Rightwingers Launch Insurgency Against Obama's 2012 Bid

Have you seen these new ads lately?  Here's the scoop from Beth Fouhy of the AP (via Breitbart.com):

GOP-leaning group launches ads criticizing Obama

NEW YORK (AP) - A Republican-leaning independent fundraising group announced Friday it would launch a $20 million television campaign criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the economy.

The ads, produced and financed by Crossroads GPS, will begin running Monday in 10 states, many of which are presidential battlegrounds.

Spokesman Jonathan Collegio said the group would spend $5 million initially on cable television nationwide and on broadcast TV in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia. Crossroads will spend a total of $20 million on the campaign over two months, Collegio said.

The 30-second ad illustrates how unemployment, the national debt and gas prices have all gone up since Obama took office in January 2009. It also suggests the $850 billion federal stimulus plan failed, with Obama acknowledging there weren't as many "shovel ready" infrastructure projects to fund with stimulus dollars as the administration had originally hoped.

"It's time to take away Obama's blank check," the announcer says.

The campaign represents Crossroads' first major national effort to shape the political debate in Washington, Crossroads GPS is an affiliate of American Crossroads, a Republican-leaning group with ties to Karl Rove,  President George W. Bush's former top political adviser. Together, the groups spent more than $38 million to defeat Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections ...

Here's one of the Crossroads GPS' ads:



OK, now there's the kicker: Lefties are going to be frothing at the mouth hearing that Crossroads GPS is tied to "Dr. Evil" Karl Rove.  I'm laughing already!! You know the Dems officially have their panties in a wad with that little tidbit o' info! 

Already, a group has formed to launch a counterstrike (here are excerpts from Tom Hamburger's report at The LA Times):

Rove-backed group belittles Democratic counterpunch

...
Wednesday morning, the Democratic-oriented group that sees itself as countering Crossroads--Priorities USA--announced their plan to buy more than $700,000 in advertising responding to the attack.

"We are Americans. We know right from wrong. And we know the ads blaming President Obama for the economy are politics at its worst," according to a script released by Priorities USA. "The Republican have opposed economic reforms at every turn. And now they have a plan that would essentially end Medicare for future retirees, slash education, while giving huge tax breaks to big oil and the wealthy. We can't rebuild America if they tear down the middle class."

Priorities USA Action is led by former Obama White House staffers Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney and they promised that more is to come.

Their latest salvo produced  eye-rolling at the Crossroads headquarters.

"Not only is the buy less than 20% of the Crossroads buy, but the messaging is goofy," says Jonathan Collegio, spokesman for Crossroads.

"Crossroads hits the president over his handling of the economy, and their response is that it's dirty politics to talk about the economy," Collegio said. "In addition to the initial $5 million buy, Crossroads plans to spend $20 million this summer advertising on television and on the web.

An official from Priorities USA kicked back with this: "We never expected we would be able to match Karl Rove dollar-for-dollar but we have a smarter advertising strategy and are running more effective ads. For example, our buy is far more efficient in that we are more focused on markets that speak directly to swing voters in swing states. And, as you know, we just formed a couple months ago but will be ramping up our activity especially as we get closer to the end of this year."

Here's one of Priorities USA's ads:



Let the mudslinging begin!!!!

Pelosi: "Drain the Swamp"

If you haven't checked out this site, you've got to!  It's TERRIFIC!!!! --
The People's Cube

Bees Making A Comeback Thanks to Dedicated Beekeepers

In May I posted a story about another possible reason for the decline in the bee population ("Cell Phones: Could They Be Causing the Death of Bees?").  This month Randal R. Rucker and Walter Thurman of The Wall Street Journal had an encouraging update on the bee population (emphasis added):

Blessed Are the Beekeepers
Despite the much-hyped 'colony collapse disorder,' there are plenty of bees and honey

The last week of June is National Pollinator Week. Birds, bats and wild insects all pollinate the flowering plants around us. The most celebrated pollinator is the honeybee—and for good reason. Close to 2.5 million hives of bees are managed by fewer than 2,000 commercial beekeepers, who take their bees on the road each year to pollinate blueberries, almonds, cranberries and a cornucopia of other fruits and vegetables. Without this cooperation of beekeeper, bee and farmer, our national diet would be less nutritious and less tasty.

As even casual observers now know, however, all is not perfect in the world of bees. Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, is their most recent scourge. Over the past four years, approximately 30% of U.S. honeybees alive in the fall failed to survive to pollinate blossoms in the spring. While widespread die-offs due to disease are as old as beekeeping, dating back to the 17th century at least, this one appears worse than most.

What is truly remarkable, then, is that the pollinating services of bees, and the fruits and vegetables of their labors, have remained steady in the face of CCD. In light of this fact, we propose a celebration—to pay homage to the resilience of honeybees and to the business acumen and perseverance of commercial beekeepers.

To help understand the implications of the latest wave of bee disease, and the contributions of the beekeepers who lie awake at night worrying about them, we offer the following observations based on our research:

First, the number of bees pollinating crops has been stable in recent years—CCD notwithstanding. Before CCD, U.S. beekeepers lost on average 15% of their colonies each winter. What we know about bee losses since then is that they increased immediately after the discovery of CCD in 2006 and have remained at about 30% for the past four years.

Yet the increase in winter losses has not translated into fewer springtime bees. Department of Agriculture data show that total bee numbers were higher in 2010 than in any year since 1999. Losses due to CCD have been more than offset by beekeepers rebuilding bee populations, primarily by splitting and requeening their colonies.

Second, honey production by U.S. bees has been fairly stable. It was approximately the same in 2010 as it was in the several years before CCD.

Finally, there is no evidence that CCD has measurably affected the pollinated food supply. If the effects of CCD were economically widespread and significant, increased costs to beekeepers would dictate that farmers would have to pay more to secure pollination services. But fees charged by beekeepers for pollinating crops have shown at most modest signs of increase since the appearance of CCD. While fees for pollinating almonds (a bellwether for the industry) have increased in the past decade, the increases largely predate CCD, and fees have not increased in the most recent years.

Commercial beekeepers routinely fight diseases and parasites that threaten their tiny livestock. They apply miticides. They monitor and manipulate their colonies' genetic stock. And they adjust to changing circumstances, such as increased winter mortality, by increasing bee populations in anticipation of winter losses. It is these efforts that explain the relative stability of the nation's bee population and its products in the face of CCD and other diseases and parasites.

Ongoing research will lead to better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent bee disease, which will be welcome to beekeepers and consumers alike. In the meantime, we can be grateful that CCD has had no measurable, let alone drastic, effects on the availability of fruits, vegetables, nuts and honey. Beekeepers have been as busy as . . . well, as their iconic insect partners to bring this about.

Mr. Rucker is a professor of agricultural economics and economics at Montana State University. Mr. Thurman is a professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University. Both are fellows of the Property and Environment Research Center.

Education v. Indoctrination: Teachers Again Crossing the Fine Line

Ah, yes.  Education: a topic near and dear to my heart.  But, I am sickened by teachers who indoctrinate students with leftist ideology.  And, frankly, I abhor any kind of political indoctrination -- right or left!  (Sadly, though, it always seems to be left-leaning political garbage.) 

Recently, the California Federation of Teachers has been promoting different "labor studies" curricula for use in elementary schools.  This from Kyle Olson at BigGovernment.com:

Curriculum Teaches Kindergartners to Unionize

... Like their fellow travelers in the “man-made” global warming community, the unions know they have to indoctrinate the young with their propaganda. But when you’re dealing with kindergartners, you have to insert the concept of unionizing subtly into lessons.  You’ll get blank stares if you talk about the virtues of Jimmy Hoffa or the Service Employees International Union.

The California Federation of Teachers produced the perfect solution with “Trouble in the Hen House: A Puppet Show.” To spare you the unpleasantness of reading this bilge, here’s the basic plot:  a bunch of hens feel “oppressed” by the farmer, so they band together and create Hens United. The angry unionized chickens are too powerful a force for the farmer to handle, so he capitulates to the hens’ demands.  Here’s a key excerpt:

Henrietta (the hen):  Farmer Brown, we have something to say.  This is what we chickens want:

1. More and better food.  No mold, no sand in our corn.

2. Freedom to walk around outside and a bigger hen house.

3. Each hen will lay an average of four eggs a week.

4. Stop punishing us.  Let Hortensia come back.

Farmer: No way!  Who ever heard of chickens telling the farmer what to do?  Shut up and get back to the henhouse!

Chickens:  No, Farmer Brown, not this time!  And besides those things, you have to recognize our union, Hens United, or we’ll all stop laying eggs!

Farmer: OK, OK, if I have no eggs to sell, I’ll go bankrupt.  We’d all starve, so I guess I’ll have to do what you say.  Since you’re all together, what can I do?

Chickens: We won!  We stuck together and we won!  Si, Se puede.*

With this puppet show, educators now have a way of teaching children how to use mob tactics to get what they want from those in positions of power. This puppet show fits very nicely into a kindergartener’s school day – right after finger painting and just ahead of snack time.

Lest readers are tempted to dismiss this as some wacky lesson plan that never sees the light of day in an actual classroom, consider this story about the 2009 California Federation of Teachers convention, as reported in the May 2009 newsletter of the San Mateo Community College Federation of Teachers:

“…Bill Morgan uses a short puppet show, Trouble in the Hen House, to teach about the strength and value of organizing unions.  His students act out a story about hens who organize a union to fight against unfair compensation and poor working conditions.  Through this activity, the students learn about becoming activists, organizers, negotiators and problem solvers.”

Just to remind you, the “students” the newsletter is referring to are kindergartners and first graders.
With labor activists starting to propagandize students in kindergarten, they’ll already be brainwashed by the time they learn to actually think critically.  Vladamir Lenin is quoted as saying, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

The scary thing for America’s future is that this is happening this early in children’s lives and little if anything is being done about it.

*Note: “Si, Se puede” is Spanish for “Yes, it is possible,” but is sometimes translated as “Yes, we can.”  Where have I heard that before…?

[Continue to the website Public School Spending for more.  You'll find out about another lovely piece of pro-union, "kiddie-approved" curriculum called "The Yummy Pizza Company." ]

Teachers who are guilty of indoctrinating kids should be fired, their certifications revoked, and then charged with "intellectual molestation"!!!

Petroleum Reserve: A Poll Bumping Strategy?

It's shocking when I look at the present prices on local gas stations.  In this area I would say that prices have dropped about 50 cents per gallon in less than a month.  Is this drastic of a drop in such a short period a time truly due to Obama's recent opening of the U.S.'s oil reserves?  I also can't help but wonder what kind of risk that might pose to our nation, given that that reserve is there for emergencies.

Here's RedState's Steve Malley's take on the decision -- it appears that the "emergency" is to get Obama re-elected in 2012:

Why Did Obama Open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

On Thursday, the Department of Energy announced a release of thirty million barrels of crude oil over the next 60 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation’s stockpile supposedly set aside for emergency supply disruptions.

Washington, DC – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency have decided to release a total of 60 million barrels of oil onto the world market over the next 30 days to offset the disruption in the oil supply caused by unrest in the Middle East. As part of this effort, the U.S. will release 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). The SPR is currently at a historically high level with 727 million barrels.

Upon hearing the news, my first question was “What’s the emergency?” Crude oil prices have been falling recently. The market abruptly fell 5%, which will affect gasoline prices in the short term, but the futures market is less convinced that the impact is permanent. (We noted last week, before the release, that the futures premium 6-12 months out was $2 to $3; now it is $4 to $5, all the better for the Koch Brothers.)

I concluded that the President’s goal is a bump in the polls, but that the effect would be short-lived. Most in the media concluded the same.

But then I reread the DOE press release: “… the U.S. and its partners in the International Energy Agency have decided … .” Ach so. Our International President strikes again. Ceding control of a uniquely American asset to an international body is troubling, but par for the course in the Obama Administration.

Then I read the press release one more time.

The Administration will continue to consult closely with other consuming and producing countries in the period ahead.

Reserves in the SPR are sufficient to allow Mr. Obama to play this game from now until the November 2012 election.

Uh-oh. Now I’m really paranoid.

In 2008 the Congressional Research Service issued a report titled “The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: History, Perspectives and Issues” (pdf link) which describes the legal requirements for a President to order a draw on the SPR. Initially created as strictly a emergency stockpile for domestic supply disruptions, in 2005 Congress loosened the drawdown criteria and explicitly contemplated IEA cooperation.

 Excerpt from "The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: History, Perspectives and Issues", a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2008. Highlighting added.

Read that last highlight again. A conniving president could, if I read the CRS study correctly, declare back-to-back emergencies eight times between today and the November 2012 elections. Eight times 30 million barrels is 240 million barrels. Take that away from the 727 million currently in inventory, and it leaves you with 487 million barrels, just under the statutory minimum volume of 500 million barrels.

That’s a half million barrels a day, on average, between now and the election. That’s enough oil to offset the production capability destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico by the Administration’s overreaction to the BP oil spill.

Events in Libya took 1.5 million barrels per day off the world market. The graph below shows a six-month timeline of crude oil prices, showing the effect of Libya’s turmoil on the spot prices for “West Texas Intermediate”, the dominant U.S. benchmark crude oil, and “Brent North Sea”, the European standard.

 

The dashed line is the price difference between the two benchmarks. Six months ago, Brent crude traded at a premium to WTI of only $1.75 per barrel. WTI prices have been soft because of a relative oversupply of oil at the Cushing, OK trading hub, thanks to recent drilling successes in North Dakota and South Texas. To the extent there is an “emergency”, it’s a lot more urgent for Europe than it is for the U.S.

Who are the IEA member countries? Basically, the European Union, plus the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Korea.

IEA’s announcement of the release makes no separate mention of the U.S., although SPR oil accounts for half the total. In the IEA account, the release was an IEA decision.

International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka announced that the 28 IEA member countries have agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil in the coming month in response to the ongoing disruption of oil supplies from Libya. This supply disruption has been underway for some time and its effect has become more pronounced as it has continued. The normal seasonal increase in refiner demand expected for this summer will exacerbate the shortfall further. Greater tightness in the oil market threatens to undermine the fragile global economic recovery.

Here are some questions that journalists should be asking Secretary Chu, Secretary Geithner and President Obama:

• Who decided to make this release? Was it an IEA decision, or a cooperative one?
• Who decided the timing?
• What is the weighted-average inventory price of SPR oil we’ll be selling?
• Under what conditions will SPR inventory be replaced, and at what price?
• Under what conditions do you anticipate future releases, past the current 60-day period?
• Why not restore production in the Gulf of Mexico, instead of drawing on the SPR?

I’ll eagerly await answers to these questions.

Sorry for the length, but it was too meaty to edit down.

Obama: A Spineless President Is The Terrorists' Dinnerbell

Bachmann Attack: The Left Fishing for "Dirt"

I truly do hope that Republican GOP candidate Michele Bachmann has a spine of titanium, because now the attack dogs of the MSM and radical left are on the hunt for "dirt" on everything Bachmann.  Let's not forget how viciously Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were savaged in the press during the 2008 election, evidence of how sexist our nation remains ... or, at least the press and the Left.  ("Tolerance" my ass!)

Last night I was disgusted to read this bit of tripe on MSNBC.com (the "Lean Left" network):

Bachmann's husband got $137,000 in Medicaid funds

While Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., has forcefully denounced the Medicaid program for swelling the "welfare rolls," the mental health clinic run by her husband has been collecting annual Medicaid payments totaling over $137,000 for the treatment of patients since 2005, according to new figures obtained by NBC News.

The previously unreported payments are on top of the $24,000 in federal and state funds that Bachmann & Associates, the clinic founded by Marcus Bachmann, a clinical therapist, received in recent years under a state grant to train its employees, state records show. The figures were provided to NBC News in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The clinic, based in Lake Elmo, Minn., describes itself on its website as offering "quality Christian counseling" for a large number of mental health problems ranging from "anger management" to addictions and eating disorders.

The $161,000 in payments from the Minnesota Department of Human Services to her husband's clinic appear to contradict some of Michelle Bachmann's public accounts this week when she was first asked about the extent to which her family has benefited from government aid. Contacted this afternoon, Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Bachmann, said the congresswoman was doing campaign events and was not immediately available for comment.

MSNBC's "national investigative reporter" Michael Isikoff then delves into a trail of Medicaid payments to the Bachmanns' clinic and questions whether the payments for employee training went to the clinic or to its employees.  But, here are some points that pop up:

1)  Never is there an accusation of wrongdoing in applying for or in the receipt of the money -- no  corruption stories;

2)  Do the math: the "money trail" involved $137,000 paid out over six years is less than $23,000 a year -- which seems like a pittance.

Helloooo?!?  Why is this a story, folks?  It's a feeble attempt to sully Bachmann's name at a time when she's barely out of the gate in her shot at the presidency.  The MSM is frantically attacking every single GOP candidate with anything and everything in a fear-driven frenetic attempt to protect The Golden Child and assure The One's re-election.

Meanwhile, the media are churning out stories to make Bachmann look like "a flake" with her gaffes, completely overlooking and censuring any reports of Dear Leader's, because he must be protected at all costs.  This from Jason Mattera of Human Events (emphasis added):

Michele Bachmann said Duke was born in Waterloo instead of Winterset.  So what?

Barack Obama once said he would campaign in all 57 states, which, on a sliding scale of silly to serious gaffes, has to rank up there in the latter category ...

While the media are trying to paint Rep. Michele Bachmann (R.-Minn.) as a blunder-prone candidate—or “flake,” as Chris Wallace unjustifiably called her on “Fox News Sunday”—Barack Obama and many of his Democrat colleagues have played “Can You Top This?” with their own misstatements and slipups, and yet they do not receive even a scintilla of the scrutiny that Bachmann does. 

Within the last three years, the media’s self-appointed smartest President in modern history has insulted the Special Olympics, mixed up the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, falsely claimed that his American Uncle liberated Auschwitz, signed the Westminster Abbey guest book with the date 24 May 2008 when the date was really 24 May 2011, mispronounced “corpsman” when speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, and perhaps most egregiously, God’s gift to the presidency couldn’t even distinguish between living and dead Medal of Honor recipients.

And that’s just off the top of my head.

Gaffes hit us all.  But the frequency and folly of Obama’s are particularly troubling considering that he has an army of researchers, writers, handlers and teleprompters at his disposal.

That makes Obama’s gaffes a special kind of stupid.

Then there are the policy statements that are so far removed from reality.

When have you heard Michele Bachmann tout a “Recovery Summer” like Joe Biden did while the labor force shrinks and the economy limps along?  Or can you recall Bachmann blaming the persistent unemployment on modern technology, including those pesky ATM fees, as our genius President did?  When has Bachmann ever advocated codifying a new health-care law and then, and only then, finding out what was actually in that new health-care law, as Nancy Pelosi admitted to the press?

You haven’t.

Bachmann’s sin is that she has an “R” next to her name. ...

And here's where Mattera gets in a really good uppercut to the MSM's jaw:

Rather than promise to grill Michele Bachmann’s foster kids or highlight the number of times she used the word “Iowa” in a speech in … Iowa, journalists could turn their sharp pens and cantankerous voices to the growing number of businesses suspiciously exempted from ObamaCare, the expanding number of surveys reporting that employers are dropping coverage because of the President’s health-care law, and the Democrats’ inability to offer any proposals to reform our Medicare system.

Yesterday, Andrea Tantaros of FoxNews had some insightful comments regarding the lesson she imagines Bachmann has learned from observing Sarah Palin.  Here are some of the meatier points (emphasis added):

There is a saying that a fool learns from his own mistakes, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. When it comes to Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, there is no truer statement ...

Palin was the first female Republican candidate to be nominated to the GOP presidential ticket, and with that came much scrutiny ...

With Palin, the left-leaning press asked “gotcha” questions, unlikely to be asked of a man. The then-Alaska governor was asked everything from obscure foreign policy questions to simple, almost insulting ones like “what papers do you read?” And they were all crafted, by design to confuse her.

She was lambasted for her hairstyle (beehive), sexualized for her figure (when she posed for Runner’s World magazine), ridiculed for her diction and down home style (Newsweek: “She’s one of the folks – and that’s the problem”). 

Her marriage was dissected with reporters asking if Todd was too involved in her career, despite other marriages in politics like the Clintons union being viewed as acceptable.

...

While Democrats could ask the media to lay off their kids, the press viciously analyzed and editorialized hers ...

Tantaros then proceeds to list Bachmann's approach thus far to the ensuing press tsunami:

Judging from Bachmann’s performance over the last few months, she had the luxury of observing from the sidelines, and learning from her errors.

Bachmann has message discipline. She’ll throw out red meat to her base but subtly and smartly so as not to be labeled a nut. 

She is deeply entrenched in the issues of the day from foreign policy to the budget and boasts an impressive resume that she has no problem touting, unlike Palin, who relied on McCain advisors to assist in her branding ...


Rather than spar with those who buy ink by the barrel, a la Palin, Bachmann realizes that this can drag a candidate down and get them off track. 

Instead, Bachmann blows of their nonsense and inherently biased questions with ease and coolly coasts back on message. 

When "Fox News Sunday’s" Chris Wallace asked her if she was a "flake" she brushed it off and got back to highlighting her credentials. When she confused actor John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gasey (both from Iowa) in her official presidential announcement remarks she admitted she made a mistake and moved on rather than staying around to spar with the press.

Bachmann, it appears, acutely understands that she will be held to a different standard than the guys, just as Palin was. She demonstrated this during the first debate in New Hampshire. While the boys rolled their eyes and smirked at each other, she took shots at the president – not her GOP rivals – doing it all the while with a smile.

Lessons have been learned. She won’t give the press the fight that they want. She won’t let her gaffes (and all politicians make them) define her. And she will not resign from office to pursue her passions.

Go, Michele!!  Let's hope Bachmann can continue diverting the press back on track to the real issues, rather than allowing it to pull her down in the the muck of sexism and sexualization.  And, in the process, maybe she will help wake up this nation to the MSM's tawdry, manipulative and intolerant schemes.

SCOTUS Deals Gore & Global Warming Alarmists A Blow with Reality

There apparently are some clear-thinking realists still alive in this country, and from our U.S. Supreme Court, no less!  From Steve Milloy at The Washington Times (emphasis added):

Supremes retreat from climate panic
Ruling returns environmental rules to politicians, not courts

The Supreme Court dealt Al Gore, the Environmental Protection Agency and other believers in alarmist climate science a surprising and severe blow this week. In its June 20 decision on American Electric Power v. Connecticut et al., the court ruled that the mere existence of EPA regulatory authority over greenhouse-gas regulations pre-empted lawsuits against coal-burning utilities on the grounds that the emissions constitute a public nuisance.

That decision wasn’t all that surprising as the common law doctrine of nuisance is more typically applied to local cases of noxious odors and noise as opposed to emissions of colorless, odorless and tasteless greenhouse gasses, which are global in nature. Even alarmist science believer and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney knows that it’s called “global warming,” not “America warming.”

The startling part of the decision, however, is that the court quietly but clearly backed away from alarmist climate “science.”

In its 2007 decision Massachusetts v. EPA that was authored by the very liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, a bare majority of the court (all the liberals plus Justice Anthony Kennedy) embraced Al Gore-type climate alarmism in ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Justice Stevens wrote: “The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized. The Government’s own objective independent assessment of the relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels … severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in … winter snowpack … with direct and important economic consequences, and an increase in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events.”

But what a difference a science scandal apparently makes. In its first climate decision following the 2009 Climategate scandal and its progeny - i.e., Glaciergate, Rainforestgate, Pachaurigate, NASAgate and other climate science-related scandals - the court retreated to neutrality on climate science.

Writing for an essentially unanimous court (Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused herself because she was part of a lower-court ruling on the case), the ultra-liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated, “The Court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.”

The court's plainly written, jaw-dropping about-face is hidden in a footnote and so hasn’t been reported in media accounts of the decision - but it is of significant consequence.

Climate alarmists can no longer claim that the Supreme Court has validated the science of climate alarmism and ordered the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

Other text in Justice Ginsburg's opinion clearly indicates that it is up to the EPA as to whether greenhouse gases should be regulated. The agency might decline to regulate so long as its decision is not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law.”

If there was any doubt before, the court has now unanimously shifted the blame for destroying the economy with carbon regulations to the Obama administration.

This decision has 2012 implications, as well.

The winner of the presidential election will be fully in charge of the EPA and the decision whether the  agency regulates greenhouse gases.

If re-elected, President Obama most likely will keep the pedal to the metal in order to accelerate EPA control of America’s economy. A Republican president will have the option to roll back the EPA’s junk science-fueled regulations or to do something in between.

No Republican candidate yet has indicated what they would do about the EPA’s job- and economy-killing greenhouse-gas regulations, though Rep. Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich have courageously called for the abolition of the EPA.

At the very least, the EPA’s greenhouse-gas regulations should be rolled back as part of a complete rethinking of environmental protection policies and practices. In the more than 40 years since President Richard Nixon merged the various federal environmental programs into the EPA, our environment has become about as generally pristine, clean and safe as makes sense.

This is not about rolling back meaningful environmental protection so much as it is about rolling back harmful overregulation. By making us poorer, today’s overregulation eventually will hurt the environment and public health more than past emissions of anything ever did.

Now that the Supreme Court  has removed its imprimatur from EPA’s attack on America, Republicans should exploit the moment to save our economy from an out-of-control agency.

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and is author of “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them” (Regnery, 2009).

Splinters in Her Crotch

I got this e-mail quite a while ago ... hopefully it isn't something that y'all have read a million times by now ...

"Splinters in her crotch"

A woman from Los Angeles who was a tree hugger, a liberal Democrat, and an anti-hunter, purchased a piece of timberland near Colville, WA .

There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted a good view of the natural splendor of her land so she started to climb the big tree. As she neared the top she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the woman slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her crotch.

In considerable pain, she hurried to a local ER to see a doctor. She told him she was an environmentalist, a democrat, and an anti-hunter and how she came to get all the splinters. The doctor listened to her story with great patience and then told her to go wait in the examining room and he would see if he could help her.

She sat and waited three hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry woman demanded, "What took you so long?" He smiled and then told her, "Well, I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a "recreational area" so close to a waste treatment facility. I'm sorry, but due to Obama Care they turned me down."

Dogs Appointed in Court Cases to Calm Witnesses

Yet another reason why we all love dogs ...

From The Associated Press via nola.com (emphasis added):

Special Court Dogs Provide Calm for Traumatized Victims

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- A 15-year-old girl had special help when she took the witness stand Monday at the trial for the man accused of sexually assaulting her for four years.

Rose, an 11-year-old golden retriever whose regular job is helping provide therapy in schools for troubled children, was there at her side, helping to calm a child who experts said is otherwise incapable of talking about her traumatic ordeal.

It's an unprecedented arrangement in New York and now gaining acceptance elsewhere. Pioneered by a Seattle prosecutor in 2003, courthouse dogs are participating in trials in at least 10 states, often over the objections of defense lawyers who worry that the dogs generate extra sympathy for victims and witnesses.

During a little more than an hour on the stand, Rose was mostly invisible Monday. When the girl was asked to point out the man who is charged with raping her for four years starting at the age of 10, the dog poked her muzzle up and the girl stroked it. When she was asked to go into graphic detail about the rapes, she looked down and patted the dog.

Dutchess County Judge Stephen Greller had rejected a defense argument that Rose's presence might prejudice the jury. Greller said he relied in part on an earlier New York case involving a "comfort item," a teddy bear held by a child witness in an early 1990s sex-crime trial.

Before the girl and jurors were brought in, a handler led Rose to the witness box, where she was placed mostly out of view under the supervision of the judge. When jurors returned, Greller introduced the witness and told the panel she was with a companion animal, but that they shouldn't draw any conclusion from that or allow sympathy to sway them.

The girl gave mostly short answers, steadily reaching down with one hand on the lead and one hand on Rose. The jury of seven women and five men gave no indication they even noticed the dog.

The girl, dressed in a dark top and pants, her dark hair in braids, pursed or bit her lips as she responded to questions, nervously draining a small white cup of water while cross-examination began. At one point, under questioning from the defense lawyer, she took a deep breath, looked down and appeared to whisper to Rose.
Ellen O'Neill-Stephens, a prosecutor in Seattle who founded the organization Courthouse Dogs, has championed dogs helping witnesses. She said they are "an incredible tool" for helping calm victims "reliving the trauma as they're describing what happened to them."

Their use gained traction after a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a defendant's right to confront an accuser threw into doubt the legality of allowing victims to testify remotely by two-way video or other means to avoid the stressful environment of the courtroom.

"Now you had kids right up there in the face of the person who did this to them," O'Neill-Stephens said.
"We had an occasion in our courthouse where a child just froze," she said, describing a witness scared by the presence of a defendant's relatives. "All it took was playing with the dog to tell the judge he was afraid of them."

The relatives were ordered out of court.

O'Neill-Stephens lists 18 jurisdictions in Washington, Idaho, California, Texas, Missouri, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Hawaii and New Mexico with courthouse dog programs.

Rose was trained by Dale Picard, founder of Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities. The animal works in the organization's vocational education program at six alternative schools near New York City for children with emotional, behavioral and learning problems.

The animal is trained to work with victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatized and special needs children, veterans at VA hospitals and others. She has been trained to sense anxiety and to try to reduce stress by nuzzling a person or seeking to be petted.

Studies show that such interactions have a strong calming effect, including lowering blood pressure, said David Crenshaw, a clinical psychologist at the facility where the girl is living.

Before the girl took the stand, defense lawyer David Martin repeated his objections.

Martin, the public defender representing 36-year-old Victor Tohom, has objected not only to the potential that Rose would generate prejudicial empathy among jurors, but the fact there is no law in New York allowing the dog to accompany her. He said Greller's decision allowing the dog will be part of any appeal if Tohom is convicted on the charge of predatory sexual assault against a child.

Greller asked Martin to suggest special instructions he should give jurors before they deliberate, something O'Neill-Stephens said is vital to avoiding issues on appeal.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Kristine Hawlk, the prosecutor who filed the motion to allow Rosie in court, said she couldn't discuss the case.

To date, there has been no case law from an appeals court on the practice, O'Neill-Stephens said, but "some defense attorneys successfully object to the presence of the dog and the judge doesn't want to go out on a limb."

She said defense lawyers in her jurisdiction have generally stopped objecting. Some even use the dogs to advantage, petting them as they cross-examine a witness, perhaps softening jurors' views of them as interrogators.

"The dogs are for everybody in the criminal justice system," O'Neill-Stephens said.

By George M. Walsh, Associated Press

As I always say: "Tain't nuttin' like a dawg!"

Co-Ed Dorms: Higher Rates of Drinking, Hook-Ups, Depression & Lower Academic Achievement

Now, at this moment, it's only one university that has decided to revert back to single-gender living arrangements for its dorms.  And, yes, it is The Catholic University that has made this decision for the coming Fall, but one must seriously consider the university's reasons and stats for such a drastic change. 

Here's this opinion piece from The Wall Street Journal, written by John Garvey, president of The Catholic University in Washington, D.C. (emphasis added):

Why We're Going Back to Single-Sex Dorms

Student housing has become a hotbed of reckless drinking and hooking up.


My wife and I have sent five children to college and our youngest just graduated. Like many parents, we encouraged them to study hard and spend time in a country where people don't speak English. Like all parents, we worried about the kind of people they would grow up to be.

We may have been a little unusual in thinking it was the college's responsibility to worry about that too. But I believe that intellect and virtue are connected. They influence one another. Some say the intellect is primary. If we know what is good, we will pursue it. Aristotle suggests in the "Nicomachean Ethics" that the influence runs the other way. He says that if you want to listen intelligently to lectures on ethics you "must have been brought up in good habits." The goals we set for ourselves are brought into focus by our moral vision.

"Virtue," Aristotle concludes, "makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means." If he is right, then colleges and universities should concern themselves with virtue as well as intellect.

I want to mention two places where schools might direct that concern, and a slightly old-fashioned remedy that will improve the practice of virtue. The two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up.

Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for young adults aged 17-24. Students who engage in binge drinking (about two in five) are 25 times more likely to do things like miss class, fall behind in school work, engage in unplanned sexual activity, and get in trouble with the law. They also cause trouble for other students, who are subjected to physical and sexual assault, suffer property damage and interrupted sleep, and end up babysitting problem drinkers.

Hooking up is getting to be as common as drinking. Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, who heads the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, says that in various studies, 40%-64% of college students report doing it.

The effects are not all fun. Rates of depression reach 20% for young women who have had two or more sexual partners in the last year, almost double the rate for women who have had none. Sexually active young men do more poorly than abstainers in their academic work. And as we have always admonished our own children, sex on these terms is destructive of love and marriage.

Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.

I know it's countercultural. More than 90% of college housing is now co-ed. But Christopher Kaczor at Loyola Marymount points to a surprising number of studies showing that students in co-ed dorms (41.5%) report weekly binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing (17.6%). Similarly, students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year—and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.

The point about sex is no surprise. The point about drinking is. I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up—and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up).

Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls. It will take a few years to complete the transformation.

The change will probably cost more money. There are a few architectural adjustments. We won't be able to let the ratio of men and women we admit into the freshman class vary from year to year with the size and quality of the pools. But our students will be better off.

It will be interesting to see how this change develops, and if other university's will follow suit.

EcoCAR Competition: Stuck in a 32-Year Time Warp

The other day I read a story in USAToday about the recent three-year competition called "EcoCAR" involving 16 North American universities.  The contest, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors, awarded first place to a team of students from Virginia Tech for its car with an mpg of 82.

Here's an excerpt from USAToday (emphasis added):

... It started with a GM-donated Saturn Vue and swapped out the engine with one from a 2009 Chevy HHR engine. It then added a battery and electric motor and made other tweaks such as eliminating engine idle.

... the car can go 50 miles on its battery and another 155 on gasoline, including a 85% ethanol blend or E85. The redesigned car boosted the fuel achieving of the stock engine by 70% ...

Impressive, indeed, but I can't help but point to the Moodymobile back in 1979.  The father / son racing team responded to then Transportation Secretary Brock Adams' call for the car industry to "reinvent the car" by the year 2000, pushing for 50 miles per gallon.  Ralph Moody, 60 at the time, and partner Mike Shetley solved the challenge in a week, debuting a 1979 Mercury Capri that got 84 mpg.  (See the August 1979 Popular Mechanics' article "Fuel for the Future: More Miles for Your Money: An 84-mpg Turbodiesel.") 

People Magazine in May of 1979 reported:

What they did was modify, inside and out, a four-cylinder Perkins diesel engine (like those used in motorboats) and drop it into a 1979 Capri body, adding a turbocharger for extra power. (The turbocharger reroutes hot exhaust gases that normally escape from the tail pipe.) The Moodymobile was soon stirring interest locally and was test-driven by Congressman Bill Chappell. He immediately wired President Carter: "I've seen it, I've driven it and it works."

A fortnight ago Moody and Shetley drove the car 850 miles to Washington, D.C. (on 11.1 gallons of fuel) and testified before the Senate Energy Committee. The car (which is noisier than a conventional one) faces a stiff battery of environmental tests before it can be marketed, but Moody is confident one of the big automakers will buy the rights to the patent. Ford, Chrysler and General Motors have all expressed interest. 

Shortly after that, I remember hearing that Moody had been offered money by a car manufacturer for the car's plans.  My parents promptly responded with "Well, we'll never hear about that again!"  Sadly, they were right.  Now, 32 years later, we read the results of a fancy-schmancy car competition ... backed by a car manufacturer. 

Will the innovations be taken seriously this time, or we will remain in this car manufacturer-induced, technological vacuum?

We have the technology for fuel-efficient, gas burning engines!  We've had it for over 30 years!!!  We don't have to resort to hybrids which remain underwhelming and over-hyped.

ACORN Booted by SCOTUS

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported on the recent U.S. Supreme Court's denial of  ACORN's claim that Congress had acted unconstitutionally in denying the activist organization government funding (emphasis added):

Nuts to ACORN

Cutting off funds is not a bill attainder.

The case of Acorn v. U.S. ended with a whimper this week as the U.S. Supreme Court turned aside the advocacy group's attempt to revive its lawsuit claiming that Congress had acted unconstitutionally in denying it federal funds. The Congressional action came two years ago in response to hidden-camera videos in which employees of at least five Acorn offices gave conservative activists advice on how to start a child-prostitution business.

Acorn cried that the denial of funds from Uncle Sam, which had accounted for about 10% of the group's budget, amounted to a "corporate death sentence." District Judge Nina Gershon held that the ban was an unconstitutional bill of attainder—a legislative usurpation of the judicial authority to punish wrongdoing. But last August the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. A three-judge panel ruled that a "smattering" of Congressional opinions to the effect that Acorn was "crooked" or "criminal" was insufficient to establish punitive intent and that "the withholding of appropriations . . . does not constitute a traditional form of punishment."

"Congress must have the authority to suspend federal funds to an organization that has admitted to significant mismanagement," Judge Roger Miner wrote for the panel. In addition to the hidden-camera scandal, Acorn had acknowledged voter-registration fraud and a cover-up of the founder's brother's embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the organization. With its legal remedies exhausted, perhaps Acorn will finally turn its attention where it should have been all along: on cleaning up its own act.

Geert Wilders Acquitted!!!

My activity on this blog has been quite low this past school year, which has been a very hectic and fast-paced one.  Now that I am officially on summer vacation (well, actually for a few weeks now), I have continued being remiss in my blogging "duties."  I've been quite the sloth, not feeling motivated to blog, although there have been a boat load of issues buggin' the crap out of me!  I guess I've been practicing avoidance -- upset about "shtuff" going on in our nation and world, and yet not wanting to vent.

My big motivator to get back to blogging was a wonderful piece of news I read today about Dutch politician Geert Wilders being acquitted of hate speech and discrimination.  This is the right-wing guy, perhaps the only politician in the world, who has had the cojones to speak out against Islamofascism.  The PC-Police tried to shut him up, but amazingly "justice prevailed." Here's the scoop from the AP via MSNBC (the "lean left" network ... I bet they're pissed), emphasis added:

Dutch Court Acquits Lawmaker Geert Wilders of Muslim Hate Speech Charges

Politician Claimed Islam is violent by nature, called for banning of Quran

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A Dutch court acquitted right-wing politician Geert Wilders of hate speech and discrimination Thursday, ruling that his anti-Islam statements — while offensive to many Muslims — fell within the bounds of legitimate political debate. 

Presiding judge Marcel van Oosten said Wilders' claims that Islam is violent by nature, and his calls to halt Muslim immigration and ban the Muslim holy book, the Quran, must be seen in a wider context of debate over immigration policy.

The court said his public statement could not be directly linked to increased discrimination against Dutch Muslims.

He looked unmoved as the verdict was read, but his supporters in the public gallery hugged one another and clapped after the acquittal.

Wilders, one of the most powerful and popular politicians in the Netherlands, was accused of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims through numerous public statements, and with insulting them by comparing Islam with Naziism.

PhotoBlog: Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders back in court
 
"I'm incredibly happy with this acquittal on all counts," Wilders said outside the courtroom.

"It's not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you're allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you're not muzzled in public debate. An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders," he said.

The court found that Wilders' rhetoric was "on the edge of what is legally permissible" but not illegal.

Legitimate debate
The judge described statements about a "tsunami" of immigrants as "crude and denigrating," but legally legitimate given wider context and his acknowledgment that those who integrate are acceptable and do not call for violence.

In speeches, written articles and a short film that incited riots around the Muslim world, Wilder said Islam is an inherently violent religion, and he compared the Quran with "Mein Kampf," Hitler's tirade against Jews — an especially touchy image because of the large number of Dutch Jews handed over to the Nazis in World War II.

Story: 'Islam is regarded as the biggest threat to Europe for many Europeans' 
 
Wilders argued that his statements represent the views of millions of Dutch voters, that they are protected by freedom of speech law, and that the court is biased against him, while the charges are politically motivated.
Even the prosecutors called for his acquittal, saying that his remarks may be offensive, but they are part of legitimate political debate.

Despite their reluctance, the judges ruled last year that the case should be put to a judicial test and Wilders should be prosecuted.

Gilders was the guy that caused quite a firestorm back in 2008 when he produced the movie Fitna (go here for my post on that.)  You can find the movie on the Internet (YouTube), and here is a FoxNews interview with him.  Atlas Shruggs (Pamela Geller) has the movie along with a timeline of events surrounding Wilders.