in November, allowing Clinton to have a second tilt at the nomination in four years' time.
For Clinton, defeat in the nomination process would mean consignment to the political wilderness.
Losing nominees rarely get a second chance to run, and although Clinton's seat as a New York senator seems safe, failure in the nomination process leaves her politically neutered.
Talk of a possible consolation prize, in awarding her the job of Senate Majority leader, has petered out with several more senior senators also coveting the job.
Meanwhile, Clinton's poll numbers continue to slide. Obama now leads her nationally by about 10 points, and a CNN poll in Pennsylvania showed him closing the once-yawning gap to just three points.
Should Clinton lose Pennsylvania, the defection of growing numbers of superdelegates from her to Obama could become a flood.
After Pennsylvania
Possible outcomes of the crucial Democrat primary of April 22.
1. Clinton wins big
A win of 20 points or more over Obama in Pennsylvania would keep Clinton's campaign alive. She would also have to replicate this result in the nine states still to vote, narrowing the gap with her rival and convincing the all-important party superdelegates to choose her as nominee.
2. Clinton wins small
A victory in single digits, in a state where Clinton was once 20 points ahead, would make little difference to Obama's lead. Yet a win is a win, and she would be likely to try to stay in the race until June, unless superdelegates stepped in.
3. Obama wins small
A single figure victory on Clinton's 'home turf' would cement Obama's claim to the nomination. Superdelegates would be likely to declare him the nominee before June.
4. Convincing win for Obama
A double-digit Obama victory would be the shock of the primary contest. It would be followed by a stampede of superdelegates rushing to be front of the queue to embrace him.
Obama forced to backtrack
DEMOCRAT Barack Obama last night conceded that comments he made about bitter working-class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen, as he tried to stem a burst of complaints that could hurt his chances in upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
"I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said, at a campaign rally in Indiana.
As he tried to quell the furore, presidential rival Hillary Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms, saying: "Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch."
At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over white, working-class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions: "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment to explain their frustrations."
The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political website, set off a storm of criticism and threatened to highlight an Obama Achilles' heel – the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant, aloof and carries himself with an air of superiority.
Comments: ALL OF THEM KNEW ABOUT THE HOUSING BUBBLE - it was MSM worthy in May 2006 in Harper's magazine, front cover.
They allowed Hankie Poo into the US Treasury. '
The effects of military KeynesianISM are well known in DC circles.
Al Gore sucks.
John Dean is having Gore and Clinton do the dirty work for him and it was hinted that such would be the case in OpEd News . . . They do not want a repeat of the 1968 convention; they learned their lesson
Dick Morris already said that HiLIARy was OUT nearly three weeks ago.
The news of the Clinton scandals coming out would TANK the democRATic party forever.
She is a boob high on drugs - possibly afraid of WAR CRIMES prosecution herself as she was "SUCH A HELP" in Kosova, eh?
There is not ONE PROGRESSIVE Running in any democRATic race. NADA.
The circus continues. I often wonder how well orchestrated all this really is.
Hey! Bushikins admitted to TORTURE . why is impeachment still off the table?
Is Nancy Pelosi up for a cabinet job if she stays QUIET, or WHAT?
Yes, I cannot help but being delighted to see the end of HiLIARy's face as a candidate ..
NOw how do we dillute Zbig and his evil, evil influence?
Think Zbig wants a special prosecutor on TORTURE?
Does America start with a CLEAN SLATE? Who will be up for Attorney General? Who will break Cheney's hold on the department of energy?
What happens with the EPA with OBAMALAND?
Does native sovereignty get respected? LEONARD FREED AT LAST?
Stay tuned ...
Can I go home now? I don't fit in here ..
(and I am pretty damaged and won't fit in there either .. sad to say)
Why do I feel like crying still . with all this good news?
I read that OBAMA is pushing away his progressive California contingent - which is where the progressives LIVE; they deserted DC quite a long time ago.
April 12, 2008
U.S. Reconnaissance Satellites: Domestic Targets
Documents Describe Use of Satellites in Support
of Civil Agencies and Longstanding Controversy
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 229
Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson
Originally Posted - September 14, 2007
Updated - April 11, 2008
For more information contact:
Jeffrey Richelson - 202/994-7000
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Related postings Declassifying the "Fact of" Satellite Reconnaissance Secrecy and U.S. Satellite Reconnaissance, 1958-1976 The Vela Incident: Nuclear Test or Meteorite? Eyes on the Bomb The Spy Satellite So Stealthy that the Senate Couldn't Kill It Eyes on Saddam The U-2, OXCART, and the SR-71 Science, Technology and the CIA Reconnaissance Flights and Sino-American Relations The NRO Declassified U.S. Satellite Imagery, 1960-1999
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In this memo, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff informs the Director of National Intelligence that he has received the report of the Civil Applications Committee Blue Ribbon Study Group and that he agrees with its recommendation to establish a Domestic Applications Office within DHS and proposes some joint measures to begin implementation of the recommendations.
