112th Congress Set To Become Least Productive – I Fail To See The Problem

The Huffington Post’s Amanda Merkel breathlessly reports

As 2012 comes to a close, the 112th Congress is set to go down in American history as the most unproductive session since the 1940s.

According to a Huffington Post review of all the bills that hit President Barack Obama’s desk this session, Obama has signed 219 bills passed by the 112th Congress into law. With less than a week to go in the year, there are currently another 20 bills pending presidential action. In comparison, the last Congress passed 383 bills, while the one before it passed 460.

The 104th Congress (1995-1996) currently holds the ignominious distinction of being the least productive session of Congress, according to the U.S. House Clerk’s Office, which has records going back to 1947. Just 333 bills became law during that two-year period, meaning the 112th Congress needs to send nearly 100 more bills to Obama’s desk in the next few days if it wants to avoid going down in history — an unlikely prospect, considering that both chambers are squarely focused on averting the “fiscal cliff” before the new year.

Personally, I find the notion of Congress doing less a Good Thing. Take out all the renaming of Post Offices and other federal buildings and what you’re left with is typically legislation that restricts freedoms and adversely affects Americans.

Read: 112th Congress Set To Become Least Productive – I Fail To See The Problem »

If All You See…

…is champagne that will disappear because of elevated levels of a trace gas necessary for life, you might just be a Warmist

The Blog of the day is Victory Girl’s Blog, with a post on a letter written to Diane Feinstein over her gun control legislation

Read: If All You See… »

Marc Morano Named “Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year”

…by the Soros funded (doesn’t George take lots of unnecessary fossil fueled flights?) Media Matters

Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year: Marc Morano

ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “king of the skeptics,” and “a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” and he revels in these descriptions. Although he has no scientific expertise, he is adamant that manmade global warming is a “con job” based on “subprime science.” Morano gained prominence working for two of the most vocal climate deniers in the U.S.: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who notoriously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and Rush Limbaugh, who we named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year in 2011 for his steadfast denial of climate science and wild conspiracy theories about the climate change “hoax.”

Congratulations, Marc! You know you’re doing great work when the Soros puppets at Media Matters give out a major award.

Read: Marc Morano Named “Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year” »

National Geographic: Hey, Snow And Cold Is Caused By Greenhouse Gases

It’s truly sad that a great organization like the National Geographic allows bat guano crazy blog posts like this one from Warmist Greg Laden

Top Climate Stories of 2012

Except, they’re actually weather, as Tom Nelson notes. After listing weather events like Superstorm Sandy along with geophysical conditions that have occurred off and on for billions of years we get

8 More Greenhouse Gasses than Ever: Even though the rate of emissions of greenhouse gasses slowed down temporarily for some regions of the world, those gasses stay in the air after they are released, so this year greenhouse gas levels reached new record high levels

Just to be clear for the scientifically illiterate liberals, greenhouse gases essentially “trap” heat.

Then Greg blames even more weather events on “climate change”. And……

Many of us who contributed to this list feel that this is potentially the most important of all of the stories, partly because it ties together several other events. Also, it may be that a change in the air currents caused by global warming represents a fundamental yet poorly understood shift in climate patterns. The steering of Hurricane Sandy into the New York and New Jersey metro areas, the extreme killer cold in Eastern Europe and Russia, the “year without a Spring” and the very mild winters, dome of the features of drought, and other effects may be “the new normal” owing to a basic shift in how air currents are set up in a high-CO2 world. This December, as we compile this list, this effect has caused extreme cold in Eastern Europe and Russia as well as floods in the UK and unusually warm conditions in France. As of this writing well over 200 people have died in the Ukraine, Poland and Russia from cold conditions. As an ongoing and developing story we are including it provisionally on this list. Two blog posts from midyear of 2011 and 2012 (this one and this one) cover some of this.

There’s your liberal science: greenhouse gases cause extreme cold and deaths from cold.

Read: National Geographic: Hey, Snow And Cold Is Caused By Greenhouse Gases »

Experts: Trained Police Officers Better Than Armed Guards In Schools

And better than squishy liberal teachers who would look at a gun in an emergency situation the same most of us look at a dead and decomposing mouse in the crawlspace. After starting out with a story about how a trained law enforcement officer shot and wounded an attacker at a school in California, we get

(NJ.com) The National Rifle Association’s response to a Connecticut school massacre envisions, in part, having trained, armed volunteers in every school in America. But Agundez, school safety experts and school board members say there’s a huge difference between a trained law enforcement officer who becomes part of the school family — and a guard with a gun.

The NRA’s proposal has sparked a debate across the country as gun control rises once again as a national issue. President Barack Obama promised to present a plan in January to confront gun violence in the aftermath of the killing of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn.

Agundez said what happened before the shooting in the San Diego County school should frame the debate over the NRA’s proposal.

With a shooting at another county school just weeks before, Agundez had trained the staff in how to lock down the school, assigned evacuation points, instructed teachers to lock doors, close curtains and turn off the lights. He even told them computers should be used where possible to communicate, to lessen the chaos.

That makes sense, especially as it relates to teachers. Do you really want someone running around waving a handgun while panicking? Especially around a lot of people who might be running around and panicking? That’s why DatechGuy’s idea of using retired military and police officers in schools is a great one. They could work with the school, the teachers, the kids, much like Agundez did.

Of course, guards could also be trained to deal with assaults in a similar manner, after receiving proper training. And some teachers, who won’t turn into puddles of goo at the first sign of an attack, could be armed, and the gun would need to stay in the classroom. But, trained personnel would be best, people who stay calm in a crisis. It won’t necessarily stop an assailant who’s hellbent on committing murder before suicide, but, might make them go somewhere else that is free of guns.

“In general teachers don’t want guns in schools period,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, one of the two large unions representing teachers. He added that one size does not fit all districts and said the union has supported schools that wanted a trained officer. Most teachers, he said, do not want to be armed themselves.

“It’s a school. It’s not a place where guns should be,” he commented.

Why not? Isn’t the idea to protect kids? Not leave them open to wackjobs like the Newtown shooter? Or would these liberals prefer to stand by their hatred of guns while leaving the kids open to murderous intent?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Experts: Trained Police Officers Better Than Armed Guards In Schools »

AP: Obama Offers Same Craptastic Fiscal Cliff Deal

If you run around the news sites, you’ll see lots of stories of “optimism” regarding a fiscal cliff deal, which kinda is belied by the long faces (and Nancy Pelosi being unable to find her car) post meeting. Ah, but a barely publicized story comes from the AP via WRAL

A person familiar with the details says President Barack Obama is not making a new ‘fiscal cliff’ offer at his high-stakes meeting with congressional leaders at the White House.

Obama instead is spelling out again a plan he says can pass the House and Senate, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak publicly about the private meeting.

Unfortunately the story was edited so as it no longer reflects that Obama thinks his plan can pass the Senate. The same Senate in which Majority Leader Harry Reid refuses to allow a vote on Obama’s plan, calling it a “stunt” when Republicans asked for a vote on the full plan.

So, Obama flew all the way from Hawaii to offer the same craptastic plan.

Read: AP: Obama Offers Same Craptastic Fiscal Cliff Deal »

So, The Palestinian Intifada In 2000 Was Premeditated

Inconvenient information for the Leftist Palestinian supporters/Israel haters

(Daily Caller) Suha Arafat, the wife of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, admitted in a TV interview earlier this month that the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel launched in 2000 was a premeditated act orchestrated by her husband, not a spontaneous “intifada,” or uprising, as many have claimed.

“Yasser Arafat had made a decision to launch the intifada,” she told Dubai TV on Dec. 16, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“Immediately after the failure of the Camp David [negotiations], I met him in Paris upon his return. … Camp David has failed, and he said to me: ‘You should remain in Paris.’ I asked him why, and he said: ‘Because I am going to start an intifada. They want me to betray the Palestinian cause. They want me to give up on our principles, and I will not do so.’”

Fortunately, liberals around the world were available to be apologists for Arafat.

Read: So, The Palestinian Intifada In 2000 Was Premeditated »

Surprise! 70K British Jobs Could Disappear Due To Hotcoldwetdry Legislation

But, you know,we’re saving Gaia from getting a fever

(Daily Mail)Up to 70,000 British jobs are at risk as a direct result of European carbon reduction targets, according to a report.

The policies have pushed up the cost of energy, threatening the vital mineral industries which deal in materials such as cement, chemicals, glass, ceramics and steel, the study claims.

It says the aluminium industry has been ‘virtually eradicated’ after closures in Anglesey and Northumberland, and blames policies which penalise ‘energy-intensive’ industries for emitting too much carbon dioxide.

Strange how Warmist policies always seem to hurt people, eh?

Read: Surprise! 70K British Jobs Could Disappear Due To Hotcoldwetdry Legislation »

If All You See…

…is snow that can only occur because of fossil fuel usage, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Hockey Schtick, with a post on a paper noting that climate models exaggerate projected warming

Read: If All You See… »

If Only Wind Turbines Could Be Built Where There’s Wind

..But, people don’t want it there (unmentioned in the article), and there’s already viable power where they want to build

(NY Times) As I note in Friday’s paper, construction of new wind farms is going to grind to a halt with the end, at least temporarily, of the wind production tax credit. What’s next?

The credit is worth 2.2 cents per killowatt-hour generated, beyond whatever the electricity can be sold for on the regional market. At some hours of the day, most or all of the revenue will come from the tax credit.

Well, that sounds like a hell of a viable business model, eh?

Without the credit, wind farms could still be profitable if they were built where the wind is strongest, according to Robert W. Thresher, a research fellow at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. But the trend lately, he said, has been to move to somewhat less favorable sites because the best ones within connection distance of the grid have been used up.

And, as noted, because people generally do not want the wind turbines in their neighborhoods nor blighting the landscape.

Read: If Only Wind Turbines Could Be Built Where There’s Wind »

Pirate's Cove