If All You See…

By William Teach May 29, 2012 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled farm vehicle on an evil Big Agriculture farm, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Pundit and Pundette.

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Romney Hits Obama On Solyndra, Wasting Money

By William Teach May 29, 2012 – 12:40 pm

I think we can put this in the category of being direct retaliation for Team Obama’s hits on Mitt’s Bain record

(The Hill) Mitt Romney’s campaign is out with a new video that takes aim at White House support for the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra and other taxpayer-supported green energy companies.

The video released Tuesday revives GOP attacks on green energy programs and adds to the political thrust-and-parry between Romney and President Obama over their records on economic stewardship. (snip)

Defenders of the loan guarantees say that while Solyndra’s demise was unfortunate, the overall program has succeeded in backing companies that have created jobs and helped expand renewable component manufacturing and green power generation.

How many jobs? Not many. And it doesn’t count when a job is created then lost. As we learn from Andrew Bolt

Obama spent $90 billion of his stimulus package on green energy projects, including weatherization of buildings and development of electric vehicles. Yet, by the end of last year, just 16,100 people landed new jobs in the so-called green industry, Labor Department statistics show…

Read: Romney Hits Obama On Solyndra, Wasting Money »

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Romm: Humans Are Like Slowly Boiling Brainless Frogs Or Something

By William Teach May 29, 2012 – 8:12 am

What better way to attempt to get people over to your side, Joe Romm, than calling them brainless?

Humans Are Not Like Slowly Boiling Frogs … We Are Like Slowly Boiling Brainless Frogs

Even though people keep using the famous simile — “the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog” — it is not quite right.

As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz “demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water.” Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up. (snip)

If we destroy a livable climate, which means “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse” and are renamed just plain Homo, then in fact we will  have demonstrated we are dumber than frogs (who were, after all, doing just fine until we came along).

At that point, we will be brainless frogs.

Joe even provides a pithy cartoon (he actually provides two, both hotlinked from the Washington Post. I guess stealing is OK when the planet is on the line)

The cartoon is rather correct, since most Warmists, especially the leaders, refuse to give up their big “carbon” lifestyles.

Anyhow, all you frogs out there must be feeling the heat from the temperatures going up a whopping 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the 20th Century. Global temp increases have been statistically insignificant, per Pete Jones, since 1995. According to some data, temps have gone down slightly over the past decade, despite a rise in CO2. Perhaps something else is happening in the atmosphere other than man induced, eh?

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Mostly Left Leaning Media Put Romney’s Mormon Faith In Spotlight

By William Teach May 29, 2012 – 7:36 am

You’re shocked by that revelation, I can tell

(Politico) Mitt Romney wants voters to see him as the man to save the economy and right the country, the redeeming American hero riding in on the proverbial white horse.

Just not that White Horse.

That’s the one in the old Mormon prophecy attributed to Joseph Smith, which predicts that after the banks fail and when the Constitution is nearing collapse, Mormons flush with wealth — the White Horse, in the prophecy’s metaphor — will rise and lead America back to greatness.

Now that Romney’s essentially secured the Republican nomination, the media attention to his religious beliefs has already kicked off a sort of national Mormonism 101. Deep into his second run for president, Romney’s Mormonism remains one of his great mysteries — and obstacles — in many voters’ minds. The Senate has more Mormons than Episcopalians or Lutherans, but polls consistently show that Romney’s religion has remained a factor.

So, the media plans to run a bigoted campaign against Mitt Romney based on religion, and will most likely end up insulting Mormons across the country. When it was Obama’s religious beliefs in the spotlight, the media turned the dimmer down all the way to off.

The White Horse prophecy itself was discounted by the church almost a hundred years ago but Mormon political figures like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and even Romney himself still get asked about it from time to time. And even though it’s long been discredited by the church, there are pieces of the prophecy that echo with important themes of mainstream Mormonism today: church members believe the Framers were divinely inspired, and Mormons have a special role to play in preserving the Constitution and the nation as a whole.

So the White Horse prophecy is meaningless, and was brought up at the beginning of the story for no reason except to try and make Mormons, and Romney, look wacky. Gotcha. In fact, after the next two paragraphs, most of the story is about that same prophecy, attempting to keep showing that Mormons are wacky.

Yet Romney, for the most part, has steered clear of answering detailed questions about his religious beliefs—referring to “people of different faiths, like yours and mine” in his commencement address to the evangelical Liberty University is about as far as he’s gone in the 2012 campaign.

That leaves journalists and other observers searching for clues, and the attention already going to Mormon views of the Constitution, which has percolated up from the blogs to the New York Times, provides a window into how this can play out on the campaign trail.

The same journalists and observers are still indifferent as to Barack Obama’s past, specifically during his time in the pews at Jeremiah Wrights “church” and during Obama’s time in higher education. How about what he did as a lawyer and community agitator? Never really heard about those.

All that’s missing is the progressives wringing their hands over the coming Republican theocratic takeover.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Good News! Wind Farms Considering Measures To Save Birds From Wind Farms

By William Teach May 28, 2012 – 7:20 pm

And it’ll only cost another $500,000 (via Tom Nelson)

(LA Times) Now, in what has become one of the most critical conservation issues in the state, wind farms are considering using radar units and experimental telemetry systems that they hope will avoid harming birds by identifying incoming species early enough to switch off the massive turbines and then — to minimize costs and maximize profits — turn them back on again as quickly as possible.

“Renewable energy operators are coming around to the view that they have to do something,” said Gary Andrews, general manager and chief executive of De Tect Inc., a leading manufacturer of avian radar systems. If a protected species is killed at a wind farm that has a bird tracking system, prosecutors and others could conclude that the operator had done everything it could to prevent harm to wildlife, Andrews said.

Radar systems are expensive, with no guarantee they will perform. One problem is differentiating among avian species. Condors, for example, soar thousands of feet high while hunting for carrion. Golden eagles swoop fast and close to the ground. Migrating songbirds fly low in strong headwinds.

A standard De Tect avian radar unit sells for about $500,000 and works best in flat, uncluttered expanses devoid of trees and bushes that could overwhelm the telltale blip of, say, a condor. In mountainous terrain such as the Tehachapis, multiple radar units are recommended — some to look into valleys, others to look out of them. Additional “bells and whistles” include telescopic video attachments capable of discerning an eagle from a turkey vulture, Andrews said.

The question is, is that$500k for a wind farm, or per turbine? They’re also planning to test a $3 million radar system to protect birds from turbines. Isn’t it funny how the energy solutions from Warmists, who call themselves environmentalists, tend to b really bad for the environment? Oh, and expensive.

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 28, 2012 – 1:00 pm

…are people who gave their lives for the freedom of this country, you might just know what Memorial Day is about

That’s the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier in Philadelphia.

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Memorial Day 2012: Freedom Isn’t Free

By William Teach May 28, 2012 – 10:08 am

Swiped from Weasel Zippers.

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Aussie Climate Commish: Pull Teeth From Dead People Because Of Mercury

By William Teach May 28, 2012 – 8:35 am

Shockingly, Tim Flannery doesn’t link this to the climate change (hoax) (note-the story originally comes from the Australian Herald Sun, but you need a paid subscription to read it)

(FoxNY) Australia’s chief climate commissioner says mercury tooth fillings should be removed from corpses before they are cremated.

The practice should be made law, Professor Tim Flannery said.

“You don’t want to poison people when you are cremated,” he said. “No one would want that.” (snip)

“You just need a pair of pliers,” he said. “It is a $2 solution.”

He actually has a point

“For mercury to become dangerous, it has to get into the atmosphere, which happens when we are cremated, then blow over the oceans [and] go into the ocean depths, where there is very low oxygen, and then transform by bacteria into a methylated form of mercury,” Flannery said.

“This is then ingested by fish and the fish get put on the dinner plate.”

As an environmentalist, I take his point seriously. Mercury can cause all sorts of health and environmental issues. But, as the Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt points out, if mercury is so bad, why are governments all over the world pushing these, including by legislation?

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DHS Forced To Reveal Words They Track On-line

By William Teach May 28, 2012 – 8:13 am

Having a cookout this Memorial Day? Are you serving pork? Be careful that you cook it long enough, you don’t want anyone to get attacked by salmonella. I hope it’s not delayed or cancelled due to the weather. A storm could cause problems, and cause a power outage. What’s this about? Cyber security. Perhaps even Cain and Abel.

(UK Daily Mail) The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

A good chuck of the words I used in the opening would flag DHS. Want to discuss violence and kidnappings in Mexico on Twitter? DHS knows. How about extreme weather, snow, or a hurricane? Flagged. Did you write on Google+ about crossing a bridge before taking the metro to the airport? Flagged? The Electronic Privacy Information Center first filed an FOIA request, then had to sue to get the information (all the words are included over at the Daily Mail story). But, good news

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

And I’m sure we all trust the government, right? Yet, according to the above story, they monitor the Internet for items that are about DHS and other agencies. Under section 1.2, we get

4) Identifying media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities

Part of this is simply wanting to know so that the DHS Secretary can respond. Yet, it seems rather creepy. In section 1.3 Item of Interest Categorization we learn about

13) Reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: Includes bothpositive and negative reports on FEMA, CIS, CBP, ICE, etc. as well asorganizations outside of DHS.

Down in (2) we learn about Items Of Interest, which are kicked up to higher levels. If it is simply negative about DHS, well, just kick it to your supervisor

Note – Reports that pertain to DHS and sub agencies – especially those that have a negative spinon DHS/Component preparation, planning, and response activities should be reported tomanagement before being sent to the distribution list. Senior TSI personnel will decide whetherthe information should be reported through normal channels. If there are ANY questions aboutwhether an incident or other reported item is a valid IOI article check with management

An incident that could create an Item Of Interest?

Policy directives, debates, and implementations related to DHS

Be careful in criticizing Big Sis!

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

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Unhinged Typical Liberal Chris Hayes “Uncomfortable” Honoring Military Dead

By William Teach May 27, 2012 – 6:26 pm

Sadly, Chris Hayes is emblematic of the political left, and seems to be speaking out loud what many of them truly feel, and Hayes is a typical liberal product of liberal education (via American Power through The Daley Gator)

CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke [sic, actually Beck], who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

Yeah, like those heroes who formed a new nation, fought to keep our nation, and jumped in to save the world during two world wars, among others.

Daley Gator: Good Grief! Could there be a better example of educated beyond your hat size than this buffoon? Education without any wisdom is worthless.

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