America Being Judged

Eventually the courts will rule on the Rifqa Bary case ... and in doing so, they will become America, and from that, we will judge America.

Today was a day of submissions and press conferences:

BEFORE ME, the undersigned authority, personally appeared, Fathima Rifqa Bary, deposes and says:

1. My name is Fathima Rifqa Bary. I am seventeen years of age having been born on August 10, 1992 and I am of sound mind and personal knowledge of the facts herein;

2. My family and I moved from Sri Lanka to the Hollis/ Queens are in New York in 2000;

3. When I was twelve, in 2004, our family moved from Hollis/Queens, New York to Gahanna, Ohio;

4. Upon arriving in the new area, my father began to research Mosques in the region;

5. After visiting a couple of other Mosques in the area, including the "Islamic Center" in Columbus, my father decided that our family would join and become active in the "Noor Islamic Culture Center" (Noor Center) located in Dublin, Ohio;

6. The Noor Center was a twenty five minute drive from our house and there were eight other Mosques that were closer to out home in the Columbus area;

7. My father was very intent on making sure that his children, and especially me, were raised deeply in the faith of "Original Islam" which was taught at the Noor Center;

8. Our family attended the Noor Center gatherings as much our schedules would allow;

9. Every Saturday my father required me to attend the "Halaqah" Noor Center youth gatherings which lasted about five hours. My father and mother would often attend these meetings with me as all Noor Center parents were encouraged to attend youth meetings,

10. On three separate occasions, the regular official Saturday Noor Center youth gatherings were held in our home with other members of the Noor Center present;

11. In the summers, my Father required our whole family to also attend the Noor Center major gatherings held every Friday afternoon. This was the main meeting of the week which members were required to attend which lasted about three hours;

12. My father also required us to attend the major Islamic holidays such as Ramadan at the Noor Center;

13. Our family regularly socialized with other members of the Noor Center community;

14. My father was a committed member of the Noor Center and required our family to attend as much as possible;

15. I became a Christian on Friday, November 18, 2005 at the Korean United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio;

16. I hid my Christian faith from my parents as best as I could and had to sneak around to attend Christian campus meetings, I also hid my Bible at home in various locations;

17. In about 2007 my father discovered a copy of a book entitled the "

The Purpose Driven Life


" by Rick Warren that I hid in my bedroom. My father had a serious talk with me about the importance of retaining the Islamic blood line in my family but I did not tell him about my conversion;

18. In June of 2009 my father confronted me with several questions about whether I had become a Christian, whether I was baptized, if I was going to church. Out of fear I remained silent;

19. Then my father told me that he received numerous emails and phone calls from the leaders of the Noor Center community who informed him that he needed to deal with this matter immediately;

20. In a fit of anger that I had never seen before in my life, he picked up my lap top, waived it over my head as if to strike me with it and said "if you have this Jesus in your heart, you are dead to me! You are no longer my daughter." I continued to remain silent and then he said to me even more angry then before, I will kill you! Tell me the truth!"

21. On July 17, 2009, my mother confronted me about another Christian book she discovered that I hid in my bedroom. She had just spoken with my father was on the phone who was out of town. She was very upset, in tears, and almost grieving and told me I was going to have to be sent back to Sri Lanka to be dealt with.

... lots more at Atlas.

Civil War

ht

Oh No ... What Have We Done

Great Satire ...

Israel Rams Rahm: The Musical

Paid Hippies

... there's actually good money to be made in being a hippie ... I'm not kidding:

Ted: Touching Comments @ ABC News

... as found under the topic "What did the Kennedys Mean to You?"

• He reminds us that stimulus money needs to be diverted to building guard rails for bridges.


• To me, the Kennedys, particulary Ted, represent everything that is wrong with American politics today. Their overwhelming sense of entitlement; their (well-founded) belief that since they're rich and famous, they're above the law; their acting as if the people of this nation exist to serve and enrich them, rather than the other way around. Good riddance. The sooner all traces of this horrid man are gone from our nation's political landscape the better.


• These are people who got rich on ill-gotten gains. They fill American political circles like sewage in a holding tank. Festering, degrading.Ungrateful, uncaring while hiding behind a pretense of caring for the common people.America will be a better place when all traces of them are flushed from the political system.


• Nothing, and one less is more of nothing!


• This is fun...the Kennedys (or more specifically, the death of the last of the Kennedys) represents a new dawn for America, a changing of the guard from the old ways of government by a privileged elite, out of touch with the common man and content to live off the spoils of Americans, unhindered by law or poverty or want. Now, let's just kick the rest of the bums out and we'll be on our way back.


• Camelot - they're not!


• Teddy went down doing what he always did best; trying to manipulate the law to his personal and party advantage.


• Good question. People of privilege with a father that made his money illegally. The family: Adultery (check). Murder (check). Rape accusations (check). Alcoholism (check). Drug Addiction (check). Cowardice (check). Tax cheaters (Check).
  That is the Kennedy Family!


• Today is cementing my memory of Ted Kennedy: the left-wing media covering up for his crimes against women, his complicity in the felonies of his children and nephews, and the worship of a man so unworthy. A limousine liberal, who had all the ill-gotten gains of his robber baron father. His disrespect for his wife makes Mark Sanford look like a boy scout. No one should forget his allowing Mary Jo to die a horrible death and his role in the cover up.
  THat is my memory. Censorship and propaganda by the media as part of a coverup.

... and it goes on and on and on ...

A Topsy-Turvy World

Making Sense

Reagan Killed the Father

... but the kids are alive and well:





"Never waste a crisis ... eh!" It's as if Bezmenov was reaching out from the grave and warning us.

My great-uncle, Josef (Jožka) Pejskar, was a Czech dissident who escaped communist Czechoslovakia and became a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe.

For those so inclined, one can view a Czech Documentary about Josef Pejskar. Of course, if you don't understand Czech it's not of much use. The program describes how Pejskar ran an escape network in the early years of the communist take-over, and then how he himself escaped to the West where he continued his work as a journalist and department head for Radio Free Europe. He survived murder attempts and all sorts of communist skullduggery to produce daily broadcasts to his homeland. The elderly lady you see in the documentary is Uncle Pejskar's wife, my dear Aunt Anna, whom I speak to regularly.

I will never forget Uncle Pejskar's admonishments. He insisted that international socialism, or it's more profound form, communism, achieved it's greatest success not through war, but through wowing citizens with utopian promises and through the systematic co-opting of the elites ... by this, Uncle Pejskar meant the Universities, unions, political class, and News Media.

Even more interesting, is that the fall of the Soviet Union didn't have nearly the positive impact on Uncle Pejskar's thinking that you would've thought it would, even though he was welcomed back to a free Czechoslovakia as a hero. Uncle Pejskar understood that although the father of international communism had been slain ... it's children were alive and well and living among us.

Mourning Reading on Ted

Over the years, the myth or simple misunderstanding has emerged, that Mary Jo died in 8 to 10 feet of water. "Progressives" have used this myth to somehow excuse Ted ... after all, it'd take a pretty brave (and sober) man to dive down into the pitch black water and try to save Mary Jo who was already likely dead (being 8 or so feet under water) ... most people couldn't do it. The truth though, is that Mary Jo survived the crash, and possibly didn't even drown. The following is reconstructed from a diver's report ... the diver who pulled Mary Jo from the car:

- Farrar thrust himself through the open window and into the car. Looking up, he found the body of a young woman. Her head was cocked back, her face pressed into the footwell. Both hands gripped the front edge of the back seat to hold herself in conformity with its upholstered contours. It was not the position assumed by a person knocked unconscious by the impact of a crash, Farrar said. "If she had been dead or unconscious, she would have been prone, sinking to the bottom or floating on top. She definitely was holding herself in a position to avail herself of the last remaining air that had to be trapped in the car."

- Farrar took hold of the woman's thigh, and as soon as he touched the body he knew she was dead; the flesh in his hand was hard as wood. "Instead of life-saving, I realized I was now evidence-gathering," Farrar said. "Because I was the only person who would be able to observe this situation, it behooved me to pay attention to what I saw underwater to be able to report it."

- Satisfied that he had made a thorough observation of the accident scene, Farrar pulled the body of Mary Jo Kopechne out through the open window. The maneuver was complicated by the victim's hunched posture and outstretched arms made inflexible by rigor mortis.

-As he removed the body from the Senator's car, Farrar observed that it was "about one-quarter positively buoyant. There was still a little air left in her."

- Farrar tied the safety line around the victim, and brought her to the surface. The difficult recovery had taken him 10 minutes. In all, it took John Farrar 30 minutes from the time he got the call until he recovered the body from the accident car.

- Farrar repeatedly expressed the opinion that Mary Jo Kopechne had lived for some time underwater by breathing a bubble of trapped air, and that she could have been saved if rescue personnel had been promptly called to the scene. He had equipment to administer air to a trapped person directly or to augment an air pocket inside a submerged automobile.

- "There was a great possibility that we could have saved Mary Jo's life," Farrar said. "There would have been an airlock in the car - there always is in such submersions - that would have kept her alive. If we had been called, I would have reached the scene in 45 minutes. I say 45 minutes because it was dark. ( The daylight recovery had taken 30 minutes ). The lack of light might have caused a delay of 15 minutes."

Source

Ted Kennedy: An Autopsy

An Autopsy Report from SDA:

1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him.

2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops, the man can’t count to four. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into the US from Canada during prohibition) , pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea , where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him like “he” charged President Bush received.

3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his “education” NEVER advancing past the rank of Private.

4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver’s license was never revoked. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959, amazing!!!

5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash, and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a “state secret” until in the 1980’s when the report was unsealed. Didn’t hear about that from the unbiased media, did we.

6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur’s keys to his Oldsmobile limousine, and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond.

7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party, after passing several houses and a fire station. Then two friends returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew, that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying from asphyxiation not drowning, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car where it is surmised she may have survived several hours before running out of air. The Kennedy family began “calling in favors”, ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family, before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopecne, and he didn’t call police because he was in a state of shock. It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident, Kennedy’s “political enemies” have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS. Kopechne’s family received a payout from the Kennedy’s insurance policy, and never sued for the untimely death of their only child. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy’s family paid their attorney’s bills… a “token of friendship”?

8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, and funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors and is widely held as the “standard-bearer for liberalism”. In his very first Senate roll, he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries.

9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of and increase in immigration, up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Not to mention the Pious grilling he gave the last two Republican Supreme Court Nominees, as if he were the standard bearer for the nation in matters of right. What a pompous ass.

10. He was known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to ladies. JERK is a better description than “great American”.

... more tributes.

A Smashing Good Time Was Had by All

How fitting, that when I speak to Junker, who is now in Afghanistan, I'm more concerned about our folks in the Sandbox having a "Smashing" good time ... not whether or not they are lonely:

We had the A-10s for only a few minutes when a radio call from a different net came to Axle to release the A-10s for a TIC (troops in contact) somewhere in South Helmand. Axle radioed the pilots to switch freqs, and I recall a pilot apologizing and saying he looked forward to getting back up here. Axle put down the radio and looked straight at me, saying, “That’s such a bummer,” as if his fishing buddy had to go home early, then Axle finished with, “However, the guys that get them will be well happy,” and started shutting down his gear as the sounds of the A-10s faded into the darkness. While Axle worked, I asked about times when he “smashed” the Taliban. British soldiers like to use the word “smashed” when talking about the Taliban. When Axle would finish talking about one fight, I would ask about another. Finally, Axle said, “You Yanks are great. You like to hear stories about us smashin’ the Taliban but people at home want to know how much we miss our families.” We both chuckled, and I asked, “Really? They don’t ask you about smashing the Taliban?” “That’s right,” then Axle said something like, “They only want to hear how sad we are.” Axle and I got along great because I didn’t care if he missed his family and he didn’t care if I missed mine. This part is about smashing people who would help those who smashed the World Trade Centers and blew up people in London and Bali and Jakarta and Israel and Spain and the Philippines and anywhere else they can reach. There is a crucial development and governance aspect to this war, and still a crucial smashing side. Sometimes you’ve got to swap hats for helmets. Mullah Omar is still alive, apparently in Pakistan, and he needs to be killed. Just on 20 August I heard a Taliban singing over a walkie talkie that Mullah Omar “Is our leader,” and they were celebrating shooting down a British helicopter only twelve hours before just some miles from here. There will be time to hug families later. Now is a time for fighting.

... after all, if our folks don't smash them good, we might as well call them home. Nobody ever won a war by playing footsie with the enemy.

The Apostate and Goliath

The leftist Islamic alliance is pulling out all the stops to crush the power of authenticity, the gospel truth, the word of a just turned 17 year old girl, Rifqa Bary. The Islamic spin machine was slow on the media spin uptake, as they thought for sure that they had the cat (or in this case Rifqa) in the bag when they went into the jurisdiction hearing on Friday. They assumed Rifqa would be sent back to Ohio and dealt with accordingly.

But the candor and integrity in this girl's desperate plea set freedom loving people alight. Furious flurries of emails, faxes, and phone calls from blog readers, talk radio listeners, etc., were frantically made in a lifesaving plea for this brave girl's life. And G-d bless, she was saved (in more ways than one). And if you haven't dashed off a note of thanks to Governor Crist, by all means do it.

But now, the cultural jihadists and their infiltrators are furiously at work. The media puppets are called to do their masters' bidding. And so they are. I called the shills over at The Orlando Sentinel to task here and here and here. But that was only the beginning. That was small taters.

... read it all.

The O Logo

More.

Sign Wars

The Climate in Copenhagen

Copenhagen, is now ground zero for those obsessed with keeping the developing world in its place:

Three cheers for Jairam Ramesh! India at last has an environment minister who is willing and able to denounce the hypocrisy and immorality of the West in twisting the arms of India and China to curb their carbon emissions. He is right to make it clear that India has no intention of signing the new ‘climate change’ treaty in Copenhagen in December, which would put curbs on the carbon emissions of the Third World. If they do not comply they are being threatened by the draft bill going through the US Congress to levy carbon tariffs on their exports.

On a related note, it would appear that the obsession may be fading ... just ask hoteliers in Copenhagen:

Hotel reservation cancellations spark failure fears for the upcoming climate conference in Copenhagen.

The Foreign Ministry has cancelled 20,000 overnight hotel reservations meant for people attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.

The move is expected to cost the hotel industry about 40 million kroner in lost revenue, calculated by each night in a hotel room costing about 2,000 kroner, reports Business.dk.

Reservations in a number of hotels across Zealand and parts of Skåne in southern Sweden have been cut from 120,000 to 100,000 overnight stays.

The two-week conference in December is expected to attract between 12,000 and 15,000 participants. The ministry described the cancellations as a natural 'adjustment'.

But Thomas Færgeman, the director of environmental think tank Concito, was concerned the government had lost confidence that it could broker a ground-breaking climate and had therefore lowered expectations as to how many participants were expected.

Hotel cancellations have also been taking place in Copenhagen and Denmark's largest hotel, the Radisson SAS Scandinavia, near the conference centre, has seen 10 percent of the ministry's bookings cancelled.

Sgt. Darby Morin

A fallen soldier from the Big River First Nation will be remembered as a brave role model and loving father.

United States Army Sgt. Darby Morin, 25, died early Saturday when the driver of the vehicle he was travelling in lost control, causing a rollover near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to information provided to the Prince Albert Daily Herald.

Heavy fog blanketed the road at the time. Morin was wearing his seatbelt but was unconscious when military medics arrived on the scene.

Morin was the nephew of Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations vice-chief Lyle Whitefish.

Whitefish, reached by phone Monday, was in Delaware preparing for Morin's body to arrive back in the United States at Dover Air Force Base

... more details.

Ted Kennedy

Poor Ted ... now that he's checked out it's a pity he'll never know what it's like to be trapped under water in a car, pressing his face up into an air pocket as the water slowly rises. Alone ... in the dark ... waiting for his friend who has escaped, and is alive and well, to have a moment of conscience.

The water where Senator Drunkennedy landed his car with Mary Jo Kopechne was shallow ... very shallow. Only a drunk coward could not ... or would not at least try to save his passenger. But of course for Ted, there were other concerns ... like his reputation.

To think that for decades Senator Drunkennedy has been the darling of Democrats, champion of the down-trodden, and warrior of the dispossessed ... and chief among "progressives", is a black mark on every single human who has lauded him. Only liberals would talk of the death of Mary Jo as a "tragedy" in Ted's life ... it's like trying to turn guano into icecream.

Dike Bridge ~ Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena sits on Kennedy's submerged car in the location it landed following the accident. Arena is unaware that the body of Mary Jo Kopechne is in the back seat.- Rub rail on the right side of the bridge describes the path the car took before plunging into Poucha Pond.

On Mary Jo in the car:

It was not the position assumed by a person knocked unconscious by the impact of a crash, Farrar said. "If she had been dead or unconscious, she would have been prone, sinking to the bottom or floating on top. She definitely was holding herself in a position to avail herself of the last remaining air that had to be trapped in the car."

" Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty? "~ Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973

Rest in peace Mary Jo ... if there is a god, I trust he's got enough sense to make sure Ted is locked up somewhere far from you.

Update: If anyone can find the archived copies of the various reports and testimony from the Mary Jo manslaughter case (coroner's reports, etc.), especially divers reports and sketches, please leave the links in the comments. 2 years ago these documents were easy to find on the internet, including the pics I have above, but for some reason they are almost impossible to come by now. I'm looking for original full documents ... not blog posts or news clips. Of special interest is the former URL www.ytedk.com, which had all the archival docs one would ever hope to get, including pictures ... that site has dissappeared down the memory hole.

Not Getting the Deal They Deserve

For UK forces serving in Afghanistan, trust that their government is doing all it can for them is just about nil ... or so go most themes at Defence of the Realm:

In The Observer today we find published extracts from the diary of a soldier engaged in Operation Panther's Claw. As well as recording his experiences, the account provides a valuable insight into the thinking of one soldier as he grappled with the news of colleagues terribly injured and killed by the growing menace of IEDs.

He himself is shot in the chest and has to be evacuated, but he also finds himself twice in a Viking struck by IEDs. On these occasions, all troops inside survived.

Clearly conscious of the IED threat (he could hardly be otherwise) he asks why the Army does not have more sniffer dogs, suggesting that finding IEDs would be "a lot easier with a furry friend running about and a lot more lives would be saved." He observes that, since arriving, he has not seen one dog.

The pertinence of this observation is reinforced when he learns that another soldier has been killed in an explosion while searching for IEDs. The soldier also observes that, "We are so spread out and overstretched on the ground and it means the Taliban are taking the piss. They can lay these IEDs at fucking will. We are not there at the moment to put out ops or sniper over-watch and the Taliban know it."

And more:

"I find it so distressing to hear lavish praise being heaped upon the procurement of vehicles that are potential death-traps and to listen later to expressions of condolence to the families of those who have perished in them."

So said Ann Winterton in a debate in the House of Commons on 4 June this year, but her distress might easily apply to the expressions so freely offered (and repeated) every time troops are killed.

"Fine words butter no parsnips" – a phrase which seems to have its origins in antiquity - seems an appropriate response to these gushing outpourings, so easily trotted out every time a soldier is killed.

Hunting Wild Dogs

... at this very moment, scores of electronic eyes are scouring Pakistan for this thug ... any bets on how long he'll last?

Hakeemullah Mehsud has been appointed as the new leader of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan.

Hakeemullah was unanimously chosen to lead the Pakistani Taliban after the group's shura, or executive council, met over the past several days. The shura reportedly met in the Arakzai tribal agency, which is under control of the Taliban.

Hakeemullah is an able Taliban leader who has led attacks on NATO convoys in Khyber and Peshawar. He leads Taliban forces in Arakzai, Khyber, Kurram, and in areas of Peshawar [see backgrounder on Hakeemullah below].

The appointment of Hakeemullah to replace feared South Waziristan leader Baitullah Mehsud was announced by Faqir Mohammed. Faqir, the leader of the Taliban in Bajaur and Baitullah's deputy, was appointed the interim leader of the Pakistani Taliban on Aug. 19.

Faqir claimed that Baitullah, who is believed to have been killed in a Predator airstrike on Aug. 5, is still alive but is too ill to lead the Pakistani Taliban. Faqir also announced that Azam Tariq is the new chief spokesman for the Taliban. Tariq replaces Muslim Khan, who was named spokesman just days ago after Maulvi Omar, the longtime spokesman of the group, was captured by Pakistani security forces.

"The new appointments of Taliban chief and spokesman were made unanimously by a Taliban Shura which met in Arakzai Agency recently", Faqir said, according to the Times of India.

... the details.

Voice From the Past

Canada is engaged in a war which is a crusade to save Christian civiilization and the
liberty of mankind, Prime Minister Mackenzie King declared in a radio address last night.

The present struggle, he asserted, is for the preservation not alone of national and personal freedom but of freedom also of the mind and of the soul .

Stating he had always had a positive hatred of war, Premier King, said no other course but the overthrow by arms of Nazi Germany would prevent Naziism extending its tyrannical power over all nations and descent of the whole world into a new and terrible age of barbarism ...

... for relevance, Click.

Apologists for Islam

... must be relieved this morning that the glowing symbol of moderate Islam, Malaysia, has post-poned the beating of a female model ... at least for a few days:

Malaysia abruptly granted a Ramadan reprieve to the first Muslim Malay woman to be sentenced to caning for drinking beer, but insisted Monday the thrashing would still take place after the Islamic holy month of fasting.

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a 32-year-old mother of two, had been en route to a women's prison for the caning when Islamic officials who took her into custody drove her back home and released her.

Mohamad Sahfri Abdul Aziz, a state legislator in charge of religious affairs, later said the Attorney General's office advised that the caning should be delayed for compassionate reasons until after the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began Saturday.

... I'm still waiting to hear a single syllable of logic as to why Western countries would permit the immigration of Muslims in any great numbers. It truly does bring attention to the header of this blog:

"But then, there is the "progressive" class ... that aimless mass of Western humanity so burdened by cultural self-loathing that it is to Islam, as ungulates are to lions."

A Monopolistic Funding Racket

If I read it once, I read it a thousand times, that the science that questions Anthropogenic Global Warming can't be valid because it's funded by "big oil".

Oh Really?

Much media attention has relentlessly focused on the influence of “Big Oil”—but the numbers don’t add up. Exxon Mobil is still vilified1 for giving around 23 million dollars, spread over roughly ten years, to skeptics of the enhanced greenhouse effect. It amounts to about $2 million a year, compared to the US government input of well over $2 billion a year. The entire total funds supplied from Exxon amounts to less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in just the single year of 2008.

Apparently Exxon was heavily “distorting the debate” with a mere 0.8% of what the US government spent on the climate industry each year at the time. (If so, it’s just another devastating admission of how effective government funding really is.)

As an example for comparison, nearly three times the amount Exxon has put in was awarded to the Big Sky sequestration project2 to store just 0.1% of the annual carbon-dioxide output3 of the United States of America in a hole in the ground. The Australian government matched five years of Exxon funding with just one feel-good advertising campaign4 , “Think Climate. Think Change.” (but don’t think about the details).

Perhaps if Exxon had balanced up its input both for and against climate change, it would have been spared the merciless attacks? It seems not, since it has donated more than four times as much to the Stanford-based Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP).5, 6 Exxon’s grievous crime is apparently just to help give skeptics a voice of any sort. The censorship must remain complete.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Just Another Birdbrained Bush Type

On the stimulus as put forth by the all knowing, all doing, all to be trusted, Spender - in - Chief:

By the way, unlike your run-of-the-mill politician’s contradictory statements, these weren’t made a year or even a week apart, but during the same presidential speech in Portsmouth, N.H. At any rate, in order to “control costs” Obama says we need to introduce a new trillion-dollar government entitlement. It’s a good thing he’s the smartest president of all time and the greatest orator since Socrates because otherwise one might easily confuse him with some birdbrained Bush type. But, if we take him at his word, then a trillion-dollar public expenditure that “controls costs” presumably means he’s planning on reducing private health expenditure — such as, say, your insurance plan — by at least a trillion. Or he’ll be raising a trillion dollars’ worth of revenue. Either way, under Obama nothing is certain but death panels and taxes — i.e., a vast enervating statism, and the confiscation of the fruits of your labors required to pay for it.

That’s why the “stimulus” flopped. It didn’t just fail to stimulate, it actively deterred stimulation, because it was the first explicit signal to America and the world that the Democrats’ political priorities overrode everything else. If you’re a business owner, why take on extra employees when cap’n’trade is promising increased regulatory costs and health “reform” wants to stick you with an 8 percent tax for not having a company insurance plan? Obama’s leviathan sends a consistent message to business and consumers alike: When he’s spending this crazy, maybe the smart thing for you to do is hunker down until the dust’s settled and you get a better sense of just how broke he’s going to make you. For this level of “community organization,” there aren’t enough of “the rich” to pay for it. That leaves you.

Of Being Un-American

... from my inbox:

UN-AMERICAN GAME

ICE HOCKEY is discouraged for impressionable Ideal Americans. Ice Hockey is a Canadian import, and can be an exciting, fast-paced game. Unfortunately, Ice Hockey also brings the typical Canadian ultra-violence, mayhem and disrespect for the rule of law that so marks Canadian culture.

With their sharpened steel, cockspur-like skates and vicious, hooked clubs, this horrific Canadian orgy of violence and mindless beatings shocks and horrifies the naturally serene and peaceful American nature. Indeed, there is no more terrifying image in sports than that of a horde of Canadian-inspired killbots spilling onto their frozen killing field to kill or maim an opposing player or the referee.

One hopes that a society as vicious and prone to violent outbreaks as Canada has a vibrant and widespread National Health Care system!

UK Healthcare Unfundable

... the theme of the month expands:

Britain's system of free health are for all, the National Health Service, will likely run into problems because it will be impossible to fund over the long term, Peter Toogood, head of investment at Old Broad Street Research, told CNBC Monday.

"It’s a harsh reality of life, but something has to reform, a reform has to take place. Health care is eating into every national budget globally, continuously and something will need to be addressed," Toogood told "Squawk Box Europe."

"When the original NHS was set up in this country 50 years ago, people didn’t live to 90, they lived to 65 maybe 70. It’s just a fundamental fact and things will have to evolve," Toogood said.

"So it’s evolution rather than revolution, but things will have to change, it is unfundable as it currently stands in 20 years time," he added.

... keep in mind, that the NHS is already the third largest employer on the planet. What, with the gargantuan NHS and mammoth BBC, socialism has certianly found a home in the UK ... not to mention the fact that "progressive" immigration policies are causing a demographic shift in the UK that threatens the very institution of the nation.

"Progressia", pulling the UK into the abyss, one socialist at a time.

Minus 14

... this must be a result of global cooling ... cooling to socialism.

Of Little Girls; Socialists; and You

... just got this in my inbox:

I asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she
grows up.

She said she wanted to be Prime Minister of Canada some day.

Both of her parents, NDP supporters (Canada's Socialist Party), were standing there, so I asked her,"If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."

Her parents beamed, and said, "Welcome to the NDP Party!"

"Wow ... what a worthy goal!" I told her. I continued, "But you don't have to wait until you're Prime Minister to do that. You can come over to my house, mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50.Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out. You can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I smiled and said, "Welcome to the Conservative Party."

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

Climatologists Would Make Better Stock Traders

The following article holds true for both warmists and skeptics:

One of the signs of a change in the slope of temperatures is the change in the slope of PR descriptions.

After chanting “The hottest year ever recorded” the message became the “second hottest year on record”, and after that, four of the five hottest years ever; and now, eight of the ten hottest years.

Look out for “12 of the hottest 15 years ever”... it’s coming.

It’s time to knock this on the head. It’s true, but meaningless. It appeals to that prehistoric part of our brains and “gets” to people in the same way that rising stock markets do. For example back in October 2007 we could have said that the top 8 of 10 record Dow Jones results were set that month (and look what that did for the Dow?)

... the fact remains, that a cooling planet proves the IPCC models of wonder inadequate, but it doesn't disprove AGW. A warming planet proves the IPCC models of wonder more adequate, but doesn't prove AGW.

Personally, after experience the non-summer of 2009 in Saskatchewan, I'll take Global Warming over cooling any day. A cold planet is a particularly inhospitable place ... just as the millions of species that went extinct during cool phases ... or consult the history books to see what happened to civilizations when the planet cooled.

Obama Prediction Comes True

... this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow:

Rob was in fact correct that his assertion that the trend listed in the graphic did not reflect either the slope of the trend line nor the change calculated using the two endpoints of the series.

Normally that would be the end of the story, however, I happened to visit the site again this morning. To my surprise, the graph now looked like this:

There was an indication that the graph was updated 08.20.09, but no other indication that anything had changed. I don’t know if Rob had informed them of the error or whether they had "coincidentally" discovered it themselves.

The changes in the graph are interesting. The rate for the historical data on the left dropped a remarkable 30% 15% overnight from 2 mm/year to 1.7 mm/yr and the latest data trend dropped a more modest amount. The vertical scales changed in both graphs (150mm does seem more impressive than 15 cm). The source for the latest data plot also seems to have changed presumably accounting for the change in scaling.

Anyway, I am glad to see that the sea levels are not rising as fast as they were yesterday…

Ocean Temps Surge

... or do they? Be sure to read the discussion.

Preserving the Dignity of the White House

... one Wee Wee at a time:



... more @ Malkin.

Bruce Bawer Q & A

One of my favorite books is "While Europe Slept; How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within", by Bruce Bawer. Coupled with Londonistan, and America Alone, a powerful case for the concept of Eurabia emerges.

For those of you in the Ottawa area, you've got a chance in September to meet and hear Bruce Bower.

Gay and Right has more ... click.

There's a Welcome Home

... and then there is THIS.

The Year of Fat Happy Bears

So much for the disappearing arctic ice ... just ask the bears:

Too many cool, wet days resulted in a lousy summer -- but you won't find any polar bears complaining. The cooler-than-usual summer produced thicker ice on Hudson Bay, giving the area's polar bear population several extra days to feed on tasty ringed seals.

"This is the time of year when polar bears eat the most, and the ringed seals are so full of fat and energy," said Daryll Hedman, the northeast regional wildlife manager for Manitoba Conservation.

Hedman said polar bears stay on the Hudson Bay ice for as long as possible so they can feed, adding this year the ice was so thick that the bears stayed out for an extra two weeks.

That's resulted in fatter, healthier bears this summer, Hedman said, adding the development is not likely a long-term trend.

Canadian Death Panels

Lest Canadians become too smug in their mocking of Sarah Palin and her "death panels", I strongly suggest they do a little reality check.

Canada already has "death panels” ... and like it or not, you or a loved one may someday live or die or suffer needlessly depending on what that panel determines.

There is not a province in Canada that is waiting list free. In some provinces, the lists are getting longer as provincial healthcare systems fall behind patient needs. In each province, in each city, and in each health region, someone, somewhere, is tasked with prioritizing and scheduling surgeries, hospital beds, and diagnostic tests. Someone, somewhere ... be it an individual or panel, decides who moves up, who falls back, and who never gets to the front and in most cases the criteria used are not common knowledge ... but there are nevertheless, criteria, which are administered by humans in a system that is overloaded.

For starters, it can be assumed that any individual who is influential, or in a position of power ... or worse, in a position to embarrass "the system", moves rapidly to the front. Have you ever heard of a politician languishing on a waiting list ... have you ever heard of a public personality like say ... a David Suzuki or Mike Duffy, or Lloyd Robertson, sitting patiently in a line while that "unknown" lump grows ever larger? I haven’t.

How about the daughter of a surgeon or the wife of a nursing union head? What about well known writers, journalists, politicians, or even sports stars? None of these folks wait in lines for long because somebody deep within the healthcare bureaucracy moves them up ... which simply means that somebody else has to move down.

Then there is another type of "death panel". This is where inter-agency politics determines who gets surgeries and procedures ahead of others. It may be as simple as Dr. X's patients getting quicker access than Dr. Y's, because Dr. Y is a young specialist who just isn’t politically connected or hasn’t yet learned how to game the system.

In each line there is an assortment of individuals. For instance, a diagnostics waiting list may include a 5 year old; a mother of 3 small children; and a 70 year old man. Who do you think gets bumped down the line if that line is long and a lot of critical cases are clogging up the front? Remember, the Canadian system is stretched beyond capacity.

Disease doesn’t stand still though, just because humans are sitting on waiting lists. Simple treatments may become complex as untreated illness advances. Some cases may become salvage jobs where doctors make the best of what is left. And sometimes, people die while waiting.

In the end, Sarah Palin may not be a bimbo who imagines death panels in her dreams ... she may simply be a person who casts her eyes just south of the Alaskan border and sees all the death panels anyone would ever want to see; panels which decide who to invest scarce government dollars in and who to leave in the line.

What is the Cost of Vice

... I wonder, has anyone ever figured out what vice and life-style illness costs us as Canadians ... how many of us wait in line so that chain smoking Uncle Joe and Fat Sally can get treatment for life-style health complications? Just wondering?

I just can?t wait to pay for the medical attention needed by your morbidly-obese sister and the medications to treat her sky-rocketing blood pressure or your chain-smoking uncle needing a lung transplant or two or the dialysis treatment for your booze-swilling father with the failing liver and finally I really want to pay for your strung-out doper brother?s rehab. Come on, everybody, let?s save this swill at no cost to them. AH, THAT?S OBAMA?S AMERICA....you haven't SEEN expensive until the government gives it to you FOR FREE!!

... at least in the USA, when Obamacare kicks in, they'll have all the little gods of "progressia" to help them make the hard choices.

The discussion.

It Makes Not One Jot of Difference

... they've enjoyed their time here:

The 174 MPH Debt

Preserving the Dignity of the White House

... one Acorn thug at a time:

Why would the president of the United States have any interest in linking up with the SEIU, encouraging them to be his enforcers?

In the mid 1990s, ACORN and the SEIU partnered with other leftist groups to help form the Marxist New Party, a political coalition. In 1995, Obama sought out their nomination. He was successful in obtaining that endorsement and used a number of New Party volunteers as campaign workers.

The fact that Obama received the New Party’s endorsement in his first run for office cannot be dismissed as insignificant. On the contrary, Obama’s ties to the New Party and the New Party’s backers at ACORN and the SEIU are long-standing, substantial, and reveal a great deal about his personal political allegiances.

The New Party’s biggest wins in the country were in Chicago, including Obama’s victory in his 1996 run for the Illinois Senate. Chicago’s New Party was formed around two core elements, ACORN and the SEIU’s local 880. SEIU 880 was itself an ACORN offshoot.

... keep reading.

What did you Expect from a Radical without a CV

Take the man's teleprompter away and all you're left with is the confused ramblings of a basement radical with a law degree:

But back to our storyline. Everyone makes a mistake or flubs a line when asked questions on the spot, including the president of the United States. We can overlook run-on sentences, subject and verb tense disagreement, even a memory lapse when it comes to facts and figures.

The proliferation of Obama’s gaffes and non sequiturs on health care has exceeded the allowable limit. He has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke.

The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact.

Neither option is good; ignorance is clearly preferable to the alternative.

... more from Bloomberg.

Slum Landlord - in - Chief

... was every single Obama association a scum bag?

I'm serious ... this guy has rubbed shoulders and snuggled up to a who's who of Chicago dirt bags ... it's like somebody dumped the slop pail and Obama rose from the mirk untouched and perfectly clean. No wonder the MSM did virtually nothing to vet this guy.

Canadian Socialism

... helping Americans elect conservatives:

Striking Fear in the Hearts of Liberals

There's nothing like a utopian socialist president to assist citizens in finding their inner conservative:

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

During Republican President George W. Bush’s second term, the number of self-identified conservatives as measured by Gallup dropped, riding at a low of 37% as recently as last year.

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states--including President Obama’s home state of Illinois--even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in party identification in 30 states.

... we are told that the human body's immune system needs a cold or even flu once in a while for anti-bodies to develop; the same must be true for political pathogens like socialism.

Oh My ... Let the Weeping and Moaning Begin

The healthcare war isn't even over ... the left side has just taken a small stumble, but already the loons are tossing in the towel and doing what they do best ... chewing each other up:

• sandra adroitly observes, "Obama has succeeded in showing us that the corrupt corporations hold the power, the crazy screamers have succeeded, and democracy has failed us, big time." ......... If by "corrupt corporations", you mean the companies that pay billions in taxes and employ millions of American taxpayers... and by "crazy screamers", you mean "pissed-off taxpayers"... and by democracy failing "us", you mean ACORN, the SEIU and other paid agitators are outnumbered by the taxpayers... well, yes, you're spot on.

• mtiffany threatens David "Svengali" Axelrod and Rahm "Al Capone" Emanuel, stating that if "there is a public mandate to buy insurance without a public option, I'm NEVER voting for the Democrats EVER again." ......... Well, Tiffany, I'm sure all of the capitalization scared them back into line.

• Gridlock is madder than a Democrat forced to comply with the Constitution, "...so the inmates in the nuthouse have won, now they'll be screaming about this forever (at least until they get sick and die without the healthcare they succeeded in killing) and Failbama failed miserably at the first big task in front of him... Nice job. 0 for 0, Barry... Enjoy the rest of your hamstrung term, you f***wit." ......... No snide comments are necessary on my part, because the Secret Service is currently chasing Gridlock down the street, flip-flops, shopping cart and all.

• Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas is thoughtful and introspective. "I sit here today on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and now realize that we were the most spoiled brat generation ever in this nation because ultimately our liberalism of 1969 was to save our own asses from going to Nam, it had nothing to do with making the nation better or helping the downtrodden because we all went out and cut our hair and became part of the machine to make money by f***ing everyone. It was all about basic cowardice and selfishness and getting stoned. F*** us. The Boomers have sold out and don't give a s*** about anyone but themselves. It is very depressing. I did not sell out. I did good in the world by going into teaching. So now I'm just poor and unhappy. I was a total fool. I shoulda sold out like everyone else did. I was really f***ing stupid to hold onto ideals. You made your f***ing bed now lie in it Boomers." ......... I really need to know what school district this guy teaches in --- my kids need that type of edumacation.

We told you last year, that either Obama would be at war with his base, or he'd be at war with America. Any bets on who it'll be?
... or not?

Hanson Weighs in:

We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack Obama was to be the new FDR and his radical agenda an even better New Deal.

What happened, other than the usual hubris of the party in power?

First, voters had legitimate worries about health care, global warming, immigration, energy, and inefficient government. But it turns out that they are more anxious about the new radical remedies than the old nagging problems. They wanted federal support for wind and solar, but not at the expense of neglecting new sources of gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power. They were worried about high-cost health care, the uninsured, redundant procedures, and tort reform, but not ready for socialized medicine. They wanted better government, not bigger, DMV-style government. There is a growing realization that Obama enticed voters last summer with the flashy lure of discontent. But now that they are hooked, he is reeling them in to an entirely different — and, for many a frightening — agenda. Nothing is worse for a president than a growing belief among the public that it has been had.

... keep reading VDH

Change

“He went around the country last fall promising ‘change we can believe in,’ but now we see it’s about changing what we believe in,” ~ Pawlenty

Canada Healthcare Utopia ... On the Rocks

Health Alert

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

Ouch

Just in Time to Prevent a Global Carbon Tax

... but oh the price we will pay, when the Northern hemisphere can no longer feed the world:

It is worth recalling the feature article “Natural antidote to global warming” written by Sir John Maddox, then the editor of Nature and published in Nature on 21 September 1995.

Sir John referred to the extensive research published up to 1995 indicating the Sun-climate relationship and that the Sun was likely to enter into a Maunder Minimum inducing state sometime during the first few decades of the new millennium.

Sir John, an enthusiastic apostle of the IPCC dogma, asked:

“There remains the question of whether the Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to avoid a global carbon tax?”

He answered that on the basis of his reading of the evidence published up till then there was only a small chance. However, he concluded by noting that it is a real possibility and that the moral of his commentary was “a better understanding of the Sun might now have practical value.”

Livingston and Penn and a large number of solar physicists (see, for example, the home page of the grandfather of modern solar physics, Professor Emeritus Cornelius de Jager,) would say that now the likelihood of the Earth being seized by Maunder Minimum is now greater than the Earth being seized by a period of global warming.

They would answer Sir John's question by saying: “Yes, the Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to save the planet from the utterly foolish global carbon tax.”

Read the whole thing.

Get to the Back of the Line

... You Old Geezer:

The problem with government health systems is not that they pull the plug on Grandma. It’s that Grandma has a hell of a time getting plugged in in the first place. The only way to “control costs” is to restrict access to treatment, and the easiest people to deny treatment to are the oldsters. Don’t worry, it’s all very scientific. In Britain, they use a “Quality-Adjusted Life Year” formula to decide that you don’t really need that new knee because you’re gonna die in a year or two, maybe a decade-and-a-half tops. So it’s in the national interest for you to go around hobbling in pain rather than divert “finite resources” away from productive members of society to a useless old geezer like you. And you’d be surprised how quickly geezerdom kicks in: A couple of years back, some Quebec facilities were attributing death from hospital-contracted infection of anyone over 55 to “old age.” Well, he had a good innings. He was 57.

[...]

America is the Afghanistan of the western world: That’s to say, it has a slightly higher infant mortality rate than other developed nations (there are reasons for that which I’ll discuss in an upcoming column). That figure depresses our overall “life expectancy at birth.” But, if you can make it out of diapers, you’ll live longer than you would pretty much anywhere else. By age 40, Americans’ life expectancy has caught up with Britons’. By 60, it equals Germany’s. At the age of 80, Americans have greater life expectancy than Swedes.

The Heart of a Nation in Sand

The Natural Evolution of Cow Tipping

Those wacky Westerners are at it again ... as if it wasn't enough that they torment sleeping cows by pushing them over ... now they are tormenting Smart Cars:

Owners of pint-sized Smart cars aren't laughing about reports that vandals may be targeting the tiny vehicles in a 21st-century take on tipping cows over.

The Internet and blogosphere are abuzz with media reports that pranksters may have pushed several of the tiny vehicles into canals in Amsterdam.

And now a man in his 40s is charged with mischief for allegedly tipping a Smart car onto its side along Edmonton's Whyte Avenue, a trendy bar-and-boutique strip that sometimes attracts rowdy drinkers.

... at least Edmonton doesn't have cannals:

Amsterdam police is deeply concerned about a new craze in which vandals toss parked cars from the Smart brand into the city’s canals.

The so-called ‘Smart tossing’ takes place mainly during the weekend, when many youths are out for a night on the town.

According to locally-published newspaper De Telegraaf police has not wanted to publicize this form of vandalism for fear of copy-cat incidents. However, police officers are paying extra attention to Amsterdam’s canals, especially during the weekends.

The Smart cars are small enough to be parked with head or tail pointing to the water.

Of Old Guys, Beer, and Summits

Mark has some thoughts ... something about professors and being black.

... and speaking of old guys ... here's my Fav.

Sabre Rattling at the CNE

Killing Mortar Teams, Ink Blots, and Premature Withdrawal

From the Torch a thought provoking buffet:

Dusk was closing fast on a patrol of Canadian soldiers as they cleared a sector of this bombed-out, abandoned village. Suddenly, the puttering of a motorbike was heard in the distance.

The sound came as a surprise. The motorcycle was the first non-military vehicle they had heard since they moved in three days earlier to set up a new outpost here, about six miles southwest of the provincial capital of Kandahar.

[...]

This time, they think they've got it, they've really got it: A plan, a strategy, a clear objective, a hope in hell.

And they're no longer alone, essentially on their own to pacify the great swath of insurgency that is Kandahar province, spiritual home of the Taliban.

The Americans have come, 4,000 Stryker Brigade troops, nearly double the Canadian component that has been stretched so pitifully, if valiantly, thin these past five years.

[...]

The assertion that Canadian forces have created a bright spot amid the darkening security picture in southern Afghanistan represents the military's first detailed response to several academic reports in recent months that have described NATO as losing the war.

Gen. Gauthier, commander of all Canadian forces overseas, invited reporters for an unusually open discussion [good on him - MC] in Kandahar during the weekend, taking questions for nearly an hour in an attempt to show that his troops are making progress.

... and speaking of withdrawal.

Death in the Sandbox

I'm posting the following video to show how much care goes into making sure that "bad guys" are infact, bad guys, before they are dispatched. The newly arrived Air Brigade often works within the Canadian Zone of Southern Afghanistan, where OH-58 Kiowas, among other assets, like to prowl the night:

Warmists Continue to get Hammered

Almost weekly now, severe cracks in the warmist dike are developing ... unfortunately for believers, there aren't enough little dutch boys available to plug the leaks:

We find that there have, in general, been larger linear trends in surface temperature datasets such as the NCDC and HadCRUTv3 surface datasets when compared with the UAH and RSS lower tropospheric datasets, especially over land areas. This variation in trends is also confirmed by the larger temperature anomalies that have been reported for near surface air temperatures (e.g., Zorita et al., 2008; Chase et al., 2006; 2008, Connolley, 2008). The differences between surface and satellite datasets tend to be largest over land areas, indicating that there may still be some contamination due to various aspects of land surface change, atmospheric aerosols and the tendency of shallow boundary layers to warm at a greater rate [Lin et al., 2007; Esau, 2008; Christy et al., 2009]. Trends in minimum temperatures in northern polar areas are statistically significantly greater than the trends in maximum temperatures over northern polar areas during the boreal winter months.

We conclude that the fact that trends in thermometer-estimated surface warming over land areas have been larger than trends in the lower troposphere estimated from satellites and radiosondes is most parsimoniously explained by the first possible explanation offered by Santer et al. [2000]. Specifically, the characteristics of the divergence across the datasets are strongly suggestive that it is an artifact resulting from the data quality of the surface, satellite and/or radiosonde observations. These findings indicate that the reconciliation of differences between surface and satellite datasets [Karl et al., 2006] has not yet occurred, and we have offered a suggested reason for the continuing lack of reconciliation.”

WUWT

... science always wins ... always!

A Beck Moment

Preserving "Progressia"

... one bellicose progressive at a time:



... more.

More Warmist Side-Winding

The more we find out about the ethics of some warmist scientists, the more we scratch our heads:

As many WUWT readers know, Steve McIntyre’s tireless quest to get the raw data that makes up the gridded Hadley Climate Research Unit HadCRUT dataset has been fraught with delays, FOI denials, and obvious obfuscation. In some cases the “dog ate my homework” is the excuse. The UK Register has an excellent summary of the issue.

A similar issue has been brewing in parallel over tree ring data in the UK. Doug Keenan tells us the story of getting the “ring around” for over 2 years trying to obtain what many would consider a simple and non controversial data request.

... keep reading.

Third Largest Employer in the World

Preserving the Dignity of the White House

... one email at a time:

This is interesting, because I am one of those people Fox News Channel's Major Garrett is talking about. Just this morning, at about 11:30 a.m. I received a message entitled "Something Worth Forwarding" from David Axelrod at the White House. And this isn't the first one I've received, either: On June 4, I received an e-mail from Axelrod entitled "A New Beginning -- Watch the President's Speech." On July 23, I received one entitled "This Isn't a Game." Three days ago, I received a message, "It's Time for a Reality Check."

The Taliban are Winning

So says WSJ ... and Kandahar is about to fall to the jihadists. At least that's the way things seem to be portrayed.

There is, however, a slight problem with this story:

A minor shitstorm was kicked off when a Wall Street Journal article (with a needlessly sensational title of "Taliban Are Winning") focused on Kandahar and stated that the city was in danger of falling to the Taliban. We learn that American forces are being redirected there, which is okay because Helmand is a "sideshow", in the words of an anonymous official.


EXCEPT, as the brilliant Mark Collins points out in an epic post at The Torch, no such redirection is taking place:

... oops.

Watch Out for the New Age of Conservative Terror

I find it so strange, that after years of the most vitriolic hate expressed toward any US president in history, that the media would suddenly discover new and imminent threats of terrorism and danger directed at Barak Obama. During the Bush years, where open calls for the death of Bush-Hitler, celebrations of his death in the arts, and internet hate-mongering on a scale never before witnessed (for 8 whole years) ... the press and it's herd of shadowy "experts" seldom, if ever, expressed concern for the safety of Bush. (Nothing comparible to Bush-hate exists for Obama)

ABC brings us a typical MSM piece ... long on sensationalism and short on any "fact" one can grasp (save the example of a couple of loons who posed no threat to The Big O) we are led to believe that like the explosion of "terrorism" in the 90's (you know, those conservative terrorist acts that occurred almost weekly for 10 years), America is on the cusp of a new wave of dread. After all, an army of unnamed “experts” say it is so.

I suppose, that to preserve national security interests, ABC doesn't list a single primary source to justify its fear and loathing of that horrific species, the racist, gun-loving, negro-killing conservative ... so don't even bother trying to source the ABC piece unless you are willing to suspend rational thought and accept its suggestion, that even Limbaugh might be some sort of grand terrorist wizard about to unleash a wave of murder. After all, he did draw attention to the fact that the Obama healthcare logo compares closely to a lot of Nazi Germany symbolism. Of course, ABC didn't bother telling anyone that Rush made the comment while mocking out Pelosi et al for their suggestion that anti-healthcare protestors were neo-Nazis ... brown shirts, etc. ... you get the drift.

One ABC expert explains:

"I don't think these are simply people who are mentally ill or off their rocker," Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News of those behind the threats. "In a very real sense they represent a genuine reaction, a genuine backlash against Obama."

Experts say a sharp growth in so-called militia groups that helped spawn a wave of domestic terrorism in the 1990s – and are now using YouTube, rock music and the Internet to recruit members and spread hate and fear - shouldn't be ignored.

Every US president has to be watched over carefully ... we found that out with Kennedy and Reagan ... because loons who get through the security screen can pose a grave threat. But, to obliquely tar over half of the US population with the nasty brush of extremism is simply the MSM doing what it does best ... which is to use every ploy in the Alinsky playbook ... but to ever less effect.

In the meantime, beware of rock music, YouTube, Limbaugh ... and Palin.

Update: More from Gateway.

... and MORE on manufactured Wingnuts.

Update 2: The Hill Reports on security situation.

Preserving the Neutrality of the Media

... one AGW omission at a time:

1,264 = the number of news stories covering Michael Mann and colleagues' new paper claiming that Atlantic hurricanes are at a 1,00o-year high.

1 = the number of news stories covering Chris Landsea and colleagues' new paper claiming that there is no trend in Atlantic hurricanes over a century.

Bias? You be the judge.

CEO ... Or Poster Boy

For "progressives" wondering why their new great "hope" for "the moment they've been waiting for" is going down in flames, it may have something to do with the fact that head man Obama hasn't advanced anything so far, instead ... it's all been done by the Supreme Soviet:

Why is President Barack Obama suddenly drowning in a sea of widespread resistance to his centerpiece legislation? Because it has now become quite clear to Harry & Louise Q Citizen that this was a man without a "constructive alternative" to the out-of-control healthcare system he has badgered and rhetorically beaten bloody to a pulp.

Obama himself, Organizer in Chief, had no plan. He proposed no plan to Congress. He has let committee after committee of witless tax-and-spend, haggard old liberals write the convoluted mess they're calling healthcare reform, and has virtually done nothing for own his part but bash the insurance companies, the doctors and even the patients, who ask for individual control over their own life-and-death choices.

This, dear readers, is the fundamental difference between an empty-suited celebrity and a nuts-and-bolts executive: flim-flam artistry vs. substance and real results.

Bringing Back the Skyraider 2

Recently, Junker reported on a growing line of thinking that favours fixed wing prop driven aircraft for close support in Afghanistan. The idea seems to be mushrooming:

From a minority obsession, the deployment of light turboprop strike reconnaissance aircraft to aid the conflict in Afghanistan has achieved the status of an idea whose time has come.

The latest writing on the wall came with a Pentagon briefing reported on 23 July, when Michael Vickers, the acknowledged guru on special operations and low intensity conflict told a small group of defence reporters that upcoming Quadrennial Defence Review (QRD) would be looking at creating "irregular warfare air units" to beef up the US counterinsurgency capability.

The US Navy is SEALs are, of course, already ahead of the game. They are testing leased an EMB-314 Super Tucano aircraft in the desert ranges in California, under a year-long project codenamed "Imminent Fury", picked up recently by Strategy Page.

But now we learn from Flight Global that the US Air Force has issued a "request for information" (RFI) to identify sources that can supply 100 new aircraft to perform light attack and armed reconnaissance.

This is from Air Combat Command, issued on 27 July, calling for aircraft deliveries to start in 2012 and the first operational squadron to activate a year later.

Hope and Change in Australia

Finally, some change to believe in:

Australia’s Senate rejected the government’s climate-change legislation, forcing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to amend the bill or call an early election.

Senators voted 42 to 30 against the law, which included plans for a carbon trading system similar to one used in Europe. Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, was proposing to reduce greenhouse gases by between 5 percent and 15 percent of 2000 levels in the next decade.

Give Your Head a Shake ... Lost AGW Data

Imagine a drug company applying to have a drug legalized, yet when the responsible governing body begins to analyze the data, it finds that some of the foundational data ... the nuts and bolts ... has been forever lost by the drug company ... imagine this, because it'd never happen ... unless of course warmists were involved:

We are not in a position to supply data for a particular country not covered by the example agreements referred to earlier, as we have never had sufficient resources to keep track of the exact source of each individual monthly value. Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.

... add this fiasco to those AGW scientists deliberately witholding data and the picture gets pretty pathetic.

Here's a comment from the Nature Blog, which relates to THIS happenstance:

What many of us find impossible to understand is the following.

The future of the human race on earth is at stake. Drastic measures are essential. There are however many influential skeptics who are not convinced of this, their main argument is that the studies on which the above assertions are based are impossible to verify, because the data and the algorithms are being kept secret.

Professor Jones, along with Mann, Thompson, and others has done the work, has generated studies, and it is all totally securely based. If we had access to the raw data and the code, we could see that the evidence is overwhelming, the results reproducible. We would, if we came to accept this, immediately swing behind Copenhagen and Kyoto. Because we would see that the studies were right, there is no alternative, we must act now to save humanity.

Yet, when offered this simple method of silencing all objections, and compelling agreement on so vital an issue, Jones, Mann, Thompson and others decline to reveal the totally convincing evidence they have. Thus allowing skepticism to flourish, and the future of humanity to be threatened.

Why?