The word being circulated around
media such as MSNBC is that even the Messiah himself can't know what's going on in the federal government. Sure, he was supposed to be the smartest guy in the country, and would even halt the rising of the oceans and begin the healing of the planet - but that was before the enormous impact that actually trying to serve as a CEO would have upon his golf games, his vacations, and his campaigning.
There's simply not enough time to do all of that and try to function as CEO of the country; something's got to give. And so it's claimed that He knew nothing, nothing! until he saw it on the evening news, like any other American. Obviously, he finds the military folks useful, but he really can't be bothered with the hijinks coming out of his EPA, his DOJ, his IRS, or much of anything else. Who can find the time?
We've discussed the aerial Cuisinarts here many times before, but hey. Even the Associated Press is picking up on these "sustainable" power sources:
CONVERSE COUNTY, Wyo. (AP) -- Wind farms in this corner of Wyoming have killed more than four dozen golden eagles since 2009, one of the deadliest places in the country of its kind.
But so far, the companies operating industrial-sized turbines here and elsewhere that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted - even though every death is a criminal violation.
Many times more bats, both insectivorous and pollinating, are killed by the sudden drop in air pressure, which causes their lungs to explode; eagles and other raptors, by contrast, are generally victims of blade-strikes.
"What it boils down to is this: If you electrocute an eagle, that is bad, but if you chop it to pieces, that is OK," said Tim Eicher, a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent based in Cody.
It's a double standard that some Republicans in Congress said Tuesday they would examine after an Associated Press investigation revealed that the Obama administration has shielded the wind power industry from liability and helped keep the scope of the deaths secret.
It sure hasn't been an especially good week for Barky, whose legacy is increasingly looking as though it'll be remembered as the most scandal-plagued administration in the history of the country. They go after power companies if an eagle is harmed by power lines, but "clean, green, sustainable" windmill companies get a total pass. Funny how that works. Double standards: it's the Chicago Way.
Record low tornado activity in last 12 months: Harold Brooks of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center reports just 197 tornadoes of intensity EF-1 or higher touched down nationally in the 12 months between May 2012 and April 2013 (the next lowest number is 247 between June 1991 and May 1992), the lowest such number since reliable records began in 1954.
Tornado fatalities have also been historically low. Only 7 people died from tornadoes during this stretch – the fewest number in a 12-month period since just 5 died between September 1899 and August 1900.
Meanwhile, in places like Michigan and the U.K., record snowfalls and cold temperatures are piling up, while Russian climatologists are predicting that we're entering a planetary cold phase that may last 200 years. In other words, the "scientific consensus" is wrong; the science most definitely is not "settled", and despite all of the harrumphing and posturing, nobody really has a damned clue.
But that doesn't bother the professional alarmists; their religious faith is strong. So strong, in fact, that over in the Meteorology Department at San Jose State University, perfessers Bridger and Clements decided that, from their enlightened and tolerant™ perspective, books that present a skeptical view of man-made global warming should simply be burned.
Sure, the photo they posted on the departmental website was doubtless their attempt at humor - though the good perfessers tried taking it down after it went viral. They're so smart that they totally missed the part about the Internet being forever, and evidently are blissfully ignorant of sites such as the wayback machine.
The enviro-left in academia has “progressed” from ignoring all this non-alarmist evidence, to trying to dismiss it, to failing at that, to refusing to debate, to fudging data and blackballing contrarian evidence, to committing crimes against The Heartland Institute, to now showing the world that putting a match to evidence from the “other side” is a reasonable reaction. Pathetic. We are witnessing the death throes of a cult in real time, and it ain’t pretty.
Team Barky, now operating under the moniker "Organizing for Action", is attacking Republicans as Climate Change "Deniers"; thus inadvertently demonstrating that belief in "man-made global cooling warming climate change" is purely a manufactured religion. In this religion, skeptics are branded as apostates and in true Alinsky fashion, subjected to ridicule as a means of marginalizing them.
This is pure, unvarnished propaganda: When asked, they deny that "overwhelming" science on climate change is real. But, of course, they don't. What they refute are two claims:
"The science is settled."
"Human activities cause climate change."
As has been discussed here many times over the years, the science is not settled, although it has been politicized to an unhealthy degree. Even supporters of the religion are unable to account for the fact that the planet is not warming, despite their dire predictions and modeling.
Moreover, as the campaign's own video shows, Congressional Republicans do not deny that our climate changes; they note that there is little evidence indicative of human influence - and to claim otherwise, as the adherents of the religion do, simply illustrates their preoccupation with self-importance.
When Rep. Bill Cassidy notes that climate change could "be secular, just a shift on the axis", the religious campaign makes no effort to refute the statement - they simply ridicule it - even though it is well established that planetary axis shifts account not only for seasonal changes in "climate", but that minor perturbations can result in relatively long-term effects.
When Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California notes that variations on the planet Mars mirror those here, the campaign makes no effort to refute the statement - because they can't; our sophisticated Mars rovers are entering their teen years now, and they have yet to capture an image of Martians joyriding around in CO2-spewing SUVs. Indeed, many scientists have come to suspect that solar activity may play a more significant role in planetary climate change than previously suspected (imagine that!).
The response from the campaign, again, is ridicule: MARS?
Well, yes. And reasonable people have discussed that here and on other sites many times over the years. But ridicule's the best the campaign can manage.
And when Virginia's Rep. Morgan Griffith notes that Vikings dominated much of the north for several hundred years during the last warming period (as noted here and elswhere previously, they established farms on Greenland that were subsequently consumed by advancing glacial activity), the response of the campaign is again: VIKINGS?!
Since they can't refute facts, they resort to mockery.
They close by claiming that "Denying" climate change is dangerous.
Authorities have released the body of the older brother involved in the Boston bombing, but local Muslims have declined an uncle's request for a funeral and burial. Apparently following through on a statement made earlier this week, the Imam of a Boston-area mosque refused to open it to hold a funeral for the guy.
Earlier this week, Imam Talal Eid of the Islamic Institute of Boston told The Huffington Post: “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.”
It is both unexpected and to some degree gratifying to see such leadership from a sect most commonly associated with homicide and mayhem.
Today is Earth Day and both NBC and Gizmodo.com have posts up noting one of the more unsavory figures involved in the event’s creation: Ira Einhorn. A prominent liberal activist back in the day, Einhorn spoke at length during the first event in Philadelphia in 1970.
Einhorn was later convicted of murdering his girlfriend.
Ira's still in prison. Interestingly, his lawyer at trial was one Arlen Spector (R- PA, D-PA). Obviously, before he became a senator, he had to do something to pay the bills. Anyway, now that Earth Day is now a 40-odd-year-old tradition, folks associated with the event are trying to de-link the unsavory Einhorn as one of the founders and featured speakers at the first event.
It's easy enough to see why: after getting into a fight with his girlfriend, who then left, Ira warned that he'd toss the rest of her stuff out if she didn't come over and pick them up. So she did.
Ira beat her to death and stuffed her body in a trunk lined with insulation and deodorizers, and told police that like a good little liberal, she'd gone out for some tofu and sprouts - and simply never returned.
Yet, given the Leftist adoration for folks like Che, and others, it seems like the folks over there at Earth Day would cut ol' Ira some slack and give him the honors he so richly deserves; it's not as though he's a mass-murderer or anything. Oh, wait - maybe that's the problem.
Times are bad in the "Man-Made Global Warming®" community of trough-feeders, these days as even the media's beginning to catch on to the fact that - hey, the planet hasn't been warming during the past 16 years or so. If the media's noticing, can the politicians be far behind? Fortunately, yes; yes, they can. Or si se puede, for those of you in southern California. So the "scientists" are struggling mightily to come up with a reason why the damn planet isn't doing what their models say they should do.
It might be the oceans. Then again, it might be down to the fact that these "scientists" approach things bass-ackwards: in actual science, one makes observations, then forms an hypothessis which might explain the observations. That's not how these guys roll; they produce models, and then are astounded to find that observations don't conform to their models. Some, like Michael Mann, simply manipulate data to make it seem like things conform to the model (see: hockey stick, climategate), but that's only a short-term solution; you can only fool people for so long with that kind of idiocy.
But the approach works, to the extent that it's proven successful at gaming the system and securing millions in government grants. It ain't, however, science.
Just how much are they twisting and turning? They're just being silly, at this point, as the following demonstrates:
A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s - when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth's surface - made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.
Got it? Developed nations cut air pollution, temperatures increased by a bit, and so stronger laws must be developed to cut even more pollution in order to Save The Planet™ from Man-Made Global Warming®. The venerable United Nations IPCC - which thus far hasn't got anything right - says so:
The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.
So, since global warming stopped some 16 years ago, it's imperative that "scientists" put their heads together and come up with an explanation that will allow politicians appropriate cover in order for them to continue to (1) keep the grant gravy train rolling and (2) impose ever greater controls over the activities of the little people. After all, freedom is one of those things that must be sacrificed for the good of the collective.
Elián González is removed at gunpoint from his relatives' home in Miami.
The Waco standoff ended 20 years ago this coming Friday in a sea of fire, spawning various conspiracy theories and setting the stage for Tim McVeigh to go off the rails exactly two years later. Many of the conspiracy theorists blamed Attorney General Janet Reno and her agents for causing the inferno that consumed nearly 80 Branch Davidians, including cult leader David Koresh.
However, the evidence indicated otherwise; the blazes were in fact set by Koresh and his followers, some seven of whom suddenly had epiphanies and left as things got heated. Yet they still, to one degree or another, believe that Koresh was the Christ.
Reno and company engaged in overkill tactics on several occasions, such as in the Ruby Ridge saga and the home-invasion raid to grab the Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez. Given their strong-arm tactics and the resulting firestorms that subsequently emerged, it is perhaps unsurprising that many blamed her DoJ for the event at Waco; spawning even more violence as a misguided sort of retribution against the federal agencies. However, viewed with 20/20 hindsight, it seems clear enough that, after 51 straight days of fruitless effort, Reno and her DoJ had little to gain by ending the siege through fire - while Koresh and his followers believed that fire was a cleansing force to be not feared, but embraced.
And thus, Waco became known as an acronym for "We Ain't Coming Out".
English: King County (Washington, US) Council Member and candidate for State Attorney General Bob Ferguson speaking at his 6 th Annual Shrimp Feed (a tradition he took over from former Washington governor ), Northgate Community Center, Seattle, Washington. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, having apparently solved all other problems, has decided that it'd be a wise use of taxpayer resources to file a lawsuit against a florist who refused to put together a flower arrangement for a couple of guys who plan to get married.
Ferguson acknowledged in an interview with The Stranger today that filing the lawsuit this way is unprecedented; anti-discrimination suits must be brought by the Washington State Human Rights Commission or the aggrieved party. But as of this week, neither had taken action. Ferguson says he has legal authority to file the suit as a consumer protection case because the alleged discrimination occurred "in a consumer setting."
"Right now she's getting away with it, and that sends the wrong message to all the businesses around the state," said Ferguson.
Whatever, Bob. It's unlikely you're going to win this one, as the florist's barristers have some interesting counter-arguments:
Stutzman claimed that "discrimination is not the issue," but rather that she is entitled to exercise her religious conscience and that arranging flowers is an act of personal expression, and as such, any restriction on how and where she sells flowers arrangements infringes on her First Amendment right to free speech.
It's an interesting argument, to be sure - can the state require a musician to arrange a musical score for someone? More importantly here, comes the question: can the state require a person to do anything that conflicts with that person's religious beliefs? Courts have struck down Obamacare provisions mandating that employers provide abortion coverage as part of their health-care plans for employees on grounds of religious freedom; at what point (if any) can the state demand that an individual ignore his or her religious beliefs?
This isn't going to end any time soon; doubtless Washingtonians across the state will appreciate the AG's decision to expend their resources in a thorough exploration of this particular can of worms.
We stand for Tolerance™ and Diversity™ - as long as you conform.
The Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 UN proposal requiring all nations to reduce CO2 output by 5.2% by the year 2012, became international law after Russia signed on. One major industrialized country declined to sign on, to the dismay of many. And in 2012, one industrialized nation on the planet met the terms of the Kyoto Protocol.
Kyoto, 11 December 1997 – After 10 days of tough negotiations, ministers and other high-level officials from 160 countries reached agreement this morning on a legally binding Protocol under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2%.
They led the world in "investing" in "clean, green, sustainable" solar and wind power - a source of considerable pride. Oh, but guess what? They signed the protocol, and failed to meet it.
Well, Germany: economic powerhouse, also heavily "invested" in "green" power. Nope, not them, they failed to meet the standard they agreed to.
Britain, with wind farms galore? Nope. Russia maybe? Nope.
The only industrialized country to meet the 2012 benchmark was the one country that didn't sign - and isn't bound by - the Protocol.
All views are welcome here, but there are a few rules that most understand intuitively. If you're stupid, you need them spelled out. So this note's for you:
1) You don't get to call people names (referred to in general parlance as an "ad-hominem attack").
2) You don't get to hijack discussion threads. This means that you confine your comments to the the post, and/or to comments related to the post.
3) You don't get to spit, drool, crap on the carpets, nor employ expletives - even if you believe that doing so showcases your vast intellectual capabilities.
4) If you happen to be stupid enough to be unable to comply with the above rules, you will receive one (1) warning - after which your subsequent comments may be removed, and your comment privileges revoked.
