The World to Come

Your Daily Downer in Video:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

So Much for Drill Baby Drill

I thought they had remote cutoff systems:

As work crews try to contain an oil well that is pumping thousands of barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, many businesses are bracing for the worst.

Much is at stake. BP [BP 51.58 -0.98 (-1.86%)], owner of operator of the well, has already had its image dented by recent accidents. This event will likely cause its image further harm—not to mention the millions in costs associated with containing the spill and drilling a new well.

But the fallout stretches well beyond that. The oil industry is fresh from a victory over President Obama's decision to open up parts of the Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling.

How can "Drill Baby Drill" go ahead, when government doesn't require the industry to use the most modern safety equipment available:

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., sent President Obama a letter Thursday reminding him that in 2000 the Interior Department insisted "oil companies have 'reliable backup systems' in the event of a rig blowout."

By 2003, the plan was scrapped.

"This could be one of the world's greatest nightmare scenarios of an oil gusher," Nelson said.

The backup systems are supposed to act when an oil rig fails and starts leaking. Then, a valve deep under the water where the drill pipe meets the ocean floor is supposed to choke off the flow of oil. In the case of BP's platform, either the valve wasn't activated or didn't work, possibly because of the explosion.

But there is another line of defense this oil platform did not have, a so-called acoustic switch. It can be activated by remote control sending acoustic pulses through the water to trigger the blowout preventer even if the rig is damaged or evacuated.

Acoustic switches are used in Norway and Brazil after those oil producing countries suffered spills. The U.S. considered requiring them, but drilling companies questioned the $500,000 cost and whether the devices even work.

If Only They Had a Long Gun Registry

... things like this wouldn't happen:

Devastating Words about Climategate

... from the UK Parliamentary Investigation:

Lord Lawson's response to these questions is damning:

We believe that there is compelling evidence both independent of the leaked email exchanges and arising from those emails to suggest that the answers to (ii), (iii) and (iv) above are clearly 'yes'.

However, Lord Lawson chooses his words more carefully in answering the smoking-gun question at the top of the list:

Moreover, we are disturbed by the CRU scientists' treatment of the so-called divergence problem. That is the fact that, for that period of time where both a proxy global temperature series and a recorded global temperature series are available, the two series markedly diverge. This clearly suggests either that the proxy series is unreliable or that the recorded series is unreliable (or possibly both: the point is that they cannot both be true). The CRU scientists' attempt to hide the problem by concealing the divergence demonstrates, we believe, a lack of integrity.

Commi-killer

Thin-Skin-in-Chief

... calls out the riot police to scare grandma:



For more comedy:

... just a reminder of a previous post we did.

Did Canadian Soldiers Die for Pakistani Power

The Torch:

To enable Pakistan effectively to return as the predominant power, as it was when the Talibs were in power? Lovely prospect. But with our 2011 military pull-out in view Canada will have about zero influence regarding future geopolitical developments (not that the government would have much idea what to do with any such influence). From Ahmed Rashid (links in original):

... keep reading.

Who Castrated Conservative Men?

I've been noticing the feminization of conservative men ... especially the political class ... the act of turning them into limp-wristed-politically-correct-wimps. They've been convinced by the media, led by "men" like Robert Fife, that being "sensitive" and "intelligent" and "nuanced" means to utter no truth that may offend the progressive class ... least of all take a concrete action. More often than not, the result is a passive-aggressive ninny.

In America, the Tea Party movement has enabled a few of these hapless males to find their unmentionables again ... but only just so.

It's testament to the times when the occasional conservative man who is so in more than just name becomes a standout.

On the flip side, a growing number of conservative women have grasped the torch from the pale, timid, conservative dish rags, and are cutting a swath through politics ... they are, as a result, the most hated conservatives out there ... hated by progressia for not following the rules long laid down by progressive academia, media, and activists ... rules designed to castrate the conservative male.

It's an amazing phenomenon ... conservative women with balls ... conservative men with none:

Gov. Jan Brewer is dismissing the threat of an economic boycott over the new state immigration law she signed last week.

Appearing Monday at an Arizona Town Hall in Tucson, Brewer said she doesn't believe the law is "going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think it might."

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, has called for a boycott of convention business for the state and other calls have come for a boycott of Arizona goods, services and tourism because of the nationally controversial immigration law.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that Brewer says outrage over the ability of police to ask people for citizenship documentation will fade. She recalled how another uproar faded when she was secretary of state and rode herd over a requirement that voters show ID at the polls.

... be sure to read the comments.

The Ash Cloud Nightmare ... That Didn't Have to Be

Bureaucrats pulled a good one:

Inquiries by this newspaper have disclosed that:

Attempts to measure the ash's density were hampered because the main aircraft used by the Meteorological Office for this purpose had been grounded as it was due to be repainted.

Computers at the Met Office, which earlier forecast a 'barbecue summer' last year and a mild winter for this year, produced a stream of maps predicting the ash would cover a vast area, eventually stretching from Russia to Newfoundland. But across almost all of it, there was virtually no ash at all, and none visible to satellites.

Though there was some ash over Britain at times during the ban, the maximum density measured by scientists was only about one twentieth of the limit that scientists, the Government, and aircraft and engine manufacturers have now decided is safe.

Being Green is all About Recycling

... the sustainability of climate science:

Contrary to a myth believed in by the climate science “community”, most recent multiproxy reconstructions are not “independent” – they merely recycle the same stereotypes with slightly different weighting methods. In an email (1140039406.txt) in which Briffa urges Overpeck not not to “over egg the pudding”, he stated: “Peck, you have to consider that since the TAR , there has been a lot of argument re “hockey stick” and the real independence of the inputs to most subsequent analyses is minimal.”

Balls

“If you ask for more money, through equalization, you want to be poorer,” he said. “What I’m saying to Quebecers is, our goal must be to have less money from the equalization formula, because if we have less money it means we are richer. It is the policies of the last four decades, with a big interventionist government, that created this situation.” national post

... more.

Your Morning Mo

Mo ... what's not to like?

Diddling While Rome Burns

Who to trust?

A slew of internal e-mails from the leading credit rating agencies show employees at those firms knew of the dangers in subprime mortgages, but gave them the seal of approval anyway.

"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. :o)," wrote an employee from Standard & Poor's Rating Agency in an internal e-mail in December of 2006.

"This is frightening. It wreaks of greed, unregulated brokers, and 'not so prudent' lenders," said one S&P internal e-mail dated September 2006. And another from that same month: "...this is like another banking crisis potentially looming!!"

The e-mails and other documents were presented as evidence at a hearing on Capitol Hill Friday, part of an 18-month investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Senator Carl Levin, examining the causes of the financial crisis.

And the government regulators ... they diddled while Rome Burned:

SEC:

"It is nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation's economy to the brink of collapse," said Rep. Darrell Issa. The Republican is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Fighting Off the Transnational Progressives

Canada digs in:

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he's working hard to convince his G20 counterparts that a proposed global bank tax is a bad idea.

"The logic of it doesn't make sense for countries that didn't have to bail out their banks to now impose a capital tax on their banks," Flaherty said at the end of a daylong meeting in Washington on Friday.

"It's not a realistic scenario."

The issue was hotly discussed at the meeting, but it appears officials moved on to other subjects without reaching an agreement on the proposal. Flaherty said that a consensus had yet to be reached on the issue, either way.

I've slammed PM Harper a lot of late ... not on this.

The Climate Enquiry that Wasn't

Whitewash hardly even begins to describe it:

When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any.

[...]

And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. … I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.

The Civil Left ... in Satire

VDH:

At last there is a return to civility. If we were confused in recent years as to whether “hate” was a permissible word in public discourse — as in the outburst of Democratic national chairman Howard Dean, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” or the infamous essay by The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait that began, “I hate President George W. Bush” — we now accept that such extreme language in the public arena is not merely uncivil, but is an incitement to real violence. The use of the word “hate” at last has become “hate speech.”

With Rep. Joe Wilson’s improper outburst to President Obama — “You lie!” — we also have at last come to appreciate that those in Congress have a special responsibility not to use incendiary language to defame our government officials. That’s why we now lament Rep. Pete Stark’s slur of George W. Bush from the House floor as a “liar” — the same Rep. Pete Stark who said of our troops that they had gone “to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

But since 2009 Americans have finally learned that our soldiers are sacrosanct and must not be smeared — as in Sen. Richard Durbin’s characterization of American military personnel as synonymous with Nazis, Stalinists, or Pol Pot’s murderers; as in the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s comparison of American troops to Saddam’s lethal jailers; as in Sen. John Kerry’s smear of our soldiers as acting in terrorist fashion. Evocation of Nazi or Brownshirt imagery particularly coarsens the public discourse; it demonizes opponents rather than engage them in real debate. So we can all concur now that Sen. John Glenn, Sen. Robert Byrd, and former vice president Al Gore spoke quite improperly when they compared their president’s governance to that of the Third Reich.

Be sure to read it all ... and when the next time your progressive friend chides you for your partisan hyperbole, don't be surprised if your impulse is to tell him/her to sit on a post and rotate ... nothing, absolutely nothing, can outdo the left in political hyperbole, high dudgeon, and rousing the insane to violence.

Euro-Zone: A Requiem

The greatest progressive economic experiment is on its last legs ... the rotten carcass held together by Germany, whose population is running out of patience. Every few days ... almost ignored by the North American press ... the rumblings of the falling structure resonate across the big pond:

Greece had a far larger budget deficit than expected last year and the figures may yet get worse, according to the European Union's statistics office.

New data from Greece shows a gap of 13.6% of gross domestic product (GDP), not the 12.7% first reported.

Eurostat, which was given new data by Greece, said doubts over the figures meant they could be revised again.

The credit rating agency Moody's also cut its rating on Greek debt and warned that there could be more downgrades.

Moody's cut its rating on Greek sovereign debt to A3 from A2, saying that there was "a significant risk that debt may only stabilise at a higher and more costly level than previously estimated".

Klaus describes how the EU has already failed ... and how the finale will play out:

The economic growth in the current member countries of the eurozone has been slowing down since the 1950s and 1960s and the euro hasn't altered this trend in any way. According to the European Central Bank data (ECB Statistics Pocket Book, March 2010), the average annual GDP growth in these countries was 3.4% in the 1970s, 2.4% in the 1980s, 2.2% in the 1990s, and only 1.1% in the "decade of the euro", more precisely between 2001 and 2009. Such dynamics doesn't take place in other regions of the world.

Another expected goal hasn't occurred: the inflation rate of the eurozone hasn't dropped. Two distinct groups of countries have emerged within the eurozone: one of them has a low inflation rate while the other - Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and a few others - have a higher inflation rate. Long-term imbalances of the trade surpluses and deficits have also increased. The export-dominated countries have been separated from the countries that run trade deficits (it's no coincidence that it's the countries with the highest inflation rate). No homogenization of the eurozone has been achieved by its creation.

The global financial and economic crisis has "only" escalated and unmasked all these problems: it hasn't caused them. It's no surprise for me. "The euro currency zone" of the present 16 European countries is currently not an "optimum currency area", which is what the elementary theorems of the economical theory demand. The fact that the birth of the eurozone was primarily a political decision, which in no way guaranteed that this whole group of countries was appropriate for the project of a shared currency, is repeatedly confirmed (most recently, in Prague in December 2009) even by a former member of the banking committee of the European Central Bank and its main economist Otmar Issing (e.g. in his book "The Birth of the Euro", Cambridge 2008). However, if the currency zone fails to be an optimum currency area, it is inevitable for the expenses to create and maintain the union to exceed the benefits caused by its continuing functioning.

So, the beast will live on, but its slaves will enjoy ever less.

Climate Science Politicians: Slow Learners

Willis said that scientists now needed to work on the presumption that if research is publicly funded, the data ought to be made publicly available.

“Following the Climategate furore at the University of East Anglia the message came out loud and clear from the select committee report and from Lord Oxburgh’s report that data has to be made publicly available in order that there is no question of anyone hiding anything,” he said.

“Any university or scientist that hasn’t got that message needs a total rethink of the way they do research. Every time they don’t do it, they give ammunition to climate deniers and sceptics.”

... clearly, some still haven't gotten the message ... or there is so much to hide, that they can't afford to get the message.

Wow

Islam in the Culture

There is little to like about Islam ... and even less each day:

Now "South Park" can't even say the words "Prophet Muhammad."

After last week's episode of the Comedy Central series sparked a threat (and yes, it was certainly a threat) from a radical Islamic website, the network has cracked-down-for-their-own-good on creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone during last night's continuation of the show's storyline.

For those who missed the drama, the show's 200th episode last week mocked the one "celebrity" that the series has been largely unable to depict, the Prophet Muhammad, who was hidden from view in a bear costume. A U.S.-based website RevolutionMuslim.com then warned Parker and Stone they could end up like Theo Van Gogh (the Dutch filmmaker who was murdered by Muslim extremists after depicting Muhammad on his show) and even posted the address of the show's production office. The site has since been shut down.

Last night, "South Park" continued the controversial Muhammad storyline, but with a key difference: every instance of the words "Prophet Muhammad" was bleeped out, making the episode practically incomprehensible, especially to anybody who missed the previous week.

The character of Muhammad was once again also hidden from view, covered by a large block labeled "censored."

A Comedy Central spokesperson confirmed it was the network's decision to bleep the words.

The Muhammad content is also not available on the South Park Studios website.

Ironically, "South Park" apparently shows an image of the Prophet Muhammad briefly in its opening credits that has gone largely unnoticed.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Regulating Agencies

Worth little more than shite the world over:

Yet it was on Sunday last, the words written on the Saturday, that I was pointing out that the then current safety guidelines for dealing with volcano eruptions made no distinction at all between major or relatively modest eruptions.

Nor, I wrote, did they take into account the dilution effect as the cloud spreads from the original point. The only reference was to generic dust clouds, without any attempt to carry out a risk assessment. Furthermore, it was evident from those very guidelines that the model used was the largest and most dangerous of Icelandic volcanoes, the Katla volcano – way more serious than the relatively modest eruption we are currently experiencing.

Now, with hundreds more millions spent, much heartache and disruption and increasing chaos, ministers and officials have finally come to the conclusion that was evident almost from the start, that the total shutdown of UK aviation was a gross over-reaction, and entirely unwarranted.

... and never forget, that one of the single most pressing goals of any progressive worth his or her salt is to grow bureaucracy ... ever bigger ... ever more intrusive ... ever more meddling ... ever more powerful ... and with it an ever larger government slave class. Regulating agencies are part of that progressive drive. They may be necessary, but seldom is their scope and reach necessary. Regulators are, after all, the most powerful of bureaucrats.

Another Progressive Dream is Hatched

Regulating the financial industry so that abuses and excessive risk don't take down the world economy again, is one thing ... using the crisis of 2008 to transfer funds to progressive NGOs to build their little kingdoms and expand the number of government slaves worldwide, is altogether unacceptable:

Regulating the financial industry so that abuses and excessive risk don't ever risk the world economy again, is one thing ... using the crisis of 2008 to transfer funds to progressive NGOs who are very adept at create little armies of bureaucrats and marxists, but little else, is altogether unacceptable:

... read the details.

The Harper CPC, at least in this case, are on the RIGHT side of the issue.

Leaving Afghanistan - The Great Canadian Vote Hunt

Some "experts" believe it makes no sense:

Queen's University defence policy expert Douglas Bland calls it "bizarre" given Canada is still in places such as Cyprus and the Golan Heights 46 and 56 years after the fact, respectively.

"Decisions to leave usually have a rationale around it," Bland says.

"The decision to leave (Afghanistan) in 2011 is just an idea that's floating in space. It has no connection to anything. To relations with the U.S., relations with NATO, relations with the Afghan people . . . It has nothing to do with the context of the operation."

... but we know why Canada is leaving ... don't we? ... all three political parties in Canada are playing for Quebec votes ... the province that is loaded to the gills with pacifists (but which lusts after military industrial contracts).

In Canada, pandering for Quebec votes comes before just about everything ... and PM Harper has evolved amazingly before our eyes in his quest for those votes ... from Hawk to full on retreat ... PM Harper can't put Afghanistan in the rear view mirror fast enough ... all those Canadian soldiers arriving back home in caskets get in the way of Quebec votes ... and to the great Canadian political chess player, that's unacceptable.

Update: While we're at it ... let's pull out of Afghanistan and jump into the Congo ... NICE because it isn't a "combat" mission and the tapeworms in Quebec might actually agree with it.

O-Math

It's easy to save or create jobs when you fudge the baseline:

Step 1: How many jobs does the Administration currently claim there would be, without stimulus?

129.7 million Current number of U.S. jobs

- 2.8 million Jobs currently claimed to be “created or saved”

126.9 million Jobs the Administration currently claims there would be without stimulus

Step 2: How does that compare with the number of jobs the Administration used to say there would be without stimulus?

133.9 million January 2009 projection of jobs without stimulus

- 126.9 million Current claim of jobs without stimulus

= 7 million Jobs removed from the Administration “baseline” to justify their latest stimulus job creation claims

In other economic news ... there are some very GOOD signs out there.

Alinsky - in - Chief

More:

President Obama is bringing his war on Wall Street to the enemy’s turf.

He’ll make his pitch for financial reform in the heart of lower Manhattan Thursday – even as his team make hay of the Goldman Sachs fiasco with a tech savvy appeal to Democratic donors.

Internet surfers who entered “Goldman Sachs SEC” into Google were directed to the president’s campaign Web site via a sponsored link titled “Help Change Wall Street.”

The White House’s political arm paid for the keywords — but would not say how much.

Progressive Fantasy Versus Nature

Progressives have caused the spending of tens of billions of dollars and established massive government and business and NGO infrastructures to be built ... all in the name of mitigating a fantasy called Anthropogenic Global Warming ... a fantasy that will apparently cost humanity dearly.

Yet ...

One little puff from mother-nature demonstrates that real natural disasters can cause instant and undeniable damage and that it is real danger that must be prepared for ... not progressive wet dreams.

But ...

The Progressive fed AGW dream of building more government and exercising more control over humans lives on ... long after the AGW canard has been put to bed.

Geraldo Gets Owned

IPCC Lead Author Says ...

Over the years, the IPCC has changed from a scientific institution that tries to be policy relevant to a political institution that pretends to be scientific. I regret that. There are already more than enough climate activists, while there are too few solid and neutral bodies that make down-to-earth and well-founded statements about climate change and climate policy.

[...]

Working Groups 2 and 3 of the AR4 violated all IPCC procedures. The conclusions are partly scientifically unfounded, and even partly copied from the environmental movement.

[...]

The errors are not random. Working Group 2 systematically portrays climate change as a bigger problem than is scientifically acceptable. Working Group 3 systematically portrays climate policy as easier and cheaper than can be responsibly concluded based on academic research.

[...]

The reputation of climate research has been severely damaged by the IPCC. The IPCC should therefore be drastically and publicly reformed.

Source

Never Trust the News Media

Never ... never ... never!

Omitted:

And I think that some of the sceptical comment was in fact justified,

Printed:

... and some of it was just plain nasty and ill-informed.

Another Reason to Loath Progressives

... because when reality bites ... they create an alternative reality:

Somebody tell me: What have I missed? Will somebody explain to me what tea party person has advocated violence? What have I missed here? What tea party has engaged in acts of violence? And, by the way, President Clinton, the fight is about taxation by duly honestly elect representatives that you don't have to...? We have had a number of pieces of legislation including the recent health care bill rammed down our throat. This regime is governing against the will of the people. There's nothing Democratic about what happened here. Bribes and kickbacks to members of Congress in order to get their votes for this thing? Let's go back also to April 28, 2003, in Hartford, Connecticut. The tea party people are peaceful. They are festive. They're described that way even by the regime's media. Festive and good cheer. They're not taunting anybody, they're not menacing anybody; they're not threatening anybody. All they are is dissenting. They disagree with the direction the regime is taking the country. Back in 2003, Mrs. Clinton went nuts at the annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinner. It's in Hartford, Connecticut. You remember this.

HILLARY 2003 (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, "WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!"

I can see it now ... Rahm and the boys wishing for a domestic terrorist act ... hoping for an Oklahoma city ... begging for a crisis that shan't be wasted.

A Cloud that Eats Money

Thank You Mr. President

Truly an Interesting Religion

... that can dish up a never ending supply of THIS:

A suicide bomber blew himself up in the main hospital in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing 10 people and triggering chaos and panic on the wards.

Police said it appeared to be a sectarian attack linked to the nearby shooting of a Shi'ite banker whose body had been brought to the hospital shortly before the bomb blast.

Quetta, capital of insurgency-hit southwestern Baluchistan province, has seen frequent violence pitting militants from the majority Sunni and minority Shi'ite communities.

City police chief Ghulam Shabbir Sheikh put the death toll at 10, including four policemen and a cameraman with a private television station.

More than 30 people were wounded, including at least four journalists and a local MP.

Not N*gger ... Not Even F*ggot

... it should have been liar:

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler is distancing himself from comments he made to the Times-News last month, stating he heard racial slurs yelled from a crowd of angry health care protesters outside the U.S. Capitol.

On March 20, black Democratic congressmen John Lewis, Andre Carson and Emanuel Cleaver said they heard the N-word as they walked to the Capitol to vote on health care. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who is gay, said anti-homosexual epithets were yelled at him.

At that time, Shuler told the Times-News he was walking toward the Capitol with Cleaver when protesters began yelling racial epithets at Cleaver.

On Wednesday, Shuler told The Associated Press that he heard slurs against Frank, but not Cleaver.

Goldman: Just the Tip of the Iceberg

SEC goes after Goldman:

"This litigation exposes the cynical, savage culture of Wall Street that allows a dealer to commit fraud on one customer to benefit another," Chris Whalen, a bank analyst at Institutional Risk Analytics, said in a note to clients Friday.

Khuzami said the case was the first brought by a new SEC division investigating the abuses of so-called structured products such as CDOs in the credit crisis. He said the investigation continues but declined to comment further.

It's too bad that the SEC doesn't have the teeth nor political will to go after all the creepy crawlies hiding under rocks.

Climate Science Politics

image: click

Bonus @ National Post ... click.

Double Bonus ... click.

Special Delivery from the IPCC

... a truck load of guano:

21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations' Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F on a report card we are releasing today. Forty citizen auditors from 12 countries examined 18,531 sources cited in the report – finding 5,587 to be not peer-reviewed.

Contrary to statements by the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the celebrated 2007 report does not rely solely on research published in reputable scientific journals. It also cites press releases, newspaper and magazine clippings, working papers, student theses, discussion papers, and literature published by green advocacy groups. Such material is often called "grey literature."

I've always said that leftists and leftist-types(greens) usually deflect from their own transgressions by screaming long and hard whenever they find their opposition taking missteps that they themselves are already taking in spades.

If they are cheating ... they scream doubly hard when there is so much as a whif of cheating by your oppostion. If they are lying ... they are sure to point and tisk-tisk at even perceived mistruths uttered by your opposition. And, when they aren't using peer reviewed literature even when their onw rules state that they must ... these same scoundrels mock, ridicule and belittle all of their detractors for not using peer reviewed literature ... and that, after they themselves have corrupted the peer-review process so that detractors can't get published in the first place.

Turning Alinsky on Himself

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

Tea Party Violence Update

From yesterday ...

An Update @ GATEWAY

Update2: from Gateway ... and from Malkin.

More updates. (April 19)

Update Smorg ... click.

What a Humanoid Tapeworm Looks Like

Mail Online:

The Davey family's £815-a-week state handouts pay for a four-bedroom home, top-of-the-range mod cons and two vehicles including a Mercedes people carrier.

Father-of-seven Peter gave up work because he could make more living on benefits.
Yet he and his wife Claire are still not happy with their lot.

With an eighth child on the way, they are demanding a bigger house, courtesy of the taxpayer.

'It's really hard,' said Mrs Davey, 29, who is seven months pregnant. 'We can't afford holidays and I don't want my kids living on a council estate and struggling like I have.

'The price of living is going up but benefits are going down. My carer's allowance is only going up by 80p this year and petrol is so expensive now, I'm worried how we'll cope.

'We're still waiting for somewhere bigger.'

Mrs Davey has never had a full-time job while her 35-year-old husband gave up his post in administration nine years ago after realising they would be better off living off the state.

Finally Some Clarity in Global Warming Predictions

That settles it then ... time to start planting palm trees in Saskatoon:

Global warming has reached the point of no return, a study published in the Tuesday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a joint team of the U.S., French and Swiss researchers concludes. Even if the world reduces emissions of CO2 to the level before the industrial revolution, it will take at least 1,000 years to reverse the climate change effect that have already taken hold, AP on Sunday quoted the team as saying. Dr. Susan Solomon of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research laboratory led the study. “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide the climate would go back to normal in 100 years, 200 years; that’s not true,” she said, adding the effects are well nigh irreversible.

... read it all HERE.

Imagine if "Journalists" Had Cavorted With the Wehrmacht

ht

What Sinks Faster Than a Windfarm?

... any prospect of profits ... of course.

Tea Party Violence

Allee Bautsch, chief campaign fundraiser for Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and her boyfriend Joe Brown, were savagely beaten Friday night in New Orleans after leaving a Republican party fundraising dinner by a group of thugs who reportedly targeted the couple because they were wearing Sarah Palin pins.

Bautch's leg was broken and Brown incurred a broken jaw and nose as well as a concussion.

The Hayride reports that a source who visited Bautsch at the hospital the day after the attack says they were told the couple was attacked for wearing Palin buttons:

Two people at the Brennan’s event have now confirmed that the protest had largely broken up by the time it ended, but we also understand from someone who visited Allee Bautsch in the hospital Saturday morning that she and Brown were followed and attacked expressly because they had Palin pins on (she heard one of the attackers say “Let’s get them, they have Palin pins on” – so the attack WAS politically motivated as its victims understood it. It was not a mugging, it was not an argument gone wrong and it was not a bar fight.

The story of a Republican and her boyfriend being viciously attacked for wearing Palin buttons has yet to make national headlines, unlike say, unfounded rumors of nasty words being said by Tea Party protesters.

Source

Graphing Temperature

Why Greece Will Won't Fail

From EUR:

Unwittingly, The Financial Times may have delivered the ultimate epitaph for the foolhardy experiment of allowing Greece into the eurozone.

It comes in its latest analytical offering – of which there has been no shortage – when we are told of the latest developments, with the rider: "This was not how things were supposed to work out." That, most certainly would suffice for the gravestone of a nation.

The situation on which the FT was commenting was the declaration by somebody or other in the EU telling everybody who would listen that the "colleagues" would come dashing to the rescue if need be. Greece would not be allowed to default.

Somehow, though, this message does not seem to have got through to the markets. Nervousness about Athens' public finances, we are told, has contaminated lending in the private sector, with depositors having withdrawn €10 billion from Greek banks.

This is what the FT thinks should not be happening. Greece cannot be forced out of the euro and is unlikely to leave voluntarily so, with the declaration of support, the markets are supposed to rush in and buy up Greek debt.

The reason for this seems to be that the EU – with Germany looming in the foreground – is playing an elaborate game of chicken. It framed its statement of support, says the FT, in terms of a reason why the support would never actually be needed.

... keep reading.

New Element Discovered

Amazing Science:

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons,and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.

These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quan More..tities of lepton-like particles called peons.

The symbol for Pelosium is PU.

PU's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass.

When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnausium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium.

Source

Tiger's Wood

... and all the others:

“I’m not surprised at all,” one player told me in a moment of rare candour after I’d promised anonymity. “They’re all at it. I know loads who are worse than Tiger, they’re just not so famous, so no-one talks about it. There’s a rule, a code of omerta: what happens on tour, stays on tour.”

There are some spots which are well known for bad behaviour: Thailand, Malaysia, Amsterdam and eastern Europe. “In those places the lads just go berserk,” the player said. This was confirmed to me by a veteran journalist who covered the European Tour, a circuit of 48 tournaments over 49 weeks held everywhere from Glasgow to Dubai and including the Andalucia Open.

“Eighty per cent of the caddies are brothel hands, they know one in every city. Of course there are some honourable husbands and boyfriends, but for the rest? I shudder to think what they are taking home. There’s a minority of the players who will go with the caddies on these excursions, I’d say 5% of them: they know who they are. Some of the top ones are at it, the ones who get a taste for it.

“There are those who prefer to pay,” a player adds. “And for the rest, there are always girls at these tournaments. Sometimes they are the drivers of the courtesy cars, or they are with the management companies, or with the sponsors or promoters. At the end of some tournaments there’ll be girls at the final green, asking if you’d like them to take you on a tour round their city, or hang out. If you want to get laid there’s usually an opportunity.”

The Oldest Progressive Trick in the Book

Is to erase or rewrite the past ... because if you don't know where you came from, you won't know who you are; making your brain easy pickings for progressive utopian guano.

The UK gives a feeble effort to reignite the past ... it's a start:

The series, called A History of Britain, was first published in 1937 and was widely used in schools for decades.

It has now been updated and relaunched for a modern audience amid growing concerns that schools are failing to give children a good grasp of history.

It comes as a group of leading history experts called for reform to the school curriculum so secondary schoolchildren are taught a single chronological history course, stretching from the Norman conquest to the 20th century.

Currently, pupils study topics such as the Nazis, Soviet Russia, slavery or the Victorians, often taught in isolation and repeated in different years.

According to the publishers, the 1930s books are needed to address a "crisis" in the teaching of the traditional narrative of British history.

"For more than half a century most intelligent youngsters in Britain have grown up to live in the half-darkness of historical ignorance," said Tom Stacey, chairman of Stacey International.

It's All About Being Green

... until a developing country needs power:

The World Bank has approved the $3.75 billion loan for Eskom's 4.8GW coal-fired electricity plant in South Africa, despite the abstentions of British, US and the Dutch representatives.

Some 125 environmental groups had written to the World Bank demanding rejection of the loan. Local groups also put the British government on the spot, challenging the Labour government on its "green" credentials, calling for it to vote against the loan.

When the decision was announced, there was no immediate word on how the UK did actually vote, but a later report stated that the UK abstained. Offering a bland statement, an official spokesman for DFID said, by way of explanation: "The project raises several sensitive and potentially controversial issues which it has not been possible to resolve before this period began."

The US Treasury said it abstained due to "concerns about the climate impact of the project and its incompatibility with the World Bank's commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation."

A Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman said it had advised its representative to abstain, citing concerns that Eskom was not doing enough to develop alternatives to coal. "The Netherlands believes Eskom is doing relatively too little to develop alternatives to coal, so we don't think this is a good proposal," a ministry spokesman said.

There is some early reaction but we will wait to see how the greenies react en masse – they are going to hate it, not least because this will be one of the biggest coal-fired plants in the world.

... keep reading EUR.

That Symbol of Progressive Islam

Indonesia:

A human rights activist on Thursday slammed the humiliating punishment meted out to a teacher in Aceh Barat and the married woman he was suspected of having an affair with after the pair were marched through a village naked, tied to a pole and then brutally beaten.

“To parade people around naked is not sanctioned in Islam,” said Zulfikar Muhammad, an activist from a coalition of human rights organizations in the staunchly Muslim province.

“The acts of the villagers who paraded the two through a village clearly violates both Islamic Shariah law and human rights. Islam upholds justice and the rights of human beings.”

[...]

Abdurrazak said the pair were marched naked through the village and then both tied to a pole and beaten. After the police arrived to rescue the couple, they were rushed to the Cut Nyak Dhien General Hospital in the district capital of Meulaboh for emergency treatment, he added.

Isn't it strange, that the main Western apologists for Islam are progressives, the very same people who would be first in line for canings, dismemberings, and all manner of nasty were Islamic purists in charge. Progressives; like Impala's getting an intellectual hard-on for lions.

That's why our header reads: "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."

Enough With the Noble Reasoning

It's plain and simple ... Afghanistan doesn't sell in Quebec, so Harper has axed it:

But actually, it isn't clear. The motion, as passed by Parliament [no, just the House of Commons] in March 2008, says the Canadian military must cease combat operations by July 2011 [no, this is the only time the word "combat" appears in the motion, sixth sub-paragraph in: "the House takes note that the government took a decision to commit a combat Battle Group of roughly 1200 troops to Kandahar for a period of one year, from February 2006 to February 2007"] and withdraw from Kandahar, not the whole the country. It was Prime Minister Stephen Harper who added the rider that every Canadian soldier would leave Afghanistan.

The Southern Medieval Warm Period

One critical plank in warmist literature is that the Medieval Warm Period was a Northern Hemispheric event ... that it didn't effect the entire planet. It is important to note, that the issue is unsettled ... and was even a point of contention in the Climategate emails.

The quote below is taken from Climate Audit ... be sure to read the entire Climate Audit piece ... it offers a window into the twists and turns of climate science politics:

I attach here a version of glacier box and suggestions (in red) how to include there the reference to the new Thompson et al., 2006 paper.

In this relation – I am getting more and more concern about our statement that the Early Holocene was cool in the tropics - this paper shows that it was, actually, warm – ice core evidences+glaciers were smaller than now in the tropical Andes. The glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere (Porter, 2000, review paper) were also smaller than at least in the Neoglacial. We do not cite Porter’s paper for the reason that we actually do not know how to explain this – orbital reason does not work for the SH, but if we do cite it (which is fair) we have to say that during the Early to Mid Holocene glaciers were smaller than later in both Northern, and Southern Hemisphere, including the tropics, which would contradict to our statement in the Holocene chapter and the bullet. It is probably too late to rise these questions, but still just to draw your attention.

Personally, it makes me wonder why, given the enormous funding available to warmists, that they haven't been crawling all over the Southern Hemisphere drilling and poking to find evidence for or against a Southern MWP? After all, Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had no problem finding evidence, both anecdoltal and scientific, of a Southern MWP.

The point is, that nobody knows for certian ... but by now they should.

Saskatchewan Black Gold

No, not THAT black gold (we've got plenty) ... but THIS, black gold:

The Palin Effect

Rex:

Among the many delightful characteristics of Sarah Palin is her seemingly unfailing capacity to capture Barack Obama's angry attention.

[...]

Sarah Palin irritates, agitates, angers and annoys some of the self-appointed finest minds of America to a point long past reason. She has been the target, since the night she walked on stage to speak at a Republican convention, of some of the most savage commentary that the great republic has seen since Richard Nixon.

[...]

But Palin is not the president, nor has she been. She's been a presence in American national politics for only about two years. She is a cheerful human being, with a large family, an apparently easy-going and normal husband. She has a personality that would sell corn flakes -- if not grow them. What career she had in Alaska, she earned. She's at home indoors and out, radiates human warmth, seems to have some balance about herself, and has displayed over the last year or so a considerable fortitude under an avalanche of mockery and hatred. For the final stroke of this cameo I should note she is smart -- smarter than 90% of the people who make a point of how rock-stupid they know she is.

[...]

I side with those who venture that the nerves Palin hits have more to do with class -- where she's from, how she speaks, where she was educated, what she likes (the moose-hunting), than her politics or her gender. She's rural, she came into national politics from (ugh) Alaska. She and her husband have the unerasable stigmata of the modern working class.

Enviro-loons: Younger by the Day

... and richer:

Parker Liautaud, 15 years old, is reporting on his progress skiing his way to the North Pole. He has made his goal to become the youngest person to ski to the North Pole, and to use that attempt to bring greater awareness to the urgent environmental issues of the arctic.
…
And more importantly for his purpose of letting the world see the ravages of global warming on the arctic - There was a lot of open water today. It really shows what’s been going on in the Arctic – it’s falling apart. Right now we’re camping on this patch of old ice, but all around us is open water, broken and thin ice. To our north there’s a massive pan of very thin ice. Everything is freshly frozen, if not open.

... the details.

Master Liautaud, helping GE get wind turbine contracts, one polar trek at a time.

Mud Rings

Afghan Ambassador to Canada

Video

Anderson Cooper - Call the Office

Teabaggers:

When it comes to the Tea Party movement, the stereotypes don't tell the whole story.

Here's what you often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: offensive posters blasting President Obama and Democratic leaders; racist rhetoric spewed from what seems to be a largely white, male audience; and angry protesters rallying around the Constitution.

Case in point: During the health care debate last month, opponents shouted racial slurs at civil rights icon Georgia Rep. John Lewis and one person spit on Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. The incidents made national headlines, and they provided Tea Party opponents with fodder to question the movement.

But here's what you don't often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: Patriotic signs professing a love for country; mothers and fathers with their children; African-Americans proudly participating; and senior citizens bopping to a hip-hop rapper.

Last week, I saw all of this during a five-city Western swing as the Tea Party Express national tour made its way across the country. CNN was along for the ride, and I was charged with planning CNN's coverage for five stops in two states: St. George, Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah; and Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado.

Dr. Dawg ... gear down there big rig:

Babble, with respect, doesn’t put hundreds of thousands of rabid, gun-toting, hissing and spitting racist partisans into the streets. What an abjectly silly bit of moral equivalence. Show me more than one or two Black people in the ranks of the Teabaggers. Show me even one of the latter who can argue instead of hork.

Man-Caused Disaster Averted

ABC has it ... something about an attempted terror attack ... we'd use the M-word, but we don't want to offend our progressive friends:

Federal air marshals subdued a man who authorities say attempted to "light his shoes on fire" on a United flight from Washington Reagan to Denver Wednesday night, federal law enforcement officials told ABC News.

Authorities say an explosive team is on the way to the airport, and that while the presence of explosives has not yet been confirmed, they believe it was an attempted "shoe bomb."

The suspect was identified by authorities as a diplomat in the Qatar embassy in Washington, Mohammed al Modadi. The FBI said the man had full diplomat immunity as the 3rd secretary and vice-consul.

By tomorrow we should know if this whole thing was a "misreported" disturbance ... or the real deal.

What not to say on a plane:

When the marshal asked him what he was doing in the bathroom, al-Modadi supposedly said, “I was trying to light my shoes on fire.” In fact, he might have simply been having a smoke and was being sarcastic with the marshal. Again, this is all from Williams. I’ll update when I see something contradictory. Incidentally, until a few minutes ago, MSNBC.com’s own headline for this story was “NBC News: Airline bombing foiled.” Now it’s “NBC: Passenger subdued aboard United jet.”

Final:

Qatar's U.S. ambassador rushed to the defense of his envoy whom authorities say grabbed a surreptitious smoke in a jetliner's bathroom, sparking a bomb scare and widespread alert that sent jet fighters scrambling to intercept the Denver-bound flight.

But no explosives were found and authorities speaking on condition of anonymity said they don't think he was trying to hurt anyone during Wednesday's scare and he will not be criminally charged.

So, now that no terror attack was attempted, we are free to say that the man was Muslim.

Ocean Drilling Revolution

The Ugliest Truth About American Taxation

Only the well-to-do pay:

Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

Even for those who do pay, America's middle class and lower class pay very little, to next to nothing. Virtually the entire US income tax burden is borne by the well-to-do.

Bend Over Canada

... the tapeworms are at it again:

"The question is no more what does Quebec want, we know what we want, the question is, what does Canada have to offer. And there's been no answer," Duceppe said.

I suggest we "offer" Quebec the door with the exit sign. The only reason Quebec remains in Canada is because Canada pays ransom.

For those bleeding heart apologists who somehow think Quebec is changing ... just try giving Quebec an equal deal ... just try treating them equally and see what happens.

Quebec runs its very own protection racket... "pay up, or the country gets it! ... and every single Federal Party which seeks a majority is forced to pay up.

Quebec separatism is mostly one almighty bluff, a giant racket by which the francophone minority screws out of English Canada a hugely disproportionate share of the spoils.

Like Lukewarm Water on a Hot Day

"So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth." Revelations 3:16

Canadians have little confidence in either the Conservatives or Liberals to manage the economy, balance the books or reflect their values, a new poll suggests.

Indeed, more Canadians picked "None of the above" and "Don't know" than chose any federal party on those key issues, according to The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.

Harris-Decima chairman Allan Gregg said the findings are "an indictment" of Canada's political parties and help explain why support remains tepid for both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The poll put the Conservatives at 32 per cent nationally, with the Liberals close behind at 29 per cent. The NDP stood at 17 per cent and the Greens at 11 per cent.

"Virtually no party has established themselves as having strong credentials on the issues set that matters most to Canadians," Gregg said in an interview.

I predict, that the whoever gets a leader with a pulse first, will win the next majority. Neither Harper nor Iggy have what it takes ... and the CPC in particular, with its brand of liberal-lite, is setting up for a fall. Lukewarm conservatives don't sell.

... either be the real thing, or sell out your base and try to establish a new liberal base ... right now though, you are indeed lukewarm water on a hot day.

The Single Biggest Impediment in Afghanistan (update)

... is corruption:

President Hamid Karzai lashed out at his Western backers for the second time in three days, accusing the U.S. of interfering in Afghan affairs and saying the Taliban insurgency would become a legitimate resistance movement if the meddling doesn't stop.

Mr. Karzai, whose government is propped up by billions of dollars in Western aid and nearly 100,000 American troops fighting a deadly war against the Taliban, made the comments during a private meeting with about 60 or 70 Afghan lawmakers Saturday.

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn't back his controversial attempt to take control of the country's electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three people who attended the meeting, including an ally of the president.

Taking a strong hand with Karzai makes all that much more sense, when one considers the price we have already paid ... a price, that enables those who have actually sacrificed to speak with moral clarity:

On Easter Sunday, 2007, Pte. Kevin Kennedy was killed in Afghanistan. Today in Kandahar, at an Easter ceremony for the families of fallen soldiers, Kevin's father Myles said this: "If you look at our history, we always went in with strong moral causes, and we went in to do a job. Our job will not be complete if (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) pulls out the whole group. We have to maintain some type of military presence for security . . . to let the world know that we haven't really abandoned this mission."

Said Theresa Charbonneau, whose son Cpl. Andrew Grenon died in September, 2008: "One hundred forty-one lives have been lost. The journalist has been lost. The diplomat has been lost. I don't want their deaths to be in vain. I don't want to see (Afghanistan) collapse. If by staying longer we can help that not happen . . . I would like to see that."

Update:

Via The Torch comes an interesting piece from TIME:

To some it may seem as if President Hamid Karzai has a death wish. The Afghan leader has lately begun sticking it to the U.S. and its Western allies — the only force protecting him from a surging Taliban, which hanged the last foreign-backed President when it reached Kabul in 1996. Having infuriated the Obama Administration by continuing to drag his feet on corruption — and then cozying up to Iran and China when Washington turned up the heat — Karzai ratcheted up the rhetoric last week. He accused the U.S. of trying to dominate his country, blamed the West for last year's electoral fraud (which his campaign was accused of masterminding) and made comments that verged on sanctifying the Taliban insurgency as a "national resistance" against foreign invaders. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Karzai even threatened, during a meeting with Afghan parliamentarians, to join the Taliban himself if the West continued to pressure him.

Our Friends the Chinese

... what's a bit of gossip among friends?

Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry.

In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.

Economic Collapse: The Silver Lining

EUR:

Wolfgang Münchau in The Financial Times seems to be ruling out any possibility of fiscal union in the eurozone. That, he seems to be saying, will lead to a "terminal crisis" and the collapse of the euro.

I am not sure he's right – given that I've understood him properly. He could well be underestimating the sheer determination of the "colleagues" to pursue their integration agenda. The prospect of a "terminal crisis" is precisely the type of beneficial crisis which gives them their power.

Should the euro collapse – with the default of Greece – which Münchau suggests must happen next year, it will signal the end of the EU as a political project. It will not recover from such a blow and, once its agenda goes into reverse, it will not stop there. So weakened will it be that the EU itself will be under threat, and will have difficulty surviving.

Losing Fisk

... means that you're losing the war:

Add Robert Fisk to the people—Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin—I’m still waiting for dawg to denounce as ‘white supremacists…’

Equal Outcomes - in - Chief

Obama, the perfect president for all those progressives who hate American exceptionalism:

Start with Obama the candidate and remove the scripted speechifying, the calculated racial identity, and any pretense of spiritual engagement, and only a few unflattering character traits remain. The traits increasingly on display are dominated by Obama's unshaken confidence in himself, his willingness to dehumanize not only the opposition, but also his "poster child" examples (see also Marcellus Owens), and his peculiar view that the change demanded by Americans is "the great leveling" -- a spreading around of wealth among Americans, and eventually among nations, that will reposition the United States in its rightful place as one unremarkable, one unexceptional, one "fair" nation in which every American child can grow up expecting not equal opportunity, but equal outcome.

Perhaps the Biggest Progressive Lie

... it was all Bush's fault:

ht and discussion.

The Fastest Fingers in the World

Wow ... I am truly impressed. The speed with which progressive journalists can conduct interviews and compose stories is truly impressive:

I asked because at 4:51 that same day, McClatchy reporter William Douglas posted an article on the McClatchy website with the inflammatory headline, "Tea party protesters scream 'ni--er' at black congressman."

In other words, Douglas, with an attributed assist from James Rosen, managed to interview representatives John Lewis, Emanuel Cleaver, and Barney Frank, compose an 800-word article, and have it edited and formatted for posting within a 90-minute window.

During that same 90 minutes, Douglas would have received and incorporated a press release from Emanuel Cleaver, making the easily disproved claim that he had "been spat upon and that Capitol Police had arrested his assailant."

To Spit or Not to Spit

A lying, race-baiting, progressive? ... so what else is new?

Cleaver:

In an interview on Tuesday with FOX 4 News, Rep. Cleaver would not directly answer the question of whether or not he was intentionally spit upon.

"I haven't talked about this incident on TV or anywhere, and I've been approached to talk about it on every national TV show," said Rep. Cleaver in an interview with FOX 4 News. "I never, I never reported anything, never a single thing in Washington, not one thing. People assume I went somewhere, never done press conference, never done an interview on it and I'm not going to do it."

... oh ... really?

This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the others Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care. After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol Police.

House of Commons CRU Report

First a primer from Der Spiegel ... setting the stage:

Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?

Life has become "awful" for Phil Jones. Just a few months ago, he was a man with an enviable reputation: the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, an expert in his field and the father of an alarming global temperature curve that apparently showed how the Earth was heating up as a result of anthropogenic global warming.

Those days are now gone.

The Der Spiegel Smorg:

•Part 1: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
•Part 2: Politically Charged Science
•Part 3: A Climate Rebel Takes on the Establishment
•Part 4: The Smoking Gun of Climatology
•Part 5: The Reality of Rising Sea Levels
•Part 6: The Myth of the Monster Storm
•Part 7: Climate Change’s Winners and Losers
•Part 8: The Invention of the Two-Degree Target


Jo Nova captures the most salient point:

The UK Parliamentary Committee was always going to be a whitewash. They put no skeptics on the committee; they interviewed no skeptics; they didn’t ask Steven McIntyre to speak. They tried to put people on the committee like Phillip Campbell, who had already pronounced it was a done deal and ClimateGate a non-event, but were forced to settle for people who were more covertly sympathetic: “impartial” people like committee chairman Phil Willis, who had already made up his mind in January and announced it in the Telegraph:

“There are a significant number of climate change deniers, who are basically using the UEA emails to support the case this is poor science that has been changed or at worst manipulated. We do not believe this is healthy and therefore we want to call in the UEA so the public can see what they are saying”

It’s no wonder the committee made a spin-like press release with wishy-washy weasel words. What’s amazing is that under the spin, they can’t help but bust all of modern climate science.

The UK report: [press release]

“The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.

The translation:

We were looking in the wrong spot. We don’t think Phil ought to get busted for just doing what all the other sloppy, biased scientists do. He did hide data, but so does everyone else. The whole of climate science has bogus practices that need to change.

Pielke Responds:

The UK House of Commons has released its report (PDF) on the issues associated with the release of emails and other materials from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia last November. The report keeps a tight focus on CRU and Phil Jones. It provides a nice summary of issues, complaints and responses but adds very little new substance, which is probably to be expected as the report is based on a single day of testimony and has been prepared in just a few weeks. It punts some of the more challenging issues to other ongoing investigations.

And finally, two pieces from the man who never asked to testify, yet who was more than any other sceptic, at the centre of the storm ... click ... click.

Update:

I thought I'd add the following to underscore the point that Climate Science, is not like other sciences ... some might even call it shite:

NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can’t tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA’s temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data.

E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails — and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center.

The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA’s data “was more accurate” than other climate-change data sets, NASA’s Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said “the National Climatic Data Center’s procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate,” admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings.

The final word goes to johnnythelowery in the comments @ WUWT in reference to the Spiegel piece:

Eein AGW Dunkoff Science Fraudenscheitz CRU fahrt un Frakenstein Jones. Schnitzel Mann mat un Convalute Data to Stick Hockey for Gore under table transact Billion Kroner/Deutsch with Carbon Credit sgeem. Attension Max -1.0 c with Thermometer +/- .5 F acurate to Flugshaft Bomb Pattern WWI.

Somali Aircraft Industry in High Gear

The future of the Aircraft Industry may be in Africa:

Three men from Somaliland who, ever since they were young dreamed of building a helicopter have designed and built their own helicopter in their own backyard using scrap metals and an old engine from a van.

The trio, Mohamed Abdi Barkadle, Saed Abdi Jide and Abdi Farah Lidan said the purpose of their helicopter was to be used to fight fire in the city and surrounding area. They receive no major sponsors, financial nor material support from any one including the government, it is a three men vision and ingenuity.

This is the first ever helicopter built in any Somali speaking state. The fact that the trio could do so much with so little will inspire a lot of Somalilanders.

To many Somalilanders, this is historical moment for Somaliland and it is possible very soon others will start manufacturing their own electronics and devices.

This is the time to support these promising Somalilanders!, all stakeholders and regulatory agencies should rally round and assist these men to achieve their goal.

Source ... and be sure to read the comments.

The Joys of Islam

... so much joy, infact, that some Muslims are losing their heads over it:

A Lebanese man charged with sorcery and sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be beheaded on Friday, the man's lawyer said Wednesday.

May El Khansa, the attorney for Ali Hussain Sibat, told CNN that she and Sibat's family were informed about the upcoming execution. She said she heard from a source in Saudi Arabia with knowledge of the case and the proceedings that Saudi authorities "will carry out the execution."

The Saudi Ministry of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment on the matter.

El Khansa said she has appealed to Lebanon's prime minister, Saad Hariri, and president, Michel Suleiman, to stop the execution. Amnesty International, the human rights group, has called on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to block it as well.

Violent Tea Party Crazies

... anti-Obama loons off the rails and the secret service response (lots of pictures included at bottom)

... click.