Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach July 21, 2013 – 10:22 am

Patriotic Pinup Gil Elvgren

Happy Sunday! Another great day to remember the ideal of what America stood for, and what we need to bring back. This pinup is by Gil Elvgren, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Ann Althouse has a few thoughts on the Trayvon protests
  2. Postmodern Conservative discusses the rise of the warrior cop
  3. NoFrakkingConcensus opines on when name calling substitutes for journalism
  4. Atlas Shrugs comments about Obama’s “peace” partners
  5. The Other McCain discusses post-Disney deviance
  6. Capitalist Preservation has wacky Melissa Harris-Perry doing her crazy act
  7. Classical Values wonders about stuff that used to be confidential
  8. Cold Fury has some of that national conversation that cowards do not want to have
  9. DaTechGuy has the 3% solution
  10. Director Blue wonders about Detroit and those evil Republicans
  11. Fausta has free government cellphones for illegals
  12. Sister Toldjah dreams about Obama’s response to Gosnell trial
  13. Flopping Aces has the winners in the Trayvon Martin sweepstakes
  14. Jammie Wearing Fools has life on Obama’s Chicago
  15. And last, but not least, The Jawa Report has the Iranian position on Zimmerman

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page. While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check outwhat I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. (BTW, since someone asked, the reason I leave links for the previous week up (or you might see a *) is because they are place holders for later in the day or for next weeks. Easier than rewriting all the time. Also, the listing order has to do with how they are added over time, not how good a post is. I just copy and paste from the previous week, then edit. If you see one of the *’s, go ahead and check out the blog anyhow, see if there is an update. I cannot update with my Android during the day.

The posts do take a long time, so, if you want to send me your links for Rule 5 babeage or links, use ye olde email in the header bar (remove the NOSPAM part). Preferably, create the html link so I can copy and paste how you want it to read.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

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Hooray! Warmists Finally Proclaim All Power Outages Caused By “Climate Change”

By William Teach July 21, 2013 – 8:59 am

I was wondering when they would get around to this blamestorming talking point, and I blame you, dear reader, for all the power issues for refusing to give up your fossil fueled vehicle, using hair spray, and having a fridge with an ice maker. Oh, and per Warmist doctrine, no, I’m not giving up mine. This is only for you

(Grist) Eerie images of flooded, pitch-black lower Manhattan following Superstorm Sandy made it clear just how stark an effect climate change and extreme weather can have on our everyday access to electricity.

A report from the U.S. Department of Energy released last week shows that New York City and other coastal regions aren’t the only ones at risk. And it’s not just a question of the future. No American region, it turns out, has been exempt from the possibility of mass power outages. The report focuses on three major causes: rising temperatures; wider-spread, more severe droughts; and more devastating flooding, storms, and sea-level rises.

DOE also created a map of energy and power-related disruptions over the past decade that experts have attributed to large-scale, long-term disruptions in climate and weather patterns (for the full, interactive map, click here).

The whole article is based on that map and a highly partisan post at the Department of Energy website. They’re blaming all the power outages on

  1. Increasing air and water temperatures;
  2. Decreasing water availability across regions and seasons; and
  3. Increasing intensity and frequency of storm events, flooding and sea level rise.

Except, the global temperatures have not increased in a statistically significant manner in 15 plus years, and, really, is a 0.14F increase since 1997 and 0.28F increase since 1990 cause for concern? Some data sets show decreasing temperature, but, the biggest thing is that temperature is not following CO2 increases. The US right now has 71% below normal temperatures for the year.

Water availability? Doesn’t mean there are anthropogenic causes, just the natural part of How Things Work On Planet Earth.

There is no increase in extreme weather. The weather is not out of whack. Flooding is not increasing (which is funny, because #2 whined about a decrease in water availability). Sea rise is well within the historical norm of 6-8 inches, when, if this was a normal warm period, it should be much, much more, due to the law of averages.

And, yes, they do actually blame “climate change” for the power outages during February, 2013 in Massachusetts from…wait for it…snow.

And you know what will be awesome? When brownouts and blackouts occur more frequently as government mandates force citizens to rely more and more on “alternatives” that provide inefficient and unreliable power.

Read: Hooray! Warmists Finally Proclaim All Power Outages Caused By “Climate Change” »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Energy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: ObamaCare To Lower Indiana Premiums By 72%

By William Teach July 20, 2013 – 1:39 pm

Did I say lower? Sorry, was just going with all the ObamaCare-Zombie talking points

(Indystar) Insurance rates in Indiana will increase 72 percent for those with individual plans and 8 percent for small group plans under President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, according to the state’s insurance department.

The spike in costs is due primarily to new mandates under the law, which requires insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions and to offer a minimum level of benefits, said Logan Harrison, chief deputy commissioner with the Indiana Department of Insurance under Republican Gov. Mike Pence. New taxes and fees under the law also contributed, Harrison said.

“This new data regrettably confirms the negative impact of the Affordable Care Act on the insurance market in Indiana,” he said. “The Affordable Care Act requires many Hoosiers to purchase more comprehensive and more expensive health insurance than they may want or need. These rates call into question just how affordable health insurance will really be for many Hoosiers.”

Costs for individual plans is expected to increase from an average of $255 per member per month in 2012 to $570 in 2014, when the most aspects of the law go into effect, Harrison said.

The article points out that this only effects about 220,000 people who buy health insurance on their own, but does anyone think that these kinds of increased costs won’t hit virtually every other plan?

Read: Good News: ObamaCare To Lower Indiana Premiums By 72% »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 20, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is the need for weapons because a warming world is causing massive sea rise causing climate war, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Michelle Malkin, with a post on HHS admitting you may not be able to keep your doctor under O-care.

Read: If All You See… »

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Bummer: Satellite Records Still Not Following UN IPCC Prognostications

By William Teach July 20, 2013 – 7:38 am

Nor all the other “computer models” Warmists use

(The NO CARBON TAX Climate Skeptics Blog) Each month Professor Ole Humlum from the University of Oslo published the latest month’s data in a report called Climate4you.  He has just issued the latest for June 2013. (link – pdf)

  • The two satellite records continue to show cooling;
  • All three surface air temperature records continue to show negative temperature trend for the last 5 and 10 years; however

Also noted is that CO2 continues to increase. Yet, the computer models of Warmists are failing miserably. Here’s a good graph on just how bad they are failing

Read More »

Read: Bummer: Satellite Records Still Not Following UN IPCC Prognostications »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 72 Comments | Trackback URL

Senator Cruz Calls Obama’s Shameless Trayvon Statement An Attack On 2nd Amendment

By William Teach July 20, 2013 – 7:09 am

I’m sure you’ve read the news and analysis regarding Obama’s “hey, Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago” (if Obama was in to street fighting, marijuana, illegal guns, taking naked pictures of underage girls, and taking drugs like DMX and Lean) comment, unsurprisingly making the issue about himself, along with all the race baiting and ignoring the facts of the case. Here’s Senator Cruz in response

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday slammed President Barack Obama after his remarks about Trayvon Martin, saying the president has a “disregard for the Bill of Rights.”

“It is not surprising that the president uses it seems every opportunity he can to try to go after our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Cruz said on CNN. “I think it is unfortunate that this president and this administration has a consistent disregard for the Bill of Rights.”

According to the White House transcript, here’s what PBO said

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

If Trayvon thought he was in danger from Zimmerman and Zimmerman was confronting Trayvon, yes, he could stand his ground, if the Florida statute was met

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

Democrats like Obama want to take the notion of self defense away from citizens (but not for themselves, of course). And then there’s the pesky little reality that stand your ground had nothing to do with the trial. Zimmerman waived having a stand your ground hearing, because it became pure self defense when Trayvon attacked Zimmerman first and had him on the ground pummeling George.

Most of the rest was shameless pandering based on Obama’s typical me me me mode. It was pathetic, unpresidential, and took the side of one citizen (Trayvon) over another’s (Zimmerman), the latter having been acquitted by a duly empaneled jury. Any violence against Zimmerman or through riots is now on Obama. Instead of fomenting peace and coming together, Obama stoked the fire even more.

And he used the comment to push for more gun control. The man is shameless.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Senator Cruz Calls Obama’s Shameless Trayvon Statement An Attack On 2nd Amendment »

Posted in 2nd Amendment, Barry Obama, Current Affairs | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Report Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn’t Pollute Pa. Waters

By William Teach July 19, 2013 – 4:07 pm

Despite all the yammering of Liberals, Democrats, and Warmists, virtually every talking point regarding hydraulic fracturing goes down in flames

(CBS) A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.

Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.

Look, I’ll be the first to say that the companies need to be careful as they drill in any manner, doing what they can to avoid environmental pollution. Basic safety. But, the anti-fracking wackjobs are irrationally unhinged over the issue, refusing to look at facts, figures, studies, instead going with their typical un-founded scareathon stories that “could happen”. But never seem to.

Read: Bummer: Report Finds Fracking Chemicals Didn’t Pollute Pa. Waters »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 19, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is the sign of an evil fossil fuels company threatening you with an evil gun, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Maggie’s Farm, with a post on the desperation of Warmists.

Read: If All You See… »

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Warmists Were Eviscerated During Senate “Climate Change Is Here” Hearing

By William Teach July 19, 2013 – 12:09 pm

Warmists really did not comport themselves well, especially when it came to the actual science, or what the infer is science. Judith Curry has a nice breakdown of the testimony, which includes this from Dr. Roy Spencer (full testimony here)

It should also be noted that the fact that I believe at least some of recent warming is human-caused places me in the 97% of researchers recently claimed to support the global warming consensus (actually, it’s 97% of the published papers, Cook et al., 2013). The 97% statement is therefore rather innocuous, since it probably includes all of the global warming “skeptics” I know of who are actively working in the field. Skeptics generally are skeptical of the view that recent warming is all human-caused, and/or that it is of a sufficient magnitude to warrant immediate action given the cost of energy policies to the poor. They do not claim humans have no impact on climate whatsoever.

Judith notes that this is particularly clever, a good way to blunt the “97% consensus” meme being thrown around. Hey, you could put me in that 97%, as I’ve written before. I do believe Mankind plays a small role in heating, mostly through agriculture, ocean pollution, and landfills, when it comes to true global impacts, but the urban heat island effect plays the most part in anthropogenic forcings, meaning it is localized.

The lack of statistically significant warming in the last 15 years is sometimes glossed over with the claim that the global temperature record has a number of examples of no warming (or even cooling) over fifteen year periods. But this claim is disingenuous, because the IPCC presumed radiative forcing of the climate system from increasing CO2 has been at its supposed maximum value only in the last 15 years. In other words, when the climate “stove” has been turned up the most (the last 15 years) is also when you least expect a lack of warming.

It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. The fact that all of the models have been peer reviewed does not mean that any of them have been deemed to have any skill for predicting future temperatures. In the parlance of the Daubert standard for rules of scientific evidence, the models have not been successfully field tested for predicting climate change, and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.

The claim has been made that the extra energy from global warming has mostly bypassed the atmosphere and has been sequestered in the deep ocean, and there is some observational evidence supporting this view. But when we examine the actual, rather weak level of warming (measured in hundredths of a degree C) at depths of many hundreds of meters, it implies relatively low climate sensitivity. Part of the evidence for this result is satellite radiative budget measurements which suggest that more intense El Nino activity since the 1980s caused an apparent decrease in cloudiness, which allowed more sunlight into the climate system, which caused a natural component to recent global warming. Since the global energy imbalance leading to ocean warming since the 1950s is only about 1 part in 1,000 compared to the average rates of solar heating and infrared cooling of the Earth, it should not be surprising that natural climate cycles can cause such small changes in ocean temperature. Even if our ocean temperature measurements of deep warming of hundredths of a degree over the last 50 years are correct, and mostly due to human greenhouse gas emissions, they probably do not support the IPCC’s pessimistic view of future warming.

Judith notes

On the “warm” side, overconfidence or snarky putdowns of scientists on the other side of the debate does not go over well, since this triggers reminders of Climategate and detracts from your credibility. On the more “skeptical” side, aligning yourself with consensus is an effective strategy, which was used both by Roy Spencer and Roger Pielke Jr. in this Hearing.

Barbara Boxer quickly snarked about the Climate Realists being paid hacks of Big Oil, smearing the witnesses. Of course, Boxer is a paid hack of abortionistas, based on the money that EMILY’s list gives her.

Check out all of Steve Milloy’s tweets about the hearing.

Read: Warmists Were Eviscerated During Senate “Climate Change Is Here” Hearing »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Collapsing Science, Democrats, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Obama To Work Hard Pushing Obamacare

By William Teach July 19, 2013 – 8:57 am

Democrats up for re-election in 2014 hardest hit

(The Hill) President Obama criticized Republicans on Thursday for “the same old song and dance” on ObamaCare, vowing to “blow through” their criticisms to implement his signature healthcare law. [WATCH VIDEO]

Seeking to bolster his unpopular healthcare law in a speech from the White House, Obama contrasted positive headlines about the law’s effects with Republicans’ continued efforts to undermine the law and said his administration would plow ahead with full implementation.

Which is funny, considering that Obama has had to violate the law in pushing the employer mandate out a year from its legally scheduled start date of 1/1/2014. Unions are saying that Obamacare will shatter their benefits. The testing requirements for state exchanges could delay them. HHS and the other agencies involved, including the politicized IRS, are constantly missing their deadlines. Heck, they’re at 20,000 pages of regulations and still adding.

But, hey, Obama tells us that NY is the perfect example of costs coming down

The reason New York premiums are forecast to drop under Obamacare is that the state has required insurance companies to offer coverage to all applicants since 1993. This mandatory coverage has made New York’s insurance rates the highest in the nation, meaning that by adding the federal requirement that all humans not covered by a government program purchase insurance, the risk pool will expand and rates will drop.

Dr. Sreedhar Potarazu notes that this is like buying at a sale where the prices were already hyper-inflated

Ohio’s rates will be more typical of those experienced by consumers in the rest of the nation: Insurance regulators in Columbus are forecasting an 88 percent individual rate hike next year as those previously refused insurance or unable to afford it come into the system.

Democrats up for re-election should probably breathe easy: Obama rarely spends much time pushing anything. He gave a speech, he might spend a week or two pushing O-care (which is still just as unpopular as it was before it was passed), then forget about it. But, they do have to worry about the dreaded “pivot” close to voting time. Because more than half of Americans think Obamacare will make their lives worse. And

(Weekly Standard) A new Gallup poll of small-business owners indicates that Obamacare is having a dramatic and deleterious effect on Americans’ employment prospects.  More than 40 percent of small-business owners say that Obamacare has caused them to freeze hiring, while nearly a fifth say that it has caused them to cut existing workers.  According to the poll, 41 percent of small-business owners have frozen hiring, while 19 percent have “reduced the number of employees [they] have in [their] business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare]” (italics added).

But, hey, Republicans should thank Obama for giving them talking points as the 2014 mid-terms approach.

Read: Obama To Work Hard Pushing Obamacare »

Posted in Barry Obama, Democrats, Healthcare | 3 Comments | Trackback URL
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