GUNMEN KILL WOMEN

It's hard to believe how far the news services have fallen from the good old days when a newsman's writ was to ferret out the facts, record them and then publish them in a form that could be as salacious as they liked but which all bore the same hallmarks of news reporting: who, what, when, where, why.

Long years ago at the beginning of the War For Oil, the world's news arms banded together and decided to eschew foreign terms from their news reports. All killers and terrorists were simply branded, 'gunmen.' Gunmen were found to be gunning down various unworthy people all over the world without explanation or criticism. It was not, said the news mouthpieces, their job to explain what motivated gunmen or what made their victims so unworthy, so they stopped even trying.

In America, it quickly became apparent that the news apparatchiks adopted the new style enthusiastically because they were getting beaten up all the time for describing the people accused of horrible crimes or on trial for horrible crimes. The proletarian masses were quickly beginning to sense that an enormous percentage of the most outrageous violence was being carried out by a small minority of people. The news people felt a duty to cover that up.

In British news it wasn't hard to spot that the same sort of cover up was at work as the press labored mightily to blame things on gunmen or youths. Up until a few years ago some of the lesser news services still had the gall to refer to some vicious attackers as young Asian men in an attempt to muddle just who was carrying out most of the most vicious and senseless attacks.

I just finished reading the BBC's little bit of not-the-real-news about Gunmen attacking in Iraq. It wasn't at all about what I thought it would be from the headline but you can make up your mind from this capture.

There seems to have only been one news service that saw fit to describe the attackers. It's OK though, the rest of the so-called news services found it acceptable to brand all the women killed as prostitutes. They seem OK with labeling some of the victims of these vicious attacks because, somehow, in their minds, it justifies the attackers.

Only the turnips at the BBC could write something this blandly stupid:

"The motive for the killings is not clear. No group has said it carried out the attack. 

Reports said the two buildings were suspected to be brothels. 

Writing left on the door of one of the buildings read: "This is the fate of any prostitution," AFP news agency reports."

HUMBLE UBIQUITOUS TRILOBITES

Little known today, trilobites were once the tastiest morsel left in the seas. Our link goes on to make the rather astonishing claim that, Trilobites are, "Extinct, but not a failure."

Roughly 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, something killed 90 percent of the planet's species. Fewer than 5 percent of the animal species in the world ocean survived this Great Dying.

Nothing lasts forever, but the Trilobites are the world champions for surviving the longest on earth. Some researchers blame the rise of atmospheric CO2 for the Late Permian Extinction. They blame some sort of manmade climate change for intense global warming that led, inevitably, to Skynet and the rise of the Machines!

THROW THEM FROM A VERY GREAT HEIGHT

Sometimes, I get diverted by other news at the bottom of the news item I'm reading. It can be illuminating. How could I have missed this story?

Two kayakers who were injured after falling 200 feet over the face of the dam at Prettyboy Reservoir have been charged with trespassing. 

Paul K. Hare, 22, and Stephen D. Sparks, 21, both of Parkton, are charged with criminal trespassing and face $1,000 fines and one year in jail, said the Baltimore Environmental Police, which patrol the reservoir.

You get that these two young men, having already fallen 200 feet and lived, now face prosecution and up to a year in jail for....wait for it..... hold on.....

"Police said they were in a no trespass zone and had been boating without permits."

Yes, yes, I know, it's shades of Alice's Restaurant and the Group W bench.

One day, as a very junior officer, one might say, the most junior officer on board, I and another man went and visited with the Commander of the Bahrain Self Defense Force. I had been stamped with a co-lateral duty in addition to my primary duty as Auxiliaries Officer. In addition to my duties as Legal Officer for the ship, I also filled my spare time by serving as Middle East Force Postal Officer, Wardroom Mess Treasurer, Voting Officer...well, the usual sort of thing.

The visit I paid on the august commander of the Self Defense Force was to see if maybe he would be willing to let two of our usually very responsible sailors go forth from his country's jail. You know, as I think back on that day, I wonder what skids were greased before I ever left the ship. Can you imagine, seriously, sending an Ensign and the Engineering Department Master Chief to see the head of any other country's Self Defense Force (Police) with a nicely phrased respectful request to let our sailors go?

Thought not. We had nobody from the Embassy. We had no potentates and pontiffs. We had me and we had the man who wears the stars.

The general was exceedingly courteous and greeted us both as we came into his office. He got up from his desk and came around to shake my hand and to more vigorously shake the hand of Master Chief Meisberger. As he shook the Master Chief's hand he said, "at last, I meet the man who wears the stars!"

We sat down at his request and he sent for tea. We quaffed. We talked. We raised the unpleasant subject that brought us to his fine office that day. Was there I wondered, any chance of getting our sailors out of the hoosegow.

"Ah," he said. "Those poor men, they have just been released from hospital."

The thing was, they'd been snotty with a cab driver and they kicked his cab down by the souk. The cabby, naturally, took umbrage. He and the security guards from the Regency Hotel took down our sailors and called the police who, showed up, cuffed our men, tossed them in the back of a jeep and drove off towards the hoosegow.

They cuffed the guys with their hands in front. The younger one of our sailors suggested to the older one that maybe, when the jeep slowed down for a red light, that they jump out and run away. Which, both being drunk beyond reason, they did.

In Bahrain, one slows down to 40 mph for a red light. Only an idiot would stop at one.

They suffered an enormous number of broken arms and one of them broke his jaw when it hit the pavement.

The General gave my small request just an instant of thought before saying, "they have suffered enough. Of course you may take them with you."

That was the ample justice of one of the nicer emirates. Contrast with the justice one finds after falling over the dam in Maryland. I'd have said those two guys suffered enough. On the other hand, I'm notoriously easy on felons and lawbreakers.

That story happened just exactly as I said but can you imagine? The CO didn't go, the XO didn't go. The Department Head didn't go. Nobody from the embassy went. A single O-1 and an E-9 went to get those guys. Sure, the Master Chief had them all outnumbered but I cannot actually imagine this happening anywhere at all in the wide world in this day and age. It was, at the time, just about what I expected out of that miserable crappy co-lateral job.  On the other hand, I got to watch Captain Franklin D. Julian work himself up into a towering rage before he held Captain's Mast. That really was fun.

MY KIND OF LAWYER

Had this up at his place. I swiped it. It is not the kind of language one expects from an esquire.

I wonder what happened to the story 3 months ago. It must have been dire because I think almost any competent lawyer could have taken that video and turned it into gold. The thing I object to is that this goes on and on and the only feeble barrier laid out anywhere against such police misconduct is when a lawsuit succeeds against the city and the tax payers who pay for those abusive police. The law breakers are never prosecuted, never go to jail, don't get fired and show up at work and your house the next day.

FLEET OFF

Where was all this when I made every port call a raid on their bookstores my first priority after dropping off and picking up the ship's mail and then setting up the wardroom admin?

This is/was the fleet. The smallest one of all, on the left, retired tonight. Just now. I never had sound canceling head phones. I crossed the Pacific Ocean 40 times with just that little iPod on the left for accompaniment. The music it gave was more than enough to deaden the noise of the trip. Yeah, it pretty much worked the whole way out, recharged, and all the way back.

One way or the other, we're going to find out what compression does to ancient digital storage. The CDs I no longer have were used to populate that little thing 14 years ago with the music of albums I really liked.

If push comes to shove, I know of a way to get it all back. I'm left hoping that the Raytheon master clear works on Apple too.  I'm going to keep hoping that right up until it bursts into flames.

FLEET OF A BILLION WORDS

Buck rightly took me to task for sending to a well deserved oblivion some posts about democrats and climate scarers causing genital warts. It's all true and I have models that show that, but never mind. We were running on empty. He reminded me of the music. Music is one of the best paths to memories, if you like it.

It doesn't matter what you say though, music is a direct path into anybody's memory. If not the music of the times, then the music of life. No, not the music of the era, but the music of what brought the world to life when it mattered more than you imagined. We all have that. It can be the most obtuse music of life and still, in the memory, it brings back that day, that instant, like nothing else. I don't have anything from the time which is no more, but I do have fun memories of sound with my daughter. Red neck yacht club and beer for my horses, whiskey for my men is as good as it gets for bringing the past to life with my little pilot.

I can hear "ode to joy" almost anytime and go back. It's like 'Scotland the Brave'. The memory that abides were playing both Scotland the Brave and Baba O'Reilly to wake people to the day back when we, who were awake, enjoyed that prerogative.  It was a short lived time back when life and death merged far closer than most of the guys knew. Sometimes the cat got out of the bag and they suspected, but not because we weren't trying really hard to convince them that we knew what we were doing.  All of us went into the field, only 5 or 6 of us actually knew the grisly details... if we did it right.

We really worked hard to make it the most boring thing in life.

LIMITS

I never knew fear growing up. I still don't. Rooftops and the deep woods held no fear for us. There remain places I won't go without a gun, but fear? No. Ever since forever, I figure, I can take them. Still, I like this song.

EXCUSE ME

I have to write a book right now this instant.  Back in a flash.

MAKES ONE WONDER

This guy is in charge of the war on drugs, or, at least all military forces on our southern border. He makes one wonder.

All the sound and fury and he doesn't stop human bodies and children flooding across our southern border. What chance does he have, or we, of stopping a flood of crap that losers kill for?

We made our choice to create the Al Capones and Bugsy Malones when we outlawed liquor and gambling in a previous example of unbelievable stupidity. Why does anybody think we can stop drugs from crossing the border when we cannot seem to stop anything from making it across at our own checkpoints?

I know, he has a dream.

MAD GENIUS OF THE LEFT

It takes all kinds.

Do they have a school for stupid?

Oh wait, I know the answer to that one.

ENDLESS WAR AS HEADLINES

The news from Nineveh and Babylon isn't so good these days.

The last major report by U.N. inspectors on the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program was released about a year after the experts left in March 2003. It states that Bunker 13 contained 2,500 sarin-filled 122-mm chemical rockets produced and filled before 1991, and about 180 tons of sodium cyanide, "a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the warfare agent tabun." 

The U.N. said the bunker was bombed during the first Gulf War in February 1991, which routed Iraq from Kuwait, and the rockets were "partially destroyed or damaged." 

It said the sarin munitions were "of poor quality" and "would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there." It said the tabun-filled containers were all treated with decontamination solution and likely no longer contain any agent, but "the residue of this decontamination would contain cyanides, which would still be a hazard." 

According to the report, Bunker 41 contained 2,000 empty 155-mm artillery shells contaminated with the chemical warfare agent mustard, 605 one-ton mustard containers with residues, and heavily contaminated construction material. It said the shells could contain mustard residues which can't be used for chemical warfare but "remain highly toxic."

Those were evidently the WMD that Saddam 'never had.'

The news from the last light of civilization in the Middle East is even less good. I can skip lightly over the news that the enemies of the race have acquired the weapons of mass destruction that everybody now swears blind Saddam didn't have, but the news at the Jerusalem Post is a scroll of rocket attacks, one after another, every day, around the clock from people and territories that have shown nothing but contempt for all the care and aid lavished on them by the West.

I think that even the Israelis are finally beginning to crack under the strain of endless attack. It sounds like they have taken the gloves off officially.  It looks like some are fed up with the endless murder.

60 years of war does interesting things to the psyche. We have all of history to look at. I sort of remember a quote from last week about how wars never last more than 30 years. To paraphrase, after 30 years of war we have killed the first and next generation interested in perpetuating war. Something seems to have gone amiss in the valley of the Jordan River. Like the Vale of Kashmir, there is such concentrated hate it perpetuates itself long after reason has fled.

A FASCINATING PROSPECT

From Patterico, a possibility that the law we could not see coming, may be hoisted by its own petard.

To review from my original post on the matter: The law’s plain language says subsidies are available only when a health plan is purchased on an exchange “established by the state under section 1311.” 34 states refused to establish an exchange, after which the HHS Secretary invoked her authority to set up federal exchanges under a different section: section 1321. Then the IRS promulgated a rule that said exchanges set up by the Secretary under section 1321 were actually exchanges “established by the state under section 1311.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say: “state” does not mean “federal government.” The exchanges established by the HHS Secretary under section 1321 are not “established by the state under section 1311.” Making the point even clearer: a “state” is defined in the ACA as “each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia,” they note, and not the federal government.

The Obama lawyers say: oh, come on. Don’t look at the plain language of that one provision. You gotta look at the whole law and the intent of Congress.

When a cast of thousands write a fiendishly complex bit of evil, one has to accept that room for error is made, and into error space creep the dissenters, and from there, they take it to the courts, and the same people that rejoice as the courts strike down laws enacted by clear pluralities and majorities at referendums are left feeling mightily abused when the same process is used by their enemies.

THAT AINT GRACEFUL

It's pretty cool though. Late at night, when whossname was away, me and my little pilot used to watch the indoor flying on youtube. We never saw one of these though. Captain America, eat your heart out.

PREDICTABLE TO A FAULT

The nation's newest class of fighter plane is grounded worldwide with engine problems. Congress kind of suspected this would happen because it always happens these days with fighter procurements. They appropriated $3 billion dollars for an alternative engine designed by the team of General Electric and Rolls Royce. Then they killed it.

Predictably, the President and Defense Department scoffed at the idea of an alternative engine for the most expensive weapons program in history and finally killed funding for the engine a couple of years ago just as it became clear that the Joint Strike Fighter engine was deeply flawed.

Obama administration officials told ABC News the president would veto the 2012 defense authorization bill if it included language that would extend the life of the alternate engine program.

 This is not the first time that a fighter has been delivered to the military with deficient engines. History is replete with examples. The one I remembered offhand was the F-14 TOMCAT.

The weak point of the Tomcat was in its engines, which were initially a pair of TF30-P-412 axial flow turbofans, rated at 12,350 lb.s.t. dry and 20,900 lb.s.t with afterburning. This engine was essentially similar to the TF30-P-12 that had been used for the F-111B. With this engine, the F-14A was decidedly underpowered. On several occasions, fan blades broke free from the shaft, damaging the surrounding airframe structure and systems and causing the loss of the aircraft. Very early in the flight test programs there were problems encountered with engine stalls at high angles of attack. These stalls would usually take place when coming either in or out of afterburner or at low power settings when at high angles of attack. These engine problems were exceedingly vexing and resulted in the loss of several aircraft.

We should keep in mind that every time one of these fighter planes crashes or burns it costs us $160 million dollars. That is inevitably going to lead to the most cautious and risk averse training regime in history. Typically, when that happens, the training becomes completely unrealistic and divorced from reality. Plans are written based on capabilities encountered and defeated in training scenarios and then they turn into garbage in the harsh light of reality.

I don't think the Air Force knows how to guard things anymore. They can't even keep track of their nuclear weapons. The U.S. Marines lost sight of the requirement to provide meaningful security for its aircraft based in a war torn country that is mostly under the control of Taliban terrorists.

The U.S. military long ago dropped the facade of guarding military bases from terrorists. One terrorist in a dump truck driving through a dozen or two dozen F-35s or F-22 Raptors parked on an unguarded parking ramp on a base that is only "virtually" protected because the bean-counters replaced the guards with remote operated TV cameras, is going to cost us a fortune.

Do you ever wonder how many terrorists have surged across our southern border in the last few months? How many of our home grown little muslim terrorists are off picking up terror job skills fighting in Syria or Iraq or Somalia? How many get handed a visa by a State Department worker at the embassy and consulates in Saudi Arabia?

OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN

Movie review.

There were actors and actresses in the movie, I'm pretty sure. It was about willful painful stupidity on a massive repetitive scale. There were explosions and knives and hand to hand combat. There were helicopters going manno-y-helicoptero against emplaced anti-missile guns and missile defense systems on the white house roof.

It was one lone man against an army of commandos from NorK and winning. I'm not really sure how the Force of Order neutralized the dump truck machine gun positions. I'm guessing poison gas was involved.

It was staggering the number of trained killers who eschewed firing from cover for advancing bravely into the fire from mini-guns fired from aircraft or 50 caliber machine gun fire from trucks. It must be a dominant gene that controls that because otherwise you'd think that sort of behavior was weeded out after Agincourt and Crecy.

I was hoping the bad guys were aliens. I guess I should have stuck to Independence Day.

OTOH, it was as if the bad guys all worked for the New York Times. They share the same values and appreciation for history.

NEWS OF THE REALM

I sometimes find Drudge's juxtapositions amusing.

I've long thought the best way to lose weight was communism. If anybody knows demons, it's cops, and the idea of protesters blowing smoke at Obama sounds about right.

FRUSTRATED KINGMAKER

A tragedy foreseen years too late by the OSD Tsar that thought he could create the next King of Iraq. He didn't choose wisely but he doesn't blame himself. No. He blames America. It was apparent that Maliki was uncoupling the wheels from the cart back in 2011 when he tried to have the Vice President arrested. He utterly failed to get rid of the only enemy he absolutely needed to have killed while resisting arrest. Typical.

The sunni Vice President got away to Kurdistan and how they must be laughing, those clever Kurds in the north, watching the unleashing of islam II.I on poor mainstream Iraqis. It's kind of astonishing that the Truth Ministry actually wrote an insightful piece on the coming collapse 3 years ago. You know them, they hardly ever let the truth see the light of day.

It occurs to me that the next step is almost bound to be an intervention from Elam as it watches the collapse of the Iraq that American power built on the bones of Sumer and Akkad.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

ON BEING PRESIDENTIAL

One of the most despicable things about the current president is his penchant for playing fast and loose with the Constitution. OK, that is too weak. He blithely ignores the Constitution and the separation of powers and does things as his own autocratic tendencies move him. What I don't get though, is why 'Mr. Executive Action' hasn't yet released his brothers and sons from Guantanamo. That place was created by real executive action and could be swept away tomorrow with a stroke from the famed autopen.

He literally wouldn't have to lift a finger to make it happen as he promised many years ago, right about the time he commenced a detailed study of the idea of importing Canadian oil into this country though some radical new device called a pipeline. If I was into actual conspiracy theories rather than simply creating them and floating them about, I'd speculate that somebody with deep pockets is paying him to keep the cousins and nephews on ice while they consolidate their gains in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria.

As with Bill, who suddenly, somehow, amassed a $100 million dollar fortune on the strength of being president, won't we all be shocked to find out that the Won has found great riches while in office and retires to Hawaii with half a billion dollars in his bank account? I wonder where he is planning to locate his presidential library and what he'll do with the two or three pages of notes he scribbled while in office.

SCIENCE IN AMERICA TODAY

From al jazeera of all places, an interesting article from an ethics researcher who tells nothing but lies.

The paper, published in the journal Pediatrics, states: 'We advocate for the incorporation of a new clause into the consent forms for pediatric genetic testing that clearly states that any incidental information about parentage will not be revealed, regardless of the result.'

Imagine. You go to a doctor and you submit to testing and the doctor feels nothing less than a moral obligation to lie to you. And feels good about it. So good, she publishes her belief that you deserve to be lied to because, doctor.

It's like the Tuskegee syphilis case never even entered her sphere of thought. Ever.

It does take all kinds. My doctor told me I was dead.

I failed to believe him but there may be some room in there for debate...given time.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Happy Independence Day!

Anybody who believes in liberty should be encouraged to fight for it. Anybody opposed to tyrants and dictators should be encouraged to fight against them. The two are not necessarily the same.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION

This reads like a primer on the effects of deliberate breeding for vicious stupid and corrupt. It's like reading the history of Russia. Since the dawn of time, the Middle East has been weeding and pruning the smart, urban, educated people out of its gene pool. They started reducing civilizations almost 5000 years ago. If the death of the land wasn't done by locals, it was being done by outsiders. The victors and spoilers had the people who knew how to build civilization massacred along with all their children. All that is left today are the people who never understood civilization except that they knew it was extremely bad for people that practiced it. Every society has its Pol Pot ready to spring into action against civilization. Only the Middle East and Africa reliably return them to power.

It is a pretty tough neighborhood but it isn't all blighted. Most of us are more familiar with the dry side of the Persian Gulf but this part of the world wasn't referred to as the fertile crescent for millennia because it was an endless barren wasteland of sand.

In the meantime, I think we'd do well enough to leave them alone for a couple of generations. The nobs keep telling us that we have created a worldwide problem of global warming by burning all the oil under the desert. OK, if the entire area reverts to utter barbarism and we don't get any more oil from there, won't that make the Earth better? It's not like we need oil from the Middle East.

One should always keep in mind that the ones who attacked the United States on 9/11 and unleashed the TSA and Homeland Security upon us all, came from our putative 'friend' in the region, Saudi Arabia.

I say, look on the bright side. The Kingdom won't survive what it unleashed.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Ramadan got underway in the U.S. on Saturday. It sneaks up on one.

A PLEASANT LITTLE TRIP

We were off to the rock-bound coast of Maine and had a great trip, as usual. We stopped along the way and spent a night at my alma mater. I hadn't seen the place since I went to Department Head School in Newport, RI back in 1985. I barely recognized the campus. University Park is brand new and shiny. I like it, but this Penn State is not the same one I attended a mere 33 years ago.

We drove on to spend the next day and night at Newport, RI. I have not been back there since 1985 either. I meant to attend graduation from the War College long ago, because those of us who cannot make it there full time are welcome to attend graduation ceremonies with our class, but I was otherwise detained at the time... I think I was suddenly in Thailand, if memory serves. We visited two of the houses I used to live in there. The first was a little different but still wonderful. The second, unchanged. They were each at opposite ends of Cliff Walk. One was above Bailey's Beach and the other was on Annandale Road above Easton's Beach.

1 Jeffrey Road

From there we went on to our place in Maine. We like Maine a lot. It's a pity they have no internets there but I'm sure they're working on that and as soon as they figure out the electricity thing I'll bet they cotton on to digital in no time at all. I thought I could get around the apprentice digital trogs by bringing a hotspot with me but I failed to consider the ISPs in Maine. They have a monopoly there. They have a service plan that rivals the fire departments that you find in the Rumford Meteor. When the RM talks about various fire departments in Maine's remarkable ability to "save the basement" almost every time there is a fire in a structure....well that's the attitude of Maine's businesses to the idea of offering ANY kind of wifi. They don't get it. Neither does Sprint or Verizon Maine. They had network issues for weeks.

View from the deck of our place in Maine

I keep telling them that there must be some economic advantage to offering internets but the business owners aren't impressed. I must have it wrong. So I went kayaking. We went sailing. We went on cruises. We went out and about and attended concerts and we ate out. Somehow, I survived without the internet. I may write a book about it.

Rivendell in Montpelier, VT

A VIEW THROUGH THE GATE

I suspect it is mostly a NYT-writer-kind-of-fabulism on display, but it is worth reading.  The underlying basis for a civil society is a civil society of shared values. I get the sense that the place this man comes from is a society that doesn't share any of the values of mine.

The wasteland described by D Watkins is not confined to Baltimore. What he described is what every major city I have ever lived in has at its core; Oakland, Baltimore, Washington, DC, New York, LA, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Cleveland. In every case, someone has piled every single bane of civilization on the people that live there. One foul blight after another has contributed to an endless parade of misery, poverty, illiteracy, dependency, violence, and soul destroying inhumanity.

The time is not that far when some clever soul will discover a way to imperson a machine with all the writings and teachings and facts known about a man, such as Martin Luther King, Jr, and then ask it what it thinks of the current situation on the ground in America. Just by looking at the pictures out of his time and era I can be sure that the machine would be appalled and then turn about and quest in vain for who spent the last 60 years doing this to American citizens living in the greatest cities of the world.

I think that some people did deliberately create the society we see today. Callous people with enormous power created every step of the path that led from the signing of the Civil Rights Act to the complete destruction of the society and people that occupy the core of our major cities today. All of this didn't happen without detailed planning and a whole lot of effort to make things fall apart in just such a way that leaves almost no way out.

In all the years I spent in the military I met a number of people that did make it out of places like Cabrini-Green but altogether they probably amounted to less than 1% of the people living in such places. As the Armed Forces grow more selective, fewer and fewer can even begin to qualify to enter the Armed Forces. I know, we are told to never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, but looking at what happened to people like the author of the link above, I think it must be malice to make so much of the society that we enjoy, fail for those at the heart of our cities.

As I said at the beginning though, it may be that all this was launched on the basis of another pack of lies brought to us by another Blair. I don't believe it, but it could happen. Stranger things have.

MAKING A SKEPTIC THE OLD FASHIONED WAY

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is making skeptics at an alarming rate. They do it by lying to the people over and over and over and then lying about it. That is also exactly what every single member of the global climate scam has done since Al Gore launched the great South Sea Scam.

Oddly enough, there is nothing wrong with being a skeptic. It is exactly people like us that force scientists and scam artists to fabricate arguments from data that win us over to their point of view. The Climate Scammists have so far been most unwilling to provide either the data they used to derive their models or the corrections they have applied to the data to justify their models. They haven't shown us the data or the adjustments. They have flat refused to discuss the matter with us. That's not science.

Wattsupwiththat examines the latest bit of chicanery from the fabulists that labor at NOAA. It's worth a look. I like the Zombie weather stations.

The facts are hard to find. There are other reporters who cover the climate scam who I trust to share the data, who derive different conclusions from it but who I can respect for at least being able and willing to discuss 'adjustments' and 'refinements' that are so necessary if we are to be shown comparisons of apples with apples and oranges with oranges. The ones I value make a good faith attempt to get to the bottom line on the science of climate. They are willing to discuss the data.

I accept that the climate changes. The only people who avow that climate doesn't change over the centuries are the climate scammers who keep attributing that bit of idiotic nonsense to the skeptics who they refer to as, deniers. Nothing I have ever seen though has given me any reason to believe that mankind is changing the climate on a global scale. Every time you hear one of the scammers or a politician tell you that you need to spend trillions of dollars on climate nonsense, you need to ask them, how that will reverse the damage they allege has already happened and return the planet to its pristine state. Your mileage may vary.