By JEANNINE AVERSA and CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER (AP) – 39 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Just when it was beginning to look a little better, the economy relapsed Friday with a return to double-digit unemployment for only the second time since World War II and warnings that next year will be even worse than previously thought.

The jobless rate rocketed to 10.2 percent in October, the highest since early 1983, dealing a psychological blow to Americans as they prepare holiday shopping lists. It was another worse-than-expected report casting a shadow over the struggling recovery.

President Barack Obama called it "a sobering number that underscores the economic challenges that lie ahead." He signed a measure to extend unemployment benefits and to expand a tax credit for homebuyers.

Economists had not expected the 10 percent mark to come so quickly and immediately darkened their forecasts. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, and Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc., predicted the rate will peak at 11 percent by mid-2010. They earlier had projected 10.5 percent.

Unemployment at 11 percent would be a post-World War II record. Only once since then has joblessness hit double digits in the United States — from September 1982 to July 1983, topping out at 10.8 percent.

"It's not a good report," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for New York-based investment firm Miller Tabak & Co. "What we're seeing is a validation of the idea that a jobless recovery is perfectly on track."

The Labor Department, using a survey of company payrolls, said the economy shed 190,000 jobs in October. A separate survey of households found 558,000 more people were unemployed last month than in September. Some 15.7 million Americans are out of work.

The survey of companies doesn't count the self-employed and undercounts employees of small businesses. So the economic picture could be even more dire.

One struggling small business, homebuilder Miller and Smith Inc. of McLean, Va., has trimmed its work force to about 100 from 350 at the height of the housing market in 2005. The company has been hurt by a slowdown in building and surging health care costs.

Troubles for small businesses could have a disproportionate effect on the economy, because they account for about 60 percent of the nation's jobs. They tend to rely on credit cards and home equity lines — both of which banks have tightened — for cash flow.

And the unemployment rate doesn't include people without jobs who have stopped looking, or those who have settled for part-time jobs. Counting those people, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest since at least 1994.

Economists had expected unemployment to rise to no more than 9.9 percent, up just a tick from September's 9.8 percent, and the surprising jump added to fears that the recovery could fizzle if Americans don't spend.

Already, consumer confidence for October came in well below what analysts were expecting. Shoppers' sentiments about the state of the economy are the gloomiest in nearly three decades.

The AP.

Geeze.  Obumble must be REALLY fucking up if the AP is posting stuff like this.

How's that "HopenChange^TM" working out for you progressive dipshits that elected this popinjay?

How's that "Hope 'n Change" working out for you Obama voting assholes?

American Thinker

The first lines of a press release from the NSIDC did state this:

At the end of the Arctic summer, more ice cover remained this year than during the previous record-setting low years of 2007 and 2008. However, sea ice has not recovered to previous levels. September sea ice extent was the third lowest since the start of satellite records in 1979, and the past five years have seen the five lowest ice extents in the satellite record.

Polar ice has only been studied extensively for 30 years.  That small amount of solid data is only part of what many believe to be a larger cycle. It is entirely possible that we have turned the corner, and the recovery of ice has already begun on its own.  Even the EPA had a scientiic report that the planet has been cooling for the past decade, and covered it up.

The NSIDC report continues with this positive statement:

Scientist Walt Meier said, “We've preserved a fair amount of first-year ice and second-year ice after this summer compared to the past couple of years. If this ice remains in the Arctic through the winter, it will thicken, which gives some hope of stabilizing the ice cover over the next few years. However, the ice is still much younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s, leaving it vulnerable to melt during the summer.”
The charts and diagrams come directly from the NSIDC report. It does clearly show that since the the record lowers ice in 2005, every year since has shown more ice.
This is called young ice since it is new, and not as thick as the long term polar ice cap. That does make it more susceptible to melting in the summer, yet look at the diagram of second year ice in the slide show below. This crucial point that should not be ignored. If ice can survive one summer, then build upon itself the following winter, that is a sign of regrowth. That is a sign that while over the 30 year average the ice is still low, it is recovering. That is a good thing, and should be celebrated. That is also something that should be the focus of the current research.

So why does the NASA report on this ignore the positive?  Instead, their statement talked about decline as if it was showing no end or stabilization.  

Several recent studies based on data from NASA’s ICESat and QuikScat satellites have shown that, in addition to shrinking geographic ice coverage, the amount of multi-year ice cover – thicker ice that survives more than one summer -- has been declining in recent years.

That is not entirely true, and contradicts the NSIDC statements.  See the first few images in the slide show below.  This comparison shows the increased ice coverage, and in fact less geographic area without ice.  We have a lot of respect for NASA, and honor their accomplishments in this forum often.  But there does seem to be an attempt to not include some aspects of the report which is more widely distributed.  Consider that just last winter, a report came out that Arctic sea ice underestimated by 193,000 square miles.  That is the size of California.  During the winter freeze last winter, arctic sea ice returned to 1979 levels.  Why was that not mentioned in this report as well?

Instead of the overall decline of ice since 1979, new research should focus on what forces are allowing this ice reformation and whether it will continue? In the face of rising CO2, something or many other things act to influence the ice more.
 For the complete images and close up views comparing years see the slide show below.

Folks, this "Global Warming" bullshit is just that; BULLSHIT!  We need to tell these hucksters in no uncertain terms that WE AIN'T BUYING THE SNAKEOIL!

The Examiner (Houston)

By Victor Davis Hanson

For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been.

HOW OBAMA WON
Barack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn.

1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic — and African-American. He thus offered voters a sense of personal and collective redemption, as well as appealing to the longing for another JFK New Frontier figure. An image, not necessarily reality, trumped all.

2) After the normal weariness with eight years of an incumbent party and the particular unhappiness with Bush, the public was amenable to an antithesis. Bush was to be scapegoat, and Obama the beginning of the catharsis.

3) Obama ran as both a Clintonite centrist and a no-red-state/no-blue-stat e healer who had transcended bitter partisanship. That assurance allowed voters to believe that his occasional talk of big change was more cosmetic than radical.

4) John McCain ran a weak campaign that neither energized his base nor appealed to crossover independents. McCain turned off conservatives; many failed to give money, and some even stayed home on election day. Meanwhile, the media and centrists who used to idolize McCain’s non-conservative, maverick status found Obama the more endearing non-conservative maverick.

5) The September 2008 financial panic turned voters off Wall Street and the wealthy, and allowed them to connect unemployment and their depleted home equity and 401(k) retirement plans with incumbent Republicans. In contrast, they assumed that Obama, as the anti-Bush, would not do more bailouts, more stimuli, and more big borrowing.

Take away any one of those factors, and Obama might well have lost. Imagine what might have happened had Obama been a dreary old white guy like John Kerry; or had Bush’s approvals been over 50 percent; or had Obama run on the platform he is now governing on; or had McCain crafted a dynamic campaign; or had the panic occurred in January 2009 rather than September 2008. Then the trance would have passed, and Obama, the Chicago community organizer and three-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, would have probably lost his chance at remaking America.

OBAMA'S ASSUMPTIONS
I note all this at length because Obama seems to act as if this right-center country — one that polls oppositely to his positions on most of the major issues (deficits, spending, nationalized health care, homeland security, Guantanamo, cap-and-trade, etc.) — has given him a mandate for a degree of change not seen in nearly 80 years.

Apparently, Team Obama figured that with sizable majorities in both the House and the Senate, Obama would snap his fingers, Congress daily would pass bills redefining America, and Obama would stay in perpetual campaign mode to hope and change the country to accept his agenda. Governing would be like campaigning, as audiences fainted hearing the details of a 1,500-page health-care bill or of ever more sins from America’s past.

But, after just a few months in office, that proved not to be the case. Just as a number of planets had to line up precisely to allow an inexperienced hard-left ideologue to be elected president, so there would have had to be a similar configuration to allow him to govern successfully.

BITTER TRUTHS
1) Obama had to match his unity rhetoric with brotherly action. In fact, he has done the opposite.

At one time or another, Obama and his supporters have, rather scurrilously, insulted doctors, insurers, the police, tea-partiers and town-hallers, opponents of his health-care plan, non-compliant members of the media, and a host of other groups as either greedy, dishonest, treasonous, unpatriotic, moblike, racist, or in general worthy of disrespect.

I love this guy.  Go read the rest.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his request for additional troops in Afghanistan on August 31.

Here are some of the things President Obama has done since then:

* Deliver remarks at a fundraiser for Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate in New York's 23rd Congressional District, and then deliver remarks at a fundraiser to benefit the DNC at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

* Deliver remarks at a DNC fundraising dinner and reception at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

* Deliver remarks at an event at the Ritz Carlton Hotel celebrating the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

* Deliver remarks at the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner at the Washington Convention Center.

* Attend "In Performance at the White House: Fiesta Latina," a concert celebrating Hispanic musical heritage on the South Lawn.

* Host a picnic for United States Secret Service members and their families on the South Lawn.

* Host an event for local middle-school students to stargaze and conduct hands-on experiments with astronomers.

* Deliver remarks at event with doctors from across the country in the Rose Garden.

* Fly to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago’s Olympics bid (and meet with McChrystal while he was there).

* Deliver remarks at a fundraiser for the Democratic Governors Association at the St. Regis Hotel.

* Deliver remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative at the Sheraton Hotel.

* Hold a rally on health-insurance reform at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland in College Park.

* Host a viewing of a portion of the documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" in the White House movie theater.

* Host an event on the South Lawn with the White House Office on Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport, Chicago2016, and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to promote Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

* Deliver remarks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 32nd Annual Awards Gala at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

* Deliver remarks to the AFL-CIO Convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

* Attend and deliver remarks at a fundraising event and reception for Sen. Arlen Specter at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

* Welcome the Pittsburgh Penguins to honor them for their 2009 Stanley Cup championship victory.

* Meet with the Professional Golf Association of American champions.

* Host a dinner celebrating Ramadan and highlight the contributions of American Muslims in the State Dining Room.

Now, many of these are worthwhile events and/or standard duties of the president. And on many days since August 31, Obama has met with various members of his cabinet, the military, and leaders on Capitol Hill to discuss Afghanistan.

But all those meetings haven't yet generated a decision, and now we're told that there's really no sense of a deadline of when this decision has to be reached. Meanwhile, the president will be attending more fundraisers in the coming days, one in Boston on Friday and at least one in Florida early next week.

A common refrain these days is that President Obama needs to be reminded that it's time to stop campaigning and time to start governing. This presumes he has any interest in the latter, or an ability to cease the former.

NRO

By Kevin “Coach” Collins

Senate Democrats think we’re stupid. They actually believe hiding their criminal deals in 1502 pages keeps us from knowing what they’ re up to.

Harry Reid, who is ten points down to two unknown Republicans, has attempted to slip a provision into the Baucus bill exempting Nevada from the skyrocketing of Medicaid costs it will bring. Three other Democrat run basket case states Oregon, Rhode Island and Michigan slithered in as well.

Sneaky scheme

All of the Obamacare bills currently being considered “appear” to save money because they shift costs to the states. That way when he gets his bill Obama can claim it “saves” federal money.

Because our country has been handed over to Chicago gangsters by the dopes who voted for Obama and his Democrats, which states pay what will be decided by low lifes like Harry Reid.

Very clearly Democrat states, that can’t survive without extorted funds from other states, will be supported with money ripped away from states run under conservative principles. Oklahoma and Texas come to mind. As has become the expected pattern, this legislation will be used to punish achievers.

States with lower tax rates or unfriendly climates for illegal aliens or invoke States Rights under the Tenth Amendment will be forced to pay “tribute” to king Obama. He’ll need it to feed his lackeys in Michigan and Oregon.

Double edged sword

Fortunately this dirty deal will help kill the Baucus bill and quite likely all other similarly written bills. The Democrats are basically greedy and will not be able to resist the opportunity to over play their hand.

Other greedy Democrats will demand their state be exempted as well. It’s hard to see Arkansas and Louisiana’s Democrat Senators not sticking their hands into this pie. There is no honor amongst thieves after all.

The Collins Report

A key House committee on Thursday quietly altered its health care legislation in a way that could allow the Senate to mow over Republican opposition to Democratic reforms by exploiting a budgetary loophole.

The Ways and Means Committee adjusted its health care overhaul package so that the Senate, down the road, could avoid a filibuster and pass health care reform with a smaller number of votes than normally required. 

The long-discussed process, nicknamed the "nuclear option," is known as reconciliation. It's coming into potential play after the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday became the last of five committees to approve health care reform legislation, sending the overhaul proposals a big step closer to the president's desk. Before it gets there, though, the bill has to pass from the committees to the floors of the House and Senate. 

Under the normal process, senators can filibuster almost anything and the debate would only be cut off if at least 60 lawmakers vote to do so. For that reason, 60 is considered the magic number in the quest to pass health care reform out of the Senate. 

But under reconciliation, typically used in the budget process, no filibusters are permitted and a bill can pass with just a simple majority. 

Structuring the health care bill in this way allows it to be scooped up in the reconciliation process, which could torpedo the Republicans' trump card. 

"The secret of the week is that Democrats pulled the trigger on the nuclear option," warned Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., top Republican on the House budget committee and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. "They built their vehicle today."

BOHICA, folks...

FNN

By Shaun Waterman THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, "in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year," said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance "a disgrace."

"The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines," he said in a statement.

Vote these bastards out.

Washington Times

According to the rules of the Nobel Prize nomination, a candidate receives an invitation for submission as a Nobel Peace candidate in September of the previous year, and must respond by the 1st of the subsequent February. That's right, in September of 2008, when nobody had even voted for the current President, Mr. Obama was under the illusion that he was qualified for a Nobel Peace Prize based on a few years as a community organizer, a little time in the Illinois legislature, an incomplete term in the United States' Senate, and a couple of books about his favorite topic -- himself.

By the February 1, 2009 deadline for submissions, before Mr. Obama had even stepped into office, he was no more surprised or humbled then than he is on this ignoble day.

This display is truly the antithesis of humility.

Now we know why he's been waiting so long to determine how to protect our troops in Afghanistan. Or is it too audacious to suggest such a thought?

Learned anything yet, you stupid Obamabots?

The American Spectator

DebbieSchlussel.com has learned that Robert Schoch, the Special Agent in Charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for Los Angeles, is under investigation for alleged embezzlement and/or misuse of ICE funds used in undercover operations.  Mr. Schoch and the Los Angeles Deputy Special Agent in charge, Jennifer Silliman, were escorted from the ICE federal offices in Long Beach, California, and had their badges and guns taken from them (standard procedure when an agent is under investigation and put on leave).  They were both put on administrative leave pending a continuing investigation.  A search warrant was reportedly executed on Agent Schoch’s home, and sources say his computers from both his LAX and Long Beach offices were seized.

Normally, this would be inside baseball stuff.  But Schoch was slated by Obama Administration officials running ICE to be Director of Investigations of ICE, meaning that he would be running and overseeing all ICE investigations worldwide.  His appointment to that position was imminent, even as he was reportedly being investigated by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility and, reportedly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.  The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing at ICE. . . and doesn’t care.

I contacted ICE’s PR people, yesterday afternoon, regarding this story, and they would neither confirm nor deny it.  However, it’s all over ICE.  Agents are wondering why a man who was, himself, under investigation was chosen and about to be named their agency’s chief investigator.  It sounds like a joke, but it’s very real and, sadly, very typical of the agency for which they work and where morale continues to plummet.

It’s more bad news about an agency that continues to be mismanaged, without aim or specific purpose, and cannibalized by inept and dishonest supervisors and bureaucrats, who use the agency as their own personal harems, “The Bachelorette” show sets, and nightly falalafel dinner opportunities with Muslims galore (that means you, Abu Moskowitz).  And you wonder why illegal aliens continue to laugh at them . . . and us.  I’ll be writing more about ICE’s, um, “leadership” under the Obama/Napolitano regime in the near future (stay tuned).

*Sigh*  Worst.  President.  Ever.

Debbie Schussel

The deadline for nominations is Feb. 1, meaning the president was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.

Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told "Good Morning America" the decision to pick Obama was unanimous.

ABC News

Why not?  They gave one to Surrogate Al Gore for making a Science Fiction movie...

Oh, and the Taliban too, which must be news to Mark Halperin, Ruth Marcus, Richard Cohen, and Ezra Klein this morning.  George Bush got a lot of heat when he used the “you’re with us or against us” for the war on terror, but he specifically meant nations that had to decide whether to help us fight terrorist networks or choose to hide them or hinder justice.  Politico reports that the DNC now posits that anyone ridiculing Obama is a terrorist sympathizer:

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. “Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize - an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride - unless of course you are the Republican Party.

“The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore - it’s an embarrassing label to claim,” Woodhouse said.

Even in a political environment where the two major parties send out ridiculous ding-dong reactions to events, this takes the cake.  Woodhouse argues (almost assuredly uncomprehendingly) for a fuehrerprinzip where the head of state must never be questioned or criticized, lest one become a traitor to the fatherhomeland.  Will Woodhouse also start labeling late-night comedians like Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien terrorist sympathizers for their (very) occasional ridicule of His Reverence?  Does Janet Napolitano plan to open a file on Saturday Night Live for last week’s prescient dig?

Clearly, the DNC needs a smarter class of public-relations flacks.  Given this evidence, it should not be difficult at all to find them.  (image courtesy HA reader Mehokie)

Hot Air

CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf has stated on several occasions that an accurate CBO scores requires legislative language.  But CBO didn’t have it to do an accurate score on the Baucus draft.  So how reliable is this cost estimate?  And how much of a burden will it be on the economy?

According to this new CBO score, the Baucus concept draft contains $506 billion in new taxes and over a half-trillion in cuts to Medicare, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid while moving millions more to the Medicaid rolls.  The CBO score also claims that the draft is budget-neutral. Right.

Should this concept draft pass out of committee, it still has to be merged with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee partial bill passed earlier this year which contains a robust government-run health care option and, like the Senate Finance concept, does not bar federal funding of abortion nor does it require proof of citizenship when enrolling for government-run health care coverage.

The legislative language will be written when these two bills merge.  All sorts of things will be inserted that are not part of the CBO cost estimate score.  Democrat Senate leadership says Republicans will be shut out of this bill-writing process.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Finance, says hard working American families will foot the bill to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   
“I worry that some of my colleagues will focus only on the deficit-neutral piece of CBO’s document,” Grassley said.  “A celebration of the deficit effects masks who pays the bills.  This package includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes and fees.  Most Americans with health insurance will see their premiums increase.”  

He added, “Uninsured individuals would pay a tax for not obtaining government-approved health insurance.  Employers who already offer health insurance would face a penalty if their workers choose subsidy-eligible insurance.  With all of this, the bill spends nearly a $1 trillion and still leaves 25 million people without health insurance.  That's not much bang for the buck”

Absolute, outright, theft by the Fed.

Human Events

The Saudis, those nice folks who were charging us $147 a barrel just over a year ago, now say they'll need economic aid if the world keeps cutting back on oil consumption.

The United Nations is currently holding climate talks in Bangkok, where Saudi Arabia, suddenly spooked at the idea the world might need less of their No. 1 export, is privately demanding that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for big cuts in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The head of the Saudi delegation Mohammad S. Al Sabban dismissed the IEA figures as “biased” and said OPEC's own calculations showed that Saudi Arabia would lose $19 billion a year starting in 2012 under a new climate pact. The region would lose much more, he said.

“We are among the economically vulnerable countries,” Al Sabban told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks ahead of negotiations in Copenhagen in December for a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. “This is very serious for us.”

NBC

The United Nations says in a new report that unless we (meaning U.S. taxpayers and consumers) cough up $10 trillion to the world’s renewable energy rentseekers and carbon abatement scamsters, the planet will be destroyed by UN-fabricated global warming.

Click here for Wall Street Journal coverage.

ThooLou to U.N.:  Go pound sand up yer ass...

Canada Free Press

And the winner is ... Loveland.

Boasting its earliest opening day in 40 years, Loveland officials opened for skiing today. Arapahoe Basin announced it would open Friday.

Loveland is the first ski area in North America to open its season, with $44 lift tickets. Loveland trail crews were able to begin snowmaking operations on Sept. 21.

"We took advantage of the cold temperatures and got an early start making snow this year," said Eric Johnstone, snowmaking and trail maintenance manager. "Now we can move some equipment to other trails and try to open more terrain as quickly as possible."

Globull Warming!

The Denver Post

And who is making that "heretical" claim? Why Andrew Revkin, the New York Times environment writer. On the heels of his recent "heresy" of quoting noted climatologist Mojib Latif's finding that the world will probably be in for a cooling trend for the next decade or two, Revkin's latest report will probably not sit well with the global warming alarmists: 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center released its summary of summer sea-ice conditions in the Arctic on Tuesday, noting  a substantial expansion of the extent of “second-year ice” — floes thick enough to have persisted through two summers of melting. The result could be a reprieve, at least for a while, from the recent stretch of  remarkable summer meltdowns.

According to the center, second-year ice this summer made up 32 percent of the total ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, compared with 21 percent in 2007 and 9 percent in 2008. The percentage of ice that was many years old, forming thick pancaked expanses, was at its lowest since satellite observations began 30 years ago. But that could change next year as the second-year ice adds mass through the long winter freeze. 

 Will you warming idiots please just give it up?  All your datasets are BOGUS!

NewsBusters

Marc Sheppard

In yesterday’s article, UN Climate Reports: They Lie, we discussed the problems associated with a chart that appeared in the UN’s most recent climate report.  One such issue was that the graphic, which claimed to establish a “correlation between temperature and CO2,” used a temperature plot immediately recognizable as the infamously debunked “Hockey Stick Graph.”  

As Andrew Orlowski reports in The Register, the issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy in order to ‘reconstruct’ past temperatures. The papers in question  incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia:

This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer and larger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronounced and dramatic uptick in temperatures.

How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret -- failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including NatureScience, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors. Until now, that is. and

At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open -- and Yamal's mystery is no more. From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.

In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990. All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century. The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.

A small ‘but closely knit’ number of scientists all used the misleading Yamal data to claim that today’s temperatures were unprecedentedly hot. Orlowski notes:

Controversy has been raging since 1995, when an explosive paper by Keith Briffa at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia asserted that that the medieval warm period was actually really cold, and recent warming is unusually warm. Both archaeology and the historical accounts, Briffa was declaring, were bunk. Briffa relied on just three cores from Siberia to demonstrate this.

Three years later Nature published a paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes based on temperature reconstructions which showed something similar: warmer now, cooler then. With Briffa and Mann as chapter editors of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this distinctive pattern became emblematic - the ‘Logo of Global Warming’.

But as the heroic mathematician Steve McIntyre – who helped demonstrate the fraudulence of the even more seminal AGW claim of the ‘hockey-stick curve’ of historic global temperatures – has finally managed to winkle out, their premise was false and their claim was untrue.

Told you so...

The Spectator

Rio de Janeiro is to host the first Olympic Games in South America.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge made the announcement in Copenhagen today, to the bitter humiliation of Barack Obama.

The U.S. president was embarrassed on the world stage after the IOC rejected his very personal bid for the 2016 Olympic Games to be held at his home town of Chicago.

Despite the president's unprecedented appeal, from late afternoon on the momentum had all been with Rio. 

Tokyo was also eliminated in the first round, leaving just the Brazilian capital and the Spanish city of Madrid in the running.

And after an inspirational speech from Brazilian president Lula Inacio de Silva today, some commentators were left in no doubt.

South America is the only continent that has never hosted the Games [Lazy freaking reporters, neither has Africa...  --ed.] - which means that it was the only option of the four currently on the table that gives IOC chiefs the chance to make history.

Mail Online

The World Health Organization, the UN agency (ir-) responsible for declaring a Phase 6 “PANDEMIC” global alert over what it calls H1N1 Influenza A or Swine Flu, whose chief Dr Margaret Chan has repeatedly warned that while Swine Flu to date had been rather mild, that the emergency declaration was necessary because it “could mutate” aggressively into a deadly pandemic killing millions, now admits well into the flu season in the Northern Hemisphere that H1N1 has apparently not mutated.

Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, at a meeting with health officials in her native Hong Kong has just stated that the swine flu virus has not yet mutated into a more deadly strain. WHO Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, Dr Marie-Paule Kieny reinforced that statement in a press conference September 24 in Geneva when she stated, “we are lucky that the pandemic is moderate in severity that most people experience a mild illness and recover spontaneously.”  That means recovery with no vaccination, no Tamiflu or other dangerous ”antiviral” drugs. Just with letting nature take its course.  

Last summer, when the WHO decided to declare a global “pandemic emergency” over what it called the H1N1 Influenza A global spread, it also announced in a notice buried among its press releases that most countries had stopped testing ill populations for H1N1, and that WHO therefore simply arbitrarily “assumed” all patients with a stated set of symptoms were automatically H1N1 victims. So the H1N1 pandemic case counts, to quote the WHO “no longer reflect actual disease activity.”

The symptoms the WHO listed as indication that a patient has H1N1? A fever, cough, sore throat, headache...in short, all the symptoms of a common cold. The pandemic declaration by the agency entrusted by the UN with monitoring and guarding the world’s health came anyway, on recommendation of the WHO’s “experts,” the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts or SAGE.

What a surprise, not.

The Market Oracle

Gaspard doesn't register on the media radar screen in the way that his immediate Bush-era predecessor, Karl Rove, did. But as the New Orleans-based ACORN has been implicated in a host of illegal schemes ranging from voter registration fraud to embezzlement to tax evasion, he may get there. That's because prior to assuming his current job, Gaspard, at least according to ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had been political director for the New York City chapter of ACORN under Bertha Lewis, who last year replaced Rathke as the group's chief organizer and CEO. What's more, he's worked closely with the ACORN-controlled Working Families Party and the largest local within the Service Employees International Union.

Political affairs director is a position at the top of the White House hierarchy. A dual role of bureaucrat and politician, it requires an ability to secure passage of legislation, develop a media outreach strategy, and win elections for his boss and his party. With the possible exception of chief of staff, no person in an administration provides a better window into the president's mind than political director. Karl Rove at times functioned as a stand-in for George W. Bush. So when President Obama hired Patrick Gaspard to be his political director, it was because Obama saw him as possessing the requisite loyalty, tenacity and networking skills. A closer look reveals Obama long has been part of that network. Indeed, without its help, his presidency would have unlikely.

President Obama long has been close to ACORN. While never formally a community organizer with the group, he has served its interests in a much more crucial way. In 1995, while as an attorney for the Chicago firm of Miner Barnhill, he was part of the team representing ACORN in its effort to block the State of Illinois from circumventing a federal court order to implement the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 - more commonly known as the "Motor Voter" law - signed by President Clinton. The Illinois State Board of Elections believed the law lacked sufficient safeguards against fraud. ACORN didn't just defend the legislation; it worked to create it - and little wonder. The organization this decade has been at the center of voter registration fraud investigations in more than a dozen states, with the result in several instances being guilty pleas by volunteers. The Motor Voter law thus was tailor-made for ACORN fraud. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit early in 1996 denied the state's motion on procedural grounds.

Obama is a common thug.  Read the rest.

NLPC