Reader Tips

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." -- George Bernard Shaw

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Not Waiting For The Asteroid

"You know Canadian newspapers don't pay for interviews." -Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail.

An Interview With Sheriff Joe Arpaio

At Right Wing News;

There was a professor that I wasted 10-20 thousand on, who did survey about 15 years ago on recidivism. So, he told me things that I already know, like prisoners hate the Bologna sandwich, they hate the pink underwear, and they hate the 140 degree tents. I didn't need him to tell me that.

"The problem with Socialism..."

The Ides of March, 2010 may be remembered as the day* the entitlements crash began. Social Security liabilities exceed inflow, and SSA has begun tapping its vault full of Treasury bonds. “Too bad” (as the AP story notes) “the federal government already spent that money…”

h/t Geoff

The Sound Of Settled Science

Propaganda science meets the smell test;

Estimates that airborne contaminants cause thousands of deaths a year - often cited by public-health authorities and medical associations - are gross exaggerations, argues the University of Guelph's Ross McKitrick in the paper.

Other research on the issue has generally failed to factor in the confounding effects of smoking and income levels, and looked at short time periods where pollution levels were relatively low, making results less reliable, he said.

"High air pollution will affect people's lung health, it's just that the effect seems to be too small to support this notion of thousands of hospitalizations," said Prof. McKitrick. "If we got rid of all the air pollution in the cities - didn't change anything else - how much would the rate of hospitalization go down? The answer is it really wouldn't go down at all."

Behold, A Miracle

If I ever get prostate cancer, I'm heading to Libya.

Every Time You Read This Blog A Polar Bear Dies

I say we invite these folks to this year's Ceremonial Banishment of the Snows.

h/t EBD

Another Poll Goes Horribly Wrong

Reader Tips

Welcome to the Wednesday (EBD) Late Nite Radio. In honour of the fact that yesterday was St. Paddy's day, aka the day on which sensible people go straight home after work in order to avoid encounters with drunken revelers of every ethnic background wearing "Kiss me, I'm Irish" t-shirts, tonight we feature the walking distilleries known as The Pogues performing a song written by their — highly flammable — lead singer Shane MacGowan called If I Should Fall From Grace With God.

Please move small pets and elderly family members to a safe area, and refrain from throwing beer bottles.

You are invited, as always, to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

Obamas Interruptus

And the Bret Baier buzz begins.

You can watch the full interview here, or read the rush transcript.

Update: This QOTW from the NYT David Brooks... (via Hotair)

Either this whole city has gone insane or I have or both. But I’m out here on the ledge and I’m not coming in the window. In my view this is no longer about health care. It’s just Democrats wanting to pass a bill, any bill, and shredding anything they have to in order to get it done. It’s about taking every sin the Republicans committed when they were busy being corrupted by power and matching it with interest.

And now, for the "Hawaii earthquake" moment....

Let's Play Another Round Of "Guess That Sculpture!"

The MTV camera crews were in the process of filming what was described as "grown men wearing fur" who were dancing around the sculpture as it shot the "white fluid" into the air.

" Think there is no credit bubble in Canada?"

Think again.

h/t

Y2Kyoto: Only Gaia Bleeds

And everything old...

Is new again.

Published This Month In The Journal Of The Blatantly Obvious

"The first published national study of injuries related to table saws reports that these devices account for about 31,500 injuries per year, 97% percent of the victims are male and most injuries are due to 'contact with the blade of the saw'..."

Is There Nothing The Non-Interferer-In-Chief Can't Do?

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!

November 2009 - "We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs."

March 2010 - Secretary Clinton then gave Netanyahu a list of specific demands that Israel must meet for the U.S. to be convinced that she is serious about peace with the Palestinians.

Continued juxtaposition, from David Harsanyi.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Johnny Hamp & his Kentucky Serenaders performing Keep Your Sunny Side Up!, with Joe Cassidy singing, in 1929 (2:47). Keep your sunny side up, keep it up, Hide the side that gets blue. If you have nine sons in a row, Start a baseball team,     they make money you know.   Keep your funny side up, don't let up, Let your laughter come through. Stand up on your legs,     be like two fried eggs, Keep your sunny side up.   "The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -- Benjamin Franklin   Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Y2Kyoto: If We're The Ones Doing All The Polluting

(Click image for interactive table)

How come Los Angeles has all of the smog?

“The cap-and-trade proposal assumes there is no difference in the impact of carbon dioxide, regardless of where it originates,” Jacobson said. “This study contradicts that assumption.”

More: Alberta Air Quality Map ... Oil Sands Environmental Fact Sheet

Ahenakew

But, with hindsight, the salient point in the story remains the one I end on - that to his audience his remarks were utterly uncontentious.

Marketing Campaigns Of The Apocalypse

We call him "Clifford Olson" and he's wonderful with children;

Not one dog bite in Canada has been attributed to a Staffordshire bull terrier in the history of the breed, said Barkey, a leading advocate for rescinding the law as written. She breeds the dog in Quinon, Que., and in several countries outside Canada.

“I’m the only one here today,” she said of the dog’s breeders and competitors.

Because of the Ontario ban, the breed is in decline in Canada, she said. She named the 15-month-old dog “Che,” she said, to give the breed a freedom fighter.

The Sound Of All Hell Breaking Loose

In a one word answer;

"Are you saying that the scientific community, through the IPCC, is asking the world to restructure its entire mode of producing and consuming energy and yet hasn’t done a scientific uncertainty analysis?"

Not Waiting For The Asteroid

In this case I think Newsbusters is going a bit hard on the New York Times.

It's likely that the editorial staff noticed the intersecting lines in the image, but just couldn't quite put their finger on where they'd seen it before.

Reader Tips

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation, here are Woody Herman and his orchestra, The Swinging Herd, featuring Bill Chase, Dave Gale, Billy Hunt, Phil Wilson, Henry Southall, Bob Rudolph, Sal Nistico, Jackie Stevens, Bobby Jones, Frank Hittner, Nat Pierce, Chuck Andrus, and Jake Hanna performing Molasses ¤ on Jazz Casual in 1963 (6:30).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

"For some reason, that never actually makes the headline"

I had my camera along, but BCF did a much better job. Enjoy!

(It's a little shaky near the end. Hopefully, he'll post another video showing the proximity of the new Hezbollah bunkers to our plucky UN observers.)

Jonathon Narvey collected other reports here, plus a few past writings from our incomparable guide Uri.

Welcome to Progressia

I recall a Saskatchewan event a number of years ago which involved a canoe race. The teams in the race decided to all finish the race together ... so the fastest canoe held up to let all the rest catch up, and they finished the race all in first place.

... or was it all in last place?

Such is the mentality of the new Europe:

Germany's trade surpluses built on holding down labor costs may be unsustainable for the other countries in the eurozone, France's finance minister said in an unusually blunt warning to Berlin.

Christine Lagarde said Berlin should consider boosting domestic demand to help deficit countries regain competitiveness and sort out their public finances.

Her comments break a long-standing taboo between the French and German governments about macroeconomic imbalances inside the 16-country bloc which have been dramatically exposed by the Greek debt crisis.

"[Could] those with surpluses do a little something? It takes two to tango," she said in an interview with the Financial Times. "It cannot just be about enforcing deficit principles."

"Clearly Germany has done an awfully good job in the last 10 years or so, improving competitiveness, putting very high pressure on its labor costs. When you look at unit labor costs to Germany, they have done a tremendous job in that respect. I'm not sure it is a sustainable model for the long term and for the whole of the group. Clearly we need better convergence."

But I have a condition...

You've got to wonder sometimes if this whole "human rights" thing hasn't gone too far:

A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.

The union, NU'91, is calling the campaign "I Draw The Line Here," with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.

A more effective advert would show a trio of brawny Dutch-Calvinist nurses advancing with a pillow...

Narcissist? Who knew!

The Telegraph, doing the job N. American media refuses to do.

Rampaging gangs of Toyotas rough up the elderly and the bankrupt

Last week a 61-year old named James Sikes, who filed for bankruptcy several years ago, found himself unable to stop his 2008 Toyota Prius as it raced along the highway at over 90 miles per hour. The 911 dispatcher "repeatedly pleaded with Sikes to shift into neutral. He simply refused....."

Fun fact: the gear shift in the 2008 Toyota Prius is conveniently mounted so that one can shift while keeping both hands on the wheel.

“I thought about” shifting into neutral, Sikes said at a televised press conference the day after the incident. But “I had never played with this kind of a transmission, especially when you’re driving, and I was actually afraid to do that.”

Might there be more going on behind the scenes of this whole "Toyota scandal" than the average MSM-watcher is aware of? Theodore H. Frank, in the Washington Examiner:

We went through this a generation ago with the Audi 5000 and other autos accused of sudden acceleration, and, again, mysterious unknowable car components were supposedly at fault....Back then, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)...found that sudden acceleration was several times more likely among elderly drivers than young drivers..."

We’re seeing the same pattern again today. Initial reports of a problem, followed by dozens of new reports “coming to light” as people seek to blame their earlier accidents on sudden acceleration.

(...)

In the 24 (Toyota) cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89—and I’m leaving out the son whose age wasn’t identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

Hmmm. Clearly, it's time for a class-action age-discrimination lawsuit against foreign car manufacturer Toyota. Their customers' lives, after all, "can suddenly become hell-on-wheels."

Reader Tips

"Certitude is not the test of certainty." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Now is the time at SDA when we Juxtapose!

Obama administration publicly dresses down Israel:

"The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting," (Hillary) said. "I mean, it was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone -- the United States, our vice president, who had gone to reassert America's strong support for Israeli security -- and I regret deeply that that occurred."

Meanwhile Palestinians hold a ceremony naming a square after Fatah terrorist:

Despite the Palestinian Authority’s announcement that it had postponed the inauguration of a square in el-Bireh named after Dalal Mughrabi, the Fatah woman who led the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians and an American photographer were killed, and 71 were wounded, Fatah officials on Thursday evening went ahead with the ceremony.

And in related news, another day in the Islamic world, another rampage against Christians:

Muslims attacked a community center and burned several homes belonging to Coptic Christians in northwestern Egypt over the weekend, injuring 23 people, in a rampage that a local bishop said was incited by a radical Muslim preacher.

What's a Day Without Climate Nonsense

... in this case though, a sniff of common sense has taken hold:

TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm.

The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.

The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again.

It has also referred a television commercial to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, for potentially breaching a prohibition on political advertising.