Monday, July 28, 2008

Obama's 46 Top Lies

One Man's Thoughts
1.) Selma Got Me Born LIAR - your parents felt safe enough to have you in 1961 Selma had no effect on your birth as Selma was in 1965. (Google ‘Obama Selma’ for his full March 4, 2007 speech and articles about its various untruths.)
2.) Father Was A Goat Herder LIAR - he was a privileged well educated youth who went on to work with the Kenyan Government.
3.) Father Was A Proud Freedom Fighter LIAR - he was part of one of the most corrupt and violent governments Kenya has ever had.
4.) My Family Has Strong Ties To African Freedom LIAR - your cousin Raila Odinga has created mass violence in attempting to overturn a legitimate election in 2007in Kenya . It is the first widespread violence in decades. The current government is pro-American but Odinga wants to overthrow it and establish Muslim Sharia law. Your half-brother Abongo Obama is Odinga’s follower. You interrupted your NH campaigning to speak to Odinga on the phone. Check out the following link for verification of that….and for more. http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/080115/issues.html?.v=1 Obama’s cousin Odinga in Kenya ran for president and tried to get Sharia Muslim law in place there. When Oding a lost the elections, his followers have burned Christians’ homes and then burned men, women and children alive in a Christian church where they took shelter. Obama SUPPORTED his cousin before the election process here started. Google Obama and Odinga and see what you get. No one wants to know the truth.
5.) My Grandmother Has Always Been A Christian LIAR - she does her daily Salat prayers at 5 am according to her own interviews. Not to mention Christianity wouldn’t allow her to have been one of 14 wives to 1 man.
6.) My Name is African Swahili LIAR - your name is Arabic & ‘Baraka’ (from which Barack came) means ‘blessed’ in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama. Barack Hussein Obama is not half black. If elected, he would be the first Arab-American President, not the first black President. Barack Hussein Obama is 50% Caucasian from his mother’s side and 43.75% Arabic and 6.25% African Negro from his father’s side. While Barack Hussein Obama’s father was from Kenya , his father’s family was mainly Arabs. Barack Hussein Obama’s father was only 12.5% African Negro and 87.5% Arab (his father’s birth certificate even states he’s Arabnot African Negro). From…. And for more…. Go to….. http://www.arcadeathome.com/newsboy.phtml?Barack_Hussein_Obama_-_Arab-American_only_6.25%25_African
7.) I Never Practiced Islam LIAR - you practiced it daily at school, where you were registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until your wife made you change so you could run for office. 4-3-08 Article ‘Obama was ‘quite religious in Islam http://www.wnd.com/index.php?Fa=PAGE.view&pageId=60559
8.) My School In Indonesia Was Christian LIAR - you were registered as Muslim there and got in trouble in Koranic Studies for making faces (check your own book). February 28, 2008. Kristoff from the New York Times a year ago: Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks) Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.’ This is just one example of what Pamela is talking about when she says ‘Obama’s narrative is being altered, enhanced and manipulated to whitewash troubling facts.’
9.) I Was Fluent In Indonesian LIAR - not one teacher says you could speak the language.
10.) Because I Lived In Indonesia, I Have More Foreign Experience LIAR - you were there from the ages of 6 to 10, and couldn’t even speak the language. What did you learn, how to study the Koran and watch cartoons?
11.) I Am Stronger On Foreign Affairs LIAR - except for Africa (surprise) and the Middle East (bigger surprise) you have never been any where else on the planet and thus have NO experience with our closest allies.
12.) I Blame My Early Drug Use On Ethnic Confusion LIAR - you were quite content in high school to be Barry Obama, no mention of Kenya and no mention of struggle to identify - your classmates said you were just fine.
13.) An Ebony Article Moved Me To Run For Office LIAR - Ebony has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t and never did exist.
14.) A Life Magazine Article Changed My Outlook On Life LIAR - Life has yet to find the article you mention in your book. It doesn’t and never did exist.
15.) I Won’t Run On A National Ticket In ‘08 LIAR - here you are despite saying live on TV that you would not have enough experience by then and you are all about having experience first.
16.) Present Votes Are Common In Illinois LIAR - they are common for YOU, but not many others have 130 NO VOTES.
17.) Oops I Mis-voted LIAR - only when caught by church groups and democrats did you beg to change your mis-vote.
18.) I Was A Professor Of Law LIAR - you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.
19.) I Was A Constitutional Lawyer LIAR - you were a senior lecturer ON LEAVE.
20.) Without Me, There Would Be No Ethics Bill LIAR - you didn’t write it, introduce it, change it or create it.
21.) The Ethics Bill Was Hard To Pass LIAR - it took just 14 days from start to finish.
22.) I Wrote A Tough Nuclear Bill LIAR - your bill was rejected by your own party for its pandering and lack of all regulation - mainly because of your Nuclear Donor Exelon from which David Axelrod came.
23.) I Have Released My State Records LIAR - as of Mar 2008, state bills you sponsored or voted for have yet to be released, exposing all the special interests hidden within.
24.) I Took On The Asbestos Altgeld Gardens Mess LIAR - you were part of a large group of people who remedied Altgeld Gardens . You failed to mention anyone else but yourself in your books.
25.) My Economics Bill Will Help America LIAR - your 111 economic policies were just combined into a proposal which lost 99-0 and even YOU voted against your own bill.
26.) I Have Been A Bold Leader In Illinois LIAR - even your own supporters claim to have not seen BOLD action on your part.
27.) I Passed 26 Of My Own Bills In One Year LIAR - they were not YOUR bills, but rather handed to you after their creation by a fellow Senator to assist you in a future bid for higher office.
28.) No One Contacted Canada About NAFTA LIAR - the Canadian Government issued the names and a memo of the conversation your campaign had with them.
29.) I Am Tough On Terrorism LIAR - you missed the Iran Resolution vote on terrorism and your good friend Ali Abunimah supports the destruction of Israel .
30.) I Am Not Acting As President Yet LIAR - after the NAFTA Memo, a dead terrorist in the FARC in Colombia was found with a letter stating how you and he were working together on getting FARC recognized officially.
31.) I Didn’t Run Ads In Florida LIAR - you allowed national ads to run 8-12 times per day for two weeks - and you still lost.
32.) I Won Michigan - LIAR - no you didn’t.
33.) I won Nevada - LIAR - no you did not.
34.) I Want All Votes To Count - LIAR - you said let the delegates decide.
35.) I Want Americans To Decide LIAR - you prefer caucuses that limit the vote, confuse the voters, force a public vote, and only operate during small windows of time.
36.) I passed 900 Bills in the State Senate - LIAR - you passed 26, most of which you didn’t write yourself.
37.) My Campaign Was Extorted By A Friend LIAR - that friend is threatening to sue if you do not stop saying this. Obama has stopped saying this.
38.) I Believe In Fairness, Not Tactics - LIAR - you used tactics to eliminate Alice Palmer from running against you.
39.) I Don’t Take PAC Money - LIAR - you take loads of it.
40.) I don’t Have Lobbyists - LIAR - you have over 47 lobbyists and counting.
41.) My Campaign Had Nothing To Do With The 1984 Ad LIAR - your own campaign worker made the ad on his Apple in one afternoon.
42.) My Campaign Never Took Over MySpace LIAR - Tom, who started MySpace issued a warning about this advertising to MySpace clients.
43.) I Inspire People With My Words - LIAR - you inspire people with other people’s words.
44.) I Have Passed Bills In The U. S. Senate LIAR - you have passed A BILL in the U. S. Senate - for Africa, which shows YOUR priorities.
45.) I Have Always Been Against Iraq LIAR - you weren’t in office to vote against it AND you have voted to fund it every single time, unlike Kucinich, who seems to be out gutting you Obama. You also seem to be stepping back from your departure date - AGAIN.
46.) I Have Always Supported Universal Health Care LIAR - your plan leaves us all to pay for the 15,000,000 who don’t have to buy it.

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Barack Hussein Obama's One World Government Scam

pronounced /bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə

By Tom DeWeese web posted July 21, 2008
Senator Barack Obama has introduced a dangerous bill and it's on the fast track to Senate passage, probably because of his high profile position as the expected Democrat presidential nominee.

Obama hasn't done much legislatively in his freshman Senate term, but this one is very telling about what we can expect from a President Obama.
The bill is the "Global Poverty Act" (S.2433) and is not just a compassionate bit of fluff that Obama dreamed up to help the poor of the world. This bill is directly tied to the United Nations and serves as little more than a shakedown of American taxpayers in a massive wealth redistribution scheme. In fact, if passed, The Global Poverty Act will provide the United Nations with 0.7% of the United States gross national product. Estimates are that it will add up to at least $845 billion of taxpayer money for welfare to third world countries, in addition to the $300 billion Americans spent for the same thing in 2006. The situation is urgent because the Global Poverty Act has already passed the House of Representatives by a unanimous voice vote on September 25, 2007. The senate version has been passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by unanimous consent and ready for a full Senate vote. Of course the United States has had an ongoing program of supplying foreign aid and assistance to the poor for decades. And the U.S. pays most of the bills at the UN for its herd of programs. So what's new about Obama's bill, and why is it dangerous?Some history that led up to the Global Poverty Act. In 1999 and 2000 non-governmental organizations, NGOs held numerous meetings around the world to write what became known as the Charter for Global Democracy. The document was prepared to be a blueprint for achieving global governance. In reality it was a charter for the abolition of individual freedom, national sovereignty and limited government. The Charter for Global Democracy outlined its goals in 12 detailed "principles":
Principle One called for the consolidation of all international agencies under the direct authority of the UN.
Principle Two called for UN regulation of all transnational corporations and financial institutions, requiring an "international code of conduct" concerning the environment and labor standards.
Principle Three explored various schemes to create independent revenue sources for the UN - meaning UN taxes including fees on all international monetary transactions, taxes on aircraft flights in the skies, and on shipping fuels, and licensing of what the UN called the "global commons," meaning use of air, water and natural resources. The Law of the Sea Treaty fits this category.
Principle Four would restructure the UN by eliminating the veto power and permanent member status on the Security Council. Such a move would almost completely eliminate U.S. influence and power in the world body. In turn Principle Four called for the creation of an "Assembly of the People" which would be populated by hand-picked non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are nothing more than political groups with their own agendas (the UN calls NGOs "civil society"). Now, the UN says these NGO's will be the representatives of the "people" and the Assembly of the People will become the new power of the UN.
Principle Five would authorize a standing UN army.
Principle Six would require UN registration of all arms and the reduction of all national armies "as part of a multinational global security system" under the authority of the UN.
Principle Seven would require individual and national compliance with all UN "Human rights" treaties and declarations.
Principle Eight would activate the UN Criminal Court and make it compulsory for all nations - now achieved.
Principle Nine called for a new institution to establish economic and environmental security by ensuring "Sustainable Development."
Principle Ten would establish an International Environmental Court
Principle Eleven demanded an international declaration stating that climate change is an essential global security interest that requires the creation of a "high level action team" to allocate carbon emissions based on equal per-capita rights - The Kyoto Global Warming Treaty in action.
Principle Twelve demanded the cancellation of all debt owed by the poorest nations, global poverty reductions and for the "equitable sharing" of global resources, as allocated by the UN - here is where Obama's Global Poverty Act comes in.
Specifically, the Charter for Global Democracy was intended to give the UN domain over all of the earth's land, air and seas. In addition it would give the UN the power to control all natural resources, wild life, and energy sources, even radio waves. Such control would allow the UN to place taxes on everything from development; to fishing; to air travel; to shipping. Anything that could be defined as using the earth’s resources would be subject to UN use-taxes. Coincidentally, all twelve principles came directly from the UN's Commission on Global Governance. There was one major problem with the Charter for Global Democracy, at least as far as the UN was concerned. It was too honest and straightforward. Overt action displeases the high-order thinking skills of UN diplomats. The UN likes to keep things fuzzy and gray so as not to scare off the natives. That way there is less chance of screaming headlines of a pending takeover by the UN. So, by the time the UN's Millennium Summit rolled around in September 2000, things weren't quite so clear.At the Summit, attended by literally every head of state and world leader, including then-president Bill Clinton, the name of the Charter had been changed to the Millennium Declaration and the language had been toned down to sound more like suggestions and ideas. Then those "suggestions" were put together in the "Millennium Declaration" in the name of all of the heads of state. No vote or debate was allowed - just acclamation by world leaders who basically said nothing. And the deed was done. The UN had its marching orders for the new Millennium. Now the principles were called "Millennium Goals," and there were eight instead of twelve. Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty; Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education; Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women; Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality; Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health; Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases; Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability; Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development. Yes, these are sneaky guys, well trained in the art of saying nothing. Who could opposes such noble goals? The Millennium Project, which was set up to achieve the "goals" says on its website that it intends to "end poverty by 2015." A noble goal, indeed. So what happened to the 12 Charter principles? Take a hard look - they are all still there. Principles One, Two, and Twelve are right there in Goal 8 - to develop a global partnership for development. Now almost every world organization such as the World Bank carries a section on their web sites calling for "Millennium Development Goals" which control international banking and loan policy. They set policy goals for each country and sometimes communities to measure if nations are keeping their promise to implement the Millennium goals. Principle Seven is clearly Goal 3, the only way to assure Gender Equality is to enforce compliance with UN Human Rights treaties. Principle Eight has already been achieved. Principle Nine is Goal 7. Al Gore is doing his best to enforce Principle Eleven. Global Warming, no matter how well the theory is debunked, just won't go away because it is one of the Millennium Goals. And then there is Barack Obama's Global Poverty Act. Can you see which Principle that is? Of course, Principle 12 and Goal 1. Obama's bill specifically mentions the Millennium Goals as its guide and the 0.7% of GNP is right out of UN documents. In order to eradicate poverty by 2015, they say, every industrial nation must pony up 0.7% of their GNP to the UN for use in eradicating poverty. The UN is now becoming an international collection agency, pressing to collect the promises the world leaders made at the Millennium Summit. The UN wants the cash. In 2005 former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said, "Developed countries that have not already done so should establish timetables to achieve the 0.7% target of gross national income for official development assistance by no later than 2015..."At the Summit in 2000, the UN set clear goals to establish its power over sovereign nations and to enforce the greatest redistribution of wealth scheme ever perpetrated on the world. Now it has the Criminal Court; Sustainable Development is fast becoming official policy in every corner of the nation - only today we call it "going green;" and there is a full court press on to enforce Global Warming policy, in spite of the fact that there is now much evidence surfacing to debunk the theory. Clearly, Obama's bill has been introduced to assure the United States falls in line with the Millennium Declaration and all that it stands for. After all, the UN needs the money to pay for its new found power. Truth, science and American taxpayer interests be hanged. Barack Obama wants to be a "world" leader.
Tom DeWeese is the President of the American Policy Center and the Editor of The DeWeese Report.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

FIRE AND/OR/AND/OR ICE

From- The Business & Media Institute
By R. Warren AndersonResearch Analyst
Dan GainorThe Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow


It was five years before the turn of the century and major media were warning of disastrous climate change.
Page six of The New York Times was headlined with the serious concerns of “geologists.” Only the president at the time wasn’t Bill Clinton; it was Grover Cleveland. And the Times wasn’t warning about global warming – it was telling readers the looming dangers of a new ice age.

The year was 1895, and it was just one of four different time periods in the last 100 years when major print media predicted an impending climate crisis. Each prediction carried its own elements of doom, saying Canada could be “wiped out” or lower crop yields would mean “billions will die.

Just as the weather has changed over time, so has the reporting – blowing hot or cold with short-term changes in temperature. Following the ice age threats from the late 1800s, fears of an imminent and icy catastrophe were compounded in the 1920s by Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan and an obsession with the news of his polar expedition. As the Times put it on Feb. 24, 1895, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.” Those concerns lasted well into the late 1920s. But when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, newspapers and magazines responded with stories about the new threat. Once again the Times was out in front, cautioning “the earth is steadily growing warmer.” After a while, that second phase of climate cautions began to fade. By 1954, Fortune magazine was warming to another cooling trend and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.” As the United States and the old Soviet Union faced off, the media joined them with reports of a more dangerous Cold War of Man vs. Nature. The New York Times ran warming stories into the late 1950s, but it too came around to the new fears. Just three decades ago, in 1975, the paper reported: “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.” That trend, too, cooled off and was replaced by the current era of reporting on the dangers of global warming. Just six years later, on Aug. 22, 1981, the Times quoted seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an “almost unprecedented magnitude.”
In all, the print news media have warned of four separate climate changes in slightly more than 100 years – global cooling, warming, cooling again, and, perhaps not so finally, warming. Some current warming stories combine the concepts and claim the next ice age will be triggered by rising temperatures – the theme of the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow.”

Recent global warming reports have continued that trend, morphing into a hybrid of both theories. News media that once touted the threat of “global warming” have moved on to the more flexible term “climate change.” As the Times described it, climate change can mean any major shift, making the earth cooler or warmer. In a March 30, 2006, piece on ExxonMobil’s approach to the environment, a reporter argued the firm’s chairman “has gone out of his way to soften Exxon’s public stance on climate change.” The effect of the idea of “climate change” means that any major climate event can be blamed on global warming, supposedly driven by mankind.

Spring 2006 has been swamped with climate change hype in every type of media – books, newspapers, magazines, online, TV and even movies. One-time presidential candidate Al Gore, a patron saint of the environmental movement, is releasing “An Inconvenient Truth” in book and movie form, warning, “Our ability to live is what is at stake.” Despite all the historical shifting from one position to another, many in the media no longer welcome opposing views on the climate. CBS reporter Scott Pelley went so far as to compare climate change skeptics with Holocaust deniers. “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel,” Pelley asked, “am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?” he said in an interview on March 23 with CBS News’s PublicEye blog.
He added that the whole idea of impartial journalism just didn’t work for climate stories. “There becomes a point in journalism where striving for balance becomes irresponsible,” he said. Pelley’s comments ignored an essential point: that 30 years ago, the media were certain about the prospect of a new ice age. And that is only the most recent example of how much journalists have changed their minds on this essential debate. Some in the media would probably argue that they merely report what scientists tell them, but that would be only half true. Journalists decide not only what they cover; they also decide whether to include opposing viewpoints. That’s a balance lacking in the current “debate.” This isn’t a question of science. It’s a question of whether Americans can trust what the media tell them about science.

Global Cooling: 1954-1976
The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming inEngines stop running, the wheat is growing thinA nuclear era, but I have no fear’Cause London is drowning, and I live by the river-- The Clash“London Calling,” released in 1979

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s. Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend. Journalists took the threat of another ice age seriously. Fortune magazine actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics for its own analysis of the danger. “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed,” Fortune announced in February 1974.
“It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,” the article continued. That article also emphasized Bryson’s extreme doomsday predictions. “There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest.” Bryson warned, “It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” However, the world population increased by 2.5 billion since that warning. Fortune had been emphasizing the cooling trend for 20 years. In 1954, it picked up on the idea of a frozen earth and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.” The story debunked the notion that “despite all you may have read, heard, or imagined, it’s been growing cooler – not warmer – since the Thirties.” The claims of global catastrophe were remarkably similar to what the media deliver now about global warming. “The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations,” wrote Lowell Ponte in his 1976 book “The Cooling.” If the proper measures weren’t taken, he cautioned, then the cooling would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.” There were more warnings. The Nov. 15, 1969, “Science News” quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. about global cooling worries. “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization,” he said. If the cooling continued for 200 to 300 years, the earth could be plunged into an ice age, Mitchell continued. Six years later, the periodical reported “the cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” A city in a snow globe illustrated that March 1, 1975, article, while the cover showed an ice age obliterating an unfortunate city. In 1975, cooling went from “one of the most important problems” to a first-place tie for “death and misery.” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.” He claimed it was not his disposition to be a “doomsday man.” His analysis came from “the facts [that] have emerged” about past ice ages, according to the July/August International Wildlife Magazine. The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed. Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.” In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught. “The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained. James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.”

Global Warming: 1929-1969
Today’s global warming advocates probably don’t even realize their claims aren’t original. Before the cooling worries of the ’70s, America went through global warming fever for several decades around World War II. The nation entered the “longest warm spell since 1776,” according to a March 27, 1933, New York Times headline. Shifting climate gears from ice to heat, the Associated Press article began “That next ice age, if one is coming … is still a long way off.” One year earlier, the paper reported that “the earth is steadily growing warmer” in its May 15 edition. The Washington Post felt the heat as well and titled an article simply “Hot weather” on August 2, 1930. That article, reminiscent of a stand-up comedy routine, told readers that the heat was so bad, people were going to be saying, “Ah, do you remember that torrid summer of 1930. It was so hot that * * *.”

The Los Angeles Times beat both papers to the heat with the headline: “Is another ice age coming?” on March 11, 1929. Its answer to that question: “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer, and that it will continue to get warmer.” Meteorologist J. B. Kincer of the federal weather bureau published a scholarly article on the warming world in the September 1933 “Monthly Weather Review.” The article began discussing the “wide-spread and persistent tendency toward warmer weather” and asked “Is our climate changing?” Kincer proceeded to document the warming trend. Out of 21 winters examined from 1912-33 in Washington, D.C., 18 were warmer than normal and all of the past 13 were mild. New Haven, Conn., experienced warmer temperatures, with evidence from records that went “back to near the close of the Revolutionary War,” claimed the analysis. Using records from various other cities, Kincer showed that the world was warming.
British amateur meteorologist G. S. Callendar made a bold claim five years later that many would recognize now. He argued that man was responsible for heating up the planet with carbon dioxide emissions – in 1938. It wasn’t a common notion at the time, but he published an article in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society on the subject. “In the following paper I hope to show that such influence is not only possible, but is actually occurring at the present time,” Callendar wrote. He went on the lecture circuit describing carbon-dioxide-induced global warming. But Callendar didn’t conclude his article with an apocalyptic forecast, as happens in today’s global warming stories.
Instead he said the change “is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power.” Furthermore, it would allow for greater agriculture production and hold off the return of glaciers “indefinitely.”
On November 6 the following year, The Chicago Daily Tribune ran an article titled “Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise.” It began, “Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cities thuout [sic] the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend toward warmer climate in the last two decades.” The rising mercury trend continued into the ’50s. The New York Times reported that “we have learned that the world has been getting warmer in the last half century” on Aug. 10, 1952. According to the Times, the evidence was the introduction of cod in the Eskimo’s diet – a fish they had not encountered before 1920 or so. The following year, the paper reported that studies confirmed summers and winters were getting warmer. This warming gave the Eskimos more to handle than cod. “Arctic Findings in Particular Support Theory of Rising Global Temperatures,” announced the Times during the middle of winter, on Feb. 15, 1959. Glaciers were melting in Alaska and the “ice in the Arctic ocean is about half as thick as it was in the late nineteenth century.”
A decade later, the Times reaffirmed its position that “the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two,” according to polar explorer Col. Bernt Bachen in the Feb. 20, 1969, piece. One of the most surprising aspects of the global warming claims of the 20th Century is that they followed close behind similar theories of another major climate change – that one an ice age.

Global Cooling: 1895-1932
The world knew all about cold weather in the 1800s. America and Europe had escaped a 500-year period of cooling, called the Little Ice Age, around 1850. So when the Times warned of new cooling in 1895, it was a serious prediction. On Feb. 24, 1895, the Times announced “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again.” The article debated “whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period.” Those concerns were brought on by increases in northern glaciers and in the severity of Scandinavia’s climate. Fear spread through the print media over the next three decades. A few months after the sinking of the Titanic, on Oct. 7, 1912, page one of the Times reported, “Prof. Schmidt Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.” Scientists knew of four ice ages in the past, leading Professor Nathaniel Schmidt of Cornell University to conclude that one day we will need scientific knowledge “to combat the perils” of the next one. The same day the Los Angeles Times ran an article about Schmidt as well, entitled “Fifth ice age is on the way.” It was subtitled “Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” That end-of-the-world tone wasn’t unusual. “Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada,” declared a front-page Chicago Tribune headline on Aug. 9, 1923. “Professor Gregory” of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” Gregory’s predictions went on and on. Switzerland would be “entirely obliterated,” and parts of South America would be “overrun.” The good news – “Australia has nothing to fear.” The Washington Post picked up on the story the following day, announcing “Ice Age Coming Here.”
Talk of the ice age threat even reached France.
In a New York Times article from Sept. 20, 1922, a penguin found in France was viewed as an “ice-age harbinger.” Even though the penguin probably escaped from the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, it “caused considerable consternation in the country.” Some of the sound of the Roaring ’20s was the noise of a coming ice age – prominently covered by The New York Times. Capt. Donald MacMillan began his Arctic expeditions in 1908 with Robert Peary. He was going to Greenland to test the “Menace of a new ice age,” as the Times reported on June 10, 1923. The menace was coming from “indications in Arctic that have caused some apprehension.” Two weeks later the Times reported that MacMillan would get data to help determine “whether there is any foundation for the theory which has been advanced in some quarters that another ice age is impending.” On July 4, 1923, the paper announced that the “Explorer Hopes to Determine Whether new ‘Ice Age’ is Coming.” The Atlanta Constitution also had commented on the impending ice age on July 21, 1923. MacMillan found the “biggest glacier” and reported on the great increase of glaciers in the Arctic as compared to earlier measures. Even allowing for “the provisional nature of the earlier surveys,” glacial activity had greatly augmented, “according to the men of science.” Not only was “the world of science” following MacMillan, so too were the “radio fans.” The Christian Science Monitor reported on the potential ice age as well, on July 3, 1923. “Captain MacMillan left Wicasset, Me., two weeks ago for Sydney, the jumping-off point for the north seas, announcing that one of the purposes of his cruise was to determine whether there is beginning another ‘ice age,’ as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate.” Then on Sept. 18, 1924, The New York Times declared the threat was real, saying “MacMillan Reports Signs of New Ice Age.”
Concerns about global cooling continued. Swedish scientist Rutger Sernander also forecasted a new ice age. He headed a Swedish committee of scientists studying “climatic development” in the Scandinavian country. According to the LA Times on April 6, 1924, he claimed there was “scientific ground for believing” that the conditions “when all winds will bring snow, the sun cannot prevail against the clouds, and three winters will come in one, with no summer between,” had already begun. That ice age talk cooled in the early 1930s. But The Atlantic in 1932 puffed the last blast of Arctic air in the article “This Cold, Cold World.” Author W. J. Humphries compared the state of the earth to the state of the world before other ice ages. He wrote “If these things be true, it is evident, therefore that we must be just teetering on an ice age.” Concluding the article he noted the uncertainty of such things, but closed with “we do know that the climatic gait of this our world is insecure and unsteady, teetering, indeed, on an ice age, however near or distant the inevitable fall.”

Cooling and Warming Both Threats to Food
Just like today, the news media were certain about the threat that an ice age posed. In the 1970s, as the world cooled down, the fear was that mankind couldn’t grow enough food with a longer winter. “Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output,” declared a New York Times headline on Aug. 8, 1974, right in the heat of summer. “Bad weather this summer and the threat of more of it to come hang ominously over every estimate of the world food situation,” the article began. It continued saying the dire consequences of the cooling climate created a deadly risk of suffering and mass starvation. Various climatologists issued a statement that “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” reported the Dec. 29, 1974, New York Times. If policy makers did not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” would result. Time magazine delivered its own gloomy outlook on the “World Food Crisis” on June 24 of that same year and followed with the article “Weather Change: Poorer Harvests” on November 11. According to the November story, the mean global surface temperature had fallen just 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1940s. Yet this small drop “trimmed a week to ten days from the growing season” in the earth’s breadbasket regions. The prior advances of the Green Revolution that bolstered world agriculture would be vulnerable to the lower temperatures and lead to “agricultural disasters.” Newsweek was equally downbeat in its article “The Cooling World.” “There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically,” which would lead to drastically decreased food production, it said. “The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now,” the magazine told readers on April 28 the following year. This, Newsweek said, was based on the “central fact” that “the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.” Despite some disagreement on the cause and extent of cooling, meteorologists were “almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” Despite Newsweek’s claim, agricultural productivity didn’t drop for the rest of the century. It actually increased at an “annual rate of 1.76% over the period 1948 to 2002,” according to the Department of Agriculture. That didn’t deter the magazine from warning about declining agriculture once again 30 years later – this time because the earth was getting warmer. “Livestock are dying. Crops are withering,” it said in the Aug. 8, 2005, edition. It added that “extremely dry weather of recent months has spawned swarms of locusts” and they were destroying crops in France. Was global warming to blame? “Evidence is mounting to support just such fears,” determined the piece. U.S. News & World Report was agriculturally pessimistic as well. “Global climate change may alter temperature and rainfall patterns, many scientists fear, with uncertain consequences for agriculture.” That was just 13 years ago, in 1993. That wasn’t the first time warming was blamed for influencing agriculture. In 1953 William J. Baxter wrote the book “Today’s Revolution in Weather!” on the warming climate. His studies showed “that the heat zone is moving northward and the winters are getting milder with less snowfall.” Baxter titled a chapter in his book “Make Room For Trees, Grains, Vegetables and Bugs on the North Express!” The warming world led him to estimate that within 10 years Canada would produce more wheat than the United States, though he said America’s corn dominance would remain. It was more than just crops that were in trouble. Baxter also noted that fishermen in Maine could catch tropical and semi-tropical fish, which were just beginning to appear. The green crab, which also migrated north, was “slowly killing” the profitable industry of steamer clams.

Ice, Ice Baby
Another subject was prominent whether journalists were warning about global warming or an ice age: glaciers. For 110 years, scientists eyed the mammoth mountains of ice to determine the nature of the temperature shift. Reporters treated the glaciers like they were the ultimate predictors of climate. In 1895, geologists thought the world was freezing up again due to the “great masses of ice” that were frequently seen farther south than before. The New York Times reported that icebergs were so bad, and they decreased the temperature of Iceland so much, that inhabitants fearing a famine were “emigrating to North America.” In 1902, when Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to ride in a car, the Los Angeles Times delivered a story that should be familiar to modern readers. The paper’s story on “Disappearing Glaciers” in the Alps said the glaciers were not “running away,” but rather “deteriorating slowly, with a persistency that means their final annihilation.”
The melting led to alpine hotel owners having trouble keeping patrons. It was established that it was a “scientific fact” that the glaciers were “surely disappearing.” That didn’t happen. Instead they grew once more. More than 100 years after their “final annihilation” was declared, the LA Times was once again writing the same story. An Associated Press story in the Aug. 21, 2005, paper showed how glacier stories never really change. According to the article: “A sign on a sheer cliff wall nearby points to a mountain hut. It should have been at eye level but is more than 60 feet above visitors’ heads. That’s how much the glacier has shrunk since the sign went up 35 years ago.” But glacier stories didn’t always show them melting away like ice cubes in a warm drink. The Boston Daily Globe in 1923 reported one purpose of MacMillan’s Arctic expedition was to determine the beginning of the next ice age, “as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would indicate.” When that era of ice-age reports melted away, retreating glaciers were again highlighted. In 1953’s “Today’s Revolution in Weather!” William Baxter wrote that “the recession of glaciers over the whole earth affords the best proof that climate is warming,” despite the fact that the world had been in its cooling phase for more than a decade when he wrote it. He gave examples of glaciers melting in Lapland, the Alps, Mr. Rainer and Antarctica. Time magazine in 1951 noted permafrost in Russia was receding northward up to 100 yards per year. In 1952, The New York Times kept with the warming trend. It reported the global warming studies of climatologist Dr. Hans W. Ahlmann, whose “trump card” “has been the melting glaciers.” The next year the Times said “nearly all the great ice sheets are in retreat.” U.S. News and World Report agreed, noted that “winters are getting milder, summers drier. Glaciers are receding, deserts growing” on Jan. 8, 1954. In the ’70s, glaciers did an about face. Ponte in “The Cooling” warned that “The rapid advance of some glaciers has threatened human settlements in Alaska, Iceland, Canada, China, and the Soviet Union.” Time contradicted its 1951 report and stated that the cooling trend was here to stay. The June 24, 1974, article was based on those omnipresent “telltale signs” such as the “unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland.” Even The Christian Science Monitor in the same year noted “glaciers which had been retreating until 1940 have begun to advance.” The article continued, “the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.”
The New York Times noted that in 1972 the “mantle of polar ice increased by 12 percent” and had not returned to “normal” size. North Atlantic sea temperatures declined, and shipping routes were “cluttered with abnormal amounts of ice.” Furthermore, the permafrost in Russia and Canada was advancing southward, according to the December 29 article that closed out 1974. Decades later, the Times seemed confused by melting ice. On Dec. 8, 2002, the paper ran an article titled “Arctic Ice Is Melting at Record Level, Scientists Say.” The first sentence read “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades.” Was the ice melting at record levels, as the headline stated, or at a level seen decades ago, as the first line mentioned? On Sept. 14, 2005, the Times reported the recession of glaciers “seen from Peru to Tibet to Greenland” could accelerate and become abrupt. This, in turn, could increase the rise of the sea level and block the Gulf Stream. Hence “a modern counterpart of the 18,000-year-old global-warming event could trigger a new ice age.”

Government Comes to the Rescue
Mankind managed to survive three phases of fear about global warming and cooling without massive bureaucracy and government intervention, but aggressive lobbying by environmental groups finally changed that reality. The Kyoto treaty, new emissions standards and foreign regulations are but a few examples. Getting the government involved to control the weather isn’t a new concept. When the earth was cooling, The New York Times reported on a panel that recommended a multimillion-dollar research program to combat the threat. That program was to start with $18 million a year in funding and increase to about $67 million by 1980, according to the Jan. 19, 1975, Times. That would be more than $200 million in today’s dollars. Weather warnings in the ’70s from “reputable researchers” worried policy-makers so much that scientists at a National Academy of Sciences meeting “proposed the evacuation of some six million people” from parts of Africa, reported the Times on Dec. 29, 1974. That article went on to tell of the costly and unnecessary plans of the old Soviet Union. It diverted time from Cold War activities to scheme about diverting the coming cold front. It had plans to reroute “large Siberian rivers, melting Arctic ice and damming the Bering Strait” to help warm the “frigid fringes of the Soviet Union.” Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” noted climatologists’ admission that “solutions” to global cooling “such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,” could result in more problems than they would solve. More recently, 27 European climatologists have become worried that the warming trend “may be irreversible, at least over most of the coming century,” according to Time magazine on Nov. 13, 2000. The obvious solution? Bigger government. They “should start planning immediately to adapt to the new extremes of weather that their citizens will face – with bans on building in potential flood plains in the north, for example, and water conservation measures in the south.” Almost 50 policy and research recommendations came with the report. The news media have given space to numerous alleged solutions to our climate problems. Stephen Salter of the University of Edinburgh had some unusual ideas to repel an effect of global warming. In 2002 he had the notion of creating a rainmaker, “which looks like a giant egg whisk,” according to the Evening News of Edinburgh on Dec. 2, 2002.
The Atlantic edition of Newsweek on June 30, 2003, reported on the whisk. The British government gave him 105,000 pounds to research it. Besides promoting greater prosperity and peace, it could “lift enough seawater to lower sea levels by a meter, stemming the rise of the oceans – one of the most troublesome consequences of global warming.” The rain created would be redirected toward land using the wind’s direction. Instead of just fixing a symptom of global warming, Salter now wants to head it off. He wants to spray water droplets into low altitude clouds to increase their whiteness and block out more sunlight. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has considered other ways to lower temperatures and the media were there to give them credence. Newsweek on May 20, 1991, reported on five ways to fight warming from the National Research Council, the operating arm of the NAS. The first idea was to release “billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons” to reflect sunlight. To reflect more sunlight, “fire one-ton shells filled with dust into the upper atmosphere.” Airplane engines could pollute more in order to release a “layer of soot” to block the sun. Should any sunlight remain, 50,000 orbiting mirrors, 39 square miles each, could block it out. With any heat left, “infrared lasers on mountains” could be used “to zap rising CFCs,” rendering them harmless.
Global Warming: 1981-Present and Beyond
The media have bombarded Americans almost daily with the most recent version of the climate apocalypse. Global warming has replaced the media’s ice age claims, but the results somehow have stayed the same – the deaths of millions or even billions of people, widespread devastation and starvation. The recent slight increase in temperature could “quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life on the planet” argued the Jan. 18, 2006, Washington Post. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times wrote a column that lamented the lack of federal spending on global warming. “We spend about $500 billion a year on a military budget, yet we don’t want to spend peanuts to protect against climate change,” he said in a Sept. 27, 2005, piece. Kristof’s words were noteworthy, not for his argument about spending, but for his obvious use of the term “climate change.” While his column was filled with references to “global warming,” it also reflected the latest trend as the coverage has morphed once again. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but can mean something entirely different. The latest threat has little to do with global warming and has everything to do with … everything. The latest predictions claim that warming might well trigger another ice age. The warm currents of the Gulf Stream, according to a 2005 study by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, U.K., have decreased 30 percent. This has raised “fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age,” as the Gulf Stream regulates temperatures in Europe and the eastern United States. This has “long been predicted” as a potential ramification of global warming. Hollywood picked up on this notion before the study and produced “The Day After Tomorrow.” In the movie global warming triggered an immediate ice age. People had to dodge oncoming ice. Americans were fleeing to Mexico. Wolves were on the prowl. Meanwhile our hero, a government paleoclimatologist, had to go to New York City to save his son from the catastrophe. But it’s not just a potential ice age. Every major weather event becomes somehow linked to “climate change.” Numerous news reports connected Hurricane Katrina with changing global temperatures. Droughts, floods and more have received similar media treatment. Even The New York Times doesn’t go that far – yet. In an April 23, 2006, piece, reporter Andrew C. Revkin gave no credence to that coverage. “At the same time, few scientists agree with the idea that the recent spate of potent hurricanes, European heat waves, African drought and other weather extremes are, in essence, our fault. There is more than enough natural variability in nature to mask a direct connection, they say.” Unfortunately, that brief brush with caution hasn’t touched the rest of the media. Time magazine’s recent cover story included this terrifying headline: “Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More; Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon —and what we can do about it” That attitude reflects far more of the current media climate. As the magazine claimed, many of today’s weather problems can be blamed on the changing climate. “Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast — when the emergency becomes commonplace —something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming,” Time said.

Methodology
The Business & Media Institute (BMI) examined how the major media have covered the issue of climate change over a long period of time. Because television only gained importance in the post-World War II period, BMI looked at major print outlets. There were limitations with that approach because some major publications lack the lengthy history that others enjoy. However, the search covered more than 30 publications from the 1850s to 2006 — including newspapers, magazines, journals and books.
Recent newspaper and magazine articles were obtained from Lexis-Nexis. All other magazine articles were acquired from the Library of Congress either in print or microfilm. Older newspapers were obtained from ProQuest. The extensive bibliography includes every publication cited in this report. BMI looked through thousands of headlines and chose hundreds of stories to analyze. Dates on the time periods for cooling and warming reporting phases are approximate, and are derived from the stories that BMI analyzed.

Conclusion
What can one conclude from 110 years of conflicting climate coverage except that the weather changes and the media are just as capricious? Certainly, their record speaks for itself. Four separate and distinct climate theories targeted at a public taught to believe the news. Only all four versions of the truth can’t possibly be accurate. For ordinary Americans to judge the media’s version of current events about global warming, it is necessary to admit that journalists have misrepresented the story three other times. Yet no one in the media is owning up to that fact. Newspapers that pride themselves on correction policies for the smallest errors now find themselves facing a historical record that is enormous and unforgiving. It is time for the news media to admit a consistent failure to report this issue fairly or accurately, with due skepticism of scientific claims.

Recommendations
It would be difficult for the media to do a worse job with climate change coverage. Perhaps the most important suggestion would be to remember the basic rules about journalism and set aside biases — a simple suggestion, but far from easy given the overwhelming extent of the problem. Three of the guidelines from the Society of Professional Journalists are especially appropriate:

“Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”
“Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.”
“Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.”

That last bullet point could apply to almost any major news outlet in the United States. They could all learn something and take into account the historical context of media coverage of climate change. Some other important points include:
Don’t Stifle Debate: Most scientists do agree that the earth has warmed a little more than a degree in the last 100 years. That doesn’t mean that scientists concur mankind is to blame. Even if that were the case, the impact of warming is unclear.
People in northern climes might enjoy improved weather and longer growing seasons.
Don’t Ignore the Cost: Global warming solutions pushed by environmental groups are notoriously expensive. Just signing on to the Kyoto treaty would have cost the United States several hundred billion dollars each year, according to estimates from the U.S. government generated during President Bill Clinton’s term.
Every story that talks about new regulations or forced cutbacks on emissions should discuss the cost of those proposals.
Report Accurately on Statistics: Accurate temperature records have been kept only since the end of the 19th Century, shortly after the world left the Little Ice Age. So while recorded temperatures are increasing, they are not the warmest ever. A 2003 study by Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “20th Century Climate Not So Hot,” “determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1,000 years.
Bibliography
For sources click here

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Whiners Blame Greed, Shun Personal Responsibility

Guest Editorial by Rocky Mtn Red Stater:
22 years old, but very wise for his years...

In response to opposition to this article which went around the internet recently...

I agree that the dissenters of this country are mostly angry about greed.
However greed is a two way street. Without it, society has no drive to excel and succeed. Would America even exist without the greed of the West India Trading company or the greed of the"manifest destiny" policy of our early nation?
But in the other direction, greed causes over inflation and the undermining of basic human morals for the individual gain. However capitalistic greed is an easy scapegoat for today's problems.
It is arguable which begets which, but I feel that greed is a symptom of a deeper problem...No one in this country enacts personal responsibility anymore. How much do frivolous lawsuits drive up the urge for corporations to horde profits? How much money in welfare checks does this country piss away to drug addicts because its an easy route to pleasing the poor and uneducated? How many pisspoor presidential nominees have there been because we are more concerned with image rather than message?
I would debate that corporations and government are no greedier than they have ever been, and as such we've grown to the most powerful nation in world history. This is why the Marxist hate capitalism so much, they want a utopia free from greed. This is also why communism doesn't work, no doctor wants to be paid about as much as a garbage man. Essentially, capitalism is maintained by greed, and you cannot chip away at the gears of capitalism without bringing down the structure of our nation with it. A greedy government is a given, but the beauty of capitalism is we spread the greed out amongst many, rather than one ultra greedy dictator.
Imagine the gas non-crisis if Americans quit crying about gas prices and actually realized that it isn't that expensive, its actually about right given inflation, and we've even recently raised minimum wage to account for that. How many people do you hear whining about paying $150 for a gallon of aquafina distilled TAP WATER? Or even much much more than that for starbucks coffee? But no, gas is too expensive, we need an alternative NOW...so lets stop using our limited agricultural land for food and start growing less efficient fuel. Or better yet, go buy a hybrid and plug it into a coal factory at night. Fact is there is nothing more efficient than petroleum fuels and nuclear fuels and both of those haven't been allowed to grow in this country for the last 30 years, and we now wonder why gas is inflating so much when we purposely made ourselves dependant on imported oil?
Outsourcing is another lack of responsibility based greedy action. Corporations are pressured by dissenters, unions, lawsuits and lawyers to conduct their business all while having to never offend or oppress anyone and be green while doing it. So of course the companies reaction is to outsource for ease of business. But what if both sides took responsibility and compromised towards the greater good?
I've begun to ramble so I will make my final point. I will agree with you that greed doesn't always, or even usually, work towards the benefit of this nation, and those in power seem to be greedier than in the past. Where I differ however is I do not put the blame of this fact on the government and the corporations. They're supposed to be greedy.
So I will say I am in the group who isn't so much upset with the direction of this country, but more I am disgusted at the direction of my fellow countrymen.
Take responsibility for your own actions America, and the rest of the free world for that matter! That in my opinion is the first pin in the domino effect.
-Rocky Mtn Red JR

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Kneejerk of the Decade- NHRA

In the "kneejerk reaction of the decade", the National Hot Rod Assn. shortened the length of the quarter mile following the tragic death of Funnycar driver Scott Kalitta a few weeks ago.

Less than half dozen professional drag racers have been killed while racing over the past decade yet over 30 football players have died on the field in the same time period. NHRA's decision to shorten the tracks that have plenty of shutdown area is akin to the NFL declaring that all games are going to be 3 quarters instead of 4 to reduce injuries and deaths in that sport.

This would of course be idiotic, just as is the move by the National Warm Rod Assn. is idiotic.

If they race long enough at 1,000 feet (instead of 1,320) then someone will eventually be killed at that distance... so they will shorten the track to 1/8th mile (660feet) and when someone dies at that distance... reduce the track to 330 feet... and when someone gets hurt or dies at that distance reduce the races to 60'.... and when a car blows up on the starting line and injures several crewmembers, then we go to ... BENCH RACING.

BRING BACK Quarter Mile Drag Racing and in the meantime BOYCOTT the "Shut-Em Off Early Nationals" when they come to your town.

That ain't racin'....
-red

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