Why the desire to pull the troops out of Iraq in the first place?

*posted first on Friday Feb. 10, here*

In the Australian today:

NO sooner did President Barack Obama welcome home American troops from Iraq and laud that country’s stability and democracy than an unprecedented wave of violence across Baghdad and elsewhere revealed the severity of Iraq’s political crisis.

Unfortunate, yet hardly surprising, even to the most casual of observers.

And whilst I can understand (yet not agree with) the Left’s position not to send troops into Iraq in the first place – an argument, largely moot, for another day – what I don’t understand is their fervish desire to pull the troops out.

It always smacked of idealism, ideology, rather than hard-nosed practicality.

After all, what was so bad with having a US troop presence there to help maintain Iraq’s fragile democratic stability?

One could argue that I am biased because a) I am centre-right politically and b) because I live in South Korea, a nation that has had a US troop presence – some 37,000  28,000 or so currently – since the armistice between North and South Korea and have seen what a permanent US troop presence looks like.

I am happy to accept those labels and can gladly tell you that such a presence ain’t that bad.

By and large,  US bases in Korea – and Japan for that matter – haven’t been a problem.

Sure, issues pop up from time to time, but if one looks at the big picture, then a strong US presence here can only be seen as a good thing, a safe option, a pretty darn good insurance policy against North Korea trying anything major on.

Almost 60 years we’ve had US troops over here without any major problems. In fact, many major problems (a full-scale Nork attack comes to mind) have arguably been averted thanks to this presence.

So, why the rush to leave Iraq essentially free of any US military  before even a decade is up and before, as is clear now, the job is done?

OK, so perhaps it’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges. US troops in Korea, aside from those stationed at the DMZ, aren’t on active duty as they were in Iraq.

However, it’s not a completely dissimilar situation. Perhaps a good analogy would be to compare mandarins and oranges.

US troops not only provided safety and stability in the fledgling democracy that is Iraq – a country still steeped with sectarian and tribal rivalries – but surely they also provided a deterrence to anybody or any groups who want to destabilise the nation.

What takes years to build can take mere seconds to destroy, and I fear a lot of hard work is being undone on the whim of a flawed, feel-good, ideology.

So why?

The only practical reason that I can see for Obama pulling his troops out of Iraq is that with an Iranian confrontation looming which includes action needed in Syria, Iraq frankly isn’t important enough any more or at best, an impractical option for a potentially over-stretched military.

Of course, Obama – a man of the progressive Left – can’t actually come out and say that but it is reasonably well-known to those who don’t just get their news from the MSM that Obama is actually more of a war-time president than Bush was, having committed more troops to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and for a longer period of time.

So whilst the MSM might play along with the “bringing the troops home” narrative, the evidence indicates this simply isn’t the case.

Some 20,000 marines, seamen and air crews from half a dozen countries, a US nuclear aircraft carrier strike group and three US Marine gunship carriers are practicing an attack on a fictitious mechanized enemy division which has invaded its neighbor. It is the largest amphibian exercise seen in the West for a decade, staged to simulate a potential Iranian invasion of an allied Persian Gulf country and a marine landing on the Iranian coast. Based largely on US personnel and hardware, French, British, Italian, Dutch, Australian* and New Zealand military elements are integrated in the drill.
Bold Alligator went into its operational phase Monday, Feb. 6, the same day as a large-scale exercise began in southern Iran opposite the Strait of Hormuz. This simultaneity attests to the preparations for a US-Iranian showdown involving Israel behind the words on Feb. 5 of US President Barack Obama (“I don’t think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran”) and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Feb. 3 (“The war itself will be ten times as detrimental to the US.”).

(*BTW, I don’t recall Aussie PM Gillard highlighting that one.)

And this:

As the US and Israel carried on bickering over the right time to strike Iran’s nuclear sites, their war preparations continued apace. debkafile’s military sources report that flight after flight of US warplanes and transports were to be seen this week cutting eastward through the skies of Sinai on their way to Gulf destinations, presumably Saudi Arabia, at a frequency not seen in the Middle East for many years.

Add into this mix reports that China will reportedly help Saudi Arabia build a nuclear bomb, and that both China and India have started paying Iran for its oil in gold thus helping thwart current US/UN sanctions (more of which were recently thwarted by Russia and China), then we see a stage set for a showdown and we see the reality that rhetoric aside, Obama won’t be bringing many troops home at all.

To someone who doesn’t know any better, it’s as if Russia, India, and China – all wannabe first chickens to the trough – are ganging up on America.**

PS Who wouldn’t love to be a fly on the wall listening in to what the US is really saying about China? Their ever-expanding use of soft power is in many ways, stuffing it all up for America. China must surely be becoming an ever-increasing pain in the neck.

This leaves Australia in an interesting position. Our main export partner is China. Our main ally is the US. We send China our goodies to help them get rich and rival America. We practice shooting our guns with America to help keep America on top.

And yet China and America are also so deep in each other’s pockets. America buys China’s goods. China buys America’s debt.

Fun times.

** I highly recommend reading The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom. Part of the book talks about the pecking order of nations.

A Decade of Tim Blair — Blogger, Legend

Gavin Atkins at Asian Correspondent marks the milestone:

Blogger/journalist Tim Blair has never been one to take a lot of notice of plaudits, awards or milestones – in fact, he assiduously ignores them – but the recent passing 10-year anniversary of his blog should not go by without comment.

For many Australians of a conservative or libertarian bent, about ten years ago, just reading or watching the news was like being asked to wade through a floating garbage dump of dogma to try and read what was written on the ground. What’s more, most of us were left cursing, as only the most watered down of our thoughts would ever make it through as a letter to the editor.

Tim Blair changed all that with his blog that tackled the idiocies of the left pretty much as they happened. His blog filled a niche that conservatives were crying out for, and his comment sections soon became almost as entertaining as the articles. […]

Along the way, he has invented terms such as Blair’s Law and the Gore Effect as well as alerting the world to the alarming tendency of lefties to tilt their heads in photographs.

And then there’s the Plastic Turkey meme, the new verbs “to beclown” and “to Fisk,” and probably a whole lot more that others can add in comments.

One thing Gavin didn’t mention was how global Tim Blair’s appeal has turned out to be  – in fact, one sledge often thrown at him by some of his resident trolls is that he has “too many” American fans and commenters.  For some reason, his Leftoid Australian detractors believed that was some sort of fatal “gotcha”.

Ah, his trolls!  Not only have Tim’s blogging efforts attracted some of the most clever and witty commenters over the years, they’ve seen him collect some of the most dedicated, demented, obsessive and sometimes just chuckleheadedly-silly assortment of sockpuppets and trolls ever seen in one place.

Go over and read Gavin’s whole piece, and be sure to leave your thoughts & favourite memories/recollections in comments either here or there.

Happy Tenth Blogiversary, Tim!

P.S. Where’s Wronwright with that mead…?

P.P.S. As our blogroll has been rather neglected of late, if you are one of the #BlairNation troupe of bloggers (new motto, #WeAreUs – thanks Julia!) and aren’t listed over on the right-hand side there ——->
just drop your blog link in comments and we’ll get it updated. Cheers.

UPDATE:  More comments now at The Blogfather’s here:  TEN YEARS OF LOVE.  As Puce would have said, CLICK.

TSSA – coming to a highway near you

I don’t know which is more chilling – the reported news, or the headline.

Tennessee Becomes First State To Fight Terrorism Statewide

You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.

Tuesday Tennessee was first to deploy VIPR simultaneously at five weigh stations and two bus stations across the state.

Anyone harboring any illusion that 21st century American media is anything other than the propaganda organs of Big Government is delusional.

But enough criticism of the lapdog media’s fawning. What we have here is the dreaded “next step” in the so-called War on Terror.

Our rulers have moved beyond herding us about at airports. Now they want to slowly get us used to being spot searched on our highways. They start small, with truck inspections at weigh stations. And before you can say, “WTF! Fourth Amendment violation!”, it’ll be random traffic stops of ordinary folks in passenger vehicles.

As if another reason to hate the failed War on Drugs is needed, the power for state police to stop a motorist on the most minimal (or invented) probable cause is already in place, courtesy of “law and order” judges ruling in favor of police in the majority of random stop cases to “stem the flow of drugs”. I suppose our rulers figure that since the War on Drugs has been such a phenomenal success [/sarcasm], they might as well extend those benefits to the far more successful War on Terror personal freedoms.

Like the proverbial frog in a pot of water that is slowly brought to a boil, we sit in bovine stupor as our freedoms are stripped from us. As long as we have American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and tons of televised sports, we’re content to pretend that we live in the “freest nation on Earth”.

But pretending doesn’t make it so.

Huge win for freedom

There are some, among them a certain troll who likes to hijack my blog’s comments for his small-minded rants, who are of the opinion that journalists must be accredited and licensed in order to hold that “lofty” title. I disagree wholeheartedly; had that sort of constraint been in place 250 years ago, individuals such as Patrick Henry would have been proscribed from publishing their treatises against the King of England, and we might still be no more than ragtag pommy colonies.

Apologies in advance to any Brits offended by the preceding paragraph. I was just being cheeky.

No, the tradition of the citizen-journalist is at the very bedrock of rights the founding fathers held most dear. Troll-boy’s protestations to the contrary, the reporting of news and spouting of opinion by mere commoners is of vital importance to the health of a republic.

And now a federal judge agrees.

Boston lawyer Simon Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007 when he used his cell phone to record officers making a drug arrest, and later sued the city and the officers for violating his rights. After the officers tried to having the lawsuit dismissed on the basis of qualified immunity, a Federal Appeals Court denied the motion last week and ruled that filming and photographing police is in fact protected by the First Amendment. They also note that the rights extend not just to professional news gatherers, but ordinary citizens as well:

“[…] changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status”.

How big is this news? Beyond big.

As I reported well over a year ago, it is a felony crime in the State of Maryland People’s Republic of Maryland to take video of the Maryland State Police Schutzstaffel in the course of executing their duties (such as shooting pet dogs, for example). Or, should I say, it was.

Now that we can confidently record the jackbooted jagoffs in action, I’m willing to bet that their behavior toward we mere commoners might just be a little less strident. We can only hope.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Unexpectedly, the mainstream media did not expect Obama to end up making such a hash of the American economy…

Aurelius at Pundit Press fingers the MSM for apparently being in a constant state of shock that the completely expected is happening, and that Obama-nomics simply isn’t delivering.

“Whenever poor business, house, or job news comes out, they are quick to throw on the word ‘unexpectedly,’ pretending that the economy is actually doing great, but this one time it hiccuped.”

Unexpectedly.

via iowntheworld.com

Hey Lefties – Got Yer #NewTone Right Here!

From the tolerant open-minded Left who keep lecturing us on the importance of striving for a more civil tone:

UPDATE: To preempt any complaints that I shouldn’t be giving these bile-spewing haters any more oxygen, for the most part I agree.  But in this case, this particular tweet was just the last straw.  Coming up with the most demeaning insult against Miranda Devine seems to be the new sport on Twitter, and there comes a point when these people need exposing.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste: Earthquake? Tsunami? Global Warming!!!

We all knew this was going to happen – it was just a matter of “when”.  As it turns out, it didn’t take very long at all.

Hours after a massive earthquake rattled Japan, environmental advocates connected the natural disaster to global warming.  The president of the European Economic and Social Committee, Staffan Nilsson, issued a statement calling for solidarity in tackling the global warming problem.

“Some islands affected by climate change have been hit,” said Nilsson. “Has not the time come to demonstrate on solidarity – not least solidarity in combating and adapting to climate change and global warming?”

“Mother Nature has again given us a sign that that is what we need to do,” he added.

Lee Doren of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has been collecting some of the highlights – er, lowlights – via Twitter.  See them here at The Daily Caller.

UPDATE:  “Global warming alarmists are to natural disasters what the Westboro Baptist Church is to military funerals.” Just so.

UPDATE 2:  Tim Blair on Anthropogenic Tectonic Warming®.  You know it makes sense!

h/t @LDoren, @JTlol, @DailyCaller

Tim Blair PWND!!

On Friday, March 4th, so-called “journalist” Tim Blair made fun of a man for having the wisdom and foresight to grow his tomatoes in his basement, behind barred windows.

The very next day, we read of this.

I know. It’s Adelaide.  And if something freaky is gonna happen it’s gonna happen in freaking Adelaide.

But still.

I call PWND.

A Quick Comparison of the ABC to the ABC

A quick comparison of the ABC’s coverage : Gillard compared to Gaddafi vs. Howard compared to Hitler

The ABC headlines :
Swan appalled by Gillard-Gaddafi comparison
versus
Hockey fires back over Keating’s Hitler jibe and Keating in Hitler attack on Howard

note that neither Howard/Hitler headline calls it a comparison although the article does. It is a “Hitler attack” and a mere “Hitler jibe”

Word count (excluding headlines) :
Gillard/Gaddafi : 508 words
Howard/Hitler : 144 + 174 = 318 words

Quotes :
Gillard/Gaddafi contains the exact controversial quote : “If Ms Gillard believes Australians want to pay higher electricity and higher petrol prices, she is as deluded as Colonel ‘my people love me’ Gaddafi”

Howard/Hitler in both articles the controversy is largely paraphrased : “Mr Keating said both the Nazi leader and Mr Howard were nationalists rather than patriots, saying they both stressed populism and suspicion of other cultures.”

It does contain this passage :

However the former Labor leader said it would be “unreasonable and absurd” to align the Prime Minister in any way with Hitler

but it doesn’t note if this was said at the time of the controversial statements or after it became a controversy.  Update : It was part of his speech. But Keating does compare Hitler and Howard and their supposed shared nationalism and says “John Howard is a nationalist and not a patriot for all the reasons I have also referred to. This is not to say John Howard does not have, what we might call, patriotic instincts; of course he does, but they all come from his larger carpetbag of nationalism”, “nationalism is arguably more exclusionary than racism” and “Nationalism is, I believe, a dangerous and divisive tendency”. None of these other quotes appear in the ABC articles.

Civility :
Gillard/Gaddafi : Comparing Gillard’s assumption of support on a carbon tax to Gaddafi’s assumption of popular support calls for more than half the article to be a discussion of civility because “radio hosts and politicians are feeding anger in the community that could lead to a tragedy similar to the recent shooting of a US congresswoman” (which the article doesn’t mention was committed by an apolitical crazy guy).

Howard/Hitler : Way back then comparing someone to Hitler was merely a jibe.

Channel 7’s Mark Riley Reacts Badly To Accusation That He Still Beats His Wife

Or, as Colonel Robert Neville says, “What’s good for the goose is good for the slander.”

No, really.

The Desperate Left

A bunch of Lefties at the California State University have sifted through Sarah Palin’s trash to find out the details of her speaking engagements contract, handed it to a local Democrat pollie, who dutifully handed it to their propaganda department the media. And now Democrat California Attorney General, Jerry Brown is investigating.

Gee, nothing desperate going on there.

And as for Palin’s speeches, shock horror, she makes some decent coin from them – and with a few perks thrown in. We’re talking $100,000 bucks a speech.

OMG, it’s “embarrassing” writes Tim Reid at The Times and reprinted in The Australian.

Yes, it is. Even I’m embarrassed that the Left is getting so desperate nowadays. Noteable also is that the Australian places Reid’s article in the “news” section.

Bollocks his article is “news”.

SARAH Palin faced embarrassing revelations yesterday about lavish demands that she makes before speaking engagements, including first-class air travel or large private jets, suites in hotels and even bendable straws in her water bottles.

…

The latest revelation will do little to damage her reputation among the party’s grassroots activists, who view her as a straight-talking hero, but it undercuts her claim to be a down-to-earth “hockey mom” who is fighting for ordinary working Americans.

Sounds more like Leftist opinion to me, and a media beat-up, Chris Mitchell.

Anyway, let’s just have a look at who earns the big bucks for speaking engagements. There’s Al Gore who gets over $250,000 to peddle speculation. Australia’s Tim Flannery get’s $50,000 to do the same.

And here’s a tidy list from the website whose company drew up Palin’s contract.

The following receive upwards of $40,000 per engagement. Is Palin’s deal out of the ordinary?

More BER waste; MSM still missing the real story

Another day, and yet more stories on the momumental waste of taxpayer dollars that is Rudd and Gillard’s Building the Education Revolution.

Unfortunate but, that the MSM is still failing to see the guts of this story. That being 1) the tender process was an absolute joke. There’s no way, in the day or so it took the government to decide who built what, that tenders could have been properly assessed and not awarded on anything but price. 2) The scope of works wasn’t really a scope of works, ususally a detailed document containing at least 10 pages, often more. Instead, Rudd’s was a few achitects notes, barely half a page long. 3) In the private sector, if a builder makes an RFI (request for information), this is usually handed in a matter of days, yet in the government’s case, this would often take weeks or even months all the while as workers are being paid to do nothing. Part of this is because instead of the industry standard of one overseer to about ten projects, in Rudd’s case, it has been closer to a 1:100 ratio. 4) The unions have been making work hard on many a site.

C’mon MSM. Report this properly.

MoveOn.disorg: “Bush Deficits BAD! Obama Deficits HOPE! CHANGE!”

Just how fucking retarded are the fucktards over at MoveOn.disorganization? Welp, back in 2004 they made up an ad to “speak dipshitese to power” and protest W’s $1 trillion debt. It was supposed to air during the Superbowl, but it was rejected. Thanks to the modern miracle that is YouTube, though, it lives on.

The obvious question is, how will MoveOn.shitforbrains react to Obama’s much larger deficits?

“After building a true budget baseline, the sobering result shows ten-year deficits of $13 trillion. The annual budget deficit never falls below $1 trillion. By 2019, the debt is projected at $22 trillion, or 98 percent of GDP.”

If they haven’t already made the ad up, well, then they are scum-sucking, maggot-out-of-hell, lying hypocrites… but we knew that already, didn’t we?

Thanks to DF over at The Corner for this gem.

Hi-fucking-larious.

WTF! Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism Guardian shocker.

This article is so backwards it lowers your IQ looking at it.

Nevertheless its begging for a world class Fisking.

Hello, my skull smells funny, I think the contents have reached their expiry date.

First the CV of the wibbling wuckwit who wrote this trash. See if you can play PC bingo.

Nancy Graham Holm was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and London School of Economics. She was a television journalist between 1972 and 1991 and has won many awards including three Emmys. She became a journalism educator in 1991 at the national school of journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. She retired from teaching in 2007. She is writing a book on feminism in the Abraham religions, including the “gender jihad” among Muslim women world-wide

Of course she is….

The originals.

Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism

On New Year’s Day, Kurt Westergaard and his granddaughter came close to losing their lives when an axe-wielding fanatic forced his way into their house. It was the latest in a string of attempted attacks that can be traced directly to the offence caused by Westergaard’s cartoons for Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

Incorrect, the attacks can be traced directly to an intolerant mediaeval mindset of a group of people who live their life based on a desert survival guide written by a madman with a “holy mole“.

More below the fold.

US Citizen? Sign the petition against cap n’ trade

If you’re a man-made global warming sceptic, or if you think the science perhaps isn’t settled, or if you are worried about a potential communist world government, or if you are worried about giant non-sovereign world taxes being imposed on all of us, or if you think the governments of this world already have too much power, or even if you’re not convinced yet either way, and don’t want a road paved that there’s no turning back on in just two short weeks, then sign this petition.

SIGN HERE

People literally right now are speaking at Copenhagen presenting the other side to this man-made CO2-driven man-made climate change/global warming argument. They will also be speaking tomorrow. Time is of the essence.

UPDATE

This post differs from the original. It came from watching the latest Monckton videos (the end of Part 4 of which part 1 was posted by 1.6 below), about a GLOBAL problem – but unfortunately only US citizens can sign that petition. Hence, first update removed, replaced with this.

The Age declares war

Bolt on how The Age, unable to call KRudd out as the liar he is, as demonstrated by Andrew on a number of occasions, takes a mere four hours to call Abbott out on his “first big lie.

Pathetic. What a bunch of ratbags, and what yet another example of what real journalism is not.

UPDATE

Abbott’s 7:30 report interview is up.

UPDATE II – post watching the 7:30 report.

This would be cliche if it were only us saying it and Kerry not consistently doing it; if only he were so tough on the Labor pollies. That said, Abbott handled him well. Not bad for a first interview, though he shouldn’t have apologised for his past behaviour – although Bolt refugees aren’t the only demographic he has to appeal to.

Abbott and the rest of them need to zero-in on Climategate. It’s a perfect exit strategy from Howard’s ETS. Behind closed doors, one can only hope they’re considering this. They should bite the bullet and do it. It’s a gamble, but their best improbable shot of snatching the next election. No more dilly-dallying – which was still evident in tonight’s interview. Of course Labor are using that FAR right nonsense lingo. It’s effective at the moment but it shows they’re scared to be coming up with such emotive sound grabs so early.

Taxes don’t change temperature.

Climategate: CRU= TGP

I swear, reading Climategate stories is as much fun as surfing TGP sites.

CRU:

“I’ve been poring over one of many leaked computer files from the “climategate” scandal.

It’s worse than those e-mails revealing leading climate scientists did a “trick” to “hide the decline” in global temperatures and privately called it a “travesty” they couldn’t explain recent cooling.

This document has the innocuous header “HARRY_READ_Me.txt.”…

The file — 274 pages long — describes the efforts of a climatologist/programmer at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia to update a huge statistical database (11,000 files) of important climate data between 2006 and 2009.

The computer coding, along with the programmer’s apparently unsuccessful efforts to complete the project, involve data that are the foundation of the study of climate change — recordings from hundreds of weather stations around the world of temperature and precipitation measurements from 1901 to 2006, sun/cloud computer simulations, and the like…

Reading “HARRY_READ_ME.txt” it’s clear the CRU’s files were a mess. The programmer laments huge gaps in data, bug-filled programs and worries about all the guesswork he’s doing. His comments suggest the problems go back years…

As you read the programmer’s comments below, remember, this is only a fraction of what he says.

– “But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)

– “It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)

– “The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour’s edits to the program, when the network died … no explanation from anyone, I hope it’s not a return to last year’s troubles … This surely is the worst project I’ve ever attempted. Eeeek.” (31)

– “Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)

– “… this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!” (45)

– “Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)

– “As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)

– “COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)

– “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ‘supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)”

Read it all.

Okay, TGP:

See what I mean? reading about the China Syndrome meltdown of Piltdown Man climate “science” is almost as awesome as looking at a beautiful young girl.

Here’s some more CRU:

Tigerhawk says:

“Some of this is a bit over done; not every suspicious turn of phrase in a conversational email hides a conspiracy, and anybody who has worked in a large organization knows that. It is also true that people in all organizations vent about outsiders who threaten to knock down the door as Steve McIntyre, to his credit, does all the time. The emails alone prove nothing.”

I disagree with this. These inclement climate pseudoscientists are fucking, goddamned pieces of shit. I don’t think one can “over do” shedding light on these slimy nightcrawlers. Personally, I think they should be cut up into little bitty bits and used as chum. After all, they are basically trying to rob the world economy of billions of dollars, and deny all peoples their God-given natural rights. No form of execution could be too gruesome for them. After all, this is cultural treason.

More TGP:

And yet more CRU:

“In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained that the AGW hype was a matter of politicians and grifters seizing an opportunity to use unsettled science as a means of getting filthy rich while imposing harsh measures against human freedom, I am very familiar with the world-view of the alarmists. Whenever I wrote about the “hoo-hah” of AGW (and particularly of Al Gore’s stupendous, international fake-out and hypocrisy), my email would load up with people telling me I was “a stupid hick,” unschooled in scientific method (just like Al Gore) and therefore unentitled to opine on anything, so I should just “shut up” and “go away” and of course, I was a “nazi.” These emails occasionally ended with a diatribe against George W. Bush for good measure, and suggested he and I were both “criminals” against humanity. One person even accused me of being Barbara Bush, in disguise.

All of that was standard-issue hate, but nowhere as amusing as the occasional “Sinner, fry in hell” emails I will get from a Jack Chicker, so I stopped reading them long ago.

But I also had a journalist I admired, and who I still consider a friend, privately and gently suggest that if I doubted the truth about AGW then I was as deluded (and perhaps as evil) as a “holocaust denier.””

Read it all, because there are many awesome links. Just like a soft porn TGP site, you could get lost for hours in the “friends” links.

Still more TGP:

Like I said, it’s a tossup: Surf TGP or surf CRU?

“There is a lot to read about Climategate, but none of it is in the Mainstream Media, with the exception of the Obama-Administration described “not real news” organization. That would be Fox News, which is covering the story.

The New York Times, in a stunning bit of hypocrisy, says they won’t report on Climategate because they didn’t like the way the information was discovered. To the NY TImes, the real story, if they ever deign to cover it, will be about the method in which the story was found, and the ends not justifying means.

There is a valid nit to pick over hacking and how it threatens not just programs but governments and individuals. But when an entire global movement, with accompanying financial interests and public bullying has been founded on “science” that is -at the very least- now confirmed to be “unsettled,” that information, regardless of how it was brought to light, needs to be reported on and investigated.

The NY Times’ prim distaste for the means of disclosure on this issue rather reminds me of a few years back, when someone leaded a memo from the Senate Intelligence Committee, whereby Sen. Jay Rockefeller suggested strategies to undermine “Bush’s war,” and the mainstream media ignored the content of the memo, while waxing indignant over the leak.

The standard media, it seems, only like leaks when they serve their own agendas, or take down their perceived enemies, foreign and domestic.

So, they don’t like this Climategate Story, not at all. Troubling links and trouble, trouble for the narrative.

Let me tell you why the press is blacking out the Climategate story:”

Which goes into Driscol’s quotation, but there’s a lot more CRU pr0n links you shouldn’t miss!

One more borderline NSFW TGP image – seasonally appropriate! – after the break:

Is Democracy not for everyone?

First reaction: bullshit.

Anyway, the BBC via Australia has launched into a bona fide debate on it all. Interesting….

Obama gets in. China’s rich. And now we’re questioning democracy… lest we mention who Obama’s press secretary admires so much.

And a note on that. Dunn said it. It’s on tape. Yet try to google a news story about it from a major news source? Almost nada. Why is that? Because a close aid to Obama, his communications director, quotes Mao as her number 1 political idol?

Oh dear, America. Oh dear, England. Oh dear, Australia.

And whatever happened to the fourth estate?

Convenient Lies

Just assume when a leftard opens their mouth or writes anything that it’s a lie. You’ll be right nearly 100% of the time. Perennial libtard whipping boy Rush Limbaugh is again the victim of lying leftards and the lying pieces of shit who enable them.

Here’s the best redux of the latest exhibition of leftist psychopathy.

“Which public figure can be quoted as having said something bigoted and disgusting and it doesn’t matter whether he did or not because he might have? Who can Big Media brand a racist without checking the facts? Who has to prove he did not say something racist, rather than the accuser proving he did?

A pat on the back for anyone who guessed the answer: Rush Limbaugh (OK, the blog headline was a clue). From CNN to MSNBC to ABC, it’s been put about that Limbaugh said this:

I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

It’s also been spread around that he said this, about the death of the man who assassinated Martin Luther King:

You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honour? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.

Trouble is, he didn’t say either of these outrageous things. And it wasn’t difficult to check, as protein wisdom shows here. They originated from, er, Wikipedia and Wikiquotes. Both quotes ended up in this book – a hit job that doesn’t cite any sources. They’re also included in this internet list posted a year ago and endlessly ripped off ever since.
The irony is, of course, that the people reporting this as fact are the same types who are always denouncing bloggers and the internet as forces of evil intent on destroying proper journalism – proper journalism being the kind that involves checking facts. In the case of Rush Limbaugh, however, it seems to be enough that the intention (i.e. to show the talk radio host is a racist) is considered pure.”

Fake but accurate!

I hope Rush sues the living fucking shit out of each and every one of these God damned, cock sucking leftard morons and forces printed, spoken, and aired apologies out of each and every one of them. SFLT’s can’t make a single point with the truth, so they’ve become serial, pathological liars.

What is Wrong with This Picture?

Hint.

Hey FOX, if you’re going to do a “then and now” pictorial about an iconic TV show, the least you could do is get the most iconic actor of the series’ name and dates right. You got his age at death correct, so how is it you can’t subtract 1912 from 1978 and see that there’s a problem? 1978-1912= 68, see? It’s not even math, it’s simple arithmetic! As for the last name, there’s this thing called Google. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Jesus Xavier Fulgencio de Maria Rodriguez.

A view into the Leftist hivemind.

Shamelessly stolen from Boltas comes this story, http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_degree_of_professional_protesting/

About the Sydney Universities “Centre for Peace and conflict studies”. I think they deserve a closer look.

 

Heres their website http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/centres/cpacs/about/index.shtml, I wonder what nonsense and lefty wankery can be found within?

 

No- Really hes the media lecturer.

More below the fold Caution, a little bit of swearing inside!

Ted Rall, Leftist Toon Town Resident: Obama Should Resign

In what has to be the ultimate example of leftard buyer’s remorse – as well as a first class exploding-head rant – foul-ball-territory left field resident, cartoonist, and columnist Ted Rall has decided that President Obama has reneged on so many of his leftist pie-in-the-sky promises… that he should resign. Wow. Just… wow.

Ted Rall

“MIAMI — We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?”

Jesus Xavier de Battista Lopez Rodriguez, not even I – a radical libertarian individualist if ever there was one – think Obama has done so poorly that calls for his resignation are in order.

“Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.”

Scary thing is – and I’m talking gulp-inducing terror here – I actually find myself agreeing with Ted on this issue (But not that Obama should resign, of course). I pray that in some drunken moment sometime, I never uttered the words, “If I ever agree with Ted Rall on anything, just shoot me.” Seriously, because that’s just the sort of thing I might have said about Ted previous to reading this article.

Methinks President Obama may have some developing troubles with his base.

You should read the whole enchilada.

H/T Mark Hemmingway.

Best Science Write-up Ever: The Untold Story of Apollo 11

Popular Mechanics has outdone themselves with these dovetailed interviews of all involved in the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was riveted and stayed up way past my bed time.

Part 1: Launch Day.

Part 2: To the Moon.

Part 3: Landing Day.

Part 4: Lunar Exploration.

Part 5: The Trip Home.

Part 6: Re-entry and Splashdown.

And, of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without… wait for it… here it comes… extensive coverage of the event by The Onion.

The Osbourne Identity

“Ozzie Osbourne” was once a female singer named Janis Joplin…

Grace Slick and Janis Joplin

… who faked her death, had a sex change, and came back as, “Ozzie Osbourne.”

Clearly.

This is just a way to turn you on to the amazing site of photographer Jim Marshall (No not the same Jim Marshall that makes guitar amplifiers).

Jim has photographed some of the most famous rock icons since the 60’s.

Mick!

Frank!

I viewed every photo there last night. Absolutely fascinating.

Media lies and distortions.

Australia has a national broadcaster, the ABC. It is fully government funded, and, as are most institutions of that type, of a fiercely left wing bent.

One case in particular has been its treatment of the illegal immigrant issues over the last decade or so. No allegation made by the ABC has been more long lasting than the one that the previous government deliberately lied about children being thrown overboard from refugee boats.

 

However it takes a special type of ignorance to ignore the senate report into the incident, which clearly states that it

A: Had happened before

B: Was threatened numerous other times.

C: Failed, and still fails to give ANY account of some of the violence and threatening/intinmidating behaviour faced by the Australian boarding parties.

 

There is a direct link to that behaviour and the deaths of 5 people, not including others lost previously when an asylum seekers boat was deliberately sunk by some of those on board. Yet the ABC still mentions “children overboard” as though there was no reason for the government of the day to have believed the reports. I have absolutely no doubt if Barnett hadnt spoken out this would be played out as an unexplained accident rather than an act of brinkmanship gone wrong.

More below the fold.