Victory is Near: Scott Brown Cuts into Soft Underbelly of MA Democrat Party

If Scott Brown becomes the next Senator from MA it will be a victory of historic significance for the GOP and - according to Newt Gingrich - the death of health care reform.



Personally, I've done what ever I could to help Brown including mentioning him in my Tweets and spreading the address of a site that provides him with secure on-line donations. See, http://www.brownforussenate.com/Apparently, we was able to raise about $1.3 million dollars, on-line, in just one day.

I thought he was a long-shot until I saw one poll showing him ahead by one-point among likely voters. The most accurate view of the race probably comes from Scott Rasmussen. Rasmussen Reports shows Brown trailing his Democrat challenger by only two percentage points. If Rasmussen only counts those who are expressing virtual certainty that they will vote on Tuesday, then Brown wins by one percentage point.

The bottom line is that Brown's opponent ran way to the left of her primary challengers. She expresses the sort of extremist views than make people nervous, like suggesting that Al Queda is no longer in Afghanistan. In a humorous demonstration of incompetence, Brown's opponent spelled the name of their state as Massachusettes. Meanwhile, Brown is racking up an impressive list of newspaper endorsements, celebrity endorsements, and police union endorsements.

As for me, I'll be Tweeting about this campaign in the expectation that this election may be decided by only one vote.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Reviewing a Close Call: Obama Administration Discovers Islamic Terrorism

One of the most annoying things about Janet Napolitano was her belief that guys like me are among the top security threats to our nation because of our conservative views, Constitutional perspective, and commitment to various "single issue" causes. Now, however, it looks like the predictions that Obama's approach to terrorism would make us safer have all been proven wrong.

In this regard, I think it is entirely fair, and important, to point out that the recent terrorist attacks during the first year of the Obama administration can all be traced to its overly optimistic trust of devout Muslims. This is the common theme that runs through accounts of the Ft. Hood shooter, the panty bomber and the CIA base attack. As far as I can tell, participants in the Obama administration are so committed to their politically correct point of view that they don't understand that religious books have real world consequences.

Unfortunately for the Democrat party, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the 23-year-old Nigerian panty bomber - was brought to the attention of the Obama administration by British authorities prior to his attack.

This fact alone undermines the theory that Obama's genius and superior governing skills would keep us safe.

For me, increased national security starts with a proper understanding of the nature of the threat we face from radical Islam. The thesis of Dore Gold's excellent book - Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism - is that Wahabi Islam has always been a dangerous religious movement - even to other Islamic adherents. The violence of Wahabi Islamic thought predates the establishment of Israel.

Accordingly, it is extremely important for the Obama administration to adjust its risk profiles to take this into accout. Pretending that Islamic terrorism is the product of loneliness or mental illness or discrimination is going to get a lot more Americans killed. The recent uptick in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil shows the Obama administration needs to go back to whatever was working so well during the last six years of the Bush administration.

The news, of course, is not all bad. The practical elements of the Obama administration are already tightening up procedures regarding travellers from Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, which are considered “state sponsors of terrorism” as well as citizens from Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen. These travellers will be subject to specialized intensive physical scrutiny.

Once again, conservatives are winning the battle of ideas. This is the same "profiling" program that I've argued for for years. I don't think all those searches of me and my luggage this year while I was visiting Northern California or Pennsylvania or Tennessee were making us any safer.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Our Anti-Marxist Mood: The Tea Party Movement at the Beginning of 2010

I've been taking some pride in the intellectual influence of the Tea Party Movement. I feel like I was sort of on the ground floor of it myself when I posted my first blog "Visualizing a One Term Obama Administration" at www.resistnet.com back on January 19, 2009.

http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/visualizing-a-oneterm-obama

I remember feeling so overwhelmed by the popularity of the Obama administration and anxious to do anything possible - within the law - to take our country back.

In my case, my alarm was fueled by my personal experience of knowing that the young Barack Obama was already a convinced Marxist at the beginning of his sophomore year at Occidental College. Since I had seen the evidence of his early Marxism face-to-face, I knew that it was wrong of him to hide and deny this fact to the general public during the Presidential campaign.

At the very least, I thought that if he was no longer a Marxist, then he owed the American people a description of the intellectual thought process which lead him away from that belief system.

In truth, his later associations with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright demonstrated that he really hadn't outgrown his early Marxist beliefs. The fact that he appointed both Van Jones and Anita Dunn - as Glenn Beck properly reported - demonstrate that his Marxist faith is still alive and well today.

As a political scientist, I feel safe in suggesting that the Tea Party Movement arose as a response to the extreme Marxist socialist agenda of the early Obama administration.

Today, I think conservatives are winning the battle of ideas again. I feel safer this year knowing that Democrats were pushed back in NJ and VA and that a Congressman from Alabama defected to our side over the health care reform issue. I'm also grateful that the new social media - Twitter, Facebook, Ning - allowed so many of us to bypass the mainstream media and to take positive action under difficult circumstances.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Thoughts on Global Warming - Bring It On: Greenland Used to be Green

I've been a little obsessed lately with trying to get up to speed on the whole climate change issue. I've been ignoring up until now. Nevertheless, my quick review of the available information tells me two things: 1) The link between increased CO2 and increased global temperatures is greatly exaggerated, and 2) The proposed fixes for the U.S. are a 90% reduction in our production of CO2 - and absurdly drastic and unrealistic remedy. I think the more people study up on this the more outraged they will become.

A couple of quick points bear mentioning. First, the Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW)folks predicted that 2009 would be the hottest year ever and 2009 turned out to be an average year. Their prediction is based on the idea that increasing CO2 levels cause global warming. Since the world produces more CO2 each year, it would be shocking - from the point of view of their model - to see temperatures decline. The problem is that even their own data demonstrates that there is no causal relationship between these two factors. The cooler than predicted 2009 should cause grave doubts among the true believers who still think there is evidence of AGW. The video linked below will give you a nerdy look at the controversy going on behind the scenes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lt4vOp8QhY

Here's another quick YouTube video that demonstrates the failure of the AGW hypothesis that I learned from John Stossel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd7M4Hqwdbg

Take a look at Al Gore's global warming chart in An Inconvenient Truth. You'll see that increases in CO2 levels trail increases in temperatures. This is the EXACT opposite of what the ClimateGate folks' beloved models are predicting will happen.

Apparently, this is why the folks at University of East Anglia were scrambling to "trick" up their models to match their theories...and looking for ways to discredit and cut out their critics. I guess their use of tree rings to measure past temperatures wasn't so accurate looking into the past - during the Little Ice Age - or looking into the future - the last 20 years.

The reality is that climate change is a lot more complex than these folks suppose and they really don't have a strong, predictive model in place yet. For example, as the folks at Powerline indicate, it maybe that the SO2/sulfate being generated by the rising emissions from China is having a cooling effect on the planet.

One of the reasons I'm an "award-winning" political scientist is that I'm not blinded by conventional wisdom. I look at the facts.

Among these facts is the truth that Greenland, in warmer - pre-industrial - times, used to be green, that is covered with grass. To a certain extent, there is evidence that mankind would be better off if the Earth was a little warmer because it would encourage plant growth and longer growing seasons.

At any rate, what is shocking is that so many political types, including Al Gore, have relied on this faulty, dishonest science to promote a political agenda which is destructive to individual freedom. (Al Gore, for example, was recently caught lying by suggesting that these controversial e-mails were all over ten years old.)

Nevertheless, I've seen this before during the welfare reform debates of the 1990s. I was personally attacked because I believed the evidence which showed that welfare programs created poverty. Just because liberals don't have the evidence on their side never seems to keep them from thinking that they know best. Also, as a political scientist, I'm skeptical of scientists living off grants to study the AGW hypothesis. They are an interest group, pure and simple.

The Climategate e-mails are very helpful to all of us right now because they show how this modelling is completely dominated by politics - not hard science. I think anthropomorphic global warming is dead as a theory. It will take some time for the true believers to catch up to the reality that they've been had. As an ex-Marxist socialist myself, I feel their pain...

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Augustine 25 Remembers: Face to Face with the Young Barack Obama

As you may know, the girls at Occidental College liked to dress up young men and take their pictures. There are some famous pictures of the young Barack Obama while he was at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA floating on the internet. Posted above, I have the rough equivalent from my own spell at this small liberal arts college. Personally, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that Obama mentions in his book, Dreams of My Father.

From what Obama writes, I guess I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. According to his book, Dreams of My Father, Obama got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in an anti-apartheid rally at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the fall of 1980.

I had graduated from Occidental College in 1979.

I met him later that same year in late December 1980. At the time, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to him and his friend Hassan.

My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality - particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.

What is significant to me now, in retrospect, was the way he conceded to my argument. At the time, I remember that this was an early victory in my life...the ability to make a powerful, fact-based argument that changed minds. In retrospect, I don't know if he was just trying to restore peace...my gut feeling is that I persuaded him - at the very least - that his education at Occidental College was not really up-to-date or terribly valuable.

Ironically, he ended up leaving Occidental College and transfering to Columbia University in 1981.

I can identify with those "intellectuals" who report that Obama is easy to talk to and seems to take advice well. I think I was one of the first to see this behavior in action...at least according to the timeline presented about his intellectual development in Dreams of My Father.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.