Random news reactions

Michael Savage is a talk show host of the obnoxious variety- but even so, it came as a shock when British Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith publicly banned him from ever traveling to England. I'll let the Mail Online pick it up from there: "The Right-wing radio presenter, whose hardline views on Islam, rape and autism have caused outrage in the US but whose show, The Savage Nation, has eight million listeners, was identified in May by Ms Smith as one of 16 people barred due to their political views. Mr Savage, who had not even applied for entry to Britain, claimed his name had been 'plucked out of a hat' because he was 'controversial and white'. He has since served a £100,000 libel writ on Ms Smith, who announced his ban on television."
Typical right wingnut trying to play victim... except he was right! Memos obtained under the Freedom Of Information act show that the British government was worried about how it looked with all the banned lowlifes being Muslim: "We will want to ensure that the names disclosed reflect the broad range of cases and are not all Islamic extremists... with Weiner, (Savage's real name) I can understand that disclosure of the decision would help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases."
　
"Obamacare" is really warmed-over "Hilary care". How do I know? First clue: if there hasn't been time to read the bill, I can't imagine there's been time to write it from scratch. Second clue: Even President Obama wasn't clear about all aspects of the bill in a press conference. Clincher: the bill makes special provisions for the retarded. Yes, it says "retarded" How many years has it been since anyone used the term "retarded"?

‘Triad’: Polyamorous Lifestyle of WA ‘Family’ Inspires Web Sitcom Wouldn't it be ironic if, because of shows like this, the public came to accept polyamorous relationships after we went to the trouble of ditching the entire UU Affiliates program to get rid of them because they were an embarrassment?

Women getting more beautiful, say scientists
"Evolution has led to women, but not men, getting progressively beautiful, according to scientists." Well, duh... men my age and older have been saying "High school girls didn't look like that when I was in high school!" for years. But I thought everyone knew human male evolution peaked out in 1955. And evolution of lower species has peaked out as well; after all, we have laws intended to never let any species of anything go extinct if we can help it- that must mean that no further evolution is needed or desired

Did you ever wonder...

why there are so many climate conferences held all over the world? They tell us to start restricting and eliminating unnecessary travel- buy local produce that doesn't have to be trucked in, take public transportation or bike in to work- or better still, work from home via computer. And for God's sake, stop all that wasteful business travel- telecommute, video conference, twitter your customers! And yet, all the climate change brass hats jet all over the world non-stop, holding conferences in distant lands- why?

Politiken.DK provides the answer- the whole story is contained in the headlines: Climate conference sex boom
Copenhagen’s sex trade did brisk business during the recent business climate conference.

This suggests a new tactic for political activists, less expense than campaign contributions, and potentially far more effective: I call it "Lysistrata by proxy". All you have to do is target the conferences, seminars, and summit meetings of your special interest, arrive the day before they do, and pay all the prostitutes to stay home and watch TV during the summit meeting. Be it a climate conference or a G-20 meeting, I'm guessing they'll get bored by the second day, pass the agenda in a voice vote, and rush home to their regular mistresses... after resolving to video conference next time instead!

An Inconvenient Blunder

From the Telegraph : "A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal... The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running."

It actually gets worse from there- a riveting read.

By the way, yet another hurricane season has come and gone without living up to Gore's predictions as well.

A question not asked

In the speculation about whether or not Senator Obama will pick Senator Clinton as Vice President, the question I’ve not seen anyone ask is whether she should accept if asked. I think she’d be wise to refuse.

If Obama wins, she will get no credit for it- even in a normal year, it is conventional wisdom that people vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom; and this time, with the Republican party at its nadir and Obama being so charismatic, she’d be seen as unnecessary icing on the cake. Should Obama lose, rightly or wrongly she'd be blamed for the loss, as Ferraro was before. There is simply no upside for her in the campaign.

Should they win, Obama could not afford to give her any real power. If she had power and success, the Cheney to his Bush, then with or without her permission her followers would paint her as the power behind a charismatic figurehead- it would be the perfect setup for her own run eight years from now. Obama could not allow that, and not just for his own ego; it would be the ultimate irony if the first black President was seen as a token figurehead. There's no way he'd accept that legacy. On the other hand, should she be given power and fail, President Obama would get the blame in the end, and rightly so; "the buck stops here." Therefore, should would never be given any real power in an Obama administration.

If she were to serve as Vice President without any specials powers, she'd suffer the fate of all such vice Presidents: instant obscurity. That would give Nancy Pelosi another eight years as the most powerful woman in America, making her a serious threat to Senator Clinton's chances to become the first female President. On the other hand, should Hilary stay in the senate, then given Senator Kennedy's poor health and the fact that Senator Byrd can't last forever, she will quickly become the public face of the Senate, a perfect place to launch her next campaign from. the one and only thing she gains from serving as Vice President is the chance to become President without standing for election should the unthinkable happen, and the last two Presidents who reached the office that way, LBJ and Ford, were not successful.