I like this quote especially:

There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. “For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models,” Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.

So, let me get this straight: For the past ten or fifteen years, you were "just arm-waving with models," right? And yet there was equally little doubt about the science then, either.

Models are bullshit. A model will tell you precisely what you told it. If you tell your model that the ocean's moderating currents will catastrophically arrest if the global temperature should rise one degree celsius, then guess what -- your model will spit out a scenario in which the oceans' currents catastrophically arrest if the global temperature should rise one degree celsius.

Anyone really know what increase, or decrease for that matter, in global average temperature is required to stop the oceans from churning? No, of course they don't. It's never been observed; it's believed to have happened in the ancient, aeons-ago past, but of course there's no solid data for what precisely caused it.

So they assume. Conditions x, y, and z will cause effect A, and the models -- get this -- confirm that conditions x, y, and z cause effect A. Q.E.D.

There's an old joke about how much economists' theories relied upon unverifiable, and often provably untrue, assumptions. Economic models are rife with assumptions -- assume zero transaction costs. Assume perfectly rational economic actors with perfect information about their best economic interests. Assume monetary and non-monetary benefits are perfectly fungible and economic actors are indifferent between them. Assume this, assume that, assume it with a baseball bat, soooo...!

At any rate, the joke goes that an economist, a physicist, and a chemist are stranded on a desert island and have no food whatsoever except for a crate of tuna-cans that happened to wash up on the shore with them. The trouble is, getting those cans open is a difficult trick. So they put their heads together to figure out how to open the cans.

The physicist offers, "We can find a high point on the island and drop the cans from it. Carrying the cans up the hill gives them potential energy, which becomes kinetic energy when they're dropped due to the acceleration of gravity, and this kinetic energy is arrested upon hitting the earth resulting in all kinetic energy being transferred to the can itself, resulting in deformations and, hopefully, tearing upon its weak points."

The chemist prefers a heat-based approach. "The cans are partly filled with water. We need only find an area of powerful sunlight, then amplify the heat conducted by the light rays by focusing it on a can by use of lenses and mirrors. The water in the can will boil and expand, and, as I hardly need remind you, hydraulic pressure is one of the most powerful mechanical forces known to engineering. The hydraulic pressure of the expanding water and steam will pop the cans open at their seams, with the added benefit of cooking our tuna for us."

The physicist agrees that this is the most sensible approach, until the economist suggests an even simpler method: "Assume the existence of a can opener..."

I said it was an old joke, not a funny one.

The UN would like us to do a lot of assuming -- that there is no inhibitory feedback caused by warming, say, greater cloud production, which then reflects away more warming sunlight from the earth; that the exact mechanisms for ocean-current disruption are well-known; that CO2's precise contribution to warming is precisely definable; that "runaway" heating occurs at a specific temperature; and etc., and etc., and etc.

If they can assume, so can I. Here's my solution to global warming:

"Assume the existence of a three-hundred foot tall palace concubine with a hundred-foot-wide palm-frond fan..."

And, heck, while we're at: Assume she's got knockers the size of Tigers Stadium.

Even assuming these catastrophic predictions, there are far less expensive engineering tricks to reduce CO2 production. Like merely "seeding" the oceans with lots and lots of iron in order to spur the growth CO2-digesting, O2-creating algae. Global warming catastrophists now claim that the only reason the earth cooled (alarmingly!) in the seventies was due to the fact that we'd simply been pumping too man albedo-increasing chemicals into the air; those aerosols refelcted sunlight back away from the earth, "hiding" the true effects of global warming. (In other words, the world was actually heating due to pollution, but we cooled it down even more via another sort of polution.)

Well, gee whiz. I'm sure then that, if necessary, we can start pumping some perfectly inert and safe aerosols into the air to get us some of that wonderful seventies global cooling going again.

But of course the global warming ninnies just view that as "more pollution" and won't even dignify such suggestions with a response.

And as Michael Crichton always points out -- who the hell knows what technology the earth will be using one hundred years hence? No one in 1907 would have predicted streets filled with cars, wireless phones carried by virtually everyone in the first world (and a lot of people in the third world, too), supersonic transport, radar, the internet, etc. They wouldn't even have realized that oil would displace coal and wood as the world's chief -- bordering on exclusive -- source of energy.

Jonah Goldberg addresses the costs:

Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but letÂ’s stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious).

ThatÂ’s still an amazing bargain. Life expectancies in the United States increased from about 47 years to about 77 years. Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.

Given the option of getting another 1,800 percent richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees warmer, I’d take the heat in a heartbeat. Of course, warming might get more expensive for us (and we might get a lot richer than 1,800 percent too). There are tipping points in every sphere of life, and what cost us little in the 20th century could cost us enormously in the 21st — at least that’s what we’re told.

...

Skeptics are heckled for calling attention to global warming scare tactics. But the simple fact is that activists need to hype the threat, and not just because that’s what the media demand of them. Their proposed remedies cost so much money — bidding starts at 1 percent of global GDP a year and rises quickly — they have to ratchet up the fear factor just to get the conversation started.

The costs are just too high for too little payoff. Even if the Kyoto Protocol were put into effect tomorrow — a total impossibility — we’d barely affect global warming. Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research speculated in Science magazine that “it might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century” to beat back global warming.

Thirty Kyotos! ThatÂ’s going to be tough considering that China alone plans on building an additional 2,200 coal plants by 2030. Oh, but because China (like India) is exempt from Kyoto as a developing country, the West will just have to reduce its own emissions even more.

Meanwhile, as Michael Crichton notes, it took no massive government force, nor somewhere between one and 30 percent of world GDP, to convert the world's primary energy sources from wood and coal to oil. It happened naturally -- because oil was better.

And, alas, remains better than just about everything else. For now, that is. The same as wood and coal were better than just about any other energy source conceivable in 1907.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (81)
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Squirrels are cute. I dig 'em. I just don't see the point of killing a squirrel to get three or four ounces of stringy meat.

I like how the mom compliments her son on bagging a squirrel "after only five minutes in the woods." How long does it typically take? I could pretty much kill nine of them from my window.

Here's some anti-squirrel propaganda from Geico:

Thanks for both to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (60)
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I'm so tired of this racist profiling. Muslim women are just fascinated by airport layouts. Google it!

With one already considered 'dangerous' by the United States government, two women became the center of more critical attention after their alleged actions at Dallas Love Field caught the interest of the FBI and Dallas Police Department.

Sources said in February, Kimberly "Asma" Al-Homsi, 42, and Aisha Abdul-Rahman Hamad, 50, allegedly scoped out Dallas Love Field in a manner classic of surveying an area.

Al-Homsi was already under surveillance and is on the government's no fly list since being involved in a road rage incident back in December of 2005. Officials said during the incident she held up an inert grenade and threatened another driver. Garland's bomb squad reported they later found ammunition in her car.

"If I didn't have a scarf on my head and it was a simple road rage I would not be on the terrorism watch list," she said.

As for long-range assault rifle and explosives training official said Al-Homsi said she admitted to have studied, Al-Homsi said it was something she was educated on while growing up.

Back during the February incident, Dan Hamilton said he was suspicious when he spotted the two women along a fence at Love Field with binoculars.

"I saw a car parked along this fence here; and there was a young lady sitting looking through the fence at the control tower in that vicinity using binoculars," he said.

...

Sources told News 8 the women were not only spotted outside the airport, but they were also seen inside the terminal pacing distances in what they said appeared to be typical surveillance techniques. However, the women said they were simply going to the flight museum and then watching planes take off. They deny they were surveying the airport.

...

Al-Homsi said she is Syrian and is sympathetic to the Palestinian people. Both women said they disagree with the United States' Middle East policy.

"I don't like the government," Al-Homsi said. "The American people, no problem."

"I think they stick their nose in business where it doesn't belong," Hamad said.

I hope they stick their nose in deeply where it does belong.

What the hell are these people still doing in our country?

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (32)
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Surely no one in the Bush Administration has the balls to prosecute her, but a US attorney should at least begin investigating if a crime was committed. Not secretly, either. Put her and her ilk on notice.

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States." Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.

President John Adams requested the statute after a Pennsylvania pacifist named George Logan traveled to France in 1798 to assure the French government that the American people favored peace in the undeclared "Quasi War" being fought on the high seas between the two countries. In proposing the law, Rep. Roger Griswold of Connecticut explained that the object was, as recorded in the Annals of Congress, "to punish a crime which goes to the destruction of the executive power of the government. He meant that description of crime which arises from an interference of individual citizens in the negotiations of our executive with foreign governments."

The debate on this bill ran nearly 150 pages in the Annals. On Jan. 16, 1799, Rep. Isaac Parker of Massachusetts explained, "the people of the United States have given to the executive department the power to negotiate with foreign governments, and to carry on all foreign relations, and that it is therefore an usurpation of that power for an individual to undertake to correspond with any foreign power on any dispute between the two governments, or for any state government, or any other department of the general government, to do it."

...

The U.S. is in the midst of two wars authorized by Congress. For Ms. Pelosi to flaunt the Constitution in these circumstances is not only shortsighted; it may well be a felony, as the Logan Act has been part of our criminal law for more than two centuries. Perhaps it is time to enforce the law.

And he's not making the Logan Act up. Google it!

USAToday editorializes she was "out of bounds," but shies away from the illegality of her actions.

Like it or not (and we do not), President Bush's policy has been to refuse to negotiate with Syria until it changes its behavior. That behavior is malignant. Syria has long meddled destructively in neighboring Lebanon and is widely seen as the bloody hand behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Pelosi surely knew that as speaker - third in the succession line to the presidency - her high-profile presence in Damascus would be read as a contradiction of Bush's no-talkpolicy. No matter that she claimed to have stuck closely to administration positions in her conversations with Assad, smiling photos of Pelosi and the Syrian president convey the unspoken message that while the U.S. president is unwilling to talk with Syria, another wing of the government is. Assad made good use of the moment.

Also along was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., who said the meeting was "only the beginning of our constructive dialogue with Syria, and we hope to build on this visit." That suggested Democrats are going beyond unobjectionable fact-finding and getting-to-know-you conversation into something closer to negotiations, undermining U.S. diplomacy.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (57)
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I've never seen O'Reilly like this before. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen anyone like this before. Except for a history prof I had in collge, Professor Turgidson.

Oh wait, that was a movie.

At any rate, this comes pretty close to that. If it's a question of volume and anger, O'Reilly wins, easily.

I think we can safely say that O'Reilly isn't just on illegal aliens for ratings.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (52)
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Feveh.

Employers ramped up hiring in March, driving the unemployment rate down to 4.4 percent, matching a five-year low. It was a surprisingly strong performance in an economy that has otherwise shown signs of sluggishness recently.

The new snapshot, released by the Labor Department on Friday, also showed that employers boosted their payrolls by a strong 180,000 in March, the most since December. Workers' also saw their paychecks get bigger.

...

"There's been worry that housing troubles would seep into the rest of the economy and hurt jobs but that is not happening now," said Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services. "This says employers are finding that they need people and when they need people they hire them. These are good, healthy numbers," he said.

The report was stronger than economists were expecting. They were calling for the economy to add around 135,000 new jobs in March, and for the unemployment rate to actually edge up to 4.6 percent.

...

And as usual prior months' job gains were goosed upwards, though not by a huge amount:

Adding to the positive showing, job gains in January and February turned out to be stronger than previously reported. The economy added 113,000 positions in February, up from a prior estimate of just 97,000, which had marked the slowest job growth in two years. In January 162,000 new jobs were created, better than the 146,000 previously reported.

Workers' wages grew again, too. After years of telling us how terrible it was that workers' wages weren't growing fast enough, now the MSM shifts to telling us how dire it is that workers' wages are rising too quickly:

Solid wage growth is good for workers and supports consumer spending, which is indispensable to the economy's good health. But a rapid pickup -- if prolonged and not blunted by other economic forces -- can raise fears about inflation.

Spiraling inflation would whittle away any wage gains, hurting workers' wallets. It isn't good for the economy, either.

That's true enough, but it was also true when wages weren't increasing very much. Did the MSM interject such cautionary notes then, informing the public that "while slow wage growth may make some workers feel they're not gaining from the growing economy, rapid wage growth can actually harm workers and lower the the true spending value of their wages" ? Of course not. Back then, higher wages were presented as an unmitigated boon, and of course a gross failure of Bush's in failing to deliver on them.

When wages grew "too slowly:" "You're not actually getting any richer."

When wages grow "too quickly:" "You're not getting any richer because inflation is gobbling up all your gains, and then some."

Seems to me, though, that inflation is merely a worry at this time, and hence we are at a happy medium. So shouldn't the MSM be addressing the current situation which is neither "too little" nor "too much" and acknowledge that with wages rising and inflation tame, workers are in fact making more real money?

Nah. Would confuse the narrative too much. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (31)
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Biggest shock: I didn't know feminism had still been alive.

[Phyllis] Chesler's experiences in Afghanistan have helped shape her thoughts about the failure of feminism to engage with what she sees as the oppression of women in Islamic countries. After "40 years on the front lines" of feminism - she is now emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at the City University of New York - her current project means that she gets a "chilly" reception from fellow feminists. It does not help, perhaps, that her latest book is called The Death of Feminism.

Isn't the title somewhat stark? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say there are trends in feminism that she, personally, finds disturbing?

"I am still a feminist," she insists. "The reason that I have announced the death of feminism, which I agree is stark, is that from my point of view, looking at mainstream feminism in the west - in the universities, in the media, among academics and the socalled intelligentsia - there is a moral failure, a moral bankruptcy, a refusal to take on, in particular, Muslim gender apartheid. So you have many contemporary feminists who say, 'We have to be multiculturally relativist. We cannot uphold a single, or absolute, standard of human rights. And, therefore, we can't condemn Islamic culture, because their countries have been previously colonised. By us.' I disagree."

...

Western feminism's failure to confront the problems raised by Islam, Chesler believes, is a result of the creation of a hierarchy of sins, "an intellectual culture in which racism trumps gender concerns". The example she cites as the embodiment of wrongheaded priorities is "gay and lesbian movement activists rooting for the Palestinians who, meanwhile, are very busy persecuting homosexuals, who in turn are fleeing to Israel for political asylum".

The result, she argues, is that "instead of telling the truth about Islam and demanding that the Muslim world observes certain standards, you have westerners beating their breasts and saying, 'We can't judge you, we can't expose you, we can't challenge you.' And here in the west you have a dangerous misuse of western concepts such as religious tolerance and cultural sensitivity so that one kind of hate speech is seen as something that must be rigorously protected. That means, principally, lies about America and lies about Jews."

...

Chesler will not accept the Islamophobe label. She claims it is a blanket term used to silence those who portray Islam accurately, and bemoans feminism's embrace of what she sees as misguided causes."Feminism began to fail when they began to say, 'We can't judge barbarism. We can't even call it barbarism, because the barbarians will be offended'," she says. Feminism has become just one part of a wider anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist movement, "so much so that many feminists are now much more concerned with the occupation of a country that doesn't exist - namely Palestine - than they are concerned with the occupation of women's bodies worldwide".

Thanks to Son of Nixon.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (35)
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[The suspect] was arrested in Denver after his girlfriend told police officers that he poured an alcoholic drink on her face while she slept, then put her in a choke hold and flung her on to a bed when she attempted to leave.

Hints:

1) He was blonde.

2) When he was on TV, he didn't yet have the vampire lip-rings.

3) He was the little brother.

4) As TV kids are wont to do, he rapidly aged from being born to suddenly being around 4 years old over one summer break.

5) He worked with Justine Bateman.

6) He knew what was his.

7) He can be seen here.

Story here, and also the answer, if you're frickin' stupid.

Thanks to herbert.

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 PM | Comments (42)
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It's a day of unforced errors.

Although, you know, technically, he is a lifelong hunter.

To hear Mitt Romney talk on the campaign trail, you might think the Republican presidential candidate had a gun rack in the back of his pickup truck.

”I purchased a gun when I was a young man. I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life,” he said this week in Keene, N.H., to a man sporting a National Rifle Association cap.

Yet the former Massachusetts governorÂ’s hunting experience is limited to two trips at the bookends of his 60 years: as a 15-year-old, when he hunted rabbits with his cousins on a ranch in Idaho, and last year, when he shot quail on a fenced game preserve in Georgia.

Last yearÂ’s trip was an outing with major donors to the Republican Governors Association, which Romney headed at the time.

An aide said Wednesday that Romney was not trying to mislead anyone, although he confirmed Romney had been hunting only on those occasions in his life.

”Governor Romney’s support for the Second Amendment doesn’t come from the fact he knows how to handle a firearm; it comes from his appreciation of the Constitution and the rights enshrined in it, including the right to keep and bear arms,” said campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.

Of course he wasn't trying to mislead anyone. Since when has making a dubious statement that's only arguably not an outright lie when parsed in a highly convoluted manner in order to convey an impression that is simply flat-out false been considered "misleading"?

Next thing you know and they'll be telling us that Clinton wasn't being quite straight with us when he denied, under oath, being "alone" with Monica Lewinsky.

In related news, Hillary! is super-psyched that her home baseball team, the New York Yankees (playing just 1500 miles down the street from her surburan Chicago home), are playing again.

Go Yankees!

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (149)
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I apologize. I really didn't know what the Hyde Amendment was, and I didn't realize Giuliani's remarks were in the context of this Amendment.

The Amendment mandates federal funding for abortions (presumably through already-existing medical welfare programs like Medicaid) only in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. This has been on the books for 18 years, and I am aware of no serious effort to change it... by anyone.

In this context, it appears that Giuliani was saying only that he would apply the law as it currently stands and would not seek to overturn it. Which no one would. Strong pro-lifers may want it to be overturned (clarification: I meant "overturned" in the sense of being made more strict, forbidding any and all funding for any abortion no matter what the circumstance), but no one running nationally -- and few running statewide -- will take that position. And even if they did, it would go nowhere.

Emperor of Icecream argues, on the other hand:

Prolifers support the Hyde Amendment. But Giuliani doesn't. He just says that he won't actively work to change it (see the press release his campaign just put out. The Corner has it posted). He's been very careful to leave open the possibility that if a democratic Congress passed a law for federal funding of abortion, he would sign it.

Even Democrats have supported the Hyde Amendment. Giuliani is far enough to the left on this that I don't see how any pro-lifer could support the guy. His position is awful and isntead of fixing it he just keeps flailing around saying ambiguous things. Someone needs to tell him that you can't take a far left position in favor of public funding of abortions and then get out of it with a few ambiguous statements that could be interpreted either way.

I don't buy that he's been "very careful to leave open the possibility" that he may expand funding for abortions. He's trying to avoid contradicting previous positions; he's not trying to run more liberal than he's been in the past. He's trying to run as conservatively as he can without seeming to reverse himself completely.

So I actually see this now as much ado about very little. He's saying he'll support the law as it currently is. Guess what -- so will every serious GOP candidate. I doubt you could get more than a "Well I'd like to take a look at that if I'm President" non-committal response on totally stopping all funding for abortions if you asked any candidate.

Go ahead. Ask Romney. As Thompson. Ask Gingrich. See what they say. If you find someone agitating hard to undo the Hyde Amendment, I'll be very surprised.

Over at the Corner, Giuliani was quoted thus:

What I said yesterday is what I've been saying throughout, I think in the last number of months publicly and privately for quite some time, which is I'm against abortion, I hate it, I wish there never was an abortion and I would council a woman have an adoption instead of an abortion but ultimately I believe an individual right and a woman can make that choice. I also, on public funding or funding of abortion said I would want to see it decided on a state by state basis. And what that means is I would leave the Hyde Amendment in place. It's been the law now, 17, 18 years, it's part of the constitutional balance that I talked about yesterday and the Hyde Amendment leaves the funding issue largely to the states. They have to decide how they're going to do it. And same thing on the issue that you're giving me now, which is I believe that the state should decide. And that's largely my approach not only in the area of abortion but in the area of guns and other things. I think these things are best decided on a state by state basis and would have as limited a federal role as the law requires.

A lot of that's a mish-mash -- or at least I don't get it -- but the key is he seems to be talking about nothing more than simply leaving the status quo as regards the Hyde Amendment intact. Which, again, is pretty much what any serious candidate is going to say.

Allah's arguing with me that using the language "constitutional right" implies Giuiliani takes an expansive view of this right. (Well, that's what I think he was saying; he went away mid-sentence.) I think that's silly. His position is his stated position and we needn't go searching for the penubras and emanations of it looking for "implications."

And, actually, abortion is, currently, a "constitutional right," so calling it such doesn't indicate anything much at all except a willingness to call things what they are. And it will probably stay a constitutional right for at least 20 years.

I don't think anyone's particularly suprised Giuliani isn't a strong conservative on the abortion issue. The question has always been will he be barely conservative enough to be passable. Unless I'm missing something, this gaffe doesn't indicate he's not that -- just conservative enough to be passable.

Again, I really don't see how people can seriously demand that Giuliani -- known to be socially moderate, even liberal -- take a more absolutist position on abortion than geuniune (mostly) social con George W. Bush. That to me is just kinda silly.

Posted by: Ace at 01:07 PM | Comments (220)
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