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I'm planning on being around in ten years, Lawd willin'. And I'm really looking forward to holding up all these global-warming deniers, like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all their absurd guests running around their shows screaming that "CRU e-mails prove global warming is a hoax!" for some serious, serious ridicule.

Like Hannity last night on his Fox show, hosting the best author Exxon/Mobil money could buy, Chris Horner, to natter at length about the fake CRU e-mails scandal. At the very end, Hannity comes up with an epithet for global warming:

Hannity: Biggest scientific fraud, I think, in our lifetime.

Yes, that's what we'd call it too -- not global warming, but this fake scandal, as Media Matters explains in thorough detail.

Particularly when it comes to Hannity's and Horner's doubts that the e-mails were "stolen" (Hannity says: "I don't think that's an accurate story," and Horner says, "There is no evidence this was a hacking.") As MM explains:

CRU officials have stated that emails were obtained through "a criminal breach of our security systems." In its initial response to the reported theft, officials at the University of East Anglia stated: "Recently thousands of files and emails illegally obtained from a research server at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have been posted on various sites on the web." In a statement about the controversy, CRU vice chancellor of research Trevor Davies stated: "We are committed to furthering this debate despite being faced with difficult circumstances related to a criminal breach of our security systems and our concern to protect colleagues from the more extreme behaviour of some who have responded in irrational and unpleasant ways to the publication of personal information."

But beyond the fact that this is just another right-wing water-muddying exercise to advance their own propaganda, you really have to wonder how the rest of the media can so eagerly lap up such a non-story. Especially when confronted with the actual evidence of what in fact is occurring in the Real World, i.e., the natural world, to wit:

Climate change speeds up since 1997 Kyoto accord

Since the 1997 Kyoto international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the Arctic's once-frozen summer sea ice. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen:

• The world's oceans have risen about an inch and a half.

• Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

• Species now in trouble because of changing climate include not just the polar bear, which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.

• Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 degree warmer than in the dozen years leading up to 1997.

"The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Continue reading »

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Flippity, floppity, flip, flop. Just like a fish on the deck of a boat, John McCain is gasping for the life of his campaign. Knowing full well that tying his campaign to staying in Iraq and the "success" of the "surge" (quick, McCain, explain what that means!) and that the majority of Americans just aren't willing to buy it, McCain executes a perfect "cut and run" from his earlier statement of staying in Iraq for 100 years.

By the way, that reminds me of that “100 year thing”. My friends, the war will be over soon. The war, for all intents and purposes, although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years. But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us.

Huh? The war will be "over soon"??? Mission Accomplished redux? But the insurgency will go on. But that's not a war. But the Iraqis will handle it. Aren't the insurgents Iraqis too? Can anyone make heads or tails of this ridiculous excuse of a back pedal?

How in the hell does McCain think he can get away with this?

I wasn't going to post about this, but what the heck. It's too funny ...Apparently, there's a "Save Tucker" movement trying to flourish and they have a website to prove it. And a three-time Democratic office seeker is helping out...I wonder how long it will take Howard Kurtz to do a feature on it, but I digress. Here's where the fun begins...

MSNBC executives are considering cancelling 'Tucker' with Tucker Carlson which airs on MSNBC at 6:00pm EST weekdays. This decision by MSNBC will silence a [bleating, whiny, intensely irritating-ed.] conservative voice, part of a move by MSNBC to swing left and become "FOX for the Liberals," dropping any pretense of objectivity or balance.

Any guy willing to go on "Dancing with the Stars" and treat guests both left and right with spirited but congenial debate should not be purged in some ideological marketing plan. We respectfully urge NBC to reconsider this decision and save TUCKER!

I think all his problems are essentially illustrated in this pesky little ratings graphic below....

(click pic to make it larger) h/t TV Newser...Anyway, TRex started a new blog and talks more about this...

At this point, it's obvious that the government's response to Katrina was pathetic, and the response to the wildfires has been competent, though as Dan Froomkin noted yesterday, “[D]espite all the forceful pronouncements from the White House, it’s not clear that Bush deserves much, if any, of the credit. And there’s no indication that his visit will expiate the Katrina legacy, arguably the second most defining aspect of his presidency.”

But that apparently hasn’t stopped Bush from taking a cheap shot.

“There is no hill he’s not willing to charge, no problem he’s not willing to solve,” Bush said of the California governor. “It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead.”

Unlike, say, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who was faulted perhaps as much as the Federal Emergency Management Agency was for inadequate preparation and response for Hurricane Katrina’s assault on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?

You think? Two years later, and the president is still trying pass the buck.

For her part, Blanco said in a press statement that it took federal forces nearly a week to arrive in Louisiana after the storm. “I was the only game in town, leading for nearly a week without the president’s help,” Blanco said. “Of all the lessons learned from Katrina now being put into place in California, I would hope the one he would remember is that politics has no place in any disaster.”

So much for that idea.

Ordinarily, when a reporter asks the president to comment on a subject he’s not comfortable with, Bush will dodge pretty well. He’ll note his unwillingness to discuss the matter, but he’ll do so artfully (albeit unpersuasively) with some vaguely credible explanation. Yesterday, however, NBC’s David Gregory asked Bush about Israel’s bombing raid on a target in Syria earlier in the month.

“I’m not going to comment on the matter,” the president said with a stoic impression. When Gregory followed up with a related question, Bush repeated, “I’m not going to comment on the matter.”

As a rule, I don’t find Charles Krauthammer’s work to have any value, but his initial description of the events in Syria earlier this month were on the mark: “On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what.”

The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright shed some additional light on the subject today with a provocative front-page piece.

Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.

This bears watching. As the WaPo noted the other day, “[L]ike a subterranean explosion, the event is sending shock waves through the Middle East and beyond.”

James Wolcott's Blog: It is a measure of Petraeus's obliging pliancy that he would even accede to testifying on the anniversary of 9/11, thus ensuring that his report would function as a 'tie-in' product.

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Hillary has returned the Hsu money.  When will George W. Bush return the $1.4 million his campaign received from Enron?

Consortiumblog: When former CIA officer Ray McGovern made the vocal suggestion -- during a technical delay to fix Gen. David Petraeus' microphone -- that the witness be sworn in, McGovern was forced to leave the hearing room.

Robert Reich's Blog: The way to prevent the looming recession

10 Zen Monkeys: In one corner, we have a disheveled , sickly looking maniac who can barely move and appears to be in some kind of drug-enduced stupor while babbling messages of madness.

And in the other corner, we have Osama bin Laden

Media Bloodhound: Quality reporting demands accuracy, honesty, context and a willingness to report the hard truths.  We Want News

DailyKos:

Colorado representative Doug Lamborn has just made the final doo-doo step it what will be the shortest and most lackluster career the House has ever seen. Doug Lamborn's recorded threats to a pair of voters critical of his views has now reached the pages of both the Denver and Huffington Posts. Doug's local paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette, is eerily silent.[..]

Update: Here's the back story from Colorado Confidential. And here are Doug's threats, as printed by the Denver Post:

"Now there are consequences to this kind of thing, but I would like to work with you in a way that is best for everyone here concerned."

He didn't stop there, though. The message cut off before his inner Tony Soprano could kick in:

"Hello, this is Doug Lamborn again, I'm finishing up my message from a moment ago. I got cut off. It is critical that you get back to me as soon as possible on this because I'll be going back to Washington here in a few days and I have to make sure that this is resolved one way or another. And like I said I'd rather resolve this on a Scriptural level but if you are unwilling to do that I will be forced to take other steps, which I would rather not have to do."

What did the couple do to incur Lamborn's wrath? Wrote a letter to the editor of their paper denouncing his voting AGAINST stricter dog-fighting penalties. I'd say that this is a case for the House Ethics Committee, wouldn't you? Rep. Tubbs-Jones is the chairperson, if you'd like to contact them.

GuardianUK: (h/t Gregory)

Tension between British and American commanders in southern Afghanistan erupted into the open yesterday as a senior UK military officer said he had asked the US to withdraw its special forces from a volatile area that was crucial in the battle against the Taliban.

British and Nato defence officials have consistently expressed concern about US tactics, notably air strikes, which kill civilians, sabotaging the battle for "hearts and minds" and infuriating Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

The coalition of the "We're willing, but not with you here"? Why does there seem to be so much more common sense and thoughtfulness on the part of British military tactics? I'd like to see our brass adopt some of the British forces' techniques. Sadly, this is likely the only guideline they will likely imitate:

Sweeping new guidelines barring military personnel from speaking about their service publicly have been quietly introduced by the Ministry of Defence, the Guardian has learned.

Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel will not be able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

Via SF Gate:

State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday. The researchers "were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,'' said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the "top to bottom review" of every voting system certified by the state.

Neither Bowen nor the investigators were willing to say exactly how vulnerable California elections are to computer hackers, especially because the team of computer experts from the UC system had top-of-the-line security information plus more time and better access to the voting machines than would-be vote thieves likely would have.

Bowen said in a telephone news conference Friday that the report is only one piece of information she will use to decide which voting systems are secure enough to use in next February's presidential primary election.

If she is going to decertify any of the machines, she must do it by Friday, six months before the Feb. 5 vote. Read more...

You can contact California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen here and let her know what you think of electronic voting machines.

Empire Burlesque:  Hype v. Hyderabad.

At MaxSpeak, Max Sawicky’s proposal for an “intelligent immigration policy.”  At No Comment, a less intelligent but more modest proposal from Glenn Beck: convert Mexicans into cheap alternative fuel.

All Spin Zone: The Fairness Doctrine is still dead.

Lukery Land: A short course in scandal management, from Bandar Bush to Sibel Edmonds.

Pandagon: Most white people would charge a cool million to give up TV forever – but they’d be willing to switch races for ten grand or less.  (Has Clarence Thomas switched already?)

If you go to church on Sunday / And cabaret on Monday, join the Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

Guest blogger Simbaud will go to bed hungry tonight . . . unless you help.  Send your leftover infoscraps to: Simbaud AT gmail DOT com.