"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Saturday, August 11, 2007

The Default Interpretation

I was reading the comments at Coyote Blog since I just finished a bit about a climate article they had put up and I came across this little gem by dearieme posted Aug 9, 2007 12:15:51 PM:
"Government scientists ..refuse to publicly release their temperature adjustment algorithms or software": the default interpretation of that is that they are crooks.
It seems like a lot of people are coming to that conclusion.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

A Shill For Al Gore?

Coyote Blog has a bit up on the latest Climate Change scandal. The error in the data making 1998 the hottest year on record. James Hansen is head of GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) the source of the error. Michael Mann (inventor of the guaranteed hockey stick method - feed any data in, random numbers are good - get a hockey stick out) stated he was 99% certain that 1998 was the warmest year on record for the last 1,000 years. Actually it is the second warmest year on record in the last 73 years. That means he was only off by 927 years. Not bad for a professional. The error has been corrected in remarkably short time. However, it has brought to light something rather interesting.

James Hansen gets money from a foundation run by John Kerry's wife Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Newsweek portrays James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, as untainted by corporate bribery.

Hansen was once profiled on CBS' "60 Minutes" as the "world's leading researcher on global warming." Not mentioned by Newsweek was that Hansen had acted as a consultant to Al Gore's slide-show presentations on global warming, that he had endorsed John Kerry for president, and had received a $250,000 grant from the foundation headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry.
You don't suppose the money has biased Hansen do you? Me either. I put such talk down to idle speculation, innuendo, and ugly rumor. Like all true scientist who understand that CO2 is causing global warming, the man is beyond reproach. I think those inquiring into the underlying data and adjustment methods of NASA/Goddard's GISS temperature record are just a bunch of climate hooligans and should be ignored. Mr. Hansen is in charge of GISS. He works for the government. His honesty and integrity are beyond reproach. No need to audit the books.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

"INTIFADA NYC" PRINCIPAL RESIGNS

The principal of the controversial Khalil Gibran Arabic school who condoned some "intifada NYC" t-shirts has resigned (Hat tip: One Jerusalem):
NEW YORK — A New York City principal who came under fire for controversial comments about an "intifada" T-shirt that seemed to condone terrorism has resigned.

On Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg accepted the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an English-Arabic school set to open next month in Brooklyn, N.Y.

"I became convinced yesterday that this week's headlines were endangering the viability of Khalil Gibran International Academy, even though I apologized," Almontaser said in an e-mail to FOX News.

The principal had come under fire for comments she made to The New York Post about an "Intifada NYC" T-shirt that is sold by an activist group which shares an office with the Yemeni-American association that Almontaser represents.

The day before she condemned the T-shirt message's connection to Palestinian terrorism, Almontaser told the Post that "intifada" meant "shaking off" and the shirts represented women "shaking off" oppression.
Wrong. Intifada means something like uprising, and breaking the law. Almontaser's defense was taqqiya.
The comments infuriated the city's United Federation of Teachers president, Randi Weingarten, who called the message "war-mongering."

“That’s something that ought to be denounced, not be explained away,” she told the paper.
As far as the school is concerned, some good news may be that they haven't gotten the turnout they were hoping for. If not, good. Their flopping is well deserved.

The Russian Problem

I'm going to re-cover some ground here because I think it is important and to add something else important at the end. The Russian/USSR data has problems. See link below. AGW is a house of cards. Pull a bottom card (data) and the whole house comes crashing down.

==

It has come to my attention that there are problems with the the temperature record in Asia.
At virtually the same time NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies was correcting historical climate data with the assistance of Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre, a British mathematician discovered serious flaws in papers used and cited by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent Assessment Report.

Douglas J. Keenan, a former Morgan Stanley arbitrageur and current independent mathematical researcher, identified "fabrications" in such studies that suggest a "marked lack of integrity in some important work on global warming that is relied upon by the IPCC" and that "the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC assessment report assumes."
The errors are so glaring that one might conclude fraud was involved. Such a conclusion would be premature.

There are links to the studies involved and other links at the above url.

H/T Reliapundit

Update: 11 Aug 007 1711z

Questions about the Russian data.

Florida business tenant loses lease because he doesn't speak ... Spanish

We read:


"Tom McKenna is a longtime Stuart businessman who speaks only English. He says that's why he's being kicked out of the storefront on South Dixie Highway where he has run Seacoast Water Care for seven years. "I don't know how else to put it," said McKenna, 51. I'm not sure I do either.

On July 5 - the day after Independence Day - McKenna received a letter from landlord Ivan Munroe telling him to consider another location. Munroe said in his letter he wants to have "quality tenants serving the Spanish need in the area." "I guess I don't serve the 'Spanish need,' whatever that means," McKenna said. "I have plenty of Spanish-speaking workers come in here to buy water for their landscaping crews," he said. "And people in the neighborhood use the vending machines out front to fill their water bottles for their homes." .....

Munroe is a private business owner, and he can do anything he wants with his property including fulfill his "vision." But there's a double standard, and I don't think Munroe is a villain as much as he's the symptom of a bigger societal ill: Try telling a minority business owner to leave so you can bring in a quality tenant to serve the need of the English-speaking population.

You'd have activists organizing protests so quickly it'd make the annual snowbird migration seem slow. McKenna said it's going to cost between $10,000 and $15,000 to move - assuming he can even find another storefront in 30 days. And he knows he's going to lose some of the customers he's served for seven years.

Source



(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

The genesis of the modern world

Modern industrial civilization developed in countries with a large Protestant population -- mainly in England -- but is religion alone enough to explain why? There was certainly a long gap between the establishment of Protestantism in England (which stretched from Wycliffe in the 1300s to Elizabeth I in the 1500s) and the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1700s. I suspect that a combination of Protestantism with other factors -- such as the newly revealed one mentioned in the excerpts below -- made the difference

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution - the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 - occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues....

The Industrial Revolution, the first escape from the Malthusian trap, occurred when the efficiency of production at last accelerated, growing fast enough to outpace population growth and allow average incomes to rise. Many explanations have been offered for this spurt in efficiency, some economic and some political, but none is fully satisfactory, historians say.

Dr. Clark's first thought was that the population might have evolved greater resistance to disease. The idea came from Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel," which argues that Europeans were able to conquer other nations in part because of their greater immunity to disease. In support of the disease-resistance idea, cities like London were so filthy and disease ridden that a third of their populations died off every generation, and the losses were restored by immigrants from the countryside. That suggested to Dr. Clark that the surviving population of England might be the descendants of peasants.

A way to test the idea, he realized, was through analysis of ancient wills, which might reveal a connection between wealth and the number of progeny. The wills did that, but in quite the opposite direction to what he had expected. Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. "The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages," he concluded.

As the progeny of the rich pervaded all levels of society, Dr. Clark considered, the behaviors that made for wealth could have spread with them. He has documented that several aspects of what might now be called middle-class values changed significantly from the days of hunter gatherer societies to 1800. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped.

Another significant change in behavior, Dr. Clark argues, was an increase in people's preference for saving over instant consumption, which he sees reflected in the steady decline in interest rates from 1200 to 1800. "Thrift, prudence, negotiation and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent and leisure loving," Dr. Clark writes.

Around 1790, a steady upward trend in production efficiency first emerges in the English economy. It was this significant acceleration in the rate of productivity growth that at last made possible England's escape from the Malthusian trap and the emergence of the Industrial Revolution. It is puzzling that the Industrial Revolution did not occur first in the much larger populations of China or Japan. Dr. Clark has found data showing that their richer classes, the Samurai in Japan and the Qing dynasty in China, were surprisingly unfertile and so would have failed to generate the downward social mobility that spread production-oriented values in England.

What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence - being a hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer. Rather, it was "a repertoire of skills and dispositions that were very different from those of the pre-agrarian world." ...

Most historians have assumed that evolutionary change is too gradual to have affected human populations in the historical period. But geneticists, with information from the human genome now at their disposal, have begun to detect ever more recent instances of human evolutionary change like the spread of lactose tolerance in cattle-raising people of northern Europe just 5,000 years ago. A study in the current American Journal of Human Genetics finds evidence of natural selection at work in the population of Puerto Rico since 1513. So historians are likely to be more enthusiastic about the medieval economic data and elaborate time series that Dr. Clark has reconstructed than about his suggestion that people adapted to the Malthusian constraints of an agrarian society....

Dr. Bowles, the Santa Fe economist, said he was "not averse to the idea" that genetic transmission of capitalist values is important, but that the evidence for it was not yet there. "It's just that we don't have any idea what it is, and everything we look at ends up being awfully small," he said. Tests of most social behaviors show they are very weakly heritable. He also took issue with Dr. Clark's suggestion that the unwillingness to postpone consumption, called time preference by economists, had changed in people over the centuries. "If I were as poor as the people who take out payday loans, I might also have a high time preference," he said.

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

CUBA RELEASES ONE POLITICAL PRISONER

BBC:
A well-known Cuban dissident has been freed from jail after serving nearly 15 years for revealing state security secrets, a human rights group has said.

Francisco Chaviano, a former teacher, was sentenced in 1995 and was released on parole
on Friday.

The independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said that he was Cuba's longest-serving political prisoner.


The Cuban government has not commented on Mr Chaviano's release. Mr Chaviano had been one of Cuba's leading dissidents and human rights activists in the early 1990s.

In the past Amnesty International has described his military trial as falling short of international standards.


The number of political prisoners in Cuba has fallen b
y about 20% since Raul Castro, brother of President Fidel Castro, was named as acting president just over a year ago, according to the Human Rights commission. But its spokesman, Elizardo Sanchez, said that there were still more than 200 such prisoners living in what he described as sub-human and degrading conditions.

The Cuban authorities denied that they were political prisoners, describing them as "counter-revolutionary mercenaries" on the payroll of the United States.


Also on Friday
, another former political prisoner, Martha Beatriz Roque, held a news conference to denounce prison conditions. At the residence of the top US diplomat in Havana, she was joined by relatives of a number of dissidents currently in jail. The families complained of a lack of medical care, overcrowding and intimidation and said common criminals were treated better than political prisoners.
CUBA IS A TYRANNICAL TOTALITARIAN STATE WITH REAL POLITICAL PRISONERS.

YET THE CHIC DEGENERATI OF THE LEFT - TYPIFIED BY MICHAEL MOORE AND DANNY GLOVER AND HARRY BELAFONTE AND SEAN PENN - IGNORE THIS FACT.

WHICH IS WHY THEY'RE NOTHING MORE THAN IDIOTS & DUPES.

Might As Well Be Walking On The Moon

It appears that China is interested in mining the moon.
Chinanews, Guiyang, Aug 10 –China plans to survey every inch of the soil on the moon during the Chang'e project, said Ouyang Ziyuan, China's chief scientist for the moon exploration project.
So why would China be spending money on moon exploration. Do they have something practical in mind? Yes they do.
“There are altogether 15 tons of helium-3 on earth, while on the moon, the total amount of Helium-3 can reach 1-5 million tons. Helium-3 is considered as a long-term, stable, safe, clean and cheap material for human beings to get nuclear energy through controllable nuclear fusion experiments. If we human beings can finally use such energy material to generate electricity, then China might need 10 tons of helium-3 every year and in the world, about 100 tons of helium-3 will be needed every year. This means that the helium-3 reserves on the moon can serve human society for at least 10,000 years,” he said.
It turns out that if this alternate fusion scheme works, out we will not have to go to the moon for fuel. We can leave the He3 on the moon for use in space travel. On earth we can use Boron 11 and hydrogen. Hydrogen is abundant. There is enough Boron 11 for around 100,000 years. More than enough time to figure out what is next. Plus we need not get into resource wars over goodies in space. At least not for a while.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Friday, August 10, 2007

IF THE GLOBE IS WARMING, THEN HOW COME GREENLAND IS COOLING?

NEWSBUSTERS:
... a paper written by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, and published Monday by the Science and Public Policy Institute stated that not only have temperatures been declining in Greenland in recent years, but also glaciers have actually expanded a bit (emphasis added):

The Greenland ice sheet would appear to have experienced no net loss of mass over the last decade for which data are available. Quite to the contrary, in fact, it was likely host to a net accumulation of ice, which Zwally et al. found to be producing a 0.03 ± 0.01 mm/year decline in sea-level.
RTWT. THE WHOLE LINK FILLED THING.

BOTTOM-LINE: AGW IS A SOCIALIST SCAM.

IT'S A LIE AS BIG AS THE ONE ABOUT THE "45 MILLION UNINSURED."

THE WHOLE POINT OF THESE LIES IS TO GET US TO ENACT THEIR SOCIALIST POLICIES.

DON'T FALL FOR IT.

UN'S IIPC USED FRAUDULENT GLOBAL WARMING DATA

NEWSBUSTERS:
... a British mathematician discovered serious flaws in papers used and cited by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent Assessment Report.

Douglas J. Keenan, a former Morgan Stanley arbitrageur and current independent mathematical researcher, identified "fabrications" in such studies that suggest a "marked lack of integrity in some important work on global warming that is relied upon by the IPCC" and that "the insignificance of urbanization effects on temperature measurements has not been established as reliably as the IPCC assessment report assumes."
RTWT. THE WHOLE LINKED FILLED THING.

BOTTOM-LINE: AGW IS, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, A CONSPIRACY CONCOCTED BY ANTI-INDUSTRIAL, ANTI-TRADE, ANTI-FREE MARKET SOCIALISTS.

I MEAN... DO YOU REALLY THINK IT IS A COINCIDENCE THAT THE FOLKS WHO CLAIM THERE IS LIFE-THREATENING AGW ARE RECOMMENDING NEW POLICIES WHICH DOVETAIL SO PERFECTLY WITH THEIR LONG-HELD SOCIALIST ONES!?

SHEESH.

U.K. POLICE HUNT REPORTERS WHO EXPLOSED RADICAL ISLAMISTS

British police are pursuing reporters who dared to expose the fanatical rants of an extremist British cleric. British TV station, channel 4 last January aired a program called Undercover Mosque which had been secretly filmed obviously under dangerous conditions inside a British mosque. The documentary contained long segments of radical incitements.

In the beginning, the British police were investigating the mosque for their outrageous teachings:

West Midlands Police launched an eight-month inquiry after the programme’s secret filming depicted radical preachers at British mosques calling for the West to be “taken over” by Muslims.

One was shown glorying in the Taliban’s murder of British Muslim soldier Jabron Hashmi in Afghanistan, saying: “The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders.”

But astonishingly when Channel 4 decided to air the program, the police did an about-face and are now aiming the big guns at the TV station rather than the mosque. Mosque leader, Mr Usama is, of course, ebullient about the change of face:

He said footage of him calling women “deficient” and homosexuals “dogs who should be murdered” were “misconstrued and taken out of context”.

Baron Bodissey comments that he saw the whole documentary and the rants of the cleric were quite lengthy. It would have to be one heck of a context which would explain all that away.

Would this Marxist dhimmitude in high places and overrunning by pro-multicultural forces have anything to do with why Brits are fleeing ship in record numbers?

Cross-posted here

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too!

That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating.

After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!
WATCH AND LISTEN TO THESE GEMS - BY JOE COCKER. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS, RECORDED DECADES APART. BOTH WONDERFUL. ENJOY.



Art In Moscow

Sagittarius
Art in Moscow. Zodiac street lamps. Click the picture for more.
Can you guess which sign this is?

Pro-abortion doctors are finding ways around the anti-partial birth abortion law

Pro-abortion doctors are finding ways around the anti-partial birth abortion law.

BOSTON GLOBE - VIA KJ LOPEZ/NRO:
"The banned method involves partially delivering a live fetus, then intentionally causing its death. Even before it was banned, the procedure was exceedingly rare, accounting for a fraction of 1 percent of all abortions.

Instead, doctors typically cause the fetus's death surgically while it is still inside the womb and then remove it."
RELIAPUNDIT: The difference between murdering a baby inside the womb and murdering a partially delivered BABY is a difference without a MORAL distinction.

MORE GLOBE:
Greene said that in the experienced hands of hospital staff, the injections add no risk and are "trivially simple," compared with other obstetrical procedures. The main downside, he said, is that "it is yet another procedure that the patient has to endure."
The only patient the doctor cares about is the so-called "mother"; not for a second is the fetus even considered a HUMAN BEING. How....clever... and immoral.

MORE:
They decided that whether to have an injection should be up to the patient; some are comforted by the idea that the fetus has died before it is removed.
RELIAPUNDIT: The same LIBERALS who decry death penalty EXECUTIONS done with potassium chloride - executions done to convicted MURDERERS only after exhaustive - seemingly unlimited appeals) - these same libs think THIS PROCEDURE is just fine AGAINST A DEFENSELESS BABY.

SHEESH! Talk about hypocrisy!

The morality is so inverted as to be worse than immoral; it is nothing less than PURE evil. I mean, what kind of mother is "comforted" by killing her baby by lethal injection!? IT'S SICK.

UPDATE:
From a lawyer:

Subject: Potassium Chloride??

Wowsa. I have done some litigation in the area of lethal injection, and potassium chloride is typically the third drug used in the "three drug cocktail" most states use when they execution someone. It is a painful, painful drug that stops the heart. To mitigate that pain for prisoners, states give them sodium thiopental, which is a short-acting barbituate, then pancuronium bromide, which acts as a paralyzing agent, THEN they give the potassium chloride. It would be extremely painful for a prisoner to have an injection of potassium chloride alone. It stuns me that that's what they're using to kill these babies in utero.

Persons with more medical knowledge than I will hopefully write in and confirm this, but this is my understanding, based on the litigation I've done and the doctors I've spoken with.
LIKE I SAID: THIS IS INCREDIBLY HYPOCRITICAL OF THE LEFT.

AND INHUMANELY CRUEL.

INCREDIBLE.

MIKE BLOOMBERG IS A JOKE WHO CARES MORE ABOUT TRANS-FATS THAN TRANSPORTS

EVIL GLENN:
PERHAPS MIKE BLOOMBERG SHOULD HAVE WORRIED ABOUT THIS PROBLEM, instead of spending his time on trans-fats:

In a Crisis, Subway Riders Get Little Guidance
Compared with commuters in many of the world’s leading cities, subway riders in New York live in something of an information vacuum once they enter the system’s 468 stations. For decades, riders have regarded their creaking and antiquated subway network as a minor miracle, tolerating frequent delays, cramped stations and malfunctioning public-address systems.

But the storm this week, highlighting yet again deficiencies in how the authority gets information out, seemed to push riders past the limits of their patience.

This is not just a convenience issue, but a safety issue.
The Astute Bloggers have posted on the worthless Bloomberg years before (here and here and here); he's the equivalent of Clinton: all smiles and compassion and soft-socialism with nothing really important accomplished in two terms.

I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO NAME ONE GREAT AND TOUGH THING HE DID FOR THE CITY.

All the tough lifting was done by Rudy. Mike and the city have been coasting ever since.

Stone Age Settlement Found Under English Channel

YAHOO/LIVESCIENCE:
Erosion on the floor of the English Channel is revealing the remains of a busy Stone Age settlement, from a time when Europe and Britain were still linked by land, a team of archaeologists says.

The site, just off the Isle of Wight, dates back 8,000 years, not long before melting glaciers filled in the Channel and likely drove the settlement's last occupants north to higher ground.
ER UM... WHY'D THE GLACIERS MELT, WAS IT BECAUSE OF MAN-MADE CO2, OR COULD IT HAVE BEEN ER UM YA KNOW... NATURAL!?!?

OH ER UM SORRY... NEVER MIND... THERE WAS NO MAN-MADE CO2 8000 YEARS AGO.

NEVER MIND. IT HAD TO BE NATURAL, BOTH THE GLACIATION AND THE RETREAT OF THE GLACIERS.

BOTH WARMING AND COOLING.

TO A DEGREE WE HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED IN CENTURIES.

ALL NATURAL.

GO FIGURE.

USA AND UK FINALLY GET THE UNSC TO GET THE UN TO DO MORE IN IRAQ

AP:
The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Friday expanding the United Nations' role in Iraq in a move aimed at reconciling the country's rival groups, winning support from neighboring countries and tackling Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

The resolution authorizes the U.N., at the request of the Iraqi government, to promote political talks among the country's ethnic and religious groups and a regional dialogue on issues including border security, energy and refugees.

The United States and Britain, who have the largest military forces in Iraq and cosponsored the resolution, believe the U.N. should play a greater part there because the world body is viewed by many as a more neutral party that can facilitate talks among feuding parties.
THE UN FLED WHEN THEY WERE BOMBED DURING THE BEGINNING OF THE LIBERATION.

THEY WERE ATTACKED BECAUSE THEY REFUSED US MILITARY ASSISTANCE:
Except for a new concrete wall built recently, UN officials at the headquarters refused the sort of heavy security that the US military has put up around some sensitive civilian sites - because the UN "did not want a large American presence outside", said Salim Lone, the UN spokesman in the Iraqi capital.
THEN, THEY CUT & RUN LIKE COWARDS/DEMOCRATS, (TAKE YOUR PICK).

FINALLY, THEY ARE COMING BACK.

THIS IS YET ANOTHER SIGN - ALBEIT ON THE DIPLOMATIC FRONT - THAT WE ARE WINNING.

IF GITMO IS REALLY AS BAD AS THE LEFTIES CLAIM, THEN WHY DO THE INMATES THERE FIGHT TO STAY?

NYTIMES:
The Supreme Court said Friday it would not prevent the U.S. from transferring an Algerian army veteran from Guantanamo Bay to his home country.

Ahmed Bel Bacha, who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, has argued he would be tortured if turned over to Algerian officials. One of at least two dozen detainees who have expressed fear of abuse if sent home...
BOTTOM-LINE:

GITMO IS NOT AS BAD AS THE LEFTIES HAVE ALWAYS ARGUED.

MANY INMATES PUT ON WEIGHT THERE, AND ALL HAVE A BETTER LIFE THEN THEY HAD ON THE BATTLEFRONMMTS FROM WHICH THEY WERE TAKEN.

THE LEFTIES WHO ATTACK THE USA FOR GITMO SHOULD STFU.

LA TIMES ARE TRAITORS: THEY WANT AN AMERICAN TALIBAN MEMBER RELEASED

Those still subscribing to the newspaper would be well advised to cancel their subscriptions, because the Los Angeles Times is clearly determined to undermine justice in the war on terrorism, as they show with this latest hogwash (Hat tip: Rhymes With Right). They say:
John Walker Lindh broke the law. But 'the American Taliban' wasn't a terrorist, and he deserves clemency.
What?!? Excuse me? Seperating between just about anything he actually did and the descriptions that fit the crimes is unforgivably obscene. He should be sent to chair, pure and simple. This is propaganda and denial of the worst kind.

Bill Clinton Says Hillary Is Winning Over the Military.... Here's How:

A really fun post below excerpted from Gateway Pundit

Bill Clinton told supporters at a $2,300.00-a-plate dinner last night that Hillary is winning over the military.
Here's a reminder on how Hillary is winning over the military she loathes:

The COERCION PHOTO shows that this soldier has been thru Survival School and learned his lessons well. He's giving the sign of "coercion" with his left hand. These hand signs are taught in survival school to be used by POW's as a method of posing messages back to our intelligence services who may view the photo or video. This guy was obviously being coerced into shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. It's ironic how little she knew that he would so inform us about the photo -- perhaps because she's never understood our military to begin with.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)
NEW STUDY: GLOBAL SEA-LEVEL RISE SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER THAN THOUGHT

Discussing: Woeppelmann, G., Miguez, B.M., Bouin, M.-N. and Altamimi, Z. 2007. Geocentric sea-level trend estimates from GPS analyses at relevant tide gauges world-wide. Global and Planetary Change 57: 396-406.

What was done

The authors describe a technique they developed for utilizing Global Positioning System (GPS) data, which they obtained from numerous GPS stations situated in close proximity to various tide gauges around the world, to correct the tide gauge records and thus obtain what they call a "set of 'absolute' or geocentric sea-level trends." Based on a number of criteria that had to be met by both the tide gauge and GPS stations, they ultimately used paired data sets from 28 locations that covered a time span of 5.9 years (1999.0-2005.7) to derive their final mean global result, after which they compared it with what they call the "most quoted" tide-gauge results of Douglas (1991, 1997, 2001), which had been corrected for the most common form of vertical land motion by means of theoretical models of Glacial-Isostatic Adjustment (GIA).

What was learned

Whereas the data of Douglas yielded a mean global sea-level rate-of-rise of 1.84 ~ 0.35 mm/year after correction for the GIA effect (Peltier, 2001), Woeppelmann et al. obtained a much lower mean value of 1.35 ~ 0.34 mm/year when employing their correction for measured GPS vertical velocities. The sizable difference between these two results raises the question of how they compare with results obtained from other ways of estimating global sea level trends. In this regard, the four researchers note that Mitrovica et al. (2006) recently indicated there is a 1 mm/year contribution to sea-level rise from the melting of global land ice reservoirs, as well as a 0.4 mm/year contribution from thermal expansion of the global ocean (Antonov et al., 2005). Together, these two numbers yield a value of 1.40 mm/year for the global ocean's total sea-level mean rate-of-rise, which is much closer to the 1.35 mm/year result of Woppelmann et al. than to the Douglas-Peltier result of 1.84 mm/year.

What it means

The mean global sea-level rate-of-rise calculated by Woppelmann et al. appears to resolve the "sea-level enigma" noted by Munk (2002), who called attention to the sizable discrepancy that existed at the time of his writing between estimates of climate-related contributions to sea-level change and what the observed value was thought to be. Now, there is no longer any discrepancy between these two numbers. What is more, the global ocean's mean rate-of-rise is now seen to be much slower than what was previously believed to be the case.

Source

Original journal abstract follows:

Geocentric sea-level trend estimates from GPS analyses at relevant tide gauges world-wide

By G. Woeppelmann et al.

Abstract

The problem of correcting the tide gauge records for the vertical land motion upon which the gauges are settled has only been partially solved. At best, the analyses so far have included model corrections for one of the many processes that can affect the land stability, namely the Glacial-Isostatic Adjustment (GIA). An alternative approach is to measure (rather than to model) the rates of vertical land motion at the tide gauges by means of space geodesy. A dedicated GPS processing strategy is implemented to correct the tide gauges records, and thus to obtain a GPS-corrected set of 'absolute' or geocentric sea-level trends. The results show a reduced dispersion of the estimated sea-level trends after application of the GPS corrections. They reveal that the reference frame implementation is now achieved within the millimetre accuracy on a weekly basis. Regardless of the application, whether local or global, we have shown that GPS data analysis has reached the maturity to provide useful information to separate land motion from oceanic processes recorded by the tide gauges or to correct these latter. For comparison purposes, we computed the global average of sea-level change according to Douglas [Douglas, B.C., 2001. Sea level change in the era of the recording tide gauge. Int. Geophys. Ser., 75, pp. 37-64.] rules, whose estimate is 1.84 ~ 0.35 mm/yr after correction for the GIA effect [Peltier, W.R., 2001. Global glacial isostatic adjustment and modern instrumental records of relative sea level history. Int. Geophys. Ser., 75, pp. 65-95.]. We obtain a value of 1.31 ~ 0.30 mm/yr, a value which appears to resolve the 'sea level enigma' [Munk, W., 2002. Twentieth century sea level: an enigma. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 99(10), pp. 6550-6555].

Global and Planetary Change, Volume 57, Issues 3-4, June 2007, Pages 396-406

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

NEWS ON EHUD OLMERT'S INVOLVEMENT IN BANK LEUMI SCANDAL

State prosecutor is supposed to issue a decision on an indictment following this investigation:
(IsraelNN.com) Testimony by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the National Fraud Investigation Unit in the next few days is expected to clinch a decision by State Prosecutor Eran Shendar as to whether to issue an indictment in the Bank Leumi privatization affair.

Investigators will grill the prime minister about his involvement in the sale of the government shares in the bank during his reign as acting Finance Minister. The tender was issued by Olmert in November 2005, during the term of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Olmert is suspected of using his position to help two business associates compete in the bidding for the bank shares. One of the two, Australian business tycoon Frank Lowy, was set to become a controlling shareholder in Bank Leumi after it was privatized.

[...]

State Prosecutor Eran Shendar is right now deciding whether or not to proceed with the investigation of the Prime Minister, or even to indict him. Olmert's future months therefore depend heavily on the lengthy testimony he is expected to give in the next few days.
I'm going to keep an eye out for further developments on this.

Climate Audit Hit

It appears that Climate Audit after posting on a NASA error that made 1998 the warmest year on record (it is now second warmest after 1934 Power and Control link) has been hit with a denial of service attack according to a commenter at Watts Up With That?

Evidently the news was too much for some people to bear.

More news here.

Michelle Malkin sent an e-mail. She thinks it was a mention of Climate Audit by Rush L. that did it. Possible. Steve McIntyre has posted at A. Watts' site saying it may be a while before CA returns. Maybe a week. The usual DOS type attack is cleared in a couple of days or less. So I'm still wondering. More news as it becomes available. Michelle has more details on the main story and some thoughts on why Climate Audit is down.

Clayton Cramer has some thoughts.

Update: 10 Aug 007 2258z

What really happened by some one who was actually there.
I know the DOS attack on ClimateAudit.org was real, as I helped them try to troubleshoot the problem, and the attack continues even now.
BTW Climate Audit is back up.

Update: 11 Aug 007 1838z

Climate Audit has limited access until they get their new servers installed. If you can connect to them you are fortunate (I got lucky). Otherwise you will most probably get a 403 Error. They hope to have all the kinks ironed out by Monday.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Thursday, August 09, 2007

LEFTIES TRUST THE MSM MORE THAN THE US MILITARY



HOT AIR HAS MORE GRAPHS AND LINKS.

REPORTERS HAVE NEVER WON A WAR.

BUT THEY HAVE LOST A FEW.

WHICH IS PROBABLY WHY THE LEFT LOVES'EM.

HER VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY


READ THIS BLOG EVERYDAY.

BOURNE IS A PUSSY. THESE OTHER GUYS - WHO THE MSM WON'T TELL YOU ABOUT - THEY'RE THE REAL HEROES



READ IT. LOOK AT THE PICTURES.

THESE GUYS MICHAEL YON WRITES ABOUT ARE NOT LEFT-WING ACTORS POSING AS TOUGH GUYS.

THEY ARE THE REAL HEROES WHO ARE MAKING THIS WORLD A SAFER PACE FOR YOU AND ME AND ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS.

GOD BLESS THEM.





AND SCREW MATT DAMON AND JASON BOURNE.




YA GOT THAT RIGHT: DAMON: SCREW YOU!

IF THE USA IS WINNING THE WAR IN IRAQ, BUT NO ONE REPORTS DOES IT MAKE A SOUND?

YES.

But a faint one. Because most Americans believe what they hear on the morning TV shows and the evening news - which is pretty much dictated by the NYTIMES. Most Americans hear constant bad news and conclude that the war was a mistake and that we should pull out.

When the MSM starts reporting the good news, then public perceptions will change.

There is plenty of good news being reported on Fox and in the blogosphere and on talk-radio, but these outlets don't reach everyone, and not most of the middle-of-the-road independents who are the true swing voters.

That's why the few reports trickling in from AP and other MSM outlets are so so so SO important, and these reports are why support for the war - and Bush - is growing.

BTW: I think this is the MAJOR reason why the Dems don't want to attend any debate held on Fox: they FEAR that some of their supporters might actually have their eyes, and ears, opened, and then become regular viewers and GOP voters.

The Dems depend on keeping the wool over the eyes of their supporters - and wool in their ears too.

Al Qaeda knows all this too. They know how and when to manipulate the MSM. So you can bet your bottom dollar they will attempt a major attack in Iraq and Europe and the USA right before Petraeus's report.

KADDISH FOR CARDINAL LUSTIGER


IHT/AP:
PARIS: Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who sought to bring Jews and Catholics together in life, is continuing the mission in death.

In a funeral infused with symbolism, Jews will stand Friday in front of the sculpted saints of Notre Dame cathedral and recite one of Judaism's most sacred prayers — moments before an archbishop reads psalms for the Jew who converted to Catholicism, became a towering figure in the church and was even touted as a possible candidate for the papacy.

Lustiger's own faith remained complex up until his death Sunday at age 80 in a Paris hospice. He never rejected his Jewish identity, and worked to heal wounds between France's Jews and Catholics.


The longtime archbishop of Paris, whose mother died at Auschwitz and who was a confidant of late Pope John Paul II, asked that his funeral include both faiths.


"This was his wish, to share the remembrance this way," Arno Lustiger, a cousin who is a German historian and Auschwitz survivor, told The Associated Press.


Arno Lustiger, 83, will lead the reading of the kaddish mourning prayer, in Hebrew, in front of Notre Dame on Friday morning.
Praise God.

More here.

BTW: French President Nicolas Sarkozy - partly of Jewish ancestry - is flying back for the funeral. A nice thing. Good.

PLEASE READ THIS:
"For me, it was never for an instant a question of denying my Jewish identity. On the contrary," he said in Le Choix de Dieu (The Choice of God), conversations published in 1987.

A confidante of the late Pope John Paul II, Lustiger represented the pontiff at January 2005 ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where his mother died.

"I don't want to return because it is a place of death and destruction," said Lustiger, who had visited the camp before. "If I am going, it is because the pope asked me."

Lustiger never publicly addressed the tragedy of his mother Gisele. But during France's National Day of Remembrance to commemorate the deportation and death of French Jews during World War II, Lustiger, taking part in the reading of names in 1999, came to his mother's.

"Gisele Lustiger," he intoned, then added, "ma maman" (my mama), before continuing, Catholic World News reported.
MAY HE REST IN PEACE.

NEW NASA DATA DISPROVES AGW

DAILY TECH:
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding.

The warmest year on record is now 1934.

1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place.

1921 takes third.

In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.
Graphs. More HERE.

Before WW2 there was FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR less man-made CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been since. But EVIDENTLY, the first half of the last century was just as likely to have a REALLY REALLY WARM YEAR as the last half.

Guess that proves that the infamous Hockey Stick is really merely some eco-nutsie hooey schtick.

BTW: Commenters on the DT thread relate the fact that the current warming trend is no different than the previous ones - all of which ended benignly without carbon credits, or leftist taxes and regulations.

Gay-bashing is OK if you are a Leftist

That modern-day paragon of Leftism, Daily Kos, has just accused Matt Drudge of being queer. Why? Because Drudge publicized the admitted lawbreaking of Jerome Armstrong, a Kos author. I neither know nor care what Drudge likes to do with his dick (I'd be more interested in what he does with his hat!) but where is that great Leftist "privacy of the bedroom" principle now? If any conservative had said as much, there would be "hate speech" headlines blaring across the country by now.

An excerpt from Kos:

"Matt Drudge is reported to still be cruising Florida gay bars in between sending traffic to his personal friend Breitbart's startup "news wire" in exchange for kickbacks and running goofy pictures of Hillary Clinton..."

Leftists are so full of hate that they just cannot restrain themselves. I gather that Drudge is not an admitted homosexual. Riehl World has a bit of background.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Official Attack on Canadian Blog Ends Inconclusively

Apparently, the complaint that moved the Canadian Feds into action was withdrawn by the complainant, a Ms. Mary Lynn Gentes. Background to the matter is here.

The legislation under which the authorities were working stresses conciliation as a first step so I suspect that the authorities told the complainant that she would probably not win and advised her to withdraw.

So whether you can speak ill of Islam or homosexuals on Canadian blogs remains unresolved. But Canadian bloggers will now no doubt be pretty muzzled against such criticisms.

That's a pity because Canada has a constitutionally entrenched Bill of Rights ("The Charter") under which the anti-free-speech legislation could be challenged -- with a good prospect of success. Rights ennumerated in the Charter include freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and of other media of communication. And, being constitutional, such rights override laws made by Canadian legislatures. But deep pockets would be needed to mount such a challenge. You would be taking on the whole Canadian government.

Canada lacks free speech not because speech lacks constitutional protection there but because Canadians have such weak egos that they are constantly trying to prove that they are wiser and better than the USA is -- and they are childish enough to think that doing the opposite of what the USA does proves that. It's a "little brother" syndrome. New Zealanders hate Australians for the same reason. Pathetic.

Australia has fewer people than Canada but Australians don't define themselves in relation to the USA the way Canada does. The average Australian has a strong sense of his Australian identity -- powerfully reinforced whenever he travels overseas -- so doesn't need to prove it. Australia's Leftist intellectuals often twist themselves into knots trying to define the Australian identity but the average Australian does not even think about such things -- he just feels it in his bones. And that's why Australia has long been America's best friend (even fighting in Vietnam). We feel free to acknowledge it if we think America has got it right.

Hey! Maybe I've just uttered hate-speech against Canada! That would be fun. Though who'd be bothered to hate Canada?

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

MORE PROOF SARKOZY IS A FRAUD???

ANOTHER SOCIALIST GETS A KEY ROLE.

Sadly, I think he's quite probably a ruthless egomaniac who thinks he's being magnanimous.

He should get on with the program of saving France with Reagan/Thatcher/Hayek- which is what he was elected to do - and stop making nice to the folks who drove France into the ditch.

SECRET BUT UNSURPRISING TALKS BETWEEN FATAH/HAMAS

This proves once again that anyone who thinks that Fatah is any better than Hamas is wrong:
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plans to bolster Fatah may experience a grave setback in light of Hamas and Fatah's renewal of secret talks aimed at repairing relations. Olmert has been attempting to bolster Fatah's position and isolate Hamas, a militant group whose primary goal is to destroy Israel.

"The talks are being held at a low-level," a Fatah official told the Jerusalem Post. "It's premature to talk about a breakthrough, but at least we are talking again."

Olmert said on Tuesday that he does not have information about the talks, according to sources in the prime minister's office. However during his meeting with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, Olmert said that the renewal of Fatah-Hamas talks could have harsh "diplomatic ramifications," underscoring his opposition to a united Palestinian government. Abbas vowed not to renew contact with the militant group.

A Hamas-Fatah reuinification could undermine all diplomatic progress achieved so far between Olmert and Abbas.
But it's really because Abbas doesn't want any "progress", that's all. He says the Hamas takeover of the Gaza strip is "destructive", but that does not prove that he's against their existence at all.

AGW MEETS NIMBY - some hilarious leftist hypocrisy on AGW


HILARIOUS!

BOTTOM-LINE: If these leftists on Nantucket were really convinced that the life on earth is in the balance, then they wouldn't be against ANY measure which reduces our "carbon footprint" - even the ones in their backyards.

In fact, they'd be rushing to build them in their backyards so they could be EXAMPLES TO US ALL. You know... LEAD!?

But AGW is merely BS. Just more PC BS. AGW IS PC BS. And I wish all the AGW nuts would just SFTU.

OK?

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

AMERICAN WRITER ONE-UPS POWERFUL SAUDI AGAINST THE ODDS

An extraordinary battle has been raging between an Islamist billionaire, Khalid Bin Mahfouz, and one female writer, Dr Ehrenfeld.

The Saudi billionaire is determined to destroy the voice of any writer in the U.K. or the U.S. who opposes or exposes Islam and he's succeeded again and again. He's determined to destroy this writer too. But Dr. Ehrenfeld is fighting like a rat in a drain.

Dr Ehrenfeld has written a book Funding Evil which, amongst other things exposes the activities of Khalid Bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz, who has sued or threatened to sue some 36 U.S. and U.K. publishers and authors, just can't get no satisfaction with Dr Ehrenfeld.

He thought he had achieved success when a British court ruled in his favour against Ehrenfeld:
"...Bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld for libel in Britain. In the High Court, bin Mahfouz’ attorneys informed Justice David Eady that former CIA director R. James Woolsey had written the foreword for Funding Evil. “Say no more,” declared Eady. “I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too.”

Justice Eady then ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay bin Mahfouz $225,913.37 in damages and destroy copies of her book."
The idiotic and traitorous dhimmitude of the high level British judge had no authority over Ehrenfeld however. As an American citizen, she went to American courts and claimed her constitutional rights. The American courts backed her up so she defied the judgement of Eady and Bin Mahfouz was foiled.

This is an exceptional story which highlights a major victory over dhimmitude and Islamist attempts to subdue the West. It shows how evil many of the high level people in the British legal system and also, the fact that America is still alive and kicking despite the best efforts of the Left!

I would recommend that you read the rest of this amazing story at Yankee Doodle's blog.
Cross-posted here

Video of the "Yearly (wac)Kos": THE ENEMY AT HOME

One of the core beliefs of The Astute Bloggers is this: in order for our nation to be able marshal the forces necessary to defeat the jihadist enemy abroad we must first defeat the leftists at home.

HERE'S VIDEO of the enemy at home. The "Yearly (wac)Kos ". WTWT.

It would funny except that these leftists now call the shots in the Democrat Party.

They're why it's the party of Ned Lamont, and not the party of Lieberman - OR JFK!

WW4 & BUSH'S POLL NUMBERS, AND THE CIVL WAR & ABE LINCOLN'S

Bush is now back up in the polls - in the 30% area. It's simple: the better the Iraq Front goes, the better his numbers get.

It was the same for Lincoln.

In fact, Abe - who is now regarded as the greatest president in our nation's history - had much lower numbers: Lincoln was - in his lifetime, and during his two-terms - THE LEAST POPULAR PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME:
Lincoln was elected with half the vote in half the nation (which INCLUDED the south), or 25%.

And six months before the election of 1864, he was less popular than that - maybe as low as 20%! In fact, he thought he was going to lose. Only a succession of war victories boosted his popularity. With just six months to go before re-election.
Bush has more time before his second term is up, and there is ample time for things to continue as they are - to such a degree as to push him well over 50% again.

Victory has a thousand fathers don't you know...

I expect this to be the case.

What is sad for me is the fact that the numbers reveal that most Americans still do not grasp what is at stake, or the need to confront it now rather than after the enemy (any part of this transnational extremist enemy) has WMD, even nukes.

It is a far FAR safer world without the RISK of Saddam getting WMD.
And with Libya out of the WMD game, and without Pakistan in the WMD racket, literally.
And with North Korea coming back into the fold.

It will be a far FAR safer world when we stabilize Iraq and "neutralize" Iran - which will neuter Syria and Hizballah and Hamas.

At that stage, all the wobbly Western nations and dubious Arab and North African and Muslim nations around the world will be much more able to openly and unreservedly combat these extremists. And the global war against islamic extremism - WW4 - will be then won.

This war is at least as important to the Free World and the 21st Century as the US Civil War was to the USA and the 19th C. A loss in this war would be like losing to Hitler and Stalin and Mao COMBINED.

We must go wobbly and let the 21st Century Copperheads get control. If they do - if Hillary or Obama or Edwards or ANY DEMOCRAT gets in the White House, then we shall surely lose. If not SURRENDER.

Bush is like Lincoln, and the Democrat Party of today is like the Copperhead dominated Democrat Party of 1865. (More HERE. AND HERE.) [Great post on Lincoln here. And Murtha and the Copperheads HERE.]

Look at it this way: the islamic extremists are like a global KKK-cubed and on speed - and all us non-extremist Muslims are ni**ers. The West should no more give into the islamic extremists than the USA give into the Confederacy or the Klan.

UNIFORMLY TRAITORS: BENEDICT ARNOLD; KERRY AND THE VENOMOUS VETERAN LIARS OF THE LEFT

MALKIN REPORTS. WITH PICTURES, VIDEO, AND LINKS.

AND THESE LEFTIST LIARS GET MORE MSM COVERAGE THAN ALL THE REAL HEROES COMBINED.

I WONDER WHY?

MORE PROOF THAT THE SO-CALLED "HEATHCARE INSURANCE COVERAGE CRISIS" IS ENTIRELY BOGUS

YAHOO/REUTERS:
Adults aged 19 to 29 are the biggest group of the newly uninsured, according to an independent research group's report released on Wednesday

That age group made up 30 percent of the 45 million Americans without health insurance in 2005, according to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

Young adults, many who are just entering the workforce and can't afford the high cost of individual insurance, are the big drivers of an increase in uninsured adults, the report said.

"They are at a vulnerable place in the labor market," said study author Sara Collins, an assistant vice president at the fund.

U.S. employers, especially smaller businesses, are increasingly opting not to offer health insurance, leaving workers to fend for themselves in the health insurance market.

"If you don't get coverage through your employer, you're left to the individual market, and it's a very difficult market to negotiate," Collins said.

Health insurance officials often cite their efforts to market to uninsured young adults. Insurers describe this demographic as the "young invincibles," saying this group adopts an attitude that their youth protects them and therefore they do not need insurance.
AVERAGE MONTHLY HEALTHCARE INSURANCE PAYMENTS FOR THIS DEMOGRAPHIC IS $95 - OR LESS.

THIS DEMOGRAPHIC SPENDS THAT ON "PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT" EACH MONTH INSTEAD OF HEALTHCARE BECAUSE THEY ARE HEALTHY, AND MANY KNOW THAT THEY CAN GET FREE CARE IN ANY EMERGENCY ROOM.

MORE ON THE BOGUS "45 MILLION UNINSURED" HERE.

MORE ON THE SHEER IDIOCY OF SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE HERE.

BOTTOM-LINE: SO-CALLED UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS A ONE-WAY TICKET TO EVER INCREASING TAXES, RATIONING AND LOUSY CARE.

[THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS HAS POSTED SEVERAL DOZEN NEWS-STORIES ABOUT THE FAILINGS OF SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE FROM AROUND THE WORLD. SCROLL HERE. AND HERE.]

THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS SCOOPS INSTAPUNDIT BY THREE WEEKS!

EVIL GLENN:
BRITAIN TO BUY two aircraft carriers.

"HUMAN EVOLUTION POORLY UNDERSTOOD" - AS ANOTHER THEORY FAVORED BY "SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS" BITES THE DUST

NYTIMES:
Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.

Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens — a 1.44 million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55 million-year-old Homo erectus — said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.

If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before. It means that both habilis and erectus must have originated from a common ancestor between two million and three million years ago, a time when fossil hunters had drawn a virtual blank.

Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought.

Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood.
The SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS had for decades been that Homo erectus and Homo habilus evolved one after the other. Now, that SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS has to be throw out.

This comes the sane week that another theory which had for decades been the SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS had to be throw out, too: that Caucasians in Europe descended from Africa; new evidence suggests we came from Asia.

These two cases should stand as a warning to anyone and everyone who argues that "warmening"/AGW must be true because "it's the scientific consensus!"

What is the "PC theory" at any given time is subject to change because CONSENSUS IS NOT PROOF.

Only the scientific method can offer proof.

Other than that, logical arguments and logical conjectures merely make one hypothesis more plausible than another.

We should not wreck our economy and our industries and allow the federal government - or any "world government" to have more control over our lives and liberty because many scientists find one theory more plausible than another. That's merely "scientific consensus" and it should carry little to no weight in the political realm. Because it is subject to change. It has ALWAYS been subject to change. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW SCIENCE WORKS!

The Inflationary Universe

Michael Turner of the University of Chicago talks about the Big Bang and the Inflationary Universe. A deep subject given a light hearted treatment. You might want to get up to speed on the physics idea of "time horizon" in relation to the speed of light before digging in. Or keep repeating the section from about 7 1/4 minutes in on the first video until it makes sense. His "view graphs" owe a lot to Batman Comics. The videos require "Real Player".

Michael Turner - video 1

Michael Turner - video 2

More Cosmology Videos

H/T Commenter Cynthia at The Reference Frame

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Background to the Pace University Koran Nonsense

We read:

"As you may recall, I twice discussed the questionably anti-Semitic behavior of Pace administrators in mistreating the campus student Jewish organization, while kowtowing to demands of the student Muslim groups.

In the columns, I make it clear that the campus administration took radically different approaches to anti-Semitic behavior and anti-Muslim behavior. When a Menorah was desecrated on campus and a swastika was drawn on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the University's president David A. Caputo labeled the events as "bias incidents." When a paperback Koran was tossed in a toilet - resulting in minimal water damage - Caputo labeled the incident as a "hate crime" that outraged him.

To realize the great lengths to which the University mistreated both these incidents, I highly recommend you read my column from January of this year. The treatment of both incidents gives the following news greater context.

Now, police have discovered who was responsible for the Koran-toilet incident: Stanislav Shmulevich, a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a student at Pace while anti-Semitic vandalism was occurring and going unpunished. He is being charged with felony hate crimes that could land him in jail for up to four years - just for putting a book in a toilet....

Now, back to the paperback Koran and its unfortunate swim in a toilet bowl. Is this really a hate crime? No one was physically hurt. The damage to the Koran was minimal. The Koran in question was a paperback copy - not a priceless religious document. There was no personal target of the demonstration - the target was a paperback book. This was a constitutionally protected act of free speech, regardless of what New York's hate crime bill states, the same way dropping a crucifix in a jar of urine was protected speech.

Source

Read the whole thing.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Fascism reborn in Russia

Sadly, Fascism was always popular and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has rediscovered that. Excerpts below:

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia". Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland. With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phony religious cult. But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.



Nashi's annual camp, 200 miles outside Moscow, is attended by 10,000 uniformed youngsters and involves two weeks of lectures and physical fitness. Attendance is monitored via compulsory electronic badges and anyone who misses three events is expelled. So are drinkers; alcohol is banned. But sex is encouraged, and condoms are nowhere on sale. Bizarrely, young women are encouraged to hand in thongs and other skimpy underwear - supposedly a cause of sterility - and given more wholesome and substantial undergarments.

Twenty-five couples marry at the start of the camp's first week and ten more at the start of the second. These mass weddings, the ultimate expression of devotion to the motherland, are legal and conducted by a civil official. Attempting to raise Russia's dismally low birthrate even by eccentric-seeming means might be understandable. Certainly, the country's demographic outlook is dire. The hard-drinking, hard-smoking and disease-ridden population is set to plunge by a million a year in the next decade.

But the real aim of the youth camp - and the 100,000-strong movement behind it - is not to improve Russia's demographic profile, but to attack democracy. Under Mr Putin, Russia is sliding into fascism, with state control of the economy, media, politics and society becoming increasingly heavy-handed. And Nashi, along with other similar youth movements, such as 'Young Guard', and 'Young Russia', is in the forefront of the charge.

At the start, it was all too easy to mock. I attended an early event run by its predecessor, 'Walking together', in the heart of Moscow in 2000. A motley collection of youngsters were collecting 'unpatriotic' works of fiction for destruction. It was sinister in theory, recalling the Nazis' book-burning in the 1930s, but it was laughable in practice. There was no sign of ordinary members of the public handing in books (the copies piled on the pavement had been brought by the organisers).

Once the television cameras had left, the event organisers admitted that they were not really volunteers, but being paid by "sponsors". The idea that Russia's anarchic, apathetic youth would ever be attracted into a disciplined mass movement in support of their president - what critics called a "Putinjugend", recalling the "Hitlerjugend" (German for "Hitler Youth") - seemed fanciful.

How wrong we were. Life for young people in Russia without connections is a mixture of inadequate and corrupt education, and a choice of boring dead-end jobs. Like the Hitler Youth and the Soviet Union's Young Pioneers, Nashi and its allied movements offer not just excitement, friendship and a sense of purpose - but a leg up in life, too. Nashi's senior officials - known, in an eerie echo of the Soviet era, as "Commissars" - get free places at top universities. Thereafter, they can expect good jobs in politics or business - which in Russia nowadays, under the Kremlin's crony capitalism, are increasingly the same thing.

Nashi and similar outfits are the Kremlin's first line of defence against its greatest fear: real democracy. Like the sheep chanting "Four legs good, two legs bad" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, they can intimidate through noise and numbers. Nashi supporters drown out protests by Russia's feeble and divided democratic opposition and use violence to drive them off the streets....

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin's newly-minted ideology of "Sovereign democracy". This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia's supposed unique political and spiritual culture. It is strongly reminiscent of the Tsarist era slogan: "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationality". The similarities to both the Soviet and Tsarist eras are striking. Communist ideologues once spent much of their time explaining why their party deserved its monopoly of power, even though the promised utopia seemed indefinitely delayed. Today, the Kremlin's ideology chief Vladislav Surkov is trying to explain why questioning the crooks and spooks who run Russia is not just mistaken, but treacherous.

Yet, by comparison with other outfits, Nashi looks relatively civilised. Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers. These showed a young blonde Russian refusing a ride from a swarthy, beetle-browed taxi driver, under the slogan: "We're not going the same way." Such unofficial xenophobia matches the official stance. On April 1, a decree explicitly backed by Mr Putin banned foreigners from trading in Russia's retail markets. By some estimates, 12m people are working illegally in Russia.

Those who hoped that Russia's first post-totalitarian generation would be liberal, have been disappointed. Although explicit support for extremist and racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is mushrooming. Slogans such as "Russia for the Russians" now attract the support of half of the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as "fascist", for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too evident. The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to take power.....

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes off Stalin's crimes. It describes him as "the most successful leader of the USSR". But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and starved in the cause of communism. "Political repression was used to mobilise not only rank-and-file citizens but also the ruling elite," it says. In other words, Stalin wanted to make the country strong, so he may have been a bit harsh at times. At any time since the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism in the late 1980s, that would have seemed a nauseating whitewash. Now, it is treated as bald historical fact.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad. If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuehrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren't they ringing about Nashi?

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