I thought slavery was a very serious moral wrong. Obama's head of scientific falsification thinks it wasn't so bad.

In his lecture, Hansen will argue that the challenge facing future generations from climate change is so urgent that a flat-rate global tax is needed to force immediate cuts in fossil fuel use....

"The situation we're creating for young people and future generations is that we're handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control," he said. "We're in an emergency: you can see what's on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction."

...

Hansen will argue in his lecture that current generations have an over-riding moral duty to their children and grandchildren to take immediate action. Describing this as an issue of inter-generational justice on a par with ending slavery, Hansen said: "Our parents didn't know that they were causing a problem for future generations but we can only pretend we don't know because the science is now crystal clear.

By the way, this paper has been peer-reviewed ahead of publication.

Wonder how they verified that claim that "global warming is a moral wrong on the level of slavery."

They probably have a model for that.

Dick Durbin, incidentally, is a crystal-clear scientist himself.

"It's your money or your life," he said a press conference. "We are either going to dedicate ourselves to a cleaner, more livable planet and accept the initial investment necessary or we're going to pay a heavier price in terms of loss of human life, damage and costs associated with it."

"Investment"

You're a proud owner of part of the Democrats' lucrative investment portfolio -- currently a hundred trillion dollars in the red, but sometime around 2145, you could start seeing some terrific earnings.*

* DISCLAIMER: The Democratic Party does not guarantee terrific earnings.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (192)
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I always hear that hippos are bad-tempered and aggressive and dangerous, but I never see it.

Except in movies, like Congo, where they try to Authenticate their movie by bragging that they know that hippos are dangerous. And of course that's fake.

So here's a hippo charging and head-butting a jeep or Land Rover or something. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (145)
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click

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (122)
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No link. Here's the more egregious parts of his latest column.

President Obama is an intelligent, judicious man who can see all sides of an issue. But every once in a while he tries to get politically cute, and he puts on his Keith Olbermann mask.

Every once in a while?

When does Obama not "put on a Keith Olbermann mask"? Brooks claims this; he ought to be able to give us some examples when Obama spoke as a nonpartisan, intelligent, judicious statesman.

I suppose it’s to his credit that he’s most inept when he tries to take the low road. He resorts to hoary, brain-dead clichés. He wanders so far from his true nature that he makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Authenticity.

When is he ept?

ThatÂ’s pretty much what happened this week in ObamaÂ’s speech before a group of newspaper editors. ObamaÂ’s target in this speech was Representative Paul RyanÂ’s budget.

It should be said at the outset that the Ryan budget has some disturbing weaknesses, which Democrats are right to identify. The Ryan budget would cut too deeply into discretionary spending. This could lead to self-destructive cuts in scientific research, health care for poor kids and programs that boost social mobility.

Later on, he chides Obama thus: " Then he unleashed every 1980s liberal cliché in the book, calling the Republicans a bunch of trickle-down, Trojan horse-bearing social Darwinists."

But didn't Brooks himself just do that, with his litany of woes?

Moreover, the Ryan tax ideas are too regressive. They make tax cuts for the rich explicit while they hide any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors.

How is that regressive? On one hand, he says, Ryan promises, explicitly, tax cuts. In the very next breath, he says Ryan "hides any painful loophole closings that might hurt Republican donors."

Loophole closings like capping the mortgage interest deduction-- that is, increasing the taxable income base of richer people while simultaneously lowering the rate.

That's not regressive. Neither is it progressive. The whole point is to be more or less revenue neutral, and yet increase efficiency and productivity by getting rid of a lot of arbitrary, economic-decision-distorting shelters and loopholes.

All of this applies to better-off Americans. With one hand, a lower rate is granted, with another, the taxable base that rate will be applied to is expanded.

Does David Brooks understand what "regressive" means? Apparently he doesn't.

But these legitimate criticisms and ObamaÂ’s modest but real deficit-reducing accomplishments got buried under an avalanche of distortion. The Republicans have been embarrassing themselves all primary season. ItÂ’s as if Obama wanted to sink to their level in a single hour.

Obama's real deficit-reducing accomplishments?

Like when he walked away from an actual deal, because Democrats told him they needed to run on Mediscare, and could not do so if Democrats joined a useful, sensible deal on Medicare?

I think that's all for David Brooks.

The Warm, Comfortable Cocoon of the New York Times

Where even our "conservative" columnists hate Conservatives and love Obama.

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 AM | Comments (132)
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Remember, Obama is the All of the Above Energy Candidate.

Hydroelectric dams create cheap power which do not burn any fuel. Water powers the turbines. Essentially free electricity is generated (though there are of course staffing/maintenance costs, but these are pretty trivial).

So, we're not interested in combustible fuels. Now we also are dismantling our hydroelectric sources.

A former science adviser to the Department of the InteriorÂ’s Bureau of Reclamation was fired in February, shortly after he alleged that the Obama administration intentionally falsified scientific fact in a proposal for dam removal in the Klamath River.

Professor Paul Houser of George Mason University, in an allegation to the Office of the Executive Secretariat and Regulatory Affairs in the Department of the Interior, said that Sec. Ken Salazar’s determination to remove the dams resulted in “intentional biased (falsification) reporting of scientific results.”

He also alleged that when he voiced his concern about the scientific integrity of the press release involving the dam removal in September, very few of his concerns were taken into consideration.

Houser was later terminated from his government job.

Salazar says removing the dams will bring back salmon populations, but the whistleblower says there are nine factors suggesting salmon won't come back, dam or no, and yet Salazar is determined to destroy yet another source of domestic energy on what amounts to hope.

I like this "expert's" quote. It says so much about environmental science.

“There are no guarantees that removal of dams will solve disease problems,” Oregon State microbiology professor Jerri Bartholomew told The Daily Caller, “but returning the river to a more natural system is expected to bring it into better balance.”

There is nothing in that statement that is scientific -- there are no numbers, there are no tangible predictions.

He's talking about "natural" states and bringing "balance" to things.

Balance?

Is this about chakras?

This is a non-scientific impulse. "The natural state is better and balanced, because it is natural, and hence balanced."

I don't know what "balanced" means. Neither does the guy saying it.

Either way, this is supposed to be about science, not bringing balance to our life-force and Thetans.

Thanks to Vic.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (190)
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The brief clip where she asks Haley if she'll tip Sikh cabdrivers more, and the longer cut at Hot Air.

At around 4:20, the interviewer asks Haley how Romney will overcome his poor poll position with women. Haley says "Ann Romney" is the "magic bullet" to fix that, and lists all of Ann Romney's attributes.

The interviewer immediately switches to a new "War on Women" attack, putting on her Concerned, Confused, Disgusted Face when she asks "You think women vote on the basis of wives?"

Subtext: You are so anti-woman you think women are so stupid as to vote for someone's wife rather than policy?

She ignores the fact that Democrats have routinely championed their supposedly awesome wives as good reason to vote for them. Clinton's "Two for One" presidency?

If liberals don't think women are interested in the First Lady, and aren't more favorably disposed to the President if they like the First Lady, why exactly do they have Michelle Obama on six thousand magazines and a dozen TV shows?

But Nikki Haley says something along those lines, and suddenly she's demeaning women for suggesting they'd factor such an absurd thing into their decisionmaking.

Oh, despite all the hype about Michelle Obama -- with the implication she's "superior" to previous First Ladies -- the interviewess then has a cow at the implication that "Ann Romney is sooo vastly superior to Michelle Obama."

It's Not So Much a War on Women As a Rejection of Crude Passive-Aggressive Gender-Identity Manipulations

Don't talk like a prat.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (208)
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If you're a Christian, today is Good Friday.

If you were looking for good news in the unemployment report that was released this morning, it's a really, really bad one.

Prayers to kick the economically illiterate dunce we have in the White House to the curb this November are in order. But first, the numbers:

- Non-farm payroll adds: 120,000 (against an expectation of ~200,000)
- U-3 unemployment rate: 8.2%
- Labor force participation rate: 63.8%

American Enterprise Institute econ. blogger @JimPethokoukis calculated that if the labor force participation rate, which measures the size of the workforce (including those looking for work) against the work-aged population, had remained constant with where it was on the day Obama was inaugurated, the U-3 rate would be 10.9%.

In other words, the only reason the rate is as low as 8.2% is that an extraordinary number of people have given up looking for work altogether.

Of course, the Obama administration knows exactly who to blame for this outrage: The Republican-controlled House!

WH Economic Advisor Gene Sperling says House Republican partisanship "has blocked us from having a stronger job market." (@MarkKnoller)

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with an administration that focused like a laser on passing an unconstitutional healthcare law in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the great depression, could it?

Or an administration that shoveled boatloads of borrowed dollars out the door in pursuit of "green jobs" that are proving as mythical as unicorns.

Former White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein gave some advice on running "clean energy" firms in Las Vegas today and admitted that these sorts of ventures don't actually create many jobs.

"When I worked for the administration I was very active in the implementation of the Recovery Act," Bernstein told the Vegas crowd. "And one thing we found about clean energy was that if you build a solar plant you are going to hire a lot of people. If you run a solar plant, it doesn't take a ton of people to run some of these plants. The labor-saving technology around the actual production of clean energy is quite intense. So some of these firms don't employ as many people as you might hope."

Now they tell us.

We have a structural unemployment problem caused by a confluence of factors: consumer and government debt overhang, regulatory uncertainty (or, more precisely, certainty of bad regulations), skills mismatch and others.

Getting rid of Obama in November won't magically solve these problems, but it is an absolutely necessary first step. more...

Posted by: andy at 06:23 AM | Comments (306)
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Happy Friday.

Sorry 'bout the delay, folks. Overslept. Have a great weekend.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:31 AM | Comments (372)
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Please stand by while we work on some technical difficulties.

Update: Now with like 100% less content...because sometimes less is more.

Update: CAC here. I have been posting a daily projection on the sidebar for a few weeks now. Today I've modified it so you can see how 10 specific swing states are leaning: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa. Should be pretty self explanitory, and their changing colors will correlate in the above number, showing Obama and Romney's electoral totals (and has tossup EV's sandwiched in-between). They are also organized from most Democratic to most Republican within their respective colors. So right now, Pennsylvania is less favorable to Obama than, say, Nevada or Virginia. The rest is pretty self explanatory. I will be updating Monday through Friday.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:13 PM | Comments (1245)
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It's a PDF I can't copy and past from but I've been putting them on my Twitter feed.

First and best part? The name of Olbermann's company is, "Olbermann Broadcasting Empire". Seriously, it is.

Right now the extent of the "Olbermann Broadcasting Empire" is Keith on a park bench yelling at the pigeons about Bush lying us into war or something. The bird's just want the bread crumbs Keith.

Some highlights from Olbermann's suit and occasional snark from me.

Olby says Fred Hyatt wanted to be Olby's friend but "Olbermann did not reciprocate Hyatt's advances" and then Olby was punished.

"Olbermann thought he made a deal with a legitimate network but instead go an unprofessional cable-access show". Olby never watched Current?

.@keitholbermann's lawsuit reads like a Special Comment. If only he could deliver it with dramatic camera turns.

I wonder how many legal documents actually contain the phrase "too little, too late" like Olby's lawsuit does.

Hmmm...@keitholbermann says his company's "primary asset is the artistic services of Keith Olbermann". Not newsman, performance artist.

"Hyatt behaved as if he had just paid Olbermann to become his puppet instead of the Chief News Officer". Come on that was a goofy tile.

"Stunningly, Al Gore's network was not interested in establishing a strong internet presence" Cause he invented it @Keitholbermann?

"Olbermann opined to Bohrman that ["Young Turk Cenk] Uygur had difficulty separating facts from things he wanted to be true" Blue on Blue!

Olbermann objected to use of his likeness to promote The Young Turks & The War Room because he "believed they were low quality programs"

"In a "Keystone Kops" move that was emblematic of standard operating procedure at Current...." You can't make this stuff up.

Wow, @keitholbermann says it was "disparaging" for Current to say he was "replaceable". Dude, you're replaceable. Ask ESPN and MSNBC.

Olby is upset that Current described him "as a difficult employee". Gee, no one has ever said that about @keitholbermann before now.

Oh my. "Olbermann is a person of unquestionable integrity who feels a genuine sense of duty to his audience and believes in the causes for which he advocates on his program" I seem to recall his "integrity being questioned before.

That's only up to page 28 of 44, there's got to be more in there. I wonder if it ends, "Good night and good luck".

The whole thing is begging for a dramatic reading take down.

It's very possible that Current did break the contract but the fact that Olbermann was stupid enough to go to a network no one watched and then was shocked to find out it was a rinky-dink operation it pretty funny.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:00 PM | Comments (201)
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