[HT:LK]
LOS ANGELES COUNTY - Figures from the Department of Public Social Services show that children of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County collected over $21 million in welfare and over $22 million in food stamps in March 2009 -- an increase of $1 million from the previous month, announced Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Children of illegal aliens cost county welfare $44 million in March
California counties cut healthcare to illegal immigrants
Forced to slash their budgets, some California counties are eliminating nonemergency health services for illegal immigrants -- a move that officials acknowledge could backfire by shifting the financial burden to emergency rooms.
Sacramento County voted in February to bar illegal immigrants from county clinics at an estimated savings of $2.4 million. Contra Costa County followed last month and Yolo County is voting on a similar change next month...
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PRINCIPAL A KING IN QUEENS
For the first time, Queens Principal Anthony Lombardi has become a real school leader.
Lombardi, who has been the principal for 12 years, has more control over hiring his staff. He said eliminating the rule in the union contract that allowed tenured teachers -- some of whom were considered incompetent -- to use their seniority to "bump" their way into his school has been a big plus.
"I'm able to keep the teachers I interviewed and trained. The elimination of transfers and bumping stabilizes a school's organization,"
Before mayoral control, PS 49 went through a stormy period as Lombardi sought to force out low-performing teachers under cumbersome union rules, which caused a war among his staff. Mary Shannon, a literacy coach and teacher at the school for 18 years, recalled,
"It was ugly for a long time. There were divided camps: who was with Mr. Lombardi and who wasn't. But it had to be done. We had to clean house. It's about the kids,"
The results?
Math and reading scores are up 14 percent since 2003, and PS 49 received a solid B on its school report card last year. In 2007, the state Education Department honored PS 49 for high performance and for closing the achievement gap for minority students. More parents are clamoring to get their kids into the school, which is adding two kindergarten classes next fall and is expanding from K-to-5 to K-to-8.
Parents are thrilled with the changes.
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Democrats and Poor Kids
Sitting on evidence of voucher success, and the battle of New York.
Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.
Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids."
Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions...
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PUT GUNS ON CAMPUS
Mass public shootings are a horrific feature of modern life. Many of the bloodiest examples of this scourge have occurred on college campuses. Professors are particularly sensitive to this danger, say Theodore Day, a professor of finance, and Stan Liebowitz, the Ashbel Smith Professor of Economics, both at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Craig Pirrong, a professor of finance at the University of Houston.
All support a bill currently pending in the Texas Legislature that would permit the concealed carrying of firearms on college and university campuses in the state by holders of concealed-handgun permits. According to the professors, any public policy involving matters of life and death should be decided only after weighing carefully the competing risks.
For example, examining the relevant facts and data indicates that permitting Texas permit holders to carry weapons on college campuses would improve safety because:
- The best available empirical evidence shows that concealed-carry laws reduce the incidence of mass public shootings.
- Mass public shootings occur almost exclusively in places -- like universities -- where concealed carry is proscribed.
- There are numerous examples of firearms owners acting to disarm would-be mass murderers, thereby saving lives.
- Concealed-handgun-permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding individuals.
Sadly, the exact opposite is true. All multiple-victim public shootings in the United States with more than three fatalities have occurred where concealed handguns are prohibited.
Moreover, the worst primary and secondary school shootings have occurred in Europe, despite its draconian gun laws, say the professors.
[I.e., 'gun laws' DON'T effect criminals - they ONLY disarm the law abiding. How many more deaths must occur before we admit this?]
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CASH-STRAPPED CITIES TRY PRIVATE GUARDS OVER POLICE
CALIFORNIA
Facing pressure to crack down on crime amid a record budget deficit, Oakland is joining other U.S. cities that are turning over more law-enforcement duties to private armed guards.
The City Council recently voted to hire International Services Inc., a private security agency, to patrol crime-plagued districts. While a few Oakland retail districts have pooled cash to pay for unarmed security services, using public funds to pay for armed guards would mark a first for the city.
Yet, hiring private guards is less expensive than hiring new officers:
- Oakland -- facing an $80 million budget shortfall -- spends 65 percent of its budget for police and fire services.
- In contrast, for about $200,000 a year the city can contract to hire 4 private guards to patrol the troubled East Oakland district where 4 on-duty police officers were killed in March.
- Districts in downtown Los Angeles with guards register significantly less crime than areas without them.
- Some areas of New Orleans have used armed private patrols since 1997 and neighborhood committees are seeking to expand special tax incentives to pay for private security for neighborhood patrols.
A: Union first {citizen safety second}.]
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The Media Elite's Secret Dinners
Last Tuesday evening, Rahm Emanuel quietly slipped into an eighth-floor office at the Watergate.
For more than a year, David Bradley, the Atlantic's soft-spoken owner, has hosted these off-the-record dinners at a specially built table in his glass-enclosed office overlooking the Potomac. And the guests, from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to Jordan's King Abdullah II, are as A-list as they come.
Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.
"It's just a joy for me," Bradley says. "These are reflective, considered conversations, which is hard to do when you're going after headlines for the next day's publication." While the guests seem quite open, says the businessman who bought Atlantic a decade ago, he is new enough to journalism "that I can't tell the difference between genuine candor and deeply rehearsed candor"...
[Terrific]
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Sacramento flood agency considers huge salary hikes
Despite the economic crisis that has spurred drastic cuts in state and local government spending, the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency plans to boost salaries for professional employees by up to 127 percent in the coming fiscal year.
Executive Director Stein M. Buer called his proposed changes essential to 'fair' treatment of employees ...
[And what, exactly, is 'fair' about private sector layoffs? Isn't it nice that regardless of the economy government employees have the luxury of worrying about childish notions of 'fairness'.]
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Dogs from military base in Afghanistan find new home
Bear and Hutch, two of the United States’ newest immigrants,
are settling into their new home in North Buffalo.
are settling into their new home in North Buffalo.
Saturday afternoon, the mixed-breed dogs from Afghanistan flew on Pakistan International Airlines into John F. Kennedy International Airport, where they were met by William “Craig” Macy, a 28-year-old staff sergeant with the New York Army National Guard who first befriended the dogs when they were puppies, in September 2008.
“They were pretty happy. They were happy to get out of their cages more than anything,” Macy said of the dogs’ reaction upon seeing him. “It was pretty exciting to know the dogs made this crazy, long journey from the other side of the world. . . . You get really attached to them.”
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What did it say?
[HT:LC]
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls Rush Limbaugh and tells him, "Rush, I had a wonderful dream last night. I could see America, the whole country, and on each house I saw a banner."
"What did it say on the banners?" Rush asks.
Mahmoud replies, "UNITED STATES OF IRAN."
Rush says, "You know, Mahmoud, I am really happy you called, because believe it or not, last night I had a similar dream. I could see all of Tehran, and it was more beautiful than ever, and on each house flew an enormous banner."
"What did it say on the banners?" Mahmoud asks.
Rush replies, "I don't know. I can't read Hebrew."
[I just post 'em]
Monday, April 27, 2009
Media Jumping 100-Days Gun, Praising His Popularity
The major media aren’t waiting for the actual 100 days of the Obama administration to end before crowning him a success. The front page of Friday’s USA Today touted their poll with Gallup, using the headline
"Poll: Public thinks highly of Obama."
He’s only getting stronger, they claimed...
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[? But...]
Obama Approval Relatively Low Compared to Predecessors
On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, panelist Jim Pinkerton pointed out that, contrary to the impression given by the mainstream media, President Barack Obama’s approval rating, as measured by Gallup, is relatively low compared to his recent predecessors for the 100-day mark, and is even below where President George W. Bush was after his first 100 days. Pinkerton observed:"Judith Klnghoffer, writing for the History News Network, made the point that Obama actually ranks seventh of the last nine presidents in Gallup poll opinion ratings. So seventh out of nine isn't so good."
Judith Klinghoffer’s article, "Obama’s Polls Trail Those of W.; Gallup Covers it Up," notes that Bush’s approval rating taken by Gallup stood at 62 percent after his first 100 days, while Obama’s currently stands at 56 percent...
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Sanger on ABC: Obama 'More Moderate than Expected'; Brown on CBS: 'Spring Time in America!'
Asked by George Stephanopoulos to name the “most important thing we've learned” about President Barack Obama during his first one hundred days in office (which is still three days away), David Sanger, a Washington correspondent for the New York Times, asserted:
“I think we've learned that he's more moderate than we had expected.” [????? - !]
That says a lot about the mindset of New York Times reporters and prompted George Will to retort, during the roundtable segment on ABC's This Week:
“He's less moderate than I thought. He's going to design our cars. He's going to design our light bulbs. He's going to tell us where our house shall be built. This is supervisory liberalism in the most nagging, annoying sort.”
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Obama Worship Goes Into Overdrive as 100-Day Mark Approaches
[HT:GK]
"The Truth" is stranger than fiction.
This is not a spoof picture from The Onion or any other satirical website.
The image you see to the right (larger version below the fold) is a painting by artist Michael D'Antuono called "The Truth" that will be officially unveiled at Union Square in New York City on April 29 to mark President Barack Obama's hundreth day in office. Here are the details from the official press release...
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'Star Trek' Cast Visits Soldiers in Kuwait, Media Couldn't Care Less
When Hollywood movies and their stars trash America's brave soldiers, the anti-war press can't give them enough attention.
Yet, when cast and crew members of the soon to be released prequel of the sci-fi classic "Star Trek" visited service men and women in Kuwait on Saturday, newsrooms across the fruited plain couldn't care less.
Spc. Howard Ketter filed this report shortly after the event concluded (h/t Big Hollywood, video embedded below the fold h/t Blackfive):
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The West Coast Plot: An "Inconvenient Truth"
.Critics of the CIA program are desperate to convince Americans that no valuable information came from the interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and other senior terrorists.
They know that if our citizens learn the details of how enhanced interrogations stopped terrorist plots, most would support the CIA program.
A recent Pew poll showed that 71% of Americans believe that there are circumstances under which strong interrogation (not just enhanced interrogations, but actual torture) is justifiable to get information from captured terrorists.
This is why Timothy Noah of Slate (with Andrew Sullivan cheerleading him on his blog) is at such pains to debunk the story of the West Coast plot.
In his post, Noah calls the West Coast plot “Thiessen’s claim” and Anderw Sullivan calls it “Thiessen’s LA Tower Canard.”
What these two fail to appreciate is that the story of how enhanced interrogation broke up the West Coast plot is not my story — it is the official position of the intelligence community...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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McCain: Don't Investigate EIT Memos
Arizona Sen. John McCain suggested today that the push to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush administration officials who crafted the legal basis for the use of ''enhanced interrogation techniques,'' such as waterboarding, may have grown from a desire to ''settle old political scores'...'
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58% Oppose Further Investigation of U.S. EIT Allegations
58% of U.S. voters are opposed to more investigations of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects. Just 28% think the Obama administration should do further investigating of how suspected terrorists were questioned during the Bush years.
But congressional Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are pushing for a wider probe...
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Dutch TV Jury Acquits Osama bin Laden of 9/11
A Dutch TV jury has found Osama bin Laden not guilty of the September 11 attacks.
In the conclusion Wednesday night to the show "Devil's Advocate" on Dutch public broadcaster Nederland 2, the jury of two men and three women, along with the studio audience, ruled that there was no proof bin Laden was the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
In the latest show, Spong was able to convince the jury that bin Laden's connection to September 11 was a product of "Western propaganda." The jury also ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove bin Laden was the real head of terrorist network al-Qaida.
The jury did rule, however, that bin Laden is a "terrorist who has misused Islam."
The show is certain to provide further ammunition* in the already heated Dutch debate over immigration and the country's large Muslim minority.
[*And there it is: while we consider this a sad joke, many middle easterners {urged on by the Arab press} will take it seriously - continuing the societal struggle the the benefit of our enemies.]
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Tony Blair calls on world to wage war on militant Islam
Tony Blair has said he does not regret leading Britain to war in Iraq when he was Prime Minister and has called on the world to take on and defeat Islamic extremists. He believes that, without intervention, the problem will continue to grow in countries such as Afghanistan.
He called for a battle to be waged against militant Islam similar to that fought against revolutionary communism...
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Obama declares US not at war with Islam
ANKARA, Turkey - Barack Obama, making his first visit to a Muslim nation as president, declared Monday the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam." (snip)...We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own country," Obama said.
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The Price Tag of Modern Liberalism
As we struggle to come to terms with the “Islamic fact,” it should by now be obvious that we are dealing with what Robert Spencer has called “stealth jihad,” a serpentine Islamic movement which envisions the demolition of a way of life and the weakening of the State which braces it. We do not seem to realize the extent to which we have boogied into the arms of those who would jeopardize our stability and well-being, as if in agreement with the Islamic notion of the West as jahiliyya (“pre-Islamic,” i.e., pagan, ignorant) and therefore deserving of immolation.
For militant Islam, the West is ripe for the plucking. Whether we are dealing with the sly, insinuating eloquence of Tariq Ramadan, whose project is the gradual permeation of Islamic culture into the center of the Western public space, or the agonistic declamations of Dyab Abu Jahjah, who defines assimilation as “cultural rape,” the difference is the same: the message is that of Islamic supremacy.
Countries like Holland, England, Belgium, France and eventually Canada will find themselves paying in tax dollars and social turbulence, if not in blood, for their political inertia, ethnic patronage, civic permissiveness, electoral calculations and the usual multicultural chestnuts. This is the price tag of modern liberalism, which the precient American political thinker James Burnham, in his 1964 Suicide of the West, defined as “a philosophy of consolation [that] permits Western civilization to be reconciled to dissolution.” [snip]
All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion. In the drama of civilization being enacted before our very eyes, it is not only the bombers who are suicidal...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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POPULATION ALARMISTS
[HT:JN]
The great British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has become the latest in a long line of illustrious people to say we need to cut population growth sharply or face a grim future. Is he right?
Attenborough, in supporting Britain's Optimum Population Trust -- a group that advocates reducing human numbers -- has put himself on the wrong side of one of the great questions of our time.
- Today's world population is about 6.8 billion, give or take a hundred million or so.
- By 2050, most estimates show the population will be about 9 billion -- roughly a 35 percent or so increase.
- That's the equivalent, population-wise, of adding seven new countries the size of the United States to the world population.
- If fertility rates decline just a little more than predicted (and the decline in fertility rates over the past four decades has been faster than almost any estimate out there), the population actually begins to shrink in 2040.
- By 2050, at the low end of fertility expectations, U.N. forecasts show just 7.96 billion people in 2050.
- And by the end of the century, the population will actually drop below its current levels.
To do this, we'll need to have more babies, not fewer. Attenborough is wrong, but then so has been everyone to fret over human expansion throughout history...
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We’re fleeing high-tax Britain, say City tycoons
Two of Britain’s best known entrepreneurs are considering leaving Britain in protest against Alistair Darling’s new 50 per cent tax rate, as leading figures from business and the City warn of a talent exodus.
Hugh Osmond, the pubs-to-insurance entrepreneur, is thinking about a move to Switzerland. Peter Hargreaves, the £10 million-a-year co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the financial adviser, is looking at the Isle of Man or Monaco.
More are likely to follow...
[Are we paying attention?]
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Why the Law is Foreign to Ginsberg
.
"I frankly don't understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law [when handing down court rulings] . . . ."
Well, you know what? I believe her. She and her fellow travelers really don't understand. That is, they don't grasp the correct legal philosophy well enough to understand what they're rejecting.
Note that I called the legal philosophy "correct" and not "strict constructionism," and for good reason. When you call it correct, it follows that other positions are incorrect. But what is the other side of the coin of constructionism? It would be living-document legal philosophies. To accept these categorizations implies that we just have a bunch of different credible perspectives on constitutional law, and who is to say what is correct? Call it legal relativism... [snip]
She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the Supreme Court.
The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is ‘probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.' There is one reason for that, she said: ‘You will not be listened to if you don't listen to others.'"
This is a striking statement, and it vindicates something I've long believed. I once wrote that part of the problem with our judges is that they're not content to just be judges. A judge is much like a referee at a baseball game. It's not his place to make or alter the rulebook (Constitution); his is simply to determine whether or not it has been violated. His like or dislike of a rule shouldn't come into play.
Yet today we have judges who would be kings. They're not satisfied to just referee; that's too small a role for them. They want to be agents of activism, molders of men, shapers of society -- and they want the ego satisfaction attending such status... [snip]
The point is that activist judges undermine the rule of law by setting an example of contempt for it.
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Polish Academy of Sciences Questions Gore's Man-Made Global Warming Theory
Just as Al Gore prepares to testify on the dangers of Global Warming and urgency of new legislation the Polish Academy of Sciences has published a document that expresses skepticism over the concept of man-made global warming.
This report from a major scientific institution in the European Union shows the “consensus” position is becoming increasingly untenable.
The report found: [snip]
Experiments in natural science show that one-sided observations, those that take no account of the multiplicity of factors determining certain processes in the geo-system, lead to unwarranted simplifications and wrong conclusions when trying to explain natural phenomena. Thus, politicians who rely on incomplete data may take wrong decisions. It makes room for politically correct lobbying, especially on the side of business marketing of exceptionally expensive, so called eco-friendly, energy technologies or those offering CO2 storage (sequestration) in exploited deposits. It has little to do with what is objective in nature. Taking radical and expensive economic measures aiming at implementing the emission only of few greenhouse gases, with no multi-sided research into climate change, may turn out counterproductive.
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Gore's Global Warming Riff Keeps Melting
What a strange week. First, we saw what just might be an official transformation of the institution of science into a bordello, as its constituent members cheered on proven nonsense about “global warming.” Then the American Association for the Advancement of Science applauded alarmist-in-chief Al “there is no debate” Gore for admitting to them that this non-existent debate needs their help.
As the news reports came in last weekend, I was embarrassed for the lab-coat set, manifesting how they have completely sold out in the name of a taxpayer-funded gravy train. Reporters told us of their feverish approval at being told that, when it comes to their own personal bailout -- catastrophic man-made global warming theory -- things are even worse than we thought. [snip]
Turns out that, given such inconvenient observations, it meant “global warming” no longer really has anything to do with temperature. You can prove global warming instead by pointing to emissions from energy use (a proxy for population and economic activity). In slightly confused fashion, the alarmists have cut out the middleman [that would be the temperature], and energy use is now formally the demon..
[Bait & switch - but there's too much money to just let it go...]
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Dobbs Mocks Gore for Likening Global Warming Alarmism to Civil Rights Legislation of the 1960s
"Well, as you just heard Lisa [Sylvester] report, the former vice president claimed that this climate change legislation has the moral significance or equivalence of the civil rights legislation of the '60s and the Marshall Plans," Dobbs said. "Well, an interesting note - Gore's father, Senator Al Gore, Sr., like many southern Democrats at the time voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
Dobbs also noted during the segment prior Earth Day prognostications in his report, all of which didn't quite come true.
"Well, Earth Day, this week, and here are some words of doom and gloom from leading scientists, academics and authors on our climate and environment associated with Earth Day," Dobbs said. "Journalists Peter Collier wrote, ‘One to two million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.' Biologist Paul Ehrlich claimed that most people are going to die in ‘the greatest cataclysm of mankind.' Harvard biologist George Wall said, ‘If we don't take act now, civilization will end between 15 or 30 years.' And ecologist Kenneth Watt claiming that in 15 years, ‘Air pollution will reduce the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one- half.' I want to point out if I may that each and every one of those quotes were from the first Earth Day in 1970, nearly 40 years ago."
The CNN segment highlighted a ClimateDepot.com report that global warming skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton was denied the opportunity to testify before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment.
"The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,"
Monckton told the online magazine Climate Depot," CNN correspondent Lisa Sylvester said.
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'Cap and Tax' to Hurt Americans
“The provisions they are proposing would change our economy and would have detrimental effects to American industry,”
“What we have learned from our research and findings — not our own but those of other outside agencies and groups such as the MIT study — is that this would cost American families $3,128 per year in basically what is a national energy tax.
“The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that it would cost three to four million American jobs. And then they estimate what they think the jobs growth would be. They only think that this legislation would create two million green jobs. So we are looking at a large jobs loss in this country if they pass that bill.”
“We are very concerned about that private right of action [next piece] being included in that bill,” ... it would be “bankrupting to the federal government.”
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FOR LAWYERS, "GREEN" MEANS MONEY
The carbon cap-and-trade idea is bad enough on its own. But Congress will make the climate bill even worse if it tacks on language that encourages lawyers to tie up the courts with frivolous suits:
- If it becomes law, it will place limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
- Businesses that discharge the harmless gas will be forced to buy tradable emissions permits from the government.
- Utilities, energy companies and other large industries that need to release CO2 beyond their allowed limit can buy unused cap space from others.
Already the country is strewn with frivolous and abusive lawsuits. Sometimes the plaintiffs in these cases actually end up with generous awards from juries that often have no problem giving away a lot of someone else's money. Imagine how plaintiffs and their lawyers will use the climate bill to shake down taxpayers and private companies...
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RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT
The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to play cap-and-trade roulette with the U.S. economy by ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant that threatens the public and therefore must be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. This so-called "endangerment finding" sets the clock ticking on a vast array of taxes and regulation that EPA will have the power to impose across the economy, and all with no political debate. This is a momentous decision that has the potential to affect the daily life of every American.
Peter Glaser, an environmental lawyer at Troutman Sanders, told Congress in 2008,"The country will experience years, if not decades, of regulatory agony, as EPA will be required to undertake numerous, controversial, time-consuming, expensive and difficult regulatory proceedings, all of which ultimately will be litigated."
The EPA has now opened this Pandora's box:
- The centerpiece of the Clean Air Act is something called the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) under which the EPA decides the appropriate atmospheric concentration of a given air pollutant.
- Under this law the states must adopt measures to meet a NAAQS goal, and the costs cannot be considered...
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA also must regulate all "major" sources of emissions that emit more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year. That includes "any building, structure, facility or installation." This might be a reasonable threshold for conventional pollutants such as sulfur oxide (SOX) or nitrogen oxide (NOX), but it's extremely low for carbon.
Hundreds of thousands of currently unregulated sources will suddenly be subject to the EPA's preconstruction permitting and review, including schools, hospitals, malls, restaurants, farms and colleges. According to EPA, the average permit today takes 866 hours for a source to prepare, and 301 hours for EPA to process. So this regulatory burden will increase by several orders of magnitude...
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[The time is now... > ]
"STOP THE GREEN LUNACY: NO CARBON CAP-AND-TAX"
House-Pelosi: http://speaker.house.gov/contact/
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
.
Kids live in fear
Modern children crippled by environmental anxiety
Habitat Heroes is a social networking site for environmentally conscious kids. To find out what American kids were thinking about the environment, the folks behind the website commissioned a 'survey'.
Nearly 60% believe Earth will be a blasted, apocalyptic wasteland by the time they're adults. One out of three children surveyed aged 6-11 fears that the Earth itself will cease to exist by the time they grow up.
Anxiety is highest among minority kids -- 75% of black kids and 65% of Hispanics think the planet will be damaged beyond repair by the time they're old enough to legally buy beer... [snip]
That's what the message of the modern eco-terrorist such as Gore and Suzuki is all about. To scare us all into dismantling the global economy.
The fact that it's all an overblown lie and that even if the world does warm up a bit, it won't be the first time and it won't cause environmental horror but might even save a bunch of human lives, is all beside the point.
All the poor little kid hears is the adults in his life telling him the world is going to end.
There was a time when parents, teachers and society's leaders -- even during real crises, such as time of war, as opposed to manufactured nonsense such as this -- did their very best to protect their children from the big bad world around them...
[That was before children became a political weapon. We should be outraged.]
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Unfair and unbalanced, Times spins toward oblivion
The nation’s largest left-wing newspaper and the bible for network news producers and bookers may be going under.
This past week, The New York Times [NYT] announced more staggering losses: nearly $75 million in the first quarter alone...
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Swiss heartland voters ban nude hiking
APPENZELL, Switzerland – Voters in the heart of the Swiss Alps on Sunday passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their picturesque region.
The cantonal government recommended the ban after citizens objected to encountering walkers wearing nothing but hiking boots and socks...
[Now had they been Italians...]
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Friday, April 24, 2009
Congress Knew About the Interrogations
Obama should release the memo on the attacks
George Tenet, who served as CIA director under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, believes the enhanced interrogations program saved lives. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" in April 2007:
"I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."
Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.
It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002.
We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses... [snip]
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program "on a bright sunny day in April 2009," and how the current situation demonstrates how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.
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FLASHBACK > CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Prosecuting Heroes
National Security: The Justice Department may launch a witch hunt against those who organized the enhanced interrogation of terrorists. That's no way to treat people who saved so many lives.
The American public has just seen how policy based on campaign rhetoric can come crashing into the reality of a successful past policy...
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58% Say Release of CIA Memos Endangers National Security
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 28% believe the release of the memos helps America’s image abroad.
But fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States.
Only 28% of U.S. voters think the Obama administration should do any further investigating of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects. Fifty-eight percent (58%) are opposed.
Democrats are evenly divided over whether further investigation is necessary. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 62% of voters not affiliated with either major party are against more investigating.
Ideology versus Competence
Sorry Canada, its going to be a long four years. In an article called "The Border for Dummies" Canada's National Post asks a salient question:"Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job?"
I think I can offer some enlightenment. You see, Janet is an ideologue. She is the kind of person who will pursue ideological goals without regard for truth, a person who can be expected to reinvent reality to fit the ideological vision of the administration, which she does with abandon.
When asked about Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio's policy of actually enforcing immigration laws she had this to say:"And yes, when we find illegal workers, yes, appropriate action, some of which is criminal, most of that is civil, because crossing the border is not a crime per se. It is civil..."
Since when is it not a crime to illegally enter the US?
Sheriff Arpaio, by all accounts an effective and popular law enforcement officer, is ignoring more serious crimes to pursue illegals? A national cabinet member criticizing an honorable local law enforcement official and accusing him of criminal dereliction of duty is stunning.
Incredible comments, incomprehensible logic, borne of the talking points from the Obama-La Raza disinformation machine.
It gets worse...
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Epically Inept
[HT:BS]
Well, it didn’t take long for the Obama administration to demonstrate who would be the “instant fail” appointee. Admittedly, it was a tough competition, but the winner has to be Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
First up, her department issued a report on the dangers of right-wing extremism that mainly served to smear and anger many veterans. Just as the furor of that began to die out, the FBI decided to add, for the first time, a domestic terrorist to its 10 Most Wanted terrorists list.
Then Ms. Napolitano decided that it was incumbent upon her to discuss border security. This should have been her forte; after all, she had been the governor of Arizona, and that state is having huge problems with Mexican drug gangs. If anyone ought to know about the problems with our borders, it should be her.
Whoops.
She demostrated that she knows almost nothing about the history of terrorism in the United States, saying (falsely) that the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. through Canada. Canada is understandably irritated at this slur.
Napolitano holds an incredibly sensitive and important position, and has yet to show even the slightest competence at it. She should never have been put up for the position, and needs to be replaced by someone who actually understands the job...
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Appreciation Finds No Language Barriers During Continuing Promise
With nine years as a Navy ophthalmic technician and a current assignment at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Martinez has conducted more eye exams than he can count. But rarely, he said, is the need as great -- or the service as welcomed -- as by patients like Alexis receiving medical and dental care during Continuing Promise 2009.
Volunteer interpreters abound here during Continuing Promise, clearly identified by the bright yellow T-shirts they wear both on the USNS Comfort hospital ship and at medical clinics and other operations providing services ashore. But as the Comfort crew and Haitian patients alike are coming to realize, appreciation has a universal language all its own.
“The best part of it is when all of a sudden, you put glasses on someone and they start looking all over the place with a big smile,” he said. “It’s really wonderful, and it makes you feel great.”
After leaving here April 19, Comfort and its crew will visit Antigua, Barbuda, Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama, before returning to the United States.
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China shows off its expanding navy
The fleet parade off the mist-shrouded eastern port city of Qingdao marks 60 years since the founding of the People's Liberation Army Navy, long the somewhat neglected arm of China's military forces.
The spectacle included two of China's nuclear-powered Long March submarines, vessels capable of firing ballistic missiles far from the country's shores, the China Daily reported.
State television showed President Hu Jintao, decked out in white gloves and a dark suit, standing on a Chinese warship waving to the passing fleet as it paraded past on calm seas.
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A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.
Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can.
"China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources. They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings."
One thing is clear: Beijing suspects that the US Federal Reserve is engineering a covert default on America's debt by printing money. Premier Wen Jiabao issued a blunt warning last month that China was tiring of US bonds.
[The point: Obama's policies, in particular spending money we do not have, isn't fooling anyone but American's who get their 'news' from TV. It's devaluing the dollar which will lead to hyper inflation - if we're lucky. If unlucky... did you see the movie 'Rollover'? Think global...]
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Next Bernie Madoff? Emissions Cap-and-Trade Aids the Corrupt, Hurts the Little Guy
The American people have had enough of convoluted, indecipherable financial schemes and the opportunists who exploit them. The public is understandably angry about Wall Street's exploitation of Main Street, and yet our political leaders are setting the stage for another complex trading market, ripe for corruption. The future Enrons and Bernie Madoffs of the world would like nothing better than to see the U.S. impose a new market for carbon emission trading. [snip]
European governments and industries, in an attempt to stave off the economic impact of cap-and-trade, have found plenty of ways to game the system. Governments have freely handed out emissions allowances. Meanwhile, European consumers have suffered as energy rates have increased. In contrast to the burdens borne by European households, traders have been reaping the benefits of emissions trading with little regard for the environmental concerns cap-and-trade is supposed to address.
The emissions permit market has constantly fluctuated. With the price of carbon up or down by an average of 17.5 percent per month and with daily price shifts as great as 70 percent, European companies have been left to simply guess at how much their environmental compliance costs might be each month. Consequently, investors have been reluctant to invest in these businesses and there is little incentive to invest in new technologies.
As a result, UNCCC data show that the European emissions rate under cap-and-trade increased by 3.5 percent from 2000 to 2006 while U.S. emissions increased by only 0.7 percent.
The cap-and-trade system being touted on Capitol Hill would create a multibillion-dollar playground that would, once again, create a group of wealthy traders benefiting at the expense of millions of average families—middle to low-income households that would end up paying more for food, energy, and almost everything else they buy...
[We've been warned.]
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Lost jobs, big hikes in your bills -- that's cap-and-trade
President Obama has repeatedly said he will not raise taxes on low- and middle-income families, yet his policies do not match his rhetoric. Take for instance, a new tax he has proposed on the use of energy. It's called cap-and-trade or, more appropriately, cap-and-tax. The tax would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.
The Democrats need the revenue this will generate to pay for their expensive agenda. But getting it this way would be shortsighted because it will cost far more in the long run than it will bring in. While the president originally estimated that implementing this plan would cost $646 billion over eight years, his deputy director for the National Economic Council, Jason Furman, recently stated that it could cost up to three times that -- bringing the cost closer to $2 trillion.
Any way you look at it, it's low- and middle-income Americans who will pay dearly for this. Using an analysis by Peter Orszag, President Obama's budget director, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by nearly $4,000 a year...
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Hate Crimes Legislation Draws Criticism from Christian Groups
The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday is expected to pass federal hate-crimes legislation, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federally protected classes.
Thanks to hate-crimes laws in Canada and in the European Union, Christian groups have already become targets for hate-speech prosecution...
[We need repeal all 'hate crime' legislation - the government has no business trying to interpret the intent behind free speech. If your words cause harm, you should (and can be) held accountable, but this special-class 'protection' business is impossible and unAmerican.]
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Columnist Will correct that initial TARP money did not buy toxic assets
Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets."
George Will on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 in a column published by the Washington Post and other news organizations.
The $325 billion cited by Will comes from the March 11 testimony by Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant secretary for financial stability who directs the TARP, before the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
And at that point, none of the money had been spent on buying toxic assets, according to the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan congressional research group, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent group tracking spending on TARP and other stimulus programs on its site Stimulus Watch.
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TARP, the Criminal Enterprise?
[HT:JM]
Is the whole TARP plan a criminal enterprise? Sounds farfetched, I suppose. But after reading about Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky’s report, it may well be that TARP is just one big criminal problem.
Listen to this: Barofsky’s investigators reported Monday that they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax-law violations, insider-trading, and mortgage-modification fraud related to TARP.
Yup, those are criminal probes...
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What's the Benefit?
Global warming realists (that is, those who don't buy the Al Gore-like catastrophism because they see the earth is no warmer than it was 12 years ago) often argue against various forms of energy taxes, but too many stop short of asking alarmists, "What's the benefit?"
Those in conservative talk radio and punditry often don't go far enough, because telling the cost side tells only half. Listeners and readers are left with the impression that "yeah, it costs a fortune." But then you can hear their Gore-pressed consciences wonder, "but don't we still have to do something?"
This leads to the next (should be) obvious question -- one the alarmists never have to answer -- which is, "If we do what you are proposing we should do, what will we (or the Earth) get in exchange for what we spend?"
But instead of boldly proclaiming the great thermostatic results their policies will produce, they run away from the science they so adamantly claim that they stand behind. How? Because they cannot explain how much greenhouse gas reduction will cause global temperatures to change.
For all their jargon-filled technological conversations about how to "solve the problem," they only measure their goals in terms of emissions averted or reduced -- usually quantified in "million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," or MMtCO2e. How's that for an absurd acronym?
So it's easy to stump the alarmists when you ask: What will the climate do when we lower MMtCO2e's? Can you doomsayers who so haughtily and demandingly chant "Science! Science! Science!" tell us how your plans will lower temps, save sea levels, and spare species?
They never answer in terms of degrees, so you can conclude that the "benefit" side of the ledger is zero.
Sound like a deal you'd want in on?
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The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem (Rep. Nita Lowey)
[Meanwhile, from our congressional 'leaders'...]
In the past month, the House Minority Leader called the idea that carbon dioxide - a greenhouse gas and known carcinogen - is dangerous “almost comical,” and members of his party suggested that the planet is actually cooling and “carbon-starved” and invited a global warming denier as a public witness to a Congressional hearing on the topic.
As anyone with experience with recovery knows, the first step in addressing a crisis is to admit that you have a problem. Unfortunately, these displays and others make it increasingly clear that, despite conclusive scientific evidence on the existence of global warming and the human role, some elected officials refuse to take Step 1.
Today - Earth Day - I introduced a resolution that says three very simple things critical to a constructive dialogue on global warming:
- The Earth is warming;
- Human activity plays large role in that warming;
- Congress can mitigate the risks through legislation...
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Thought Police Muscle Up in Britain
Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalize politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out.
Countryside Restoration Trust chairman and columnist Robin Page said at a rally against the Government's anti-hunting laws in Gloucestershire in 2002: "If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you."
Page was arrested, and after four months he received a letter saying no charges would be pressed, but that: "If further evidence comes to our attention whereby your involvement is implicated, we will seek to initiate proceedings." It took him five years to clear his name.
Page was at least an adult. In September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher's first response was to scream at her: "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police!"
Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed... [snip]
Muslim parents who objected to young children being given books advocating same-sex marriage and adoption at one school last year had their wishes respected and the offending material withdrawn. This year, Muslim and Christian parents at another school objecting to the same material have not only had their objections ignored but have been threatened with prosecution if they withdraw their children... [snip]
[And on and on...]
Any one of these incidents might be dismissed as an aberration, but taken together - and I have only mentioned a tiny sample; more are reported almost every day.
This campaign seems to come from unelected or quasi-governmental bodies controlling various institutions, which are more or less unanswerable to electors,* more than it does directly from the Government, although the Government helps drive it and condones it in a fudged and deniable manner.
[You know, like school systems. It's happening here as well, we're but a few years 'behind' them...]
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Is Your Minister a 'Hate Crime' Peddler?
The George Orwell congress resumed its session yesterday. Not content to attempt to end the secret ballot by the “Employee Free Choice Act,” the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up and pass the equally-Orwellian “Hate Crimes” bill, HR 1913.
The “Hate Crimes” bill wants to criminalize speech that insults politically-fashionable minorities... [snip]
Rather than offering protection to a class of Americans, the effect of enacting HR 1913 into law will be to create a new persecuted class in order to correct these imaginary crime waves against the richest and most politically active part of the Democratic Party’s and President Obama’s base.
HR 1913 targets mainstream religious people for prosecution because their sincerely-held religious beliefs and centuries of theology inform them that homosexuality is a disordered behavior and a sin. Just expressing that belief will amount to a crime under this bill and pastors across America will be risking their freedom to quote certain passages of the Bible from their pulpits...
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Then >
"OPPOSE HR 1913"
YOUR Congressman: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
and as always, pass it on...
.
Miss California's Competitors From Gay Marriage States Say She Needed to Be PC
Meowww. The claws are coming out. The Miss USA contestants from the four states that allow same-sex marriage say Miss California should have been more politically correct* when she was asked for her thoughts on the issue during the nationally televised pageant...
[*Memo: "politically correct" is a derogatory phrase, not a literal political ideal.]
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It's Alternative Media That's Cooling Global Warming Hysteria
The latest Rasmussen poll reports that the lowest number of voters ever polled -- one-in-three -- believe that global warming is caused by human activity. That’s an astonishing figure, especially considering the all-out green propaganda assault the mainstream media (MSM) exposes the public to on a daily basis.
After all, it’s become nearly impossible to open a magazine, unfold a newspaper or turn on the television without being scolded about the selfishness of your energy consumption and the damage your unworthy existence does to the planet. And yet, Friday’s Rasmussen found that forty-eight percent of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, not their so-called carbon-footprint. That’s up 4% in less than three months.
Aided by an all-too-eager MSM, policy makers speak of manmade climate change as “settled science” and perpetrate the lie that only a few “fringe” scientists question its tenets. Nevertheless, the latest Gallup Poll reports that 41% of Americans consider global warming to be an exaggeration. That’s up 11% in just 3 years.
So despite a MSM that spoon feeds its audience the latest alarmist crap about how manmade CO2 kills polar bears, threatens coastal cities and islands, incubates all manner of pestilence and so on and so on, the number of people actually buying into their still-unsubstantiated carbo-chondria continues to shrink... [snip]
“Every opinion poll--even those conducted by the bed-wetters themselves – shows that global public opinion is cooling as fast as the global climate. In one recent survey, ‘global warming’ came at the very bottom of a list of political and environmental concerns, immediately behind the need to clean up dog-poop on the streets. Why? Because dog-poop is a real environmental problem and ‘Global warming’ is not. The correct policy response to the non-problem of climate change is to have the courage to do nothing.”
Indeed, the latest Gallup poll concurs. Global warming ranked last in public concern among eight specific environmental issues. Dead last. And I doubt it would have fared any better had dog crap been a menu item. [snip]
But if you weren’t a consumer of the New Media (ezines, blogs, etc.), you wouldn’t know that, would you? You’d likely continue to believe the lame MSM warnings that we’re running out of time to save the planet. And given the acute rise in public skepticism that one monster of a winter energized, just imagine the panic the specter of decades of cooling stirs in those whose dreams of controlling our energy consumption – and thereby our lives -- depend entirely upon an alarmed populace.
You see, it’s actually climate alarmists that are running out of time -- and they know it.
Policy makers know very well that time grows short to implement their carbon control schemes. And the media face a similar problem. Sure, today NBC launches yet another of their excruciatingly silly “Green is Universal” weeks to celebrate this year’s Earth Day on Wednesday. And once again they’ll sully their often worthwhile conservation tips by spreading carbon phobia and climate alarmism throughout their broadcast and myriad cable networks.
But these recent public opinion shifts suggest that more and more people will be turned off by such counterfeit tactics, and will in turn turn off their TVs and head for the internet...
[One can hope. And BTW; got a friend who could use a 'subscription' {same low price} to NNB? Don't forget you can 'push' them - anonymously - to try it (left side bar).]
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PETA protesting chicken dance at NASCAR
PETA is pecking away at NASCAR fans doing the chicken dance. (snip)KFC was the sponsor of the record attempt and PETA charges the Colonel is cruel to chickens. A KFC spokesman denies the allegations.
[Exactly how many chickens were offended?
You can't make this stuff up.]
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