Response to a troll

CalJim, aka CaJim, Jammin, and "Guest", takes umbrage to comments I made in response to comments he made (re-read it - it'll make sense on the second pass). For those of you who don't know about good old Jimmy, let me introduce you.

• Old Jimmy is a butt-buddy of the Caput a Palos
• Old Jimmy is a prominent voice for the FLDS persecution club (FLDS Texas)
• Old Jimmy still refuses to believe that Greg Prickett is the Caput a Palos
• Old Jimmy thinks that the Vulture is guilty of journalistic malpractice
• Old Jimmy has reading comprehension issues
  

Let's address old Jimmy's gripes, one by one.

I have never called you a pedophile nor even inferred it, your need to broad brush many topics might work for you but don't accuse me of such simple minded thought processes. Come on Vulture admit it, I never called you a pedophile.

You, Jim, may not have ever called me a pedophile. But how would I know, since so many of you over there at FLDS Texas and the (thankfully) dead Caput Penitus Culus post as "anonymous".

But that's not even the point. I said, "Your side categorizes my side as being pro-pedophilia." Your side != you personally. There's that reading comprehension problem again.

Your preoccupation with 'Due Process' I've criticized, especially now in the light that minor children brought to the YFZ Ranch from Canada definitely were sex trafficked from British Columbia.

Really? Children brought to the YFZ Ranch from Canada were sex trafficked? See, I did a Google search under "News" (so as to filter out wild accusations from bloggers like little Greggie), for "FLDS sex trafficking Canada" and I didn't get a single hit. Not one.

That's how your side works. Some blogger repeats gossip and it's fact to you, because it's what you want to believe. Legitimate news operations risk lawsuits if they print wild accusations. That's why there's no mention of any of that under "News" on Google. Even Big Media (the BM for short) wants no part of allegations that might get them sued.

You, however, stay mute on anybodies rights other than FLDS Church Priesthood men and their Prophet. Howze that? The women and children of this fanatical sect are look upon by their tenets of faith as literal property but you somehow clam up on that topic. Does equality stop at the MENS room door for you?

First, it's "anybody's", not "anybodies". Do try to be articulate when you write.

Second, you want to talk about a "broad brush"? The very idea that my interest in Due Process starts and ends with the FLDS is ridiculous on its face. See the right hand column, where it says "Labels"? See how it starts with various amendments, includes categories such as "bad law", "constitution", "crime", "Das Überwachenden", "Der Staat", "DHS", "F'ing lawyers", "Free Speech" - I could go on and on. The FLDS? Child please! They're way down on my list of priorities. I've spent way more time railing about cops, prosecutors, and politicians who violate the public trust than I have on the FLDS - and a lot of the FLDS posts were to defend myself against the likes of you and your execrable cohorts.

Tell me, when I write about black men who spent decades in prison because of planted evidence, prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence, or other malfeasance, does that mean I don't care about white men in the same situation? Or do you simply choose to only see what you want to see? I suspect the latter.

Scott Ledbetter republished your opinion pieces and his 'Ye Olde Journalist' blog fancies itself as a mainly journalistic site fighting yellow journalism and you allow him to pass off your writings as news content and it has never been labelled as editorial nor opinion column.

For the love of Pete! This is the exact same argument he raised months ago when Greggie's story appeared in the UNT student newspaper. Apparently old Jimmy expects Ye Olde Journalist to adhere to some kind of high standard of journalism, like The Washington Post or The New York Times. As if! Jimmy, those fishwraps regularly print opinion masquerading as news! Virtually every story about Global Warming is nothing but propaganda and political posturing slathered on like mustard on a ball park frank, masquerading as legitimate "news". What's the difference between Dana Milbank of The Post writing a Page 1 "news" article that says that Republicans are obstructing "progress" and me writing - well, anything? Get a clue, son. There is no "pure" journalism. Stop whizzing on Scotty. He can put anything he wants in his blog because....wait for it...it's HIS BLOG.

You're nothing but a troll, Jimmy. I don't know why I wasted my time responding to you. Nobody gives a rat's stinking tuchus what you think about anything. Your own mama doesn't even listen to you. Give up. Please.

The Eisenhower Warnings

Frequent Tizona Group commenter J.M. Heinrichs made the following comment in reference to a comment I made about Ron Paul being the only Team Elephant candidate who would take on the military-industrial complex.

People keep forgetting that Eisenhower issued two warnings, and the Mil-Industry one was the lessor.

That got me thinking. Everyone who knows anything about history is familiar with Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex. But another warning? I was intrigued. I googled Eisenhower's speech and found this.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.  (emphasis mine)

Does that sound familiar to you? It should.

The War on Man-made Global Warming (AGW) is just one example of what has become a symbiotic relationship between left-leaning politicians, left-leaning bureaucrats, and left-leaning academics. Science has been co-opted by this nefarious troika to the detriment of both science and humanity.

Government money is allotted to those scientists who come up with the "results" that government wants to see. Public policy is made on the basis of these "influenced" findings. And politicians leverage these "facts" to demogogue against those who question their agendas.

It's a pity that this Eisenhower warning wasn't given the same weight as the other, equally important warning. Only time will tell whether it will be the military-industrial complex that is our undoing or the scientific-technological elite.

Science scare tactics

I for one am sick and tired of science and its over-hyped, overblown, overly dramatic "findings". At the heart of each of those "findings" is the need for a "solution" that will require massive amounts of funding for more "science" or bigger government.

Here's a recent sampling.

World is 'one poor harvest' from chaos, new book warns
Summary: overpopulation and global warming are going to wipe us out if we don't do something. "Something" isn't defined exactly, but more science funding is the implied "solution".

If Quakes Weren’t Enough, Enter the ‘Superstorm’
Summary: a superstorm could hit California, dumping up to 10 feet of rain on the state in a short span of time. This would result in the Sacramento valley becoming an inland sea. Considering that this "study" was funded by FEMA and CEMA, I'll leave it to you to figure out if there was any ulterior agenda in the "findings".

Smoking Damages DNA Within Minutes, Research Shows
Summary: Okay, setting aside the utter absurdity of the premise, that you're doing life-threatening damage to your body the instant you smoke your first cigarette, the study aims to scare smokers and those who might consider starting to smoke by claiming that your DNA is damaged and your risk of short-term cancers increased within minutes of your first puff. Chemicals called PAHs are to blame. Obviously, more money must be spent in researching these all-powerful and lethal carcinogens.

Is it any wonder that no one outside of the collectivists who wish to herd us all together into sheeplehood believes in AGW any more? All of science's "solutions" involve increased taxation and more power to the almighty Staat. Science is coming dangerously close to losing its credibility.

Hmm. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

The Looter Czar

Il Duce, the Amerikan President, likes czars.  He's appointed so may of them that I honestly can't even hazard an estimate as to how many there actually are.  While Chairmanship of the President's Council on Jobs and Competiveness doesn't technically qualify as a "czarship", the new Chairman of that Council certainly merits some sort of Czar-like title.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - Jeffery Immelt.

President Obama today will name General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt chairman of the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, the White House announced overnight.

Why is this any more noteworthy than any other Il Duce appointment?  Because General Electric is the #1 looter corporation, and GE Chairman Jeffery Imelt is The King of Looters.

When Democrats said President Obama was “pro-business,” we didn’t know they meant one business in particular.

There are a few companies on the Obama corporate A List – Democratic patrons Google and Goldman Sachs both turn up again and again at White House functions and for special recognition – but no company seems to get the VIP treatment that General Electric receives.
[...]

Whether it is pushing the president’s plan for global warming fees in order to create demand for his “Ecomagination” line of windmills, solar panels, etc., boosting the president’s national health-care law as part of an effort to sell more medical equipment, or enthusing over the Obama strategy of making loans available for industrial exporters, Immelt has been an Obama stalwart all along. Immelt has also consistently argued to shareholders that there is big money to be made in advancing the Democratic agenda.

The fact is that no company has more riding on AGW than GE, and no company is more involved in lobbying for crap legislation to lock out its competition than GE. The bill that outlawed incandescent light bulbs? GE was behind that. All the crap legislation making our nation's "energy policy" completely reliant on wind, sun, and unicorn farts? GE was behind that.  GE is crony capitalism at its worst.

Il Duce is all about rewarding his supporters and punishing those who oppose him.  This is a bald-faced example of unmerited political payback.

But then, "unmerited" is a looter's middle name.

The OC attacks

For the most part, I respond to comments in the {expletive-deleted} Echo comments.  But when there is a comment requiring too much response for just a comment, or a comment that really sticks in my craw, I reply with a blog post.

This comment met both criteria.  It was in response to my comment that we are "living in Atlas Shrugged".

You're living in Atlas Shrugged, which was the vision of a lunatic who has as much insight into living human beings as Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man". To be a consistent Randian you need to have as much contempt for Christianity as for Socialism. Of course it was all that "Good Samaritan" and "Golden Rule" crap that she particularly hated. Is that part of your Christianity?

If you can back up your claims with anything besides wordplay and overuse of the word "literally", that might hold some interest . As it is, you remind me of the "merry pranksters" of the 60s/70s with their "radical" "underground newspapers" with everyone they opposed dressed up as Nazis. I like you in many ways -- primarily when you talk to me directly; not so much when you're preaching, but I gotta speak the truth as I see it.

Don't put words in my mouth. I was neither preaching, nor espousing the incoherent, contradictory, and, frankly, sophomoric epistemology of Ayn Rand.  When I said that we are "living in Atlas Shrugged", I meant the world portrayed by Rand in the novel.  In the book, the government and industry were run by looters --  looters who raped the productive by pushing legislation in the interest of "fairness", etc.

The world we live in has looters pushing legislation "for the children", "to save the planet", "to make us safe from terrorism", "to make health care affordable for everyone", "because they're too big to fail".  The end result of all of these legislative "responses" to "crisis" is the same as those portrayed in Rand's novel.

Wealth is confiscated from the productive.
Government amasses more power over all facets of our lives.
Our personal liberties are lost.

You cannot deny this - not if you're paying attention, not if you're being honest and not disingenuous.

You believe in AGW - hey, how 'bout that?  I don't.  ALL proposed "solutions" to AGW involve confiscation of wealth.  That and nothing more.

You're free to continue your misplaced "faith".  I see AGW for what it is: the hijacking of science to promote an agenda that centralizes government power, redistributes wealth (mostly to crony capitalists), and destroys individual freedoms.

Real scientists and AGW

Hat tip to bingbing for this one.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.

Who's that saying those heretical things about Mother Gaia and the blessed religion of AGW?  Some clown in the employ of Big Oil?  Some flat-earth-know-nothing?

Nope.   It's Professor Emeritus Hal Lewis of the American Physical Society.  A physicist.  A REAL scientist, not some IPCC quack.

Remember this the next time someone tells you "the science is settled".

An appeal to my fair-mindedness

Hal (OC) writes:

We've gotten way too used to engaging pictures, whether of unicorns, polar bears on ice flows, as a substitute for thinking. I'm sure a lot of climate scientists by now wish Al Gore had never been born.

Yes, it's true, the IAC has critiqued the IPCC on some counts.

Another report of theirs, which can be accessed at www.interacademies.net/?id=9075 which makes, among other conclusions:

·At current emission rates models suggest that all coral reefs and polar ecosystems will be severely affected by 2050 or potentially even earlier;

·Marine food supplies are likely to be reduced with significant implications for food production and security in regions dependent on fish protein, and human health and well being;

·Ocean acidification is irreversible on time scales of at least tens of thousands of years;

·Even with stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 at 450ppm, ocean acidification will have profound impacts on many marine systems. Large and rapid reductions of global CO2 emissions are needed globally by at least 50% by 2050.

Counting on your fairmindednes, as I've gotten accustomed to doing.

I appreciate the OC's comments, as always. He and I can be described as being polar opposites politically.  Yet we are able to engage in meaningful discussion without rancor.  Would that all such discussions could be handled so amicably.

Okay, enough of the mutual admiration society.  Let me address the substance of your comment.

You post four "evidences" of the damage wreaked by mankind on our environment by our emissions of carbon dioxide.  Given that these "proofs" originate from the very people I cite as having bitch-slapped the scientists con men at the East Anglia University Propaganda Factory, one would think that I would give those "proofs" some weight.  One would be wrong.

It boils down, sadly, to a matter of faith.  Because, for every "proof" you or others produce, I can produce one (or more) contradicting or refuting that "proof".  Many more.  These links are just those accumulated prior to 2010; there are many, many more in the aftermath of the IPCC email-gate scandal.

As I wrote in my first post in the Death Knell series:

Never mind that ALL of the scientists working for alternate energy companies, for the government, or on projects that are government-funded are part of the 'consensus'.

Never mind? Let me take that back. It DOES matter that the 'consensus' emanates from those sources. Why? Like they say in all of the detective shows: follow the money.

ALL of the money going into grants to study warming comes from those with much to gain from that warming being "true".  All of it.  There is NO government or Quango (Quasi-governmental organization) money going into ANY study to try to falsify the findings of those claiming AGW is true.  Falsification - proving something is correct by first trying to prove that it isn't - is the bedrock of science and the scientific method.  Funding only studies that seek to PROVE warming and to identify its "effects" gives the impression that the science isn't serious.  It's the scientific equivalent of a Soviet show trial (Verdict first, then trial!).  

Approaching the issue from a common sense perspective, it's hard to get behind man-made carbon as a factor in warming when:

• The #1 cause of warming and cooling of the planet is.....solar activity.  Period.  Everything else is incidental.  There was high solar activity in the 90's: there were high temperatures in the 90's.  There has been extremely reduced solar activity in the 00's: there have been colder temperatures in the 00's.  These colder temperature have been noticed; the name change from "warming" to "climate change" is a lame attempt to address this.
  
  
• The #2 cause of warming of the planet is....carbon?  Nope.  Water vapor.  Yeah.  Water vapor.  From evaporation.
  
  
• The "unprecedented" warming of the 90's?  Can't even touch the Great Medieval Warming.  Not even close.  What has the receding ice in Iceland uncovered?  Farms.  From....wait for it....the Great Medieval Warming.  Warming that, so far as we know, wasn't caused by factories, internal combustion engines, or AGW.

I made mention earlier to faith. I have believed AGW to be a fraud and a scam from Kyoto on.  How can anyone take seriously a crisis whose answer is to demand that the developed world commit economic suicide while exempting mega-polluters China and India?

Those who "deny" AGW are bullied and shouted down.  They're call "flat earthers" and equated with Holocaust deniers.  Scientists whose studies "prove" the warming get fat funding.  Scientist who don't toe the line get bupkis.  

AGW is just another arrow in the quiver of scamming and bullying employed by governments to drag us back to the Good Olde Days of Feudalism.  They get to rule and control all of the wealth.  We get to work at the jobs they let us work at, live where they let us live, for as long as they choose to let us live, and we get to like it or lump it.

Worlds apart - UPDATED

It's funny how two people can look at the same set of facts and come to complete opposite conclusions.

Reporter #1 looks upon the IPCC findings and declares a grand fraud exposed.

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.

The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

Reporter #2 looks upon the upcoming Cancun AGW summit and declares it humanity's last chance.

Cancun, or "COP 16" as it is officially known, will again see ministers and officials from nearly 200 nations grapple with the politics of global warming, but no one thinks they will be able to close a widening breach in the world's defences against dangerously rising temperatures – the "gigatonne gap".

A gigatonne is a billion tonnes of carbon, and the emissions cuts currently promised by the nations of the world in the Copenhagen Accord – the last-minute agreement patched together by leaders after the conference in the Danish capital all but collapsed – will mean that, by 2020, when global emissions should be on a firmly downward trend, they will be several gigatonnes too high to limit the warming to C above the pre-industrial level. This is widely considered the most that human society can stand without serious consequences.

Remember this the next time someone tries to feed you that BS about news sources being "objective".

Update: Another news source has picked up on the growing lack of public confidence in the charlatans scientists behind the AGW "science".  It looks like the wheels are finally coming off of Al Gorebells' cart.

Royal Messiah Complex

I used to be amused by the Royals.  I mean, they were a harmless lot, weren't they?  The horse-faced old queen who probably hasn't smiled since 1948.  The jug-eared doofus err (no misspelling) to the throne.  The scandals. 

At worst they were an anachronism, a set of living tourist attractions, right?

But they're apparently not all so harmless after all.  The jug-eared doofus has decided he's the messiah.

The Prince of Wales says he believes he has been placed on Earth as future King ‘for a purpose’ - to save the world.

You can't make this stuff up.

Price Charles, I hate to burst your bubble, but your purpose on Earth is NOT to save the world.  Rather, it's to serve as a cautionary tale: this is what happens when first cousins marry.

Cleared of all wrongdoing [/sarcasm]

The search for truth being a relative thing, we can certainly take it as settled fact when the University of East Anglia proclaims that its investigation of....uh....itself....uncovered no wrongdoing of any kind.

Emails stolen from one of the world's leading climate change research centers contained no evidence to undermine the case for manmade global warming, a report found on Wednesday.

An investigation into the British research unit cleared its scientists of serious wrongdoing, but criticized their lack of openness and said some of their data was misleading.

The University of East Anglia, eastern England, launched the inquiry after 1,000 emails hacked from its climate research unit were put on the Internet and held up as evidence scientists had exaggerated or lied about man's role in global warming.

Just like Penn State University in its investigation of....uh....itself....found nothing amiss.

Nothing to see here people.  Move along.

Not all of us are persuaded.

Russell was appointed by the institution to investigate an archive of source code and emails that leaked onto the internet last November. The source code is not addressed at all. His report suggests that the problems were of the academics' own making, stating that they were "united in defence against criticism". Yet the enquiry found that despite emails promising to "redefine" the peer review publication process, and put pressure on journal editors, staff were not guilty of subverting the IPCC process, and their "rigour" and "honesty" were beyond question.

Leading academics were called for written and oral evidence before the Russell enquiry, and in many cases the report accepts their account of events. The subjects of their criticism were not invited, not were climate scientists critical of their behaviour. For example, in their capacity as IPCC gatekeepers, the academics are cleared of excluding critical evidence, and yet bending the rules to include supporting studies. To reach this particular conclusion, for example, the report finds a criterion: a "consistence of view" with earlier work. The earlier work here was in fact produced [by] the academics under scrutiny. So, having compared the CRU academics' work against their previous work, and found it to be consistent, they are cleared of malpractice.

Let me summarize. Because the results produced in the time frame under investigation matched the results of earlier work produced by....uh....the people under investigation....nothing untoward has occurred.

Nothing to see here people.  Move along.

Now let me speak honestly, from the heart.  The source code matters.  Michael Mann's discredited "hockey stick" program would produce the same result whether you fed it temperature data or the price list from Wendy's.  It skewed older numbers to a pattern of a slow, gradual increase, and completely distorted numbers at the tail end of the dataset to sky upward at an exponential rate that is ridiculous on its face and should have caught SOMEONE'S attention from the very beginning.

What's in the source code at East Anglia?  Are we dealing with the same kind of intellectual dishonesty as that shown by Mr. Mann?

Talk of "tricks" and "hide the decline" matter.  When one speaks of "cheating on my spouse" you don't assume it involves a card game.  Someone with a little more intellectual honesty (and no connection to either the University or any government bureaucracy) needs to look into what their little "tricks" were.

Though concern was voiced over the refusal of the scientists to share their "data" (I use the term loosely - fictitious bullshit is the more appropriate term) with independent scientists so they might independently validate their findings, this too matters much more than the sham investigation weighs it.  The fact that in one of the emails a scientist said that he would DESTROY the data before he would share it with an outsider is GARGANTUAN.  This is not something to be brushed under the rug or treated with a slap on the wrist.  You don't hide your data unless you know that it's corrupt, has been falsified, or is total fiction.

The bullying of scientific journals to prevent publication of opposing viewpoints matters.  If science is, as so many of its proponents claim, a search for the truth, then let opposing voices be heard!  These scientists weren't acting as seekers of the truth by throwing their weight around in this way.  They were acting as ideological thugs.

I'm tired of the dishonesty.  I'm tired of this ideology-tainted pseudo-science serving no other purpose than to further political schemes to increase taxation on and control over formerly free peoples.

My brother is right - this planet IS the insane asylum for the entire universe.

Update:

Check out this column for a scathing review of East Anglia's "finding".

Al Gorebells' thermometer

This is Al Gorebells' personal thermometer. No wonder he believes in global warming!

Weekend Wrap-up

Welcome to the first edition of Weekend Wrap-up, a new kind of post serving as a catch-all for events of the weekend (read: a place for me to pontificate on NFL football and whatever else I feel like w/o having to do a full-blown Vulture Droppings).

Here are the things I picked up on this past weekend.

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The playoffs started this weekend. Three of the four games were either blowouts or were never in doubt. But the fourth and final game was a hoot! It was the highest scoring playoff game in NFL history, as the Cardinals (AKA the Niners' whipping boys) beat the Packers 51-45 in overtime.

Both quarterbacks - Kurt Warner (379 yards, 5 TDs) and Aaron Rodgers (421 yards, 4 TDs) - were outstanding. Both defenses were....invisible? Incompetent? Out to lunch?

There was a lot of QQing (read: whining and crying) on the radio and on various blogs about the final play of the game. Various folk are alleging that there was both helmet-to-helmet contact AND grasping the facemask on the final play -- why, a penalty should have been called!

First, there was no helmet-to-helmet contact. And second, while there was incidental facemask graspage (You like that? Just add 'age' and you have a new word!), it was of the old 5-yard variety, NOT the 15-yard personal foul variety. Now, aren't you Packers fans glad that the league eliminated the old 5-yard penalty? Cost you the game, didn't it?

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A sad note for you football fans out there. There are only 7 meaningful games left in the 2009 season. A moment of silence is called for. *silence*

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Can we all finally agree that Kurt Warner belongs in the Hall of Fame when he retires? He has had about a half dozen of the most amazing playoff performances in league history, including the 3 highest passing totals in Super Bowl history.

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Moving on to other subjects, you may have noticed that it was cold yesterday...no matter where you are. The colder it gets, the more the AGW crowd tries to shout down its opposition. If the weather patterns of the past two years continue in subsequent years, there won't be anyone BUT AGW Gaia worshipers clinging to their leftard beliefs. Oh, and our political class. Can't forget them. They'll never let go of AGW. They see it as a cash cow just waiting to be milked.

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Oh, and it WAS cold, and has been all winter; the temperatures for the lower 48 states for December were the 14th coldest since 1895. Put that in your favorite AGW fanatic's pipe the next time they blather on about "warming".

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Is it Friday yet?

Mocking Al Gorebells

Hat tip to Tizona Group and Toes for calling this masterpiece to my attention.


Look! It even spews carbon! Scary!

The back-story is found here. I like this quote.

"We don't agree with his theories -- we're suspicious of the financial motivation behind them," Compeau said.

It looks like smart people think alike.

Wiener of the Year - 2009

It's time for the least prestigious unknown award currently offered on the old WWW - The Vulture's Wiener of the Year.

I started with a list of potential nominees I considered to be quite deserving. Toes made some suggestions of her own.

My nomination for WotY is the Prezbo. Second is a 3 way tie between Pelosi-Reid-Nepolitano. Can't forget Al Gore or the Nobel Committee

All good candidates, all deserving of the dishonor.

Before I name the Wiener, I'd like to give appropriate "props" to the also-rans.

• President Obama, Il Duce to you regulars. What an MCF of a presidency this guy has had so far! Stimulus dollars for his well-heeled buddies. The Fascist takeover of a large portion of the financial sector and 2/3 of the Big Three auto makers. Special deals for his "friends" buried in the disastrous health care reform Fascist takeover of 1/7 of the nation's economy. And let's not forget his participation in the grotesque charade that is the AGW myth. He's awful, and most deserving of a Wiener.
  


• Al Gore and his sycophants who comprise Big Warming. Not even the smoking gun of the leaked emails of faux scientists actively perpetuating fraud in the service of One World Socialist Utopia (AKA Climategate) has slowed Mr. Gore and his ilk from pursuing new ways to destroy the economies of the West and bring about their desired One World government. He's deserving of a Wiener; hell, he's deserving of a Lifetime Achievement Wiener!
  


• Pottawattamie County, Iowa, prosecutors. As I detailed last April, these execrable slimeballs deliberately hid exculpatory evidence that might have cleared two innocent men from prosecution for killing a police officer. For these lowlifes, winning the case took precedence over justice. They deserve to spend the same 25 years in jail that the two defendants endured. Wiener worthy? You bet!
  


• Congress. Where to begin? (I believe I used those same words for last year's detailing of Congress' Wiener qualifications). Ah, the accomplishments of this Congress! Nationalization of a large percentage of our nation's financial sector. Nationalization of 2 of the Big Three automakers. Passage of Cap and Trade. Passage of health care reform the fascist takeover of 1/7 of the nation's economy, pending committee resolution of the House and Senate bills. And let's not forget H.R. 4173, the "financial reform" legislation passed by the House earlier this month, which provides for as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. God help us when these avaricious clowns are in session. Most Wiener-worthy, particularly leaders Nancy "Air Force 3" Pelosi and Harry Reid.
  


• Big Media (the BM for short). These Il Duce-worshiping tools have been most successful at ignoring news that is inconvenient to his royal worship's dismantling of our economy. They've also managed to almost completely ignore Climategate. Virtually all news related to Climategate and its particulars has come from the British press. The BM should be ashamed. As I wrote last year, they are, collectively, as pompous, imperious, and out-of-touch a group of people as anyone on this planet outside of Congress. Their Wiener-cred is unchallengeable.
  


• Judge Barbara Walther (last year's Wiener). She has done everything in her power to steamroll through convictions against FLDS men accused of crimes in the wake of the militaristic (and questionably Constitutional) raid on the Yearning for Zion ranch last year. She has shown her true colors as an authoritarian who wipes her ass with the Constitution. She is worthy of a Wiener, but more appropriately deserves prison time for judicial malpractice.
  


• The Team Elephant establishment, who insist on marginalizing populists like Ron Paul and Sarah Palin in favor of Rockefellerite losers. There will be no two party system in this country so long as elitists run the Republican party. Wieners? You betcha.
  


• The Team Donkey establishment. The party of John Kennedy, Scoop Jackson, and Hubert Humphrey is now the party of Bill Ayers, ACORN, and Nancy Pelosi. This is NOT a party interested in advancing America or American interests. They are all about establishing a One-World Socialist Utopia. The only question is whether they are more deserving of a Wiener or to be brought up on charges of treason.
  


• Janet Napolitano. What a waste of oxygen! From the minute she took her position as the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHSS - you can't spell Schutzstaffel without the double S) she has been an epic fail. Her handling of the latest act of terrorism was epic in its incompetence. She needs to be fired. She's a walking example of what the Wiener award is all about.
  

This year's Wiener was chosen because of the harm that people like these pose to a free Constitutional republic (or, in the case of the USA, what REMAINS of a free Constitutional republic).

The 2009 Wiener of the Year is shared by two blogs: Caput Penitus Culus and FLDS Texas.

These two sites exist solely as a meeting place for bigots where they can share their bigotry in a little echo chamber.

They are openly hostile to arguments that bring their bigotry into question. They engage in the worst sort of character assassination imaginable against those whose views are different from their own. I was actually called a pedophile for simply opining on the Constitutionality of the YFZ raid!

Commenters who persist in questioning their views - particularly if those commenters match venom with venom - are banned as "trolls". There is no reaching these people with logic, reason, or even baseball bats.

So what makes them a threat to our Constitutional freedoms?

These are the very sort of people who made the Third Reich possible. They are people who are more than willing to attribute the worst sort of crimes to people different than themselves. They are people who are more than willing to see these scapegoated outsiders punished to the fullest regardless of what kind of shady actions were taken by the government to secure those convictions. All that matters to them is that the outsiders are punished (or, preferably, expelled).

They willingly sell our freedoms - particularly the 1st and 4th Amendments - just to assure that the government can "get" the outsiders. Then, as if that weren't enough, they pronounce legal justification for what has happened!

They are too caught up in their hatred and bigotry to figure out that they have imperiled anyone who is "different" in any way to be a target of voracious agents of der Staat. They're too stupid to realize that they've imperiled THEMSELVES.

You may disagree with my choice for WotY; if so, have at me via comments.

Congratulations, bastions of bigotry! You're the Wiener of the Year!

Wiener of the Week

The final WotW for 2009 are the people who showed up for this.

A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday's snowstorm.

"Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions," said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.

Classic. Absolutely classic.

And a most worthy recipient of the Wiener of the Week.

Storms

As I write this there is a blizzard pounding the East Coast. A big one. A real, live Nor'easter. Unofficially, Frederick has received 22" of the white stuff, with the snow projected to last through tomorrow afternoon. The wind has been gusting, so there are drifts over 4' tall alongside the house. The steps out the back door are completely covered.

But this storm is a big, fat nothing compared to two other storms brewing on the horizon. On Friday Il Duce reached an agreement with other nations complicit in the the fraud that is the Hopenhagen debacle. Oh, sure, you say, it doesn't really have any teeth to it; there's nothing to worry about. Ah, but that's where you're wrong. When the details of this little agreement finally trickle out -- from European and Internet sources, NOT Big Media (the BM for short)- you will find that our "leaders" are using this invented "crisis" to sell off our sovereignty.

The other brewing storm is much more worrisome. The last domino has fallen in Der Staat's longstanding quest to take ownership of our very persons via the fraudulently-sold universal health care.

Senate Democrats appear within reach of the 60 votes necessary to pass President Barack Obama's health care legislation after a long year of struggle and a final burst of deadline bargaining with holdout Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

There it is. Just like that troll Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, Nelson has sold his soul for over $300 billion in Federal goodies.

So Congress is going to put something worse than a lump of coal in our respective stockings. The steaming pile of legislation we'll find in our stockings is never going to be confused with candied apples.

God bless us -- we're gonna need it.

Wiener of the Week

When I named the WotW two weeks ago, I left a "Bonus Wiener" tease link to what is a classic example of intentionally misleading journalism. That link deserves more attention, especially in light of yet another intentionally deceptive story.

First, the older story. The premise of that story was that global warming was forcing women in some islands of the Philippines to work in hard-labor occupations or even as prostitutes. Global warming.

By the third paragraph "have driven" has softened to "could" and "possibly". And in paragraph eight the truth finally outs: the catastrophe forcing women to work hard-labor jobs or as prostitutes is overfishing. Overfishing. Not warming. In other words, the first half of the article was nothing but a lie, an intentional deception to pimp for the cause of AGW.

This story caught my eye personally, because, as one who suffers from asthma, I am keenly aware of how air quality affects my breathing.

Cutting global warming pollution would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too, newly released studies say.

Slashing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable deaths from heart and lung diseases, the studies show.

So we are led to believe that reducing carbon emissions will help prevent heart and lung diseases. Starting at paragraph three, the theme starts to implode.

The "life saving benefit" of reducing carbon is predicted by a computer model. Uh-huh. A computer model like the one that draws a hockey stick whether it is fed temperature data or the prices from the menu at Wendys?

Paragraph four contains the denouement.

Cutting carbon dioxide emissions would also reduce other types of air pollution, especially tiny particles that lodge in the lungs and cause direct health damage, doctors said. Other benefits could come from encouraging more exercise and less meat consumption, to improve heart health, researchers said.

So, the entire benefit of reducing carbon to improve health is not the carbon. No, it's the reduction of REAL pollutants. And, of course, exercise and meat reduction are also required in order to realize the reduced carbon health benefits. In other words, avoiding pollution, getting regular exercise, and reducing consumption of red meats - things already recognized by the medical profession as promoting good health - NOT a reduction of carbon, as posited in the first paragraphs, are the things that will result in improved health.

These stories are intentionally deceptive. They combine a grain of truth with a healthy dose of propaganda to link AGW to real issues that are related to AGW not at all.

To the authors of these flaming propaganda pieces, congratulations: you're the Wieners of the Week.

Media Priorities

Dateline dedicated its Friday installment to the Tiger Woods saga. Shocker there.

A major theme of the story dealt with why the media was so obsessed with reporting on the story. It was almost like the reporter felt compelled to justify the over-the-top, wall-to-wall, Tiger-24x7. It was almost like the reporter was embarrassed and felt dirty about the whole idea that Big Media (the BM for short) would stoop to such tabloid-like behavior.

Of course, he didn't feel bad enough about it not to do his OWN report.

Contrast the coverage of the Tiger Woods scandal with the BM's coverage of the most important scandal of the 21st century: Climategate. *queue sound of crickets chirping*

I would like to see a reporter from one of the Big 3 networks old media dinosaurs go to the same lengths of justification that the Dateline reporter went through in explaining WHY everyone was beating on the Tiger Woods story to explain why the BM is NOT reporting on Climategate.

I'm waiting.

I'm still waiting.

I'll probably be waiting til the day I die.

Bastards.

Wiener of the Month - November

Big Media (the BM for short) has continued to stonewall or downplay ClimateGate.

James Delingpole of The Telegraph (yeah, you have to go to UK sources to read ANYTHING about ClimateGate) wrote an opinion piece that provides a breakdown of the BM's non-coverage of the issue. In the course of detailing this journalistic malpractice, he makes the following assertion.

But in the case of “Climate Change”, the MSM has been caught with its trousers down. The reason it has been so ill-equipped to report on this scandal is because almost all of its Environmental Correspondents and Environmental Editors are parti pris members of the Climate-Fear Promotion lobby. Most of their contacts (and information sources) work for biased lobby groups like Greenpeace and the WWF, or conspicuously pro-AGW government departments and Quangos such as the Carbon Trust. How can they bring themselves to report on skulduggery at Hadley Centre when the scientists involved are the very ones whose work they have done most to champion and whose pro-AGW views they share?

The sad thing is - he's absolutely right. Environmental reporters are as wedded to AGW as the corrupted "scientists" who are studying it falsifying data to keep the myth alive.

Congratulations, BM - you're the Wiener of the Month for November.

Update

Catching up on my reading, I note that Andrew Bolt is on the same page as Mr. Delingpole. A must read.

Wiener of the Week

He's been The Terminator. He's been Conan the Barbarian. He's been Kindergarten Cop. And now -- he's the WotW because of this.

A map of how California will be affected by climate change in the future was unveiled yesterday by state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The map, which demonstrates the devastating effects of global warming in just a century, shows how San Francisco Airport would be completely underwater if sea levels were to rise by 150cm (60in).

The coastline on the map was also coloured, highlighting how nearly half a million Californians are at risk from rising sea levels.

The map, named CalAdapt, which was revealed at a press conference on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay by Mr Schwarzenegger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was created as part of a plan for the state to adapt to global warming.

'Within a century, Treasure Island, this place where we are right now, could be totally under water,' the governor said. 'It is technology in the end that will save us.'

Oh, mighty technology! Please save us! [/sarcasm]

The ClimateGate scandal is front-and-center -- except in the Big Media (the BM for short) -- and the asshat Governator is still selling AGW. Talk about True Lies!

Ahnold - you're the Wiener of the Week.