A peer-reviewed study on the affect of humans on the global climate has shown that over 80% of climate changes over the ladder half of the 20th Century can be attributed to nature. Further, the study found that human activity has little affect on the climate.

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Can someone drag the Gorebot away from the McDonald’s long enough to break the news to him? Carbon off-sets? A scam. Cap-n-Tax? Another scam based upon fraud. One can only hope that the Obamassiah will come to his senses and kill his economy-killing Cap-n-Tax proposal. I’m not hopeful that he will, because I think he’s had too much of the environmental lobby’s Kool-Aid to be able to think clearly on this matter.

As for Sheila Jackson Lee, she doesn’t hold a candle to Bachmann on the looney scale.

I object. I mean, Lee is 100% certifiable. Just ask anyone who used to work for her (by 2002, she had gone through 85 aides). In this article by Sam Dealey from February, 2002, her wanton sense of entitlement is laid bare for all to see:

It’s about 200 paces from the awning of Jackson Lee’s Capitol Hill apartment to the marbled steps of the Cannon House Office Building, where her office is. Most people think the walk is a pleasant one. Red-brick townhouses give onto tree-lined streets; crossing guards ensure no one is run over. It’s the kind of neighborhood where you might expect to find the Republican party’s headquarters–and do. They’re right next door to Jackson Lee’s building. In a city that consistently ranks among the nation’s worst for commuting, Jackson Lee would seem to have it made.

But apparently it’s not convenient enough. Jackson Lee is routinely chauffeured the one short block to work–in a government car, by a member of her staff, at the taxpayers’ expense. And apparently in violation of House rules.

I guess we should be happy that at least she hasn’t killed anyone, like her fellow Democrat Ted “The Swimmer” Kennedy. What is it with Democrats and cars, anyway?

Take, for example, the morning of December 6, a balmy Thursday when the temperature in Washington would climb to 73 degrees. At 8:43, a blue Ford Contour with government plates–the car Jackson Lee’s office has leased–pulled up to her building. For the next 23 minutes, the aide impeded traffic on one of Capitol Hill’s busiest streets, pulling in and out of alleys and reserved parking spaces. Finally, at 9:06, Jackson Lee appeared.

The aide jumped from the car and hurried to help the congresswoman. First she opened the rear door so Jackson Lee could deposit a bag and sheaf of papers; then she opened the passenger door. But Jackson Lee took this opportunity to place a phone call, and the aide stood patiently by. After a minute or so of this, Jackson Lee determined she was ready to climb in. But something was wrong. An uncomfortable moment passed as the congresswoman and aide stared at each other. Of course! Jackson Lee’s coat and shawl were still on!

The aide sprang to remove the garments, and Jackson Lee gave an exasperated look. After Jackson Lee climbed in, the aide gently closed the door, scurried around the rear of the car to the driver’s seat, and they were off to the office, a block away. It was such a short trip, Jackson Lee didn’t even bother to fasten her seatbelt.

This isn’t even the worst of it. Look what she does to the airlines:

For years, Jackson Lee tormented the airline’s office in Washington that handles VIP booking. When Congress was in session, her staff would make several reservations early in the week for return flights to Houston. After the House finished its business that week, she would grab whichever flight was most convenient and scrap the others. But this kind of rule-bending put the carrier in a difficult position. Not only was Jackson Lee only paying coach fare (she was routinely bumped up to first class), but Continental was unable to sell the premier seats she didn’t use.

Talk about a sense of entitlement and abuse of power! Will no one stand up to her?

That outburst prompted a phone call to Jackson Lee from Rebecca Cox, vice president of Continental’s government affairs office in Washington and the wife of California Republican Chris Cox. The message? Straighten up and fly right, or don’t fly with us.

Finally, look how she treats her own staff:

A year earlier, at a March 2, 1998, reenactment of the march on Selma, an irate Jackson Lee called her scheduler in D.C. demanding to know why she hadn’t been given a ride to the event by the organizer, as a white colleague had been. According to the aide–who quit after just a month and a half on the job–Jackson Lee shrieked, “You don’t understand. I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen.” [emphasis mine]

There you have it — the Queen of Congressional Loonies. Michele Bachmann is no prize, but she doesn’t come anywhere near Lee as far as craziness goes. Bachmann isn’t even in the same league.

Prove me wrong — I dare you!

Heck, we’d probably be strolling on Mars by 1980 at this rate, right? Well, as we all know, I was completely wrong there.

The fact that the space program, for all intents and purposes, was killed off shortly after the flight of Apollo 17 by the government budget process is only one of the harsh realities which sully the memory of America’s greatest scientific achievement. The other harsh reality is the existence of the conspiracy theorists who, to this day, claim that man never went to the moon.

Their theories have all been debunked by a plethora of highly-educated scientists and ordinary citizens too. They have been ridiculed for decades, yet they still cling to the belief that the U.S. government of the late 1960′s was able to convince the more than one million people involved with the space program to keep their mouths shut for over 40 years to keep the cover-up secret.

The New York Times talks about one of these whack jobs in an article published on July 13th, 2009:

Mr. Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a Bible, insisting that they swear on camera they had walked on the Moon. He so annoyed Buzz Aldrin in 2002 — ambushing him with his Bible and calling him “a coward, and a liar, and a thief” — that Mr. Aldrin punched Mr. Sibrel in the face. Law enforcement officials refused to file charges against Mr. Aldrin, the second man on the Moon.

In an interview, Mr. Sibrel said that his efforts to prove that men never walked on the Moon has cost him dearly. “I have suffered only persecution and financial loss,” he said. “I’ve lost visitation with my son. I’ve been expelled from churches. All because I believe the Moon landings are fraudulent.”

Well, we may finally be able to put the lie to these nutcases and their wild theories once and for all, thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The LRO was launched by NASA on June 18, 2009 and tasked with:

LRO will spend at least a year in a low polar orbit approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the lunar surface, while its seven instruments find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment and test new technology.

In addition, the LRO is taking high resolution photos of the surface of the moon, which will include at least some of the Apollo landing sites.

Jesus Diaz: Would the LRO return images of the moon landings when it flies over them?
Grey Hautaluoma (NASA Headquarters, Office of Public Affairs): Yes, it will. We don’t have a timeline yet for viewing the Apollo sites, but it will be in the near future.

My insides tell me that whatever the photos reveal, the crackpots will just come up with another conspiracy theory to explain them away, like they have done with the lunar rock samples. Oh well, at least the normal people will know that they’re full of dung.

This picture was captioned: All this 9/11 worship is ghoulish and downright silly.

A day of commemoration for nearly three thousand innocent people killed by radical Islamic terrorists, and Liberals make it the butt of a joke. Words fail me.

While you are remembering and honoring those lost, please take a moment to remember one more thing:

Barack Obama takes these people seriously.

These images were taken from Right Wing News. which brought them to my attention.

A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.

A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.

“Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet,” the Imam says, according to the report. “If you don’t believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain.”

The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam’s position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.

As far as I’m concerned, Ann Coulter was right.

The reason we fans won’t be able to see the game is because the NFL Network, who is broadcasting the game, and several cable companies (mine is Time Warner, so I’ll use them) can’t decide how much more they want for carrying this channel. According to the NFL Network, here is what is happening:

FACT: It costs only 2 cents per subscriber a day for cable companies to offer NFL Network, yet they want to charge you up to $10 per month for the right to watch NFL Network.

FACT: Although more than 222 million Americans watched NFL football last year, the cable companies argue that NFL Network’s audience is too small to justify a spot in the basic lineup. Yet they manage to offer less popular sports channels they own, like Versus and the Golf Channel, on basic cable.

FACT: Cable has a double standard when it comes to sports channels. Channels they own, like Versus and the Golf Channel are included in the basic lineup. Independent channels like NFL Network get left out in the cold. This is unfair and anti-consumer. Consumer interest should decide what channels get carried – not inside deals among cable companies.

Here is Time Warner’s side of the argument:

Q4. How much is the NFL asking Time Warner Cable to pay for the Network?

A4. This is about price AND value. And the NFL needs to get real. The asking price for this network is not in line with the content it plans to deliver. NFLN is still evolving – its viewership is too small to even be rated. So we don’t really know how many people are watching it nationally.

We cannot get into negotiation specifics. But they are asking for a greater per-subscriber fee than today’s top rated networks. We won’t pay superstar prices for an untested rookie.

Sure, hardcore NFL fans love NFLN. But its programming is limited to only 8 games out of 238 available in the 2006 regular season and other shows targeted specifically to a limited audience. Because of the nature of its targeted programming and its price it belongs as part of a sports package where only those interested need to pay.

Well, after reading all of this, I have come to some conclusions regarding this whole situation:

• Both sides are being pig-headed in an attempt to be seen by the public as fighting to keep their cable costs down.
• Time Warner is being just as greedy as the NFL on this one. TWC wants to charge each subscriber $10 a month extra to carry an entire tier of programming just so they can watch the NFL Network, which only costs TWC $0.60 a month per subscriber to carry. The NFL wants that $0.60 per subscriber from the entire customer base, not just the the subscribers to the Sports Tier.
• Both sides seem to be a bit disingenuous when representing the other side in their ads. TWC keeps telling people that the NFL Network is a “niche” network and no one knows how many people will watch it. We all know that football passed baseball several years ago as the national pastime; many millions will watch the NFL Network during the season. However, there is a real question as to how many of those 222 million people cited by the NFL will watch the NFL Network during the off-season, when no new games will be shown.

No matter how this situation is resolved, the after-effects will be similar to the after-effects of a strike by the players. I know that I won’t forget the fact that their “negotiations” prevented me from seeing my favorite team play in the biggest game so far this season. I’ll also have to take a look at the cable bill the next time it comes in the mail and determine if I am really getting my money’s worth or not. I mean, its great to have all of those channels, but do I really need 20 different HBO, Showtime, and Starz channels? It might be a good idea to check out the satellite companies and see if my wife and I could be happy with a much lower bill and a lot less filler channels.

In the meantime, I guess I have to watch a DVD or surf the Internet tonight, instead of supporting my favorite team as they remind Bret Favre that it is time to retire.

Ahh, but this is the left-coast. You just knew it wasn’t going to end there.

The Port of Seattle’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee (hereinafter “Dirtwads”) has decided that from now on, trees can be displayed at Christmas Time at the airport, but no specific religious decorations will be used to ensure that nobody gets offended.

Welcome to the port’s holiday forest.

There may be firs or hemlocks, spruces or pines at Sea-Tac Airport this holiday season, but there will not be a Christmas tree.

Not by definition, anyway.

Nor will menorahs or Buddhas be present.

So recommended the Port of Seattle’s Holiday Decorations Advisory Committee on Thursday.

“No specific religious symbols should be used,” recommended the committee, formed after the port was slammed internationally for yanking down — then reinstating — its airport’s nine Christmas trees last December.

In trying to craft holiday decorations that won’t offend or exclude anyone, the decorations committee — chaired by K + L Gates counsel Fredric Tausend — kept it neutral.

So, in an effort to cater to probably 0.0001% of the population, the Dirtwads have decided to offend the remaining 99.9999% of the population by removing Christmas decorations from the trees, and instead have a bunch of trees with no specific purpose or meaning displayed throughout the airport. Brilliant. Prevent offense by denying the existence of the holiday.

Port of Seattle Airport Division Managing Director Mark Reis said that just because a tree is permitted doesn’t mean it will be gussied up to look like Christmas.

“The very traditional single, iconic Christmas trees is not one of the areas we will be exploring,” Reis said. “There is the traditional, conical-shaped single tree — that the von Trapp family would have presents beneath and with balls and lights on it — versus something more natural and outdoors looking in a Northwest setting.”

I think these Dirtwads are afraid of Christmas Trees. I can’t really think of anything else to explain this. I thought the whole idea behind diversity, as preached by liberals, was to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs. How does removing Christmas Trees from public display show tolerance? If anything, it shows intolerance of other religious beliefs.

Here’s an idea: instead of removing the Christmas Trees, what if the Dirtwads allowed the Jewish community to decorate their own display at the airport? Why is that so hard?

But rather than risk having multiple religions make requests for inclusion, the committee decided to aim for expressing the overarching principals — the “universal values” — at the heart of the religions whose holidays anchor the season.

Why is including more than one religion a risk? Isn’t having more than one religion practically the definition of diversity? Why dilute the meaning of the holiday to the point of no meaning at all?

So, instead of Christmas Trees next Christmas Season, folks at the Seattle airport will be treated to a “peace and harmony” fir tree, if in fact, they will allow a fir tree to be placed in the display at all.

How does any of this make sense?

It doesn’t! As usual, the liberals of the Northwest have taken a perfectly harmless tradition and loaded it down with so much crap that the only thing they can do is something incredibly stupid.

These people are in control of Congress. Think about that tonight when you go to bed.

HAT TIP: Michelle Malkin

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Filmmaker Michael Moore has asked the Bush administration to call off an investigation of his trip to Cuba to get treatment for ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers for a segment in his upcoming health-care expose, “Sicko.”

Moore, who made the hit documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ assailing President Bush’s handling of Sept. 11, said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday that the White House may have opened the investigation for political reasons.

Moore doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that by traveling to Cuba without obtaining permission from the government (no matter who is in charge) he has broken the embargo against Cuba, which has been in place for years. In fact, if you read the entirety of his letter to Secretary Paulson you can see for yourself that he spends all of the letter complaining about what he perceives as political shenanigans on the part of the Bush Administration over the past five or six years, while mentioning his transgression in only one sentence:

First, the Bush Administration has been aware of this matter for months (since October 2006) and never took any action until less than two weeks before SiCKO is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and a little more than a month before it is scheduled to open in the United States.

Believe it or not, Mr. Moore actually did apply for permission from the Treasury Department to travel to Cuba as a working journalist. I guess he just didn’t think he had to wait for the Treasury Department to render a decision on his request, because if he wants to go to Cuba that’s his right. Obviously, he states, the only reason the Bush Administration is investigating him because of politics and donations from big pharmaceutical companies. Pay no attention to that whole, “ignoring the law which has been in place for years” thing he did.

Michael Moore has a problem with his self-image. Apparently, he thinks that the entire Bush Administration has nothing better to do than to spend its resources trying to stop him from producing and releasing his “movies.” Never mind the fact that Moore has never had a single problem from any Administration when it came to the release of his other “movies,” the Bush Administration is obviously putting that whole “terrorism” thing aside, as well as that whole “North Korean nuclear” thing, on the back burner just so they can target and go after poor little Mikey.

Hey, Mike, listen up! You. Are. Not. That. Important. Get over yourself. I realize that this may be hard for you to understand and comprehend, but no one in the Bush Administration cares about your “movie” or your conspiracy theories. If this next “movie” is anything like your previous “movies” it will be long forgotten and completely debunked before the end of 2007.

Although I would agree that you are large enough to qualify as a celestial body, you must realize that the Earth does not revolve around you and your ideas.

The war in Iraq “is lost” and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.

“I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week,” Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

“I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear … I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically.”

Never mind that by making this statement publicly, Mr. Reid has almost single-handedly destroyed the morale of most of the troops now serving in Iraq. Never mind that by making this statement publicly, Mr.Reid has just told the enemy that if they can just hold on a little longer we’ll be out of their hair, and oh, by the way, our soldiers won’t be getting that equipment and additional funding they need. Mr. Reid, did you ever think that being “the odd guy out” may mean that you’re wrong? I mean, what gives you the idea that you know better than seasoned military personnel? Actions like this are why Conservatives have been questioning your patriotism for months, if not years. Personally, I don’t question your patriotism as I find it hard to question something you don’t possess.

I always thought that giving aid and comfort to the enemy was grounds for being tried for treason. To do so in the course of a pursuit for political advantage in the next election is even worse, which is what Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of the Congressional Democrats are doing.

Don’t forget, that while the Democrats are stalling the passage of the supplemental war funding bill, the military is already having to cut back on supplies for the troops. Its their “slow bleed” tactics in full bloom. Just exactly how is this “supporting the troops”?