GORE'S BAD SCIENCE

by Timothy P. Carney (more by this author)

Al Gore's grasp of Earth science was dreadful in college and has gotten steadily worse, according to the embarrassing facts exposed in the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming," a book that declares: "Catastrophic Manmade global warming is not catastrophic, manmade, or global." It reveals that Gore's college grades were not anything to write home about:

NATURAL SCIENCES 6 (MAN'S PLACE IN NATURE): D
NATURAL SCIENCES 118: C+

Gore's favorite crusade of recent months, that global warming caused Katrina, is summarily dismissed in the book by the nation's top hurricane expert. "The degree to which you believe global warming is causing major hurricanes is inversely proportional to your knowledge about these storms," said Dr. William Gray, the leading Hurricane expert in the U.S.

"The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming" dismantles Gore's faulty science with hard facts ignored by the mainstream media:

• Gore's favorite animal, the polar bear, is thriving. Ten out of 12 polar bear populations are thriving, although the White House has recently said they are going extinct.
  
• Man is responsible for only 3% of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
  
• Methane is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas that comes from decaying plants, seeps from swamps, bogs, rice paddies, and leaks out the front and back ends of masticating animals.
  
• The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker and the South Pole is getting colder. The Southern hemisphere on the whole shows no appreciable rise in temperatures.
  
• Gore points out that the "snows of Kilimanjaro" are melting, but leaves out the fact that the temperature there is dropping.

Mr. Carney, a contributing editor to HUMAN EVENTS, is the author of "The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money," published by John J. Wiley & Sons. He is the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Read more of his work at TimothyPCarney.com.

BARACK OBAMA AND SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

I watched liberal Democrat Barack Obama on 60 Minutes last night. No doubt about it .. he's glib. He's smooth. Please note, though, that I won't say that he's articulate. In the last few weeks we've come to know that saying that a black person is "articulate" is racist.

Oh .. you didn't know that? Where you've been? Remember when Joe Biden said that Barack was "articulate?" Well this was immediately translated into Biden saying that Obama is articulate and that somehow makes him different from all other blacks who aren't. So now you have to be careful to only give a white person credit for being articulate. Stray away from this rule and you run the chance of being called a racist.

OK ... back to the socialized medicine thing. Barack ... like virtually every Democrat candidate ... is pushing the "universal health care" theme.

Know this. "Universal health care" is just sugar-coated way of saying socialized medicine. The left has become very adept of late in coming up with clever words and phrases to substitute for words and phrases to most Americans react negatively. "Liberal" has become "progressive." "Spending" is now called "investing." People might object to government spending, but who would object to some sound investments? Similarly, "socialized medicine" is now "universal health care." These people know they aren't going to get elected on the promise of socialized medicine.

Democrats know that the best and most efficient way to deliver health care services to the most people in this country is through the private sector. There has been no economic mechanism in the history of mankind that does a better job of delivering essential services and products to people quicker and more efficiently than capitalism and the free market. Democrats know this. You know this.

But there is a problem.

When the free market delivers the services it leaves politicians on the sidelines ... with little power. This is completely unacceptable.

The call for socialized medicine is not about a more efficient method of delivering medical care. It's about gaining even more power over the everyday lives of Americans. When you control someone's health care, you control them.

DEMOCRATS DEFEND IRAN

Democrats are sticking up for Iran...big-time. The Islamic terrorist state led by the loony Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has found some protection in Washington. Democrats are warning the administration not to do anything to Iran without building a case first. Meanwhile, Iran continues to support the insurgency in Iraq that is killing our troops. The defense department says it has hard evidence of Iran's involvement. Not good enough for the Democrats.

First up to apologize for Iran is The Poodle: "Every leader in the region and every observer, every expert here in our country, tells us that Iran does not want a complete and total implosion in Iraq." OK, fine. But how does that explain Iran's training of terrorists and their supplies showing up in Iraq? How does that explain Iranian explosive devises being used by Islamic terrorists against American troops? You do know that Iranian projectile bombs have killed 170 U.S. Troops. Perhaps it takes 175 for Kerry to get upset. I wonder if every troop killed by Iranian bombs will get a purple heart? Maybe John Kerry can give them one of his; after all, he didn't exactly earn them now did he?

Then we have Senator Jack Reed, Democrat, who just can't believe Iran is supporting the aggression in Iraq. He seems to think it could just be "rogue elements" in Iran. Evidently vowing to wipe Israel off the map doesn't make Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "rogue" enough. Then there's Ron Wyden, Socialist of Oregon, who is also wringing his hands: "The administration is engaged in a drumbeat with Iran that is much like the drumbeat that they did with Iraq. We're going to insist on accountability." Don't worry, America. Ron Wyden is going to be carefully counting those coffins. Evidently there is some secret amount that have to be killed by Iran before we'll do anything.

Once again, the Democratic Party exposes itself as a terrorist sympathizer at worst and extremely weak on defending America at best. There is no other conclusion to draw here.

THE LIMITS OF SUNNINESS

By George Will

In this winter of their discontents, nostalgia for Ronald Reagan has become for many conservatives a substitute for thinking. This mental paralysis -- gratitude decaying into idolatry -- is sterile: Neither the man nor his moment will recur. Conservatives should face the fact that Reaganism cannot define conservatism.

That is one lesson of John Patrick Diggins's new book, " Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History." Diggins, a historian at the City University of New York, treats Reagan respectfully as an important subject in American intellectual history. The 1980s, he says, thoroughly joined politics to political theory. But he notes that Reagan's theory was radically unlike that of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism, and very like that of Burke's nemesis, Thomas Paine. Burke believed that the past is prescriptive because tradition is a repository of moral wisdom. Reagan frequently quoted Paine's preposterous cry that "we have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Diggins's thesis is that the 1980s were America's "Emersonian moment" because Reagan, a "political romantic" from the Midwest and West, echoed New England's Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Emerson was right," Reagan said several times of the man who wrote, "No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature." Hence Reagan's unique, and perhaps oxymoronic, doctrine -- conservatism without anxieties. Reagan's preternatural serenity derived from his conception of the supernatural.

Diggins says Reagan imbibed his mother's form of Christianity, a strand of 19th-century Unitarianism from which Reagan took a foundational belief that he expressed in a 1951 letter: "God couldn't create evil so the desires he planted in us are good." This logic -- God is good, therefore so are God-given desires -- leads to the Emersonian faith that we please God by pleasing ourselves. Therefore there is no need for the people to discipline their desires. So, no leader needs to suggest that the public has shortcomings and should engage in critical self-examination.

Diggins thinks that Reagan's religion "enables us to forget religion" because it banishes the idea of "a God of judgment and punishment." Reagan's popularity was largely the result of "his blaming government for problems that are inherent in democracy itself." To Reagan, the idea of problems inherent in democracy was unintelligible because it implied that there were inherent problems with the demos -- the people. There was nothing -- nothing-- in Reagan's thinking akin to Lincoln's melancholy fatalism, his belief (see his Second Inaugural) that the failings of the people on both sides of the Civil War were the reasons why "the war came."

As Diggins says, Reagan's "theory of government has little reference to the principles of the American founding." To the Founders, and especially to the wisest of them, James Madison, government's principal function is to resist, modulate and even frustrate the public's unruly passions, which arise from desires.

"The true conservatives, the founders," Diggins rightly says, constructed a government full of blocking mechanisms -- separations of powers, a bicameral legislature, and other checks and balances -- in order "to check the demands of the people." Madison's Constitution responds to the problem of human nature. "Reagan," says Diggins, "let human nature off the hook."

"An unmentionable irony," writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. "Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it." Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government -- a dispenser of unending entitlements -- they will get ever larger government. But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's First Inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, which inevitably include desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?

Similarly, Reagan said that the people never start wars, only governments do. But the Balkans reached a bloody boil because of the absence of effective government. Which describes Iraq today.

Because of Reagan's role in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Diggins ranks him among the "three great liberators in American history" -- the others being Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt -- and among America's three or four greatest presidents. But, says Diggins, an Emersonian president who tells us our desires are necessarily good leaves much to be desired.

If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison. As Diggins says, Reaganism tells people comforting and flattering things that they want to hear; the Madisonian persuasion tells them sobering truths that they need to know.

georgewill@washpost.com

BUSH MISSED CHANCE FOR PEACE WITH IRAN?

A document has surfaced that Newsweek is reporting supposedly shows George W. Bush blew a chance to make peace with Iran in 2003. Who are they kidding? How do you make peace with a country calling you The Great Satan and sending terrorists into Iraq to blow your soldiers up? Are you telling me that Newsweek is really taking this stuff seriously?

Supposedly the Iranians faxed a proposal for negotiations to Washington through the Switzerland ambassador 4 years ago. The implication is that the Bush Administration, eager to go to war with Iran, simply ignored the proposal. I wonder if the Iranians were offering to stop enriching uranium, stop training terrorists and discontinue their harboring of Al-Qaeda fugitives? Those would be some good starting points. Needless to say, Iran's "offer" was not taking seriously.

As much as the Left and the media would hate to admit it, there is every probability that the U.S. may have to use military force to bring Iran down a notch or two. Especially now that they're training terrorists to fight and kill American troops, then sending them to Iraq. That is what we call the enemy. In another time, we would be bombing Tehran right about now. But there's no support in the world to do that, mainly because most countries deal with Iran for their oil.

And, in other news, the Iranians have a fax machine. They're moving up in the world!

WHEN YOU TAX PROFITS, YOU TAX PEOPLE

By Lawrence Kudlow

ExxonMobil just reported the largest annual profit ever by a U.S. company -- a staggering $39.5 billion.

I say congratulations, although Hillary Clinton begs to differ.

At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee, the senator from New York said, "The oil companies reported the highest profits in the history of the world. I want to take those profits, and I want to put them in an alternative energy fund."

Take? Isn't that a confiscation of private property? Author P.J. O'Rourke framed it perfectly on a recent edition of CNBC's "Kudlow & Co.": She's "Hugo Chavez in a pants suit."

And what exactly would Mrs. Clinton be taking? ExxonMobil's profits are outsized, but they come on sales of $377.5 billion, making for a profit margin of just over 10 cents on the dollar. This remains well below the profit margins of many industries, including banking and biotech, where the margins nearly double those in the energy sector. The numbers are big, but the returns are middling.

And since sales and profits in the energy sector depend on the world price of oil, it's feast or famine for these businesses. In the last decade, oil prices have fluctuated from about $10 a barrel to nearly $80. Talk about volatile pricing.

Indeed, the energy business isn't easy. Still, ExxonMobil remains one of the best-run companies in America. Many professional investors believe it's the best-run company. In his recent book, "The Future for Investors," Jeremy Siegel of the University of Pennsylvania reveals that Exxon has been one of the top three stocks in terms of return on investment over the past 50-odd years. John D. Rockefeller Sr., looking down from on high, must be pleased.

But it's also a tax-burdened company. While ExxonMobil recorded record profits last year, it also paid $100.7 billion in taxes -- two-and-half times its net profits, according to the Tax Foundation. In fact, over the past 25 years, federal and state governments took $397 billion from the largest oil companies and an additional $1.1 trillion in taxes at the pump. In today's dollars, that's $2.2 trillion.

This isn't an isolated problem. The prevailing 35 percent corporate tax rate takes a monster bite from all U.S. businesses. Moreover, our business taxes are far too high in relation to the rest of the world. Believe it or not, the corporate tax rate is lower in France than it is in the United States.

Along with slow-growing Japan, the United States has the highest marginal tax rate on corporate profits of any of the developed countries. Think of this: Germany is cutting its corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 25 percent. And if frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy wins the French presidential election this spring, he plans to slash France's corporate tax burden. Meanwhile, we'll still be taking our best companies behind the barn and shooting them.

The bottom line here is that our economic system is all about free-market capitalism, and at the core of that system is profit. Profit isn't a dirty word. From profits spring the abundance of this great country. Profits are the mother's milk of stocks and the economy. Expanding profits provide businesses the resources to enlarge production operations and hire additional workers. This, in turn, is how incomes are created -- wages that are then spent by American families.

Why can't liberals grasp this?

When the government meddles in the market and taxes companies more -- when it sticks its nose where it doesn't belong -- it ends up hurting not just businesses, but all individuals. Taxing profits more means taxing families more. Taxing profits moreleads to smaller wage gains for middle-income workers. When you tax American companies more, the American workforce is paid less. And when you tax American energy companies more, they produce less energy. That means higher prices for gas at the pump and heating fuel at home. This may enrich Uncle Sam, but it comes at the expense of ordinary folks.

Washington economist Kevin Hassett has shown that the U.S. workforce bears a full 70 percent of the cost of corporate taxes. So, if folks are indeed worried about wage inequality, they should be lobbying their congressional representatives to cut corporate taxes in order to increase worker wages.

The truth is, when you tax profits more you undermine the American work ethic and the incentive structure that goes along with it. In fact, you demoralize the very system that has made this country great. It's the people who ultimately pay the corporate profits tax -- and that includes shareholders, pensioners and other retirees. Business taxes should be headed down, not up.

Punish ExxonMobil for turning a healthy profit? Take those profits? Do that, and you punish the American worker and the entire economy, too.

Lawrence Kudlow is a former Reagan economic advisor, a syndicated columnist, and the co-host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company. Visit his blog, Kudlow's Money Politics.