SodaHead - Ken "Don't tread on me!"'s Blog

A National Salute to Bob Hope and the Military

2009-11-17T19:47:10Z

+17 raves

I thought you might be interested in this "National Salute to Bob Hope," located on San Diego Bay next to the USS Midway exhibit. The tribute consists of a bronze of Bob Hope and military personnel of all eras from WWII to the Gulf War. There are photos and a video with the men responsible for the tribute, survivors of the Battle Off Samar Island. The video also depicts, briefly, the nearby monument to "Taffy 3", the unit of destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers that held off an attack by the bulk of the Japanese fleet, headed by battleships and cruisers, on October 25, 1944. The Navy lost over 900 men on one day, in that single battle. Admiral "Bull" Halsey called it the U.S. Navy's finest moment.

Click on the link to view:
http://www.portofsandiego.org/public-art/view-the-art-directo...

New Gov't. Breast-Cancer Screening Advice: Have Cuts In Care Already Begun?

2009-11-17T05:11:29Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+14 raves

Breast-Screening Advice Is Upended

By SHIRLEY S. WANG -- Wall Street Journal For years, women have been taught to perform regular breast self-exams and those 40 and older told to undergo annual mammograms to detect breast cancer, a disease that kills about 40,000 people in the U.S. every year. Now, new guidelines released by an influential government-funded authority on screening offer this message: never mind.

Health Blog
Breast Self-Examinations: What's Wrong With Them?

The new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, state that routine mammograms aren't necessary for women of average cancer risk in their 40s, and that women between 50 and 74 years old don't need to undergo mammograms more often than every other year. They also recommend that physicians abstain from teaching women how to examine their breasts for signs of cancer because of a lack of evidence that it is of any benefit.

The guidelines were based on a routine review of research published since the last set of recommendations and a new analysis of data. The guidelines were formed by weighing benefits of screening compared with the harms of false positives, such as anxiety and unnecessary additional tests and biopsies, which are expensive and time-consuming, according to Diana Petitti, vice-chairman of the task force.

The task-force recommendations only apply to women without a family risk of breast cancer and who don't have genetic mutations known to be associated with breast cancer, such as the presence of BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

By scrubbing the previous recommendation of annual mammograms for women 40 and older, the new guidelines are likely to be controversial and confusing. They also raise concerns that health insurers will curtail coverage and reimbursements for screenings that fall outside the guidelines, according to doctors and groups including the American Cancer Society.

Phil Evans, a professor of radiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and president of the Society for Breast Imaging, says he was "shocked" by the changes. "There's a ton of scientific data in this country and others on screening that shows a significant benefit for women between 40 and 49 to be screened," he says.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association recommend annual mammograms for women starting at age 40, while the American College of Physicians recommends women in their 40s decide for themselves whether to seek annual exams.

The task force, which receives funding from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality but is independent from the government, last issued guidelines for breast cancer in 2002. "The task force isn't saying there isn't a benefit" to screening women in their 40s, but "we're saying the benefit is small," Dr. Petitti said. "The change really is a change between do it routinely and don't do it routinely." Women 40 and older who are free of any symptoms should talk with their doctors and decide with them whether to put off screening for a few years, she said.

Screening Guidelines: Then and Now
Mammography
2002: Recommended every 1 to 2 years for all women older than 40
2009: Recommends against routine screening for women 40 to 49; recommends mammograms every 2 years for women 50 to 74; insufficient evidence to conclude benefit or harm of mammograms for women 75 and older
Breast Self-Examination
2002: Insufficient evidence to conclude benefit or harm
2009: Recommends against teaching BSE
Digital and MRI Mammography
2002: Not addressed in guidelines
2009: Insufficient evidence to conclude benefit or harm
Source: U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines published in 2002 and 2009

Whether the new guidelines lead to changes in insurance reimbursement is likely to be a big concern among health providers and patients.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers government health benefits for the elderly and the poor, says the new guidelines wouldn't change how it covers mammograms for Medicare patients. But that may not be the case for private insurance. The task force guidelines tend to influence public and private insurers' coverage decisions, though they aren't the only factor, according to John Ayanian, a professor of medicine and health-care policy at Harvard Medical School who published a paper last year on the impact of cost-sharing on mammogram usage rates in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plan, an industry trade group, says she anticipates mammogram coverage will continue even for those who fall outside the new guidelines' target age range. What may change, she says, are insurers' aggressive outreach efforts to get women to get their screening, such as the reminder postcards they used to receive about getting their annual mammogram.

Eric Winer, chief scientific adviser of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast-cancer advocacy foundation, and director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, says that "at a minimum, what we can say is that women and their doctors have a right to make a decision about whether they should be screened. If they don't have financial coverage, then they don't have that right."

Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com

Note: Am I being overly suspicious when I think that these cuts in the frequency of breast-cancer examinations are a way to cut the costs of health care? For years we have been told by the medical profession that the best way to treat cancer is to catch it as early as possible, now, on the cusp of a government take-over of our health care system, a "government funded study" is telling women that they can start mamograms a decade later, at 50 instead of 40, and cut the frequency of the exams in half as well?

10 Percent of U.S. Mosques Preach Jihad, FBI Estimates

2009-11-11T00:11:24Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+1 raves

10 Percent of U.S. Mosques Preach Jihad, FBI Estimates Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:09 PM By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size Imams preach jihad and extremism in 10 percent of the 2,000 mosques in the United States, the FBI estimates. That sums up the problem facing us as we ponder the meaning of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s slayings of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. Given his association with a pro-al-Qaida imam in northern Virginia and his preoccupation with radical Islamic Web sites, it’s clear that the radical element of Islam influenced Hasan. On the other hand, those who condemn Muslims in general because of the actions of Hasan and others like him are engaging in prejudice that has no place in America. Indeed, such stereotyping sets back the war on terror, because we need moderate Muslims on our side. The problem is not the Quran, which is no more incendiary than some passages in the Bible. (Deuteronomy, for example, prescribes stoning to death for those who “served other gods and worshipped them.”) The problem is the radical element that uses the Quran as an excuse to engage in terrorism and the failure of many moderate Muslims to condemn the extremists. About a quarter of the Muslims in America ages 18 through 29 believe that suicide bombings can be justified, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Generating those attitudes are imams who preach jihad and hatred in American mosques and postings on the Internet, according to FBI counterterrorism officials interviewed for my book “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack.” Saying he is being conservative, an FBI counterterrorism official told me in interviews for the book that 1 in 10 imams preach jihad. Before 9/11, the number of mosques where imams preached jihad was even greater than today. “Those who actively support extremist causes, say America is evil and deserves what it gets, and celebrate the death of soldiers, know they may come to our attention,” an FBI official says. “So they don’t do it as openly now.” Before 9/11, he says, “There was much more of that because all of it was considered by Justice Department guidelines to be purely protected speech. We do not have incitement laws in America, but once an imam facilitates someone else taking action, he has crossed the line into material support and becomes our business.” An example was Ali al-Timimi, a spiritual leader at a mosque in Northern Virginia who preached jihad and provided contact information for those who went to Afghanistan for training in terrorist camps. Al-Timimi is serving a life prison term. The FBI has outreach programs to try to develop sources in the Muslim community and solicit tips, but FBI agents have found little receptivity. They find that Muslims often are in denial about the fact that the terrorists who threaten the U.S. are Muslims. “I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in D.C.,” a frustrated counterterrorism agent says. “And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’” The agent began laughing. “Okay, you know what I’ll do?” the agent said. “I’ll start an Irish squad, or how about a Japanese squad? You want me to waste my time and your taxpayers' dollars going to look at the Irish? They’re not killing Americans. Right now, I’m going to put my money and my people in a place where the threat is.” The agent tells them to take a look at the cells that the FBI has rolled up in the United States. “I can name the home-grown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to murder Americans,” the agent says. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants, it’s the Muslims.” In response, Muslim groups have told him he is rough around the edges. “I’m not rough around the edges,” he tells them. “You’re just not used to straight talk.” They respond by getting angry at him. Although Muslims occasionally condemn al-Qaida, “Rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” one agent says. “They want to fix it inside the community. They’re a closed group, a very, very closed group. It’s part of their culture that they want to settle the problem within their own communities. They’ve actually said that to us, which I then go crazy over.” On the one hand, “They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community,” the agent says. “Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everyone already knows it. That horse has left the barn. So there’s a lot of talk about engagement, but realistically, we’ve got a long, long way to go.” At one meeting, a Muslim group suggested having a photo taken of its members with FBI Director Robert Mueller to show their community isn’t a bunch of terrorists and that they are partners in the war on terror. An agent replied, “Let me make a suggestion: When you bring to my attention real extremists who are here to plan and do something, who are here supporting terrorism, and I work that based on your information, then I promise you, I will have the director stand up on the stage with you.” To the agent’s amazement, the answer was: “That could never happen. We would lose our constituency. We could never admit to bringing someone to the FBI.” “Well, we’ve just defined the problem, haven’t we?” the agent told them. To be sure, some individual Muslims have brought leads to the FBI. That led to FBI cases in Lackawanna, N.Y.; Lodi, Calif.; and Atlanta. But the FBI has found that imams and other community leaders are reluctant to do that. If the news media filmed imams preaching hated of America in mosques that are public, the number of imams publicly espousing jihad would dwindle to close to zero. Until that happens, Americans must learn to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. “In recent years, U.S. soldiers have fought a common enemy on behalf of and often alongside Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Somalia, and elsewhere,” the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial. “The U.S. is fighting a sworn enemy today, just as in World War II American Germans, Italians and Japanese fought sworn U.S. enemies of the same race and religion. Many American Muslims will do the same if we stay focused on the real enemy, and show we have the will to do what’s necessary to find them and stop them.” Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now. © 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Thomas Sowell -- Lying About The "Costs" of PelosiObama Care

2009-11-08T20:44:10Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+1 raves

The "Costs" of Medical Care by Thomas Sowell We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is "too high"-- either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs. There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor's office and more in taxes-- or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you. Costs are not reduced simply because you don't pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past. Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive-- but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch. Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance-- and fewer people who can afford it. Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them. If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If doctors' incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors' offices. What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the work. Britain has had a government-run medical system for more than half a century and it has to import doctors, including some from Third World countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors' income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences. Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles. There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them. The high costs of "defensive medicine"-- expensive tests, medications and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than to help the patients-- could be reduced by not letting lawyers get away with filing frivolous lawsuits. If a court of law determines that the claims made in such lawsuits are bogus, then those who filed those claims could be forced to reimburse those who have been sued for all their expenses, including their attorneys' fees and the lost time of people who have other things to do. But politicians who get huge campaign contributions from lawyers are not about to pass laws to do this. Why should they, when it is so much easier just to start a political stampede with fiery rhetoric and glittering promises? As always, a startlingly simple truth, a breath of fresh air, from Thomas Sowell!

More Evidence of News Bias: CBS & NBC Fail to ID Hasan as Muslim

2009-11-06T18:08:55Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+36 raves

From MediaResearchCenter.org: CBS and NBC Fail to ID Hasan as Muslim; ABC's Raddatz Relays: 'I Wish His Name was Smith' By: Brent Baker November 05, 2009 20:48 ET Neither the CBS Evening News nor NBC Nightly News, in their East coast feeds Thursday night, noted the Muslim religious beliefs of the mass killer at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas, but ABC anchor Charles Gibson wasn't cowed by political correctness as he teased World News, “Fort Hood tragedy: An Army officer, a Muslim convert, is the suspect in a shooting spree...” Introducing his first story, Gibson referred to how Major Nidal Malik Hasan “an army officer, a Muslim, opened fire with handguns...” (With a range of frequency, during late afternoon/early evening coverage, CNN, FNC and MSNBC all identified Hasan as a Muslim.) Cryptically, ABC's senior foreign affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, concluded a story on reaction at Fort Hood: “As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'” So, a concern this will lead to groundless fear of Muslims? The CBS Evening News avoided any mention of Islam or Muslim faith as Katie Couric provided this benign description: “Today, according to the Army, a soldier opened fire....He's identified tonight as Army Major Nadal Malik Hasan, a licensed psychiatrist and drug and rehab specialist from Bethesda, Maryland.” NBC anchor Brian Williams: “The soldier, identified as the initial gunman here, is an Army psychiatrist, Nadal Malik Hasan. He's an officer, a Major, and he was apparently armed with two handguns.” NBC's Pete Williams insisted, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, “everything about his background is rock solid, and nothing extraordinary stands out about his background.” (At another moment on ABC, Gibson he pointed out there's “confusion” over whether Hasan was convert or was born a Muslim. Brian Ross then offered that he “attended Damascus University in Syria and may be Jordanian -- likely not a convert if that's the case.”) From the latter part of the story narrated from Washington, DC by Raddatz on the Thursday, November 5 World News on ABC: MARTHA RADDATZ: Fort Hood's 1st Cavalry Division is currently deployed to Iraq, making this all the more tragic. This woman's husband is among the soldiers in Iraq. WOMAN: He's really upset. He's freaking out. Yeah, it says [reading from PDA], “I'm freaking out here. I have no idea what's going on. The guys keep asking questions. Can someone please tell us something?” I don't believe for a second that a soldier could do this to another soldier at Fort Hood. I just, I don't believe it. SECOND WOMAN: It's very, very stressful and we don't know what's going on. RADDATZ: And on Capitol Hill late today, a moment of silence. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said the shooter was about to be deployed. SENATOR HUTCHISON: The shooters were military people. And of course that's very troubling. RADDATZ, ON SCREEN AT ANCHOR DESK: As for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, "I wish his name was Smith." Charlie. — Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center Another little tidbit that is just coming to light is that Major Hasan was on the FBI's "watch list" for posting praise for Islamic suicide bombers on the web!

Larry Elder Debunks Myth of Fox News' Bias

2009-11-05T19:39:25Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

0 raves

Fox Fever -- The Latest Pandemic by Larry Elder I spoke at a recent town hall forum. The many issues discussed included the Obama administration's attack on Fox News. Later, one of the audience members came up to me and sneered, "Well, even you must admit that Fox News is biased in favor of Republicans." Separate the opinion guys from the news deliverers. Does Fox focus on stuff that the others -- MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS -- do not? Yes. Is that stuff more critical of liberals and less critical of conservatives? Yes. The best gauge is who watches these stations. Fox News Channel, as a percentage of viewers, includes more self-described libs and indies than CNN or MSNBC includes self-described conservatives and indies. Pew Research Center recently studied the cable channels' viewers' politics. CNN? Fifty-one percent liberal, 23 percent independent and 18 percent conservative. MSNBC? Forty-five percent liberal, 27 percent independent and 18 percent conservative. Don't know about the "fair" part, but Fox's audience was the most "balanced," with 39 percent conservatives, 33 percent liberals and 22 percent independents. I know from my appearances that the audiences differ -- at least as to the e-mail I receive. When I appear on Fox, as I did to promote my latest book, "What's Race Got to Do with It," I get mostly approving e-mail. When I get one that disagrees, the writer points out -- using facts, information or analogies -- what, in his or her opinion, undermines my position. But when I appear on Wolf Blitzer's CNN show -- oh, man! Hundreds of hostile e-mails accuse me of everything but the Lincoln assassination. Only rarely, such as when someone took exception to the book's premise -- that white racism no longer poses a potent or even significant factor in America -- does anyone argue intelligently, with facts or information. It's snarl, attack, name-call. On a recent appearance on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show, I opposed Obamacare -- or tried to, given the host's interruptions. The e-mails I received were unprintable. The White House loathes Fox News. President Obama pointedly excluded Fox while appearing on ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN. Obama's communications director, on CNN, complained about Fox's year-old coverage of Obama's campaign. But a Pew Research Center study found that during the last six weeks of the campaign, 61 percent of CNN's stories on John McCain were negative, compared with 39 percent on Obama. On MSNBC, 73 percent of McCain stories were negative, while only 14 percent of stories on Obama were negative. But 40 percent of Fox News' stories on Obama and 40 percent of those on McCain aired during the final six weeks of the race were negative. So, of the three major cable news networks, who can legitimately claim to be more "fair and balanced"? But let's assume, for the sake of argument, Fox News slants toward conservatives. On one side stand conservative talk radio, Investor's Business Daily and some conservative/libertarian publications, writers, bloggers and, yes, Fox News. On the other stand The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and even the news section of The Wall Street Journal, as well as the editorial pages of virtually every big-city newspaper. It includes PBS, NPR, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC. In the 1992 presidential election, for example, almost 90 percent of Washington-based journalists admitted to voting for Bill Clinton for president. But because Fox News is allegedly biased in favor of conservatives, critics whine like children whose lunch money got snatched. Conservatives have been pummeled for decades. Now that Fox News and conservative talk radio give people alternatives, critics squeal as if being sodomized. Is Fox skeptical about the "bailout" and Cash for Clunkers or more likely to blame government rather than "greed" for the housing meltdown? Yes. Does Fox appear to focus more on Obama's dithering over his top Afghanistan commander's request for the troops the general thinks necessary to succeed? Yes. The better question is, why aren't the others doing the same thing? The double standards and pro-liberal negligence are mind-boggling. If media malpractice were a crime, many "reporters" would be on death row. When the Obama administration claimed 640,000 jobs were "saved or created" with $159 billion of the "stimulus," many "news" outlets blithely "reported" this. Do you know that comes to $250,000 per job?!!! And the administration claimed half the jobs were teachers. How many teachers make $250,000 per year? Very little skepticism. Why didn't "journalists" immediately challenge this as a matter of who, what, where, when and why? If George W. Bush had done this (God forbid he'd have supported an $800 billion stimulus package), the mainstream media would have -- and should have -- said, "Why, that comes to $250K per job!!!!!" But as to Fox News, it's BMW -- bitch, moan and whine. Oh, the humanity!

9/29/2009: Confirmed - Global Warming "hockey stick" is a fraud!

2009-10-30T04:57:22Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+13 raves

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 Confirmed! Global warming "hockey stick" graph a fraud - data cherry-picked to show effect that wasn't there! The hockey stick graph is a classic from years back, that has now been proven to be a fraud perpetrated by those pushing a liberal agenda, and using the debunked theory of man-made global warming to justify it. The graph was a centerpiece of Al Gore's fear-mongering. The researchers that made it refused to disclose their data, even though the study was funded with taxpayer money. Now we know why. I wrote on the hoax before (The hockey stick hoax), and showed that the hockey stick graph is totally inconsistent with data gathered in Europe: The lead scientist was global warming alarmist Michael Mann, who should be stripped of any further academic duty by virtue of scientific fraud. In essence, man-made global warming is a hoax. It is not man-made, but it is Mann-made. From Planet Gore (via Climate Depot): 1: In 1998, a paper is published by Dr. Michael Mann, then at the University of Virginia, now a Penn State climatologist, and co-authors Bradley and Hughes. The paper is named: Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations. The paper becomes known as MBH98. The conclusion of tree ring reconstruction of climate for the past 1,000 years is that we are now in the hottest period in modern history, ever. ...Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, suspects tree rings aren't telling a valid story with that giant uptick at the right side of the graph, implicating the 20th century as the "hottest period in 1000 years," which alarmists latch onto as proof of AGW. The graph is dubbed the "Hockey Stick" and becomes famous worldwide. Al Gore uses it in his movie An Inconvenient Truth in the famous "elevator scene." 2: Steve attempts to replicate Michael Mann's tree ring work in the paper MBH98, but is stymied by lack of data archiving. He sends dozens of letters over the years trying to get access to data but access is denied. McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, of the University of Guelph publish a paper in 2004 criticizing the work. A new website is formed in 2004 called Real Climate, by the people who put together the tree ring data and they denounce the scientific criticism: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/false-c... 3: Years go by.McIntyre is still stymied trying to get access to the original source data so that he can replicate the Mann 1998 conclusion. In 2008 Mann publishes another paper in bolstering his tree ring claim due to all of the controversy surrounding it. A Mann co-author and source of tree ring data (Professor Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit) used one of the tree ring data series (Yamal in Russia) in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 2008, which has a strict data archiving policy. Thanks to that policy, Steve McIntyre fought and won access to that data just last week. 4: Having the Yamal data in complete form, McIntyre replicates it, and discovers that one of Mann's co-authors, Briffa, had cherry picked 10 tree data sets out of a much larger set of trees sampled in Yamal. 5: When all of the tree ring data from Yamal is plotted, the famous hockey stick disappears. Not only does it disappear, but goes negative. The conclusion is inescapable. The tree ring data was hand-picked to get the desired result. Here are the relevant graphs showing the fraud: Ouch! The only questions remaining now are 1) is Mann going to be thrown out for scientific fraud, possibly the worse offense one can make in academia; and 2) will the MSM notice and report on the hoax as much as they reported on it when the hockey stick graph was introduced? Chris Horner wonders: So now the question is, if tree rings scream and their message is one that few want to hear, does their message get heard? Steve McIntyre has the money quote: I hardly know where to begin in terms of commentary on this difference. - Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit in Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem The above information is from http://www.sodahead.com/world-news/9292009-confirmed---global... NOTE: Despite the discreditation of Mann's "hockey stick" graph as an out-and-out fraud, the purveyors of AGW hysteria are still relying on it! It this month's issue of Scientific American, at p. 21, there is an article entitled "Still Hotter Than Ever" which claims that a "new reconstruction of the past 600 years" "finds similar results." They just won't give up!

Dismantling America -- by Thomas Sowell

2009-10-28T17:38:30Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+5 raves

Dismantling America by Thomas Sowell Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent? Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish? Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments? Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones? Does any of this sound like America? How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough. How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries. We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American. How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin. Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country. Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people. Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children. Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House? Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world. Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list. Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation. About The Author -------------------------------------------------------------... Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute of Stanford University and author of "The Housing Boom and Bust."

The Fun Theory -- Non-Political

2009-10-20T19:11:42Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+3 raves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw Click on the link - the video is only 1:48 long!

Obama Finances Offshore Drilling - To Benefit George Soros!

2009-10-19T05:34:51Z

Ken "Don't tread on me!"

+29 raves

Too bad it's not in U.S. waters - it's to a company in which Obama's benefactor George Soros holds ten million shares! [From the Wall Street Journal Online] You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas. But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire. The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19. This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home. Well it seems that Obama's good friend and buddy... and democratic supporter George Soros, just increased his holdings in Petrobas before the loan was guaranteed -- Petrobas is, in fact, Soros' largest single equity holding.... YES FOLKS GEORGE SOROS OWNS OVER 10 MILLION SHARES OF THIS COMPANY AND IT IS HIS SINGLE LARGEST EQUITY HOLDING... AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CAN NOT DO ENOUGH FOR THEIR SUPPORTERS... WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS DESTROYING THE U.S. AND HELPING THOSE WHO HELP THEM GET RICHER..... NO drilling for us in the U.S. (heaven forbid we should become energy independent!)... but .. oh a little $10 Billion Loan Guarantee for good old George Soros' oil company in Brazil ... no problemo.