WORD AROUND THE NET

"Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist."

You've probably seen this but I had to report on it anyway: Ford Motor Company, the one US Auto company smart enough to avoid the bailouts GM and Chrysler pathetically begged congress for has reported a $2.7 billion profit for 2009. Good for them, that means lots of people working and lots of input to the economy. Government run auto companies continue to struggle despite huge ad campaigns. People seem to not want to buy companies from a business so retarded they ran themselves into the ground then got taken over by the US government and unions.

Yet another scandal is rocking the alarmist world. Global warming hysterics have long claimed absurdities such as 1.78 acres of rainforest (jungle) being destroyed per second, and people like me have long been skeptical since we still seem to have hundreds of millions of acres of rain forest in the world despite this claim being repeated since the 1980s. Now we find that in the 2007 IPCC report - the same one with the deliberately fraudulent Himalayan Glacier report - it claims that 40% of the jungles of the world are in danger from global warming. Richard at EU Referendum reports that this claim was based on a journalist's statement in a World Wildlife Federation (a leftist organization with its own problems with facts). And the article quoted was not even about global warming:

The clue, perhaps, lies in the title of the article, which is, "Large-scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire" – i.e., it is not about climate change.
...
Thus, from an assertion (IPCC) that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation", we see this relying on a statement (Rowell & Moore) that "up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." But that seems to rely solely on the assertion that: "Logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process."

The IPCC didn't even use the original paper, they used a Nature magazine report on the paper which altered the conclusions because that was closer to what they found useful. The truth marches on, even if alarmists scream at us to pay no attention to that fraud behind the curtain.

Scorpions fans, there's an important message on the band's website. I'll reproduce it here for you:

It was always our pleasure, our purpose in life, our passion and we were fortunate enough to make music for you - whether it was live on stage or in the studio, creating new songs.

While we were working on our album these past few months, we could literally feel how powerful and creative our work was – and how much fun we were still having, in the process. But there was also something else: We want to end the Scorpion’s extraordinary career on a high note. We are extremely grateful for the fact that we still have the same passion for music we’ve always had since the beginning. This is why, especially now, we agree we have reached the end of the road. We finish our career with an album we consider to be one of the best we have ever recorded and with a tour that will start in our home country Germany and take us to five different continents over the next few years.

We want you, our fans, to be the first to know about this. Thank you for your never-ending support throughout the years!

We uploaded the very first snippets from our new album for you.

And now… let’s get the party started and get ready for a “Sting in the Tail”!

See you on the world tour,

Yours

Scorpions

I have heard their most recent work, and while it is musically skillful the old Scorpions power from albums such as Blackout simply isn't there any longer. I guess there really only are so many good songs in any of us, and eventually you run out. Still, I want to hear their latest work. They have short parts of two of their new songs on the site Raised On Rock and The Good Die Young. Neither seems as great as their best work such as Can't Live Without You and Rock You Like a Hurricane or even The Zoo but the bits are so short its difficult to know for sure.

Another abortion clinic has killed a client. Of all the different medical procedures, its seems like this one ends up killing an awful lot of people for being "one of most common and safest surgical procedures performed in the United States," as abortion clinics assure their lucrative clients. Police are investigating the A1 Queens Clinic over the death of someone there. No one is investigating the thousands of previous deaths there because they were too young to afford a lawyer.

Often the most absurd things are done in the name of well meaning. For example, the board game Dad's Army, which allows you to play hapless British Home Guard troops which never got action in WW2 (based on a hit TV series), was banned from E-Bay. Why? Fay Schlesinger at the Daily Mail reports:

The auction website has banned from sale a board game based on the much loved comedy series, calling it 'offensive material' that could 'promote violence, hatred, racial or religious intolerance'.

The family game features on its lid the swastikas and Union Flag symbols instantly recognisable from the opening titles of the series.

The board itself shows Walmingtonon-on-Sea, which has been occupied by Nazi troops.

Players roll a dice to collect 'bombs' and 'landmines' before swiping swastika markers off the board and replacing them with British flags to reclaim territory.

The aim is to get members of the platoon, including Captain Mainwaring, Sergeant Wilson and Corporal Jones, to a 'safe' location while watching out for the enemy.

I understand not wanting to sell or advertise things that promote racism or even Nazism but the people who come up with these policies also have to allow for some intelligence and discernment as well.

Michael Ledeen, writing at Pajamas Media has such a great quote I wanted to pass it on here:

Banks are not lending, companies are not hiring, because they are afraid of what Obama will do next. Both are afraid of onerous taxes, including new health care burdens, and the banks fear new regulations and the consequences of the recently declared war on evil bankers by the president.

In essence, the specter of socialism and radical leftist ideas is crippling the US Economy which, if left alone and under wiser guidance, would have been recovering or recovered by now. The entire economy is acting like a hurricane may hit any day, hoarding food and boarding up windows instead of going out and getting things done. I don't think President Bush's State of the Union speech or House Speaker Pelosi's endless quest to pass the Government Health Insurance Takeover Act are helping any.

Related to the quote above is this warning by the Chairman of the National Policy Center for Analysis which I think congress would do well to heed:

The top personal income tax rate will rise next Jan. 1 to 39.6% from 35%, a hike of nearly one-eighth. The dividend tax rate will rise to 39.6%, more than 2½ times the current 15%. And the capital gains tax rate will rise by a third, to 20% from 15%. If the House health care bill had passed, all three of these rates would have risen to 45%.

The estate tax, which fell to zero this year under the Bush tax cuts, will return in 2011--or sooner, if Congress acts to restore it. Another likely tax increase will be on the income of private equity and hedge-fund managers, from the capital gains rate of 15% to the new higher income tax rates. It has already been passed by the House and is supported by the Obama administration, as is an additional 10-year, $90 billion tax on banks aimed at "rolling back bonuses for top earners." It would affect some 50 banks, insurance companies, and large broker-dealers.

Meanwhile a number of last year's tax deductions have disappeared due to the failure of Congress to extend them into this year. The tax deduction for state and local sales taxes is one; the deduction for college tuition and fees is another; and the 50% write-off for small businesses for capital purchases--equipment, machinery or building a new plant--has disappeared as well, which will have a negative effect upon the construction of new business operation facilities.

Lets say you have a business. The president keeps doing things which slow or harm the economy and keeps promising to do more (cap and trade, health insurance takeover, etc). You know that the tax cuts under President Bush are due to sunset this year and all congress has to do to let that huge tax increase take place is do nothing. How motivated are you to hire new people, expand your business, invest, or even hang on to people you do not absolutely 100% need to stay open? Mr Ledeen predicts economic damage of 3-4%, in inflation, contraction rather than growth, and unemployment. Lets hope that's all it is, because there's simply no chance they'll extend any of those tax policies.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, the government here isn't interested in cutting the bloat in its budget, and instead begged taxpayers to pass a tax increase on themselves. For the first time in 70 years - despite polls indicating few people claim to have voted for it - two tax increases passed. I can only hope that, once the nation digs out of this incredibly idiotic economic blunder, people will know better than to trust the left on fiscal and economic policy for at least a generation or two.

President Obama is calling for the space program to be slashed. After more than thirty years, NASA was finally planning to send more people to the moon, but now that program looks doomed. I hate seeing space funding killed, and I normally would loudly oppose such a cut but... after spending trillions of dollars on pork, leftist dreams, and "green investment" the US government simply cannot afford to do what it ought to and what will actually benefit us. However, having slashed the space program, the president wants NASA to spend that money instead on earth and climate monitoring programs so we can check for... you guessed it... global warming. In essence, Obama wants the entire Bush Vision for Space Exploration program gone.

President Obama is calling for a freeze on various spending. For example he wants to freeze executive department salaries on people making over a certain amount, for one year. He's calling for congress to freeze other spending as well. That's great - and certainly just stopping automatic increases on spending balanced the budget by the Republican congress during the Clinton administration, over his objections and 3 previous budget submissions. Its not enough, and after immensely bloated spending and calls for even more by the president it strikes me as more symbolic than real, its always good to see government talking about at least not spending more. Baby steps to cuts, maybe. And the salary freeze is at least something he can do as president. Congress has to do the rest.

Wisconsin set up a rule for its prisons: you cannot play Dungeons and Dragons. In one sense I have to laugh, do they think the prisoners will learn to cast Dimension Door and escape? Do they think the game leads to rampant LARPing and geek behavior? In another, however, I don't much care. The guy who was in the test case wanting to play D&D killed someone with a sledgehammer. I don't have much pity for guys like that. Take away all his privileges, as far as I'm concerned. Still its pretty silly, and the federal court decision (pdf file) that upheld this ruling is quizzical as well.

Union membership continues to collapse, down 10% last year from the previous year. Meanwhile the influence and power of especially public employee unions continues to climb. Well, what do you expect, a union made up of people who make and execute government policy which will help unions can only get more powerful. Too bad their head is such a loon, it seems like eventually that will catch up to them.

Rock the Vote is MTV's political department, and although it alleges to be non partisan (it has to, in order to qualify as a nonprofit organization) as Jeremy Boreing at Big Hollywood reports:

Rock the Vote is a nonpartisan organization. This means that we do not support or endorse candidates nor do we participate in any activities that could benefit one party over another. There are many laws governing our work as a nonpartisan organization and we take our non partisanship seriously.

It plainly is not, as it always and every time promotes Democrats and leftist ideals. In fact their missions statement plainly says that's their goal:

Rock the Vote’s mission is to engage and build the political power of young people in order to achieve progressive change in our country.

Their latest scheme is to push the Government Health Insurance Takeover Act, which at this point seems doomed. Somehow I'm not confident that the Obama justice department under Eric "black men cannot break the law" Holder will act against Rock the Vote despite its repeated violations of nonprofit status.

Speaking of Eric Holder, Justice Department bloggers continue to violate federal law by their work, although they claim their work is merely new media specialists. New Media sources have been following this story for a while now, but so far the legacy media is just not interested at all. If they can successfully ignore a story, large numbers of the voting public never hear about it, and that's all the power the legacy media has left. The work of these bloggers is said primarily to monitor sites adversarial to this administration and to send out talking points to those friendly to it - which shows up pretty obviously in sites like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo.

"Stimulus" money has been sent in large sums to Planned Parenthood to help them build abortion clinics around the nation. Technically the money they got cannot be used to set up clinics for abortions, but it helps them build Planned Parenthood (which ironically actually means to help people avoid being parents) branches around the country, freeing up their other funds for abortion clinics. And given how fast and loose Planned Parenthood is with the truth when it comes to abortion, who knows how it will be spent. Its like giving money to a drug addict only to buy food with. Even if he obeys, that frees up his other money for drugs.

Amazingly, the Washington Post has surprised me with is blatant and excessive bias recently. Here's how they reported a huge public uprising to send the first Republican to congress from Massachusetts in almost half a century:

At 9:30 on Thursday morning, the Republican state senator arrived by US Airways shuttle at Reagan National Airport, though he rode a GMC-driving everyman image and a wave of Tea Party-stoked, establishment-financed frustration into the U.S. Senate seat of Jack and Teddy Kennedy.

Well, at least they didn't say teabaggers.

Something you should read, if you're curious why I keep talking about government waste and failed leftist ideas, is Andrew Coulson's article at Pajamas Media about the Head Start program Lyndon Johnson pushed for and got congress to pass. In essence, we learn of a test which revealed that the program has spent over 160 billion dollars and gotten virtually no results. Coulson writes:

Out of 44 separate cognitive tests given to former Head Start students at the end of the first grade, only two showed even marginally significant effects. The other 42 showed no statistically significant effect at all.

And once statisticians adjusted for random fluke results, even those two marginal successes vanished. $166,000,000,000 down the drain for nothing. Good thing Democrats in congress voted to increase funding for this program.

*This just in: Obama's Justice Department has ended the corruption investigation into New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson - once seemingly the only sane choice for Democrat voters as President. Richardson was being investigated for using his office to throw friends money and influence, but after four years the case was suddenly closed without comment or explanation. In a completely unrelated story, long time Clinton friend Bill Richardson suddenly changed from supporting Hillary for president to Obama during the tightly contested primary elections.

*Also breaking is news that the last quarter US economic growth was over 4%, some estimating as much as 5.7%! Given the last few numbers on the economy to come out of the federal government, its wisest to wait for the revised numbers in a few days or weeks to be sure.

And that's the Word Around the Net for January 29, 2010