The Crappy (Slashdot) Deal

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com “Somebody should Slashdot this, it is exactly the sort of thing the programming geeks there will understand and appreciate. They may also be able to provide valuable insight.” I’ve been watching Slashdot for this story to come up, obviously this is just the sort of thing that SHOULD show up there. It won’t. Slashdot is filled with pro AGW types, and controlled by them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it never show up there at all. Even the “science” section is glaringly silent on the issue. Yes they are the type that would understand this, but for many it would mean exposing their preconceptions to themselves, and that won’t happen. There is a reason why people will defend the crappy deal they got from a used car salesman.

Climaquiddick

clipped from www.qando.net The leaked documents (see our previous coverage) come from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England. In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it “relies on most heavily” when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated. To me that’s more than enough reason to step back, call a halt to all this talk about global treaties and take a good hard look at the science involved in all of this. What should be obvious to everyone is that more than enough questions have emerged over the past year to seriously question the conclusions reached by the CRU. This data is the source of the EPA’s decision to regulate CO2.

A Fine Mess

clipped from pajamasmedia.com This kind of thing is as fascinating as a soap opera, but I want to know how it comes out. Near the bottom of the file, I find: I am seriously close to giving up, again. The history of this is so complex that I can’t get far enough into it before by head hurts and I have to stop. Each parameter has a tortuous history of manual and semi-automated interventions that I simply cannot just go back to early versions and run the update prog. I could be throwing away all kinds of corrections – to lat/lons, to WMOs (yes!), and more. The file peters out, no conclusions. I hope they find this poor guy, and he didn’t hang himself in his rooms or something, because this file is a summary of three years of trying to get this data working. Unsuccessfully. I think there’s a good reason the CRU didn’t want to give their data to people trying to replicate their work. It’s in such a mess that they can’t replicate their own results.

Epidemic Death Spiral

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Meanwhile, the death spiral of the Islamic Republic continues.  There is an epidemic of failed landing gear on airplanes either belonging to, or transporting officers of, the Revolutionary Guards.  The latest was a flight on Monday from Tehran to Mashad that had to return to Tehran and circle the air field for nearly two hours, burning off fuel and waiting for foam to be spread.  There were no casualties. The same cannot be said for two young men who were recently murdered by the regime.  The younger was Ramin Pourandarjani, a 25-year old medical doctor whose career seemed guaranteed to soar; he graduated first in his class in Tehran.  At the time of his death–November 10th–he was working at the infamous Kahrizak detention center in Tehran, the site of mass torture following the anti-regime demonstrations in June.  He had initially refused to sign documents that claimed that a dissident had died of natural causes

Peerless II: Criminals

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It's the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy. This is the scandal of the century. It needs to be thoroughly investigated-and the culprits need to be brought to justice.

Peerless

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com You can also see from these e-mails the scientists' panic at any dissent appearing in the scientific literature. When another article by a skeptic was published in Geophysical Research Letters, Michael Mann complains, "It's one thing to lose Climate Research. We can't afford to lose GRL." Another CRU scientist, Tom Wigley, suggests that they target another troublesome editor: "If you think that Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted." That's exactly what they did, and a later e-mail boasts that "The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/new editorial leadership there." So it's no surprise when another e-mail refers to an attempt to keep inconvenient scientific findings out of a UN report: "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. K and I will keep them out somehow-even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

COTD: Code II (Pants On Fire Edition)

clipped from camirror.wordpress.com 2) Measured temperatures in recent times are way off temps predicted by proxies. Rather than question the proxies, the later measured data is adjusted. Then it is changed again by adding in the latest hotter measured temps — not by overlay, but mixing the signals together plus overlay. You just can’t do this and call it honest. Its made to look like the proxies were hard data this way, but the hard data ends at the foot of the blade. After seeing this in the code, I went to the graphs to check – and the graphs actually also say they are doing this in the notes! So two points for being upfront, but HOW does that get a pass? This isn’t a climate question, this is a statistics/graphing question, and I believe have plenty enough experience in that field to call foul. Then in the ‘IPCC comments file’ you see this brought up in a few places, all rejected (“its in the notes”). Wow. Noting a deception doesn’t make it ok. “Your pants are on fire*” ….. *actually they’re not.

COTD: Code

clipped from camirror.wordpress.com After a day or two looking through the code (I’m a programmer, not a climatologist) and getting some good responses from gavin at realClimate I am surprised at a few things. 1) I really thought code like this would be super complicated — obviously simulating weather long term is a very tough problem. However in the code it comes down to, get the measurements, apply arbitrary weighting/changes to the end set of data (blade portion), and then weight in hotter measured temps for the blade only (non linearly). One could argue that the numbers used to reduce proxy signals in the 40’s and amplify them in the blade portion were the result of hundreds of inputs and deep thought, but seeing -.03 and 2.6 there doesn’t inspire confidence. That’s like the ultimate answer being 42. The comments above the lines don’t help either, things like “****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE ******”.

21

clipped from omniclimate.wordpress.com

Consensus

clipped from omniclimate.wordpress.com The main impression that I get from the emails is that the various scientists think that I and others are simply doing this to harass them. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have no desire to put any scientist to any extra effort beyond providing what science requires – a full accounting of the data, the methods, and in some cases the computer code used to do the research. Anything more is harassment … but anything less is scientific obstruction. As I said, the issue is not Trenberth or scientists talking smack. It is the illegal evasion of legitmate scientific requests for data needed to replicate a scientific study. Without replication, science cannot move forwards. And when you only give data to friends of yours, and not to people who actually might take a critical look at it, you know what you end up with? A “consensus” …

Deniers

clipped from camirror.wordpress.com Phil Jones, Dec 3, 2008: About 2 months ago I deleted loads of emails, so have very little – if anything at all. Phil Jones, Nov 24, 2009 Guardian We’ve not deleted any emails or data here at CRU.

Which leads to this inevitable analysis by one of the Climate Audit commentariat:

One of the “defenses” put out by Team supporters is that there is no smoking gun and the email’s are really that bad.

However, once one realizes that the emails left were the ones the Team considered “safe”, then the inescapable conslusion is … [self snip].

Clique-ity Quacks

clipped from limitedmodifiedhangout.blogspot.com ...As mentioned before, Michael Mann is his own group since he is a co-author with each of the other 42. The cliques are very clear in this layout. In addition to the Mann-Rutherford-Jones-Osborn-Briffa-Bradley-Hughes clique there are several others that are readily apparent. They are Rind-Shindell-Schmidt-Miller, Cook-D’Arrigo- Jacoby-Wilson, Folland-Vellinga-Allan-Knight, Stahle-Shugart-Therrell-Druckenbrod- Cleveland, Sangoyomi-Moon-Lall-Abarbanel, and Clement-Zebiak-Cane. The last cluster is somewhat of the miscellaneous cluster of people who had published with Michael Mann, but not much if at all with each other. The black boxes indicate that the proxy was used in a given paper. It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications....

Imagine No Politicians

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com

Nuts (Part 69,496)

clipped from www.riehlworldview.com By dumping a large number of sensitive documents in a public dumpster on the eve of a formal investigation, ACORN may have succeeded in shredding what might be left of its reputation. It may have also revealed itself not just as a criminal enterprise, but as an enterprise that is, at its heart, criminally dumb. But then what else would one expect from a bunch of progressives rolling in a ton of Democrat cash, possible bribes, kickbacks and influence peddling? Let us not forget that the titular head nut behind ACORN is none other than Barack Obama himself. While the future is impossible to predict and plenty of powerful Dems will be doing everything they can to circle the wagons and protect their party and potus in all this, at this rate, Obama may yet prove to be the false prophet who led his people into the sea just as the waves came crushing down on them.

In The Zone

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

Check. ... Me. Out.

clipped from www.qando.net World in recession? Check. Wheels coming off the science of AGW? Check. High unemployment continuing to rise? Check. 2010 an election year? Check. Senate historically opposed to international treaties that hurt the economy? Check. Great – why not go to the UN’s Copenhagen treaty summit and offer some totally unrealistic and probably unachievable cuts in greenhouse gas emissions so we can feel like one of the cool kids? President Barack Obama is considering setting a provisional target for cutting America’s huge greenhouse gas emissions, removing the greatest single obstacle to a landmark global agreement to fight climate change. This is absolutely perfect for the talker-in-chief. Go. Promise. Bask. This is how you turn a useless conference which will most likely never accomplish a thing in reference to its primary goal into one all about the president.

Wanting

clipped from www.qando.net Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him? Instead, he simply said “thank you, guys,” and disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists’ questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public’s expectations had been “too high.” The master of spin’s spin is the public’s expectation’s had been “too high”? Wow – I guess Axelrod missed all that subtlety, nuance and success as well. How bad is the growing lack of respect? You have a German magazine which was an Obama booster criticizing his foreign policy and comparing Obama to George Bush and finding Obama wanting. pigs are flying.

Disproved

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com But let's go back to the main point. Apparently the alarmist climatologists acknowledge that SO2, frequently emitted in conjunction with CO2, nullifies, wholly or in part, any warming tendency associated with the CO2. What is the net effect? This is, obviously, an empirical, quantitative question. But these scientists can't answer it, not only because each of their models gives a different answer, but because they have no idea how much SO2 is being emitted by the main countries that produce that pollutant, India and China. Climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial. What climate scientists like those at East Anglia don't know dwarfs what they do know. They can produce a model for every occasion, but are the models any good? If so, which one? One thing we know for sure is that they don't generate reliable predictions. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved.

OSwindling Futurity (Bumped) (Bumped Again)

clipped from www.qando.net “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” - Thomas Jefferson UPDATE: "The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation" - V.I. Lenin UPDATED AGAIN: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

Unintended Consequences (Part 83,391)

clipped from sayanythingblog.com Again and again liberals have insisted that one of the best ways to help with America’s unemployment problem is to expand unemployment benefits.  In fact, expanded unemployment benefits were part of the “stimulus” spending spree that was supposed to create more jobs. Throughout critics such as myself have pointed out that making it easier to be unemployed at the expense of the people who we want to be doing the hiring was hardly a way to fix unemployment.  And it turns out we were right: WASHINGTON – As if small businesses needed another reason not to hire, consider their latest financial burden: The cost of rising unemployment itself. Employers already are squeezed by tight credit, rising health care costs, wary consumers and a higher minimum wage. Now, the surging jobless rate is imposing another cost. It’s forcing higher state taxes on companies to pay for unemployment insurance claims. Some employers say the extra costs make them less likely to hire.

Dobermans

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus’ Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor’s writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book: “The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle.” Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, “That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate.”

The ABCDs Of Watermelondom

clipped from pajamasmedia.com MORE ON CLIMATEGATE in the London Times: “Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.”

I'd have said corrupt watermelondom but that would have been redundant.

We Now Take You Live To Beijing...

clipped from www.liveleak.com

COTD: Criminals - A Lower Form Of Life

clipped from bishophill.squarespace.com The used car salesmen must be pleased that a lower form of life has been identified.

Criminals -- The Next Level

clipped from bishophill.squarespace.com In the circumstances, here are some summaries of the CRUgate files. I'll update these as and when I can. The refs are the email number. Phil Jones writes to University of Hull to try to stop sceptic Sonia Boehmer Christiansen using her Hull affiliation. Graham F Haughton of Hull University says its easier to push greenery there now SB-C has retired.(1256765544) Michael Mann discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489) Tim Osborn discusses how data are truncated to stop an apparent cooling trend showing up in the results (0939154709). Analysis of impact here. Wow! Phil Jones describes the death of sceptic, John Daly, as "cheering news".(1075403821) Phil Jones encourages colleagues to delete information subject to FoI request.(1212063122) Phil Jones says he has use Mann's "Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series"...to hide the decline". Real Climate says "hiding" was an unfortunate turn of phrase.(0942777075)

RTWT.

Criminals II

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Now, I’ve purposefully not included much of the text from these emails, both for reasons of space and because I want people to read them for themselves. But, at least on this first look, it appears that the three scandals are: First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog.)  This is at best massively unethical. Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions. Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime.

Criminals

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Email 1107454306 is particularly interesting. In it, Dr Jones writes: The two MMs [McKittrick and McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. What makes this interesting is that the CRU, in later years, announced that they had “inadvertently deleted” their raw data when they responded to an FOIA request from … McIntyre.

Except He Didn't Actually Write Them

clipped from hotair.com Instead, they are people, either in politics or close observers, who once held an unromantically high opinion of Obama. They were important to his rise, and are likely more important to the success or failure of his presidency than Obama or his distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team appreciate. I’d challenge this argument as part of the real problem Drew misses.  The people who held Obama in such high esteem had indisputably romantic (in the classic sense) notions of Obama.  By definition.  What had Obama done before 2007 to earn “unromantically high opinion[s]” from anyone?  He won a few elections, but had no significant legislative accomplishments to his name, either in Illinois or in the US Senate. Most of these high opinions and high expectations came from Obama’s two memoirs.  It’s almost impossible in this age to imagine any more romantic basis for the vast support Obama won for his quest to have his first executive job be the US Presidency.

See here.

COTD: 25K

clipped from disgrasian.com Let’s look at what the “task force” has admitted to. They state that for women age 40-49, it is necessary to screen about 1900 women — to save one woman’s from dying of breast cancer. If you check the census data, you will see that there are about 22 million women in the US between the ages of 40 and 49. If these women are not screen over the next ten years, one in 1900 will die an unnecessary death from breast cancer. That works out to — about 25,000 women dead in the prime of their lives — when they could have been cured. That’s more than the combined death toil from 9/11, the Iraq war I, the Iraq war II, and the Afghanistan war. . . .in fact, it’s about twice as much. I wonder how much they’re paying the “task force” members for such wise counsel. . . .

Uproar

clipped from mjperry.blogspot.com The NY Times blog has an article "The Uproar Over Mammography," which links to a WSJ op-ed "A Breast Cancer Preview: The mammogram decision is a sign of cost control to come." In a world of consumer-driven health care that includes Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), wouldn't this "uproar" be a complete non-issue? In that world, patients spending their own money could make decisions on their own, in consultation with their physician, about the timing and frequency of their mammograms. Think about oil changes for your car. If the manufacturer recommends oil changes every 5,000 miles, but you decide on a different frequency - say every 3,000 miles or every 10,000 - that's not a problem. Now if your car insurance covered routine oil changes, and then the government introduced "government car insurance reform" with a "public option," then the frequency of oil changes would become an issue and could lead to an "uproar."

Stopped Clock Watch, 11/21/09

clipped from mjperry.blogspot.com Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was astounded this week by President Barack Obama’s decision to respond a written questionnaire Sánchez submitted to the White House. Still recovering from bruises left by a recent vicious attack by state security agents, she told CPJ from her home in Havana: “This is the best way to get better.” When the history of Cuba’s freedom movement is written, it’s likely that Yoani Sanchez will be recognized as a national hero and freedom fighter, the equivalent of Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Klaus in the Czech Republic. Yoani Sanchez demonstrates that we should never underestimate the power of one courageous individual with a computer Intellectual figures like Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, and Thomas Jefferson would be proud of Yoani Sanchez and her powerful message of individual freedom in one of the few remaining regimes of totalitarianism left in the world.

Except that O Duce is turning the U.S. into one.

Two Simple Observations II

clipped from mjperry.blogspot.com We have become so accustomed to employer-provided medical care that we regard it as part of the natural order. Yet it is thoroughly illogical. Why single out medical care? Food is more essential to life than medical care. Why not exempt the cost of food from taxes if provided by the employer? Why not return to the much-reviled company store when workers were in effect paid in kind rather than in cash? The revival of the company store for medicine has less to do with logic than pure chance. It is a wonderful example of how one bad government policy leads to another. During World War II, the government financed much wartime spending by printing money while, at the same time, imposing wage and price controls. The resulting repressed inflation produced shortages of many goods and services, including labor. Firms competing to acquire labor at government-controlled wages started to offer medical care as a fringe benefit. That benefit proved particularly attractive to workers and spread

Two Simple Observations

clipped from mjperry.blogspot.com Two simple observations are key to explaining both the high level of spending on medical care and the dissatisfaction with that spending. The first is that most payments to physicians or hospitals or other caregivers for medical care are made not by the patient but by a third party—an insurance company or employer or governmental body. The second is that nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely or as frugally as he spends his own. No third party is involved when we shop at a supermarket. We pay the supermarket clerk directly: the same for gasoline for our car, clothes for our back, and so on down the line. Why, by contrast, are most medical payments made by third parties? The answer for the United States begins with the fact that medical care expenditures are exempt from the income tax if, and only if, medical care is provided by the employer. If an employee pays directly for medical care, the expenditure comes out of the employee’s after-tax income.

cO-conspirators

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com On May 29, Phil Jones wrote to Michael Mann, with the subject heading "IPCC & FOI": Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have with Keith re AR4? ["AR4" is common shorthand for the U.N. IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, which was released in 2007.] Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. These emails appear to show that, when faced with a legitimate request under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, these global warming alarmists preferred to delete their emails with one another about the crucially important IPCC report--the main basis for the purported "consensus" in favor of anthropogenic global warming--rather than allow them to come to light. This is one of many instances in the East Anglia documents where the global warming alarmists act like a gang of co-conspirators rather than respectable scientists.

No Need To Know

clipped from ace.mu.nu Amazingly, they didn't think it was something the Army needed to know. In the months before the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan intensified his communications with a radical Yemeni American cleric and began to discuss surreptitious financial transfers and other steps that could translate his thoughts into action, according to two sources briefed on a collection of secret e-mails between the two. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said Friday that he would investigate the handling of the e-mails -- 18 or 19 in all -- and why military officials were not aware of them before the deadly attack. Levin told reporters after a briefing from Pentagon staff members that "there are some who are reluctant to call it terrorism, but there is significant evidence that it is." If even an ostrich like Levin is realizing this is a terror attack, it's going to be harder for Obama and Army leaders to continue to pretend otherwise.

Beyond zerO

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Can Barney Frank Dunk on Lebron? No, he cannot. Nor can anyone else in Washington. Nor can they catch passes from Ben Rothlisberger in the Super Bowl or strike out Derek Jeter in the World Series. They are not equipped to do so. So what?  This ridiculous image speaks to the business malaise infecting the economy since Obama took office. The point is that politicians are equally ill-equipped to run the auto industry or the health industry or the lending industry or the insurance industry -- and their determination to do so is sucking all the dynamism from the entrepreneurial class in this country. With the threat of this administration and congress, what is the possible motivation for anyone with ideas and capital to invest his time, talent, and money into a risky endeavor? There appears to be none. In fact, there appear to be powerful incentives not to invest any time or treasure -- thus an economy with almost zero creative inertia.

mObster

clipped from neoneocon.com Elizabeth Drew reports that many inside-the-Beltway Obama supporters are angry that Greg Craig was tossed under the bus by this administration, with Obama’s tacit approval and acquiescence while others did the dirty work. The sentence that interested me most in that regard was this: Yes, we knew, or should have, during the campaign that the supposed idealist Obama had a bit of the Chicago cut-throat in him, but there was little sign that he could be as brutal and heedless of loyalty as he was in the Craig affair. Query to Elizabeth Drew and whomever else might have thought of Obama that way: ever hear of Alice Palmer? Because if you hadn’t, you failed to complete the initial assignment of your homework on your hero. And if you had, you could not have avoided the immediate realization that Obama’s very first political act had been to brutally double-cross his earliest booster and mentor, and to do it as cold-bloodedly and ruthlessly as any Chicago pol—or mobster.

Kung Fu Sarah

clipped from ace.mu.nu You remember "Ricky Hollywood"? Not. One. Single. Mention. That's cold. Other than this deliberate omission, I couldn't find a single outwardly venomous reference in this book. Its like a king-fu revenge movie starring Mr. Rogers: You know there's some ass-whoopin' going on there, but damned if you can see the bloody details. Sarah's writing style might seem stilted compared to the flowery rhetoric of Teleprompter One, but to this denizen of "flyover country" it seemed to ring true. Sarah Palin campaigned on a "What You See Is What You Get" platform, and never claimed to be Victor Davis Hanson or William Jennings Bryan. She's a happy housewife from the Mat-Su Valley who punctuates her stories with positive anecdotes about her family & her State because she wants you to see Alaska and America through her eyes. If this is cold, calculated populist junkfood designed to falsely endear her to ham & eggers like me........then she's got the tune down pat.