Liberty News Central

Exposing environmentalist's bitches -The Hindustan Times, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:14:00 +0000

This will be a series exposing the persistent lack of honest reporting on climate change in the Indian media.Starting with the Hindustan Times because this is the rag I'm most familiar with.

Climategate broke 5(I think) days ago -and for 5(I think) days I have searched the newspaper's site using keywords like - CRU... email... hack....Phil Jones..... And still-

nothing, zilch, nada!

Makes you wonder -

1)do they live in a cave with no internet connection?
2)have they not heard of Climategate( or Climaquiddick as some prefer it)?
3)if so do they not consider it newsworthy?

So the shocking story which(in Andrew Bolt's words)-

* caused an international controversy

* shocked world leaders in climate science

* triggered calls for an inquiry by a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

* caused fellow Leftist and warmist crusader George Monbiot to call for the resignation of one of the warmist scientists, and complain that fellow Leftists who ignore it are in denial.

* helped to prompt a Liberal revolt against Malcolm Turnbull

* caused warmist crusader Tim Flannery to confess on ABC television for the first time that the world had indeed been cooling, and ”when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem” and “we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it”.

* revealed that one of the co-authors of the IPCC report that Faine(another environmentalist's bitch -ed) cites as gospel conceded ”we can’t account for the lack of warming, it’s a travesty that we can’t”.

is not worthy of being covered?

Or, as is more likely -doesn't fit the narrative.

This, in these last 5 days, has been the Hindustan Time's agenda(as it has been for past several years -they don't take their eyes off the ball)-

UH-OH! This is going to be long post.....a mere five days and so much warmingering......so will continue in the next post.

Update -

Climategate broke seven days ago -making media's silence all the more damning.So I will cover last 6 issues of the Hindustan Times in the next post.

Greens and the MSM -pimp and the bitch

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I have great respect for prostitutes -those who are in it voluntarily. They earn an honest living. One can't say that of the mainstream media(MSM). They give whoring a bad name. The way they have become mere megaphones of the environmentalists, their bootlickers, their...bitches -is simply astounding. It is a journalistic fraud of the highest order -if they were oil or financial company executives, most newspaper editors would be behind bars. They make up facts, they hide inconvenient truths, they delight in scare-mongering,they put up dodgy reports in screaming headlines, the way they carry the trumpet for the capitalism-hating, ideologically obsessed big-government greenies ......They make good bitches.

Remember acid rain?
From Planet Gore-

As with the Truth about Acid Rain, the MSM Wants to Bury Climaquiddick [Henry Payne]

David Skole, a professor of forestry at Michigan State University, visited the Detroit News offices earlier this month to argue that cap-and-trade legislation would be an economic boon to America. As evidence, he sited the 1990 Clean Air Act, which initiated a cap and trade program for power plant–particulate emissions. “Everyone said it would be too costly,” Skole gleefully announced, “but they were wrong and it worked.”

In fact, like global warming science today, the “consensus” science in 1990 — which argued that Midwest power plants were destroying Northeast lakes with acid rain — was bunk. So how can Skole (and his allies) boldly stake their claim? Because Washington politicians and their media parrots covered up the scientific evidence in 1990 so that it would not derail the regulation they had long sought. It is a cautionary tale for those who think that truth will win the day after the newly released Climate Research Unit e-mails — a.k.a., Climaquiddick — have revealed fraud in global-warming science.

The NAPAP (National Acid Rain Precipitation Assessment Project) study published in 1989 — which took ten years and cost $500 million, the most comprehensive federal study ever undertaken — proved that acid rain was a minor nuisance and that passing expensive regulation would do little to address the supposed problem.

I briefly covered the story in Washington at the time having read alternative media reports in the Washington Times by Warren Brookes and Reason magazine. But, as in Climaquiddick today, the MSM buried the story’s tawdry details. In 1989, I spoke with two journalists who knew of the report’s conclusions, but who refused to report on it lest it jeopardize passage of the Clean Air Act. I interviewed then-EPA Chief Bill Reilly (a green Bush appointee) who dismissed the report. Congress, despite having spent half-a-billion, quashed the inconvenient science. Only one brief hearing was held.

Months after the regulations were voted into law, 60 Minutes became the first MSM outlet to look into the allegations that acid rain science was a hoax.

“(NAPAP chief scientist Ed) Krug and then-NAPAP director James Mahoney explained and defended the project’s conclusions,” reported Reason. “Both argued that acid rain is not a crisis. On acid lakes, (60 Minutes reporter) Kroft repeated NAPAP’s belief that acid rain contributes to acidity of only ‘about 2 percent of the surface water in the Adirondacks.’”

Asked about a New York Times story that claimed acid rain had turned forests in Appalachia into “ragged landscapes of dead and dying trees,” Krug told 60 Minutes, “I don’t know where they got that from. It appears to be another assertion, unsubstantiated.”

Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz also got wind of the NAPAP cover-up after the fact. Trying to explain why environmental reporters had ignored the scientific evidence that would have precluded $4 billion a year in regulatory compliance, he wrote: “Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists, whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesmen and other lobbyists.”

Fortunately, the alternative press has grown since 1989 and today there are prominent news outlets like Fox and the blogosphere to help report the inconvenient Climaquiddick facts.

But as with acid rain, the MSM continues to filter out information that does not fit the Big Government green agenda. So that when MSU professor Skole spun his false tale of the Clean Air Act’s “success” before a group of journalists, he could assume ignorance of the science.

Just to emphasize-

I spoke with two journalists who knew of the report’s conclusions, but who refused to report on it lest it jeopardize passage of the Clean Air Act

They are not reporters -they are activists.They are agenda-driven whores.
Environmentalist's bitches.

(emphasis mine)

Hacked emails point to climate fraud!

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Update -the incriminating emails are now on net in a searchable form. Well done!

This is HUGE!!

Some noble soul has hacked into the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and what a treasure trove of incriminating emails has been found!

Scientic fraud to make AGW theories appear plausible? Silencing of skeptics? Deleting data to escape from responding to FOI requests?

Yes, like a formula-ridden blockbluster, it's all there -scientists acting as partisans of a cause.

Andrew Bolt has many details. Steve McIntyre, the object of much scorn and fury among alarmist scientists in these emails, has more.

Those emails can be downloaded from here.

Update 2- more from the indispensable Tom Nelson.

This is Oh-bama!

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:03:00 +0000

From the excellent Michael Ramirez.

Bower-in-chief

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:47:00 +0000

Oh no, there he goes again!

Somebody forgot to tell him that-

The one thing that virtually everyone who teaches bowing etiquette stresses is under no circumstance try to combine a bow with a handshake.

Scraping and bowing before foreign royalty comes naturally to the appeaser-in-chief.

Finally, a moron in the White House

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:07:00 +0000

Obama at the helm of America is like a drunk at the steering wheel of a racing car on a highway doing 260mph!
-

Obama has been a prime malefactor in fanning confusion about the enemy and the means we will use to defend ourselves. He ran for president on pulling the plug on Iraq, although that was a central battlefield in the war against the same Islamic fundamentalists. Once in office, he not only declared war on the CIA by re-investigating its operatives and disclosing their methods, but he proposed closing Guantanamo and bringing detainees to the U.S. for trial and possible incarceration. In his grand address on health care, he tells the country it’s a shame we have to spend money fighting in Afghanistan. He has excised “war on terror” and “Islamic fundamentalist” from our official lexicon. And he has declared we won’t be using enhanced interrogation techniques to extract any useful information from those who would carry out dozens of Fort Hoods.

Somebody charge him for being an idiot while president.

Read it all.

Update-
Related-

It’s pretty clear to the conscious that the President hasn’t a clue how to grow the economy. And, every day more of us suspect that job growth isn’t even part of his agenda for the next few years

Kumkum Dasgupta -no wind in those windmills

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:56:00 +0000

The moment I lay my eyes on this article on windmills by Kumkum Dasgupta in today's Hindustan Times, I just knew that it would be strong on uninformed tosh and unquestioning credulity. I was not disappointed(or rather was- that this large article was no different from thousands of others).Here is the gist of it-

--------------------------------------
A little bit of push from the government always helps, as it did for Samsoe, which is located in the middle of Denmark, a country of 406 islands and peninsula Jutland. Thanks to its geographical position, the Viking explorers once used Samsoe as a meeting point. Today, it has become the centre of the country’s renewable energy (RE) programme. Thanks to a community initiative, the island now runs on 100 per cent RE.

That Samsoe’s contribution is part of Denmark’s larger plans of moving from fossil fuels to RE is clear: by 2025, Denmark wants at least 30 per cent of its total energy consumption to be powered by RE. As of today, RE accounts for over 15 per cent of the country’s gross energy consumption and about 27 per cent of the electricity that is generated.

-----------------------------------------------------------

The residents responded wholeheartedly: they gave up their oil-burning furnaces for centralised plants that burned leftover straw or wood chips to produce heat and hot water. They bought shares in new wind turbines. Then they invested in 11 large land-based turbines, enough to meet their electricity needs.

They also supported the construction of 10 massive offshore turbines. Banks backed the resident-investors because the Danish government assured the price of electricity for 10 years.
“We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank.

And, being part of it, we also feel responsible,” Hermansen said in an interview to a newspaper.
“The spin-offs have been enormous: the islanders not only saved on its fuel/electricity bills but Samsoe became an island for eco-tourism

-------------------------

“We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank. And, being part of it, we also feel responsible,” Hermansen said in an interview to a newspaper.

Ok, we get the narrative - a green island paradise that is now teaching the world how to give up completely it's dependence on fossil fuels, a sort of renewable energy kibbutz that actually works and makes money, grassroots collective action for nature and for profit.

Kumkum Dasgupta, following to a T other 'environmental' writers' techniques, raises no doubts, interviews no contrary voices, questions nothing.The truth, alas, is often not found in a newspaper article -a strange and tragic irony.

Ms. Dasgupta, here some facts that you seem to be unaware of -

The answer is that the president's (repeat) claim that "Denmark produces almost 20 percent of their electricity through wind power" is false. Denmark actually produces much less of its own electricity from wind, as low as 4 percent depending on the year, with the recent average of 9.7 percent. This despite a massive buildout of what they flatteringly call the "wind carpet," on some of the most hospitable terrain for wind power in the world.

It is also in return for its households paying the highest eletricity rates in Europe. With a substantially lower per-capita energy use. That means, to get half of what Obama seeks, the U.S. would have to carpet itself twice over — which means lots of windmills where birds fly and Kennedys live — and pay Danish-style rates.

Oh. Wait. That still won't do it. Apparently Denmark's experience isn't even scalable to Scanadanavia. It turns out that, if the Norwegians and Swedes tried to replicate Denmark's expensive folly, well, it would blow the system up. Here's why. Denmark took advantage of long-since-paid-for interconnectors between Jutland and Norway, and the island on which Copenhagen sits and Sweden. It made a political decision that windmills would be their "national champion" industry, and as you will hear to no end throughout the Copenhagen COP, a big part of their national identity. So they built a lot of windmills, and started a mythology.

This buildout was only possible because the Norwegians and Swedes use enormous percentages of hydropower and nuclear, both of which can be dialed up or down according to the whimsy of the wind. When the wind does deign to blow, Denmark sends fully half of its very expensive, ratepayer subsidized wind power to its neighbors at cut rates, in return for said neighbors indulging Denmark's wind mill image-making by dialing up or down its hydro power or nukes at other times (which, most of the time, means "up").

When the wind picks up, the story gets worse. On top of subsidizing their neighbors' electricity and allowing them to go without building more of their own, it turns out that increases in wind generation, under the current buildout, are shipped nearly 100 percent and at a considerable below-cost discount right out of the country. With its politicians now vowing to massively increase installed wind ("50 percent of our elecricity" — how about getting to 20 percent first?), that means Denmark will be sending even more domestic wealth to its neighbors.

Because it is displacing carbon-neutral electricity — as a condition precedent even to deploying the machines, mind you, so this is not something that can be changed — you can kiss claims to massive CO2 reductions (or reduced fuel use) goodbye.

When it comes to Obama's claim that Denmark, not discredited Spain, is the model to follow: waiter, the food was horrible, and the portions too small. You can't replicate Denmark's model — and its a good thing, too.

Although, I'm informed that the Danish wind industry admitted the problems to the media this morning before muttering about needing further (ratepayer) investment, expect the American wind power industry to spin wildly in coming days. Which, incidentally, is more than we can say about their products.

So, the merry islanders are laughing their way to the bank while rest of Denmark pays the highest energy bills in Europe. Denmark has to ship out it's wind-generated electricity at a loss to it's neighbors. And to top it all, the alleged CO2 reductions are a myth.

And this you say, Ms.Dasgupta, is model for the world to follow. Really?

(emphasis mine)

Update -
missing links added.

Update 2-

        Related-

      BBC refuses to air a film not duly worshipful of windmills

   Artists against windmills

Iranian protesters taunt-plead-shame Obama with Bushspeak

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:02:00 +0000

One of the biggest transformations going from Bush to Obama has been the trashing of human rights by the new team in power. They are leftists, after all, freedom and human rights has never been the Left's forte.

A most heart-rending struggle of current times is the desperate struggle of Iranians against their brutal fanatic regime - a regime which does this:

(video link)

A girl is walking away and a riot guard stops her, she is all alone against the big metal gate, defenseless and not bothering anyone, but an anti-riot guard decides to lash her across the sheens a couple of times with his truncheon. But there is worse to come, another girl is pulled over and this time she is smacked in the face with the truncheon, she is knocked out and when a young man comes to her aid, he too is pulled away and kneed in the face before more women come to their rescue. Also notice the security agent with the camera who is filming the protesters. This is what they do in public, just imagine what they do behind the prisons.

For Obama the protestors have been irritants in his set-in-stone policy of talking to the mullahs. He even cut off funding for center documenting Iranian human rights violations to suck up to the regime. The protestors are now trying to shame Obama into doing the right thing-

The New York Times reports that opposition protesters in Iran, in between beatings and tear-gassing from riot police and the regime’s hired thugs, have started a new chant: “Obama, Obama -- either you’re with them or you’re with us.”

In case you were wondering what the answer might be, the statement yesterday from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it all. Gibbs declared that Obama administration officials were following reports of the unrest and “hope greatly that violence will not spread.” This was a great moment in the annals of diplo-speak. No mention of who might be committing the violence, or who might be its victims. Violence, it seems, has the capacity to spread without any human involvement.

Unpleasant as it may be for the president to hear, his policy is objectively aiding the Tehran regime and harming the opposition in their ongoing struggle.

The chanters are right. The United States can either be with them or against them. Right now, President Obama is against them. But it’s not too late for him to switch sides.

I hate to say it - but the most powerful man in the world has his moral compass pointing in the wrong direction
.

Hergé on climate change?

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:07:00 +0000

Hergé drew a delightful series of comic strips on a couple of urchins named Quick & Flupke which were later published in form of 12 albums.

Going through one of these albums,Two of a Kind, this one story made me wonder -was Hergé making a veiled statement on the dangers of climate change? Or was he making fun of all those global warming alarmists that have now proliferated more extensively than rabbits?

(click for larger image)

Observe - the climate change in the comic is 'cooling'. The stories were published in the 1930's and 40's. Till 1940 the planet is supposed to have warmed(a time when CO2 emissions were low). It then cooled till early 1970's (even though the CO2 emissions were rising rapidly) then warmed again and then has cooled ever since 2001 forcing even the BBC(the Pravda of Global Warmingism) to sit up and take notice.

All of which makes me go -hmmm........

Note-
To our good fortune the series has been reprinted in India by EuroBooks India.

The troubled story of Ayn Rand's 'We the Living' movie

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Some good news -the 1942 film of Ayn Rand's We the Living is now out on DVD-

Big Hollywood has a review-

We The Living was made during World War II in Mussolini’s Italy, of all places. The government warily allowed it to be filmed as a propaganda vehicle against the Soviet Union. But when Mussolini realized the movie was a critique not only of communism but of all forms of statism, he banned it from theatres, where it was a smash hit.

The government rounded up and destroyed all copies of the film – save one, the original negative, which was secreted away. As we are informed by the fascinating documentary (included among the DVD extras), the film’s reels languished unseen for decades until Rand’s attorneys went hunting for it among the Italian film community.

Duncan Scott, who produced the DVD release, explains how as a young editor he talked his way into recutting and subtitling the film alongside Ayn Rand herself. WTL had originally been released as two separate films. They combined them, trimmed away some of the excess, and removed or redubbed pro-fascist propaganda speeches inserted at the insistence of the authorities.

The issue of re-dubbing is intriguing -

Scott tells how in the original version, Andrei delivered a heated diatribe against the evils of capitalism. Needless to say, this speech didn’t exactly belong. Not content merely to change the subtitles, Scott actually hired a sound-a-like Italian actor so he could redub the voice track in Italian to match the new subtitles.

Unfortunately the digital transfer was done in 1987, and the cost of a high-definition remastering was prohibitive for this DVD release, so the picture quality isn’t quite as crisp as one might wish. Nevertheless, it is completely watchable.

Glenn Kenny quotes J.Hoberman's description of the film -

"Shot mainly in close-up and entirely in the studio, We the Living evokes an atmosphere of total, demoralized corruption. As directed by...Alessandrini, a filmmaker with some Hollywood experience, the movie does not lack for mise-en-scéne. The grim sets are scrawled with hammer-and-sickle graffiti and Cyrillic exhortations, emblazoned with menacing posters of proletarian ape-men and encephalitic Lenins. That everyone is always layered with clothing adds to the sense of unpleasant crowding, just as the already high fog quotient is significantly augmented by a constant sucking on cigarettes. The atmosphere is as gray as the dialogue is purple."

If anybody gets a hand on the DVD, you know where to contact me.

(cross posted at the Ayn Rand India)

Declare hospitals 'Prime Minister-free' zones

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:46:00 +0000

Socialism kills, as does it's cousin -the welfare state.The huge state apparatus that allegedly exists for the common good inevitably becomes a supremely arrogant and brutal self-serving monster.Just visit any government office as an ordinary citizen -and you'll know(as if you didn't)how much the public 'servants' are really public 'masters'.

We are just chattel -we are forced to pay taxes to feed this monster, we must vote to legitimize the beast, we exist to bow before the powerful politicians and their goons, to grovel and bribe at the endless number of departments to get something done, we are there to serve...the public servants.

This monstrous reality is perfectly encapsulated in what is state murder in all but name-

A 32-yr-old patient lost his life outside the Post Graduate Institute for Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) hospital, Chandigarh, after he was stopped from entering the hospital due to security reasons. The Prime Minister was visiting the hospital. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has said that the Prime Minister is saddened by the incident and that it has demanded a full report on the incident.

Video from Times Now

(if the video does not play, here is the direct link)

The patient Sumit Prakash was reportedly shunted from gate to gate for almost two hours which allegedly led to his death. The deceased was from Ambala and was suffering from acute kidney problems that required him to visit the Inderjit hospital in Chandigarh on a monthly basis.

Today, he also developed respiratory problems which led Inderjit hospital to send him to the PGI in order to get oxygen. It was outside the PGI that he was refused entry as the Prime Minister was addressing a convocation there.

Did Manmohan Singh not know that his visit to the hospital would put patients' access to doctors in severe jeopardy? Is he so clueless? Or just plain vanilla callous like the rest of the political class to which he belongs?

Shouldn't he be prosecuted for knowingly putting patients at risk -finally killing one?(But which official has the balls to start such a line of inquiry -let alone a prosecution?)

At minimum, the hospitals need to be declared 'Prime Minister-free' zones.

Politics, they say, is a killer. For us chattel, it is.
But hey, he is 'saddened' .

(emphasis mine)

Will India be like(gasp!)California?

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:04:00 +0000

No, this is not a compliment -

California vs. Texas: The Verdict Is In

-----------------

Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California. Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so. William Voegeli draws the sad but instructive comparison in the Los Angeles Times:

In America's federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a "package deal" that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right. ...

California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau's latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. ...

Confronted with a stark choice between government dominance and freedom, Americans are voting with their feet:

One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive "net internal migration," in the Census Bureau's language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

So are higher taxes and greater public expenditure in California worth it?-

But those higher taxes in California must be going somewhere. Why aren't they benefiting those many thousands of citizens who are leaving the state for greener pastures?

In what respects, then, does California "excel"? California's state and local government employees were the best compensated in America, according to the Census Bureau data for 2006. And the latest posting on the website of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility shows 9,223 former civil servants and educators receiving pensions worth more than $100,000 a year from California's public retirement funds. The "dues" paid by taxpayers in order to belong to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

I'm afraid the dynamic 2-in-1 do-badan-ek-jaan* superhero team of Chacha Manmohan S.Gandhi(as Sauvik Chakraverti so wonderfully likes to put it) is rushing India towards the failed California model -a numerous high-caste of sumptuously paid and pampered inefficient and corrupt public employees, large-scale(rather, huge-scale) spending on 'social' sectors in the name of the poor, higher taxes whether directly or indirectly(see all the goverment controlled charges increasing all around you -from transport to vegetables to electricity).The 2-in-1 team likes the 2-step tango -massive amount of spending(as if it is their baap's* money) and massive amount of debt(which we and our children's and our grandchildren's baaps will have to pay off).

We have only just begun to nibble on the fruit of partial liberalisation of the Indian economy. The 2-in-1 team is poisoning the fruit with it's 'social' obsessions.

Only it will be much worse in India because-
the size of Indian babudom is much larger and their predatory grasp much stronger,
their level of corruption and venality cannot be matched (not even close) by the Californian babus,
all of India will be California and there is no Texas to escape to.
(emphasis mine)

*The colorful Indian language translator-
       do-badan-ek-jaan - two bodies but one mind

       baap - father
       babu - (derisively) bureaucrat

Zigzagging on Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:57:00 +0000

Richard Cohen-

Foreign policy realists question whether any effort in Afghanistan can succeed. Possibly they are right. The interventionists, if I may call them that, suggest the realists are being unrealistic -- that Afghanistan matters and it matters much more than Iraq or, before that, Vietnam ever did and that we can prevail. Possibly they are right.

But the ultimate in realism is for the president to gauge himself and who he is: Does he have the stomach and commitment for what is likely to continue to be an unpopular war? Will he send additional troops, but hedge by not sending enough -- so that the dying will be in vain? What does he believe, and will he ask Americans to die for it? Only he knows the answers to these questions. But based on his zigzagging so far and the suggestion from the Copenhagen trip that the somber seriousness of the presidency has yet to sink in, we have reason to wonder.

Homophobic, meet Islamophobic

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:40:00 +0000

Mark Steyn-

There'll be a lot more of this in the future:

French Gay Soccer Team Snubbed By Muslim Team

The gay team has accused the Muslims of homophobia. But isn't accusing Muslims of homophobia a bit Islamophobic?

Obama's moral compass

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Hello, Thugs. Hello, Unions.
Goodbye, Dalai.

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:22:00 +0000

Rush Limbaugh schools BBC's Katty Kay

It's drôle!

Leftists fail again to turn lead to gold

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:06:00 +0000

At last,somebody discovered a government program that actually worked!

That is like fulfilling the supreme quest of alchemy to transmute lead into gold. Deserves at least a dozen Nobel awards all at once. From the fertile brain field of BHO and the Democrats came this wonderful piece of goodness for the economy and the environment -Cash for clunkers. Wise man Joe Biden called the program “an unqualified success”.

But hold on to those Nobels yet-

Cash for clunkers had two objectives: help the environment by increasing fuel efficiency, and boost car sales to help Detroit and the economy. It achieved neither. According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best "the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day's gasoline use." Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

The basic fallacy of cash for clunkers is that you can somehow create wealth by destroying existing assets that are still productive, in this case cars that still work. Under the program, auto dealers were required to destroy the car engines of trade-ins with a sodium silicate solution, then smash them and send them to the junk yard. As the journalist Henry Hazlitt wrote in his classic, "Economics in One Lesson," you can't raise living standards by breaking windows so some people can get jobs repairing them.

In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices. The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.

Now can anybody name any government program that works?

"No Global Warming in 351 Year British Temperature Record"

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:56:00 +0000

Offered without comments-

No Global Warming in 351 Year British Temperature Record

The Central England Temperature (CET) record, starting in 1659 and maintained by the UK Met Office, is the longest unbroken temperature record in the world. Temperature data is averaged for a number of weather stations regarded as being representative of Central England rather than measuring temperature at one arbitrary geographical point identified as the centre of England.

A Scottish statistician, Wilson Flood, has collected and analysed the 351 year CET record. Here is the comparison of the 18th Century with the 20th Century:

Wilson Flood comments:

“Summers in the second half of the 20th century were warmer than those in the first half and it could be argued that this was a global warming signal. However, the average CET summer temperature in the 18th century was 15.46 degC while that for the 20th century was 15.35 degC. Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the 20th century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.”

(emphasis mine)

New York Times does Pravda again

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:11:00 +0000

The Soviet journalists at least had an excuse -they had a perpetual gun held to theirs and their families' heads.

What excuse do the journalists and editors of the still free world have?

New York Times scrubs quotes that are embarrassing to Obama.

Deleted quotes include-

And the prospect of winning was too irresistible. After all, Mr. Obama has already envisioned the day when he could welcome the world to his hometown, never mind that small matter of reelection. “In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president,” he told a rally in Chicago in June 2008. “So I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park ... as president of the United States and announcing to the world: Let the Games begin!”

and-

“They shouldn’t try to make politics of this,” Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a Chicagoan himself, told ABC News. “I think they should take some pride in the U.S.’s win, and you know, we’ll make sure they get some good seats once Chicago does host the games.”

Right out of Stalin's time -airbrushing embarrassments to the Dear Leader out of history.

Patterico-

These passages — demonstrating as they do the glaringly unfounded arrogance of Obama’s administration — have been conveniently removed from view.
And you know in your bones that, were it Bush who had gloated so, we would hear nothing else from Big Media for a week.

What made them turn into bootlickers of Obama? They viciously destroy Sarah Palin and zealously cover up Obama's mess(and there is a lot of it strewn all over the road).

Why?

Bump - oops! 'Pravada' in the title changed to 'Pravda'. Slippery fingers, impatient mind -that's me!

The Ghalib-Mr.Thomson incident

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:11:00 +0000

When I read this in Narayani Gupta's book Delhi Between Two Empires,pg 9, I knew it stank (or as we say in India, mera maatha thanka!) -

Ghalib, like others, realized that the British had come to stay, and shrewdly thought that a qasida to the Queen would be a useful investment. But he went that far and no further. When Thomson, the provincial Secretary, treated him boorishly, Ghalib sacrificed the offer of an appointment at Delhi College, though he desperately needed a steady income to cushion him against his extravagances and his gambling debts.

And sure enough. William Dalrymple describes the incident in greater detail in the Last Mughal, pg 129-130 -

Ghalib, like many writers before and since, suffered from the potentially combustible combination of expensive tastes, a keen sense of his own worth and insufficient financial resources to support either. Always precarious, his finances had become especially troubled after his sense of personal honour compelled him to turn down the lucrative chance to become the Persian Professor at Delhi College. Ghalib had arrived at Delhi College in his palanquin having being invited to apply for the new post. But after reaching the college gate, he refused to enter until Mr Thomason, the secretary, came and welcomed him, as he insisted his aristocratic status dictated. After a long stand-off, Mr Thomason came out personally and explained that a formal welcome was appropriate when he attended the Governor's durbar, but not in the present case, when he came as a candidate for employment.

Ghalib replied, 'I contemplated taking a government appointment in the expectation that this would bring me greater honour than I now receive, not a reduction in those already accorded to me .' The secretary replied, 'I am bound by regulations.' 'Then I hope you will excuse me,' Ghalib said, and came away.

What a difference in the two narrartives! And I don't mean the detail.

Ms.Gupta leaves an impression of Ghalib being a victim of colonial arrogance - you know, those racist, rude British that pepper our films and stories and official histories.The truth, as in the account of Dalrymple, appears just the opposite. It is Ghalib who in his aristocratic loftiness and vanity did himself much harm while Mr.Thomson(or Thomason) was politely correct and rule bound.

Mr. Thomson has long left this earth, of course but I hope that Ms.Gupta would do the departed soul justice and correct her description of the events.

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:33:00 +0000

MISSOURAH.com has a flow-chart keeping "track of what is legitimate criticism of President Obama and what is racial hatred."-

Larger image at missourah.com.

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:13:00 +0000

Just in-

Chicago is out of the Olympic race despite Obama's aggressive campaigning.

That can mean only one thing -

The International Olympic Committee is RACIST!

Michael Moore shits in the trough from which he feeds

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:20:00 +0000

On the Drudge Report-

From the linked article-

Moore said: “Well, capitalism did nothing for me, starting with my first film.”

But-

According to Fortune Magazine, Moore’s films have grossed over $300 million worldwide.

That's a lot of nothing.
What a lying fat ass!

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:59:00 +0000

In Which H'wood Obliges Conservatives By Aggressively Fulfilling Every Stereotype of the Morally Unmoored Entertainment Industry Where Oscar-Winning Rapists are Defensible

Update - an amusing twitter exchange in the linked post:

@brooksbayne: "If Roman Polanski were a Duke lax player he would have been hunted down and disemboweled."
@andylevy: If Polanski were a Duke lax player he wouldn't be guilty of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl.
@gpollowitz: If Roman Polanski were a Duke lax player, Duke would really suck at lacrosse.

noreply@blogger.com (gurmeet) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Allahpundit tweets-

Word on the street: Polanski's next film is so good, Europe's going to let him bang an eight-year-old. It's THAT GOOD.