"Australian Christians rioted today protesting this blasphemous portrayal of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Mother."

Of course that didn't happen, but if yuo replace a few words in that sentence, you know it would happen if the portrayal was of Mohammed.

From LGF:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26864_
Aussie_Islamic_Leader-_Mary_in_a_Burqa_is_
Not_At_All_Offensive&only

Australian Christians are offended, but not murderously so, about a statue of the Virgin Mary in a burqa and an image of Jesus Christ that morphs into Osama bin Laden.


Of course the below image is tempered by the fact that there aren't screaming "Rage Boy" images of hysterical wack jobs.  There also aren't burning flags of Middle Eastern nations.  Oh, and no waving of machetes or machine guns.

(Above image courtesy of RightWingNews.) http://www.rightwingnews.com/

So expect more innocent foreigners trying to do good things to be brutalized by these islamofascists.

Thanks Korea...

From CTV:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070829/
hostages_follow_070830/20070830?hub=TopStories

The seven remaining South Korean hostages taken captive last July by the Taliban have been released, and insurgents have vowed they will abduct more foreigners.

"We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday.

More from LGF.  
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=26866_Taliban-_We_Have_Found_This_Way_to_Be_Successful&only

You read that right.  You too can now confess your 'eco-sins', in a real confessional, to a real priest.

From the TimesOnline: (emphasis mine throughout)

Forgotten to recycle any newspapers or tin cans recently? Feeling guilty because you neglected to carbon offset your flight to somewhere, anywhere, outside England this summer?

The Roman Catholic Church is at hand with a new line in “green confessions” to help eco-sinners to find forgiveness.

Dom Anthony Sutch, the Benedictine monk who resigned as head of Downside School to become a parish priest in Suffolk, will be at the county’s Waveney Greenpeace festival this weekend to hear eco-confessions in what is thought to be the first dedicated confessional booth of its kind.

I think we're into the looking glass on this one people:

Vested in a green chasuble-style garment made from recycled curtains, and in a booth constructed of recycled doors, he will hear the sins of of those who have not recycled the things they ought to have done and who have consumed the things they ought not to have done.

And the priest is so eco-friendly, he cares not about freezing his parishioners out of church:

Father Sutch tries to practise what he preaches but has turned the heating down so low at his church of St Benet’s that at least one parishioner has fled to the warmer care of a neighbouring priest for winter services.

He told The Times: “It is not, I hope, blasphemous to do this. I do not think it is. It is just an attempt to make people conscious of the way they live. The Church is aware of green issues and of how aware we have to be of how we treat the environment.

What's blasphemous?  Using the sancity of the confessional for such social inanity, or freezing your churchgoers to try to make a point?  And of course you know there would be loads of moral equivalence:

“I’ve had one or two comments about abuse of the confessional. One or two people have said, ‘Father, is this quite right?’ Luckily, more people see it as an excellent idea. As with all these things, we have to look in the mirror and see what we could stop consuming ourselves.”

Being green has become the new “socially correct” form of behaviour for many, resulting in dishonesty as Western consumers exaggerate their eco-friendliness to keep up with their neighbours. A new poll for Norwich Union found that nine out of ten people tell “little green lies” about how much they recycle and how little they consume. More than half think that unethical living is as socially taboo as drink driving. 

So killing someon by drunk driving is the moral equivalence of not recycling is the point here I suppose?  And us skeptics thought it was a joke and laughed when we thought of the church selling indulgences:

“I imaging people will be confessing to things like, ‘I have bought a new car even though I didn't need one’, or ‘I flew to Australia last year’. I have come up with some penances, such as making a donation to a green charity or telling ten other people what you have done.”

There you have it.  I think the eco-wackos have crossed the line into full-fledged insanity.

Watch this video clip first as a warmup:

One Marine who has been exonerated is already doing so.  Lt. Col. Chessani is going to wait until he also is cleared.

This is great stuff and I hope they take him for a real ride!

More from Hot Air:

Well, the Marine Corps investigator has now dropped all charges against 3 of the 8 accused Marines in the case, and only one Marine still stands accused of crimes at the scene. The others are charged with various after-the-fact issues that arose from investigations of Haditha, not the events themselves. Murtha’s aim, of course, in accusing the Marines of murder “in cold blood” was to pin the blame on Bush. But in the process of blaming Bush, he slandered those Marines.

Indeed.

I'm posting this again from earlier today, partially in response to some comments over on a blog post by Patrick Rufinni.  Partially to illustrate Ron Pauls true standings nationwide in various polls, including some straw polls.  And partially because it needs to be addressed again.

Let the Paulbot moaning begin!

Contrary to the "World According to Paulbots" misinformation out there, it seems their guy is going to amount to, well, not much.

From Rasmussen:
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/daily_
presidential_tracking_poll__1

For the seven days ending August 26, 2007, Rudy Giuliani earns 24% of the vote. Fred Thompson is second at 23% followed by Mitt Romney at 13%. John McCain now earns 12% support followed by Mike Huckabee at 5%. Four other candidate split 4% of the vote while 18% are undecided. Those other four candidates, mentioned by name in the polling question, are Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo (review history of weekly results).

This info is a bit date (Monday), but the most recent Rasmussen report doesn't even mention anyone below Huckabee, so until the next weekly report, this is it. 

So Roan Paul splits 4% with three other candidates.  Best case:  The three other candidates all have 0% and Ron Paul has 4%.  Scorcher!

From American Research Group:
http://americanresearchgroup.com/

Ron Paul is polling 1% in Iowa, 3% in New Hampshire, and 2% in South Carolina.  En Fuego!

From Strategic Vision:
http://www.strategicvision.biz/political/newjersey_poll_083007.htm 

Ron Paul - 3% in New Jersey.  There is good news in this poll however.  Ron Paul is up 1 percentage point in the past six weeks in this same poll.  Smokin!

Straw Polls Paul didn't win:

What, you mean the "only man who can save the world" has not won some straw polls?  With all the buzz of those he has won, funny how these were left out.

Kentucky State Fair/State Straw Poll  - Ron Paul: 6th Place/6.8%
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48730452_kentucky_
kentucky_state_fair_straw_poll_results 

A California Straw Poll.  Now if you follow the link and read the story, this is the type of poll Mr. Paul has done extremely well in.  In this one he scores:  3%.
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2007/08/28/news/
featurednews/news01.txt

Bottom Line:

Again, contrary to the internet hype and the wishes of his supporters, none, NONE of the hype, You Tube numbers or any amount of spamming has done anything for Ron Paul.

I can hear it now...

All of these polls, organizations and websites are just republican political hack groups who want to stifle the RP Revolution, so they don't count...you just don't know!

Well, well, well.  You must read this.  I can't wait for the Dem/lib spin on this one.

From Reuters: (Sorry, link tool still not working right)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?
type=topNews&storyid=2007-08-30T170627Z_01_
N30440927_RTRUKOC_0_US-UN-CHEMICALS
.xml&src=rss&rpc=22&sp=true

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations officials found vials of dangerous chemicals, which had been removed from Iraq a decade ago, in a U.N. building in New York, but U.N. officials said on Thursday there was no danger.

The FBI was called in to help remove the substances.

The material was phosgene, a chemical warfare agent, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe told a news conference.

The inspections unit said in a statement that the chemicals had been found last Friday.

The Iraqi weapons inspectors came across the material as they were closing their offices, which are housed in a building near the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, said Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the inspectors.

Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a choking agent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Dare I say it?  You know what I'm thinking, right?

Nah, I'll wait for the spin to begin!

How can that be?  Why hasn't it been reported?

Great story from Newsbusters:

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration announced that "Greenhouse gases likely accounted for more than half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States last year."

Yet, NOAA ignored the fact that the primary GHG global warming alarmists point to as the cause for rising temperatures, carbon dioxide emissions, actually declined in 2006.

Regardless, let's first look at the announcement from NOAA (emphasis added):

Greenhouse gases likely accounted for more than half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States last year, according to a new study by four scientists at NOAA's Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. Last year's average temperature was the second highest since record-keeping began in 1895. The team found that it was very unlikely that the 2006 El Niño played any role, though other natural factors likely contributed to the unusual warmth. The findings will appear September 5 in the Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The NOAA team also found that the probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth's atmosphere.

Before we look at the CO2 emissions, isn't it interesting that a naturally occurring El Niño, which many climatologists view as key to warming cycles in the northern hemisphere, was discounted as the culprit?

And here is the best part of this.  Read on...

Yet, most important is how NOAA ignored the May 2007 report from the Energy Information Association concerning CO2 emissions for 2006 (emphasis added throughout):

U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions declined in absolute terms -from 5,955 million metric tons (MMTCO2) in 2005 to 5,877 MMTCO2in 2006, a 1.3 percent decrease

Emissions from natural gas and petroleum fell 1.7 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, while coal emissions declined 0.9 percent

• Energy intensity (energy consumed per $ real GDP) fell by over 4.0 percent, as total energy demand declined 0.9 percent while the economy grew by 3.3 percent
• The total carbon intensity of the economy (CO2 per$ real GDP) fell by 4.5 percent, as the carbon intensity of the energy supply (CO2 per Btu of energy) fell in addition to the decline in the energy intensity
• The 2006 decline in carbon intensity is the largest since 1990 and the 4th largest since 1949

Pretty delicious, wouldn't you agree? But there's more:

Factors that helped the Energy-CO2 Emissions Decline

• Weather conditions were favorable for emission reductions in 2006 as both heating degree-days and cooling degree-days were lower than in 2005

  - As 2006 enjoyed a mild winter, heating degree-days were down 7.4 percent

- In addition, the summer of 2006 was cooler than the summer of 2005 and cooling degree-days declined almost 1 percent

So explain to me if rising CO2 is responsible for rising temperatures, and CO2 emissions declined in 2006, how could 2006 be hotter than 2005, and how could it be caused by CO2?

Use this on you eco-nazi neighbor and score one for common sense.

Must be because we aren't spending enough money on education in this country!

From The Washington Times:

About 20 percent of students enrolled in D.C. public schools were absent on the second day of class this week, according to attendance records provided by school system officials.

Many students who had enrolled were not present because they had not registered for classes, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said last night. It was not clear yesterday how much of the attendance problem was due to students who had not registered on time and how much was due to students who didn't show up for other reasons.

"I think we can improve attendance overall," Mrs. Rhee said. "Attendance is something we can definitely work on."

Well, I'm glad Mrs. Rhee is confident they can improve attendance.  I'm even more heartened by the fact she feels attendance is something they should work on.

Records show that about 10,000 of the 51,000 students enrolled Tuesday at 141 schools did not report to classes. Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Rhee, said Tuesday's preliminary enrollment number was 50,542, but only 40,821 of those students reported to school.

Maybe they should just pay the kids to go to school. 

Throwing more money at the problem; that always works right?

Contrary to the "World According to Paulbots" misinformation out there, it seems their guy is going to amount to, well, not much.

From Rasmussen:
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/daily_
presidential_tracking_poll__1

For the seven days ending August 26, 2007, Rudy Giuliani earns 24% of the vote. Fred Thompson is second at 23% followed by Mitt Romney at 13%. John McCain now earns 12% support followed by Mike Huckabee at 5%. Four other candidate split 4% of the vote while 18% are undecided. Those other four candidates, mentioned by name in the polling question, are Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo (review history of weekly results).

This info is a bit date (Monday), but the most recent Rasmussen report doesn't even mention anyone below Huckabee, so until the next weekly report, this is it. 

So Roan Paul splits 4% with three other candidates.  Best case:  The three other candidates all have 0% and Ron Paul has 4%.  Scorcher!

From American Research Group:
http://americanresearchgroup.com/

Ron Paul is polling 1% in Iowa, 3% in New Hampshire, and 2% in South Carolina.  En Fuego!

From Strategic Vision:
http://www.strategicvision.biz/political/newjersey_poll_083007.htm 

Ron Paul - 3% in New Jersey.  There is good news in this poll however.  Ron Paul is up 1 percentage point in the past six weeks in this same poll.  Smokin!

Straw Polls Paul didn't win:

What, you mean the "only man who can save the world" has not won some straw polls?  With all the buzz of those he has won, funny how these were left out.

Kentucky State Fair/State Straw Poll  - Ron Paul: 6th Place/6.8%
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/48730452_kentucky_
kentucky_state_fair_straw_poll_results 

A California Straw Poll.  Now if you follow the link and read the story, this is the type of poll Mr. Paul has done extremely well in.  In this one he scores:  3%.
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2007/08/28/news/
featurednews/news01.txt

Bottom Line:

Again, contrary to the internet hype and the wishes of his supporters, none, NONE of the hype, You Tube numbers or any amount of spamming has done anything for Ron Paul.

I can hear it now...

All of these polls, organizations and websites are just republican political hack groups who want to stifle the RP Revolution, so they don't count...you just don't know!

More government (taxpayer)-funded climate drivel.  We've received these same forecasts of doom and gloom for years now, so we need another one? 

Why is NASA throwing more good money after good money conducting more studies which are rehashes of studies they have already done before?  I know one of the measurements for scientists is confirmation of original results, but this is not a re-running of the same models and predictions, which have already been shown be be false in some cases.

No, this is from a new climate model which assumes so many variables that I cannot believe those who ran it think this is news, let alone science.  (Well, I can believe it since these folks aren't scientists, they're activists).

From LiveScience:

First, the prediction:  Global warming will make severe thunderstorms and tornadoes a more common feature of U.S. weather, NASA scientists said today.

Climate models have previously shown that Earth will see more heavy rainstorms as the atmosphere warms, but a new climate model developed by NASA researchers is the first to show the difference in strength between storms that occur over land and those over the ocean and how storms strengths will change in general.

Now the running of the models predicting an outcome based on unknown variables which NASA just plugs in:

Researchers then ran the model for a future climate scenario where carbon dioxide levels were double their current level and the Earth's surface was 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. The model's projections showed that continents warm more than oceans (a result which is expected because water needs to absorb more heat than land to raise its temperature) and that lightning occurs at a higher altitude where storms are usually more vigorous.

So let's run models based on contrived 'data' which is assumed (doubling of atmospheric CO2 and a 5 degree  increase in temps) and then call the 'conclusions' rock solid science.  WTF?

I'm no climatologist, but I am a thinker.  And I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but how in the world can you use this type of modeling and call it science?  There are so many variables, so many unknowns that there is no way it can be accurate.  Yet frickin NASA is playing it off as concrete observation and have the audacity to say "it will happen."  They don't even say "may happen", they say "will happen"!

And another thin about the stronger storm theory.  Is there really any difference if you house gets hit by an F3 tornado as opposed to an F5?  If you live in a flood plain, is there really a big difference between 8 inches of rain and 10?  Do you see where I'm going with this?

So what's the point of the alarmism?  When you ask yourself that, you will begin to see that the alarmism does not pass the smell test.

Remember that PBS documentary which they shelved so as not to incite negative feelings amongst muslims?

Well it seems that PBS may have been getting 'inputs' from The Nation of Islam.  You know, the moderate and Jew friendly organization once fronted by the benevolent Louis Farrakhan?

From CNSNews:
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200708/CUL20070830a.html

(CNSNews.com) - A conflict of interest involving the radical Nation of Islam and the Washington, D.C., affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is an example of unethical journalism that benefits extremist Muslims, according to a national security expert and a Hollywood filmmaker.

Martyn Burke, director of documentary films at ABG Films, and Frank Gaffney, president of the conservative Center for Security Policy, produced a documentary for a PBS series - "America at a Crossroads" - that focused on Muslims in America, Europe, and Canada who speak out against Islamist extremists.

Their documentary, "Islam versus Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center," was, after a protracted battle, rejected in April by WETA, the PBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.

More:

The film is going to air on an Oregon PBS affiliate this month, and some other affiliates may run it as well. However, it is now known that PBS had an unedited version of the film reviewed by the radical Nation of Islam prior to PBS's decision to cancel the documentary.

The Nation of Islam (NOI) and its long-time leader Rev. Louis Farrakhan have a history of espousing racism and anti-Semitism. Farrakhan stepped down as NOI's leader in 2006 for health reasons.

PBS's decision to pass the film to NOI for review was a serious "breach of journalistic ethics," said Burke.

"Is there anyone who understands that no functioning journalist - or network, or publication can ever allow this kind of outrageous action?" Burke wrote in an e-mail to PBS officials.

"This utterly undermines any journalistic independence. ... It virtually hands the story to the subject and allows them to become an active party in shaping it. That is advertising, not journalism. Is that not obvious?" he added.

But of course, no one has ever accused the media of being unbiased.  Have they?

How about this for an analysis of some of the latest AGW alarmism...

From The Diplomad:
http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bullwinkle-must-die.html

An old hunting friend once told The Diplomad that he actually agreed with an anti-hunting zealot's statement that hunting moose was about as challenging as shooting a parked bus. If that's true, my friends, then that's good, very good news for the environment and for threatened HUMMER owners everywhere.

The facts are in. The scientists have agreed. Bullwinkle must die!

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on
September 25 . . . (Der Spiegel)

And in keeping with an 'ecological solution to the moose threat, Diplomad offers this:

But is there a politically correct response (i.e., one not involving firepower) to the moose threat? Yes, indeed! Wolves! Huge, roaming packs of the hungry beasts! They will save us!

[T]he number of wolves has seesawed upward over the past decade and is now up to 29, as many as the park has seen since 1980 and 11 more than last year . . . What's bad for moose has been good for the wolves . . . Professor Rolf Peterson of Michigan Technological University, who has lead the study of Isle Royale's wolves and moose for 34 years [said] "What we think is happening is that wolves are cashing in on moose vulnerability that's been induced by a warmer climate."

Works for me, though I am a fan of the firepower option.

Oh, I know you were told an iceberg did it, but you should have know someone, someday, would turn this to blaming mankind.

Nature would never be so cruel...

OK, my intro was somewhat disengenuous, but this is an interesting story.

From The Daily Mail:

It was perhaps the most catastrophic lapse of memory in history, costing more than 1,500 lives.

A sailor called David Blair forgot to leave behind a key as the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage.

Without it, his shipmates were unable to open a locker in the crow's nest containing a pair of binoculars for the designated lookout.

The binoculars were to look out for dangers in the distance including signs of bad weather - and icebergs.

Lookout Fred Fleet, who survived the disaster in which 1,522 people lost their lives, later told an official inquiry that if they had binoculars they would have seen the iceberg sooner. 

Second Officer David Blair was taken off the Titanic at the 11th hour

The key would have opened a locker where the crows nest's binoculars were kept

I hate to pile on, but this is a funny video!

(H/T: Hot Air)
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/29/video-understanding-poetry-with-jimmy-kimmel/

I am putting out a request for assistance on a little project.

I don't have the technological expertise and probably don't have the equipment for what I want to do.

It's a little video editing project.

If anyone is interested, please send me an e-mail through my blog.  I'll elaborate more at that time.

So if anyone has a little spare time and would like to help make something which I think could be really funny, let me know.

Thanks!

Catmman