Wednesday, September 30. 2009
Via Icecap:
Leading UK Climate Scientists Must Explain or Resign
By Jenniffer Marohasy
MOST scientific sceptics have been dismissive of the various reconstructions of temperature which suggest 1998 is the warmest year of the past millennium. Our case has been significantly bolstered over the last week with statistician Steve McIntyre finally getting access to data used by Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn and Phil Jones to support the idea that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last hundred years - the infamous hockey stick graph.
Mr McIntyre’s analysis of the data - which he had been asking for since 2003 - suggests that scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the United Kingdom’s Bureau of Meteorology have been using only a small subset of the available data to make their claims that recent years have been the hottest of the last millennium. When the entire data set is used, Mr McIntyre claims that the hockey stick shape disappears completely. (Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem, by Steve McIntyre, 27 September 2009)
Mr McIntyre has previously showed problems with the mathematics behind the ‘hockey stick’. But scientists at the Climate Research Centre, in particular Dr Briffa, have continuously republished claiming the upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years is real and not an artifact of the methodology used - as claimed by Mr McIntyre. However, these same scientists have denied Mr McIntyre access to all the data. Recently they were forced to make more data available to Mr McIntyre after they published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - a journal which unlike Nature and Science has strict policies on data archiving which it enforces.
This week’s claims by Steve McInyre that scientists associated with the UK Meteorology Bureau have been less than diligent are serious and suggest some of the most defended building blocks of the case for anthropogenic global warming are based on the indefensible when the methodology is laid bare.
This sorry saga also raises issues associated with how data is archived at the UK Meteorological Bureau with in complete data sets that spuriously support the case for global warming being promoted while complete data sets are kept hidden from the public - including from scientific sceptics like Steve McIntyre.
It is indeed time leading scientists at the Climate Research Centre associated with the UK Meteorological Bureau explain how Mr McIntyre is in error or resign. See post here.
Looks like they were cherry-picking data to get the results they wanted. Why?
Quoted at Conspiracy as Joke of the Day. It begins:
DEMOCRATS: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO REFORM HEALTH CARE, OR DON'T YOU? Philip K. Howard in the Wall Street Journal:
On Aug. 25, at a town-hall meeting in Reston, Va., Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, was asked why there is nothing in the health-care proposals about liability reform. Mr. Dean replied: "The reason that tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers. . . . And that is the plain and simple truth."
...A few thousand trial lawyers are blocking reform that would benefit 300 million Americans. This is not just your normal special-interest politics. It's a scandal—it is as if international-trade policy was being crafted in order to get fees for customs agents.
Read it all. Link above.
Polanski is on record as claiming that all guys "want to f- young girls." Perhaps some do, but guys with young daughters tend not to approve of the notion: the idea tends to make them go load their guns. Althouse wonders about the pedophilia of Hollywood types.
I would just like to offer the comment that, from a psychological standpoint, desire for 13 year-old girls is not really pedophilia. In the past, 13 year-old women routinely married and, without spending time on a search, I wonder how many girls in NYC get pregant at 13? I'll bet it's many.
No, the issue is not whether men (or women, for that matter) are sometimes attracted to young people, or whether 13 year-olds can be sexy witches, or whether 44 year-olds can be drawn to young females.
The issue is the law. Forcible sex, and sex with the underaged, are illegal. Admittedly the latter is rarely enforced when the guy is underaged too but, regardless of our sexual inclinations and fantasies, or our opinions about every law, we all implicitly agree to obey the laws by virtue of our citizenship - or to accept the consequences like the adults we are presumed to be. That's Adulthood 101.
Rape is illegal. Everybody knows that. We used to hang people for it. It has never been in fashion, to my knowledge. Until now.
 Is the O "playing at being President?" Gratuitously cruel but cute-as-heck photo of the O is h/t NE Repub.
Sarkozy: The O incredibly naive and egotistical.
The O wants the US to surrender sovereignty - but to whom?
These are supposed to be savvy guys. Don't they realize that they are being used as window dressing?
More from the Frenchies: How French women stay thin. h/t, Tiger.
Massive ACORN vote fraud in NY. Related: The Politico gets played by ACORN
It wasn't rape. As neoneo notes, after all she was a 13-year old sexually active temptress at the time. The rules do not apply to Hollywood, apparently. Sodom and Gomorrah over there. Vanderleun nails the story.
In praise of political anger. Gets your heart working too.
The FCC cannot tie its own shoes, but wants to dig into the internet. Arrogant jerks. Leave us the heck alone.
The enraged and hateful Left aims at critics' jugulars
The Are all men pigs? meme. We believe that, at heart, all men are not pigs, but dogs, invested with a powerful mating urge. However, most of us also believe in civilized, honorable, and honest behavior especially when sober or when not in the throes of uncontrollable biological urges and desire...
NYC celebrates 60 years of Chicom rule. Perhaps New Yorkers might enjoy the same thing?
Why the O bombed on health care. WSJ. No, the public isn't stupid.
NY Post - Reform horrors: The O's total disconnect
Via Wilkinson:
I actually think we are going to get a reform that is both worse than the status quo and worse than a pure single payer system.
Maybe they want to break it, so they can come in and "fix it" later. That is termed "tactics."
Praying to Obama. Good grief. That is sick.
Ace on why it matters:
...it's why defeating health care in general and a government option in particular is so important. Once people turn their very lives over to the beneficence of government, it's game over.
Right. It makes us all slavish dependents on the government plantation.
Insty:
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: “Liberals are screaming over public option failure even tho WH says plan is no biggie. Someone has their story wrong.”
If anybody thinks Congress and the O know what the heck they are doing, please make your case.
Tuesday, September 29. 2009
Does anybody take Frank Rich seriously?
I never did ,even when he did the drama reviews.
Not that 64 is old by any means, but the Medicare group is very upset about ObamaCare.
Rightly so. They have a very good deal right now - probably an impossibly good deal - and they are going to lose it to help pay for the younger people who don't want to buy medical insurance.
Once the dog gets a bone, don't try to take it away. Folks on Medicare love their almost-free lunch.
Ann Althouse, a prominent law professor, teenager in the ‘60’s, dismisses Andy Williams as too “square” even back in the ‘60’s to be taken seriously now, when he says President Obama is “following Marxist theory.”
I tested Williams’ squareness on my sons, now 4 and 9, this morning by showing them a YouTube of Andy Williams singing the theme song from Exodus, “This Land Is Mine.” Both loved it. But, are they biased because we’re Jewish? No. Both’s favorite TV show when younger, after the usual run of kiddie shows, was reruns on PBS of Lawrence Welk’s show. They both loved the melodious and understandable lyrics along with the lively and friendly performances.
So, are my sons square? Or, does Ann Althouse’s comment reflect a deprived upbringing, lacking personal connection to the emotions and tastes of an earlier generation? I choose the latter but what is important about this minor brouhaha is what it reflects about us.
Ann Althouse is known for her scholarship on federalism and the Constitution, so she is concerned with past debates and their effect on and application to current events. In this, she may be cognizant of philosopher George Santayana’s famous comment about “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” but may have missed his other comment, “the equality of unequals is inequality” while arguing for equality of opportunity.
Most people are not scholars of the myriad origins, forms and history of Marxism or Socialism. These terms are usually short-hand for categorizing redistribution of results among unequals, from those who earned the results to those who haven’t. That’s a sticky argument, as others argue unless those who haven’t are provided means to opportunities then they are less likely to obtain results commensurate with their skills and efforts.
The problem lies in discerning the boundaries, and aside from legislative and court determinations each individual must choose. I say “must” because the extent to which government decides the boundaries is inescapable upon each individual.
Most liberals tend to come down on a more expansive view of redistribution. Hence the epithet of “Marxist” or “Socialist” from some of those more conservative.
Many investigators who have studied President Obama’s past associations, to the limited extent they have been discovered, document his closest formative influences and choices to be among those quite radical and even avowedly “socialist” or “Marxist.” The major media has essentially ignored this pattern, or restrained coverage when they no longer could.
Does this matter?
To me, not as much as some of the investigators among my friends. I tend to be something of a behaviorist, believing that what one sees now is most important, and recognize all's ability to change. Others whom are friends are less concerned with the observable and the now. As one I respect says, “My hope is that he will get real very soon on lots of fronts as he experiences the push back and the immovable objects….Personally, I will give it more time to see how his presidency develops.”
Fair enough. And, while recognizing the observable and the now, incomplete when one considers the actual actions of President Obama that irremediably affect our and other nations’ inhabitants futures.
It’s unnecessary to be sucked into semantics or history. Only open eyes are necessary. That’s why this seemingly minor brouhaha is receiving such play among commenters. Some see Andy Williams' comment as an eye-opener and some see it as "square," but once again the real issue is missed. What will be history is now being shaped, and cannot be avoided by retreat to the past or hope for the future, nor need analogies be made. The observable and now are real and tangible enough.
 With ObamaCare in a Hole, Will the White House Stop Digging?
The real obesity problem is with the government
The hockey stick is dead. It was a fraud
Fiendish plot to create government daycare
Insty:
CANADIANS PUSH FOR PRIVATE OPTION: “Whereas U.S. healthcare is predominantly a private system paid for by private insurers, things in Canada tend toward the other end of the spectrum: A universal, government-funded health system is only beginning to flirt with private-sector medicine.” (Via American Power).
Will Small Businesses Stop Offering Health Insurance If Reform Passes? I think that's their plan
Coyote: But’s Its My Hard Work Paying Your Unemployment
Seems quite clear now that the O did not write his books
Dr. Government by Sen. John Kyl
Euroland should just give up on Socialism and try real Communism. It works just great.
Related: Are we witnessing the collape of Liberalism? at Am Thinker. How's that for whiplash?
Monday, September 28. 2009
 The new museum in Athens. Sounds good.
Bring it on! Coldest winter. But I was sorta hoping for some global warming by now. They promised!
From Surber:
Wild turkeys attack a little boy in New Jersey. Why do you think they call them wild animals, New Jersey? I say an ax, an oven, some cranberries — bada-bing, bada-boom — Happy Thanksgiving.
The video.
We like John Kasich. Wonderful fellow.
What?
The admission of foreign students is something policymakers haven't focused on sufficiently. Such visas should only be granted for graduate schools and four-year colleges — no high schools, community colleges, or technical schools, like the Golf Academy of America, the California School of Dog Grooming, or John Paul's Hair, Nails & Skin Care Institute, all of which are on the list of approved schools to admit foreign students.
No flight schools?
I cannot believe that Radical Chic is still cool in California. It's so 70s.
Give us back our bullets. I have mine.
Whatever you say, Sen Kerry, but to me it's just a new tax:
"I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does," Kerry said. "This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a pollution reduction bill" (E&E Daily, Sept. 25).
Baloney.
A Liz Cheney update. Like her a lot. Rising star?
 Support hits new lows. Nobody wants this government mess. Just fix a few simple things, and all will be well.
Samuelson: It's just an exercise in ego gratification. No, it's worse than that: it's about power.
The cost? It's hidden in unfunded mandates for the states to pick up. They will just love that.
This loony, grandiose big government snafu is a train wreck waiting to happen, and Casey Jones is driving that train, high on cocaine. Better watch your speed.
 Works as well as an aerobic workout. Today's photo of one of our farm staff is for our male readers' health. We need to keep them alive.
We commit 6 felonies/day? Heck, I am sure I can do more.
Upping the predictions on climate in preparation for the conference. But not to worry - Bundanoon will solve it for us.
America's ridiculously large economy. India's national economy is equal to that of the NYC metropolitan area. Sheesh.
Oil bonanza in California (h/t, Miller)
George Will likes Marco Rubio
Neoneo: Are they laughing at us?
Stop allowing the Left to set the rules
Fineman: The limits of charisma. Somehow the charisma never really affected me.
Via Insty:
AND DON’T LET US CATCH YOU BEING NEIGHBORLY AGAIN: State bureaucrats threaten to fine, jail a Michigan woman for watching her neighbors’ kids. If people are neighborly, they need the state less. This cannot be permitted.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “‘If people are neighborly, they need the state less.’ You have unwittingly provided every ’social-service’ bureaucracy with a motivational slogan to be posted prominently in parts of the building where the public is not allowed.” I don’t think it’s anything they haven’t figured out already. . . .
Sunday, September 27. 2009
In the WSJ. One quote:
Television does not begin to fill it. To the extent broadcast networks ever tried they now have abdicated to so-called cable news channels. These, in turn, now devote most of their resources to covering celebrities, crimes and sundry social trivia and to prime-time programming that pretends to be analysis and informed opinion while mostly offering the spectacle of extremist heads yelling at each other. There are few resources and even less commitment to covering significant news beyond floods and fires.
The Internet is not filling news vacuums either. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online sites and blogs that claim to provide news, but virtually none of them even pretend to pursue the traditional news role of newspapers, which is to invest in professional staffs dispersed around a community and across the country or the globe to cover, analyze, and only then comment on, events. Actually, all they do is comment.
As to all the free online editions of our newspapers, their business model does not begin to cover the cost of significant news reporting. So the online editions with growing audiences—largely cannibalized from print audiences—rely on the poor print editions for almost all the news they give away. Sadly, there is less and less of that, and the ultimate loser, of course, is the public.
He is right. We are in a time when new paradigms are waiting to be born. (However, his WSJ is still doing fine.) The new paradigm we do not want is this one. The very idea is sick sick sick.
h/t Reader and Theo:
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "someone may steal from it at night.." So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job at $18,000 per year..
Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people: one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.
Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people: one to do the studies and one to write the reports.
Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" So they created the following positions: a time keeper, and a payroll officer, then hired two people.
Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they created an administrative section and hired three people: an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for a year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost."
So they laid off the night watchman.
 Post Partisan in the WaPo rips the O's UN speech. One quote:
I’ve refrained from commenting on President Obama’s address to the United Nations General Assembly because the speech made me angry. And most postings -- or letters, or e-mails -- written while angry are better discarded or deleted.
But this address grows more disturbing on further reading. Some major presidential speeches deserve to be remembered, quoted and celebrated. Some deserve to be forgotten. A few deserve to be remembered and criticized, because they dishonor the history of presidential rhetoric.
Obama’s rhetorical method in international contexts -- given supreme expression at the United Nations this week -- is a moral dialectic. The thesis: pre-Obama America is a nation of many flaws and failures. The antithesis: The world responds with understandable but misguided prejudice. The synthesis: Me. Me, at all costs; me, in spite of all terrors; me, however long and hard the road may be. How great a world we all should see, if only all were more like…me.
It was bizarre.
A federal sales tax on medical insurance? The purpose of that must be to drive the prices up, to drive people to government programs. Why else would they try to make private insurance more expensive for people?
Stossel: “‘Liberal’ Is What My Philosophy Used To Be Called — It’s The Statists Who Are The Reactionaries”
Why the rush to push health care thru? It's political
Many thanks to law enforcement for catching these guys
Saturday, September 26. 2009
I do not think it's so much because people want freedom and choice (altho they do) as it is because people have no confidence in government entitlement programs (which the Dem plans are all about, ultimately). Why?
Social Security - bankrupt
Postal Service - bankrupt
Welfare - had devastating unintended consequences for which the nation still pays and from which the nation continues to suffer (eg huge rates - up to 70% - of single motherhood among beneficiaries)
Medicare - bankrupt
Medicaid - bankrupting the states
Government-run (ie union-controlled) schools: are people thrilled with them?
Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac - bankrupt
The "stimulus" - a failure, but it did create 25,000 new government jobs!
The future tax consequences of the above are daunting to people, and the idea of adding another trillion or so frightens the heck out of people who are thinking about their own well-being, their kids' futures - and also about the nation's.
The sad thing is that most of what people complain about in health care can be easily solved without giant government controls and bureaucracies:
1. Permit interstate competition among insurance companies so people can have a wide range of choices of types of policies including cheap major medical which is what makes sense for most people, and explain the basic fact that medical care has to be paid for, and even saved for, same as car repairs and house repairs and vacations (and legal costs). That is what grown-ups do. You can get major medical for a family for the price of a big-screen TV.
2. Portability of insurance - so you own it (that is complicated tho for companies that self-insure)
3. A law that says you cannot be cancelled if you get sick
4. State "pools" for the uninsurable, same as for uninsurable drivers. We already have (bankrupt) Medicaid for the poor.
How easy and non-controversial would those changes be? Abundant, high quality, and fairly expensive medical care is one of the great blessings and privileges of a prosperous society, and thus an important economic engine. Why kill it? People want these things.
Do Americans want to be grown-ups, or children? It's our call.
- Take a minute today to email your Congressman and Senators to let them know your views of the Dem healthcare plan. Their email addresses are here. It helps to be calm, polite, reasonable, direct - and brief. A phone call or letter probably is better, but everybody does email these days.
Ouch! At Big Government. h/t, Insty
But Chavez, Fidel, Quaddafi and Ahmadinejad seem to like the O, so that must be progress.
I think the O is getting in political trouble, but I have been wrong before about things.
Friday, September 25. 2009
 Going fishing off Montauk this weekend. Will do mostly catch and release. I will never keep a big breeder Striper. One medium legal fish maybe.
I will leave these with y'all:
I did think that St. Francis said that.
The plusses (mostly) and minuses of community colleges
Health care scrubbed from NEA website. Lots of things getting scrubbed these days. Even the NYT tried to cover this story.
Congress: Let's own the newspapers. How would you tell the difference?
Why to the jihadists still want to kill us? Aren't we all hopey-nicey now?
Is this admin the last hurrah of Liberalism? Am Thinker. One can only hope.
If you missed Bibi's speech
Getting ugly: ACORN Funded Political, For-Profit Efforts, Data Show
Unbelievable: treat misbehaving kids differently, based on race. Is the racist assumption that "others" are incapable of civilized behavior?
Since when is playing doctor evil? Good wholesome fun for kids.
The continuing Dem war against business. Who is supposed to make the money they want to spend?
Photo is Montauk Light. It comes in handy.
 Health care bill too difficult to put online.
FedEx or fax it to us, Sen. Baucus. We'll be happy to post every page for you.
Our secretaries, assistants, and paralegals are standing by, waiting (photo). It's a slow day just flirting in the office.
Mona Charen on Obama's Self-Worship.
It actually worries me a little. I am not saying this to pick on the guy. I just worry that he bought into the messianic hype because he has not been through much in life. Mark Steyn observed on the radio yesterday that he was the first President who acted like the job was too small for him.
Thus far, I am neither impressed by the O's fund of knowledge, nor his wisdom, nor his experience. I am impressed by his smooth, lawyerly glibness and his apparent supreme self-confidence at times - but these are not the things I admire in people.
Thursday, September 24. 2009
From Vanderleun:
It has become fashionable for governments to treat people -- even adults -- like children: children who consume too much, obey too little and remain too fond their imaginary friends. And their betters take it upon themselves to guard their speech, take away their dangerous toys and curtail their choices because they are prone to make unwise ones. And most of all they see to it that we should expect no better our lives but a little welfare gruel and some end of life counseling. Once upon a time mankind saw it as their birthright to wander the fields, swim in the streams and see what was over the next hill. Today we live penned up in dark houses warded by sour matrons and bloodless didacts who are forever seeking to administer their "teaching moments."
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Anti-trust suits: 