Now what would that be? $10 billion UN-linked climate change fund wants immunity from prosecution
h/t Kevin B
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore
And the title of today’s story is Surrender;
Paramount Pictures has apparently forced the cancellation of planned screenings of Team America: World Police across the U.S. in the coming days, presumably over fears of the bogeymen from North Korea.
The Libranos: The Big McWipe
Police allege Liberal caucus paid $10k to have McGuinty office computers wiped;
Newly released police documents allege the partner of an aide for Dalton McGuinty was paid $10,000 to wipe personal data from the hard drives of computers in the premier’s office which happened to contain emails related to the two cancelled gas plants.
The allegation was contained in over 130 pages of documents which police used in order to obtain a search warrant for the provincial government’s security branch on Jarvis Street which they searched last month.
Million Mummy March
Mummy privilege: They have also discovered that the mummies appear to be clustered together by hair colour, with those with blond hair in one area and all of those with red hair in another.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Kevin, Gavin, Mike, It’s Seth again.
People who own all-electric cars where coal generates the power may think they are helping the environment. But a new study finds their vehicles actually make the air dirtier, worsening global warming.
Ethanol isn’t so green, either.
“It’s kind of hard to beat gasoline” for public and environmental health, said study co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean … are not better than gasoline.”
Of course, no study is complete without meaningless numbers extrapolated from pure conjecture;
The study finds all-electric vehicles cause 86 percent more deaths from air pollution than do cars powered by regular gasoline.
But what the hay! I’ll amuse myself, anyway.
ROLLING DEATH: ELECTRICS MAKE UP LESS THAN 1% OF CARS ON THE ROAD. http://t.co/ctlE6NZG1U @borenbears pic.twitter.com/mjp4BiRhdP
— Katewerk (@katewerk) December 18, 2014
Marvin! Was That You?
Reader Tips
In tonight’s Christmas entertainment Variety Fun-Pack Special you get to choose between James Brown’s Funky Christmas Millennium – huh! – or Midwest boy Andy Williams’ rendition of The Christmas Song.
If you play both, your computer will explode. Choose wisely.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Jim Prentice Country
It’s official: Danielle Smith and eight other Wildrose MLAs officially cross the floor to the Alberta Progressive Conservatives
Embargo Lifted, Fidel Still Dead.
Michael Totten on Cuba.
It was bound to happen eventually: The United States and Cuba have decided to restore diplomatic relations after treating each other as enemy states since the 1960s.
Some are elated and some are despondent. Both sides can make a strong case.
I visited Cuba near the end of last year and returned home with mixed feelings about the US embargo. Cuba is in no way a strategic or military threat to the United States. If diplomatic relations hadn’t already been severed a long time ago, Washington would have no reason to suddenly sever them now. In that sense, the embargo is an anachronism, a leftover from a now-distant past and a different era of history.
On the other hand, Cuba has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere. Allowing the regime in from the cold gives it a patina of legitimacy it has done nothing whatsoever to earn, and it exhausts whatever scraps of leverage the United States had to convince the island’s overlords to free their people and share power like most other governments in the region.
So is restoring diplomatic ties the right call? I have no idea. I thought I’d return home from Cuba and take a firm stand one way or another, but some things in politics and in life are ambiguous.
What follows are my thoughts as originally published in World Affairs in March, 2014, before this decision was made.
I just think it’s ironic that in the 50 years that have passed under embargo, America has moved closer to communism than Cuba has to liberty.
Reaction at Babalu Blog.
Bin Laden Is Dead And 140 Schoolchildren Are Dead
Still got their fingernails? Still got their testicles? Still got their eyes? Shut up, then.
According to a new poll released Tuesday by The Washington Post and ABC News, a majority of Americans believe that torture of suspected terrorists can be justified — even in the wake of graphic revelations by a Senate Intelligence Committee report of exactly what such tactics look like.
Related: “More journalists have tried the experience of being waterboarded than terrorists were subjected to it.”
Oh Nooos!
(Via email) Emergency Fundraising Appeal from National Farmers Union President Jan Slomp!
Delegates and members at convention heard first-hand about the precarious financial situation the NFU is projecting for 2014-2015 – a deficit of more than $75,000. As usual, our members faced this challenge head-on. In less than two days, 120 delegates and visitors contributed $15,000 to defray our budget shortfall!
Careful management by the Board of Directors allowed the NFU to absorb similar or larger revenue losses in each of the last two years without reducing staff or noticeably cutting services. Staff, volunteer Board members and members across the country all worked together to provide the policy analysis, research and publications that farmers – in fact all Canadians – need in these hostile times.
Even with the emergency fundraising at convention and the Board’s careful stewardship, the NFU cannot survive a third revenue shortfall of this size without cutting staff and services to the point that we will no longer fulfill our mandate or be able to recruit or retain members.
Tip of the hat to Shawn, who’s as distraught as we all are.
It’s Probably Nothing
All of these “notes” are simply bundles of risk-free bonds subsidized by written derivative premiums on oil-prices – and sold to greater-fool yield-reaching muppet investors around the world who never saw a short-term trend they did not extrapolate – the question is – who is on the other side of all these notes? Especially now that capital is actually being eroded instead of simply less gains…
h/t Melinda Romanoff, who adds;
The net effect of those Crude Oil Structured Notes is that any of the margin inside those things would wipe out any margin for other trades, a k a stocks, and force a sell off with them. Another side effect of the new Corzine Rule, leave absolutely no excess margin in any account, lest your broker use it for their own trading account.
So every thing goes out with the Structured Note bath water.
I wonder who wanted these things put together to short them……
Related: It’s Not Oil That Is Causing The Slump, It’s The End Of QE
YNoKyoto
Japan’s Turn to Coal Belies Claim That Climate Change Mitigation Comes Cheap
And after almost three and a half years … the state of the Japanese electricity sector puts the lie to Paul Krugman and like-minded green energy enthusiasts. As reported last week by Reuters, utilities in Japan are burning a record amount of coal, and they intend to increase coal capacity by a further 40 percent, climate be damned. According to reporters Aaron Sheldrick & Osamu Tsukimori, “Japan’s appetite for cheap coal, to counter a soaring oil and gas bill after the nuclear shutdown, saw it import a record 109 million tons of coal in 2013.
Reader Tips
We’re not quite there yet, but It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas.
The comments, as always, are open for your Reader Tips.
Quote Of The Day
“FYI: The guys who slaughtered all those school children in Pakistan are the same guys Obama doesn’t want to waterboard.” – Katie Pavlich
Wild Rose Country
The executive of the Wildrose party is holding a teleconference Tuesday night after Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith met with her caucus to discuss uniting with Premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives.
And that’s all she wrote.
The Children Are Our Future
Bill’s Wife
Oops. Not Bill’s wife.
It’s Probably Nothing
Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.
Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.
NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.
Oh, Shiny Pony!
The Liberal candidate who almost staged a major political upset in Brandon-Souris last year says he only lost the 2013 byelection because of meddling by the national Liberal office,
Rolf Dinsdale issued a scathing letter on Facebook on Friday, saying he won’t be seeking the nomination for the riding again and that “the Liberal Party has made deciding not to run an easy choice for me to make.”
h/t Mike