Debts That No Honest Man Can Pay

Packaged
Following on from the original 'climategate' emails of 2009, the new package appears to show systematic suppression of evidence, and even publication of reports that scientists knew to to be based on flawed approaches...Yet one of the newly released emails, written by Prof. Jones  - who is working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - said: 'Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden. (Daily Mail, 11/28/2011)


As predicted yesterday by RedStateVT, no discussion of Climategate in the state-controlled media today, but we do get a new Herman Cain scandal. Thankfully we have the Climate Depot web site. And now, at last, we have incontrovertible proof that - as RedStateVT has told you - global warming is all about money, i.e. the research grants that grease the "scientists."


Finally, global warming's epitaph:
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse. The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece. 


Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds. (Bret Stephens, WSJ, 11/29/2011)


Featured
Mr. Gingrich taught college history before entering politics, and his historical references on the campaign trail are such a feature of his public remarks as to be nearly a rhetorical tic. They strike some as evidence that Mr. Gingrich is the smartest candidate in the room — and others that he is a man determined to let you know how much he knows. (NYT, 11/29/2011)


One of the requirements that Liberals have for a president is that he appear to be smart. Hence, because Bush sometimes mangled his syntax we got 'Bush is Dumb.' Obama's qualifications for president - given that he had no experience and no accomplishments - were that he was a brilliant orator. (The bloom is off that rose now, however). All this was notwithstanding that Bush was a Harvard MBA and Obama is reported to have been a mediocre student. 


So what to do with Newt Gingrich who is demonstrably smart and well-spoken? Well, the script now being written is obviously going to be that he is "too smart for his own good...nobody likes a smarty pants."


Scandal-Ridden Congressman To Retire
Simply put, Barney Frank has had enough. (NYT, 11/29/2011)


RedStateVT is by no means an expert on the Barney Frank scandals, but here are the ones that we recall:


- His boyfriend was running a male prostitution ring out of Barney's basement.
- His boyfriend was growing marijuana in his beach house.
- Barney recommended his boyfriend for a job at Fannie Mae (no pun intended).


We do not know whether this was the same boyfriend or not.


Oh, and of course, the biggest Barney scandals was when he told Fannie/Freddie that he wanted to "roll the dice" on providing more loans to the poor (unqualified) mortgage applicants.


Finally, Barney's epitaph:
However, it is unlikely that Mr. Frank is leaving for the reason he should depart Congress: out of shame for all he did to stop reform of Fannie and Freddie while there was still time to avert the disaster that almost took down the American economy.


In 2003, he called Fannie and Freddie “fundamentally sound financially” and accused the Bush Administration of trying to “exaggerate a threat of safety… [to] conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see."


A year later, he said talk of financial problems at Fannie and Freddie were “an artificial issue created by the administration...I don't think we are in any remote danger here."


In 2007, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and just as Fannie and Freddie – overleveraged and stuffed to the gills with risky mortgages they’d encouraged and facilitated – were about to go over the cliff, Mr. Frank attacked President George W. Bush’s call for reform as “inane.” (Karl Rove, WSJ, 11/29/2011)