(A series of daily-ish semi-weekly-ish * roundups of the day's Climate news and commentary.)

* The furor is at a low-ebb after Copenhagen, and my own attention this past week has been taken by mundane things like my paying job, so these wrap-ups are going to be less frequent unless something big happens.

This is by no means a comprehensive recap. The stories come from a variety of sources, and I highly recommend exploring the linked sites for more breaking news.

(after the break...) more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:45 PM | Comments (51)
Post contains 410 words, total size 4 kb.

Sorry for the late notification. I'll keep this bumped all day until 5 to make sure people see it.

When: 4-7/8 pm Monday the 11th -- but Iowahawk has a previous engagement at 6... I'll hang out longer, but he is out of there at 6, firm. He may be back much later, but I don't know if I have more than four hours in me, personally.

Where: The Coliseum Pub at Columbus Circle. 312 W. 58th Street. I've never been there but seems okay. A review said it's behind the Time Warner Center.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (177)
Post contains 104 words, total size 1 kb.

Off to meet Iowahawk. The short day couldn't really be helped; Iowahawk basically can only meet until 6.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (161)
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

I donÂ’t know why but Fareed Zakaria annoys the hell out of me. No, itÂ’s not because heÂ’s brown (thatÂ’s why IÂ’m afraid of him, a very different deal). I think itÂ’s because he says and writes dumb stuff, a lot of dumb stuff, yet heÂ’s hailed as a deep thinker. He also bothers me because heÂ’s a younger (and yes browner) Thomas Friedman. Since thereÂ’s simply no point in taking out after Freedman anymore, I guess IÂ’ve turned my ire to Zakaria.

What got me going today is his column about terrorism in the wake of the Underwear Bomber.

First, there’s the annoying and predictable, 'if we overreact or even really react at all, the terrorist will have won'. The funny thing about liberals is, no matter what we do (fight back, increase security, etc) the terrorist win. Apparently in Zakaria’s mind the only way we can win is to simply take what the terrorists do and pretend it never happened. Quite frankly, I’m not sure Zakaria actually gets the concept of ‘winning’.

More annoying is this bit.

Is there some sensible reaction between panic and passivity? Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and later a senior State Department official in the Bush administration, suggests that we should try to analyze failures in homeland security the way we do airplane catastrophes. When an airliner suffers an accident, major or minor, the National Transportation Safety Board convenes a group of nonpartisan experts who methodically examine what went wrong and then issue recommendations to improve the situation. "We approach airline security with the understanding that it's a complex problem, that we have a pretty good system, but that there will be failures -- caused by human beings, technology, or other factors. The point is to constantly fix what's broken and keep improving the design and execution," says Zelikow.

Imagine if that were the process after a lapse in homeland security. The public would know that any attack, successful or not, would trigger an automatic, serious process to analyze the problem and fix it. Politicians might find it harder to use every such event for political advantage. The people on the front lines of homeland security would not get demoralized as they watched politicians and the media bash them and grandstand with little knowledge.

This plays into AceÂ’s earlier post on Brooks and the Tea Party crowd.

Liberals always seem to think we need to take decisions out of the hands of individuals who are answerable to actual voters. Some how the world would be rainbow filled if only we had more experts in charge of things, insulated from the passion of the moment or the will of the people.

Funny thing is, those experts always seem to want to do what the liberals default to anyway. The left knows their positions arenÂ’t all that popular so they either have to hide what they really want (see Campaign Of, Obama, B.H., 200 or move it to the friendly and popularly unaccountable judiciary (see, Abortion, Same Sex Marriage, etc.).

Worst of all, Zakaria’s example of airline accident investigation doesn’t illustrate his point as he might think. Short version is, when there’s a plane crash the NTSB investigates. They are generally apolitical forensic investigators who almost always get the cause of a crash. But…they have no enforcement power. If the NTSB says, ‘Hey, this crash was caused by an airline's poor maintenance (or a manufacturer's defect)' they can’t do anything about it other than forward it on to the FAA. The FAA however is a very political agency. They are curiously charged with oversight and promotion of the aviation industry. Before they take an action (like a grounding or fining) they consider the effect on their stakeholders (airlines, manufacturers, etc). The NTSB experts have often been overruled or ignored by the FAA so the non-security aspects of air travel are more politicized than Zakaria seems to imagine (here is one of many examples). more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:33 AM | Comments (85)
Post contains 1032 words, total size 6 kb.

50%? Yes, 50%. 34% say it is.

A couple of other global warming items I've been meaning to get to. First, EdwardR. objects to Al Gore's magical thinking. One element of magical thinking involves counting confirmatory evidence while ignoring counter-evidence. This is why some people think that horoscopes or psychics actually have some sort of insight into reality -- they seize upon the (general, broad, nearly-universally applicable) stuff that seems to apply to them, and quickly forget about all the stuff that doesn't apply.

Al Gore is a confirmed horoscope-adherent:

"And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isnÂ’t it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today."

And what's he ignoring? Oh, like, everything. Like the coldest winter since eighteen-naugtety-aught or whatever. And to that point, Dave at Garfield Ridge sends this picture of England:

Cool Britannia, baby. The whole island is covered by snow.

Now, is that real? I have to admit, I'm skeptical, but lefty-ish site Gizmodo says it's real so I'll take their word for it.

But seriously, there's a matrices of coldening going on with a high level of connectivity to freezing my taint off.

We have to treat Global Warming as every bit the threat that jihadism is. In just 100 years, the Pacific Island of Vanutu might experience a higher-than-normal tide or something.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (64)
Post contains 353 words, total size 3 kb.

Nothing really to report, just a thread if you saw it and want to comment.

He wants us all to know that he has met some black people. He also says he chose his words poorly, but didn't (unless I missed it) explain what he did mean to say.

Okay, Harry, if that was the wrong way to express what you meant, what would the right way be?

Of course he was not pressed too hard on this basic point.

Because our credentialed faux-nobility cultural supremacists in the press are so damn meritocratically superior they can't handle the basic responsibilities of their jobs.

Blacker Than the Ace of Spades (or At Least a Light-Skinned Ace of Spades): Ron Blagojevich says he's "blacker than Barack Obama," and the weird thing is I think he can make a not-insane case along those lines.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (140)
Post contains 183 words, total size 1 kb.

Or, let me be fair: David Brooks has some connectivity with the matrices of elitist crypto-fascist douchebaggery.

Maybe I'm dumb (or sick -- I'm sick today), but I'm having trouble coming up with the right word here. Crypto-fascist isn't right. What I mean instead of fascist is government by a select, credentialed, inter-marrying social elite. Crypto-aristocratic isn't quite right, and I don't think crypto-aristarchic is a word. Crypto-royalist gets the notion right, but he's not agitating for a real royalty.

I dunno -- what's the right word? Government by the credentialed urban faux-nobility, I mean. (The UHB, or Urban Haute Bourgeoisie, as that guy kept saying in Metropolitan.)

(Oh, and elitist is inadequate, because what I have in mind is a pining for a formalized caste system. "Elitist" suggests a belief in an informal system of class differentiation. Brooks and others seem to pine for the strictly, punitively class system of England, but without the titled nobility.)

My educational deficiencies aside: After introducing a letter by his cousin, a well-educated Tea Partier, Tunku Varadarajan turns to David Brooks:

Not everyone in the movement is a Wellesley graduate, and I bring my cousin into the story only as a forensic counterpoint to David’s fixation with the “educated class.” America doesn’t really have a class system, but that fact makes it tough for people like David, who sometimes seem to wish it did. The traditional solution has been to attend an Ivy League school if possible—or just cop an “intellectual” attitude if not—and then look down on the rest of America. When America was less of a meritocracy (and that was not so long ago), this solution was less damaging. Now that the country is run mostly by graduates of Ivy League schools, however, that they look down on the electorate is becoming not only vastly irritating to the electorate but also rather dangerous. Elitism, now, might have adverse political consequences—and a backlash.

...

What bothers me, however, is that although ideological differences are at the bottom of the Tea Party assaults, the critique is almost purely aesthetic: The Tea Partiers, it is said, are crude, sloganeering, lemming-like, heartland Bible-Beltists who donÂ’t understand policy or David BrooksÂ’ subtleties.

It's not pure aesthetics, though that's a big part of it. It's also the idea they don't dare clearly announce: These people have no right.

They are threatened. They have the sense of noblesse oblige and Divine Right, and they feel their positions are threatened by the rabble.

And what bothers them most of all -- and this accounts for the scorn poured by Brooks' colleagues on amateur commentators such as bloggers -- is that their belief that they are needed, and that only they have the sufficient education and wisdom to run this country (or even simply comment upon the running of it), is undermined and diminished on a daily basis.

The Tea Partiers don't need David Brooks to tell them what to think. They never did. It's only now that David Brooks begins to realize that, or realize these stupid Tea Partiers are too stupid to realize they need his erudite guidance on self-governance.

Thanks to JohnK.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (179)
Post contains 547 words, total size 4 kb.

That seems to be the take-away, here.

KAINE: Well, I think if you look at the remarks, as I have, it was all in the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama and why he —

WALLACE: Negro dialect?

KAINE: — might be a wonderful —

WALLACE: Light-skinned?

KAINE: Positive things about his candidacy and why his candidacy would be strong. And so I think, you know, again, while he said the choice of words was unfortunate, he stepped right up to it, acknowledged it and said, "Look, I said things that I shouldn't have or I should have said differently."

It definitely was in the context of recognizing in Sen. Obama a great candidate and future president. And that's why they're working so well. Â…

And... um... the darker-skinned black folks who have a "Negro accent"? I guess they're... well, not good, like Obama is.

The column's by Ken "Medium-Shade" Blackwell, all about the Democrats' free pass on race. Worth reading.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (103)
Post contains 225 words, total size 1 kb.

Chaotic Evil, Lawful Evil merge into new alignment called Awesome Evil.

Ms. Palin will not have her own regular program, one person familiar with the deal said, though she will host an occasional series that will run on the network from time to time. This person would not elaborate, but the network does have a precedent for such a series. Oliver L. North is the host of an occasionally running documentary series on the military called “War Stories.”

Many suspected that when Ms. Palin retired as the governor of Alaska last summer she was doing so to pursue some sort of career in television. The Fox News deal, however, would not seem to be all encompassing, and would appear to give her room for other pursuits, as well.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 AM | Comments (138)
Post contains 142 words, total size 1 kb.

This statement would be jackass if it came from anyone.

But this guy, specifically, seeks a job in which his only job is to stop terror attacks on planes. And he doesn't consider it a top priority. Or, if it is a "top" priority, he's pretty promiscuous in in giving that designation to a lot of priorities.

His belief is that "terror" (one can hear the sneer-quotes in his voice) should be at a level of "parity" as far as prioritization with global warming and education.

He also talks rather stupidly, I have to say. He peppers his speech with not-really-appropriate uses of fifty cent words, as when he speaks of "matrices" as regards the war on terror. I take this as a sign of stupidity, honestly. There are situations where the fifty cent word is the right word, and there are situations where it's the wrong word. And someone who can't tell the fucking difference is probably below-average in intelligence or at least lacking confidence in his brainpower. So, rather than speaking plainly but lucidly, he tastelessly tosses in a bunch of SAT Vocabulary Builder words and thickwitted academic-speak to give the transparently-erroneous impression he's bright.

Bonus: He also speaks of "connectivity" with Israel, by which he means "relations" or "an alliance." Because if you say "connectivity" instead of the proper word, that makes you smart.

I like promoting people too stupid to speak properly to sensitive positions in which they have responsibility for protecting my very life. Or, should I say, "There's a matrices [sic] of positive mitigation for the connectivity of the dull-witted with positions of resplendent responsibility."

They are going to kill us.

I didn't even cover the previous revelation that, as an FBI agent, he searched sensitive files on his ex-wife's boyfriend and passed those files on to his cop-buddies so they could harass this guy.

And then lied about it to Congress, while under oath.

Southers told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee (both panels had to vote on his nomination) about the incident in a sworn affidavit submitted in October. Southers said he was censured by the FBI because he had, 20 years ago, "asked a co-worker's husband, who worked for the San Diego police department, to run a database check on my ex-wife's new boyfriend." Southers explained that he had only been separated from his wife for a very brief time and was "concerned for the safety of her and my infant son." The search turned up an outstanding arrest warrant for the man, but Southers admitted that "it was a mistake to have used my official connections to investigate the matter."

On Oct. 27, the commerce committee approved the Southers nomination, with just two senators -- Republicans Jim DeMint and John Ensign -- voting no. (They were unhappy with Southers' refusal to take a position on whether the TSA should be unionized.) On Nov. 19, the homeland security committee approved Southers unanimously.

But something was wrong. Just before the homeland security committee vote, Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the panel, learned that Southers' sworn account of the FBI censure was incorrect. She asked him to give her the straight story.

On Nov. 20 -- the day after the committee voted to approve him -- Southers sent a letter to Collins and committee chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman admitting the affidavit was wrong. As it turned out, he had not asked a friend to do the database search -- he did it himself. And there was not just one database search -- there were two. And he shared the information with others.
It was a major change in the story -- one that some senators on the homeland security committee knew nothing about when they supported Southers. Says a spokesman for GOP committee member Sen. Tom Coburn, who voted for Southers: "He did not know about it on November 19, and if he had known, it would have made a difference."

They are going to kill us.

It's that simple.

They are going to keep up this crap, with corrupt incompetents who think global warming should be as high a priority as terror installed as do-nothing heads of an already-failing TSA, until hundreds of Americans are killed, and then they are going to apologize and claim they've finally "gotten the message," and then, they are going to keep doing the same fucking thing until more people die.

Don't Worry -- He's Keeping a Weather Eye Out for Christians. It's only politically correct to monitor one type of would-be terrorist, so that's where this Mensa Chapter President's focus is at.

This guy is a moron. This is plainly a sop to the left and a sop to "diversity" in hiring, and even in that case, I'm certain we could find a lot of people actually qualified for the position that check the right Affirmative Action boxes.

Note how effusive he is in discussing this topic. Compare to his "matrices" talk about the futility of fighting actual terrorists.

Thanks to SlaveDog.

Prominent Democrats Defend Southers in the Comments. Wow, another day of big-time politcos commenting here.

I don't get it. He's light skinned, he barely has any hint of 'Negro dialect'.

What's not to like about this guy?

Posted by: Harry Reid

Well, I'm still waiting for my coffee.

Posted by: Bill Clinton

Posted by: Ace at 08:14 AM | Comments (178)
Post contains 966 words, total size 7 kb.