The three questions Obama can't answer.

After just a bit of research to follow-up on a story Rush Limbaugh read from The Jewish Week today about Obama's involvement in the Woods Fund, which gave grants to terrorist groups like the P.L.O., I came across something even more interesting: Three men (and one woman) whom may well bring down Obama.

1) Tony Rezko.
Hillary has already brought forth the name, but the public hasn't yet paid much attention. That will likely change if Rezko is convicted at his upcoming bribery and corruption trial. Most recently, Rezko was busted for lying to a judge and was arrested for trying to hide his money overseas.

Tony Rezko is a long-time friend of Barack Obama, played a significant role in raising funds for Obama's political campaigns, and got the Obamas a sweetheart deal on their home. And, once Rezko is convicted, the public is going to want to know just how much of his dirty cash Obama got.

2) William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
William Ayers, described by some as a 'distinguished professor of education', is an unrepentant terrorist and, though some may argue that's six of one and a half-dozen of the other, he's acknowledged planting bombs in U.S. Federal buildings and plotting to bomb the Pentagon and the United States Capitol building as a member of the Weatherman organization, a group that advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.

Ayers has said things like:

"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at."

And, the Ill-Timed Quote of the Day from September 11, 2001:

"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

The problem is, he's also got a long-standing relationship with Barack Obama. He hosted a fundraiser for Obama. He actively worked to secure Obama's first electoral victory in Illinois. And, as recently as 2002, they worked together on the board of the Woods Fund -- and, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, gave money to a group with ties to the P.L.O.

Dorhn (a Law Professor at Northwestern University and a member of the ACLU) was, of course, linked to Ayers through her involvement in the Weatherman organization. She eventually married Ayers and, with Ayers, is raising the son of convicted murderer and fellow Weatherman, Kathy Boudin.

She has appeared alongside both Ayers and Obama at a number of gatherings and academincal events as recently as 2002, including the "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?" Conference a the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Dorhn is probably best known for her unabashed praise of serial killer Charles Manson:

"Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach. Wild."

And, she is largely responsible for the Weather Underground's radicalization, calling for them to carry out covert terrorist activities rather than peaceful acts of protest.

3) Rashid Khalidi
This is the guy who I was most interested in when I heard Rush's story. Rashid Khalidi is a Middle East Professor at Columbia University, an activist for the P.L.O., and was the guy who helped broker Iran's President Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia last summer (and, oddly, again one man's 'professor' is another man's 'terrorist').

According to The Jewish Week:

Khalidi, now the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and head of that school’s Middle East Institute, declined to comment on Abunimah’s recollections. But in an interview in Tuesday’s Daily News, he said he hosted the fundraiser because he and Obama were friends while the two lived in Chicago. “He never came to us and said he would do anything in terms of Palestinians,” Khalidi told the paper.

Nevertheless, one Hyde Park source close to Obama, speaking only on condition of anonymity, recalled, “He often expressed general sympathy for the Palestinians — though I don’t recall him ever saying anything publicly.”

Now, which Presidential candidate is it that's calling for talks with Iran? And, clearly, there's no tie between Obama's friendship with Khalidi and Khalidi's sympathy toward Ahmadinejad and other terrorists, right?

According to WorldNetDaily:

Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

And, that certainly doesn't add more questions about Obama's support from the terrorist Ahmed cousins, does it?

Now that Obama has, more or less, sewn up the Democratic Presidential nomination, it's time to stop falling for his hype and start asking honest questions about his ties to a felonious slumlord, two unrepentant Marxist terrorist who hate the United States and its military, and a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies who associates with the P.L.O. ...

"Before Goldwater or Reagan, there was Buckley."

This morning, while working in his study, William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away.

Described, just now, on the top of the hour news as 'Conservative before being Conservative was cool', and widely regarded as a man skilled in the talent of friendship, Buckley is a man that many of us on the Conservative side of the aisle would do well to emulate.

If you're unfamiliar with him, you can get to know him more by his eulogies (as compiled in the Wall Street Journal), or the 'He Stood Athwart History' column by James Taranto on WSJ's Best of the Web Today page. And, if you'd like to read his speeches, you can try to find his book "Let Us Talk of Many Things", recommended today by Rush Limbaugh and, unfortunately, currently unavailable on either Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble's site ...

Obama's 'Patriot Act'

Last August, Senator Barack Obama (D - Ill.) co-sponsored a bill that would, in effect, destroy American businesses by making every one of the Labor Unions' dreams a mandated reality.

The legislation, called the 'Patriot Employer Act', defines patriotic businesses as those that:

• "Pay at least 60 percent of each employee's health care premiums,"
• Have a position of "neutrality in employee [union] organizing drives,"
• "Maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in the United States relative to the number of full-time workers outside of the United States,"
• Pay a salary to each employee "not less than an amount equal to the federal poverty level," and
• Provide a pension plan.

Unfortunately, this is another example of how Liberals fail to understand the basic economic principle that businesses are in business to make money, not provide jobs and benefits.

They fail to realize the fact that the same Unions and collective bargaining units that they're catering to are exactly what has caused many businesses to move their business overseas in the first place. Businesses have to be able to hire people that they can employ while still being able to make money, or there's no point being in business in the first place and coercing employers into paying above-market wages and benefits is only going to lead to fewer people being hired in the first place.

And, what benefit do 'Patriot Employers' gain? A 1% tax credit on their profits. However, in return, they'd have to agree to pay the U.S. Corporate tax rate on all of their profits earned abroad, rather than the Corporate tax of the host country. And, since the U.S. Corporate rate is nearly 10 percentage points above the average rate charged in the rest of the world, that means that Corporations would also be paying what amounts to a huge tax increase.

What Obama fails to recognize is that the offshore business activities of U.S. companies tends to increase domestic business, not decrease it. According to the Wall Street Journal:

A 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research study by economists from Harvard and the University of Michigan found that more foreign investment by U.S. companies leads to greater domestic investment, and that U.S. firms' hiring of more offshore workers is positively, not negatively, associated with the number of American workers they hire. That's in part because often what is produced overseas by subsidiaries are component parts to final, higher-value-added products manufactured here.

In addition to that, if it weren't for the fact that the United States already imposes the second highest corporate income tax rate on the planet, many businesses wouldn't have incentive to move jobs overseas in the first place. And, a study by the American Enterprise Institute has shown that it's the employees, not the employers, that suffer under the United States' confiscatory tax rates, as employers are forced to pay lower wages and salaries in order to makes ends meet.

If Obama were truly interested in doing something 'patriotic' that would encourage American business growth, he could start by cutting the corporate tax rate so that business would have more money to hire American workers.

Late Night Global Warming Fear-Mongering

Dave Letterman had leftist NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman on tonight to talk about his new book, The World is Flat (which, oddly enough, was also the title of another book he wrote two years ago -- apparently, he's not big on creativity). Apparently, as Dave himself said, all of Dave's knowledge on the subject of global climate change came from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Now, while Dave Letterman has always been a moron, I think this exchange between Mr. Letterman and Mr. Friedman about sums up the idiocy among the global warming zealots:

Letterman: "I mean, everyone loves a 92-degree day in February but, honest to God, it's going to be 160 in July."

Friedman: "That's exactly right."

Uh-huh.

Now, don't get me wrong: I appreciate the use of hyperbole as much as anyone. But, even even by Al Gore's "I may've exaggerated to make a point" standards, Dave's statement is a more than just bit over the top. And, even though he said it, Friedman can't possibly mean that he thinks Dave is correct.

As I've mentioned previously, the worst case scenario on Global Warming is a .7°C increase over the next century. That means, for those of you not keeping track at home, that we could expect an average temperature increase of about 2°F by the year 2100.

In other words, the only way it's going to be 160°F in July is if your 'regular' temperature was hovering somewhere near 158°F. And, considering that the world record temperature (set in the Sahara desert in 1922) was 136°F ... ? Well, let's just say that I think that we're safe, Dave.

( And, maybe it's just me, but you might also note, in reviewing those world record temperatures, just how many of them occured in the 'warmest years on record' as, you know, unless I'm reading it wrong, they all seem to have occured prior to 1978 ... which is weird given how hot the globe is supposed to be getting and all. )

I Told You So: Preparing for the next Ice Age.

I was on this story several weeks ago, but it seems that the rest of the world is actually catching up with me. Today, Canada's National Post published an opinion piece that stated pretty much exactly the same things I've been saying for weeks.

Here are some facts presented in the article:

• Snow cover over North America, Siberia, Mongolia, and China -- also read as 'most of the Northern Hemisphere' -- is greater than it's been in 40 years.
• The U.S. National Climatic Data Center show that temperatures in January were cooler than the 1901-2000 average.
• China is suffering from the most brutal winter it's seen in a century.
• There was more snow in the first two weeks of February in Toronto (70 cm) than there'd been in the entire previous record for the month, which was set back in 1950 (66.6 cm).
• The Arctic Sea ice is back and it's thicker -- by 10 to 20 cm -- than it was last year.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences advised folks to 'stock up on fur coats'.

Kenneth Tapping of Canada's National Reseach Council is convinced we're in for a long period of severe cold if sunspot activity doesn't pick up soon, pointing out that the last time the sun was this inactive, the earth went through a several century long 'Little Ice Age'.

And, on top of all of that, according to Marc Morano of the U.S. Senate's Committe on Environment and Public Works, we're looking at global "temperatures just sort of 'plateau-ing out' to the point where the head of the U.N. IPCC [Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change] has recently called for an investigation as to why temperatures were not continuing to rise as predicted."

And, these aren't the only places that are echoing me, either. Selwyn Duke, over at the John Birch Society, is saying it, too. The Federalist Journal is also saying it.

( Oh, and there's this quiet little story that's being ignored by the mainstream media that the National Oceanographic and Atmopheric Administration that debunked one of the main premises of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. )

And, to top it all off, four different sources -- UK's Hadley Climate Research Unit, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and the Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA -- state that we've gotten 'globally cooler' in the past 12 months (by an average of -.64°C).

The London Telegraph even caught on, saying:

More thought-provoking, however, has been the scientific data showing just how abnormal this winter's cooling has been. According to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, we experienced the sharpest January-to-January global temperature drop - three quarters of a degree Celsius - since records began in 1880.

Temperatures were lower than their 20th century average for the first time since 1982. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at its greatest extent since 1966. At the other end of the world, Antarctic ice-cover was at its most extensive since satellite records began in 1979, 30 per cent above the January average ...

It may be too early to draw conclusions as to what this says about changing climate patterns, but the fact remains that such drastic cooling hardly accords with classic global warming theory, that rising CO2 must mean rising temperatures. Certainly nothing on this scale was predicted by those scientific bodies on which the world's politicians have been relying for their belief that global warming was the most serious challenge facing the planet.

At New Year, one such body, the University of East Anglia's Hadley Centre, predicted that, although 2008 would be cooler than some recent years, it would still be one of the 10 hottest years in history, and that any cooling would only "mask the underlying warming trend".

Seven weeks later it is clear that the cooling has gone much further than that, according better with the predictions of that growing body of scientists who argue that climate change is caused less by CO2 emissions than by magnetic activity on the Sun. They point to the abnormally low present sunspot level, of a type associated with severe cooling in the past, such as in the Little Ice Age between the 17th and early 19th centuries.

Meanwhile, rather than actually engaging in a debate about facts -- because at least, by their dogma, the debate is 'settled' and there's no need for further or continued review -- folks like The Nation's David Roberts resort to name-calling ...