Huckabee 'ally' attacks Rush Limbaugh.

It looks like the Huckster's campaign is bored with the supposed Mormon bashing and have now decided to attack someone else who isn't a big fan of Huck: Rush Limbaugh.

"Honestly, because Rush doesn’t think for himself. That’s not necessarily a slap because he’s not paid to be a thinker—he’s an entertainer. I can’t remember the last time that he has veered from the talking points from the DC/Manhattan chattering class. If they were praising Huckabee, he would be too."

"Also, I have to think that he’s dying to have Hillary in the White House. Bill Clinton made Rush a megastar. Having another Clinton back in power would make him the Leading Voice of the Opposition once again."

As someone who has listened to, but not always agreed with, Rush for many, many years, I can tell you that Rush is not a parrot for the 'DC/Manhattan chattering class'. He's a conservative, and he stands up for conservative issues even when the GOP-establishment would prefer he back them -- things like the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform and the recent Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants bills spring immediately to mind. Rush also differed from the 'DC/Manhattan chattering class' on things like the Dubai Ports deal, and Harriet Miers' nomination.

And Rush, for the record, has never made comments about Huckabee and hasn't endorsed any candidate.

Rush has, however, repeatedly spoken about the fact that the Huckster's record as governor doesn't match the statements he's making on the campaign trail and that concerns Rush -- as it should concern anyone considering voting for Huckabee based upon what he's saying rather than what he's done.

Rush's problem with Huck is that Huck simply isn't a Conservative on anything but gun control and abortion.

Rush is a Goldwater / Reagan conservative. He's for limiting government, not expanding it. He's seen Huck's record and read Huck's statements: Huck wants to expand the role of the federal government in preventative health care, smoking, and education. Huck expanded state benefits for illegal immigrants under the guise of 'compassion'. Huck increased taxes in Arkansas to the tune of $505 million dollars.

Further, Huck's 'ally' attacking Rush is ill-advised and I would hesitate to vote for anyone who would 'ally' himself with anyone that dumb. There's an old saying about not picking a fight with someone who buys paper by the ton and ink by the barrel. The modern analogy would be to not attack the guy who talks directly to 22 million of the people you're wanting to get votes from every day ...

Update: Rush lights Huckabee up.

• The first comment, moments into the show: "You want to whine like Mike Huckabee's whining... I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it happened."
• Rush then went after [Huckabee National Campaign Chairman Ed] Rollins, for claiming Rush doesn't like Huckabee simply because he didn't foresee Huck's rise and then played audio of him talking about "what if Mike Huckabee wins Iowa" from November 8...
• "I saw it coming... and I now may be seeing it going."
• "These people are coming after me personally, something I have not done. They're coming after me personally the way the libs do."
• Rush, discussing how he differs from the NY-DC media axis, lists off Harriet Miers, Dubai Ports World, Republican spending abuses, illegal immigration...
• On the argument that he secretly wants Hillary to win, to make him a bigger star: "I became a megastar long before the Clintons got into the White House."
• "I really am uncomfortable with this, I was hoping it wasn't going to come to this."
• "I've never called him a Huckster, I've called his fans Hucksters."
• Rush points out Rollins ran the Christie Todd Whitman campaign, calling him the "DC-Manhattan Axis campaign manager."
• "I'm part of the Cape Girardeau-Middle America Axis."
• "Stop with this Clintonian spin."
• "McCain's starting to look better to me than this guy, and that's saying something."
• "The Huckabee campaign is trying to dumb down conservatism in order to get it to conform with his record."
• Limbaugh then compared Huckabee to H. Ross Perot.
• "Who is this campaign to decide who is and who is not conservative? I hadn't heard of Huckabee in any serious manner before this campaign began. Believe me, I know who the conservatives are and aren't."
• "It's elites who want to talk to Iran, not Middle America. It's the elites who are soft on crime, not Middle America."
• "I've not attacked him. I've studiously avoided it. But I've raised questions. I'm going to keep asking the questions if I feel they're warranted."
• "The very fact that I have looked at his record has stirred great anguish in his campaign."
• "If he wants to tag me, or some of his supporters, want to tag me as being part of a New York-D.C. axis... the New York-D.C. axis is the drive-bys!"
• "He's been endorsed by the New Hampshire NEA. They endorsed Huckabee on the Republican side, and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side. The NEA is not interested in conservatives getting any power anywhere. Huckabee's record is a better record for the Wall Street D.C. Axis than anything."
• "How is questioning that record an attack on Christians or evangelicals? That's a deplorable tactic."
• "That's what the libs do. They do that because they don't want to discuss the issues. I'm getting the sense that Mike Huckabee doesn't want to debate the issues. He uses this as a firewall to prevent the issues from coming up."
• A caller asks if Huckabee is any less conservative than Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Rush: "In Rudy and Romney's case you can cite two things - gay marriage and abortion. In Huckabee's case, you can cite four or five things. There's more than two deviations in the Huckabee governing record."

Former Reagan speech-writer and now Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has also weighed in:

[Mike Huckabee] plays the victim well. Others want to "trip him up," but he'll "get my message out there." His foes are "Wall Street-Washington" insiders, elitists. On the "Today" show he said his critics are the type who never liked evangelical Christians. When one of them runs, these establishment types say " 'Oh my gosh, now they're serious, they don't want to just show up and vote, they actually would want to be part of the discussion and really talk about issues that include hunger and poverty and things.'"

This is a form of populist manipulation. Evangelical Christians have been strong in the Republican Party since the 1970s. President Bush and Karl Rove helped them become more important. The suggestion that they are a small and abused group within the GOP is strange. It is as if the Reagan Democrats, largely Catholic and suburban, who buoyed the Republican Party from the late '70s through 2004, and who were very much part of the GOP coalition, decided to announce that Catholics have been abused within the party, and it's time for Christmas commercials with floating Miraculous Medals.

Steven Stark says: "The good news for Mike Huckabee is that he's doing one hell of a job of reuniting significant portions of the old Reagan coalition. The bad news is that it's increasingly arrayed against him."

Archbishop of Canterbury calls Nativity 'a legend'.

That's the headline spreading fast and far around the world. Unforutnately, as with most things in the media these days, it's an exaggeration and a fabrication. According to the London Telegraph (self-described as Britain's #1 quality newspaper website):

Dr Rowan Williams has claimed there was little evidence that the Magi even existed and there was certainly nothing to prove there were three of them or that they were kings.

Dr Williams argued that the traditional Christmas story was nothing but a 'legend.' He said the only reference to the wise men from the East was in Matthew's gospel and the details were very vague.

Dr Williams said: "Matthew's gospel says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that's all we're really told. It works quite well as legend."

The Archbishop went on to dispel other details of the Christmas story, adding that there were probably no asses or oxen in the stable.

He argued that Christmas cards which showed the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus, flanked by shepherds and wise men, were misleading. As for the scenes that depicted snow falling in Bethlehem, the Archbishop said the chance of this was "very unlikely".

In a final blow to the traditional nativity story, Dr Williams concluded that Jesus was probably not born in December at all. He said: "Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival."

You can read the full transcript of the interview the Archbishop of Canterbury gave to BBC Radio for yourself to see just exactly what the Archbishop said. But, the only portion of the nativity story that he said 'works well as a legend' was the three kings showing up, and few of the other comments he made were nearly as 'damning' as the Telegraph would like to make it seem.

And, for the record, I'll agree with the Archbishop.

The gospels give scant information about these 'kings'. They're not described at all in Luke, the book most commonly read as the Christmas story. In Matthew 2:1, they're said to have shown up at King Herod's palace at some point after Jesus' birth, following what they described as a star.

They're not described there as kings. Given their penchant for stargazing, I'd say that it's likely that they weren't 'kings', as the 'legend' holds, but astronomers and astrologers.

We're never told how many of them there are. We're only told what gifts they brought, that they found Jesus as a 'child' at a 'house,' and that they ignored Herod's orders to report back when they'd found Him.

Nothing in the story indicates that the 'traditional' image that you see of the three kings kneeling at Jesus' manger opposite the shepherds is anything more than just that -- tradition. Or, as the Archbishop is now being roundly criticized for stating, a 'legend'.

And, whether or not there were three of these wise men, whether they were kings, and whether they were present immediately after the birth or a few days, weeks, or even years later shouldn't distract from the message of the story: That God became man, was born into the cold and dark of our world, so that He could die for our sins.

Unfortunately, in his effort to make sure that we weren't distracted from that story by the three men in crowns kneeling beside Jesus on our Christmas cards, the Archbishop has managed to become himself a distraction from that story and has made a statement that will become fodder for anti-Christians everywhere -- like, for example, the London Telegraph -- and as a leader of the Church of England, he should've been a bit wiser about his word choices.

Report from U.S. Senate debunks Climate Change 'Consensus'

Report: More than 400 prominent scientists in more than two dozen countries significantly objected to the 'consensus' on man-made global warming.

While Al Gore is in Bali, deriding America as standing in the way of he and his climate cronies' attempts to sign everyone up for new restrictions aimed at curbing man-made global warming, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has released a report that challenges whether or not there is consensus about global warming.

This new report details how teams of international scientists are dissenting from the UN IPCC’s view of climate science. In such nations as Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and France, nations, scientists banded together in 2007 to oppose climate alarmism. In addition, over 100 prominent international scientists sent an open letter in December 2007 to the UN stating attempts to control climate were “futile.”

Now, I'm sure you're wondering just what expertise these people might have, right? After all, the U.N. has recently released the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and the scientists that participated in that panel and Al Gore were recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on that, right?

Turns out, most of these scientists -- like Ross McKitrick in yesterday's Global Warming article -- were part of the IPCC panel.

The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including: climatology; oceanography; geology; biology; glaciology; biogeography; meteorology; oceanography; economics; chemistry; mathematics; environmental sciences; engineering; physics and paleoclimatology. Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the UN IPCC Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Gore.

Additionally, these scientists hail from prestigious institutions worldwide, including: Harvard University; NASA; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the UN IPCC; the Danish National Space Center; U.S. Department of Energy; Princeton University; the Environmental Protection Agency; University of Pennsylvania; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the International Arctic Research Centre; the Pasteur Institute in Paris; the Belgian Weather Institute; Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute; the University of Helsinki; the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., France, and Russia; the University of Pretoria; University of Notre Dame; Stockholm University; University of Melbourne; University of Columbia; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.

Seems that Al Gore's contention that the debate was settled that those who are skeptical are the same sort that still believe the earth is flat and think that the moon landing was a hoax is a bit off. It would also appear that U.N. I.P.C.C. chair Rajendra Pachauri's assertion that there were only 'about half a dozen' skeptical scientists left undershot the actual number by several orders of magnitude.

I find it ironic that Gore often uses the 'flat earth' comparison. In those days, the Catholic Church had a tendency to ridicule scientists that questioned their dogma that Earth wasn't flat, and wasn't the center of the solar system. Folks like Galileo -- a man now considered 'the father of modern physics' -- found themselves locked in towers. You simply weren't allowed to question the church's dogma.

Nowadays, anyone who dares question Gore's dogma receives similar treatment. Funny how things change.

The Huckabee Hustle

If you're a Huckabee supporter (which I'm not), you should read this article by Selwyn Duke on the American Thinker website.

I'm not against voting for someone whose beliefs and values most closely reflect your own. In fact, that's how I think people should vote. Unfortunately, I have serious doubts as to whether or not Huckabee actually is what he's trying to sell himself as, and Duke does a fantastic job of illustrating that.

Global Warming Hot Air, Part I.

ScienceDaily.com has recently released yet another story proclaiming the end of the world due to Global Warming. According to them, the top 11 Warmest Years on Record have all been in the last 13 years.

The University of East Anglia and the Met Office's Hadley Centre have released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years.

ScienceDaily.com cites the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) and the World Meteorological Organization.

Now, the problem with all of this is that the WMO's 'record' that puts 11 of the warmest years 'ever' in the past 13 years only takes 'averages' based on dating going back as far as 1961. The reason that this is important is that, when the 'averages' are expanded back to 1880, you find that the enormous 'increase' that 2007 saw over the 'averages' of 1961-1990 isn't really all that significant.

Why?

Because of the 30 years between 1961 and 1990, 18 years (60%) were below the average annual mean temperature of the entire period between 1880 and 2006, and 20 years (66.6%) were below the 5-year mean temperature.

So, the WMO and ScienceDaily.com are reporting that we're seeing a temperature increase over a period where temperatures were below normal.

The Huffington Post's Joseph Romm also jumps into the fray with a headline that claims NASA is stating that 2007 is the second warmest year, behind the 'record warmth' of 2005, in the Goddard Insititute for Space Studies analysis.

Romm's dataset, however, doesn't appear to factor in the fact that the same study that ScienceDaily.com cites only puts 2007 as the 7th warmest year since 1850, and he uses 'old data' that had to be revised when a blogger managed to catch a Y2K glitch in NASA and NOAA's climate data collection methods last August.

That's not necessarily Romm's fault, though, as NASA was rather silent about releasing the corrected figures that place 5 of the top 10 warmest years ever before World War II.

Beyond that, no one mentions that we're never given any of the real surface temperature numbers. In his report, Contaminated Data, Ross McKitrick points out a number of the flaws with trying to compare what is to what was.

The surface-measured data has many well-known problems. Over the post-war era, equipment has changed, station sites have been moved, and the time of day at which the data is collected has changed.

Many long-term weather records come from in or near cities, which have gotten warmer as they grow. Many poor countries have sparse weather-station records and few resources to ensure data quality. Fewer than one-third of the weather stations operating in the 1970s remain in operation.

To 'correct' this, scientists play with the numbers. To deal with the 'false warming' generated by growing cities and urban sprawl, they include an 'Urbanization Adjustment'. To deal with the changes based upon the time of day that the data is collected, they have a 'Time of Observation Bias Adjustment'. But, no one knows whether or not any of these adjustments adequately compensate for the changes.

But in a 2004 study with climatologist Patrick Michaels, we found that the adjustment models were not removing the contamination patterns as claimed. If the contamination were removed, we estimated the average measured warming rate over land would decline by about half. Dutch meteorologists using different data and a different testing methodology had come to the same conclusions.

McKitrick showed that there was a direct link between observed warming trends and regions experiencing economic growth to the point that they could demonstrate that "the probability they are unrelated is less than one in 14 trillion." They also showed that the contamination of the data could account for up to half of the surface warming measured since 1980.

If McKitrick's information is as solid as his claims, and the mean temperatures since 1980 that have been reported by NASA are adjusted by his suggested 50%, only 1998 would remain in the 'Top Ten Warmest Years on Record' at 10th place.