“Many people, just as they become eligible for Medicare, discover that the insurance rug has been pulled out from under them. Some doctors — often internists but also gastroenterologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists and other specialists — are no longer accepting Medicare, either because they have opted out of the insurance system or they are not accepting new patients with Medicare coverage. The doctors’ reasons: reimbursement rates are too low and paperwork too much of a hassle.”
“Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will defend his handling of a crisis that has shaken the world's faith in his organisation at a meeting of environmental leaders in Bali.
He will try to save his job by outlining plans to reform the way the IPCC works in the wake of the discovery of errors in its latest report.”
“Whether he ever says so or not, it's the Olympic gold medal that changes history's view of Miller. What happened in Turin is now an aberration rather than the defining moment. Now he'll always be seen by those outside the sport as one of Alpine skiing's greats who frittered away one Olympics, not a should-have-been who never fulfilled his promise.”Here in Ski Town USA, those inside the sport never bought the idea that Turino defined Bode.
“To be sure, Spain is in the throes of the worst economic crisis in its recent history….
Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union. Nearly 20 percent of working-age Spaniards (or 4.5 million people) were without a job at the beginning of 2010…
Spain is also facing an exploding budget deficit…
The labor minister blamed ‘the neo-conservative thinking preached by U.S. President George W Bush’”
“Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, a professor, has released a study with startling claims about what's happened in Spain and what he predicts will play out in America.Gee, maybe Obama thought his self-described Communist Green Jobs Czar would succeed where Spain had failed? Eh?
Calzada says for every green job that's created with government funding, 2.2 regular jobs are lost and that only one in 10 green jobs wind up being permanent.”
“The revelation that Spain’s air traffic controllers can earn ten times more than their Prime Minister — and more than 50 times the average salary — has provoked outrage.”
“Spain's government says it is using emergency legislation to rein in its air traffic controllers, who earn up to euro900,000 ($1.2 million) a year in a country suffering a recession and nearly 20 percent unemployment.”Similarly, here at home, I hear the job market is GREAT (for those living in Washington, D.C.).
“More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.”
“As California stumbles through its continuing budget crisis, 60% of likely voters in the state now believe it would be better if most incumbents in the state legislature were defeated in this November’s elections.”
“YVO de Boer, the top UN climate change official, announced last night that he was resigning after a tumultuous four years in the job, marked by the failure to convince governments to agree on a post-Kyoto deal and revelations of a series of blunders in the UN's 2007 report on climate change.”
“In a November appearance with conservative policy advocate David Horowitz, [Democratic strategist Pat] Caddell called the SEIU ‘thugs’ and said environmentalists were out to ‘deconstruct capitalism.’”
“Sixty-one percent (61%) of Americans say it is better for the economy for the government to stay out of the housing market.”
“In August 2007, I submitted two Freedom of Information Act requests to NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), headed by long-time Gore advisor James Hansen and his right-hand man Gavin Schmidt (and RealClimate.org co-founder)…
NASA stonewalled my request for more than two years, until Climategate prompted me to offer notice of intent to sue if NASA did not comply immediately.
On New Year’s Eve, NASA finally provided the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) with the documents I requested in August 2007.
The emails show the hypocrisy, dishonesty, and suspect data management and integrity of NASA, wildly spinning in defense of their enterprise.”
“Virginia's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli filed a petition yesterday to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's December 7 ruling that it would regulate greenhouse gases as it would air pollutants under the Clean Air Act--a back door attempt to accomplish what Congress can't through cap and trade.”
“President Barack Obama hailed Wednesday's one-year-old economic stimulus law as an accomplishment that staved off another Great Depression and kept up to 2 million people on the job.”
“President Obama, speaking to an enthusiastic audience of union officials in Lanham, Md., on Tuesday, underscored his embrace of nuclear power as a clean energy source, announcing that the Energy Department had approved financial help for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia.”
“Whenever Alexandre Bilodeau had a tough time during training, he'd think of his older brother Frédéric, 28, who was born with cerebral palsy and whom doctors said wouldn't walk after the age of 10.
The older Bilodeau proved them wrong and not only walks but skis, taking on some of the toughest slopes at St. Sauveur, Que., not far from the family home near Montreal.”
“[Phil Jones, of ClimateGate infamy] said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming”
“The [computer model] simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends [in global temperatures] for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”That’s it! Game OVER! The AGW Hysteria cult is officially DEAD and BURIED!
“The trend in the ENSO-related component for 1999–2008 is +0.08±0.07°C decade, fully accounting for the overall observed trend. The trend after removing ENSO (the "ENSO-adjusted" trend) is 0.00°±0.05°C decade.”Click here for a single factor explanation as to why.
“The ‘military’ characters in the movie were portrayed as uncaring and unfazed by the suffering of others -- willing to take lives with nary a second thought. They were portrayed as deserving to die because of how little they cared for the lives of others. It wasn't just some of the military that were portrayed this way -- it was all of them. Only the rogue protagonist was different….
The soldiers I had gotten to know so well -- who was going to tell their stories?”
[And then, a few stories get told…]
“The purpose of this piece is not to make a statement about war. Leave that for the politicians. Rather, it is to testify to the character of soldiers -- men and women of character, compassion, and honor. There are enough stories like the above to fill a book (being written), and many more yet untold. Yes, there are bad soldiers, just as there are bad doctors, bad cops, etc. Yet the vast majority risk and sacrifice their lives to protect not just us, but innocent people of other nations as well. When it comes to the military, let's not let one (otherwise entertaining) movie be the only story that gets told.”
“Roughly 15,000 American, Afghan and NATO forces began an assault late Friday on the Taliban in the central Helmand town of Marjah in what senior military commanders are calling the largest operation since the start of the Afghanistan war…
‘This may be the largest IED threat and largest minefield that NATO has ever faced,’ said Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of Marines in southern Afghanistan.”
NewsBusted Comedy Show From 2/12/10:
Click here to view more NewsBusted comedy.
“under current law, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid measured as a share of GDP will rise from 4 percent today to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today…Click here and here to understand why our health care costs are soaring.
Federal spending on programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—including national defense and a wide variety of domestic programs—is likely to contribute far less, if anything, to the upward trend in federal outlays as a share of GDP.”
World War II - “nearly 40 percent”
Korean War - “15 percent”
Vietnam War - “10 percent”
Currently - “less than 5 percent”
"The enormous sums committed to mandatory federal programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid dwarf all other aspects of the budget. Left unchecked for a decade or two, they will consume a larger share of the nation's GDP than all our federal programs today combined. Coupled with increasing interest payments on the government's rising debt, they will either force up taxes or produce dangerous deficits."
“As Europe edges toward emergency guarantees to stem market panic over one of the most profligate members of the euro bloc, the country that the region turns to for leadership, Germany, is suffering from growing doubts about the European experiment it long championed.
Reluctant German leaders now find themselves forced to help Greece remain solvent, or risk watching markets attack one weak member after the next, from Portugal to Spain to Italy, threatening the stability of the euro, the European currency Germany fought so hard to create…
Berlin has been mostly silent on the matter. That is partly to put pressure on Greece, as civil servants struck there Wednesday to oppose cutbacks that the government has promised in order to rein in its enormous budget deficit.
But a bailout will be politically awkward for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. It is precisely the financial millstone that opponents warned about when Germany gave up its treasured mark, a move that a majority of people here, in contrast to their political leaders, opposed at the time.”
“The past chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has joined the growing list of IPCC critics. According to the Sunday Telegraph, Rajendra Pachauri, the disgraced current IPCC chair, now faces criticism from his immediate predecessor, Robert Watson…
Watson’s new-found scepticism of the science being produced by the IPCC represents an ironic reversal. In 2002, he remarked that ‘The only person who doesn't believe the science is President Bush.’”
NewsBusted Comedy Show From 2/9/10:
Click here to view more NewsBusted comedy.
“It was the scientific paper that served as a central pillar for the idea that vaccination could increase children's risk of developing autism.
Now, with a formal retraction from the Lancet, the medical journal which in 1998 published this piece of research by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, most researchers will view the study as if it had never been published in the first place.”
“If I were President Obama and there were no birther movement, I would invent one. It destroys the credibility of anyone who talks about it. To moderates and liberals, the birther movement is the right-wing equivalent of those moonbats who were calling the 2000 election stolen, years after the election was over-- its a bit crazy.”
“It’s not just the threat of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035.
Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away. A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC.
‘The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.’
There is however one teensy-weensy little problem. As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find ‘no evidence’ to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report.”
“For me, science is the search for truth…
It seems that the climate research community has betrayed that mighty goal in science…
The damage has been done. The public trust in climate science has been eroded…
So what comes next? Let us stop making unjustified claims and exaggerated projections about the future even if the editors of some eminent journals are just waiting to publish them. Let us admit that our understanding of the climate is less perfect than we have tried to make the public believe. Let us drastically modify or temporarily discontinue the IPCC. Let us get back to work.
Let us encourage students to think their own thoughts instead of forcing them to parrot the IPCC conclusions.”
“‘The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,’ the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics…
By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: ‘Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.’ That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.”
“The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday.
According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP.”
“The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because [like everybody else] it ‘cannot rely’ on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own leading scientist Dr R.K Pachauri…
[Note: Dr. Pachauri has NO academic background in ANY branch of science!]
The move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.”
“The NBER has not yet determined the end of the recession that began in December 2007. The date 2009-07-01 has been substituted in graphs as an estimate. This estimate is based on a statistical model for dating business cycle turning points developed by Marcelle Chauvet and Jeremy Piger (A Comparison of the Real-Time Performance of Business Cycle Dating Methods, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2008, 26, 42-49). For more information, see
http://www.uoregon.edu/~jpiger/us_recession_probs.htm
“A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus's climate research unit.
Norfolk police have interviewed and taken a formal statement from Paul Dennis, 54, another climate researcher who heads an adjacent laboratory…
Dennis's own research, which dates fluctuating temperatures in ice cores stretching back thousands of years, does not support the more catastrophic current predictions of runaway global warming.”
“It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China?
But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN's top climate science body.
It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.”
