Tag: politics

Weather, not climate

10:35 am

From Walter Russell Mead: Weather, not climate.

Those Via Meadia readers old enough to remember Hurricane Katrina can no doubt remember the many moralizing predictions of smug and condescending green climate hacktivists that followed: global warming was going to mean more hurricanes and bigger ones. Our coasts were toast; it was baked in the cake. The rising sea level combined with the inexorably rising number of major hurricanes were going to knock the climate skeptics out of the park.

Well, no. Andrew Revkin has called attention to this post from Roger Pielke’s blog which shows that as of today it has been 2,226 days since the last major hurricane (Category 3 or higher) hit the US mainland. Unless a big hurricane hits this winter, it means we are on track to break a 100 year record for the longest gap between major hurricanes hitting the coast. (The last Big Calm was between 1900 and 1906.) [emphasis mine]

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Canada has joined the United States in raising objections to a planned $100-billion a year climate fund

12:48 am

The gravy train is ending: Canada has joined the United States in raising objections to a planned $100-billion a year climate fund.

I like this quote describing the U.S.’s objections:

Heading into the United Nations climate conference in Durban this week, the United States has made it clear it will not support the current proposals for the climate fund over concerns about how the money would be raised, lack of verification of how it is spent, and an unwillingness of major emerging countries to commit to legally binding emissions reduction. [emphasis mine]

Other than these minor points, everything about the fund is above board and legitimate.

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Despite earmark ban, some lawmakers continue to try to give money to hundreds of pet projects

11:06 pm

The battle over earmarks.

The efforts to resurrect spending on pet projects reveal the tenuous nature of current reform efforts. Two senators have publicly called out their colleagues and will introduce legislation Wednesday that would ban earmarking with the force of law. “I have heard too many appropriators say informally that they are very hopeful that we can get back to earmarking in the future with few restrictions,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who is co-authoring the bill with Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.). “That has come out of the mouths of Democrats and Republicans.”

What I glean from this article is that a good number of legislators are still trying to sneak in their earmarks, but that they are finding it increasingly difficult. Unfortunately, it also appears that too many of them are still succeeding.

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Senate passes bill allowing military to hold US citizens indefinitely, even within the US borders

8:06 pm

Fools and tyrants: The Senate today passed a bill allowing the military to hold US citizens indefinitely, both inside and outside the US borders. The vote was 61-37, with 44 Republicans and 16 Democrats voting in favor.

To me, this is more proof that we need to throw out as many Senate incumbents as possible, with Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) being the first to go. These bastards don’t give a hoot about freedom. What good does it do us to defeat Al Queda if we destroy the very rights and freedoms that makes the United States different from Al Queda?

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Lame-duck Barney Frank joins effort to repeal Obamacare “death panels”

10:58 am

A bit late, ain’t he? Lame-duck Barney Frank joins the effort to repeal Obamacare’s “death panels.”

Note also that Frank has now essentially admitted that Sarah Palin was right about these panels (though he of course hasn’t come out and said it). Rather than be partisan back when she first brought this issue up, why couldn’t Frank have acted more responsibly and voted against the bill in the first place?

Update: I reworded the above paragraph because the original language gave the impression that Frank had actually said he now agreed with Palin, something he has not done.

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American Airlines files for bankruptcy

9:22 am

American Airlines files for bankruptcy. Note this as well:

American was the only major U.S. airline that didn’t file for bankruptcy protection in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks that triggered a deep slump in the airline industry. The last major airline to file for bankruptcy protection was Delta in 2005.

This list of bankrupt airlines does not include Southwest, however, which has seen its business boom in the past decade. I wonder, could these other airlines be driving customers away with their high baggage fees, complex ticket rules that end up costing customers money or convenience, and their willingness to go along with the abuses of the TSA?

Whenever I can, I fly Southwest, because they don’t charge for baggage and allow me to change or cancel flights without penalty. However, I also fly as little as possible these days, mostly to avoid being treated like a criminal by the TSA. And I know I am not alone in this.

Thus, all airlines have lost business due to TSA abuse. You’d think they’d wake up and start to fight this government intrusion into their operations.

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The New York Times and the BBC: Global warming activists

3:44 pm

Two stories today from the Climategate 2 archives:

The first describes how Andrew Revkin, the Times’ primary environmental reporter, was entirely in the global warming camp, and worked with these corrupt scientists to push their agenda. It also quotes, from the climategate emails, Revkin’s contempt for anyone who expressed skepticism about the IPCC process and global warming.

The second describes how the BBC teamed up with these same corrupt scientists to keep any skepticism of global warming from being aired at any time.
» Read more

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Senate bill would allow the military to arrest and hold US citizens at home or abroad indefinitely

1:46 pm

Madness: A Senate bill, to be voted on today, would allow the military to arrest and hold US citizens indefinitely, both at home and abroad.

Termed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and drafted behind closed doors by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) the NDAA would:

1) Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;

(2) Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and

(3) Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.

For any elected official to consider this kind of legislation acceptable is only clear evidence that they should be put out of office immediately. Fire them all!

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Memo to the Occupy protesters: Ten things we evil capitalists really think

8:39 am

Memo to the Occupy protesters: Ten things we evil capitalists really think.

I especially like #8:

8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried. In a system based on property rights and free contract, people succeed by providing an honest service to others. Bill Gates became rich by enriching hundreds of millions of us: I am typing these words using one of his programmes. He gained from the exchange (adding fractionally to his net worth), and so did I (adding to my convenience). In a state-run system, by contrast, third parties get to hand out the goodies.

Another way to say this is to call it freedom.

Read the whole thing.

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“Perpetuating rubbish”: a detailed analysis of one part of the new climategate emails

9:42 pm

“Perpetuating rubbish”: a detailed analysis of one part of the new climategate emails.

I think the first comment sums up the tragedy of this situation very clearly:

So privately they said the series had a “dubious relationship to temperature”, but publicly they said it was “well calibrated”? I am just about to the point of never trusting any scientists at all.

The willingness of the climate field to whitewash the fraud and corruption revealed by the first set of climategate emails is now haunting this field badly. Why should anyone believe anything any global warming scientist ever says? It is very clear that too many of them put politics above science in their work.

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One scientist’s perspective on the new Climategate emails

8:12 am

One scientist’s perspective on the new Climategate emails.

Long time readers will recall that in 2004 and 2005 (before Katrina), I led an interdisciplinary effort to review the literature on hurricanes and global warming. The effort resulted in a peer-reviewed article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. That paper, despite being peer-reviewed and standing the test of time (as we now know), was ignored by the relevant part of the IPCC 2007 that dealt with extreme events. Thanks to the newly released emails from UEA [University of East Anglia] (hacked, stolen, donated, or whatever) we can say with certainty why that paper was excluded from the IPCC 2007 report Chapter 3 which discussed hurricanes and climate change. Those various reviews associated with the release of the UEA emails that concluded that no papers were purposely kept out of the IPCC may want to revisit that particular conclusion.

Read the whole thing. It is worth it to get a real sense about how petty and political the IPCC process is. It has little to do with science, and everything to do with forcing a conclusion down everyone’s throat.

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Gingrich’s presidential campaign has gotten him no endorsements from Republican lawmakers

12:27 pm

Gingrich’s presidential campaign has gotten him no endorsements from Republican lawmakers.

Considering how incompetent these Republicans have been in getting the federal budget under control, and considering that the last time the budget was balanced was during Gingrich’s reign as speaker in the 1990s, I would consider their lack of support as the best endorsement Gingrich could get. We need real change in DC. The status quo has left us on the verge of economic collapse and bankruptcy.

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Violence and oppression from the left

12:47 pm

Two stories today clearly illustrate the oppressive nature of the left. They don’t wish to debate and persuade. They want to impose their will on the rest of us, by force if necessary.

First there’s this: Occupy Wall Street has paid the bail for the OWS demonstrator who threatened to burn down New York and throw Molotov cocktails into the windows at Macy’s.

A week ago he wanted to toss Molotov cocktails at Macy’s, but Tuesday he was back at it, mixing it up in Zuccotti Park. The Daily News snapped photos of Occupy Wall Street nut case Nkrumah Tinsley, 29, prancing around after the movement coughed up $7,500 for his bail, his lawyer, Pierre Sussman said.

One of their demonstrators publicly admits he wants to destroy property and commit violence, and the OWS movement backs him to the hilt.

Then there’s this story:
» Read more

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Climategate 2

12:08 pm

Having failed to clean up its act after the release of the climategate emails two years ago, the field of climate science is about to turned upside down all over again. Today there was another release of hacked emails, written by the same collection of global warming scientists. Once again, these emails show that these scientists are anything but scientists. Instead, they seem far more interested in campaigning for a certain result, regardless of the science. A few quotes:
» Read more

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Supercommittee gives up

8:38 pm

The day of reckoning looms: The Congressional supercommittee has given up. The perspective of one member of the committee can be read here. Key quote:

The Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare trustees, and the Government Accountability Office have each repeatedly said that our health-care entitlements are unsustainable. Committee Democrats offered modest adjustments to these programs, but they were far from sufficient to meet the challenge. And even their modest changes were made contingent upon a minimum of $1 trillion in higher taxes—a move sure to stifle job creation during the worst economy in recent memory.

Even if Republicans agreed to every tax increase desired by the president, our national debt would continue to grow uncontrollably. Controlling spending is therefore a crucial challenge. The other is economic growth and job creation, which would produce the necessary revenue to fund our priorities. [emphasis mine]

This needs repeating: regardless of whether you think we should raise taxes in this situation, no tax increase can eliminate the deficit. The problem is out-of-control spending that needs to be seriously curbed.

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The case against SpaceX

9:38 am

The case against SpaceX. From one of the company’s biggest supporters.

Trent Waddington raises many good points, all of which must be considered to have a clear, educated sense of where the future stands for American manned spaceflight. Two quotes:

The goal of SpaceX is human spaceflight, and the greatest repository of knowledge about human spaceflight is NASA. As such, it would appear obvious that getting NASA to help you to fly humans safely is a good idea. The way to do that is with Space Act Agreements. This is what SpaceX did under the COTS program, and later under the CCDev program.. and they got paid for the privilege. As a result, the Dragon spacecraft will soon be fully qualified as safe for human habitation on orbit as it will be berthed to the ISS and have astronauts inside it.

The problem is that NASA is a precocious customer. They know what they want, they think they know even better than you do how to make it, and they feel no guilt about changing their mind halfway through the project. As such, Space Act Agreements just totally grind NASA’s gears. They don’t have enough control. [emphasis in original]

NASA money is like heroin.. once they start taking it, most people find it very hard to stop. There’s a dependence that has grown between NASA and SpaceX, and although it is obviously a love-hate relationship, it’s going to be very hard for SpaceX to let go.. but, inevitably, they must. The current needs of NASA are very different to the long term goals of SpaceX.

And this:

Fundamentally, SpaceX has a shoddy business case which is best described as a house of cards.. that they’re still trying to play poker with.. and there’s dogs at the table, and they’re smoking cigars! Yeah, metaphor.

Read the whole thing. It’s quite good.

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