Comedian Al Gore: Climate Scientists Not Motivated by Money

These frauds would be out of business if they weren't living off government grants to peddle their junk science. But the chief hoaxer, Al Gore, says financial motivation has nothing to do with it.

How is it Gore became so wealthy?

Al Gore on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry.

“This is an organized effort to attack the reputation of the scientific community as a whole, to attack their integrity, and to slander them with the lie that they are making up the science in order to make money,” Gore said in an online interview.

“These scientists don’t make a lot of money. They are comfortable, as they should be, but they don’t make a lot of money. That is not their motivation for doing what they do,” Gore added.

If anyone is really being slandered, why do they choose not to pursue it legally?

As Gore is fond of saying: Bullshit.

Obama Donated $100K of Nobel Peace Prize Money to 'Three Cups of Tea' Fraud

One fraud helping out another.

One of the funders of CAI who may now be wondering where his money went is President Obama. Last year, the president donated $100,000 out of his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize winnings to the Bozeman, Montana-based charity. It was one of the 10 U.S.-based organizations the president chose because of their "extraordinary work in the United States and abroad helping students, veterans and countless others in need."

Is there anything Obama's touches that doesn't crumble?

Mortenson's book is an inspirational tale of a mountaineer who finds a remote village after failing to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. He is taken in by strangers and three cups of tea later he promises to build them a school. The charity inspired by the encounter has raised $60m and in 2009 said it was supporting 54 schools in Afghanistan serving 28,475 students, 21,165 of them girls. Obama donated $100,000 to the group from the proceeds of his Nobel prize. The book has become required reading for US servicemen heading for Afghanistan.

But reporters for CBS's 60 Minutes programme visited almost 30 of the schools and claimed that roughly half were empty, built by someone else or not receiving any support. The programme alleged that Mortenson's charity, Central Asia Institute (CAI), spent more on book promotion and publicity than on building schools. Mortenson took private jets to events where he was paid $30,000 to speak, according to the programme, and former associates accused him of using CAI as his own "private ATM".

Who knows, maybe he's laundering money back to Obama's re-election campaign.

Makes you wonder: If Mortonsen's book is fair game for scrutiny with the media, why not Obama's?

'We Have Been Waiting To See This for Two Years'

I guess you can't go golfing every Sunday.

Metroplian AME was filled with people who are waiting to see the Obama family.

"We have been waiting to see this for two years," said one church member as he passed through a line of metal detectors.

President Obama and the first family will join D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray to worship at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Northwest during a service that will reflect on the spiritual fervor of Martin Luther King Jr.

Last year the president delivered a major address the Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the Districts Vermont Avenue Baptist Church where King spoke when he was alive.

White House sources say this year the president has chosen to sit quietly in the pews with members of the historic church and listen along with his family and other White House officials.

He must really miss his buddy Jeremiah Wright.

'I Bet He'll Go Far'

If making up stories and fabricating quotes is the standard, then yes, he'll go far. A plum spot at the New York Times can't be far off. Unless, of course, the taint of Jayson Blair still lingers (H/T).

Rob Sgobbo, a young writer for the New York Daily News, has had a freelance story he wrote yanked from the Village Voice's website. He apparently fabricated sources and lied about his reporting. (Update: the NYDN has canned him.)

Voice editor Tony Ortega says in an editor's note that in a story examining for-profit colleges (here's the cached version), Sgobbo "invented a character, 'Tamicka Bourges,' who claimed she had amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree."

A classmate of this fraud from Columbia waxes nostalgic.

The last time I thought about Rob Sgobbo — before he was caught fabricating characters and quotes in a piece he wrote for the Village Voice this week — was on the day we both graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism last year. Sgobbo was bounding up the stage at the end-of-the-year awards ceremony after winning an award for his education reporting. I didn't, and don't, know Sgobbo personally — I know him mostly as that friendly guy in the student lounge who always seem to dress really well — but I remember thinking at the moment, "I bet he'll go far."

I'll explain: There are two types of people who do especially well in journalism school. The first are the good reporters and/or writers, the ones who always seem to turn in the best stories time and time again. The ones whose work professors always praise as examples for the rest of the class to emulate. The second are the personalities, the popular kids who amass friends, the ones everyone seems to like. If you know journalists at all, you know it's rare to find someone who falls into both categories. There are a lot of socially-awkward, surly reporters who do great work; and there are a lot of happy, well-liked journalists who produce mediocre stuff.

On that cold, rainy day in May, there was no doubt Sgobbo fell into both categories. As he climbed the stage at the award ceremony — something only the best student-reporters got to do — a large crowd cheered him on. The guy had obviously made a lot of friends.

He probably had the best weed or something. Maybe put out for the right editor, IYKWIMAITYD.

Now it gets funny.

My guess is that Sgobbo is as confounded about his actions today as the rest of us are. Sometimes people do things — and, yes, journalists are people, too — we know are wrong, things we understand will catch up to us later, even if we can't admit it at the time. That doesn't excuse what Sgobbo did, and he has, and will continue, to pay the price for his actions. But I bet that even as everyone piles their well-deserved scorn upon him, in the end, no one will be harder on Sgobbo than Sgobbo himself.

Right. And it won't be long long until there are books and movies about him. Maybe Stephen Glass can write the screenplay.

This chump is history at the NYDN, but here's some of his, ahem, journalistic legacy that has yet to go down the memory hole. Used to be a time when these kids would work their way up from the Podunk Press to the big city papers, but I guess these days a flashy smile is all you need to impress the hiring managers.

Mysteriously his Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages have gone down the memory hole. I guess being exposed as a two-bit fraud will do that to a guy. To no surprise he's still listed as a HuffPost blogger. He fits in perfectly with their "journalistic" standards. Here's his bio.

Rob grew up in Princeton, New Jersey where he would often ditch school to attend gallery openings in Chelsea at the ripe old age of 16. After attending Haverford College, where he received his BA in Politics, he moved to the East Village. Committing himself to two years with Teach For America, Rob divides his time traveling to the South Bronx and freelance writing. Some of his interests include traveling to dangerous places in Eastern Europe, photographing ugly dogs in Tompkins Square Park and playing with his new frozen margarita machine.

Hope those margaritas are tasty tonight.

Rent Is Too Damn High Guy Not a Member of the Party ... and Doesn't Pay Any Rent

Naturally this kook is a registered Democrat.

According to NYPIRG number cruncher Bill Mahoney, McMillan is not one of the three registered members of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. A traitor to his cause? McMillan, who twice ran under the RTDH banner for mayor and is now the party's standard-bearer for governor, is in fact a registered Democrat.

And for a guy who says his rent is too damn high, paying nothing is a pretty good deal.

But Mr. McMillan gave The Wall Street Journal a somewhat different account of his living arrangements in an article published online on Tuesday, saying that he paid $800 a month for his own apartment. His landlord could not be reached. Mr. McMillan, asked about his comments to The Journal, said, “I was probably just trying to brush them off.”

He restated that he personally lived rent free. A few moments later, however, he refused to confirm any of his previous statements.

“Don’t look for anything I say about my living space to be true,” he said.

Can any of these Democrats tell the truth ... about anything?

Sounds like he may soon regret his sudden popularity.

McMillan disputed claims that he made anti-Semitic comments during a prior run for mayor under the pro-tenant banner.

He said he complained that Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg were getting favorable treatment for housing vouchers.

Probably an AL Sharpton acolyte.

'When You Are Black, You Are Subjected To a Different Reality, and We Are Not Going To Be Quiet'

So said noted racial healer Al Sharpton, way back in February 2008. Indeed, Sharpton very much is subjected to a different reality. In fact just Saturday he drew a few thousand people to see him whine about Glenn Beck's massive rally and he was accorded preferential treatment by the Washington Post. But we're used to seeing an alternate reality when it comes to Sharpton. Over two decades after pushing the Tawana Brawley hoax, inciting riots in Brooklyn and the Freddie's massacre in Harlem, Sharpton is greeted by the media as a political kingmaker. In fact, he's been reinvented, according to one rapidly fading weekly.

So it's interesting today to revisit his comments from 2008.

The Rev. Al Sharpton says federal investigators probing Roger Clemens' alleged steroid use must hold the hurler to the same standards applied to slugger Barry Bonds.

"When I see a contrast between how you treat a Clemens and how you treat a Bonds, that is a civil rights issue," Sharpton said Saturday on his weekly radio show.

Sharpton - who seemed to downplay the harsh questioning of Clemens by several members of Congress - assailed those who "treated Roger Clemens like they were at a fan club meeting."

Clemens, in his appearance before a House committee last Wednesday, repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs - echoing the claims of Bonds, baseball's all-time home run leader.
...
But Sharpton said Clemens' celebrity, his sterling statistics and his off-field endeavors shouldn't affect the decision to prosecute him.

"You have prosecuted Barry Bonds, and you did not say, 'Don't prosecute Bonds because he made the sport a lot of money,'" Sharpton said.

"You did not say, 'Don't prosecute Bonds because he gives a lot to charity,' which he does.

"When you are black, you are subjected to a different reality, and we are not going to be quiet."

Thanks to Phil Mushnick for noticing the media's amnesia when it comes to this.

Last week, after Clemens was indicted by the federal government for perjury, Sharpton appeared on MSNBC. But his irresponsible, inflammatory allegations about Bonds and Clemens were never even mentioned. Sharpton was brought on to shout "racism!" at something else.

Sharpton never has been held accountable for his wishful-thinking claims about sports, but those claims sure make big news when he first makes them. That's what happens when the news media can't distinguish -- or chooses not to distinguish -- an activist from an arsonist.

Clemens is being arraigned today. Al Sharpton is unavailable for comment.

Update: Check out all the hate on display at the Sharpton rally. Funny how the media's ignoring this.

'Her Case is an Embarrassment to This Country and President Obama'

They shouldn't worry about Obama. He doesn't embarrass easily.

Kenya’s government is unhappy with the impression created by a U.S. court ruling that granted asylum to President Barack Obama’s aunt for saying she could be targeted by members of Kenya’s government if deported, an official said Friday.

Government Spokesman Alfred Mutua described the case of Zeituni Onyango as an embarrassment and said the allegations made against Kenya were untrue and unrealistic.

"It has become a habit for Kenyans seeking asylum in other countries to lie. Her case is an embarrassment to this country and President Obama," Mutua said. "We are not looking for her. The government does not have any problem with Zeituni Onyango."

Earlier this week, U.S. Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro in Boston said he gave Onyango asylum in the U.S. because she would be a target in Kenya not only for those who oppose the United States and Obama but for members of the Kenyan government.

Onyango is the half sister of Obama’s late father and has been living in public housing in Boston.

Shapiro granted Onyango asylum in May after her case was heard during a closed trial. His written decision was released this week through the Freedom of Information Act.

So if her claims were bogus and she doesn't face any threast, can we ship her back now?

Good Noose: Plagiarist Professor Suit Tossed

Here's some career advice for this two-bit fraud. Maybe she can sign up with Michelle Obama and lecture us all on obesity. She can be a test case on how to shed a hundred pounds and stay relevant.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everybody's out to get you.

A controversial professor who contended Columbia's Teachers College canned her in a "frame-up" that was part of a "complex conspiracy" has lost her bid to get her job back.

The school's decision to fire Madonna Constantine -- who made headlines in 2007 when she said she found a noose hanging from her office door -- was neither "arbitrary or capricious," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jane Solomon found.

Constantine was fired last June, after the school's faculty advisory committee found that she had "committed plagiarism, and also that she had fabricated documents that she presented in her defense," Solomon wrote.

Constantine contended there was a "frame-up," that the committee didn't give her a fair shake, and that Teachers College president Susan Fuhrman's decision to fire her on the committee's recommendation was "arbitrary and capricious."

Solomon disagreed.

In a decision made public yesterday, she said the committee had thoroughly reviewed the case, and their report "fully supports Fuhrman's decision."

"Professor Constantine's theory of the case would require a complex conspiracy among many persons including the highest levels of the college's administration, its outside counsel, and several former students and a former faculty member," the committee had commented.

Oddly enough the "investigation" into the noose hanging is still unresolved. A shame nobody wants to come out and actually say she did it herself.

Video of 'Grassroots' Coffee Party Founder Slobbering Over Obama in 2008

Yeah, her support for Obama only goes back two year from this video dated January 2008. But that crack reporter from the New York Times, who used to work with this woman, couldn't uncover this.

She was so proud of her affiliation with the New York Times that here Linked in page went bye-bye.

As usual, it's the foreign press that's far more honest than the duplicitous U.S. media.

The Coffee Party crowd believe government is not an enemy of the people but the voice of the people. Annabel Park, a documentary filmmaker who started up the Facebook page from Silver Spring, Maryland, said: "We want to see people representing us moving towards solutions to problems rather than strategically obstructing any form of progress." In a video on www.coffeepartyusa.org (motto: wake up and stand up) she says she decided to act after "listening to news coverage that made it seem the Tea Party was representative of America. I completely disagree with this."movement, it is clearly adopting a pro-Obama stance in contrast to relentless and often virulent opposition extended to the president

Though she wants the phenomenon to be seen as a bottom-up movement, it is clearly adopting a pro-Obama stance in contrast to relentless and often virulent opposition extended to the president by the opposition. Park herself has campaigned with Asians for Obama and on behalf of the Democratic senator Jim Webb.

Funny how the Times and WaPo conveniently left out that part about Obama.

'I Don’t Think We Should Be Taking Much Notice of What’s on Blogs'

I'm sure his partner in crime, Al Gore, feels the same way. Who knew Gore's "invention" would come back to haunt him like this?

"The IPCC [report] is an assessment, it's not a review," he says, "so the authors have to know something about the subject to assess which are the important papers to bring in to the particular chapter." In doing so, authors naturally would exclude papers that are scientifically weak or irrelevant, argues Jones.

But he fears that the aftermath of the climategate affair is undermining the integrity of the scientific review process. "I don't think we should be taking much notice of what's on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process," says Jones.

It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. "[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they're being drowned out."

Aww, they're being drowned out. Well for the past couple of decades we "deniers" have been shouted down and inundated with propaganda every day, our governments are held hostage by environmental extremists, children are terrorized in the classrooms and told the polar bears are dying off and yet poor Phil Jones is being "drowned out."

Heartbreaking, isn't it?

H/T Tim Blair.

Update: See Ed Morrissey's item this morning: Did Nature misreport fraud issue with Jones?

Given that Keenan’s work has been peer reviewed and freely available, it seems at least curious that Nature apparently never attempted to contact Keenan about the allegations he has made in those papers. The description of Keenan as an “amateur” also seems somewhat misleading, given that he has written at least one peer-reviewed paper directly on the subject of misuse of data in climate-change research. Had Nature actually done a little research themselves, they would have known that Jones has not been accused of doing sloppy work, but of deliberately and knowingly using faulty (or at least unsupported) data to support his theories.

Is there any end to the fraud?

ClimateGate Hoaxer Fesses Up

It's the end of global warming as we know it.

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.

More here.

Meanwhile, another scam bites the dust.

Mark Steyn:

Say it loud, he's unsettled and proud. Hide-the-decliner Phil Jones is embracing his inner decline.

Time for some apologies, don't you think?

Untold billions of pounds have been spent on turning the world green and also on financing the dubious trade in carbon credits.

Countless gallons of aviation fuel have been consumed carrying experts, lobbyists and politicians to apocalyptic conferences on global warming.

Every government on Earth has changed its policy, hundreds of academic institutions, entire school curricula and the priorities of broadcasters and newspapers all over the world have been altered – all to serve the new doctrine that man is overheating the planet and must undertake heroic and costly changes to save the world from drowning as the icecaps melt.

You might have thought that all this was based upon well-founded, highly competent research and that those involved had good reason for their blazing, hot-eyed certainty and their fierce intolerance of dissent.

But, thanks to the row over leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit, we now learn that this body’s director, Phil Jones, works in a disorganised fashion amid chaos and mess.

Amazing, isn't it, how the media seems so disinterested in tracking down Al Gore for comment.

But in the light of the ‘Climategate’ revelations, it is time for governments, academics and their media cheerleaders to be more modest in their claims and to treat sceptics with far more courtesy.

The question is not settled.

UN Climate Clown's Massive Carbon Footprint

Apparently this stooge has never missed an opportunity to help pollute the planet. His credibility is shot, he's reduced to wishing death upon his critics, and now we discover he's got one of the more massive carbon footprints known to man.

Heckuva job, Patchy!

On his international missions, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for radical action to stave off environmental disaster.

He urged people to eat less meat, pay aviation taxes and even ban giving iced water in restaurants. But in order to get his message across, the former railway engineer, who lives in Delhi, created an enormous carbon footprint of his own.

Dr Pachauri has been the chairman of the panel since 2002. Documents available on its website showed that in one 19-month period, he clocked up more than half a million miles in the air as he travelled the world on official business.

Between January 2007 and July 2008, he took more than 120 long-haul flights and 43 short-haul trips, taking in countries such as New Zealand, America and Fiji.

Dr Pachauri’s trips would have produced 121.1 tons of carbon dioxide, according to calculations by ClimateCare, a carbon offset provider.

It is estimated that the average Briton produces around 8.6 tons of carbon dioxide a year, while the average Indian produces just over one ton.

The international climate change debate has been dominated in recent months by disclosures of leaked emails suggesting unfavourable data was being suppressed.

It also emerged that predictions that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 were out by 300 years. Dr Pachauri refused to apologise over the blunder, claiming he could not be responsible for every word of a 3,000-page report.

Most of Dr Pachauri’s trips involved high level meetings with world leaders, environmental experts and influential business executives.

But in May 2008, he flew more than 6,500 miles from Tokyo to New Haven in Connecticut to collect an honorary degree from Yale University.

Speaking last September ahead of the climate change conference in Copenhagen, Dr Pachauri admitted his carbon footprint was significant.

He told a UN publication: “I really have one area where unfortunately I am guilty of a pretty large carbon footprint, and that is in terms of travel.

That is something that unfortunately I can’t do anything about because I have to spread the message.

“I have to go all over the world and I have to convince people that this is a serious problem that we have to address. But in terms of my personal lifestyle, I’m very careful about not being consumptive in my habits.

“I’m careful about use of transport in my daily life.”

Seems fewer people by the day are being convinced.

Other than his Nobel co-winner, Al Gore, there may not be a bigger hypocrite on the planet than this fraud. He want you to pay higher taxes, wants you to travel less, wants to regulate what you eat, yet he travels the globe in luxury getting rich off the gullibility of others. Great work if you can get it.

Columbia 'Noose' Plagiarist Sues ... Again

When you're exposed as a fraud and a plagiarist, you should have the common decency to just slink off into obscurity or wait for your appointment in the Obama administration. But no, this one just can't do that. She's the victim, you see. Whine about racism, keep filing frivolous suit after frivolous suit and you figure to walk off with a handsome payday at some point.

A lawsuit-happy former Columbia University professor yesterday renewed her claims that she was the victim of an "academic lynching" when she was canned for plagiarism last year.

Madonna Constantine, who made headlines in 2007 when a hangman's noose was found dangling from her office door, filed the newest action against the university in Manhattan federal court.

It's the fourth time the academic, who is black, has sued the school since she was booted for allegedly cribbing from her colleagues and students.

A judge tossed out one of the cases earlier this year.

Two years after the mysterious noose incident and there's still no resolution to that case. It's widely believed Constantine put it there herself, but just the mere mention of that might cause us to be called raaaaacist. Oddly, there is surveillance video from the area where the noose was placed but the university refuses to release it.

I wonder why?

Modern Day John Kerry Gets 18 Months in the Brig

Lokk on the bright side, Dave. In 30 years or so you can marry up and maybe run for president.

A Marine noncommissioned officer who faked being a decorated wounded war hero was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in the brig and fined $25,000.

Sgt. David Budwah never suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan or from seeing dead bodies piled up on the beaches of Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, as he had told people. He never deployed to those places.

The war injuries from which Budwah pretended to suffer grew with each witness the prosecution called during his general court-martial at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. Budwah, 34, pled guilty to five charges, including making false statements, wearing medals or ribbons he did not earn, bluffing his way into 13 sporting events and concerts meant for wounded service members, and wrongful appropriation of property.

A military judge sentenced to him five years’ confinement, but a pretrial agreement will limit his brig time to no more than 1½ years. And in addition to the hefty fine, Budwah will receive a dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to E-1.

Budwah spent six years in Okinawa, Japan, his first duty assignment, and then moved to Headquarters Company, Headquarters and Services Battalion, at Quantico in 2006. There, he worked at the Post Exchange for Marine Corps Community Services.

Around May 2008, he told at least one officer that he was suffering from stomach cancer. At the time, he was receiving outpatient treatment for PTSD at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
.
Because Budwah had appointments nearly every day, he was transferred around July 2008 to Wounded Warrior Battalion-East in Bethesda. He stayed there until November 2008, when allegations against him first surfaced

Army 'Journalist' Refuses Call-Up

Naturally, AFP giddily runs a headline saying it's an illegal war and also conveniently leaves a few facts out of their story.

Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love.
"I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old told AFP.

"I was 'filet mignon' for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade," or around 16 years old, he added.

Chiroux joined the US army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private to sergeant.

He served in Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, and the Philippines and was due to be deployed next month in Iraq.

On Thursday, he refused to go, saying he considers Iraq an illegal war.

"I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington.

Some details AFP omits.

Matthis enlisted in the Army days after graduating from high school. During his five-year enlistment, Matthis served as a journalist in the Army, with tours in Germany, Japan, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

While serving in Afghanistan and Palawan, Philippines, Matthis experienced hostile environments fighting against Islamic insurgents.

Can you believe it? Actually entering hostile environments while playing a journalist?

Hmm, no agenda here, I'm sure.

And the 24-year-old Army sergeant’s dream was on track when he was honorably discharged last September. He wasted no time moving to New York City to attend college as a journalism and pre-law major.

But less than six months after relocating, the Army came calling again. This time, they needed him to deploy to Iraq.

On Thursday, Matthis, joined by members of the nonprofit organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, publicly announced in Washington, D.C., his plans to ignore the Army’s orders to report to Iraq on June 15.

In a press conference held in the Cannon House Office Building, Matthis read a statement that said, in part:

“As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter service members’ stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. “Never again will I fail to stand. … This occupation is unconstitutional and illegal, and I hereby lawfully refuse to participate, as I will surely be a party to war crimes. …”

He heard about the stories. Never saw them, but heard about them.

Well, isn't that just too damn bad. You signed up for your hitch, so either fulfill your obligation to your country or pay the consequences.

Oh, another convenient omission is the fact Iraq Veterans Against the War are a group of frauds. Does the name Jesse MacBeth ring any bells?

Apparently not with the media.

Here's a dispatch filed while Chiroux was undergoing a grueling tour of Poland in 2006. No doubt he's suffering post-traumatic stress disorder after that arduous ordeal. He clearly suffered further from that deployment in Japan.

Here he receives comfort from a notorious America-hater.

Ironically, Criroux got a photo credit in the NY Times that accompanied a story about--get this--an Army deserter!

Update: Thanks to Just a Grunt for reminding me about Jonn Lilyea's account yesterday of the IVAW Traveling Road Show.

The YouTube Sham

CNN deserves no mercy for the fraudulent "debate" they staged Wednesday night and should forever be shunned by Republicans. Not that they had much credibility to begin with, but now they have zero.

Michelle Malkin demolishes them here, while the New York Post notes how within hours bloggers demolished the alleged news network, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party and the Clintons in particular.

If they had a shred of decency, they would apologize and fire all those responsible for this fraud.

Wednesday night's CNN/YouTube debate was barely over before the network was forced to make an embarrassing admission: One of its supposedly disinterested questioners, retired gay Army officer Keith Kerr, has an official position with the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Wait.

There's more.

Within hours, resourceful bloggers had uncovered the even more embarrassing fact that at least three others who'd been selected to grill the Republican presidential hopefuls had all declared, in various online forums, that they're backing Democratic candidates.

This isn't the end of the world, of course - though, as Malkin notes, it's not hard to imagine the national uproar that would ensue if GOP operatives flying false colors had infiltrated a Democratic debate sponsored by Fox News.

For its part, CNN said it had only checked to see whether any of its so-called citizen questioners had donated to a candidate. Obviously, a little more scrutiny was called for - as those bloggers swiftly proved.

Sad to say, though, the host network's sloppiness was hardly the only thing wrong with the debate. Or even the worst thing.

The basic format - often-bizarre home videos by mostly young questioners who seemed more full of themselves than genuinely curious - essentially turned the event into a circus.

Read the rest.

Are Spitzer and Cuomo Dumb Enough to Bite on This?

One of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated has resurfaced.

If the governor and attorney general are stupid enough to go anywhere near this, they deserve all the ridicule that comes their way.

NEW YORK - Twenty years after her allegations of a racially charged rape became a national flashpoint, Tawana Brawley's mother and stepfather want to reopen the case, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Glenda Brawley and Ralph King want to press Gov. Eliot Spitzer and state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to re-examine the November 1987 incident, which a state grand jury ultimately concluded was a hoax, the Daily News reported.

"New York State owes my daughter. They owe her the truth," said Glenda Brawley. She reiterated her stance that her daughter was indeed raped by a group of white men who smeared her with feces and scrawled racial epithets on her body.

Representatives for Spitzer and Cuomo did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages early Saturday.

Brawley was 15 when she went missing for four days from her home in Wappingers Falls, about 75 miles north of New York City. After being found, she made the shocking allegation that she had been abducted and raped by six white law enforcement officials.

The case quickly made headlines and drew the attention of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who became an outspoken advocate for the teen.

But a special state grand jury found evidence Brawley had fabricated her story. A former Dutchess County prosecutor who had been implicated in the case later sued Brawley, Sharpton and other Brawley advisers for defamation, winning a $345,000 judgment against the advisers and a $185,000 judgment against Brawley.

A spokeswoman for Sharpton, who was held liable for $65,000 in the case, did not immediately respond to an e-mail message early Sunday. The former prosecutor's lawyer did not immediately return a telephone message.

Nobody is in any hurry to return calls, for obvious reasons.

Despite this fraud, Sharpton somehow managed to become a Democrat kingmaker.

They deserve each other.

Plantsuit-Gate: The Fallout

Doug Ross has been busy nailing this down, and Dan Riehl and Gateway Pundit have been on it from the outset.

Much more here.

Reached for comment on the recent media perfidy, Clinton operatives chuckled.


UPDATE: Captain Ed links. Thanks! Jim Geraghty also has more.

Nobel Fraud Menchu Forms Political Group in Guatemala

It's been many years since we've seen this fraud on the scene. Now, Rigoberta Menchu has resurfaced in Guatemala to form her own political movement.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu on Monday announced the formation of an Indian-led political movement whose primary aim is to back her probable bid for Guatemala's presidency this fall.

Menchu is in talks with two minor leftist parties that have offered to make her their presidential candidate. The movement, known as Winaq, does not have time to register itself as a political party before September elections but would back Menchu's candidacy under the banner of one of the smaller registered parties.

Winaq is a Mayan word signifying "the wholeness of the human being."

Menchu won the Peace Prize in 1992 for her efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to her homeland, where a 36-year civil war killed about 150,000 -- most of them civilians of Guatemala's Indian majority.

Conveniently, the story fails to mention the fact this woman is a total phony. It sure would seem relevant to note the story upon which she was awarded the Nobel Prize is a fabrication.

As noted here, hers is a typical fabrication of the left, a feelgood story that seems too good to be true, and usually is.

For Rigoberta, the Nobel Prize proved to be a canonization in both senses of the term. This obscure Indian woman who published her 1983 autobiography when she was still in her mid-20s, suddenly received worldwide recognition as a leftist icon -- a modern-day Saint Sebastian, pierced by the arrows of racist discrimination and colonial exploitation. She received several honorary doctorates and in 1992 was nominated as a United Nations goodwill ambassador and special representative of indigenous peoples. Her book, haled as a first-person account of Guatemalan bigotry and brutality against native Indians, spread from cutting-edge curricula like Stanford's to become part of the canon of required and frequently assigned readings in high schools and universities around the globe.

Then, just last week, the New York Times revealed that much of I, Rigoberta Menchu is a fabrication. Times reporter Larry Rohter corroborated the research of an American anthropologist, David Stoll, whose interview with over a hundred people and archival research during the past decade led him to conclude that Rigoberta's story "cannot be the eyewitness account it purports to be."

Read the remainder. Rather eye-opening.

More at Front Page, which notes she didn't even write this piece of fiction.

THE STORY OF RIGOBERTA MENCHU, a Quiche Mayan from Guatemala, whose autobiography catapulted her to international fame, won her the Nobel Peace Prize, and made her an international emblem of the dispossessed indigenous peoples of the Western hemisphere and their attempt to rebel against the oppression of European conquerors, has now been exposed as a political fabrication, a tissue of lies, and one of the greatest intellectual and academic hoaxes of the Twentieth Century.

During the last decade, Rigoberta Menchu had become a leading icon of the university culture. In one of the more celebrated "breakthroughs" of the multicultural left, a demonstration of left-wing faculty and students at Stanford University, led by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, had chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western cultures got to go!" The target of the chant was Stanfords required curriculum in Western civilization. University officials quickly caved before the demonstrators, and the course title was changed simply to "CIV." Works by "Third World" (mainly Marxist) authors previously "excluded" were now introduced into the canon of great books as required reading. Chief among these was an autobiography by an indigenous Guatemalan and sometime revolutionary, I, Rigoberta Menchu, which now took its place beside Aristotle, Dante, and Shakespeare as the Stanford students introduction to the world.

Published in 1982, I, Rigoberta Menchu was actually written by a French leftist, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, wife of the Marxist, Regis Debray, who provided the "foco strategy" for Che Guevaras failed effort to foment a guerilla war in Bolivia in the 1960s. The idea of the foco was that urban intellectuals could insert a military front inside a system of social oppression, and provide the catalyst for revolutionary change. Debrays misguided theory got Guevara and an undetermined number of Bolivian peasants killed, and as we shall see, is at the root of the tragedies that overwhelmed Rigoberta Menchu and her family, and that are (falsely) chronicled in I, Rigoberta Menchu.

Curious how none of these facts made it into the AP story, isn't it?