Obama quietly continues to defend Bush's terror policies | McClatchy
WASHINGTON — Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans' phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any formal legal process or court oversight.
The FBI revealed this stance in a newly released report, troubling critics who'd hoped the bureau had been chastened enough by its own abuses to drop such a position.
In further support of the legal authority, however, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel backed the FBI in a written opinion issued this month.
The opinion by the OLC — the section that wrote the memos that justified enhanced interrogation techniques during the last administration — appears to be yet another sign that the Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush's in claiming sweeping and controversial anti-terrorism powers.
The Justice Department's watchdog, the inspector general, said the OLC opinion has "significant policy implications that need to be considered by the FBI, the Department, and the Congress."
"The FBI says that this kind of activity is in the past," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who's now the American Civil Liberties Union's policy counsel. "But if they're saying that they have a continuing legal authority that means it's not in the past."
In another similarity to Bush era-legal decisions to keep legal theories under wraps, Obama's Justice Department refused to release to McClatchy the OLC opinion, despite the administration's vow to be more open than its predecessors.
The little-noticed revelation about the OLC opinion and the FBI's legal position appears in a heavily redacted section of an inspector general's report released Wednesday.
In the report, Inspector General Glenn Fine concluded the FBI committed egregious violations of the law when it obtained thousands of telephone records without court oversight or through any formal legal process.
The report described a "casual" environment in which FBI agents and employees of telecom companies treated Americans' telephone records so cavalierly that one senior FBI counter-terrorism official said getting access to them was as easy as "having an ATM in your living room."
Yet it also stated that "the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency."
FBI and Justice Department officials refused to comment on that assertion.
In a letter sent Friday, Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder release a copy of the memo.
"Although much of the information about the OLC opinion is redacted in the public version of the (inspector general) report, the opinion appears to have important implications for the rights of Americans," the senators wrote.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has said that the informal practice of requesting telephone records as described in the report was stopped in 2006 when he found out about it from the inspector general.
Since then, it appears the bureau now refrains from using the authority it continues to assert, according to another heavily redacted section of the inspector general's report.
"However, that could change, and we believe appropriate controls on such authority should be considered now, in light of the FBI's past practices and the OLC opinion," Fine warned.
Privacy and open government advocates called on the Justice Department to release the opinion outright.
"There's a tremendous mystery as to what this legal basis is," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates privacy protections for technology. "It does not seem like a legal justification should be a national security secret."
Last March, Attorney General Eric Holder released Bush administration OLC memos justifying interrogation methods that Bush's Justice Department had refused to release.
"It is my goal to make OLC opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making," he said at the time.
Such rhetoric hasn't necessarily translated into action, however, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an open-government group. CREW released a report this week that criticized the Obama administration for recent decisions to withhold information.
"Judging by CREW's interactions with various federal agencies over the past year, the promise of transparency and openness has not translated into new government-wide . . . policies," the group said.
The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit Friday to try to compel the Justice Department to make public a report from Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility that examines possible ethics violations by lawyers who wrote the interrogation memos.
Holder had said in late November the report was finished and would be released soon.
Friday was also the deadline for executive branch agencies to release certain "high-value" data as part of President Obama's open government directive. Open government experts, however, said it remains to be seen how useful the information will be since the agencies themselves are determining what to divulge.
As of Friday afternoon, for example, the IRS had released its files tracking citizens' changes of addresses and the Department of Housing and Urban Development posted federal housing inspection data.
19 January 2010
15 January 2010
Rush Accused of not wanting donations to go to Haiti
| OBSCENE PROFIT CENTER 
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RUSH: To Paducah, Kentucky. This is April. That is one of my all-time, top ten favorite female names. April, thank you for calling. Nice to have you with us. Hello.
RUSH: Now, April, I must ask a serious question: Do you ever listen to my program or do you hear about it in places like the Huffington Post?
12 August 2009
The Socialism Utopia is Upon Us
The REAL Irony of America's "March to Socialism" is that in effect we are already a "Socialist Paradise". What is the goal of socialism, but to make everyone equal.
In the past, if you were part of the Rich, the elite, you had special privileges not available to your average working class person. This like Cruise Ship travel (they used to have "Steerage Class" for the "Peasants"). Things like Air Travel was restricted to the "Super Rich". 100 Years ago, the average mode of transportation was by Horse for the average Joe and by foot for the poor. While the Rich rode in class in their "Horseless Carriages". This is still the case in many of the undeveloped areas in the world.
Contrast that world with today's modern Utopia we call the USA. Where the "Super Rich Guy's" AC system in his $250,000.00 Rolls Royce works JUST AS WELL as the AC system in a $15,000 Ford Focus, same for the Air Bags and other safety features. We now share the same Roads, Cruise ships, the same Airplanes, the same Hospitals and the same neighborhoods. I used to live in a 1200 Sq. Ft. home, which is about the average size for a family in poverty. Now I live in a 3000 Sq. Ft. home and my "living area" is about the same as it was in my smaller home. Same goes for my Sister in her 7000 Sq. Ft. Home. the "other areas" of our houses are just BARELY used, since we all end up living in about the same sized space. There's only so much "space" that a human being can live in.
The "Socialist Utopia" has already arrived in the U.S. However, the Political class will only gain power by dividing us and pitting us against each other, so instead of pointing out our similarities, they point out our differences to build a wedge between us.
In the past, if you were part of the Rich, the elite, you had special privileges not available to your average working class person. This like Cruise Ship travel (they used to have "Steerage Class" for the "Peasants"). Things like Air Travel was restricted to the "Super Rich". 100 Years ago, the average mode of transportation was by Horse for the average Joe and by foot for the poor. While the Rich rode in class in their "Horseless Carriages". This is still the case in many of the undeveloped areas in the world.
Contrast that world with today's modern Utopia we call the USA. Where the "Super Rich Guy's" AC system in his $250,000.00 Rolls Royce works JUST AS WELL as the AC system in a $15,000 Ford Focus, same for the Air Bags and other safety features. We now share the same Roads, Cruise ships, the same Airplanes, the same Hospitals and the same neighborhoods. I used to live in a 1200 Sq. Ft. home, which is about the average size for a family in poverty. Now I live in a 3000 Sq. Ft. home and my "living area" is about the same as it was in my smaller home. Same goes for my Sister in her 7000 Sq. Ft. Home. the "other areas" of our houses are just BARELY used, since we all end up living in about the same sized space. There's only so much "space" that a human being can live in.
The "Socialist Utopia" has already arrived in the U.S. However, the Political class will only gain power by dividing us and pitting us against each other, so instead of pointing out our similarities, they point out our differences to build a wedge between us.
05 June 2009
Why American Capitalism is Gone with a Wimper
I was reading the Article Posted on Pravda Online, American Capitalism Gone With A Wimper, when I came across something that someone posted in reference to the article:
Jamesschwartz said...
Quote:"You talk a nice line, but, like most Russians I have met, you know little more than rhetoric. In fact, your country is a ganster nation, a country of lazy ingrates who are squandering the freedom which the Pope and Ronald Reagan bought for you.
In fact, Russia is a grossly unequal society where a few people are vastly wealthy and most of the value of the average worker's labor goes to further enrich the wealthy few, in which the masses are brainwashed by commercial advertising in a fruitless search for happiness in material form, and that which steals resources and exploits people throughout the Europe, using gansterism power to further profit the already wealthy at the expense of the common people"
Quote:"You talk a nice line, but, like most Russians I have met, you know little more than rhetoric. In fact, your country is a ganster nation, a country of lazy ingrates who are squandering the freedom which the Pope and Ronald Reagan bought for you.
In fact, Russia is a grossly unequal society where a few people are vastly wealthy and most of the value of the average worker's labor goes to further enrich the wealthy few, in which the masses are brainwashed by commercial advertising in a fruitless search for happiness in material form, and that which steals resources and exploits people throughout the Europe, using gansterism power to further profit the already wealthy at the expense of the common people"
This is how it starts. People like "Jamesschwartz" don't see all the gains the Russian people have made. They don't see the stores stocked full of goods, where there used to be lines. He doesn't see the ever rising prosperity of the average people. He only sees the Wealthy who helped make it happen. He believes that all the people who invest time, money and take risks should be just like everyone else and not make a dime off their efforts.
This is exactly the kind of attitude that is causing the collapse of the U.S.
He sees no problem with a SINGLE Company in the U.S. (Exxon-Mobile) paying more in taxes than HALF OF ALL Working Americans. He thinks this is Just. He sees no problem with the Government Robbing the Economy of all the Capital that it takes to create jobs, because he thinks that somehow this is "Fair", and punishes those who would dare to become successful.
Remember the Tenth Commandment not to covet they neighbor's house, wife, or anything that he has. Every Christian, Muslim and Jew have that Commandment in their Holy Books.
Americans have been convinced that it is Trickle Down economics and deregulation that has brought us down to where we are, when in fact it was Trickle down economics in the early 80's that saved the U.S. economy. It is, in fact what lifted us from the failed Tax and Spend and over regulation policies of the Left in the 70's led by then President Jimmy Carter.
Tax cuts left more money in the hands of the Capitalists to do what they do. What do Capitalists do? They wish to create more Capital. How do they create more Capital? By investing in or creating new Business Opportunities. What doe new Business Opportunities mean to your average Joe? It means more Jobs and more money in his pocket. If they the Capitalist get Rich off of that Formula, what business is that of anyone? Why should anyone care? Was it their money? Was it somehow "stolen" from the poor? Preposterous! The poor don't have any money.
It's a very simple theory, which any logical person can easily see how it will succeed, but our leftist media has convinced the people that this model in fact never did work, and that the Accumulation of Wealth that we experienced during the Reagan Revolution was a fantasy, that somehow, all of our problems started with Reagan, when in fact he had come in and FIXED our problems and our decline. He Reversed our fortunes and anyone who would dispute that, EXPECIALLY someone like Obama who grew up during the Reagan Revolution and took part in the opportunities that it created to become wealthy himself.
The Saddest part is that Japan, FDR and Carter have already tried the Big Government Big Spending Theory and as history has shown us, it simply doesn't work.
06 April 2009
The Personal Responsibility Act by No Socialism
I've written a previous article on this subject, but since I changed out my Commenting Engine to Disqus, people can't comment on the old article anymore, and I've been getting a lot of emails on this one. I'm going to re-post the Original 10 Points of the Act, and later get into some of the finer details in subsequent posts.
Burn all 60,000 pages of the Tax Code. It's a tax code that was designed specifically to give members of Congress powers to bestow upon special interests in an attempt to keep them in power. Eliminate all taxes, including Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Death Taxes, Import Taxes and so forth. Eliminate all Payroll Taxes. The only responsibility that Employers have is to keep their business in business. While providing jobs is a nice side effect, it's not their responsibility to provide for things like Retirement, Health care, Unemployment Insurance and so forth. These are things that should be purchased by employees, and they should be fully aware of the full cost of such benefits.
The Personal Responsibility Act.
Burn all 60,000 pages of the Tax Code. It's a tax code that was designed specifically to give members of Congress powers to bestow upon special interests in an attempt to keep them in power. Eliminate all taxes, including Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Death Taxes, Import Taxes and so forth. Eliminate all Payroll Taxes. The only responsibility that Employers have is to keep their business in business. While providing jobs is a nice side effect, it's not their responsibility to provide for things like Retirement, Health care, Unemployment Insurance and so forth. These are things that should be purchased by employees, and they should be fully aware of the full cost of such benefits.
- Replace current revenue with a 10% Sales Tax on ALL Goods and Services except for Cash Transfers (such as Bank Deposits) and a 10% Import tax with ZERO Exemptions. The U.S. Economy is currently running at around 13 Trillion and we import about 1.5 Trillion in goods alone. Current income taxes collect 1.1 Trillion and current Duties (Import Taxes) collect 26 Billion. This new model would collect 1.3 Trillion (assuming zero growth) in Sales taxes and 150 Billion in Import Taxes, almost 6X more than current levels (again assuming zero growth).
- Give Employees their FULL pay. Now that the Employer no longer has to pay all these taxes, he should go ahead and give that money directly to the employees. On average an employer spends approximately 10% on Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes and an additional 15% on Health Insurance. Your typical family salary is currently around $51,000.00, but once you take out all the Taxes and Social Security, that family only takes home about $39,000.00, not including their share of 401K's and Insurances, which on average reduces it another $3300.00 a year, but let's just keep the Original $39000.00 since not everyone has insurance today. This typical family would now see their take home pay increase to $63,750, a 61% increase without costing the employer a dime. He simply shifted the money he was ALREADY spending on Taxes and Insurance back to the employee.
Think about this for a moment, what kind of life would your family have if you had a 61% increase in your level of income. All of a sudden, things like Health insurance is affordable. Retirement Savings isn't an issue. Heck you could even get by without the Government paying for your kids lunch!
- Double the current Minimum Wage. Now that employers no longer have to comply with a crushing level of government mandates, he can afford to pay his employees more. He should pass on the savings to his employees.
- Give Employees a choice, but make retirement mandatory. Now that employees are flush with cash, the only responsibility that Employers now have is to offer an SS401K, (Social Security 401K) where they must put a minimum of 10% of their pay into. In addition, employers need to offer insurance, but all insurance premiums would be fully deducted from the employee's pay, again so he knows the FULL cost of these products.
Let's cover the SS401K's first. These special SS401K's will be Government certified to only invest into Grade A Commercial Paper, Midcap to Largecap growth companies and Home loans (NOT SubPrime Garbage). Every year employees must update the year they plan to retire, and at least half of their account must be moved out of the stock market no later than 5 years from retirement to reduce exposure to volatility. - Issue Bonds to pay for the current crop of Social Security recipients. Currently, the U.S. will have to pay about 17 Trillion over the next 30 years to the people who are currently enrolled in Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. should monetize this obligation and place it in each tax payers SS401K plan on a pro-rated basis, dependent upon how much they've paid into Social Security so far, in the form of U.S. Interest Bearing Bonds (instead of the non interest bearing type they're currently filling Social Security with). Chile has already set a precedence for this and their average retirees are actually worth more than your average retiree here in the richest country in the world. These bonds will require an additional 5% sales tax, but the good news is that once they're paid off (in about 30 years) that extra 5% drag on the economy will be gone.
- Make Employees take responsibility for their Health Care. Pre-existing conditions clauses would be eliminated. Age indexing would be eliminated, all policy holders will pay the same price, regardless of age, sex or condition. While you would think that this would cause rates to rise, in reality it won't because it will balance out with healthy people that currently choose NOT to buy insurance injecting cash into the system. HMO Type policies will also be eliminated because they mask true costs of health care from the general populace, which is why the health care industry is able to get away with increase that are usually 2 or 3X the level of inflation. All employees will have the choice of going with one of 3 policies, a modified Medical Savings Account which has a $5000.00 Cash allotment to be used for medical expenses on a special Credit Card), after which the company pays for all expenses (This would be the closest thing to an HMO, but at least the employee is AWARE of the TRUE cost of services). The second type of policy will be a Catastrophic policy that only pays after a $5000.00 deductible (this will be the cheapest, probably around 2 to $400.00 a month). The third option will be a standard indemnity policy with around a $250.00 deductible and 80/20 coverage, where you file paperwork with the insurance company and they reimburse you 80% of what you paid (usually to 5 or 10K then it covers 100%). All policies will have to cover up to 2 Million. Since Doctors and hospitals will no longer have to hire battalions of Billing Specialist to fight the HMO's for reimbursement, all Doctors that currently take insurance (yeah some don't) will be required to reduce their current prices by 25%. This price control will be in effect for 5 years to give the market time to adjust to the new realities.
- All those who chose to ignore the law (such as illegal Immigrants and the self employed who didn't buy policies) will be transferred to special Government run hospitals if they end up needing care, where they can receive Canadian Style wait for years to get treatment service. This way Hospitals can't use the uninsured as an excuse to charge us $100.00 for a Tylenol.
- Make Employees take responsibility for Mishaps. Mishaps happen, unemployment happens and so employees will have to take responsibility and buy their own unemployment insurance and Accident insurance. Policies like AFLAC pay a certain amount of CASH for every day that someone is in the hospital so they can pay their bills. Unemployment insurance should be offered by private companies with the risk rating relative to how many times someone has applied for unemployment. As an employer, I was keenly aware of employees who would work the minimum of 6 months to qualify for unemployment, they would then get themselves fired and then applied and "took 3 months off". Then went back to work for the next stooge.
Employees that show this pattern of behavior should be charged more for their unemployment insurance. Again, people will be required to buy these kinds of policies, but they shouldn't consume any more than about 1 to 3% of their pay. All of These insurance Policies, Retirement accounts and even savings accounts should be offered as a direct deduction to employees, but none of it should be subsidized by the employer. If the employer wishes to subsidize something, they should simply pay the employee more money and let the employee decide what to do with the cash. - Move more responsibility towards the States. Things like Welfare and other social programs should be administered by the States. With their constituents flush with cash, they will see a MASSIVE increase in sales tax revenue. Remember, even though the average person has to pay 15% more for their products (between the 10% sales Tax and the 5% special Assessment for Social Security Bonds) they will still have between 25 to 61% more money to spend. The average family won't be spending any more than about 15% to 25% of their pay on Retirement and Insurance, so that should leave PLENTY of extra cash for buying more stuff. The states can use this revenue to increase their
responsibility. - Reap the rewards. Small Business owners who inherited the business from their parents will no longer have to pay crushing death taxes and sell off parts of the business. With Oil imports permanently costing 10% more than the home grown variety, companies will have more incentives to both drill at home and develop alternatives, such as Wind and Solar. This alone will help to provide Millions of new jobs. The same goes for a variety of other businesses where imports are only marginally lower than the home grown variety. Businesses that relocated to other parts of the world will be flocking back to the U.S. totake advantage of the elimination of the Capital Gains tax. EVERY Multinational Company in the world will relocate their headquarters to the U.S. With 100% of Profits (instead of 65% under the old system) being reinvested in companies, the U.S. will see the most powerful boom in economic activity since the start of WWII, far eclipsing and surpassing any economic boom that we've ever had.
The only reason I feel that this plan will not work, is because it would never be implemented. The current congress would have way too much power to lose if the tax code were eliminated, and special interest groups would no longer have a need for them. Congressmen would lose MILLIONS in donations. The only way something like this would happen is if the people demanded it, and so here's thefirst voice, demanding that we do this.
05 April 2009
Sarah Palin Bikini Photos
I was reading a story from the Glenn Beck Newsletter, and I can't believe that this story is still out there, and there are still people that think there are real pictures out there of Sarah Palin in a Bikini!.Apparently there's been over 600,000 searches over the past several months with the following being the Hottest Key words:
Hot photos, Sarah Palin Bikini Photos, Sarah Palin Nude, Sarah Palin Naked.
Honestly, this just literally blows my mind that this is what people are looking for, they're not looking for the fact that she's running one of the only states with a massive budget surplus, they're not talking about the fact that even with surpluses, she's cut over a Billion dollars out of the budget. They're not talking or looking for information on all of her great accomplishments, instead they're looking for a Flesh Piece? Well to that all I can say is maybe America got what they deserved with the current administration.
For all you doubter's here's the REAL photograph that you see above:
If you need another party to verify, check out snopes.
03 April 2009
The Coming Environmental Disaster
The Environmental Protection Agency and some large business (especially GE who makes the bulbs and owns NBC and MSNBC), including Wal-Mart, are aggressively promoting the sale of compact fluorescent light bulbs as a way to save energy and fight global warming. They want Americans to buy many millions of them over the coming years.But the bulbs contain mercury, a neurotoxin, and the companies and federal government haven't come up with effective ways to get Americans to recycle them!
"The problem with the bulbs is that they'll break before they get to the landfill. They'll break in containers, or they'll break in a dumpster or they'll break in the trucks. Workers may be exposed to very high levels of mercury when that happens," says John Skinner, executive director of the Solid Waste Association of North America, the trade group for the people who handle trash and recycling.
Skinner says when bulbs break near homes, they can contaminate the soil.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and it's especially dangerous for children and fetuses. Most exposure to mercury comes from eating fish contaminated with mercury, however, that can change now that we're adding more and more mercury filled bulbs into our homes and places of business.
Some states, cities and counties have outlawed putting CFL bulbs in the trash, but in most states the practice is legal.
Pete Keller works for Eco Lights Northwest, the only company in Washington state that recycles fluorescent lamps. He says it is illegal to put the bulbs in the trash in some counties in Washington, but most people still throw them out.
"I think most people do want to recycle, but if it's not made easy, it doesn't happen," Keller says. "And they're small enough to fit in a trash can. So by nature, I think most people are not recyclers. So if it's small enough to fit in a trash can, that's where it ends up."
Experts agree that it's not easy for most people to recycle these bulbs. Even cities that have curbside recycling won't take the bulbs. So people have to take them to a hazardous-waste collection day or a special facility.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency program concedes that not enough has been done to urge people to recycle CFL bulbs and make it easier for them to do so.
"I share your frustration that there isn't a national infrastructure for the proper recycling of this product," says Wendy Reed, who manages EPA's Energy Star program. That programs gives the compact bulbs its "energy star" seal of approval.
She says that even though fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, using them contributes less mercury to the environment than using regular incandescent bulbs. That's because they use less electricity — and coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of mercury emissions in the air.
The difference however is that while Mercury emissions at Coal Fired plants can be controlled with tougher legislation, Mercury in our homes and offices, and especially landfills cannot be easily contained.
Reed says the agency has been urging stores that sell the bulbs to help recycle them.
"EPA is actively engaged with trying to find a solution that works for these retailers around recycling the product, because it's really, really important," Reed says.
But so far, she says the biggest sellers of the bulbs haven't stepped up to the plate.
"The only retailer that I know of that is recycling is IKEA," she says, referring to the Swedish-owned furniture chain store.
Reed says the EPA has been prodding other retailers, such as Wal-Mart, to do more.
"We are working with Wal-Mart on it, we are making some progress. But no commitments have been made on the part of Wal-Mart," she says.
Wal-Mart didn't respond to requests for a comment on the issue.
EPA also has asked retailers to sell the lower mercury compact bulbs that some manufacturers are making. Engineers say you can't cut mercury out completely.
Some other big companies have started paying attention to the recycling problem.
General Electric has been making compact fluorescents for 20 years. Now the company admits that the little bit of mercury in each bulbs could become a real problem if sales balloon as expected.
"Given what we anticipate to be the significant increase in the use of these products, we are now beginning to look at, and shortly we'll be discussing with legislators, possibly a national solution here," says Earl Jones, a senior counsel for General Electric.
In fact, Jones said he was having his first talks with congressional staffers on Thursday.
Story originally by Elizabeth Shogren
02 April 2009
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
I found this story over at the Telegraph, and it reminded me of a couple of stories I wrote a while back. I wrote about how we've actually been cooling for the past decade. How NASA backtracked on the "Warmest Year Ever" claim, and how I along with others felt that Global Warming has officially ended in 1998. I've read stories on how the Glaciers are expanding again and how we continue to have record breaking winters in 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and so on. Yet they keep trying to feed us the lie. The lie about Global Warming and Rising Sea levels.
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.
Christopher Booker, 28 Mar 2009
If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.
Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.
But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.
Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.
The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".
When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.
Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.
One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.
•For more information, see Dr Mörner on YouTube (Google Mörner, Maldives and YouTube); or read on the net his 2007 EIR interview "Claim that sea level is rising is a total fraud"; or email him – morner@pog.nu – to buy a copy of his booklet 'The Greatest Lie Ever Told'
Fined, frozen and now jailed
The Marine Fisheries Agency was certainly onto a winner when it enlisted the aid of the Assets Recovery Agency in its ruthless war against our fishermen. In December 2007 Charles McBride and his son Charles, from Kilkeel in Northern Ireland, were fined £385,000 for under-declaring catches of whitefish and prawns in the Irish Sea, threatening the loss of their homes and boat. But the Assets Recovery Agency, using powers designed to recover money from drug dealers, also froze all their assets. To pay the fines, the McBrides tried to borrow against their assets. Now, for this effort to pay the fines, Liverpool Crown Court has sentenced the two men to two and three months in gaol for “contempt of court”.
Blown away
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, timed his jibe impeccably last week when he said that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”. Britain’s largest windfarm companies are pulling out of wind as fast as they can. Despite 100 per cent subsidies, the credit crunch and technical problems spell an end to Gordon Brown’s £100 billion dream of meeting our EU target to derive 35 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020.
Meanwhile the Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the “great wind fantasy” will soon be over.
Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.
Christopher Booker, 28 Mar 2009
If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.
Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.
But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.
Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.
The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".
When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.
Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.
One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".
When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.
•For more information, see Dr Mörner on YouTube (Google Mörner, Maldives and YouTube); or read on the net his 2007 EIR interview "Claim that sea level is rising is a total fraud"; or email him – morner@pog.nu – to buy a copy of his booklet 'The Greatest Lie Ever Told'
Fined, frozen and now jailed
The Marine Fisheries Agency was certainly onto a winner when it enlisted the aid of the Assets Recovery Agency in its ruthless war against our fishermen. In December 2007 Charles McBride and his son Charles, from Kilkeel in Northern Ireland, were fined £385,000 for under-declaring catches of whitefish and prawns in the Irish Sea, threatening the loss of their homes and boat. But the Assets Recovery Agency, using powers designed to recover money from drug dealers, also froze all their assets. To pay the fines, the McBrides tried to borrow against their assets. Now, for this effort to pay the fines, Liverpool Crown Court has sentenced the two men to two and three months in gaol for “contempt of court”.
Blown away
The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, timed his jibe impeccably last week when he said that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”. Britain’s largest windfarm companies are pulling out of wind as fast as they can. Despite 100 per cent subsidies, the credit crunch and technical problems spell an end to Gordon Brown’s £100 billion dream of meeting our EU target to derive 35 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020.
Meanwhile the Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the “great wind fantasy” will soon be over.
Jobless claims at 26-year high - Or is it?
Don't you just love this. News organizations REALLY LOVE bad news. Of course what they don't say is that 26 years ago, we had about 100 Million LESS people in the U.S. What that means is that the unemployment figures back then was about 1/3rd higher than it is today! Problem is that's not BAD enough news, so they need to make it worse by simply stating the actual numbers instead of the percentage points.
Unfortunately, this plays right into the hands of those on the left who want to push even MORE stimulus, MORE spending, MORE Government, while most of us are fed a steady diet of bad news to keep us from revolting.
Here's the story from Reuters
Jobless claims at 26-year high
Thu Apr 2, 2009 1:42pm BST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose to its highest level in over 26 years last week and so-called continued claims jumped to a record high in March, according to data that underscored the labor market deterioration.
KEY POINTS: * The Labor Department said on Thursday initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 669,000 in the week ended March 28, the highest since the week ending October 2, 1982, from an upwardly revised 657,000 the week before. * Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 650,000 new claims versus a previously reported count of 652,000 the prior week. * The number of people staying on the benefits roll after collecting an initial week of aid surged 161,000 to 5.73 million in the week ended March 21, the latest week for which the data is available, from 5.57 million the previous week. * This was the highest on record and lifted the insured unemployment rate to 4.3 percent, the highest since a matching 4.3 percent in the week ending May 21, 1983. * The insured unemployment rate was at 4.2 percent in the week ended March 14. * The four-week moving average for new claims, considered to be a better gauge of underlying trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, climbed 6,500 to 656,750 in the week ending March 28, from 650,250. * That was the highest reading since October 1982.
COMMENTS:
SCOTT BROWN, CHIEF ECONOMIST, RAYMOND JAMES & ASSOCIATES, ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA:
"Jobless claims are another really bad number. We have been seeing not just an elevated trend but an increasing trend. That is not good. We know the labor market is going to be a lagging indicator but we need to see the pace of job losses moderate soon if we are going to get a recovery.
"Following the ADP data we got yesterday, I think markets will be braced for a decline of 700,000 or more in non farm payrolls.
"Treasuries are looking at the stock market, which is poised to open higher. These numbers are not affecting the government bond market much."
SUBODH KUMAR, CHIEF INVESTMENT STRATEGIST, SUBODH KUMAR & ASSOCIATES, TORONTO:
"The employment data is still poor-- we saw that in Europe as well-- but I think the markets aren't responding to hard data right now. I think markets today will be focused more on confidence measures, and how confidence may be lifted.
"At the G20 meeting, I think investors have expectations for news about regulations, and I also think they'd like to see more aggressive stimulus policy. They want more concrete action on stimulus."
T.J. MARTA, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, MARTA ON THE MARKETS, SCOTCH PLAINS, NEW JERSEY:
"This is bad. It needs to be countered against the rise in the U.S. population; as a percentage, it's not that bad.
"Continued claims is the more concerning matter. What it says to me is the persistence of unemployment. The unwillingness of the auto industry to adjust and the bubbles in housing and on Wall Street have led to a misallocation of house resources. It's more of a structural reallocation of resources, which could be worse than anything we've seen since the Great Depression."
MARKET REACTION: STOCKS: U.S. equity index futures pare gains slightly after jobless claims data. BONDS: U.S. Treasury debt prices steady at lower levels. DOLLAR: U.S. dollar little changed.
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)