First, the positive outlook for the GOP on this bye-election eve:

Republicans Are Poised for Gains in Key Elections

Republicans appear positioned for strong results in three hard-fought elections Tuesday. But isolated, off-year contests aren't always reliable indicators of what will happen in the wider federal and state races held in even-numbered years.

Democrats and Republicans are jostling to glean messages from voters in a race for a U.S. House seat in far northern New York, as well as from contests for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. Republicans, increasingly optimistic, say the contests foreshadow trouble for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's ambitious agenda heading toward the 2010 congressional elections.

"We will be looking very closely at the results in these three races and reminding Democrats of the message they send about the agenda that they are forcing on American taxpayers," said Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which coordinates GOP House races.

It'll be very interesting to see how these votes turn out...especially NY-23, and New Jersey.

At the same time, there is this recent polling result, which should give the GOP party leaders some pause:

Partisan Trends
Democrats Inch Up in Partisan ID during October, GOP Slips

For the third straight month, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats inched up while the number of Republicans fell slightly.

Hmmm. On the eve of some potentially significant GOP gains, this other trend seems at first glance to be a bit contradictory. Obviously something else is at work here....

What NY-23 Says About The GOP And Its Voters

THIS is interesting...it provides an local exaple that helps explain both of the above reports.

The race in New York’s 23rd Congressional District highlights the concerns many Republican voters have about their party leaders. At a time when 73% of Republicans believe their party's representatives in Congress have lost touch with the GOP base, 11 county leaders in upstate New York picked a nominee for Congress who supported the Democratic president’s stimulus package, his health care reform plan and “card check” legislation designed to make union organizing easier.

All three items are overwhelmingly opposed by Republican voters - and even by Republicans in Congress. The decision by county GOP leaders to nominate such a candidate seemed almost designed to provoke the party’s core voters, and it did.

A Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, entered the fray and picked up endorsements from many leading national Republicans.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, urged voters to stick with the party’s official nominee. He said a decision by local party leaders was good enough for him, but most Republican voters don’t have such confidence in the party leadership.

In spite of his obvious talents and ability, IMHO Gingrich has shown himself to be a hack  thoroughly in the country-club wing of the GOP that is...uncomfortable...if not hostile, to the GOP's would-be grass-roots conservative base.

Once the inside initiates anoint their candidate, and the conservatives go out and support him/her, then they are supposed to fade back into the lawn until needed again for the next election cycle.

Been there. Done that. "Ain't gonna work on THAT farm no more!" increasingly seems to be the attitude of the potentially GOP conservative base, as it indicated even more strongly in this result:

73% of GOP Voters Say Congressional Republicans Have Lost Touch With Their Base

President Obama told an audience at a Democratic Party fundraiser Wednesday night that Republicans often “do what they’re told,” but GOP voters don’t think their legislators listen enough to them.

Just 15% of Republicans who plan to vote in 2012 state primaries say the party’s representatives in Congress have done a good job of representing Republican values.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 73% think Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters from throughout the nation. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided. These numbers are basically unchanged from a survey in late April.

Time will tell if the GOP leadership starts to get the picture or not. 

One of the big things that B.O. promised during his campaign was that a new style of engaging diplomacy would absolutely get us positive results. This of course was supposed to be contrasted with the alleged failures and lack of respect that resulted from Bush's harder line policies (which the Chief doesn't really consider to any too consistent in their own right).

So, here's how impressed Ahmadinejad "Ah'm-mad-on-a-jihad" is with this form of "Change" that HE believes in:

Ahmadinejad: Iran's Enemies a 'Mosquito'

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday compared the power of Iran's enemies to a "mosquito," saying Iran now deals with the West over its nuclear activities from a position of power. The comment from Ahmadinejad came as Iran is negotiating with the West over a U.N.-backed proposal to ship its uranium abroad for further enrichment....

"While enemies have used all their capacities ... the Iranian nation is standing powerfully and they are like a mosquito," a government Web site quoted Ahmadinejad early Sunday as saying.

Ahmadinejad also said Iran doesn't trust the West when it sits for talks. "Given the negative record of Western powers, the Iranian government ... looks at the talks with no trust. But realities dictate to them to interact with the Iranian nation," he said according to the site.

Did you get that last bit? "Realities DICTATE to them..." -in other words we are in a position where we are now FORCED to deal with Iran due to Iran's successful exercise of power!

So much for the results of B.O.'s and Hilary's "new" diplomacy.

Science bulletin: 'Sun heats Earth!'
Russian research forecasts global cooling

In a sharp rebuke to climate alarmists who believe human-generated carbon dioxide is responsible for causing catastrophic global warming, a Russian scientist has issued what amounts to a news flash announcing, "Sun Heats Earth!" Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, has published a paper in which he tracks sunspot activity going back to the 19th century to argue that total sun irradiance, or TSI, is the primary factor responsible for causing climate variations on Earth, not carbon dioxide.

If you think man-made CO2 is producing glowbull warming - don't exhale!

Moreover, Abdussamatov's analysis of sun activity data has led him to conclude that the Earth is entering a prolonged cooling phase because sunspot activity is currently in a phase regarded as a "minimum." "Observations of the sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is 'not guilty,'" Abdussamatov wrote, "and as for what lies ahead in the coming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged temperature drop." Abdussamatov's paper is featured on page 140 of a report issued this year by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, documenting more than 700 scientists who disagree over the proposition that global warming is a man-made, or anthropogenic phenomenon.

This report is swamping the envirowacko's much ballyhoo'd IPCC Report that AlGor and others of his ilk, including B.O., and many complaisant members of Cong. kowtow before as the Holy Book of the Orthodox Church of Glowbull Warming.

Update: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Outpouring of Skeptical Scientists Continues as 59 Scientists Added to Senate Report
‘The ­science has, quite simply, gone awry’

Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists – a dramatic increase from the original 650 scientists featured in the initial December 11, 2008 release. The 59 additional scientists added to the 255-page Senate Minority report since the initial release 13 ½ weeks ago represents an average of over four skeptical scientists a week.

This updated report – which includes yet another former UN IPCC scientist – represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007. The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers. The 59 additional scientists hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA. ...Award-Winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Robert H. Austin, who has published 170 scientific papers and was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, lamented the current fears over global warming.

“Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science…It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best,” Austin told the minority staff on the Environment and Public Works Committee on March 2, 2009. ‘Could turn the climate change world upside down’

The rise in skeptical scientists are responding not only to an increase in dire “predictions” of climate change, but also a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real world data, and inconvenient developments have further cast doubts on the claims of man-made global warming fear activists. The latest peer-reviewed study in Geophysical Research Letters is being touted as a development that “could turn the climate change world upside down.” The study finds that the “Earth is undergoing natural climate shift.”

The March 15, 2009 article in WISN.com details the research of Dr. Anastasios Tsonis of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “We realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural," Tsonis said. “I don't think we can say much about what the humans are doing,” he added.

Go to the links and see the report itself...the science is there on this, and is NOT based on erroneous models that are based on incomplete and "selected" data, and computer modeling that ignores significant variables.

The real climate change catastrophe In a startling new book, Christopher Booker reveals how a handful of scientists, who have pushed flawed theories on global warming for decades, now threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages This is from the London Telegraph, and by now it's no secret that the Brits have their own nests of moonbats who are every bit as radical (if not even MORE so, as impossible as that might seem!) as the B.O. Presidium Czars.

Next Thursday marks the first anniversary of one of the most remarkable events ever to take place in the House of Commons. For six hours MPs debated what was far and away the most expensive piece of legislation ever put before Parliament. The Climate Change Bill laid down that, by 2050, the British people must cut their emissions of carbon dioxide by well over 80 per cent. Short of some unimaginable technological revolution, such a target could not possibly be achieved without shutting down almost the whole of our industrialised economy, changing our way of life out of recognition.[emphasis added]

EIGHTY PERCENT? They have got to be kidding! Seriously - IF it is fully enforced this would end industrialization, with the necessarily associated death of...how many millions?...The Chief CANNOT envision even the enervated and anesthetized Brits rolling over voluntarily allowing themselves to go through the collective mass suicide that this would require. This piece has a thumbnail history of the rise of the Great and Orthodox Junk Science Church of Glowbull Warming, as expounded by the false proclamation of It's Truth as expounded by the IPCC, which in reality isn't at all what it has been presented as.

More and more eminent scientists have been coming out of the woodwork to suggest that the IPCC, with its computer models, had got it all wrong. It isn’t CO? that has been driving the climate, the changes are natural, driven by the activity of the sun and changes in the currents of the world’s oceans. The ice caps haven’t been melting as the alarmists and the models predicted they should. The Antarctic, containing nearly 90 per cent of all the ice in the world, has actually been cooling over the past 30 years, not warming. The polar bears are not drowning – there are four times more of them now than there were 40 years ago. In recent decades, the number of hurricanes and droughts have gone markedly down, not up. As the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for CO? threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale. Yet it is at just this point that the world’s politicians, led by Britain, the EU and now President Obama, are poised to impose on us far and away the most costly set of measures that any group of politicians has ever proposed in the history of the world – measures so destructive that even if only half of them were implemented, they would take us back to the dark ages. We have “less than 50 days” to save the planet, declared Gordon Brown last week, in yet another desperate bid to save the successor to the Kyoto treaty, which is due to be agreed in Copenhagen in six weeks’ time. But no one has put the reality of the situation more succinctly than Prof Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, one of the most distinguished climatologists in the world, who has done as much as anyone in the past 20 years to expose the emptiness of the IPCC’s claim that its reports represent a “consensus” of the views of “the world’s top climate scientists”. In words quoted on the cover of my new book, Prof Lindzen wrote: “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly exaggerated computer predictions combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.” Such is the truly extraordinary position in which we find ourselves. Thanks to misreading the significance of a brief period of rising temperatures at the end of the 20th century, the Western world (but not India or China) is now contemplating measures that add up to the most expensive economic suicide note ever written.

Drill now, and throw another log on the fire! By the way, I hope all you West River types are ready to shovel and plow your coming share of October Glowbull Warming!

When it comes to Iran, the U.S. may be facing a cataclysm

Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer. Both have studied the Middle East for decades, traveled to the area repeatedly in recent years and written about the region extensively. And both have become convinced that we may be facing a cataclysm. Hanson and Baer each presented his analysis during an interview this past week. Although they differ on certain matters, they agree on five observations.

There is more of the backstory on each of these in the article, but that doesn't make the situation look any better.

The first: If not already capable of doing so, Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons in mere months.

The second observation: The Iranians have no interest in running a bluff. Once able to produce nuclear weapons, they will almost certainly do so.

The third observation: As the Iranians scramble to produce nuclear weapons, the Obama administration appears too feckless, inexperienced or deluded to stop them.

The Chief doesn't know whether it is the fecklessness, inexperience, or delusion that is causing the problem. Probably all three!

The fourth observation: Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran.

The final observation: Iran would retaliate. "Iran's deterrent doctrine is to strike back everywhere it can,"

Baer explained. "We should expect the worst." Iran would attack American supply lines in Iraq and command Hezbollah to start a civil war in Lebanon. It would fire surface-to-surface missiles at every oil facility within range, wreaking devastation in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states while removing millions of barrels of oil a day from the world markets. The economy of the entire globe would suffer a paroxysm. The Middle East could descend into chaos. The U.S. would experience the worst crisis in decades.

After the assassination 95 years ago of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the great powers of Europe engaged in meaningless diplomatic maneuvers. "Austria has sent a bullying and humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, who cannot possibly comply with it," British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith confided in a letter. "[W]e are in measurable, or at least imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon."

A big nation attempting to humiliate a small nation in a way the small nation simply cannot accept. Unseriousness among great powers. A gathering sense of impending catastrophe. Once again, it may be Armageddon time.

Like the lyric of an old Warren Zevon song: "It ain't that pretty at all!".

President Obama has something important in common with Edward I, aka "Longshanks"

What is this about?

It has received far less notice than it deserves, but last week the United States joined with Egypt in sponsoring a resolution appoved by the UN Human Rights Council that could blow a gaping hole in the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and other civil liberties most of us take for granted. The resolution encourages member nations to define as criminal "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."

Who defines what constitutes "national, racial or religious hatred?" Why, the government, of course. Who decides whether any given statement "constitutes incitement?" You guessed it.

In other words, if you live in a country that adopts this approach to freedom of speech, be very careful what you say about any other nation, racial group or religious faith. And you better not make anybody in power mad because you would be amazed what can be construed by governments as "incitement" to "hatred."

If you are an American with the notion that the First Amendment will protect your right to say whatever you want whenever you want about whomever you want, be advised that this resolution embodies exactly the conceptual assumptions about law and rights that lead directly to those speech codes that restrict civil liberties on hundreds of U.S. college campuses at this very moment....

In other words, bunky, if you think the First Amendment will protect you from Obama and the UN, you're still living in the 18th Century when people believed individual rights were theirs simply by virtue of being born under the U.S. Constitution, not as a dispensation of those in power.

So, what's it have to do with Longshanks?

The UN resolution is quite literally medieval.

I guess this will make the Islamic world feel right at home...back to the 13th Century!

Consider the provision of Westminster I in 1275 under King Edward I in England (If you saw "Braveheart," you will recognize him as the hated Longshanks. Trust me, he was every bit as bad as Randall Wallace's wonderful screenplay made him).

Westminster I banned the telling of "tales whereby discord or occasion of discord or slander my grow between the King and his people, or the great men of the realm." And who defined what tales tended to sow discord? Why, the King and great men of the realm, of course.

But Westminster I was no Longshankian exception to the rule in mediavel England. Roll forward several centuries and we find Henry VIII, he of the many wives. Nobody could print a book without Henry's permission. A law passed in 1542 proclaimed that "nothing shall be taught or mainained contrary to the King's instructions" concerning the Bible or other religious matters. Violate that law three times and you went to the stake to be burned to death.

A century later, a 1662 statute provided the death penalty for those selling "heretical, schimatical, blasphemous, seditious and trasonable books, pamphlets and papers." Why? Because such publications allegedly were "endangering the peace of these kingdoms and raising a disaffection to his most excellent Majesty and his government."

That is the essential legal background from England that helped spark the English Reformation and ultimately led to the adoption of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution.

Why on earth would anybody want to go back to that barbaric world in which you could lose your head for saying the wrong thing?

If you are interested in learning more about the bloody history that came before the First Amendment, see former University of Texas journalism professor Marvin Olasky's "Telling the Truth" and the chapter on "a great cloud of witnesses."

At this rate might it take the 2nd Amendment to preserve the 1st Amendment? One can only hope not.

Apostle Says Religious Freedom Is Being Threatened

It is not the usual run of affairs for higher leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) church to directly address political issues in their capacity as church leaders. When this does happen, it's as though someone else is saying "Hey! You! Listen up! This is something REALLY serious!"

It may be worth noting that historically the LDS church knows deeply about possible problems with religious freedom, having been driven from Missouri at one point by an "Order of Extermination" issued by the state governor, and then being pushed out of Illinois after renegade militia vigilantes assassinated the Church president, Joseph Smith, and his brother. That was what led to the exodus to Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young, but I digress...

An apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said religious freedom is being threatened by societal forces intimidating those with religious points of view from having a voice in the public square. [emphasis added] (See the full text of the speech here)

Elder Dallin H. Oaks made the comments today in a major address to Brigham Young University-Idaho students on the importance of preserving the religious freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

Elder Oaks has had a front-row seat in observing what he calls the “significant deterioration in the respect accorded to religion” in public life. Prior to his appointment to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Oaks had an illustrious law career. He served as a justice on the Utah Supreme Court, was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School and clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court.

These issues are well worth pondering; one does not have to agree with the religious teachings of the LDS Church to be able to appreciate the civil and Constitutional issues addressed.

Anyone concerned with the maintenance of our Constitutional government in the face of continuous attacks from those who have another agenda, both inside and outside the Washington Beltway, should be concerned with this situation.

DISCLOSURE: The Chief is a active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

White House Official’s Praise for Mao--Whose Policies Led to Death of 65 Million--Was ‘Pathetic,’ Says China Expert

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told high school students in May 2009 that one of her favorite political philosophers was Mao Tse Tung, the Communist dictator responsible for the death of millions of people, and she explained why his philosophy was important for achieving personal and political goals.

When questioned last week after a video of her speech surfaced, however, Dunn said she was using “irony” in reference to Mao.

A leading expert on China told CNSNews.com that Dunn’s remarks were “pathetic,” given the human rights atrocities committed under Mao’s reign.

Yeah:   Mao is cool. Never mind about those 65,000,000 dead people.  Nothing to see here.  Move along folks.

According to the MSM this is nothing worth commenting on. Could you imagine their outcry if a Republican said something like this about Hitler?

These people in the White House are truly bereft of reason.

Wall Street exec to lead SEC fraud branch

The Obama administration on Friday tapped a Wall Street executive to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission's charge against investor fraud in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal as it pushed anew for a regulatory overhaul to protect Americans from financial sector shenanigans.

The SEC announced Adam Storch, vice president of Goldman Sachs' Business Intelligence Group, is assuming the new position of managing executive of the its enforcement division, created earlier this year.

Goldman-Sachs AGAIN? Yeah. Right.

Although the Chief has some serious issues with Arizona Senator John McCain, on this one he hit the nail on the head:

"SEC names Goldman Sachs exec to enforcement post - you can't make it up," quipped Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, on Twitter, the popular social-networking Web site.

THIS is more "Change You Can Believe In" - at least if you're with Goldman-Sachs.

This is the same Goldman Sachs involved with continuing to make massive bonus payments.

Conflict of interest? What's that? (Nothing to see here folks. Move along.)

Obama loosens missile technology controls to China

President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department -- a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

The president issued a little-noticed "presidential determination" Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

Even Bill Clinton had enough shame to do stuff like this under the radar. As fas as B.O. is concerned, why bother. Of course, the message to the country is "Nothing to see here. Move along folks. Go back home and watch NBC some more."

Commerce officials say the shift will not cause controls to be loosened in regards to the export of missile and space technology.

DUH...by delegating the authority for approval DOWN the chain of command...the controls have ALREADY been loosened! Besides...there is no reason to change the regulatory setup...unless there is already the intention to use the changed system to sell our technology to the ChiComs.

Eugene Cottilli, a spokesman for Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, said under new policy the U.S. government will rigorously monitor all sensitive exports to China.

Right...they will be monitored. Logically, this means that they will be occurring! Otherwise, there would be nothing to monitor! (Dang! That pesky logic...)

The presidential notice alters a key provision of the 1999 Defense Authorization Act that required that the president notify Congress whether a transfer of missile and space technology to China would harm the U.S. space-launch industry or help China's missile programs.

How can a "presidential notice" repeal a law? Did I miss something here?

The law was passed after a late-1990s scandal involving the U.S. companies Space Systems/Loral and Hughes Electronics Corp. Both companies improperly shared technology with China and were fined $20 million and $32 million, respectively, by the State Department after a U.S. government investigation concluded that their know-how was used to improve China's long-range nuclear missiles.

This was the afore-mentioned Clinton "problem" with missile tech security.

Section 1512 of the 1999 law requires the president to certify to Congress in advance of any missile equipment or technology exports to China that the export will not harm the U.S. space-launch industry and that "missile equipment or technology, including any indirect technical benefit that could be derived from such export, will not measurably improve the missile or space launch capabilities of the People's Republic of China."

Of course, if B.O. is ignoring Congress on this, Congress will surely respond vigorously, right?

Oh...yeah...THIS Congress...never mind.