Reality is sinking in Ms hillary

The pressure of Obama's surge at the polls may be too much for Clinton as she choked back tears during a campaign event in New Hampshire.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — One-time presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton was driven to the verge of tears at a campaign event during the final hours before New Hampshire voters go to the polls Tuesday.

The pressure of a surge by Barack Obama may be overwhelming Clinton as she choked up Monday unexpectedly when answering a question about how she keeps up the pace on the campaign trail.

“I have so many opportunities and don’t want us to fall backwards,” she said. “I see what’s happening, people. … Some of us are ready some of us are not. When we look at the array of problems and potential for it to spin out of control, this is one of the most important elections. As tired as I am … I believe so strongly (in) who we are as a nation so I’ll do everything I can to make my case and voters get to decide.”

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Lets see what she said. The first sentence is just fluff. 2nd sentence starting to think about the fact she is being rejected. 3rd sentence is fluff. 4th sentence is fluff. 5th sentence she is looking for sympathy. All a bunch of witch brew for you.

Is Hillary becomming a Sourpuss?

sour·puss /ˈsaʊərˌpʊs, ˈsaʊər-/
–noun Informal.
a person having a grouchy disposition that is often accompanied by a scowling facial expression.

It seems she is and becoming more so every day. Obama's (the empty suit) magic train has left the station and the sourpuss syndrome becomes her. Her real personality is a sourpuss. As she is stressed you will see the sour and the puss become more vindictive and desperate to catch the Obama magic train. She will do anything at any cost to win the nomination. Another blogger said Obama better watch his back and I agree. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned!

popularism is just a snake oil salesman selling you a lie

Would you look at this! Look at those eyes. Is this the change you want. She thinks what she has done borders on genius. It borders on a concept of (popularism a more politically correct alternative term) Its Cotton candy, fluff talk, the popularism dirty tricks to get your vote. Feel good talk that is motivating you through your emotions and not your logic. Its just like putting a frog in boiling water. The frog (average feel good American) is being deceived into thinking there is no danger but the danger lies in the feel good Americans emotional response to fluff and cotton candy feel good ombama and clinton deceptions. They transform themselves into your hero and protector. I think they are just modern day snake oil salesmen. They are telling you this bottle of stuff will do anything but once you have bought it and found out it just watered down jin, the feel good feeling will wear off and you will be asking yourself, why did I let myself be suckered in to believing this crap?
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Rush Limbaugh is right. The word populist. What is populism? What is a populist? The dictionary definition is often, as in the case of dictionary definitions today of liberal and conservative, it is not helpful. But the dictionary definition of populist is: "A member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people; a person who holds or who is concerned with the views of ordinary people." The root here is... Well, there was a Populist Party. It was formed in 1891 and at the time the Populist Party "advocated the interests of labor and farmers, the free coinage of silver, and a graduated income tax along with government control of monopolies." Now, the modern interpretation of populist, as I use it today, is not complimentary. A populist in this sense of "seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people," this is what people who employ populism want the ordinary people to think: that they are "one of them"; in fact, that they are from them; that they understand the ordinary, and that the ordinary are being shafted, and that the ordinary are being creamed, and the ordinary are being ignored.

So the populist comes along and says, "Not only am I for you, I'm of you, and I am going to go to Washington and I'm going to make sure that we ordinary people kick butt and we're going to kick the butts of the elites and we're going to kick the butt of the establishment! We're going to do this and we're going to do that." Most of them who do this are already from the establishment! They're elected governors. They're senators, or what have you. So it becomes a technique to relate to people on an emotional basis with a false promise, and that is that any one individual can solve all the problems of the ordinary. (Rush Limbaugh)
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Obama said, "One of my opponents said we can't just, you know, offer the American people false hopes about what we can get done,"

Clinton told Democratic voters they should elect "a doer, not a talker."

Both are nothing but talkers. They don't have any real records at all. Both offer false hopes both are just snake oil salesmen. I ask you, what have they done? Think about this, really nothing. Empty records of both. No real leadership, only talk. Unreal! Read the crap below. Both in reality are the same thing over and over again, just empty do nothing records. You can expect great things but what you will find is an empty bottle that was not the cure!

"The real gamble in this election is to do the same things, with the same folks, playing the same games over and over and over again and somehow expect a different result," he said. "That is a gamble we cannot afford, that is a risk we cannot take. Not this time. Not now. It is time to turn the page."

Lets caucus like we did last summer

Please note the over complicated way democrates elect delegates to their state convention. It is obvious the democrates want to mico manage the voter. The same way a democrate will micro manage the american citizen if a liberal democrate gets elected because of media fluff. I just saw the campaign coordinator for obama on tv and she said the country was ready for cool. I guess she means "cool" is enough to run for president and be elected to do what, be cool? If I were voting cool would not be one of the qualities I would be looking for. Cool plus empty suit equals empty suit plus cool. All I have seen is fake politicans lieing through their teeth. The only person who has any credibility is Fred Thompson, but he is not a true conservative. Slim pickins at the caucus. Lets caucus and find a real candidate who is not a fake and a real leader. One like Ronald Reagan. Is this possible? I can't think of anyone who fits this bill. If we caucus long enough maybe we could come up with someone. Its a nice thought.



The Iowa Caucus

In Iowa, the caucuses themselves are local party precinct meetings where registered Republicans and Democrats gather, discuss the candidates and vote for their candidate of choice for their party's nomination (Iowa caucuses actually occur every two years - in non-presidential-election years, participants generally discuss party platform issues). In both parties, the purpose of the caucus vote is to select delegates to attend a county convention -- each caucus sends a certain number of delegates, based on the population it represents. The delegates at the county convention in turn select delegates to go to the congressional district state convention, and those delegates choose the delegates that go to the national convention.

The Republican caucus voting system in Iowa is relatively straightforward: You come in, you vote, typically through secret ballot, and the percentages of the group supporting each candidate decides what delegates will go on to the county convention.

The Democrats have a more complex system -- in fact, it's one of the most complex pieces of the entire presidential election. In a typical caucus, registered democrats gather at the precinct meeting places (there are close to 2,000 precincts statewide), supporters for each candidate have a chance to make their case, and then the participants gather into groups supporting particular candidates (undecided voters also cluster into a group). In order for a particular group to be viable, they must have a certain percentage of the all the caucus participants. If they don't have enough people, the group disbands, and its members go to another group. The percentage cut-off is determined by the number of delegates assigned to the precinct. It breaks down like this:

* If the precinct has only one delegate, the group with the most people wins the delegate vote, and that's it.
* If the precinct has only two delegates, each group needs 25 percent to be viable.
* If the precinct has only three delegates, each group needs one-sixth of the caucus participants.
* If the precinct has four or more delegates, each group needs at least 15 percent of the caucus participants.

Once the groups are settled, the next order of business is to figure out how many of that precinct's delegates each group (and by extension, each candidate) should win. Here's the formula:

(Number of people in the group * number of delegates)/ number of caucus participants­

­ For example, say a precinct has four delegates, 200 caucus participants, and 100 people support John Doe. To figure out how many delegates you assign to John Doe, you would multiply 100 by four, to get 400. You divide 400 by 200 and get 2. So John Doe gets two of the four delegates.

The media reports the "winner," based on the percentage of delegates going to each candidate. This isn't exactly accurate, since it's actually the state convention that decides what delegates go to the national convention, but more often than not, there's a clear statewide winner after the caucuses.

The convoluted caucus system dates back to 1796, when American political parties emerged, and it hasn't changed a whole lot since then. Most states eventually replaced this system, because as political parties became more centralized and sophisticated in the early twentieth century, party leaders or "bosses" were perceived as exerting too much control over choosing a nominee. To give individual voters more influence over the nomination process, party leaders created the presidential primary system. Florida held the first primary in 1901 marking the beginning of the presidential primary we know today.

Dramatic caucus reforms and rules that the Democratic Party instituted at the state level in the 1970s changed the system significantly. Designed to improve and open up caucuses to all party members, the requirements actually made caucuses more difficult to manage and inadvertently led to the rise of primaries. To help states coordinate the election days of both parties, the Republicans also changed their system.

You can learn more about the United States democratic process by reading the links on the next page.

Huckabee The Huckster

huck·ster One who uses aggressive, showy, and sometimes devious methods to promote or sell a product. To promote or attempt to sell (a commercial product, for example) in an overaggressive or showy manner.

Devious is the key word here. This guy has a potential,"it depends on what is, is type" of twisting in a devious way the facts while trying to act in a moral way. It would have been ok to run the ad on romney's flip flop's but to explain he is not going to be negative by running the ad and then displaying it for all to see at is news conference is very devious. Even the reporters laughed out loud when he explained his point! I don't believe this guy can be trusted nor do I believe he is honest. It seems most of the republican candidates are not worth voting for because they are not real conservatives just liberal or moderates repackaged as are most of the democraps candiates. I don't see any of them that I would vote for. What a mess of crap the voter has to walk through. This time around at the election not only must the voter hold his nose and vote but also bend over and grab their ankles. It seems to be all media hype with no real candidates. No real choice so here comes another ross perot to give the election to someone like ms hillery. It doesn't look good.

Huckabee pulls negative ad, vows to go positive
By Sam Youngman | Posted: 12/31/07 2:58 PM [ET]
December 31, 2007

DES MOINES – Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) told reporters Monday that he was pulling a negative ad designed to target his chief rival in Iowa, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R).

Then he showed the ad to a room packed wall to wall with reporters.

When asked if it is hypocritical to make an announcement about not running negative ads, and then show a negative advertisement to dozens of members of the national and local media, Huckabee said he had to show the ad to prove its existence.

“I want to show you that we were fully prepared,” Huckabee said.

The former governor said the ad, which hits Romney on the issues of taxes and abortion, was set to start running in Iowa Monday at noon.

He said he made the decision earlier in the morning that he does not want to run a negative campaign. As a result, he said he will not run any ads going after Romney or other Republican rivals.

Perhaps because voters in other states do not respond as adversely to negative campaigning, Huckabee refused to rule out running similar ads in other states. For now, he said he wants to see how Iowans react to his strategy.

Huckabee said the ad cost about $30,000 to make, and the original purpose of the press conference was to introduce the spot to the media.

But the former governor said he had a change of heart shortly before the media assembled. Easels outlining the attacks on Romney were still standing in the room, and Huckabee stood in front of a banner that read “Enough is Enough.”

“It’s never too late to do the right thing,” he said.

In the ad, Huckabee says that Romney’s healthcare plan in Massachusetts allowed for $50 co-pays for abortions.

At the end of the ad, Huckabee again makes the point that Romney’s attacks on him have been “desperate and dishonest.”

“If a man’s dishonest to obtain a job, he’ll be dishonest on the job,” Huckabee says in the ad.

Huckabee acknowledged that his decision not to run counter ads to Romney’s is “a huge gamble,” and he conceded that Romney’s ads targeting him had hurt him.

But, he said, “if you gain the whole world and lose your soul, what does it profit you?”

The Romney campaign responded by again going after Huckabee’s record as governor, and in one email, the campaign described Huckabee’s ploy to announce he is not running the ad then following that up by showing it to reporters as a “meltdown.”

“We’re proud that Governor Romney has run a campaign about the issues that are important to voters,” Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said in a statement. “Governor Romney has worked hard to talk about the vision and experience he has when it comes to keeping taxes low, cutting wasteful spending and securing our borders. He’s worked hard to make his case to voters about leading a Republican Party that will strengthen the American family.”

Madden continued: “Mike Huckabee’s troubling record of higher taxes and spending binges is clearly not holding up well under scrutiny. Mike Huckabee has turned from nice to very hot-tempered and volatile now that his record has been examined by voters.

“It’s Mike Huckabee's record. It’s definitely a tough record for him to defend, but it’s still a record that belongs to Mike Huckabee.”

Huckabee is quoting gospel but acting in a manner that questions his motives and honesty! He says that Romneys ads are not truthful, yet they accurately display his record. This means huckabee is lying. He says his is not going to run negative ads yet he displays one at a news conference. Again this is a bold lie. He is actually doing and saying the opposite of what he says his is doing. This is just what ms hillary and other democrates do. As soon as they open their mouth they change their position or lie about what they just said. How crazy is this!

Cheese Herion (black tar herion mixed with tylenol pm)

Drug dealers peddling new kid-friendly mixes. This is something I was not aware of but thought it should be published for your information. This sicko stuff comes straight from mexico via illegal aliens.

Meth, heroin laced with candy and strawberry flavoring to appeal to youth.
'Cheese' heroin is shown wrapped in school notebook paper. Cheese heroin is a mixture of black tar heroin, a less refined form of the drug, and ground up Tylenol PM.

In their quest to lure new, younger clientele, drug dealers are mixing their wares with over-the-counter pain remedies and other familiar products — even candy — and peddling them under non-threatening names.

One such concoction, a blend of black tar heroin and Tylenol PM that goes by the name “cheese,” has been linked to the deaths of 19 teenagers in Dallas, including two 15-year-olds.

“If you’re a drug dealer you have to target a new audience all the time,” said Garrison Courtney, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman. “It’s Marketing 101 for drug dealers.”

Examples of the drug-mixing strategy also include candy laced with marijuana and, in several states, flavored methamphetamine. In Arkansas recently, a mix of meth and strawberry-flavored powder normally used to create a children’s milk drink turned up under the name “Strawberry Quick.”

“They’re calling it ‘cheese,’ they’re not calling it ‘heroin,”’ said Dr. Collin Goto, a toxicologist at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. “It becomes much more appealing to younger kids because it doesn’t have the stigma, they’re not as afraid to get started.”

Dallas school district police first became aware of the heroin-mixing trend in 2005, and its become a disturbing local phenomenon since.

“Cheese is just a different makeup for mixing with heroin, but it’s still heroin,” said Dr. Jeffrey Barnard, chief medical examiner for Dallas County. “It’s the heroin that’s the problem.”

Cheap and needle-free

Beyond the innocuous name, several other factors appear to be driving the popularity of cheese. Kids often buy the drug from other kids. It’s affordable, selling for about $2 a dosage. And it is snorted rather than injected.

During the 2005-2006 school year, the Dallas school district police arrested 90 students for possession of the heroin-Tylenol PM mixture. The number has soared during the current school year. Through February, 122 have been arrested. The average age of those arrested: 14.


The latest meth cut, known as "Strawberry Quick," uses a powdered drink mix to give the drug a pink coloring. The sweetness of the powder can make meth more palatable and partially masks its harsh chemical taste.

“The resurgence of heroin in society in 11- to 16-year-olds — that’s unprecedented,” said Julian Bernal, deputy chief of narcotics for the Dallas police, who makes six to 12 arrests a month for possession of cheese heroin.

“Hopefully we can try to contain it,” said Dr. Sing-Yi Feng, another toxicologist at Children’s Medical Center Dallas. “The concern is that the stuff is pretty cheap. It’s easy to use.”

Experts say cheese usually has about 2 percent to 8 percent heroin mixed with the Tylenol PM — which contains acetaminophen and diphenhydramine — or similar over-the-counter drugs.

‘Cheese’ arrests rising

Gary Hodges, deputy chief of the Dallas school district police, said cheese arrests in the district have nearly equaled those for marijuana, still the leading substance involved in drug arrests.

Authorities say they are just now beginning to understand how widespread the mixture has become and the toll it is taking on Dallas area youth. Even the exact number of cheese heroin-related deaths was not known until The Dallas Morning News analyzed medical examiner records and published the results last month.

“Basically, it flew under the radar screen,” said Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services and a member of the Dallas County task force on cheese.

Most of the victims are male, and involve nearly equal numbers of white and Hispanic youth.

Dave Cannata’s 16-year-old son, Nick, died in June 2005, with heroin and diphenhydramine in his system. Nick Cannata, who had been in rehab for a drug problem the summer before, was found dead in his bed in Coppell, just outside of Dallas.

He had spent the day building a deck with his father before going to a friend’s house. Dave Cannata said he knew something was wrong when his son returned home that night, but he decided to delay a confrontation.

“If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call 911,” said Cannata. “It’s alarming the epidemic proportion of kids that are messing with this stuff.”

Olga Sanchez agrees. She thought her 15-year-old son had stopped using the mixture. But this spring, Oscar Gutierrez’s brother found the eighth-grader at a Dallas middle school dead in bed.

“He was very purple. He was very cold, cold,” said Sanchez, who had been attending drug counseling with her son since discovering his cheese habit last fall.

“I would like for kids to realize that lots of other kids have died, that they should look for help, that they could lose their life,” she said.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18557266/wid/11915773/

Hillary don't ask don't tell

Don't ask don't tell at rallys.
Clinton's "don't ask" policy

As she races through Iowa in the days before next week's caucuses, Hillary Clinton is taking few chances. She tells crowds that it’s their turn to “pick a president,’’ but over the last two days she has not invited them to ask her any questions.

Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she’s done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A.

She was no more inviting when a television reporter approached her after a rally on Thursday and asked if she was “moved’’ by Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Clinton turned away without answering.
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She knows that someone could ask her a real question requiring a real answer. Because she is a political placard poised to portray a competent woman who can deal with off the cuff answers to complicated questions she must not let this mith be exploded. In reality she has trouble just answering simple questions about everything.
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PEGGY NOONAN
Hillary Clinton? No, not reasonable. I concede her sturdy mind, deep sophistication, and seriousness of intent. I see her as a triangulator like her husband, not a radical but a maneuverer in the direction of a vague, half-forgotten but always remembered, leftism. It is also true that she has a command-and-control mentality, an urgent, insistent and grating sense of destiny, and she appears to believe that any act that benefits Clintons is a virtuous act, because Clintons are good and deserve to be benefited.

But this is not, actually, my central problem with her candidacy. My central problem is that the next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days, and in that time it will be crucial--crucial--that our nation be led by a man or woman who can be, at least for the moment and at least in general, trusted. Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.
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I agree Ms clinton asks like a cold witch and who wants to be led by this kind of woman. She looks and talks like a cold calculating witch who would do anything to have the power of the president. She is not qualified in any way to be president, mentally or emotionally.

Clinton met bhutto 12 years ago, so what. Obama had tea at an ambassadors office, so what. These are statments by IDIOTS!

Its time to pick a president?

Hillery says its time to pick a president (Dec 27, 07) and then says the following:
“I want you to ask yourself, ‘Who will be the best president? Who, if something happened that none of us can predict now, would be there able to respond and act on behalf of our country immediately?’.”

Well if you think she can, I would ask you on what do you base this on?
Ms clinton can't even make up her mind on NY drivers license for Illegal Aliens!
She would vacillate if anything happened and would panic, having trouble making a valid national security decision. She has NO gravitas to "be there" whatever this tourched logic means. Acting immediately could mean responding in an illogical manner as has been her pattern in this political campaign.

Oh bama is also an empty suit who would respond to a threat like the empty suit he is. Its time to pick a president. Neither of these liberal deceivers would or could respond in a manner that can make us sleep better at night. Both are foreign policy headaches waiting to happen if elected. Incompetent people really have no clue as to their own failings or others skills. They are blissfully self-assured and ignorant of their own incompetence. Again I challenge anybody to tell me why these two political media blowup dolls could lead this country because of any past experience in dealing with foreign policy! I'm waiting.

Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find

Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning. (In other words they are just to stupid to realize it) Barack Hussein Obama is a prime example.
Have You Vetted Barack Obama

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Do you know anyone like this? I do. They can be co-workers, management or anyone. "Management" is brimming with these type of people. Incompetent breeds more incompetentence. Overconfident, billegerent amd incompetent! Acquiring a "position" by default, or a waver of qualifications. I have personally known of 2 people who got their jobs by padding their resume which someone else wrote and typed. I know of people who got their job in spite of the fact they failed the qualifying test 3 times and it was waved the fourth time. I also know of a person who got a job by filing an "xxx" played the race card and was put in a postion and was not qualified, simply because of this.

I and others actually compensate for their incompetence daily by doing our own self management and correcting their erroneous conclusions and choices. Of course the upper crust gets falsely compensated and lauded for "their" accomplishments. What is management doing if the manager is delegating the supervision to others because the manager is incapable of supervising because of incompetence? This is what I call "figure head management" and empty suit or dress. Worst of all other supervisors cover for this incompetence. Why? It is easy to understand if you can say the word bonus or job security. Like I said incompetence breeds incompetence and perpetuates itself to the detriment of the EMPLOYEE! (EMPLOYEE is emphysized over employer)

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Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find
They're blind to own failings, others' skills

Erica Goode, New York Times

Tuesday, January 18, 2000

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

``I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it,'' Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

``Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,'' wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

This deficiency in ``self-monitoring skills,'' the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.

In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to ``grossly overestimate'' how well they had performed.

In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.

Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored only in the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile, and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.

Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to ``identify grammatically correct standard English,'' and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.

On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an ``expert'' panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.

Unlike unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the ``false consensus effect.''

When high-scoring subjects were asked to ``grade'' the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.

``Incompetent individuals were less able to recognize competence in others,'' the researchers concluded.

In a final experiment, Dunning and Kruger set out to discover if training would help modify the exaggerated self-perceptions of incapable subjects. In fact, a short training session in logical reasoning did improve the ability of low-scoring subjects to assess their performance realistically, they found.

The findings, the psychologists said, support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that ``he who knows best knows how little he knows.''

And the research meshes neatly with other work indicating that overconfidence is common; studies have found, for example, that the vast majority of people rate themselves as ``above average'' on a wide array of abilities -- though such an abundance of talent would be impossible in statistical terms. This overestimation, studies indicate, is more likely for tasks that are difficult than for those that are easy.

Such studies are not without critics. Dr. David C. Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside, for example, said he suspects that most lay people have only a vague idea of the meaning of ``average'' in statistical terms.

``I'm not sure the average person thinks of `average' or `percentile' in quite that literal a sense,'' Funder said, ``so `above average' might mean to them `pretty good,' or `OK,' or `doing all right.' And if, in fact, people mean something subjective when they use the word, then it's really hard to evaluate whether they're right or wrong, using the statistical criterion.''

But Dunning said his current research and past studies indicated there are many reasons why people would tend to overestimate their competency and not be aware of it.

In various situations, feedback is absent, or at least ambiguous; even a humorless joke, for example, is likely to be met with polite laughter. And faced with incompetence, social norms prevent most people from blurting out ``You stink!'' -- truthful though this assessment may be.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=c/a/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Global warming is a MITH. Over 400 scientists agree it doesn't exist as a man made problem. It is only a mass media hysteria hoax. The goal is to tax and more control over the helpless population.


U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007
December 20, 2007

Posted By Marc Morano - Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov - 9:47 AM ET

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Senate Report Debunks "Consensus"


INTRODUCTION:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.


The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.



Even some in the establishment media now appear to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics "appear to be expanding rather than shrinking." Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bite the dust.” In addition, many scientists who are also progressive environmentalists believe climate fear promotion has "co-opted" the green movement.


This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate.


Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.



“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,” Paldor wrote. [Note: See also July 2007 Senate report detailing how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation ]



Scientists from Around the World Dissent



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.”



Paleoclimatologist Dr. Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa, recently converted from a believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. Patterson noted that the notion of a “consensus” of scientists aligned with the UN IPCC or former Vice President Al Gore is false. “I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority.”


This new committee report, a first of its kind, comes after the UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri implied that there were only “about a dozen" skeptical scientists left in the world. (LINK) Former Vice President Gore has claimed that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to “flat Earth society members” and similar in number to those who “believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona.”


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; Columbia University; the World Federation of Scientists; and the University of London.


The voices of many of these hundreds of scientists serve as a direct challenge to the often media-hyped “consensus” that the debate is “settled.”



A May 2007 Senate report detailed scientists who had recently converted from believers in man-made global warming to skepticism. [See May 15, 2007 report: Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics: Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research – - In addtiion, an August 2007 report detailed how proponents of man-made global warming fears enjoy a monumental funding advantage over skeptical scientists. ]


This report counters the claims made by the promoters of man-made global warming fears that the number of skeptical scientists is dwindling.


Examples of “consensus” claims made by promoters of man-made climate fears:


Former Vice President Al Gore (November 5, 2007): “There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat.” Gore also compared global warming skeptics to people who 'believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona' (June 20, 2006 -


CNN’s Miles O’Brien (July 23, 2007): The scientific debate is over.” “We're done." O’Brien also declared on CNN on February 9, 2006 that scientific skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming “are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually.”


On July 27, 2006, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein described a scientist as “one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels.”

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC view on the number of skeptical scientists as quoted on Feb. 20, 2003: “About 300 years ago, a Flat Earth Society was founded by those who did not believe the world was round. That society still exists; it probably has about a dozen members.”

Agence France-Press (AFP Press) article (December 4, 2007): The article noted that a prominent skeptic “finds himself increasingly alone in his claim that climate change poses no imminent threat to the planet.”



Andrew Dessler in the eco-publication Grist Magazine (November 21, 2007): “While some people claim there are lots of skeptical climate scientists out there, if you actually try to find one, you keep turning up the same two dozen or so (e.g., Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Christy, etc., etc.). These skeptics are endlessly recycled by the denial machine, so someone not paying close attention might think there are lots of them out there -- but that's not the case.



The Washington Post asserted on May 23, 2006 that there were only “a handful of skeptics” of man-made climate fears.



UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland on May 10, 2007 declared the climate debate "over" and added “it's completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific “consensus."





ABC News Global Warming Reporter Bill Blakemore reported on August 30, 2006: “After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate” on global warming.


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Brief highlights of the report featuring over 400 international scientists:


Israel: Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. “First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!”



Russia: Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences has authored more than 300 studies, nine books, and a 2006 paper titled “The Evolution and the Prediction of Global Climate Changes on Earth.” “Even if the concentration of ‘greenhouse gases’ double man would not perceive the temperature impact,” Sorochtin wrote.



Spain: Anton Uriarte, a professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and author of a book on the paleoclimate, rejected man-made climate fears in 2007. “There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried,” Uriate wrote.





Netherlands: Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, “I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting – a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number – entirely without merit,” Tennekes wrote. “I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."



Brazil: Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo – Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil declared himself a skeptic. “The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming,” Hackbart wrote on May 30, 2007.



France: Climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at Université Jean Moulin and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment in Lyon, is a climate skeptic. Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming – Myth or Reality? - The Erring Ways of Climatology. “Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up’ - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts’ and ‘sea level rises,’ the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!”



Norway: Geologist/Geochemist Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, a professor and head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the UN IPCC: “It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction.”



Finland: Dr. Boris Winterhalter, retired Senior Marine Researcher of the Geological Survey of Finland and former professor of marine geology at University of Helsinki, criticized the media for what he considered its alarming climate coverage. “The effect of solar winds on cosmic radiation has just recently been established and, furthermore, there seems to be a good correlation between cloudiness and variations in the intensity of cosmic radiation. Here we have a mechanism which is a far better explanation to variations in global climate than the attempts by IPCC to blame it all on anthropogenic input of greenhouse gases. “



Germany: Paleoclimate expert Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, criticized the UN IPCC summary. “I consider the part of the IPCC report, which I can really judge as an expert, i.e. the reconstruction of the paleoclimate, wrong,” Mangini noted in an April 5, 2007 article. He added: “The earth will not die.”



Canada: IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist, a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project who has over 45 years experience in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, and who has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling: “To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD (First Order Draft) and sent me the SOD (Second Order Draft) with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process.”



Czech Republic: Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. “The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid,” Kukla told Gelf Magazine on April 24, 2007.



India: One of India's leading geologists, B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. “We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles.”



USA: Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and one of the climatologists who gathered at Woods Hole to review the National Climate Program Plan in July, 1979: “Al Gore brought me back to the battle and prompted me to do renewed research in the field of climatology. And because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that ‘real’ climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem.”



Italy: Internationally renowned scientist Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists and a retired Professor of Advanced Physics at the University of Bologna in Italy, who has published over 800 scientific papers: “Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming."



New Zealand: IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001: “The [IPCC] ‘Summary for Policymakers’ might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain't so.”



South Africa: Dr. Kelvin Kemm, formerly a scientist at South Africa’s Atomic Energy Corporation who holds degrees in nuclear physics and mathematics: “The global-warming mania continues with more and more hype and less and less thinking. With religious zeal, people look for issues or events to blame on global warming.”



Poland: Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw: ““We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels.”



Australia: Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia: "There is new work emerging even in the last few weeks that shows we can have a very close correlation between the temperatures of the Earth and supernova and solar radiation.”



Britain: Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant: “To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions.”



China: Chinese Scientists Say C02 Impact on Warming May Be ‘Excessively Exaggerated’ – Scientists Lin Zhen-Shan’s and Sun Xian’s 2007 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics: "Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated." Their study asserted that "it is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change.”



Denmark: Space physicist Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen is the director of the Danish National Space Centre, a member of the space research advisory committee of the Swedish National Space Board, a member of a NASA working group, and a member of the European Space Agency who has authored or co-authored around 100 peer-reviewed papers and chairs the Institute of Space Physics: “The sun is the source of the energy that causes the motion of the atmosphere and thereby controls weather and climate. Any change in the energy from the sun received at the Earth’s surface will therefore affect climate.”





Belgium: Climate scientist Luc Debontridder of the Belgium Weather Institute’s Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) co-authored a study in August 2007 which dismissed a decisive role of CO2 in global warming: "CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. “Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it.”



Sweden: Geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus of the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, critiqued the Associated Press for hyping promoting climate fears in 2007. “Another of these hysterical views of our climate. Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate.”



USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: “In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this.” Wojick added: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”



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Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary

The over 400 skeptical scientists featured in this new report outnumber by nearly eight times the number of scientists who participated in the 2007 UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The notion of “hundreds” or “thousands” of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking “consensus” LINK) Recent research by Australian climate data analyst Dr. John McLean revealed that the IPCC’s peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired.

Proponents of man-made global warming like to note how the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have issued statements endorsing the so-called "consensus" view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially, only two dozen or so members on the governing boards of these institutions produced the "consensus" statements. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process.

The most recent attempt to imply there was an overwhelming scientific “consensus” in favor of man-made global warming fears came in December 2007 during the UN climate conference in Bali. A letter signed by only 215 scientists urged the UN to mandate deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. But absent from the letter were the signatures of these alleged “thousands” of scientists. (See AP article: - LINK )

UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri urged the world at the December 2007 UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia to "Please listen to the voice of science.”

The science has continued to grow loud and clear in 2007. In addition to the growing number of scientists expressing skepticism, an abundance of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. A November 3, 2007 peer-reviewed study found that “solar changes significantly alter climate.” (LINK) A December 2007 peer-reviewed study recalculated and halved the global average surface temperature trend between 1980 – 2002. Another new study found the Medieval Warm Period “0.3C warmer than 20th century”

A peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists found that "warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." – Another November 2007 peer-reviewed study in the journal Physical Geography found “Long-term climate change is driven by solar insolation changes.” These recent studies were in addition to the abundance of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007. - See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears"


With this new report of profiling 400 skeptical scientists, the world can finally hear the voices of the “silent majority” of scientists.