Saskatoon Storm Chase

Picture: Funnel cloud forms just West of Rosthern Sk, June 30, 2009

I had a bit of fun storm chasing just north of Saskatoon today. A storm formed just West of Rosthern. There was tremendous inflow wind from the South East, where I was located. A wall cloud formed and produced several funnel clouds. As far as I know, there were no full blown tornadoes from this cell but later in the evening a number of powerful cells formed up East of Saskatoon. I don't know if they formed any tornadoes.

Update: A tip from the comments

The house is the only thing standing after an apparent tornado ripped apart a farmyard Tuesday in the Baljennie district, about half an hour southeast of the Battlefords.

Stan Mills was working in his shop when he noticed pieces of tin flying past the open door.

"So I just headed for my big machine lathe, and laid face down on the floor and covered up my head," Mills said Tuesday evening. "It couldn't have been two minutes later, and it seemed like the storm had died down, so I looked up and I was sitting wide open.

"There wasn't a shop left or a Quonset. It's all gone."

Mills' wife rode out the storm inside the house. Their home survived, but a two-by-four sticks out of one wall. The grain bins, shop, barn, and trees are all gone.

"Then the people started coming and word got around, and I got lots of help. You sure can't beat neighbours."

The 76-year-old Mills says while he's comforted by the help, it's sad to see the destruction.

"50 years of building up, on a farm, and [in] three minutes it's disappeared."

Environment Canada says the RCMP reported a sighting of a tornado touching down in the Hafford area, east of the Battlefords, and this may have been the same tornado, but they're working to confirm it.

How the Mighty Fall

California is proof that when "progressive" spending takes hold ... even the richest state can be brought low once tax-payers have been squeezed to the bone to pay for the lavish entitlements and perks they themselves have demanded. I know that most are blaming California lawmakers ... I blame the voters themselves:

California is preparing to issue IOUs to its creditors this week as it grapples with an unprecedented cash crunch and prepares to begin its new fiscal year deep in the red.

Once the US’s richest state, California now has the dubious distinction of having the worst credit rating in the country.

It is facing a budget deficit of $24bn (€17bn, £14.5bn) yet Arnold Schwarzenegger, its governor, and the state assembly cannot agree on a budget that would address the shortfall.

California’s fiscal year ends on Wednesday but as the state’s cash reserves are empty, IOUs will be issued to a range of creditors, including contractors, such as information technology companies and the food service groups that cater for prisons.

Consider California the canary in the coal mine.

What Will Jack and Iggy Say?

... when the one whom they adore and revere above all else, asks:

Obama Democrats have quietly sounded out power-brokers in Ottawa looking for advice on how to convince war-weary Canadians to keep military forces in Afghanistan after 2011.

Conscious of the deep political and public opposition to extending the mission further, American officials - political and military - are struggling to understand those concerns and identify the right arguments to make to the Harper government to "keep Canadian boots on the ground," said defence sources.

Speaking of Journalism

Almost weekly now the world is being handed ammunition that crushes Warmist alarm under its collective weight. The AGW myth has been shot full of holes with hardly a one being patched or filled with genuine scholarly rebuttal. By now the SS AGW should be sunk and sitting serenely at the bottom.

That's what should be the reality, but for some reason (feel free to guess why), most journalists the world over are ignoring the obvious ... that there is no consensus, and are therefore lending a hand to the AGW fraudsters by simply refuse to report.

Jennifer Marohasy fires another round ... and the SS AGW settles ever lower in the water:

There has been criticism of the potential for official weather stations in the USA to record artificially high temperatures because of the changing environments in which they exist, for example, new asphalt, new building or new air conditioning outlets. Meteorologist, Anthony Watts, has documented evidence of the problem and Canadian academic, Ross McKitrick, has attempted to calculate just how artificially elevated temperatures might be as a consequence.

A reader of this blog, Michael Hammer, recently studied the official data from the US official weather stations and in particular how it is adjusted after it has been collected. Mr Hammer concludes that the temperature rise profile claimed by the US government is largely if not entirely an artefact of the adjustments applied after the raw data is collected from the weather stations.

... keep reading.

Cranks, Losers, and Blow-hards

... after all, isn't that all that bloggers are. True intellect is concentrated within that class of brilliant individuals called "journalists", where truth is hunted down ruthlessly, never suppressed, and all issues are approached with scalpel-like precision that only the truly unbiased can bring to any issue.

That's why the following has got to be a mistake ... simply because a blog is responsible for what is going to be a fire-storm ... a storm that should've been unleashed long ago by scores of gum-shoes calling warmists to task:

Folks, I work at EPA and am unfortunate enough to actually know exactly what happened. Alan Carlin knows more about climate change science than most of the people on the EPA work group that wrote the endangerment proposal. The claim that he is simply an economist is a deep disservice to Alan and is patently false. Further, the work group refused to consider his arguments because they “don’t know how to weigh them against the IPCC report” – suggesting they won’t be able to evaluate the public comments either. Notably, others at EPA agree with Alan’s analysis which EPA will make public (so they say). If they actually release the report Alan sent forward, and don’t take his extremely critical statements out, it will embarrass the Agency badly. That will be a shame, but it is what the Agency has earned for itself.

I would like to give my name, but I don’t wish to be punished in the same manner as Alan.

This is a deeply sad set of events for EPA and for the nation.

REPLY: Doing a quick Google Search on the email he provided, I can vouch for the claim of this poster working with the EPA – Anthony

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Anatomy of a Slaughter

Wasi: 'Shoot them in the back of the head.'

Akasha: 'Sure. Just as soon as we come under fire.'

Wasi: 'No. Don't wait any longer. You never know when you might come under attack.'

Akasha: 'Insh'Allah' (God willing).

... click.

It'd be interesting to compare the physical artefacts of modern religions ....

Catholics would have cathedrals, crucifixes, holy water, and pope-mobiles and the like.

Hindus, would have very little save their shrines.

Muslims would of course have their shrines and mosques ... but added to this would be the RPG, AK47, battery acid, electric drill, C4, K-bar and pilots license.

Fellow - Thug - in - Chief

Isn't it strange, that it took 10 days and public pressure for the O-Administration to utter a few feable words of support for Iran's pro-democracy protestors ... yet it took hardly a few hours for the O-Administration to offer support to the Honduran thug who would be president for life.

Who's side is the O-Administration on anyway?

Hugo Chávez's coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation's constitution.

It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya's abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

... keep reading.

King Coal

With a 200 year supply of known reserves world wide, and much more to be discovered, it may be that the time for coal has come:

NuCoal expects a coal liquefaction plant to be operating in southern Saskatchewan within years -- not decades, says president Alan Cruickshank.

Coal is entering a Renaissance era, he says. There are enormous global reserves that will last the world 240 years, unlike oil reserves, which are beginning to dwindle.

New technology will ease carbon emissions and develop alternative and economical uses for coal, including turning it into gasoline, he says.

"Coal isn't dirty. It's the way we process it," he said in an interview this week.

A liquefaction plant would produce fuels with no air pollution, no tailings and no carbon emissions, he said.

Southern Saskatchewan is blessed with huge amounts of coal and NuCoal has 2.2 million acres of permitted area in its South 50 project around Coronach, Shaunavon and Estevan. NuCoal also has a number of northern properties in earlier stages of exploration, in joint ventures with Alix Resources and Geo Minerals.

... and then, there is the coal bug:

Craig Venter, the controversial American scientist who helped decode the human genome, has announced the discovery of ancient bacteria that can turn coal into methane, suggesting they may help to solve the world’s energy crisis.

The bugs, discovered a mile underground by one of Venter’s microbial prospecting teams, are said to have unique enzymes that can break down coal. Venter said he was already working with BP on how to exploit the find.

Venter even suggested the discovery could open up the world’s coalfields to an entirely new form of mining, where coal is infected with the bacteria, allowing methane to be harvested “without even digging up the coal”.

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Funny how all these things seem to be coming together, just as the Global Warming Hoax is in its last paroxysms of struggle.

UK Climate-nazis Get a Haircut

Pity:

The Met Office, home of UK weather soothsaying, is getting its climate research budget chopped by a quarter after the Ministry of Defence ended financial support to focus on "current operations."

A loss of £4.3m ($7m) funding will hit the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, according to the science journal Nature. The research institute provides the government with bleeding-edge computer models indicating which parts of the UK should stockpile sunscreen and floaties for the coming Thermageddon.

Reg Event
The pull-out will be the first time Met Office climate research has gone without MoD money. For several years now, the MoD has been the Hadley Center's primary customer and funder for climate modeling.

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Canada, Leading the Way

... out of the energy crisis:

It's always risky to count your chickens before they're hatched, but it looks like a go for a plan to raise egg-producing hens in a suburban Moncton neighbourhood.

The Greater Moncton District Planning Commission has granted a local group a one-year temporary permit to run an urban experimental farm. The project, sponsored by Post Carbon Greater Moncton, will involve the keeping of up to four hens within the city boundaries. The group hatched the plan as a response to concerns that rising oil prices will one day force people to return to being more involved in their food production.

Is having your own hens laying eggs all it's cracked up to be? Will the quiet hamlet (or is that omelette?) of Sunny Acres West (or is that Sunny Side Up Acres?) ever be the same? What's the best way to run a hen-house without running off half-cocked?

That's what the folks of the local post carbon group hope to find out through a careful study. This is not simply a "let the chicks fall where they may" approach to the issue of farm animals and humans co-existing in an urban setting, but rather something that will be carefully monitored.

... keeping reading about "food sovereignty".

Now That's a Pilot

O-Jobs

Science?

The New USA Crap and Tax Bill is based on science ... here's the proof:

Section 701 reads:
(a) Findings- The Congress finds as follows:
(1) Global warming poses a significant threat to the national security, economy, public health and welfare, and environment of the United States, as well as of other nations.
(2) Reviews of scientific studies……….demonstrate that global warming is the result of the combined anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from numerous sources
(3) Because they induce global warming, greenhouse gas emissions cause or contribute to injuries to persons in the United States, including–
(A) adverse health effects such as disease and loss of life;
(B) displacement of human populations;
(C) damage to property and other interests related to ocean levels, acidification, and ice changes;
(D) severe weather and seasonal changes;
(E) disruption, costs, and losses to business, trade, employment, farms, subsistence, aesthetic enjoyment of the environment, recreation, culture, and tourism;
(F) damage to plants, forests, lands, and waters;
(G) harm to wildlife and habitat;
(H) scarcity of water and the decreased abundance of other natural resources;
(I) worsening of tropospheric air pollution;
(J) substantial threats of similar damage; and
(K) other harm.

The Great Ethnologist

... who would be Prime Minister:

This was too much for Kis. “You have to be an imbecile to see things that way and say you are an ethnologist”, he rudely declared. “I am no kind of ethnologist, but I do have political experience that you don’t have.” “You can’t say that!” protested Ignatieff. “I have the right to say it”, Kis replied, “because only a man with no political experience whatever could say such things, could say that one cannot make a hard and fast judgement. In a case like the Rushdie affair, we can certainly speak of a fascist attitude, and even worse than fascist . . .”. Ignatieff walked off the platform [emphasis added].

... the details.

That 3 a.m. Call is Ringing Off the Hook

There's courage ... then there's Barrack:

As Obama said at the press conference:

Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

He hasn’t. He is not. That 3am call to which Hillary so memorably referred during her doomed election campaign has now rung off the hook.

Democracy?

Poo Gem

Picture: ... yes ... it's a Poo Gem.

For details, check out the homepage of the GCH4 ...

The Gardiner CH4 is a waterless toilet that creates an urbaninfrastructure in which people trade their waste for biofuel.

I Am Too Sexy for this Mask

Grovel - in - Chief

... Ok, maybe it's not grovelling ... it's more like respect among thugs:

The official death toll is still being generally given as 17, but it would seem that dozens may have been killed in the awful crackdown in Iran. CNN has received unconfirmed reports of 150 deaths. It has also been reported that 70 professors have disappeared. Yesterday, it appears the demonstrators were clubbed down in Tehran’s Baharestan Square by security thugs carrying knives and batons. Opposition activists and international journalists are being rounded up. See this CNN article, and this, and this graphic account with footage on Revolutionary Road. See also this story in today’s Guardian about the appalling treatment meted out to the grieving family of Neda Agha Soltan, whose bloodied face after she was killed earlier this week has become an iconic image of these protests; her family have been forced out of their house, the police did not hand her body back to them, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques.

... keep reading.

The New Feminists

Since feminism in the West has evolved into little more than a "progressive" community organization, it was thought not so long ago that feminism had indeed died. After all, Western feminists put their leftist ideals before the rights and aspirations of women, so most sensible people view them as little more than mouthpieces for socialist utopianism.

Apparantly though, true feminism is alive and well elsewhere.

note: I don't know whether or not this photo is authentic ... but it gets the point across.

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The Changing Tide

Science wins ... always:

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

[...]

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The Education of Barack Hussein Obama

Thuggery 101:

Pres. Barack Obama came into office apparently believing that his non-traditional background, charisma, and good intentions could placate dictators hostile to America and ease global tensions.

In these first six months, the new administration has made clear to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and other strongmen like them that Barack Obama is not a mean-talking George Bush. A kinder, gentler United States has promised to push the “reset” button. In the interest of peace, an American president will finally be listening rather than lecturing, and willing to talk to authoritarian bullies without preconditions.

... keep reading.

How to Make Science Work

If your science doesn't work ... use a cudgel:

A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2.

The source, who chooses not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said that Carlin was rebuffed in his attempt to introduce scientific evidence that does not accord with the EPA’s view of global warming, which largely relies on IPCC reports. The source also saw Carlin’s report and said that it was ‘based on 8 points of peer-reviewed, recent and relevant scientific publications’ that cast doubt on the wisdom of regulating CO2 as a pollutant.

The EPA’s draft Endangerment Finding was initially written over a year ago during the Bush administration, and Lisa Jackson (the new head of the EPA) and her team wanted to get the Finding out on or near Earth Day, according to a schedule that was made public about a week before formal publication of the proposal. The draft was submitted to agency workgroups with only one week for review and comment, which is unprecedented, and received only light comments–except for Carlin’s.

... the intriguing details.

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The Year Birds Couldn't Breed

It must be AGW:

"I have lived in Churchill since the 1950s, and this the latest spring I have ever seen here," said local resident Pat Penwarden. "The spring of 1962 was almost this bad."

... the details.

Choking His Chicken

From KOS:

As I listened to him sarcastically reading the e-mails written between Sanford and his mistress, correspondence I sure they both believed would stay private, I kept imagining Olbermann as that pervert in a dirty movie studio choking his chicken underneath his trenchcoat. A couple of times I was certain he was going to ejaculate and his laugh became grotesque bordering on acrid. … Olbermann began his attack on the most vile and disgusting parts of this heartbreaking saga and it went downhill from there. There are four little boys who bear no responsibility for what happened and they have to go to school tomorrow and face their friends. … To see him do things that would brutalize this family and get apparent sexual pleasure out of it might have been one of the most disgusting things I have ever witnessed.

The Return of the Wizards

Science has indeed come full circle ... in the not so distant past "science" was the realm of wizards and seers who often made detailed predictions based on what the entrails of sheep and goats revealed ... after a hiatus of a century or two, it would appear that they are back:

On Thursday, the Met Office launched its new report on global warming: UK Climate Projections 2009, otherwise known as UKCP09. This is based on the output of Hadley Centre climate models that predict temperature increases of up to 6°C with wetter winters, dryer summers, more heatwaves, rising sea levels, more floods and all the other catastrophes that one would expect from similar exercises in alarmism.

What makes this report different from any of its predecessors is the resolution of the predictions that the Met Office is making. They are not just presenting a general impression of what might happen globally during this century, or even how climate change could affect the UK as a whole. They are claiming that they can predict what will happen in individual regions of the country - down to a 25km square. You can enter your postcode and find out how your street will be affected by global warming in 2040 or 2080.

In the meantime, it would appear that real science may be getting the upper hand ... or as I like to say, "Science Always Wins in the End!:

As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade. The story of this legislation's collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US—and to the whole global warming hysteria.

Since the Australian government first introduced its Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation—the Australian version of cap-and-trade energy rationing—there has been a sharp shift in public opinion and political momentum against the global warming crusade. This is a story that offers hope to defenders of industrial civilization—and a warning to American environmentalists that the climate change they should be afraid of just might be a shift in the intellectual climate.

Pussy - in - Chief

Ann:

You might be a scaredy-cat if ... the president of France is talking tougher than you are.

More than a week ago, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: "The ruling power claims to have won the elections ... if that were true, we must ask why they find it necessary to imprison their opponents and repress them with such violence."

[...]

Liberals hate America, so they assume everyone else does, too.

So when a beautiful Iranian woman, Neda Agha Soltan, was shot dead in the streets of Iran during a protest on Saturday and a video of her death ricocheted around the World Wide Web, Obama valiantly responded by ... going out for an ice cream cone. (Masterful!)

Commenting on a woman's cold-blooded murder in the streets of Tehran, like the murder of babies, is evidently above Obama's "pay grade."

If it were true that a U.S. president should stay neutral between freedom-loving Iranian students and their oppressors, then why is Obama speaking in support of the protesters now? Are liberals no longer worried about the parade of horribles they claimed would ensue if the U.S. president condemned the mullahs?

Update:

But of course, if you listen to progressive spin, you'd think that Obama himself inspired Iranian youths to take on the thugocracy in Iran ... and that two budding democracies right next door had nothing to do with it.

... read about The Audacity of Humbug

Who Are These People?

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards

* "Indoctrination of the Revolutionary Guards"
* "The Organization of the Revolutionary Guards"
*"The Revolutionary Guards' Creeping Coup d'Etat"
* "The Revolutionary Guards' Role in Iranian Politics"
* "How Intertwined are the Revolutionary Guards in Iran's Economy"

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Private versus Public

The economic recession and near depression we are now experiencing can be laid at the feet of government, financial institutions, and greedy individuals. After reading mountains of literature on the topic I've become convinced that a perfect storm was set up via interaction between all three.

Governments neglected to police the risky but lucrative trade in debt; the Bush administration removed the uptick rule and allowed 3X Bear ETFs into the market; financial institutions took stunningly stupid risks; and individuals by the hundreds of millions took on ridiculous amounts of debt and even homes that they had no hope of ever paying off ... all the while being encouraged to do so by a US legislative system hell-bent on getting poor people into homes they couldn’t afford. Only a few countries, like Canada, were spared much of the economic disaster because stodgy regulations protected their banks. Any losses in Canada, for example, came about as a result of American economic decline. Who then, in the future, can be best trusted to make the right decisions in safeguarding the economy while at the same time preserving America's unrivalled ability to offer individuals upward mobility?

Chicago Boyz gives the thumbs up to the free market:

What do these stories all have in common? They all demonstrate that government organizations do not systematically make better decisions in the same circumstance than do private organizations.

Leftists like to argue that, by some magical mechanism, real-world politicians make better decisions, especially better economic decisions, than do private actors in the free market. They usually make this argument after either the free market corrects itself naturally or the government interferes. They then simply assert, without any possibility of empirical verification, that the magic government unicorns could have prevented the problem if only they had been given enough power to do as they wished.

Longing for Purpose

... because hugging struggling military families is so pedestrian:

Although Obama's job-approval ratings have soared, the first lady -- a Harvard-educated lawyer -- wasn't satisfied with coasting. She is hiring a full-time speechwriter and has instructed her staff to think "strategically" so that every event has a purpose and a message. She doesn't want to simply go to events and hug struggling military families, she said ...

If things don't change, poor Michelle might stop loving her country again.

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Canada-Care

... government healthcare means that bureaucrats, not doctors, often determine care.

Take the following case, where stiff bureaucratic rules have caused a Canadian woman to needlessly suffer for decades ... and then of course, when she uses the American system to bring a halt to her suffering, the Canadian system does nothing but get in the way:

A Winnipeg woman is seeking controversial treatment for Lyme disease in South Carolina after she says her Manitoba doctor failed to diagnose her condition.

Roslyn Kornell, 48, has been chronically ill since 1970, when she believes she was bitten by a blacklegged tick during a family vacation through the United States. Blacklegged ticks are known to carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

[...]

[An official} said the province uses a standard two-step testing process that first screens potential patients using the ELISA. If the result is positive, the Western Blot is used to confirm the diagnosis.

According to information published by Manitoba Health for health professionals, "a small proportion of chronic Lyme disease patients remain seronegative," meaning they won't test positive on tests.

But Roberecki stressed this is a highly unlikely occurrence: "The information from our infectious disease specialists is that it's a rare occurrence," she said. "Most individuals will expect to have a positive test if they have chronic Lyme symptoms."

... that's what happens in an inhumane system where bureaucratic rules get in the way ... rules that determine that the minority of people who need a second test aren't worth the effort ($) or time ($). After all, there's an army of government bureaucrats to pay.

Ice Cream Cone - in - Chief

... to understand just how vacuous the new American leadership is we need a comparison ... a yardstick as it were ... so, we turn to Lech Walesa:

When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.

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For perspective ... click.

Update:



And they continue to die:

When Soldiers Die By Their Own Hand

Please Read it all:

I cringed when I read the Globe's description of Maj Mendes' career path. I cringed because, while our situations were undoubtedly very different, I can identify with how she got to such a dark and desperate place. And as someone who luckily didn't have such a simple way out of this life readily at hand, as someone who's come back from depression and built what really is a blessed existence out of my second chance, I wish I could have been there with her in that room in Kandahar and said "The only mistake you can't ever recover from is the one you're about to make. Trust me, I've been there and I know from personal experience that you can hit bottom and bounce instead of break. I've done it, and you can too."

Global Warming Destroys Maple Syrup Industry

The dreaded Global Warming is destroying the Maple Syrup industry ... so says this report:

The Branons, who savor their life as well as the syrup, find it difficult to event think about a future without their trees.

"We'll probably both live through it," said Cecile. "But I hope our kids can. You know, we've got four sons and we want to be able to see them take over their business."

But Tim Perkins, who lives every day with the disturbing scientific reality, doesn't think the trend can be reversed.

"It would be very difficult, I think, at this point," he said.

"The loss would be really a very large blow to the psyche of the state," he added sadly. "It would affect a large number of sugar makers, obviously, but it would also impact the way that people see themselves as Vermonters. It's an emblem of the state."

... oops ... wait a minute, that was in 2007.

Now in 2009, things seem to have changed:

With Vermont leading the way, US maple syrup production in 2009 totaled 2.33 million gallons, up 22 percent from 2008 and the highest on record since 1944. The number of taps is estimated at 8.65 million, 4 percent above the 2008 total of 8.33 million. Yield per tap is estimated to be 0.269 gallons, up 17 percent from the previous season. Vermont led all states in production with 920,000 gallons an increase of 30 percent from 2008 and the highest on record since 1944. Vermont produced more than a third of the national total.

I wonder if Maple Syrup was included in the most terrifying report to come out of the Obama White House ... don't read this unless you are stout of heart:

Harmful effects from global warming are already here and worsening, warns the first climate report from Barack Obama's presidency in the strongest language on climate change ever to come out of the White House.

Global warming has already caused more heavy downpours, the rise of temperatures and sea levels, rapidly retreating glaciers and altered river flows, according to the document released Tuesday by the White House science adviser and other top officials.

Obama, an Iranian Woman in the Street, and Waco

picture: Neda

Then, of course, there is Obama and his quest for a global messianic rather than an American presidential role. So far it pays to be Hamas and the Palestine Authority rather than Israel, Chávez rather than Uribe, Ahmadinejad rather than Maliki, Putin rather than an Eastern European elected prime minister, a Turkish Islamist rather than a Greek elected prime minister. The former all gain attention by their hostility, the latter earn neglect by their moderation and generally pro-American views. Praising Islam abroad is a lot more catchy than praising democracy — one boldly inspires Bush’s critics, the other sheepishly dovetails with Bush’s agenda. All that, in varying degrees, also explains the troubling neglect of the Iranians in the street.

One mystery remains: Does Obama do this because the squeaky problem gets the attention, or does he really empathize with the tired anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist refrain of those who used to be considered hostile?

... Keep Reading Hanson

The polite explanation for Barack Obama’s diffidence on Iran is that he doesn’t want to give the mullahs the excuse to say the Great Satan is meddling in Tehran’s affairs. So the president’s official position is that he’s modestly encouraged by the regime’s supposed interest in investigating some of the allegations of fraud. Also, he’s heartened to hear that OJ is looking for the real killers. “You've seen in Iran,” explained President Obama, “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election . . . ”

[...]

The mullahs stole this election on a grander scale than ever before primarily for reasons of internal security and regional strategy. But Obama’s speech told them that, in the “post-American world,” they could do so with impunity. Blaming his “agents” for the protests is merely a bonus: Offered the world’s biggest carrot, Khamenei took it and used it as a stick.

... Keep Reading Steyn

What's a Secret?

... somebody please explain to CanWest what a secret is ...

"Canada wrapped up a secret mission this week that provides the country's military a greater intelligence role in Afghanistan - literally from a Canadian perspective."

... the truth.

Rasmussen Runs in the Red

picture: first negative result this term

... just goes to show that money, and all the positive press in the world, can't buy you love.

... from Rasmussen: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That’s the President’s lowest rating to date and the first time the Presidential Approval Index has fallen below zero for Obama (see trends).

Thug-in-Chief

It's strange to watch events that would've had the media and liberals rampaging in rage during the Bush term, being simply ignored today.

America's Chicago has certainly come to roost:




Source

Updates @ America's Right

IOC versus NOAA

It's a sad day in science, when the IOC has more credibility than the NOAA:

Let me say it first: THIS IS JUST WRONG.

If they know the error, how can they possibly justify keeping the new maximum records? You can’t get away with this sort of thing in the world of professional sports records, Olympic records, or even the cheesy Guinness Book of Records. Heck they even fix mistakes made on the TV quiz show Jeopardy and dock the contestant’s winnings!

Surely NOAA has more scruples than a TV game show?

If the record can’t be verified because the equipment is faulty, how does that make it a valid record? They can’t, it’s FUBAR!

Now That's Boogie

From Switzerland:

Mortgaging Your Children's Future

... by the numbers:

A former official in the George H.W. Bush White House estimates that the bloated public and private debt in the US works out to $250,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

David Walker, the former US Comptroller General, says that the federal debt level is approaching $55 trillion and if you add in the what is owed on the state and local levels -- plus personal household debt -- it adds up to $75 trillion in obligations.

Walker, who now heads the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, named for the co-founder of the Blackstone Group, warned that without fiscal restraint, Uncle Sam may be guaranteeing that our future is not as prosperous as our past.

At the $75 trillion deficit level a family of four owes $1 million, he said.

Earlier this year Walker wrote on Politico.com: "Social Security and Medicare alone are already underfunded by about $44 trillion, or $146,000 per American, in today's dollars, and this number is growing on auto pilot every year by about $2 trillion, or $6,600 per American."

Source

RC Wonder

When the Left Misbehaves with Impunity

... Conservative politicians tend to be the most useless of defenders. They grumble in their cornflakes but take no action. The worst have got to be America's hapless Republicans who have faced Obama's world with all the fortitude of wet dishrags. Only the grassroots have been rising steadily to the challenge.

There is one Conservative politician though, who is setting a new standard, and who is demonstrating that pushing back is the only way forward. Recently, she scored a knockout:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has accepted David Letterman’s apology on making a bad joke about her 14-year-old daughter.

In a statement, Palin says she accepts Letterman’s apology “on behalf of young women like my daughters, who hope men who 'joke' about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve.”

"Letterman certainly has the right to 'joke' about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction,” Palin continued in the statement. “And this is all thanks to our U.S. military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America's right to free speech — in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect."

On Monday night, Letterman apologized for the second time in one week after he joked about one of Palin’s daughters being “knocked up” by baseball player Alex Rodriguez.

"The joke, really, in and of itself, can't be defended," Letterman said. "I understand why people are upset.”

“I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future,” he added.

Source

Money Talks

... always:

"I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor, and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani," Letterman said. "It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. ... So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke."

[...]

"I understand, of course, why people are upset; I would be upset myself," Letterman said. "I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future."

[...]

One CBS advertiser reportedly pulled its ads in response to the protests

Money talks so loud that even thick-headed "progressives" understand the language ... each and every one of them.

Food Shortages

About a year ago I argued that severe global cooling would have far more devastating consequences than Global Warming, especially if general frosts began to occur in the Northern hemisphere during growing seasons. Of course, the usual AGW worshippers took umbrage.

Silly them:

For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend "climate change". In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.

There was midsummer snow not just in Norway and the Cairngorms, but even in Saudi Arabia. At least in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but snowfalls in New Zealand and Australia have been abnormal. There have been frosts in Brazil, elsewhere in South America they have had prolonged droughts, while in China they have had to cope with abnormal rain and freak hailstorms, which in one province killed 20 people.

... more.

Now imagine a mini-iceage ...

Canada's Info-War

A great piece at The Torch about the "thought War" going on in Afghanistan:

Western countries spend millions trying to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan, only to throw it all away with a clumsy cultural gaffe.

That's where Mina Sharif comes in. She's 29, from Scarborough, and an expert in what sells in Afghanistan.

... click.

Make-Stuff-Up - in - Chief

If we had a truly impartial press, common knowledge would be that The Big O was a "bimbo" ... not Palin.

Hanson delivers what is perhaps his best ever:

In the first six months of the Obama administration, we have witnessed an assault on the truth of a magnitude not seen since the Nixon Watergate years. The prevarication is ironic given the Obama campaign’s accusations that the Bush years were not transparent and that Hillary Clinton, like her husband, was a chronic fabricator. Remember Obama’s own assertions that he was a “student of history” and that “words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up.”

Yet Obama’s war against veracity is multifaceted.

[...]

Obama talks more than almost any prior president, weighing in on issues from Stephen Colbert’s haircut, to Sean Hannity’s hostility, to the need to wash our hands. In Obama’s way of thinking, his receptive youthful audiences are proof of his righteousness and wisdom — and empower him to pontificate on matters he knows nothing about.

Keep Reading.

It

Thermometer-Dynamics

We are not living in a Greenhouse, but in a heat engine:

1. The sun puts out more than enough energy to totally roast the earth. It is kept from doing so by the clouds reflecting about a third of the sun’s energy back to space. As near as we can tell, this system of cloud formation to limit temperature rises has never failed.

2. This reflective shield of clouds forms in the tropics in response to increasing temperature.

3. As tropical temperatures continue to rise, the reflective shield is assisted by the formation of independent heat engines called thunderstorms. These cool the surface in a host of ways, move heat aloft, and convert heat to work.

4. Like cumulus clouds, thunderstorms also form in response to increasing temperature.

5. Because they are temperature driven, as tropical temperatures rise, tropical thunderstorms and cumulus production increase. These combine to regulate and limit the temperature rise. When tropical temperatures are cool, tropical skies clear and the earth rapidly warms. But when the tropics heat up, cumulus and cumulonimbus put a limit on the warming. This system keeps the earth within a fairly narrow band of temperatures.

6. The earth’s temperature regulation system is based on the unchanging physics of wind, water, and cloud.

7. This is a reasonable explanation for how the temperature of the earth has stayed so stable (or more recently, bi-stable as glacial and interglacial) for hundreds of millions of years.

Source

Why Conspiracy?

There are a lot of conspiracy theories that ebb and flow ... especially in the past few years. When examined individually they can be debunked ... or fed; but what happens when we examine them all as a phenomenon?

The following by Nick Cohen is a long read ... so settle in if you are interested. Here's a teaser:

To see why we ought to worry, go back to my original list of modern conspiracy theories, which I confess to not choosing at random. Instead of asking the paranoid's question, "Who benefits?" ask instead, "Who loses?" When wealthy Westerners broadcast the idea that Serb militias were responding to Western aggression, they dismissed the cause of the persecuted Bosnian Muslims. All the conspiracy theorists about Iraq block from their minds any thought for the tens of thousands blown to pieces by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. From the mild argument that "America had it coming" to the full fairytale that "America did it", what unites those who spin justifications about the crimes of radical Islam is that they have no sympathy for or interest in the largely Muslim populations of the poor world that it terrorises and oppresses.

The real damage Western conspiracists do is not to Western societies — or perhaps I should say is not only to Western societies — but to the victims of real conspirators with the power to kill.

The Speech

Three views of the Big O's Cairo grovel-fest:

Charles Krauthammer:



Hanson:

In his speech last week in Cairo, President Obama proclaimed he was a "student of history." But despite Barack Obama's image as an Ivy-League-educated intellectual, he lacks historical competency, both in areas of facts and interpretation.

Wafa Sultan

After President Obama’s Cairo speech, many of my Middle Eastern Arab readers reacted with bewilderment. As one of them expressed; “Who should we believe, Obama or you?” ‑ in particular his statement that “America and Islam overlap and share common principles, the principles of justice, tolerance and dignity for human beings”.

True, reading the Arab press’s reaction to his speech it is clear that many Muslims now love Obama. After all, he introduced to them a narrative that affirms their conspiracy theories and their identity as victims of the West. Hence, the Arab media expressed their confidence that the speech will provide a “new stance towards Islam and the Muslims, after centuries of aggression and hostility.”

Hyper-Inflation-In-Chief

Obama has taken Bush economic blunders and magnified them. Instead of taking the opportunity to save the US economy and become the hero, he's decided to "not waste a crisis" and bring in a radical leftist agenda running on debt ...

From WSJ:

The percentage increase in the monetary base is the largest increase in the past 50 years by a factor of 10 (see chart nearby). It is so far outside the realm of our prior experiential base that historical comparisons are rendered difficult if not meaningless. The currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base — which prior to the expansion had comprised 95% of the monetary base — has risen by a little less than 10%, while bank reserves have increased almost 20-fold. Now the currency-in-circulation component of the monetary base is a smidgen less than 50% of the monetary base. Yikes!

Green Jobs

The Big O will green the workforce, just like they did Down Under:

MQ: Employment redistribution in the employment model is not necessarily what you would think of as green jobs. There are shifts in employment in what you might not think of as green jobs as we move from high to low emission industries.SBJ: That’s constructing wind towers?

MQ: There is a reallocation in the Australian industry from high emission to low emission. It doesn’t necessarily relate to renewable energy, it’s simply producing goods that are low emission.

SBJ: It stands to reason. You take someone out of a mine you give them a brush cutter and tell them to start to wander around the forest. This is all fanciful.

Gaze in Wonder at Your Frigidaire

Our own Junker writes from Afghanistan:

... wondering why all the negative vibes ... ? We live in a great free country in the most opulent era in history and are surrounded by great friends and more good things than we know what to do with. Where's the down side?

From the UK ...

"Well if your ancestors could see you standing there/They would gaze in wonder at your Frigidaire/They had to fight just to survive/So can't you do something with your life? ~ Jarvis Cocker

Mark Steyn:

Look, by historical standards, we’re loaded: We have TVs and iPods and machines to wash our clothes and our dishes. We’re the first society in which a symptom of poverty is obesity: Every man his own William Howard Taft. Of course we’re “vulnerable”: By definition, we always are. But to demand a government organized on the principle of preemptively “taking care” of potential “vulnerabilities” is to make all of us, in the long run, far more vulnerable. A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.

Update:

Great quote from the comments at SDA ...

"The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry 'caste.' In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either 'poverty' or 'consumerism.' In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry 'alienation.' In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry 'oppression.' In a society of boundless private charity, they cry 'avarice.' In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the 'exploitation' of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry 'injustice.' In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like 'liberty' in quotation marks when these refer to the West…."

Line Up for a Spot

... on the nude eco-glacier:

Tiger - in - Chief

God - In - Chief

I just love it when journalists forget themselves ... even if they are above the rest of us lowly parochial types ... click.

Nixon - in - Chief

More

How Many Anti-Nukes Does it Take

... to power a lightbulb?

The Discussion.

Revenge

I Have a Dream

... of Latina women.

The Big Zero

Let's see ... 90% of the MSM is in the tank ... TIME has another drooling cover out ... and the DNC is still in election mode ... and this is all they can squeeze out for their man.

... If I were an American liberal, I'd be afraid ... it's going to be an ugly divorce.