Swan Dive in Copenhagen

Early in the AM, Saturday, December 19, 2009. I'm sitting here tapping away before taking a literal long winters' nap. Outside, the temperature is plunging, and the DC metro area, where I currently reside, is starting to get hit by what the local weather man says has the potential to be the largest December blizzard to hit this area since records began to be kept, circa the 1880s. "Global Warming" at its finest.

Meanwhile, at Copenhagen's "global warming" confab, it's blizzard time as well. Trying to keep warm inside is the UN's international gang of fraudsters, leftists, industrialists looking to capitalize on phony cap-and-trade rules, and kleptocrats eager to redistribute income, mostly yours and mine. The UN is putting out brave press releases. But make no mistake: Obama's last minute Paul Revere ride failed, and they're putting PR lipstick on this pig. A great report from the online UK Telegraph pretty much pegs this band of thieves:

When your attempt at recreating the Congress of Vienna with a third-rate cast of extras turns into a shambles, when the data with which you have tried to terrify the world is daily exposed as ever more phoney, when the blatant greed and self-interest of the participants has become obvious to all beholders, when those pesky polar bears just keep increasing and multiplying – what do you do?

Well, what do you do? Answer, aside from putting out puffy press releases signifying nothing, you...

...get some unbiased, neutral observer, such as the executive director of Greenpeace, to say: “This is the single most important piece of paper in the world today.” Unfortunately, the response of all intelligent people will be to fall about laughing; but it was worth a try – everybody loves a tryer – and the climate alarmists are no longer in a position to pick and choose their tactics.

Absolutement. On a roll here. Money graf:

This week has been truly historic. It has marked the beginning of the landslide that is collapsing the whole AGW imposture. The pseudo-science of global warming is a global laughing stock and Copenhagen is a farce. In the warmist camp the Main Man is a railway engineer with huge investments in the carbon industry. That says it all. The world’s boiler being heroically damped down by the Fat Controller. Al Gore, occupant of the only private house that can be seen from space, so huge is its energy consumption, wanted to charge punters $1,200 to be photographed with him at Copenhagen. There is a man who is really worried about the planet’s future.

Italics mine.  

Read the rest here. The whole Copenhagen "global warming" charade has now deliciously collapsed into the black hole of the East Anglian misadventure and the revelation of the bogus, manipulated, or downright MIA data upon which the "global warming" hoax has been built. Thank God. It's a moment to be savored. But we still need to keep an eye on these idiots. Proving them wrong on anything is never a deterrent.

Postscript: With his over-the-top arrogance, increasingly massive frame, and unbridled rhetorical excess, Al Gore has now morphed into the American counterpart of Austin Powers' super-sized nemesis, Fat Bastard, don't you think?

White Christmas in Copenhagen?

This recent Bloomberg.com headline below says it all:

Blizzard Dumps Snow on Copenhagen as Leaders Battle Warming 

The summit is about to conclude, BTW,  and President Obama will make yet another pilgrimage here to pitch his version of the "global warming" concept, apparently not yet having heard about the East Anglia debacle. Wonder if this pitch will be as successful as his Olympic pitch a few months back. Hope so.

On the other hand, Air Force One might not even be able to land:

World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

Obviously, the blizzard was due to the ongoing effects of "global warming" which HazZzMat has been guilty of regularly denying. And about that Danish snow:

Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century. Temperatures today fell as low as minus 4 Celsius (25 Fahrenheit).

Where's Bing Crosby when you need him? 

Michigan Rep. Candace Miller Fights Cap-and-Tax

Praise from the ever-vigilant Right Michigan for a local Republican rep, apparently a RINO in many instances but right-on when it comes to battling cap-and-trade in a state that will be devastated by this kind of legislation.

In a guest editorial in the Detroit News, Rep. Candace Miller calls the arrogant EPA regulation threat and the cowardly Democrat leadership's response to it just the way she sees it:

If the House [cap-and-trade] bill were passed, the National Association of Manufacturers projects 2.4 million net jobs would be lost. The federal government's Energy Information Administration projects 2.3 million net jobs would be lost.

No wonder a job-killing plan like cap-and-trade has stalled in Congress.

The EPA move apparently is designed to force congressional action. Sen. Dick Durbin, the second ranking Democrat in the Senate, chillingly said in response to the EPA announcement, "If we don't come up with a reasonable way to reduce CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions working with business and labor and interest groups, then we may face decisions by the EPA which are very tough on a lot of people."

In other words: Either enact legislation that we know will destroy millions of jobs or the EPA will destroy even more.

And furthermore,

There are enough questions about the potentially flawed science on which these decisions are being based to suggest we should be very hesitant before leaping off the cliff. The inconvenient truth is whatever action we take, cap and trade or EPA regulation, will cost millions of jobs.

We need a lot more of this kind of political spine to fight off the Democrats' drive toward a ruinous Socialist World State. Read the rest of this great editorial here.

Goracle Evades Inconvenient Truth

Pompous Nobel Prize winner Al Gore continues to avoid discussing the inconvenient truth that his cutting edge theories for solving global warming have been unmasked as part of a massive hoax. A reporter in Copenhagen tries to ask him a question on this. Here's what happens:

Note the phalanx of UN police-state types keeping the reporter away and ripping the cable out of his mike. Looks like an example of what we'll get if we let the Socialistas impose "world government" on us as America's left would surely like.

Meanwhile, guess what the weather's like in Copenhagen. If you're stumped, here's the answer.

Hat tip to Drudge for links to the source material.

NPR: Fox News Biased?

Apparently, I missed this little journalistic kerfuffle last week:

NPR reporter Mara Liasson was reportedly pressured by executives over her frequent appearances on Fox News, because of concerns that the cable news network had become more biased.

According to Politico, NPR's executive news editor Dick Meyer and senior Washington editor Ron Elving requested in October that Liasson watch Fox News for 30 days and reconsider her appearances on the network.

Fox biased? Imagine that. Just like MSNBC maybe? All networks are equal, but some are more equal than others.

NPR is in the queue for HazZzMat's next Glass Navel Award for serving as lackeys of the Obama White House propaganda mill. Maybe it's time to de-fund these arrogant, taxpayer-funded brownshirts and send them to dwell in the media graveyard with the ghost of floundering Air America.

U S Fish and Wildlife Goons Raid Gibson Guitars

Related to our most recent blog entry below, the following story offers further evidence that the current administration is going bonkers trying to please radical left extremists by harassing respectable American businesses:

Agents of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service made a midday appearance and served a search warrant on company officials at Gibson's Massman Drive manufacturing plant, where it makes acoustic and electric guitars.

Government harassment of small business, elimination of consumer choice, and limitation of product options while raising the costs of those that remain. That's the game, and the old and respected Tennessee guitar manufacturer, Gibson Guitars, is the latest small company to be called on the carpet. Like WHP, they are now being forced to spend an increasing amount of time and legal fees on government interference being brought down upon them by leftist fringe fanatics.

Let me start this by pointing out that Gibson has been run by folks who are at least modestly eco-freaks and almost certainly vote for Democrats. But that was not enough to innoculate them from this recent raid by the Feds. Apparently, "critics" decided that they were illegally using banned exotic woods in some of their guitars. We don't know who or what, because the complaint is contained in a "sealed affadavit." You can guess that it involves some type of rosewood or ebony (commonly used in guitar construction) and that it was the Communists in Greenpeace or their friends on the outer edges of the lunatic fringe who blew the whistle even though they had no hard evidence. Here's why:

The government there [Madagascar] contends it is allowing only limited harvesting of rosewood, but critics that include Greenpeace and other environmental activists complain that the wood is being cut to near extinction.

Note the press' favorite device, "critics," which is usually used to cover up the identity of left-wing witch hunters. The article does refer to Greenpeace. But who are the "other environmental activists" (read "extremists")? Also note that whenever an "activist" makes an accusation, it is therefore true.

Gibson has for years prided itself for years on its carefully checking the sourcing of its woods, and has often been cited as a model corporate citizen in this regard. Well, too bad. That was yesterday, "critics say." Even if you behave and obey the elites you're still not off the hook. If some nutcases decide they want to harass you, the Feds in this administration will jump.

Gibson Guitar Corp.'s top executive will take a leave of absence from the board of the Rainforest Alliance, an environmental group, in the wake of a federal search for banned wood products at the instrument maker's Nashville factory, officials said Wednesday.

For all I know, something fishy is going on here. That doesn't assume that Gibson is complicit, though. Whenever you're dealing with the Third World, where bribery and kleptocracy seems ingrained in the culture, you can never be totally sure that someone isn't messing with you no matter what safeguards you might take. "Critics," though, and the Feds, always assume malfeasance on the part of our guys, not the Third World kleptocrats. Gibson is probably profitable, which in this administration seems to be ample cause for disrupting its business. I really think that in this current economic disaster, the Feds have more important things to do than waste taxpayer money on marginal World Government crap like this.

Meanwhile, to the Democrats' staple Tax and Spend dogma, this administration has appended a new mantra: Harass and Punish. Expect more taxes and punishment in the coming year.

FDA vs. Washington Homeopathy and the Flu

Ever hear of homeopathy? Some regard it as quack medicine. But it's just another flavor of America's health obsession, in this case, promoting the use of certain trace substances to help the body boost its own immune systems. The aim: to stay healthy and avoid the use, when possible, of traditional chemical or pharmaceutical remedies. It's basically health nut stuff. I don't have a problem with it. Some doctors do. Others figure, at best it works, at worst it cures people via the placebo effect.

The Washington Homeopathic Products (WHP), actually located in Berkeley Springs WV, where Mrs. Wonker and I have a second home, is respected worldwide as a purveyor of high quality homeopathic remedies. It's a mom and pop operation that's grown nicely in size over the years, adding needed employment in a largely rural area that has few other industries. In an era during which the very idea of US exports has become an oxymoron, WHP recently opened a new factory to help handle increased international business. Its efforts were officially recognized by West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin:

Washington Homeopathic Products was recognized for exporting products to Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Thailand, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, Grenada, Latvia, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Bangladesh and Morocco.

WHP also won an SBA award:

The U.S. Small Business Administration recently chose his [Joe Lillard's] company, Washington Homeopathic Products, as West Virginia’s Small Business of 2009.

In addition:

Last month [April 2009], the U.S. Small Business Administration also named Lillard its West Virginia Small Business Person of the Year for 2009.

(Info from company's website, excerpted from the Morgan Messenger.)

What the SBA giveth, however, the Federal bureaucracy taketh away. Such obvious success for a profitable operation that sells substances not rigorously regulated by the FDA*, raises flags in a Socialist administration. And so it has come to pass that the current FDA has been harassing WHP to the point of conducting unannounced raids on its rural factory, frightening and terrifying its workers. Apparently, among other things, the FDA is worked up about the company's advertising of its products' benefits.

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post, with little understanding of homeopathy, sneeringly endorsed the FDA's recent persecution of WHP. Reporter Sandra Boodman, no authority on the subject, complains there's no "scientific evidence" that homeopathic remedies work. Er, same goes for "global warming," Sandy, which the Post still endorses.

Now for a brief, relevant detour: Due to this administration's paranoia over how to administer the current H1N1 flu vaccine, there remains a shortage of doses well into the current flu season. How'd the shortage happen? The New York Times dissembles, putting out a puff piece glossing over the administration's complicity in the shortage and implying it was a problem within the companies producing the vaccine. In a linked story online, they more explicitly blame the drug companies:

Sanofi [one of the companies], however, ran into some delays putting the vaccine into vials and syringes.

A half-truth. The NYT craftily omits why the drug companies ran into these "difficulties." It was the fault of this administration's socialist nannies. Leave it to the reviled El Rushbo to set things straight, citing an article in the NYPost:


There's a great story in the New York Post today about this bill from Robert Goldberg.  He's vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest.  "The shortage of swine-flu vaccine results not from drug-company greed --" wow, I thought everything was the result of big corporate greed.  No, "The shortage of swine-flu vaccine results not from drug-company greed or outsize demand but almost entirely from the government's decision to pander to unfounded and unscientific fear.  As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the US government set out to have the H1N1 vaccine produced largely in single-dose syringes -- a demand that has set back production considerably, because multidose vials are far easier to make."

So once again -- your instincts are right, Bill [a caller who complained about this] -- once again we see what happens when government makes business decisions and then they blame the manufacturer for not having high enough yields of the vaccine.  They no doubt changed demands after the manufacturer said they could do what they wanted and so forth.  "The only reason to seek single-dose production was to please people needlessly worried about the preservative thimerosal, which is used to provide multiple doses of the vaccine. The fear -- utterly groundless and repeatedly debunked -- is that thimerosal can cause autism and other neurological disorders in infants and other young children.  If not for that decision, we'd have more than enough vaccine. Instead, because the government yielded to pressure from antivaccine fringe groups, we're behind the curve on protecting millions of children from swine flu." 


While Rome burns, however, there have been other potential remedies available. Or were. WHP has annually produced a product called "Influenzium," which contains small killed amounts of the current season's flu virus in oral doses.

Last year, when I couldn't get a flu shot (unavailable for an entirely different reason), I picked up some of last year's version of Influenzium when I was out in Berkeley Springs, and used it in lieu of the vaccine I couldn't get. I never got the flu. Was it because I used this product? Frankly, I'm a skeptic about many things, so I don't know. What I do know is that I at least got a small amount of killed virus into my system due to this product whereas the normal channels proved unable to provide me with the official FDA-approved vaccine. Logic told me that getting some kind of treatment was better than nothing.

Now it's 2009. The press and the administration have been screaming for nearly a year that we're all going to die if we don't get the H1N1 flu shot. Once again, no flu vaccine. Or if it does become available, people in my age group--aging Boomers--are turned away. This is age discrimination, courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control bureaucrats. They're covering for the administration's blundering by saying Boomers probably don't need the vaccine. There's been little hard scientific evidence to back this up. Yet we're now learning that older Americans have apparently been dying in greater numbers than other groups from H1N1 and complications.

No matter. I can go to WHP and do what I did last year, right? BZZZZZT!!!! Wrong answer. The FDA has so harassed WHP that A. They're out of last year's Influenzium and can't make more now according to a person I talked to in WHP's downtown shop/museum last week; and B. Since the FDA hasn't yet authorized release to WHP of sufficient quantities of the H1N1 virus to process into this year's product, I can't get this year's version either. Let's go over this again, PowerPoint style:

• I'm too old to qualify for a current flu shot (age discrimination and healthcare rationing)
• I can't get last year's homeopathic product as a substitute (FDA hates WHP)
• I can't get this year's homeopathic product as a substitute since a vindictive FDA is obviously going to delay its production until it's too late to help (bureaucratic harassment, aka running out the clock)

If this is how Obamacare is going to work, why the hell would we want this? My options for this flu season have effectively been eliminated and we don't even HAVE Obamacare yet. What's the sense in giving these dopes even more power and tax dollars? As for WHP? God help them now that this administration's FDA has got them squarely in their sights.

* The FDA does have some statutory authority here, but not to the level that the agency does over, say, Merck or Pfizer.

Got Botox? Big Brother Wants You!

Sidebar before the main event: One of the aspects of creeping socialism that's fascinated me for years has been the increasing number of government attempts to demonize products and activities as a way of extracting more income from them. A classic example was the treatment of tobacco products, specifically cigarettes.

Unlike "global warming," the connection of cigarette smoking to lung cancer was proved, beyond a scientific doubt, many years ago. Clearly, the healthy solution would have been either to ban cigarettes, a la the Volstead Act, or treat them as a controlled substance, as has, in fact, recently occurred.

However, the socialists in Congress and the bureaucracy conspired to assemble a Rube Goldberg contraption whereby the tobacco industry was permanently demonized, attacked on the airwaves with relentless regularity, but permitted to sell its products from which were extracted higher and higher taxes, via the consumer. In effect, instead of a tax on the industry (although the many lawsuits against tobacco companies might suffice to serve that function), the government eventually created a direct spigot of income derived from the tobacco companies' profit stream.

Allegedly this money was all to be spent by the states for health purposes. But, as always, once having obtained this endless cash flow, various government entities simply redirected the money to suit their various patronage purposes. This is how socialistic governments work, extracting more and more income from companies and individuals in whatever way they can to reward their friends and constituencies in the name of "fairness."

In the case of the tobacco companies, this new, permanent, endless income stream actually happens via a severely regressive tax--by and large, cigarette smokers come from the lower economic strata. Wealthier individuals tend not to smoke. So we now have a cognitive dissonance here--lefties who never met a "progressive" tax they didn't like (i.e., a tax on "the wealthy," whomever they are),  happily reverse that philosophy when they deem it convenient. In this case, the convenience is the political capital gained by punishing tobacco company miscreants. Intriguingly, however, it's the socialists' own lower class constituents who pay for the punishment. And these constituents, of course, never see the connection and keep voting for the socialists. A strange brew.

Which brings us to our actual topic. The use of botox as a temporary wrinkle fix for women of a certain age (like Nancy Pelosi) is well known. Since it's not permanent, it needs to be re-done from time to time, and it's a bit expensive. Since it's also a cosmetic procedure, it's also not generally covered by health insurance. So, as an out-of-pocket expense, it's really not for Joe the Plumber's wife, shall we say.

Enter the socialists. One item currently included in the Senate version of the Democrats' Health Disaster Plan, would tax botox consumers 5% on top of an already costly procedure. Like tobacco products, botox treatments are easy to demonize, in this case because it's mostly wealthy individuals, primarily females, who can afford it. So on top of what they pay, let's gouge 'em a bit more. After all, if they can afford the botox, they can afford 5% more for it.

This may in fact be the case. But Allergan and other companies who produce and market the treatment are protesting nonetheless, arguing essentially that it's anti-competitive, anti-free-choice, and, of course, discriminatory toward the largely female clientele of botox users. And they're right. The Dems, though, apparently figure that it's another way of sneaking in another tax to punish yet another company they don't like because they dare to make a profit on a bit of female vanity.

Thus, in one bold stroke of the pen, assuming this disaster actually passes in its present form, the Dems will have created yet another corporate income spigot, will have raised the costs of a treatment that might have actually declined in cost over the years (making it available to customers of more modest means), and will have yet another source of initially "targeted" revenue that they'll direct most likely to "social programs" that employ bureaucrats who are members of public employees' unions that support the Democrats.

Whether you endorse botox or not, the Socialists in Congress are trying to impose yet another tobacco-company-like scam. The botox nonsense, like the tobacco nonsense (it's still a legal product, remember), simply increases the discretionary income that permanent incumbent Congressmen can redistribute, while increasing the cost of the product or products involved.

Congressional Democrats and their friends the trial lawyers got away with the tobacco scam by demonizing a product that was easy to demonize. They're now attempting to do the same with botox by using it as a sneaky way to impose a tax on "the rich" (defined, I guess, as anyone who can afford or chooses to afford the treatments.) And if we let them succeed in this, who knows what additional products they'll demonize and tax, raising costs on businesses, pricing consumers out of the market, and limiting, bit by bit, our freedom of choice.

Whether you find my remarks on botox trivial or not, I'd simply ask you to stop and consider: if this sort of thing isn't nipped off early, where will it end? Cap and tax, maybe?

Bring Back Bush!

You think we're kidding? This, from the generally liberal news site, Politico:

Perhaps the greatest measure of Obama's declining support is that just 50% of voters now say they prefer having him as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they'd rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that's somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country's difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited. The closeness in the Obama/Bush numbers also has implications for the 2010 elections.

 After nearly a year of governmental mismanagement, legislative miscues and myopia, and clumsy presidential speeches and public appearances (more later), all the fault of America's Socialist Party, the public is already beginning to wax nostalgic for real leadership that can stand up to setbacks and smears. Why are we not surprised?

(Hat tip to Instapundit for the grafik.)

"Global Warming" vs. "Climate Change": Words Matter

Here's the quick terminology followup I promised you in HazZzMat two blog entries ago.

I've long crusaded against the "global warming" hoax. As with a variety of other positive-sounding, utopian lefty crusades, this one has used propaganda and weird science to promote, as an aberration, something that's been happening since our planet was spun out of the big-bang: global warming. In cycles ranging from dozens to hundreds to thousands to millions of years, our planet has warmed and cooled due to a variety of factors--often (and perhaps now) due to unpredictable solar cycles over which we have zero control.

"Global warming" has simply served as a simplistic term that's been used as a cudgel by socialist elites attempting to create mass fear. This, in turn, will allow them to "solve" an artificial problem by extracting more of our income and distributing it to themselves and their friends.

When the "science" behind "global warming" was recently exposed as a long-running fraud, the deviously clever wordsmiths of the left, began to alter the terminology describing it. They repositioned "global warming" as "climate change."

Without skipping a beat, the Washington Post featured this new terminology on its front page.

Why "climate change?" Lefty propagandists quickly decided that "global warming" as a term had become toxic to Party dogma. So they are retaining the dogma but are shifting how it's described. The intention is to diminish the negative effect of their scientific fraud by disguising it as something else.

"Climate change" is a potential master stroke. "Global warming" as a purely man-made phenomenon can and has been discredited. "Climate change" CAN'T be discredited because it's always happening and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. So, in a bizarre way, the indefensible science described by "global warming" can be re-armored by re-describing it as "climate change" which is in and of itself virtually impossible to refute.

A good magician will always acknowledge that his hand is "quicker than the eye." The Marxist left, employing the arcane but useful tools of semiotics, has historically shown real genius in its ability to cover its dirty tricks with verbal sleights-of-hand. The conservative to libertarian right has never fully appreciated how this has gradually worked to displace traditional American narratives with false but widely propagated socialist narratives. But HazZzMat does. It's the original reason we came to be. And we'll continue to call out the WaPo and anyone else when they try to get away with this stuff.

Inconvenient Truth: The Goracle on ClimateGate

True to his left-wing netroots, here's Al Gore in full coverup mode on the ClimateGate emails:

Al Gore has studied the Climategate emails with his typically rigorous eye and dismissed them as mere piffle:

Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?

A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, butthe most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.

Carefully note the observation about the "10 year old" emails. Andrew Bolt of the online Aussie HeraldSun poses another question and Gore returns to the talking point:

So an e-mail exchange more than 10 years ago including somebody’s opinion that a particular study isn’t any good is one thing, but the fact that the study ended up being included and discussed anyway is a more powerful comment on what the result of the scientific process really is.

What study is Gore talking about? No specifics. (Lefties carefully avoid specifics in favor of indefensible broad pronouncement which the press then reports as fact.) And the emails in question painfully document how "skeptic" studies were excluded from the literature. Note again the 10-year meme.

Yet another question, and Gore does it again:

These people are examining what they can or should do to deal with the P.R. dimensions of this, but where the scientific consensus is concerned, it’s completely unchanged. What we’re seeing is a set of changes worldwide that just make this discussion over 10-year-old e-mails kind of silly.

Note carefully the constant repetition of the talking points. And now having done so, check out the reporter's observations:

In fact, as Watts Up With That shows, one Climategate email was from just two months ago. The most recent was sent on November 12 - just a month ago. The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year.  Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.

How closely did Gore read these emails? Did he actually read any at all? Was he lying or just terribly mistaken? What else has he got wrong?

Answer: Gore never read the emails and never will. He was neither lying nor terribly mistaken. He was restating, ad nauseam, the standard lefty talking points which, like all things Marxist, don't have to conform to any objective truth. "Global warming" was and always will be a hoax and a massive smokescreen for greater government control over our lives and our pocketbooks, i.e., state socialism run by fashionably lefty elites like Gore.

For Gore, as with good Communist Party members of the past and present, "the truth" is not objective. It's whatever line the Party has decided to preach and to hell with the facts. This is why you get responses from the left that look a lot like Gore's obviously ignorant "10 year" mantra. He's decided this is true (because some moron he trusted probably fed it to him), and will stick to his mantra regardless of the facts that disprove it. Another example of the "fake but accurate" syndrome we saw in RatherGate.

In addition, Gore's already created a corporate structure that will enrich him beyond avarice if cap-and-trade laws get enacted, so he has a vested interest in peddling this crap.

As to what else he got wrong? Answer: everything. Gore's mendacity is absolutely breathtaking. This reporter has called him on it. If clowns like Gore and the academic miscreants on both sides of the Atlantic lie and fudge about scientific truth once, particularly when the stakes are so high, why would we ever believe them again?

"Global Warming" Buries Midwest Under Blanket of Snow

More evidence that we're in trouble from man-made global warming:

CHICAGO (AFP) – A massive storm buried much of the central United States in dangerous ice and snow Wednesday, stranding scores of motorists with massive drifts that shut down major roads and defeated plows.

Strong winds created drifts as high as 15 feet (4.6 meters) as the storm dropped as much as four feet of snow (1.2 meters) in some areas, said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service.

 BTW, have you noticed that, over the last week or two, since the East Anglia ClimateGate scandal erupted, we're been hearing less about "global warming" than we have about "climate change?" You have to watch these slippery eels on the left. Since "global warming" is increasingly unreliable as a pitch for greater social control over the average citizen, leftist linguists have now subtly broadened this out to the sneaky, indefinite term "climate change" which subtly implies that all weather is our personal fault. In the military, they call this "mission creep." Beware.

I'll have something on this a bit later.

Barbara Boxer: December Glass Navel Award Winner

It occurred to me recently that I haven't given out a Glass Navel Award recently. That's a special award we ginned (literally) up in my Georgetown dorm years ago that granted special recognition to individuals whose heads were so far up their nether orifices that they needed a glass navel to see what was plainly in front of them.

Which gets us to Barbara Boxer, very possibly the most intellectually-challenged of all U.S. Senators, which is saying a lot. According to a report in today's San Jose MercuryNews online, Senator Babs has been moved to fury by those of her fellow senators who are trying to dislodge the Holy Sacrament of Taxpayer Supported Abortion from the current version of Obamacare--which bill is in and of itself a metaphorical abortion:

As abortion took center stage in the Senate's historic debate over health care reform, Sen. Barbara Boxer was right in the middle of the fight, provocatively comparing an effort to limit women's access to abortion to restricting men's access to Viagra.

Her combative stance on the issue was a familiar one for the third-term Democrat, whose support of abortion rights has been central to her political career.

"Why are women being singled out here? It's so unfair," Boxer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. "We don't tell men that if they want to ... buy insurance coverage through their pharmaceutical plan for Viagra that they can't do it."

Take it from me, Babs. A great many private insurance policies DON'T cover Viagra and DO cover abortion. You have to pay for Viagra out-of-pocket unless your company has specifically contracted the coverage, which many don't in order to avoid the increased cost. (Don't ask me how I know this.)

As to the difference between a medication designed, essentially, to cause a temporary blood pressure adjustment in a certain, fleeting situation, vs. what many agree is effectively infanticide, particularly in the third trimester--well, that's why we're awarding the senator our Glass Navel to enable her to witness the utter hilarity in her wildly inappropriate illogic.

Barring an unlikely trip to Damascus by the senator, I can only conclude that she's discovered a frand new way to define moral equivalency down.

Sarah Barracuda Catching Obama

Since the moment she was nominated as John McCain's Vice-presidential running mate in 2008, Sarah Palin and her family have not only been the collective butt of nonstop vitriol and slander. They've been under a nearly-continuous barrage of invective from smart-ass types in both what's left of the media and also in the (so-called) entertainment business. In the latter (re: the smarmy David Letterman), Palin's always fair game for a cheap joke, as is her family. (Here's a typical, showbiz-oriented smear, complete with obviously PhotoShopped graphic.)

Over a year after the national elections, we still know vastly more false information about Palin than we do actual facts about the clueless Chicago enigma successfully promoted to the presidency by the press, the professors, the trial lawyers, and everyone else that's smarter than you and me.

Palin was widely derided by the usual suspects for resigning her Alaska governorship and rolling out a book tour. I don't much back this kind of resignation myself on the grounds that if you win an election and take an oath to serve, you need to serve out your term. That having been said, the constant media sniping, coupled with the never-ending attacks on Palin and her family originating with Alaska old-boy pols (even fellow Republicans) made it virtually impossible for Palin to govern in an effective way. Which, of course, was the point of the barrage of attacks.

So Palin did the logical thing. She took herself out of the political fire and went back to being a private citizen.

But she clearly had something up her sleeve. The book and the ongoing promo tour have the dual task of making money for Palin and her family. And making so much of it that it might give her a campaign war-chest starter fund for a run against Obama in 2012.

The press and the pols, as usual, sneered and jeered from the sidelines. Their collective aim, in point of fact, is to continue 2008's demonization campaign in hopes of keeping her off the Republican ticket in 2008. Why? Because, the woman they sneer at and condescend to at the drop of a hat is their worst nightmare. She's an attractive, Conservative, combative female who can hold her own in a debate (re: Biden) and who, gasp, is actually a mom and is proud of it. And oh, yeah, she's a practicing Christian which makes her far scarier to the media than Osama bin Laden. I.e., now that the media-induced Obama haze is being rubbed from America's collective eyes, there's every possibility they're going to want to repent in 2012 by bringing someone like them back to the White House.

Want proof?

Obama's new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.

Regular Ticket readers will recall how in this space in late November we pointed out that Obama's closely watched job approval slide was coinciding with Palin's little-noticed rise in favorability. And it appeared they might cross somewhere in the 40s.

Well, ex-Sen. Obama, meet ex-Gov. Palin.

The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable, just one point below her fellow basketball fan. 

Scary stuff for the liberal elites. Although this particular piece of info comes from the LA Times of all places, although it runs in a political puff piece whose attitude is a little suspect.

Needless to say, the brownshirts on the left are now even more enraged and inclined toward juvenile retaliation:

Political history is not usually made on a second-floor balcony in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

But that's where 33-year-old Jeremy Paul Olson lost it Monday. Observing the lines and hoopla attending former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's book-signing at the mall's Barnes & Noble, Olson lobbed not one but two tomatoes in the direction of the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

Instead he hit a police officer and was arrested for disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer. Gawker called the Bloomington jail and talked to "a bored-sounding officer ... apparently indifferent to the feat of produce-based heroics." The site added, "If anyone has information on the tomato-wielding Real American Hero Jeremy Paul Olson, please email us. Who is this man? What motivated him to throw tomatoes at Sarah Palin? And most importantly: How could he miss!?

Good question. Anecdote appears in the same newspaper, BTW. The miss by the tomato missile could very well serve as a metaphor for what's about to happen to the Democrats in 2010.

This is the whirlwind the Democrats and their MSM toadies reaped. They are slowly learning that there's a price to be paid for all the smarmy fun they've been having dissing Alaska's former governor. Yep. They pissed off Sarah Barracuda. Paybacks are rough.

Meanwhile, we eagerly await the outraged statement from NOW attacking the thuggish, sexist male behavior on display in the state Al Franken bought.

EPA's Jackson: Damn the Facts, Full Speed Ahead

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson made public the EPA's report/findings on "global warming" and surprise: We have a problem with CO2 and we're all gonna die. Except EPA will save us with batches of onerous and costly regulations to solve a problem we now know has not yet been proven to exist.

And oh, yeah, the hacked East Anglia emails don't matter because they don't prove anything:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson dismissed GOP calls to delay a critical finding on greenhouse emissions in light of hacked e-mails from climate scientists.

More here.

Of course, the EPA report, based on faulty or phony data, does prove that we all have to pay a lot of money to eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere.

Suggestion: Let's save a lot of money. We'll all just hold our breath until we all die. That way we'll be part of the solution, not part of the problem, right Lisa?

It's Fun to be a Democrat (and Profitable, Too!)

The Right Ohio blog blares the following self-explanatory headline:

Remember Olivia Alair, the Ohio Spokesbabe for the Obama Campaign that Voted Illegally in Franklin County?

You can guess the rest:

She is now making the big bucks at the Department of Transportation.

In the Democrat party, voter fraud is quite profitable.

Yeah, it is.

Meanwhile, up on the Hill, the Senate is looking into "probing" Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign's messy affair. But we get stony silence from Senate moralists about Dem Senator Max Baucus' own dilly-dallying with an aide prior to trying to nominating her to a plum US Attorney opening--a bit closer to a hangin' offense in my opinion. Both affairs were (are?) immoral, but Baucus' is unethical. Like Olivia Alair, however, being a Democrat is never having to say you're sorry. (Except for being a US citizen.)

Kilamanjaro: Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear?

Funny question, actually, since the DC area, aka Wonkerville, was buried under some thick snow yesterday and is likely to get iced-out on Tuesday.

But the point of this entry is the latest ClimateGate fallout--unrelated in this case, actually--wherein Dutch scientists debunk one of the Goracle's signature "global warming" metaphors:

Professor Sinninghe Damste’s research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) — a governmental body — shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.

The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of  “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”

Oops. Never mind. At least the Dutch have chosen to be civilized about their debunking:

DOSR calls Al Gore’s iconic use of the melting cap of Kilimanjaro “unfortunate” — since it now seems to be mainly the result of “natural climate variations.”

Guess Gore's "inconvenient truth" about the Mt. Kilamanjaro snowcap has just gone the way of the St. Christopher story. Or maybe it'll continue to survive like RatherGate, as "fake but accurate" religious dogma for secular humanists.

Read the rest here. Hat tip to RedState for the link.

Are You Unemployed???

Well, if you're outta work (like Mr. and Mrs. Wonker) or a former CEO stocking shelves 2 hours a week at Home Depot, you might THINK you're unemployed. But think again after watching this jolly video:



Even with this week's allegedly big drop from 10.2% to 10% in the allegedly real unemployment rate (which I'll believe when I see the revised figures next month), all this good fortune may not have caught up with you yet. Further, the "unemployment rate" doesn't count those who are underemployed (like our conjectural CEO above) or who've just plain given up looking. If you actually count these folks, too, the real unemployment rate is closer to 17.2% at last estimate. But neither the Feds nor the media want you to know this, because you might blame Pelosi, Reid, and "The One" for collectively impersonating Herbert Hoover.

Worse still, their so-called "stimulus bill" has hardly had any effect on unemployment at all since it was geared toward protecting public employees union jobs that overtaxed locals couldn't pay for. And because the bulk of its actual, rather pitiful "stimulus" spending was cleverly deferred until 2010 so jobs would pick up a bit next spring and summer, just in time for Democrat incumbents to crow about the "improvement" and demand re-election as a reward. If you lose your house in the meantime, who cares? Remember that when these calculating clowns ask for your vote next fall.

Al Gore: Eejit

As we near the opening of the upcoming Copenhagen "global warming" fraud-fest, we hear that its patron saint, Al Gore, will be avoiding as much open public contact as possible, no doubt to dodge unwanted questions on the "inconvenient truth" surrounding the recently exposed hoax now known as ClimateGate.

The character of this dim bulb of an elitist is perhaps best summed up in one word: idiot. For which characteristic we enjoyed substituting the more colorful Irish pronunciation in our headline. No matter what anyone says about Bush, W saved us from having to endure minimum of four years of Gore's ponderous, misinformed, elitist tediousness and condescension in the White House.

The MSM, for its part, has taken great pains to hide his almost unbelievable hypocrisy from us. One example: as Gore and his acolytes tell us to turn down our thermostats and use less toilet paper, neither he nor anyone else currently residing with him at his Tennessee mega-mansion, much bothers to take heed of the unsolicited and unwanted advice he dishes out:

After all his whining about the dangers of fossil fuels and coal-powered electricity plants, and after assuring us we can be “carbon free” by paying attention to “where we set the thermostat, [and] keeping [our] a/c and furnace filters clean,” Gore’s 2006 utility bills for his Nashville home topped $30,000.

His home energy use was literally 20 times the national average.

More here.

I knew that this sort of thing was going on, but I had no idea how over-the-top it was. (We're not even going to begin talking about the private jet over-use.)

By comparison, Mrs. Wonker and myself had an electric bill (our house is all-electric) of approximately $1100 last year, a mere 4% more or less of what the genius from Nashville consumes.  Right, our townhouse is only about 1600 square ft in area, but then again, who's got the more "progressive" carbon footprint, me or Algore? Just a little something to think about before the Copenhagen circus begins.

...and Speaking of Ohio...

Re: our previous post, Ohio is not entirely without hope. The capable and personable John Kasich may try to wrest the governorship from the Dems next year.

But wait. There's more. A newish blog suddenly to our wondering eyes has appeared that offers a welcome Conservative perspective to the state's hapless, and, we hope, increasingly disgruntled voters. It's called "Right Ohio," and we're adding it to our growing Good Guys list, located, ironically, in the column to the left of this entry.

That's just below the Google Ads we've started up again here in a desperate attempt to bolster our own bottom line here at HazZzMat.

Anyhow, a hearty Christmas greeting to the folks writing for "Right Ohio."

(We'll actually be visiting friends in Toledo and Cleveland over the holidays, BTW.)

Class Struggle in Ohio

Although my home state of Ohio still has tons of the friendliest folks you'll want to meet, the state--particularly its large, northern cities, has been politically dysfunctional since long before I left in the late 1960s. Crippled by union featherbedding and thuggery--particularly on the part of Ohio's arrogant public employees' unions--and rendered almost entirely sclerotic by some of the most polarized racial politics in the nation, state and local governments alike have created one of the worst business climates in the country.

The Great Recession has made things even worse. Whole neighborhoods in Cleveland have been foreclosed due to scads of subprime loans that should have never been made. And of course, even folks who qualified for conventional mortgages are strapped for that monthly payment now because real jobs simply aren't to be had.

But that never keeps the unions from demanding more and more from their taxpayer employers who clearly have less and less. Apparently, no one on either side can do the math anymore and confront the obvious, which is why, I guess, Ohioans, particularly in said big northern cities, keep electing the same bozos (usually Democrats) again and again. The link between cause and effect--i.e., the pols catering to the unions' perpetual class struggle agenda--seems to have been completely severed in voters minds. I just don't get this at all, and I don't think I would even if I lived there.

The latest example of this game is the state's current budget battle. In an era where the state's generally anti-business climate has combined with the Great Recession to eviscerate tax income, the usual suspects just can't seem to understand that there ain't any money anymore to keep unions and racial interest groups paid off as in days of old, particularly in the construction trades.

Lawmakers are close to a budget deal, but construction reform could be the deal breaker.

"It's not going to go. It will not have the support of the legislative black caucus. We've been very clear on that from the very beginning," said Democratic Representative Tracy Maxwell Heard...

"When you're talking about construction reform, we have to address the issues of inclusion, which is the biggest issue we've failed to respond to as a state the last 16 years," Maxwell Heard told ONN's Jim Heath.

Ohio State University President Gordon Gee disagrees. He will testify Monday that this construction reform proposal could save OSU millions of dollars.

What we're talking here is reforming the bidding process, gearing it more to sound budget practices (like maybe picking the lowest bidder for large contracts) and less to the kind of costly, outcome-based social engineering so beloved of Democrats and their pet special interest groups that keep them in office.

Until Ohio grows up and learns to live in the 21st century, it's going to remain an employment backwater. Businesses simply don't need Ohio's enormously high tax burden and operational constraints. Which makes life even tougher and more hopeless for the unemployed taxpayers who are still expected to pay the bills.

It's depressing when you realize that, in some ways, Ohio and its neighbor to the north, Michigan, are now essentially public laboratories. Both states are laying out for us, in advance, where the rest of the country is headed if we sit back and allow the current Democrat Triumverate of Evil--Obama, Pelosi, and Reid--to have their way without mounting a challenge against this kind of miserable fate.

BaucusGate

What an autumn! First we get ClimateGate. Now, we get BaucusGate. Yep, another Democrat paragon of virtue, Montana's Senator Max Baucus, has been carrying on an affair while not yet officially divorced. Now, had he been a Republican, that would be sufficient to have motivated the Senate to expel him. But being a Democrat is never having to say you're sorry.

Lest you think I'm being prudish, there's more to this story. Unfortunately, there are a lot more individuals besides Baucus who run fast and loose with their marital vows. But the crux of the matter here is that while his mistress continued to work for him, presumably at taxpayer expense, he actually had the chutzpah to nominate her for a U.S. attorney position earlier this year.

Given the media's lack of interest in scandals that don't involve Republicans, it's not surprising that this minor little conflict-of-interest situation--which would have gotten you and me fired at work--it's not surprising that it took so long to come out.

Will there now be calls for a Senate investigation of Baucus? Will there now be cries from the Democrat leadership for him to step down in disgrace?

You gotta be kiddin'.

Hat tip to Volokh Conspiracy which has the whole skinny on this. Including, amazingly, a quote from the NYT that actually mentions Baucus' political party. Copy editors must've been asleep.

NYC Raspberries for Holder's Idiotarianism

Okay, the demo wasn't huge as such things go. And the East Coast's cold, blustery, and ultimately snowy day didn't help the turnout.

But the very fact that a decent-sized group respectable New Yorkers organized the first of what could be many demonstrations against AG Eric Holder's beyond-stupid, ideology-driven decision to treat Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--the driving force behind the 9/11 plot against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon--like a Bronx drug dealer signifies. As does their unassailable logic:

Several passionate speakers shared the podium, among them close relatives of 9/11 victims and a surviving firefighter from the first-response teams dispatched to the World Trade Center. They all voiced their disgust at how the administration is handling KSM with gloves of moral priggishness. And they also urged the demonstrators to leave no political stone unturned and to buttonhole their representatives until they take responsibility for this disgrace.

Read the rest here.

"Global Warming" Comes to Houston

Yeah, sure it does. Getta loada this:



Earliest snow in Houston ever, according to a number of weather sources. And it rarely snows there anyway. They oughta send a few snowballs from Houston to Copenhagen in dry ice.

Might also cool the climate-freak delegates down, too, so they can avoid being compromised further by Denmark's charming ladies of the evening. They're making an offer the delegates can't refuse. Such a sly offer could cause a resurgence of "global warming!"

Obama's Surge

A belated comment on the Prez' speech a couple of nights ago, outlining his "decisive" approach to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. He failed to impress is West Point audience, which I am told had to be virtually ordered to be polite. (These young warriors know the kind of Commander-in-Chief they've got, and they're not happy about it.) And frankly, he failed to impress me--mainly due to his Cloud Cuckoo-land approach, typical of Marxist academic types who try to impose their fantasy-visions on a world they're not familiar with.

To wit, the very idea of giving a relatively firm deadline for withdrawing his "surge" (which wasn't as much as General McChrystal had asked for) is the kind of stupidity that the Bushies never caved into in spite of a 24/7 onslaught by the media. Telling the enemy when you're going to withdraw allows him to plan a careful withdraw-and-go-hide scenario. The Taliban and Al Qaeda will simply do what they tried to do in Iraq--disappear when the Marines are in town and reappear when they've left. How dumb is that?

Australian Parliament Defeats Cap & Trade

Australia's plans for an emissions trading system to combat global warming were scuttled Wednesday in Parliament, handing a defeat to a government that had hoped to set an example at international climate change talks next week...The Senate...rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air....Australia's Parliament Defeats Global Warming Bill, Yahoo News, 12/2/2009

The resignation of five ministers in Australia last week, which followed on the revelations that "climate change" reports from the UN's IPCC and from Britain's CRU in East Anglia were based on falsified data, and this defeat in Parliament of Australia's cap and trade bill, may mark the Midway battle in the fight against the Greens' efforts to destroy the industrial economy. Like Midway, it's not entirely certain to be a complete victory. Like Midway, however, it looks like a turning point.

Luther

Great Recession Investing Update

Back some time ago, I informed our readers that the Mrs. and I had both been laid off our day jobs--the summer of 2008 to be exact. We're still gainfully unemployed, and no manner of networking and resume emailing has produced more than a peep since December of 2008 when I almost snagged the writing job on a contract that was purportedly going to entail compiling a detailed report on the TARP for the White House. When the contractor decided to "no bid" the contract (good choice, actually), that was the end of the opportunity.

I did get a call two weeks ago to fly up to Syracuse, NY to work on a proposal for an unnamed client, but they weren't offering expenses, so I nixed it.

Meanwhile, I've been running and gunning my investment portfolios, largely from rolled over 401(k)s, trying to "get back to even" in the catch phrase of Jim Cramer's latest book (which has quite a few good tips, BTW).

If I hadn't mentioned it already, I'm pleased to report that not only have I gotten back to even from the double market crash of Oct-Nov 2008 and Feb-early March 2009. I've actually gotten into the black enough that I've been able to take some money out of our one non-IRA account and start paying down some debt.

My basic strategy since late February 2009 has been more or less as follows:

• First, play guts-ball with the financials and the energy complex, picking up large money center banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo) a couple regionals I'm familiar with (USB, BB&T), and two insurance companies (MetLife and Prudential); and major oils with high dividends whose stock prices were asininely cheap (Chevron, Conoco-Philips, BP).
• Next, stacked up, even as the market was tanking, on any large company whose price had fallen so far that it's dividend had become absurdly huge.
• Closed my eyes at the market bottom and prayed.

As a onetime stockbroker myself who was at my desk when the notorious Hunt Brothers' silver debacle came to a head, I basically know when something's gone way too high, or, conversely, when the market has collapsed into the final black hole of selling known in the trade as "capitulation." In the first few days of March, 2009, we definitely had capitulation. Yeah, I didn't know that exactly, but it was a good guess, based on the obvious fact that people were just frantically selling everything indiscriminately, hand over fist, like there was no tomorrow. It's so overdone that you just know.

I had thought this was happening in October of 2008 and loaded up on the banks at that time--but got killed, as this drop turned out to not have been the real thing. March 2009 was far fiercer, however, and I knew the drop was over, at least for that phase of the Great Bear. So, unlike the dumpers, I bought hand over fist. In the case of the banks, since the Feds had basically said that no more large money center banks would fail, I felt confident in buying, say, Bank of America (BAC) in the single digits. Yeah, they were and are in trouble, but it's because the Feds basically coerced them into buying the trashed remnants of once-great Merrill Lynch on top of their takeover (under) of the criminal enterprise known as Countrywide (with which I had a mortgage, BTW). So, contrary to their price, they weren't going out of biz.

These stocks, of course, and others were in short order swept up by what may go down as the greatest market comeback of all time, made even more fierce by the fact that everyone has been bad-mouthing it all the way up.

As bull fever took over the market in April-June, I swept out of a great deal of positions for a profit, replacing a number of them with some of the market's best-kept secrets: preferred stocks. These are non-voting shares of a company that basically swap your vote (which tends not to count anyway, statistically) for a nice, abnormally high fixed dividend--a dividend that's senior to any dividend on the common stock if bad times hit. Interestingly, most of the preferreds I started buying were in the same beat up banks I've just mentioned, plus others. Since their prices were so depressed, the preferred dividends, as a percentage, were huge, some as high as 14%. It's these stocks I began to use for income. The kicker is that as the banks recovered, so did the preferreds. As their prices went up, the fixed yields went down as a percentage toward a more normal 7-9% or so. Most I'm still holding for the swell income.

Some banks weren't affected by the crisis due to their own peculiar markets and the fact they didn't need TARP money or had paid it back. Two of these banks are really strange beasts I discovered on my own, although to New Yorkers, they're probably old hat. The first is New York Bank (NYB). It specializes in loans used by investors to purchase rent-controlled apartment buildings in New York City. Stock has basically gone nowhere after a mild recovery (people are a little nervous about some of the noises the city is making, re: how some apt. owners may have fudged their numbers). But while I wait, it pays an 8% dividend.

NYB's strange counterpart, Medallion (TAXI) is also a specialty play. The name and the stock symbol tell you all you need to know. This is a bank that, almost exclusively, makes loans that businesses use to purchase NYC taxi medallions. Not being a New Yorker, I had to do a little research on this. What I discovered was that "medallions"--essentially, certificates sold by the city that allow you to operate fleets of taxis in the city--are monstrously expensive and basically require large loans to finance. Which is why TAXI exists. It makes the loans. It makes the money on the loans. And, unlike almost anything else in this rotten economy, taxis in New York City are a highly profitable business model. So densely packed is this city, particularly in Manhattan, that, except for the occasional country excursion, it makes no sense whatsoever to own a car. So if you need to get around on schedule, or if you're a touristo who doesn't know the streets or address system or subway and bus lines, you have to take a cab to get there. Captive customers, the perfect business even in bad times, and thus very little risk to the loans. So TAXI also, currently underpriced, offers a fat dividend of around 8%.

High dividend stocks, preferreds of normal and oddball banks (plus the Preferred M series of storage renting giant American Storage) now serve as a core of my portfolios, along with carefully selected oil and gas drilling trusts and/or partnerships which trade like stocks. Also helping out are another neglected play, closed end investment companies, essentially mutual funds that don't issue any more shares and so trade like stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Closed end funds that invest in junk bonds are somewhat risky (in my opinion), but the huge dividends, often payable every month, are quite appealing if you're seeking income. And again, I bought most of mine when they were deeply discounted, which closed end funds tend to be, unlike regular mutual funds. The company known as BlackRock has a bunch of them, and I consider these guys pretty good and pretty shrewd managers as opposed to the clowns who went belly-up in the recent debacle.

For tax-haters, BlackRock also has several closed-end funds of municipal bonds of various states, particularly New York and California. The appeal? For those who don't know, the interest on most muni bonds is TAX FREE!! Hurray!! BlackRock has a somewhat thinly traded Virginia muni bond fund (BHV) and I've had a chunk of it for quite some time now, with an average TAX FREE yield of circa 5.5% in Virginia. (I live here. The Feds can't tax muni bonds, although they give it a shot from time to time. Each state can tax the interest on another state's bonds. But nearly always, states don't tax the interest on their own bonds, so if you buy muni bonds or muni bond funds of your home state, you don't have to pay any taxes on them at all, unless you're in the AMT bind. FYI, muni bonds of Washington DC and Puerto Rico are, by statute, untaxable by any state. Last time I looked, cheapskate states that tax their own muni bonds are Wisconsin and Tennessee.)

The other thing that's been important in recovering your money is that you largely need to forget about the old "buy and hold" adage. It's suicide right now. I trade daily--no, I don't consider myself a day-trader, but I move the merchandise a lot, except for some of the high yielding stuff I hold for income.

Finally, I hold a number of small bond positions. Normally, these things are vehicles you buy and hold to collect the interest. You don't expect a capital gain. But many of these bonds got so cheap in the double-crash that I scooped about 2 dozen issues and have capital gains on nearly all. I did make a mistake here, though. When I was in the business, "round lots" of muni and corporate bonds were in 5-10K increments. Well, that's still true for munis, but these days, a round lot of corporates is 25K face value. Having picked up smaller positions based on my previous knowledge, I'm not getting the best prices when I sell some of these "odd lots" which I hadn't thought were odd lots. This old dog has now learned a new trick. Irritating, but not fatal.

Well, I've gone on for a long time, but I felt I should bring this irregular series up to date. Before I head off though, the usual caveat. I'm no longer a registered investment rep, and even if I were, beware: I'm not soliciting or giving advice. I'm only telling you what I know. And nothing I say here either assures or guarantees similar result for anyone else either today, tomorrow, or ever. Travel at your own risk.

Bottom line: you yourself may still be outta work. But you can still make money. And, frankly, I like me as a boss far better than any of the goofballs I've worked for over the last two decades and more.

Name That Party!

This just in from ABC News 2 in Baltimore:

The jury convicted Mayor Sheila Dixon on one count of fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary.

 No word yet as to whether Herhonor will step down.

No word from ABC News 2 either about Mayor Dixon's party affiliation. Hint: If she were a Republican, that would've been in the lede.

Just thought you'd like to know. All parties are equal but some are more equal than others.

Hewitt on Healthcare

Like blogging day for yours truly today. Spent most of it penning a couple of pieces to run in Friday's Washington Times.

But others have been busy in the blogosphere. While we've spent most of our time lately on the ClimateGate scandal, I'd like to point you in the direction of Hugh Hewitt who's been doing a great job fielding comments and providing info on the equally crucial Obamacare debacle currently attempting to wend its way through Congress. Tons of good stuff. Take a gander.

See you tomorrow.

Got ClimateGate? Propagandizing Kids in School

A sickening first-hand report from a mom whose kids are getting brainwashed at school:

When did global warming turn into a forced religion?

My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing -- or time to call an exorcist -- out came this chilling refrain:

" . . . You can hear the warning -- GLOBAL WARMING . . . "

By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:

A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called "The Warming Song," at a concert for parents.

B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.

C) There was no deprogramming session on the menu. And no arguing allowed.

This NY Post report by Andrea Peyser--highlighting the Stalinist-style indoctrination of her own kids-- would be chilling to me save for the fact that this sort of thing is going on all the time, courtesy of the teachers' unions (mostly in big cities) who are more than happy to do their part to turn the nation's children into an up and coming generation of left-wing mind-numbed robots. So it's old news really, although we're mightily glad that someone's decided to report it.

Schools are supposed to educate, not propagandize for one side of an argument, the now-discredited side in this case. Parents of both school-aged and college-aged students need to wake up and start intervening in their schools to put an end to this kind of propaganda.

How Many Times Do You Believe a Liar?

Link in today's Drudge Report:

Professors in U-turn, will publish all data...

Click the link, and you get to this story from the UK Telegraph online:

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data - dubbed Cimategate - have agreed to publish their figures in full.

The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, "stolen" by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements.

Simple question: Of what use is this "data" if,  as we and countless others have discovered, the original, allegedly factual data upon which this "data" was based was allegedly thrown out with the trash as the perps scientists allege?

All they'll be "releasing" is the same batch of lies they've been feeding gullible journos and socialist pols for at least two decades.

 

Picture the "Global Warming" Scandal

Cartoonist Michael Ramirez did:

Hat tip to Power Line.

You gotta love this. The "global warming" fanatics, the academic Sultans of Smug, are under the kind of withering crossfire now that they've sought to avoid for a generation by tenuring in only those who fervently subscribe to their own socialist, statist view which is really what all of this weird science is about. What is going to be even more amusing than this scandal itself is the tap dancing we'll see from the slimy politicians who bought into this hoax hook, line, and sinker. (Except the Goracle, who is too loaded with hubris and thickheadedness ever to admit he was wrong.)

Scary thing--none of these clowns, professorial or political, has any history whatever of being deterred by the truth. Wanna bet we see the Democrat-led Congress pushing their cap and tax legislation anyway?

The Goracle Opines on Capitalism

Dateline: November 26, 2009.

Kinda funny when the Goracle shows up in London's Financial Times with a sermon essentially favoring the long term goals of socialism over the allegedly short term goals of capitalism. By inference, socialism leads to a more responsible stewardship of the planet, which, of course is defined by Gore as ending "global warming," a thesis that's now been exploded by the East Anglia data scandal we've chronicled here.

Money sentence:

We must exercise our voting rights, work with global regulators to improve shareholder rights and responsibilities, and more aggressively hold company boards to the highest standards of governance and ethics.

There he goes again. Note the one-world reference to "global regulators." The "global warming" scam is just another step toward the hard left's goal of a New World Order based on socialism and state control. And Gore is all for it.

FYI, Gore's co-author here, David Blood, probably wrote the whole piece. Along with Gore, he leads an LLC called "Generation Management." It's obviously an investment company built on supporting "sustainable technologies" and such. It's a known fact that Gore has already made large investments in companies and areas that will benefit by the kind of cap and tax legislation he's championing. Thus, this whole piece is an elaborate, self-serving commercial for the Goracle's personal money machine.

How DARE he!

ClimateGate Update: There Ain't No Data!!

Just when you think this scandal can't get any worse, it does. The East Anglia climate miscreants now "admit" that all the original data upon which their vast hoax was based--is GONE. Hot off the presses in today's (London) Sunday Times:

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

I'm shocked. SHOCKED. So what does this mean?

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Guess we now have the real reason why they refused to share the data. It doesn't exist. What exactly was the data and where did it go?

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

One commentator to this online story compares it to a "dog ate my homework" excuse. My take: the real reason our fraudsters weren't "able" to provide the raw data is that, like that famous Monty Python parrot, it "is no more."



Our faux scientists would, of course, have us continue to believe in the purity of the original dataset as well as the manipulations that were performed on said data to to arrive at the conclusion that we're all going to die, maybe tomorrow, if our left-leaning governing elites don't carbon-tax us into oblivion. Or as the denizens of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) put it somewhat wistfully on their website:

“We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

"Value-added." That's rich. Let it never be said that the standup comics at the CRU lack a sense of humor.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Pens another commentator with a jaunty, scholarly air:

"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" It is getting harder and harder to defend these clowns.

Indeed. Yet another commentator observes:

One of [the stonewallers] said in the leaked emails that he'd rather delete the raw data than release it, maybe he did just that !

Another tries to defend the CRU by claiming we could restore the missing data by backing the current, manipulated data back through the algorithms imposed on the initial dataset. In other words, by wiping the lipstick off the pig, we can get a better picture of what the pig actually looked like a long time ago. A lovely idea, but naive. This also presupposes that the East Anglians have a pristine record of and justification for each and every manipulation they've performed on the lost data and that we trust them to be honest about it. As if!!

What really happened here? In the end, only one of two things, I think.

• A. The East Anglians really did thoughtlessly throw out the original dataset as they stated. In this case, they are sloppy and stupid scientists which casts doubt on the quality and/or veracity of any research they've performed, whether it involves climate change or any other issues. Or,
• B. The East Anglians dumped the original data quite recently when they realized the UK Freedom of Information Act would require them to make it public, thus instantly unmasking them as absolute frauds in the eyes of the public.

Whether the data exited our ever-warming planet via route A or B is immaterial. The consequences are the same: a lose-lose situation for the perpetrators of this massive hoax.

Enemies to the Left of Us!

More specifically, in the left column of our blog. In addition to links to our most recent posts, we've long carried link lists of Enemies and pals, aka Good Guys.

I've recently checked these links disposing of those that no longer work. Meanwhile, I've added to and updated our Good Guys list and am doing the same with our Enemies, who, in point of fact, aren't actually enemies since they probably don't care if I exist. I list 'em only so you can see the kind of slugs we oppose in action whenever you wish. I'm assuming you are all too intelligent to fall for their propaganda.

In late-breaking aesthetic news, I've changed the color scheme of our verbiage a bit, just to spruce things up and dust off the cobwebs. Since we're essentially into the rarified (and under-covered) realm of cultural and sociopolitical criticism here, there's no point in making this blog's appearance busy, fussy, and distracting or loading it with ads whose throbbing Flash attachments and thundering Shockwaves spill out over the page, cover the text, and generally piss people off.

(PS: for those not yet born when the Trickster was in the White House, a hat tip to Dick and other long-departed Nixonians for the useful "Enemies List" concept. Ironically, the Clintonistas and the Obamanationals have been far more skilled at smashing their own Enemies than Tricky Dick ever was, despite the MSM opprobrium that's been continually heaped on the only president who's ever resigned from office.)