Remember this

The Wall Street super congress may be facing an impasse, and you know what that means? It’s getting to be that time of year again!

The super committee — an outgrowth of an August budget deal that also raised U.S. borrowing authority — has until November 23 to craft a deal, with the full Congress facing a December 23 for final action. If there is a failure on either end, automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion would start in 2013.

I can think of nothing that would further depress the US economy, especially ahead of what already looks like a dismal holiday shopping season, than We the People being forced yet again to endure lectures about debt and deficits from the very same political and corporate deadbeats who not only piled up a mountain of debt, but who created debt so utterly foul and toxic that We the People had to buy their debt and bail them out faster than a freshman caught maxing out daddy’s gold card in Mexico. Remember that when Thanksgiving rolls around in a few weeks and this becomes all the rage.

Anthony Watts struggles with climate change facts

Results from the Berkeley Earth project data fits existing NASA and NOAA temperature records like a glove

The Anthony Watts saga continues, sadly, as the popular skeptic blogger seems to be struggling, and so far failing, to face the facts he ostensibly helped produce. Take the first bullet point in a list of things he does and does not agree with, recently posted on his site:

The Earth is warmer than it was 100-150 years ago. But that was never in contention – it is a straw man argument. The magnitude and causes are what skeptics question.

Anthony is terribly confused and that’s a charitable take. [Read more…]

And a single biologist will lead them

Wall Street job destroyers and class-holes take note: A UC Irvine evolutionary biologist who made a killing in the vineyard business, shows the opposite of the cancerous greed-and-ignorance-are-good sentiment with a whopping $10 million donation to science, his community, and his adopted country:

Francisco J. Ayala, who was once a Dominican priest in his native Spain and who is known for taking on creationists in books and lectures about evolution, said the gift is a way of showing “gratitude” for his 24-year career at UCI.

Mittens descends into incoherence on Iraq

In a somewhat strange statement issued by the Romney for not-Romney campaign, Mittens criticizes Obama for getting out of Iraq as promised on the 2008 campaign trail:

“President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women,” Romney said in a statement.

Maybe Romney visualizes soldiers hanging out on an embassy rooftop or clinging for dear life on Huey skids. I’m not sure. But the transition sure looks to be pretty damn orderly and most important of all, it hasn’t happened yet. So it’s more than a little puzzling how it could be an astonishing failure already.

US involvement in Iraq to end, US troops home by holidays

The misguided action in Iraq, at least the official involvement of the US military in it, is coming to a close according to a statement issued by President Obama from the White House press room.  The President said in part:

As a candidate for President I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end … after taking office I announced a new strategy [to remove US troops] . Today I can report after nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.” … “The troops will be home by the holidays.”

Hey Anthony: Watts up with this?

Results from the Berkeley Earth project data fits existing NASA and NOAA temperature records like a glove

If Anthony Watts is an objective skeptic he has a very interesting weekend ahead. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Watts is a former weather-caster turned blogger and global warming skeptic who writes at What’s Up With That. Sources tell me he may have tipped his hand over a hot-off-the-press independent climate study which confirmed the same rising temperature trend found by NASA and other climate scientists over the last century. The story begins with Watts fluffing the scientific cred of that study’s authors and editors back in March:

I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results. I haven’t seen the global result, nobody has, not even the home team, but the method isn’t the madness that we’ve seen from NOAA, NCDC, GISS, and CRU …

NASA madness! But the Anthony Watts who chimed in on the same project yesterday, after those results were partly released, sounds very different: [Read more…]

Conservatives grudgingly recognizing US policy success in Libya

They’re getting dragged kicking and screaming, and some haven’t quite been able to fess up and admit this worked, at least in terms of getting rid of the world’s worst (previously living) terrorist:

McCain’s statement made no mention of President Obama or his administration’s role in supporting the rebels.However, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who accompanied McCain to Libya last month, released a statement crediting the administration.

Some of you may be too young to remember, but for years Gaddaffi was the number one terrorist in the world, or so we were told incessantly before 9-11 anyway.