What ClimateGate Really Means

Reposting a comment by HarleyDavidson, commenter at J.R. Dunn's post, "Global Warming Fraud and the Future of Science," at American Thinker:

What Climategate really means: So easy even a CAVEMAN can understand.

ClimateGate exposed the cabal of 20 – 30 scientists (not just at CRU) that peer reviewed each others papers, strong-armed scientific journals to only print their views, and then sat on the IPCC panels as authors judging which published studies go into the IPCC final reports. This is why they always keep shouting “peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies, peer reviewed studies”. They owned the peer review process.

ClimateGate exposed that this small group has been adding positive corrections to the raw global temperature data, inflating the amount of published temperature rise over the last 50 years. Both CRU in the UK and NASA-GISS in the US add these biases. At CRU, the programmers did not even know what and why some corrections were added every month. Only since satellite monitoring for comparison have the amounts of biasing leveled off.

ClimateGate exposed the leaders of this cabal instructing each other to delete emails, data files, and data analysis programs ahead of already filed Freedom Of Information Act requests for raw data and computer codes, clearly a crime.

ClimateGate exposed the “trick” about the Hockey stick figure and other studies that performed proxy construction of past temperatures. After all, reconstruction of the last 1,000 years of climate is the first step in predicting the future with super computer programs as explained below:

Everything about all 21 super computer programs used by the IPCC to determine future global warming rely on best-determined past sensitivities to solar and volcanic effects (climate forcings) from the proxy temperature record.

1. The elimination of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (the handle of the hockey stick) was necessary so that past solar effects could be minimized, thereby allowing almost all of the warming in the last 75 years to be blamed on Greenhouse Gasses. Raw data (like tree-ring thickness, radioisotope of mud layers in a lake bottom, ice core analyses, etc.) are used as a proxy for reconstruction of the temperature record for 1000 AD to 1960 AD. To ensure desired results, statistical manipulation of the raw data and selecting only supporting data, cherry-picking, was suspected and later proved.

2. The slope of long-term 10-year running average global temperature using thermometers from 1900 to present (the blade of the hockey stick) was maximized with the sloppy gridding code, Urban Heat Island effects, hiding the declines, and even fabricating data (documented in the leaked source code comments revealed with ClimateGate). This ensured that the Greenhouse Gas effect coefficient in all 21 of the super computers was maximized, and that maximizes the temperature result at year 2100 based on Greenhouse Gas increases. This thermometer data was used to replace the tree ring-divergence after 1960 and plot this over the climate history data of (1) above giving the false impression that the reconstructed 1000 AD to 1960 AD results are more accurate than they are.

3. Because tuning of the super computer programs uses back casting, the computer outputs could always replicate the 20th Century (by design); therefore it was assumed that the models had almost everything in them. Because of (1) and (2) above, nearly all climate change predicted by the models was due to CO2 and positive feedbacks and hardly any of the climate change was for other reasons like solar, understood or not.

4. Over the years, when better numbers for volcanic effects, black carbon, aerosols, land use, ocean and atmospheric multi-decadal cycles, etc. became available, it appears that CRU made revisions to refit the back cast, but could hardly understand what the code was doing due to previous correction factor fudging and outright fabricating, as documented in the released code as part of ClimateGate.

5. After the IPCC averages the 21 super computer outputs of future projected warming (anywhere from 2-degrees to 7-degrees, not very precise), that output is used to predict all manner of catastrophes. (Fires, floods, droughts, blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, insects, extinctions, diseases, civil wars, cats & dogs sleeping together, etc.)

How do they manage it? Read about the secret life of climate researchers in Iowahawk Geographic.

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Related:

• Meditation: Issac Newton on Truthful Reporting of Data
• ClimateGate Who's Who
• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
  
• There is one day that is ours . . .
• What You Did Was Such a Crime
• Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

Meditation: Issac Newton on Truthful Reporting of Data

In the Principia, Isaac Newton outlined four rules of reasoning.

Here is Rule 1:

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

ClimateGate Who's Who

From Watts Up With That? (with thanks to Magic Java for putting it together)

Shocking.

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Related posts:

• Make Way for the Code Breakers
• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime
• Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

Make Way for the Code Breakers

AJ Strata at The Strata-Sphere has been doing a fantastic job of decoding the computer language and data behind the now-infamous junk science assertions of the "hockey team" cabal who have been blaming you and me (and our livestock, pets, stoves, furnaces, vehicles, and lightbulbs) for the global warming that's been going on ever since the Great Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago.

A lot has come out since November 24th, when Strata wrote:

I can now understand why Jones and Co. were so resistant to providing code and data – it would not take long for the army of skilled skeptics with backgrounds in science, engineering, math and programming to unravel the truth. And now that the dirty laundry is in the hands of 100’s of sharp minds on the internet, were are discovering the depth and breadth of the AGW con.

[snip]

I have seen inklings of how bad the CRU code is and how it produces just garbage. It defies the garbage in-garbage out paradigm and moves to truth in-garbage out. I get the feeling you could slam this SW with random numbers and a hockey stick would come out the back end. There is no diurnal corrections for temperature readings, there are all sorts of corrupted, duplicated and stale data, there are filters to keep data that tells the wrong story out, and there are create_fiction sub routines which create raw measurements out of thin air when needed. There are modules which cannot be run for the full temp record because of special code used to ‘hide the decline’.

How right Strata was! From Marc Sheppard at American Thinker:

In two other programs, briffa_Sep98_d.pro and briffa_Sep98_e.pro, the "correction" is bolder by far. The programmer (Keith Briffa?) entitled the "adjustment" routine “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” And he or she wasn't kidding. Now IDL is not a native language of mine, but its syntax is similar enough to others I'm familiar with, so please bear with me while I get a tad techie on you.

Here's the "fudge factor" (notice the brash SOB actually called it that in his REM statement):

yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor

These two lines of code establish a twenty-element array (yrloc) comprising the year 1400 (base year, but not sure why needed here) and nineteen years between 1904 and 1994 in half-decade increments. Then the corresponding "fudge factor" (from the valadj matrix) is applied to each interval. As you can see, not only are temperatures biased to the upside later in the century (though certainly prior to 1960), but a few mid-century intervals are being biased slightly lower. That, coupled with the post-1930 restatement we encountered earlier, would imply that in addition to an embarrassing false decline experienced with their MXD after 1960 (or earlier), CRU's "divergence problem" also includes a minor false incline after 1930.

And the former apparently wasn't a particularly well-guarded secret, although the actual adjustment period remained buried beneath the surface.

Plotting programs such as data4alps.pro print this reminder to the user prior to rendering the chart:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The data after 1960 should not be used. The tree-ring density records tend to show a decline after 1960 relative to the summer temperature in many high-latitude locations. In this data set this "decline" has been artificially removed in an ad-hoc way, and this means that data after 1960 no longer represent tree-ring density variations, but have been modified to look more like the observed temperatures.

Others, such as mxdgrid2ascii.pro, issue this warning:

NOTE: recent decline in tree-ring density has been ARTIFICIALLY REMOVED to facilitate calibration. THEREFORE, post-1960 values will be much closer to observed temperatures then (sic) they should be which will incorrectly imply the reconstruction is more skilful than it actually is. See Osborn et al. (2004).

Care to offer another explanation, Dr. Jones?

It just gets worse and worse. Watts Up With That? has published enough of the code notes to give non-computer-geeks an even more sickening picture of just how brazen and unapologetic this fraud was.

The University of East Anglia researchers got about £13 million (about $22 million in today's devalued dollars) to trump up man-made global catastrophe.

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Related posts:

• Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus
• What You Did Was Such a Crime
• Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

Obama's Science Czar Holds a Whip in the Tree-Ring Circus

Not that it comes as a surprise, but one member of the "climate change" cabal busily engaged in burying research suggesting that sunspot activity effects Earth's temperature is John Holdren, Obama's science czar, formerly Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

When the Harvard University Gazette took Holdren's ideological temperature back in March of 2001, he announced that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had largely ended "the debate over whether human-induced climate change is happening." The debate was officially closed, we now have confirmation, by fraudulent data whose ascendancy was protected by an academically organized shut-out of opposing views and competing research.

This confirmation was delivered via exposed email correspondence and copies of the Fortran code used to deliver warnings of catastrophic global warming that failed to materialize except in the predictions coming out one end of a sketchy computerized model while cherry-picked, carefully sequestered data was being pumped into the other end. The idea, it seems, was to scare everyone on the planet, from kindergarteners to presidents, that the end was near, unless somebody did something drastic.

Holdren said he believes that global warming – which he prefers to term "global climate disruption" – will come to be known as an even more difficult problem than people today expect.

The the term climate disruption, of course, puts the blame on a climate disruptor, in this case a carbon dioxide emitter, and that doesn't mean the Pacific Ocean, which produces 72% of the world's CO2 or the Earth's population of termites, which emit ten times more CO2 than all the factories and automobiles on the planet. It means you, your transportation, your heat and light, manufactured goods, comfort, health, etc., etc. Back in early 2001, before the attack of 9-11, few Americans expected that a widely accepted fear of a global warming catastrophe would be used as a pretext for depriving them of their liberties, doubling the cost of their energy bills, and merging their country into a socialistic world government. Little did America suspect, in March of 2001, that in November of 2009, a newly appointed president of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy, would proclaim: "2009 is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step toward the global management of our planet."

From the Essex County Examiner:

According to Tim Ball and Judi McLeod at Canada Free Press, Holdren was directly complicit in impugning the credibility of certain physicists who challenged the orthodox opinion on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), specifically with reference to the Medieval Warm Period of 800-1300, that preceded the Little Ice Age of 1400-1850. These physicists, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, published a paper in 2003, "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years", in the journal Climate Research, explaining their findings. In brief, they correlated average temperature, using humidity as a proxy, with sunspot activity, and found that sunspot activity correlated well with the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

[snip]

CRU Archive File No. 1066337021.txt contains a long series of back-to-back e-mails between John Holdren, then at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, in which Holdren argued with Nick Shultz, editor of Tech Central Station, as to the credibility of Soon and Baliunas as scientists. In that exchange, Holdren rather peremptorially told Schultz that AGW was now as obvious as are the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

Ball and McLeod at Canada Free Press published this October 2003 email from Holdren to Michael Mann (of hockey stick graph infamy) and Tom Wigley:

I’m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my “Harvard” colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium.

The Crimson article is available here.

Nucengineer, a commenter to Marc Steyn's post, Cooking the books on climate, shows the shape of things:

And Winston looked at the sheet handed him:
“Adjustments prior to 1972 shall be -0.2 degrees and after 1998 shall be +0.3 degrees.”

Winston wondered at the adjustment to the data. At this point, no one even knows if the data, prior to his adjustments, was raw data or already adjusted one or more times previously.

It didn’t matter. All Winston was sure of is that one of the lead climatologists needed more slope to match his computer model outputs. He punched out the new Fortran cards and then dropped the old cards into the Memory Hole where they were burned.

“There!” Winston exclaimed to himself. “Now the temperature data record is correct again; all is double-plus good.”

I am wondering, will academia be willing to come forward and redeem its collective soul, or will the world's ivory towers remain "double-plus good"?
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Related posts:

• What You Did Was Such a Crime
• Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

There is one day that is ours . . .

Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

~O. Henry


Enjoy!

What You Did Was Such a Crime

Couldn't resist posting this. Shamelessly lifted from Nice Deb, who swiped it from Purple Avenger at Ace of Spades HQ.

I like a catchy tune.
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Related post: Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

Heh, Heh, Heh. Vincit Omnia Veritas

I've got a lot of observations about the outing of elite global warmists when a "mushroom cloud" of self-incriminating emails surfaced detailing the data-cooking, colleague intimidation, and other nefarious activities by which they've been deluding many inhabitants of Earth about the condition of our planet. But today is a busy day, so I will content myself with a few thoughts I left as a comment to How's That Obama Vote Working Out For You's insight about Ed Bagley, Jr.'s televised loss of control over "ClimateGate."

Take a look at it.

My first impulse is to laugh, but I think this could get pretty dangerous.

Can you imagine the last person who looked at you like you had the intellect of a grub when you mentioned a few facts that contradicted the global warming doctrine actually coming to the conclusion that he's been reading all the wrong publications and paying for a lot of unnecessary technologies? I can't, and I'm having trouble visualizing this on a large scale.

Believers who have accepted global warming as a primary tenet of political correctness are not going to take kindly to being asked to face up to the idea that they've been had, and global warming proselytizers--from the power-and-money grabbers to the innocent suckers--are going to fight this with everything they've got.

It's going to be quite a ride.

Update 1:30 p.m.: For real entertainment, don't miss the Global Warming Model computer code sleuthing going on at The Strata-Sphere. Scroll back and start with Strata's "The End of the Earth is Coming . . ." post and read forward.
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Surprise: ObamaCare Will Bankrupt Hospitals Serving Elderly & Poor, Moody's Says

Urban hospitals that serve large populations of the elderly are going to be in even bigger financial trouble as a result of cuts to Medicare written into the Obamacare bill, so much trouble that they might be forced into closure. Certainly, the added financial pressure will not be good in any case. Most at risk are hospitals in New York City and Texas that are centers for heart surgery and neurosurgery.

Also likely to be forced into closure by Obamacare are community hospitals that serve the poor but aren't subsidized by a larger hospital system.

This information comes from a report recently issued by Moody's Investors Service, which keeps an eye on the financial health of commercial and government entities.

That's a lot of bad news for many poor and elderly patients who need the medical services of hospitals but don't live in more affluent areas. It's also bad news for others in those areas who won't have a convenient community hospital to turn to for even emergency services, and for people who will need heart surgery and neurosurgery.

I've been warning ObamaCare advocates that government care isn't going to be the same care they are used to, only cheaper, available to more people, and absent pain-in-the-neck paperwork. It's going to be a lot more like the VA government-care system, where ordinary hospital care is offered not by community but by region, and veterans commonly have to travel long distances for common tests and procedures like eye exams, x-rays, or physical therapy evaluations that most people expect to get right in their neighborhoods.

From ModernHealthCare.com:

Spending varies across regions, but Moody's noted those ranked as most expensive included mostly urban and densely developed communities and providers there could be targets for reform efforts, as written in the report.

“Attempts to minimize variation in healthcare costs among regions is almost certainly going to involve cuts to Medicare reimbursement to high-cost providers,” according to the report. Stand-alone hospitals without the resources of a system, dependent on referrals and unable to attract insured patients, will be most likely to struggle.

The five most-expensive regions—which are defined as geographic areas in which patients are referred to the same hospitals for major cardiovascular surgery and neurosurgery—are Miami, Fla.; McAllen, Texas; the New York City boroughs of the Bronx and Manhattan; and Harlingen, Texas.

I note that hospitals in the Bronx and Manhattan are among the most expensive to operate and thus at highest risk of taking cuts for services rendered under ObamaCare. That fact makes it even more interesting that residents of those two New York boroughs have been among the strongest supporters of Obama's campaign, election, and policies. The Bronx loved him, and the Manhattan vote for Obama was just about unanimous.

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Back from the Future

Thank you to readers who have been checking in on this blog, wondering what happened to me. I stepped into a time machine, and the exit door didn't open for a week.

Which is another way of saying that, for one week, I got a few unwelcome reminders of the kinds of system breakdowns that occur when economies head south and companies and institutions stretch their resources until, inevitably, things snap. A couple of these breakdowns resulted in my losing my Internet connection for most of the week, explaining my absence from this blog.

Of course, breakdowns come part and parcel with technology in the best of times but, undeniably, the clatter of signals of the economy's downhill slide, like splashes of gravel hitting the roof, have been getting increasingly alarming, even here in my little corner of Progressive Paradise, where most people have been using ObamaHope as an inoculant against reality. Obama, they were certain, was going to make everything wonderful by acting as their proxy to smooth-talk the world out of violence. He was going to make a gift of hassle-free, state-of-the-art health care to everyone physically present in the United States. He was going to lower sea levels by dispensing with fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine, while making every hip Progressive who invested in wind, solar, and lithium battery technologies rich, or at least a lot more comfortable, courtesy of free (somebody else pays) government subsidies.

Reality nevertheless managed to pay a call here, and Obama devotees who forgot that there are certain benefits to living in a capitalist society are facing shortages of jobs and money. Academics are getting by on less funding, supplies, and staff. Shopkeepers are sitting in empty shops waiting for customers. Yes, and even women with pink ribbons pinned to their lapels are being slapped with guilt trips if they consider "wasting" the nation's precious health resources by getting mammograms or even using self-examination lest they find lumps that turn out not to be cancer, thus burning up valuable diagnostic time and healthcare money that could have been spent on something (somebody) else.

Many people who can't (or can barely) afford health insurance understandably still have their fingers crossed that Obama will come through for them, sadly without coming to terms with the cold fact that whatever Uncle Sam puts into one pocket, he vacuums out of another (never neglecting to take a cut to pay Congress), and that both those pockets inevitably belong to the same people who are rooting for Obama to save them.

Not even Progressives will escape. A rising tide lifts all boats, but the opposite also is true. Private insurance may go away, but paperwork will not, nor waiting lines, nor mix-ups in computerized records; in fact, these will get much, much worse.

But it is clear, now, love of Obama will go away.

Progressives who otherwise are perfectly computer literate have allowed themselves to believe that health care will be made cheaper by a magical process in which 310+million people's health care records are seamlessly transferred into a giant, fantastically reliable Obama-nationed computer network. Their awakening will come when some portion of the accuracy and integrity of the government record-keeping at recovery.gov is applied to their personal health records.

We don't need a trip in a time machine to understand that the state-of-the-art health care and environmental protection are luxuries affordable only by the people of wealthy nations with plenty of disposable income, not by the people of nations cutting back on production, jobs, resource use, money, savings, and the bits and pieces of technology that keep business and medical care humming along.

But, unless we can stop them, a trip in a time machine is exactly what we will be getting as Congress, led by Obama and cheered on by those who think they won't be paying the fare, passes out the obligatory "your only choice" tickets to the future that will make the last year look like a good year.

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Hooray! Maryam & Marzieh To Be Freed Today

Many readers of this blog will be heartened to hear that two young women jailed in Iran in the notorious Evin prison for the crime of converting to Christianity have been told that they will be released today.

Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, letters, contributions, and assemblies. Thank you for spreading the word in every way that you could. Thank you to Christian ministries who work to shed light on the plights of Christians imprisoned, tortured, and murdered for no other cause than their Christian faith. One of these is Voice of the Martyrs, which keeps track of persecuted Christians worldwide. Another is Elam Ministries, which serves Christians in the Iran region. It has been important to let Iranian officials know that many eyes are watching for Maryam and Marzieh's safe release.

Maryam and Marzieh are not completely out of the woods yet. They are being sent home, but they are in poor health and will be required to return to court. So keep praying and keep your eyes on them.

Even as we celebrate the return of Maryam and Marzieh to their homes, we have not forgotten about Rifqa Bary, an even younger woman, a mere 17 years old, who is being held in virtual house arrest in the state of Ohio. Rifqa's crime? None, but she came to fear for her life when her parents and their mosque learned that she had secretly converted to Christianity three years before and fled to the Florida, which, after a number of hearings, sent her back to Ohio. Not yet returned to her parents, not permitted to attend school, and not permitted telephone conversations with her friends, Rifqa waits in foster care for the state to decide her fate.

Rifqa's supporters, who include a number of Christian converts from Islam who share her fear for her safety, as well as friends and relatives of girls who were victims of so-called "honor killings," will be assembling in Columbus, Ohio today to let American officials know that eyes are looking out for Rifqa's safety, too.

Read about the Rifqa Rally at Atlas Shrugs and Jihad Watch, and be there if you can. If you can't, a call to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (contact info here) can help a young person enjoy the freedom of religion which so many Americans were willing to guarantee with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

If Rifqa's freedom of religion cannot withstand the forces of Islam in courts here in the United States, it certainly will not bode well for the rest of us.

Hat tip: Freethemm.com
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Related posts:

• Meditation: Rally for Christian Convert, Rifqa Bary
  
• Meditation: Progress for Maryam & Marzieh
• Rifqa Bary Meets Hamlet. Result: Alas or Huzzah?
• Judge Keeps Rifqa Bary Temporarily in Florida--Again
• Meditation: 187 Candles Plus 1, Updates on Maryam, Marzieh, and Rifqa
  
• Mediation: Londoners Hold Prayer Vigil for Maryam and Marzieh
  
• Aqsa, Amina, Sarah, Rand
  
• Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?
  
• Meditation: Maryam and Marzieh Face Death But Refuse to Renounce Christianity
• Meditation: Pray for the Release of Maryam and Marzieh
• Maryam and Marzieh: Convicted of Being Christian

Meditation: John Adams on Supporting Liberty

No matter who Obama bows to, I remember this:

Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.

John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

How Low Can Obama Go?

Obama pretending to know something about Japanese culture.


Hint: Japan is not Indonesia, and you are not "a little Jakarta street kid" anymore,
Mr. President.

Your protocol advisors are chuckling behind their sleeves.

Update: Images of other head-of-state bows greetings to the Japanese emperor, shamelessly snatched from Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.

Update: Japanese emperor greeting American president (h/t Townhall.com):

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Religion of Peacer Encounters Transvestite in Rochester, NY

It looks like self-described Muslim, Munir Muthana, got a surprise when he attempted a close encounter with a man dressed as a woman in Rochester, NY.

Apparently enraged that he had been seduced by a transvestite (or perhaps enraged that he was seen keeping company with a transvestite), Muthana, 27, jumped into his car and proceeded to run down six pedestrians and to repeatedly crash his vehicle into several civilian vehicles and two police cars.

From 13-WHAM:

According to court documents, police say Muthana allegedly got intoxicated and was seen going into the Kennedy Towers with a transvestite. It is not clear whether the suspect knew he was with a transvestite.

When someone on the street confronted Muthana with that information, it is alleged that Muthana became enraged and began intentionally running people over.

Deputy Police Chief George Markert said an officer was flagged down on South Plymouth Avenue around 2 p.m. by pedestrians saying a driver was trying to hit people with his car.

When officers responded, Muthana allegedly pulled into a parking lot, drove in circles and struck numerous pedestrians before fleeing.

“He was trying to run people over on the sidewalk,” said Laurali McLean of Rochester, who witnessed the scene. “He smashed the cop cars back and forth. It’s very sick.”

The officers pursued him through the west side of the city. During the chase, he intentionally hit two police cars several times, as well as other vehicles in the area, before being taken into custody at Brooks Avenue and Genesee Street. The suspect did not go willingly; witnesses say it was this that median finally stopped his rampage.

According to court documents, when he was arrested, Muthana was yelling remarks such as “F*** the police,” “The Muslims will fix this country,” and “I was trying to fight that f***** shemale.”

A Rochester Police spokesman says the RPD diligently checked with all federal authorities and found that Muthana was not on any sort of terrorist watch list. While he was also heard muttering words like "jihad" and "hating Americans," he also reportedly said he didn't hate Americans, just police.

Alcohol containers were found in his car.

Seven people, including Muthana, were taken to Strong Memorial Hospital with minor injuries. Those injured were: Dominick Nicholson, 21; Tyrese Beard 20; James Pross, 40; Debra Hollis, 50; Luis Cruz, 25; Diane Neil, 49, all of Rochester.

Muthana is being held on $20,000 cash bail, $80,000 bond. He returns to court on November 16.

I hope that transvestite is a little more choosy next time.

Hat tip: Jihad Watch
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Now They Tell Us: "You Don't Want Hasan in Your Foxhole"

It looks like Jihadist Nidal Malik Hasan had his teachers, colleagues, and superiors over a barrel. Ain't PC just grand?

From Daniel Zwerdling at NPR:

Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?

"Put it this way," says one official familiar with the conversations that took place. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."

Yet, Hasan was about to be deployed to give psychiatric care to American warriors. Appalling.

Deeply Troubling, Schizoid Behavior

When a group of key officials gathered in the spring of 2008 for their monthly meeting in a Bethesda, Md., office, one of the leading — and most perplexing — items on their agenda was: What should we do about Hasan?

Hasan had been a trouble spot on officials' radar since he started training at Walter Reed, six years earlier. Several officials confirm that supervisors had repeatedly given him poor evaluations and warned him that he was doing substandard work.

Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan's behavior — which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that "Islam can save your soul."

Exactly how low were their standards? This guy wouldn't last a day as a receptionist in the office of any doctor that I know.

[P]sychiatrists and officials who are familiar with the conversations, which continued into the spring of 2009, say they took a remarkable turn: Is it possible, some mused, that Hasan was mentally unstable and unfit to be an Army psychiatrist?

But they still assigned brave soldiers in mental and physical pain to Hasan for "treatment." Nightmare material. Horrible.

One official involved in the conversations had reportedly told colleagues that he worried that if Hasan deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak secret military information to Islamic extremists. Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide, like the Muslim U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2003, killed two fellow soldiers and injured 14 others by setting off grenades at a base in Kuwait.

So why didn't officials act on their concerns and seek to remove Hasan from his duties, or at least order him to receive a mental health evaluation? And why was he about to get shipped to Afghaistan or Iraq to treat seriously distressed service men and women?

Good questions.

Zwerdling offered some possible explanations:

For one thing, Walter Reed and most medical institutions have a cumbersome and lengthy process for expelling doctors, involving hearings and potential legal battles. As a result, sources say, key decision-makers decided it would be too difficult, if not unfeasible, to put Hasan on probation and possibly expel him from the program.

Focusing for just a moment on the concept of "unfeasible," it isn't difficult to speculate about the sound of the wheels humming in the brains of that psychiatric team: Think what would happen when lawsuits started to fly. / The Army's priority is to keep that multiculturalism thing going. And Hasan is not from just any old culture. / How feasible will it be to hassle a guy named Hasan when the commander-in-chief's name is Hussein? Who bows to the monarch of Saudi Arabia. And who spent his formative years as "a street kid" in a country with the largest Muslim population on the planet, where he studied the Koran in school, and later grew up to describe the Muslim call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset" (see the report in the New York Times). Oh, and who had a Muslim grandfather and stepfather. A commander-in-chief who wants to give foreign Islamic terrorists U.S. Constitutional rights and have captured enemy combatants Mirandized on the battlefield. Who appointed an attorney general whose law firm defended Islamic terrorists. Etc.

Second, some of Hasan's supervisors and instructors had told colleagues that they repeatedly bent over backward to support and encourage him, because they didn't have clear evidence that he was unstable, and they worried they might be "discriminating" against Hasan because of his seemingly extremist Islamic beliefs.

See Reason #1 again. Teachers and supervisors had been making excuses for Hasan and letting him slide for so long that it had become just about impossible to back out. For years, no one had had told Hasan that he wasn't cut out for psychiatry. Like Charles Krauthammer pointed out, political correctness is both immoral and dangerous.

Third, the officials involved in deliberations this year reportedly were not aware, as some top Walter Reed officials were, that intelligence analysts had been tracking Hasan's e-mails with at least one suspected Islamic extremist since December 2008.

Back to Reason #1 again. Hearings and potential legal battles. In a political and working environment in which the only correct answer is that Islam is the religion of peace and the U.S. is the world aggressor who should be apologizing to "victimized" Muslims in danger of experiencing "backlash." And, as Charles Krauthammer did not point out, political incorrectness, however moral, also can be dangerous. Especially to one's career and livelihood.

And finally, Hasan was about to leave Walter Reed and USUHS for good and transfer to Fort Hood, in Texas. Fort Hood has more psychiatrists and other mental specialists than some other Army bases, so officials figured there would be plenty of co-workers who would support Hasan — and monitor him.

In other words, "He's not our problem anymore. Let Fort Hood deal with him."

Zeidling and NPR named the names of participants in the spring meeting and subsequent conversations:

• John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed;
  
• Robert Ursano, chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS);
  
• Charles Engel, assistant chair of the Psychiatry Department and director of Hasan's psychiatry fellowship;
  
• Dr. David Benedek, another assistant chairman of psychiatry at USUHS;
  
• psychiatrist Carroll J. Diebold;
  
• and Scott Moran, director of the psychiatric residency program at Walter Reed, according to colleagues and other sources who monitor the meetings.

I shudder that these psychiatrists' buried concerns about Hasan, now resurrected, will support any insanity defense brought up in his favor, serving to bury Americans' outcry against terrorism and treason, making us less safe.

And I would be remiss--even politically correct--if I did not point out that these doctors' unrecorded concerns about Hasan also speak volumes about the kind of medical attention that, speaking in practical terms, they were willing to consider adequate for Hasan's patients. When push came to shove and these physicians had to weigh their concerns on the political and career balance, assuring effective medical care by a caring physician for some of our brave soldiers at Walter Reed and at Fort Hood turned out to be a feather being weighed against a brick, that brick being involvement in messy lawsuits and a possible avalanche of ill will directed at those doctors, against a backdrop of headlines and editorials, talking heads, and public radio opinion pieces portraying America as racist and intolerant rather than properly wary and, quite reasonably, intent on survival.

The lesson for the Walter Reed psychiatrists and officers who couldn't believe their lying eyes is one that all America must learn.

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Denmark Tries Paying "Anti-Social" Foreigners to Go Home

Maybe the Danes shouldn't have succumbed to their fit of socialized generousity and, instead, refused to offer foreigners instant welfare checks, free housing and transportation, unemployment benefits, social security, and more. Although Denmark's immigrants account for a little over 7% of the population, when the entitlement checks backed by Danish taxpayers get handed out, immigrants account for 40% of the takers.

Denmark quickly revised its immigration policies, which are now the toughest in Europe, but the question remains: What to do with those bossy immigrants who don't want to become Danish citizens, don't want to assimilate, but do want to turn Denmark into wherever they used to live (but with substantial entitlements paid for by someone else)?

Where did Denmark's immigrants used to live, chiefly?

Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, and Turkey.

It's so much fun having 7% of your population trying to turn you into Iraq or Somalia that Denmark is now offering substantial cash incentives to foreigners to "return to their homelands if they 'can't or won't' assimilate into society."

From the UK Daily Mail:

The offer now on the table is close to £12,000 for every person who takes up the offer to leave.

[snip]

The financial carrot is ten times more than that previously offered under a scheme which as been law since 1997.

'We thought it was important to substantially increase this aid so that immigrants who want to return home because they are not able to adapt to Danish society have a strong financial basis to start a new life,' said foreign affairs spokesman Soeren Espersen of the far-right Danish People's Party.

The offer is aimed at immigrants and refugees who 'cannot or do not want to integrate into Danish society,' said the head of the DPP's parliamentary group, Kristian Tuelesen Dahl.

[snip]

In addition, 20 million kroner will be set aside for city councils in charge of integrating immigrants to 'motivate' foreigners to return to their homelands.

Opposition parties are shocked by the news, and fear it sends the message 'that foreigners are not welcome in Denmark'.

And this, from the Copenhagen Post:

The Danish People’s Party (DF) has strengthened its immigration stance by securing an agreement to pay ‘anti-social’ foreigners 100,000 kroner to leave Denmark.

[snip]

The new deal would see 100,000 kroner given as a bonus if a foreigner returns home and gives up their residency rights in Denmark.

Neither the government nor DF has yet elaborated on what constitutes an ‘anti-social’ foreigner, but have said that it would be aimed at those who ‘can’t or won’t integrate’.

According to DF party leader Pia Kjærsgaard, the move will save the state a significant sum in local costs which are administered by local and regional councils.

‘Society will save a lot on an immense number of charges and problems. We already know that there are problems with nursing homes and have been problems with hospitals and health charges,’ Kjærsgaard said.

The Danes are trying another tack as well:

Ten million kroner of the budget will be set aside to improve passport control at Danish borders with the purchase of scanners that can check Interpol databases for stolen travel documents.

An all-too-familiar case of closing the barn door after the horse is gone.
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Jihadist Hasan Has More Suspicious Contacts

From ABC News:

A senior government official tells ABC News that investigators have found that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan had "more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI" than just radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. The official declined to name the individuals but Congressional sources said their names and countries of origin were likely to emerge soon.

Questions already surround Major Hasan's contact with Awlaki, a radical cleric based in Yemen whom authorities consider a recruiter for al Qaeda. U.S. officials now confirm Hasan sent as many as 20 e-mails to Awlaki. Authorities intercepted the e-mails but later deemed them innocent or protected by the first amendment.

The Washington Post has posted Hasan's PowerPoint presentation from his "medical" lecture on Islam, suicide bombers, and Muslim threats to the military. Entitled "The Koranic Worldview As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military," it is available here.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Unless you are willing to wipe the warning from your consciousness with a politically correct scrub.

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George Washington's Prayers to the God of Armies

Offered on this solemn Veterans Day, a prayer of George Washington, as expressed in his Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States, November 2, 1783:

To the various branches of the Army . . . he [Washington, speaking as Commander-in-Chief] can only again offer in their behalf his recommendations to their grateful country, and his prayers to the God of Armies. May ample justice be done them here, and may the choicest of heaven's favours, both here and hereafter, attend those who, under the devine auspices, have secured innumerable blessings for others.

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Jihadist Hasan, Card Carrying "Soldier of Allah," Literally

Just for the record:

In which SoA means Soldier of Allah and SWT means . . . well, Atlas Shrugs has the rest. Hasan's own card, given out by him with Korans to his neighbors.

Another Fort Hood eyewitness account, reprinted from Small Dead Animals (via Constant Conservative):

I was notified by dispatch that there were several shots fired and potentially several victims. The scene was not safe so we were instructed to "stage" close to the scene. While staging I was approached by a police officer that their was an "officer down!"...I told him I had not gotten a "code 4", our code that the scene was safe for emergency responders to enter the scene. The officer left and came back again to me to tell me again there was an officer down and needed EMS NOW!

He assured me the scene was safe so we proceeded into the scene. Several bystanders were around and Ft Hood fire dept was already on scene. My partner went to a pt lying on the ground on her side of the ambulance and I approached the officer who had been shot; her gun shot wound was exposed which appeared to be potentially fatal due to the location, a tourniquet was applied prior to my arrival which probably saved her life; she was conscious but appeared very pale and probably in compensated shock at this point due to the massive amount of blood loss I witnessed around her.

I was then summoned to other patients calling for EMS; the next pt I approached was shot in the neck with a arterial bleed...I instructed bystanders to continue to hold pressure to the wound and gave them bandaging material. I triaged several pt's with potentially life threatening wounds, each worse than the next.

A young man walked up to me and asked if I could help him, I asked him, "where are you shot?", he told me in the chest...I directed him to go sit in my ambulance and an army medic sat with him and started oxygen and bandaging on him; in the mist of the madness I was trying to determine who would be the first to be transported still waiting on the helicopters to land so I could fly out the worst.

While getting more bandaging material off my ambulance several bystanders carried a soldier to my truck that had been shot in the head, he was conscious and breathing, he kept asking me "am I gonna die?", I told him I was doing the best I could, knowing from experience his situation appeared bleak.

Behind my ambulance several bystanders were doing CPR on a lady that had obviously been fatally shot, in a mas-cal situation you do "the most good for the most people"...that means save the ones you can and black tag the un-salvageable...it's a harsh truth but effective in this type of situation.

Since the helicopter was still not there I made the decision to take off and transport these two critical patients to Darnell Army Hosp which was about 4 mi away. I quickly dropped off those patients and headed back to the scene with an ER nurse as well to help. In the meantime, several other ambulances had showed up and others had been transported leaving me with one soldier shot in the shoulder, and deservedly last, the shooter was the last to leave the scene and was flown to a hosp approx 30 mil away since the local hosp's were overwhelmed at this point.

I consider myself and seasoned and experienced medic but no one can prepare you for a war zone, which is exactly what this was...I felt so helpless trying to help so many with such limited resources. Thank God for all the bystanders, fire dept and community EMS services that came to our aide. Thank you officer Kimberly Munley for being so brave and fearlessly doing your job....

Uh, and our nation's top Homeland Security officer and the U.S. Army's top officer want us to feel sorry for Hasan and his death cult buddies?

Hat tip: Snaggletoothie of the Loyal Opposition
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Related posts:

• Straight Talk on Jihadist Hasan: Political Correctness Killed Ft. Hood Patriots
  
• American Woman Shoots Down Ft. Hood Jihadist
• Massacre at Fort Hood (Updated 11/6/09)

Monday Morning Digest

Go to sleep one night, wake up with your world changed (again).

The Stupak amendment passed. Unbelievable. William Jacobson:

This is a stunning development, one which anti-abortion activists could not have imagined just weeks ago. The Speaker of the House and Democratic majority, notwithstanding their lip service to women's reproductive rights, were willing to throw those rights aside to hand the Obama administration a temporary legislative victory.

Of course, this is nothing new. The Democrat party threw women's rights from the train long ago, just about the time that Ceegar Willie was conducting job interviews under his desk while his female cheerleaders were degrading feminism into what Ann Althouse called "a dull, uninspired argument for keeping Democratic politicians in power."

ObamaCare passed the House by five votes. Yukio Ngaby:

It is unreasonable to vote for $1 trillion dollars of non-essential spending amid a recession and a 10.2% unemployment rate, while two mostly ignored wars are being fought. It is unreasonable to believe that the U.S. government could do a better job of regulating the medical industry than it did regulating the housing market and manipulating interest rates. It is unreasonable to release a 2000 page bill on Oct. 30, force a vote on Nov. 7, and then claim due deliberation and transparency. It is unreasonable for a president to stand before Congress and the American people, declare that he will not sign a bill that increases the deficit by one dime or requires cuts in Medicare benefits, then essentially renege on that promise within two months, and believe that the American people will not notice.

Now the bill goes to the Senate to be re-rammed down America's throats, some willin' and the majority not so willin'. More Yukio Ngaby:

. . . I firmly believe the response of the Senate will depend on the response of the American people to this bill's passage through the House. If we behave subdued, defeated, tamely distraught, then the bill will pass largely unchanged. If we stand idle and mutely confirm that we believe Washington knows what is best for our individual lives, then the bill will pass largely unchanged through the Senate. And if we show that we are not disinterested in the political process, despite our lives, families and careers, that we will hold those responsible accountable to their votes, then it will be unlikely to pass at all.

[snip]

We can allow ourselves to be discouraged by elected officials unresponsive to the concerns of their constituents. We can allow ourselves to be bullied into silence. We can allow ourselves to lapse into a listless malaise amid baseless accusations of racism and extremism, and disingenuous questioning of our patriotism. But it defies the basic precepts of representative democracy to do so.

I know that ObamaCare and Cap'n Tax and Copenhagen Conference approvals and whatever other legislative vampire bats the Democrats have temporarily caged in committee, ready for release on the American public, are vitally important, and I will not allow myself "to be bullied into silence," but my heart and mind have been with the families of Ft. Hood.

Via Constant Conservative, an eye-witness account.

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Meditation: Rally for Christian Convert, Rifqa Bary

He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him, and honor him. Psalm 91: 15

I've been following reports of the persecution of several converts from Islam to Christianity, among them Rifqa Bary, the Ohio teenager who fled to Florida when her Muslim parents and their mosque discovered that she had converted to Christianity (a capital offense under Sharia law). Since my last post about Rifqa she has been returned to Columbus, Ohio, despite previous assurances by the Court that she would not be returned to Ohio if her parents did not present proof of legal residency in the U.S. Rifqa is now awaiting yet another hearing.

Rifqa's next dependency hearing, her first in Ohio, is being held on November 16, and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and Dr. Andrew Bostom are organizing a Rally for Rifqa on that day "in support of the reinstatement of Rifqa's rights and freedom of religion."

Two big problems being faced by Rifqa in her struggle for religious freedom is the inability of many Americans to imagine that she could be in real danger and the inexperience of American legal and social systems in dealing with Sharia law, the law that governs Muslims.

In case you have doubts that converting from Islam to Christianity can be a life-threatening action, a number of people with first-hand knowledge of the risks involved will be at the rally bearing witness for Rifqa. These warriors for the truth include Simon Deng, an ex-slave from Sudan; Nonie Darwish, Executive Director of Former Muslims United; Jamal Jivanjee, another apostate who is now a pastor and Rifqa's friend; James Lafferty, Chairman of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force; Patricia Said, mother of Amina and Sarah Said, Texas teens who were slain in an "honor killing"; and other family members of honor killing victims. Also lending support will be talk show radio host, Joyce Kaufman.

Rifqa's supporters implore you to join with them in Columbus, Ohio for this event.

Rally for Rifqa

November 16, 2009

Dorrian Commons Park

across the street from

Franklin County Juvenile Court

11 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Check Atlas Shrugs for directions and more details about speakers and attendees as the date nears.

It would also be helpful to contact Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, here, and tell him to make certain that Rifqa's fears are taken seriously and that she is permitted to enjoy religious freedom in safety.

Maryam and Marzieh are still imprisoned. Please pray for them.
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Related Posts:

• Meditation: Progress for Maryam & Marzieh
• Rifqa Bary Meets Hamlet. Result: Alas or Huzzah?
• Judge Keeps Rifqa Bary Temporarily in Florida--Again
• Meditation: 187 Candles Plus 1, Updates on Maryam, Marzieh, and Rifqa
  
• Mediation: Londoners Hold Prayer Vigil for Maryam and Marzieh
  
• Aqsa, Amina, Sarah, Rand
  
• Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?
  
• Meditation: Maryam and Marzieh Face Death But Refuse to Renounce Christianity
• Meditation: Pray for the Release of Maryam and Marzieh
• Maryam and Marzieh: Convicted of Being Christian

Straight Talk on Jihadist Hasan: Political Correctness Killed Ft. Hood Patriots

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters tells it like it is:

Peters in today's New York Post:

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting "Allahu Akbar!" committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.

This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.

When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."

But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld.

And the Army won’t. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism."

And the media won’t. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears.

Other appreciators of Peters' eloquence: It Don't Make Sense and Libertyblog.
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Related posts:

• American Woman Shoots Down Ft. Hood Jihadist
• Massacre at Fort Hood (Updated 11/6/09)