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| Insider Report from Newsmax.com Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Voters Prefer Tea Party to Republican Party More Americans would vote for a congressional candidate from a hypothetical Tea Party than for a Republican, a Rasmussen Reports national poll reveals. Respondents to the poll were asked: “Suppose the tea party movement organized itself as a political party. When thinking about the next election for Congress, would you vote for the Republican candidate from your district, the Democratic candidate from your district, or the Tea Party candidate from your district?” The result of the three-way generic ballot: The Democrats attracted 36 percent of the vote, the Tea Party candidates 23 percent, and the Republicans 18 percent, with the rest undecided. Among respondents not affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican Party, the Tea Party candidates came out on top with 33 percent of the vote, while 25 percent chose the Democrats and just 12 percent preferred the GOP, with 30 percent undecided. Even among Republican respondents, the vote was close, with GOP candidates getting 39 percent of the vote to the Tea Party’s 33 percent. Overall, Tea Party candidates beat the Republicans among both men and women, and in all age groups except those over 65, Rasmussen Reports disclosed, but pointed out: “In practical terms, it is unlikely that a true third-party option would perform as well as the polling data indicate.” The tea party movement arose out of opposition to big government, increased federal spending, the economic stimulus plan and tax increases, and rose to prominence when it organized protest gatherings across the country earlier this year. The Rasmussen survey also found that 41 percent of voters believe Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that a new party is needed to represent the American people. Also, polling shows that 73 percent of Republican voters think their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base. 2. Scientist Points to U.N. ‘Fraud’ on Climate Change The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be dismissed as an authority on global warming, according to a scientist associated with the IPCC. In an article that appeared on South Africa’s BusinessDay Web site, Dr. Philip Lloyd, who has been a coordinating lead author for the IPCC, writes about the “flaws behind the whole process” of the IPCC. The IPCC “claims that it has thousands of scientists and almost as many reviewers of the scientists’ work to produce their reports,” noted Lloyd, an honorary research fellow at the Energy Research Center at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. However, Lloyd says the reviewers of IPCC reports have been neither independent nor anonymous, as they should be. In Lloyd’s experience there has been no review “in the accepted sense of the word — there was no independence of review, and the reviewers were anything but anonymous. The result is not scientific.” Another problem cited by Lloyd is that the IPCC issues a Summary for Policy Makers four months or more before a scientific report is published. Lloyd concludes: “It isn’t necessary to list all the changes I have identified between what the scientists actually said and what the policymakers who wrote the Summary for Policy Makers said they said. The process is so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud. As an authority, the IPCC should be consigned to the scrapheap without delay.” Lloyd’s article makes no mention of the so-called climategate scandal, which has called into question the validity of some of the IPCC’s science supporting man-made global warming. In a related note, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, following the eruption of the climategate controversy, acknowledged that the science supporting man-made global warming may not be “as certain as its proponents allege.” But The Telegraph in Britain reported that Blair believes the world should take action on climate change “even if the science is not correct.” 3. FBI File: Paul Harvey Was Nearly Shot Were it not for a security guard who was remiss in his duty, the nation might never have heard, or heard of, legendary radio personality Paul Harvey — because he would have been dead at age 32. Harvey, who died in February at age 90, was known for his trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” and had been heard nationally since 1951 when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks. At the peak of his career, Harvey reached more than 24 million listeners on over 1,200 radio stations, and his syndicated column was carried by 300 newspapers. But early in his career, Harvey narrowly escaped with his life when a publicity stunt backfired, according to an FBI file obtained by Newsmax through the Freedom of Information Act. In February 1951, Harvey — then a reporter at an Illinois radio station — sought to publicize what he felt was lax security at federal installations by climbing a 10-foot fence and gaining access to a restricted area of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. His overcoat got caught in the barbed wire at the top of the fence, and he was apprehended almost immediately by a security guard. He was held at gunpoint and FBI agents were sent to question him. An FBI document said Harvey was “questioned not detained.” But Illinois presented the case to a Federal grand jury, seeking to charge him with “making public, information regarding national defense,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. However, the jury did not indict him. The story doesn’t end there. The most intriguing piece of information in Harvey’s FOIA file is a report that the guard who seized Harvey was suspended “because he failed to open fire immediately.” Leslie Groves, wartime head of the atomic bomb project, said the guard who seized Harvey “had every right to shoot him.” Harold Urey, winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry, said he was disappointed that guards did not shoot Harvey. Urey conducted research that aided the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons. Related work was carried out at the facility that later became Argonne. And Harvey acknowledged in a radio broadcast that “I risked getting shot.” Now you know “the rest of the story.” 4. Kiplinger: Cap and Trade ‘Out of the Question’ President Barack Obama will begin 2010 in a “weaker position” and three major initiatives supported by his administration are doomed, according to The Kiplinger Letter. Kiplinger, a widely read business and economic forecasting periodical for people in management, predicts that “the 2010 legislative agenda will be full, but much of it will go unfulfilled.” There is “no way” pro-labor card-check legislation will pass, Kiplinger states. Card check would provide measures eliminating an employer's ability to require a secret ballot if the employees attempt to gain union representation. Instead, a union could be certified if 50 percent plus one of those working at a particular site sign cards asking for a union, creating a "card-check" system. “Labor will have to settle for a compromise bill that will protect against undue employer pressure,” and will “preserve the secret ballot for union elections,” Kiplinger reports. Climate change legislation is “out of the question,” according to the Dec. 11 edition of Kiplinger. The House-passed cap and trade bill to curb greenhouse gas emissions “will never make it through the Senate, no matter what gets decided” at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kiplinger forecasts. And a major overhaul of immigration measures is “very unlikely,” Kiplinger also predicts. Obama and the Democrats will push for a bill with tough enforcement, more legal immigration and a path to legal status for illegal aliens. “But winning 60 votes in the Senate for what some will call amnesty will be very hard.” 5. We Heard . . . THAT France’s first lady Carla Bruni says that serving only one term as president of France is “enough” for her husband Nicolas Sarkozy. “As his wife, one mandate is enough,” Bruni declared in an interview reported by Britain’s The Telegraph. But she added, “We never talk about it because I don’t think I should get involved in that kind of thing.” If Sarkozy wants to seek re-election, it would be “his business” and not hers, said Bruni, an Italian-born singer and former supermodel. “It would be like him sticking his nose in and suggesting I write a song in a major or minor key, when that’s my business.” Sarkozy took office in May 2007. He wed Bruni in February 2008, four months after he was divorced from his second wife. THAT Golf Digest is standing by Tiger Woods in spite of his mushrooming sex scandal and said it would not drop him as its “playing editor.” “Golf Digest has had a long-standing relationship with Tiger Woods to provide instruction articles for the magazine, and we do not have any plans to change that,” said a spokesman quoted by the New York Post. Woods’ contract with Golf Digest is reportedly worth up to $3 million a year. Woods was dropped as a spokesman for consulting firm Accenture and Gatorade dropped its Tiger drink amid disclosures that the golfer was involved in multiple infidelities. Woods has taken an indefinite leave from professional golf. |
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