“Interpol, at the request of a Swedish court looking into alleged sex crimes from earlier this year, has put WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on its most-wanted list.
The Stockholm Criminal Court two weeks ago issued an international arrest warrant for Assange on probable cause, saying he is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and illegal use of force in August incidents.”
“A family of former asylum-seekers from Somalia are living in a £2.1million luxury townhouse in one of Britain's most exclusive addresses at a cost to taxpayers of £8,000 a month…
Mr Nur said his former five-bedroom home in the Kensal Rise area of Brent, which cost £900 a week in housing benefit, was suitable for the family's needs but he said they had felt compelled to move because they did not like living 'in a very poor area' and were unhappy with the quality of local shops and schools…
Rules allow anyone who is eligible for housing benefit to claim for a private property in any part of the country they wish.”
“The real damage of this document dump is what it does to American foreign policy. The United States looks like a bumbling fool in the eyes of the world. How can we be trusted with secrets or even not so secret opinions. The Wikileaks people funnel documents to the press at will, and for the sole purpose of damaging U.S. relations with other countries, our war efforts, and our intelligence capability. These leaks are an attack on the US and we do almost nothing about it. If the Obama Administration took action that would be the surprise…
The reaction of our government is embarrassing. We are the laughingstock of the world, we look impotent.”
“The Obama administration has told whistle-blower WikiLeaks that its expected imminent release of classified State Department cables will put ‘countless’ lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize U.S. relations with its allies.”
“A BILL pulling the plug on federal funding for National Public Radio was thwarted last week when the lame-duck Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives voted down a Republican effort to bring the measure to the floor. Introduced last summer by Colorado Republican Doug Lamborn, the legislation would bar NPR and its local affiliates from spending federal dollars on NPR programming. Of course there was never any chance that a bill targeting one of the nation’s most prominent left-of-center institutions would pass while Democrats still controlled the House. But a GOP majority is taking over in January, and ending NPR’s taxpayer subsidies ought to be high on its to-do list…
[In response, NPR] issued a statement so pompous and illogical that it could have been drafted in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
‘Today, good judgment prevailed as Congress rejected a move to assert government control over the content of news,’ it declared.”
“I've never worked for the TSA. But once I spent a day putting airline passengers through what they believed was a full-body scanner…
I claimed that the metal detector wasn't working properly, and instructed passengers to lie down on the conveyor belt so they could ride through the [fake] X-ray machine along with their bags…
All but one passenger, a middle-aged man, willingly laid on the conveyor belt, belly down, and was transported through the box without protest…
I'm glad to see that many travelers are no longer simply submitting blindly to airport scanners, and are questioning invasive pat-downs. That's actually something worth smiling about.”
“It’s a very rare occasion when a free marketeer like me agrees with the green fanatics over at Friends of the Earth, but they are right about one thing: It's time to let ethanol subsidies die…
The good news is that unless Congress acts, the $5 billion in annual subsidies to corn ethanol will expire at the end of the year.”
“While the next climate summit in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this month will make a show of sifting the geopolitical wreckage from last December’s climate summit, any real prospect for coordinated international action is, post-Copenhagen, dead in the political water. As if that were not enough, the bête noire of climate alarmists, King Coal, is, once again, reigning supreme…
The simple fact is that coal is cheap and accessible and a coal-fired power station can be up to eight times more efficient in electricity generation than renewable energy projects…
As the World Bank maintains, it is hard to fight poverty for people without any electricity. Put bluntly, when it comes to the developing world, investment in efficient poverty-eradicating electricity projects ranks morally higher than fighting a war against carbon that is based on a speculative theory, and which is, as the statistics make abundantly clear, already lost.”
“The US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.
Despite the billions: ‘audits’ of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of the theory and compete with a well funded highly organized climate monopoly. They have exposed major errors.”
“The recent public ire toward the TSA’s new pat-down and body imaging screening methods is likely to cause more people to drive automobiles and forego airline travel…
the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.”
“A retired special education teacher on his way to a wedding in Orlando, Fla., said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down by TSA officers recently at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.”
“Steamboat is currently reporting a remarkable 38-inch base at mid-mountain and 52-inch base at the summit, the largest base amounts ever seen for an opening day.”
“Seniors enrolling in private Medicare policies starting this week are finding fewer options, as health insurers close down certain types of plans due to legislative changes and looming cuts to federal funding.
Cigna Corp., Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and others aren't renewing hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans, which are Medicare policies administered by private insurers. The moves will displace some 700,000 beneficiaries who must find new policies, according to Humana Inc., a large seller of Advantage plans.”
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?”
“Political parties are not immortal. They are born and eventually die…
The Democratic Party is unlikely to survive…
In the two most recent elections, each political party was soundly, sequentially rejected, but for different reasons. Simply and bluntly:
* The Republicans were tossed out because they did not govern according to their principles.
* The Democrats were tossed out because they did govern according to their principles.
One party lost because it misbehaved; the other because it revealed itself.”
“The Transportation Security Administration has opened an investigation targeting John Tyner, the Oceanside man who left Lindbergh Field under duress on Saturday morning after refusing to undertake a full body scan…
Michael J. Aguilar, chief of the TSA office in San Diego, called a news conference at the airport Monday afternoon to announce the probe. He said the investigation could lead to prosecution and civil penalties of up to $11,000.”
“It didn't take long for the Federal Reserve to come under fire for its resumption of asset purchases, aka ‘QE2’, announced at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on November 3…
the controversy truly caught fire on November 15, when the plucky Economics21 published an open letter to Bernanke…
The Keynesian party-line enforcement squad, led by Paul Krugman of the New York Times, responded with its usual mix of intellectual arrogance and ad hominem invective.”
“Just because we're forbidden from showing a sense of humor while we're being pawed and groped by these folks doesn't mean they don't have any themselves. Whoever came up with the gag that federal bureauweenies can keep us safer than the airlines themselves must be a laugh a minute. But I'm forgetting: the point isn't security, it's creating union jobs for government employees.”
“Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been found guilty on 11 ethics charges, ending a two-year investigation into his personal finances.
A special eight-member panel of the House ethics committee, after deliberating for roughly six hours, found that there was ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that Rangel had violated House ethics on 11 of the 13 charges he faced heading into a rare public ethics trial.”
“Middle class incomes have declined [in the last decade]”Click here to (after the commercial)
“The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble…
There have been no major fish die-offs. On the contrary, a comprehensive new study says that in some of the most heavily fished areas of the Gulf of Mexico, various forms of sea life, from shrimp to sharks, have seen their populations triple since before the spill. Some species, including shrimp and croaker, did even better.
And meanwhile, the media has greatly exaggerated damage found in studies about coral, which is in some ways more vulnerable to oil and dispersant. Most of it is doing fine.
The growth of the fish population is not occurring because oil is good for fish. Rather, it is occurring because fishing is bad for fish. When fishing was banned for months during the spill, the Gulf of Mexico experienced an unprecedented marine renaissance that overwhelmed any negative environmental consequences the oil may have had, researchers say.”
Quoting The FDA:
“The collection phase of this assignment was conducted from June 15, 2010 thru July 8, 2010. The analysis was completed August 8, 2010. All samples were analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by the NOAA method. No PAHs were detected above the levels of concern as set forth in the federal and state agreed upon Protocol for Interpretation and Use of sensory testing and Analytical Chemistry Results for Re-Opening Oil-Impacted Areas Closed to Seafood Harvesting.”
Click here for more on the environmental disaster that wasn’t.
“We investigated the tropical forest response to this rapid warming… We observed a rapid and distinct increase in plant diversity and origination rates… The tropical rainforest was able to persist under elevated temperatures and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in contrast to speculations that tropical ecosystems were severely compromised by heat stress.In other words, this study found nothing but BENEFITS to this extremely rapid warming and “high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide”!
“Nothing more poignantly reflects the collapse of the great global warming scare than the decision of the Chicago Carbon Exchange, the largest in the world, to stop trading in ‘carbon’ – buying and selling the right of businesses to continue emitting CO2…
Next Friday is the first anniversary of the leaking of the ‘Climategate’ emails…
Next month sees the anniversary of the Copenhagen conference – the largest ever held, with 100,000 delegates – which collapsed in an acrimonious shambles…
This was followed by all those scandals surrounding the IPCC itself, hitherto regarded as the supreme authority on global warming. It emerged that the most recent IPCC report was riddled with errors, and that many of its more alarming predictions were based, not on proper science, but on claims dreamed up by environmental activists….
it has become clear that the 20-year-old climate scare is dying on its feet.”
“The television season’s best surprise is easily Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck as the New York City Police Commissioner, and the head of a multi-generational family of cops. What looked in trailers to be a clunky cop drama is both a surprisingly original take on the genre and a provocative look at some hot-button issues…
In a mere 7 episodes, Blue Bloods has taken on enhanced interrogation, profiling, vigilantism, and restrictions on the kinds of force a cop can use to protect his life. And while both sides of the issue are presented fairly, this is a show from a cop point of view, starring one of Hollywood’s most prominent conservatives…
Blue Bloods can’t live forever on issue-oriented shows, (and I really hope it doesn’t become dominated by the conspiratorial back story it introduced in the pilot) but it has shown it can handle a standard crime plot, a good sign. And with its engaging cast and the smart people running things, I’d say this has the potential to be classic television.”
“Presumptive House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday that he will not use the military jet provided to current Speaker Nancy Pelosi to fly from D.C. to his home district each week, but will board the same airlines as everybody else.
Pelosi had claimed after she became speaker in 2007 that a military aircraft was offered to her in light of position as second in line to the presidency. But Boehner said he's not so concerned.”
“American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.
By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier…
The Americans had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.
One Nato figure said the effect was ‘as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik’ - a reference to the Soviet Union's first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.”
“The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office”
“Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would go a long way toward restoring federalism and frustrating special-interest influence over Washington…
Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would not be a panacea for what ails the American political and constitutional system… But repeal would be a step in the direction of restraining an imperialistic central government and frustrating special-interest influence. Whether or not it is good politics, it remains sound constitutional design.”
“Are things in our country so bad that it might actually be time for a revolution? The answer, obviously, is yes.”
“I am a Socialist”Lawrence O’Donnell in his own words:
