Way back in June, The Guardian [UK] wrote up an excellent summary of the official forecasts of doom.

via Reviewing Last Month’s Forecasts of Doom | Watts Up With That?.

How did the predictions of higher than normal temperatures, record-low Sea Ice Extent, amount and strength of Hurricanes…? Well, click on the link above and see.

Three prominent people recently said some very stupid things. Three wonderful critics ripped them to shreds.

Melanie Phillips on David Cameron
Jennifer Rubin on Oliver Stone
Evelyn Gordon on Roger Cohen

via Three idiots; three critics.

An informal and accidental alliance has been developing for some time between neo-Nazis and some members of a group they would normally despise: Muslim immigrants. The two groups seem to share vaguely similar anti-Semitic ideologies.

Anti-Semitism from the two groups shows itself in different ways in Germany. On the one hand, there are the efforts of extremist right-wing groups, which tend to follow a certain pattern. During a football match in April, for example, supporters of SV Mügeln-Ablass 09, a district-league football club in the eastern state of Saxony, chanted “a tree, a noose, a Jew’s neck” and “we’re building a subway, from Jerusalem to Auschwitz,” until the match was stopped.

According to the German government’s response to a parliament inquiry by Left Party politician Petra Pau, Jewish cemeteries in Germany are defaced, vandalized or destroyed about once every 10 days. Memorial sites are also frequently targeted. Last month, for example, extremists defaced a memorial plaque in the western city of Bochum, a Jewish cemetery in Babenhausen in the state of Hesse and a memorial in Beckum in the Münsterland region.

via German anti-semitism on the increase.

Accidental alliance? This “accident” has been happening for most of a century now.

How embarrassing… Hizb’allah soldiers all at the same time accidentally give the Nazi salute at their swearing-in ceremony. *blush*

In other words, real-life housewives emulate the “Real Housewives,” who can’t quite keep up with the A-list — and everybody winds up spending themselves into oblivion.

via Bankrupt Housewife, Teresa Giudice, Inspires Spending Trend – Lemondrop.com.

via D.A. threatens La Habra Heights videographer over Youtube video.

Meanwhile, 86-year-old Judith Popinski says she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust.

Popinski found refuge in Malmo in 1945. Until recently, she told her story in Malmo schools as part of their Holocaust studies program. Now, some schools no longer ask Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, because Muslim students treat them with such disrespect, either ignoring the speakers or walking out of the class.

“Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war,” she told the Forward while sitting in her living room, which is adorned with Persian rugs and many paintings.

“I am not safe as a Jew in Sweden anymore,” a trembling Popinski said in a frail voice. But unlike others, she intends to stay in Sweden. “I will not be a victim again,” she said.

via Malmö, Sweden synagogue attacked.

Times loses almost 90% of online readership | Media | guardian.co.uk.

Why does the PLO have a mission in Washington, and not the pseudo-democratic Palestinian Authority?

The answer to that question is terrifically important.

The Palestinian Authority is extraordinarily limited in what it can do. It reports to the corrupt, non-democratic, terrorist PLO.

via About that PLO flag in Washington.

A free User Interface Design tool for Web Designers

• Design faster wireframes and create better mockup deliverables in Illustrator.
• Design usable application interface with hundreds of common GUI elements : just drop them from Illustrator Panels or pick them in the library files.
• Customize easily the vectors GUI elements to your own needs : you can easily resize, color or tweak their appearance.
• Benefit from a consistent UI elements library made by a web designer expert in application interface design.

Hell Yeah.

Much thanks to Brian at SnappedShot.com for the big ups.

4chan vs. Gawker

Included in Adrian Chen’s series of articles about the situation was one entitled The Art of Trolling: Inside a 4chan Smear Campaign. After outlining 4chan’s plan of attack against Dahvie Vanity with screenshots and links, Chen linked to a chatroom, daring readers to troll it. Enraged, /b/ set out to take down Gawker’s main servers around noon on July 19th. When the site did not go down, an attack against Adrian Chen was launched. Gawker posted about the entire plot, stating that they were not afraid.

Coverage of the attempt to take down Gawker appeared on the Village Voice and New York Magazine’s Daily Intel.

via Jessi Slaughter “You dun goof’d” / “The consquences will never be the same” | Know Your Meme.

/b was laughed off by Gawker, and /b couldn’t do anything about it? The consequences will never be the same. Is /b now irrelevant? No matter how many sites they take down, they’ll always be known for not taking down Gawker. Until Gawker is publicly humiliated by /b, /b will be considered 2nd class and ineffectual.

/b is dead. Long live /b.

A 2007 Lancet study found “there was little difference in health-adjusted life expectancy between smokers who quit all tobacco and smokers who switch to snus.” The authors of the study discussed in this post note that “nicotine uptake from snus instead of from cigarettes has the potential for reducing harm by at least 90%.”

“Remember the Soviet Union?” said Hector Alvarado, who heads a civic advocacy group. “They had a lot of bureaucracy, and they lost. Maywood was like that. Now people know if they don’t work, they will be laid off. Much better this way.”

Here’s a sample from the Post story:

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies duplicate work.”

via News Alert: Top Secret America.

Here we have two examples of “goodwill gestures” – one, a private Jewish organization that funds and facilitates expensive medical procedures for Palestinian Arabs. The other, where Israel releases prisoners – even without a swap. (In fact, Israel has released thousands of Palestinian Arab prisoners in the past couple of years.)

Both goodwill gestures were reciprocated – but with murder.

It is not racist to realize that the mentality of Palestinian Arabs is fundamentally different from that of most Westerners. It is a result of the culture they were brought up in; it is the result of decades of the most disgusting incitement imaginable – it is hardly genetic. The differences are there and they should not be papered over with wishful thinking. The assumption that “we are all the same under the skin” is a fatal error. The ugly truth is that, in some cultures,  ”goodwill gestures” are interpreted as weakness, not goodwill, and the obvious response to kindness by an enemy is violence.

via Terrorist kills after daughter is saved by Jews.

According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs.

via Listening To The Government Makes You Fat.

I’m much less likely to help a distressed child because I’m too afraid of what might happen to my own kids. And that’s just sad. — Alan

via Welcome To The Land Of “All Men Are Child Molesters”.

Because of the fear mongers who love to promote sensational stories, this is the end result: men have to think twice about helping a child.

3)  Its a pittance! This is only a) 14 days of profits; b) 7X the CEOs salary c) 5% of Cash on hand:

Pay attention, this is important: I have been laboring under the impression that fines and penalties are to relative to the legal transgression — you know, the law that was violated, and the damages that violation caused.  The fines are not your bank account or income.

But that seems to be precisely what some people are arguing for. Does anyone here really want to see  the law structured so that fines and penalties are dependent upon your assets and income — and not based on the actual infraction?

Imagine getting pulled over for a speeding ticket, and in addition to license and insurance and registration, you give the cop (or the judge) your IRS 1040, bank account and IRA/401k statements. Fines are then assessed based on your income and wealth — rather than the actual seriousness of the infraction?

Pretty ugly and absurd thought! Yet that is exactly what I keep hearing people claim — that apparently, we should use the company’s finances and income to assess a far greater penalty.  Therefor, the fine should have been much greater — regardless of the transgression, because GS is so profitable and has so much cash.

Is that the road any of you seriously want to go down?

via Its the Law, Bitches!.

In yet another fine blog post, Barry Ritholtz brings down all the biased pundits and tells it like it is. Mr. Ritholtz and I don’t agree on everything, but I can count on him being honest and cogently defending his point of view. Makes me take a deep breath and relax.

via Congressman introduces bill to protect citizens who videotape cops.

Generally, lawyers write such things, so for my show, I went to Seton Hall University and interviewed some aspiring lawyers.

Many were eager to limit the First Amendment. They said things like:

“If you look at the gravity of the harm versus the intrinsic value of what is gained in blasphemy, the gravity of harm outweighs the intrinsic value.”

“We need to regulate flag burning– and any desecration of the flag in the interests of respecting those who have died to protect it.”

Another student thought videos showing “animal cruelty” – including hunting – should be illegal, and filmmakers thrown in jail.

Another argued that there should be an exception to corporate political speech, warning:

“They will own the airwaves. They will own all the advertising venues, ’cause they can afford it.”

The students are hardly alone. Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Elana Kagan, argued before the Supreme Court that the court should uphold a law that allowed the Federal Elections Commission to regulate corporate speech before an election – even books . But she assured the justices:

“Nobody in the administrative apparatus has ever suggested that books pose any kind of corruption problem, so I think there would be a good as-applied [legal] challenge with respect to that.”

To which Scalia replied incredulously:

“So [imagine] you’re a lawyer advising someone who is about to come out with a book and you say, ‘don’t worry, the FEC has never tried to send someone for prison for this. The statute covers it — but don’t worry, the FEC has never done it.’ Would that comfort your client? I don’t think so.”

Fortunately, the Supreme Court upheld freedom of speech that time. But it’s always in danger.

via Kagan’s Exception to the First Amendment.