The cap-and-trade bill passed the House of Representatives shrouded in a fog of willful ignorance and calculated irrationality.

No one could be sure what he was voting for — not after the 1,200-page bill had a 300-page amendment added at 3:09 a.m. the day of its passage. The bill is so complex and jerry-built that even its supporters can’t know how, or if, it will work. And it’s metaphysically impossible for someone to know whether the motivating crisis, impending planetary doom, will ever materialize.

Other than that, it’s a model exercise in thoughtful lawmaking.

The formulation of the so-called Waxman-Markey bill was less traditional legislative sausage-making than an unspeakable practice out of The Jungle. Its architects bought off every possible interest group no matter what the policy consequences until they had a bare majority to slam it through the House sight unseen (a physical copy of the final bill didn’t yet exist when it passed). Mission accomplished, although at the price of a ramshackle bill that won’t succeed on its own terms, even as it introduces costly distortions and invasive bureaucratic controls into the economy.

The basic idea of cap-and-trade is that government establishes an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions and then creates emission credits, which companies can buy or sell among themselves. It is essentially carbon rationing designed to suppress traditional sources of energy.

Because cap-and-trade is meant to create pain in an economy dependent on fossil fuels for 85 percent of its energy, the only way to make it politically salable is to vitiate it. Originally, the Obama administration counted on $80 billion a year from the government’s sale of emissions credits. To win over industry, Waxman-Markey gives the credits away for free. Poof! There goes the revenue.

The bill bestows hundreds of billions’ worth of credits on local electricity and natural-gas distribution companies, as well as on the auto, coal, and oil industries — basically anyone with the ear of a congressman or with a halfway-competent lobbyist.

Then there are the “offsets,” the environmental equivalent of indulgences. A company maintains its carbon emissions but buys an offset for someone else to capture carbon or reduce emissions — say, by not cutting down a tree in a rain forest somewhere. Offsets are notoriously dubious. Waxman-Markey makes generous allowance for them anyway.

The upshot is that an Environmental Protection Agency analysis says that under Waxman-Markey, there will be no reduction in emissions by 2020. The progressive Breakthrough Institute estimates that emissions could continue at their current business-as-usual rate through 2030. Perversities abound. According to the Los Angeles Times, under the bill, the U.S. “would use more carbon-dioxide heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.” Time writes that “the total amount of renewable energy generation under Waxman-Markey would actually be less than the renewable energy that would have been produced without the bill.”

Morons.  The Senate better not pass this crap...

NRO

No, as far as I know, Neda and the victims of the Iran crackdown never got one of their own — but they did get a resolution of support, so never mind that comparison. What’s more irritating here, that the House would interrupt national business for this or that JJJ would have the stones to pay tribute to the “grace” and “mercy” of a guy who was accused of child molestation more than once and was known to pay $20+ million settlements in hush money to his accusers? Atheist bonus points to Junior for framing it as an “if there is a God” question, oblivious as he is to the implications for that subject if one believes Michael was “blessed” with a penchant for kiddie-fondling. Like Treacher says, it’s a good thing those cherubs have wings; they’re going to need them.

As I write this, the websites of CNN, FNC, ABC, and NBC are still in full banner mode. The only outlet not smoking the Jacko cracko is CBS. Thank god it’s Friday. Click the image to watch.

Oh fer the love of Pete!  Not like there's anthing ELSE going on in the world.

Video @ Hot Air.

Wakey wakey America: nightmare day is here. The day when the House of Representatives votes on probably the most pointless, damaging, wrong-headed and suicidally dumb piece of legislation since…

Well I was going to say Prohibition, but even Prohibition had a certain twisted logic to it. (You know: “Daddy, why does your breath smell funny? Why do you keep hitting Mom? Why’s there no money for food again this week?” etc. I’m not saying I’m persuaded by this argument but at least you can concede the Temperance movement had one).

So that must mean then that the Climate Bill - aka Waxman-Markey after the two, rather sinister-looking representatives who wrote it - being pushed through the House today is quite simply the worst piece of US legislation in living memory. And possibly beyond.

Why? Well at the cost of the biggest tax increase in American history, it will achieve precisely zilch.

(Actually, not quite zilch. There are one or two people who are going to be doing very nicely out of it, from the Libtard apparatchiks and Algore fellow travellers who’ve invested in the right carbon-trading companies to all those vested interests in the Mid-West who have been bought off with the inevitable pork barrelling concessions designed to ease the bill’s awkward passage.)

According to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation the Waxman-Markey bill -  whose centrepiece is a tax on carbon emissions, often known as “cap and trade” because it sounds innocuous and no one understands what it means - will by 2035 reduce aggregate gross domestic product by $7.4 trillion. (That’s more than 6 times the projected cost of President Obama’s ENTIRE universal healthcare programme).

But the misery doesn’t end there:

“In an average year, 844,000 jobs would be destroyed, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by almost 2 million.”

“Consumers would pay through the nose as electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, as President Obama once put it, by 90% adjusted for inflation. Inflation-adjusted gasoline prices would rise 74%, residential natural gas prices by 55% and the average family’s annual energy bill by $1,500.”

And how exactly will the world benefit from this swingeing tax on the stuff every one of us breathes out every minute of day?

“According to an analysis by Chip Knappenberger, administrator of the World Climate Report, the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by 2050 — the goal of the Waxman-Markey bill — would reduce global temperature in 2050 by a mere 0.05 degree Celsius.”

There’s ‘no debate on carbon pollution’ jeopardizing the planet, claims President Obama, who clearly gets all his information from the liberal broadcast media and the dead tree press, both of which for reasons known only to themselves cleave to the Al Gore “Anthropogenic Global Warming” meme like cognitive dissonant rats to a sinking ship.

Out here in the real world, meanwhile, there are fewer and fewer of us who want any more of their money of wasted on this bizarre eco-fascist fantasy. It was an exciting and novel distraction in the good old days when we still felt rich and a bit guilty for being rich and wanted to devise new ways of punishing ourselves for our (perceived) eco sins. But not any more. We haven’t the money to bribe the Third World to reduce its carbon emissions; nor are our economies nearly strong enough to absorb the burden of green taxation and zealous  and intrusive green legislation.

What’s more, the science is increasingly with us. Today I shall be praying with all my heart that Waxman-Markey dies the death it so fully deserves. So too will everyone else in the world who values liberty, a healthy global economy and plain common sense.

Melt the phones, people.  We cannot allow this Obomanation to pass!!

The Telegraph

Waxman-markey pre-liminary head-count as of Thursday afternoon (courtesy Myron Ebell):

218 needed to win…

Yes

Yes = 175
Leaning Yes = 35
TOTAL = 210

Undecided = 20

No

No = 190
Leaning No = 14
TOTAL = 204

Undecided or Won’t Say:

Kirkpatrick Az
Boyd Fla
Brown Fla
Bishop Ga
R Kirk Ill
Foster Ill
Donnelly Ind
R Jones NC
McIntyre NC
R Frelinghuysen NJ
Tonko NY
Arcuri NY
Space Ohio (he voted for it in committee)
Carney Penna.
Davis Tenn
Al Green Tex
Jackson Lee Tex
Ortiz Tex
Eddie Bernice Johnson Tex
Kind Wisc

Leaning Yes:

Mitchell Az
Cardoza Calif
Costa Calif
Baca Calif
R Castle Del
Grayson Fla
Meek Fla
Kozmas Fla
Abercrombie Hi
Bean Ill
R Cao La
Kratovil Md
R Ehlers Mich
Kildee Mich
Schauer Mich
Peters Mich
Clay Mo
Skelton Mo
Thompson Miss
Shuler NC
Adler NJ
Lance NJ
Meeks NY
McMahon NY
Murphy NY
R McHugh NY
Maffei NY
Driehaus Ohio
Fudge Ohio
Kilroy Ohio
Cooper Tenn
Edwards Tex
Rodriguez Tex
Nye Va
Kagan Wisc

Leaning No:

Salazar Colo
Marshall Ga
Boswell Iowa
Minnick Idaho
Halvorson Ill
Etheridge NC
Kissell NC
Massa NY
Kaptur Ohio
Boccieri Ohio
R Gerlach Penna
Hinojosa Tex
Mollohan WV
Rahall WV

The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour (against NBC's "The Philanthropist" debut and a repeat of "CSI: NY" on CBS). The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

The special was shot at the White House and featured the president answering questions about his health care plan. The president's primary message was that those who like their current insurance will be able to keep it and that taking no action will result in higher health care costs.

The special drew fire from Republican leadership after refusing to allow an official opposition response, or even a paid ad. ABC also interviewed Obama on "Good Morning America" to help promote the special.

UPDATE: ABC points out that "Questions for the President" continued into late night during "Nightline" (4.3 million) and helped boost the news program to pull more viewers than CBS' "Late Show" and NBC's "Tonight Show."

*Snork*

The Live Feed

The Senate is about to pay off the unions for helping get Obama elected. Senator Max Baucus (D, Mont.) looks to be about ready to propose a plan to pay for Obama’s massive, more than $1 trillion in new government spending on healthcare by instituting a new tax on many employees that currently have healthcare through their workplace (nearly 1 in 8 workers according to Peter Barnes). Never having been “income” before, Senator Baucus is prepared to claim it is and will be taxed accordingly.

… unless, of course, you happen to be a union member. If you are a Democrat supporting, Obama voting union member, why you don’t have to pay this never before levied tax at all. You get off scot free. Fuggedaboutit.

So much for equal under the law. Now, all you have to do is join a union and, voila, you don’t have to pay the taxes everyone else suffers under. Aren’t you glad that Obama is so interested in “fair,” and “balanced” governance? Isn’t it great that the Obama era is the “post-partisan&rdqu o; era? If it weren’t the “post-partisan&rdqu o; era, I’d fear for my life instead of just my tax bill this being an example of Democrat’s “fairness” for America.

One of the many problems with Obamacare is his claim that the program could be made “revenue neutral.” It is a thorough fantasy to imagine it could be so. We all know that for Obama to begin to pay for even a small portion of this mess taxes will have to be raised in many areas. And even that will never cover the cost of the trillions that Obama wants to spend on this policy. Obama’s meddling in healthcare will cost an exorbitant amount of money. Worse, it is likely that the states will be left with unfunded mandates that will force them to raise taxes as well (just like what happened with Medicare and Medicaid).

Additionally, Baucus has a sort of bait and switch in his proposal. Not only is he selling this idea to his biggest supporters in unions as a free ride for them in order to get their class warfare vote, but he is also pretending that only “the rich” will have to pay the healthcare-coverage-as-in come tax. He says that only a small number of Americans will be hit with the new tax scheme. To soften the blow, Baucus is proposing a cap on on his tax exclusion at a level “significantly above” the cost of current federal employees plans. That way, he claims, the tax would hit only those making $100,000 or above (or $200,000 for a couple). He then proposes that the tax cap be frozen at this current rate. It’s a classic class warfare maneuver. Soak the rich, give everyone else a pass… even though that “everyone else” will ostensibly benefit the most.

So, why would Baucus only want to tax such a small number of people? If his goal is to “pay” for Obama’s massive spending on healthcare, one might think Baucus would make the cap at a much lower income level so that more Americans would find themselves paying the new tax.

This is where it gets underhanded. Once the Baucus cap is frozen at today’s rates, as time goes on and incomes rise, more and more Americans will find themselves suddenly “rich” enough to be taxed unequally. This happened with the “Alternative Minimum Tax.” In that case, only “millionaires&rdquo ; were supposed to be hit harder, but as incomes rose more and more people found themselves forced into the bracket that triggered the tax. The obvious tactic is to hurt fewer Americans now to get the thing passed all the while knowing that more and more citizens will be hit later.

And why exempt all union members? Shouldn’t they share the same burden as other Americans? This is just more of Baucus’ underhanded political games being played with our health. Was Baucus trained by Tony Soprano? It sure seems so.

Publius' Forum

President Barack Obama has gone to the golf course at least 11 times since he took the oath of office a little more than six months ago--three rounds were played during the late January, 12-day holiday Obama took with his family in Hawaii; one at Andrews Air Force Base; and seven at Ft. Belvoir Golf Course, including a round on Sunday, Father’s Day, with Vice President Joe Biden.
 
These 11 rounds played by the president are documented through media reports of his golf trips. The White House press office told CNSNews.com that to confirm every round of golf played by the president since he took office would take “hours” because the only records kept are those sent to the media through e-mails that are not posted on the White House Web site because they are for media planning only.

Despite ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing violence in Iran, and an economy that Obama has described as the worst since the Great Depression, the president has golfed multiple times in the past several weeks--on April 26, May 16, May 25, May 31, June 7, June 9, June 14 and June 21.

Obama’s golf outings have generated favorable reports from the media, in contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush.
 
On Aug. 5, 2002, The Washington Post wrote about President Bush golfing near his parents’ home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Under the headline “Before Golf, Bush Decries Latest Deaths in Mideast,” staff writer Mike Allen described Bush as he “sprang from his golf cart at 6:15 a.m. and said he was distressed to hear about the latest suicide bombers in Israel.”

“Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand,” Allen wrote.

“However incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead,” Allen wrote.
 
“There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” he [Bush] said. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers.”

“His business out of the way,” Allen wrote, “Bush barely paused for breath before saying, ‘Thank you. Now watch this drive.’”
 
A search of news reports on Nexis revealed that photographers, but not reporters have access to Obama when he is on the links. But his outings have been covered, including by The Washington Post on June 9, 2009, in an article with the headline “Just the Sport for A Leader Most Driven.”

“What’s the deal? Why golf?” Post staff writer Richard Leiby wrote. “The attraction seems to be simple. It’s a great escape; the game demands such attention that nothing else matters. It’s time spent with friends, an unhurried afternoon in loose clothing (shorts seem to be Obama’s preference).”

Leiby continued, “To some, Obama’s frequent outings reflect a cool self-confidence.”

Leiby even quoted a sports psychologist who said Obama seemed able to play golf despite the grim reports by the media about the wars and the economy.

In August 2003, Bush said he decided to stop playing golf to show his respect for the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” Bush said in an interview with Politico and Yahoo News on May 13, 2008. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Bush said he made the decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner of human rights. He was golfing when he got the news.

“I was playing golf--I think I was in central Texas--and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, ‘It’s just not worth it anymore to do.’”

Bush was criticized for giving up golf, including by presidential historian Robert Dallek who was quoted in a May 14, 2008 article in The Washington Post.

Dallek said Bush’s remarks about Iraq “speak to his shallowness.” Dallek added: “That's his idea of sacrifice, to give up golf?”

God I hate you lefty hypocrites...

CNS News

The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The White House, Democrats, and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there’s one health care policy nightmare you won’t hear the Obamas hyping. It’s a tale of poor, minority patient-dumping in Chicago — with First Lady Michelle Obama’s fingerprints all over it.

Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago have raised red flags about the outsourcing program, run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has non-profit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care. Yet, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor in fiscal 2007 when Mrs. Obama was employed there—1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the non-partisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.

Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: “Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds.”

Don’t expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an “Urban Health Initiative,” Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents.” The program guaranteed “free” shuttle rides to and from the outside clinics.

In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming “RAAAAAAAAACISM!&rd quo; at the top of their lungs.

Joe Stephens of the Washington Post wrote: “To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Axelrod’s firm recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign—appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party ‘validators.’ They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications.”

Some health care experts saw through Mrs. Obama and her public relations man, David Axelrod—yes, the same David Axelrod who is now Mr. Obama’s senior adviser at the White House. The University of Chicago Medical Center hired Axelrod’s public relations firm, ASK Public Strategies, to promote Mrs. Obama’s Urban Health Initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett – now White House senior adviser.

Axelrod’s great contribution: Re-branding! His firm recommended re-naming the initiative after “[i]nternal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word ‘urban’ is code for ‘black’ or ‘black and poor’….Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative.” Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.

In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas’ community exploded after a young boy covered by Medicaid was turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams’ mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama’s hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics, and Tylenol and shoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.

I’ll guarantee you this: You’ll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the First Lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the health care system.

Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Mr. Axelrod’s grand plan. The group released a statement expressing “grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA)” – signed by President Reagan, by the way – “and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.

Michelle Malkin

And that suits those doing the blacklisting particularly if they call themselves liberal and claim to care about censorship and human rights.

But some liberals forget to keep quiet and make public what is really going on.

Richard Lindzen is an MIT physicist whose scientific investigations make him sceptical about Global Warming. But his significant scientific pedigree does not matter to those less qualified who believe otherwise. He recently told the GreenHellBlog that after a house fire he approached a Boston art appraiser to value an antique rug.

Professor Lindzen received the following response by email:

"I am sorry to inform you that after some consideration, I’ve decided not to perform the appraisal service that you’ve requested. Your writing on the subject of global warming is offensive to me personally, and I feel that I would have difficulty being an impartial appraiser of value given my view on the subject."

We smiled when the email was revealed and thought that Professor Lindzen and Boston could do with a new art appraiser.

However it was amusing only until we asked a number of US companies to work for us. We needed companies to make DVDs and provide translated subtitles for our new documentary Not Evil Just Wrong. Just like Professor Lindzen it challenges liberal orthodoxy - taking a critical look at environmentalism and Global Warming hysteria.

And just like Professor Lindzen we felt the chill hand of discrimination. One of the companies, in the midst of the biggest recessions in living memory, said "our order was too big" and declined to bid for the contract.

However, the Atlanta based International Services translation company really gave the game away when in an email they explained why they were refusing to provide us with their services.

CEO Sue Ellen Reager stated:

"I have researched your film on the web, and do not see scientific reviews or major press reviews in support (may be too early), and needed that support to assure cooperation from our translators. Because we translate with highly educated people around the world, located in countries like Germany and France, who take Global Warming very seriously, I am fairly sure that several countries will refuse to participate in this project."

In a follow up telephone conversation Ms Reager explained to "you guys in Europe" how the system really worked.

Ms Reager and her company have "worked in Hollywood for years" she explained. Their client list includes CNN, Turner Broadcasting, Google and Microsoft.

At first she blamed her European translators.

"Your content looks like it is refuting many assertions made by Al Gore and Europe is pro Al Gore... and I am pretty sure they will refuse to participate...we deal with really classy people in Germany and anything attacking Al Gore they will refuse."

Speaking on the phone Ms Reager said that in the email she was "just being nice" to us because we were Europeans and that she was worried that the film might be like some of the "Republican shit" that gets released in the US.

The real problem is with those pesky Republicans in the US who insist on making films that she and Hollywood don't agree with.

"I didn't know whether your documentary is fact based or part of the rubbish that Republicans make. You wouldn't believe the crap they put out. It is unbelievable shit, incredible lies," she said.

Many Republicans put out films that are just "faith based imaginings," she added.

We are European but isn't Altlanta the home of one of your famous civil rights leaders who in a "faith based imagining" dreamed that people one day would be judged by the content of their character and nothing else.

This dream does not seem to have reached Hollywood - just yet. It is a one party town where character, hard work and talent count for nothing. No dissent form the leftist orthodoxy seems to be tolerated and those who disagree experience quiet discrimination that slowly strangles their ability to work in the industry.

Not evil, just wrong

The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. Dr. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, asks:

[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?

You can check out Dr. Pielke’s blog for a detailed rebuttal of how the report presents science in his area of expertise, the study of trends in natural disasters and their relation to climate change. While the new federal report (prepared by 13 agencies and the White House) paints a dire picture of climate change’s impacts, Dr. Pielke says that the authors of this new report, like those of previous reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Stern Review, cherrypick weak evidence that fits their own policy preferences. He faults all these reports for all relying on “non-peer reviewed, unsupportable studies rather than the relevant peer-reviewed literature” and for “featuring non-peer-reviewed work conducted by the authors.”

Dr. Pielke contrasts these reports’ conclusions about trends in natural disasters with the some quite different findings last year by the federal Climate Change Science Program. Dr. Pielke summarizes some of its less sensational conclusions:

1. Over the long-term, U.S. hurricane landfalls have been declining.
2. Nationwide there have been no long-term increases in drought.
3. Despite increases in some measures of precipitation . . . there have not been corresponding increases in peak streamflows (high flows above 90th percentile).
4. There have been no observed changes in the occurrence of tornadoes or thunderstorms
5. There have been no long-term increases in strong East Coast winter storms (ECWS), called Nor’easters.
6. There are no long-term trends in either heat waves or cold spells, though there are trends within shorter time periods in the overall record.

Okay, liberals, I have a radical idea I want to run by you: the Iranian government is bad and worthy of some of your outrage.

Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy. Iran is not a beauty queen speaking out against gay marriage, or Sarah Palin. Why in the world would you want to direct any scorn towards a brutal theocracy seeking nuclear weapons? It’s not obvious, but let me explain.

Now, I know it doesn’t take much to convince conservatives to be against Iran. You just tell them, “It’s full of foreigners.” And they’ll be like, “What?! Let’s nuke it! Let’s nuke it now!” Liberals, of course, are more sophisticated and will take a much more measured approach. When you tell them that Iran has an evil government worthy of outrage, they’ll point out the obvious — that it’s not America.

Well, that’s true, and I know America is the biggest meddler and cause of trouble everywhere, but also remember it’s now run by President Obama. Thus, if you’re too critical of America, you’ll also be critical of Obama, which is de facto racist. So you have to admit that’s a pretty good argument to redirect some of that scorn at another country.

Okay — I know the first country that comes to mind if you are not going to hate America is Israel. Israel is a close ally of America — which is pretty suspicious — while Iran constantly condemns America, something sophisticated people are known to do since America is full of the greatest threat to this planet: Mid-Westerners. Once again, I’m going to suggest something radical. …

Maybe you can try judging a country regardless of its opinion on America.

The Iranians just had an election stolen from them by their government. Remember how angry you were when you pretended the election was stolen in 2000? Why, you whined about it for years and years. Some of you still even whine about it today. Again, you guys were only pretending an election was stolen. Now think if the election were actually stolen, and Bush declared himself winner by 63 percent of the vote. You’d be so angry you might actually do something more than whine about it. Well, that is what’s happening with the Iranians, and they’re taking to the streets. If you miss the pretend anger about 2000, maybe you can direct some real anger at what’s happened in Iran.

Excellent.

Pajamas Media

In 2005, La Raza received $15.2 million in federal grant money for charter schools and get-out-the-vote campaigns and in 2006 got another $4 million in congressional earmarks for housing reform. The organization’s financial statements for 2008 show that it received another $5.1 million in federal grants, and holds assets worth $97.4 million. La Raza has received more than $30 million from the federal government since 1996.  

The Council of La Raza arranged to have its voice included in congressional hearings by House and Senate leaders and garnered an extra $4 million in federal tax funds earmarked by an anonymous senator in 2007 while continuing to lobby for open borders, driver’s licenses for illegals, and amnesty leading to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in the country. 

Many of Mexico’s leading politicians encourage the takeover of sovereign U.S. property, and La Raza encourages those statements, while offering advice about avoiding the terms “illegals” and “amnesty.” Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told Mexicans in a state of the nation address that “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.” In 1995, President Ernesto Zedillo told a group of U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent in Dallas that “You are Mexicans, Mexicans who live North of the border,” suggesting they owed a higher allegiance to Mexico than the United States. Zedillo brought a 1997 La Raza gathering in Chicago to its feet in applause when he said that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders. All those statements accord with the accusations of the colonialism that the U.S. is constantly accused of pursuing by its enemies.

Go read the rest.

Human Events

The firing of Gerald Walpin as Inspector General was not an isolated incident, as the Chicago Tribune reports today.  Two more IGs have been dismissed in the past two weeks, and Senator Charles Grassley has started demanding answers.  The sudden push to rid the government of independent watchdogs appears to coincide with Barack Obama’s plans to use government spending to get control over more aspects of American life, such as with stimulus spending, the financial sector, and volunteer organizations (via Dan Riehl):

He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government’s multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation’s financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate.

The disagreement stems from a claim by the Treasury Department that Barofsky is not entirely independent of the agency he is assigned to examine — a claim that has prompted a stern letter from a Republican senator warning that agency officials are encroaching on the integrity of an office created to protect taxpayers. …

The dispute comes as Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into the abrupt firings within the last week of two other inspectors general ¿ one of whom was fired by the White House and the other by the chair of the International Trade Commission.

Both inspectors general had investigated sensitive subjects at the time of their firings.

Grassley is now concerned about whether a pattern is emerging in which the independence of the government’s top watchdogs — whose jobs were authorized by Congress to look out for waste, fraud and abuse — is being put at risk.

The positions themselves indicate where the White House wants to go with its efforts.  Barofsky ruffled feathers in April when his watchdog report showed that the Obama administration had placed insufficient safeguards on Porkulus spending.   This later caused Joe Biden to shrug and tell the media, “Some people are being scammed already,” as if it wasn’t the job of the administration to stop it from happening.  Barofsky now has a leash around his neck, with the White House insisting that he answers only to Treasury.

This is what you progressive shitheads have elected:  A Chicago thug.

Hot Air

A top Republican senator is asking whether First Lady Michelle Obama's office played any role in last week's firing of former service program Inspector General Gerald Walpin. 

The concern, one of several surrounding Walpin's sudden dismissal, stems from the timing of a staff switch in the first lady's office. Just days before Walpin got the boot, the White House announced Michelle Obama's chief of staff would be appointed senior adviser to the agency Walpin was responsible for monitoring. Michelle Obama said at the time she and her outgoing staffer, Jackie Norris, would work closely going forward. 

With accusations now flying that the Walpin firing was politically motivated, the personnel change only adds to the list of questions Republicans have for the president. 

The White House insists the first lady had nothing to do with the firing. 

"She was not involved in any way in the decision to remove Mr. Walpin," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told FOXNews.com. 

Responding to criticism, President Obama on Tuesday offered a more detailed explanation for why he fired Walpin. In a letter sent through his special counsel, Norman Eisen, to leaders of the Senate committee that oversees AmeriCorps, Obama argued the agency's chief watchdog was so "confused" and "disoriented" at a board meeting that some questioned "his capacity to serve."

But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is looking for more documentation. 

He has sent a letter to Alan Solomont, board chairman for the Corporation for National and Community Service, asking that he provide all relevant correspondence from several offices and individuals. Included in that list was "contacts with officials in the Office of the First Lady." 

The letter did not elaborate on why the senator is seeking that information, but a Grassley aide confirmed that the Republican asked because of the recent staff switch in the first lady's office. 

Grassley's questions go far beyond that issue. He is among several Republican lawmakers who have sounded alarms about the firing and suggested President Obama canned Walpin in retaliation for investigating one of his supporters, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. Johnson was accused of misusing federal funds for an academy he founded. He eventually reached a settlement with the U.S. attorney's office.

Grassley, a frequent defender of government watchdogs, fired off thinly veiled accusations against the administration in his letter. 

"Inspectors general have a statutory duty to report to Congress. Intimidation or retaliation against those who freely communicate their concerns to members of the House and Senate cannot be tolerated," Grassley wrote. "This is especially true when such concerns are as legitimate and meritorious as Mr. Walpin's appear to be."

FNN

After being briefed today on President Obama’s firing last week of Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the president did not abide by the same law that he co-sponsored – and she wrote – about firing Inspectors General.

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal.”

McCaskill, a key Obama ally, said that the president’s stated reason for the termination, “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.” 

She added that she was “hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible.”

 We’ve covered this story HERE  and HERE and HERE.

From ABC News, oddly enough...

It has finally happened. With yesterday's naming of Border Czar Alan Bersin, the Obama administration has by any reasonable reckoning passed the Romanov Dynasty in the production of czars. The Romanovs ruled Russia from 1613 with the ascension of Michael I through the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in 1917. During that time, they produced 18 czars. While it is harder to exactly count the number of Obama administration czars, with yesterday's appointment it seems fair to say it is now certainly in excess of 18.

In addition to Bersin, we have energy czar Carol Browner, urban czar Adolfo Carrion, Jr., infotech czar Vivek Kundra, faith-based czar Joshua DuBois, health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, new TARP czar Herb Allison, stimulus accountability czar Earl Devaney, non-proliferation czar Gary Samore, terrorism czar John Brennan, regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, and Guantanamo closure czar Daniel Fried. We also have a host of special envoys that fall into the czar category including AfPak special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell, special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia Dennis Ross, Sudan special envoy J. Scott Gration and climate special envoy Todd Stern. That's 18. 

This is a very conservative estimate, however. I will allow you to pick whom you would like out of the remaining candidates. For example you could count de facto car czar Steve Rattner even though the administration went out of its way to say they weren't going to have a car czar...  before he ultimately emerged as the car czar. You could count National Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair, often referred to as the intelligence czar, although you might not want to because his job has a different kind of status on the org chart. I'm not going to count Paul Volcker who was referred to as Obama's economic czar because Obama is not making much use of Volcker (at least according to reports). 

But you certainly might want to count people deemed by the media to be the "cyber security czar" or the "AIDs czar" or the "green jobs czar" even if there are reasons to quibble about the designation of one or two of them. I also won't count Michelle Malkin's designation of White House science advisor John Holdren as "weather czar" because as a matter of principle I won't count anything that horrifying woman does. Nonetheless you could certainly call the talented Holdren the nation's science "czar" without stretching things.

Foreign Policy

CBS News and U.S. News have posted a stunning, disturbing opinion piece by Bonnie Erbe. Here's who she is, for those of you who may not be familiar with her work:

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

Top credentials. Her voice is loud and reaches far. Here's what it's saying:

Round Up Hate-Promoters Now, Before Any More Holocaust Museum Attacks

Erbe takes her lead from a statement made by Playwright Janet Langhart Cohen on CNN following the Holocaust Museum shooting:

She said something must be done about ridding the Internet and the public dialogue of hate speech. I agree.

And what is that "something"?

Isn't it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill?

I don't know, Bonnie, is it? Who is going to determine who the haters are? And without a Department of PreCrime, who can determine when one of them will kill? Who is going to be doing the round up? Are we going to maybe house them at Gitmo now that we're clearing that place out? Any trials planned in your little fantasy?

And what do you suggest "we" do if some decide to resist the "round ups"?

Why is it your "Final Solution"...I mean, "Last Roundup" to oppose neo-Nazism sounds just like something the Nazis would do, Bonnie?

I saw this coming when I wrote "Holocaust Museum shooting must not be exploited to erode liberty" the other day, citing a blogger on a popular left-wing site and expressing concern that it represented the tip of an iceberg. As we can see, it hasn't taken long for mainstream "authorized journalists" to take up the cause.

I note the chilling Ms. Erbe is affiliated with the Thomas Jefferson Street blog. I can't help but wonder what she'd have to say about an extreme insurrectionist promulgating violent views like this:

the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.

If Ms. Erbe and those like her get their wish, we will find out how deep that tree's roots go, how wide its branches spread.

So who am I siding with, the haters?

From where I sit, that designation belongs to Ms. Erbe. And as far a neo-Nazis go, I can't help but notice many of her political sympathies appear both national and socialist in scope.

My friend and colleague Mike Vanderboegh has sized things up well in his open letter to Erbe:

You wish to sweep away those that you find "hateful." Have you ever considered that there are many who find your ideas "hateful?"

Most of the Founders understood that you should never pass a law that you wouldn't be willing to see enforced upon you by your own worst enemy. (John Adams didn't, but then he and his party were swept from power by the reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts.) If you really believe what you wrote, and worse, get what you ask for, the resulting armed resistance to such a tyrannical proposal would sweep away the safe, mythical cocoon within which you seem to live.

And if you think that tyranny and civil war cannot come to this country, as divided ideologically and morally as we presently are, you are whistling past the graveyard of history.

A government that would do what Bonnie Erbe demands is the very reason Thomas Jefferson wrote:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

"Throw off."

And how would they do that?

Tomorrow, barring any current events that might push it to a back burner, I'll explore the limits of the First Amendment, what you'd have to do to abuse it to the point where others have a right to intervene. Contrary to common wisdom, you can yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

The media is a abuzed(sic) about this, and the lefty blogs are acting as though this being some nuance of the right.

Wrong. Let’s not forget that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, both antisemitic and neither considered spokesmen for the right.

But after some research it appears the shooter, James Von Brunn is in fact - despite the protestations of the Kos Kids - a registered democrat from Maryland.[I have not been able to confirm this yet -- ed.]

So much for the “Right Wing Conspiracy”.

Fact is that most of the Holocaust Denier crowd is from the left. Many of the groups follow the writings of Naom Chomsky, the premier antisemite. Paul Bogdanor’s website is devoted to the subject of leftwing antisemitism, as well as Communism and Genocide committed under left wing ideology.

UPDATE: More here on left wing antisemitism here too.

UPDATE: More to the point. Kathie Shaidle notes:

“The anti-semitism of von Brunn is the first thing one notices when visiting these bizarre websites. However, like those of most “white supremacists”, many of von Brunn’s political views track “Left” rather than “Right.” Clearly, a re-evaluation of these obsolete definitions is long overdue.

For example, he unleashed his hatred of both Presidents Bush and other “neo-conservatives& rdquo; in online essays. As even some “progressives&rdquo ; such as the influential Adbusters magazine publicly admit, “neoconservative&rd quo; is often used as a derogatory code word for “Jews”. As well, even a cursory glance at “white supremacist” writings reveals a hatred of, say, big corporations that is virtually indistinguishable from that of anti-globalization activists.

James von Brunn’s advocacy of 9/11 conspiracy theories also gives him an additional commonality with individuals on the far-left.

None of this will surprise readers of Jonah Goldberg’s bestseller Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change , which clearly demonstrates that “fascism” of the kind advocated by the British National Party (BNP) and the likes of James W. von Brunn is just as likely to reflect “leftwing” views as “rightwing” ones.”

Imagine that.

Mac's Mind

Well, I'm glad that's over! Now that our silver-tongued president has gone to Cairo to soothe Muslims' hurt feelings, they love us again! Muslims in Pakistan expressed their appreciation for President Barack Obama's speech by bombing a fancy hotel in Peshawar this week.

Operating on the liberal premise that what Arabs really respect is weakness, Obama listed, incorrectly, Muslims' historical contributions to mankind, such as algebra (actually that was the ancient Babylonians), the compass (that was the Chinese), pens (the Chinese again) and medical discoveries (huh?).

But why be picky? All these inventions came in mighty handy on Sept. 11, 2001! Thanks, Muslims!!

Obama bravely told the Cairo audience that 9/11 was a very nasty thing for Muslims to do to us, but on the other hand, they are victims of colonization.

Except we didn't colonize them. The French and the British did. So why are Arabs flying planes into our buildings and not the Arc de Triomphe? (And gosh, haven't the Arabs done a lot with the Middle East since the French and the British left!)

In another sharks-to-kittens comparison, Obama said, "Now let me be clear, issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam." No, he said, "the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."

So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don't have enough female firefighters here in America.

Delusionally, Obama bragged about his multiculti worldview, saying, "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal." In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, women "choose" to cover their heads on pain of losing them.

Obama rolled out the crucial liberal talking point against America's invasion of Iraq, saying Iraq was a "war of convenience," while Afghanistan was a "war of necessity." Liberals cling to this nonsense doggerel as a shield against their hypocrisy on Iraq. Either both wars were wars of necessity or both wars were wars of choice.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan -- nor any country -- attacked us on 9/11. Both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as many other Muslim countries, were sheltering those associated with the terrorists who did attack us on 9/11 -- and who hoped to attack us again.

The truth is, all wars are wars of choice, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Gulf War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. OK, maybe the war on teen obesity is a war of convenience, but that's the only one I can think of.

The modern Democrat Party chooses -- really chooses, not like Saudi women "choosing" to wear hijabs -- to fight no wars. But the Democrats couldn't say that immediately after 9/11, so they pretended to support the war in Afghanistan and then had to spend the next 7 1/2 years trying to come up with a distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq.

Maybe next they can tell us why fighting Hitler -- who never invaded the U.S. and had no plans to do so -- was a "necessity" in a way that fighting Saddam wasn't. (Obama on Hitler: "Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale." Whereas Saddam Hussein was just messing with the Kuwaitis, Kurds and Shiites.)

Meanwhile, Muslims throughout the Middle East are yearning for their own Saddam Husseins to be taken out by U.S. invaders so they can be liberated, too. (Then we'll see how many women -- outside of an American college campus -- "choose" to wear hijabs.) The war-of-choice/war-of-nece ssity point must be as mystifying to a Muslim audience as a discussion of gay marriage.

Arabs aren't afraid of us; they're afraid of Iran. But our aspiring Jimmy Carter had no tough words for Iran. To the contrary, in Cairo, Obama endorsed Iran's quest for nuclear "power," while attacking -- brace yourself -- America for helping remove Iranian loon Mohammad Mossadegh.

The CIA's taking out Mossadegh was probably the greatest thing that agency ever did. This was back in 1953, before it became a collection of lawyers and paper-pushers.

Mossadegh was as crazy as a March hare (which is really saying something when your competition is Moammar Gadhafi, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein). He gave interviews lying in bed in pink pajamas. He wept, he fainted, and he set his nation on a path of permanent impoverishment by "nationalizing" the oil wells, where they sat idle after the British companies that knew how to operate them pulled out.

But he was earthy and hated the British, so left-wing academics adored Mossadegh. The New York Times compared him to Thomas Jefferson.

True, Mossadegh had been "elected" by the Iranian parliament -- but only in the chaos following the assassination of the sitting prime minister.

In short order, the shah dismissed this clown, but Mossadegh refused to step down, so the CIA forcibly removed him and allowed the shah's choice to assume the office. This "coup," as liberal academics term it, was approved by liberals' favorite Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, and supported by such ponderous liberal blowhards as John Foster Dulles.

For Obama to be apologizing for one of the CIA's greatest accomplishments isn't just crazy, it's Ramsey Clark crazy.

Obama also said that it was unfair that "some countries have weapons that others do not" and proclaimed that "any nation -- including Iran -- should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Wait -- how about us? If a fanatical holocaust denier with messianic delusions can have nuclear power, can't the U.S. at least build one nuclear power plant every 30 years?

I'm sure Iran's compliance will be policed as well as North Korea's was. Clinton struck a much-heralded "peace deal" with North Korea in 1994, giving them $4 billion to construct nuclear facilities and 500,000 tons of fuel oil in return for a promise that they wouldn't build nuclear weapons. The ink wasn't dry before the North Koreans began feverishly building nukes.

But back to Iran, what precisely do Iranians need nuclear power for, again? They're not exactly a manufacturing powerhouse. Iran is a primitive nation in the middle of a desert that happens to sit on top of a large percentage of the world's oil and gas reserves. That's not enough oil and gas to run household fans?

Obama's "I'm OK, You're OK" speech would be hilarious, if it weren't so terrifying.

Get 'em, Ann...

Or is Commander Fitzpatrick III Guilty of Mutiny?

The answer to one of the above questions is absolutely, YES! --Either Barack Hussein Obama is guilty of treason, as formally charged in a March 2009 federal criminal complaint filed by retired Navy LCDR Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III, on March 17^th, (or) LCDR Walter Fitzpatrick is indeed guilty of Mutiny, - “forcible or passive resistance to lawful authority; especially: concerted revolt (as of a naval crew) against discipline or a superior officer.”

There is no higher authority for a U.S. Naval Commander than the superior office of Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, the President of the Unites States. Yet, LCDR Fitzpatrick has publicly and formally charged President Barack Hussein Obama with the high crime of treason in a federal complaint filed with James R. Dedrick U.S. Attorney, Eastern District Tennessee, and Edgar Schmutzer, Dedrick’s Assistant U.S. Attorney on March 17, 2009.

In doing so, LCDR Fitzpatrick opened himself up to the very serious charge of mutiny, a crime which requires Court Martial and carries the penalty of death.

In the criminal complaint, Fitzpatrick has charged Barack Hussein Obama (and others alleged complicit) with treason, an act that if false, constitutes an act of mutiny on behalf of Commander Fitzpatrick.

However, if Commander Fitzpatrick is right, then the act constitutes the ultimate selfless act of true patriotism, and a glowing example of what it means to stand on an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

By his actions, Commander Fitzpatrick is either a traitor guilty of mutiny, or a shining example of heroic patriotism, willing to risk all in defense of the U.S. Constitution and the people it was written to protect. The situation could hardly be more serious! If this were a game of high stakes poker, the Commander just went all-in!

From the official complaint-- “Your criminal ascension manifests a clear and present danger. You fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works. - Confident holding your silent agreement and admission, I identify you as a foreign born domestic enemy. - My sworn duty, Mr. Obama, is to stand against what you stand for. You are not my president. You are not my commander in chief.”

There’s nothing at all ambiguous about this statement. The basis upon which Commander Fitzpatrick makes his charge is equally straight forward.

- “you [Mr. Obama] have broken in and entered the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, dissembling, and deceit. Posing as an imposter president and commander in chief, you have stripped civilian command and control over the military establishment. Known military criminal actors --command racketeers --are now free in the exercise of military government intent upon destruction of America’s constitutional government.”

You can read THE OBAMA FEDERAL CRIMINAL COMPLAINT in its entirely at Commander Fitzpatrick’s blog site, The JAG Hunter...Dauntless and unafraid! - where you can also find additional follow-up information.

Has Fitzpatrick Lost his Mind?

Fitzpatrick reports that two days after Commander Fitzpatrick filed his charges against the President of the United States, the Secret Service showed up on his doorstep - “Two Secret Service special agents came to my residence two months ago… on 19 March 2009, as directed by James Russell Dedrick, United States Attorney for the Eastern District, Tennessee. Dedrick and his assistant, attorney Edgar Schmutzer, triggered the Secret Service alert and reaction upon receipt of my federal criminal complaint naming Mr. Obama in commission of the crime of TREASON. Dedrick reported me a threat to the imposter Obama.

The two Secret Service agents, escorted by two local police officers, arrived at eight minutes before 3 o’clock in the afternoon. They all left ‘bout an hour later. - I’m still here. - It’s been two months. - Mr. Obama admits his TREASON.”

This may in fact establish some very critical points in what seems to be a storm of monumental consequence brewing on the horizon.

• Questioning Obama’s eligibility constitutes a “threat to national security” in the minds of leftists who clearly don’t care whether or not Obama is a Constitutional President. But what about the rest of us?
• The fact that Fitzpatrick was not immediately taken into custody on the spot is an indication that there is doubt in the minds of Secret Service agents and local law enforcement about Obama’s eligibility.
• The fact that Fitzpatrick has NOT been charged with mutiny is a very strong indication that his charges of treason against Obama, may be very well founded.
• Commander Fitzpatrick takes his oath to the Constitution, more seriously than most.

Commander Fitzpatrick is a career Naval Officer who graduated the Annapolis Naval Academy in 1975 and spent a lifetime serving his country with honor and distinction. He is not known as any form of conspiracy crackpot or extreme right-wing rabble rouser.

As of this writing, he has not been charged with mutiny for his formal charge of treason leveled against the sitting President of the United States, almost three months after those charges were filed, and Secret Service agents effectively vetted those charges on March 19^th.

If Fitzpatrick’s charge of treason against the sitting President is false, why has he not been charged with mutiny? Why did Secret Service agents leave without arresting Commander Fitzpatrick on March 19^th, or at any time since?

Does Fitzpatrick Stand Alone?

No, he does not stand alone, and Obama knows it. In a telephone interview with Commander Fitzpatrick yesterday, he stated that according to the MANUAL FOR COURTS-MARTIAL, he MUST be charged with mutiny if his treason charges against Barack Obama are in any way false. He further explained that he is fully prepared to be charged and accept the potentially severe consequences, if his charges against Obama are not true and accurate.

Fitzpatrick seems the first to take a criminal route to addressing what many Americans believe to be a fraudulent and unconstitutional president and administration. Several others have taken a civil suit approach to forcing Obama out in the open, thus far to no avail.

Over 400,000 American citizens have signed a national petition demanding that Barack Obama keep his campaign promise to operate a “transparent” government, beginning with his own history.

Yet to date, Mr. Obama has spent millions in legal fees to block his true identity from becoming public. His entire past, from birth to adoption in Indonesia, to his travel on an Indonesian passport, his college records, including how such an average individual was able to afford such an expensive Ivy League education, and how he came to be friends with so many evil anti-American individuals during that period, remain a secret guarded far more carefully than actual matters of national security.

Hundreds across the country are now filing Grand Jury Indictments against Obama, via the American Grand Jury initiative, which makes criminal allegations against Obama, very similar to those made by Commander Fitzpatrick.

No, the Commander is by no means alone… although he acted alone in the filing of his formal criminal complaint against his alleged Commander-in-Chief. Is he nuts? I see no signs that he is anything less than a true patriot of impeccable decency, honor and intellect.

Those who oppose his actions will undoubtedly call him every nasty name under the sun. But they will do so without foundation, based upon the research I have done on the man.

Thank you, Canada.  No one in the Obama felaciating U.S. press will touch this.

Canada Free Press

LONDON (Reuters) - Climate change has contributed to a flattening of the complex, multi-layered architecture of Caribbean coral reefs, compromising their role as a nursery for fish stocks and a buffer against tropical storms, a study shows.

The analysis of 500 surveys of 200 reefs, conducted between 1969 and 2008, showed the most complex types of reef had been virtually wiped out across the entire Caribbean.

Such reefs -- typified by Table Corals of over 1 meter across and huge antler-shaped Staghorn Corals -- act as a sanctuary for local fish stocks and a hunting ground for larger, commercially fished species.

Many have been replaced with the flattest types of rubble-strewn reef, which now cover about three quarters of the Caribbean's reef area, up from about a fifth in the 1970s, said the study, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The biggest impact has occurred in the last decade, said the report by researchers from Britain's University of East Anglia and Canada's Simon Fraser University.

"Lack of ... refuges for species with commercial importance, such as lobsters and large fishes may compromise the long-term sustainability of fisheries and fishing communities," the report said.

Flatter reefs are also less effective in protecting coastal homes and villages from storm swells and tidal surges.

"The importance of this is going to increase," said Lorenzo Alvarez of the University of East Anglia, who led the study. "Many scientists think there will be more hurricanes in the future."

The degradation of Caribbean reefs is not entirely linked to climate change, with disease killing about 90 percent of Elkhorn and Staghorn Corals in the 1970s, but a second period of coral destruction is now under way.

New damage is typified by "coral bleaching," which occurs when the tiny organisms that build coral reefs become stressed and abandon their colonies.

"We suggest that the last period of decline is partly due to climate change, but also due to several other human impacts such as over-fishing and coastal development," Alvarez said. "In future, we'll need to change our behavior and reduce the stress on the reefs."

Still trying to polish that turd, huh?

Rooters

I have compared global warming alarmism as a kind of religion, complete with its own versions of sin, repentance, atonement, ritual (kids go through recycling drills) and indulgence (purchase carbon offsets to compensate for your private jet travel). Now it turns out that there’s another element: a desire to kill heretics. Here’s a collection of calls for executions of “global warming deniers.” I don’t see any specifics on what method should be used. Burning at the stake, an old favorite, might produce too much in the way of carbon emissions. Lethal injection might require use of petrochemicals produced from carbon-emitting fossile fuels. Perhaps hanging by the neck until dead with a noose made of natural fibers produced on a certified organic farm which was not reclaimed from rain forest.

I knew this was coming.  Just look at Surrogate...

The Washington Examiner

In case you hadn't noticed, Michelle Obama has been in London recently on a flying unofficial visit with her daughters. She hadn't really come to see us, I don't think. It was more that we were a handy stopover on the place she really wanted to see - Paris. Still, she and the girls did get to see The Lion King, which was nice.

Anyway, I know there are some American readers out there who have accused us Brits of being a bit too willing to drink the "Obama Kool-Aid." I also know that there's another American reader - press spokesman in the White House, name of Robert Gibbs - who considers the British media essentially trivial and worthless: fine for the football results and ephemera like that but not for anything serious or more important.

So, to demonstrate just how outrageous and absurd these allegations are, I thought I'd give you a few examples of the modest, understated coverage we gave to the woman we mere Brits have affectionately come to know as The Mighty Goddess Queen, She Whose Beauty And Wisdom Shine Forth Like Mighty Beacons Of Burning Wondrousness To Bring Light And Goodness To All Dark Corners Of The World.

Here are the stories. I have removed the newspapers' names to spare them any embarrassment.

Michelle Obama bumps into sick orphan girl on way to Lion King musical, heals her, gets her lots of lovely clothes in Top Shop, invites her to join her in the royal box at the theatre, then adopts her.

Top London chocolatier declares: "Not even my finest confectionary is as smooth and lickable as Michelle Obama's gorgeous skin."

Kate Moss complains: "Why aren't my arms as photogenic and perfect as Michelle's?"

Repentant Jihadist says: "I was just about to blow up a bus with my rucksack bomb, when I happened to see lovely Michelle Obama waving from a car. I could see at once that she was a kindred spirit who shared my pain. So I've decided to renounce violence forever and become a 20/20 cricket player instead."

Evil Scar - inspired by Michelle Obama's radiant presence in the audience - decides he won't after all kill Simba's dad, which does present plot problems, but nevertheless sets splendid example of healing and forgiveness which all world should follow.

So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Gibbs. We in the British media are tough, fearless, uncompromising and we set the world's agenda with stories so hardhitting no one else would dare print them.

Heh!

The Telegraph Blog

The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers Monday not to use skin products made by Clarcon because of high levels of disease-causing bacteria found during a recent inspection.

Clarcon Biological Chemistry Laboratory Inc. of Roy, Utah, issued a voluntary recall of some skin sanitizers and skin protectants marketed under several different brand names, the FDA said in a statement.

Consumers should not use any Clarcon products and should throw them away, the FDA said.

Analyses of several samples of over-the-counter topical antimicrobial skin sanitizer and skin protectant products revealed high levels of various bacteria, including some associated with unsanitary conditions, according to the agency. Some of these bacteria can cause opportunistic infections of the skin and underlying tissues and could result in medical or surgical attention as well as permanent damage.

Examples of products that should be discarded include Citrushield Lotion, Dermasentials DermaBarrier, Dermassentials by Clarcon, Antimicrobial Hand Sanitizer, Iron Fist Barrier Hand Treatment, Skin Shield Restaurant, Skin Shield Industrial, Skin Shield Beauty Salon Lotion, Total Skin Care Beauty and Total Skin Care Work.

The FDA said its findings, following a recent inspection of the Clarcon facility, are particularly concerning because the products are promoted as antimicrobial agents that claim to treat open wounds and damaged skin and protect against various infectious diseases. The inspection uncovered serious deviations from FDA's Good Manufacturing Practice requirements, the agency said.

Fox News

Do you want to avoid buying products made in certain countries?

Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or China?

If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690, 691 or 692, the product is MADE IN CHINA.

471 is Made in Taiwan.

Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products “MADE IN CHINA”, so they don’t show from which country it is made.

However, you may now refer to the barcode.

Remember if the first 3 digits are:

690-692 CHINA
00 - 09 USA & CANADA
30 - 37 FRANCE
40 - 44 GERMANY
47 Taiwan
49 JAPAN
50 UK

BUY USA by watching for “0″ at the beginning of the number.

Notoriously Conservative

UPDATE:

From About.com:

Comments: The information above is unreliable and misleading, for two reasons:

1. There's more than one kind of bar code in use around the world. UPC bar codes, the type most commonly used in the United States, do not typically contain a country identifier. A different type of bar code known as EAN-13 does contain a country identifier, but it's more commonly used in Europe and other countries outside the U.S.

 

2. Even in the case of EAN-13 bar codes, the digits associated with country of origin don't necessarily specify where the product was manufactured, but rather where the bar code itself was registered. So, for example, a product manufactured in China and sold in France could have an EAN-13 bar code identifying it as a French product.

Looking for a "Made in XYZ" label is generally more helpful, but, particularly with regard to foods and beverages, there's no sure-fire way to determine in every case where a product or its components originated. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration mandates country-of-origin labeling on many food products, but there are exceptions, most notably the entire category of "processed foods." Consumer groups are currently advocating the closure of these loopholes.

When Eric Holder became U.S. attorney general, he promised to administer the law in an objective, nonpolitical manner. So it's disappointing that the Justice Department had spent the last several months misinterpreting key voting rights laws for nakedly political reasons.

Exhibit A: Justice's inexplicable dismissal of a civil lawsuit for voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party. The Black Panthers weren't content to endorse Barack Obama. They sent their members to the polls last November to "patrol election sites." Fox News aired a video of two Black Panthers in military-style uniforms in a Philadelphia precinct. One of them was carrying a nightstick.

The complaint the Justice Department filed in January (before Messrs. Obama and Holder took over) says the Panthers made "racial threats and racial insults" to voters and "menacing and intimidating, gestures, statements and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters." One witness, Bartle Bull, a civil-rights lawyer who worked with Charles Evers in Mississippi in the 1960s, called it the worst voter intimidation he had ever seen.

Justice won the suit by default when the Black Panthers and three individual defendants didn't show up in court to deny the allegations. But instead of following through and getting an injunction to prevent this behavior in future elections, the department, now under Mr. Holder, dismissed the lawsuit against all but one of the defendants (the nightstick holder). Even then, Justice requested only a watered-down penalty: an injunction to prevent him from carrying a weapon in a polling place. But only in Philadelphia and only until 2012!

Exhibit B: Justice recently stopped Georgia from implementing a key provision of the Help America Vote Act. Passed in 2002, the act requires states to verify the accuracy of information voters provide on their registration forms by comparing it with state driver's license and Social Security records -- a sensible requirement. With input from Justice Department lawyers in 2008, Georgia implemented this verification process, including checking the citizenship status of applicants. It is a violation of federal and state law for a noncitizen to register and vote in federal and state elections.

Under Georgia's program, anyone flagged as a potential noncitizen would still be registered if he could confirm to local election officials that he was indeed a citizen. Georgia sent letters to over 4,000 potential noncitizens. More than 2,000 failed to confirm their citizenship, strong evidence that noncitizens were prevented from illegally registering and voting.

Has this verification process depressed minority voter turnout, as some claim? Hardly. There has been a 140% increase in Hispanic turnout and a 42% increase in black turnout since the 2004 election.

And America continues it's slow-motion suicide by Political Correctness and racism.

Wall St. Journal

I wish the President well, but he is butting up against human nature. And that is a fight one cannot win. If one runs up nearly a $2 trillion annual deficit, and then persists in such red-ink to the point of adding another $9 trillion, all to reach an aggregate $20 trillion national debt, there are not too many options. If there were, everyone-both states and individuals-would simply spend, call it stimuli, and then find academics to offer contorted explanations why it was OK and the money need not really have to be paid back. Does Obama think his debt is like buying  a house in a down market with an up market inevitable?–that is, we borrow to the max and then count on our equity to come to bail us out? But houses do not always go up, and we can’t quite sell off the US to capture our speculative profit.

So we all know the old rules, because the universe works according to time-honored precepts: we either must tax all of us (there are not enough of those evil “they” who make between $200-500K or even enough of the noble generous rich who make over $10 million a year and think Obama should increase inheritance taxes so that their children get only $1 billion instead of $2, while the hardware store owner’s kids sell the business) in insidious ways; OR simply cut government expenditures elsewhere to pay the annual interest payments, OR print money and screw the Chinese, European, etc. , debtors, inflating our way out via the late 1970s.

Sorry, there are no other real alternatives.

The only mystery? How the choice of payment is rhetoricized in the hope and change mode.

Deficit Foreign Policy Too

So it is with foreign policy as well. Obama’s make-over will have positive short-term effects, as he reminds the world ad nauseam that he is black, sorta, kinda from a Muslim family, and the son of an African who is more like the world than he like most Americans-and not George Bush and not a thieving capitalist and not a warmongering imperialist and not (fill in the blanks). (My favorite Cairo line was the apology on Gitmo where inmates have laptops and Mediterranean food, spoken to millions whose societies kill and maim tens of thousands in Gulags on a yearly  basis.)

But in the long run?

He hits against human nature. Most of you readers-in business, law, the professions-don’t continually praise your friends, competitors, and enemies (e.g., “Glad you got that job, Home Depot-we at Lowes didn’t really need it; what a wonderful bid you submitted, Hilton, much better than ours here at the Four Seasons; it was my fault here at Goldman Sachs that I didn’t match your better offer at Credit Suisse; I grew up working for the Royals, and can empathize why you Yankees don’t like us; it’s time we at Citibank  apologized to Chase for our past cutthroat competition; we are just too arrogant over here at Delta and wanted to let you guys at United know that.”)

Sorry

The world sadly does not work that way. If one were to do that, we know the outcome: a group of rival execs would say “Hmmm, time to steal market share from Citibank, or Hilton isn’t really up to the arena anymore, let’s move in on its Western region, etc.”

Only someone who has not been in the real world, but only marketed rhetoric without consequences (e.g., if Obama had a bad day organizing, or legislating, was he fired?) could believe such things.

A Farmer’s Tale

In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself–at 26. I had left the farm for 9 years to get a BA in classics, PhD in classical philology, and live in Athens for two years of archaeological study-all on scholarships, TAships, research-ships and part-time summer and school jobs tucked under the aegis of the academic, no-consequences world. By the end of endless seminars, papers, theses, debates, discussions, academic get-togethers, I had forgotten much of the culture of the farm where I spent years 1-18.

The Return

Then after the requisite degrees I left academia, and returned to farm 180 acres with my brother and cousin-and sadly was quickly disabused of the world of the faculty lounge.

Oh yes, I came back to Selma thinking, “I am not going to be the grouch my grandfather was, yelling at neighbors, worried all the time, nervous, seeing the world as rather hostile, hoarding a tiny stash of savings, worried as if bugs, the government, hired men, weather, and markets were out to destroy him. I’ll farm with my Bay Area manners and sort of think, “I will reset the farm, and things will at last work as they should” (not thinking that my grandfather raised three daughters, sent them to college while mortgaging the farm in the Depression, and spent on himself last, and was a saint compared to my pampered existence in the university).”

One small example of my late coming of age. A rather brutal neighbor (now dead and not to be mentioned by name (de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est)), an immigrant from an impoverished country, a self-made man, veteran of infamous fights and various bullying, shared a communal ditch. We talked and exchanged pleasantries–at first–at the standpipe gate. He lamented how rude my late grandfather had been to him, and even had made unfounded accusations that he was less than honest (he was also sort of playing the race card, remarking about the prejudicial nature of California agrarian culture).

VDH scores another perfect point.  Read the rest at Pajamas Media.

D-Day + 20.  Years, that is. CBS ran a one-hour special hosted by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.  It would be his last trip to the Normandy beaches that his troops captured at such terrible cost. Only one memory lingers:  Ike waved his hand over a big stretch of beach.  “Here, you could hardly find sand to walk on for the American dead.”

D-Day + 40. President Ronald Reagan addressed veterans of the invasion at the place where it began. He spoke of the valor of the Rangers, boys mostly, who scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. There were 225 of them at dawn. The next day 90 were fit to bear arms.  He asked them:  “Why did you do it?  What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs?  What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?  We look at you and somehow we know the answer.  It was faith and belief.  It was loyalty and love.”  His entire speech is still worth reading.

D-Day + 50.  What I most clearly remember is a photo of our draft-dodging Philanderer-in-Chief walking along that beach, head down, looking thoughtful and contemplative as only the most brilliant and insightful of men can.  One wag superimposed a thought bubble over his head:  “I’m sure glad it wasn’t me over here getting my butt shot off.”

D-Day + 60.  At Omaha Beach President George W. Bush quoted Gen. Omar Bradley:  “Six hours after the landings, we held only 10 yards of beach.”  He also quoted from the diary of a Dutch girl who would turn 15 only six days later.  She greeted news of the invasion with these words:  “It still seems too wonderful, like a fairy tale . . . . I may yet be able to go back to school in September or October.”  She never made it back to school.  Anne Frank died at Bergen Belsen on a date uncertain in early March 1945, barely two months before the Germans surrendered.  

D-Day + 65.  Their numbers are dwindling, but former Second Lieutenant Bob Dole was there.  Our Apologist-in-Chief is concluding another triumphant tour, breast-beating and genuflecting all the way.  He probably goes through kneepads faster than an NBA starter.  But you’ve got to give the man credit.  He never misses an opportunity to peddle his squishy pabulum, his deviant views of the world we live in, and his apparent desire to retire from office in 2017 to a rousing universal chorus of Kumbaya.  “We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true.  It’s a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government . . . . The nations that joined together to defeat Hitler’s reich were not perfect.  They made their share of mistakes, had not always agreed with one another on every issue.  But whatever God we prayed to . . . we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped.”

“[W]hatever God we prayed to . . . .”  Now what do you suppose he could have meant by that?  Whom do you think he was talking to in his uniquely reassuring and condescending tone?  And while we’re at it, how did I -- philistine that I must be -- overlook for almost 63 years the indispensable contribution to the overthrow of tyranny by those of our brothers so deeply committed to freedom and equality, the Nations of Islam?

“[C]laims about what is true.”  If he was only talking about determining the truths, if any there are, in organized religion I would agree with him.  But do you have the same hunch I do?  He’s talking moral equivalence here, the delusions fostered by John le Carre and his cohort:  the KGB and the CIA are brothers under the skin.  Strangling your daughter because she wants to divorce the husband you forced her to marry is alien to our own beliefs, to be sure, but it’s a cultural difference, you see.  Slowly hacking off the head of a helpless hostage is not acceptable, but we’ve been guilty of our own provocations, right?  Just take a look at those terrible photos from Abu Ghraib, where the minor delicts of three or four low-level borderline morons were used to justify claims that our entire effort in Iraq is morally corrupt.  The truth, objective reality if you will, is something to be determined, not endlessly debated by those whose level of tolerance for “competing beliefs” borders on the suicidal.

Granted, D-Day observances are not an occasion for jingoistic nationalism as the effort involved several nations. It was truly an Allied effort.  But it took more than blood, treasure, and guns to demolish Fortress Europa.  An unshakable belief in the superiority of Western Civilization as defined by the best that the Judaeo-Christian tradition teaches us was essential.  In the words of Winston Churchill, we had to recover our “moral health and martial vigour . . . .  arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.”  It was a job for warriors sprung from freedom, not milquetoasts debating “what is true.”  Obama’s speech was what one would expect from someone who is, in the words of a top advisor to Hillary Clinton, “not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

Excellent.  Read the rest at Human Events.

"NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming"

A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate.  The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles.  At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat.  According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change  in the past.  And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.

Could Dr. Hansen’s Reign of Error as head of the Goddard Institute for Space Flight be coming to an end? Or will Robert Calahan get the ax for telling the truth?

Science or ideology?  What's it going to be NASA?

American Thinker

Grammy Award-winning blues legend Koko Taylor, 80, died on June 3, 2009 in her hometown of Chicago, IL, as a result of complications following her May 19 surgery to correct a gastrointestinal bleed. On May 7, 2009, the critically acclaimed Taylor, known worldwide as the “Queen of the Blues,” won her 29th Blues Music Award (for Traditional Female Blues Artist Of The Year), making her the recipient of more Blues Music Awards than any other artist. In 2004 she received the NEA National Heritage Fellowship Award, which is among the highest honors given to an American artist. Her most recent CD, 2007’s Old School, was nominated for a Grammy (eight of her nine Alligator albums were Grammy-nominated). She won a Grammy in 1984 for her guest appearance on the compilation album Blues Explosion on Atlantic.

Born Cora Walton on a sharecropper’s farm just outside Memphis, TN, on September 28, 1928, Koko, nicknamed for her love of chocolate, fell in love with music at an early age. Inspired by gospel music and WDIA blues disc jockeys B.B. King and Rufus Thomas, Taylor began belting the blues with her five brothers and sisters, accompanying themselves on their homemade instruments. In 1952, Taylor and her soon-to-be-husband, the late Robert “Pops” Taylor, traveled to Chicago with nothing but, in Koko’s words, “thirty-five cents and a box of Ritz Crackers.” 

In Chicago, “Pops” worked for a packing company, and Koko cleaned houses. Together they frequented the city’s blues clubs nightly. Encouraged by her husband, Koko began to sit in with the city’s top blues bands, and soon she was in demand as a guest artist. One evening in 1962 Koko was approached by arranger/composer Willie Dixon. Overwhelmed by Koko’s performance, Dixon landed Koko a Chess Records recording contract, where he produced her several singles, two albums and penned her million-selling 1965 hit “Wang Dang Doodle,” which would become Taylor’s signature song.

After Chess Records was sold, Taylor found a home with the Chicago’s Alligator Records in 1975 and released the Grammy-nominated I Got What It Takes. She recorded eight more albums for Alligator between 1978 and 2007, received seven more Grammy nominations and made numerous guest appearances on various albums and tribute recordings. Koko appeared in the films Wild At Heart, Mercury Rising and Blues Brothers 2000. She performed on Late Night With David Letterman, Late Night With Conan O’Brien, CBS-TV’s This Morning, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, CBS-TV’s Early Edition, and numerous regional television programs.

Over the course of her 40-plus-year career, Taylor received every award the blues world has to offer. On March 3, 1993, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley honored Taylor with a “Legend Of The Year” Award and declared “Koko Taylor Day” throughout Chicago. In 1997, she was inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame. A year later, Chicago Magazine named her “Chicagoan Of The Year” and, in 1999, Taylor received the Blues Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2009 Taylor performed in Washington, D.C. at The Kennedy Center Honors honoring Morgan Freeman.

Koko Taylor was one of very few women who found success in the male-dominated blues world. She took her music from the tiny clubs of Chicago’s South Side to concert halls and major festivals all over the world. She shared stages with every major blues star, including Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy as well as rock icons Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

Taylor’s final performance was on May 7, 2009 in Memphis at the Blues Music Awards, where she sang “Wang Dang Doodle” after receiving her award for Traditional Blues Female Artist Of The Year.

Survivors include Taylor’s husband Hays Harris, daughter Joyce Threatt, son-in-law Lee Threatt, grandchildren Lee, Jr. and Wendy, and three great-grandchildren.

Alligator Records

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?

Farm worker Radha in the cotton fields beneath Gujarat Fluorochemicals: she claims her plants have been affected by chemicals from the nearby factory

The farmers, faces wizened and browned from hours in the harsh Gujarati sun, lower a bucket into a well. It’s a solid-brick cylinder 100ft deep. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on the scorched earth. In the baked fields, maize and cotton have been planted. But none of the crops look very healthy. Leaves are wilted and tinged brown. Nothing has been watered for months.

Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms.

‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says.

As the bucket returns to the top, we can make out a white, almost oily-looking film on the surface of the liquid, which has formed little snowflake shapes.

She scoops up some water and asks us to smell it. It has an odour so acrid it catches in the back of our throats, making us cough.

‘We can’t irrigate our crops with it,’ she says. ‘It’s the water of death. It kills most crops we put it on.’

‘Gone bad,’ says the man who brought up the pail.

Radha makes a derisive gesture across the fields. Her calloused, cracked fingers bear testimony to a lifetime of weeding, planting and hoeing. She is 40 but looks closer to 60. Since her husband died eight years ago, she’s had to feed herself and her six children. Perhaps it’s necessity that’s made her more outspoken than her male counterparts.

‘A few years ago, I grew spinach, potatoes, lots of different crops. Now… look at my plants. Weak, useless.’

We’re in a field of cotton that should be ready to harvest. But there’s nothing to reap – just a few little tufts that blow mockingly in the breeze. Radha picks up a handful of soil. The surface has a faintly visible white crust, as if talcum powder has been sprinkled over it. Hold it close and it has the same caustic smell as the water, a bit like paint stripper.

Overlooking the fields like a hulking metal skeleton is the factory the villagers claim has polluted their water and land. The plant, owned by Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL), produces refrigerant gases for air-conditioning units and fridges.

We can't irrigate our land with it - it's the water of death. It kills the crops we put it on

But this is much more than a tale of big business versus poor farmers in the Third World. GFL is part of a worldwide carbon-trading scheme, centred in London, which is supposed to be helping to save the planet from global warming. On paper the scheme, which was ratified under the Kyoto agreement and supervised by the UN, looks like an efficient way to cut global carbon emissions. However, a Live investigation has exposed a series of major failings and loopholes in the scheme.

Four years ago, GFL installed technology to reduce the greenhouse gases it produces and was given a vast financial reward by the UN; a UK company was also given considerable sums for investing in the project. However, far from being a flagship green factory, GFL stands accused of poisoning the local environment.

Our own extensive tests by an independent laboratory showed dangerous contaminants in the land and water around the factory – chemicals that match those pollutants produced by GFL. Interviews with the people living nearby reveal their livelihoods and health have been severely affected. We found that the auditors who were supposed to verify the carbon savings were paid for by GFL, a stipulation of the scheme, and they checked only for greenhouse gases, caring little about other pollution.

In a further ironic twist, we discovered that GFL used some of the money it gained from the UN to build a factory making Teflon and caustic soda –both processes are massively polluting.

Meanwhile in the UK, one of our biggest industrial companies is able to claim it has off-set its own pollution by supporting GFL, yet it remains oblivious to and unconcerned about the serious accusations being made against the Indian factory.

These hypocrisies aren’t isolated to GFL. The UN carbon off-setting scheme is filled with similar examples of companies with poor environmental and human rights records being financially rewarded.

As you dig below the surface it would appear that the UN programme – with backing and finance from Britain – is as polluted as the questionable companies it chooses so generously to reward.

In the middle of the City of London is a large anonymous-looking building, home to the European Climate Exchange (ECX). About 98 per cent of the carbon-emissions trading in Europe is done in this office, with more than 25 million tons of carbon traded daily. Last year this market was worth £80 billion worldwide, and it’s set to grow to £97 billion this year, despite the recession.

Chief executive Patrick Birley meets us in the glass-panelled reception. He points out where climate protestors camped on the doorstep during the G20 protests in March.

‘I care just as passionately about saving the planet as they do,’ he says. ‘But the difference is that I believe environmentalism and capitalism can converge.’

Inside his office the trading screen flashes with yellow, red and green figures. In the office next door, traders bash the phones doing deals for clients all over the world. It’s no different to any other busy trading floor, except no one here is selling an actual commodity. Here traders sell our planet’s future in the form of carbon credits. These are part of international attempts to limit greenhouse gases, and each credit represents a ton of CO2.

Companies that cut their emissions gain credits. If, on the other hand, they exceed their quotas, they have to acquire credits. The credits are traded on markets such as the ECX and have become such an established part of the financial world that trading involves Europe’s biggest banks, including RBS and Barclays. Until the global slowdown, carbon was one of the most profitable ‘commodities’ , nearly doubling in value between 2007 and 2008.

The Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Company Limited factory spews smoke into the air of southern Gujarat

Follow the MONEY.

The Daily Mail

NASA finally mentions the Maunder Minimum in its discussion of the current prolonged solar minimum, but it STILL does not mention that the Maunder Minimum coincided with the onset of the Little Ice Age, or that the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s was also cold, as was the unnamed fin-de-the-1800’s minimum.

Thar she blows, the Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity:

As it has done for two years now, NASA is predicting that solar cycle 24 will ramp up tomorrow. Should that broken-clock prediction hits its hour, then NASA is also predicting that solar cycle 24 will have the modest amplitude of the 1928 cycle, indicated by the red arrow.

A look at the temperature record shows the correspondence between solar activity and temperature:

Maunder Minimum cold; Dalton minimum (just before the red thermometer-based line starts) cold; unnamed end-of-1800’s minimum (first dip in red line) cold; “grand maximum” solar activity between 1920 and 2000 warm.

NASA is acutely aware of this correspondence, but is keeping John Q Public in the dark. Now that the sun has gone quiet again, the climate is cooling again, but you will never hear it from James Hansen’s underlings at NASA:

CO2 keeps going up, but temperatures are going down. NASA frowns and scratches.

Gee you tax-payer supported SOLAR SCIENTISTS, busy gaping at “the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” if temperature is not being driven by CO2, what possibly COULD have created warming since 1910 and cooling since 2000?

There you have it.  Go read the rest at Flopping Aces.

Yesterdays Article, Einstein-like breakthrough in Climate Science (Part 1), discussed the theory behind Dr.’s Miskolczi “PHYSICS OF THE PLANETARY GREENHOUSE EFFECT” Which states basically that the Earth’s atmosphere is in equilibrium, demonstrated very simply by the fact we have an atmosphere, and CO₂ is irrelevant in changing that equilibrium.

This brings us to a disturbing and very concerning point. If the science behind this is correct, the math has been proven, why is it that the UN and the IPCC refusing to look at the information that has been presented by Dr. Miskolczi and Dr. Zagoni? Why are these theories not being discussed? It is rare to even hear of their existence, let alone any debate about them. Why is it that the Main Stream Media has not announced this brilliant breakthrough to the world?

The answer could not be simpler.

MONEY.

In order for government grants to be given out to institutions in this current government climate, it has to be in the arena of proving that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) exists.

There is no government funding for disproving AGW. There is no funding for projects that may call into question the governments mantra that humans are causing AGW, the government does not want it disproven. The Government needs it to appear as real and as legitimate as possible in order to tax it. There is in fact a great pressure to ridicule or otherwise make irrelevant those who call into question the science that the Government is funding.

In fact, those who are indeed proving that AGW does not exist, face ridicule and scorn from the Main Stream Media, Politicians, and a few businessmen who stand to personally profit from it, such as Al Gore. There are many scientists that have staked their careers and reputations on this faulty science, and so they resist any research that may tend to make them look poor in the eyes of their peers, not to mention call into question the viability of their government grants.

The Mainstream Media, as was illustrated in the 2008 Election cycle, is decidedly favorable to the Democrats now in power, and those politicians want to pass legislation that will continue to fund their Socialist agenda, in fact, they are now counting on it not only to pay for their 11 Trillion dollar spending spree (the “Stimulus” Package), but to fund brilliant programs such as Socialized Health care. What will all of those Canadians do if we institute healthcare similar to theirs? Sorry Canada, we have Socialist Democrats in charge here now, much to the detriment of North America.

Those same Democrats want to Tax CO₂ Emissions based on PROVEN FAULTY SCIENCE that the government continues to exclusively fund in support of its taxing scheme. The Waxman-Markey Energy Bill, with its three years of unemployment benefits, is designed to tax carbon emissions, something Dr.’s Miskolczi and Zagoni have proven to be irrelevant in Anthropogenic Global Warming. The Waxman-Markley Bill is designed to generate revenue for the Federal government by taxing your exhalations, and is based on incorrect mathematical theory that is the basis of the government funded research. This tax will immediately, literally and overnight, wipe out the American Economy as billions of our dollars get transferred to the coffers of the Federal Government.

It is an unavoidable conclusion: The federal government is using the public’s general lack of knowledge about sophisticated mathematics to support faulty science in the name of generating revenue for itself.

This is intolerable. Change has indeed arrived; this issue has risen to the level of a Constitutional Civil Rights Violation as it will quite literally steal billions of dollars from American Businesses and citizens and is based in faulty science. It is not only fundamentally against the founding principles of Freedom in this Nation, it is naked thievery, and on a level heretofore unseen in all of human history. The outrageous immorality of what the government is doing by funding research which has only one purpose, to justify the existence of Carbon Cap and Trade Tax is nothing short of immoral. This is something akin to fiscal genocide supported and generated by the Federal Government.

In an article by Hans Bader for OpenMarket.org, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein warned Obama and Congress: "the barrage of tax increases proposed by President Barak Obama's budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery." Feldstein goes further, "Mr. Obama’s biggest proposed tax increase is the cap-and-trade system of requiring businesses to buy carbon dioxide emission permits. . .CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Finance Committee on May 7 that the cap-and-trade price increases . . . would cost the average household roughly $1,600 a year, ranging from $700 in the lowest-income quintile to $2,200 in the highest-income quintile."

Consider also, the State of Oregon is attempting to do the same thing, keep in mind, these are two separate taxes, which for this state could mean  a 100 to 200% increase in your electricity bills, natural gas, gasoline, and nearly every other single product or service you do not generate for yourself. If you pay 1200$ (100$ a month for electricity) a year now, that will increase to at least 1800$ to as much as 3600$ a year, thats 300$ a month. Ask yourself, can you afford that? Can your neighbor?

All to reduce a naturally occurring emission that will have no effect on the climate regardless if it doubles in concentration or is cut in half?

There is an exceptionally high probability that Congress is operating with incorrect information. The certainty of this is approaching 100%. If for no other reason, America must stop the direction in which is rushing headlong in Congress, and reconsider the conclusions it is operating under. If the science they are using to justify the Carbon Tax is incorrect, we are literally handing billions of dollars to the Federal Government, for less than no legitimate reason.

The Cap and Trade legislation is not meant to lower emissions, it is meant to tax them and generate revenue for the government. The only science anyone hears about AGW is the government funded science, which has a predetermined outcome. This is a very bad combination.

The end result will beggar us all. That much is guaranteed.

The Examiner

On May 19th MIT released a report that proves something.

“The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.”

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   – David Chandler MIT News Office

They proved group think still exists. That's all they proved.

How can this be? Their model seems so all encompasing... The key lay in this phrase, "selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge", from MIT's recent publication.

Because they are using mathematical equations that have been found to be incorrect, they cannot get repeatable results that can be applied systemically to the entire Earth’s climate that matches the data actually recorded. They can only get a probability. This is the basis for all of the differing results in Climatology today; no two reports seem to be the same, anyone reading the headlines over the last 45 years can attest to this.

As long as the Opacity of the Atmosphere is considered limitless in the calculations related to Radiative Transfer a precise model that matches global conditions cannot be made. This technical language may sound intimidating, however, the concepts are simple at their core. Our atmosphere is neither opaque, nor completely transparent. It is semi-transparent, and that is the basis of the error that current climate models are making. IPCC scientists, including those at MIT are not using the correct numbers for these concepts. This is one of the major reasons we see so many wildly different climate predictions. One group will report 6 degrees of warming over a century, another will say 1 degree, and none of them are accurate over the entire system.

Because the solutions each group comes up with vary so widely, and because their models cannot be applied systemically, only one conclusion can be made: there is an error in the math somewhere. Somewhere basic and fundamental, that all of these learned scientists are using, that all of their calculations depend on as the foundation of their Science.

In 2007, Dr Ferenc Miskolczi found that error and corrected it.

Dr. Ferenc M. Miskolczi released his work: "GREENHOUSE EFFECT IN SEMI-TRANSPARENT PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES” in 2007 in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Society. Based on his previous studies, in this ground breaking work, Dr. Miskolczi states and then mathematically proves, it is water - the Oceans and the water vapor they generate in the atmosphere, that acts as the mechanism of Equilibrium.

The answer lay in the complex science of Radiative Transfer. To clarify this complex science, I contacted Dr. Miklos Zagoni. He is a physicist and science historian at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, and is now a governmental adviser in his native country of Hungary. Dr Zagoni was once a solid supporter of Anthropogenic Global Warming – Man Made Global Warming. That is until Dr. Miskolczi corrected the math. He now works closely with Dr. Miskolczi, and other scientists who are mathematically describing reality as it is, not as the political establishment wants it to be.

In an email conversation he related the basic nature of the error:

“They [IPCC Climatologists] regard one specific parameter (opacity [of the atmosphere]) to be infinite in a specific approximation, according to an old and still unrecognized math error in the history of radiative transfer. Miskolczi revealed that error, gave the correct mathematical and physical solution, and the referred quantity became finite [specific] in his hands, and he became able to calculate its value correctly. His calculation proved that with finite opacity (or transparency --- we are talking about here not the visible, but the infrared wavelengths – the correct name of the parameter is optical depth) leads to constrained greenhouse effect and constrained greenhouse surface temperatures because cooling (exactly because of this transparency) is possible on the required level.”

In laypersons terms, this means that Earth’s atmosphere is a balanced system at equilibrium. This is demonstrated by the simple and unavoidable fact that we still have an atmosphere. If the system could not find an equilibrium, the air we breathe would have been long gone millions if not billions of years ago when CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses were at levels far greater than they are today. The correctness of his math is proven by his models; they match nearly exactly the actual vertical temperature readings we have recorded on earth. What’s more, because his math and physics are correct, this model can also be applied to Mars temperature data. When you have a model that matches the data, and can be applied over the whole system and get a match, you have the correct theory.

E=MC² is an equally true theory, and once scientists could perform the experiments needed to prove it, Einstein was hailed as a Genius and hero. In climate science, the theory is proven with computer models and real measured temperatures. Until Dr. Miskolczi solved the equation, no theory fit all the data. Dr. Miskolczi is today’s Einstein in Climate Science.

To put this in even simpler terms, consider a child’s teeter totter. On one side you have Greenhouse gasses such as CO₂. On the other you have the single greatest greenhouse gas on earth, Water Vapor. As you increase the CO₂ level, the water vapor side goes down. If CO2 levels drop, the water vapor side increases. This see-saw effect is referred to as equilibrium. The error in the mathematics used by MIT and other IPCC climatologists is in the base of this see-saw, “in the historic approximation of the basic transfer equation. Having the exact solution, the energy balance conditions can be correctly established and the work of the opposite powers to maintain the equilibrium can be precisely described.” according to Dr Zagoni. This is a drastic oversimplification, but it is descriptively accurate. Because they cannot precisely describe the basic energetic agencies of the teeter totter,

“they [believe] it can be it can be permanently turned up or down. But Miskolczi proved that any imbalance our CO₂ emissions caused was effectively countered by about 1 per cent decrease in the water vapor amount, and the system still fluctuates around its theoretical equilibrium value. His calculations on the NASA / NCAR atmospheric database proved that the Earth's greenhouse effect does not show any steady increase, regardless of our CO₂ emissions.”

CO₂ cannot cause global warming.

Science describes things accurately as they are, not as one wants them to be.

The IPCC is coming up with different numbers because they are using an incorrect model.

I asked Dr. Zagoni: “Is there a simple explanation as to why CO₂ is more or less irrelevant? Is it simply because the existence of so much water on earth, and there by so much water vapor, that CO₂ is simply overwhelmed by it?”

Dr. Zagoni replied, “Not overwhelmed, but dynamically controlled by the practically infinite reservoir of water vapor in the surface of the oceans. The system need not 'wait' for our CO₂ emissions if it had the possibility to warm. There is the tool at its hands to do that at any time. So it has been working on its energetically possible maximum for long before our emissions.”

Water vapor is in reality, the greatest heat source and heat sink on earth. 71% of the surface of the earth is water. Water can absorb energy and become vapor. It can release energy and fall as rain, which by definition is cooler than the vapor it condensed from – releasing heat. When you boil water, it becomes steam as it cools it condenses again into water.

When the earth warms, water vapor is released by the liquid sources that make up the majority of our planet. That water vapor will then condense, releasing that heat into the upper atmosphere and space as infrared radiation, and then falls back to earth as rain or snow. This is the very basic engine of our climate, and Dr.’s Zagoni and Miskolczi have mathematically proven it, they have solved the equation.

As Dr. Zagoni put it: “The earth is cooling on its possible maximum rate, [the] greenhouse effect of any further GHG [Green House Gas] release is countered by minor (almost immeasurably little) changes in the hydrological cycle.” The atmosphere corrects itself. If it were not capable of doing so, life would not have evolved on this planet.

The Earth, and her very great abundance of water, is quite literally a planet sized air-conditioner. And it’s been running for billions of years, through vast planet wide volcanic activity releasing much more green house gasses than man has ever released in his combined history, through massive asteroid strikes large enough to cause mass extinctions, even with such enormously catastrophic events the planet has the ability to return to equilibrium. Man’s emissions can effect no change in this fundamental defining quality of the planet. The Earth cannot warm up because of Greenhouse gasses.

Dr. Miskolczi may well have saved the people of this planet untold misery by finding and correcting this error. He has made it possible to accurately model not only our atmosphere, but that of Mars as well. That is how accurate his calculations are.

We could double our emissions of Carbon Dioxide, and the Earth's climate will maintain its equilibrium. We are after all talking about a planet sized system, 1.39 Billion cubic Kilometers of water, that’s 1.35 x10¹⁸ metric tons of water. If the Earth wanted to have a runaway greenhouse effect, water would be the way to do it, it is far more important and influential in the earth’s system than anything else. Including CO2, including Man.

Dr Zagoni's website, dedicated to Miskolczi’s new results can be found here: http://miskolczi.webs.com" title="http://miskolczi.webs.com" target="_blank"http://miskolczi.webs.com At this site, you can find all of Dr. Miskolczi's equations, graphs, and conclusions.

All of this being said, man can have an impact on climate, deforestation, and the wide scale removal of green plant growth which converts the sun's energy into sugars, can cause warming. When the sun's energy hits the solid ground it heats it up. And so ironically enough, increasing CO2 can cool the globe by increasing plant growth.

Another issue to consider is the sun’s output, which right now is about 1% less than normal, as the sun continues in a stage of very low sunspot activity. Tuesday we will look at NASA's report on the lack of sunspots and the very large impact this has on our climate. It cools things off, and sometimes very significantly.

Also on Tuesday, we will take a look at how this issue affects the civil rights of all Americans. We will take an honest look at why the Scientific Community, The UN, the IPCC and the Government of the United States are ignoring this breakthrough. It starts with money and it ends in congress. Legislation is being considered with the stated purpose of "saving the environment", The supporters of this legislation are using faulty science, and the average person's lack of knowledge about climate science in passing legislation that will 1) not affect the climate in the least and 2) will cost every American man woman and child billions of dollars for no purpose other than to line the pockets of the Government.

The terrible economic depression which will result will take many years to recover from. The ramifications of legislating according to bad science is enormous.

The Examiner

New approach offers more pleasant light of traditional bulbs without the energy guilt

Thanks to a bit of ingenuity, Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev have been able to squeeze out fluorescent-like energy performance from an incandescent light bulb.  The breakthrough boils down to a laser treatment of the bulb's tungsten filament, a processing step which could one day become a standard in the light bulb industry.

Traditionally, incandescent light bulbs provide more pleasant light, however they lack the efficiency of fluorescent designs.  The new bulb offers the brightness and color of a 100 watt incandescent bulb while using less than 60 watts.

The key is to blast the tungsten filament with an ultra-fast, ultra-powerful laser, which creates beneficial nanostructures on the metal's surface.  Describes Professor Guo, "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament.  We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."

The pulse lasts a mere femtosecond, and delivers as much power as the entire grid of North America into a needle point size spot.  Serendipitously, this strange treatment yields nanostructures and microstructures which turn a low-wattage incandescent light bulb into a high brightness one, while preserving its energy sipping character.

The incredible discovery was made after Professor Guo tinkered with the reverse phenomena -- a laser processed metal that was incredibly good at capturing light, making it almost a perfect black.  He figured that if this was possible, the reverse -- a material giving off light much more efficiently -- was also probable.  Professor Guo describes, "There is a very interesting 'take more, give more' law in nature governing the amount of light going in and coming out of a material.  We knew it should work in theory, but we were still surprised when we turned up the power on this bulb and saw just how much brighter the processed spot was."

The process can also tune the color of the bulb.  By controlling the pulse, the resulting nanostructures are modified in a predictable way, in turn modifying the wavelength of the emitted light.  Professor Guo has demonstrated blue, golden, and gray designs, in addition to black, white, and the base yellow.  The team has even made filaments able to emit polarized light without efficiency-reducing filters.

Funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Professor Guo continues to explore what kind of additional changes he can invoke with the laser.  And given that the laser he's using can run off a wall socket, there's hope that the discoveries he takes can be ported to production.  While materials changes are frequently expensive, this breakthrough would only need capital investments for the laser, which is reusable.  Thus it could deliver these super-bulbs at a reasonable price.

Daily Tech