Monday, April 19, 2010

Angry Teabaggers Heckle Mr. Wonderful

JammieWearingFool:
Angry Teabaggers Heckle Mr. Wonderful
"Well, at least since they're gay protesters they're authentic teabaggers.
He became totally flustered and his TelePrompter just wasn't prepared for any of this."

Air ban led by flawed computer models

Brussels - Air ban led by flawed computer models
"The computer models that guided decisions to impose a no-fly zone across most of Europe in recent days are based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials.
As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses."

JammieWearingFool

JammieWearingFool
"A day ahead of school budget elections statewide, Gov. Chris Christie today escalated his war of words with the state teachers' union, accusing union representatives of 'using the students like drug mules' to carry information about whether their parents planned to vote."

UPDATE: Police chief says Roosevelt Park mayor's weekend death was suicide

UPDATE: Police chief says Roosevelt Park mayor's weekend death was suicide
"Authorities have confirmed that Roosevelt Park Mayor Jeff Lenartowicz died Sunday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

New Yorkers Brace for Doorman Strike -2

New Yorkers Brace for Doorman Strike - NYTimes.com
"The 30,000 residential doormen, porters, superintendents, elevator operators and handymen now earn an average of $40,500 a year, with benefits raising the total to nearly $70,000, according to the Realty Advisory Board, which represents building owners.
The workers are seeking wage increases, while building owners are pushing to reduce benefit costs."

I laughed when I read this...and then I stopped laughing and shook my head.

How Public Sector Unions Broke California

The Beholden State by Steven Malanga, City Journal Spring 2010
"The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone.
“We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot.
“Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’"

New Yorkers Brace for Doorman Strike

New Yorkers Brace for Doorman Strike - NYTimes.com
"Who will safeguard my apartment as I sleep?
Greet my children when they come home from school?
Accept deliveries? Clean the hallways? Sort the mail?
Operate the elevator?
And who, for goodness sake, will let the cleaning lady in?"

This ought to be a Saturday night Live parody.
It's not.
It's about the two Americas.
The filthy rich liberal elites and the rest of us.
Wake up folks!

Domestic violence program coordinator for AWARE Inc. faces felony charge after allegedly threatening husband with hammer

Domestic violence program coordinator for AWARE Inc. faces felony charge after allegedly threatening husband with hammer

Obama skips Polish funeral, heads to golf course

Obama skips Polish funeral, heads to golf course
"It is the 32nd time Mr. Obama has played golf since taking office Jan. 20, 2009,"....
Mr. Obama has played golf far more often than former President George W. Bush.

In his eight years in office, Mr. Bush played just 24 times.

No story here... unless the golfers were reversed.

WHY CAN'T BLACK KIDS READ?

WHY CAN'T BLACK KIDS READ?
Charlie Sykes:
"The answer, of course, is that they can.

But in Wisconsin, only 9 percent score at the proficient level.

What's wrong with this picture?"

IslamoCare

IslamoCare FrontPage Magazine
"The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses.
From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty.
Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves.

Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.”"

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Roosevelt Park Mayor Found Dead in His Home - FOX 17

Roosevelt Park Mayor Found Dead in His Home - FOX 17
"Lenartowicz was also the financial supervisor for the Muskegon County sheriff's department."

Very sad when one so young and promising dies.

But, I suspect the police are looking at:
1. The "Celestial Bullet". The heart attack, fall or stroke that comes out of nowhere for a young person.
2. Random crime. A burglar or neighbor problem that just hit at the wrong time.
3. Marital/girlfriend/etc. problems. I see no mention of his wife/children/girlfriend/boyfriend. Any bad blood going on?
4. Suicide. Lots of possibilities for a young politician but I'd focus on his "financial supervisor for the Muskegon County sheriff's department" position. Lot's of opportunity to make mistakes there.
And plenty of precedent in Muskegon....and Wall Street.

How sad that I hope it's a stroke or heart attack.

White supremacist rally ends with five arrests and two assaults, police say

White supremacist rally ends with five arrests and two assaults, police say
"One man, who sported Nazi tattoos, was severely beaten near City Hall while another man, who carried a confusing sign about religion with a scribbled swastika, was pummeled by a mob of people on Spring Street between 1st and 2nd."

So.
The folks causing the violence were....Tea Party protesters?
We'll probable see a lot of anguished looks on tomorrow's MSM's newsreader's faces about the violence from the .......I guess there isn't a right wing "group" listed in this article.
Yeah, right....

BBC News - Volcanic ash incidents involving airliners

BBC News - Volcanic ash incidents involving airliners
"The US Geological Survey says at least 102 aircraft encountered volcanic ash clouds between 1973 and 2003.

The risk is naturally greater when aircraft fly in areas of volcanic activity.

Studies suggest that ash from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 was responsible for 20 incidents involving aircraft. One US airline grounded its aircraft at Manila for several days.

When Mount Popocatepetl in Mexico erupted in 1997, there was minor disruption to flights, with one crew experiencing such reduced visibility after landing they had to look through the flight deck's side windows to see where they were going."

Theses are big eruptions, with little commercial airline interruption and no fatalities.
Is the Icelandic event being overblown?
And if so why?

Roosevelt Park Mayor Jeff Lenartowicz is dead at 34

Roosevelt Park Mayor Jeff Lenartowicz is dead at 34
"As of early Sunday evening, no information on the cause of his death was available.
Lenartowicz, who was 33 when he was named to the city's top elected position, may have been the youngest mayor in the city's more than 60-year history."

What Democrats Mean By "Civility"

Power Line - What Democrats Mean By "Civility"
"Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum, who represents St. Paul and environs, wasted no time explaining what Hoyer meant.

On the House floor on Tuesday, she claimed that today's conservatives, especially Tea Partiers, are just like Timothy McVeigh. She did so, of course, in the name of 'civility:'

Madam Speaker, today I rise to remember the victims of the 1995 terrorist attack in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.
This act of American terrorism was committed by a man who viewed the federal government as such a threat that it justified mass murder.
I applaud my colleague from Oklahoma for her resolution because it serves as a reminder that right-wing, anti-government extremist groups are on the rise today. ..

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center states, 'Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing...'

Today, Mr. Potok states, 'as the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians...'"

Temple for Ted Kennedy built with pork

Watchdogs: Temple for Ted Kennedy built with pork
"The new taxpayer-funded total would cover the full $60 million estimated cost of building the project, adjacent to John F. Kennedy Presidential Library at Columbia Point.
And it would put the public on the hook for nearly half the project’s $150 million target."

Liberal Media Hypocrisy Test

Cities must control employee costs

Cities must control employee costs visaliatimesdelta.com Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register:
"Visalia's City Council listened to a startling report about the rise in expenses for its employees this week.

City staff told the council that the increases in costs for employee salaries and benefits is approaching a point that is unsustainable.
The city is looking at the prospect of having employee expenses constitute 70 percent of its budget or more."

Teachers union shows its true colors on reform bill

Teachers union shows its true colors on reform bill
"If you had any doubt about the motivation of the Colorado Education Association when it comes to teacher tenure and evaluation reform, wonder no longer.
The CEA is playing what it considers to be its trump card.

By announcing last week that it will refuse to support the state's second-round application for a $175 million federal Race to the Top grant, the union is showing its true colors"

Climategate: a scandal that won’t go away

Climategate: a scandal that won’t go away
"If you were faced with by far the biggest bill of your life, would you not want to be confident that there was a very good reason why you should pay it?
That is why we need to know just how far we can trust the science behind the official view that the world is threatened with catastrophe by global warming – because the measures proposed by our politicians to avert this supposed disaster threaten to transform our way of life out of recognition and to land us with easily the biggest bill in history.
(The Climate Change Act alone, says the Government, will cost us all £18 billion every year until 2050.)"

.....The crown jewels of the IPCC’s case that the world faces catastrophic warming have been all those graphs based on tree rings which purport to show that temperatures have lately been soaring to levels never known before in history – thus eradicating all the evidence that the world was hotter than today during the Medieval Warm Period, long before any rise in CO2 levels.
Best known of these graphs, of course, was Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”, comprehensively discredited by the expert Canadian statistician Stephen McIntyre and Professor Ross McKitrick.

But the IPCC was able to defend its case with the aid of another set of “hockey sticks”, based on different tree rings, produced by Mann’s close allies at the CRU.
The most widely quoted of the Climategate emails was that from the CRU’s director, Philip Jones, saying that he had used “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”.

If there was anything in the CRU’s record which a proper inquiry should have addressed it was the story behind this email, because what it highlighted was the device used by the CRU to get round the fact that its tree-ring data hopelessly failed to show the result the warmist establishment wanted.

When their Siberian tree rings showed temperatures in the late 20th century sharply dropping rather than rising, the “trick” used by Prof Jones and his colleague Dr Keith Briffa, copied from Mike Mann’s own “hockey stick”, was simply to delete the downward curve shown by the tree rings, replacing them with late 20th-century temperature data to show the dramatic warming they wanted.

The significance of this sleight of hand can scarcely be exaggerated.

Why, in using this misleading graph, did the IPCC not explain the trick that had been played by its leading scientists?
If tree rings were so inadequate in reflecting 20th-century temperatures, why should they be relied on to reflect temperatures in earlier centuries?
Why, when fresh Siberian tree ring data came to light, making a nonsense of the CRU’s earlier temperature reconstructions, did the CRU simply ignore the new data?

Anyone who has followed the meticulous analysis of this curious story by Steve McIntyre on his Climate Audit website might well conclude that we are looking here at a complete travesty of proper scientific procedure, matched only by the bizarre methods used by Mann himself to construct his original hockey stick.
Yet these are the men, Mann, Jones and Briffa, who acted as the “lead authors” of the key chapters of the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports.

Oakland County won’t enforce smoking ban, Patterson says

Oakland County won’t enforce smoking ban, Patterson says
"Oakland County says it doesn’t plan to enforce Michigan’s smoking ban that’s set to take effect May 1.

County executive L. Brooks Patterson told WJBK-TV he’ll sue over the smoking ban next week. Patterson says the law amounts to an “unfunded mandate” if county health departments must oversee and enforce the ban.

Patterson says the county doesn’t have the resources to enforce the ban."

Editorial: Voters need to know who are paying for campaign ads |

Editorial: Voters need to know who are paying for campaign ads
"The decision raises the specter that shadowy groups — labor unions, multi-national companies or wealthy individuals with axes to grind — will quietly pull the strings of state and national elections and never be held accountable for their actions"

I saw the earth explode

I saw the earth explode: How a photographer shooting outdoor clothing camped on Iceland's volcano & and witnessed the eruption that closed Europe.

George F. Will - The perils of the value-added tax

George F. Will - The perils of the value-added tax
"adoption of a VAT would proclaim the impossibility of serious spending reductions and hence would be the obituary for the Founders' vision of limited government."

B-36: Bomber at the Crossroads

B-36: Bomber at the Crossroads History of Flight Air & Space Magazine
"It was the biggest warplane ever to wear an American star, and in the summer of '49 the Peacemaker found itself a war--in Washington."

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Why Volcanic Ash Is Dangerous to Airplanes

Why Volcanic Ash Is Dangerous to Airplanes - Volcanic Ash Engine Failure - Popularmechanics.com
"Today, authorities closed airports across Britain and Northern Europe due to clouds of volcanic ash in airspace from an Icelandic eruption."

National Prayer Day Shot Down; What Will Obama Do?

National Prayer Day Shot Down; What Will Obama Do? - Law Blog - WSJ
"according to Wisconsin federal judge Barbara Crabb, who ruled on Thursday that the federal statute that created the day violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“[I]ts sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function,” wrote Judge Crabb.
“In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.”"

‘BEHAVIOR PLACEMENT’: GE’s Orwellian NBC Wants ‘You To Do Good’

‘BEHAVIOR PLACEMENT’: GE’s Orwellian NBC Wants ‘You To Do Good’

"Forget product placement, NBC Universal is trying “behavior placement” with some of its shows. Characters from programs such as “30 Rock” and “The Office” are acting out eco-friendly behaviors that advertisers hope will sway viewers.

WSJ’s Amy Chozick reports.
In just one week on NBC, the detectives on “Law and Order” investigated a cash-for-clunkers scam, a nurse on “Mercy” organized a group bike ride, Al Gore made a guest appearance on “30 Rock,” and “The Office” turned Dwight Schrute into a cape-wearing superhero obsessed with recycling."

Next time you consider purchasing a GE product.....think again.

Spending, Not Tax Cuts, Is the Real Driver of the Fiscal Mess

Spending, Not Tax Cuts, Is the Real Driver of the Fiscal Mess — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
"To balance the budget over the next 25 years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says, would require an immediate and permanent increase in tax revenues, or reduction in spending outlays, equal to 5.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

To put that in context, that equals a 29 percent increase in all federal tax revenues relative to historical levels.
That means not just income taxes, but payroll taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains and dividends taxes, and other sources of revenue.
And it doesn’t mean just a 29 percent increase in tax rates, but—to account for the disincentive effects of higher taxes—even higher rates so that total revenue rises by 29 percent.

That’s a pretty big deal."