Tag: politics

The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

9:22 pm

More climate fraud: The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

Almost all past temperatures have been adjusted downward, compared with the temperatures that were actually recorded at the time. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, when many record high temperatures were recorded, the readings have been adjusted downward by, generally speaking, one to one and a half degrees. These adjustments stop abruptly in the late 1990s. The effect of the adjustments is to make the past look cooler in relation to the present.

This kind of manipulation of data, changing the historical record after the fact, is done ALL THE TIME by the climate alarmists who crank out all of the data that are reported on in the newspapers. And the adjustments are always the same: they make the past cooler, so that the present will look warmer, in order to support their power-grabbing climate hysteria agenda. Whenever you hear on the radio that a temperature reading is the “warmest ever” in a particular place, you can reasonably assume that the “warmest ever” title was conferred by falsely reporting temperature readings from past decades.

And as Hinderaker properly concludes, “This is, in my view, the biggest scandal in the history of science. I can’t think of any competitor that could even come close.”

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The plundering of NASA

3:30 pm

From one of my readers: The Plundering of NASA: an Expose, How pork barrel politics harm American spaceflight leadership. You can buy the ebook edition here, and the print edition here.

I just finished reading it. Boozer’s introduction and opening two chapters provide one of the best detailed summaries explaining clearly why the United States today cannot launch its own astronauts into space, and why we are threatened with the possibility that we won’t be able to do it for years to come. And while his perspective is mostly from an engineering perspective, he also gives some of the political background behind this situation.

His later chapters are not as effectively written, but the opening is still worth it.

I will give a hint about his thesis: it involves comparing the Space Launch System (SLS) with private commercial space. And SLS does not fare well.

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The IRS chief counsel, now implicated in the IRS scandal to harass conservatives, is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire IRS.

9:43 am

William Wilkins, the IRS chief counsel, now implicated in the IRS scandal to harass conservatives, is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire IRS.

Noonan’s review and analysis of yesterday’s testimony in the House is right on the money. The IRS scandal now points directly to the White House. Or as she notes,

It’s almost as if—my words—the conservative organizations in question were, during two major election cycles, deliberately held in a holding pattern.

And this was done deliberately, by Wilkins, Obama’s political appointee, using the IRS for political purposes.

Moreover, the testimony yesterday also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lois Lerner lied when she claimed the harassment was merely the actions of some rogue agents in Cincinnati. The obvious question then is this: Who was Lois Lerner trying to protect by these lies? The obvious answer: her bosses, in the White House.

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Under pressure from her fellow legislators, a Maryland congresswoman has withdrawn her proposal to close the Marshall Space Flight Center.

8:45 am

Business as usual: Under pressure from her fellow legislators, a Maryland congresswoman has withdrawn her proposal to close the Marshall Space Flight Center.

As I wrote yesterday, this is government, and our legislators don’t represent us, they represent the small number of employees at these specific government facilities. Gotta protect that pork!

This also illustrates quite nicely why NASA can’t build anything cheaply, which means it can’t build anything at all. The agency is saddled with too much expensive fat which it is not allowed to trim.

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Detroit today filed for bankruptcy, the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

2:54 pm

What a half-century of Democratic Party rule gets you: Detroit today filed for bankruptcy, the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

Though I personally dislike Democratic Party policies and think they accelerated this disaster, the real problem was a willingness of voters to accept the idea of one-party rule. Not once during those fifty-one years of continuous and disastrous Democratic Party rule did Detroit voters even once consider the idea of firing these guys to give someone else a shot at running the city.

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The New Black Panther Party is offering a $10,000 bounty for the capture and kidnapping of George Zimmerman.

11:22 am

The new brownshirts: The New Black Panther Party is offering a $10,000 bounty for the capture and kidnapping of George Zimmerman.

Watch the video at the link. (I was especially struck by the uniforms, which strongly reminded me of Nazi uniforms in the 1930s.) They are holding themselves above the law, with the right to kidnap and imprison anyone they happen to dislike or disagree with.

Update: A commenter has noted that this is not a new story. The Panthers offered this bounty back in March 2012, before Zimmerman was charged. I should note however that this really doesn’t change anything, as these thugs were still making themselves judge, jury, and executioners, and above the law.

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It appears that one of the four individuals whose tax records were illegally accessed for political reasons was tea party candidate Christine O’Donnell.

9:38 am

It appears that one of the four individuals whose tax records were illegally accessed for political reasons was Delaware senatorial Republican candidate Christine O’Donnell.

Investigators for Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, an influential Republican who serves on the Finance and Judiciary committees, have uncovered one key issue: a backdoor system in which state officials can access Americans’ private tax records in the name of investigating with little oversight or accountability. [emphasis mine]

Now isn’t that reassuring?

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A third federal court has ruled that Obama’s fake recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Broad violated the Constitution.

9:23 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: A third federal court has ruled that Obama’s fake recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Broad violated the Constitution.

The worst part of this violation by Obama and his cohorts is that, even after these rulings, the illegally appointed board has continued to issue regulations, ignoring the decisions of all the courts.

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Congresswoman Mary Edwards (D-Maryland) has proposed merging two NASA centers to save money.

9:13 am

Congresswoman Mary Edwards (D-Maryland) is proposing a merger of two NASA centers to save money.

The amendment would establish a Center Realignment and Closure Commission that would be given six months to evaluate “[c]onsolidating all rocket development and test activities of the Marshall Space Flight Center and Stennis Space Center in one location” and recommend a location promising the greatest cost savings. The commission would also be asked to look at “[r]elocating all operations of the Marshall Space Flight Center to both the Stennis Space Center and Johnson Space Center.”

Now this is interesting. The Marshall Space Flight Center has been looking for a reason to exist for decades, since the end of the Apollo program. Any smart private company would have shut it down long ago to save money.

But then, this is government. The article, hostile to the idea of eliminating any government facility, describes quite succinctly why NASA can’t build anything cheaply and why nothing in government ever shrinks. Our legislators don’t represent us, they represent the small number of employees at these specific government facilities.

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