Since I'm on the road with spotty Internet, tonight's ONT is going to be minimal i.e. whatever I can type into the iPhone.

Aspirin: What Can't It Do?

16 of the creepiest comic book scenes ever

Posted by: Maetenloch at 04:58 PM | Comments (518)
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Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past ~ George Orwell

We "skeptics" have suspected for a long time that most Global Warming™ is indeed manmade.

No, not in the sense that there's an actual increase in the Earth's temperature from human production of so-called greenhouse gases that's discernible from otherwise natural temperature variations. But in the sense that temperature and other data is tortured by AGW-believing "scientists" until it tells them what they want to hear.

This is how Michael Mann erased the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, and it's how every year becomes one of the hottest years ever measured.

Today Anthony Watts and coauthors released a paper quantifying the impact of station quality issues and NOAA data adjustments on the USHCN temperature records that are one of the most important books in the warmists' bible:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-FranceÂ’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. (emphasis added)

Cutting to the chase (from the PowerPoint slides accompanying the release):

Instead of adjusting the poorly sited station trends downward to the levels of the well located stations, the well sited station trends are adjusted upward to match the poor station trends. The “official” trend data is higher even than that of the raw data for non-compliant stations.

No result is too ridiculous as long as it helps The Cause, I guess.

Watts included a handy graph of the impact that can be used to beat warmists over the head (metaphorically of course).

Read the whole thing. Also, be sure to heed James Delingpole's advice and resist the urge to gloat. more...

Posted by: andy at 02:10 PM | Comments (252)
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Oh no, say it ain't so... the doughty BuzzFeed is reporting by headline that Mitt Romney may have been a day off when signing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's official guest book. A stellar mimograph artist writing for the BF under the moniker, Zeke Miller inspected and stamped the latest BF meme.

Recall Obama's 2008 is the new 2011 faux paus scribbled in the guest book at Westminster Abbey? That was just a liberal 3 year miscalculation...that was chalked up to good intentions. For after all, Obama's with the government and he's here to help.

BuzzFeed...journalism by meme...if you build it...a liberal may come.

If someone else want's to link feel free. I ain't worthy.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:40 PM | Comments (94)
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MailOnline: Hey that thing about the NHS with the nurses, nannies, and bedridden children was pretty weird, wasn't it?

Last night's spectacular $42million, the brainchild of Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle, included a segment where dozens of skipping nurses and children in pajamas leaping acrobatically on massive hospital beds, with a large 'NHS' displayed.

It was a celebration of Britain's national health service, which has provided free taxpayer-funded health care to everyone in the country since its foundation after the Second World War.

. . .

Before the ceremony, the Slumdog Millionaire director defended his decision to feature the NHS prominently in the show. He told reporters that he chose to feature it because ‘everyone is aware of how important the NHS is to everybody in this country.’

He continued: ‘One of the core values of our society is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you will get treated the same in terms of health care.’

The Commentator executive editor Raheem Kassam was one of many who took to social media to voice their opinions, and tweeted: 'Anyone else realise it wasn't the NHS who tended well to the kids in the Opening Ceremony, it was private nanny, Mary Poppins!'

. . .

Others simply thought the idea of children, nurses, and nannies in an elaborate choreographed dance was simply bizarre.

I don't know about you, but the NHS is not one of the top things that comes to mind when I think of Britain. And when I do think about their healthcare system, nothing good comes to mind. In fact, it's the opposite. I think of the horror stories I've read.

Well, here's another horror story to add to the list: One of Britain's top doctors, Patrick Pullicino, says that they're killing 130,000 people a year in a euthanasia program they call the "Liverpool Care Pathway."

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.

It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.

It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.

Withholding water. That sounds familiar. Last month, a 22 year old man was so desperate for water, he called police. He died, though. I thought it must have been a case of one-off negligence, but withholding water is part of the program. They just did it to the wrong guy that time.

Stories like that are not uncommon.

When I think of Britain, the royal family comes to mind. Knights in armor. Swords. Arthurian legend. Newton. Shakespeare. Eddington. Hobbits. Double-decker buses. Castles and palaces. The full breakfast. Pubs. The music. Gardens. The Tower Bridge. Big Ben. That silly Ferris wheel. The great people. I think of brilliant individuals who have changed the world. And Danny Boyle included some of that. But I do not think of a soviet-style utopia where faceless factory workers hammer away at metal, apparently in service of the state. And a healthcare system where one first has to survive a long waiting period before running the gauntlet in a hospital. It's a shame they let a left-wing hack advocate his narrow, half-baked politics.

I wonder where Danny gets his healthcare.

Plus, the giant baby? Creepy.

Added: From commenter "sunny black":

My third year of medical school I worked at an NHS hospital near Manchester, UK called Stepping Hill. I walk to my Gastro rotation, the doctor is with a patient who had either Crohn's or Ulcerative Colitis, and he decides that the patient needs a colonoscopy. He writes down the plan on a slip, gives it to the patient, and says to him, "Okay, we'll see you in 9 months or so for that colonoscopy."

I was shocked. I was thinking of American patients in Florida where I'm from and what there reaction would be if their physician told them they'd have to wait 9 months to a year to get a procedure done.

That's just one example of how "awesome" the NHS is. It's a big bureaucratic mess.

Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:54 AM | Comments (216)
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Cheney explains:

“The test to get on that small list has to be, ‘Is this person capable of being president of the United States?’”

Cheney believes Sarah Palin failed that test.

“I like Governor Palin. I’ve met her. I know her. She – attractive candidate. But based on her background, she’d only been governor for, what, two years. I don’t think she passed that test…of being ready to take over. And I think that was a mistake.”

Well, certainly she had more experience than then-candidate Obama, although I concede that that's a damn low bar against which to hold our possible presidents (and Cheney's right that the VP has to be prepared to be president on Day 1).

This is from Cheney's first post-heart transplant interview, which will air tomorrow on ABC News vehicles. He's apparently offered some private advice to the Romney camp about their VP pick, though he doesn't tell ABC what that advice was. Hopefully, it's something along the lines he gave the Bush camp in 2000, when he was running their VP search: "Me. I'm perfect for the job."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:04 AM | Comments (260)
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Above the post update: The Daily Caller apparently took the Gusty Call post down.

From the book teaser on Amazon:

* Obama delayed and canceled the mission to kill Osama bin Laden three times and then committed an intelligence blunder that allowed dozens of high-level members of al Qaeda to escape.

###

Remember that time President Gutsy Call singlehandedly killed Osama bin Laden? Yeah. Not so much:

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21.

That sounds more like the SCOAMF we know and lo... Well, know.

Posted by: andy at 04:23 AM | Comments (369)
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Well morons, we weren't the only ones confused and horrified with the opening ceremony yesterday. Americans Baffled By Left-Wing Tribute To Free Healthcare During Opening Ceremonies. I guess they figure no one else in the world keeps up with the monthly NHS scandals. I suppose it might be a bit difficult to work a dance routine highlighting How The NHS Euthanizes 130,000 Elderly Patients A Year.
more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:41 PM | Comments (546)
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Forgive me if this is a wee bit presumptuous of me, however, after last evening's taped delayed 5 ring Olympic extravaganza performed under Danny Boyle's (B)ig (M)assive monkey pawed vision, (in what appeared to be a melding of trip time with Timothy Leary, Clockwork Orange and Dante's 9th ring) I thought we may need an outlet to depressurize. Given that the opening morsels our well heeled and teethed Londoners served us have been nearly digested by now, I think a good debriefer is definitely in order.

Speaking in the collective, and sticking with the digestive genre, yes... I believe the opener was one big massive.

Cheerio... more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:10 AM | Comments (523)
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Just a sprinkle of content....Senator Claire McCaskill (D-On Her Way Out The Door) is trialling every Republican in Missouri in her reelection bid. The Show Me State isn't even waiting to see who the GOP picks, they just want her (and Obama) gone.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:41 AM | Comments (89)
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A Portland-class cruiser, engaged in one of the most secret and important actions in WWII. Her mission in that fateful month was to carry critical parts and the enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb Little Boy unleashed upon Japan. She completed that mission on July 26, and after delivering her critical supplies was sent to Guam, where several crewmen were relieved and replaced, and then directed to Leyte.

On July 30, a few minutes after midnight, she was struck by two torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58, and within 15 minutes foundered and sank. 300 of her 1,196 crewmen died in the sinking. But the worst was yet.

880 survivors of the attack waited days for rescue, while the Navy, unaware of the nature of her secret mission, did not initiate search and rescue operations for days.

In those few days the 880 survivors of the attack suffered dehydration, exposure, salt poisoning and shark attacks.

There were only 317 survivors.

The Indianapolis was the last major USN fighting vessel to be sunk during WWII.

The commanding officer, Captain Charles B. McVay III survived the sinking, and was court-martialed and convicted of "hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag" even though his orders permitted him to choose to do so. The Japanese commander of the I-58 testified at his trial that zigzagging would have made no difference. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz remitted McVay's sentence and restored him to active duty. In 1968, McVay took his life with his Navy issued sidearm.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:15 AM | Comments (223)
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