Mendacity

Friday 3 May 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

In the event any of you were wondering, this is what mendacity looks like. President Obama:

And we also recognize that most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States[.] I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms, and as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right and I always will.

But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to [pass] common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people, that can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States. It’s the right thing to do.

I’m sure he’ll work Fast and Furious on these “common sense” reform laws. You know, the ones where he will use the result of his own policies that purposefully transferred guns from American gun shops in the southwest to violent drug cartels in order to justify.

Comments Off on Mendacity  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-05-03  ::  madlibertarianguy

If Stupidity Hurt

Friday 3 May 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

If only the rest of us were fortunate enough to have stuidity hurt the emitters as much as it hurts those at which said stupidity is directed. The Hill:

Several House Democrats are calling on Congress to recognize that climate change is hurting women more than men, and could even drive poor women to “transactional sex” for survival.

The weather makes women whores? Wait, what? They don’t have individual agency? Women are nothing more than pawns in nature?

The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

Is it your contention, Democrats, that men don’t fucking eat, and that men wouldn’t be hurt by decreased agricultural output?

“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

Oh, okay. “Food insecure women” are the ones at risk. Gee, that isn’t misogynist at all. Also, climate change gave me AIDS? Really? That Team BLUE is trying to turn the greenhouse effect global warming climate change in to another front on the so-called “war on women” shows that they know the gig is up. They’re desperate, and they’re willing to exploit any avenue they can in order to try and enforce their socialist agenda.

Comments Off on If Stupidity Hurt  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-05-03  ::  madlibertarianguy

Sigh

Thursday 2 May 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

What could go wrong?

Bradshaw is readying a hotline and is planning public service announcements to encourage local citizens to report their neighbors, friends or family members if they fear they could harm themselves or others.

And do you really need a $1M hotline? Is 911 or the non-emergency number for your local police department not sufficient?

Comments Off on Sigh  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-05-02  ::  madlibertarianguy

Need

Wednesday 1 May 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

NO ONE NEEDS AN ASSAULT RIFLE!!!

Comments Off on Need  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-05-01  ::  madlibertarianguy

Another Wrench

Tuesday 30 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Another wrench thrown in to the machine of global warming. The Register:

Another powerful negative-feedback mechanism which acts to reduce the effects of global warming has been identified, as scientists say that rising temperatures cause plants to emit higher levels of planet-cooling aerosols.

“Aerosol effects on climate are one of the main uncertainties in climate models,” explains Pauli Paasonen of Helsinki uni. “Understanding this mechanism could help us reduce those uncertainties and make the models better.”

[. . .]

Paasonen and his colleagues’ new work indicates that there is and will be a lot more aerosol in the air and cooling the planet than had been thought, as they have carried out detailed measurements showing that a slightly warmer climate makes plants give off much increased amounts of cooling aerosols. This had long been suspected, but previous studies had been able to identify such an effect only in very specific and limited locations: Paasonen and his colleagues have now shown that the feedback acts on continental scales, overcoming earlier difficulties in accounting for the always tricky effects of the boundary layer where the atmosphere interacts with the surface beneath.

[. . .]

On its own, according to Paasonen, this newly quantified feedback would not wipe out global warming (logically enough, as it needs some warming before it appears). But he and his colleagues consider that it means forecasts should be adjusted downward by around a degree, which is a big deal in global-warming terms. Various other previously unknown cooling or negative-feedback effects have been identified in recent research – for instance, melting ice sheets are said to create a massive carbon sink and the mysterious “Criegee intermediates” are also thought to be a powerful planet coolant.

Such mechanisms may help to explain why global warming has been on hold for the past decade and more, and why some projections now suggest much lower levels of near-future warming than had been feared.

And for those of you who would question the source as an inherent “denier” who wants to see the earth burn so that oil companies can squeeze another dime in their bank account,

Paasonen and his colleagues’ new paper is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Comments Off on Another Wrench  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-30  ::  madlibertarianguy

Important

Tuesday 30 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

The most important article you’ll read today.

More important, to Verleger’s way of thinking, the peak-oil battle has become irrelevant. Verleger, a former economic official in the Ford and Carter administrations, is now a visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. Since Hubbert’s time, the dispute has focused on “conventional” petroleum, the type found in regular oil wells, most of which is in the Middle East and controlled by OPEC. Production of conventional oil has indeed plateaued, as Hubbertians warned: OPEC’s output has remained roughly flat since 2005. In part, the slowdown reflects the diminishing supply of this kind of oil. Another part is due to the global recession, which has stalled demand. But a third factor is that OPEC’s conventional petroleum is being supplemented—and possibly supplanted—by what the industry calls “unconventional” petroleum, which for the moment mainly means oil and natural gas from fracking. Fracking, Verleger says, is creating “the biggest change in energy in almost 100 years—a revolution.” That revolution, in his view, will have a big winner: the United States.

The argument is simple. The need to import expensive foreign oil has been a political and economic burden on the United States for decades. Today, though, fracking is unleashing torrents of oil in North Dakota and Texas—it may create a second boom in the San Joaquin Valley—and floods of natural gas in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. So bright are the fracking prospects that the U.S. may become, if only briefly, the world’s top petroleum producer. (“Saudi America,” crowed The Wall Street Journal. But the parallel is inexact, because the U.S. is likely to consume most of its bonanza at home, rather than exporting it.) Oil may cost more than in the past, but prices will surely stabilize. No more spikes! Still more important, this nation is fracking so much natural gas that its price today is less than a third of its price in Europe and Asia—a big cost advantage for American industry. As companies switch to cheap natural gas, a Citigroup report argued last year, the U.S. petroleum boom could add as much as 3.3 percent to America’s GDP in the next seven years.

[. . .]

The fracking-led oil-and-gas boom, Philip Verleger said in January, will lead to an American “economic Renaissance.” The United States will at last escape the world made by Churchill, at least for a while.

Fracking is the future for US energy. Period. Until the costs come down to a reasonable on so-called renewables, we will use fossil fuels for our energy needs. It’s that simple.

Comments Off on Important  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-30  ::  madlibertarianguy

Enabling

Tuesday 30 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Were I to have given the Tsarnaev family over $100k to subsidize their living costs over the decade which led up to their bombing of the Boston Marathon, there’s no question that I would be arrested for aiding terrorism. So why isn’t the state of Massachusetts? The Boston Herald:

The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.

“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.

The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.

I though the idea of “transitional assistance” was to provide help over a limited support of time. So what’s up with this 10 year bullshit?

Comments Off on Enabling  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-30  ::  madlibertarianguy

Right Wing Violence

Thursday 25 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

I thought that the biggest danger we face as a nation was the threat from those crazy right wingers . . .

Family Research Council (FRC) officials released video of federal investigators questioning convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins II, who explained that he attacked the group’s headquarters because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identified them as a “hate group” due to their traditional marriage views.

“Southern Poverty Law lists anti-gay groups,” Corkins tells interrogators in the video, which FRC obtained from the FBI. “I found them online, did a little research, went to the website, stuff like that.”

The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard reported that Corkins, who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, said in court that he hoped to “kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-Fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces, and kill the guard.” As Bedard explained, “the shooting occurred after an executive with Chick-Fil-A announced his support for traditional marriage, angering same-sex marriage proponents.”

So much for that thread in the narrative.

Comments Off on Right Wing Violence  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-25  ::  madlibertarianguy

It Burns

Thursday 25 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

This kind of stupid burns.

Comments Off on It Burns  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-25  ::  madlibertarianguy

What Could Go Wrong?

Thursday 25 April 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

In a world where the security state has no accountability because of its colossal size, and no real means of forcing it to be accountable, what could go wrong? Dana Priest and William M. Arkin at The Washington Post:

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

But apparently I’m crazy and irrational for not trusting government and whether the things it does are either necessary or effective, while those who support this boondoggle are the rational, reality based people in America.

Comments Off on What Could Go Wrong?  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-04-25  ::  madlibertarianguy