"The U.S has made some progress with the Chinese and the Indians Over the Past Couple of Weeks

The Chinese and the Indians would beg to differ. As would Brazilians and South Africans. Maybe they believe the emails. . .

(someone better tell Gibbs before he looks even stupider. . .)

India Times:

Copenhagen conference: India, China plan joint exit
Saibal Dasgupta, TNN 28 November 2009

BEIJING: 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.

The draft, which was originally prepared by China, was finalized after some changes during a 7-hour long meeting of BASIC countries-Brazil, South Africa, India and China besides Sudan as the chair of G-77.

This joint front forged on Saturday is a major political initiative -- the first major India-China accord on international affairs--that is likely to impact not just the dimension of the talks on climate change but international diplomacy as a whole. The move comes after recent discussions on climate change held with Indian and Chinese leaders by US president Barack Obama, who appears to have made little impact on them.

Denmark is expected to unveil its draft to a group of select countries that includes the United States, several European nations, India and China on December 1. It will be later presented at the conference. Around the same time, the BASIC nations plan to circulate their own counter-draft in order to influence the course of negotiations.

The four nations issued a joint press release, which made it clear the developed nations should be ready to contribute funds and share green technology if they expected the developing and poor nations to take major actions on environmental protection.

The four countries and the chair of G-77 said they were keen to make a “contribution towards a consensus in Copenhagen”.

The release said: “We are in agreement on major issues including those relating to the establishment of a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, as well as shared vision for long term cooperative action on climate change, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to the impact of climate change, and the provision of finance and technology to support and enable these actions, taking into account the special needs of the least developed countries, the small island developing states and African countries.”

The United States, which refused to endorse the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, might find it difficult to handle the new onslaught mounted by four developing nations including India and China. They are demanding an extension of the Kyoto Protocol.

In fact, there are serious questions on whether US president Barack Obama will keep his promise of attending the Copenhagen conference on climate change next month to avoid pressures to accept a “second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol”. Obama recently met both Chinese leaders and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in order to soften the stance of developing nations and avoid exactly the kind of situation that is now emerging.

Besides the elements of the Kyoto Protocol, there are “significant new features” in the draft proposal worked out by BASIC countries-Brazil, South Africa, India and China-at a meeting here on Saturday, Jairam Ramesh, minister of state for environment and forest said.

These countries have decided not to allow rich nations to make climate change an excuse to set up trade barriers or resort to trade protectionism. Rich countries should be ready to contribute funds for stopping the process of forest degradation including the one in Amazon valley in Brazil and also invest in the process of creating new forests.

The developing nations will also not accept any pressure from developed countries to establish legally binding emission targets at Copenhagen. Developing countries want to be allowed to reduce emissions voluntarily and take what they consider to be “nationally appropriate actions” he said.

Ramesh said India will under no circumstances accept the concept of a peaking year under which each country will have to indicate on what date they will reach the highest level of pollution before beginning to come down.

India will also not accept any unsupported mitigation actions without any effort by developed countries to provide funds and technology support to improve environment in developing nations.

New Delhi has also set its face against any international measurement, reporting and verification of the work done in India for environment protection.

The Indian minister said that China, Brazil and South Africa were also in agreement on these issues.

Obama The Incredible Enigma

I wonder if Cass Sunstein will be angry with me for posting this:

SOME WILL BLINDLY REFUTE ALL OF THIS, OTHERS MAY REFUTE SOME OF THIS, BUT MANY WILL SAY, "HOW IN THE HELL DID THIS MAN GET ELECTED?" WHY ARE THERE STILL SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS?
Barack Obama is less of a person than an image - a Brand. People see whatever they want as they do on a Rorschach test. But does anyone really know him?

In fact, he is....,

(HAVE CUT 3 LINES and placed them at the end of this list - L)

A man whose childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, spied on U.S. military installations in Hawaii for the Soviet Union, edited a communist newspaper, authored pornographic novels, and wrote poetry in praise of Joseph Stalin.

A man mentored by and still supported by radical Muslims.

A man who promised transparency in government, but has spent over a million dollars in legal fees hiding information that would determine his eligibility to be President.

A former drug user.

A man whose academic records are sealed from kindergarten through law school.

A man who arrived in New York in June of 1981 without enough money to get a hotel room, but one month later flew to Indonesia and Pakistan .

Why did he go?

Who paid his expenses?

A man who traveled to Pakistan when it was illegal for U.S. citizens to do so.

So what country's passport did he use?

A man whose Law School Admission Test scores and grades at Columbia University are known to have been mediocre, but was admitted to Harvard Law School through the intervention of a Saudi named Khalid al-Mansour.

A law review editor who never published an article in any law review.

A lawyer with no significant accomplishments in the law and no reputation in the legal community.

A former State and U.S. Senator, who never authored a piece of legislation.

A disciple of the Marxist Saul Alinsky.

A product of the Chicago political machine, the most corrupt political organization in America .

A man who selects Marxists, corrupt politicians, and criminals as his close political associates and personal friends.

A man whose presidential candidacy was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the Socialist International, and the Workers International League.

A man lauded for the literary brilliance of two memoirs, both of which were ghostwritten by others.

A so-called Christian who says that knowing when human life begins is above his pay-grade, but somehow knows that abortion is permissible at any stage.

A man who thinks waterboarding is immoral, but partial-birth abortion is moral.

A man who publicly laments slavery in America, which was abolished 150 years ago, but praises Islam, which still practices both slavery and the sexual mutilation of young girls.

A man who speaks endlessly about helping the less fortunate, but gives almost none of his sizeable income to charity - not even to his half-brother, who is living in squalor in Kenya.

A man who had the most left-wing voting record in the United State Senate, but was predicted by the press to govern from the middle.

A man who has never created a job, met a payroll, or even operated a lemonade stand, but wants to tell Detroit how to make cars.

A President who has never before served as an executive in either the private or the public sector.

A Commander-in-Chief who doesnt know how to shoot a rifle, throw a hand-grenade, drive a tank, fly a plane, or steer a ship.

A Commander-in-Chief who has publicly divulged some of our nations most important intelligence secrets.

A man who has been put in charge of the largest economic engine ever existed, but has never invested in the stock market and admits total ignorance of it.

A President who says science will guide his administration, but has no education in the sciences.

A man who is proficient in reading what is written for him on a teleprompter, but jerks and stammers his way through any off-the-cuff speaking.

A man whose health records are sealed from childhood to the present day.

A man whose educational records are sealed from childhood through law school.

A man who spent 20 years in a church whose pastor espouses Marxist Liberation Theology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Semitism, but claims he never heard his pastor utter anti-American or anti-Semitic statements.

A man who added more to the National Debt in 100 days than all other Presidents did in the past 220 years, yet feels qualified to lecture Americans about fiscal responsibility.

A man who publicly expressed disdain for the U.S. Constitution on a Chicago radio station because it limited the governments ability to redistribute wealth.

The first American President to bow before a foreign head of state - a Muslim dictator.

A man who sits and listens submissively while his country is castigated by Daniel Ortega, a Communist thug whose own daughter accused him of raping her.

A narcissist who gave the Queen of England a present from the United States --an iPod containing recordings of his own speeches.

A so-called Christian who officially declared Pride Month for a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.

A man who wanted Americans to ignore his Muslim name during his election campaign, yet boasts of his Muslim name when he travels to Muslim countries.

A man who can name hundreds of America's shortcomings, yet none of its great accomplishments.

A President who claims the moral high ground by closing Gitmo yet supports the transfer of terror suspects to countries where horrific torture is certain.

A President who scoffed at being called a socialist yet acted to nationalize the auto industry, the banking industry, and the insurance industry . . . and now seeks to nationalize the healthcare industry.

A President who violates private property rights, the sanctity of contracts, and the rule of law - three essential principles that go back over a thousand years in the Common Law tradition.

A man who promised 95% of all Americans a tax cut, but is increasing taxes on 100% of the population through inflation - the cruelest tax of all.

A lawyer who represented ACORN, an organization now indicted in several states for voter fraud, whose stated goal is to get as many people on welfare as possible in order to destroy our financial system.

A President who cheated GMs bondholders by giving their property to the UAW in a political payoff.

An American President who frequently criticizes his own country when speaking in foreign countries, but never praises America's generosity, goodness or greatness.

A President whose Secretary of the Treasury cheated on his taxes, as did several other appointees and advisors.

A President who, despite the current federal debt of 100 trillion dollars, wants to add the greatest debt ever by nationalizing healthcare.

A President who scoffs at being calleda socialist, yet has appointed 28 Czars with more to be appointed to circumvent constitutional government, including: A Science Czar who has advocated compulsory abortions for American women and the surrender of Sovereignty to a comprehensive Planetary Regime.

A self-professed Communist as his Green Jobs Czar.

A Pay Czar to regulate the pay of corporate executives.

A President who swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, yet has nominated a domestic enemy of the Constitution to the Supreme Court.

A President whose Homeland Security Chief classified pro-lifers, veterans, and supporters of traditional marriage as terrorists.

A President who stood silent while the Iranian government hacked unarmed protestors to death with axes, because it was an internal matter, but freely offers his opinions about the internal affairs of Israel and Honduras .

A President who decreed true acts of terrorism must now be described as man-made disasters.

A President who cracks hurtful jokes about Special Olympians.

A President who refused to intercept or inspect a North Korean ship virtually certain to be carrying Weapons of Mass Destruction to Burma .

A President who wants to cancel all missile defenses while rogue nations are developing long-range ballistic missiles.

An American President who blames the violence in Mexico on America .

A Commander in Chief who claims to have been unaware that Air Force One was taken on a terrifying, low-level photo-op over Manhattan..

A President who berates American CEOs for flying in private planes at private expense on company business, but whose wife spends hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars flying to Paris for a shopping spree. (Note: the Dems in Congress are in the process of passing a bill to purchase a number of private jets for the exclusive use of its members.)

A President who promised a transparent administration, but requires all questions be screened before impromptu appearances.

A man who freely admitted his energy policies are designed to bankrupt the American coal industry.

A President who has presided over the loss of 14.7 million jobs and whose energy policy will cause the loss of another 1 million jobs.

A President whose energy policy will increase the average Americans utility bills by over $2,000 a year in the middle of the Great Recession.

A man about whom Liberal journalist Tom Brokaw said, There's a lot about him We Don't Know?....... just one week before the election.

The vast majority of Americans Do Not Know who he is, but SOMEONE Surely Does.

Someone paid for his travel expenses to Pakistan and Indonesia.

Someone engineered legal challenges to all of his election opponents for the State Senate and had them disqualified.

Someone straightened and leveled his path to the U.S. Senate when a Democrat Judge made public the child custody records of his Republican opponent. When he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate,

Someone arranged for him to speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Someone saw to it that all of his records were sealed, both at home and abroad.

Someone assembled the massive organization for his run for the Presidency.

Someone knows all about him.

Who??

OBAMA WOULD NOT HAVE FREED THE SLAVES

An interesting perspective from Judith Klinghofer:

In Afghanistan, a Just War I argue that the war in Afghanistan, like the Civil War and the Second World War, is bound to remain a case of just war not because of the reasons it was fought but because of it's consequences, the freeing of Afghan women. True, Afghan women, like freed American slaves and Freed Jews before them, have a long way to go. But there can be little doubt that their liberation has begun and a return of the Taliban would put them back in shackles. Consider this exchange on "This Week:"

ROBERTS: And I think that he, therefore, he has to deliver on Afghanistan. And I also think that one of the things that he can explain is that the difference that it will make for women and girls in Afghanistan if we leave is devastating. (CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I got to say, I bet that's one thing he's not going to do. He might give a glancing blow to it. I think he's going to try to say all we can do is stabilize that country. We can't create, as Secretary Gates has said, a Valhalla in Afghanistan.

ROBERTS: No, of course not. But people in this country were very excited when they saw those girls going to school for the first time in years, and all of that. And the sense that America was doing something good in the world, which we are all over the world, but a lot of people don't realize that. And the idea that those people would just be locked up again and repressed is something to make a case for.

This was not the first time Roberts tried to raise the Afghan women's issue nor the first time George Stephanopoulos dismissed her concerns as naive. In this he merely reflects the determination of the Obama administration to ignore this moral dimension of the War in Afghanistan forces one to conclude that had he been living in the eighteen sixties, he would have sided with realist Stephen Douglas and not with idealist Abe Lincoln.

In other words, he would not have freed the slaves. Instead, he would have used his considerable rhetorical powers to convince the country that the Southerners have the right to live according to their unique set of values and it is wrong of the "imperfect" Yankees to force their own notions of morality on them.

I am delighted that some women's groups decided to speak out. I wish Laura Bush joined them as, unlike Michelle Obama and her vegetable gardens, she has been active in the cause of Afghan women. Hillary, as always, tows the line of the men for whom she works. I do not like the Afghan war but permitting the re-enslaving of Afghan women is too awful a prospect to contemplate. Yet, by dithering as the British correctly pointed out he effectively undermined public support for the war and by asserting an exclusive national security reason for the war and ignoring it's moral aspect sought to make the abandonment of Afghan women palatable.

No, he is no Lincoln!

Dumb: AFP Quotes Jihadi Group Behind Mumbai Massacre Lashkar-e-Taiba on Swiss Minaret Ban. Seriously Retarded: Terror Group Decries Ban as Blow for "Inter-Faith Harmony"....

Is it possible that Agency French Press doesn't know that Lashkar e-Taiba is a terrorist group? If they don't know, can they really call themselves Journalists?

Click on the title and go read the whole thing.

Lou Rawls

Stormy Monday

White House Insists Anthropogenic Global Warming Is Still Settled ... So There

Damn reality, full speed ahead.



From Professor of Meteorology, at Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Richard Lindzen:

THE CLIMATE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED

Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

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The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.

That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let's refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."

There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.

The Climate Emails

The Economics of Climate Change
Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'
Global Warming With the Lid Off
Climate Science and Candor

Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume—in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.

But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity—which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.

Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapor are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.

There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapor in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapor feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapor and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.

Document Reveals UN's Goal of Becoming Global Rule-Maker for Environmental Laws, Says "Environmentalism Should be Regarded on the Same Level With Religion"

(Fox News)- Environmentalism should be regarded on the same level with religion "as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity," according to a paper written two years ago to influence the future strategy of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world's would-be environmental watchdog.

The purpose of the paper, put together after an unpublicized day-long session in Switzerland by some of the world's top environmental bureaucrats: to argue for a new and unprecedented effort to move environmental concerns to "the center of political and economic decision-making" around the world — and perhaps not coincidentally, expand the influence and reach of UNEP

The Green Economy Initiative, also called the Global Green New Deal, is a major counterpart to the new treaty on greenhouse gas suppression that all branches of the United Nations, and a horde of environmental organizations, are lobbying loudly to bring to agreement at the environmental summit in Copenhagen.

The ambitious paper, entitled "The UNEP That We Want," was the product of a select group of 20 top environmental bureaucrats and thinkers, including UNEP's current No. 2 official, Angela Cropper. The document was later delivered to UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Other participants included Janos Pasztor, currently head of the team pushing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's unprecedented Seal the Deal lobbying campaign to pressure U.N. member governments into signing a new environmental agreement at Copenhagen; Julia Marton-Lefevre head of the World Conservation Union; Dominic Waughray, currently head of environmental initiatives at the World Economic Forum; and Maria Ivanova, a Bulgarian academic who is director of the Global Economic Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.

....The report was "very well received" by UNEP's hierarchy, according to Halle, and "it has had a great impact internally." He added, "I have participated in several discussions and presentations of the ideas."

Go read the whole thing at Weasel Zippers.

Marvin Gaye

What's Going On

Ronald Reagan On America

Ronald Reagan About Socialized Healthcare

I Must Be Racist

- I think if its okay to crack jokes about white people then it should be okay to crack jokes about black people as well

- I don't think all Muslims are the same race

- I think its okay to criticize Islam and I also think Islam is not a race

- I don't think there is anything wrong with calling people of African descent "black" just like there is nothing wrong with calling Caucasian people "white"

- I think the non-white population of the world should get over the past and stop blaming the white population for all their problems.

- I think non-whites are racist when they have negative generalizations about white people

I believe all that, I must be racist!

Please help me understand how racist I am by mentioning more facts like that.

Arvo Part

Agnus Dei

BLOGGER USES PICTURES OF OSAMA BIN LADEN FOR TARGET PRACTICE

Oh yes I do.

Hey, if the Somalis can do it, so can I. . .

Don't Try This At Home. . .

Hondurans Vote

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

I'm posting the article, but really hope Carlos can speak better on it soon.

Wall Street Journal:

Hondurans Pick a Leader to End Limbo
Conservative Rancher Wins Presidential Election, but International Acceptance Isn't Guaranteed

By NICHOLAS CASEY
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- A conservative rancher named Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo took the Honduran presidency in elections Sunday, five months after the country's last elected president was forced out of the country at gunpoint. Now Hondurans must wait to see if the international community, which has been divided over the crisis, accepts the winner as legitimate.

The results gave Mr. Lobo 56% of the vote, well ahead of Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos at 38%, confirming voters' expected punishment of the Liberals -- party of both the deposed president and the interim government that ousted him.

While the small Central American nation is expected to get crucial support from the U.S., it will likely continue to face opposition from regional heavyweights such as Brazil and Argentina. The U.S., in agreeing to accept the winner, is now in a delicate position -- with Brazil, for example, which is housing exiled leader Manuel Zelaya in its Honduran embassy and recognizes him as president.

Hondurans Head to the Polls
View Slideshow

Associated Press

A soldier stood guard in the door of a polling center during presidential elections in Tegucigalpa, Sunday.
About 61% of Hondurans voted, and turnout, which was up from 2005, was seen as a crucial factor in persuading more countries to back the vote. The turnout was a loss for Mr. Zelaya, who had urged supporters to boycott the election. After the vote, Mr. Zelaya condemned the elections on CNN saying: "Absenteeism triumphed. ... These elections don't correct the coup d'etat."

Mr. Zelaya's removal at gunpoint in June caused a stir in Honduras and abroad, where the global community condemned the ouster as a coup. Honduras's political institutions, including its congress and supreme court, backed the ouster as the legal removal of a president who they said was illegally trying to get himself re-elected -- charges Mr. Zelaya denies.

Honduras's interim government has since struggled to gain acceptance and has cast the election as the obvious answer to the country's impasse. But some nations have said Mr. Zelaya would have to be restored to power to hold a credible election.

Neither of the two men claiming to be president during the past five months -- Mr. Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti -- was on the ballot. The vote hands power to Mr. Lobo, a conservative rancher who was narrowly beaten by Mr. Zelaya four years ago. "It's going to be Pepe this time," said Higenio Garcia Ponce, an agricultural laborer who said he had just voted for Mr. Lobo. "There was a rupture in the Liberal Party over what happened with Zelaya."

In San Angel, a mountain village overlooking Tegucigalpa, three long lines stretched through the town's polling place as voters waited to cast their ballots. "We need change," said Roberto Ponce, 49, who voted for Mr. Lobo. While Mr. Ponce described satisfaction with Mr. Micheletti's tenure, he expressed no interest in supporting the president's party, despite having cast ballots for the liberals in past elections.

Power Struggle
See a timeline of events.

View Interactive

More interactive graphics and photos Further Reading
Honduran Hopefuls Look Past Zelaya The election seemed largely peaceful in the capital. Outside, there were reports of clashes between security forces and pro-Zelaya demonstrators in the second city of San Pedro Sula. Tom Loudon, co-director of the Quixote Center, a faith-based nongovernmental organization focused on social-justice issues, was among the protesters and said about 500 people were dispersed with tear gas and water cannons. Calls to the city's police department weren't returned Sunday.

Others said Zelaya supporters tried to prevent them from voting. Enrique Zelaya, a 54-year-old doctor who works for the United Nations, said he was among people in a group of 25 cars Sunday that was stopped at the border between El Salvador and Honduras by men who said they were trying to enforce Mr. Zelaya's boycott of the election. After five hours, the cars were allowed to pass, he said.

The political crisis began when Mr. Zelaya attempted to hold a referendum to gauge public interest in changing the constitution. Critics of the former president, a leftist known for his ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, alleged he was following in Mr. Chávez's footsteps and attempting to change the law to stay past term limits, itself a violation of Honduran law. On June 28, he was apprehended at his home and sent out of the country in his pajamas. Mr. Micheletti, the next in line for the presidency, took office.

Only the U.S., Costa Rica and Panama have said they will accept the winner, though other countries, including Mexico and Canada, appear to be leaning that way as well. The government is betting that U.S. recognition will lead other nations to back down from earlier positions. "They may not recognize the elections Sunday itself, but I believe they will at some point in the future," Mr. Lobo said Saturday.

Mr. Lobo and Mr. Santos offered differing domestic agendas but were light on specifics about how to tackle Honduras's central challenges, including reducing chronic poverty and encouraging foreign investment.

More immediately, the winner will have to deal with concerns related to Mr. Zelaya: whether to instruct Congress to reinstate him temporarily on a vote to be held Wednesday, and how to reassure the international community of the new government's legitimacy.

"Connecting the dots in this fashion would not have been contemplated as recently as one year ago"

Oh, I don't know. Since a bunch of people here and throughout the right side of Infidelphia have been connecting these dots, one way or another, since long before the 2008 Coronation. No one wanted to listen to us then and now, even right side media outlets are wondering how they could have missed this, how they could have not seen it coming.

Must have been all that charisma. . .

American Spectator:

The Plan to Silence Dissent
By Mark Hyman on 11.30.09

There is no shortage of conspiracy theories that elicit a chuckle or the rolling of eyeballs. "September 11th was an inside job." "The war on Iraq was launched to enrich Halliburton." "AIDS was created to annihilate the black community." But should we be alarmed when a theory appears plausible in an age when the previously unthinkable occurs on a regular basis?

"When the heavy hand of the State is imposed on the press, all of us lose," Barack Obama told a group of Kenyan journalists during a 2006 trip to Africa. He continued, "The media does not have a formal role in the Government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the Government accountable."

That was then and this is now. Apparently, a present-day President Obama has a different view -- a wild-eyed view -- of a free press than did a Senator Obama now that some outlets hold him, his administration and his political allies accountable.

The Obama Administration declared war on the minority of media outlets that do not worship the political left's newest false idol immediately after Obama was sworn in. Three days into his presidency Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh. Amazingly, the president who offered to sit down with the thug leaders of rogue nations, such as Iran's Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without any preconditions believed an immense threat was posed by a radio talk show host originally from southeastern Missouri.

Then the White House launched a jihad against Fox News Channel and its hosts by first boycotting appearances on the cable channel and then second, by engaging in name-calling and leveling baseless allegations.

More recently, the White House brazenly attempted to marginalize Fox News Channel by enlisting the support of the heretofore compliant news media. Fortunately, competing news outlets found the backbone -- if only temporarily -- to put the kibosh on Obama's attempts to blacklist FNC from the White House press pool.

All of the Obama Administration bluster may have been just that. Supporters of talk radio breathed a sigh of relief earlier this year when an amendment introduced by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) passed with an 87-11 Senate vote that seemingly ended an attempt to implement the so-called "Fairness Doctrine." The inaptly named "Fairness Doctrine" is nothing less than government-imposed speech codes. Although the doctrine would not have likely survived Constitutional scrutiny, radio hosts and listeners alike thought a major bullet was dodged.

So, are all threats averted? Perhaps not. There may be another plan afoot to silence dissent.

Instead of having the government decide which program merited "the other side" of the argument, what if there was a plan to shut down the free component of talk radio and broadcast TV?

More than 150 bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission are in the final stages of planning how to deliver broadband Internet to the estimated 3-6 million people who do not have access. A formal plan will be unveiled in early 2010 but one proposal being discussed is deeply alarming as it threatens First Amendment freedoms.

The FCC is contemplating the notion that some or all of the electromagnetic spectrum occupied by radio and TV broadcasters is the perfect real estate to launch a national wireless broadband service. The price tag is $350 billion. That is as much as nearly $120,000 per person to be connected. Apparently, the FCC has not heard of the "$99 Triple Play."

Evicted broadcasters would no longer offer free, over-the-air radio and TV, but would instead be confined to subscription platforms such as cable and satellite or the Internet. This aspect of the plan is indeed troubling. The public would be required to pay for their news, information and entertainment services and there would be no free option.

However, it gets worse. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced a measure this year that would allow the president to disconnect private broadband users during an undefined national cyber emergency.

One provision of S.773 would grant the president authority to "declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic" including that on private systems designated as critical. Not surprisingly, the bill gives the president wide discretion in designating private systems as "critical." Would an H1N1 pandemic qualify as such an emergency allowing the president to shut down voices opposing his socialized medicine plans?

Another provision of the bill is to federally-license certain information technology professionals making it illegal for those not holding such a license to access any IT systems. Obviously, the most efficient way to control the nation's broadband platforms is to control those who operate them.

Connecting the dots in this fashion would not have been contemplated as recently as one year ago. But today, no one is rolling their eyes.

Doubts Mount over Obama's 'Civilian Surge' Strategy for Afghanistan

Newsmax:

Sunday, November 29, 2009 6:38 PM

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is forging ahead with its civilian surge in Afghanistan but some experts say thousands more are needed while others fear the security situation is making the push ineffective.

In unveiling his first Afghanistan strategy in March, President Barack Obama called for increasing the number of experts to 1,000 in order to help the Kabul government serve its people and wean the economy off opium production.

Obama, due to unveil a revamped strategy on Tuesday that is expected to include some 30,000 to 35,000 more troops, stressed again last week the importance of sending civilians to accompany the military push in Afghanistan.

"It's going to be important to recognize that in order for us to succeed there, you've got to have a comprehensive strategy that includes civilian and diplomatic efforts," he told reporters.

Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said earlier this week that some 974 civilians will be deployed by "the early weeks of next year."

A US official told AFP on condition of anonymity the figure could be higher.

Steven Metz, an analyst with the US Army War College, wrote in the New Republic magazine that the civilian surge could only succeed if Washington sent several thousand experts to Afghanistan for years at a time.

But John Dempsey, a specialist with the United States Institute of Peace who has spent the last seven years in Kabul working on reforming the Afghan justice sector, said numbers were not necessarily the key.

If the civilians are stuck mainly on a military base or with armed escorts for security reasons, "the impact of the (planned US) increase will be marginal yet expensive," Dempsey said in an email exchange with AFP.

"On the other hand, if they can recruit qualified civilians who are given proper cross-cultural training and who are able to meet with Afghans regularly in the local communities... then I think there's a real opportunity for development progress to be made."

Senior State Department official Jacob Lew said there were only 320 civilians deployed by the US in Afghanistan in January when Obama succeeded president George W. Bush.

Lew said 388 experts alone will be deployed outside the capital Kabul by early next year, compared to just 67 who served in the provinces in January.

The civilians are either US government employees from the State Department or seven other government agencies, including the Agriculture Department, or have been recruited outside for their special skills, such as language.

They undergo various kinds of training, including in Pashtu and other Afghan languages if they don't know them, learning about Afghan culture and how to interact with the US military.

Civilian workers deployed in Afghan provinces to work on various projects, such as building an airstrip in Helmand, live on US military bases and are escorted by American troops and Afghan security forces to ensure their safety.

However, a handful of civilians are set to be deployed in new US consulates being set up in the cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif by the end of the year.

Anthony Cordesman, a civilian military expert who was in Afghanistan over the summer to advise the US military, is critical of the civilian effort.

"We're not meeting this so-called civilian surge goal, and the quality of the civilians we?re providing isn't meeting the need," he said recently.

The other problem, Cordesman said, is how to coordinate among an alliance of 42 countries which set down different guidelines for its forces. He also accused the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) of poor management.

In a paper published November 19, Cordesman spoke of "the near chaos in managing the overall foreign aid effort within the State Department -- an issue that Secretary (Hillary) Clinton has raised but so far done nothing to address."

It has to be galling to The New York Slimes to have Sarah Palin Number 1 on their bestseller list.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws be made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

-- James Madison --

now, read how that aplies to the health care bill here

Lawmakers Probe Science Czar Holdren’s Links to Climategate

Click on the title above to read the whole story at Gateway.

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.

Minister Who Witnessed Gladney Beatdown Cannot Believe Misdemeanor Charges Filed For Vicious Hate Crime (Video)

From Gateway:

Harris Himes, the minister who witnessed Kenneth Gladney’s beatdown at the Russ Carnahan town hall in August, cannot believe that only misdemeanor charges were filed against the SEIU thugs last week. The Russ Carnahan union supporters beat, stomped on and kicked black vendor Kenneth Gladney.




Click on the title above to go to Gateway for the whole story.

DEAR TROLLS

Let's be clear about this

Wishing, hoping for, describing, inciting etc physical violence or harm to ANY of our elected officials their families or friends

IS (one of the very few things) NOT ALLOWED HERE

KNOCK IT OFF

Edvard Grieg

In the Hall of the Mountain King

My Trip To Melbourne

Well, I am back from my very long trip to Australia and New Zealand. I intend to write about some conversations that I had over there in separate articles but here, I just wanted to share some pictures (click on each image for a better, enlarged view) and thoughts from Melbourne (and maybe Auckland) that I thought were of interest.

I found Melbourne to be very patriotic and unapologetic of its Christian roots. It is a city that tells you the local population is proud and happy and they are not going to apologize for who they are to anyone. This was the feeling I got not only from my conversations but just by looking at the city.


The picture above is of "the golden mile" which takes you to different parts of the city that still have its history preserved in old churches and buildings. Most of these buildings date from the 19th century but they are beautiful to look at, especially because they are presented with a sense of pride and not as a sign of apology to anyone.

It was refreshing to see so many religious symbols spread all over the city. Many of the old churches were refurbished for worship services. There were 14 plaques spread all over the city containing the story of Jesus' final moments leading to his death and the best part was that those plaques were placed there by the financial help of the government of Victoria (Melbourne is in the state of Victoria). Oh and no, they are not debating whether to take them down in the name of secularism and to appease Muslims or not. These images are there tall and proud whether Muslims and leftists like it or not.

[Sorry, some images are sideways. I am still playing around with my first ever camera and have no time or software to fix the images]






The city officials have made sure to include the history of all of the important buildings, whether they be churches or hotels or statues of the "founding fathers" (oh and even though statues are not allowed in Islam, Australia isn't tearing them down--at least I didn't see appeasement on the streets of Melbourne like I do in European cities).





I was walking around the city center and I only saw one Halal store.


What's funny about this picture is that that store is right next to the police precinct--I guess they know who they have to keep an eye on.

This is where I had lunch--(A note to terrorists: Don't blow it up, I ain't there anymore).


All in all, Melbourne is a beautiful city. Beautiful parks and nice architecture. Out of all the things Melbourne had to offer, I especially liked that the people were not apologetic about being patriotic and I could see that on every corner of the street.

Here are a few random pictures of Melbourne:





I had heard a lot about Australians being racists but I found them to be very welcoming once they knew I wasn't there to blow them up or rape their women (remember the Lebanese on the beach?) I guess when the Australian men stood up against those moronic Lebanese who were Muslims, the rest of the world considered that action to be racist because, of course any action against a Muslim, whether he be a criminal or not, is racism!

Finally, on a bad note, I did find a piece of evidence of Australian racism.

They only allowed WHITE bikers that had a red stick going through them...bastards!


Anyway, this article is getting too long I think, so I will close with a Melbourne sunset.


If anyone here wants to reuse these pictures, feel free to do so and I have 650 more pictures of both New Zealand and Australia, if you're interested, I can send them to you. It might take time for me to do it, but I will send them.

I talked to a couple of people there about the state of things. I will be writing articles about those conversations in the same fashion as my "interview" with the cabin crew that I posted before. I am real busy these days so it is going to take me a while to put all of the stuff up that I gathered on my trip.

Nightwish

Nemo

In The Cave. . .

"Listen, Achmed, change of plans. If the dirty infidels find me DO NOT kill me.

I can have a civilian trial now!"

Weasel Zippers:

Assploding Hypocrisy: Obama Still Running "Black Jails" in Afghanistan Despite Order to Close Them Down and Constantly Ripping Bush for Running Similar Sites....

Climategate

The Times of London now reporting on it.

American media? Not so much. . .

Climate change data dumped
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) 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.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue. The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years.

He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans. Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity.

Flash Floods -- In Saudi Arabia -- Kill Hajis

Dr Bulldog:


The Associated Press says that at least 100 have been killed by flash flooding in Saudi Arabia Wednesday that affected the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that is ongoing this week. Given these pictures uploaded this morning from AccuWeather.com Photo Gallery user addhna, I would think that death toll would continue to rise in this terrible tragedy; this article says that 350 are still missing.




The Associated Press says:

“The official says rescue teams were looking for possible survivors from the downpours that caused heavy flooding in the coastal city of Jiddah, the main entry point for the millions of Muslims performing the annual hajj pilgrimage. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media.”

Counterterrorism Blog:

Chechen Mujahideen Claim Sabotage Bombing of Russian Natural Gas Storage Facility
By Evan Kohlmann

The NEFA Foundation has obtained a communiqué issued by a group calling itself “Muwahiidun ar-Rusi” ("The Russian Monotheists") claiming responsibility for the bombing of "the largest subterranean natural gas storage facility in the world" in Stavropol, Russia. The communiqué was posted by Kavkaz Center, the official mouthpiece of the Chechen insurgents. Kavkaz stated that it "does not have reliable evidence about the organization...Let us remind that the same organization announced its participation in the sabotage at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant."
The complete text of the communique can be accessed via the NEFA Foundation website.