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.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tuesday December 1 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
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U.S. Honors Stalin on Hallowed Ground, Will Saddam Hussein Be Next? (POLISH RADIO-EXTERNAL SERVICE)
Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan
The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.
According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
COMMUNIST PARTY USA Honors SEIU, AFSME “Leaders” (Sweetness-Light) From the CPUSA’s People’s World (formerly the Daily Worker
Three union leaders to be honored at ‘Keep the Ball Rolling’ event NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Three Connecticut labor leaders, Art Perry, Anna Montalvo and Gwen Mills, will be honored on Sunday, Dec. 6, with the annual Amistad Award presented by the People’s World, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party USA.
The reception, "Keep the Ball Rolling … to win jobs with union rights, health care, peace and equality!" will be held at 4 p.m. at the New Haven People’s Center, 37 Howe Street, New Haven.
The three are being recognized for their contributions in mobilizing in the workplace and community and building coalitions for social change. Also featured on the program will be music and spoken word, a holiday gift table and homemade buffet.
Art Perry has been an organizer and community and political activist since working at Southbury Training School as a member of New England Health Care Employees Union / District 1199 in the 1970s.
His grassroots political organizing with working families has elected many progressives to local, state and federal office.
He served with1199 for 17 years, and is now Connecticut political director of SEIU 32BJ Justice for Janitors where he furthers his beliefs in justice, equality and community organization.
Isn’t it funny how the SEIU, AFSCME and other unions are so closely aligned to the Communist Party?
Eric Holder Won't Investigate His Radical Friends at ACORN (BigGovernment.com)
Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18.
He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.
But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder, whom I’ve long argued is unfit to serve as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, supports ACORN’s goals.
ACORN wants to use the power of government to bring about a radical transformation of American society. So does Holder.
Leader of Athens (Ohio) Democratic Party indicted on bribery charges (The Columbus Dispatch)
The embattled chairwoman of the Athens County Democratic Party was indicted today on charges she sought to buy the votes of some Ohio University students.
A grand jury charged Susan Gwinn with two counts of election-related bribery, said Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost, the special prosecutor in the case.
No one else, including members of the OU College Democrats, was indicted after grand jurors heard testimony and evidence today, Yost said.
The indictment comes after authorities investigated a charge that Gwinn offered a $5 bounty to some college students for bringing friends to the polls on Nov. 3.
Gwinn previously said that such a plan to pay students for get-out-the-vote efforts was discussed with college Democrats, but never was enacted.
Yost said no students were indicted in the case because Gwinn was the "leader" and the students were "followers." The two bribery counts are fourth-degree felonies, each punishable by six to 18 months in prison.
Gwinn declined to comment this evening, citing a gag order accompanying a prior criminal case in which she is charged with campaign-finance irregularities.
60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll Asks If Obama Should Be Added to Mt. Rushmore (Newsbusters) Out of touch? Biased? ClimateGate, Who us? Of course not, we’re the media!
Harry Smith, Maggie Rodriguez, Cali Carlin, Michael Hogan, CBS The first question in a poll conducted by CBS’s 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair [1] magazine asked Americans to nominate a fifth face for Mt. Rushmore and included Barack Obama among the contenders.
While President Kennedy took the lead with 29%, Obama came in fourth with 16%, just behind Franklin Roosevelt at 18% and Ronald Reagan at 20%.
Negative international reviews of President Obama’s foreign policies have reached flood stage, including the British defense secretary’s claim that Obama is responsible for “the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.” And that’s not all:
“The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian.
The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.”
The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.”
The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change.
Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled.
The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days.
And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.”
“He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami.”
American Presidents can dither and waffle all they want on domestic political policies but every Administration must project strong international leadership.
For now, President Obama has become the American who talks too much and says nothing.
Late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year according to government tsar (Guardian (UK)
Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government's director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.
Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week.
The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.
Richards has revised up his estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the disease lung, bowel and breast cancer which together kill almost 63,000 people a year.
So ominously read a heading in a Gallup poll released Monday about America's opinion of pending healthcare reform legislation.
The news was not good for Democrats and the Obama administration hoping to pass something before the Christmas break.
Quite the contrary, despite all the efforts of press members to sway the public concerning this matter, Gallup found Americans not only growing less and less interested in this current bill, but also giving the President his lowest approval rating to date concerning his handling of this issue
The "healthc-care reform" bills in Congress would hit 39 states hard with new expenses, by raising Medicaid eligibility above the cur rent income cutoffs.
The only states that won't have to raise eligibility because of the Senate bill are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin (plus the District of Columbia).
And the House bill would force even Massachusetts and Vermont to pay more.
Hardest hit would be Texas ($2,750 million a year in extra state spending under the Senate bill), Pennsylvania ($1,450 million), California ($1,428 million) and Florida ($909 million).
Who knows if Florida could avoid imposing an income tax if it has to meet so high an unfunded mandate?
Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage (Washington Times ) Obama: YOU LIE!
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit.
The House bill mandates, and the Senate bill strongly encourages, businesses to extend health care coverage to all employees.
But the bills do not have exemptions to screen out illegal immigrants, who usually obtain jobs by using false identities and are indistinguishable from legal workers.
Meet the Future Death Panel Czar (Economic Policy Journal) (Dr. Kevorkian sadly disappointed)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will determine what medical treatments are and are not available to you under the Senate health bill.
It is quite possible she will determine if you live or die. A serach of the Senate health bill will bring up "secretary" 2,500 times, according to Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
Ferrechio continues: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be awarded unprecedented new powers under the proposal, including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it.
"The legislation lists 1,697 times where the secretary of health and humans services is given the authority to create, determine or define things in the bill," said Devon Herrick, a health care expert at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
For instance, on Page 122 of the 2,079-page bill, the secretary is given the power to establish "the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health care plan."
...And the bill even empowers the department to establish a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that would have the authority to make cost-saving cuts without having to get the approval of Congress first.
"It's a huge amount of power being shifted to HHS, and much of it is highly discretionary," said Edmund Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy and insurance markets at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
'Toothless' NHS regulator accused over damning safety report (The Times)
The dispute followed a report in which at least 12 trusts in England were criticised for significantly underperforming on standards such as patient safety and infection control.
Dr Foster, a private company that works with the NHS, also highlighted a further 27 hospital trusts that were found to have unusually high mortality rates, resulting in an estimated 5,000 avoidable deaths last year.
Dr Foster said it had uncovered widespread safety issues including 39 per cent of trusts “failing to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards”.
Items such as swabs and drillbits were left in patients after surgery in at least 209 cases in 2008-09 while surgeons operated on the wrong part of a body ...
CBO report predicts hike in insurance costs (by an average of 10 percent or more) (The Hill)
Individual insurance premiums would increase by an average of 10 percent or more, according to an analysis of the Senate healthcare bill.
The long-awaited report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) also concluded that subsidies provided by the legislation would make coverage cheaper for those who qualify.
The report, issued in the form of a letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), will provide both Democrats and Republicans with ammunition as the Senate begins amending the healthcare bill on Monday.
Biden asks: 'Who do you trust?' on healthcare (The Hill)
Americans should ask themselves who they trust more in the healthcare debate, Vice President Joe Biden urged Monday.
In a web video posted to the White House's website, Biden said Americans have more to trust in doctors and nurses (some of whose groups have endorsed health reform) than in groups who are opposing reform legislation before Congress.
"When it comes to explain what healthcare reform means to you, who do you trust?" Biden asked.
"Do you trust the defenders of the status quo, the people who say you'd be better off if you left things just the way they are?" the vice president said.
"Or would you rather hear from the folks who actually know something about what's happening in our healthcare system because they work in it every day, doctors and nurses?"
*White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says ClimateGate has no bearing on Obama’s push for massive global warming taxes/intervention. The science is “settled.”
The Green Mask Is Being Peeled Away From The CO²mmunists – All Eyes Now On Copenhagen (Big Government)
Now that we are learning prominent leaders of the global warming movement destroyed the data they claim to have used to construct their climate models, and only the most rabid environmental fraud deniers still cling to the authenticity of their “science”, a serious moment of truth is fast approaching.
That moment is Copenhagen, which has always been about much more than so called “man-made global warming”. Copenhagen has always been about striking a “Global New Deal”.
Last month, we compiled and posted extensive evidence of years-long Democratic party coordination with the Party of European Socialists (PES).
Click here to see our detailed examination of this special relationship, including then Party Chairman Howard Dean’s full address to the 7th Congress of the PES.
If you do not have the time to examine the detailed account linked above, just take a look at the video below for a quick and horrifying taste of what the global Progressive movement has been cooking up for Copenhagen.
It’s a promotional video for the “Global Progressive Forum”, an event created and organized by the PES.
India, China, Brazil Plan Joint Exit From Copenhagen Junk Science Talks (GatewayPundit)
India, China, Brazil and South Africa plan to walk out of the international junk science meetings next month in Copenhagen.
The Times of India reported: In an unprecedented move, India on Saturday joined China and two other developing countries to prepare for a major offensive on rich nations at the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month.
The four countries, which include Brazil and South Africa, agreed to a strategy that involves jointly walking out of the conference if the developed nations try to force their own terms on the developing world, Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister for environment and forests (independent charge), said.
“We will not exit in isolation. We will co-ordinate our exit if any of our non-negotiable terms is violated. Our entry and exit will be collective,” Ramesh told reporters in Beijing.
The move comes after reports suggested that rich nations led by Denmark are trying to set the agenda of the conference by presenting a draft containing a set of specific proposals.
The BASIC countries-Brazil, South Africa, India and China- decided to throw the gauntlet at rich nations by coming up with a counter-draft that will be presented at the conference.
They agreed to let China, which initiated the exercise, to present the draft of the developing nations at Copenhagen.
“This BASIC draft fully meets India’s goals and aspirations. We hope it is made the basis of discussions at the conference,” Ramesh said.
Climate Change Scientists Admit Dumping Data (Fox News)
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected.
The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
Lawmakers Probe Science Czar Holdren’s Links to Climategate (GatewayPundit)
Republican lawmakers are probing Science Czar John Holdren’s links to the Climategate documents.
Obama’s socialist Science Czar John Holdren, who once said that forced abortions were needed to save the planet, is also involved in the Climategate Scandal.
Holdren, another socialist in the White House, was pushing global cooling before he was pushing man-made global warming.
His name is linked to the Climategate scandal.
The Wall Street Journal reported: Congressional Republicans have started investigating climate scientists whose hacked emails suggest they tried to squelch dissenting views about global warming.
An aide to Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said investigators are studying the documents, which unknown hackers stole last week from the computer of a prominent British climate-research center.
Investigators are focusing on the correspondence of White House Science Adviser John Holdren, he said. Dr. Holdren, a point man for the Obama administration on climate change, sent one of the hacked emails.
In the 2003 email, Dr. Holdren, then at the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., defended research by Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a scientist who believes global warming is man-made and who also sent some of the hacked emails.
On Monday, Dr. Holden said: “I’m happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of ‘burden of proof’ in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute.”
The aide said investigators are also probing the contributions of dozens of climate scientists to reports published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Environmental Protection Agency, in its recent move to boost regulation of greenhouse gases, based its conclusions on IPCC reports.
The IPCC has said the climate is heating up and humans are almost certainly to blame.
Those who disagree that the globe is warming, or on the cause or extent of any warming, complain that their views have been excluded.
Global Warming E-Mails Scandal Show Scientists May Have Cooked the Facts (U.S.News & World Report)
It is starting to look like President Barack Obama, aided and abetted by former Vice President Al Gore, Sens. Barbara Boxer, and John F. Kerry and others, may have lied this nation into a war against man-made global warming.
Preliminary analysis of the contents of thousands of E-mails and documents taken from the computer archives of the Climate Research Unit at England's University of East Anglia—possibly by a hacker, possibly by a whistleblower—indicate a number of the world's most important scientists engaged in research designed to prove that global warming really does exist may have been cooking the books.
As columnist Michael Barone wrote in Sunday's Washington Examiner, "The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals."
If true, the cooking of the temperature data to provide support for the idea that man-made global warming is occurring is a scandal of most serious proportions.
It should force policymakers to reconsider the role science plays in the formulation of policy if its conclusions can be manipulated the way those concerning climate change now appear to have been.
Climategate Scandal Heats Up, As Researcher "Accidentally" Deleted Data (The Business Insider)
It would appear that the Climategate scandal, the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. revealing that scientists distorted climate change data, is not going to cool off anytime soon.
Climate change skeptics are fired up about the "accidental" deletion of temperature data by head of the CRU Phil Jones and the bogus data aggregation procedure used by scientists that "renders the [temperature readings] totally meaningless," but what gets some people's goats the most is the fact that the University of East Anglia is still denying that there was any wrong doing.
The Washington Times: We read and reread these CRU documents in stunned amazement.
But rather than investigating all the evidence of so much academic fraud and intellectual wrongdoing, the University of East Anglia is denying there is a problem.
Professor Trevor Davies, the school's pro vice chancellor for research, issued a defensive statement on Tuesday claiming:
"The publication of a selection of the emails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others.
There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation."...
Meet the White House’s Alarmist in Chief (Humanevents.com)
If you had devoted your entire scientific career to predicting the end of the world, what do you think would be the symbol of success with which to crown that career?
Why, to be President Obama’s choice as White House Director of Science and Technology. That’s his formal title, but what John Holdren is, in fact, is the nation’s Alarmist in Chief.
Al Gore thinks he invented global alarmism, but he’s a Johnny-come-lately compared with Mr. Holdren who, back in 1971 edited (with population alarmist Paul Ehrlich) a book titled Global Ecology.
Also, he supplied one of its essays, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide” in which he predicted that such human-caused phenomena as agricultural dust, jet exhaust and smog would cause a new ice age.
Thus, he wrote, “...a sudden slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.”
Nowadays, of course, the giant tidal wave will be caused by melting ice caps, not growing ones. One must move with the times.
East Anglia Scientists Agree to Publish DataPATTERICO
The UK Telegraph reports the East Anglia scientists have done a U-turn on releasing their data:
“Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full.
The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, “stolen” by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.
In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.”
Is this a story worth covering now, American media?
Dramatic Quote-of-the-Day by climate change supporter Dr. James Hansen in an interview with Eric Berger, the Houston Chronicle’s science blogger:
BERGER: “I gather from what you were saying earlier about the bills in Congress, you feel the same about President Obama’s proposal for a 17 percent reduction in climate emissions by 2020.”
HANSEN: “Yeah. Obama is a very smart person and the hope was that he would try to understand this problem.
But instead his approach seems to be, “Oh let the politicians, let the House and Senate come to some sort of compromise on this.” But this is not something you can compromise on.
This is analogous to the situation Abraham Lincoln faced with slavery, or Winston Churchill with Nazism. You can’t compromise and say we’ll reduce the number of slaves by 50 percent or something.”
Where Is Obama the Leader? (The great imposter is finally getting exposed) FOX
It is becoming crystal clear that President Obama is not the leader we thought he was.
This revelation is as surprising as it is disappointing. He certainly looks like a leader; heaven knows he talks like a leader, but it turns out that he lacks a crucial qualification that all real leaders possess.
Great leaders put themselves on the line; Obama puts Congress on the line.
This penchant made headlines again last week. The White House wants to establish a commission to cut the federal budget deficit.
According to The Wall Street Journal, budget director Peter Orszag met with Senate Budget Committee head Kent Conrad about setting up a bipartisan committee that will examine ways to reduce spending.
Here’s a shocker for the White House: that’s your job. You are in charge of the budget.
You -- the Obama administration -- made the spending choices that led to a $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009.
Going forward, your decision to ramp up government outlays guarantees unsustainable red ink far into the future.
Yes, you stepped into a deteriorating situation, as you have reminded the American people on countless occasions; like all inheritances, however, the deficit now belongs to you.
It is not up to Congress to find a way out of our fiscal sand trap -- that is the responsibility of the White House.
It is the president, ultimately, who is responsible for finding ways to cut the out-of-control entitlements programs that will otherwise destabilize this country.
He then has to ram the tough choices through Congress, which his party dominates, even if it makes some people angry.
Taking the private jet to Copenhagen (Times On Line)
Hypocrisy is the vice we find hardest to forgive, but it’s also the one we most enjoy discovering in others.
And nothing piques our interest more than eco-hypocrisy as practised by the “green” celebrities who have been spouting green virtue but spewing out hundreds of tons of carbon from their private jets or multiple holiday homes around the globe.
There was Sheryl Crow, who had called upon the public to refrain from using more than one square of toilet paper per visit (“except on those pesky occasions when two or three are required”) and who was leading a Stop Global Warming concert tour across America.
It was revealed that while Crow travelled in a biodiesel tour bus, her 30-person entourage followed in a fleet of 13 gas-guzzling vehicles.
John Travolta notoriously encouraged the British public to do its bit to fight global warming — after flying into London on one of his five, yes, five private jets (one of which is a Boeing 707).
In 2006 his piloting hobby produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions, more than a hundred times the output of the average Briton, according to the Carbon Trust.
It is less well known that Tom Cruise — who has campaigned for the LA-based environmental group Earth Communications Office — also has an air fleet and a licence to pilot his five planes, including a top-of-the-line customised Gulfstream jet he bought for his wife, Katie Holmes.
Harrison Ford, who is vice-chairman on the board of Conservation International, voices public-service messages for an environmental federation called EarthShare, and once shaved his chest hair to illustrate the effects of deforestation, is another hobby pilot.
He once owned a Gulfstream but now makes do with a smaller Cessna Citation Sovereign eight-seater jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.
Chris Matthews Compares Obama To Neville Chamberlain (NewsBusters) MSDNC Liberal Hack falls off turnip truck becomes lucid for 45 seconds
A week after calling Barack Obama "Carteresque," Chris "Tingles Up My Leg" Matthews said the former object of his affection is "Too much Chamberlain and not enough Churchill."
I'm honestly not sure which is worse -- being compared to Jimmy Carter or World War II appeaser Neville Chamberlain.
Regardless, I guess Matthews really has lost that lovin' feeling.
As the discussion about the President's upcoming speech on Afghanistan wound down on this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show," the host asked his guests if the "long deliberation" concerning strategy will make Obama "look smart and deliberate for having taken all this time, or will the dithering shot still being cast in by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney" hurt him?
Sunday LondonTimes BANNED In Dubai After Unflattering Portrayal Of Ruling Sheikh (The Business Insider)
Don't you dare show Shekih Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum drowning.
Foreign media better be on notice. Dubai's mess doesn't give you an excuse to take shots at the ruling family.
WSJ: The Sunday London Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai's debt problems, an executive at the paper said.
The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones.
The Sunday Times edition available in the U.A.E. on Nov. 29 featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt.
The Times wasn't given a reason for the block, or a timeframe when it will be lifted, the executive said.
Rolling Stone's Taibbi: Public Executions for Party Crashers; NYT’s Rich: They Are Party Terrorists (Been awhile since we've seen a couple of leftist so concerned about national security)
Has the left finally a reason to be impassioned by a threat to our national security? Michaele and Tareq Salahi seem to have provided that reason.
After the Salahis literally crashed a White House State Dinner on Nov. 24, the two demonstrated how vulnerable President Barack Obama could be to outside intruders. And justifiably, it has not only caused some concern with members of Congress, but some of the more outspoken members in the media.
Reports: Salahis Spoke With Desiree Rogers Before Dinner; Couple Crashed Previous Obama Dinner
Will Obama Throw Desiree Rogers Under the Bus for State Dinner Fiasco?
A bombshell claim by a friend of Michaele Salahi last night on Larry King Live could end up blowing White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers out of the East Wing and under the Obama bus of discarded friends and associates.
Politico reported on what was said on Larry King Live:
As far as I know, they were invited," said Teresa Foss-Conlan, one of three Salahi friends who appeared on King's CNN show Monday night after the Salahis themselves postponed a planned appearance. "I never in a million years would imagine them crashing the White House state dinner.
... I know that she had correspondence with the White House social secretary about the proper attire that she should wear as she was trying to decide about the dress and the color and if this was the proper attitre to wear."
Foss-Conlan's revelation that Michaele Salahi spoke personally with White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers is new and could result in responsibility falling closer to the White House's inner circle than previously known.
Also Monday evening, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), at the behest of Rep. Peter King (R-NY), asked Rogers to testify at the committee's hearing on the state dinner fiasco Thursday.
The Washington Post reports the White House has so far declined comment on the invitation.
After major same sex marriage research, liberal CA org says: "We do not see a path to victory." (SFGate)
The effort to get same sex marriage on the California ballot in 2010 took a hit Monday.
Rick Jacbos, the leader of the 700,000-member Courage Campaign just told us that after spending more than $200,000 on "qualitative research" into the issue in California that "We do not see a path to victory."
So, the Courage Campaign sent a note to its supporters Monday calling for "for more research and time to change hearts and minds before returning to the ballot."
Lambda Legal, a LGBT legal organization, said largely the same thing Monday.
Jacobs told us that the research --led by Obama confidante Steve Hildebrand -- found that "The biggest hangup people have is that right wing has done a very good job of telling people that somehow children will be affected" should same sex marriage become legal.
Rev. Al Sharpton's Daughter, Ex-Wife Appear in Court (WPIX-TV)
NEW YORK (WPIX) - The daughter and ex-wife of the Rev. Al Sharpton were in a Manhattan courtroom Monday where prosecutors charge the mother-daughter duo launched an obscenity-filled rant against a cop during a Harlem traffic stop.
Dominique Sharpton, 23 and the civil rights activist's former wife, Kathy Jordan, appeared before a judge to answer charges stemming from an Oct. 30 traffic stop.
Sharpton is accused of cutting off a copy by crossing a double line and running a red light after 7 p.m. at W. 110th St. and Eight Ave.
"Why the f--- are you locking her up?" Jordan is accused of yelling at officers as they arrested her daughter. "Get your f------ hands off her."
Sharpton - who was on her way to the theater - apparently also mouthed off to the officers.
"This is f------ bull----," police say she screamed. "You were driving too slow. I have a place to go to."
Court papers allege the two women did more than just use forceful language.
Sharpton, who works alongside her father at the "National Action Network," reportedly "flailed her arms" to avoid getting handcuffed.
In addition, the complaint claims Sharpton "pushed her feet against the police vehicle to resist being placed inside the vehicle."
Jordan, who divorced Rev. Al Sharpton in 2004, "grabbed the handcuffs" from a Housing Authority sergeant and "twisted her body away from police officers," cops charged.
Prosecutors on Monday did not offer up a deal. Instead, Sharpton and Jordan are due back in court Jan. 19 They each face a one year prison term.
The Big Business-Big Insurance-Big Pharma lobbyist who posts each morning to "Got news or an update?" here has been busy again this morning. Thanks. Since you pounce on any example (real or imagined) of the administration's lack of transparency, how about telling us which lobbying firm you work for and who their biggest financial contributors are?
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin's Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.
But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, "Drill, Baby, Drill," Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:
Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their lives.
Only the quote wasn't by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled "Back on the War Ponies," which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
Here's the full quote:
Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Oops! That's not quite the sentiment that Sister Sarah was trying to convey as she guzzled down sugar-free Red Bull and cranked up Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now?" while jumping on her patriotic high horse at the opening of the third chapter.
There's also no small amount of irony in the quote, given Palin's abysmal record on Alaska Native issues during her truncated term as governor.
I was a huge UCLA basketball fan as a kid. Whenever the Bruins came to the Bay Area, I did whatever I could do to snag a ticket. I loved to watch Wooden coach. But I never figured the Wizard of Westwood as an advocate for radical land distribution.
Yep, he said that had he known then what he did, of course he never would have done it. However, acting on the recommendations of the judge and his leftist social workers he thought he was doing the right thing by allowing him parole eligibility.
Still no word at all from the two pedophile loving, left coast judges who released him on a token bond for raping a little girl. It's not their fault though, the homosexual community flies high cover for pedophiles and other demented minds on the left coast.
Huckabee would have been a horrible Repub candidate and a sure loser. Glad he shot himself in the foot early. What he did was inexcuseable and a prime example of why governor's shouldn't overturn the judicial system decisions on criminals. Let the parole boards do their jobs.
McCrappy takes another nosedive in the stock market today. Look for a round of layoffs to be announced soon as they once again will artificially pump up the stock price by cutting heads.
Huckabee and Palin are both finished as candidates. They can still be effective campaigners and fundraisers, but neither is electable as President. In the grand scheme of things, it's better that these things came out now, rather than during an election campaign.
Funny somebody would mention another round of layoffs for McClatchy getting underway. Saw this on the Business Journal site:
The Charlotte Observer has offered a voluntary buyout program to many of its employees, including most newsroom staffers.
Publisher Ann Caulkins confirmed the buyout in an interview Monday afternoon, citing the impact of the recession as the main culprit.
“It’s about a sluggish economy,” she said. “We just aren’t seeing improvement.”
Caulkins told the newspaper staff about the buyout program on Monday morning. Most employees will be eligible, though Caulkins expects few takers.
“We don’t think we will get many employees who will raise their hand with this,” she said. “If we don’t get many, this will cause us to look at cost-cutting measures that are non-people-related.”
The publisher said no layoffs will occur in the wake of the voluntary buyout. She declined to say how many employees the paper has in the newsroom or in total. The McClatchy Co., the Observer’s corporate parent, puts The Charlotte daily’s head count at 900 full-time employees and 226 in the newsroom, according to the company Web site. That head count seems high, given the layoffs and buyouts the paper has gone through in the past two years.
In March, the Observer reported a 14.6 percent cut in jobs, encompassing 60 full-time and 22 part-time employees. The paper also reduced most salaries at that time.
McClatchy last week reported a slight gain in third-quarter net income after one-time gains were excluded. Revenue for the quarter fell 23 percent to $347 million from a year ago. Advertising revenue dropped 28 percent to $266 million. For the first nine months of the year, McClatchy’s total print advertising revenue declined 33 percent from the same period in 2008.
Circulation at McClatchy papers fell 11.3 percent for daily distribution and 8.2 percent for Sundays, according to the company’s latest regulatory filing. The company did not break out individual papers in the filing. McClatchy’s Web site puts the Observer’s weekday circulation at 215,379 and 270,347 on Sundays. New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations will be released later this month.
McClatchy also publishes The Herald of Rock Hill, The News & Observer of Raleigh and 27 other daily newspapers. The Raleigh paper offered employees a buyout program earlier this month, citing weak advertising sales.
Huckabee and Palin are both finished as candidates.
------------
Huckabee was done a long time ago, but Palin has a huge following. The chatter and slander you hear from her come straight out of the gay nutter seats. She's a viable candidate for anything.
I would have agreed with you, until today. Personally, I like her, and I'd vote for her. However, this misquote of John Wooden in her book is beyond embarassing, it's the equivalent of Dan Quayle misspelling "potato". It will follow her forever, and the fact that it was never caught by a fact-checker is unforgivable.
Palin ain't got it. But there's plenty of time for a fresh face to emerge as a candidate to unseat Obama. He's another Jimmy Carter and this latest Afghanistan joke about pulling out in 18 months, will hammer him in the polls.
48 comments:
U.S. Honors Stalin on Hallowed Ground, Will Saddam Hussein Be Next? (POLISH RADIO-EXTERNAL SERVICE)
Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan
The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.
According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
COMMUNIST PARTY USA Honors SEIU, AFSME “Leaders” (Sweetness-Light)
From the CPUSA’s People’s World (formerly the Daily Worker
Three union leaders to be honored at ‘Keep the Ball Rolling’ event
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Three Connecticut labor leaders, Art Perry, Anna Montalvo and Gwen Mills, will be honored on Sunday, Dec. 6, with the annual Amistad Award presented by the People’s World, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party USA.
The reception, "Keep the Ball Rolling … to win jobs with union rights, health care, peace and equality!" will be held at 4 p.m. at the New Haven People’s Center, 37 Howe Street, New Haven.
The three are being recognized for their contributions in mobilizing in the workplace and community and building coalitions for social change. Also featured on the program will be music and spoken word, a holiday gift table and homemade buffet.
Art Perry has been an organizer and community and political activist since working at Southbury Training School as a member of New England Health Care Employees Union / District 1199 in the 1970s.
His grassroots political organizing with working families has elected many progressives to local, state and federal office.
He served with1199 for 17 years, and is now Connecticut political director of SEIU 32BJ Justice for Janitors where he furthers his beliefs in justice, equality and community organization.
Isn’t it funny how the SEIU, AFSCME and other unions are so closely aligned to the Communist Party?
Eric Holder Won't Investigate His Radical Friends at ACORN (BigGovernment.com)
Attorney General Eric Holder has made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no interest in investigating his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder’s Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that allows the Obama administration to ignore the will of Congress which has voted overwhelmingly to suspend federal funding of ACORN until at least Dec. 18.
He’s also ignored the 88-page report on ACORN’s systemic corruption and flagrant racketeering activities that was issued this summer by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Apparently, public outrage at the continuing antics of the corrupt radical advocacy group that used to employ President Obama and White House political director Patrick Gaspard counts for nothing.
But Americans really shouldn’t be surprised that Attorney General Holder is bending over backwards to help his radical friends at ACORN.
Holder, whom I’ve long argued is unfit to serve as the federal government’s chief law enforcement officer, supports ACORN’s goals.
ACORN wants to use the power of government to bring about a radical transformation of American society. So does Holder.
Leader of Athens (Ohio) Democratic Party indicted on bribery charges (The Columbus Dispatch)
The embattled chairwoman of the Athens County Democratic Party was indicted today on charges she sought to buy the votes of some Ohio University students.
A grand jury charged Susan Gwinn with two counts of election-related bribery, said Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost, the special prosecutor in the case.
No one else, including members of the OU College Democrats, was indicted after grand jurors heard testimony and evidence today, Yost said.
The indictment comes after authorities investigated a charge that Gwinn offered a $5 bounty to some college students for bringing friends to the polls on Nov. 3.
Gwinn previously said that such a plan to pay students for get-out-the-vote efforts was discussed with college Democrats, but never was enacted.
Yost said no students were indicted in the case because Gwinn was the "leader" and the students were "followers." The two bribery counts are fourth-degree felonies, each punishable by six to 18 months in prison.
Gwinn declined to comment this evening, citing a gag order accompanying a prior criminal case in which she is charged with campaign-finance irregularities.
60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll Asks If Obama Should Be Added to Mt. Rushmore (Newsbusters) Out of touch? Biased? ClimateGate, Who us? Of course not, we’re the media!
Harry Smith, Maggie Rodriguez, Cali Carlin, Michael Hogan, CBS The first question in a poll conducted by CBS’s 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair [1] magazine asked Americans to nominate a fifth face for Mt. Rushmore and included Barack Obama among the contenders.
While President Kennedy took the lead with 29%, Obama came in fourth with 16%, just behind Franklin Roosevelt at 18% and Ronald Reagan at 20%.
President Pussyfoot PATTERICO
Negative international reviews of President Obama’s foreign policies have reached flood stage, including the British defense secretary’s claim that Obama is responsible for “the decline in British public support for the war in Afghanistan.” And that’s not all:
“The President is “Obama the Impotent,” according to Steven Hill of the Guardian.
The Economist calls Obama the “Pacific (and pussyfooting) president.”
The Financial Times refers to “relations between the U.S. and Europe, which started the year of talks as allies, near breakdown.”
The German magazine Der Spiegel accuses the president of being “dishonest with Europe” on the subject of climate change.
Another withering piece in Der Spiegel, titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” lists the instances in which Obama is being rolled.
The Jerusalem Post puts it this way: “Everybody is saying no to the American president these days.
And it’s not just that they’re saying no, it’s also the way they’re saying no.”
“He talks too much,” a Saudi academic who had once been smitten with Barack Obama tells the Middle East scholar Fouad Ajami.”
American Presidents can dither and waffle all they want on domestic political policies but every Administration must project strong international leadership.
For now, President Obama has become the American who talks too much and says nothing.
Britain's shame over the cancer toll on women... nearly the worst in Europe (dailymail.co.uk)
British women are more likely to die from cancer than those in almost every other European country, an alarming report has revealed.
Death rates here are worse than those in Croatia, Russia, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
Overall England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all in the bottom ten of a cancer mortality 'league table' covering 36 European nations.
It comes despite Labour tripling funding for the Health Service since 1997.
Late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year according to government tsar
(Guardian (UK)
Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government's director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.
Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week.
The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.
Richards has revised up his estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the disease lung, bowel and breast cancer which together kill almost 63,000 people a year.
Gallup: 'Obama Gets Poor Marks on Healthcare'
So ominously read a heading in a Gallup poll released Monday about America's opinion of pending healthcare reform legislation.
The news was not good for Democrats and the Obama administration hoping to pass something before the Christmas break.
Quite the contrary, despite all the efforts of press members to sway the public concerning this matter, Gallup found Americans not only growing less and less interested in this current bill, but also giving the President his lowest approval rating to date concerning his handling of this issue
Hardest hit by ObamaCare (NY Post )
The "healthc-care reform" bills in Congress would hit 39 states hard with new expenses, by raising Medicaid eligibility above the cur rent income cutoffs.
The only states that won't have to raise eligibility because of the Senate bill are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Wisconsin (plus the District of Columbia).
And the House bill would force even Massachusetts and Vermont to pay more.
Hardest hit would be Texas ($2,750 million a year in extra state spending under the Senate bill), Pennsylvania ($1,450 million), California ($1,428 million) and Florida ($909 million).
Who knows if Florida could avoid imposing an income tax if it has to meet so high an unfunded mandate?
Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage (Washington Times ) Obama: YOU LIE!
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit.
The House bill mandates, and the Senate bill strongly encourages, businesses to extend health care coverage to all employees.
But the bills do not have exemptions to screen out illegal immigrants, who usually obtain jobs by using false identities and are indistinguishable from legal workers.
Meet the Future Death Panel Czar (Economic Policy Journal) (Dr. Kevorkian sadly disappointed)
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will determine what medical treatments are and are not available to you under the Senate health bill.
It is quite possible she will determine if you live or die.
A serach of the Senate health bill will bring up "secretary" 2,500 times, according to Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
Ferrechio continues: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be awarded unprecedented new powers under the proposal, including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it.
"The legislation lists 1,697 times where the secretary of health and humans services is given the authority to create, determine or define things in the bill," said Devon Herrick, a health care expert at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
For instance, on Page 122 of the 2,079-page bill, the secretary is given the power to establish "the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health care plan."
...And the bill even empowers the department to establish a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that would have the authority to make cost-saving cuts without having to get the approval of Congress first.
"It's a huge amount of power being shifted to HHS, and much of it is highly discretionary," said Edmund Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy and insurance markets at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
'Toothless' NHS regulator accused over damning safety report (The Times)
The dispute followed a report in which at least 12 trusts in England were criticised for significantly underperforming on standards such as patient safety and infection control.
Dr Foster, a private company that works with the NHS, also highlighted a further 27 hospital trusts that were found to have unusually high mortality rates, resulting in an estimated 5,000 avoidable deaths last year.
Dr Foster said it had uncovered widespread safety issues including 39 per cent of trusts “failing to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards”.
Items such as swabs and drillbits were left in patients after surgery in at least 209 cases in 2008-09 while surgeons operated on the wrong part of a body ...
CBO report predicts hike in insurance costs (by an average of 10 percent or more) (The Hill)
Individual insurance premiums would increase by an average of 10 percent or more, according to an analysis of the Senate healthcare bill.
The long-awaited report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) also concluded that subsidies provided by the legislation would make coverage cheaper for those who qualify.
The report, issued in the form of a letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), will provide both Democrats and Republicans with ammunition as the Senate begins amending the healthcare bill on Monday.
Biden asks: 'Who do you trust?' on healthcare (The Hill)
Americans should ask themselves who they trust more in the healthcare debate, Vice President Joe Biden urged Monday.
In a web video posted to the White House's website, Biden said Americans have more to trust in doctors and nurses (some of whose groups have endorsed health reform) than in groups who are opposing reform legislation before Congress.
"When it comes to explain what healthcare reform means to you, who do you trust?" Biden asked.
"Do you trust the defenders of the status quo, the people who say you'd be better off if you left things just the way they are?" the vice president said.
"Or would you rather hear from the folks who actually know something about what's happening in our healthcare system because they work in it every day, doctors and nurses?"
*White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says ClimateGate has no bearing on Obama’s push for massive global warming taxes/intervention. The science is “settled.”
The Green Mask Is Being Peeled Away From The CO²mmunists – All Eyes Now On Copenhagen (Big Government)
Now that we are learning prominent leaders of the global warming movement destroyed the data they claim to have used to construct their climate models, and only the most rabid environmental fraud deniers still cling to the authenticity of their “science”, a serious moment of truth is fast approaching.
That moment is Copenhagen, which has always been about much more than so called “man-made global warming”. Copenhagen has always been about striking a “Global New Deal”.
Last month, we compiled and posted extensive evidence of years-long Democratic party coordination with the Party of European Socialists (PES).
Click here to see our detailed examination of this special relationship, including then Party Chairman Howard Dean’s full address to the 7th Congress of the PES.
If you do not have the time to examine the detailed account linked above, just take a look at the video below for a quick and horrifying taste of what the global Progressive movement has been cooking up for Copenhagen.
It’s a promotional video for the “Global Progressive Forum”, an event created and organized by the PES.
India, China, Brazil Plan Joint Exit From Copenhagen Junk Science Talks (GatewayPundit)
India, China, Brazil and South Africa plan to walk out of the international junk science meetings next month in Copenhagen.
The Times of India reported: In an unprecedented move, India on Saturday joined China and two other developing countries to prepare for a major offensive on rich nations at the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month.
The four countries, which include Brazil and South Africa, agreed to a strategy that involves jointly walking out of the conference if the developed nations try to force their own terms on the developing world, Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister for environment and forests (independent charge), said.
“We will not exit in isolation. We will co-ordinate our exit if any of our non-negotiable terms is violated. Our entry and exit will be collective,” Ramesh told reporters in Beijing.
The move comes after reports suggested that rich nations led by Denmark are trying to set the agenda of the conference by presenting a draft containing a set of specific proposals.
The BASIC countries-Brazil, South Africa, India and China- decided to throw the gauntlet at rich nations by coming up with a counter-draft that will be presented at the conference.
They agreed to let China, which initiated the exercise, to present the draft of the developing nations at Copenhagen.
“This BASIC draft fully meets India’s goals and aspirations. We hope it is made the basis of discussions at the conference,” Ramesh said.
Climate Change Scientists Admit Dumping Data (Fox News)
Scientists at the University of East Anglia have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected.
The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
Lawmakers Probe Science Czar Holdren’s Links to Climategate (GatewayPundit)
Republican lawmakers are probing Science Czar John Holdren’s links to the Climategate documents.
Obama’s socialist Science Czar John Holdren, who once said that forced abortions were needed to save the planet, is also involved in the Climategate Scandal.
Holdren, another socialist in the White House, was pushing global cooling before he was pushing man-made global warming.
His name is linked to the Climategate scandal.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Congressional Republicans have started investigating climate scientists whose hacked emails suggest they tried to squelch dissenting views about global warming.
An aide to Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said investigators are studying the documents, which unknown hackers stole last week from the computer of a prominent British climate-research center.
Investigators are focusing on the correspondence of White House Science Adviser John Holdren, he said. Dr. Holdren, a point man for the Obama administration on climate change, sent one of the hacked emails.
In the 2003 email, Dr. Holdren, then at the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., defended research by Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a scientist who believes global warming is man-made and who also sent some of the hacked emails.
On Monday, Dr. Holden said: “I’m happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of ‘burden of proof’ in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute.”
The aide said investigators are also probing the contributions of dozens of climate scientists to reports published by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Environmental Protection Agency, in its recent move to boost regulation of greenhouse gases, based its conclusions on IPCC reports.
The IPCC has said the climate is heating up and humans are almost certainly to blame.
Those who disagree that the globe is warming, or on the cause or extent of any warming, complain that their views have been excluded.
Global Warming E-Mails Scandal Show Scientists May Have Cooked the Facts (U.S.News & World Report)
It is starting to look like President Barack Obama, aided and abetted by former Vice President Al Gore, Sens. Barbara Boxer, and John F. Kerry and others, may have lied this nation into a war against man-made global warming.
Preliminary analysis of the contents of thousands of E-mails and documents taken from the computer archives of the Climate Research Unit at England's University of East Anglia—possibly by a hacker, possibly by a whistleblower—indicate a number of the world's most important scientists engaged in research designed to prove that global warming really does exist may have been cooking the books.
As columnist Michael Barone wrote in Sunday's Washington Examiner, "The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals."
If true, the cooking of the temperature data to provide support for the idea that man-made global warming is occurring is a scandal of most serious proportions.
It should force policymakers to reconsider the role science plays in the formulation of policy if its conclusions can be manipulated the way those concerning climate change now appear to have been.
Climategate Scandal Heats Up, As Researcher "Accidentally" Deleted Data (The Business Insider)
It would appear that the Climategate scandal, the hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. revealing that scientists distorted climate change data, is not going to cool off anytime soon.
Climate change skeptics are fired up about the "accidental" deletion of temperature data by head of the CRU Phil Jones and the bogus data aggregation procedure used by scientists that "renders the [temperature readings] totally meaningless," but what gets some people's goats the most is the fact that the University of East Anglia is still denying that there was any wrong doing.
The Washington Times: We read and reread these CRU documents in stunned amazement.
But rather than investigating all the evidence of so much academic fraud and intellectual wrongdoing, the University of East Anglia is denying there is a problem.
Professor Trevor Davies, the school's pro vice chancellor for research, issued a defensive statement on Tuesday claiming:
"The publication of a selection of the emails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others.
There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation."...
Meet the White House’s Alarmist in Chief (Humanevents.com)
If you had devoted your entire scientific career to predicting the end of the world, what do you think would be the symbol of success with which to crown that career?
Why, to be President Obama’s choice as White House Director of Science and Technology. That’s his formal title, but what John Holdren is, in fact, is the nation’s Alarmist in Chief.
Al Gore thinks he invented global alarmism, but he’s a Johnny-come-lately compared with Mr. Holdren who, back in 1971 edited (with population alarmist Paul Ehrlich) a book titled Global Ecology.
Also, he supplied one of its essays, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide” in which he predicted that such human-caused phenomena as agricultural dust, jet exhaust and smog would cause a new ice age.
Thus, he wrote, “...a sudden slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.”
Nowadays, of course, the giant tidal wave will be caused by melting ice caps, not growing ones. One must move with the times.
East Anglia Scientists Agree to Publish DataPATTERICO
The UK Telegraph reports the East Anglia scientists have done a U-turn on releasing their data:
“Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data – dubbed Climategate – have agreed to publish their figures in full.
The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, “stolen” by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.
In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.”
Is this a story worth covering now, American media?
Climate Change Drama PATTERICO
Dramatic Quote-of-the-Day by climate change supporter Dr. James Hansen in an interview with Eric Berger, the Houston Chronicle’s science blogger:
BERGER: “I gather from what you were saying earlier about the bills in Congress, you feel the same about President Obama’s proposal for a 17 percent reduction in climate emissions by 2020.”
HANSEN: “Yeah. Obama is a very smart person and the hope was that he would try to understand this problem.
But instead his approach seems to be, “Oh let the politicians, let the House and Senate come to some sort of compromise on this.” But this is not something you can compromise on.
This is analogous to the situation Abraham Lincoln faced with slavery, or Winston Churchill with Nazism. You can’t compromise and say we’ll reduce the number of slaves by 50 percent or something.”
I sense desperation.
Where Is Obama the Leader? (The great imposter is finally getting exposed) FOX
It is becoming crystal clear that President Obama is not the leader we thought he was.
This revelation is as surprising as it is disappointing. He certainly looks like a leader; heaven knows he talks like a leader, but it turns out that he lacks a crucial qualification that all real leaders possess.
Great leaders put themselves on the line; Obama puts Congress on the line.
This penchant made headlines again last week. The White House wants to establish a commission to cut the federal budget deficit.
According to The Wall Street Journal, budget director Peter Orszag met with Senate Budget Committee head Kent Conrad about setting up a bipartisan committee that will examine ways to reduce spending.
Here’s a shocker for the White House: that’s your job. You are in charge of the budget.
You -- the Obama administration -- made the spending choices that led to a $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009.
Going forward, your decision to ramp up government outlays guarantees unsustainable red ink far into the future.
Yes, you stepped into a deteriorating situation, as you have reminded the American people on countless occasions; like all inheritances, however, the deficit now belongs to you.
It is not up to Congress to find a way out of our fiscal sand trap -- that is the responsibility of the White House.
It is the president, ultimately, who is responsible for finding ways to cut the out-of-control entitlements programs that will otherwise destabilize this country.
He then has to ram the tough choices through Congress, which his party dominates, even if it makes some people angry.
Taking the private jet to Copenhagen (Times On Line)
Hypocrisy is the vice we find hardest to forgive, but it’s also the one we most enjoy discovering in others.
And nothing piques our interest more than eco-hypocrisy as practised by the “green” celebrities who have been spouting green virtue but spewing out hundreds of tons of carbon from their private jets or multiple holiday homes around the globe.
There was Sheryl Crow, who had called upon the public to refrain from using more than one square of toilet paper per visit (“except on those pesky occasions when two or three are required”) and who was leading a Stop Global Warming concert tour across America.
It was revealed that while Crow travelled in a biodiesel tour bus, her 30-person entourage followed in a fleet of 13 gas-guzzling vehicles.
John Travolta notoriously encouraged the British public to do its bit to fight global warming — after flying into London on one of his five, yes, five private jets (one of which is a Boeing 707).
In 2006 his piloting hobby produced an estimated 800 tons of carbon emissions, more than a hundred times the output of the average Briton, according to the Carbon Trust.
It is less well known that Tom Cruise — who has campaigned for the LA-based environmental group Earth Communications Office — also has an air fleet and a licence to pilot his five planes, including a top-of-the-line customised Gulfstream jet he bought for his wife, Katie Holmes.
Harrison Ford, who is vice-chairman on the board of Conservation International, voices public-service messages for an environmental federation called EarthShare, and once shaved his chest hair to illustrate the effects of deforestation, is another hobby pilot.
He once owned a Gulfstream but now makes do with a smaller Cessna Citation Sovereign eight-seater jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.
Chris Matthews Compares Obama To Neville Chamberlain (NewsBusters) MSDNC Liberal Hack falls off turnip truck becomes lucid for 45 seconds
A week after calling Barack Obama "Carteresque," Chris "Tingles Up My Leg" Matthews said the former object of his affection is "Too much Chamberlain and not enough Churchill."
I'm honestly not sure which is worse -- being compared to Jimmy Carter or World War II appeaser Neville Chamberlain.
Regardless, I guess Matthews really has lost that lovin' feeling.
As the discussion about the President's upcoming speech on Afghanistan wound down on this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show," the host asked his guests if the "long deliberation" concerning strategy will make Obama "look smart and deliberate for having taken all this time, or will the dithering shot still being cast in by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney" hurt him?
Sunday LondonTimes BANNED In Dubai After Unflattering Portrayal Of Ruling Sheikh (The Business Insider)
Don't you dare show Shekih Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum drowning.
Foreign media better be on notice. Dubai's mess doesn't give you an excuse to take shots at the ruling family.
WSJ: The Sunday London Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai's debt problems, an executive at the paper said.
The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones.
The Sunday Times edition available in the U.A.E. on Nov. 29 featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt.
The Times wasn't given a reason for the block, or a timeframe when it will be lifted, the executive said.
Rolling Stone's Taibbi: Public Executions for Party Crashers; NYT’s Rich: They Are Party Terrorists (Been awhile since we've seen a couple of leftist so concerned about national security)
Has the left finally a reason to be impassioned by a threat to our national security? Michaele and Tareq Salahi seem to have provided that reason.
After the Salahis literally crashed a White House State Dinner on Nov. 24, the two demonstrated how vulnerable President Barack Obama could be to outside intruders. And justifiably, it has not only caused some concern with members of Congress, but some of the more outspoken members in the media.
Reports: Salahis Spoke With Desiree Rogers Before Dinner; Couple Crashed Previous Obama Dinner
Will Obama Throw Desiree Rogers Under the Bus for State Dinner Fiasco?
A bombshell claim by a friend of Michaele Salahi last night on Larry King Live could end up blowing White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers out of the East Wing and under the Obama bus of discarded friends and associates.
Politico reported on what was said on Larry King Live:
As far as I know, they were invited," said Teresa Foss-Conlan, one of three Salahi friends who appeared on King's CNN show Monday night after the Salahis themselves postponed a planned appearance. "I never in a million years would imagine them crashing the White House state dinner.
... I know that she had correspondence with the White House social secretary about the proper attire that she should wear as she was trying to decide about the dress and the color and if this was the proper attitre to wear."
Foss-Conlan's revelation that Michaele Salahi spoke personally with White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers is new and could result in responsibility falling closer to the White House's inner circle than previously known.
Also Monday evening, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), at the behest of Rep. Peter King (R-NY), asked Rogers to testify at the committee's hearing on the state dinner fiasco Thursday.
The Washington Post reports the White House has so far declined comment on the invitation.
Obama wanted his Palestinian friends at teh State Dinner on the quiet, except the wife blabbed it all over facebook.
I wonder how many other secret invitations there have been over the last year to Obama’s radical friends.
After major same sex marriage research, liberal CA org says: "We do not see a path to victory."
(SFGate)
The effort to get same sex marriage on the California ballot in 2010 took a hit Monday.
Rick Jacbos, the leader of the 700,000-member Courage Campaign just told us that after spending more than $200,000 on "qualitative research" into the issue in California that "We do not see a path to victory."
So, the Courage Campaign sent a note to its supporters Monday calling for "for more research and time to change hearts and minds before returning to the ballot."
Lambda Legal, a LGBT legal organization, said largely the same thing Monday.
Jacobs told us that the research --led by Obama confidante Steve Hildebrand -- found that "The biggest hangup people have is that right wing has done a very good job of telling people that somehow children will be affected" should same sex marriage become legal.
Rev. Al Sharpton's Daughter, Ex-Wife Appear in Court (WPIX-TV)
NEW YORK (WPIX) - The daughter and ex-wife of the Rev. Al Sharpton were in a Manhattan courtroom Monday where prosecutors charge the mother-daughter duo launched an obscenity-filled rant against a cop during a Harlem traffic stop.
Dominique Sharpton, 23 and the civil rights activist's former wife, Kathy Jordan, appeared before a judge to answer charges stemming from an Oct. 30 traffic stop.
Sharpton is accused of cutting off a copy by crossing a double line and running a red light after 7 p.m. at W. 110th St. and Eight Ave.
"Why the f--- are you locking her up?" Jordan is accused of yelling at officers as they arrested her daughter. "Get your f------ hands off her."
Sharpton - who was on her way to the theater - apparently also mouthed off to the officers.
"This is f------ bull----," police say she screamed. "You were driving too slow. I have a place to go to."
Court papers allege the two women did more than just use forceful language.
Sharpton, who works alongside her father at the "National Action Network," reportedly "flailed her arms" to avoid getting handcuffed.
In addition, the complaint claims Sharpton "pushed her feet against the police vehicle to resist being placed inside the vehicle."
Jordan, who divorced Rev. Al Sharpton in 2004, "grabbed the handcuffs" from a Housing Authority sergeant and "twisted her body away from police officers," cops charged.
Prosecutors on Monday did not offer up a deal. Instead, Sharpton and Jordan are due back in court Jan. 19 They each face a one year prison term.
My McClatchy and MSM prediction on sharpton:
Page HH-27 on NYT, LAT and USATD — font size 6.
No mention on any broadcast MSM station of any medium outside of FOX
The Big Business-Big Insurance-Big Pharma lobbyist who posts each morning to "Got news or an update?" here has been busy again this morning. Thanks. Since you pounce on any example (real or imagined) of the administration's lack of transparency, how about telling us which lobbying firm you work for and who their biggest financial contributors are?
There have been so many lies and distortions pointed out in Sarah Palin's Going Rogue since it was released last week that her memoir has already become something of a gag line.
But perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden.
As the epigram to Chapter Three, "Drill, Baby, Drill," Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:
Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their lives.
Only the quote wasn't by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled "Back on the War Ponies," which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.
Here's the full quote:
Our land is everything to us. It is the only place in the world where Cheyennes talk the Cheyenne language to each other. It is the only place where Cheyennes remember the same things together. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it--with their life. My people and the Sioux defeated General Custer at the Little Big Horn.
Oops! That's not quite the sentiment that Sister Sarah was trying to convey as she guzzled down sugar-free Red Bull and cranked up Toby Keith's "How Do You Like Me Now?" while jumping on her patriotic high horse at the opening of the third chapter.
There's also no small amount of irony in the quote, given Palin's abysmal record on Alaska Native issues during her truncated term as governor.
I was a huge UCLA basketball fan as a kid. Whenever the Bruins came to the Bay Area, I did whatever I could do to snag a ticket. I loved to watch Wooden coach. But I never figured the Wizard of Westwood as an advocate for radical land distribution.
The Huffington Post
...and the dominos begin to fall.
Climategate Hoax Ringleader to Step Down Under Investigation!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578486,00.html
No news about Huckabee commuting a cop killer/rapist? No? Hm. Many say his political career is over.
1:54 is obviously a racist. At least that was what libs said when Willie Horton was a topic.
Yep, he said that had he known then what he did, of course he never would have done it. However, acting on the recommendations of the judge and his leftist social workers he thought he was doing the right thing by allowing him parole eligibility.
Still no word at all from the two pedophile loving, left coast judges who released him on a token bond for raping a little girl. It's not their fault though, the homosexual community flies high cover for pedophiles and other demented minds on the left coast.
Huckabee would have been a horrible Repub candidate and a sure loser. Glad he shot himself in the foot early. What he did was inexcuseable and a prime example of why governor's shouldn't overturn the judicial system decisions on criminals. Let the parole boards do their jobs.
McCrappy takes another nosedive in the stock market today. Look for a round of layoffs to be announced soon as they once again will artificially pump up the stock price by cutting heads.
Huckabee and Palin are both finished as candidates. They can still be effective campaigners and fundraisers, but neither is electable as President.
In the grand scheme of things, it's better that these things came out now, rather than during an election campaign.
Funny somebody would mention another round of layoffs for McClatchy getting underway. Saw this on the Business Journal site:
The Charlotte Observer has offered a voluntary buyout program to many of its employees, including most newsroom staffers.
Publisher Ann Caulkins confirmed the buyout in an interview Monday afternoon, citing the impact of the recession as the main culprit.
“It’s about a sluggish economy,” she said. “We just aren’t seeing improvement.”
Caulkins told the newspaper staff about the buyout program on Monday morning. Most employees will be eligible, though Caulkins expects few takers.
“We don’t think we will get many employees who will raise their hand with this,” she said. “If we don’t get many, this will cause us to look at cost-cutting measures that are non-people-related.”
The publisher said no layoffs will occur in the wake of the voluntary buyout. She declined to say how many employees the paper has in the newsroom or in total. The McClatchy Co., the Observer’s corporate parent, puts The Charlotte daily’s head count at 900 full-time employees and 226 in the newsroom, according to the company Web site. That head count seems high, given the layoffs and buyouts the paper has gone through in the past two years.
In March, the Observer reported a 14.6 percent cut in jobs, encompassing 60 full-time and 22 part-time employees. The paper also reduced most salaries at that time.
McClatchy last week reported a slight gain in third-quarter net income after one-time gains were excluded. Revenue for the quarter fell 23 percent to $347 million from a year ago. Advertising revenue dropped 28 percent to $266 million. For the first nine months of the year, McClatchy’s total print advertising revenue declined 33 percent from the same period in 2008.
Circulation at McClatchy papers fell 11.3 percent for daily distribution and 8.2 percent for Sundays, according to the company’s latest regulatory filing. The company did not break out individual papers in the filing. McClatchy’s Web site puts the Observer’s weekday circulation at 215,379 and 270,347 on Sundays. New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations will be released later this month.
McClatchy also publishes The Herald of Rock Hill, The News & Observer of Raleigh and 27 other daily newspapers. The Raleigh paper offered employees a buyout program earlier this month, citing weak advertising sales.
Huckabee and Palin are both finished as candidates.
------------
Huckabee was done a long time ago, but Palin has a huge following. The chatter and slander you hear from her come straight out of the gay nutter seats. She's a viable candidate for anything.
"She's a viable candidate for anything."
I would have agreed with you, until today. Personally, I like her, and I'd vote for her. However, this misquote of John Wooden in her book is beyond embarassing, it's the equivalent of Dan Quayle misspelling "potato".
It will follow her forever, and the fact that it was never caught by a fact-checker is unforgivable.
Palin ain't got it. But there's plenty of time for a fresh face to emerge as a candidate to unseat Obama. He's another Jimmy Carter and this latest Afghanistan joke about pulling out in 18 months, will hammer him in the polls.
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