January 28, 2012
Losing The Peace In France's War For Oil
The war continues to look at best like a diversion, at worst as if the US fell for a cynical French ploy to get oil in a way that damaged our long term strategic interests.
Scattered reports of torture in Libyan jails and unrest in Libyan towns are beginning to coalesce into a picture of the exciting new reality created by last year’s humanitarian war-to-protect. If Amnesty International knows what it is talking about, Libyans are being “tortured to death” by the people we saved from Gaddafi and installed in power. Surprisingly, the Wilsonian hawks who gave us this inspiring policy haven’t yet sent a new barrage of airstrikes to stop the new round of brutality and bloodshed.
[...]
As predicted, the Libyan intervention has strengthened Assad and ensured a longer period of delay and hesitation before any possible intervention in Syria. The tortures taking place in Libyan jails today and the blood flowing in Syrian streets cannot be separated from the humanitarian bombs about which the “duty to protect” crowd rejoiced so naively last spring.
Related - Something's fishy in Tripoli
Adam Carolla Comments on the Current State of America
Adam Carolla isn't buying into the class warfare schtick of the Democrats. Here's a snippet from the NRO article about him:
He hates the fact that the rich have to pretend they’re not wealthy. “We’ve turned our world into some kind of prison yard, and if somebody finds out you’ve got a couple of cartons of cigarettes stuffed down your pants, you’re going to get torn apart [on] the handball courts.”Given the contributions rich families such as the Carnegies and the Rockefellers have made to the arts, Carolla finds it “weird” to equate rich with evil. If the rich are evil, “why are you sitting in their library? Why are you sitting in their hall? Why did I just listen to a whole show on orangutans with no commercials that they paid for?”
When asked about the hullaballoo over Mitt Romney’s tax returns, Carolla adds, “I don’t know who is sending mosquito nets over trying to cure malaria in Africa, but last time I checked it was Bill Gates. Is Bill Gates evil? Are all rich guys evil or just guys with nice hair?”
What Constitutes "Amazing" in the Minds of Young Leftists These Days
If you're a conservative voter you probably base your electoral decisions on facts & logic. To begin to understand the mindset that the Republican Presidential candidate will be up against in November click on the "Continue Reading" link below. One wonders if the founders of the country ever thought things would devolve to such a banal, unintellectual mentality?!
Continue reading What Constitutes "Amazing" in the Minds of Young Leftists These Days"" In other words, you don't even have a bubble."
h/t K Shaidle
Reader Tips
Tonight we listen to the tragic tale of an impoverished but indomitable maid who watches her family members give up the wretched ghost, one by one, in a song called simply Irish Ballad.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
January 27, 2012
Because (Outside Of The Ovaries) There's No Such Thing As "Race"
In an analysis of 250 women aged 18 to 44 years, researchers found that 200 milligrams of caffeine per day elevated estrogen levels in Asian women, but decreased the hormone’s levels in white women. Black women who drank the same amount also demonstrated elevated estrogen levels, but the result was not statistically significant, the authors reported. However, when caffeine sources were examined individually, coffee intake mirrored the original trend but caffeinated soda or green tea consumption was associated with a higher estrogen levels in all three races.
The Shape of Losers to Come
Lots of, er, us types:
The End of the Win-Win WorldWhy China’s rise really is bad for America -- and other dark forces at work...
A few months ago, I found myself sitting next to a senior EU official who turned out to have read my book. "My job is to prove your zero-sum thesis wrong," he told me. I replied that, as an author I hoped to be proved right -- but as a European and a human being I was hoping to be proved wrong. My lunch companion laughed and said, "That is too dialectical for me."
It is one of the nice things about the best EU officials that they are happy to talk to their critics, and comfortable using words like "dialectical." However, I fear that cultured technocrats will not do terribly well in the new era. A zero-sum world may summon up rather darker forces.
The Sound Of Settled Science
Via Powerline;
The climate system may be less sensitive to greenhouse-gas warming than many models have predicted.
Nathan Gillett and his co-workers at Environment Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, analysed how well the latest Canadian Earth System Model tracked temperature changes attributable to volcanoes, man-made aerosols and rising greenhouse-gas emissions. They adjusted the model using temperature records from 1851 to 2010 — 60 years of data more than most previous analyses. The model predicted a short-term increase of 1.3–1.8 °C for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, which is low in the range of estimates from previous forecasts.
Say it isn't so.
Do All American 20 Something Girls Major in "Elementary Education?"
WARNING:
It's absolutely painful to read.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can't Do?
Related: The economic chart that may doom the Obama presidency
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
[A]pparently the Reuters reporters failed to fact check the Democratic talking points they were given before running them as a news story: So far, Reuters has published five separate corrections to the story (all noted at the bottom), in each case dealing with a factual assertion in the original that was blatantly false. An hour ago, there had only been three corrections published, so we should probably stay tuned for yet more.
Reader Tips
In June of 2010, Canada accepted it's first delivery of Lockheed Martin's tactical airlift plane, the C-130J Super Hercules. "Prized for its versatility and flexibility", the Super Hercules gets rave reviews from pilots and commanders, including Lt. Col. Jeff Blalock of the U.S. 48th Airlift Squadron who says, "From a pilot's perspective, this aircraft is just phenomenal. The engines and props give you tremendous power and capability…It climbs like a rocket on takeoff."
Take a look at the C-130J Super Hercules in action at the 2011 Paris Air Show.
h/t Michael M.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
January 26, 2012
The Nannystate and Your Dog
If you're walking your dog in Vancouver and want to quickly buy some groceries or get a coffee, be aware that you're breaking the law if you tie up Fido to a pole and leave him unattended.
In the interest of curiosity, does this same bylaw exist in your community too?
We Don't Need No Stinking Sparky Cars
Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
State Of The Union, Jan 24, 2012;
State Of The Battery, Jan 26, 2012;"In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries."
Obama-backed electric car battery-maker files for bankruptcy
h/t Ed S.
Free Saskatchewan!
There have been layoffs at the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, CBC News has confirmed.
Best part?
MORE TO COME
h/t Marc
Be Prepared
Girl Guides of Canada is considering transgender members...
The historic Girl Guides of Canada is wrestling with a very modern question: Whether to allow transgender girls - children who were born male but identify as girls - into their troops.
No big deal. The "Girl Guides" as we knew them are essentially dead, anyway.
More - "Until recently, I had no idea the organization was helping dismantle what’s left of the West."
Peter Nygard's Lawsuit Against the CBC to Proceed
The Earth must have entered into the Twilight Zone. How else to explain that our always professional, always objective, always unbiased state broadcaster could have possibly breached a whole host of ethics in their attempt to destroy a businessman.
h/t Maz2
Sheila Leggett's Never-ending Make-work Project
h/t Wally J.
Reader Tips
January 26 is Australia Day, a mid-summer statutory holiday during which the men, full as a coog, walk around in budgie smugglers having a Captain Cook at the white pointers while the women go looking for their men -- at least, that's what an expatriate New Zealander told me. In honour of our upside-down Anglospheric friends, then, here's a stirring rendition of their national anthem Advance Australia Fair. Cheers!
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
January 25, 2012
Where we live
"In Amsterdam, 22 jihadis stormed my book launch, ordered my execution and threatened to break my neck.…."
"Even when they had a chance to run from the room, nobody at my Amsterdam launch fled. Some of my guests created a human shield around me and my host. It's yet more proof that 'ordinary people' are capable of moral courage. As I write in Allah, Liberty & Love, 'Some things are more important than fear.'"
Lo and Behold, The Changes in Wisconsin are Working
A most interesting article has just been published in City Journal. It describes in detail, with example after example, how Governor Scott Walker's changes are making things better, not worse. Quite a contrast from the dire predictions made by the public sector unions and their sympathizers.
The unions’ battle against Walker’s reforms has rested on the argument that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services.At the outset of the public-union standoff, educators had made dire predictions that Walker’s reforms would force schools to fire teachers. In February, to take one example, Madison School District Superintendent Dan Nerad predicted that 289 teachers in his district would be laid off. Walker insisted that his reforms were actually a job-retention program: by accepting small concessions in health and pension benefits, he argued, school districts would be able to spare hundreds of teachers’ jobs. The argument proved sound. So far, Nerad’s district has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts. No teachers were laid off in Beloit and LaCrosse; Eau Claire saw a reduction of two teachers, while Racine and Wausau each laid off one. The Wauwatosa School District, which faced a $6.5 million shortfall, anticipated slashing 100 jobs—yet the new pension and health contributions saved them all.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
McGuinty puts his faith in good nature of unions. (h/t Kevin)
London, Ontario Mayor Joe Fontana vs. Private Enterprise
h/t Matt from Mississauga
This Is Awkward
Or is the word "intentional"?
The Department of Education has acknowledged using flawed data in a study on the impact of race on student loan repayment rates, having omitted black students from its calculation. The analysis was conducted during the debate over gainful employment regulations, in response to complaints that the rules would hurt colleges that enroll relatively high percentages of minority students.
[...]
The Obama administration designed the federal rules in an attempt to ensure that most programs at for-profit colleges and certificate and vocational programs at nonprofit institutions prepare students for "gainful employment." For programs to be eligible for federal financial aid, they must adhere to benchmarks related to student loan repayment and debt-to-income ratios.
The original analysis was included in the introduction section of the final rules, which were issued last June. It asserted that the “percentage of the students that are members of a minority group explains 1 percent of the total variance in repayment rates” at for-profit institutions. The low figure, the department concluded at the time, meant the racial composition of students was not a statistically significant contributor to how an institution stacks up on loan repayments. The percentage of lower-income students an institution enrolled was a better measure.
But by failing to count black students, the study understated the impact of race: the actual variance at for-profits is 20 percent over all, and 31 percent for four-year institutions, the department said in the December filing.
Via Instapundit
Alternative State of the Union Speech
Here's the speech John Stossel wishes would have been given last night.
Related: A State of Denial (or simply a speech given by a huckster who has zero respect for those he's speaking to?)
We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Fans
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture wants the provincial government to temporarily pull the plug on industrial wind turbine development until serious shortcomings with the program can be fixed. [...]
Wales says the situation has become untenable and industrial wind turbines are occupying the rural agenda. “It’s tearing rural communities apart.”
Farmers need to focus on growing food, creating jobs and helping get the economy back on track.
“We’re clearly getting the message from our members that we need to come out very strong and remind government the issues must be dealt with now,” he says.
h/t Jamie
Honey, I Finished The Internet
A virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel. (h/t EBD)
In The Mail
 | "The book that follows is not a history in the normal sense, but, as the subtitle explains, the history of a controversy. The controversy in question is the one which has raged for many years around the question: What ended Roman civilization and brought about the Dark Ages?" |
More at New English Review.
Expect the Expected
Just over a week ago Anne Marie Waters, a Council Member of the National Secular Society, was scheduled to give a talk at Queen Mary University of London as a Co-Spokesperson on behalf of the anti-Shariah group One Law For All. You'll never guess what happened next:
Before (the talk) started, a man entered the lecture theatre, stood at the front with a camera and filmed the audience. He then said that he knew who everyone was, where they lived and if he heard anything negative about the Prophet, he would track them down. The man also filmed students in the foyer and threatened to murder them and their families. On leaving the building, he joined a large group of men, apparently there to support him.
Campus security to the rescue!
He said: 'If you have these discussions, what do you expect?'
Well, in any country anywhere in the world with a substantial Muslim population you can expect to be hung out to dry by politicians and law-enforcement officials. Would-be speaker Ann Marie Waters - who is courageous by virtue of even attempting to speak out against Islamist censorship and threats - seems just a half-step away from understanding that in the relativistic, equivocating West, front-line defenders of free speech are essentially on their own:
I am left wondering what exactly we could have done. I would love to say that we stood up to him and carried on bravely in a valiant defence of free speech, but it was a frightening experience and I know that people felt genuinely threatened and upset. In any case, is it the role of speakers and students to face off against potentially violent Islamists in defence of our free speech, risking our safety in the process?
Reader Tips
In the early 1920's a group of Canadian musicians crossed the great briny to become the resident band at New Princes' Restaurant in Piccadilly in the heart of London. In tonight's musical selection, recorded in November 1925, the New Princes' Toronto Band and their unidentified vocalist perform a vaguely indelicate canoeing song about the hearty open-air pleasures of Paddlin' Madeline Home.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
January 24, 2012
YNoKyoto
Barclays Closes US Carbon Desk In Latest Cap And Trade Setback
Have a Little Fun with Tonight's State of the Union speech
When The One starts speaking tonight, you might want to make the event a whole lot more fun by playing Obama Bingo. You can download your cards here (PDF).
"And in other news today...
Canada and Mexico will have no weather. Sports at 6:00."
Politically Correct Nitwits Attack Lego
There's even an online petition against Lego!
Here's more from Adler's radio show.
h/t Matt from Mississauga
Harper Won't Axe the Indian Act
Some might argue that he is making a mistake in the interest of political correctness and avoiding opening up a new line of attack from the Liberals & NDP.
Toronto Hydro: One Very Confused Government Agency
Toronto Hydro appears to be . . . well, confused.
The Conservatives' Super Secret Anti-Gay Agenda
Kelly McParland eviscerates the Idiotic Left in this hilarious column.
Lorne Gunter: Big cuts needed in Ottawa’s bloated public service
Lorne Gunter skewers the phoney reports coming out of left-wing advocacy groups about massive cuts to the Federal Government's workforce. He only wishes what they were saying was true!
Each of the more than 450,000 federal civil servants costs taxpayers an average of $92,000 annually for salaries, benefits and pension contributions, according to James Lahey, a former senior bureaucrat who has done the most comprehensive studies yet into civil service pay and benefits. The cost of a federal civil servant is nearly $20,000 a year more than the cost of an average private-sector worker.
Related: A new report from the Centre for Policy Hysteria
Reader Tips
Ridin' tough ponies was his middle name. One day, a feller made him a bet that he couldn't ride that pin-eared, bog-spavined, Roman-nosed, double square iron-branded Strawberry Roan.
Based on rodeo rider Curley Fletcher's poem.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
January 23, 2012
Tim Thomas "Just Has To Be" a Racist
The Radical Left's latest Racist Poster Boy is none other than Tim Thomas, goaltender of the Boston Bruins. Why? Because he refused to go to the White House today.
Here's the statement that Thomas released:
"I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People. This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers [ sic ] vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL."
h/t 'Snagglepuss'
Some of the comments at the Bruins Blog are priceless:
Way to put your own confused political leanings in the way of your team, your town, your fans...Continue reading Tim Thomas "Just Has To Be" a Racist"You assume Thomas's absence is a political statement, but for all we know, he may have had a roll with the first lady and felt the situation would have been socially awkward.
Typical knee-jerk liberals didn't say a word when Theo skipped a Bush invite. Hypocrites.
First off, not so bad that you dissed the President of the United States, but this is a slap in the face to all the Boston Bruins fans. In case he hasn't noticed, Massachusetts is a Democratic State. Why would Thomas take this stand. Doesn't he know that Curt Schilling pretty much got run out of town for backing and working to get George W Bush elected?
Besides that, Red Sox management exercised their rights under his contract to put a stop to his foray into politics right quick. I respect most people for their political beliefs, but Glen Beck? I could see Ronald Regan, John F Buckley, Dwight D Eisenhour, but Glen Beck? The guy is a Nazi for god sake! My guess is that the Boston Fans will let their feelings known at the next home game.
