DarkStar Spouts Off

Science or Silence

Science or SILENCE The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports. Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.

She Should Have Learned To "Clap" It

She should have learned to "make it clap".

A 38-year-old former Miss Argentina has died over the weekend from complications resulting from cosmetic surgery, friends say.

"This woman who had everything is dead because she wanted to have a slightly firmer ass," said Roberto Piazza, a fashion designer and close friend of Solange Magnano.

Magnano, Miss Argentina 1994 and a married mother of eight-year-old twins, went under the knife on Thursday at a plastic surgery centre in Buenos Aires.

She was rushed to the hospital on Friday suffering from a pulmonary embolism, and died on Sunday, her friends said.

Just, wow.

Question About a Scam

I have a question about "climate change" and carbon credits.

If you are convinced that "climate change" is a direct result of human energy consumption, then why are you not raising a ruckus over carbon credits? Here is what I don't understand. If someone burns energy that compares to 1.5 times "normal use", and another person only burns energy at a level of 0.5 "normal use", why is it reasonable to allow the person who burns "too much" to "buy carbon credits" from someone who doesn't burn energy in a wasteful way?

I just don't understand it.

Lie Enough and It Becomes Fact

Mychal Massie wrote:

In lessons inculcated down through recent generations, they have taught blacks in their stockyards to assault other blacks. It was blacks that pelted then Republican candidate Michael Steele with Oreo cookies. Even though Michael is a moderate Republican, he is still a Republican. And that means he must be destroyed – discrediting him would not be enough.

Actually, Mychal Massie LIED. Robert Erhlich AND his running mate Michael Steele have both said bussed in union members were the people causing disruption before the debate. Blacks weren't involved.

Now Can People Say "Climate Change" Is A Fraud?

Now
can we say that "climate change" is a fraud?

I'm Feelin' This One

"Healthcare" Vote: The Fix Is In

If the Dems didn't think they had the votes to get the "health care" bill to the floor, they would have never scheduled the vote, especially on a Saturday.

It's a done deal folks. No matter what the bill in the Senate looks like, it will be voted on and it will pass. Then the bill will go to resolution between the House and the Senate and that's where the real damage will be done. Things not in the bill will be placed in the bill. Earmarks will be placed in the bill. Things people said can't make the cut, will be put in the bill.

This really bites.

Ladies & Gentlemen! In Ring #1!!!!!!

Let the circus begin!!!!

NEW YORK (AP) - The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

"Their assessment is negative," he said.

Do I really have to write anything?

I mean really. Do I have to write anything?

Ladies & Gentlemen! In Ring #1!!!!!!

Let the circus begin!!!!

NEW YORK (AP) - The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it."

The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Mohammed, Ali and the others will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy," Fenstermaker said.

"Their assessment is negative," he said.

Do I really have to write anything?

I mean really. Do I have to write anything?

Money Quote From Cal Thomas

From Cal Thomas:

Victimization plays well with the conservative base and that's a problem. If conservatives don't rise from the muck of feeling excluded, disrespected, ignored and mocked, they will continue to suffer all of these things. There is nothing like proving the worth of your ideas to put the mockers in their place. Victimization can raise money, sell books and get one face time on TV, but it doesn't advance the ball.

Defend This

I want those people who automatically defend the actions of the police to defend the tasering of a 10 year old girl.

NOVEMBER 18--An Arkansas cop tasered an unruly 10-year-old girl after her mother called police to report that the child was crying, screaming, and refusing to go to bed. The tased girl, Kiara Medlock, is about 65 pounds and 4' 6", according to her father. Anthony Medlock, a truck driver who does not live with the fifth grader and her mother, provided TSG with a recent photo of his daughter, which can be seen at right. According to the below Ozark Police Department report, when Officer Dustin Bradshaw arrived at the residence last Thursday, he found the girl "screaming, kicking, and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her." Bradshaw added that, "Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to."

This is insane. The cop should be fired and the child should be removed from her egg donor's care.

It's Time, Don't You Think?

Don't you think it's due time to cut off Jesse Jackson, Sr's nuts?

Changing Health "Standards"

Last week and the week before I had some sort of bug. Mrs. D.S. nagged me enough that I went to the doctor to see about it. During the examination, the doctor's assistant told me I had high blood pressure, based on the "new blood pressure standard created by the blood pressure experts." Under the old standard, I would not have been marked as having high blood pressure. I laughed because my pressure was raised from what my blood pressure norm.

Monday, while talking with Mrs. D.S., I heard the newscaster state a government medical panel has changed the recommendation for regular breast cancer screening from 40 to 50. When I heard that, I went on a quick mini-rant about changing standards, asking who knows what's the right answer for anything these days.

Tuesday, while driving, I remembered Mrs. D.S.'s friend who found out she had breast cancer. She was in her late 30s and is now recovered. She would not have known if she followed "the advice" of this government board. In fact, because her family has a history of breast cancer, she started getting regular checks earlier than the old standard.

Today, this issue is still being discussed but I hear the political spin on it. Imagine if we had single payer or the system that is in the House bill that recently passed. Would women in their 40s be able to get mammography readings done and paid for by insurance, if the standard is 50? And can't the new standard be seen as a way of COST CUTTING? To really cap this off, in Britain, the death rate from breast cancer is higher than in the U.S. because a medical treatment that is available in the U.S. is not paid for by the Britain health care system, thus causing deaths.

This is a GREAT example of the fear of rationed care under a government system and there seem to be a lot of women AND men concerned about this.

This Defines Old School

The post this links to defines Old School.

Period.

Read it.

I Think Only Maryland Had A KIPP School Fail

If I remember correctly, the only KIPP school to fail was a school in Maryland. That becomes important when you read this:

But they also managed, in coming to the public charter school known as KIPP Ujima Village Academy, to underscore another point: Obama is serious about challenging teachers unions to think differently.

The academy, with 375 students in grades 5 to 8 in the Park Heights neighborhood, is part of a national network called the Knowledge Is Power Program. The school trimmed 45 minutes from its daily class schedule and canceled Saturday classes this fall in response to a pay dispute with the Baltimore Teachers Union. Longer school days and weeks are part of KIPP's formula for raising student achievement in poor urban areas.

KIPP leaders say they had paid their teachers a 20 percent premium to work longer days, but the union had said the school was not paying enough. So KIPP Ujima's school day is 8 1/2 hours instead of 9 1/4 . That's still longer than a regular school day. But KIPP leaders contend that the methods that produced some of the city's best test scores, in a school where most students are from low-income families, have been compromised and that the network might have to pull out of Maryland if the conflict is not resolved.

Pulling out of Maryland is EXACTLY what the Maryland public school system wants! They don't want charter schools at all. In fact, Maryland has the strongest anti-charter regulations in the United States.

Andres A. Alonso, chief executive of Baltimore schools, joined Gingrich and Sharpton and said he admires KIPP but wants all of the city's schools to have autonomy and success. He said the city school system is making progress.

And, again, Andres Alonso is a putz!

P.S. Again, Democrats show they are the ones standing in the public school doorway!

P.P.S. Check out the BCPS category for more of my rants.

Interesting PIC Observation

I'm going to make an observation about the prison industrial complex (PIC).

First off, on the AFROAM-L email list, I used to write that the people moaning and complaining about the PIC were focusing on the wrong thing. The existence of the PIC could go away in years if the Black people, primarily men, would stop doing the crimes that landed their behinds in jail. If that were done, there would be no money to be made in the PIC.

Having written that, I find it interesting that Illinois Congress-criters seem to be upset about the possibility of having GITMO detainees jailed there and complaining that an economy should not be created because of the existence of prisons, when many rural governments are trying to do just that. They are trying to expand the local economy by building prisons and then getting other areas to send their prisoners to them.

A Court Case

I see no LEGAL reason why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in a U.S. court of law. To me it doesn't make sense what so ever. Mohammed is not an American citizen nor is he a legal U.S. resident. If he were in the country when he planned the attacks, then I can understand why he would be tried in the U.S.

But right now, his status is an enemy combatant, which is not a legal definition. It seems to me to be a loop hole created by the Bush administration because congress, which it has been doing for decades, has abdicated it's Constitutional authority.*

If a war cannot be fought against an entity other than a government, then congress should have added terrorist groups to the definition and then declared war against terrorist groups. Or, congress should have created another definition for the military action and the "legalize" that is involved. One glaring definition would define if "enemy combatants" are to be tried in military court, U.S. federal court, or something else.

But, I'm not a lawyer so what do I know?

* I'm one of those people who thinks congress sometimes writes laws poorly, with intent, so that people will challenge some laws and leave it up to the courts to figure out.

Players! Do You Use Gift Cards To Mack?

A man who is happily married has to know. Do players these days use stacks of gift cards to get their mack on?

Lipscomb was pursuing Dixon romantically and lavishing her with gifts, sometimes anonymously, Weiner said. Lipscomb attached himself to Dixon's group of friends and even followed her to Boston, Weiner said. The stacks of $50 and $25 gift cards that he gave her in 2005 and 2006 were no different from furs and designer clothes that she accepted from him, the lawyer said.

Weiner said that another batch of gift cards she is charged with misusing, donated in December 2005 by Turner, had arrived at Dixon's office in a blank envelope. She assumed that they were also a gift from Lipscomb, to be used as she saw fit, her lawyer said.

Stacks of $25 and $50 gift cards she thought were "gifts".OK. Sure.

Maine Does Health Care

Maine Finds a Health Care Fix Elusive

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.

To Ms. Snowe, Maine’s past shows that change, while needed, should be incremental because mistakes are common. This is among the reasons she opposes an immediate public insurance option. “I mentioned to the president that people can’t digest everything at once,” she said in an interview.

To conservatives, Maine proves that government efforts to strictly regulate the nation’s health insurance market are doomed. Many of the reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine.

“These reforms are very well-intentioned, but in reality they have yet to produce the promised results or even be financially sustainable,” said Tarren R. Bragdon, chief executive of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative research organization in Portland.

A state does some of the same things that congress wants to do, and the costs still rise, yet congress says these are the things that will bring down costs?

Veterans

The the veterans of the U.S. military, I say thank you. I especially want to say thank you to the Coast Guard veterans who are often overlooked as being a part of the military.

The Cycle

Boy sees man beat up his mother.

Girl sees father beat up her mother.

Boy and girl get together years later. Boy beats up girl 8 or 9 times. The last time was "the last time" only because there were witnesses of the boy biting the girl.

At least the cycle didn't involve death; this time.

P.C., Part 2

A man in the military says he is opposed to a certain military action and it is known to his upper command. What upper command would send the man to serve duty in the action to which he is opposed?

That is the situation with the Ft. Hood terrorist. How does sending a man to duty in an area to which he is opposed, a "P.C." action?

Some media have been doing stories of the military sending people back into service although the people claim or have documented they are suffering from PTSD. If that history with the military didn't exist, I would more strongly consider the "P.C." angle of this, but since the military has been sending people off to fight who should not fight, the "P.C." angle is discounted, to me.

YMMV.

Please pray for the families of the victims of terrorism.

[ UPDATE ]

Let me give you the relative time line of events on that Thursday.

1. I heard about it on the radio, and that it involved 3 people.
2. The body count started rising.
3. The terrorist was said to be among the dead.
4. The terrorist was identified.
5. Online, The Washington Post identified the terrorist as a devout Muslim.
6. It was reported the terrorist was still alive.
7. I'm now at home and the network news is saying he is a devout Muslim who has been outspoken in his views and that he didn't want to go to Afghanistan.

And pundits/commentators want to say the network media didn't or were slow to report he is a Muslim?

P.C.

I need to know how the Fort Hood terrorist assassin was only able to do it because of political correctness. That's what I keep hearing but I don't understand how that is the case.

If the media is to be believed, the terrorist assassin had conflicts with other military people concerning his terrorist beliefs. But, so far, it appears those people didn't report his views.

If the media is to be believed, the terrorist assassin told the army that he wanted to get out and didn't believe in the war. But, it appears his attempts to exit the army were turned down.

If the media is to be believed, he posted terrorist assassin beliefs on a board under his own name. [ UPDATE ] And, if the media is to believed, it was brought to the attention of LAW ENFORCEMENT officials.

Where is p.c. is this?

One? Sick. Three? Terrorism

If it is accurate that 3 SOLDIERS were involved,...this is terrorism.

[ UPDATE ]

Let me shut up about this.

First there was one, then three, now it's back to one. Two people were released.

First he was dead now he's alive?

The media is in their report everything to beat the crowd mode, so I'm going to sit back and wait for it to calm down. Meanwhile, I'll pray for the families.

Independents Day

In yesterday's voting, independents voted for Republicans 2 to 1.