It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist."
He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians
and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But
that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of
production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.
What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more
insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership
in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when
their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own
businesses in the private sector.
Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and
tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from
Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for
all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a
scapegoat all the time.
Government ownership of the means of production means that
politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to
face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous — something
that Barack Obama avoids like the plague.
Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance
companies to cover the children of their customers until the children
are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for
President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance
premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the
"greed" of the insurance companies.
The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other
privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that
can be adapted to all sorts of situations.
One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be
reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the
prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is
obvious that Obama is on the political left.
Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political
development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the
political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites
overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals
of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as their own
during the 1920s.
Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both
in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted
fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois,
as a man of the left.
It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by
Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced
themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred
these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents
with these pariahs.
What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in
common is an assumption that some very wise people — like themselves —
need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest
of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.
The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a
vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the
United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that
begins, "We the People ..."
That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get
the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by
judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution"
that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and
transfer those decisions to our betters.
The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true
believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts
are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles
up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous
consequences.
Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from
the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called
socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are
selling our birthright of freedom.
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Friday, July 1, 2016
Elizabeth Warren’s Genealogical Challenge
Elizabeth Warren’s Genealogical Challenge
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/14/elizabeth-warrens-genealogical-challenge-113019
Elizabeth Warren’s Genealogical Challenge
5/14/12
Elizabeth Warren has been taking a lot of heat lately for claiming Native American ancestry. But what do the records say? And what do they mean?
Christopher Child, a genealogist with the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, reported on May 1 that he found an 1894 Logan County—in what was then Oklahoma Territory—marriage license application that proved Warren’s Cherokee connection. According to reports, Child said the marriage application had been submitted by William Crawford, the brother of Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-grandfather, Preston Crawford and on the application, William Crawford said he wished to marry Mary Long, and that his mother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was Cherokee.
But two days ago, a document—a marriage license between William Crawford and Mary Long—was posted on Breitbart.com by Michael Patrick Leahy, a Breitbart News contributor, and editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series.
The document came from the ReJeania Zmek, the court clerk of Logan County, Oklahoma and it shows a place to indicate “color” but neither the bride nor groom did so. Leahy says the marriage license application Childs says proves Warren’s Cherokee connection “has been exposed as non-existent.”
“When asked specifically if marriage license application documents were created in Logan County in 1894, she [Zmek] said she is almost certain they were not,” Leahy reports on Breitbart.com.
Is there another document that says Crawford’s mother was Cherokee? Leahy says there are no records that support that claim. “We know that between 1794 and 1799, Wyatt Smith and Margaret "Peggy" Brackin Smith had a little girl they named O.C. Sarah Smith. There's no evidence that “Peggy,” O.C. Sarah’s mother, was Cherokee, and her father's father—Andreas Smith—was the son of two Swedish immigrants, Hans Jurgen Smidt and his wife Maria Stalcop, who settled in Delaware shortly before Andreas' birth in 1731,” Leahy explains on Breitbart.com.
And so, Warren, whether she likes it or not, finds herself smack dab in the middle of a genealogical morass. These types of findings and research hurdles are what fuels the millions of amateur genealogists and the growing popularity of sites like Ancestry.com and shows like “Faces of America” and “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Now, back to Warren. Leahy goes on to say that even if O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee, she was only half Cherokee, making Warren, 1/64, not 1/32 as most reports have recently stated.
Leahy doesn’t stop there. He says “it is more likely that O.C. Sarah Smith had no Cherokee heritage. Census records that listed O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford (her married name) as a resident of Tennessee in 1830, 1840, and 1860 classify her as white, not Indian.”
That’s not surprising though, considering that a reference to Indian on the Census form didn’t start until 1880. The 1850 Census gave options for white, black or mulatto.
“The U.S. Census records starting with 1880 included a reference to Indians, but may or may not be accurate. Earlier records sometimes regard Indians or mixed bloods as MU (mulatto) and again are not necessarily accurate,” said Myra Vanderpool Gormley, a certified genealogist specializing in Cherokee and Native American history. “There are various Indian rolls from about 1885 that identify Indians by tribe and name. Most of them pertain to Indians living on reservations and not in the general population.”
It wasn’t the only time American Indians were lumped into a group they didn’t belong in either. Walter Ashby Plecker, registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912-1946, was instrumental in crafting the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He argued that there were no full-blooded Indians left in Virginia, so everyone in the state should only be able to claim one of two racial backgrounds: Caucasian or “negro.”
And as David Treuer pointed out in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, many Indians have identified as whites to have access to more opportunities. “From the mid-19th century, the beginning of the reservation period, up through the early 20th century, regardless of how people identified themselves, being classified by the U.S. government as an American Indian automatically curtailed one’s rights,” he said.
Again, back to Warren. Even though there is a place on the aforementioned Logan County marriage license to identify “color,” this isn’t the case on all forms, as they vary by county and state.
Gene Norris, a genealogist with the Cherokee Heritage Center sent ICTMN a copy of an 1893 marriage license of Warren’s grandmother, Hannie E. Crawford, to her grandfather, Harry G. Reed, from Sebastian County in Arkansas. “You will note from the digitized image that Arkansas county marriage records show no reference to race, ethnicity or color nor does it indicate that Hannie E. Crawford is a Cherokee citizen, only that her residence was Indian Territory,” Norris said.
This further muddles the picture of Warren’s genealogical past. Just saying one lives in Indian Territory doesn’t make them an Indian. “Anyone could live in Indian Territory at any time,” Norris said. “When the U.S. federal government took the U.S. federal population Census for 1900, Indian Territory was divided into two sections, non-Indian population and Indian population, 61 percent of the Cherokee Nation’s population were not legally considered Cherokee but U.S. citizens who had migrated from other states such as Arkansas, living in the Cherokee Nation.”
Many observers have seized upon the inexactitude of record keeping, but in the end it has stymied those who wish they were of Indian ancestry and are looking for ways to become tribal citizens.
Not only does Leahy say O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford was not Cherokee, in a follow up article about Warren’s ancestry he says that Smith Crawford’s husband, Jonathan Crawford, was a member of the Tennessee militia who rounded up Cherokees and herded them into government-built stockades in Ross’s Landing, which is now Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ross’s Landing was a point of origin for the Trail of Tears.
“These were the troops responsible for removing Cherokee families from homes they had lived in for generations in the three states that the Cherokee Nations had considered their homelands for centuries: Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee,” Leahy says.
Leahy went on to say that Jonathan Crawford did not accompany the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears, but his association with American Indians didn’t stop at Ross’s Landing either. Leahy reports that Jonathan Crawford served with the same Tennessee militia once more in Florida when the group fought the Seminole Indians during the Second Seminole War in November, 1837.
Leahy also points out that none of Jonathan Crawford and O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford’s other seven children ever claim their mother was Cherokee.
There is one more piece to the Warren genealogical tale.
A Buracker & Boraker Family History Research Newsletter published by R.C. Boraker of St. Albans, England from March 2006 asks “Is there also Cherokee blood?” Under that heading, the newsletter reads: “Eldon Boraker told his children that his mother, Ella May (Crawford) Boraker, had one eighth Indian blood in her veins. That means her great-grandmother, Sarah (Smith) CRAWFORD who married Jonathan H. Crawford, must have been a full-blooded Indian.”
The newsletter goes on to say: “The first name or names of Jonathan’s wife is a mystery. In some records it is ‘O. C. Sarah Smith’ (according to Al Donica and Donald Richardson) and in the 1960 census for Bledsoe County, Tennesee she is listed as ‘Neoma Crawford’ (but ‘Nioma’ in the index). What do the initials ‘O.C.’ stand for and where did they come from? Was Sarah also called ‘Oma’ as a shortened version of Neoma? Lynda Smith uses the combined name ‘Neoma (Oma?) C. Sarah SMITH’ in her reports. What was Neoma’s or Sarah’s Indian name? Could it have been ‘Osee’ or ‘Osie’? Lynda Smith said, ‘When Neoma’s son William J. Crawford married his second wife Mary LONG in Oklahoma, he stated on his marriage application that his parents were Johnathan Houston Crawford and O. C. Sarah Smith and that his mother was Cherokee Indian.’ Ella May CRAWFORD lived on an Indian reservation as a child.”
The newsletter goes on to tell a story about Ella May Crawford who lived on the Indian reservation in Oklahoma. (See the newsletter below)
Leahy calls Lynda Smith, who is quoted in the newsletter, a “well intentioned amateur genealogist with a creative imagination.”
So it would seem that Warren’s Cherokee ancestry is based on family stories, which oral history does carry some weight in genealogical circles. Many people do have stories about Native American ancestors, but could Warren become an enrolled Cherokee citizen based on them? No, she could not.
According to Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, deputy executive director for Cherokee Nation Communications, even if that marriage license said O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee, it alone would be insufficient. Warren would have to have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls and then show state-certified documentation, like birth or death certificates, that she is related to that person, to be eligible for citizenship. Though Krehbiel-Burton admits, people are missed who should be citizens.
“Not every Cherokee was on the Dawes Rolls, so there are people who have legitimate Cherokee genealogy but are ineligible for citizenship,” she told ICTMN. “It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got to by.”
She said the nation’s registration department gets an average of 1,200 applications for citizenship each month.
Related Articles:
Christopher Child, a genealogist with the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, reported on May 1 that he found an 1894 Logan County—in what was then Oklahoma Territory—marriage license application that proved Warren’s Cherokee connection. According to reports, Child said the marriage application had been submitted by William Crawford, the brother of Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-grandfather, Preston Crawford and on the application, William Crawford said he wished to marry Mary Long, and that his mother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was Cherokee.
But two days ago, a document—a marriage license between William Crawford and Mary Long—was posted on Breitbart.com by Michael Patrick Leahy, a Breitbart News contributor, and editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series.
The document came from the ReJeania Zmek, the court clerk of Logan County, Oklahoma and it shows a place to indicate “color” but neither the bride nor groom did so. Leahy says the marriage license application Childs says proves Warren’s Cherokee connection “has been exposed as non-existent.”
“When asked specifically if marriage license application documents were created in Logan County in 1894, she [Zmek] said she is almost certain they were not,” Leahy reports on Breitbart.com.
Is there another document that says Crawford’s mother was Cherokee? Leahy says there are no records that support that claim. “We know that between 1794 and 1799, Wyatt Smith and Margaret "Peggy" Brackin Smith had a little girl they named O.C. Sarah Smith. There's no evidence that “Peggy,” O.C. Sarah’s mother, was Cherokee, and her father's father—Andreas Smith—was the son of two Swedish immigrants, Hans Jurgen Smidt and his wife Maria Stalcop, who settled in Delaware shortly before Andreas' birth in 1731,” Leahy explains on Breitbart.com.
And so, Warren, whether she likes it or not, finds herself smack dab in the middle of a genealogical morass. These types of findings and research hurdles are what fuels the millions of amateur genealogists and the growing popularity of sites like Ancestry.com and shows like “Faces of America” and “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Now, back to Warren. Leahy goes on to say that even if O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee, she was only half Cherokee, making Warren, 1/64, not 1/32 as most reports have recently stated.
Leahy doesn’t stop there. He says “it is more likely that O.C. Sarah Smith had no Cherokee heritage. Census records that listed O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford (her married name) as a resident of Tennessee in 1830, 1840, and 1860 classify her as white, not Indian.”
That’s not surprising though, considering that a reference to Indian on the Census form didn’t start until 1880. The 1850 Census gave options for white, black or mulatto.
“The U.S. Census records starting with 1880 included a reference to Indians, but may or may not be accurate. Earlier records sometimes regard Indians or mixed bloods as MU (mulatto) and again are not necessarily accurate,” said Myra Vanderpool Gormley, a certified genealogist specializing in Cherokee and Native American history. “There are various Indian rolls from about 1885 that identify Indians by tribe and name. Most of them pertain to Indians living on reservations and not in the general population.”
It wasn’t the only time American Indians were lumped into a group they didn’t belong in either. Walter Ashby Plecker, registrar of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912-1946, was instrumental in crafting the state’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He argued that there were no full-blooded Indians left in Virginia, so everyone in the state should only be able to claim one of two racial backgrounds: Caucasian or “negro.”
And as David Treuer pointed out in his opinion piece in The Washington Post, many Indians have identified as whites to have access to more opportunities. “From the mid-19th century, the beginning of the reservation period, up through the early 20th century, regardless of how people identified themselves, being classified by the U.S. government as an American Indian automatically curtailed one’s rights,” he said.
Again, back to Warren. Even though there is a place on the aforementioned Logan County marriage license to identify “color,” this isn’t the case on all forms, as they vary by county and state.
Gene Norris, a genealogist with the Cherokee Heritage Center sent ICTMN a copy of an 1893 marriage license of Warren’s grandmother, Hannie E. Crawford, to her grandfather, Harry G. Reed, from Sebastian County in Arkansas. “You will note from the digitized image that Arkansas county marriage records show no reference to race, ethnicity or color nor does it indicate that Hannie E. Crawford is a Cherokee citizen, only that her residence was Indian Territory,” Norris said.
This further muddles the picture of Warren’s genealogical past. Just saying one lives in Indian Territory doesn’t make them an Indian. “Anyone could live in Indian Territory at any time,” Norris said. “When the U.S. federal government took the U.S. federal population Census for 1900, Indian Territory was divided into two sections, non-Indian population and Indian population, 61 percent of the Cherokee Nation’s population were not legally considered Cherokee but U.S. citizens who had migrated from other states such as Arkansas, living in the Cherokee Nation.”
Many observers have seized upon the inexactitude of record keeping, but in the end it has stymied those who wish they were of Indian ancestry and are looking for ways to become tribal citizens.
Not only does Leahy say O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford was not Cherokee, in a follow up article about Warren’s ancestry he says that Smith Crawford’s husband, Jonathan Crawford, was a member of the Tennessee militia who rounded up Cherokees and herded them into government-built stockades in Ross’s Landing, which is now Chattanooga, Tennessee. Ross’s Landing was a point of origin for the Trail of Tears.
“These were the troops responsible for removing Cherokee families from homes they had lived in for generations in the three states that the Cherokee Nations had considered their homelands for centuries: Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee,” Leahy says.
Leahy went on to say that Jonathan Crawford did not accompany the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears, but his association with American Indians didn’t stop at Ross’s Landing either. Leahy reports that Jonathan Crawford served with the same Tennessee militia once more in Florida when the group fought the Seminole Indians during the Second Seminole War in November, 1837.
Leahy also points out that none of Jonathan Crawford and O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford’s other seven children ever claim their mother was Cherokee.
There is one more piece to the Warren genealogical tale.
A Buracker & Boraker Family History Research Newsletter published by R.C. Boraker of St. Albans, England from March 2006 asks “Is there also Cherokee blood?” Under that heading, the newsletter reads: “Eldon Boraker told his children that his mother, Ella May (Crawford) Boraker, had one eighth Indian blood in her veins. That means her great-grandmother, Sarah (Smith) CRAWFORD who married Jonathan H. Crawford, must have been a full-blooded Indian.”
The newsletter goes on to say: “The first name or names of Jonathan’s wife is a mystery. In some records it is ‘O. C. Sarah Smith’ (according to Al Donica and Donald Richardson) and in the 1960 census for Bledsoe County, Tennesee she is listed as ‘Neoma Crawford’ (but ‘Nioma’ in the index). What do the initials ‘O.C.’ stand for and where did they come from? Was Sarah also called ‘Oma’ as a shortened version of Neoma? Lynda Smith uses the combined name ‘Neoma (Oma?) C. Sarah SMITH’ in her reports. What was Neoma’s or Sarah’s Indian name? Could it have been ‘Osee’ or ‘Osie’? Lynda Smith said, ‘When Neoma’s son William J. Crawford married his second wife Mary LONG in Oklahoma, he stated on his marriage application that his parents were Johnathan Houston Crawford and O. C. Sarah Smith and that his mother was Cherokee Indian.’ Ella May CRAWFORD lived on an Indian reservation as a child.”
The newsletter goes on to tell a story about Ella May Crawford who lived on the Indian reservation in Oklahoma. (See the newsletter below)
Leahy calls Lynda Smith, who is quoted in the newsletter, a “well intentioned amateur genealogist with a creative imagination.”
So it would seem that Warren’s Cherokee ancestry is based on family stories, which oral history does carry some weight in genealogical circles. Many people do have stories about Native American ancestors, but could Warren become an enrolled Cherokee citizen based on them? No, she could not.
According to Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton, deputy executive director for Cherokee Nation Communications, even if that marriage license said O.C. Sarah Smith was Cherokee, it alone would be insufficient. Warren would have to have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls and then show state-certified documentation, like birth or death certificates, that she is related to that person, to be eligible for citizenship. Though Krehbiel-Burton admits, people are missed who should be citizens.
“Not every Cherokee was on the Dawes Rolls, so there are people who have legitimate Cherokee genealogy but are ineligible for citizenship,” she told ICTMN. “It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best we’ve got to by.”
She said the nation’s registration department gets an average of 1,200 applications for citizenship each month.
Related Articles:
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/14/elizabeth-warrens-genealogical-challenge-113019
Law Enforcement Sources: Gun Used in Paris Terrorist Attacks Came from Phoenix
Law Enforcement Sources: Gun Used in Paris Terrorist Attacks Came from Phoenix
A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession of an unregistered fully automatic weapon, according to law enforcement officials with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.
The investigative follow up of the Paris weapon consisted of tracking a paper trail using a 4473 form, which documents a gun’s ownership history by, among other things, using serial numbers. The Phoenix gun owner that the weapon was traced back to was found to have at least two federal firearms violations—for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic—but no enforcement or prosecutorial action was taken against the individual. Instead, ATF leaders went out of their way to keep the information under the radar and ensure that the gun owner’s identity was “kept quiet,” according to law enforcement sources involved with the case. “Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto, not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch.
It’s not clear if the agency, which is responsible for cracking down on the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, did this because the individual was involved in the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme. An ATF spokesman, Corey Ray, at the agency’s Washington D.C. headquarters told Judicial Watch that “no firearms used in the Paris attacks have been traced” by the agency. When asked about the ROI report linking the weapon used in Paris to Phoenix, Ray said “I’m not familiar with the report you’re referencing.” Judicial Watch also tried contacting the Phoenix ATF office, but multiple calls were not returned.
The ATF ran the Fast and Furious experiment and actually allowed criminals, “straw purchasers,” working for Mexican drug cartels to buy weapons at federally licensed firearms dealers in Phoenix and allowed the guns to be “walked”—possessed without any knowledge of their whereabouts. The government lost track of most of the weapons and many have been used to murder hundreds of innocent people as well as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, in Arizona. A mainstream newspaper reported that a Muslim terrorist who planned to murder attendees of a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas last year bought a 9-millimeter pistol at a Phoenix gun shop that participated in the ATF’s Fast and Furious program despite drug and assault charges that should have raised red flags. Judicial Watch has thoroughly investigated Fast and Furious and has sued the Obama administration for information about the once-secret operation.
Law Enforcement Sources: Gun Used in Paris Terrorist Attacks Came from Phoenix
JUNE 29, 2016
One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist
attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration
allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and
futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.” A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession of an unregistered fully automatic weapon, according to law enforcement officials with firsthand knowledge of the investigation.
The investigative follow up of the Paris weapon consisted of tracking a paper trail using a 4473 form, which documents a gun’s ownership history by, among other things, using serial numbers. The Phoenix gun owner that the weapon was traced back to was found to have at least two federal firearms violations—for selling one weapon illegally and possessing an unregistered automatic—but no enforcement or prosecutorial action was taken against the individual. Instead, ATF leaders went out of their way to keep the information under the radar and ensure that the gun owner’s identity was “kept quiet,” according to law enforcement sources involved with the case. “Agents were told, in the process of taking the fully auto, not to anger the seller to prevent him from going public,” a veteran law enforcement official told Judicial Watch.
It’s not clear if the agency, which is responsible for cracking down on the illegal use and trafficking of firearms, did this because the individual was involved in the Fast and Furious gun-running scheme. An ATF spokesman, Corey Ray, at the agency’s Washington D.C. headquarters told Judicial Watch that “no firearms used in the Paris attacks have been traced” by the agency. When asked about the ROI report linking the weapon used in Paris to Phoenix, Ray said “I’m not familiar with the report you’re referencing.” Judicial Watch also tried contacting the Phoenix ATF office, but multiple calls were not returned.
The ATF ran the Fast and Furious experiment and actually allowed criminals, “straw purchasers,” working for Mexican drug cartels to buy weapons at federally licensed firearms dealers in Phoenix and allowed the guns to be “walked”—possessed without any knowledge of their whereabouts. The government lost track of most of the weapons and many have been used to murder hundreds of innocent people as well as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, in Arizona. A mainstream newspaper reported that a Muslim terrorist who planned to murder attendees of a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas last year bought a 9-millimeter pistol at a Phoenix gun shop that participated in the ATF’s Fast and Furious program despite drug and assault charges that should have raised red flags. Judicial Watch has thoroughly investigated Fast and Furious and has sued the Obama administration for information about the once-secret operation.
Obama's Politics Are More Insidious Than Socialism
Obama's Politics Are More Insidious Than Socialism
Obama's Politics Are More Insidious Than Socialism
Claim that jet stream crossing equator is ‘climate emergency’ is utter nonsense
Claim that jet stream crossing equator is ‘climate emergency’ is utter nonsense
(Commentary)
Two bloggers have made a stunning claim that has spread like wildfire on the Internet: They say the Northern Hemisphere jet stream, the high-altitude river of winds that separates cold air from warm air, has done something new and outrageous. They say it has crossed the equator, joining the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere. One said this signifies that the jet stream is ‘wrecked‘, the other said it means we have a “global climate emergency.”
But these shrill claims have no validity — air flow between the hemispheres occurs routinely. The claims are unsupported and unscientific, and they demonstrate the danger of wild assertions made by non-experts reaching and misleading the masses.
The two bloggers who have perpetuated this misinformation are Robert Scribbler, who describes himself as ” a progressive novelist, non-fiction writer and emerging threats expert,” and Paul Beckwith, who is working on a PhD with “a focus on abrupt climate system change” at the University of Ottawa.
Scribbler says the cross-equator flow is a manifestation of man-made global warming, supported by the hypothesis that disproportionate heating of the Arctic is destabilizing the jet stream. “The Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more,” he writes. “More and more it has invaded regions both within the Polar zone and within the Tropics. Now, it appears that the old dividing lines are so weak that flows of upper level air between Hemispheres can be exchanged.”
He concludes that this “violation of dividing lines” is “a kind of weather weirding that we are not at all really prepared to deal with.”
Beckwith writes that the jet stream behavior is “unprecedented” and represents “climate system mayhem”: “Our climate system behavior continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before. . . . We must declare a global climate emergency.”
I reached out to several atmospheric scientists, who have graduate degrees and are trusted sources in the profession, for their reaction to these claims. Without exception, they said air flow between the hemispheres is not at all uncommon.
“This is total nonsense,” said Cliff Mass, a professor of meteorology at the University of Washington. “Flow often crosses the equator.”
Mass added that the cross-equator flow identified by Scribbler and Beckwith is not between mid-latitude jet streams, as claimed. “The analysis is making mistakes that even one of my junior undergrads would not make,” Mass said.
Ryan Maue, a senior meteorologist with a doctoral degree who works at WeatherBell Analytics, agreed with Mass that the cross-equator flow is totally normal and not evidence of a joint hemispheric jet stream. “Cross-equatorial flow at both upper and lower levels is part of the seasonal transition of the Western Pacific monsoon through boreal summer,” he said.
“Sometimes the flows connect up with each other and make it look like a larger flow structure is causing the jet stream to flow from one hemisphere to the other, but it’s in no way unprecedented,” Roy Spencer, a professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama-Huntsville, explained on his blog.
To be clear, the hypothesis that global warming is destabilizing the polar jet stream is a legitimate idea that has been published in peer-reviewed journals, though it remains controversial. But even the scientist who developed the hypothesis, Jennifer Francis, a professor of meteorology at Rutgers University, suggested it had been misapplied by Scribbler and Beckwith. “I’d say cross-equator flow cannot be unprecedented, maybe not even all that unusual,” she said.
Sam Lillo, who is working on his PhD in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, said the cross-equator flow evolved from twin areas of high pressure on either side of the equator while a parade of atmospheric waves in the Southern Hemisphere had pushed the subtropical (which is distinct from the mid-latitude or polar jet stream that Scribbler and Beckwith are discussing) jet stream northward, allowing the link to occur. “None of this is unusual,” he said. “There isn’t a wall at the equator separating the two hemispheres, and air is free to flow from one side to the other.”
Scribbler had cited a tweet from Lillo to support his argument of a strengthened equator-to-pole connection, but Lillo countered that the tweet referred to some unusual behavior of a phenomenon known as the QBO or Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, which is “a separate story” from the cross-equator flow. The QBO, he said, is an oscillation in equatorial stratospheric winds, which has been “out of phase.” He chalked up the weird QBO behavior to natural variability “even though I’m an advocate for identifying connections to human-caused climate change.”
Unfortunately, the thoroughly specious claims of Scribbler and Beckwith have gone viral, getting picked up Raw Story, Reddit and Inhabitat.
Such information viewed through the lens of a non-specialist may come across as both credible and alarming but damages the reputation of the science when ultimately shown to be flawed.
“This fear-mongering helps no one,” Maue said.
Examples like this demonstrate the pitfalls of extraordinary claims posted on blogs and the importance of consuming science that has been vetted and peer-reviewed.
UPDATE, 9:20 a.m., July 1: Robert Scribbler has modified his blog post and written a response to the criticisms of his claims. See at bottom of his original post: A necessary statement on the accuracy of the above article and related edits
Claim that jet stream crossing equator is ‘climate emergency’ is utter nonsense
Two bloggers have made a stunning claim that has spread like wildfire on the Internet: They say the Northern Hemisphere jet stream, the high-altitude river of winds that separates cold air from warm air, has done something new and outrageous. They say it has crossed the equator, joining the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere. One said this signifies that the jet stream is ‘wrecked‘, the other said it means we have a “global climate emergency.”
But these shrill claims have no validity — air flow between the hemispheres occurs routinely. The claims are unsupported and unscientific, and they demonstrate the danger of wild assertions made by non-experts reaching and misleading the masses.
The two bloggers who have perpetuated this misinformation are Robert Scribbler, who describes himself as ” a progressive novelist, non-fiction writer and emerging threats expert,” and Paul Beckwith, who is working on a PhD with “a focus on abrupt climate system change” at the University of Ottawa.
Scribbler says the cross-equator flow is a manifestation of man-made global warming, supported by the hypothesis that disproportionate heating of the Arctic is destabilizing the jet stream. “The Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more,” he writes. “More and more it has invaded regions both within the Polar zone and within the Tropics. Now, it appears that the old dividing lines are so weak that flows of upper level air between Hemispheres can be exchanged.”
He concludes that this “violation of dividing lines” is “a kind of weather weirding that we are not at all really prepared to deal with.”
Beckwith writes that the jet stream behavior is “unprecedented” and represents “climate system mayhem”: “Our climate system behavior continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before. . . . We must declare a global climate emergency.”
I reached out to several atmospheric scientists, who have graduate degrees and are trusted sources in the profession, for their reaction to these claims. Without exception, they said air flow between the hemispheres is not at all uncommon.
“This is total nonsense,” said Cliff Mass, a professor of meteorology at the University of Washington. “Flow often crosses the equator.”
Mass added that the cross-equator flow identified by Scribbler and Beckwith is not between mid-latitude jet streams, as claimed. “The analysis is making mistakes that even one of my junior undergrads would not make,” Mass said.
Ryan Maue, a senior meteorologist with a doctoral degree who works at WeatherBell Analytics, agreed with Mass that the cross-equator flow is totally normal and not evidence of a joint hemispheric jet stream. “Cross-equatorial flow at both upper and lower levels is part of the seasonal transition of the Western Pacific monsoon through boreal summer,” he said.
“Sometimes the flows connect up with each other and make it look like a larger flow structure is causing the jet stream to flow from one hemisphere to the other, but it’s in no way unprecedented,” Roy Spencer, a professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama-Huntsville, explained on his blog.
To be clear, the hypothesis that global warming is destabilizing the polar jet stream is a legitimate idea that has been published in peer-reviewed journals, though it remains controversial. But even the scientist who developed the hypothesis, Jennifer Francis, a professor of meteorology at Rutgers University, suggested it had been misapplied by Scribbler and Beckwith. “I’d say cross-equator flow cannot be unprecedented, maybe not even all that unusual,” she said.
Sam Lillo, who is working on his PhD in meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, said the cross-equator flow evolved from twin areas of high pressure on either side of the equator while a parade of atmospheric waves in the Southern Hemisphere had pushed the subtropical (which is distinct from the mid-latitude or polar jet stream that Scribbler and Beckwith are discussing) jet stream northward, allowing the link to occur. “None of this is unusual,” he said. “There isn’t a wall at the equator separating the two hemispheres, and air is free to flow from one side to the other.”
Scribbler had cited a tweet from Lillo to support his argument of a strengthened equator-to-pole connection, but Lillo countered that the tweet referred to some unusual behavior of a phenomenon known as the QBO or Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, which is “a separate story” from the cross-equator flow. The QBO, he said, is an oscillation in equatorial stratospheric winds, which has been “out of phase.” He chalked up the weird QBO behavior to natural variability “even though I’m an advocate for identifying connections to human-caused climate change.”
Unfortunately, the thoroughly specious claims of Scribbler and Beckwith have gone viral, getting picked up Raw Story, Reddit and Inhabitat.
Such information viewed through the lens of a non-specialist may come across as both credible and alarming but damages the reputation of the science when ultimately shown to be flawed.
“This fear-mongering helps no one,” Maue said.
Examples like this demonstrate the pitfalls of extraordinary claims posted on blogs and the importance of consuming science that has been vetted and peer-reviewed.
UPDATE, 9:20 a.m., July 1: Robert Scribbler has modified his blog post and written a response to the criticisms of his claims. See at bottom of his original post: A necessary statement on the accuracy of the above article and related edits
New Theory: CO2 And Climate Linked -- But Not In The Way The 'Consensus' Tells Us
New Theory: CO2 And Climate Linked -- But Not In The Way The 'Consensus' Tells Us
The problem with the Earth’s past periods of pre-industrial
glaciation and warming is that, as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) itself noted in its 2007 report, “The quantitative
and mechanistic explanation of these CO2 variations remains one of the
major unsolved questions in climate research.” In other words, we don’t
know what caused large swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the past.
The unknown mechanism for CO2 fluctuations in the past has led to myriad climate model failures in the present as climate researchers assume carbon dioxide drives the global climate. But, as Ralph Ellis, the author of “Modulation of ice ages via precession and dust-albedo feedbacks” notes, “The primary feedback involved in modern terrestrial temperature feedbacks is said to be CO2 (plus H2O), and so it is assumed that CO2 must also be closely involved in the interglacial warming process (Hansen et al., 2012). But there is a problem with this suggestion, because high CO2 concentrations during an interglacial always result in cooling while low CO2 concentrations during a glacial maximum always result in warming…”
This is a revolutionary claim. If the global warming alarmists are correct, rising CO2 could lead to runaway planetary warming while conversely, low CO2 levels would result in runaway cooling. The geologic record of the planet shows the opposite, however, with long periods of glaciation interrupted by occasional 5,000 year periods of warming.
Ellis’ work explains these cycles by completely reinterpreting CO2 ’s role in our climate. He writes:
Ellis illustrated the historic connection between CO2, dust and temperature over the past 800,000 years in this graphic.
Ellis concludes his abstract by noting that his new thesis, “…is simple, robust, and comprehensive in its scope, and its key elements are well supported by empirical evidence.” Which, charitably, is more anyone can say about any of the current crop of climate models that are rooted in the belief that modern civilization’s use of carbon-based energy is driving our planet inexorably towards extinction.
New Theory: CO2 And Climate Linked -- But Not In The Way The 'Consensus' Tells Us
Post written by
Chuck DeVore
Mr. DeVore is the vice president of National Initiatives at the TPPF where he oversees the Fueling Freedom Project.
The unknown mechanism for CO2 fluctuations in the past has led to myriad climate model failures in the present as climate researchers assume carbon dioxide drives the global climate. But, as Ralph Ellis, the author of “Modulation of ice ages via precession and dust-albedo feedbacks” notes, “The primary feedback involved in modern terrestrial temperature feedbacks is said to be CO2 (plus H2O), and so it is assumed that CO2 must also be closely involved in the interglacial warming process (Hansen et al., 2012). But there is a problem with this suggestion, because high CO2 concentrations during an interglacial always result in cooling while low CO2 concentrations during a glacial maximum always result in warming…”
This is a revolutionary claim. If the global warming alarmists are correct, rising CO2 could lead to runaway planetary warming while conversely, low CO2 levels would result in runaway cooling. The geologic record of the planet shows the opposite, however, with long periods of glaciation interrupted by occasional 5,000 year periods of warming.
Ellis’ work explains these cycles by completely reinterpreting CO2 ’s role in our climate. He writes:
Ice age CO2 reductions coincide with an increase in ice sheet extent and therefore an increase in global albedo, and this should result in further cooling of the climate. But what actually happens is that when CO2 reaches a minimum and albedo reaches a maximum, the world rapidly warms into an interglacial. A similar effect can be seen at the peak of an interglacial, where high CO2 and low albedo results in cooling. This counterintuitive response of the climate system also remains unexplained, and so a hitherto unaccounted for agent must exist that is strong enough to counter and reverse the classical feedback mechanisms.The reason for all the dust just before the end of an ice-age is simple: CO2 levels fall as the planet cools, eventually causing a die off of land-based plants, especially in arid areas such as the high steppes of Mongolia. CO2 starvation causes plants to compensate but that compensation itself makes them more vulnerable to lack of water. What then happens is a rapid loss of vegetative cover that results in increasing amounts of dust in the air. That dust then coats the layers of snow in the northern hemisphere’s landmasses, significantly decreasing its albedo or reflectiveness. This causes the ice to melt at an increasing pace until the planet emerges from its ice-age—until the process repeats itself.
The answer to both of these conundrums lies in glacial dust, which was deposited upon the ice sheets towards the end of each glacial maximum.
Ellis illustrated the historic connection between CO2, dust and temperature over the past 800,000 years in this graphic.
Ellis concludes his abstract by noting that his new thesis, “…is simple, robust, and comprehensive in its scope, and its key elements are well supported by empirical evidence.” Which, charitably, is more anyone can say about any of the current crop of climate models that are rooted in the belief that modern civilization’s use of carbon-based energy is driving our planet inexorably towards extinction.
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