State Department Edits Documents, Adding All Sorts Of Obama Narcissism

By William Teach August 17, 2012 – 12:11 pm

Sadly, I’m not surprised in the least (via The Lonely Conservative)

(Heritage)Inserting himself into the biographies of past presidents on the White House website apparently wasn’t enough for President Obama. His State Department is now editing its descriptions of foreign countries into yet another taxpayer-subsidized campaign commercial for the Obama Administration.

The State Department has recently ended its long-running series of Background Notes, which were analytical, objective histories of other countries. In their place, new “Fact Sheets” now tout Obama’s policies and actions toward each nation. No more historical context, no recounting of complex and long-standing issues in the country. Just cut to the chase—that is, the time when the current Administration came to power.

Heritage’s Jim Roberts, one of the editors of Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom, was struck by the disproportionate change in emphasis while doing some research recently.  Roberts, who worked at the State Department from 1982 to 2007 and used to write these country profiles, said he had never seen edits like these under either previous Republican or Democratic Administrations.

Ed Morrisey points out this bit

American officeholders are supposed to take great pains to separate their campaigns from their official duties. Using taxpayer resources to blatantly promote the president’s positions on foreign policy—and even editing the historical record—is an egregious abuse of power.

Has Obama ever separated his permanent campaign from his official duties?

More from Public Secrets: I don’t know if this originated with Obama the narcissist, himself, or staffers acting as sycophants, but, regardless, it’s unseemly, eye roll-inducing, and unworthy of the Chief of State of the United States.

Read: State Department Edits Documents, Adding All Sorts Of Obama Narcissism »

Posted in Barry Obama, Narcissist In Chief | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Bummer: Kids Won’t Know What Surfing Is

By William Teach August 17, 2012 – 11:07 am

Another stupid pronouncement of doom and gloom sometime in the future from Warmists (via The New Nostradamus of the North)

(Pacific Standard) “Every time a new climate study comes out its worse than the last,” Hechter says. “Climate change means more big storms. More storms, more surf, right? I guess that’s the most you can say for such a calamity: Maybe we’ll get some epic waves.”

Among surfers, Hechter’s assumption is common. According to Curt Storlazzi, a surfer and a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who studies coastlines, it is true that climate change will likely cause ever-larger storms, and more epic swells. But that doesn’t take into account the varied effects of climate change. The periods between those swells will lengthen: surfers may get to enjoy a week of all-time surf, but that might be followed by a month or more of excruciating flatness. “Climate change makes extremes more extreme,” Storlazzi said. Over time, he added, because the waves between storms will get smaller even as the bigger waves get bigger, the average height of waves is likely to stay the same, and may even go down a bit.

“Sea level rise is going to change where waves break,” said Storlazzi. Waves that break at sand-bottomed surf spots like Huntington Beach in Southern California, or the Outer Banks in North Carolina, are likely to retain their same basic form as they move toward the land. But waves at surf spots that lack a dynamic bottom—where they break over cobblestone, like at Rincon, or coral reef, like G-Land, in Java—could change significantly. These breaks are often better at low tide, and as sea levels rise, Storlazzi said, it is reasonable to assume that they will be good less often.

“The frequency where you have the exact right combination of tide, wind, and swell to make a classic surf day are going to be fewer and further between,” said David Revell, a senior associate with the environmental hydrology firm Phillip Williams and Associates. Revell said climate change will eventually have a profound affect on surfing, citing Rincon and Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz, as two good examples of breaks that could eventually be significantly affected by sea level rise. On a long enough time frame, Revell said, some low tide spots, like Supertubes in Los Angeles County, could disappear completely.

Warmists really cannot help themselves. They can’t actually prove any of their pronouncements, but, you’re supposed to run out and give up your big carbon lifestyle spread awareness and donate your money, time, and freedom.

It boggles the mind that these people think that nature is always supposed to stay unchangeable for all time. It never does, and never will. Seas rise, seas fall. Shorelines change from storms and ocean currents. Sandbars build up and become islands, then may be destroyed by nature (and sometimes measure by mankind).

Read: Bummer: Kids Won’t Know What Surfing Is »

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Obama Camp Says If Mitt Gives Them 5 Years Of Tax Returns, They Won’t Ask For More

By William Teach August 17, 2012 – 8:33 am

Sure, they wouldn’t

(Washington Post) Barack Obama’s re-election campaign kept up pressure against Republican rival Mitt Romney on two fronts Friday, launching a new ad defending the president’s record on Medicare while challenging Romney to release at least five years of tax returns.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina made the tax-disclosure offer to Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades in a letter Friday morning. Messina said he was taking the step because Romney “apparently fears the more he offers, the more our campaign will demand that he provide.”Romney’s wife, Ann, has repeatedly stated that concern in interviews, arguing that the more the couple releases, the more questions are asked.

Romney released his 2010 taxes and has pledged to release his 2011 returns. Messina said in letter that he wants Romney to provide three more years of returns.

Romney should immediately take Team Obama up on the offer, with the caveat that Obama remove the Executive Privilege from the Fast and Furious documents.

Of course, were Romney to release 3 more years, the Obama campaign would want more. Every Obama promise has an expiration date, and, really, Obama doesn’t want a serious debate on the issues that face this nation, issues that Obama has made worse along with creating more (Obamacare, for one). Obama has no viable answer for the problems. What he and the Democrats tried failed miserably. Hence, the focus on un-serious issues from the campaign itself, like Mitt’s private tax returns and his dog Seamus.

Read: Obama Camp Says If Mitt Gives Them 5 Years Of Tax Returns, They Won’t Ask For More »

Posted in Barry Obama, Elections, Romney | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Soledad O’Brien Goes After Emanuel Cleaver Over “Chains” Remark

By William Teach August 17, 2012 – 8:04 am

You read that right: Soledad O’Brien. She must have been confused. Maybe it’s that whole “stopped clock” thing.  Or, perhaps CNN is looking to attract more people as their ratings hit rock bottom, so she decided to question Black Caucus leader Emanuel Cleaver hard

(Mediaite) But the supposedly “biased” Soledad O’Brien wasn’t taking the President’s word for it Thursday morning, pressing Rep. Cleaver on the meaning behind Biden’s words. Cleaver told O’Brien that he didn’t give the line a second thought when he first heard it.

“I would never have even paid much attention to it,” Rep. Cleaver said, “except for the fact that campaigns nowadays are waiting for any kind of little nugget to try to create an atmosphere of more and more discord,” adding that the sound bite “is now being used to make Vice President Biden appear to have been throwing out these words in order to somehow attract dumb African-Americans who, if they hear the words ‘chains,’ are going to automatically vote for him and President Obama.”

“I think you’re extrapolating on the ‘dumb African-Americans part of that,” Soledad responded, then zeroed in on the subtext. “You cannot tell me that if we were talking about Mitt Romney saying a line like that, and if we were discussing that and the quote was he wants to ‘put you all back in chains,’ and that was part of Governor Romney’s speech, that people would not go crazy and crying about race and talking about tone and tenor and coded language. I think we would, wouldn’t we?”

Cleaver responded that it “depends on the context,” and asserted that there was only a “sprinkling of African-Americans there.”

Soledad explained to him that the “sprinkling” was actually about 50% Black. She also went on to grill Cleaver about the way he makes a big deal out of fictional “code language,” like with the contempt charges against the stonewalling, lying Attorney General Eric Holder.

Had a conservative/Republican said anything similar, they would have been deemed a raaaaacist and blasted constantly by the media, Democrats, Black “leaders” like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and told to resign right now.

Of course, the “unbiased” Mediaite says this proves that Soledad is not biased, which was the point of the article, just like Mediaite (I should have know this was written by Tommy Christopher)! And tries to provide cover for Biden by explaining away the comment, plus

In context, it was a clumsy non sequitur, and a trivialization of slavery, but what folks who ask what would happen if Romney made a similar remark don’t get is that Joe Biden and the modern Democratic Party have earned some benefit of the doubt that Republicans, particularly Mitt Romney, have not.

See? It’s cool if Democrats trivialize slavery and make these kinds of remarks, because they’ve done great work for Blacks, such as destroying their family units, keeping them agitated about race issues, putting so many deeper in poverty and the Welfare Nation, attempting to stop the original passage of the Civil Rights Act, lionizing a former high ranking KKK member, implementing Jim Crow in the Deep South, treating Blacks as a single voting unit rather than as individuals……is there anything good that they do for Blacks and other minorities?

Video at link.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Soledad O’Brien Goes After Emanuel Cleaver Over “Chains” Remark »

Posted in Current Affairs, Democrats, Joe Biden | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Surprise: US CO2 Output Drops, Scientists Surprised

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 3:02 pm

Surprise!

(WRAL) In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

Those dastardly market forces! How dare they interfere with gubbment forces! Anyhow, funny how they never seem to see real world things happening, eh?

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for “cautious optimism” about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that “ultimately people follow their wallets” on global warming.

Except, Warmists are trying to kill the use of natural gas, too. People are following their wallets, just not for any globull warming reasons.

PS: Mann doesn’t actually have a degree in “climate science”.

Read: Surprise: US CO2 Output Drops, Scientists Surprised »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 1:00 pm

…is a flooded drought world, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post about the best sign for Romney/Ryan.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Accidental Act Of Journalism: Washington Post Writes What Really Causing Drought

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 12:54 pm

Um, oops?

The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity, claims Aiguo Dai, the study’s author.

In the United States, the main culprit currently is a cold cycle in the surface temperature of the eastern Pacific Ocean. It decreases precipitation, especially over the western part of the country. “We had a similar situation in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s,” said Dai, who works at the research center’s headquarters in Boulder, Colo.

How in the hell is that “global warming”?

The Pacific cycle is expected to last for the next one or two decades, bringing more aridity. On top of that comes climate change. “Global warming has a subtle effect on drought at the moment,” Dai said, “but by the end of the cold cycle, global warming might take over and continue to cause dryness.”

Ah. Despite nature being nature, globull warming could possibly maybe might happen. Of course. Have to keep that money train rollin’.

Read: Accidental Act Of Journalism: Washington Post Writes What Really Causing Drought »

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Small Business Owner Turns Biden Away Over “You Didn’t Build That”

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 10:29 am

Obviously, this guy has to be a raaaaacist or something

(Daily Caller) A Virginia business owner refused a Vice President Joe Biden campaign visit at his three month old bakery on Wednesday because of President Barack Obama’s recent “you didn’t build that” comments.

Chris McMurray, the founder and owner of “Crumb and Get it” in Radford, turned away the vice president’s advance team when they approached him about using his establishment as a stop on the way to a campaign rally in Blacksburg, Va., WDBJ7 reports.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime but essentially I said ‘No offense to you or the campaign but I just decline you guys coming in here. At that time she said ‘Are you sure? There’s going to be a lot of press, a lot of activity,’” McMurray told the local station.

According to McMurray, his decision stemmed from the president’s Roanoke, Va. speech in which Obama stressed that entrepreneurs owed others for their successes.

Good for him! Gotta love when people have principles and stick with them.

Meanwhile, a deli owner in Iowa catered for Team Obama, but wore a shirt saying “Government didn’t build my business. I did.”

Joe Biden Chains McKayla

Original from Oscar at The Hay Ride, who sums Biden up thusly

In other words, he’s a dipshit.

Read: Small Business Owner Turns Biden Away Over “You Didn’t Build That” »

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AP: US Economic Recovery Weakest Since Great Depression

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 8:17 am

Exactly how bad is the current “recovery” when even the Associated Press feels the need to write an article telling us that it is really, really bad? The AP hasn’t been known for writing that many negative articles while Obama is in office. This one is horrific

(Washington Times) The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest recovery since the Great Depression, according an extensive review of the country’s economic ups and down over the past eight decades.

Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis shows that by just about any measure, the one that began in June 2009 is the weakest.

The ugliness goes well beyond unemployment, which at 8.3 percent is the highest this long after the end of a recession.

Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.

More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting: Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation.

The article points out that what has been so bad for this recession was the housing market crash, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 seeing credit evaporate. There are obviously other issues, such as the economic issues in other countries, particularly Europe, which continues to prop up nations that are brain dead and on ventilators. And I’m sure it’s somehow Bush’s fault, even though he had a Democrat Congress when the poop deluged the fan. Obama’s poor policies surely couldn’t be at fault in any way, right?

America’s gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — grew 6.8 percent from the April-June quarter of 2009 through the same quarter this year, the slowest in the first three years of a postwar recovery. GDP grew an average of 15.5 percent in the first three years of the eight other comebacks analyzed.

The engines that usually drive recoveries aren’t firing up this time.

You’re shocked, right? Housing is down from an average of 34% to 8%. Consumer spending is at 6.5%, average being 14% in other recessions. Paychecks have shrunk. Savings are in the toilet. People have been out of work much longer than in any other post-recession phase. And there’s this

The economy shed a staggering 8.8 million jobs during and shortly after the recession. Since employment hit bottom, the economy has created just over 4 million jobs. So the hiring has replaced 46 percent of the lost jobs, by far the worst performance since World War II. In the previous eight recoveries, the economy had regained more than 350 percent of the jobs lost on average.

Team Obama can throw out all the blame on everyone and everything but themselves, but it comes down the notion that their policies not only didn’t help, they hurt. Rather than addressing the issues with the credit and housing industries, they passed legislation that avoids the base issues. Temporary credit programs result in temporary boosts in credit at best. Temporary programs for jobs produce temporary jobs. One of the problems with government has historically been a focus on the short term in order to win re-election, rather than doing the hard job and dealing with issues for the long term. And pretty much all of the Obama/Democrat policies were short term patches with no way to create long term economic growth. Add in policies and a political party that are hostile to the private sector, and you get the worst recovery ever.

Read: AP: US Economic Recovery Weakest Since Great Depression »

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

Report: State Department Climate Change (Hoax) Program Is A Mess

By William Teach August 16, 2012 – 7:44 am

Is anyone surprised? The data (we are shown) is garbage, the computer models fail, the people involved fail to disclose their (taxpayer funded) methods and raw data, their prognostications are political and tend to not come to fruition, and the leaders and disciples rarely practice what they preach

(Fox News) Inadequate oversight, lax bookkeeping, sloppy paperwork, haphazard performance agreements and missing financial documentation have plagued U.S. State Department spending of tens of millions of dollars to combat climate change, according to a report by State’s internal financial watchdog — and the problem could be much, much bigger than that.

The audit report, issued last month by the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), casts an unflattering spotlight on a relatively obscure branch of the State Department that supervises climate change spending, and depicts it as over-extended in its responsibilities, unstaffed in critical monitoring posts, and more concerned with spending money than in monitoring its effectiveness.

The State Department branch is known as the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and its Office of Global Change, or OES/EGC, which have become the nerve center of the Obama administration’s international climate change policy, and the epicenter of its foreign climate change spending, which continues to balloon despite serious economic problems at home.

Can’t blame this one solely on Obama, it’s been going on since at least 2006. In terms on money, it’s not a lot when compared to other Washington spending, a couple hundred million. Until we get into 2010, when the State Dept spent at least $5.1 billion out of country on “climate change” initiatives. The period in the study was 2006-2010

  • OIG looked at seven of 19 program grants totaling $34 million, and discovered they contained no specific plans for monitoring the results.
  • Oversight officers apparently didn’t do a lot of overseeing
  • Requirements that grant recipients submit quarterly financial statements were apparently ignored,

Those are a few of the major findings. I love that they didn’t bother with plans to monitor the results. Not surprising, since the climate change hoax was never about “reducing or slowing” global temps, but simply more Progressive programs where money is spread around and people’s lives controlled.

  • The only expenditures OIG could verify in all five inter-agency cases it examined were for travel costs.

Ah. Taxpayer funded vacations.

If they can’t control “minor” funding for programs designed to save the planet from combusting, how’ll that work for Obamacare?

You can read the whole report here.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Report: State Department Climate Change (Hoax) Program Is A Mess »

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