There are lessons to be learned from the dazzling success of the surge strategy in Iraq.
Lesson one is that just about no mission is impossible for the United States military. A year ago it was widely thought, not just by the new Democratic leaders in Congress but also in many parts of the Pentagon, that containing the violence in Iraq was impossible. Now we have seen it done.
Chart via AJ Strata (where there’s more)
The clever art of painting a Hitler mustache on a photograph comes of age.
The people of the city of Bam, still in tents.
Those politically incorrect genes are at it again.
The story of Sven Somme’s shoes.
Add yours in the comments.
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and “the only answer for these appalling crimes is to bring back the death penalty for any driving offence no matter how small”
The time has come for people power to show these morons who really does rule this country,the wall has now reached the back of the the true bosses here. We’re all being taken for idiots. – Mike, Coventry
This society gets worse and sicker by the day. I can’t wait until I can retire and get out of this hell hole of a country. – Diana, England
Eating a sarnie?! does that also apply to sweets? Or having just one hand on the wheel? which would mean virtually nearly every driver getting caught as (unlike most other countries) most cars are manual! – Cww, Ipswich, Suffolk
Oh happy days in our free and happy country- smile you slaves or I will tax sorry fine you- Happy Xmas Gordon Mcbean. – Ian, Hereford
I think the use of these high tech digital cameras to catch potentially dangerous drivers is a fantastic idea. I’m tired of observing drivers using mobile phones and smoking whilst driving on our congested roads where full concentration is needed at all times. I’d make the fines higher too, maybe confiscation of their cars would make these irresponsible drivers think twice. Lets go for it. – Bill, Warrington England
Will there be two variants of camera? Type A set up to screw Joe Public; type B programmed to disregard police who commit the same offence. – Glyn, Southampton, U.K.
I think I’ll give up motoring and take up drug-dealing, pimping, mugging, burglary, and extortion …it’ll be safer for me, and more socially-acceptable. – David Bourke, Rochester, England.
Murderers are treated better than motorists, but then they’re an easier target. They give the government a big income from fines and they improve the ‘crime’ statistics no end. Government has become a joke in this country. – Ian, Benfleet, UK
h/t Drained Brain
Please pee into the phone;
The poll suggested that 17% of Canadians believed many NHL players use performance-enhancing drugs while 36% said a fair number used them. Thirty-two percent felt only a few were on them and 1% said none used them. Fourteen percent had no opinion.
Who needs drug testing when you have public “opinion”?
I don’t know what’s more discouraging – that someone apparently paid for this, or that pollsters actually found people willing to answer such utterly meaningless questions.
via National Newswatch
More on the science of polling, from the comments – “Did/can anybody quantify the difference between “many” and “a fair number”? What would be fair? 99%? I think so. Then they would almost all be on a level playing rink. BTW…do we have a “fair” number of taxes, or just “many”?
Only an expert can answer a question like that. Unfortunately, I’ve had to ban Pollara computers from accessing the site.
For the uninitiated, here is the lowdown: Andrew Dessler is a professor at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University. He is complaining about a US senate report which listed hundreds of individuals who have been reported in the media during 2007 as speaking against the “scientific consensus” on climate change, claiming that they are scientists. The report naturally challenges the very principle of the consensus, which has given climate policies the authority they have needed to be carried forward. The global warming camp have sought to undermine the value of this new list, by claiming that the scientists lack scientific qualifications, expertise, or moral integrity.
[…]
But Dessler doesn’t tell us exactly how we are to measure the qualifications, we just have to take his word for it that the 400 sceptics aren’t qualified, but the IPCC scientists are. So it’s not simply a consensus, it’s a qualified consensus, and he gets to call the qualification. So much for science. So, apparently, the IPCC scientists who represent the consensus are more qualified than their counterparts.
Or, maybe not.
We decided to test Dessler’s claim. So we downloaded IPCC WGII’s latest report on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”. There were 380 contributors to the report […] we focused on the contributors who operate in the UK. Of the 51 UK contributors to the report, there were 5 economists, 3 epidemiologists, 5 who were either zoologists, entomologists, or biologists. 5 worked in civil engineering or risk management / insurance. 7 had specialisms in physical geography (we gave the benefit of the doubt to some academics whose profiles weren’t clear about whether they are physical or human geographers). And just 10 have specialisms in geophysics, climate science or modelling, or hydrology. But there were 15 who could only be described as social scientists. If we take the view that economics is a social science, that makes 20 social scientists.
[…]
There were a few professors, but few of them had the profile Dessler gives them. Many of them were in fact, hard to locate to establish just how much better than their counterparts they were. […]
Among the remainder – most of whom are not professors, but research associates at best, are an assorted bunch, many of whom are better known for their alarmist statements in the mainstream press than they are for their contributions to scientific knowledge – activists in other words, with their own political motivation. And in spite of being reported as “climate scientists”, involved in scientific research, also seem to be working within the social sciences, albeit for “climate research” institutions, such as Tyndall. Johanna Wolf, for example, is an IPCC contributor from the University of East Anglia, who works in the department for “development studies”. Does that make her a climate scientist? Anna Taylor, of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Oxford has no PhD at all, her research focuses on “stakeholder engagement in adapting to multiple stresses, including climate variability and change, water scarcity, food insecurity and health concerns” – not climate science, and has simply not been alive long enough to join the ranks of the specialists of specialisms that Dessler demands of sceptics. Similarly, Susanne Rupp-Armstrong, listed as a member of Southampton University only appears to have ever contributed to one academic paper. Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, Maureen Agnew does not focus her research on climate science, but on such things as “Public perceptions of unusually warm weather in the UK: impacts, responses and adaptations”, and “Potential impacts of climate change on international tourism.” Katherine Vincent specialising in “Social Capital and Climate change” at the UEA, only began her PhD thesis in October 2003. How can she be cited as a specialist in climate science?
Then there are the contributors whose involvement we cannot explain.
The things CBC Fruit Fly Guy doesn’t tell you. Oh wait – he’s not a climate scientist, either.
h/t Maz 2. This is one to bookmark.
… and in spite of that he was a buddy of mine. One of the few that didn’t have his head in the sand and instead of just trying to push loans through to get the commission, he actually cared about the likelihood of repayment. He was a brand new banker, and in being such was crippled by his idealism and integrity. One day, obviously frustrated he pulled me into his office, closed the doors and asked me, “Look, I need your help. What the heck is going on here?”
The Toronto Humane Society struggles as global warming results in more hours of daylight.
Tips for Saturday.
Al Qaeda terrorists can continue to murder Iraqis and Americans at the behest of Osama, but their tactics will only backfire. Osama will no more own Iraq than he will own America. His is a lost cause. Not because of decisive military defeats, (although these have helped) but because decent Iraqi people from all quarters, sects and regions of Iraq have had enough of his people cutting off heads of children.
It’s understandable that this turn of events might come as news to Osama, because he cannot set foot in Iraq for fear of his life.
Earlier this month, Thomas Edison’s GE,, together with Sylvania and Philips won a legislative victory when Congress passed an energy bill that would outlaw sale of the standard light bulb by 2012.
Sylvania is the leading light bulb maker worldwide, and GE is tops in America. These two companies, together with Dutch-based Royal Phillips Electronics, concede they basically wrote the new light bulb law. It goes without saying that they stand to profit from it — at consumer expense.
[…]
On Dec. 18, the day the bill cleared its biggest hurdle and passed the Senate, GE’s stock jumped 8.8 percent, and Philips jumped 2.1 percent.
These companies will get rich thanks to energy bill, but it’s not clear the public or the environment will share the windfall GE and Philips will experience. GE makes its CFLs and other fancy light bulbs in China, while it makes its incandescents in the United States.
The light bulb law will ship more American jobs offshore, shift manufacturing to China’s dirtier and less efficient factories, and increase shipping distances. Add in the mercury, and it’s not clear how good this law is for the environment. Its clearest benefit is to the companies who lobbied for it.
The Prince Albert Daily Herald goes out on a foreign policy limb;
In MacKay’s defence, there is an accepted link between Islamic extremists and the Taliban.
Their Iranian readers debate in the comments.
“This is more than just another headline for me because a close friend of mine was also close friend of Benazir Bhutto.”
Defending socialism is such hard work.
Dishonesty at Real Climate.org.
Add yours in the comments.
They’re all made in China;
The growth in China’s emissions from 2006-2010 is equivalent to adding the 2004 emissions of Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia to China’s 2006 total (source). The emissions growth in China at these rates is like adding another Germany every year, or a UK and Australia together, to global emissions.
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and here shines a glimmer of hope;
Of the 563 masters and joint masters of foxhounds this season, 215 have taken on the role since the Hunting Act came into force in spring 2005.
Some of the record Boxing Day crowds were seen at the Avon Vale Hunt, where nearly 6,000 met at Lacock, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, and at the Heythrop Hunt, in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, where 5,000 turned out.
Di Pyper, Master of the Puckeridge Hunt, which attracted 600 supporters at Brent Pelham, in Hertfordshire, said there is now a countrywide call for a repeal of the ban.
She added: “A lot of people who are here today would not even have thought about hunting a few years ago.
Boxing Day has become an opportunity to show support for us. The Hunting Act has failed and the campaign against hunting has backfired.”
h/t to Charles MacDonald
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, available at Amazon;
Liberal fascism: The Fondest Dreams of the American Left, available at the Baltimore Chronicle;
The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.
There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents—human and non-human—survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.
It should be considered acceptable, in this stifling new world, to say, “Shut up. We told you this would happen.”
Liberal Fascism: Lighting The Way for the American Left available at a Canadian Human Rights Commission nearest you.
I wanted to let you know that linking to non-public officials who may be involved in this process could make things worse. Even if you do not live in Canada, at best it will increase the sympathy of the Tribunal to the complainants. It doesn’t matter if you’re not officially affiliated with Steyn, because they can use it as an example of harrassing behaviour that his articles and books are encouraging.
