Saturday, December 09, 2006

Today's Hoot!

Conan O'Brien:
This year White House Christmas decorations include several 10-foot-tall nutcrackers. Apparently, this was the biggest nutcracker at the White House since Hillary Clinton was first lady.

Speaking of nutcrackers (albeit the European variety), I see that Arianna Huffington has been spanking Hillary for being a political weather vane. For a former Newt Gingrich groupie turned leftoid moonbat, that's kind of rich. Even better, the Huffster seems to be touting empty suit Barack Obama for President without realizing that Her Heinous would beat him like drum. Shows what can happen to your head when you hang out all the time with the nutroots and Hollyweirdos. Well, if her political advice is a trifle wacky, at least Arianna can advise on how to marry rich gay guys and engage in unceasing self promotion of meager talent. Sort of like Zsa Zsa Gabor except for the gay part.

While we're on the subject of husbands, one more Hillary joke from Jay Leno:
Hillary Clinton is making calls, hiring staff and getting ready to travel to Iowa to launch her campaign. She will be on the road non-stop for the next two years. How will Bill ever manage? The poor guy stuck home alone. He will be heartbroken.
I'm sure he will. Of course, while we're talking stay-at-home spouses, there's Barack Obama's wife Michelle who is VP of Community and External Affairs at the The University of Chicago Hospitals at a salary of over $300K. The hospital says it's merely a coincidence that she got a big promotion that nearly tripled her salary after ole Barack became a Senator and that Michelle now gets paid much the same as the other 16 vice-presidents who actually have something to do with medicine and running the hospitals and medical centers and all that icky stuff. I say that unless she's phoning it in from Washington DC that means Barack is swanning about the nation's capital all on his lonesome. Beware of fat girls delivering pizzas, Barack!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Fun with global warming

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming:
David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."
You have hurricanes, it's due to global warming. You don't have hurricanes, it's due to global warming. The dog eats your homework, that's global warming too.

Next year Donk Barbara Boxer (reputed to be the dumbest US Senator, although there's lots of competition for that title) is taking over the committee and is promising endless hearings on ... (wait for it) ... global warming. Based on her performance yesterday, it's going to be a real snoozer.