In my “Moonbat” post this past weekend I wrote about some of John McCain’s views and “Global Warming” became a hot topic of debate in the comments section.

My contention is that having Al Gore selling carbon credits and making millions of dollars but refusing to debate top scientific global warming skeptics would make any reasonable person question the theories Mr. Gore presents. In fact, the pro-global warming crowd ignores the skeptics as if they are a pack of lepers infecting the so-called experts and the world.

Al Gore for one is no expert; after all, he claimed to be the “father of the internet” and has proven to be more full of methane than facts. The one fact Al Gore has proven is you can scare the masses into believing a story about global warming much the way Orson Welles set Americans into a panic while reading “The War of the Worlds” on the radio.

The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005. The seven-year decline makes warming look much more like the moderate, erratic warming to be expected when the planet naturally shifts from a Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD) to a centuries-long warm phase like the Medieval Warming (950–1300 AD) or the Roman Warming (200 BC– 600 AD). The strong 28-year upward trend of 1970–1998 may be ending.

“Global warming” is good for business in many sectors. New light bulbs have provided Sylvania, Philips, and GE with a marketing tool to scrap the incandescent light bulb in favor of the twisted mercury laden bulb on the market today. Politicians will probably make the Edison invention illegal and the “Light Bulb Police” will be knocking on our doors for a home inspection to see if we are using the old bulbs, smoking cigarettes, packing a Smith and Wesson, and munching on Foie Gras. What’s next, making a Macanudo, Glenlivet and grilling in our backyard illegal?

By the way, don’t drop one of those new twisted light bulbs. The mercury inside one of these “energy efficient” delights contains mercury and you may have to remove the kids and pets from your home and call a HAZMAT unit. Your house may be sealed off and resemble the home where E.T. was discovered and men in white space suits will take over your property.

Siegfried Frederick Singer, a well-known skeptic on man-made warming, points out that the latest cooling trend is dictated primarily by a very warm El Nino year in 1998. “When you start your graph with 1998,” he says, “you will necessarily get a cooling trend.”

Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist from Australia, notes that the earth also had strong global warming between 1918 and 1940. Then there was a long cooling period from 1940 to 1965. He points out that the current warming started 50 years before cars and industries began spewing consequential amounts of CO2. Then the planet cooled for 35 years just after the CO2 levels really began to surge. In fact, says Carter, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between temperatures and man-made CO2.

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon. (Newsweek, April 28, 1975 pdf.)

To be fair, although the Left isn’t being fair, RealClimate.com provides an argument why the “Global Cooling Myth“, as they put it, should not be used as an argument to debunk the “Global Warming Myth”, as we put it.

We could Google the premises for both sides of the debate but we can’t get the warming proponents to debate the skeptics in a real public forum. Simply browse through our Global Warming category to get a glimpse at how the Global Warming side wishes to cut off debate specifically here, here, and here.

Part of the real problem could be in California, Wisconsin, Vermont and every region in the world with livestock.

Look who’s laughing now? Indeed!

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

Mr. McCain, the presumptive GOP candidate for President of the United States has made promises to Conservative that he is, a Conservative.

Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in February the Senator said:

“I know I have a responsibility, if I am, as I hope to be, the Republican nominee for President, to unite the party and prepare for the great contest in November.”

However, Mr. McCain sounded more like John Kerry than the proud “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution” in his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council this week.

Perhaps above all, leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.

One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies.  We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to.  We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies — that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests. 

 Kerry’s “Global Test” or McCains?

We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies.  When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right.  But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them. 

Be Kind to the Terrorist

America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model.  How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad.  We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society.  We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured.  I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

 Welcome Home Jihadists

America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model.  How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad.  We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society.  We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured.  I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

Global Test and Global Temp

There is such a thing as international good citizenship.  We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home.  The risks of global warming have no borders.  We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren.  We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner.  We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India. 

McCain’s Short Memory (from AIPAC Speech)

I know I have a responsibility, if I am, as I hope to be, the Republican nominee for President, to unite the party and prepare for the great contest in November. And I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavor, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conservatives, whose convictions, creativity and energy have been indispensible [sic] to the success our party has had over the last quarter century.

John Kerry in Conservative Clothing

“I am proud to be a conservative, and I make that claim because I share with you that most basic of conservative principles: that liberty is a right conferred by our Creator, not by governments, and that the proper object of justice and the rule of law in our country is not to aggregate power to the state but to protect the liberty and property of its citizens. And like you, I understand, as Edmund Burke observed, that ‘whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither . . . is safe.’”

Reagan Said It, McCain Doesn’t Believe It

While I have long worked to help grow a public majority of support for Republican candidates and principles, I have also always believed, like you, in the wisdom of Ronald Reagan, who warned in an address to this conference in 1975, that “a political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”

If Mr. McCain believes Ronald Reagan why does he cross the political aisle to vote on Liberal principals and suggest we need the EU, UN and other assorted allies and Democracies for approval first to protect America? Why does Mr. McCain not believe global warming scientists and skeptics instead of backing the Al Gore fear mantra of environmental doom and gloom?

Mr. McCain says he is a true Conservative but we know him to falter in that respect all too often. Indeed!

Moonbat is a special feature of Liberally Conservative and posted each Saturday. For previous awards visit Moonbat Awards.

 By Tom Bliss in the Sunny Southwest

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“Grieving” Gotbaum family and ambulance chaser shake down Phoenix cops for $8M

Alone and abandoned by family, raging alcoholic woman on way to rehab passed out and suffocated herself at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.

Ambulance chasing Phoenix attorney Michael Manning can root out a 37-percent contingency payday faster than a French pig can root out a truffle in the woods.

Manning is the ambulance chaser in the Carol Gotbaum Phoenix Sky Harbor airport wrongful death shakedown case. His accomplices are the Grieving Gotbaum Family and the New York media, all lined up to exploit the death of this pathetic woman last September 28th in Phoenix, for cold, hard cash.

Manning was retained by the well-connected family and jumped on the Carol Gotbaum case within hours, before the body was even cold.

Apparently, the family was able to control their grief long enough to search out Manning—and hire their own forensic medical examiner–before funeral arrangements were made.

One has to admire their efficiency and planning while Carol lay dead.

It’s good to know the Grieving Family and attorney Manning will feel better if every man woman and child in Phoenix ponies up about $10 each to ease their suffering –about $8 million is the asking price of their anguish.

Mrs. Gotbaum died while extremely drunk in a police holding tank at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport last September. Agitated because she missed a connecting flight, she threw a cell phone on the floor and yelled at airline counter workers before being man-handled to the ground by Phoenix cops. A video of the arrest showed she was not harmed in the takedown.

After being placed under arrest, she died because she strangled herself and passed out while attempting to wriggle out of handcuffs anchored via chain to an eyelet mounted on a wall. Attempts to revive her by the arresting officers were unsuccessful.

She had reportedly received detox treatments before and was a diagnosed alcoholic for three years prior to her death. She had also reportedly attempted suicide at least twice.

Is this a woman you would put on an eight hour plane trip, kiss goodbye and hope for the best?

It took Manning and the family a surprising six months to go for the gold. On Wednesday, the family demanded the $8 million payday—which the City of Phoenix has rejected.

This should be interesting.

At issue are some simple concepts of personal, professional and family responsibility.

Of course, Manning is the high profile media-savvy bloodsucker for the plaintiffs. He is responsible for hyping the case, as he has in a number of high profit Phoenix shake downs for big contingency fees.

He says the plaintiffs and victim in the Carol Gotbaum case had no responsibility whatsoever. Just give us $8 million and we’ll go away.

The husband, too busy to accompany his now-departed wife some 2500 miles from new York to a Tucson rehab clinic, had plenty of money to send her away to rehab for thousands of dollars per week and effectively wash his hands.

The result may have been beyond the family’s wildest dreams. Were they still grieving when they realized they had, in effect, traded in a suicidal alcoholic for an $8 million wrongful death jackpot?

But what do we know about Mrs. Gotbaum and her family? Was she a wonderful woman, a delicate flower in the sun robbed of life by the uncaring Phoenix cops?

Or was she hopelessly mentally ill, a long term, suicidal alcoholic and a lost cause? Was she being banished to a last chance rehab by a frustrated family that no longer cared enough to escort her to safety 2500 miles away?

There is point at which families of terminal alcoholics must choose to survive and cut their losses. Was this the case for the Gotbaums?

Their behavior is hard to justify.

How in the world could anyone think it was safe, prudent or responsible to put her on a plane and hope for the best? Her husband claimed that he had arranged for a local Phoenix family to meet her at the Phoenix airport where she was to change planes. No one showed up.

Then she missed her connecting flight to Tucson, most likely because she was drinking heavily beforehand. No friends were there to console her, supervise her or see that she got on the next flight.

So, here is the essence of the case for a Maricopa County jury to hear in a few months: 

Should the police summon a priest, rabbi, counselor, doctor or social worker when they apprehend someone who is completely out of their mind, drunk and disruptive at an airport?

Should police approach troubled people with kid gloves? Were they too tough? Were they negligent because they placed Mrs. Gotbaum in protective custody, shackled but alone for 10 minutes in a small room?

Manning can play-up the tragic consequences of leaving this woman alone, frightened and raging for 10 minutes. The arresting cops were not warm and fuzzy, open and affirming with Carol.

Manning and the Grieving Family will say the cops should have been kinder and gentler, should have watched her every minute and provided a counselor and a pat on the shoulder. Of course, the officers on scene didn’t know she was drunk three times over the limit and also on prescription drugs.

How will Manning deflect the defense’s case? Did she commit suicide? Or did she just tangle herself up accidentally and suffocate? No one knows.

Can common sense find a place in the trial testimony?

Common sense is usually absent from personal injury trials. Emotion rules and usually wins. A city with deep pockets is not a sympathetic entity to defend.

But maybe this time, a few jury members will think.

How would any reasonable policeman handle a woman who screams and rants out of control in a busy airline concourse? Is being drunk and out of control at any airport in the post 911-world reasonable cause for being subdued and humanely locked up?

Were the family members, their doctors, psychiatrists and counselors ultimately responsible for failing to supervise a mentally ill, drunken woman alone for eight hours in a strange town?

Curiously, Mr. Gotbaum thought to call the airport security office about the time his wife died, to warn them about her condition. Did he mention she was suicidal in the past? Too bad he didn’t care enough to be there with her. Maybe he pinned a note to her blouse:

To whom it may concern or law enforcement officers:

Please deliver Mrs. Gotbaum to the Tucson Airport later today. If she asks for a drink, do not serve her. Keep her away from sharp objects, ropes, chains or high places. If she rants and screams or seems suicidal, please summon mental health professionals. I would be there with her myself but the kids needed someone to pick them up from school today.

Sincerely, Mr. Gotbaum

Well, there was no note from him. And no one cared enough to help her. But now, he wants everyone in Phoenix to pay up–for his neglect.

Hopefully, the jurors will see this shake down for what it is, an accidental self inflicted death, set into motion by a family that did the wrong thing and now refuses to take responsibility.

Maybe this time, the jury will do the right thing and just say no to court-sanctioned extortion.

Tom Bliss – Phoenix, Arizona