Evidently, Minutemen Founder Gilchrist Doesn't
Like Us

post from Crooks and Liars on 28 July 2012 06:00:51 PM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge Jim Gilchrist, left, and Shawna Forde patrolling the desert together in 2007.

I mentioned the other day that Minuteman movement cofounder Jim Gilchrist has been adamantly denying to everyone in sight the truth of what I reported about him earlier this week -- namely, that not only was he tightly associated with child killer Shawna Forde right up to the moment of her arrest, but he was aware of the crazy schemes she had in mind well before she tried enacting them.

It seems that yesterday, he posted in the comments of the AlterNet piece where I reported all this -- and I guess we can call this definitive:

Dear Readers,
David Neiwert's attempt to glorify the murder of a nine-year-old girl and her father for the purpose of bogus journalistic acclaim and the financial gain he anticipates from selling books represents perhaps the lowest form of "dirty" journalism.
I just got off the phone with private investigator Mike Carlucci and we both agree that David Neiwert has made up most of the so-called facts in his article. I, nor Mr. Carlucci ever had any discussion with Shawna Forde about her agenda to rob drug dealers.
Furthermore, the Minuteman Movement was not seriously interfered with by whatever Shawna Forde and her two accomplices did. The Minuteman Movement was put into a temporary tailspin by some selfish opportunists posing as immigration law enforcement advocates whose true interest was in hijacking the movement for their own financial and egotistical interests, in my opinion.
David Neiwert is a fiction writer who should be forthright with his readership and disclose that his selfish agenda is to sell books and be falsely heralded as "one of the great thinkers of our time."
Shawna Forde and her two thugs were lone wolves who operated their own organization distinct and separate from other immigration activist groups. She also regularly communicated with many of the hundred or so similar groups established around the country. Simply, the murderous trio used a feigned participation in the immigration law enforcement movement as a convenient veil to cloak some sinister plans to rob drug dealers and coyotes.
David Neiwert knows this, yet he revels in the opportunity to hang as many innocent persons as possible...all the while salivating at the glossy-eyed, delusional thought that such unprofessional behavior will somehow bring him recognition and money.
Not so.
There are professional journalists, and there are "dirty" journalists. David Neiwert, and his counterparts in the Southern Poverty Law Center who cooperated with him in his propaganda efforts, are dirty journalists. The veracity of their writings should be accorded the appropriate skepticism due a propaganda mill.
Sincerely,
Jim Gilchrist, Founder and President, The Minuteman Project
--a multiethnic immigration law enforcement advocacy group--

I'm not going to bother responding to much of this, other than to say I've conversed with Carlucci after his conversation with Gilchrist, and I'm quite certain Gilchrist is lying through his teeth about Mike's views of my reportage. But that should not surprise anyone here.

If Gilchrist were so confident that I reported even a single false fact, he and his attorneys would be lining up the libel suit as we speak. But he's not, because I didn't, and therefore he can't. He's stuck, he knows it, and is now relegated to blowing off steam in my general direction. Which bothers me not even the slightest.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/evidently-minutemen-founder-gilchris

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Open Thread: Guns, Mitt, and Medicaid

post from Daily Kos on 28 July 2012 06:00:06 PM. © Daily Kos

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...

American gun owners are under siege, by Mark Sumner
Mitt Romney's meth labs of democracy, by Jon Perr aka Avenging Angel
The coming Medicaid wars, by Armando
Mitt Romney is a frequent and blatant liar. Why don't our guardians of discourse care?, by Hunter
Romney in London: The embarrassments are the sideshow, the real story is the economy, by Laurence Lewis
The Second Amendment and the fantasy of revolution, by Dante Atkins
A tale of two Barbers, by Denise Oliver Velez
Walmart abuses aren't just a problem for workers. They're a problem for the rule of law., by Laura Clawson
Pressuring Chick-Fil-A on LGBT equality, some politicians overreach, by Scott Wooledge

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/LnWHZi7FegU/-Open-Thread-Guns-Mitt
-and-Medicaid

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Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global
Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution

post from ThinkProgress on 28 July 2012 06:00:03 PM. © ThinkProgress

“The decadal land-surface average temperature using a 10-year moving average of surface temperatures over land. Anomalies are relative to the Jan 1950 – December 1979 mean. The grey band indicates 95% statistical and spatial uncertainty interval.” A Koch-funded reanalysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports finds that “essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming. A forthcoming NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been excerpted on a conservative website with the headline, “New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2.”

I have spoken with scientists and journalists familiar with BEST’s findings, and the excerpt appears genuine. Here is the money graf:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I?ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.

Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

It gets better:

Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth?s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

Here is some background on BEST followed by a longer excerpt of the op-ed.

A group of scientists led by one well-known skeptic, Muller — and whose only climatologist listed is Judith Curry, a well-known confusionist [see Schmidt and Annan and Steig andVerheggen, and CP] — decided to reexamine all of the temperature data they could get their hands on. I broke the story of their initial findings in March 2011 (with the help of climatologist Ken Caldeira) – see Exclusive: Berkeley temperature study results ?confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.?

The top figure is an updated chart of their findings from March of this year. They found a lot of warming.

Indeed, their key paper from 2011 found:

… our analysis suggests a degree of global land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions.

So the only remaining question for BEST was: What is the cause of that warming? Of course, those who read ClimateProgress or the scientific literature already knew the answer to that question (see the 12/11 post, It?s ?Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950? Was Manmade; It?s Highly Likely All of It Was).

BEST is set to release those findings this week. The excellent UK Guardian reporter, Leo Hickman, tweeted earlier today that “Significant climate-related news will be breaking on Guardian website in next 24-36 hours” and then he tweeted an hour ago the link to the excerpt of Muller’s op-ed. Here is the full excerpt:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I?ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.
My turnaround is the result of the careful and objective analysis by the ?Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature? team, founded by me and my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth?s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the IPCC concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the IPCC consensus statement, that the warming before to 1956 could be due to changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophistical statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist Robert Rohde, and which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), data selection (prior groups selected less than 20% of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100%), poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones), and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions. …
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we?ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect ? extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don?t prove causality and they shouldn?t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide. …

Well, in fact, to be seriously considered, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does CO2 — and it must offer some mechanism that counteracts the well-known warming effect of CO2. Not bloody likely.

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. With a simple model (no tipping points, no sudden increase in cloud cover, a response to gases that is ?logarithmic?) I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about 1.5 degree F over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid growth (it has averaged 10% per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (typically adding one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Ouch.

I asked Caldeira for a comment on Muller’s op-ed. He writes:

I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly everyone else had come to more than a decade ago.
The basic scientific results have been established for a long time now, so I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important. However, their result may be politically important. It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans, when they take a hard look at the data, see that the climate scientists have been right all along.

Who’d have thunk it? Not the Kochs….

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-fi
nds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/

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Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 28 July 2012 06:00:00 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Our regular featured content-On This Day In History July 28 by TheMomCatPunting the Pundits by TheMomCatAnd these featured articles-Popular Culture 20120727: John Alec Entwistle by TranslatorYou're Doing It Wrong!: The Newsroom Edition by: poligirlHealth[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.docudharma.com/diary/30469/today-on-the-stars-hollow-gazette

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July 28: Missouri Slipping Away From Democrats

post from FiveThirtyEight on 28 July 2012 05:54:57 PM. © FiveThirtyEight

Two polls give Mitt Romney a nine-point advantage in the state.

Read The Full Article:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/july-28-missouri-slipping-awa
y-from-democrats/

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The Unemployment Rate is a Problem

post from Where Is The Outrage? on 28 July 2012 05:43:23 PM. © Where Is The Outrage?

The unemployment rate has been firmly stuck at 8.2% and neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is going to be able to fix the unemployment rate anytime soon. Let's take off our partisan hats just for second. Let's think about the things that we do on a daily basis. Let's take, for example, going to the

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WheresTheOutrage/~3/9mRbVuonjo0/

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The Unemployment Rate Is a Problem That Neither
Candidate, Neither Party Can Fix

post from Where Is The Outrage? on 28 July 2012 05:43:23 PM. © Where Is The Outrage?

The unemployment rate has been start firmly stuck at 8.2%, neither candidate, Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney, are going to be able to fix the unemployment rate anytime soon. Let's take off for partisan hats just for second. Let's think about the things that we do on a daily basis. For example, going to the grocery

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WheresTheOutrage/~3/9mRbVuonjo0/

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The Unemployment Rate Is a Problem

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The DMZ: RomneyShambles Edition

On this week's edition of "The DMZ" on Bloggingheads.tv the Daily Caller's Matt Lewis and I debate why is Romney doing a foreign trip, if the GOP is successfully quoting Obama out of context and is it worth going to the conventions? Watch it below.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.liberaloasis.com/2012/07/the_dmz_romneyshambles_edition.php

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To Some Conservatives A Romney Victory Is Very
Worrying-- And For Plenty Of Reasons

James Stafford runs a blog called OilPrice.com and the other day he interviewed conservative economic commentator Mike ?Mish? Shedlock, who writes the blog Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis. Stafford, of course, is just trying to figure out where oil prices are headed and he asked Shedlock to give him an idea of what might happen after the November election, Shedlock was pessimistic.

Oilprice.com: In regards to presidential elections, how do you think energy will fare under Obama and under Romney? Which sectors will benefit, and which will suffer?

Mish: Mitt Romney has declared that if he?s elected he is going to label China a currency manipulator and increase tariffs on China across the board. That's something that I believe he might be able to do by mandate. If he's elected and he does follow through, I think the result will be a global trade war the likes of which we have not seen since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act compounded problems during the Great Depression. Simply put, I think that global trade will collapse if Romney wins and he follows through on his campaign promises.

Unfortunately, campaign rhetoric now is heating up to the point where President Obama and Mitt Romney are trying to outdo each other on who's going to do more to China. Thus, we may very well see a global trade war regardless of who wins.

As an aside, Mitt Romney is pledging to increase military spending. Given Romney?s statements on Iran, it's more likely he would start a war with Iran than Obama. Note that the U.S. military is one of the biggest users of petroleum worldwide and oil price shocks could be devastating.

None of this is any good for the world economy at all. I believe that Romney will do what he says. I believe he's more likely to start wars than Obama, but that doesn't make Obama any good. This is the worst slate of candidates in U.S. history running for president, and I'm writing in Ron Paul.

I think that's what all Ron Paul backers should do. And did you know that Ron Paul asked Romney for a chance to speak at the Republican Convention in Tampa and Romney turned him down flat-- twice! That isn't going to help Romney with Jewsih Ron Paul supporters-- and neither is his trip to Israel. Even if he doesn't do something foolish like eat a ham and cheese sandwich at the Wailing Wall, he isn't picking up any steam among Jewish voters in the U.S., despite the GOP strategy of offending Muslims at every opportunity.

According to Chemi Shalev writing in Israel's Haaretz:

In any case, the poll shows that until now, the Republican campaign against Obama's attitude toward Israel has achieved only modest results and Romney has his work cut out for him if he is seeking to change the equation in Israel. With 68% of the vote and 7% undecided, Obama seems to be on track to coming close to his 2008 levels of support among Jewish voters, which was estimated to be about 75%.

If we take away the undecided voters in the Gallup survey, Jewish voters break 73/27 for Obama.

A recent report by the non-partisan Solomon Project found retroactively that Obama received 74% of the Jewish vote in 2008.

Last month, Gallup found that Obama led Romney 64%/29%. But if we compare it to Gallup's data from June 2011, this poll shows a significant increase in Jewish support for the President. Further, if we compare this to the Gallup data from June 2008, Obama is doing better this year over Romney than he did against John McCain in 2008.

One thing is clear from this trend in the polling data: the more American Jews get to know Mitt Romney, the less they like him and the more they support Obama.