Good Grief: In Rio, Statue Of Jesus Bathed In Green Light

By William Teach June 22, 2012 – 10:08 am

All this was for the Rio+20 working taxpayer funded vacation, er, conference

(Planet Gore) Green guru James Lovelock was right. He warned last week that “the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion.”

Now at the U.N. Earth Summit, even the image of Christ has been made a forcible convert to the eco-faith, as the city of Rio is bathing the iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer (Christo Redentor) in green light:

Lord Monckton had this to say

The intended triumph of the new religion over the old was symbolized by a light-emitting diode system costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that has turned the normal floodlighting of the towering statue of Christ the Redeemer an unpleasant, lurid green, so that He looks like a giant jelly-bean. Fortunately, Divine intervention (or perhaps the Gore effect) has smothered the volcanic pinnacle on which the statue stands in unseasonably dense cloud and pouring rain, rendering this crude but costly sacrilege altogether invisible. Chalk up ten points to the old religion. God is not mocked.

Soldiers with sub-machine-guns and – for some reason – elephant guns are guarding this extravagantly expensive and contemptibly childish propaganda gesture to make sure no one symbolically reasserts the triumph of the Resurrection by cutting off the unnatural green glow and replacing it with the traditional, glorious white.

Warmists really are nuts, and creating a cult.

Read: Good Grief: In Rio, Statue Of Jesus Bathed In Green Light »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming, Unhinged Tools | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

UN Investigator Says US Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes

By William Teach June 22, 2012 – 9:05 am

Let me be clear: I mostly support Obama’s use of drone strikes against Islamist terrorists around the world. It’s one of the few things on which I agree with him. Actually, it’s more like agreeing with Joe Biden, who recommended using more strikes and less troops in regards to the surge in Afghanistan. The United Nations and ACLU, though, disagree

(Guardian) The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama’s attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.

In his strongest critique so far of drone strikes, Heyns suggested some may even constitute “war crimes”. His comments come amid rising international unease over the surge in killings by remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

When will the left leaning anti-war groups call for Obama to be arrested and charged with war crimes? Lots of civilians and bystanders have been killed as “collateral damage” to the strikes, including the follow up strikes when people come to see what just happened. The program itself might need to be reigned in a bit, especially as Obama seems to enjoy the process of personally picking the targets on the kill list.

Addressing the conference, which was organised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a second UN rapporteur, Ben Emmerson QC, who monitors counter-terrorism, announced he would be prioritising inquiries into drone strikes.

So far, all the ACLU has done is ask for information from the Obama admin. under Freedom of information requests, and has been rebuffed. If Bush was president, one can certainly think that the ACLU would be suing. And the UN will investigate more. With Obama in the White House, does anyone think anything will come of it?

One of the latest UAV developments that concerns human rights groups is the way in which attacks, they allege, have moved towards targeting groups based on perceived patterns of behaviour that look suspicious from aerial surveillance, rather than relying on intelligence about specific al-Qaida activists.

There is that. Does the Obama admin have specific information before it launches a drone strike that warrants the strike? Or is it fishing?

Interestingly, many progressives who would ramp up the barking moonbat syndrome to level 10 if Bush was using drone strikes in the manner can’t find it in themselves to even simply chastise Obama over this program. Consider Firedoglake: what are they upset with?

However, members of the Obama administration do not care what effect their actions have on the ability of citizens to access information. They think it is entirely reasonable to have officials interviewed by news correspondents like Daniel Klaidman, who recently published the book Kill or Capture that highlights the CIA role in drone strikes, while at the same time arguing to a judge that they should not have to confirm or deny the existence of a CIA program.

They’re worried about FOIA requests, rather than targeted drone strikes.

BTW, Obama should be happy that Bush refused to sign on to the International Criminal Court.

Read: UN Investigator Says US Drone Strikes May Be War Crimes »

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Washington Post: Congress Has A Right To Investigate Fast And Furious

By William Teach June 22, 2012 – 8:40 am

Well, this is a bit of a shocker. The Editorial Board comes out in favor of Congress

Perhaps it’s true, as the White House has argued, that Mr. Issa’s investigation has degenerated into a partisan fishing expedition. And perhaps yielding to that would discourage candor in the councils of this and future administrations, as the Obama administration, echoing a standard plea of its predecessors, asserts.

But Congress’s authority to gather information is broad — as broad as its sweeping powers to legislate, spend public money and hold executive officials accountable through impeachment. No doubt a lot of congressional investigations are partisan fishing expeditions. For better or worse, that comes with the democratic territory. Absent very strong countervailing considerations — stronger than some of those the administration has asserted in this case — Congress is generally entitled to disclosure.

The editorial also mentions earlier that we would not have gotten to this point if “an assistant attorney general had not responded to a February 2011 inquiry from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) by mistakenly denying that there ever was an Operation Fast and Furious” which was then exposed by whistleblowers. Nor would we have been at this point had the DOJ cooperated with Congress from the get-go. If they had provided the documents requested, instead of only around 8% which saw huge numbers of redactions. Nor if AG Eric Holder had been forthcoming and open instead of obtuse and stonewalling, telling Congress fibs.

Then we get to Eugene Robinson, who gets many facts wrong in the article, describes the inquiry as a “fishing expedition,” and calls this “politically motivated”, then gets a few more facts wrong

Congress has not only the right but also the duty to investigate how such a bad idea as gun-walking was conceived and executed over five years — and to make sure nothing of the sort happens again. The problem is that Issa isn’t interested in the truth. He just wants to score political points.

Issa’s focus isn’t on the operation itself. It’s on what Holder and Justice Department officials did or did not say last year when questions were first raised.

He gets the first part right, that Congress does have a duty. The rest he gets wrong: Issa was attempting to find out what went wrong with F&F, why the guns were allowed to walk without being tracked at all, why ATF agents were specifically told to neither stop the guns at the border nor track them after, why the government of Mexico was not informed of the operation like with the earlier Operation Wide Receiver, and who authorized this operation, at which point he was stonewalled and misled.

What should Congress be investigating? The obvious first step is learning how officials in two administrations convinced themselves it was sensible to stand back and watch as powerful weapons passed into the hands of Mexican drug smugglers.

Eugene just reversed himself, because that is what Issa is attempting to do, and getting little cooperation from the DOJ and the AG. And, let’s be clear: both were stupid. But, Wide Receiver involved around 500 weapons, the Mexican authorities knew about it, and there were methods in place to track the guns. Unfortunately, the cartels found ways of defeating those methods, and as soon as they started to lose the guns, the ATF shut the program down. Furthermore, this was limited to the ATF only, rather than an alphabet soup of federal agencies. Nor is there any evidence that this program was authorized at higher levels, nor that top people in the DOJ knew about it.

Fast and Furious, however, was kept going even after they lost the guns, which involved about 2,000 weapons. Nor was it shut down when Mexican citizens were being killed with the guns. It wasn’t until Border Agent Brian Terry was murdered and two F&F weapons were found was it shut down. And, one has to wonder, if the AG has been open and forthright, why would people with the Obama administration scream at Sharyl Attkinson for investigating? We know that Holder was provided with documents much earlier about the operation than he originally claimed. If he failed to read documents on a program that walked guns into another country without tracking them, which could violate international arms trafficking agreements, he should resign due to incompetence.

Obviously, Eugene thinks Issa should investigate something else

If Issa really wants to save U.S. and Mexican lives, he should convene hearings on banning the sale of high-powered weapons. I think Holder would be happy to testify.

I’m not totally bought in on the theory that F&F was meant to create a situation to make passing restrictive gun laws here in the US easier, but, it wouldn’t be shocking if it were true.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Washington Post: Congress Has A Right To Investigate Fast And Furious »

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Research Shows Antarctica Was 20 Degrees F Warmer In Past

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 3:16 pm

Obviously, this means we’re all doooooooomed!

(Science Daily) A new university-led study with NASA participation finds ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously suspected. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation — including stunted trees — along the edges of the frozen continent.

By examining plant leaf wax remnants in sediment core samples taken from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the research team found summer temperatures along the Antarctic coast 15 to 20 million years ago were 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius) warmer than today, with temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). Precipitation levels also were found to be several times higher than today.

Here we go

“The ultimate goal of the study was to better understand what the future of climate change may look like,” said Feakins, an assistant professor of Earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Just as history has a lot to teach us about the future, so does past climate. This record shows us how much warmer and wetter it can get around the Antarctic ice sheet as the climate system heats up. This is some of the first evidence of just how much warmer it was.”

So, obviously their conclusion is that all those animals driving SUVs, taking unnecessary fossil fueled flights, charging their smartphones, and using ice makers in their refrigerators warmed the climate up too much, so, we Mankind should live like the dinosaurs did. Wait, it was warmer then, too.

Warm conditions during the middle Miocene are thought to be associated with carbon dioxide levels of around 400 to 600 parts per million (ppm). In 2012, carbon dioxide levels have climbed to 393 ppm, the highest they’ve been in the past several million years. At the current rate of increase, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are on track to reach middle Miocene levels by the end of this century.

Thought to be? So, they’re guessing? There’s only one problem: most of Antarctica has been cooling over the last 30 years, despite rising CO2 levels. But, Warmists have looked into their crystal balls and read their tea leaves and determined that it could possibly maybe might happen…..BTW, how did the researchers get to Antarctica?

Suyts Space comments on similar data

Now, they’ve done their level best to get people to quit looking at this stuff!!! It’s quite fascinating. Invariably, if one gets into a discussion with an alarmist about this, they simply call “no counts” and blithely go on blathering about CO2. Adding validity to the graph above, it’s been noted that the Late Miocene period, (~ 12-5 million years ago) the CO2 levels were near what they are today(actually a bit lower according to some new deep-sea sediment cores), but the temps were much warmer. (9–14 degrees Fahrenheit).

What is being discussed is how now the Warmists are trying to decouple CO2 from warming and blame hotcoldwetdry on CO2 when it props up their argument. Make sure to read the whole thing for effect.

Read: Research Shows Antarctica Was 20 Degrees F Warmer In Past »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 1:00 pm

…is an ocean that is going to cause the island to tip over, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Powers That Be.

Read: If All You See… »

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Why Renewable Energy Is Simply A Boondoggle

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 11:59 am

Andy’s Rant exposes the true cost of energy (via The Climate Nonconformist)

Whilst the Carbon Tax is as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool, there is no doubt whatsoever that the bipartisan support for the 20% Renewable Energy Target (RET) is the real culprit in allowing the price of power to skyrocket. The RET is illogical and economically reckless. Why Abbott and his shadow cabinet think its worth staying committed to the 20% RET is just mind boggling.

Below are the statistics on the cost of power generation in 2010 from the Australian Government’s own Productivity Commission:

  • Coal fired power station $79 per kw/h (kilowatt/hour)
  • Gas fired power station $97 per kw/h – or 1.2 times the cost of coal power
  • Wind power $1,502 per kw/h – or 19 (nineteen) times the cost of coal power
  • Solar power $4,004 per kw/h – or 50 (fifty) times the cost of coal power

You don’t need to be Einstein to work out that the high cost of Wind and Solar is the reason the public are being screwed with high electricity prices. The Carbon Tax just adds further pain.

No, you don’t. You just have to be a rational thinking person, which obviously leaves most Warmists out.

Read: Why Renewable Energy Is Simply A Boondoggle »

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

Right Wing News Features The 20 Hottest Conservative Women

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 11:56 am

Go check it out here.

Read: Right Wing News Features The 20 Hottest Conservative Women »

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High Court’s Decision On ObamaCare Could Seriously Bum Out Progressives

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 8:19 am

Awwwwwww, what a shame

(The Hill) A Supreme Court decision striking down President Obama’s healthcare law would be a blow not just to Obama, but to the decades-long push for universal healthcare.

As most realize, that is what ObamaCare is about: a step towards putting the federal government in charge of the health care decisions of 300,000,000+ Americans. It doesn’t work very well in nations with a fraction of the US’s population, and would be worse here, where the federal government is barely responsive to The People as it is.

Universal coverage has been a staple of the progressive movement since Theodore Roosevelt ran for president. To finally realize that dream, only to have it taken away just two years later, would be an especially bitter defeat even for a movement that has seen its share of disappointment.

They’ve seen their share of disappointment because the majority of Americans realize that Progressives stand for Big Government tyranny and not only intrusion, but control of individual lives.

The politics of healthcare are already treacherous. Democrats lost the House in 1994 partly because they failed to pass a healthcare bill, then lost it again in 2010 because they succeeded. Now the Supreme Court could help deny Obama a second term while also wiping out the policy that came at such a steep price.

It’s so treacherous that Democrats mostly avoided discussing ObamaCare in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, and are mostly ignoring it now. Poll after poll show that the American People do like a few parts of the bill, but are mostly against the whole thing, which they deem goes way too far, interfering with their health care decisions, involves the federal government too much, and will raise costs and cause their companies to drop their insurance offerings. And the darned sure do not like the federal government forcing them to purchase health insurance or be fined.

If that happens, it’s easy to see why elected officials might view healthcare as a bad use of political capital.

“It will make the process of providing healthcare for the American people even more difficult,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who leads the House Progressive Caucus.

And there’s part of the problem: Progressives think they it’s the job of the government to provide healthcare, even if it means that the healthcare quality will be reduced and waiting times will increase exponentially, just like in countries with socialized healthcare systems. They think it’s their job to be daddy for everyone and make the decisions.

There’s no way the Mandate stands. Obviously, most of the Liberals will ignore the Constitution and the horrible arguments from Obama’s lawyers in front of the Supreme Court and vote to uphold the Mandate. The federal government was never meant to have this much power, as the Framers knew that such an all-encompassing federal government would be unresponsive to the American people, hence the reason most of the power was reserved for the States and the People. Remember, most of the original states were the size of most European countries. That’s why they are called “states”. As in “nation-states”. As in “chief of state”.

Read: High Court’s Decision On ObamaCare Could Seriously Bum Out Progressives »

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Holder Contempt Vote Forces Media To Finally Cover Fast And Furious

By William Teach June 21, 2012 – 7:28 am

Ever since Operation Fast and Furious came out, most of the media have avoided mentioning the scandal as much as possible, and, yes, it is a scandal. The operation was bad enough in that the federal government was making straw purchases of guns and sending them across the border without alerting the Mexican government with no intention to actually track said guns. As a result, at least two federal agents and over 300 Mexicans have been killed with guns linked to F&F. Then the stonewalling began. Had Eric Holder been a Republican appointee, the media would have been all over this. One of the few to cover it was CBS News, mostly due to the work of Sharyl Attkinson.

When the minor Valerie Plame affair came up, it was wall to wall coverage, even though everyone pretty much knew who leaked her name. And no one died. F&F? Barely a peep.

The leading US newspaper, the New York Times, has a whopping nine articles that reference F&F since this began in late 2010. Today, the editorial board has, unshockingly, come out and said that this is a “useless partisan fight.” Because getting to the root of how two federal agents died due to a botched DOJ operation and what the Attorney General knew after so much stonewalling is obviously a bad idea.

ABC News, MSNBC, the LA Times, and so on have now all been forced to cover this issue as front page stories and during their national news broadcasts, (though ABC News led with the NE heatwave on the day a House committee held the AG in contempt) which will make people say “hmmmm, what’s this all about, and why would Congress hold the AG in contempt?” Many of the media reports and op-eds are negative, saying the Republicans are big meanies and there is no point to investigating this issues, which will make people do a Google search for F&F, learning about the whole sordid affair. The Washington Post points out that invoking “executive privilege” exposes Obama 5 months out from the November elections

President Obama’s decision Wednesday to assert executive privilege to shield his attorney general and the Justice Department from congressional investigators reignited a long-running Washington debate over the limits of White House power in which Obama has argued both sides.

In 2007, Obama, then a senator with higher ambitions, chided President George W. Bush for employing his executive authority to block then-senior White House adviser Karl Rove from testifying before Congress in a scandal involving the firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

Speaking to CNN host Larry King, Obama declared that the Bush administration had a tendency to “hide behind executive privilege every time there’s something a little shaky that’s taking place.”

Obama urged Bush to consider “coming clean,” adding that “the American people deserve to know what was going on there.”

On Wednesday, his role had changed, but the debate was the same: Republican were asking what exactly Obama was trying to hide by invoking his right to executive privilege for the first time. The administration is refusing to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” operation, which involved the flow of illegal guns to Mexico. A House committee on Wednesday voted to find Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the documents.

One has to wonder, why exactly did the Obama administration invoke executive privilege? This is primarily used for national security issues. And it will make people wonder what they’re hiding

That might be the legal definition, but the political calculus for the White House is whether what Obama is seeking to keep private is more damaging to him than failing to publicly disclose the documents.

Only around 8% of the relevant documents have been made available to Congress, in a fight that could have been ended had Eric Holder been forthcoming during the initial investigation. One also has to wonder if Team Obama has decided to use the potential contempt charges against Holder and the subsequent use of executive privilege as yet another way to attack Congress with a shiny object distraction campaign. Team Obama really doesn’t want to discuss the track the US is heading down, which ends in disaster.  But, if Team Obama tries to demonize Congressional Republicans, and by extent, Mitt Romney, over this contempt vote, it will backfire, as the American citizens will get massive doses of this fight within the media which will be forced to cover the issue, and they will want to know exactly why those guns were walked across the border and why the operation was covered up. And why the AG and Obama White House are refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

Even coming out and saying “this is no big deal, Republicans are big meanies”, the media will be forced to highlight what happened with F&F. Dana Milbank attempts to take the side of Obama and Holder, and unintentionally exposes just why Holder needs to be held in contempt.

More: referring back to the NY Times editorial mentioned near the beginning, Doug Mataconis at Outside The Beltway contrasts it with an editorial along the same lines from 2007, which was all for contempt charges. Doug asks “what could have changed?”

I find it interesting that liberals like those at the Times seem to have no problem with the Attorney General for the USA stonewalling and misleading Congress if said AG, the top cop in the nation, is a Democrat.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Holder Contempt Vote Forces Media To Finally Cover Fast And Furious »

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Girl Who Took Long Unnecessary Fossil Fueled Flight Tells Rio+20 To “Do Something”

By William Teach June 20, 2012 – 6:14 pm

I mentioned before how a New Zealand girl, Brittany Trilford, won a trip to attend the Rio+20 taxpayer funded vacation conference and speak to them, writing

Said trip (both ways) from New Zealand to Rio would produce over 6,100 pounds of CO2. The average citizen of the world puts out 4 tons of CO2. That means that this one trip for a 3 minute video puts out 3/4ths of what most world citizens put out per year.

Here’s how it went, via Treehugger

What would you say if given the opportunity to tell world leaders your thoughts on climate change? For 17 year-old New Zealander, Brittany Trilford, that opportunity became a reality this morning at the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Invited to provide the opening speech, Trilford delivered a polite, but stern address to the 130 heads of state and representatives in attendance. Her demand: Do something.

Here’s part of her speech

“I stand here with fire in my heart, though I’m a bit bushed from my long unnecessary fossil fueled flight. I’m confused and angry at the state of the world and having had to walk from the airport instead of being picked up in a limo and I want us to work together now to change this. We’ve all taken unnecessary fossil fueled to solve the problems that we have caused by taking unnecessary fossil fueled flights as a collective, to ensure that we have a future in which Other People are charged ridiculous amounts if they are allowed take unnecessary fossil fueled flights.

You and your governments have promised to reduce poverty and sustain our environment by taxing the bejesus out of individuals who dare charge their iPhones, like this one in my pocket. You have already promised to combat climate change, ensure clean water and food security, and that’s a pretty awesome spread you have out in the reception room. Is that Chilean Sea bass? Multi-national corporations have already pledged to respect the environment, green their production, compensate for their pollution, and pass the costs on to the consumers. These promises have been made and yet, still, our future is in danger from a whopping zero degrees F rise in temperatures during this century after a massive 1.4 degrees F during the 20th Century.

We are all aware that time is ticking and is quickly running out. You have 72 hours to decide the fate of your children, my children, my children’s children, but, then, you’ve already f*cked us with your debt and deficit policies that have mortgaged our futures so you could get re-elected. And I start the clock now… tck tck tck.”

Or something like that. What the speech was about was basically the usual warmist speech telling Someone Else to pay the piper, while the Warmists live high on the hog.

As Tom Nelson points out from a tweet, the audience yawned.

Read: Girl Who Took Long Unnecessary Fossil Fueled Flight Tells Rio+20 To “Do Something” »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL
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