This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Saturday December 5 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
27 comments:
Anonymous
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Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List(GatewayPundit)
Scott Baker from Breitbart.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted this shocking report today on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.
—-Warning on Content—–
I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered.
Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and on Breitbart.tv (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I felt this would be an appropriate place for this report.
Warning: The following material is very explicit.
Passages of Pride – Page 4 (Beginning at the age of five, a young child has sexual encounters with his playmates.)
Throughout his childhood, from age five on, Derek would sneak off with a friend into someone’s basement or the woods along the back alley, where they would take off their pants and play with each other, usually fondling each other’s genitals. It became habitual.
“At that time, I didn’t quite have a name for it,” says Derek. “It was something that I liked doing, that felt good, that I wanted to do as often as I could.
The other kids always recognized it as being something bad and dirty. And all I wanted to know was, When can we do it again?”
Would Barack and Michelle Obama approve of their daughters reading this in their classrooms?
Secret Service first learned of crashers following day, Michelle's staff knew at beginning of event (The Washington Times)
Mr. Sullivan also surprised the panel by telling members that his agency did not learn of the security breach until the Virginia couple bragged about it on the Internet.
He told the panel that the federal security agency did not become aware of the breach by the Salahis until the next day, when it saw the couple's photos from the event, including posing with the president, posted on their public Facebook account.
Honduras Congress Votes Not To Reinstate President as Zelaya Supporters Throw in Towel (Latin American Herald) Chavez and Obama deeply saddened.
TEGUCIGALPA – The National Resistance Front that arose after the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras has abandoned hope for the restoration of ousted the former president and is focused now on convening an assembly to overhaul the country’s constitution, one of the group’s leaders said Thursday.
“We have closed this chapter on the restoration of President Zelaya, which didn’t take place,” Juan Barahona told Efe the day after Honduran lawmakers rejected reinstatement of the deposed head of state.
The Honduran Congress decisively rejected the restitution of deposed President Mel Zelaya in a vote of 62 to 8, after six hours of debate on Wednesday.
Oh no! Another climate scam scandal, this time in Denmark (Washington Examiner)
November was a horrendous month for global warming propagandists, what with somebody hacking into the computers of East Anglia University's Central Research Union (CRU) and exposing thousands of emails detailing how climate change data had been systematically cooked.
Now it looks like December could be another bad month because the Copenhagen Post Online brings word of an exploding scandal in the Scandanavian nation involving massive fraud in the trading of the Danish CO2 Quotas Register.
That's Denmark's cap-and-trade system in which companies buy and sell carbon emissions credits.
The Obama-Waxman-Markey and Boxer-Kerry global warming cap-and-trade bills now before Congress are modeled in part on the Danish CO2 Quotas Register.
But things don't look good for the Danish climate change initiative, according to the Copenhagen Post Online:
"Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries.
"Denmark’s quota register, which the Energy Agency within the Climate and Energy Ministry administers, is the largest in the world in terms of personal quota registrations.
It is much easier to register here than in other countries, where it can take up to three months to be approved.
"Ekstra Bladet reporters have found examples of people using false addresses and companies that are in liquidation, which haven’t been removed from the register.
"One of the cases, which stems from the Danish register, involves fraud of more than 8 billion kroner.
This case, in which nine people have been arrested, is being investigated in England.
"The market for CO2 trade has exploded in recent years and is worth an estimated 675 billion kroner globally."
Day Fourteen and Counting (MSM Climategate Cover-up) (Media Research Center)
Alexandria, VA – For the fourteenth straight day, the three broadcast networks have failed to report on the great and growing ClimateGate scandal on their weekday morning or evening news programs. How to explain this?
Perhaps it is that ABC, NBC and CBS have not yet heard of the story, despite two weeks of non-stop reporting on and discussion of ClimateGate in a whole host of media outlets.
Perhaps the broadcast networks only trust their fellow liberal press outlets, like the New York Times.
Perhaps they don’t realize the Times exhibited journalistic diligence on ClimateGate, with a front page story the day the story broke.
In the event that ABC News, NBC News and CBS News missed the news, the Media Research Center (MRC) is today rushing each of them a copy of the Times story, in the hopes that armed with this new information, they will finally report a story that has been roiling nearly everywhere else for a fortnight.
So as not to offend the networks’ pro-global warming sensibilities, MRC President Brent Bozell is looking to have the stories delivered by bicycle messenger. Bozell:
“Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but maybe we should stop criticizing and start showing compassion for NBC, ABC and CBS and their neglect of the huge ClimateGate story.
Climategate is now huge. Way, way bigger than the Mainstream Media (MSM) is admitting it is – as Richard North demonstrates in this fascinating analysis.
Using what he calls a Tiger Woods Index (TWI), he compares the amount of interest being shown by internet users (as shown by the number of general web pages on Google) and compares it with the number of news reports recorded.
The ratio indicates what people are really interested in, as opposed to what the MSM thinks they ought to be interested in.
North explains:
Tiger Woods delivered 22,500,000 web and 46,025 news pages, giving ratio of 489. That is the “Tiger Woods Index” (TWI) against which I chose to measure a raft of other issues.
Take back Al Gore's Oscar, two Academy members demand in light of Climategate (LA Times)
But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore two years ago for the environmental movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Senate votes to keep Medicare cuts (Democrats and AARP vote to pull the plug on grandma) (Washington Post)
The Senate voted Thursday to keep nearly $500 billion in Medicare cuts in its overhaul of the health care system, protecting the bill's major source of financing against a Republican attack.
TARP Cash Targeted in Jobs Push (Dems trying to steal remaining funds for their schemes) (WSJ)
Democrats have begun to hash out how to pay for a mix of unemployment benefits, state aid, tax credits and other incentives they hope will turn around the country's surging unemployment rate.
Funding for the initiatives would come from two sources. For job creation, the principal target would be a pot of more than $150 billion that was set aside last year to bail out the tottering financial system.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she would like to tap the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to pay for any "investments that we have in jobs." ...
Republicans lawmakers said they would oppose using TARP for new jobs programs. "The TARP money was intended to solve an economic emergency in the financial sector," said House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Using the money now "on useless government programs is a very big mistake."
Next use for TARP: Government union slush fund (Michelle Malkin)
Follow the bouncing ball: TARP, the trillion-dollar-plus banking bailout, has morphed from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, to a life insurance company bailout, to an auto supplier bailout. I’m sure I forgot more.
Well, now the Democrats want to use it to bail out state governments and convert unused TARP bucks into...a government union slush fund.
John Stossel: Who Creates Jobs? (Dear Leader's "Jobs Summit) (Fox Business News)
Today, the White House holds its “Jobs Summit” stunt.
It’s typical Washington-think: Assemble interest groups and concoct special tax credits and handouts to the politically connected. What conceit.
The political class think that economies revolve around them, that Washington makes things happen, that politicians are the most important players.
Today’s Washington Post suggests that the way to create jobs is public spending by the federal government:
Obama's options are limited, as the administration already has signaled that it is unwilling to make any investments that would add significantly to the nation's ballooning deficit.
At least the Administration talks about the private sector:
"We want to make sure it is not just the public sector doing this in a vacuum," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama. "It's important we engage the private sector as well."
Administration officials, however, have excluded major trade associations from the summit... .
Some of those groups privately complain that their job creation ideas, including enactment of stalled free trade deals that they say would boost exports, are opposed by labor unions, which will be heavily represented at the forum.
The White House, which has clashed with some of the business groups over their opposition to health-care reform and other initiatives, says it has met repeatedly with those organizations and wants to hear fresh ideas.
Yes. I am sure those "fresh ideas" will come from the trade unions whom the White House just hasn't heard from much over the past year.
At the summit they will also hear from environmental groups “Green for All” and “Coalition for the Green Bank.” I’m sure they’ll have great ideas for job creation.
Will at least some free-market economists get to speak? No. The White House will hear from Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Jeffrey Sachs.(continued)
Global-Warming Theology: The end is nigh, their god is dead (The Washington Times)
Global warming was an academic Ponzi scheme. Its leading proponents were mini-Madoffs, peddling a vision of global catastrophe to gullible activists, bureaucrats and policymakers.
The vision was so vast, the fear it inspired so pervasive, that it seized popular imagination, aided ably by hucksters like former Vice President Al Gore and his science-fiction feature film "An Inconvenient Truth."
But like any Ponzi scheme, global warming only worked if everyone kept investing and no one looked at the books. Once the truth came out - of manipulated findings, phony data, rigged peer-review processes and intimidation of skeptics - the scheme began to collapse.
Yet even as the edifice comes down, the adherents of the orthodoxy say that there is nothing to see, that this is all a distraction from the business at hand, that there is still no time to lose, full steam (or solar power) ahead.
But it is far too late for that. The veil has been pierced, the myth revealed, the scales have fallen from the people's eyes.
The pagan priests are fleeing the temple, their sacred idols are being pulled down, their holy works renounced. Their god, finally, is dead.
Copenhagen targets not tough enough, says Al Gore (Man-bear-pig alive and kicking) (The Times (UK)
Even if a deal is reached at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen next week it will only be the first step towards the far more radical cuts that are needed in global carbon emissions, Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, told The Times last night.
Mr Gore said that to avoid the worst ravages of climate change world leaders would have to come together again to set more drastic reductions than those now planned.
“Even a final treaty will have to set the stage for other tougher reductions at a later date,” he said. “We have already overshot the safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
He insisted that the present goal set for Copenhagen of stabilising world emissions of carbon dioxide at or below 450 parts per million —enough to prevent a rise in average global temperatures of no more than 2C — was insufficient and a safer target would be 350 parts per million.
“Are we doing enough? The answer is obviously no — 450 is not the right target. But it is presently seen as beyond the capacity of governments around the world.
We are stretching the capacity of governments even to hit a 450 target.”
“We are gambling with the future of human civilisation in accepting odds that by any definition make our present course reckless . . .
The British university at the heart of a scandal over climate-change research announced a wide-ranging probe into allegations that its scientists manipulated data about global warming.
The independent review is part of efforts by the University of East Anglia to damp the furor over thousands of hacked private emails involving its researchers, which suggested efforts to squelch the views of climate-change skeptics.
The scandal blew up just days before world leaders are set to meet in Copenhagen for a United Nations-sponsored summit aimed at boosting international efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and slow global warming.
Climate-change skeptics have seized on the emails, saying they prove that the case for man-made global warming wasn't as definitive as generally claimed.
The scientist in the eye of the storm, Phil Jones, said Tuesday he was stepping aside as the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit pending the outcome of the investigation.
CRU maintains one of the world's most important data sets on how global temperatures have changed.
In an interview, UEA's vice chancellor said Dr. Jones would take a lower profile in the aftermath of the scandal. "He'll continue his scientific work, though how much of it will be at UEA remains to be seen," Edward Acton said. He added that the university isn't "hounding him out."
Prof. Acton, however, also said Dr. Jones "may have to take a rest." He didn't elaborate.
Gibbs: Don't Confuse Copenhagen-bound Obama With Global Warming Facts (davidlimbaugh.com)
Despite the unfolding international "climate change" scandal involving the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, President Barack Obama's ideological presuppositions on global warming remain unshaken, and he will still happily attend the Copenhagen global warming conference.
This unprecedented fraud by a "team" of politicized scientists whose research has generated some $20 million in research grants for the CRU hasn't deterred Obama from his energy- and economy-destroying agenda any more than double-digit unemployment figures have dissuaded him from his failed Keynesian policies.
Nor is Obama bothered by the incestuous relationship among the CRU, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Copenhagen summit.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sniffed that corruption at the highest levels of climate change intelligentsia -- corruption, mind you, that bears directly on the underlying science -- doesn't alter the president's firm opinion that "climate change is happening."
"I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," said Gibbs. "I think there's no real scientific basis for the dispute of this."
Oh? Is this administration so myopic as to be dangerously ignorant?
So arrogant that it deems dissenting opinions unworthy of acknowledgment? Or just old-fashioned liars?
The Speaker of the Danish Parliament has issued a damning criticism of the climate debate, saying politicians gullibly turn theories into facts.
As the world prepares to converge on Copenhagen for the COP15 Climate Summit, Denmark’s Speaker of Parliament has expressed serious doubts as to the way in which the climate debate has developed.
“The problem is that lots of people go around saying that the climate change we see is a result of human activity.
That is a very dangerous claim,” Parliamentary Speaker and former Finance Minister Thor Pedersen (Lib) tells DR.
“Unfortunately I seem to experience that scientists say: ‘We have a theory’ – then that crosses the road to the politicians who say: ‘We know’.
Who can be bothered to hear a scientist who says ‘I have a theory’ when politicians go around saying ‘I know’” Thor Pedersen says.
No temperature rise Thor Pedersen adds that the temperature has not risen in the past decade.
NYT's Friedman on ClimateGate: Global Warming Action Necessary, No Matter Risk or Cost (NewsBusters)
What's $200 billion annually, or roughly $1,761 per family per year, if it means lowering by 10 percent the chance that the world is going to end? It's a pittance to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Friedman made an appearance on CNN's Dec. 3 "Campbell Brown" to promote the paperback release of his book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded." Brown asked Friedman for his take on the ClimateGate scandal, and he insisted there should be transparency as far as the data is concerned.
"Well, these were hacked e-mails from one of the important climate research centers over in the U.K.," Friedman said. "And, frankly, Campbell, as someone who follows this issue, cares about it, I found some of those e-mails disappointing, frankly in the kind of way in which it seemed that they were trying to keep certain research out, you know, of the discussion, because I think transparency here is really ... is everything.
Cuba blasts US black leaders for charges of racism (AP via SFGate)
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Cuba hit back Thursday at 60 prominent U.S. black leaders who challenged its race record, with island writers, artists and official journalists calling the criticism an attack on their country's national identity.
The five-page signed statement, distributed by Cuban government press officials in an e-mail, defended Cuba's progress in providing social and personal opportunities for blacks and people of mixed race.
But it focused more on Cuba's past than the racial inequalities of contemporary Cuban society that came under criticism from Americans such as Princeton University professor Cornel West; Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of President Barack Obama's Chicago church; and Susan Taylor, former editor of Essence magazine.
Wow, this is great news!!! Latino socialist/commie pigs from Cuba going head to head with black socialist/commie pigs from the U.S.
Now if we can only get the Hollywood socialist/commie pig celebrities to join the fight, and then sit back and enjoy them rip each other apart. Sounds like popcorn time once again!!!
Up to last year, most Americans believed that Jimmy Carter was the worst President in American history.
But, right now, Americans are more fearful and more uncertain about the future of their country, than they were during the years that Carter was President (1977 - 1981).
Obama has not even completed a year in office, yet the country is on the verge of economic collapse.
Does anyone believe that America can afford to fight and win a war with Iran?
People may complain that tax rates were higher in the Carter years, but at least the financial burden for government spending was on the American tax-payers of the time, and was not passed on to future generations.
In the late 1970s, Democrats controlled the White House, Congress, and the Senate. But many of those Democrats were Harry Truman/Scoop Jackson Democrats, who, while supporters of New Deal economic policies, were nevertheless patriotic Americans who cared for the future of the country.
Congress was not as corrupt as it is today. Corporate interests and special interest groups did not have the power that they do today.
In the America of the 1970s, most of the stuff that you bought in shopping malls was stuff that was made in America, from clothes and toys, to TVs and screwdrivers.
I do not remember coming across any stuff that was made in China in the 1970s. Illegal immigration was not a major problem at the time, and Los Angeles was one of the most pleasant places to live.
Obama’s Jobs Summit: The Invisible Hand of SEIU and ACORN (Big Government)
As President Obama concludes his first jobs summit, almost a year into his presidency, the nature of the guest list hints at a deliberate initiative that’s been underway for over 15 years – and it’s not one of the obvious presumptions that most would make.
Notice that of the list of leaders invited, the majority are labor union leaders, leaders of businesses with government contracts, or leaders of businesses that operate on partial public funding.
There is a common element across most of the businesses represented: in one capacity or another, even if they are private sector businesses, most on the list benefit from some form of public money.
There is a legal precedent over 15 years old that is the pervasive push behind such a premise, one that was the product of ACORN and labor union coalitions.
And judging by Change to Win / SEIU’s Anna Burger’s plan for today’s jobs summit, it’s evident that this precedent is in play as we speak.
Venezuela's Currency Plunges Against Dollar (Wall Street Journal)
Venezuela's currency fell sharply against the dollar in black market trading Thursday, reaching a two-month low as worries over bank nationalizations prompted Venezuelans to trade in their bolivars for greenbacks.
President Hugo Chavez ordered the seizure of four small banks over the past week, and on Thursday said they would be nationalized.
The day before, he threatened more bank seizures, leading to a run on some banks as people started guessing which ones might be targeted.
The specter of a liquidity squeeze hitting the country's smaller banks is starting to appear, fueling dollar demand.
In afternoon trading in Caracas, the dollar was fetching about 6.1 bolivars after reaching as high as 6.3 bolivars in intraday trading. In the previous session, the dollar traded at 5.8 bolivars, while last week, before the banking woes began, the dollar cost around 5.2 bolivars.
"The bolivar's problems are stemming from Chavez's statement in which he said he has more banks on his radar screen," said Alejandro Rivera, Latin America analyst at RGE in New York.
"Venezuelans are moving into dollars and to the extent they're able to, moving their money offshore."
The Dubai File: Is Venezuela Headed for a Default? (Zero Hedge) Earlier this week we wrote in a research note:
"The market flutter caused by the unilateral debt moratorium by Dubai suggests to us is that the illusion of stability created by the Federal Reserve Board over the past year is starting to dissipate.
Specifically, there are many Dubai type situations in the global markets, both sovereigns and corporates, that are over-extended and are unable to service their debts at par.
The corporates will end up in restructuring but the sovereigns are an open question."
"We would not be surprised to see more sovereign debtors make unilateral announcement of debt moratoriums and/or restructurings, perhaps including even oil rich Venezuela.
We notice in that regard that Venezuela’s lider maximo, Hugo Chavez, is preparing to nationalize the few remaining private banks of that nation, usually a good indicator of an approaching sovereign default."
New York Times Likely to Lay Off Staff (The Wall Street Journal) Now for some GREAT Friday News!
The New York Times on Friday said it probably will have to lay off newsroom employees, because it doesn't expect to get enough people to volunteer for buyouts.
The paper in October announced plans to shed 100 jobs from its 1,250-person newsroom and said it hoped to achieve the reductions entirely through buyouts.
Employees were told they had until Dec. 7 to decide whether to take the offer and that the paper would resort to layoffs if too few people volunteered.
"We will not know until [Monday] how many Guild and excluded employees have opted to take buyouts, but it is almost certain the number will fall short of the 100 we need," Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in a memo to employees on Friday.
Under the terms of the buyout package, offered to both union and nonunion members, employees typically will receive three weeks' pay for every year of service.
Over the past year, New York Times Co. has instituted a series of cost-cutting measures as advertising revenue in the industry has dried up and threatened the company's ability to manage its debt.
The company has borrowed money, sold assets and reduced wages, among other steps, hoping to avoid cuts to its news staff, which is larger than that of many competitors.
The Big Business-Big Insurance paid lobbyist whose job includes cutting, pasting and posting to "Got news or an update?" was busy again this morning. Thanks.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
27 comments:
Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List(GatewayPundit)
Scott Baker from Breitbart.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted this shocking report today on Obama’s deviant Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.
—-Warning on Content—–
I was recently approached by a team of independent researchers that I have known for some time and have come to trust. They prepared this report involving ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings and the organization he founded, GLSEN, and asked that I find a way to help draw attention to what they uncovered.
Knowing that Gateway Pundit has followed Kevin Jennings since his appointment, as we have on The B-Cast (here, here, and here), and on Breitbart.tv (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I felt this would be an appropriate place for this report.
Warning: The following material is very explicit.
Passages of Pride – Page 4
(Beginning at the age of five, a young child has sexual encounters with his playmates.)
Throughout his childhood, from age five on, Derek would sneak off with a friend into someone’s basement or the woods along the back alley, where they would take off their pants and play with each other, usually fondling each other’s genitals. It became habitual.
“At that time, I didn’t quite have a name for it,” says Derek. “It was something that I liked doing, that felt good, that I wanted to do as often as I could.
The other kids always recognized it as being something bad and dirty. And all I wanted to know was, When can we do it again?”
Would Barack and Michelle Obama approve of their daughters reading this in their classrooms?
A Cool Trillion Later– Now Obama Tells Us Government Spending Is Not the Answer (GatewayPundit)
Now he tells us. The biggest public spender in world history now says...
“True economic recovery will only come from the private sector”
And that is why his next jobs plan will only cost $300 billion.
Obama and Democrats tripled the national deficit in less than one year.
They’ve increased the national debt to $12 Trillion.
And they’ve nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years.
It only took a trillion plus dollars for Obama to see that they were wrong.
More...Jennifer Rubin added, via Pundit and Pundette:
At his “jobs summit,” Obama discovered: “Ultimately, true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector.” Mon dieu!
You mean lambasting business, hiking taxes, imposing a flurry of mandates, and regulating carbon emissions aren’t the way to go?
No, no. The Obami still want to do all that. They just expect the private sector to grow and hire workers in spite of all that. I guess.
Secret Service first learned of crashers following day, Michelle's staff knew at beginning of event (The Washington Times)
Mr. Sullivan also surprised the panel by telling members that his agency did not learn of the security breach until the Virginia couple bragged about it on the Internet.
He told the panel that the federal security agency did not become aware of the breach by the Salahis until the next day, when it saw the couple's photos from the event, including posing with the president, posted on their public Facebook account.
Honduras Congress Votes Not To Reinstate President as Zelaya Supporters Throw in Towel (Latin American Herald) Chavez and Obama deeply saddened.
TEGUCIGALPA – The National Resistance Front that arose after the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras has abandoned hope for the restoration of ousted the former president and is focused now on convening an assembly to overhaul the country’s constitution, one of the group’s leaders said Thursday.
“We have closed this chapter on the restoration of President Zelaya, which didn’t take place,” Juan Barahona told Efe the day after Honduran lawmakers rejected reinstatement of the deposed head of state.
The Honduran Congress decisively rejected the restitution of deposed President Mel Zelaya in a vote of 62 to 8, after six hours of debate on Wednesday.
Oh no! Another climate scam scandal, this time in Denmark (Washington Examiner)
November was a horrendous month for global warming propagandists, what with somebody hacking into the computers of East Anglia University's Central Research Union (CRU) and exposing thousands of emails detailing how climate change data had been systematically cooked.
Now it looks like December could be another bad month because the Copenhagen Post Online brings word of an exploding scandal in the Scandanavian nation involving massive fraud in the trading of the Danish CO2 Quotas Register.
That's Denmark's cap-and-trade system in which companies buy and sell carbon emissions credits.
The Obama-Waxman-Markey and Boxer-Kerry global warming cap-and-trade bills now before Congress are modeled in part on the Danish CO2 Quotas Register.
But things don't look good for the Danish climate change initiative, according to the Copenhagen Post Online:
"Police and authorities in several European countries are investigating scams worth billions of kroner, which all originate in the Danish quota register. The CO2 quotas are traded in other EU countries.
"Denmark’s quota register, which the Energy Agency within the Climate and Energy Ministry administers, is the largest in the world in terms of personal quota registrations.
It is much easier to register here than in other countries, where it can take up to three months to be approved.
"Ekstra Bladet reporters have found examples of people using false addresses and companies that are in liquidation, which haven’t been removed from the register.
"One of the cases, which stems from the Danish register, involves fraud of more than 8 billion kroner.
This case, in which nine people have been arrested, is being investigated in England.
"The market for CO2 trade has exploded in recent years and is worth an estimated 675 billion kroner globally."
Day Fourteen and Counting (MSM Climategate Cover-up) (Media Research Center)
Alexandria, VA – For the fourteenth straight day, the three broadcast networks have failed to report on the great and growing ClimateGate scandal on their weekday morning or evening news programs. How to explain this?
Perhaps it is that ABC, NBC and CBS have not yet heard of the story, despite two weeks of non-stop reporting on and discussion of ClimateGate in a whole host of media outlets.
Perhaps the broadcast networks only trust their fellow liberal press outlets, like the New York Times.
Perhaps they don’t realize the Times exhibited journalistic diligence on ClimateGate, with a front page story the day the story broke.
In the event that ABC News, NBC News and CBS News missed the news, the Media Research Center (MRC) is today rushing each of them a copy of the Times story, in the hopes that armed with this new information, they will finally report a story that has been roiling nearly everywhere else for a fortnight.
So as not to offend the networks’ pro-global warming sensibilities, MRC President Brent Bozell is looking to have the stories delivered by bicycle messenger.
Bozell:
“Ignorance is no excuse under the law, but maybe we should stop criticizing and start showing compassion for NBC, ABC and CBS and their neglect of the huge ClimateGate story.
Climategate is now huge. Way, way bigger than the Mainstream Media (MSM) is admitting it is – as Richard North demonstrates in this fascinating analysis.
Using what he calls a Tiger Woods Index (TWI), he compares the amount of interest being shown by internet users (as shown by the number of general web pages on Google) and compares it with the number of news reports recorded.
The ratio indicates what people are really interested in, as opposed to what the MSM thinks they ought to be interested in.
North explains:
Tiger Woods delivered 22,500,000 web and 46,025 news pages, giving ratio of 489. That is the “Tiger Woods Index” (TWI) against which I chose to measure a raft of other issues.
Here are the rankings:
1. Climategate: 28,400,000 – 2,930
= 9693
2. Afghanistan: 143,000,000 – 154,145 = 928
3. Obama: 202,000,000 – 252,583 = 800
4. Tiger Woods: 22,500,000 – 46,025 = 489
5. Gordon Brown: 12,300,000 – 37,021 = 332
6. Climate change: 22,200,000 – 68,419 = 324
7. Sally Bercow: 25,000 – 86 = 290
8. David Cameron: 545,000 – 4837 = 113
9. Meredith Kercher: 261,000 – 3,471 = 75
10. Chilcot Inquiry: 125,000 – 4,350 = 29
Google Censoring Climategate from News (Google News)
Google News is blocking all searches of "Climategate".
Proof:
site:news.google.com climategate
site:news.yahoo.com climategate (for comparison)
site:news.aol.com climategate (for comparison)
Click on any of the above links to run the search and see for yourself.
However, if you search "climate change" on Google News, you will find plenty of hits:
site:news.google.com climate change
Take back Al Gore's Oscar, two Academy members demand in light of Climategate (LA Times)
But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore two years ago for the environmental movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
Senate votes to keep Medicare cuts (Democrats and AARP vote to pull the plug on grandma) (Washington Post)
The Senate voted Thursday to keep nearly $500 billion in Medicare cuts in its overhaul of the health care system, protecting the bill's major source of financing against a Republican attack.
TARP Cash Targeted in Jobs Push (Dems trying to steal remaining funds for their schemes) (WSJ)
Democrats have begun to hash out how to pay for a mix of unemployment benefits, state aid, tax credits and other incentives they hope will turn around the country's surging unemployment rate.
Funding for the initiatives would come from two sources. For job creation, the principal target would be a pot of more than $150 billion that was set aside last year to bail out the tottering financial system.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she would like to tap the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to pay for any "investments that we have in jobs." ...
Republicans lawmakers said they would oppose using TARP for new jobs programs. "The TARP money was intended to solve an economic emergency in the financial sector," said House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Using the money now "on useless government programs is a very big mistake."
Next use for TARP: Government union slush fund (Michelle Malkin)
Follow the bouncing ball: TARP, the trillion-dollar-plus banking bailout, has morphed from a toxic assets purchase plan to a capital injection plan, back to a toxic assets purchase plan, to a life insurance company bailout, to an auto supplier bailout. I’m sure I forgot more.
Well, now the Democrats want to use it to bail out state governments and convert unused TARP bucks into...a government union slush fund.
John Stossel: Who Creates Jobs? (Dear Leader's "Jobs Summit)
(Fox Business News)
Today, the White House holds its “Jobs Summit” stunt.
It’s typical Washington-think: Assemble interest groups and concoct special tax credits and handouts to the politically connected. What conceit.
The political class think that economies revolve around them, that Washington makes things happen, that politicians are the most important players.
Today’s Washington Post suggests that the way to create jobs is public spending by the federal government:
Obama's options are limited, as the administration already has signaled that it is unwilling to make any investments that would add significantly to the nation's ballooning deficit.
At least the Administration talks about the private sector:
"We want to make sure it is not just the public sector doing this in a vacuum," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama. "It's important we engage the private sector as well."
Administration officials, however, have excluded major trade associations from the summit... .
Some of those groups privately complain that their job creation ideas, including enactment of stalled free trade deals that they say would boost exports, are opposed by labor unions, which will be heavily represented at the forum.
The White House, which has clashed with some of the business groups over their opposition to health-care reform and other initiatives, says it has met repeatedly with those organizations and wants to hear fresh ideas.
Yes. I am sure those "fresh ideas" will come from the trade unions whom the White House just hasn't heard from much over the past year.
At the summit they will also hear from environmental groups “Green for All” and “Coalition for the Green Bank.” I’m sure they’ll have great ideas for job creation.
Will at least some free-market economists get to speak? No. The White House will hear from Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Jeffrey Sachs.(continued)
Global-Warming Theology: The end is nigh, their god is dead (The Washington Times)
Global warming was an academic Ponzi scheme. Its leading proponents were mini-Madoffs, peddling a vision of global catastrophe to gullible activists, bureaucrats and policymakers.
The vision was so vast, the fear it inspired so pervasive, that it seized popular imagination, aided ably by hucksters like former Vice President Al Gore and his science-fiction feature film "An Inconvenient Truth."
But like any Ponzi scheme, global warming only worked if everyone kept investing and no one looked at the books. Once the truth came out - of manipulated findings, phony data, rigged peer-review processes and intimidation of skeptics - the scheme began to collapse.
Yet even as the edifice comes down, the adherents of the orthodoxy say that there is nothing to see, that this is all a distraction from the business at hand, that there is still no time to lose, full steam (or solar power) ahead.
But it is far too late for that. The veil has been pierced, the myth revealed, the scales have fallen from the people's eyes.
The pagan priests are fleeing the temple, their sacred idols are being pulled down, their holy works renounced. Their god, finally, is dead.
Copenhagen targets not tough enough, says Al Gore (Man-bear-pig alive and kicking) (The Times (UK)
Even if a deal is reached at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen next week it will only be the first step towards the far more radical cuts that are needed in global carbon emissions, Al Gore, the former US Vice-President, told The Times last night.
Mr Gore said that to avoid the worst ravages of climate change world leaders would have to come together again to set more drastic reductions than those now planned.
“Even a final treaty will have to set the stage for other tougher reductions at a later date,” he said. “We have already overshot the safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
He insisted that the present goal set for Copenhagen of stabilising world emissions of carbon dioxide at or below 450 parts per million —enough to prevent a rise in average global temperatures of no more than 2C — was insufficient and a safer target would be 350 parts per million.
“Are we doing enough? The answer is obviously no — 450 is not the right target. But it is presently seen as beyond the capacity of governments around the world.
We are stretching the capacity of governments even to hit a 450 target.”
“We are gambling with the future of human civilisation in accepting odds that by any definition make our present course reckless . . .
But it’s still the most likely path to success.”
Furor Over Climate Triggers U.K. Probe (WSJ)
The British university at the heart of a scandal over climate-change research announced a wide-ranging probe into allegations that its scientists manipulated data about global warming.
The independent review is part of efforts by the University of East Anglia to damp the furor over thousands of hacked private emails involving its researchers, which suggested efforts to squelch the views of climate-change skeptics.
The scandal blew up just days before world leaders are set to meet in Copenhagen for a United Nations-sponsored summit aimed at boosting international efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and slow global warming.
Climate-change skeptics have seized on the emails, saying they prove that the case for man-made global warming wasn't as definitive as generally claimed.
The scientist in the eye of the storm, Phil Jones, said Tuesday he was stepping aside as the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit pending the outcome of the investigation.
CRU maintains one of the world's most important data sets on how global temperatures have changed.
In an interview, UEA's vice chancellor said Dr. Jones would take a lower profile in the aftermath of the scandal. "He'll continue his scientific work, though how much of it will be at UEA remains to be seen," Edward Acton said. He added that the university isn't "hounding him out."
Prof. Acton, however, also said Dr. Jones "may have to take a rest." He didn't elaborate.
Gibbs: Don't Confuse Copenhagen-bound Obama With Global Warming Facts (davidlimbaugh.com)
Despite the unfolding international "climate change" scandal involving the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, President Barack Obama's ideological presuppositions on global warming remain unshaken, and he will still happily attend the Copenhagen global warming conference.
This unprecedented fraud by a "team" of politicized scientists whose research has generated some $20 million in research grants for the CRU hasn't deterred Obama from his energy- and economy-destroying agenda any more than double-digit unemployment figures have dissuaded him from his failed Keynesian policies.
Nor is Obama bothered by the incestuous relationship among the CRU, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Copenhagen summit.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sniffed that corruption at the highest levels of climate change intelligentsia -- corruption, mind you, that bears directly on the underlying science -- doesn't alter the president's firm opinion that "climate change is happening."
"I don't think that's anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore," said Gibbs. "I think there's no real scientific basis for the dispute of this."
Oh? Is this administration so myopic as to be dangerously ignorant?
So arrogant that it deems dissenting opinions unworthy of acknowledgment? Or just old-fashioned liars?
Parliamentary Speaker: Climate debate derailed? (Denmark) (Politiken)
The Speaker of the Danish Parliament has issued a damning criticism of the climate debate, saying politicians gullibly turn theories into facts.
As the world prepares to converge on Copenhagen for the COP15 Climate Summit, Denmark’s Speaker of Parliament has expressed serious doubts as to the way in which the climate debate has developed.
“The problem is that lots of people go around saying that the climate change we see is a result of human activity.
That is a very dangerous claim,” Parliamentary Speaker and former Finance Minister Thor Pedersen (Lib) tells DR.
“Unfortunately I seem to experience that scientists say: ‘We have a theory’ – then that crosses the road to the politicians who say: ‘We know’.
Who can be bothered to hear a scientist who says ‘I have a theory’ when politicians go around saying ‘I know’” Thor Pedersen says.
No temperature rise Thor Pedersen adds that the temperature has not risen in the past decade.
NYT's Friedman on ClimateGate: Global Warming Action Necessary, No Matter Risk or Cost (NewsBusters)
What's $200 billion annually, or roughly $1,761 per family per year, if it means lowering by 10 percent the chance that the world is going to end? It's a pittance to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Friedman made an appearance on CNN's Dec. 3 "Campbell Brown" to promote the paperback release of his book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded." Brown asked Friedman for his take on the ClimateGate scandal, and he insisted there should be transparency as far as the data is concerned.
"Well, these were hacked e-mails from one of the important climate research centers over in the U.K.," Friedman said. "And, frankly, Campbell, as someone who follows this issue, cares about it, I found some of those e-mails disappointing, frankly in the kind of way in which it seemed that they were trying to keep certain research out, you know, of the discussion, because I think transparency here is really ... is everything.
Cuba blasts US black leaders for charges of racism (AP via SFGate)
HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Cuba hit back Thursday at 60 prominent U.S. black leaders who challenged its race record, with island writers, artists and official journalists calling the criticism an attack on their country's national identity.
The five-page signed statement, distributed by Cuban government press officials in an e-mail, defended Cuba's progress in providing social and personal opportunities for blacks and people of mixed race.
But it focused more on Cuba's past than the racial inequalities of contemporary Cuban society that came under criticism from Americans such as Princeton University professor Cornel West; Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of President Barack Obama's Chicago church; and Susan Taylor, former editor of Essence magazine.
Wow, this is great news!!! Latino socialist/commie pigs from Cuba going head to head with black socialist/commie pigs from the U.S.
Now if we can only get the Hollywood socialist/commie pig celebrities to join the fight, and then sit back and enjoy them rip each other apart. Sounds like popcorn time once again!!!
Was Jimmy Carter a Better President Than Obama?
Up to last year, most Americans believed that Jimmy Carter was the worst President in American history.
But, right now, Americans are more fearful and more uncertain about the future of their country, than they were during the years that Carter was President (1977 - 1981).
Obama has not even completed a year in office, yet the country is on the verge of economic collapse.
Does anyone believe that America can afford to fight and win a war with Iran?
People may complain that tax rates were higher in the Carter years, but at least the financial burden for government spending was on the American tax-payers of the time, and was not passed on to future generations.
In the late 1970s, Democrats controlled the White House, Congress, and the Senate. But many of those Democrats were Harry Truman/Scoop Jackson Democrats, who, while supporters of New Deal economic policies, were nevertheless patriotic Americans who cared for the future of the country.
Congress was not as corrupt as it is today. Corporate interests and special interest groups did not have the power that they do today.
In the America of the 1970s, most of the stuff that you bought in shopping malls was stuff that was made in America, from clothes and toys, to TVs and screwdrivers.
I do not remember coming across any stuff that was made in China in the 1970s. Illegal immigration was not a major problem at the time, and Los Angeles was one of the most pleasant places to live.
Obama’s Jobs Summit: The Invisible Hand of SEIU and ACORN (Big Government)
As President Obama concludes his first jobs summit, almost a year into his presidency, the nature of the guest list hints at a deliberate initiative that’s been underway for over 15 years – and it’s not one of the obvious presumptions that most would make.
Notice that of the list of leaders invited, the majority are labor union leaders, leaders of businesses with government contracts, or leaders of businesses that operate on partial public funding.
There is a common element across most of the businesses represented: in one capacity or another, even if they are private sector businesses, most on the list benefit from some form of public money.
There is a legal precedent over 15 years old that is the pervasive push behind such a premise, one that was the product of ACORN and labor union coalitions.
And judging by Change to Win / SEIU’s Anna Burger’s plan for today’s jobs summit, it’s evident that this precedent is in play as we speak.
Venezuela's Currency Plunges Against Dollar (Wall Street Journal)
Venezuela's currency fell sharply against the dollar in black market trading Thursday, reaching a two-month low as worries over bank nationalizations prompted Venezuelans to trade in their bolivars for greenbacks.
President Hugo Chavez ordered the seizure of four small banks over the past week, and on Thursday said they would be nationalized.
The day before, he threatened more bank seizures, leading to a run on some banks as people started guessing which ones might be targeted.
The specter of a liquidity squeeze hitting the country's smaller banks is starting to appear, fueling dollar demand.
In afternoon trading in Caracas, the dollar was fetching about 6.1 bolivars after reaching as high as 6.3 bolivars in intraday trading. In the previous session, the dollar traded at 5.8 bolivars, while last week, before the banking woes began, the dollar cost around 5.2 bolivars.
"The bolivar's problems are stemming from Chavez's statement in which he said he has more banks on his radar screen," said Alejandro Rivera, Latin America analyst at RGE in New York.
"Venezuelans are moving into dollars and to the extent they're able to, moving their money offshore."
The Dubai File: Is Venezuela Headed for a Default? (Zero Hedge)
Earlier this week we wrote in a research note:
"The market flutter caused by the unilateral debt moratorium by Dubai suggests to us is that the illusion of stability created by the Federal Reserve Board over the past year is starting to dissipate.
Specifically, there are many Dubai type situations in the global markets, both sovereigns and corporates, that are over-extended and are unable to service their debts at par.
The corporates will end up in restructuring but the sovereigns are an open question."
"We would not be surprised to see more sovereign debtors make unilateral announcement of debt moratoriums and/or restructurings, perhaps including even oil rich Venezuela.
We notice in that regard that Venezuela’s lider maximo, Hugo Chavez, is preparing to nationalize the few remaining private banks of that nation, usually a good indicator of an approaching sovereign default."
New York Times Likely to Lay Off Staff (The Wall Street Journal)
Now for some GREAT Friday News!
The New York Times on Friday said it probably will have to lay off newsroom employees, because it doesn't expect to get enough people to volunteer for buyouts.
The paper in October announced plans to shed 100 jobs from its 1,250-person newsroom and said it hoped to achieve the reductions entirely through buyouts.
Employees were told they had until Dec. 7 to decide whether to take the offer and that the paper would resort to layoffs if too few people volunteered.
"We will not know until [Monday] how many Guild and excluded employees have opted to take buyouts, but it is almost certain the number will fall short of the 100 we need," Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote in a memo to employees on Friday.
Under the terms of the buyout package, offered to both union and nonunion members, employees typically will receive three weeks' pay for every year of service.
Over the past year, New York Times Co. has instituted a series of cost-cutting measures as advertising revenue in the industry has dried up and threatened the company's ability to manage its debt.
The company has borrowed money, sold assets and reduced wages, among other steps, hoping to avoid cuts to its news staff, which is larger than that of many competitors.
The Big Business-Big Insurance paid lobbyist whose job includes cutting, pasting and posting to "Got news or an update?" was busy again this morning. Thanks.
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (-14)Rasmussen Reports
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 26% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
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