If All You See…

By William Teach May 23, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible CO2 infused beer which will cause the 6th great extinction, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Director Blue, with a post wondering if Doug Shulman committed perjury.

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Summer Temperatures On A Cooling Trend For 2000 Years, Plus More Graphics

By William Teach May 23, 2013 – 10:08 am

However, Warmists will tell us that because Someone Else drove an SUV, the Earth will boil in 100 years, when everyone has forgotten the prognostications

(Ice Age Now) A new study of tree-ring data has concluded that not only has our climate often been noticeably hotter than today, temperatures have actually been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years.

Measurements stretching back to 138 BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

This study came out last summer, and includes this graphic

What we see is warming, cooling, warming, cooling, warming, a pattern of change occurring over 2000 years, which would be the same going back about 7,000 years.

This is part of posting more charts and graphs and data-sets, below the fold, and added to the Climate Change Data page

Read More »

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Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Issa: Lois Lerner Waived Her 5th Amendment Rights

By William Teach May 23, 2013 – 9:05 am

As Orin Kerr points out, there is a lot of back and forth and varying opinions as to this matter, but not from Darrell Issa

(Politico) Lois Lerner might win the legal battle but she’s prolonging the political war.

Instead of simply taking the scorn of lawmakers for a day, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, and then moving on, she chose defiance.

And her bravado has prompted House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to say she has waived her constitutional right to not comment.

Now, he plans to haul the director of the IRS’s tax-exempt department back to the committee for questioning.

“When I asked her her questions from the very beginning, I did so so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

And well he should. As Judge Andrew Napolitano (who I’m no big fan of, being a somewhat 9/11 Truther) said on Fox News yesterday, Issa should go to a federal judge and get a subpoena to compel testimony along the lines of statement Lerner made at the beginning of her hearing time. I know Rush Limbaugh was a bit upset about letting her go (I heard the broadcast live while at the gym – yeah me!), but this is the wise choice. It allows time to go to a judge, and formulate questions specifically in tune with her statement.

Some think that there’s no way she comes back unless a deal is struck. Congress does have the power to compel people to come and testify, though, and if Issa thinks Lerner has something offer, he could drag her back, especially considering that she has testified previously.

Meanwhile, in the face of all the scandals, the Obama admin cries “squirrel”, stating that they’ve killed 4 Americans in drone strikes (all members of Al Qaeda, including Anwar al-Awlaki so good for Obama) and that Obama will “restrict” the use of drone strikes. Squirrel #2 is his bid to restart closing the detention facility at Club Gitmo, and having made a deal to send many of the vacationers to Yemen. Obama will give a Big Speech at today (I thought I heard at 930am, so, if that’s the case, he’ll deign to show up around 10am) about this.

Read: Issa: Lois Lerner Waived Her 5th Amendment Rights »

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Gang Of 8 Immigration Bill Will Supposedly Be Revenue Neutral

By William Teach May 23, 2013 – 8:35 am

These people think you’re stupid

(The Hill) Members of the Gang of Eight say their immigration reform bill will not add a dime to the nation’s deficit.

That anticipated Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score will defy conservative policy experts who recently claimed the measure would cost trillions of dollars.

The bill’s authors expect the CBO to release an estimate in early June showing it will be deficit neutral.

“If CBO comes back and says it doesn’t, then we’ll likely address the fees, the fines accordingly,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a member of the gang.

The CBO is going to switch from its normal method of static scoring and will use a dynamic scoring method. Hey, remember when we were told that Obamacare would be revenue neutral? Then we found out it would tax more, spend more, and add to the deficit? That it isn’t deficit neutral and will also add significantly to the public costs? I wonder if the CBO score will highlight how the government, at the state and federal levels, will surely ignore the provision that stops these folks “coming out of the shadows” from receiving government benefits? Everyone with a working brain knows this will happen. Democrats know they will make this happen.

The budget office has announced it will depart from its usual practice and apply a dynamic scoring model to estimate the costs of the law over the next decade. This is good news for the Gang of Eight because the model will factor in the expected economic boost provided by millions of new legal workers. Projecting higher tax revenue from increased economic activity will produce a more favorable budgetary outlook.

Exactly how will this economic boost work? Especially if there are no jobs in this Obamaeconomy, where 7 million Americans have given up and dropped out of the jobs market. Where the employment to population count is in Jimmy Carter era numbers. It’s an employers market right now, and dumping millions of new potential workers into the marketplace will only make it worse.

Where is this economic boost? Will it be companies who shouldn’t be hiring illegals at below market wages now having to pay them a lot more? Companies hiring at lower and lower starting wages with so many workers around? Or will it be Government hiring vast amounts of new employees to administer this crapsandwich of a bill? It surely won’t be from people taking jobs teaching illegals English, because we know that provision won’t be enforced. It could be people making more and more signs, and forms for Obamacare, in other languages than English!

There can’t be higher tax revenues from people making less and more people sitting around not working.

We know that Democrats are very much against restricting illegals from receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit, having voted to leave it in the Shamnesty II bill.

And we can also see

(Washington Times) Less than 24 hours after senators powered their immigration bill through committee, the legislation came under fire in the House, where the former head of immigration enforcement testified that it has too many loopholes that could delay enforcement, let dangerous people in, and hamstring agents from fighting illegal immigration in the future.

Key House Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, signaled their worries over the Senate bill, saying they worried it repeated some of the mistakes of the last amnesty in 1986, which auditors said was rife with fraud and failed to follow through on promises of better enforcement.

“I cannot find any deadline by which the border is to be secured,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, at a hearing called to poke holes in the Senate bill.

This whole bill is about getting as many people into positions where they are Democrat voters and dependent on the Government. Everything else is window dressing, no matter how it is position. I will say that it would be wise for the Republicans in the House should come out with their own competing bill that is tough, fair, gives most a legal status that is for work only but not a path to citizenship, doesn’t allow all the members of the families to come to the US legally, truly secures the border and tracks those coming on visas, and truly restricts the use of government services.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Oops: The Greek Yogurt Fad Creates Massive Amounts Of Fish Killing Acid Whey

By William Teach May 22, 2013 – 2:36 pm

No, this has nothing to do with “climate change”, but a real environmental issue

(Grist) Bad news, Fage fans and Chobani lovers (we’re gonna call you “Chobuccaneers”). All that Greek yogurt you’re eating is creating a toxic byproduct: gallons upon gallons upon gallons of acid whey.

This is the same whey that Miss Muffett so enjoyed. Apparently she was a fish-hating sociopath in addition to being an arachnophobe. Modern Farmer reports:

It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers. That could turn a waterway into what one expert calls a “dead sea,” destroying aquatic life over potentially large areas. Spills of cheese whey, a cousin of Greek yogurt whey, have killed tens of thousands of fish around the country in recent years.

They’re paying farmers to take it off their hands, but there’s only so much they can do with it. So, they’re looking at other methods, but they require massive filtration that still leaves a mess. All these methods can require lots of capital investment.

PS: this is why I get upset when Warmists put real environmental issues under the banner of “climate change”: we need to deal with things like the above on their own. Not that they did it in this case, but, environmental issues are real.

Read: Oops: The Greek Yogurt Fad Creates Massive Amounts Of Fish Killing Acid Whey »

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 22, 2013 – 1:00 pm

…is a super wonderful bridge for trains, which Other People should use instead of fossil fuels for travel, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the State Dept’s weapons program.

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And…Lois Lerner Did Plead The 5th

By William Teach May 22, 2013 – 11:03 am

As pointed out yesterday, this was expected

(Fox News) The director of the IRS division that singled out conservative groups refused to answer questions Wednesday at a House hearing on the program, as a Democratic lawmaker warned there would be “hell to pay” if the agency stonewalls Congress on its investigation.

The IRS official, Lois Lerner, invoked the Fifth Amendment Wednesday as she declared she would not testify or answer questions on the advice of counsel.

“I will not answer any questions or testify about the subject matter of this committee’s meeting,” she said.

However, her statements prompted confusion in the hearing room, as she delivered a brief opening statement in which she claimed she had done nothing wrong. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that given her other remarks, she may have “effectively waived” her rights.

She has every right to take the 5th, but, the thing about the 5th is that it is meant to protect citizens from self-incrimination, not so that people can immediately infer that there is no assumption of guilt. Though, people shouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the person did something wrong. While in a courtroom. In the justice system.

Ms. Lerner should also expect to be recalled to the Hill to testify (and probably take the 5th), and possibly face charges, both criminal and for contempt of Congress. A Blaze reader, Fellow_Citizen, makes an interesting point

Try this stunt when the IRS is investigating YOU. Your assets would be gone, your house and business would be gone, and you would be in jail.

Also, Issa brought the humor

Apparently the IRS provided some documents to Democrats, but not Republicans.

Oh, and apparently no heads are going to roll.

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Milbank: “Government Makes Criminals Of Reporters”

By William Teach May 22, 2013 – 9:10 am

It’s nice to see reporters and professional opinion writers employed by media outlets finally understanding the lawlessness of this administration. It’s a shame that it took a flagrant abuse of the 1st Amendment to some of their own, “which it seems is the only way these days to get the jaded, Obama loving media off their f***ing arses and back to doing actual reporting”. Here’s the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank

There are various reasons you might not care about the Obama administration’s spying on journalist James Rosen and labeling him a “co-conspirator and/or aider and abettor” in an espionage case.

Liberals may not be particularly bothered because the targeted journalist works for Fox News. Conservatives may not be concerned because of their antipathy toward the news media generally. And the general public certainly doesn’t have much patience for journalists’ whining.

On one point, Milbank shouldn’t conflate Conservative antipathy towards the news media as not caring: yes, we find them to be highly partisan and biased towards the Democrat/Liberal/Progressive side, but, first, those of us who blog or read blogs depend on them for material (just not always in the way they expect), and, more importantly, we want them to act as the watchdogs of the Government, as the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, along with discussion papers pre-Constitution/BORs, wanted them to be, and not just when Republicans are in charge. The American people depend upon the Press to do their jobs and expose wrong-doing. Anyhow

But here’s why you should care — and why this case, along with the administration’s broad snooping into Associated Press phone records, is more serious than the other supposed Obama administration scandals regarding Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service. The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.

To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.

And Mr. Milbank has a good point: if the DOJ is going to go after The Press in these manners, a Press which is given an extra exemption in the 1st Amendment, what about coming after you? The DOJ even went after the phone records of James Rosen’s parents. This should be chilling for all, whether you are left, middle, or right politically. As Milbank writes

If the administration is spying on reporters and accusing them of criminality just for asking questions — well, who knows what else this crowd is capable of doing?

That’s what we’ve been saying for a long time. Perhaps The Press will now decide to go full bore on investigation and asking questions, instead of just a few, like Sharyl Atckinson and Jake Tapper, instead of acting as White House employees.

Read: Milbank: “Government Makes Criminals Of Reporters” »

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IRS Scandal: Stage Managed To Leave President Obama In The Dark

By William Teach May 22, 2013 – 8:37 am

Those who’ve read my blog posts know that I always refer to him as Obama or (NMP) Obama (not my president). When I refer to Obama as President Obama I do it to make a point. Case in point, per this McClatchy article at the Raleigh News and Observer

With Obama in the dark, administration planned how to stage-manage news of IRS scandal

Weeks before the world – and apparently President Barack Obama himself – heard about the details of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, top people in his administration started planning how to stage-manage the release of the information.

Senior aides in the White House, the Treasury Department and the IRS debated the best way to tell the public what surely would ignite a storm of criticism, the coming report that the IRS earlier had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny. The plan eventually chosen: the “incredibly bad idea” of secretly planting a question in the audience when an IRS official spoke on May 10. (snip)

While White House officials insisted that aides and advisers deliberately kept Obama in the dark about the coming report, they said they and the Treasury Department started debating the best way to inform the country.

And, as we all know, President Obama stated that he first heard about this from watching the news. Now,I dearly love how McClatchy simply takes this all for granted, forgoing any sort of investigative journalism, but, then, perhaps Obama really was kept in the dark.

Which begs a question: why are any of these people, at least at the senior officer position, still employed? In any company in the world, if senior underlings engaged in this behavior they would have already been “promoted to customer”, as we say in the sales world. The same applies to most governments in the world. No leader, especially a head of a company or a government, wants to be bushwacked by a scandal, especially in politics. They always want to get ahead of the game so they can be prepared. Certainly, if the story makes it the White House chief of staff, this is something that President Obama needed to know. Why didn’t he?

Conversely, this could be the exact thing Obama wants, either because he has a stated policy or because this is the atmosphere he creates, namely that no one tells him about Bad Things. Which shows a dereliction of duty and an unwillingness to be President. It would validate what Conservatives have said for a long time, that “Obama likes to BE president; he doesn’t like to DO president.” Any leader who created an atmosphere or told his underlings “don’t tell me” would be terminated along with the underlings.

Of course, in order to cover what is sheer incompetence and what are surely mule fritters talking points (we all know that no one withheld this from Obama, he surely knew, at least back in April), we get talking points from various Obama sycophants

(USA Today) “Some matters are not appropriate to convey to him, and this is one of them,” spokesman Jay Carney said.

“You do not intervene in an independent investigation,” Carney said. “There was nothing we could have or should have done about it.”

(Fox News) Pfeiffer defended Obama’s statement that he didn’t know anything about the incidents or the investigation until he heard about them in the press.

“No president would get involved in an independent IRS investigation,” Pfeiffer said. “It would be wholly inappropriate.”

That’s cute, where they conflate being informed with “getting involved”. Obama didn’t seem to have a problem yapping his mouth, getting involved, when it came to the Trayvon Martin situation, arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (saying the Boston PD “acted stupidly” and his beer summit), and a host of other issues.

But, I’ll say it again: if President Obama, the guy whose desk the buck is supposed to stop at, is being kept in the dark by “employees”, why are they still employed? The answer to that question should tell us that Obama knew.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Posted in Barry Obama, Current Affairs | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Lois Lerner To Plead 5th At IRS Hearing

By William Teach May 21, 2013 – 7:13 pm

As Ace points out, the LA Times originally buried their own scoop way down on the page. They’ve moved it up near the top as of my looking at it, and is now showing on the National page of their Droid app

A top IRS official in the division that reviews nonprofit groups will invoke the 5th Amendment and refuse to answer questions before a House committee investigating the agency’s improper screening of conservative nonprofit groups.

Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“She has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course,” said a letter by Taylor to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Vista). The letter, sent Monday, was obtained Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times.

Perhaps not, but as a government official with Power she should provide details as to exactly what happened, and why she failed to disclose these details to Congress before, which, unless I miss my guess, is considered “lying to Congress”, obstruction, and perhaps a few other charges.

Meanwhile, her lawyer is saying “hey, since she’s pleading the 5th, there’s really no point in Congress having her testify, so, why bother?” Somehow, I doubt Darrell Issa is going to let her go get ice cream.

Read: Lois Lerner To Plead 5th At IRS Hearing »

Posted in Current Affairs, Democrats | 17 Comments | Trackback URL
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