“A shifty academic” who, by the way, licks his lips when talking about beaver tails.
Make of that what you will.
More at the CJOB audio vault. Go to Tuesday, Feb 24th. The Stickings interview runs from 1:07 – 1:28
The First American Prime Minister In Waiting
The Mole is back!
Via Donny – “You have 2 minutes with the President and you talk about f-ing Beaver Tails???”
The Sound Of Settled Science
Someone, call the Suzuki Foundation;
Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.
Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN’s IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.
One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.
The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan’s native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.
JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention.
The Register has included a translation of the report.
h/t Pete
The Anti Sean Penn
The way the Oscars should have played out…
“There’s definitely a connection between you and the fish”
And, well, your pickup truck.
h/t
Telepathy Journalism At The Associated Press
Standing before a nation on an economic precipice, President Barack Obama aimed to balance candor with can-do Tuesday night in his first address to a joint session of Congress. Millions more anxious Americans were tuning in on TV.
In a related display of journalistic transparency, the Associated Press’s Jennifer Loven and Ron Fournier hint at next week’s winning lottery numbers.
h/t Gord Tulk
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night vintage music show, here is the first known published recording of Enrico Caruso. He’s performing the Studenti! Udite aria from Alberto Franchetti‘s opera Germania, in 1902 (1:57).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Not Waiting For The Asteroid
Go ahead. Cancel your subscription. They’ll take your money anyway.
“It was at a party to raise money for Africans”
“… and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.”
Blog Notes
Yes, I’m back. We left Chicago at 6:30 Sunday night and rolled into Delisle 25 hours later.
As you might expect, it’s going to take me a day or two to bring blogging activity back up to normal. Aside from checking the Drudge Report once while I was there to reassure myself that the sky is still falling, I’ve been out of the current events loop completely.
Thanks again to the guest bloggers who kept the place running while I was gone – be sure to bookmark their sites and return the favour by including them in your daily stops.
Harper On Kudlow
A pretty good interview with the PM on CNBC.
Robbing Defense To Pay Hamas
Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
What on Earth is the administration doing announcing plans to give $900 Million in aid to rebuild Hamas’ Gaza Strip while our own Defense Department’s Security Development Plan for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan “faces a shortfall of approximately $167.5 million, about 73 percent of its funding goal for fiscal year 2009,” according to a GAO report?
Did we not just witness the American president heading up a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit”? With fiscal responsibility in such high demand, one must forget entirely the nearly $1 trillion in irresponsibly distributed ‘stimulus’ already signed into commitment and the half-trillion dollar supplemental spending bill being presented this week. In a less than three week span, the two spending packages together would instantly represent a more than 10% increase in the national debt accrued over this nation’s entire history. Yet when it comes to Defense and National Security, seemingly the only budgets eyed for any significant spending cuts, critical operations and initiatives expect to be short changed and starved of funds.
The Department of Defense’s Security Development Plan for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, like the administration’s $900 million Gaza aid plan, is directed at the heart of a terrorist haven. But the DoD initiative is directed at curtailing and/or cutting off terrorists from narcotics funding and undermining their stranglehold on and, to the degree that it exists, popular support of the local populations there. An alternative.
The Administration’s Gaza reconstruction gift contains none of these counterterrorism dynamics. Not a one. There is but one ultimate distributor in Gaza: Hamas. The Obama administration can claim that “the aid would not go to Hamas but that it would be funneled through nongovernmental organizations,” but the fact of the matter remains that the Hamas terrorist organization that dominates Gaza stands to gain from every penny. It most certainly will not be hindered. That equation is nowhere in the calculus.
Today’s Economic Lesson of the Day: The P/E Ratio
Super happy fun economic analysis here!
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here is Mr. B. B. King, along with Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, et al., performing The Thrill is Gone (6:50).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Commie Homo Loving Sons ‘A Guns
Sean Penn – F.A.G.
How to Flush a Market
IBD offers up a list of market killers … many brought to you via the new socialist overlords in the US of A. Keep in mind, that there will be no recovery until the “investor”, be it Jack with his $5000 TFSA, or Jill, with her $10 million porfolio, decide to play ball again.
A Sample:
• Newsweek, a prominent national newsweekly, blares from its cover “We Are All Socialists Now,” without a hint of recognition that socialism in its various forms has been repudiated by history — as communism’s collapse in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China attest.
Even so, a $787 billion “stimulus,” along with a $700 billion bank bailout, $75 billion to refinance bad mortgages, $50 billion for the automakers, and as much as $2 trillion in loans from the Fed and the Treasury are hardly confidence-builders for our free-enterprise system.
• Talk of “nationalizing” U.S.’ troubled major banks comes not just from tarnished Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, but also from Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Fed chief Alan Greenspan.
To be sure, bank shares have plunged along with home prices, and many have inadequate capital. But is nationalization really the only solution for an industry whose main product — loans to consumers and businesses — has expanded by over 5% annually so far this year?
Mortgage Debt as a Percent of Disposable Income
Debt is typically the cause of every major recession and depression throughout the history of the world. Through easy credit, people borrow money they can never hope to repay either investing it in foolish things such as Dotcoms or Tulip Bulbs, or perhaps not investing it at all, preferring to do the American thing and buy SUV’s, trips to Europe or degrees in philosophy for their spoiled brat children.
This triggers a recession because the funds borrowed could have been lent to the productive members of society and thusly invested in much wiser and productive things, but since they weren’t, this results in a decrease in production which is the definition of a recession.
Now I caught a lot of flak for my posting Canada might be a better place to live in the near future, but again, to show that this is not just some whim or me being in a foul mood, take a look at who has been abusing their mortgage debt;
It is an obscure statistic, but mortgage debt as a percent of disposable income is a way to measure how much debt different people in different countries take on relative to the only thing that can pay it back; disposable income. Again, surprise, surprise, our Canadian brothers to the north have taken a more conservative stance and is why they will not suffer as much as their southern neighbors.
The scary thing, is mortgage debt isn’t the only kind of debt. There’s government debt, corporate debt, student debt, you name it. And when you add it all up, never has the US had more debt relative to GDP (second chart down). And when you look at what we’re spending this veritable mountain of debt on (the stimulus, propping worthless auto companies, handouts and welfare) what possible semblance of future production can we expect?
Oh, the depression is on like Donkey Kong.
Victory for Freedom of Speech?
A Saskatoon judge acquitted David Ahenakew today, of hate crimes. Is this a victory for freedom of expression? CTV Star Phoenix
The damning comments:
“How do you get rid of a disease like that, that’s going to take over, that’s going to dominate?” Ahenakew responded. “The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That’s how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn’t take over Germany or Europe.
“That’s why he fried six million of those guys, you know. Jews would have owned the God-damned world.”
My thoughts:
1. Ahenakew did not counsel violence against Jews in the present day, therefore he should be left alone.
2. His views are indefensible, laughable, and easily deconstructed in the open marketplace of ideas … and that’s where this battle should be fought.
3. Of concern though, is that the judge commented that with internet gaining prevalence, perhaps hate crimes should be re-examined; suggesting that hate can be spread via the net, and therefore may need to be regulated more. I find this reasoning disturbing.
4. The judge rationalized that since Ahenakew tried to avoid the damning interview, he wasn’t really pushing his views … therefore, not fomenting hate … that they were private views. So, are your views expressed here, in the comments, private or public views?
What say you?
Reader Tips
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are Antal Szalai and some philharmonic orchestra performing the third movement of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s Violin Concerto, Op. 35 (9:51).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
You are Now Entering the Twilight Zone
94% of the carbon in the atmosphere has the same isotopic signature as the natural background. 6% is of an organic origin, fossil fuels included. Half of that organic source, 3% is what the IPCC itself says man is contributing.
[…]
President Barack Obama’s climate czar said Sunday the Environmental Protection Agency will soon issue a rule on the regulation of carbon dioxide, finding that it represents a danger to the public.
The White House is pressing Congress to draft and pass legislation that would cut greenhouse gases by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, threatening to use authority under the Clean Air Act if legislators don’t move fast enough or create strong enough provisions.
… and from the comments:
“It’s politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and legally ridiculous” said tallbloke, chief of himself, a contributor on Whats Up With That.
“Co2 a pollutant? Are they on this earth or fullers?” He added.
A representative of the Union of rhizomes, foodcrops, artichokes, cacti and triffids UR-FACT said the measure to remove co2 from the atmosphere “amounted to the mass murder of all photosynthesising lifeforms”.
Vegetable Supremo Carol Browner was “unavailable for comment”.
[…]
This is good news. Instead of limiting themselves to 60 second ads, OpEd pieces, PR releases, scare headlines, movies and pictorial spreads in national magazines, the anti-CO2 folks will have to come up with real numbers showing what power plants will be shuttered, what industries will be crippled, where the windmills and power lines will be built, how much the solar collectors will cost and how the mass transit will be paid for. Real activity to be paid for with real money and real changes in how people live. Moaning and complaining is easy. Cutting carbon isn’t just hard, it’s impossible without unacceptable sacrifice and expense.