SOTU and other natural and not so natural disasters

Obama Stung by SOTU Plagiarism Rap

Kudos to presidential historian Alvin Felzenberg for his tug on Obama's cape. A Ph.D. from Princeton and the former spokesman for the 9/11 commission, Felzenberg is the first intellectual insider to suggest publicly that President Barack Obama is not the writer the literati have anointed him to be.


In his review of the State of the Union speech posted on the U.S. News website, FELZENBERG GOES SO FAR AS TO ACCUSE THE PRESIDENT AND HIS SPEECHWRITERS OF PLAGIARIZING IT.

"PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SECOND STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS CONTAINED ENOUGH RECYCLED IDEAS AND LINES LIFTED FROM SPEECHES OF OTHERS TO MAKE HISTORIANS WINCE," writes Felzenberg. "Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean."….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/obama_stung_by_sotu_plagiarism.html


An interesting look at what appears to be a growing story.

To Boldly Go Where No Party Has Gone Before...

I figured out which position President Obama could play for the Steelers on Super Bowl Sunday. HE’D MAKE A GREAT PUNTER.

Decades of overspending and overpromising by the federal government, combined with a plunge in tax revenues, are pushing America to the brink of fiscal crisis. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt are gobbling up the gross domestic product. The aging Baby Boomers, meanwhile, are waiting in the wings.

PRESIDENT OBAMA KNOWS THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE CRISIS. His own debt commission reported in December, “If the U.S. does not put its house in order, the reckoning will be sure and the devastation severe.” And the debt commission offered plenty of intriguing ways to address the problem. Its plans to overhaul the tax code and Social Security were especially bold. Commissioners Paul Ryan and Alice Rivlin, moreover, delivered their own proposal to turn Medicare into a sustainable defined-contribution system. And a separate presidential commission, led by Paul -Volcker, outlined a corporate tax reform that would lower rates while closing loopholes.

OBAMA COULD HAVE ADOPTED ANY OF THESE POLICIES AS HIS OWN. HE COULD HAVE USED THE STATE OF THE UNION TO CHALLENGE REPUBLICANS TO WORK WITH HIM ON BRINGING THE GOVERNMENT’S FINANCES INTO BALANCE WHILE ENCOURAGING ECONOMIC GROWTH. He could have seized the deficit-hawk middle ground and possibly split the GOP in the process. INSTEAD, HE PUNTED. HE LEFT IT UP TO REPUBLICANS TO TAKE THE BALL AND RUN.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/boldly-go-where-no-party-has-gone_537578.html


I loved the analogy. BHO, punter in chief.



New Black Panther Party case: The facts are in

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came out in December with a draft of its interim report on the New Black Panthers Party scandal. Earlier today a final report was posted on the commission's website, and with it, a flurry of rebuttals and separate statements from a number of the commissioners. The import of these statements should not be minimized.

The statements indicate several points: 1) the New Black Panther Party case brought by career Justice Department employees WAS MERITORIOUS ON THE LAW AND THE FACTS; 2) there is voluminous evidence of the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S POLITICAL INTERFERENCE IN THE PROSECUTION OF THE NEW BLACK PANTHER PARTY case; 3) there is ample evidence that the OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DIRECTED JUSTICE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES NOT TO BRING CASES AGAINST MINORITY DEFENDANTS WHO VIOLATED VOTING RIGHTS LAWS or to enforce a provision requiring that states and localities clean up their voting rolls to prevent fraud; 4) the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT STONEWALLED EFFORTS TO INVESTIGATE THE CASE; And 5) vice chairman Abigail Thernstrom has, for reasons not entirely clear, ignored the evidence and tried to undermine the commission's work.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/the_us_commission_on_civil.html


It will be interesting to see where this ends up. Will there be indictments against those who stonewalled and worse in this case? After Scooter Libby was indicted for lying to the FBI, it appears we have a much more serious case here.

Obama and Egypt

As protests spread against the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Obama administration faces a choice: which side of history does it want to be on?

Does the United States want to support a dictator to the end, or does it stand with protesters demanding relief from decades of emergency rule, police torture, corruption and economic stagnation?

The administration already missed a chance to show the Arab world that it can live up to its rhetoric. President Obama failed to speak out in support of Tunisia's popular uprising until it was too late - after Tunisian strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country.

Political realists will argue that favoring stability and long-term allies like Mubarak is more essential to America's national interests than the uncertain and difficult task of promoting an inclusive democracy. But if we have learned anything over the past few weeks, it is that the status quo in the Arab world is not stable.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/01/29/2011-01-29_riots_in_egypt_president_obama_must_choose_between_support_of_hosni_mubarak_and_.html


We saw Obama ignore the demonstrations in Iran. It appears if you don’t want Obama to speak out against your regime, you need to be an enemy of the US. If you are an ally, well that’s a different story.



If Healthcare is so good, why all the waivers?

At the end of last year, the Department of Health and Human Services had granted some 222 temporary waivers to businesses small and large, insurers, and labor and other organizations that offer affordable health insurance or prescription-drug coverage with limited benefits. On Wednesday, THE AGENCY QUIETLY UPDATED ITS ONLINE LIST, WHICH NOW REVEALS A WHOPPING TOTAL OF 729 OBAMACARE ESCAPEES — in addition to four states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee — that collectively cover about 2.1 million enrollees.

At least one eyebrow-raising waiver recipient — THE LEFT-LEANING, NATIONALIZED-HEALTH-CARE-PROMOTING ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION — has direct ties to the White House. Obama health-care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle sits on the foundation’s board of trustees.

Most noteworthy: ONE-FOURTH OF ALL THE WAIVERS (182) SO FAR HAVE GONE TO LABOR GROUPS.

The Teamsters Union, which hailed Obama last March for “enacting historic health care reform, providing health insurance to millions of Americans who don’t have it and controlling costs for millions more who do,” obtained waivers for 17 different locals.….

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/258240/waivers-favors-michelle-malkin


Perhaps one size doesn’t fit all?

Spain's jobless rate surges to 20.33%

Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialized world, as the economy struggled for air.

It was more bad news for an economy fighting to regain the trust of financial markets and avoid being trapped in a debt quagmire that has engulfed Greece and Ireland and now menaces Portugal.

Another 121,900 people joined Spain's unemployment queues in the final quarter of the year, pushing the total to 4.697 million people, said the national statistics institute INE.

The resulting unemployment rate was 20.33 percent for the end of the year -- easily exceeding Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's target of 19.4 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110128/bs_afp/spaineconomyunemployment_20110128120624

Part of the reason Spain is in so much trouble is they decided to become the “green” capital of Europe “investing” heavily in green jobs. It seems they found the down side of this.

Cold truths about electric cars' cold-weather shortcomings

Count me among the many thousands of Washington area residents who spent Wednesday night stuck in traffic as a snowstorm sowed chaos all around us. Being car-bound in sub-freezing weather for six hours can make a guy think. I counted my blessings. The situation could have been worse, I realized: MY FELLOW COMMUTERS AND I COULD HAVE BEEN TRYING TO MAKE IT HOME IN ELECTRIC CARS, LIKE THE ONES PRESIDENT OBAMA IS CONSTANTLY PROMOTING, MOST RECENTLY IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS.

It is a basic fact of physical science THAT BATTERIES RUN DOWN MORE QUICKLY IN COLD WEATHER THAN THEY DO IN WARM WEATHER, and the batteries employed by vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt are no exception.

The exact loss of power these cars would suffer is a matter of debate, partly because no one has much real-world experience to draw on. But there would be some loss. RUNNING THE HEATER TO STAY WARM, OR THE CAR RADIO TO STAY INFORMED, WOULD DRAIN THE BATTERY FURTHER.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/27/AR2011012706170.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If you want the scientific explanation why batteries run down more quickly, click the link and read it.

Hillary and Climate Change

In August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that the floods that were ravaging Pakistan at the time were linked to global warming.

“You can’t point to any particular disaster and say, ‘it was caused by [global warming],’ BUT WE ARE CHANGING THE CLIMATE OF THE WORLD,” Clinton told Pakistan’s Dawn TV, adding, “I think the predictions of more natural disasters are unfortunately being played out.”

Well, guess what, kids? There’s A PEER-REVIEWED PAPER ABOUT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, and in the press release about the paper, they don’t even mention the word “climate.” Simply put, A ROGUE STORM SYSTEM, PART OF THE NORMAL CHAOTIC NATURE OF WEATHER ON THIS PLANET, WAS THE CAUSE OF LAST SUMMER’S DEVASTATING FLOODS. NOTHING ELSE. Anyone who claims that the storm was part of “climate change” is simply flat wrong, and that includes Hillary

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http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/27/hillarys-foot-in-mouth-moment-as-a-climate-scientist/#ixzz1CL1KjCa1



Himalayan glaciers advancing?

Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century. RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF HALF OF THE ICE FLOWS IN THE KARAKORAM RANGE OF THE MOUNTAINS ARE ACTUALLY GROWING RATHER THAN SHRINKING.

The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world’s highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.

It further CHALLENGES CLAIMS MADE IN A 2007 REPORT BY THE UN’S INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE THAT THE GLACIERS WOULD BE GONE BY 2035.

Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at “a rapid rate”, threatening floods throughout north India.

The new study by scientists at the Universities of California and Potsdam has found that half of the glaciers in the Karakoram range, in the northwestern Himlaya, are in fact advancing and that GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT THE DECIDING FACTOR IN WHETHER A GLACIER SURVIVES OR MELTS

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8284223/Himalayan-glaciers-not-melting-because-of-climate-change-report-finds.html

Does anyone else hear the sound of a hammer? Another nail in the AGW coffin?