City Of Brotherly Death At It Again

Not content with picking a meaningless and ultimately self-defeating fight with the Boy Scouts in Philadelphia, the city has now targeted a private citizen who , through his business taxes - contributes large sums of money to the city coffers. In the first case, Philadelphia is in the process of evicting the Boy Scouts – who serve mostly inner city youths and help divert at least some of them from a life of crime. No matter to the city. It is much more important to force the local council to lose its affiliation with the national organization and admit openly gay Scout leaders. Who cares about the kids? In the second case, Joe Vento, the owner of a cheese steak business, is being hounded over his posting of two signs asking customers to order their food in English.

Joe Vento, the owner of Geno's Steaks, defended his policy before the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, which filed the discrimination complaint.

"This country is a melting pot, but what makes it work is the English language," Vento told the commission. "I'm not stupid. I would never put a sign out to hurt my business."

Vento posted two small signs in October 2005 at his shop in a diverse South Philadelphia neighborhood, telling customers, "This is AMERICA: WHEN ORDERING PLEASE 'SPEAK ENGLISH.'"

He said Friday that he posted the sign because of concerns over the debate on immigration reform and the increasing number of people from the area who could not order in English.

But he said he also wanted to keep the line moving at his busy store.

"The case should, without question, be dismissed," Vento attorney Shannon L. Goessling said. "There is a legitimate business purpose for this sign."

Paul M. Hummer, an attorney for the commission, testified earlier that the sign is not about political speech, but about "intimidation," and that it suggested business from certain individuals was not wanted.

Yep, gotta stop that old "coded" intimidation visible only to the far left or the political opportunistic class, Philly. Can't have that, now can we? Besides, the ruckus the city is raising over all these things distracts the people from that pesky murder rate in the city. Which, as of November, stood at more than one per day. It is imperative that the city government trash worthwhile organizations and private, taxpaying businessmen in order to distract people from their complete, utter failure to do the actual job they are paid for.

Tossing Tin Tuna

The collapse of the Commonwealth continues apace. Last year, the British town of Lyme Regis gave up the time honored tradition of "conger cuddling", where opponents attempted to beat one another senseless with dead eels.  Now Australia is about to do away with another tradition. Yes, sadly, the hurling of the frozen tuna is history.

It is the Aussie equivalent of tossing the caber, but an annual contest which involves the hurling of whole tuna will in future involve fake fish.

With world tuna stocks collapsing, Port Lincoln in South Australia has reluctantly concluded that its annual tuna tossing competition is too wasteful.

The whole frozen tuna that are normally tossed by burly local fishermen will be replaced with polyurethane replicas for next month’s Tunarama Festival.

"What happens when the tuna is tossed, even though it's frozen solid, it does start to break down," said Merriwyne Hore, the acting manager of the 2008 festival.

"The tail comes off, the fins come off, the eyes fall out and then the underbelly breaks, and, you know, it really gets to be extremely messy."

Well, the Mythbusters didn't have that problem with a frozen chicken. They fired one through several things. Well, actually, they pretty well vaporized the chicken, so maybe that doesn't count. On the other hand, moms everywhere have told their kids to stop playing with their food. Happily, Port Lincoln has a solution to their dilemma. They are now substituting a fake tuna for the real thing.

A local artist has sculpted the fake fish to look just like the real thing. "The dimensions are perfect," said Ms Hore.

"We road tested it with one of our champions.

"He had a few throws, and he was really impressed. It felt good, very balanced."

So if you happen to be in Port Lincoln for Tunarama, you may be greeted with a bouncing bogus bluefin.

Russia Back Under The Soviet Boot

Here's an unpleasant blast from the past. Vladimir Putin's government faced a protest and decided to take action. So the day before the scheduled protest, the leader of it was sent to a mental hospital. Just like the bad, old days of the Soviet Union.

A Russian opposition activist has been sent to a psychiatric hospital by authorities a day before a planned demonstration.

Artem Basyrov's detention is the latest in a series of incidents suggesting a punitive Soviet-era practice is being revived under president Vladimir Putin.

Mr Basyrov, 20, was ordered to be held at a hospital in the central region of Mari El on November 23, a day before planned demonstrations, said Alexander Averin of the opposition National Bolshevik Party.

The party is part of the Other Russia coalition which organised the so-called Dissenters' Marches across the country this year.

Mr Basyrov ran for the local legislature as an Other Russia candidate.

Police who originally detained him claimed he had assaulted a girl.

A local psychiatric board agreed, deciding the activist suffered from a mental illness and he was committed to the psychiatric hospital three weeks ago.

He was only transferred from an isolation ward and allowed to have visitors on Thursday, said Mikhail Klyuzhev, a National Bolshevik member from the city of Yoshkar-Ola.

The allegations against Mr Basyrov were "idiocy" and were "part of the hysteria" before Russia's parliamentary elections which were held on December 2, Mr Klyuzhev added.

How long do you suppose it will be until the gulag is back in full swing? My guess is that it is already in the works. Soon, 'counting trees' will again be part of the Russian vocabulary. Not long after that the old, bitter Russian joke will start being told: What did the dissident say just before he committed suicide?

Don't shoot, comrade.

The Real Agenda Of Global Warming, Part Two

There is an almost surreal element to reading this piece from Reason by Ronald Bailey. On the one hand, the agenda of the people pushing all the global warming hysteria is out on full display. The complete, abject failure of the Kyoto treaty is obvious. Bailey sees all this, discusses it – then shows that he believes mankind is at fault for global warming anyway.

Nusa Dua, Bali - On December 11, Greenpeace distributed slices from a gigantic chocolate cake to participants at the U.N. Climate Change conference (COP-13) to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. Since many Kyoto Protocol signatories are not meeting their obligations to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to levels below those of 1990, I'm not sure what the festivities are all about. In fact, Japan, Canada and many EU countries are emitting more GHG than they did in 1990.

Oh, well. It's the thought that counts.

One of the hottest topics being negotiated the COP-13 is technology transfer. I was under the impression that technology usually got transferred when one party sold it to another. That's how I got the Sony Vaio on which I am typing this dispatch. Apparently that's old-fashioned thinking. Under the new post-Kyoto climate treaty, poor countries are demanding that rich countries create some kind of tech transfer fund that would be used to subsidize their purchases of new low-carbon energy and carbon sequestration technologies.

If that weren't enough there are rumblings among poor country negotiators that they want the right to simply seize the patents (nicely called "compulsory licensing" in trade talks) and make the equipment themselves. "If there is insistence on the 'full protection of intellectual property' in relation to climate-friendly technology, it would be a barrier to technology transfer," declared Martin Khor, director of the leftist Third World Network. Is threatening to confiscate their patents really the way to encourage companies and inventors to invest in creating the innovative low-carbon energy technologies that world is being told are vital to stopping dangerous climate change?

UN activists want a global tax, exacted from "rich" nations, with all proceeds going to the UN to use as it sees fit. Others want property rights taken away from "rich" countries and private entities and handed to other countries to use as they see fit. Can anyone look at this agenda and believe those pushing it are above being mendacious to get it accomplished? They are not above trying to silence any critics.

CHICAGO, Dec. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — For the second time this week, the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) was kicked off the press schedule for the United Nations' climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The ICSC is a group of scientists from Africa, Australia, Europe, India, New Zealand, and the U.S. who contend sound science does not support the outrageous claims and draconian regulations proposed in Bali.

The ICSC team leader, Bryan Leyland, an expert in carbon and energy trading, reported, "This morning I confirmed we had the main conference hall for 9:00 AM tomorrow. At 4:30 PM today, I found that Barbara Black bumped us off the schedule and closed further bookings. I'm fuming."

Black is NGO liaison officer for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali.

There are some inconvenient scientists who are still trying to get politicians to step back and stand down on these agenda items. 100 of them have been trying to make their voices heard.

BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.  

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.

"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants. 

There are also researchers who have shown that the models being used to sell this snake oil are wrong – and badly wrong. David Douglass, John Christy, Benjamin Pearson and Fred Singer have compared actual data against climate prediction models and have shown that the models go totally wrong as the altitude increases. This should not be the case if the culprit of global warming are greenhouse gasses.

The models and observations are compatible near the surface. However, about 5 kilometers above the surface (where the greenhouse effects starts to become relevant) in the tropical zones, models predict between 2 times and 4 times higher warming trend than what is observed. Above the altitude of 8 kilometers, the theoretical and empirical trends have opposite signs.

The full paper is here. But a picture is worth a thousand words:

The closing of the paper pretty well says it all:

The last 25 years constitute a period of more complete and accurate observations and more realistic modelling efforts. Yet the models are seen to disagree with the observations. We suggest, therefore, that projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with much caution.

But that caution is being thrown to the agenda-driven winds.

(Thanks to ICECAP for some of the links in this post.)

Into The Deep Freeze Again

As the last winter storm system to hammer the nation's midsection moves into the northeast spread massive snow over the area, a brand new system is hitting in the center of the country. Oklahoma and Kansas are the first targets. Unfortunately, they have not had sufficient time to recover from the last wave that pounded them earlier in the week and authorities are running out of places to shelter those without electricity.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Another wintry blast was forecast Friday for the nation's midsection, where hundreds of thousands are still in the dark after a deadly ice storm brought down power lines, snapped trees and coated roads.

The system could complicate restoration efforts to the some 500,000 homes and businesses in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri still without power after the first storm darkened 1 million customers at its height earlier this week.

Between two and six inches of snow was predicted for parts of Kansas and Oklahoma, said Ken Harding, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Topeka, Kan. The National Weather Service issued winter weather watches for the northwest two-thirds of Oklahoma from Friday afternoon through Saturday morning.

Many emergency shelters already were filled, with some residents on their fourth or fifth day of waiting for power to return. Kim Harrel has been staying at an American Red Cross shelter in downtown Tulsa since Monday.

The first storm system changed from ice to snow as it moved northeast, which at least spared that section of the country the misery of ice and downed power lines. But the impact was still severe with massive traffic snarls and flight delays and cancellations.

Meanwhile, residents in the Northeast were hard at work Friday shoveling driveways and walkways. As the storm moved east, it changed from ice to snow, and dropped anywhere from two inches to a little more than a foot across the region.

While it didn't cause the same problems as it did in the middle of the country, it made travel difficult. Flights were delayed or canceled and the heavy snow snarled traffic with fender-benders from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. Most schools canceled classes, but in Rhode Island, the storm left many Providence children stuck in buses or at school for hours.

Janet McCaulley, a doctor, tried to drive from Boston to work an overnight shift at Cape Cod Hospital, but couldn't get there. She found a replacement and checked in at a motel for the afternoon.

"In just an hour, the roads went from being bare to being covered in snow," McCaulley said.

Accuweather is warning that this newest storm system is going to be a real doozy.

The Winter Weather Center reports as the storm strengthens today, snow will fall from Colorado across the central Plains, including western Oklahoma. Some areas along the Oklahoma – Kansas state line could receive up to a foot of snow.

The storm tonight will tap into additional moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, expanding the snow into northern Oklahoma and the lower Ohio Valley.

Saturday will be the "calm before the storm" in New England before conditions from the mid-Atlantic to central New England begin to rapidly deteriorate by Saturday night. Heavy snow will push into the region.

The East Regional News story reports heavy snow on Sunday will spread through New York and interior New England. Winds whipping around the storm will create near-blizzard conditions by Sunday night, creating dangerous travel conditions across the Northeast.

Oh well, I guess they are going to have to reschedule all those global warming rallies. It is really cold all across the midsection of the country right now – like January-February type cold.

Delta House Rules

The Opinion Journal invoke the movie Animal House to describe the behavior of the Democrats in Congress. Really futile and stupid gestures rule the Democrat's agenda.

In the movie "Animal House," the fraternity brother known as Otter reacts to the Delta House's closure with the classic line, "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." To which Bluto, played by John Belushi, replies, "We're just the guys to do it." The movie ends by noting that Bluto becomes a Senator, so perhaps this explains the meltdown among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

As they careen toward the end of their first year in charge, Congressional leaders seem capable of nothing but futile gestures. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid failed once again to get enough votes for an energy bill, having refused to remove a $21.8 billion tax increase on energy that President Bush has promised to veto in any case. Mr. Reid was vowing to try again as we went to press.

Meanwhile, in Nancy Pelosi's House of self-inflicted pain, the Blutarsky strategy played out yesterday in one more hopeless attempt to pass a tax increase to "pay for" Alternative Minimum Tax relief. The Senate has already voted 88-5 against any such tax hike, so this House bill is dead before arrival. But Ms. Pelosi's troops are just the guys to do it anyway.

The futile, unpassable veto bait keeps spewing forth from the House and either dies in the Senate or gets hammered by Bush's suddenly red hot veto pen. Whereupon, the House under the hapless Nancy "Bluto" Pelosi revs up another asinine piece of legislation, no better than the first one and often even worse. As the Opinion Journal points out, this behavior is what has already caused fracturing of the Democrats – and is leading up to an outright collapse.

Even today, Democrats are caught between their antiwar left, which wants more futile gestures, and Members from swing districts who want to fund the troops. Democrats have delayed funding for so long that the Pentagon is issuing furlough notices to 100,000 civilian employees so it can shuffle operations funding to keep the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in ammunition.

Then there's the AMT fiasco. Without action by Congress, that hated second tax system will engulf 22 million middle-class Americans next year, most of them in high-tax, largely Democratic states. Congress has already been so dilatory that the IRS has said it may have to delay tax-return processing that is supposed to start in January. But so determined are House Democrats to raise taxes on somebody, anybody, to "pay for" this relief that they are holding out for Senate Democrats to walk the tax plank with them. In the end the House will surely back down, but not before Ms. Pelosi has put her moderate Members on record as tax raisers. Bluto strikes again.

Millions of potential voters are going to be pounded by the AMT – a tax imposed by Democrats years ago - which the current leadership appears to be unable to patch. Millions more voters will be hit by late  tax returns as a result of the antics in Congress. Hundreds of thousands of civilian employees of the US military are going to get laid off as a Christmas present from the Democrats in Congress. And Nancy Pelosi brags about how much more they'll be able to do with a Democrat in the White House.

That's precisely what a lot of people are going to start worrying about when the impacts of all these really futile and stupid gestures hit them directly in the wallet.

(H/T Pirate's Cove)

Side note: How long will it be before Sean Daniels writes another post over at Huffington Post decrying the 'misuse' of Animal House? Heck, he's probably already feverishly typing away, explaining what really happened at Faber College in 1962, to far around the bend to understand that nothing happened because Faber College doesn't actually, you know, exist.

The Real Agenda Of Global Warming

All the sound and fury, all the relentless barrage of media hype, all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the true believers and sycophants of Al Gore about global warming have been orchestrated for a specific purpose. That purpose was out in the open, in all its global socialistic majesty in the luxurious setting of the UN conference on global warming in Bali.

It is about global taxation, with the United Nations as the recipient of the massive windfall of money taken from the “rich” nations. Nothing more elaborate than that.

BALI, Indonesia – A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference.  A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm

Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”

The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”

The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.

Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.” 

'Diminish future prosperity'  

However, ideas like a global tax and the overall UN climate agenda met strong opposition Thursday from a team of over 100 prominent international scientists who warned the UN that attempting to control the Earth's climate was "ultimately futile."

The scientists wrote, “The IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions." The scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sent the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary-General. (See: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN Against 'Futile' Climate Control Efforts – LINK)

Well, let me rephrase the opening to this post. There actually is a more elaborate agenda. Once they have exerted taxation that is "legally binding to all nations," how long will it be until they decide to exert power over other aspects of a nation's sovereignty?

I'd say about the Tuesday after the Monday their scheme goes into effect. If they wait that long.