Yes, I’m still struggling. Like many of you, I am still carefully weighing all the costs and benefits of each declared GOP candidate. As the candidates continue highlighting each other’s unsavory left-wing alliances, I thought it might be helpful to compile a Hold Your Nose Tracker of the current top four front-runners. I’m just giving it to you straight. One way or the other, the plugs will come in handy. This is the hand we’ve been dealt, alas. Same as it ever was. (Flashback February 2008: The John McCain Nose Plugs.)

Update: Latest Rasmussen numbers are out. Cain: 43. Obama: 41. “Cain is tied with Romney for the lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. Nobody else is even close at the moment.”

***

Newt Gingrich. This weekend, Gingrich called out Mitt Romney’s liberal Northeast Republican record. All well and good. But let’s not pretend away Newt’s own very recent strayings from mainstream conservatism. He snuggled up to Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore in 2008 (and laughably tried to spin the humiliating lovefest as a “debate”).

He went on tour with Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan and race hustler Al Sharpton in September 2009 and again in November 2009:

He endorsed ACORN-friendly, Big Labor-backing, tax-and-spend abortion radical Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 debacle in October 2009, prompting rank-and-file conservatives to send back his book and GOP solicitations like this one from reader Barnaby, who sent back his crossed-out Republican solicitation forms with a “NO RINOS” sticky note for Newt Gingrich:

He’s played footsie with Hillary Clinton on health care, backed an individual health care mandate and aspects of Romneycare, and vigorously attacked Paul Ryan’s free-market-based Medicare reform plan.

And a friendly reminder for grass-roots Tea Party activists who were against the government bailouts before it was cool: When push came to shove, Gingrich supported TARP.

***

Herman Cain. His endorsement of pal Alan Greenspan’s Fed tenure shows too much trust for the central banking bureaucrats who helped inflate the housing bubble and who, like Naked Emperor Henry Paulson, engineered the era of endless bailouts.

For all his Tea Party cred and outside-the-Beltway status, Cain fell for the gun-to-our-heads, Chicken Little propaganda and supported TARP — vigorously — when America needed every consistent fiscal conservative voice possible to try and stop the predictable, all-purpose morphing of the bank bailout before it started.

***

Rick Perry. He tried to embarrass rival GOP gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison in September 2009 by painting her as soft on radical community organizing/fraud outfit ACORN — only to watch the attack wither after conservative opponents found him championing the group’s government shakedowns at a pro-ACORN bill-signing in 2005.

He has adopted the illegal alien DREAM Act agenda and echoed their attacks on opponents as “heartless:”

(Texans, by the way, are revolting against Perry’s lax attitude. Texas A&M students are petitioning Perry to call a special session to repeal the DREAM Act. Texas Tea Party leaders want Perry to come home and address illegal alien sanctuary cities now.)

He’s knee-deep in crony Merck lobbying ties and cash, a pair of massive government subsidy slush funds for friends and donors, and his own Solyndra-style penchant for picking taxpayer “investment” winners and losers.

And yes, he was for, then against, the government-knows-best TARP intervention. This weaseling about his position on a core Tea Party issue is typical Beltway behavior:

***

Mitt Romney . He embraced Nanny State Sen. Edward Kennedy and the federal dollars Uncle Teddy brought to the table to help subsidize Romneycare.

He put Romneycare/Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber on the map.

He took environmental advice from global warming zealot, eugenics/population control freak John Holdren, among other eco-command-and-controllers.

He stood by and watched NJ GOP Gov. Chris Christie smear Romneycare critics as “intellectually dishonest.”

Oh, and yeah: He supported TARP, too. And defends it today.

***

Gah.

***

As all of these candidates’ campaigns remind us — endlessly — there’s no such thing as a perfect candidate.

Yep, don’t we all know it? Politics is the Pageant of the Imperfects.

Every single one of these front-runners is a pro-TARP interventionist with a variety of problematic Big Biz/Big Government impulses and alliances.

Which one will do the least worst job against Obama in the debates, on the campaign trail, and ultimately in the White House? Which one will insult the base the least? Which one will actually have the energy, competence, and credibility to directly challenge Obama’s corruption, profligacy, class-warfare demagoguery, progressive pandering, and epidemic failures?

Watching, waiting, hoping, praying. And yes, preparing the nose plugs however this race turns out…

***

GOP debate viewership is nearly double the last presidential cycle’s.

The next one’s on Tuesday in Las Vegas, organized again by CNN.

Would be nice to get more conservatives to Occupy GOP Debates next time around.

I dream.

Pure, monstrous evil that was ignored for decades by state regulators:

An abortion doctor killed hundreds of babies by cutting their spinal cords with scissors after removing them from mothers late in their pregnancies, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams charged Dr. Kermitt Gosnell, 69, and nine associates with eight counts of murder, following a year-long investigation by a grand jury, whose report was unveiled on Wednesday.

The defendants are charged with first-degree murder in the cases of seven babies for which there is substantial evidence, Williams said.

Hundreds of other babies are likely to have died in Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, which he operated from 1979 to 2010, Williams said.

A third-degree murder charge stemmed from the death of a mother who died from an overdose of anesthetics, he said.

“My comprehension of the English language can’t adequately describe the barbaric nature of Dr. Gosnell,” Williams said at a news conference.

Gabriel Malor’s chilling question answers itself: “Do you really believe that just this one facility went unregulated for fifteen years?”

The victims were largely poor, minority mothers and their babies.

Planned Parenthood heroine and eugenicist Margaret Sanger no doubt approves.

Et tu, John Holdren?

People like the US De-Developer in Chief John Holdren certainly don’t seem to mind “political interference” when that interference is helping promote their cause and fleece taxpayers, but when the tables turn and some skeptics enter the scene, all of a sudden science is off limits to politics:

John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, issued a memorandum Friday to the heads of all federal departments and agencies calling for “a clear prohibition on political interference in scientific processes and expanded assurances of transparency.”

The memorandum comes as the science upon which key administration decisions are made on issues like climate change is being challenged by many Republicans in Congress. As the next Congress approaches, key members of the new House Republican majority have said they plan to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

I’m sure the timing of the Wizard’s sudden attempt to kick Toto away from the curtain is completely unrelated to man-made global warming skeptic Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner being named vice chairman of the House Science Committee last week.

Look no further than last month at the administration’s bogus “scientific” rationale behind the Gulf drilling ban for evidence that “government science” should never be handed an accountability waiver.

All Holdren wants is for select “scientists” to have say over almost every aspect of our lives and unfettered access to our money all while we’re completely powerless to do anything about it. Why drag politics into it?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The “10:10 Campaign” purports to be an effort to convince the world to cut carbon emissions ten percent per year for the next ten years. But if that doesn’t work, forget about eco-gulags for deniers — it might be necessary to just blow them up, kids and all.

By way of Story Balloon, here’s some salacious eco porn that Al Gore and the incredibly insane White House Science Czar might enjoy watching (fake blood and guts warning):

I’d be able to laugh off that video as an unfunny Monty Python-esque attempt at dark humor if I didn’t know so much about the visions and goals of the people peddling this particular scam.

Update: Chris Horner at AmSpec noticed that 10:10 took the video down from their site:

I now see they’ve taken the offending video down. Possibly in a belated fit of conscience. Or, more likely, seeing it was on its way to backfiring.

Seems to me that if “global warming” were indeed so scary in and of itself, there should be little need to inventing ways to scare kids into believing it.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

(Alternate title: Is the Climate Disrupting in Here, or is John Holdren Crazy?”)

The Obama Administration’s free-range uber-leftist psychopath “Science Czar” John Holdren, the same guy who wants to de-develop America (but in a “free market” kinda way) has obviously been charged with re-branding the foundering “global warming” movement:

The White House wants the public to start using the term “global climate disruption” in place of “global warming” — fearing the latter term oversimplifies the problem and makes it sound less dangerous than it really is.

White House science adviser John Holdren urged people to start using the phrase during a speech last week in Oslo, echoing a plea he made three years earlier. Holdren said global warming is a “dangerous misnomer” for a problem far more complicated than a rise in temperature.

An administration that goes out of its way to make terrorism sound less dangerous than it really is (i.e. “man-caused disaster”) makes the push to sell “global warming” as more dangerous than it really is. Sounds like somebody’s starting to feel uncomfortable because the icecaps and Greenland ice sheets aren’t melting fast enough. Switching “warming” to “disruption” is like Chicken Little — finally realizing that everybody’s catching on — switching to crying “the ground is rising!”

Re-branding shams is standard operating procedure for this bunch. The first thing that’s usually done with a scheme that has been exposed is to fall back, re-name it, and present the same thing all over again under a different label. An example of that is ACORN switching its name to “Communities for Change” or any other number of things that didn’t sound like “ACORN.”

Here’s a slide from Holdren’s powerpoint presentation in Oslo (ZZzzzz):

Now if we can only convince them that Powerpoint presentations cause global climate disruption.

If you ask me, the science it settled: These people are nuts — I mean, “sanity disruptions.”

Update:

Roger emails: “Regarding “global climate disruption — I think this is what the sane world calls ‘weather.’”

Maybe the Weather Channel will pick up on Holdren’s re-branding: “You’re watching the Global Climate Disruption Channel, with climate disruptions on the eights…”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

My syndicated column today looks at the global warming cultists in the Obama administration who are working overtime to paper over the ClimateGate scandal. Yesterday, Phil Jones, the head of the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia stepped aside while the university investigates. Penn State prof Michael Mann, purveyor of the infamous hockey stick graph of spiking global temperatures peddled by Al Gore, is also under investigation. GOP Sen. James Inhofe, vigilant watchdog over global warming shenanigans, wants Babs Boxer to investigate. As Obama heads to Copenhagen to crusade for massive interventions to stop global warming, a new Harris Poll shows a significant shift in public opinion away from the cult of climate change. Jonah Goldberg dissects the groupthink that has gripped the global warming industry and its media enablers. Ed Driscoll takes you on a tour through global warming evolution in six and a half minutes. Well now: “Moderate” (liberal) GOP candidates/lawmakers led by GOP cap-and-tax 8′er Mark Kirk are running as fast as they can from the global warming hot mess.

Hide the decline, hide the decline…

Oh, and just a reminder:

Former Vice President Al Gore had four White House meetings in April. The records suggest these were not social calls for Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb global warming. Two of the meetings were with John Holdren, Obama’s top science and technology adviser.

***

All the president’s ClimateGate deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

“The science is settled,” we’ve been told for decades by zealous proponents of man-made global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world’s leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won’t be surprised by the Obama administration’s response to ClimateGate.

With pursed lips and closed eyes and ears, the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled.

Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation, and cult-like cover-ups to “hide the decline” in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. The science is settled.

Never mind what The Atlantic’s Clive Crook, after wading through the climate science email files of the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, called the overpowering “stink of intellectual corruption” — combined with mafia-like suppression of dissent, suppression of evidence and methods, and “plain statistical incompetence” exposed by the document trove. The science is settled.

Never mind the expedient disappearance of mounds of raw weather station data that dissenting scientists were seeking through freedom of information requests from the Climatic Research Unit. The science is settled.

In March, President Obama made a grandiose show of putting “science” above “politics” when lifting the ban on government-funded human embryonic stem cell research. “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry,” he said during the signing ceremony. “It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

Yet, the pro-sound science president has surrounded himself with radical ClimateGate deniers who have spent their entire professional careers “settling” man-made global warming disaster science through fear-mongering, intimidation, and ridicule of opponents.

*Science czar John Holdren, who will testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on ClimateGate, infamously hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. He made a public bet against free-market economist Julian Simon predicting dire shortages of five natural resources as a result of feared overconsumption. He lost on all counts. No matter.

Holdren’s failure didn’t stop him from writing forcefully about mass sterilization and forced abortion “solutions” to a fizzling, sizzling, overpopulated planet. And it didn’t stop him from making a living making more dire predictions. In 1986, Ehrlich credited Holdren with forecasting that “carbon-dioxide climate-induced famines could kill as many as a billion people before the year 2020.” He went on to Harvard and the White House. On the David Letterman show earlier this year, Holdren fretted that his son “might not see snow!”

Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball notes that Holdren turned up in the ClimateGate files belittling the work of astrophysicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Solar, Stellar, and Planetary Sciences Division. Holdren put “Harvard” in sneer quotes when mocking a research paper Baliunas and Soon published in 2003 showing that “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” First, deny. Next, deride.

*Energy Secretary Steven Chu picked derision as his weapon earlier this year when peddling the Obama administration’s greenhouse-gas emission policy. “The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Chu. He dismissed dissent by asserting “there’s very little debate” about the impact of “green energy” policy on the economy.

There’s “very little debate,” of course, because dissenters get crushed.

*The Obama team’s chief eco-dissent-crusher is climate czar Carol Browner.

As I’ve reported and reminded over the years, she oversaw the destruction of Environmental Protection Agency computer files in brazen violation of a federal judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve its records during the Clinton years.

Over the past year, the EPA has stifled the dissent of Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, who questioned the administration’s reliance on outdated research on the health effects of greenhouse gases – and also sought to yank a YouTube video created by EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams that is critical of cap-and-trade. Browner reportedly threatened auto execs in July by telling them to “put nothing in writing…ever” about their negotiations with her.

And she is now leading the “science is settled” stonewalling in the wake of ClimateGate. “I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists,” she said. These people have been studying this issue for a very long time and agree this problem is real.” Book-cookers are good at making it seem so.

In any case, last year, more than 31,000 scientists — – including 9,021 PhDs — signed a petition sponsored by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine rejecting claims of human-caused global warming.

But hey, who’s counting? The science is settled.

***

Australia rejects a massive cap-and-tax bill.

Richard Lindzen: No, the science isn’t settled.

Paul Driessen: Time to cancel Copenhagen.

Ron Bailey on the scientific tragedy of ClimateGate:

How can the world of climate science recover? First, carry out independent investigations of the activities of the researchers involved. Pennsylvania State University has announced that it will investigate the activities of researcher Michael Mann who worked closely with the CRU and several times expressed in the leaked emails his desire to stifle the scientific work of researchers with whom he disagreed. In Britain, Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has called for an independent investigation of the CRU. Tireless journalistic global warming scold George Monbiot has declared, “It’s no use pretending this isn’t a major blow…. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign.”

“Document dump” is the operative word of the month, isn’t it?

We had another holiday weekend document dump of visitor logs from the White House, which included these trips:

Former Vice President Al Gore had four White House meetings in April. The records suggest these were not social calls for Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to curb global warming. Two of the meetings were with John Holdren, Obama’s top science and technology adviser.

Holdren, of course, is the population control freak/global warming zealout/science czar — who, as I noted last week, is smack dab in the middle of the ClimateGate scandal.

Speaking of which, the research institution at the center of ClimateGate admitted its own document dump over the weekend:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

And to round out document-dump-a-palooza, here’s the latest on the massive ACORN docdump.

Viva transparency!

***

More:

*Paul Mirengoff at Power Line: The Obama-Holder Justice Department turns a blind eye to ACORN . More here.

Well now: ACORN and NBC collaborated together on an undercover sting project.

See my “ACORN Watch: A ‘sting’-ing indictment of media hypocrisy” for more on NBC hypocrisy and the old media protection racket.

*There is now a searchable ClimateGate database here.

*White House press secretary Robert Gibbs — echoing data destruction expert/energy czar Carol Browner — says ClimateGate has no bearing on Obama’s push for massive global warming taxes/intervention. The science is “settled.”

Yeah, who cares about the global warming scandal of the century?

An Obama science policy flashback from March 2009:

But let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

Words, just words.

***

The Atlantic’s Clive Crook blasts ClimateGate corruption:

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu [subscription required]. It goes to the core of that process.

One theme, in addition to those already mentioned about the suppression of dissent, the suppression of data and methods, and the suppression of the unvarnished truth, comes through especially strongly: plain statistical incompetence. This is something that Henderson’s study raised, and it was also emphasised in the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick, and in other independent studies of the Hockey Stick controversy. Of course it is also an ongoing issue in Steve McIntyre’s campaign to get hold of data and methods. Nonetheless I had given it insufficient weight. Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work.

I’m also surprised by the IPCC’s response. Amid the self-justification, I had hoped for a word of apology, or even of censure. (George Monbiot called for Phil Jones to resign, for crying out loud.) At any rate I had expected no more than ordinary evasion. The declaration from Rajendra Pachauri that the emails confirm all is as it should be is stunning. Science at its best. Science as it should be. Good lord. This is pure George Orwell. And these guys call the other side “deniers”.

Ah, science czar John Holdren.

He’s been hyping climate change catastrophe since the 1970s, has been a master of stonewalling critics of his population control zealotry, and knows how to hide behind friendly water-carriers in the media.

So, you won’t be surprised to learn he is smack dab in the middle of the exploding ClimateGate scandal.

Dr. Tim Ball and Judi McLeod at Canadian Free Press shine the light (hat tip: @crabbycon) :

Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.

…“There is a multitude of small but frightening stories in the massive files,” Ball writes. “For example I’ve known solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon for a long time. I’ve published articles with Willie and enjoyed extensive communication. I was on advisory committees with them when Sallie suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray. I don’t know if the following events were contributing factors but it is likely.

“Baliunas and Soon were authors of excellent work confirming the existence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from a multitude of sources. Their work challenged attempts to get rid of the MWP because it contradicted the claim by the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Several scientists challenged the claim that the latter part of the 20th century was the warmest ever. They knew the claim was false, many warmer periods occurred in the past. Michael Mann ‘got rid’ of the MWP with his production of the hockey stick, but Soon and Baliunas were problematic. What better than have a powerful academic destroy their credibility for you? Sadly, there are always people who will do the dirty work.”

Indeed, Holdren’s emails show how sincere scientists would be made into raw “entertainment”.

How the deed was done

“A perfect person and opportunity appeared. On 16th October 2003 Michael Mann, infamous for his lead in the ‘hockey stick’ that dominated the 2001 IPCC Report, sent an email to people involved in the CRU scandal;

Dear All,

Thought you would be interested in this exchange, which John Holdren of Harvard has been kind enough to pass along…” At the time Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy & Director, Program in Science, Technology, & Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is now Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology—informally known as the United States Science Czar.

In an email on October16, 2003 from John Holdren to Michael Mann and Tom Wigley we are told:

“I’m forwarding for your entertainment an exchange that followed from my being quoted in the Harvard Crimson to the effect that you and your colleagues are right and my “Harvard” colleagues Soon and Baliunas are wrong about what the evidence shows concerning surface temperatures over the past millennium. The cover note to faculty and postdocs in a regular Wednesday breakfast discussion group on environmental science and public policy in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences is more or less self-explanatory.”

The Wednesday Breakfast Group

“This is what Holdren sent to the Wednesday Breakfast group.

“I append here an e-mail correspondence I have engaged in over the past few days trying to educate a Soon/Baliunas supporter who originally wrote to me asking how I could think that Soon and Baliunas are wrong and Mann et al. are right (a view attributed to me, correctly, in the Harvard Crimson). This individual apparently runs a web site on which he had been touting the Soon/Baliunas position.”

“The exchange Holdren refers to is a challenge by Nick Schulz editor of Tech Central Station (TCS). On August 9, 2003 Schulz wrote;

“In a recent Crimson story on the work of Soon and Baliunas, who have written for my website techcentralstation.com, you are quoted as saying: My impression is that the critics are right. It s unfortunate that so much attention is paid to a flawed analysis, but that’s what happens when something happens to support the political climate in Washington. Do you feel the same way about the work of Mann et. al.? If not why not?”

“Holdren provides lengthy responses on October 13, 14, and 16 but comments fail to answer Schulz’s questions. After the first response Schulz replies, “I guess my problem concerns what lawyers call the burden of proof. The burden weighs heavily, much more heavily, given the claims on Mann et.al. than it does on Soon/Baliunas. Would you agree?” Of course, Holdren doesn’t agree. He replies, “But, in practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing-it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.” No it doesn’t evolve; it is either on one side or the other. This argument is in line with what has happened with AGW. He then demonstrates his lack of understanding of science and climate science by opting for Mann and his hockey stick over Soon and Baliunas. His entire defense and position devolves to a political position. His attempt to belittle Soon and Baliunas in front of colleagues is a measure of the man’s blindness and political opportunism that pervades everything he says or does…

Like I said last week: The Chicago Way is the Global Warming Mob Way.

Fraudulent bully birds of a feather flock together.

Stanford University has banned a skeptical documentary film from airing a climate change interview with one of its prominent warming activist professors, Stephen Schneider. After legal threats from Stanford University — apparently on behalf of Prof. Schneider — the documentary filmmakers were forced to use a blank screen and an actor had to read the transcript of Schneider’s already taped but legally banned climate interview. The skeptical global warming documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong”, set for its international premier on October 18, 2009, interviewed Schneider about his flip-flop from a coming ice age proponent in the 1970s to his current advocacy of man-made global warming fears. Schneider is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. (email: shswebsite@lists.stanford.edu)

Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer told Climate Depot: “Lawyers for Stanford University have tried to ban our documentary from reporting on how one of their professors previously predicted an imminent ice-age, but is now a leading global warming advocate.” (Schneider joins others like Obama Science Czar John Holdren. See: Climate Depot’s Factsheet on 1970s Coming ‘Ice Age’ Claims — ‘Fears of a coming ice age, showed up in peer-reviewed literature, at scientific conferences, by prominent scientists and throughout the media’)

Watch the “banned” video excerpt from “Not Evil Just Wrong” of an actor portraying Schneider’s interview:

The truly inconvenient truth is out there.

So, I forced myself to watch the Population Control Freak and the Perv on CBS last night.

I can report to you that wackjob science czar John Holdren’s stonewalling press office will be very happy this morning.

A deferential David Letterman didn’t breathe a word about Holdren’s radical views, his extreme published works, his phenomenally wrong-headed predictions, or his eugenics-obsessed intellectual mentors.

Instead, Letterman lectured his audience to “pay attention” to his “fun” and “informational” interview with Holdren.

Letterman grilled him on whether he felt “exhilaration or frustration” about his job advising the White House — which Holdren used as an opportunity to bash Bush/Cheney.

With furrowed brow, Letterman drummed up global warming fear, indignantly asserted that “Coal is the culprit,” and fretted that “My son might not have a chance to see snow!”

It was even too thick for fear-mongerer Holdren, who joked that “It depends on what altitude he lives at.”

Letterman concluded with encomiums to Holdren and pronounced himself relieved. “We have many reasons to breathe easier and you’re one of them!”

Alas, my Top 10 list of nuttiest Holdren quotes didn’t get into the hands of Letterman’s writers in time.

What next for Holdren on his tour of tough media venues? Dancing With the Stars?

I reported on Monday that wackjob science czar John Holdren is scheduled to make a second appearance on David Letterman’s late-night CBS show. (He first appeared last spring to stir up global warming hysteria.)

Just a reminder to set your Tivos. It’s still a go, according to the Letterman Show website.

To help The Perv’s writers out, here’s my Top 10 List of nuttiest passages from Holdren’s works (all available at Zombietime and CNS):

10. Planetary control…

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”

9. Regulating the number of children…

“Individual rights must be balanced against the power of the government to control human reproduction. Some people—respected legislators, judges, and lawyers included—have viewed the right to have children as a fundamental and inalienable right. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution mentions a right to reproduce. Nor does the UN Charter describe such a right, although a resolution of the United Nations affirms the “right responsibly to choose” the number and spacing of children (our emphasis). In the United States, individuals have a constitutional right to privacy and it has been held that the right to privacy includes the right to choose whether or not to have children, at least to the extent that a woman has a right to choose not to have children. But the right is not unlimited. Where the society has a “compelling, subordinating interest” in regulating population size, the right of the individual may be curtailed. If society’s survival depended on having more children, women could he required to bear children, just as men can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopulation, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive reproduction could be enacted.

It is often argued that the right to have children is so personal that the government should not regulate it. In an ideal society, no doubt the state should leave family size and composition solely to the desires of the parents. In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?”

8. Forced abortions…

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

7. Forced marriage, forced adoptions, and more forced abortions…

“One way to carry out this disapproval might be to insist that all illegitimate babies be put up for adoption—especially those born to minors, who generally are not capable of caring properly for a child alone. If a single mother really wished to keep her baby, she might be obliged to go through adoption proceedings and demonstrate her ability to support and care for it. Adoption proceedings probably should remain more difficult for single people than for married couples, in recognition of the relative difficulty of raising children alone. It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society.”

6. And it could be legal…

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”

5. Involuntary fertility control…

“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
…
The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”

4. Not quite human…

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.”

3. ZEG…“Why should we not strive for zero economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population growth?”

2. De-development…

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States…De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.

…The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being.”

1. Sterilants in your drinking supply…

“Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock.”

Think these passages will come up tonight?

Cue the laugh track…

According David Letterman’s website, wackjob science czar Dr. John Holdren is scheduled to appear Wednesday night, September 2.

Holdren has been a guest on Letterman before. He visited in April 2008 to ply global warming scare propaganda.

Not a peep from Letterman about Holdren’s spectacularly wrong predictions and irresponsible alarmism.

And we certainly won’t expect a peep from Letterman about Holdren’s extremist musings on forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and undesirables.

Wouldn’t want to be accused of “defamation” by the left-wing blogs, eh, Dave?

Holdren’s office has gotten away with stonewalling questions about the science czar’s promotion of his colleague and mentor, eugenicist Harrison Brown.

These are the questions I asked last month — and which many readers also asked of Holdren’s office to no avail:

1) Does Dr. Holdren disavow the population control extremism of his intellectual mentor and colleague, Harrison Brown or not?

2) Does Dr. Holdren also view the world population as a “pulsating mass of maggots?”

3) Was Dr. Holdren unaware of Harrison Brown’s views when he paid homage to him at the AAAS keynote address in 2007?

Internet investigative blogger Zombie spotlighted copious passages from one of Holdren’s favorite books by Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man’s Future, which openly advocates a “broad eugenics program” — and also featured Holdren’s own praise for the book:

I should emphasize, therefore, that my contribution is written in what I take to be the spirit in which Harrison wrote The Challenge of Man’s Future—that is, the conviction that it is necessary to dwell on the perils in order to stimulate timely action to avoid or minimize them.

…

To put too much emphasis on the correctness or incorrectness of particular predictions, however, is to miss the main point of writing usefully about the future. The idea is not to be “right,” but to illuminate the possibilities in a way that both stimulates sensible debate about the sort of future we want and facilitates sound decisions about getting from here to there. This philosophy has informed Harrison Brown’s writing about the human future throughout the four decades in which he has been doing it. Our understanding of the dimensions of the human predicament—and of what might be done to alleviate it—is much the better for his effort.

…

The mid-twentieth-century revival of Malthus’s insight that no combination of good technology and good management can cope with unlimited population growth on a finite planet (a revival to which Harrison Brown’s 1954 book, The Challenge of Man’s Future, was the most eloquent and comprehensive contribution) is more relevant in the 1980s than ever.

…

In the spirit in which Harrison Brown wrote The Challenge of Man’s Future some thirty years ago, this chapter has been written as a contribution to the continuing effort to help create that consensus.

Zombie notes:

The first paragraph of this long quote confirms what some of Holdren’s defenders claimed about his statements in Ecoscience — namely that Holdren proposes extreme measures simply as scare tactics. When he says “it is necessary to dwell on the perils in order to stimulate timely action,” it’s his way of saying that we should terrify the populace into going along with his proposals by painting a dire picture of what the alternatives might be. (Global warming, anyone?)

I found the next paragraph particularly amusing, especially his claim that it’s not important to make accurate predictions about the future, but simply to make any predictions at all — the wilder, the better, apparently — to “stimulate debate.” (Global warming, anyone?)

And the rest of the quote is the by-now-familiar groveling by Holdren at the altar of Brown.

Will Letterman crack jokes with Dr. Holdren about “de-development?”

Perhaps they’ll share a laugh about the prospect of “zero economic growth” or Holdren’s views regarding newborn babies not being fully human.

Yep. Late Night With The Population Control Freak and the Perv.

Should be riveting television.

***

I am again reprinting what I reported last month on Holdren and Brown as a reminder of what the science czar refuses to talk about:

Well, I have indeed read one of Holdren’s recent works that reveals his clingy reverence for, and allegiance to, the gurus of population control authoritarianism. He’s just gotten smarter about cloaking it behind global warming hysteria. In 2007, he addressed the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. Holdren served as AAAS president; the organization posted his full powerpoint presentation (you can download the whole thing here.)

Take a gander at the opening slide that set the tone for his entire speech. Holdren admitted that his “preoccupation” with apocalyptic matters such as “the rates at which people breed” is a lifelong obsession inspired by scientist Harrison Brown:

Who is Harrison Brown? And what’s in “The Challenge of Man’s Future?” Holdren’s hero was a “distinguished member” of the International Eugenics Society. And, lo and behold, Harrison Brown advocated the same population control-freak measures Holdren put forth in Ecoscience.

Surprise:

Harrison Brown, writing to us from the year 1954 in his book, “The Challenge of Man’s Future,” suggests a method that would strike us as a crass violation of the rights mentioned above:

Let us suppose that in a given year the birth rate exceeds the death rate by a certain amount, thus resulting in a population increase. During the following year the number of permitted inseminations is decreased, and the number of permitted abortions is increased, in such a way that the birth rate is lowered by the requisite amount. If the death rate exceeds the birth rate, the number of permitted inseminations would be increased while the number of abortions would be decreased. The number of abortions and artificial inseminations permitted in a given year would be determined completely by the difference between the number of deaths and the number of births in the year previous.

But that wouldn’t be all. If we are to maintain a worldwide sustainable industrial society, we will need to control population across current borders. If we don’t, many members of overpopulated societies will soon be knocking at our doors asking for assistance or even entry.

Brown also suggests that such control over reproduction might be used to slow down the deterioration of the human species. This has occurred in industrial society because humans are no longer subject to natural selection to the same degree that they have been in the past. Those who are healthy and able might be encouraged through incentives to have several offspring, while those who have deficiencies, say, of sight or hearing or mental ability might be discouraged. The problem, he notes, is in deciding what really constitutes “fit” or “unfit” and overcoming our revulsion to such a eugenics scheme. Still, he adds, when one considers the bald evolutionary facts, it behooves human societies, if they want to remain resilient in the face of changing conditions on Earth, to somehow replace nature’s cruel hand in pruning the so-called “unfit” with something less drastic. It’s that or face eventual extinction.

Brown acknowledges that none of this will seem acceptable to the vast majority of his readers. But, he is concerned that unless population stability and other problems are addressed head on, arrangements that are far more restrictive and objectionable than the ones he proposes may be implemented in their place.

Harrison Brown’s book — the book that inspired Obama science czar John Holdren — also infamously likened the world’s growing population to “a pulsating mass of maggots.” Don’t just believe me. Believe your own eyes:

A Time magazine profile of Brown published when his book came out in 1954 reported: “Scientist Brown is not confident that anything can be done, but he insists that population control is the first and essential measure; only by cutting their birth rates drastically can the crowded agricultural countries hope to enjoy the benefits of industrialization.”

If, as the White House claims, Holdren no longer believes that “that determining optimal population is a proper role of government,” then why does he still pay homage to one of the country’s most renowned population control advocates and plug his half-century-old tome advocating better-living-through-engineered-abortions? Don’t just take my word. Believe your own eyes:

***

Commenter Rogue Cheddar on Letterman and Holdren: “So if these two maggots get together, does that constitute a pulsating mass?”

Bracing for Letterman and Holdren’s “Top Ten Methods of Ridding the Planet of Undesirables”…

Last month, I reported on how the Obama science czar’s office stonewalled my questions about John Holdren and his warm relationship with intellectual mentor and colleague Harrison Brown, a leading eugenics enthusiast who referred to the world population as a “pulsating mass of maggots.”

Investigative blogger Zombie provided an in-depth look at Holdren and Brown two weeks ago. (Full Holdren archives here.)

A deafening silence about Holdren’s radical ideology continues to grip the MSM. But the pressure from blogs and Fox News is getting under the science czar’s skin. And the left-wing Huffington Post has stepped up to try and stifle critics — by accusing them of a “defamation campaign.” When you can’t win arguments with dissenters, redefine their criticism as defamatory hate:

Conservative media outlets are waging an online defamation campaign against Presidential Science Advisor Jon Holdren, using out-of-context quotes and misinformation to portray him as hell-bent on pursuing population control through the use of forced abortions and mass sterilization.

Fox News reported that Holdren was bent on adopting a “planetary regime” of population control, while blogger Michelle Malkin called him a “wackjob” who entertains policies that would mandate “forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and poisoning the water supply to control the population.”

I called him a wackjob because he is a wackjob, and HuffPo’s best efforts to spin his work — which people can read for themselves — can’t mask the truth.

HuffPo’s newest alibi for Holdren?

“Holdren’s work was also a product of its time.”

Bull. The ghost of Margaret Sanger is not an abandoned artifact, but an animating spirit that thrives on the Left under the guise of “choice” and green values funded by deep-pocketed social engineers like the Rockefellers and Ted Turner.

The mainstream apathy over this population control enthusiast masquerading as a climate change do-gooder is a product of our time.

If this is “defamation,” go ahead and sue.

Go ahead.

Pay attention:

An elite group of 21 US researchers met publicly for the first time last week as the new advisory panel to US President Barack Obama on scientific and technical matters. But despite an enthusiastic inaugural meeting, it will take time to know how effective the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) will be.

PCAST has already put together its first report, on the government’s H1N1 pandemic strategy. Other topics likely to be high on its agenda include how science can help the economic recovery, and how best to deliver on Obama’s ambitious climate and energy research portfolio.

Opening the meeting on 6 August, co-chair John Holdren called the council “a spectacular cast of leaders of our science, technology and innovation communities”. Holdren, who is Obama’s chief science adviser, chairs PCAST with Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The full group boasts three Nobel laureates and 16 members of the national academies of science, engineering or medicine.

The blogosphere and alternative media are the only sources of skepticism and investigation into Holdren’s radical views. The White House czar’s office continues to stonewall. The MSM continues to yawn.

No matter.

Blogger and Internet journalist Zombie, who first posted extensive PDF images of Holdren’s mass sterilization/forced abortion tract, Ecoscience, is back with a new report on Holdren’s intellectual mentor and colleague, Harrison Brown — whose work I called attention to last month.

Read it all here. Pass it on. Spread the word. The truth will out.

If they cared about wackjobs espousing conspiracy theories, they’d be grilling every liberal commentator or Republican politician who appeared on TV about the wackjob science czar, John Holdren. There would be a Holdren litmus test:

Are you comfortable with a science czar whose intellectual mentor is a renowned eugenicist?

Do you agree that musing about forced abortions, mass sterilizations, and poisoning the water supply to control the population is in the mainstream?

Do you think the president should employ a man who pays homage to a population control zealot who views the global population as a “pulsating mass of maggots?”

The news staff at CNS did some new reporting the MSM won’t do on Holdren. It’s not just Ecoscience that Holdren co-wrote with the Ehrlichs.

Christopher Neefus writes about Holdren’s views on “de-development” in the 1973 book, “Human Ecology:”

President Obama’s top science adviser, John P. Holdren, advocated the “de-development” of the United States in books he published in the 1970s.

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote in a 1973 book he co-authored with Paul R. Ehrlch and Anne H. Ehrlich. “De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.”

In the vision expressed by Holdren and his co-authors, the Ehrlichs, the need for “de-development” of the United States demanded a redistribtuion of wealth.

“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge,” they wrote. “They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided to every human being.”

Holdren, who is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, made these comments in the 1973 book “Human Ecology,” which he co-authored with the Ehrlichs, long-time advocates of curtailing population growth.

And Terry Jeffrey reported:

President Obama’s top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if he or she is properly fed and socialized.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”

…“Human values and institutions have set mankind on a collision course with the laws of nature,” wrote the Ehrlichs and Holdren. “Human beings cling jealously to their prerogative to reproduce as they please—and they please to make each new generation larger than the last—yet endless multiplication on a finite planet is impossible. Most humans aspire to greater material prosperity, but the number of people that can be supported on Earth if everyone is rich is even smaller than if everyone is poor.”

The specific passage expressing the authors’ view that a baby “will ultimately develop into a human being” is on page 235 in chapter 8 of the book, which is titled “Population Limitation.”