NOPEC

It must be difficult, being a filthy rich Liberal whose fortune includes investments in the oil industry ... yet having to stand in The House day after day and demonize that very same industry:

Members of Congress should consider themselves fortunate that the Constitution gives them legislative immunity. Otherwise, they might someday face prosecution under a law they overwhelmingly passed this week.

The bill — referred to as “NOPEC” — is a meaningless gesture whose symbolism is intended to mollify angry motorists as gasoline prices approach $4 per gallon. Even though Democrats are intentionally keeping those prices high for environmentalist
reasons, they have passed this bill as their way of shaking a stick at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the international cartel whose supply decisions have enormous and dangerous influence on the price of oil.

The IPCC Litmus Test

It must be a wonderful thing, to concoct of thesis that can't be tested, then have much of the civilized world adopt it as fact. No matter the reality, your thesis will never fail.

Thus the value of global warming of the last 4 years fails to agree with the IPCC projections (the values are not even close!). The agrument that this is too short of a time is spurious unless the modellers can account for where else in their model results the missing Joules went.

Moreover, this is not too short of a time period to compare with the models. Heat, unlike temperature at a single level as used to construct a global average surface temperature trend, is a variable in physics that can be assessed at any time period (i.e. a snapshot) to diagnose the climate system heat content. Temperature not only has a time lag, but a single level represents an insignificant amount of mass within the climate system.

The answer to the question on this weblog “Can the IPCC model projections of global warming be evaluated from just several years of observed data” is YES. The conclusion for the past four years is that the model projections are not skillful on this time period.

Condoms for the Destitute

Wow! Am I ever relieved ... I've been losing sleep night after night worrying about all those Burmese Typhoon victims starving to death without getting a chance to boink one last time ... using safe sex:

The United Nations will send nearly a quarter of a million condoms into cyclone-hit Myanmar to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives, a UN official says.

So far, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said it had sent 72 800 condoms to survivors struggling to maintain their family planning after the storm hit in early May.

Cosmic Global Warming ... and Cooling

Those who push Anthropogenic Global Warming and their supporters believe they've figured it all out ... that their computer models have unlocked the secrets of terrestial climate and in the process have pointed the finger straight at us.

Pity ... how small of them:

Numerous palaeoclimatic observations, covering a wide range of time scales, suggest that galactic cosmic ray variability is associated with climate change. The quality and diversity of the observations make it difficult to dismiss them merely as chance associations. But is the GCR flux directly affecting the climate or merely acting as a proxy for variations of the solar irradiance or a spectral component such as UV? Here, there is some palaeoclimatic evidence for associations of the climate with geomagnetic and galactic modulations of the GCR flux, which, if confirmed, point to a direct GCR-climate forcing. Moreover, numerous studies have reported meteorological responses to short-term changes of cosmic rays or the global electrical current, which are unambiguously associated with ionising particle radiation.

Cosmic ray forcing of the climate could in principle operate on all time scales from days to hundreds of millions of years, reflecting the characteristic time scales for changes in the Sun’s magnetic activity, Earth’s magnetic field, and the galactic environment of the solar system. Moreover the climate forcing would act simultaneously, and with the same sign, across the globe. This would both allow a large climatic response from a relatively small forcing and also give rise to simultaneous regional climate responses without any clear teleconnection path. The most persuasive palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/GCR forcing involves sub-orbital (centennial and millennial) climate variability over the Holocene, for which there is no established forcing agent at present. Increased GCR flux appears to be associated with a cooler climate, a southerly shift of the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) and a weakening of the monsoon; and decreased GCR flux is associated with a warmer climate, a northerly shift of the ITCZ and a strengthening of the monsoon (increased rainfall). The influence on the ITCZ may imply significant changes of upper tropospheric water vapour in the tropics and sub-tropics, potentially affecting both long-wave absorption and the availability of water vapour for cirrus clouds.

There Was Only One Hitler

For "progressives", there has only ever been one Hitler, if you exclude Bush. Every tyrant since, including Stalin, Mao, Castro, Saddam, and what's-his-name in Iran, are not really tyrants. You can talk to them ... you can reason with them ... every "progressive" knows this:

You always know you've struck gold when liberals react with hysteria and rage to something you've said. So I knew President Bush's speech at the Knesset last week was a barn burner before even I read it. Liberals haven't been this worked up since Rev. Jerry Falwell criticized a cartoon sponge.

Calling the fight against terrorism "the defining challenge of our time" -- which already confused liberals who think the defining struggle of our time is against Wal-Mart --

[...]

The way liberals squealed, you'd think someone had mentioned Obama's ears. Summoning all their womanly anger, today's Neville Chamberlains denounced Bush, saying this was an unjustified attack on Obambi and, furthermore, that it's absurd to compare B. Hussein Obama's willingness to "talk" to Ahmadinejad to Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler.

More, from American Thinker:

Barack Obama has enshrined the principle of unconditional summitry with Iran as one of the central foreign policy planks of his campaign for President. This despite recent efforts by Obama surrogates to confuse the electorate.

The statement above is found on the campaign website of Senator Obama and reflects his view -- repeated a number of times by himself in debates and question and answer sessions -- that the thrust of his foreign policy will be personal Presidential engagement with tyrannical regimes across the globe, including Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. But the focus clearly will be on Iran as the campaign moves along. Iran is the leading state sponsor of terror and is developing the means to construct nuclear weapons.

Jokes That'll Kill You

Some cartoonists and satirists create works of humour to die for:

Your "Progressive" Future

Given that "progressives" have a love affair with Islamists, I'm sure they'd see nothing wrong with an Egyptian style democracy ... where most women have been sexually mutilated:

(IsraelNN.com) Conservatives in the Egyptian parliament have made female genital mutilation (circumcision) legal again in Egypt. The conservatives succeeded in striking several laws that had been passed by the parliament's religious Shura Council in the past. The laws canceled also include a law limiting marriage age to 18 and up, a law permitting a mother to register a child on her name and a law allowing neighbors of a family that beats its children to report the beatings to the police.

One of the parliament's members said that the law permitting a mother to register a child on her name "encourages adultery."

A Cairo appellate judge who is also the legal advisor to the Council for the Mother and Child said that the decision to strike the laws contravened international agreements signed by Egypt.

Ted Kennedy

Poor Ted ... now that he may be checking out shortly it's a pity he'll never know what it's like to be trapped under water, pressing your face up into the air pocket as the water slowly rises. Alone ... in the dark ... waiting for a Kennedy to have a moment of conscience.

The water where Senator Drunkennedy landed his car with Mary Jo Kopechne was shallow ... very shallow. Only a drunk coward could not ... or would not at least try to save his passenger.

And, to think that for decades Senator Drunkennedy has been the darling of Democrats, champion of the down-trodden, and warrior of the dispossessed ... and chief among "progressives". Just goes to show, (L)iberals would follow just about anybody off the cliff ... or ... ahhh ... bridge:

Dike Bridge ~ Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena sits on Kennedy's submerged car in the location it landed following the accident. Arena is unaware that the body of Mary Jo Kopechne is in the back seat.- Rub rail on the right side of the bridge describes the path the car took before plunging into Poucha Pond.

On Mary Jo in the car:

It was not the position assumed by a person knocked unconscious by the impact of a crash, Farrar said. "If she had been dead or unconscious, she would have been prone, sinking to the bottom or floating on top. She definitely was holding herself in a position to avail herself of the last remaining air that had to be trapped in the car."

" Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law?Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty? "~ Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973

The Global Warming Kidney Stones of Hell

I suggest, most seriously, that we ban fat people before we all get kidney stones:

Washington, May 15 (ANI): Global warming may lead to an increase in kidney stones disease, says a new study.

Dehydration has been linked to stone disease, mainly in warmer climates, and global warming will worsen this effect, according to the researchers.As a result, the prevalence of stone disease may increase, along with the costs of treating the condition.

Using published data to determine the temperature-dependence of stone disease, researchers applied predictions of temperature increase to determine the impact of global warming on the incidence and cost of stone disease in the United States.

Ingraham on Olbermann

Perfect!

Jihad by the Megaton

There was a time when the thought of two World Trade Center Towers being brought down by Muslim terrorists was beyond the thought processes of most of us ... it was the stuff of Tom Clancy.

Today, the reality of 911 has sharpened the senses ... at least those of conservatives ... and the thought of an entire Western city being brought down by jihadists is a clear and present danger. Most serious analysts think in terms of "when" ... not "if":

The latest audio message from al-Qaeda, reportedly from Osama bin Laden himself, is only the most recent confirmation that the jihadist threat to the West remains real and deadly serious. But the fact that it could take the form of nuclear terrorism should be most worrying to citizens and policy makers alike.

Where a nuclear attack once may have been beyond the capacities of stateless terrorists, that is no longer the case. One need only consider Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of 9/11 and chief operating officer of al-Qaeda, who revealed under intensive interrogation -- including the much-maligned tactic of waterboarding -- that a nuclear attack against the United States was a top priority for al-Qaeda.

According to the New York Daily News and its sources, the captive KSM told his interrogators that Osama bin Laden was planning a “nuclear hell storm” in America. Normally such a lurid claim would be disbelieved by our “inside-the-box” intelligence officers, but KSM’s recovered laptop had corroborating details.

[...]

The experts are not talking about vague probabilities far into the future. Former Clinton Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison are among those who have estimated that chance at more than 50 percent over the next decade. That is, two respected experts in the field believe that the nuclear destruction of one or more American urban centers is more probable than not in the very near future.

Orange Flavoured Explosions

If they can't nuke one of our cities ... they can always try a bit of citric acid:

Far-fetched as it sounds, bombs made from hydrogen peroxide and the breakfast powder drink Tang could have taken down seven planes bound for the U.S. and Canada — using flash cameras to trigger the explosions.

A British court saw video evidence this week of the "liquid explosives plot," an alleged terrorist cabal British police say they thwarted in August 2006. The suspects allegedly had planned to use common household chemicals to mix bombs while aboard jets flying over the Atlantic.

Canadian Human Rights Racket

So unacceptable on so many levels one doesn't know where to start:



Special thanks to Hunter for capturing this vid.

More @ Ezra's blog.

Reconsidering Capital Punishment

Occasionally one has to reconsider previously held views when new information comes to light. So it is, that I may have to reconsider a view I hold in regards to capital punishment. I, along with hundreds of millions of others, believe that capital punishment in the Western context does not act as a deterrent. What, with the lengthy trial and appeal process, any linkage to crime and punishment is lost. The "capital punishment doesn't prevent murder" argument is boiler plate, and a key foundation in the anti-capital punishment philosophy.

Now though, a number of studies are suggesting that capital punishment, even in the Western context, acts as a deterant:

For the first time in a generation, the question of whether the death penalty deters murders has captured the attention of scholars in law and economics, setting off an intense new debate about one of the central justifications for capital punishment.

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

The effect is most pronounced, according to some studies, in Texas and other states that execute condemned inmates relatively often and relatively quickly.

The studies, performed by economists in the past decade, compare the number of executions in different jurisdictions with homicide rates over time — while trying to eliminate the effects of crime rates, conviction rates and other factors — and say that murder rates tend to fall as executions rise. One influential study looked at 3,054 counties over two decades.

Admittedly, the capital punishment debate has other considerations. My key problem with it is that the judicial system convicts far too many innocent people. I'd rather have 1000 guilty murderers sit it out for a lifetime, than have society execute one innocent person. Furthermore, I believe that near-solitary confinement for a life-time is a far worse punishment than execution.

I've got to admit though, that my stance on executions has softened now ... especially for certain types of murder. It's becoming harder for me to argue against killing those who are clearly guilty of murderous acts and who have set themselves outside the bounds of what I'd consider basic humanity. I'm a hunter, so I've got no problem with killing animals for sport and food. It becomes difficult therefore, to argue against the killing of humans who are, only in genetic code, human; but just beasts in reality.

Victoria Day Darwin Nominee

Burn a Tree; Save the Planet

It's a beautiful sight ...

... In more ways than one. A new study shows that in order to save the planet, we should let our forests burn:

Quenching forest fires leads to more carbon in the air, says new research carried out in Californian forests. The discovery suggests that forests spared from fire may release more of the greenhouse gas into the air than they absorb.

Decades of suppressing natural fires has increased the number of surviving trees in California's forests. But this growth has been at the expense of larger trees, which are less resilient to drought and other stresses than smaller, younger trees, resulting in a decline in the total amount of carbon stored in these forests.

Who's the Idiot

Leftists, "progressives", and Liberals, love to repeat over and over and over again that George W. Bush is an idiot. From greeting cards lampooning "Chimp" to vulgar internet cartoons, they've had a blast.

Yet, when one compares the seasoned common sense wisdom of Hitler-Chimp-Bush, with the naive "progressive" utopianism of Barrack Obama, one must ask ... who is the idiot?

Bush ~ "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," the President said to the country's legislative body, "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Translation - Thugs can never be talked to unless they come to the table cap-in-hand.

Barrack ~ "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

Translation - Hug-a-thug and they'll see it your way ... "tough, principled, and direct diplomacy" ... what the hell is that supposed to mean?

A Glimmer of Sanity

The first rumblings of a UK return to sanity can be heard from across the big pond. There'll have to be a lot more though, before the inexorable tide of Islam in Britain is stopped:

West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have apologised for accusing the makers of a Channel 4 documentary of distortion.

The apology and the promise of £100,000 were made at the High Court on Thursday.

It follows comments made about a Dispatches programme, Undercover Mosque, which tackled claims of Islamic extremism in the West Midlands.

Dedicated to the Anti-Garths

Canucks, destroying Afghanistan, one village at time:

Garth Turner on Canadian Military Brutes

According to the honorable Garth Turner, Canadian soldiers are destroying Afghanistan, one village at a time:

"These are contradictory times," said Turner at the conclusion of the meeting. "We don't have funding for youth centres but we do have $150,000 for every shell bought for the sole purpose of destroying a village in Afghanistan. We could buy each Afghan a condominium with that money," he added.

What an Ass!