WonderfulPessimist.com

Former Vice-President and self-appointed expert on climate change, global warming conspiracy theorist and propagandist Algore has long touted the authority of his “global warming committee” that “finally has agreed there is a consensus that global warming is no longer a theory. It is established scientific fact.”

Of course, that’s bunk. But it took a real scientist from a completely different field of study to put the reason it’s bunk into the best wording possible.

At the recent Jerusalem Forgery Conference, speaking about alleged forgeries “unmasked” by Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, in which he has ultimately come to claim that perhaps as many as one-third of biblical artifacts with early inscriptions are modern forgeries, and has had his views backed up by a committee hand-selected to agree with him, received a verbal spanking from Gabriel Barkay.

Gabriel Barkay is a professor of Biblical archeology at Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His academic areas of interest include the archeology of Jerusalem, burials and burial customs, and art, epigraphy, and glyptics in the Iron Age.

This is Barkay’s words on the validity of “committees” in establishing scientific truth. Cozy up in your home theater seating, because this one’s GREAT:

“If a committee made up of the most important experts in the world decides that the earth is flat, it is not going to make the earth flat,” Barkay told the assembled scholars. “Committees, I think, are good for communist regimes. They establish a view that has to be accepted by all, but they are not for scientific methods.”

Exactly. Words Algore and all his Algorian disciples are probably biologically incapable of grasping. For the rest of us, though, we should pay attention and guard against the global warming propaganda. The jury is anything BUT in!

The Financial Times is reporting that al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the September 11, 2001, tragedy, is now confirmed to be operating in Iran. The story, written by journalist Stephen Fidler in London, quotes only one unnamed source directly; the rest of the story is the writer’s invention.

The whole thing sounds suspiciously like the news media stories about WMDs in Iraq during the Clinton-Lewinsky cover-up right through 9-11, who then shifted blame for the assumption to President Bush when it became convenient for the liberal media to do so.

I don’t know if the Financial Times report is correct or not, or if they’re all just in drug rehab this week. But I can guarantee you if Bush were to cite such a spurious, suspect report as a justification for war in Iran, somehow the blame would be shifted to “bad intelligence” and “bad leadership in the White House” rather than even a hint of “bad journalism.”

I would have suspected Fidler would at least know the one cardinal law of journalism: always use at least two reliable, quoted sourced in any news story. (Opinion pieces are a different matter altogether, but this is not a Fidler op-ed. It’s a “hard news” story.

If we ever get to a point where war in Iran is the necessary course, we don’t need suspect stories by trap-setting journalists to justify it. Frankly, for my money, Ahmadinijad’s constant threats to make Israel and the US disappear while rushing toward becoming a nuclear power against the direct mandate of the United Nations, is reason enough.

Kermit the Frog’s words have never been truer; it’s not easy being green.

Of course, that assumes one is even trying. The celebs participating in Gore’s Live Aid event to promote the global warming is producing … a hell of a lot of energy waste! Refusing to fly anything but private jets, the “energy waiver offset credit”-loving crowd set to perform in Al Gore’s “Pollute-a-thon 2007″ will be traveling 222,623.63 miles all together to get to and from the concert event.

London’s Daily Mail reports that, “The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher. The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists’ and spectators’ travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations. Throw in the television audience and it comes to a staggering 74,500 tonnes. In comparison, the average Briton produces ten tonnes in a year. The concert will also generate some 1,025 tonnes of waste at the concert stadiums – much of which will go directly into landfill sites.”

At this rate, even the writing pens that “green” journalists covering the event use will find a way to pump out their own share of pollutants. Not so fun when you are expected to practice what you preach, is it, Gore and company?

Whipped into a frenzy of wanting to do it just because they might be able to pull it off, congressional Democrats have nearly 45 percent of America at least tentatively agreeing to support impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush, according to poll results reported on Breitbart.com.

The poll was conducted by the New Hampshire-based ARG, and canvassed only 1,100 carefully-selected Americans. So the upshot is really that as much as they hate him, 55 percent of Democrats DON’T support impeachment of the Bush-meister! Because you know that’s all they polled in order to reach such a ridiculous result.

This is all, of course, payback hopes for the impeachment (but not removal) of Bill Clinton for perjury and obstructing justice (which is what his impeachment was about… not sex in and of itself.) Good ol’ Bubba Bill never had the hair transplant Florida concerns of Al Gore, John Kerry or Sen. Rodham, his wife. But there are still plenty of Dems just foaming at the mouth to impeach a Republican – any Republican would do – as payback for an embarrassment Clinton would never have suffered if he’d just told the truth.

Oops. Too much to ask.

But at least there were legal reasons to impeach President Bubba. Bush, on the other hand, is guilty of nothing in particular except being hated by liberals. Hardly an impeachable offense … unless you are a liberal feel-tank propagandist. (Since it’s fairly clear that no liberal since John F. Kennedy has actually engaged in THINKING.)

Forget the speechifying, forget the rhetoric and campaign pledges, forget the deceptive ads (otherwise known as network news.) What matters, what determines intent, is action, not talk.

Here’s the cold, hard facts of what the congressional Democrats, who flooded into office due to GOP fatigue and war concerns and promises not to bog things down in Washington with partisan nitpicking: in just around 100 days, Pelosi and Reid have launched, “over 300 investigations, had over 350 requests for documents and interviews and they have had over 600 oversight hearings” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told the press on Friday.

While spokesmen for Pelosi and Reid deny this, they haven’t actually offered up any numbers of their own to prove the White House wrong. When history is written of this Congress, however, what will be most notable is that from day one, it was, for them, all about getting Republicans out of power.

Dismiss all yard markers to the contrary … This Congress is about bitterness and payback for 12 years out of power in Congress and seven years of Bush-Cheney. Nothing more.

Back to that word from one of this site’s sponsors.

A while ago, I posted a review of the Web site and services of one of the sponsors if this blog, CanvasOnDemand.com. As exciting as their whole deal sounded, I remained unsure of what to expect. Was this going to be an oil painting type of thing, a photo on canvas instead of photo paper or something in between? After all, when you have an opportunity to acquire and anniversary gift that could become a family heirloom for generations, you hope it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.

Well, the package finally arrived last weekend and both my wife and I have been startled at just how lovely and high-quality this product is. And for those of you who are wondering, it really was “something in between” a painting and a photo.

Let me say, first of all, that CanvasOnDemand.com has some very talented folks working for them who have very good eyes for finding “the best cropping” of a photo. Control freak that I can sometimes be, I entered some very precise details into the “notes” section of my order, detailing how I wanted the photo cropped during the creation of my 16″ by 20″ canvas. And finally, I decided to trust their people by ending all those details with “please analyze the source photo before you begin work and select the best way to maximize it.”

Satisfied at my own odd display of micromanaging and blind faith, I waited. The very next day, I received an email from the artist working on my canvas, letting me know something I never would have expected.

“Your photo isn’t ideal for a 16″ x 20″ canvas,” he wrote, “so we are upgrading you to 20″ x 20″ at no additional cost to you!” He then assured me they would be starting work soon and do a great job.

A few days later, the canvas arrived and everyone we’ve shared it with agrees, it is an amazing piece of art. That’s not to say it’s a painting, exactly. CanvasOnDemand.com took my source photo, cleaned it up, maximized the interesting parts of the photo, honoring in spirit all my requests, except for finding an even better way to make the photo look its best. Their process is highly technical, but they somehow transfer the image, after image maximization, onto an honest-to-goodness artist’s canvas.

Then, with a process called “light brush strokes,” the add by hand an effect that makes the image look painted. Whether it’s a clear shellac or just what, I’m not sure, but up-close and at a distance, the photo-painting looks incredible. While I’ll soon have a photo posted (my wife and I bought a digital camera just to show this thing off, and the image will be up soon), nothing as small as an online, 72dpi photo is going to capture and communicate the artistry involved in this photo enlargement.

It’s not my gift to my wife or her gift to me; it’s our anniversary gift to ourselves. A first-year anniversary is supposed to be paper by tradition; but for us, canvas is close enough.

We got ours with a gallery frame for the initial order, but only because we wanted to go to a local frame store and hand-select the perfect frame once we had it in hand. That’s despite CanvasOnDemand.com offering a nice selection of wooden frames of their own.

I can’t imagine being happier with this product. I was a bit curious when I first placed the order, but now CanvasOnDemand.com really does have my full trust and confidence. My wife and I may even use them in the future, like when we have our first child.