Desperate warmists and weather reports

California

Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian climatologist, debunks the desperate attempts of global warmists to assign blame for bad weather to rising atmospheric CO2 in a worthwhile and very readable article in the Canada Free Press. He posits that the current decline in global temperatures in the face of rising CO2 levels is making the warmists desperate enough to use arguments they know are fallacious.

Meanwhile, here in Northern California, our air is once again thick with haze from the raging wildfires all over the region. Yet not a peep about the carbon footprint of these massive fires. If people really believed that carbon emissions were harmful, then these fires would be a double disaster, and I am very interested in how those carbon emissions compare to the impact of using incandescent light bulbs, soon to be banned.

But we hear nothing of the sort. In fact, the news coverage is very restrained. Perhaps I am cynical, but I have to believe that because these natural phenomena (the fires were started by lightning) dwarf man's contribution to carbon emissions, the media do not want to dwell on them. Doing so proves efforts to sacrifice our economic welfare in favor of limiting CO2 futile and foolish.

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... AS GREENIES HOLD UP SOLAR

The Bureau of Land Management announced that it's placing a two-year freeze on proposals for new solar-energy farms on federal lands, pending the results of ... an environmental impact study.

Turns out that with solar technology advancing briskly, energy firms have been rushing to get their hands on the flat, sun-drenched land the federal government holds in abundance in many western states - more than 1 million acres. That's a lot of land - and it's apparently got the feds thinking about the farms' impact on wildlife. [snip]

Still, such an environmental hiccup for one of America's prestige "green" industries does rather put the rest of the national energy debate in perspective:

The Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where up to 16 billion barrels of oil could be extracted from a mere 2,000-acre footprint - but for politicians' carping about the "pristine natural beauty" of a wasteland no more inspiring than any of the deserts so primed for solar energy...

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OPEC president warns no end to oil price rises

OPEC president Chakib Khelil warned Sunday that oil prices will continue to rise in an interview in the Algeria-News.

"As producer countries we think that the current supply is sufficient, that this balance in supply is in everybody's interests and that it shouldn't be disturbed..."

"I can affirm that all the (OPEC) countries are in favour of new explorations (of oil reserves), but the fact is that the embargo imposed by Libya has prevented any increase of investment in that country, just as the current embargo on Iran is stopping anyone investing there,"

[I.e., only Iran and Libya can be developed for more oil. Hmmm. Radical idea: let's develop our reserves here...]

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The Politics of Can't-Possibly-Do

This week the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued a stunning document to explain why Ground Zero has remained nothing but a hole for some seven years.

It is arguably the greatest political and bureaucratic fiasco in the history of the world. Remember the line about how if we don't rebuild the towers "the terrorists will win"? The terrorists will be dead of old age before this project is finished.

Ground Zero is a perfect storm of contemporary American politics. The report cites "19 different governmental entities from every level of government each laying claim to some component of the overall project." And, "Each entity makes daily decisions about their individual projects, but no streamlined process or authority is in place to . . . ensure that each decision is in the best interest of the overall project."

This sounds eerily like the 9/11 Commission's assessment of our dis-coordinated national security agencies...

[government screwing things up. imagine. What if we just demanded there were less of it?]

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55 MPH: No Blood for Oil

The Seventies have returned in all of their glory, with inflation looming, high gas prices, alternative fuels, CAFE standards, and now, you guessed it, an attempt to bring back the 55 mile per hour speed limit. James Baxter, President of the National Motorist Association, is perplexed by this retro attempt at mindless stupidity:

In 1984, in what started out to be a promotional ‘study' of the ‘Benefits of the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit' the Transportation Research Board determined that keeping the 55 MPH speed limit would result in a 0.18 percent (less than two tenths of one percent) fuel savings" (Source: TRB Report, 55: A Decade of Experience; page 176).

"This is not an amount that will devastate the oil economy of the Middle East. The same study did determine that the 55 MPH national speed limit was wasting approximately one billion man hours a year (page 123). This did not include state trooper man hours being burned up enforcing an arbitrary speed limit on the safest highways in the nation.

"For that matter, it has been shown to take MORE lives than the faster speeds: today the national and the interstate highway fatality rate is far lower than at any time during the ‘55 era.' In fact, the last time the fatality rate increased from year to year was in the mid 1970's when compliance and enforcement were at their highest levels."

So, our guardians in Congress want to spill blood for oil, and I doubt that we`ll have much protest from the valiant Democrats who were so enraged at our invasion of Iraq. If, by their reasoning, we should have No Blood for Oil abroad, doesn't it stand to reason we should not impose it at home?

[the safety aspect isn't word games, every study done reaches the same conclusion: it's speed disparity that increases accidents. The 'average' US motorists' speed on highways is about 68 mph. - the further you move the posted speed away from that centerline, the greater the risk becomes - for zero.point 18 % fuel savings.]

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NEA Seeks College, Citizenship for Illegal Aliens

Washington - Some of the almost 10,000 members of the National Education Association (NEA) attending the teachers union's annual conference this week in the nation's capital spoke out on the issues they hope their lobbyists will fight for during next year's legislative session, including the establishment of a peace academy, in-state college tuition and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who graduate from high school.

[translation: break our laws, avail yourselves of public services you're not entitled to, and you'll be rewarded. ]

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WHERE ARE THE D.C. SHOOTOUTS?

After the Washington, D.C., gun ban went into effect in 1976 Washington's murder rate skyrocketed. As Reason magazine's Brian Doherty pointed out last week, "Washington's per-capita murder rate has exceeded the rate in 1976 every year but one since then. For 10 of the last 30 years, its murder rate was more than twice as high as in 1976."

"New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as 'the most stringent gun law' in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled."

New Hampshire's rate of gun ownership is more than twice Massachusetts's rate. But Massachusetts's murder rate is a percentage point higher than New Hampshire's. FBI studies have shown that only 26 percent of violent crimes involve a weapon -- and only about 6 percent involve a firearm.

Clearly, murders and other violent crimes are not the result of average people having firearms at hand. Still, some people are and always will be terrified of guns. That cannot be helped. What we need to avoid is letting those irrational fears guide public policy...

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Barbara Walters: Syrian Dictator 'Charming,' 'Intelligent'

Surprise! Barbara Walters visits an anti-American dictator and returns with very nice remarks about him. Returning from the week long break on "The View" July 7, Barbara Walters described how she spent America’s birthday, and the celebration of a document denouncing tyranny, with an anti-American tyrant...

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Toddlers who dislike spicy food 'racist'

Toddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency. This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a very young age...

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FARC's 'Human Rights' Friends

[HT:JE]
... one detail stands out: undercover special forces simply told FARC that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious NGO to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission. ... it seems to have been a walk in the park to get them to believe that a 'humanitarian' NGO was providing resources to help it ferry hostages to a new location...[snip]

I am reminded of President Álvaro Uribe's 2003 statement that some "human rights" organizations in his country were fronts for terrorists. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got his back up over Mr. Uribe's statement, and piously lectured the Colombian president about "the importance of democratic values."

But as the helicopter story suggests, Mr. Uribe seems to have been right. How else to explain the fact that the FARC swallowed the line without batting an eye?

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The New York Times vs. Common Decency

The Times deliberately "outs" the interrogator of Khalid Shaik Mohammed despite his pleas and the pleas of the CIA not to name him.

The backstory, revealed today by Times "Public Editor" Clark Hoyt, is even more shocking in its implications. What it reveals about the people who make such decisions at the highest editorial level at the Times is that quite simply, they do not believe that al-Qaeda poses much of a threat to individuals and, by extension, the United States.

And beyond the security calculations is the extraordinary lack of common decency in deliberately and knowingly placing someone's life and the lives of his family in danger. That is perhaps the most telling proof of hubris on the part of the Times. In their little cocoon of arrogance and self importance, they place the life of a man on a scale and weigh it against their own petty policies...

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What CNN Kept Out of its Murtha 'Surge Has Worked' Coverage

CNN carried KDKA footage showing that Murtha has grudgingly acknowledged the obvious: That the troop surge in Iraq has, in his words, "in the short-term ..... certainly reduced incidents," but that "I'm not sure whether it's because of the Iraqis are just worn out, but certainly the way they're doing it today makes a big difference."

In interview footage left on the cutting room floor, Murtha falsely claimed that less than 1/3 of the Iraqi benchmarks have been met, and that the majority of Americans "want us out" of Iraq as fast as possible. But most explosively, the Pennsylvania congressman claimed that a major reason why the troop surge has been successful is that before that time "we broke down doors, we went in and we killed people..."

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New Cars in California Must Display 'Global Warming' Score

OAKLAND, Calif. -- California is making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with 'global warming' scores, figures that take into account emissions from vehicle use and fuel production. The law requiring the labels goes into effect at the start of next year for all 2009 model cars, though its expected the labels will be popping up on cars in the coming months.

The score will be displayed next to the already-required smog score, which also rates cars one to 10 for how many smog-forming emissions they emit. For both scores, an average vehicle will have a score of five

[get that - there's already a smog score - this is just more indoctrination of the populace with the phrase 'global warming', stated as fact, by the state, so it must be true. Here's another truth - this 'score' will be used to justify additional taxes soon - bet me.

Wake up folks, we're being taken to the cleaners {and it'll only get worse the longer we stay silent}]

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High Self-Esteem, Low Test Scores

There are new studies and new polls that strongly suggest that we are breeding increasingly stupid kids here in America. Like our tasteless tomatoes, they merely look good and healthy.

But of course there is more than one way to test intelligence. So, while only 43% of our 17-year-olds know that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900. They probably know the names of Britney Spears’ kids, which is more than Ms. Spears does at any given moment, but they have no idea why December 7, 1941, was a day of infamy.

They also don’t know what “infamy” means...

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The swiftboating of Barack Obama

Presidential races generally hinge on character issues - as Republicans understand. That's why, the last two times out, the GOP has won the White House by hammering into voters' minds the idea that the Democratic candidate embodies a particular negative quality. In 2000, Al Gore was depicted as a serial exaggerator [? did he not invent the internet?]. Four years later, John Kerry was portrayed as a weak-willed flip-flopper [? was he not for the war before he was against it?]. Ultimately, it was these personal caricatures, far more than any specific policy prescriptions*, that doomed the Democrats...

[I beg to differ: it was the policies, and this piece is pure spin - as is the entire MSM talking point that it's Obama that's being targeted unfairly. And about that title...


Remembering What the Swift Boat Vets Actually Said

I'm not the first to make this point, but it seems the attacks on John McCain's war service stem from prominent Democrats completely misreading what happened with the Swift Boat Vets for Truth. The Democrats' conventional wisdom is that A) everything the group said was a lie and B) they attacked Kerry's wartime service.

Go back and reread what they charged. (Take a walk down memory lane from the Kerry Spot here, here and here and Byron's assessment of the impact here.)

There were about 200 members of Swift Boat Vets for Truth. Maybe some of them had faulty memories, or were down-the-line Republicans, or just plain didn't like Kerry. But all of them?

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My journey to becoming an unhyphenated American

The knock on the door sounded official.It was the United States Census. "Do you live here? What is your name?" As soon as I said it, a gleam came to his eye. "Are you a Russian- or Ukrainian-American?" he asked... [snip]

It wasn't always like this.

When we moved from Venezuela in 1956, the United States government was concerned that I become an American without ethnicity attached. The immigration agent at LaGuardia Airport wanted to change my name to Walter. In school, Spanish and Ukrainian were not accepted languages. I needed to learn English quickly. [snip]

As I became more and more American, more and more Americans insisted I really was an ethnic American. So much so, that by 1968 I was not sure who I really was or to which country I belonged.

... at the University of California, Berkeley. It was ground zero for the native anti-American movement. It was unbelievable to see American college students carrying the red flags of communism. To my parents, the hammer and sickle symbolized death and famine.... [snip]

My family was in America because our farm in the Ukraine was confiscated, my grandmother shot, and my father made homeless and an orphan before his teens. The Ukraine was part of my family's history, but not filled with pleasant memories. America, on the other hand, gave us not only one opportunity, but second and third chances.

I realized I owed America everything.

My mother once said, "There are only two things wrong with Americans. One, they are incredibly naïve about the world and two, they do not realize how lucky they are"

I was not born American — English is my third language — but I take pride in the ideals, values, and achievements of this country.

I cheapen the value of America by insisting on hyphenating my nationality.

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Time to Bury the Fairness Doctrine Once and For All

ACT

The announcement from Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she wants to revive the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” is big news -- but it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

The Fairness Doctrine is an Orwellian and archaic Federal Communications Commission rule devised in 1949 that requires radio broadcasters to present both sides of an opinion when discussing controversial topics. It put unelected FCC bureaucrats in charge of enforcement and determining what speech was legal.

Broadcasters responded by avoiding controversial issues completely, the opposite of what a healthy democracy should expect from its radio press.

Now that the Democrats have control of Congress, their leaders are openly championing the return of the Fairness Doctrine. If they can’t beat conservative ideas in the radio marketplace, they might as well stifle them through government fiat... [snip]

The Broadcaster Freedom Act (H.R. 2905), which we introduced last summer, would permanently repeal the Fairness Doctrine by taking away the FCC’s power to reinstate the rule.

Of course, Speaker Pelosi will not schedule the Broadcaster Freedom Act for a vote.

But if we get the signatures of 218 members of the House on a Discharge Petition, we can circumvent the blockade presented by the majority leadership and bring it directly to the floor for an up-or-down vote.

There are certainly enough votes to pass the bill. In June 2007, the House passed, by a 309-115 margin, a one-year moratorium on funding for the Fairness Doctrine. A total of 113 Democrats -- nearly a majority of their caucus -- voted for the stay.

Right now, we have 196 signatures on the Discharge Petition. Not a single Democrat has signed on, despite their overwhelming support of the one-year moratorium.

We need just 22 Democrats to declare their support of freedom of speech by signing the petition to get a vote on the floor. Out of those who did the right thing last year by supporting the moratorium, there must be 22 Democrats who are willing to do the right thing again, even if their leader says to do otherwise...

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Broadcaster Freedom Act (H.R. 2905)
YOUR Congressman https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml