Murder Rate in DC Drops by 25%

Why? Some brilliant justices on the Supreme Court decided to give the law-abiding citizens of the city the means to defend themselves. After one year, the verdict is in

More guns in law-abiding hands mean less crime. The District of Columbia proves the point.
Reading most press accounts, one would be forgiven for thinking Armageddon had arrived after the Supreme Court struck down the District's handgun ban in 2008. Predictions sprung forth from all directions that allowing more citizens to own guns and not forcing them to keep them locked up was going to threaten public safety. According to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, more guns in homes would cause more violent crime.
This has never been the case. Local politicians enthusiastically embraced the 1977 handgun ban predicting it would make Washington a safe place by dramatically reducing murder rates. But they were as wrong three decades ago as they are now.
A telling story is illustrated by the murder numbers since the handgun ban and gun-lock bans were struck down. Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI's preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington's population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.
Few who lived in Washington during the 1970s can forget the upswing in crime that started right after the ban was originally passed. In the five years before the 1977 ban, the murder rate fell from 37 to 27 murders per 100,000. In the five years after the gun ban went into effect, the murder rate rose back up to 35. One fact is particularly hard to ignore: D.C.'s murder rate fluctuated after 1976 but only once fell below what it was in 1976 before the ban. That aberration happened years later, in 1985.

Will President Zero and his fellow gun grabbers look at this data and learn from it? Don't hold your breath.

Massachusetts, I Hardly Knew Ya!

Now Why Aren't Those Polar Bears Going Away?

The facts keep getting in the way of the carefully crafted mythology of the Branch Carbonians. Their lies about the polar bear populations declining due to thinning arctic ice were debunked long ago because (1) arctic ice is not thinning, and (2) polar bear populations are increasing. But Carbonians and their allies in the media and government still try to make these ridiculous claims anyway.

Here is some more evidence on the non-decreasing polar bear populations, from the people who live near them:

IGLOOLIK — As the world hears tales of polar bears pushed to the brink of starvation by the thinning ice caused by climate change, Theo Ikummaq says the story told by Nunavut hunters is much different.
Ikummaq, a wildlife officer for 28 years who’s travelled on the land around Igloolik since the 1950s, says polar bears are indeed coming closer to human settlements in search of food, but they’re not skinny or sickly.
Instead, hunters in the region are reporting well-fed bears and mothers travelling with multiple cubs, another sign that bears are having no trouble finding food. The male population is also up, he said.
“They [hunters] are guaranteed to be seeing polar bears at camp,” Ikummaq said. “This much we know now.”
“Twenty years back, you went caribou hunting, there was never a time you saw a bear. But in the last six years, that’s when polar bear-human encounters have occurred more constantly.”

Bad news like this undoubtedly bothers the Carbonians to no end. I recall the email from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research:

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Trenberth and the people he was corresponding with in the email (Mann, Jones, etc) are not dispassionate scientists who are trying to discover what is truly happening. They WANT their constructed view of the world to be true. And they will do anything. Concoct any type of fraudulent research with questionable data and methods. Do anything they can to smear those of us who doubt them.

And you know why? They have gone so far with this ridiculous web of lies that there is no turning back. Once a critical mass of people catch on to the fact that they are perpetrating such a massive hoax, their careers will be over and many of them will likely be subject to criminal prosecution. They have nothing to lose by postponing that day for as long as they can.

Gaga used to open for Semiprecious Weapons. Now they're opening for her.

Dirtbag of the Week: Thomas 'Slab' Murphy

One of the most notorious IRA terrorists. He was nicknamed 'slab' because his victims inevitably ended up on an autopsy slab. Managed to avoid prosecution for years by a simple trick: His house straddled the border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. An interesting article about him:

THE back door of his farmhouse is in the North and his front door in the Republic, so when the RUC appeared at his back door he could walk out the front into the Republic and if the gardai knocked on the front door he would walk out the back yard and into a little corner of the UK known as south Armagh.
Thomas 'Slab' Murphy, now a stocky, balding 56-year-old farmer, is single, a moderate drinker and a non-smoker. His interests are Gaelic football, darts and road bowling and he's only ever been prosecuted for motoring offences and claims he was questioned by gardai merely for having driven after taking alcohol.
But 'Slab' Murphy is also a ruthless IRA leader, a former chief of staff of the IRA and the man who personally masterminded the importation of hundreds of tons of lethal weapons from Libya which, we are told, have been destroyed.
At least that's what the Sunday Times said about him and when he sued for libel and lost.
According to gardai, the RUC, and intelligence services on both sides of the border, Thomas 'Slab' Murphy is the IRA leader behind some of the worst atrocities to take place during The Troubles.

Another Glitch in the Global Warming Mythology

The Branch Carbonians will stop at nothing to attempt to prove their gigantic lie is the truth. The latest IPCC report claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely by 2035. As it turns out, this was also based on bullshit science:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

So how likely is it that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035?

Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, said: "Even a small glacier such as the Dokriani glacier is up to 120 metres [394ft] thick. A big one would be several hundred metres thick and tens of kilometres long. The average is 300 metres thick so to melt one even at 5 metres a year would take 60 years. That is a lot faster than anything we are seeing now so the idea of losing it all by 2035 is unrealistically high.”

How much more of this crap do we have to put up with? It is time that the politicians and the 'scientists' who are promulgating this hoax be called to account.

US Immigration for Haitian Earthquake Victims?

Robert Kirchhoefer raises an important issue concerning Haitian refuges from the recent earthquake:

Immigration from and deportation to Haiti has been a hot-button issue for decades. It's about to get white hot.
The crisis in Haiti is now an urgent matter of establishing life-sustaining resources, law and order, and search and rescue efforts. As horrific as the current crisis is, the next phase will be equally complex but arguably more controversial for United States policymakers. How will the United States -- a country that had monumental border issues waiting in the winds before the Haiti earthquake -- address the issue of, potentially, hundreds of thousands of Haitian refugees?
As reported by the Washington Times, this question is going to be an aftershock of political discourse:
Americans are already pouring humanitarian aid into Haiti, but the next question for President Obama will be whether to grant temporary legal residence to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and legal visitors from Haiti.

I would be all in favor of welcoming many of the law-abiding Haitians into the USA, if it weren't for one thing: The racist, so-called 'affirmative action' programs favored by 0bama and many of the Democrats. These programs will give the new immigrants preference over many current US citizens for university admissions, hiring, promotion, and government contracts. Lower-class whites will be pushed to the end of a longer and longer line.

And furthermore, if the USA is such a horrible place for minorities, then why do so many blacks and hispanics from other countries seek to come here? Many of them go to great effort to live in the USA.

Global Warming - The Other Side

An interesting documentary produced by the meteorologist who founded The Weather Channel has aired on an independent station in San Diego. You can see the videos here.

Will the leftist media show this documentary? Not likely.

Get Well Soon, Gaga

Google Takes a Stand Against ChiComs

Very good news. After sucking up to the Chinese government for years, Google is finally standing up to their repressive policies

It has been dispiriting to see America’s banks apparently stand for nothing more lofty than plunder. It has been demoralizing to see President Obama hiding from the Dalai Lama rather than offend China’s rulers.

So all that makes Google’s decision to stand up to Chinese cyberoppression positively breathtaking. By announcing that it no longer plans to censor search results in China, even if that means it must withdraw from the country, Google is showing spine — a kind that few other companies or governments have shown toward Beijing.
One result was immediate: Young Chinese have been visiting Google’s headquarters in Beijing to deposit flowers and pay their respects.
China promptly tried to censor the ensuing debate about its censorship, but many Chinese Twitter users went out of their way to praise Google. One from Guangdong declared: “It’s not Google that’s withdrawing from China, it’s China that’s withdrawing from the world.”

Islamists Coddled in Britain

If the Brits and other European countries end up with sharia law some day, they have no one but themselves to blame. This can be seen from how they are pampering muslim extremists:

A group of Muslim extremists who screamed 'rapists' and 'murderers' at British soldiers went unpunished yesterday - and called their conviction 'a badge of honour'.
The five were given conditional discharges for shouting 'baby killers' and 'terrorists' and waving placards at hundreds of soldiers returning from Iraq.
Outside court they were surrounded by a mob of supporters and boasted they would do the same again, saying they wanted to see sharia law in Britain.

The men, all of whom are on benefits, were each ordered to pay £500 in costs towards the prosecution. Outside the court, they defiantly declared: 'The taxpayer paid for this court case. The taxpayer will pay for the fines too out of benefits'.
Surrounded by other followers of Islam4UK - the group led by so-called preacher of hate Anjem Choudary - they said they would protest again.

How would you like to live in a country run by people like these?

It's always nice to beat the Eagles

Frogs to Tax Google

French president Nicholas "Lucky Pierre" Sarkozy has announced plans to tax Google advertising:

The French government is considering levying a tax on the advertising revenues of Google and other internet portals, in the latest sign of a European backlash against the activities of the US internet search group.
President Nicolas Sarkozy instructed his finance ministry to examine the merits of a tax in response to complaints from the French media that Google and other sites are generating advertising income using their news and other content. He also called for an inquiry by French competition authorities into a possible “abuse of dominant position” in the advertising business of big internet sites.

Mr Sarkozy commented after the publication of an independent report for the French culture ministry that proposed a tax on Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other sites, to help fund initiatives for writers, musicians and publishers to make money from the web.

I wonder if we could interest the French in a gently-worn president? He would fit in quite well there.

Bad Romance is now her fifth #1 single. You go Gaga!

Levin apologises for ‘worst deal of century’

During the dot.com craze of the late nineties, many internet stocks were trading for far more than they could ever possibly be worth. Many companies were taken public that had never turned a profit, and in some cases had not even begun operations.

At the height of the craziness, America Online purchased media giant Time Warner, for what was then valued at $164 billion worth of AOL stock. A more realistic value for the stock would have been less than 10% of that. Former Time Warner exec Jerry Levin has recently apologized for selling the company for a will-of-the-wisp:

Jerry Levin, who sold Time Warner for AOL shares inflated by the dotcom boom, has marked the 10th anniversary of the disastrous $164bn deal with a call for today’s corporate titans to accept responsibility for the recent financial crisis.
The former Time Warner chief executive, who had avoided apologising for the billions of dollars destroyed by the deal, on Monday made a mea culpa in an appearance on CNBC.

“I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and I guess it’s time for those who are involved in companies to stand up and say: you know what, I’m solely responsible for it,” said Mr Levin. “I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and the suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

At the time, there was talk of Yahoo purchasing Disney. That would have been interesting.

Freezing Temperatures in Peru Blamed on Global Warming

Its amusing watching the Branch Carbonians twist themselves into pretzels in order to explain the non-warming of the earth. Now we read about how Peru's 'mountain people' must deal with freezing temperatures:

Climate change is bringing freezing temperatures to poor villages where families have long existed on the margins of survival. Now some must choose whether to save the animals that give them a living, or their children

The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.
In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

Am I reading this correctly? The mountain people have 'increasing cold conditions' caused by 'rapid melting of glaciers'? If the glaciers are melting, then their microclimate must be warmer, not colder.

And furthermore, have you ever been on a warm mountain? Unless its an active volcano, mountains tend to be cold, no matter how much CO2 my Nissan spews this year.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to Cost Taxpayers $400 Billion

George Bush and many other Republicans warned about the two quasi-governmental mortgage companies. Meanwhile, Democrats like Barney Frank continued to push for expansion of mortgage lending by the two companies. Other Democrats like Rahm Emannuel and Jamie Gorelick made millions while working for the companies. And now we get the bill

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.
The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.

There is no limit to the stupidity and incompetence of the left.

Happy 2010

Lady Gaga says "I wish you all peace, love, and meat-a-balls"

Snowstorm squelches climate change protest

I was really sorry to hear these guys' plans were ruined

A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday's snowstorm.
"Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions," said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.
It didn't take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they'd planned to use for their "scream-in," an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change.
Still, they chatted with a few passers-by during the commuter-hour protest near the Gateway, and explained that, blizzard aside, climate change is expected to bring chaos to the global climate, said Major.
She called Wednesday evening's effort a success and possibly the first in a series. As for the snow, it's not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate.
"There is always the irony element," Major said.

Sure hope they didn't catch frostbite.

No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds

I always smirk or even BOL when I hear about the 'scientific consensus' concerning global warming. Now there is a new study published that finds no increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide

To assess whether the airborne fraction is indeed increasing, Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol reanalyzed available atmospheric carbon dioxide and emissions data since 1850 and considers the uncertainties in the data.
In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.
The research is published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Here is a brief list of what science does NOT know about the entire global warming theory:

1. It is not known if burning fossil fuels actually increases the equilibrium amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is quite likely that most of it is absorbed in the oceans.

2. It is not known if an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase temperatures. One thing we know for sure is that the earth radiates out into space just as much energy as it receives from the sun.

3. There is no trend in the increase nor decrease of polar ice coverage. There is a regular cycle of freezing in the winter and melting in the summer.

4. There has been no increase in the number or severity of tornadoes or hurricanes.

5. There is no decrease in the polar bear populations

6. There is no evidence that there has been any significant increase in atmospheric or oceanic temperatures over the past century.

0bama Administration Accomplishes Major Decrease in Crime Rate

You have heard me criticize 0bama when appropriate on this venue. But I will also praise him when he does something good:

Americans went on binges buying guns and ammunition in early 2009, worried that a radical leftist president and Democrat-dominated Congress would violate their Second-Amendment rights to keep and bear arms. The effects? Less murder, robbery, rape, and property crime, according to an FBI report released Monday. This gives the young president and Democrat Congress at least one proud but unintended accomplishment for which they'll never claim credit.

Indeed, gun buyers were out in droves in late 2008 and early 2009. While it's easy to infer that increased gun ownership figures align precisely with the drop in crime in the same calendar period, you won't see that headline in the New York Times, despite their penchant for such inferences about increases in crime coinciding with increasing "guns on the street."

The gun-buying started shortly before, and then took off after, Obama's election. The Toronto Star reported a 15% increase of 108,000 more FBI background checks in October 2008 than during the same month in 2007. People were already anticipating the dire consequences of an Obama victory. Then, in November 2008, the number of FBI background checks on applicants buying guns spiked 42% from the previous year. The FBI performed 12.7 million background checks in 2008, compared to 11.2 million in 2007, a 13% increase.

So why isn't 0bama bragging on this? I'm baffled.

"I am, I'm too fabulous

I'm so fierce that it's so nuts"

Attention: All Global Warming Moonbats

We are still digging out from under 14 inches of global warming here in Oklahoma. Please come and bring your shovels.

"The President is Smoking Pot or Something"

Robert Morgenthau, longtime district attorney for Manhattan, had this to say about 0bama's foreign policy towards Iran:

'Everyone has dropped the ball on [Iran sanctions]. The president is smoking pot or something if he thinks that being nice to these guys is going to get him anywhere," Mr. Morgenthau says.

I'm Off For a Few

Rocky, Daphne, and I are headed to Kansas to reduce the surplus pheasant population, thence to Texas for Xmas.

I'll be back this weekend, with plenty more pics of our Beloved Smurf.

How Much to Bribe a Democrat Senator?

Nelson is cheap. He should have held out for $100 billion

Nebraska will receive $100 million in assistance for its state Medicaid program under provisions negotiated by Sen. Ben Nelson (D) in the Senate's healthcare reform bill.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) informed lawmakers on Sunday night that the section of the manager's amendment to the Senate's health bill would cost $1.2 billion over 10 years.

Nelson managed to win a share of the section of the manager's amendment on Equitable Support for Certain States, which will provide Nebraska, along with Massachusetts and Vermont, support in paying its share of additional costs to Medicaid in the health legislation.

The provision, which Republicans have derided as the "Cornhusker Kickback," actually provides Nebraska the least of the three states. Vermont will receive $600 million over 10 years, while Massachusetts will receive $500 million. The money to Nebraska had previously been reported to be $45 million.

Man asks a woman "Will you sleep with me for $10,000?"

Woman "Sure!"

Man "How about for $2?"

Woman "What do you think I am, a common whore?"

Man "We've already established what you are. We're just haggling over the price"

Does anyone seriously believe this is a man? It's amazing how ridiculous some rumors can be.

How to Promote Global Warming? Smear the Skeptics!

Steve McIntyre in Canada has been doing outstanding work of investigating the research of global warming alarmists such as Mann, Briffa, Jones, and many others. He has been met by smears, stonewalling, and outright threats. He doesn't take one cent of public funding. He's just doing this on his own time. Here are some comments on his blogue Climate Audit about the Climategate emails. The Branch Carbonians want to redefine the meaning of 'peer review'.

One of the Climategate texts that has attracted considerable commentary is:

"The other paper by MM is just garbage …I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !"

The “community”’s response to this has been: move along, there’s nothing to see. A typical defence is that of Ronald Prinn of MIT (e.g. here around minute 48) and others) : that improper peer review activities by CRU and their associates didn’t “matter” because McIntyre and McKitrick were discussed by IPCC after all:

“Five papers by McIntyre and McKitrick were published and then referenced and discussed in the IPCC.”

In yesterday’s post, I showed that the Climategate letters showed gatekeeping incidents that had nothing to do with McIntyre and McKitrick – even preceding our entry onto the scene. In today’s post, I’m going to place the money quote in context, showing that Jones and Trenberth did in fact live up to their threats, breaching other IPCC rules along the way.

If anyone reading this actually believes the 'climate change' mythology, I urge you to consider this. Ask the alarmists what their evidence is and they will say something about a 'scientific consensus', without reference to any facts at all. Ask to see their data, or their computer programs, and they will refuse or stonewall.

Then go to the skeptics like Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick (economist at the university of Guelph in Canada), Richard Lindzen (meteorologist at MIT), or any of the others. They will refer you to the data. They will gladly share their data with you. They will happily share their computer programs used to analyze the data. They will tell you to look at the facts and decide for yourself.

"My Grandma says she can see me because I wear no pants, so I will continue to wear no pants so she can see me"

Blizzard Dumps Snow on Copenhagen as Leaders Battle Warming

It Looks like all those world leaders have been successful in seeing to it that we don't have any global warming:

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”
Delegates from 193 countries have been in Copenhagen since Dec. 7 to discuss how to fund global greenhouse gas emission cuts. U.S. President Barack Obama will arrive before the summit is scheduled to end tomorrow

OK. So you guys have have saved the planet from global warming. Time to pat yourselves on the back, award yourselves a few more Nobel prizes, and go home now.

DemocRats Deserting Sinking Ship

While the unholy trinity of 0bama, Pelosi, and Reid still attempt to nationalize the health care system, many of the lower-ranking rats are abandoning ship

While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambles to assemble 60 Democratic votes for health care legislation that, according to the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls, is opposed by a 53 percent-to-38 percent margin, several Democratic members of the House are scrambling for the exits on what is starting to look like a sinking ship.
You may noticed that I avoided using the cliche "rats leaving the sinking ship," because the four Democratic House members who over the last three weeks announced their decisions to retire rather than run for ree-lection cannot fairly be characterized as rats.
To the contrary, Dennis Moore (Kansas 3), John Tanner (Tennessee 8), Brian Baird (Washington 3) and Bart Gordon (Tennessee 6) are competent House members who among them have won election to Congress 36 times. Gordon is chairman of the House Science Committee; Tanner was offered an appointment to succeed Al Gore in the Senate in 1992; Baird was lead sponsor of measures to ensure the continuity of Congress in time of national disaster. All have claims to significant legislative accomplishments.

Speak Up, Al


That wasn't very nice to break that guy's microphone, was it?

Don't You Love Them Branch Carbonians?

Read first about their 'carbon footprint'

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - The Copenhagen climate talks will generate more carbon emissions than any previous climate conference, equivalent to the annual output of over half a million Ethiopians, figures commissioned by hosts Denmark show.
Delegates, journalists, activists and observers from almost 200 countries have gathered at the Dec 7-18 summit and their travel and work will create 46,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide, most of it from their flights.

And in the meantime

People in the north-central part of the Canadian province of Ontario are digging out after one of the worst snow storms on record.
Some areas north of Toronto received as much as 100 centimetres of snow over the past three days.
The main highway through the region re-opened for the first time in days, but nearly all side roads remain closed, blocked by a thick blanket of snow, in some areas chest high.
More than 100,000 people have been affected by the storm, either cut off in smaller communities, or in their cottages, or stranded by the road closures.
In one town the mayor declared a snow emergency, shutting schools and businesses.
Officials say emergency road crews clearing roads are completely exhausted. Officers at one police detachment said they could not see their parked patrol cars buried under the snow.
Police are also urging travellers to stay away from the region at least for the next couple of days.
Meanwhile, western Canada is in the grip of a cold snap with temperatures plummeting anywhere from -40 to -50 degrees Celsius.

It's not even officially winter yet, and we are freezing our butts off here in Oklahoma too.

“only value the opinion of those you respect"

Well, BOO HOO....

Michael Smerconish is whining about Dick Cheney's criticism of the 0bama administration's foreign policy

By using a 90-minute interview with Politico to preemptively criticize President Obama's decision-making process regarding Afghanistan, Cheney sought to undermine the commander in chief the night before the most important foreign-policy announcement of his young presidency.
That the former vice president said Obama was projecting "weakness" was bad. Worse was when he suggested that Obama was "far more radical" than expected on some foreign-policy and national-security issues, which was wholly over the line.
It is not always Cheney's message with which I disagree. I happen to concur with his defense earlier this year of harsh interrogation methods. My objection is to the messenger and the timing. Whatever he says carries the imprimatur of the office he once held, and speaking up at critical junctures undercuts the president before his policies can take hold.

Of course, we know the Democrats would never try to undermine Bush, or his father, or Reagan, or.... Naw!

The UN's Jackbooted Thugs

We have written previously about Stanford professor Stephen Schneider and how he flip-flopped from being a ice-age doomsayer to a global warming alarmist.

Now we learn that Dr. Schneider called in security rather than answer questions about Climategate from Phelim McAleer:

A Stanford professor with ties to Nobel Laureate Al Gore and the growing ClimateGate scandal used United Nations security officials at the climate conference in Copenhagen to halt questions about e-mail messages obtained from Britain's Climatic Research Unit.
Dr. Stephen Schneider was speaking at the Bella Centre Thursday when Irish journalist Phelim McAleer began asking about ClimateGate.
McAleer is known for his documentary "Not Evil, Just Wrong," which challenged the content of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," as well as for confronting the former Vice President during a lecture in October only to have his microphone turned off.
According to a video just posted at Big Government, UN security officials stepped in when McAleer tried to ask the Professor inconvenient questions.

Professor Stephen Schneider's assistant requested armed UN security officers who held film maker Phelim McAleer, ordered him to stop filming and prevented further questioning after the press conference where the Stanford academic was launching a book.

This is what the entire global warming hoax has come to. Next thing you will see people prosecuted and thrown in jail for questioning the Branch Carbonians.

"Don't forget to follow your dreams and always be yourself and you know what you can tell them when they tell you that you're not right? You tell them Lady Gaga says to fuck off."

Sarah Palin Scores Direct Hit; Al Gore Throws Fit

I must admit that I was very disappointed and skeptical of her future in politics when Sarah resigned from her position as governor of Alaska. But now she is emerging as a leader of the opposition to the marxist 0bama administration's statist policies. In her Op-Ed today in the WaPo, Sarah showed some real backbone on the issue of the global warming hoax. This is something both Bush and McCain failed to do.

With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse.

The e-mails reveal that leading climate "experts" deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What's more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

Al Gore's response to Sarah's Op-Ed was predictable

Well, you know, the -- the global warming deniers persist in this air of unreality. After all, the entire north polar icecap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade. What do they think is causing this?
The mountain glaciers in every region of the world are melting, many of them at an accelerated rate, threatening drinking supplies -- drinking water supplies and agricultural water supplies. We have these record storms, drought, floods, fires, three deaths (ph) in the American West, climate refugees beginning now, expected to rise to the hundreds of millions unless we take action.
These effects are taking place all over the world exactly as predicted by the scientists, who have warned for years that, if we continue putting 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every day, the accumulation -- that's going to trap lots more heat, raise temperatures, and cause all of these consequences that are already beginning.

Yeah, Al. Winter hasn't even officially begun and we will have 10 degree temperatures tonight.

Sarah is doing what it takes to become a leader -- perhaps the leader, of the Republican party.

Will You Guys Please Chill Out?

Tiger will play again. He's too damn good with a golf club not to.

All he did was to sleep with some attractive ladies. That's something that most of you would do if the opportunity presented itself. When someone is as handsome and successfull as Tiger, the opportunity often arises.

Public Not Sold on Climate Change

Many of the so-called 'elites' in government, academia, entertainment, and elsewhere are taking AGW for granted. They are quick to accept the 'scientific consensus' even though there is none.

But for those of us who have no need to impress someone else with our viewpoints, the entire hoax falls apart very quickly. The elites are baffled by our neanderthal attitudes, so they try to think of various ways to rationalize our failure to see the light. From NPR we have these thoughts:

Nearly 100 world leaders are expected to appear at the global warming talks that open Monday in Copenhagen. This is an unprecedented showing of leadership for the issue. Yet at the same time, public opinion of climate change is souring — particularly in the United States.
A recent Harris Poll, among the latest of several over the past year, shows that barely half of the American public believes that the carbon dioxide that's building up in the atmosphere could warm up our planet.
There are multiple reasons for this growing skepticism, including psychological reactions and politics. Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale University School of Forestry puts one reason above all the rest: "First of all, it's the economy, stupid."

Now get a load of this:

Even as scientists become more confident that climate change is a serious hazard, public opinion is shifting the other way, says Kari Marie Norgaard at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash.
"This seems irrational," she says. "And in that sense, it's challenging the basic premise that we have of an enlightened, democratic, modern society."
Norgaard studied this shift in public opinion and found that as people start to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, they simply turn away from the topic. It's a form of denial, she says.
"We just don't want to know about it, so we are actively distancing ourselves from it or trying to protect ourselves from it."

Actually, Kari, it is reaffirming the basic premise of an enlightened, democratic, modern society. People are thinking for themselves, rather than allowing themselves to be led around like sheep by an unthinking elite.

Why Should We?

As the Anchoress has said many times, if the advocates of climate change aren't taking the matter seriously, then why should we? They want all the little people to go back to living like cave men, while they jet around the world and ride in limos.

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.
"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."
The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

"Have you ever loved something so much you told a tiny little lie. A negative truth. And you believed and you loved your new inventions so deeply, you would kill to make it true. Your visualisation, your futurisation, your self-masturbation. It's all you have so honour it. Some say Lady Gaga is a lie. And they are right, I am a lie and everyday I kill to make it true."

Should Bernanke be Reappointed?

No.

Ruled by Rules

Steven Greenhut has an interesting essay in the OC Register

To the extent that anyone still thinks about the former Soviet Union and its satellite communist states, they understandably think about the suffocating oppression – the Berlin Wall, the gulags, the KGB, the political prisoners, the persecution of religious people and minorities. Yet, in talking to refugees from that nightmarish world, it's clear that one of the worst aspects of communism was the endless waiting in line, the ceaseless bureaucracy and the incomprehensible rules and regulations that governed every aspect of everyday life.
Despite some real assaults on civil liberties in America (by Republican and Democratic administrations alike), Americans aren't facing too many serious dangers of the first kind mentioned above. But, as government expands its reach, we are facing bigger lines, additional nonsensical rules and more bureaucracy. You can barely do anything these days without getting approval from the authorities these days, and this touches on even the smallest, most inconsequential areas of our existence.

It has long been one of the goals of the left to have so many rules and regulations that they are impossible to obey. That way, anyone may be thrown in jail who does not cooperate with the powers that be.

"You can be smart and still be in your underwear"

BBC Exposes Fudge Factor

Even though many of the Branch Carbonians are still clinging to their religion, their hoax is rapidly unraveling. Even the BBC showed how a regular computer programmer easily slagged some of the computer code uncovered in climategate

A segment on the Dec. 3 broadcast of BBC's "Newsnight," showed the implications of the story behind the so-called "ClimateGate" scandal are more than just e-mails concealing data, but an incompetence analyzing the data by way of faulty computer code.
John Graham-Cumming, a British programmer known for the open source "POPFile email filtering program" explained how the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had wholesale problems with its computer programming analyzing climate change data, with billion, if not even trillions of dollars, on the line.

Who will be the last man standing when the Branch Carbonians admit defeat? My money is on Al Gore.

Danish Parliament Speaker Questions Global Warming

Could it be that we naysayers are reaching a critical mass? Thor Pederson expresses his doubts:

As the world prepares to converge on Copenhagen for the COP15 Climate Summit, Denmark’s Speaker of Parliament has expressed serious doubts as to the way in which the climate debate has developed.
“The problem is that lots of people go around saying that the climate change we see is a result of human activity. That is a very dangerous claim,” Parliamentary Speaker and former Finance Minister Thor Pedersen (Lib) tells DR.
“Unfortunately I seem to experience that scientists say: ‘We have a theory’ – then that crosses the road to the politicians who say: ‘We know’. Who can be bothered to hear a scientist who says ‘I have a theory’ when politicians go around saying ‘I know’” Thor Pedersen says

"So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don’t feel alone.”

Sisters of Mercy to Pay €128 million to Child Abuse Victims

We have written previously about the massive child abuse in the Republic of Ireland. Some of the primary culprits were the 'Sisters of Mercy', a group of nuns. The sisters now plan to pay 128 million euros in compensation to surviving victims.

A leading order of Catholic nuns which ran one of the most notorious industrial schools in Ireland tonight offered €128million (£116million) to compensate child abuse survivors.
The Sisters of Mercy, who were in charge of Goldenbridge Industrial School, Dublin, will donate €20million (£18million) in cash and €108million (£97million) worth of property to charities and the state.
The funds will also support counselling services.
Industrial schools were established in Ireland in the late 1800s to care for neglected, orphaned and abandoned children.

The Congregation, exposed along with 17 other orders for imposing physically and psychologically abusive regimes in state-run institutions, said the offer was an attempt to be faithful to values of reparation, reconciliation, healing and responsibility.

Not good enough. We need some millstones and rope.

Why Are the Mainstream Media Ignoring Climategate?

The main reason is they can't comprehend a little basic science and statistics:

Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you're going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown—in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand—that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact "at it" and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.

Another thing is that these climate "scientists" (Jones, Mann, Hansen, etc) have staked their careers on global warming. If and when it is revealed to be a fraud, their careers will be over. Therefore they have nothing to lose by lying, screaming, and bullshitting until the game is over.

"Are You Hungry For Wonderful? Cause I Am."

Give the Guy a Break

I got a couple questions for all you holier-than-thou zealots who are so quick to condemn Tiger.

1. Have you ever had any problems in your family?

2. Have you ever looked at an attractive young woman and wondered what she would look like naked?

Tiger has never claimed to be a saint. He's just a guy who plays a good round of golf. The only difference between him and the rest of us average Joes is we don't have our problems thrust in the public spotlight.

Check out Christopher Monckton's Report on Climategate

"The only place you wanna be is underneath my Christmas tree"

Head of Climate Hoax Center to Temporarily Step Down

This is a step in the right direction. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, will step down pending investigation

LONDON (AP) - Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.
The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.
The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.
The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.

Now if we can just convince the lamestream media to abandon their political agenda for just a few days and begin reporting the facts about the climate, we can nip this problem in the bud.