Say, Remember When We Bombed Libya To Protect Oil For France And Britain?

By William Teach September 4, 2013 – 2:49 pm

How’s that working out? (via Ed Morrissey)

(UK Independent) Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.

Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July. (snip)

In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country.

Despite all the yammering about protecting civilians during the Libyan civil war, this was really about protecting the flow of oil to France and Britain. Not working out so well, eh? No that much else is working out very well in Libya. Except for Jihadists.

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If All You See…

By William Teach September 4, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…are evil meat filled sandwiches and a CO2 infused beer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Director Blue, with a post on Obama’s checklist for Syria.

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Hooray! Obama Says His Red Line Is World’s Red Line

By William Teach September 4, 2013 – 10:36 am

I’m not sure if the word “shameless” is strong enough. SCOAMF might work

(CNN) President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the red line he outlined last year regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons came from international treaties and past congressional action, and now it is time for the international community to make good on its opposition to the banned armaments.

“I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line,” Obama told reporters on the first day of a four-day trip to Sweden and Russia to attend a G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.

Like most, I was flabbergasted when I heard this live.

More on this at Twitchy. Obama also said that it wasn’t his credibility on the line, in response to a direct question

“My credibility is not on the line, the international community’s credibility is on the line,” he responds.

He also said Congress’ credibility is on the line. Interestingly, Sweden hasn’t rushed out to go bomb Syria. Or even noted that they’re interested. Nor have any other nations.

I was also disappointed that Obama slouched and leaned on the podium virtually the entire time. Rather embarrassing.

More: The Weekly Standard has the video.

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Warmists Now Claim “Climate Change” Will Steer Big Hurricanes Away From East Coast

By William Teach September 4, 2013 – 9:10 am

In terms of landfalling hurricanes, this seems to be what’s happening. It’s been over 7 years and 10 months since a major hurricane (category 3+) hit the United States. There has only been one barely a hurricane strike since 2008. Superstorm Sandy was not a hurricane at time of landfall. Hurricanes and tropical systems seem to be staying out at sea more often. Could it be a result of a climate that is in the midst of a mostly natural warm period? Sure. But, I suspect this “report” is simply a CYA one designed to protect the Climatologists religion

(Guardian) A recurrence of Superstorm Sandy – which barrelled head-on into the Atlantic coast, swamping New York City and large parts of New Jersey – is less likely under climate change, new research suggests.

Scientists expect stronger hurricanes under climate change, and possibly even more frequent storms – especially those at category 3 and higher. But New York City and much of the seaboard will be at lower risk of taking a direct hit, the study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said.

Instead, climate change will make it even less likely future storms will follow Sandy’s devastating track. The killer storm made a sharp left turn to slam straight into the Atlantic coast. The odds of a storm like Sandy were already extremely remote – a once in 700 year event – when it hit in October 2012. But it was that trajectory that made Sandy so devastating.

Essentially, what they’re saying is “we don’t know why the humongous 2005 storm year hasn’t become the new norm, why tropical systems are hitting the east coast with less frequency, and why there aren’t more major storms, but, we need the money train to keep a rollin’, so here’s a study”.

The researchers used climate models, based on a tripling of greenhouse gas emissions by 2100, to study whether future atmospheric conditions be more or less likely to blow a storm like Sandy westwards into the Atlantic coast.

Ah. computer models. Which, as you remember, dear reader, fail to even predict what happened in the past. As it stands, hurricane predictions cannot even predict what will happen just a few days out with certainty. But, don’t worry, they know what will happen 90 years from now. When CO2 levels are 1200ppm.  Right. Sure thing. But, if true, doesn’t this mean “climate change” is a good thing? Having lived through many tropical systems here in North Carolina, I’d say so.

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Thinking Out Loud, John Kerry Won’t Rule Out Ground Troops

By William Teach September 4, 2013 – 8:46 am

Remember the days when John Kerry said that Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place in the wrong time? When he and other Democrats, including President McBombypants, were constantly assaulting Operation Iraqi Freedom, which freed 50 million people from a brutal, murderous, torturous, rapist, limb cutting off, chemical weapons using regime which saw, according to a statistical study done by a Jordanian doctor, 50 thousand children die every year because they were denied food and medicine? How about when Saddam continued to violate 17 UN resolutions? Supported multiple Middle East terrorist groups? Paid families $25K to send their kids off on suicide bombing missions in Israel? How things change

(Mediate) Secretary of State John Kerry refused to absolutely rule out the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground in Syria on Tuesday.

During a hearing on Syria in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez asked Kerry whether there would be any possibility of ground troops eventually entering Syria at some point.

The administration has “no desire” to do that, Kerry said.

But, “In the event Syria imploded for instance or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — all of us, the British, the French, and others,” Kerry said, “I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president of the United States to secure our country.”

Kerry quickly walked it back, saying, “The bottom line is, the president has no intention and will not, and we do not want to, put American troops on the ground to fight this, or be involved in the fighting of this civil war, period.”

What could possibly go wrong with limited air strikes on a client state of Russia and Iran which isn’t really targeting the actual chemical weapons caches? Surely, all those jihadist groups fighting against Assad wouldn’t try and do something like get their hands on them, right? And could we possibly have any sense that Obama would listen to the American people and not put any troops on the ground, considering he doesn’t listen to Americans in the first place, and cares not a whit for the Constitution?

Pressed on this point later by Sen.Bob Corker, Kerry said, “All I did was raise a hypothetical question about some possibility — and I’m thinking out loud — about how to protect America’s interests.”

And there’s one of the problems: what are America’s interests in the Syrian civil war, matching a brutal regime against Islamic terror groups? So far, I have yet to hear anything to confirm any American interests. How about you?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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How To Destroy The Morals And Mores Of A Country

By William Teach September 3, 2013 – 3:38 pm

In discussing the uber-left book Christan Nation, I mentioned

I generally avoid the heavily political fiction books (I don’t mind a bit of politics, but, keep it simple), but there are two I’ve read in the last year or so, An Act Of Self Defense by Erne Lewis and In Due Time by J.K. Jones, that are spectacular. The first is about the need for term limits in a State that is increasingly tyrannical. The latter is actually a time travel book that mixes in what would happen if the US becomes super Progressive. The difference here is that both those books understand the cardinal rule: Entertainment First. I’ve started a few that did not understand this, and put them away.

I’ve had a book on my Kindle for a few weeks, entitled Thy Kingdom Fall by Austin Dragon. I was a bit hesitant about reading it, like with most heavily political books, especially since it was supposed to be very much about religion. There are two things I’m very private about, and those are sex and religion. Both are my business. I was never one to discuss any adventures with a lady, and I’m uncomfortable in religious conversations. Yet, Mr. Dragon understands that One Must Entertain. He does a great job at it, especially since it is really about religion, but it hasn’t made me uncomfortable. It has provoked many pauses as to what he just wrote as I’m reading it, and I hope he will forgive me for noting this long passage which is about how to change the opinion of a large/majority portion of a population. This starts on page 96/location 1740

Pick the new/alternative behavior or viewpoint you wish to condition the society to adopt as the norm. We shall name it X.

  1. Talk about X as often as possible and thereby make X look normal and commonplace
  2. Talk about the religious institutions that support X as often as possible and thereby suggest endorsement of X by notable entities
  3. Portray religious institutions that don’t support X as bigoted, hateful, backwards, and religious institutions that do support X as champions, noble, righteous
  4. Portray members or practitioners of X as victims needing government protection and support-the greater the portrayed victimhood of X the greater their moral claim on the larger society
  5. Portray individuals or groups opposed to X as aggressors needing public condemnation, and ultimately enact laws against them
  6. Make members of X always look good (use positive historic figures or celebrities if available) and hide any negative portrayals
  7. Portray individuals or groups opposed to X always as bad, crazy, bigoted, dangers, and out of the mainstream, and hide any good portrayals
  8. To attract those undecided, show that support of X is not necessarily support of X itself but support for anti-discrimination and tolerance
  9. Make government elite reinforce the campaign to support X vocally and often
  10. Raise and use the needed money to support the campaign to make X the norm

Sound familiar?

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Posted in Books, Musings | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach September 3, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is the name of an evil fossil fuels company which should be banned, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Nice Deb, with a post on Obama’s war footing.

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The “97% Consensus” Breaks Down

By William Teach September 3, 2013 – 12:11 pm

I’ve already, like many others, beaten up on the recent paper claiming there is a 97% consensus of Hotcoldwetdry doom. Here’s Lord Christopher Monckton on the further destruction of the meme, doing a guest post at William W. Briggs (via Tom Nelson)

A major peer-reviewed paper by four senior researchers has exposed grave errors in an earlier paper in a new and unknown journal that had claimed a 97.1% scientific consensus that Man had caused at least half the 0.7 Co global warming since 1950. (Snip)

The new paper by the leading climatologist Dr David Legates and his colleagues, published in the respected Science and Education journal, now in its 21st year of publication, reveals that Cook had not considered whether scientists and their published papers had said climate change was “dangerous”.

The consensus Cook considered was the standard definition: that Man had caused most post-1950 warming. Even on this weaker definition the true consensus among published scientific papers is now demonstrated to be not 97.1%, as Cook had claimed, but only 0.3%.

Only 41 out of the 11,944 published climate papers Cook examined explicitly stated that Man caused most of the warming since 1950. Cook himself had flagged just 64 papers as explicitly supporting that consensus, but 23 of the 64 had not in fact supported it.

What the original Cook paper was attempting to do was find a way to link consensus, which is not science, to papers that were supposedly scientific, and say “see? Consensus is science!”

Make sure to read the whole thing.

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Claims There Are Literally Dozens Of (Super Secret) Allies For Syria Strike

By William Teach September 3, 2013 – 8:00 am

This was just too precious to bury as an extra to the previous post on Syria. Leave it to DWS to go off the reservation

(Politico) Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the U.S. would be bolstered with support from “dozens” of international allies if the United States makes military strikes against Syria.

“I mean we have, from the briefings that I’ve received, there are dozens of countries who are going to stand with the United States, who will engage with us on military action and also that back us up,” Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “Piers Morgan Live.”

Really? Dozens? Who might they be?

However, Wasserman Schultz said she was not a “liberty to say” specifically what countries have expressed supporting in missile strikes, because some of the information she received was classified.

Nations that support strikes is classified? I suppose there are some that support America taking action. Just apparently none, other than France, who will be participants. And they all have to be kept super secret from Moose and Squirrel.

But, really, I think we can all read between the lines and understand that DWS is simply pulling things from her posterior again.

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NY Times Finds It “Alarming” That Obama Had No Red Line Plan In Place

By William Teach September 3, 2013 – 7:41 am

The NY Times has been doing a Hamlet schtick (to be or not to be), wavering back and forth regarding Syria on the opinion pages from both the Editorial Board and op-ed contributors (remember “Bomb Syria, Even If It’s Illegal“?). Today they find that Mr. Obama did the right thing in sending the whole mess over to Congress for a debate and vote

President Obama made the right decision to seek Congressional authorization for his announced plan to order unilateral military strikes against Syria for using chemical weapons. There has to be a vigorous and honest public debate on the use of military force, which could have huge consequences even if it is limited in scope and duration.

The real question is whether we we will get an honest debate from Team Obama or of they’ll turn this into a typical Neverending Campaign prop designed to assault the Republican Party. Considering many of the articles we’ve seen so far from the Leftist media, including one at the Times noting that the debate sets up a clash within the GOP (what about the clash within the Dems?), this will become a typical Blame Republicans campaign.

Anyhow, the Editorial Board wants to know a few things, like what the objectives of strikes would be, how to ensure that the strikes don’t escalate, and how the strikes will keep Assad from using WMD again. But, then

It is unfortunate that Mr. Obama, who has been thoughtful and cautious about putting America into the Syrian conflict, has created a political situation in which his credibility could be challenged. He did that by publicly declaring that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line that would result in an American response. Regardless, he should have long ago put in place, with our allies and partners, a plan for international action — starting with tough sanctions — if Mr. Assad used chemical weapons. It is alarming that Mr. Obama did not.

That’s the Liberal equivalent of a a slap across the face with a iron glove to another Democrat. Thoughtful and cautious means “disengaged and absent”. The situation is one of his own making, though I suspect he was thinking more along the lines of 10,000 dead from WMD, not 1,400. Yes, that’s still a lot, but in a conflict with over 100K dead, it doesn’t resonate.

Really, though, the Times gets to the heart of the matter, which is that Team Obama had no plan for following through on an crossing of a red line. Especially since there have been chemical weapons used several times already. One would think that after multiple red line comments, there would be plans in place. Alas, no. Once it was learned that more chemical weapons were used, Team Obama seemed to be winging it. And ended up with a coalition of …… Obama and France. He drew a line and failed to meet or talk with foreign leaders, particularly Russia (which has no respect of nor fear for Obama in the first place). He announced strikes a-commin’ and gave away the plan in, I guess, trying to scare Syria. But talk was all he did.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council, which has the responsibility to uphold treaties outlawing chemical weapons use, has failed to act in any way following the August attack, largely because of the opposition of Russia, Mr. Assad’s chief ally and arms supplier, and China. It is appalling that Russia and China have not been the focus of international outrage and pressure.

Syria is not part of any chemical weapons treaty. Furthermore, Mr. Obama failed to make a case to the UN, and his UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, was out on holiday in Ireland at a comedy festival a mere 19 days after getting the job, and sent a lower level flunky in her place right after the use of chemical weapons came to light. Obama apparently made no attempt to engage the Arab League, either. He wasn’t going to engage either the American People nor the Congress, till the British PM lost a vote in the Parliament. Now Obama’s thrown the ball into the Congressional court. Why? I supposed we’ll find out soon what the real reason is.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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