Steve's Serendipities

Global Warming - Hiding evidence of global cooling

2009-11-25T08:05:00.000-05:00

This subject is an interesting study of human nature.
The skeptics see it as the crime of all ages, and the advocates dismiss it as "normal" behavior.
After reading many of the emails and comments, I still can't imagine anyone being so naive as to think the people involved are above reproach...

The Washington Times gives their collective opinion:

"Scientific progress depends on accurate and complete data. It also relies on replication. The past couple of days have uncovered some shocking revelations about the baloney practices that pass as sound science about climate change.

It was announced Thursday afternoon that computer hackers had obtained 160 megabytes of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in England. Those e-mails involved communication among many scientific researchers and policy advocates with similar ideological positions all across the world. Those purported authorities were brazenly discussing the destruction and hiding of data that did not support global-warming claims."

Viscount Monckton on Climategate

2009-11-25T08:04:00.000-05:00

I don't know what's legally criminal or not; however, I don't think any impartial person can read the emails in question and not be very, very suspicious of the motivations of the people involved...

Lord Monckton lets loose at PajamasMedia.com:

"The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too."

Government at Work - Feds ignored Medicare scam warnings

2009-11-25T08:03:00.000-05:00

You know, if you want to think my way, eliminating government inefficiencies would probably balance the budget.
Going a step further, eliminating fraud, would probably have the government refunding our tax money by the bushel...

Kelli Kennedy reports at Breitbart.com:

"For three years, the federal agency in charge of preventing Medicare fraud repeatedly ignored internal watchdog warnings about swindlers stealing millions of dollars by scamming several programs, documents show.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services received roughly 30 warnings from inspectors over three years during the Bush and Obama administrations but didn't respond to half of them, even after repeated letters, according to records provided to The Associated Press by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley's office."

"Desperate Democrats to bypass 10th Amendment"

2009-11-25T08:02:00.000-05:00

There's a reason laws and rules were made, so we certainly should think long and hard before changing them.
Politicians, of course, have no such ideas. They just want the votes...

On his blog, Kevin “Coach” Collins reports this:

"Democrats are scheming to give themselves new voters through legislation to violate the 10th Amendment by forcing states to allow felons to vote. The law called The Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) would give the worst of the worst living in our communities (nearly 4 million released felons) the right to vote in federal elections.

Democrats know a University of Minnesota study found that felons vote 87% Democrat. This is obviously why they want it."

Barack Obama - and appointee Judge David Hamilton

2009-11-25T08:01:00.000-05:00

Equal treatment under the law seems like it should be a basic philosophical qualifier for a judicial nominee...

At Townhall.com, Mario Diaz reports:

"In 2005, Judge Hamilton ordered the Speaker of the Indiana House to immediately stop the practice of 'sectarian prayers' at the opening of the legislative session because the prayers were too Christian. He said that people 'should refrain from using Christ’s name or title.'

Could you imagine this ruling coming down at the time of this country’s founding? Can you imagine what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Patrick Henry would have said to this judge?

I can hear Washington recounting the stories of the many men he held in his arms as they bled to death so that Americans could be free to pray to Jesus Christ. Yes, I said it. That is who they believed in. That is even who they attributed their victories to.

But now Judge Hamilton has the gall and audacity to say that all those who fought for that freedom died in vain. And to top it off, Judge Hamilton later added that praying in the name of Allah would probably be okay."

Global Warming - Who's running cover

2009-11-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

The "lamestream" media. That's who!...

"The U.S. House of Presumptuous Meddlers"

2009-11-24T08:02:00.001-05:00

John Stossel is inclined to tell it like it is, give examples, and make his points clearly.
It's quite clear that he has no thirst for "kool-aid"...

At Townhall.com, John Stossel discusses government and health care:

"The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by 'experts' means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.

Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to 'homeowners' who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance."

Government at Work - Yikes!

2009-11-24T08:02:00.000-05:00

A picture (graph) is worth a thousand words.
This one happens to be about dollars, OUR dollars...

At the Gateway Pundit website, Jim Hoft writes:

"President George Bush never did this."

Global Warming - The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones

2009-11-23T08:03:00.002-05:00

Copies of these emails are showing up all over the Internet.
They're easy to get so, of course, I got them, too.
I think it's hard to come to any other conclusion than there's been dishonesty going on.
It will be interesting to see who defends them and how they try to explain them away...

On his Herald Sun blog, Andrew Bolt highlights a few of them:

"These are the emails that should have Professor Phil Jones most worried about his future.

Jones, head of the CRU unit whose emails were leaked, has been under most fire so far over one email in particular in which he boasted of using a 'trick' to 'hide the decline' that would have otherwise spoiled his graph showing temperatures soaring ever-upward.

But far more serious - at least in a legal sense - may be his apparent boasting of destroying data to stop sceptics from checking this alarmist work. If, as some emails suggest, he destroyed it to thwart FOI requests from Professor Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre, who’d already exposed as fake the Michael Mann 'hockey stick', Jones, one of the most active of the IPCC lead authors, could even face criminal charges."

"Politicians chose to put you in this mess"

2009-11-23T08:02:00.000-05:00

This paragraph sounds all too familiar.
Obviously, politicians have all evolved into the same thought process, with the same consequences.
It's time to throw the bums out!...

Irwin Stelzer writes about it in the U.K. Telegraph:

"The reason that it is good news is that policies which produced this mess can be changed. We are not dealing with some historical inevitability, or uncontrollable tsunami that has devastated the economy, or a plague that has wiped out or debilitated a portion of the population. The policies man has wrought can be changed."

Gallup looks toward the 2010 election

2009-11-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

There are interesting trends in this survey...

Gallup.com reports with graphs and charts:

"Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup's generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month."

Global Warming - Following the Money

2009-11-22T11:25:00.000-05:00

This isn't pretty.
This article has it's basis in "hacked" or "whistle blown" documents that were recently released onto the Internet.
The veracity of the released information has not (yet) been proven beyond every doubt; but, considering the thousands of documents that would have had to be faked, it seems likely to be accurate...

At AmericanThinker.com, Marc Sheppard begins with:

"It seems that while scientists who accept funding from oil companies are branded as bought-and-paid-for shills, those financed by renewable energy interests remain unchallenged authorities in their fields. Words can’t adequately express my astonishment."

Government at Work - Writing legislation

2009-11-22T10:54:00.000-05:00

The complicated language that is written into legislation is outrageous.
Being that it COULD be much simpler, it can ONLY be intended to purposefully obfuscate details and consequences.
After you read the referenced article see if you agree; and, if you're not convinced, just try to imagine references that you might rely on written in this fashion...

The details are in Jonathan Karl's post on the ABCnews.com blog:

"On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for 'certain states recovering from a major disaster.'

The section spends two pages defining which 'states' would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that 'during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.' "

Barack Obama - "bows, but the world refuses to bow back"

2009-11-22T08:03:00.000-05:00

Apparently, American voters bought in; however, the world does not...

These are excerpts from Michael Barone's article at WashingtonExaminer.com:

"On his 10-day trip to Asia and in his 10th month in office, Barack Obama is beginning to encounter limits on his ambition to change the world. Even as he bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia last April and to the emperor of Japan last week, the world refuses to bow back.

This is not how it was supposed to be. 'I am absolutely certain that generations from now,' he said on the night he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June 2008, 'we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last best hope on Earth.'...

...As for the planet beginning to heal, well, that's not clear. Obama evidently expected that his election would change not only America's image in the world but the policies of nations both friendly and unfriendly. In saluting the fall of the Berlin Wall, on videotape, he made no mention of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa or John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev or Vaclav Havel, but cited as a world-changing event his own election in the United States 19 years later."

Politicians - Missouri State Rep. Hope Whitehead

2009-11-22T08:02:00.000-05:00

What kind of a message does this send?
Doesn't anyone pay taxes before they get caught?
Whatever happened to good citizenship?...

Jake Wagman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

"A day before she clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives on Saturday, St. Louis Democrat Hope Whitehead paid a visit to City Hall.

Not to mobilize supporters, but to pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding taxes.

Her trip downtown was more than just civic duty. Under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot."

"Ratner Family Ties: ACORN and Justice Department Plot Thickens"

2009-11-22T08:01:00.000-05:00

This has a bad ring AND a bad smell to it...

At BigGovernment.com, John M. O'Hara wants us to:

"Meet the Ratners.

Bruce Ratner is a New York real estate developer who has given thousands of dollars to Democrats including President Obama. His philanthropy also includes having bailed out ACORN with $1.5 million to pay off their embezzlement debt, a decision he stands by despite ACORN’s recent prostitution scandal and a Congressional report detailing the systemic criminal elements in the organization.

As of late, Mr. Ratner has spent thousands lobbying the Obama administration for stimulus funds for an affordable housing / basketball arena boondoggle called Atlantic Yards. Oh yeah, Ratner owns the Nets who will occupy the new stadium should he have his way. In addition to paying back Mr. Ratner for his generous support over the years, the stimulus funds would benefit, you guessed it, ACORN! What’s more, the project would be seizing property from the very poor ACORN and liberals claims to represent by invocation of the extremely controversial doctrine of 'eminent domain.'"

Climategate: Stunning Deception and Misconduct at UK Warming Research Center Revealed

2009-11-21T12:24:00.000-05:00

Deception and misconduct!
That's a pretty light criticism considering the time, effort, and money that's already been spent and proposed to be spent in order to cope with what now (always to me) appear to be falsehoods...

Jason Mick writes about it and offers this:

"The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.

Someone hacked in to the files of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia. A very large file (61 mb) was downloaded and posted to the web. Phil Jones Director of the CRU has acknowledged the files are theirs. They contain papers, documents letters and emails. The latter are the most damaging and contain blunt information about the degree of manipulation of climate science in general and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in particular."

Global Warming - "The Death Blow"

2009-11-21T12:03:00.000-05:00

Some are calling this the greatest scientific scandal in history.
As the emails are read, more and more is being exposed.
I'll post more in the next few days...

For starters, Dr. Tim Ball writes:

"The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.

Someone hacked in to the files of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia. A very large file (61 mb) was downloaded and posted to the web. Phil Jones Director of the CRU has acknowledged the files are theirs. They contain papers, documents letters and emails. The latter are the most damaging and contain blunt information about the degree of manipulation of climate science in general and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in particular."

Barack Obama - and his new lawyer

2009-11-21T08:02:00.000-05:00

Nice credentials.
Is being tainted a prerequisite for a government appointee?...

Kevin Hall provides some background at Examiner.com:

"Bauer worked for Obama on the 2008 campaign. During that time, he sent a letter to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey arguing that ACORN should not be investigated for voter fraud. ACORN has admitted to more than 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations in 2008. The community organjizing group is under investigation in at least 13 states. However, ACORN's apparent crimes go far beyond registering voters who do not exist. The group is also accused of casting illegal ballots in order to steal elections for Democrats."

Alan Mulally, CEO Ford Motor Company - 2010 Man of the Year

2009-11-21T08:01:00.000-05:00

Well deserved, if you ask me...

At AutomobileMag.com, Joe DeMatio writes about it:

"A year ago, when the heads of Detroit's Big Three - GM's Rick Wagoner, Ford's Alan Mulally, and Chrysler's Bob Nardelli - appeared in the infamous Capitol Hill bailout hearings, many lawmakers, and many Americans, decided that this trio from the industrial heartland could all be tarred with the bad-CEO brush. There was a telling moment, during a discussion about executive compensation, when the three CEOs were asked if they were willing to work for a dollar a year.

Mulally's polite reply, 'I think I'm OK where I am,' was a juicy piece of red meat for the national media, who were as one in their downright contempt for these three men and the industry they represented. CNN's Anderson Cooper literally sneered in disgust."

"No Islamic Landmarks Were Harmed in the Making of '2012' "

2009-11-20T08:02:00.000-05:00

Well, at least they're honest about why...

This is from Peter Hall at Cinematical.com:

"The trailer for 2012 plays like a highlight reel of civilization falling apart all over the world, but it's religion that gets the brunt of Emmerich's digital pounding: A Buddhist temple gets hit by a tidal wave. The Sistine Chapel crumbles to pieces as a split tears right down the middle of Michelangeo's painting of God touching Adam's finger. St. Peter's Basilica rolls over onto a crowd of devoted worshipers. Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Reedemer statue falls to earth as its wracked by shockwaves. The White House is even crushed by, of all things, an aircraft carrier. But eagle eyed fans of watching organized religion get its disaster porn comeuppance will have noticed that there are no Islamic landmarks on the CGI chopping block.

That wasn't always the plan, however. Emmerich explained to SCI FI Wire that he had originally hoped the Kaaba, one of the holiest sites in the Islamic religion, would join the visual wrath of '2012', but that his co-screenwriter Harald Kloser talked him out of it:

'Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit ... but my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. ... We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element anyway in the film, so I kind of left it out.'"

Meanwhile - in the U.K. - Safety Inspections

2009-11-20T08:01:00.000-05:00

The concept is government safety inspections to insure child safety...

This is from an article by Robert Watts article in the U.K. Times Online:

"Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: 'It is a huge intervention into family life which will be counter-productive.'

'Good parents will feel the intrusion of the state in their homes and bad parents will now have someone else to blame if they don’t bring up their children in a sensible, safe environment.'"

Barack Obama - vs the Clinton Coalition in 2010 and 2012

2009-11-19T08:05:00.000-05:00

I think something is going on in America that seems to lean toward an epiphany that American values are seriously threatened.

More than a few citizens seem to be muttering, "What have we done?"

A candidate on a white horse with a strong belief in that "shining city on the hill" will get my support and my vote in a heartbeat...

HillBuzz.org recently acknowledged the character traits of George W. and Laura Bush. Now, there's this, along with much more that explains their reasoning:

"2012 entirely hinges on three things:

(1) the GOP running a candidate who turns out their base, so that few idiots sit at home 'to teach the GOP a lesson' because they believe the candidate is not conservative enough

(2) that candidate needs to talk only about creating jobs, lowering taxes, reining in spending, providing law and order, stabilizing the economy, securing energy independence for this country, protecting our citizens, and providing a solid education and path to a good future for our children. NO talk about social issues…no attacks on gays…no crusade on abortion…no fodder for the Race Industry

(3) balancing (1) and (2), the candidate needs to appeal to conservatives while standing tall and strong as someone Jacksonian Democrats, PUMAS, independent voters, and Clinton Moderates, whatever you want to call us, can get behind

Ladies and Gentlemen, that person is Sarah Palin.

If she goes for it, she’ll be the 45th President of the United States. "

Barack Obama - "The Man Who Despises America"

2009-11-19T08:04:00.000-05:00

Pretty heavy duty, wouldn't you say?...

At Spectator.org, Mark Hyman begins his article with this and then explains more:

"The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the 'they've-lost-all-touch-with-reality' crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother's basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news' resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC's Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I'll say it.

Barack Obama despises America.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it 'in for America,' then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion."

Government at Work - "Goebbels Retail Sales?"

2009-11-19T08:03:00.002-05:00

The question is, "How can we believe the government?"
The answer seems to be "We can't"...

Karl Denninger, who follows financial things, writes on the Market-Ticker blog:

"If you were wondering how we can possibly have 'improving' retail sales data when sales tax information from the states refuses to reflect this alleged 'improvement' in retail sales, along with how states can post double-digit sales tax declines while 'retail sales' are down by a much smaller percentage, you now understand. The Census Bureau intentionally lies by omitting the 'zero' for a store in the month it closes - that loss of sales is never reported - not even retrospectively in a revision the next month."