It’s The First Time In History

Moonbats 71 Comments

That the late afternoon sun has melted steel;

[Melissa Hortman of the Minnesota House of Representatives] speculated that 90-plus-degree heat Wednesday and the above-normal temperatures of the past two summers may have been a contributing factor.
“Did the heat put extra strain on the steel?” Hortman said. “You wonder if this bridge was built to withstand the massive heat we have had this summer.”

Wait! There’s more from a “Senior Fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress“.

My brother also wonders if the low level of the Mississippi played a role. He writes that most of “Minnesota is currently under Moderate to Severe Drought conditions. The water level has been lower but the less-than-optimal conditions” could have been a stressor.

And here’s a sobering question. With our bridges now failing under the dual assaults of sunlight and too much air beneath them – how will they perform when faced with the global warming rivers of lava?
h/t Newsbusters

It’s Time To Review My Ad Rates

Media 33 Comments

Alan D. Mutter;

Three weeks ago, Newsosaur’s admittedly modest traffic spiked to an all-time daily high of more than 1,000 visits as the result of a link from a blog called, I kid you not, Small Dead Animals.
Two weeks ago, by contrast, Forbes and Business Week each quoted Newsosaur on their websites, and those links resulted in a single, solitary hit from a Business Week reader.
So, there you have it: Small Dead Animals top Large Ones by 1,000 to 1.
One event, of course, doesn’t prove much.

What happened next…

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 40 Comments

Wired;

Krawetz took an image from a 2006 al Qaeda video of Ayman al-Zawahiri (above right), a senior member of the terrorist organization. The image shows al-Zawahiri sitting in front of a desk and banner with writing on it. But after conducting his error analysis Krawetz was able to determine that al-Zawahiri’s image was superimposed in front of the background — and was most likely videotaped in front of a black sheet.

It’s the stupid people, stupid.
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST: Jamaat ul-Fuqra
Comments are open for yours.

Oh, Say Can You See?

Media 107 Comments

This is why we despise you.
Richard Ball writes from Charlottetown;

Like all meetings of its kind, last night’s Conservative Party meeting on the Charlottetown waterfront began with the singing of the national anthem. The national anthem is not a Liberal anthem or a Conservative anthem, it is the anthem of Canada, for all Canadians.
Everyone in the room rose and sang, with one apparent exception: the Canadian media.
I didn’t notice this directly as I was busy singing, but we were seated right beside the media area, and the person next to me did notice and told me about it afterwards, saying she felt like asking them if they didn’t know the words.
I had noticed something. When the national anthem was announced, one of the young women in the media group broke into the first line of the American national anthem. At the time I dismissed this as a juvenile attempt at being clever, but, given the media’s left-wing bias and working assumption that Stephen Harper is a puppet of E. A. (Evil American) George Bush, I suspect she was making an in-joke for her media brothers and sisters that she knew would be well received.
In defense of the media, I suppose they consider themselves “not there” as participants in the event; they are there as outsiders, as objective observers. But if that is so, the fact that one of them broke the media oath of silence and sang the American anthem when the Canadian national anthem was announced is a stain on their claims to journalistic integrity.
Or, maybe they just can’t sing.

If anyone can identify this “reporter” or the organization she works for, I’d very much like to provide her the recognition she deserves.

Barley Freedom Day

Gopher News 31 Comments

“Farmers have spoken,” Harper said Monday. “They’re sick of the Liberals and the NDP trying to stop freedom and keep prices low for farmers. And, mark my words, this battle isn’t over.
“We may have to wait till next season,, but we’re going to get this market opened, whether the Wheat Board likes it or not, and farmers are eventually going to win this battle.”

A reader who was in attendence at Barley Freedom Day (held at Portage La Prairie, MB on Aug. 1) shares these comments;

Barley Freedom Day was supposed to be the occasion when Western barley farmers would actually be able to enjoy what Eastern barley farmers have enjoyed all along. Choice farmers right across the Prairies were looking forward to capturing the higher prices that the free market can offer; of establishing long term relationships with buyers of their choice, of seeking out niche-markets otherwise unavailable to them, and of partnering in value-added businesses, Instead, these business-farmers must endure a continued-forced relationship with a a patriarchal institution that is intent on continuing mass-exporting raw barley, to be managed and coached by self-serving employees, and be directed by Directors whose political ideology trumps good business decision-making.
The judicial announcement initially knocked the wind out of many choice advocates, but it wasn’t long before they got their second wind. Especially when it was widely rumored that the judicaI determination was made by a protege of Liberal Anne McClellan.
A judicial Review launched by Merchant Law Group several years ago concerning money taken out of farmers’ pooling accounts seems to be stalled in the courts. Stalled to near-death. The Courts seem ambivelent, even receptive, to the untimeliness of the CWB missed deadlines in Merchant’s class action suit on behalf of farmers, but in the same breath, accomodating, no eager, to an institutional CWB in the judicial review of barley.
The bottom line at the Barley Freedom Fighter’s Day Celebration was that farmers again and again expressed the view that the Courts are rampant with political Liberal-bias.
Farmers also repeatedly expressed the view, albeit quietly, that they were quite prepared to run the border. Many felt that any substantive change in the past has come from defiance of the law. Respect is fading fast. Since farmers have traditionally been law-abiding members of society, and our jails are not filled with children from farm families, obviously, it is the court that is losing the respect they demand, That does not bode well for society.
There was a quiet re-affirmation of a dedication to choice marketing at the Barley Freedom Fighters’ Day. That kind of resolve is the worst kind to beat into the ground. Marketing choice will prevail.

Sued Into Silence

Religion Of Submission 102 Comments

Mark Steyn;

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who’s behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?
For the answer, let us turn to a fascinating book called “Alms for Jihad: Charity And Terrorism in the Islamic World,” by J. Millard Burr, a former USAID relief coordinator, and the scholar Robert O Collins. Can’t find it in your local Barnes & Noble? Never mind, let’s go to Amazon. Everything’s available there. And sure enough, you’ll come through to the “Alms for Jihad” page and find a smattering of approving reviews from respectably torpid publications: “The most comprehensive look at the web of Islamic charities that have financed conflicts all around the world,” according to Canada’s Globe And Mail, which is like the New York Times but without the jokes.
Unfortunately, if you then try to buy “Alms for Jihad,” you discover that the book is “Currently unavailable. We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” Hang on, it was only published last year. At Amazon, items are either shipped within 24 hours or, if a little more specialized, within four to six weeks, but not many books from 2006 are entirely unavailable with no restock in sight.
Well, let us cross the ocean, thousands of miles from the Amazon warehouse, to the High Court in London. Last week, the Cambridge University Press agreed to recall all unsold copies of “Alms for Jihad” and pulp them. In addition, it has asked hundreds of libraries around the world to remove the volume from their shelves. This highly unusual action was accompanied by a letter to Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, in care of his English lawyers, explaining their reasons…

Counterterrorism Blog;

Two news flashes on August 1, 2007. First, the lawyers representing the so-called Flying Imams in their lawsuit against US Airways announced that they were not going after the unnamed passengers whose concerns prompted the men to be pulled off the Arizona-bound flight (here). I suppose that is good to know, now that the long-term policy implications of their lawsuit are about to justify (literally) an act of Congress. Second, Cambridge University Press announced that it was going to destroy all copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker (here).
Connected? Absolutely.

Read them both.

All Your NBC Dateline Producers Are Belong To Us

Media 32 Comments

“We just want to ask you some questions… have you ever been on 60 minutes?”

Story. (h/t Maz2 in the comments)
More: Dave provides more links in the comments;

this MSM reporter wanted to play “gotcha” journalism, got caught then experienced firsthand what the MSM is perfectly happy to do to others. Poetic Justice, and she can cry me a river. I doubt anyone here would want a reporter playing any games like this with them.

Yup.

The Sound Of Settled Science

Climate Cult 46 Comments

Reader “Vitruvius” in the comments;

“The following is a media piece, not a learned essay; with that proviso I can now report that apparently there is some decent new evidence to the effect that – wait for it – stars produce organic molecules.

CS Monitor;

Every complex molecule absorbs and emits radio waves at unique frequencies. You can think of it as a molecule’s radio signature. Chemists can discover those “signatures” in the laboratory for any molecule they’re interested in. Then they can look for those signatures among the stars.
That’s how Dr. Ziurys and her colleagues in Tucson, Ariz., found something that should not be happening around the giant star VY Canis Majoris some 5,000 light years away. It’s one of the brightest celestial objects when viewed by infrared light. But observations with infrared or visible light have not revealed what radio tracking of molecules now shows. Two molecule-rich jets shoot out from the star. It’s the kind of chemistry expected around relatively nearby stars that are rich in carbon and poor in oxygen. VY Canis Majoris, however, has twice as much oxygen as carbon. As explained in the university’s announcement of this research last week, this discovery shows that there are far more sources of complex molecules to enrich the interstellar dust from which planets form than astronomers have suspected.
Half a century ago, astronomers thought complex molecules couldn’t exist in interstellar space because ultraviolet radiation should blast them apart. Observers have identified over 140 interstellar molecules since then. But doubts about negatively charged molecules have lingered. Such molecules would have extra electrons that UV radiation should easily knock off. Forget that. In less than a year, radio tracking of molecular “signatures” has found three such “impossible” molecules.

Another recommended link – beer in space!

Bio-Fools

Uncategorized 43 Comments

Just remember, it’s all about saving the planet:

Barto is more sad than angry. He is a leader of a Dayak Kanayan community in a remote part of the rainforest in deepest Borneo.
Gazing out over a vast expanse of freshly planted palm oil plants, he says: “This is our ancestors’ land which we have had for years, and now we have lost it.”

And in Canada

The publication also said 48 to 52 per cent of Canada’s total corn-seeded area and 11 to 12 per cent of the wheat-seeded area would have to be used – all this for Canada to reach its domestic biofuel target of 5 per cent of the national fuel consumption by 2010.

Remember This

The pasta crisis is the latest in what may soon be a regular rise in global prices. In January, Mexican consumers were hit with a tortilla crisis, as grain prices doubled and tripled the cost of tortillas and caused riots in some places. Beer prices in Germany ticked upwards in May partially due to the increased production of biofuels.

cross-posted @ Cjunk

“Progressia” … As Stingy as Ever

Uncategorized 144 Comments

But, how can this be…

In the U.S., religious people who say they devote “a great deal of effort” to their spiritual lives are 42 percentage points more likely to contribute to charity than secularists who have little or no religious faith. Moreover, religious Americans do not just give to their churches: They are also significantly more likely than secular Americans to donate money and time to non-religious charities such as the United Way.
Brooks also found a strong and specific correlation between political ideology and charity. In both the United States and Europe, conservatives who believe in limited government are far more likely to make charitable contributions than are liberals who think government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality.

cross-posted: Cjunk

Reader Tips

Reader Tips 43 Comments

I had a very long day in the sun, won a few ribbons, and have an early morning ahead. So, this is all you get for a while from me.
And no, I’m not interested in Carol Skelton’s or anyone else’s seat. But thanks for the thought.
And we’ll miss you Carol!

Good Luck With That

Media 10 Comments

Inside The CBC;

Any CBC employee who wants to start a personal blog which “clearly associates them with CBC/Radio-Canada” now requires their supervisor’s permission, according to a new policy document.
The unsigned policy document also states that this rule applies “not only to CBC/Radio-Canada journalists but to any corporation employee.”
Besides what you’d expect in a document like this, like not using the CBC’s resources (email, bandwidth, time, etc.) to update your blog, the policy states that such bloggers are “expected to behave in a way that is consistent with our journalistic philosophy, editorial values and corporate policies.”

Which means screwyoucbc.blogspot.com is about 15 minutes from launch.
h/t

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