Category: News

Will advances false claim that Blumenthal fabricated his association with Harvard swim team

George Will falsely claimed that Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal “told the Hartford Courant that he was the captain of a Harvard swim team when he was never on the swim team.” In fact, a former Harvard team captain has stated Blumenthal was on the team, and there is no evidence that Blumenthal personally provided the Courant with any information about his team status.

Will falsely claims Blumenthal misled Courant about being on Harvard’s swim team

Will: “How do you explain that he evidently told the Hartford Courant that he was the captain of the Harvard swim team when he wasn’t on the swim team?” On the May 23 edition of ABC’s This Week, George Will said if he “ran the Democratic party,” he “would be trying to get [Blumenthal] out” of the Senate race, adding: “How do you explain the fact that he evidently told the Hartford Courant that he was the captain of a Harvard swim team when he was never on the swim team?” Will added: “This is a serial problem.”

Courant profile does not state that Blumenthal said he was “captain”

Hartford Courant report does not attribute swim team claims to Blumenthal. In an October 3, 2004, profile of Blumenthal, the Courant reported (accessed via Nexis):

The Blumenthals paid for their children to attend Riverdale Country School, a private school in the Bronx, and later footed the bill for Ivy League schools, all the way through law and medical schools.

In Richard’s case, that meant four years at Harvard University, where he was captain of the swim team, editor-in-chief of the Harvard Crimson and a magna cum laude graduate, and Yale Law School.

Courant issued a correction to its story. On May 21, the Courant issued a correction to its 2004 profile that also did not indicate Blumenthal had supplied the Courant with false information:

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was never captain of the Harvard University swim team. A 1978 Courant story incorrectly reported that he was — an error repeated in subsequent Courant stories, including profiles in 1980 and 2004.

Courant: Former Harvard team captain confirms Blumenthal was on the team

Courant reported that a former Harvard team captain said Blumenthal “was on the team” and that Blumenthal said he had “no idea” where the captain claim came from. The Courant reported on May 20:

I called the school earlier today and was told the registrar’s office can verify attendance but could not verify an individuals participation on any athletic team. I was told to call the swim coach, who did not return my call.

But Waterbury native Peter Alter, who was the captain of the Harvard swim team in 1968, the year after Blumenthal graduated, told the Courant this morning that Blumenthal was on the team.

He was a freestyler and “was actually a pretty good one,” said Alter, now a lawyer in Glastonbury who still on occasion talks to Blumenthal.

The Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think-tank based in Hartford, unearthed a trove of photographs from Harvard that show Blumenthal was at least associated with the team.

A photo from the 1964 Harvard College yearbook, posted on the Yankee Institute’s Facebook page, shows Blumenthal participating in a Harvard swim meet his freshman year. “However, if Blumenthal was on the Harvard swim team, he is not included in the team’s group yearbook photo that year,” Yankee’s executive director Fergus Cullen noted in an email.

Blumenthal campaign manager Mindy Myers said it is her understanding that Blumenthal was a member of the freshman swim team at Harvard.

The captain of the swim team in 1967, Blumenthal’s senior year, was James Seubold, who is now a doctor in the Chicago area. He could not be reached for comment.

Alter, who was a diver and only the second diver in school history to be named captain, said it is a “big deal to be named captain” of any Harvard sports team.

Alter said he talked to Blumenthal a few years ago, when both of them were at a function. The two men joked about the inaccurate references to Blumenthal being the team captain. The attorney general told Alter “he had no idea where it came from.”

“He said he had tried to figure out where it had started and that he had never claimed to have been the captain,” Alter said.

NY Times first forwarded dubious claim that Blumenthal was “never on the team”

NY Times cited Hartford Courant description of Blumenthal as team captain when, “records at the college show that he was never on the team.” The New York Times reported on May 17:

On a less serious matter, another flattering but untrue description of Mr. Blumenthal’s history has appeared in profiles about him. In two largely favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine article in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college show that he was never on the team.

Mr. Blumenthal said he did not provide the information to reporters, was unsure how it got into circulation and was “astonished” when he saw it in print.

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

YOUR NEW REALITY
May 24, 2010

From Agence Global :

Rand Paul says, “I would have voted no on the Iraq War.” He also says, in a video posted prominently on his campaign website, that he’ll push for formal declarations, with House and Senate votes, before the launch even of wars he might favor. He says that while national defense is the top responsibility of government, conservatives who are serious about reducing waste must be wary of the excesses of the military-industrial complex. Add on criticisms of the Patriot Act and a willingness to cross partisan lines, and you can see why Rand Paul gets Cheney’s goat.

What really troubles Cheney and his circle, according to the Cato Institute’s David Boaz, is the prospect that a Paul win would begin to crack the false facade of party unity on military intervention. “That’s an issue the GOP establishment doesn’t want an open debate on,” says Boaz, who suggests the neocons “desperately fear that [electing] a conservative anti-interventionist leader on foreign policy just might reveal that a lot of Republicans and conservatives…don’t buy the world-policeman foreign policy the Bush/Cheney administration imposed on the GOP.”

The NeoCon-controlled Republicans are terrified now of The Tea Party, and they’re decidedly nervous that Ron Paul could become the movement’s leader. Sarah Palin as a leader of the Tea Party, they could handle her, and through her, most of the movement. But Rand Paul is something else altogether, and much closer to the roots of the Tea Party.

Just about the only place you see this kind of pinprick on U.S. consumers in the MSM is in a political cartoon:

Related Post:

• Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme?

Michael Jackson fans in Japan have been offered the chance to spend a night with the King of Pop’s possessions in an exhibition in Japan.

Promoters of The Neverland Collection at The Tokyo Tower, the world’s only official Jackson exhibition, will mark the first anniversary of the superstar’s death by holding a sleepover in its shrine, museum curators told Reuters last week. Fans are scrambling to pay the $1,000 fee required to sleep on the floor next to Jackson’s things. On Jan. 25, Jackson fanatics will be selected at random to stay overnight on in the museum, which has been visited by more than 300,000 fans since it opened in the Japanese capital on May 1.

“The idea may sound a bit odd to Western cultures, but in Japan the tradition of being with the remains and possessions of passed loved ones on the anniversary of their passing is an important ritual,” says Hiroyuki Takamura of The Tokyo Tower.

The Amazing Randy Paul & the New Republican-Tea Party

Perry Leads White in Texas
The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll finds Rick Perry (R) leads Bill White (D) by nine points, 44% to 35%, in the 2010 race for Texas governor.

“The numbers in the races polled aren’t far from the generic party numbers in the poll. Asked which party’s candidate they’d support in their local races for Congress, 46 percent chose the Republican and 34 percent chose the Democrat; 15 percent were undecided and 5 percent chose ’someone else.’”

Quote of the Day
“I venture to say we’re going to lay the smackdown on him come November.”

–Co-Founder of World Wrestling Entertainment Linda McMahon (R), quoted by the Connecticut Mirror, on Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal (D).

Blumenthal Apologizes
“After nearly a week of criticism following revelations that he misrepresented his military record and five days after a press conference in which he expressed regret for his misstatements,” Richard Blumenthal (D) apologized in an email to the Hartford Courant.

Wrote Blumenthal: “At times when I have sought to honor veterans, I have not been as clear or precise as I should have been about my service in the Marine Corps Reserves. I have firmly and clearly expressed regret and taken responsibility for my words. I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone.”

The Wall Street-Washington Axis of See No Evil Strikes Again: Ben Bernanke’s Illogical Argument About Why Taxpayers Should Continue to Subsidize Derivative Trading on the Street
The Wall Street-Washington Axis of See-No-Evil is close to axing Blanche Lincoln’s important proposal for ending the taxpayer subsidy of derivative trading. For years the big banks have relied on taxpayer-funded deposit insurance to backstop their lucrative derivative businesses. Obviously…

Peter Beinart Lashes His Lobby Critics (UPDATE) ++Dershowitz
The original piece is below. It is about Dershowitz. I’m updating with Peter Beinart’s excellent response to the Jeff Goldbergs of the world, who are going after Beinart the way they go after…anyone who dares criticize the Israeli government. Except…


Middle East – Alan Dershowitz – Warfare and Conflict – United States – Israel

Presented By:

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

James Bovard
Campaign For Liberty
May 24, 2010

In his commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 1, President Obama warned that public ignorance subverts self-government. Obama declared: “When we don’t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders, when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day… that’s when democracy breaks down. That’s when power is abused.”

Unfortunately, most Americans have little or no idea how government works or who is holding the reins on their lives. Most American voters do not know the name of their congressman, the length of terms of House or Senate members, or what the Bill of Rights guarantees. Most Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice or a single cabinet department in the federal government. But the ignorance goes far beyond Civics 101.

In his commencement speech, Obama declared that “we need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion.” Except, of course, when government officials assert that “there is nothing to see here — just move along.” While Obama loudly urges Americans to get better informed, Republicans and Democrats are quietly covering up some of the government’s worst abuses.

Obama heavily pressured Congress last year to enact a law prohibiting the release of thousands of photos showing horrendous abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. troops. From 2004 onwards, the U.S. government deceived Americans — first claiming the torture scandal involved only “a few bad apples” from West Virginia, and then insisting that it was merely a few bad units, and then asserting that there was no national policy. By 2008, it was clear that the torture was mandated at high levels of the White House and Pentagon. Suppressing the photos makes it easier for former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who crafted the policies to continue denying that any crimes ever occurred.

Obama is also squelching the vast majority of facts regarding the National Security Agency’s 2002+ warrantless wiretapping of Americans. (Federal Judge Vaughn Walker recently ruled that the wiretaps were illegal.) No individual American has been permitted to know whether NSA copied his email or recorded his calls. The Obama administration even refuses to release the Bush-era Justice Department memos that “proved” why government is now entitled to spy on citizens without a warrant. While Congress granted retroactive immunity to the federal officials and phone companies that betrayed Americans’ privacy, Obama’s Justice Department is prosecuting a NSA official for notifying the media of the abuse.

Obama’s vision of democracy also does not include permitting Americans to learn which banks and other financial institutions received trillions of dollars of subsidies and guarantees from the Federal Reserve. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.—Vt.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R—Tx.) pushed an “Audit the Federal Reserve” amendment to the financial regulation bill. But the Obama White House acted as if disclosing the names of the lucky companies that received windfall benefits would violate the rights of the biggest welfare recipients in American history.

How are citizens supposed to stop abuses when politicians refuse to let them know what government is doing? The government claims that evidence of its torture and wiretapping must be suppressed in the name of national security. But this greatly reduces the likelihood that Americans will learn from their rulers’ folly.

The recent cover-ups illustrate how our republic is becoming an Attention Deficit Democracy. The government remains nominally democratic — elections continue to be boisterous events with mass rallies and tidal waves of dubious ads. But after the polling booths close, most citizens remain clueless about what their rulers do in their name.

Attention Deficit Democracy begets Leviathan because rulers exploit people’s ignorance to seize more power over them. The contract between rulers and ruled is replaced by a blank check. And regardless of how many secrets the government keeps, the rulers still act like the people are liable for all the government’s abuses.

Obama urged graduating students to “pay attention” and “stay informed.” Citizens should be especially curious about what lurks behind the curtains that politicians close. The more crimes politicians are permitted to hide, the fewer liberties citizens will retain.

Sen. Lamar Alexander Advocates A Government Takeover Of The Oil Spill Clean-Up
The oil spill that resulted from a British Petroleum rig exploding in the Gulf of Mexico is still continuing unabated, and many scientists are now saying that BP and the Obama administration are downplaying the amount of oil that is gushing into the water. The joint BP-federal command has been relying on an estimate from […]

The oil spill that resulted from a British Petroleum rig exploding in the Gulf of Mexico is still continuing unabated, and many scientists are now saying that BP and the Obama administration are downplaying the amount of oil that is gushing into the water. The joint BP-federal command has been relying on an estimate from NOAA scientists that the oil rate was increasing by 210,000 gallons (5000 barrels) a day, but independent scientists estimate that the flow rate is at least 850,000 gallons a day.

This week, a flurry of environmental organizations, members of Congress, and local officials in the states affected by the spill called for the federal government to take over the response effort from BP. “This is an all-hands-on-deck crisis, and we need to use every asset the U.S. has, including the Defense Department and all of its most sophisticated technology,” said Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA).

Today, on CBS’ Face the Nation, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) — who spends a lot of his time fearmongering about various government takeovers — seemed to advocate that the government simply let BP off the hook and take over the clean-up effort:

Alexander: There’s one thing [the administration] could do. Under the law, they could fire BP and take it over. But the truth is the federal government probably doesn’t have the capacity to do that. […]

Q: But would you favor taking over BP if that became necessary?

Alexander: Sure, that’s up to the President to decide. … Under the law the federal government can take it over if they choose. And I understand why they might not choose, but that option exists.

Watch it:

Last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward said that he expects the environmental impact of the disaster will be “very, very modest.” But as The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson pointed out, “already, toxic sludge has started to ooze onto Louisiana’s fragile wetlands, and oil globs and tar balls have been found on barrier islands and beaches along the northeastern Gulf Coast. The federal government closed 19 percent of the Gulf to fishing on Monday when the slick doubled in size, caught by the Loop Current that is now dragging oil to the Florida Keys.”

Steele refuses to denounce Rand Paul: ?I can?t condemn a person?s view.?
This morning on ABC’s This Week, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele had to address Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul’s recent comments that private business owners should be allowed to discriminate against people of color or anyone else they choose. After a firestorm of criticism, he backtracked and said he would “not support any […]

This morning on ABC’s This Week, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele had to address Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul’s recent comments that private business owners should be allowed to discriminate against people of color or anyone else they choose. After a firestorm of criticism, he backtracked and said he would “not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” but the controversy has raised other questions about his views on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal minimum wage, and the Fair Housing Act. Today, Steele said that Paul’s philosophy is “misplaced in these times” because it’s not “where the country is right now.” However, he defended that position because “it’s a philosophical position held by a lot of libertarians” and refused to condemn Paul:

STEELE: That’s a direct quote, and it’s a philosophical position held by a lot of libertarians, which Rand Paul is. They have a very, very strong view about the limitations of government intrusion into the private sector. That is a philosophical perspective. We have had a lot of members go to the United States Senate with a lot of different philosophies, but when they get to the body, how they work to move the country forward matters. […]

TAPPER: But do you condemn that view?

STEELE: I can’t condemn a person’s view. That’s like, you know, you believe something and I’m going to say, well, you know, I’m going to condemn your view of it. It’s the people of Kentucky will judge whether or not that’s a view that they would like to send–

TAPPER: Are you comfortable with that?

STEELE: I am not comfortable with a lot of things, but it doesn’t matter what I’m comfortable with and not comfortable with. I don’t vote in that election. The people of Kentucky will. As a national chairman, I’m here to say that our party will move forward in fighting for the civil rights and liberties of the American people, especially minorities in this country, and we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that everyone who’s going to come to the United States Congress or go to state capitals with a Republican label are in that fight with us.

TAPPER: It sounds like you’re not comfortable with it.

STEELE: I just said I wasn’t comfortable.

Watch it:

Transcript:

KAINE: I was a civil rights lawyer for 17 years. Rand Paul wrote a letter about the Fair Housing Act to a local newspaper, saying a free society should tolerate private discrimination, even if it means that hate-filled groups exclude people based on the color of their skin.

TAPPER: That’s pretty much a direct quote.

STEELE: That’s a direct quote, and it’s a philosophical position held by a lot of libertarians, which Rand Paul is. They have a very, very strong view about the limitations of government intrusion into the private sector. That is a philosophical perspective. We have had a lot of members go to the United States Senate with a lot of different philosophies, but when they get to the body, how they work to move the country forward matters, and right now, the federal government is not moving forward on BP and cleaning up that mess; the federal government is not moving forward on the economy and creating jobs. There are a lot of — there are a lot of philosophies, a lot of talk on this hill about folks to get stuff done. What the American people are looking for is what are the concrete steps that this administration has taken to clean up the mess in the Gulf before it gets worse, and to create the jobs that are necessary for people to go back to building the economy the way that everybody wants it to be.

TAPPER: Fair enough, but just one more — one more beat on Rand Paul, and that is do you condemn that point of view? I mean, where would African-Americans be if the federal government hadn’t come in and said, hotels, you have to–

STEELE: Exactly. That’s very much a part of the debate back in the ’60s, as it is going forward. But the reality of it is, our party has stood four-square behind, you know–

TAPPER: But do you condemn that view?

STEELE: I can’t condemn a person’s view. That’s like, you know, you believe something and I’m going to say, well, you know, I’m going to condemn your view of it. It’s the people of Kentucky will judge whether or not that’s a view that they would like to send–

TAPPER: Are you comfortable with that?

STEELE: I am not comfortable with a lot of things, but it doesn’t matter what I’m comfortable with and not comfortable with. I don’t vote in that election. The people of Kentucky will. As a national chairman, I’m here to say that our party will move forward in fighting for the civil rights and liberties of the American people, especially minorities in this country, and we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that everyone who’s going to come to the United States Congress or go to state capitals with a Republican label are in that fight with us.

TAPPER: It sounds like you’re not comfortable with it.

STEELE: I just said I wasn’t comfortable.

Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s president, says he misses working with F1 legend Michael Schumacher. The race-car driver, who won five world championships for the automaker, stayed with the team on as a consultant basis after retiring from Formula 1.

“We had beautiful years together and I gave him back his desire to race,” di Montezemolo said. “At times I miss Schumacher, he gave so much to Ferrari, but he also received a lot.”

Schumacher left Ferrari and joined Mercedes-Benz this year to make his comeback in F1. di Montezemolo admits that his relationship with Schumacher has changed since he signed with Mercedes. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoCar

Via Prison Planet.com » Sci Tech

Watts Up With That?
May 24, 2010

Guest post By Paul Driessen, Willie Soon, and David R. Legates

We’re often asked, What really causes all these alarms about global warming disasters?

As scientists and policy analysts who’ve studied our ever-changing climate for a combined 65 years and attribute the changes primarily to natural forces, we’ve wondered that ourselves and also asked: Why is warming always framed as bad news? Why does so much “research” claim a warmer planet “may” lead to more diarrhea, acne and childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster – and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?

We’re not making this up. In fact, this is just the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg of climate scare stories chronicled at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm.

Clearly, too much money is being spent on one-sided global warming advocacy cloaked as “research,” not enough on natural causes and adaptation. Despite the best of intentions, too much money can corrupt, or at least skew the science.

As they say, follow the money. Remember Indiana Jones’ immortal words: “Fortune and glory.”

Too many people in government, wealthy foundations and activist groups have decided they know what’s best for us, what kind of energy and economic future we should have, and who should be in charge. They intend to implement those policies – and global warming scare stories are key to achieving that objective. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into the effort.

A good example of how research money politicizes science is this May 4 headline: “Carbon dioxide effects on plants increase global warming.” The story enthusiastically reported the results of a science journal paper by Long Cao and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution. Carbon dioxide is not just making the atmosphere trap more heat, they say. It also enables plants to absorb CO2 more efficiently, so they don’t have to open stomata (pores) in their leaves as much, and they evaporate less water.

That should be good news, as it enables plants to survive better under dry conditions, even in desert areas where they couldn’t before. Any botanist or visitor to CO2science.org knows this. Indeed, hundreds of experiments show how growth, water efficiency and drought resistance of crop and wild plants are enhanced by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So more CO2 and better plant growth should be celebrated – not serve as another “climate crisis” to further the political goal of ending hydrocarbon use and controlling our factories, jobs, cars, lives and living standards.

But the Carnegie folks turned this good news into bad, ominously saying the reduced evapotranspiration means plants don’t cool down as much, and that supposedly raises global temperatures slightly.

Equally interesting, the researchers based their findings not on actual experiments, but on yet another computer model that allegedly predicts future temperatures. When they tweaked various assumptions about the physiological effects of CO2, global air temperature over land increased 0.7 degrees F (0.4 deg C) above what supposedly would occur just from doubled CO2 levels directly increasing the greenhouse effect. But just six months earlier, the same authors tweaked the same model differently – and got only 0.2F (0.1 deg C) of additional warming. The authors now say this earlier result is “unrealistic.”

However, what guarantee do we have that the new assumptions are “realistic”? Maybe they are but, face it, there’s far less “fortune and glory,” far less headline grabbing, in a mere 0.2 degrees. It’s also far less “realistic” to expect another research grant, if the first one could only come up with 0.2 degrees of crisis. That’s not even 9:00 versus 9:30 on an average summer morning.

Besides fortune and glory, and more research grants and publications in prestigious journals, there’s also the matter of reputation. Dr. Caldeira, besides being a reputable scientist, is also an advisor to billionaire Bill Gates on renewable energy, and in charge of the $4.5 million in geo-engineering research funding that the Gates Foundation has provided over the past 3 years.

How many climate scientists can rub elbows with Bill Gates? Glory indeed. So 0.7 degrees it is.

Of course, this does not mean more robust plant growth can never be harmful. But does it really take five researchers and six funding sources (including the National Environmental Trust, NSF, NASA and NOAA) to model ragweed under doubled CO2 computer scenarios and conclude, “there may be increases in exposure to allergenic pollen under the present scenarios of global warming”?

All this makes us wonder: Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and revegetate deserts? Should we cut down more forests, to generate even more cooling than the planet has experienced since 2005? Why do “error corrections” always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less? And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?

The United States alone has been spending some $7 billion a year on “climate change research.” That’s a lot of money. But a majority of Americans now say climate change is due to natural forces, not to human CO2 emissions. To alarmists that means more “research” and “education” on the “climate crisis” is clearly needed – but not more on better oversight of questionable research or studying natural causes.

During a March 2009 closed-door meeting, Department of Energy senior advisor Matthew Rogers outlined his “dilemma” over how to comply with his new mandate to quickly spend $36.7 billion in grants and loan guarantees from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka, the Stimulus Act) on renewable energy and climate change. Today, with only $300 million of our taxpayer money and children’s inheritance left to spend, poor Matt says his “popularity continues to decline.”

Nearly $2.4 million dollars of that Stimulus loot may be funding the latest research by Penn State University Professor Michael Mann, father of Mann-made global warming, the debunked hockey stick temperature graph and many infamous Climategate e-mails. In one new project where Mike is the principal instigator, over a half-million dollars in grant money generated only “0.53” jobs in Pennsylvania. We must have missed the headline “Stimulus Creates Millionaire.”

We’re not suggesting fraud or corruption by Caldeira or anyone else. But we do find it curious that the vast bulk of the money goes to research that consistently discovers more “global warming crises.” We find several other phenomena equally curious.

* In an era when ExxonMobil posts all its grants on its website, and we have the “most transparent government in history,” government agencies, liberal foundations and activist groups jealously guard information on who’s getting how much money from whom, to finance all this crisis-oriented research.

* Universities are fighting attorney-general investigations, and insisting that any investigations into alleged misconduct must be conducted in-house and behind closed doors. Yet they are happy to give Greenpeace fishing-expedition access to emails and work product by climate crisis skeptics.

* Despite insisting that their research and findings are completely honest and above-board, climate alarmists still refuse to share their data, computer codes and methodologies, or discuss and debate their tax-funded work with scientists who might “try and find something wrong with it.”

If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and “transforming” society. And always include the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any grant application.

It may not be corruption. But it sure skews the research, conclusions and policy recommendations.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org). Willie Soon is an independent scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. David Legates is a climatologist at the University of Delaware.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Russia Today
May 24, 2010

A month on and the BP off-shore rig spill is still flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Rust colored oil has washed into marshlands and the Mississippi river, endangering wildlife and nature reserves on the American coastline. Big business seems reluctant to take responsibility for the clean up and locals fear they are on the brink of a ecological disaster.

The first T-Mobile HTC HD2 ROM update was released on record time, and it seems not soon after it has also disappeared.

It seems the update caused all kind of issues, include general instability and poor screen response, and has now been taken off line, with the company working on further bug fixes.

Keep an eye on www.t-mobile.com/wmupgrade for the re-appearance of the software.

Have you been affected by the wayward software update? Let us know below.

Via T-MoNews.com

Redistricting Away Our Consent
Jeremy Lott, RealClearPolitics
America was founded on the bedrock notion of the consent of the governed. In the past, that consent was often and easily withdrawn by the governed. Pollster Scott Rasmussen points out in his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, that high incumbency reelection rates are a recent and troubling change in our politics. The House of Representatives used to enjoy frequent and massive turnovers. In the election of 1948, that body saw a 75-seat swing in favor of the Democrats, ushering out the so-called “do nothing” Republican Congress.What has changed since then? Gerrymandering, on a…

Mexico City and DC Gang Up On Phoenix
Debra Saunders, SF Chronicle
Mexican President Felipe Calderon got the tough new Arizona immigration law wrong when he told Congress on Thursday, “It is a law that not only ignores a reality — but also introduces a terrible idea of racial profiling as the basis for law enforcement.”To the contrary, Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which makes it a state crime to be in the United States illegally, expressly prohibits police actions based on “race, color or national origin.”

Our New Culture War: Freedom vs. Govt
Arthur Brooks, Washington Post
 America faces a new culture war.This is not the culture war of the 1990s. It is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion. Those old battles have been eclipsed by a new struggle between two competing visions of the country's future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise — limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income…

The Mexico Model

Converting the Korean price-tags for LG’s 3DTVs the other week almost gave a few of us heart attacks, so it’s pleasing to see that the Amazon prices (they’ve just gone live) are far more reasonable. More »










South America – Technology – Engadget – Asia – South Korea

Well good Monday morning everyone! It seems that the popular next generation of Bolt Browser has just been released from beta status, and put into the wild. Starting today you can now download Bolt Browser 2.1, which brings tighter integration with Facebook, support for HTML5 video and several new Flash video streaming websites. Bolt Browser’s streaming video support now includes: mtv.com, nick.com, bbc.co.uk (UK), maniatv.com, svtplay.se (Sweden), hungama.com (India) and bollywoodhungama.com (India). With the new upgraded version of Bolt Browser also comes tighter integration with Facebook, allowing Facebook chat to be used. Check out the press release (by pressing read more) for complete details on the new version.

The new Bolt Browser can be downloaded for your BlackBerry simply by pointing your device’s browser to boltbrowser.com.

Press Release:

With tabbed browsing, video support and social network integration, the second generation of the acclaimed BOLT browser enables handset manufacturers and mobile operators to deliver the best Internet user experience to all categories of mobile devices

MARLBOROUGH, Massachusetts – May 24, 2010 – Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ: BITS) today announced commercial availability of the second generation of its acclaimed BOLT™ mobile browser.  BOLT 2.1 marks the completion of beta testing on the most fully featured browser available for mobile phones of all types.  Among BOLT 2.1’s new features are tighter integration with Facebook, support for HTML5 video and several new Flash video streaming websites.

BOLT 2.1’s advanced integration with Facebook– by far the most popular domain visited by BOLT users around the world – includes the ability to use Facebook’s instant messaging service and to seamlessly copy text or links and post them to a Facebook account directly from within the BOLT browser.  The most important new feature of BOLT 2.1 is tabbed browsing – giving people the ability to simultaneously browse multiple websites and easily switch between them – this functionality was a top request from BOLT users.  With BOLT 2.1, Bitstream has expanded streaming video support to include mtv.com, nick.com, bbc.co.uk (UK), maniatv.com, svtplay.se (Sweden), hungama.com (India) and bollywoodhungama.com (India). Additional notable upgrades in BOLT 2.1 include a faster widget gallery with updated user interface and a server upgrade to WebKit 4.03, keeping BOLT up-to-date with the latest web standards.

The free consumer version of BOLT, available on mobile Java (J2ME) devices, has been downloaded nearly 7 million times since its debut in February 2009.  Over the the past few months, more than thirty-thousand users installed the consumer version of BOLT each day, while additional people began using pre-installed versions of BOLT on newly-available devices from Bitstream’s OEM partners in Asia and Eastern Europe.
The BOLT mobile browser is engineered to run on mobile phones of all types, from low-end feature phones to high-end smartphones.  BOLT has been installed on 1,000s of different handset models running on hundreds of networks worldwide.  BOLT is the only major WebKit-based cloud computing browser and is built to deliver a PC-like browsing experience on mobile phones.  Its small package, easy integration and comprehensive feature set make it ideal for handset manufacturers and mobile network operators to offer the best possible Internet experience for users of the widest range of mobile device categories.  Co-branding and white labeling opportunities make BOLT especially attractive to OEMs and mobile network operators who will benefit from BOLT’s many advantages, including:

OEMs:

·         Can offer more appealing product lines to operators with mobile devices that provide full-featured browsing, multimedia, widgets and advanced social networking support on all levels of mobile devices.

·         BOLT’s WebKit based cloud-computing architecture enables efficient use of on-device resources.

·         BOLT is presently available in J2ME and Brew versions, with English, Spanish, Romanian and Russian user interfaces.  OEMs can request BOLT in other platforms as well.

·         A 153k lite version of BOLT is available for extremely resource-constrained devices.

Mobile Network Operators

·         The BOLT mobile browser delivers PC-style browsing, multimedia streaming, widget downloads, and social networking that increase ARPU while lowering operator cost.

·         BOLT reduces infrastructure costs through best-of-breed over the air data compression that is as much as 24:1, a factor that is more than twice-as-effective as competing mobile browsers.  BOLT’s superior data compression offers the additional benefit of speedy performance on 2G networks and entry-level devices.

·         Customizable widgets and featured favorites offer new revenue-generating opportunities.

·         BOLT’s WebKit based cloud-computing architecture allows for easy scaling to hundreds of millions of users, and beyond.

·         Flexible, cost-effective deployment options with Bitstream managing all server/cloud maintenance

BOLT is the most fully featured mobile browser, including many features not available in competing mobile browsers.  Among these features are:
·         Perfect rendering of Web pages on any class of phone, scoring 100 percent on the Web Standard’s project Acid3 test.

·         WebKit based cloud-computing architecture, ensuring rendering accuracy, speed and support for the latest web standards and innovations.

·         Streaming video from many of the world’s most popular video sharing websites, including YouTube, MySpace, Blip.TV and MetaCafe, as well as websites that stream videos such as CNN, ESPN and any website with embedded YouTube videos.

·         Super fast download speeds.

·         Copy and pasting text.

·         Built-in integration with Twitter and Facebook.

·         Password manager.

·         Download/Upload manager.

·         Ability to run Web-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, ranging from Google docs to Mafia Wars.

·         The inclusion of widgets – standalone mobile applications that are run directly from the browser – such as a weather app, calendar app, calculator, Twitter client and others.  These widgets let people using any phone take part in the mobile apps revolution.

·         Best of breed over-the-air data compression, resulting in faster load times and decreased data usage.

·         Ability to update the BOLT client remotely, over-the-air.

·         Patented split screen viewing to make surfing complicated Web pages simple, and viewing content on the smallest of screens easy.

Bitstream has made BOLT extremely easy to use, with keypad shortcuts to quickly navigate pages and scale up and down through the browser’s six levels of magnification.  Comprehensive instructions on how to use all of BOLT’s many features can be found at http://boltbrowser.com/faq.html.

Recognizing that some mobile phones currently in use cannot support the full size applications and some network providers limit the size of application downloads, Bitstream also offers a light version of the BOLT mobile browser, BOLT LiteTM.  BOLT Lite contains all the essential features of the BOLT mobile browser, retaining BOLT’s feature-rich functionality, best-of-breed download speeds and desktop PC-style page layout in a smaller package optimized for entry-level devices.

BOLT 2.1 and BOLT Lite for free at http://boltbrowser.com.  Consumers who have downloaded previous versions of BOLT will be prompted through the application to upgrade the browser.

About BOLT
The acclaimed BOLT mobile browser has the most faithful rendering of Web pages of any browser in its class. This fast mobile browser quickly and accurately displays Web pages on mobile phones just as they would appear on desktop computers. BOLT is the only browser for mobile phones of all types to support streaming video from popular media sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace. Based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone’s Safari and Android’s Chrome browsers, BOLT is compatible with the majority of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones. BOLT features a patented split-screen viewing mode, intuitive keystroke shortcuts and copy/paste functionality, and offers a user-friendly, feature-rich mobile browsing experience for even entry-level mobile phones. Download BOLT for free at http://boltbrowser.com – the mobile Internet has never looked this good on your phone.

About Bitstream
Bitstream Inc. develops software technologies and applications for the graphic art and mobile communications industries. Bitstream’s award-winning fonts and font technologies enable device manufacturers and application developers to render the highest quality text in any language, on any device, at any resolution. The company’s MyFonts brand is the world’s leading provider of fonts to consumers. Bitstream’s Pageflex brand enables marketers to easily produce customized communications in print, email, and online. The company’s latest offering is the BOLT mobile browser, which has been installed by millions of users worldwide since its release in February 2009.  For more information visit www.bitstream.com.

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Earlier this month, we heard reports that the next-generation Audi A2 will launch in 2012 instead of the 2014 as previously scheduled. Apparently, Audi is working hard to push forward the launch of the A1 as soon as possible so it can have a competitor to the BMW Megacity vehicle, which will go on sale in 2013.

According to sources, in order to compete with the BMW Megacity, the next-generation Audi A2 will be all-electric. The second-generation A2 will use a conventional steel monocoque from the new A1 and will drop its expensive spaceframe construction to keep cost down.

While styling on the next-generation A2 is being kept a big secret, it is known that Audi will keep its one-box design like the predecessor.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoCar

 "Air Products … conduct an engineering study and project plan to capture, concentrate and purify carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted from industrial operations for use in enhanced oil recovery work. … will be among several to be evaluated in 2010 by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory for potential additional funding of the overall project."

" … design and construct a state-of-the-art system to capture CO₂ from Air Products’ steam methane reformers (SMR) located at a refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.  … recover and purify the CO₂ for delivery via pipeline for enhanced oil recovery in Texas.  …"

" … Air Products has been involved in several carbon capture demonstration projects around the world, …information on Air Products’ CO₂ purification technologies can be found at: www.airproducts.com/CO2_capture "

Via: Air Products and Chemicals LINK

Former American Idol pundit Paula Abdul is returning to the judges’ table — this time as part of a new primetime dance competition series on CBS.

The noted choreographer and former professional cheerleader will be lead judge, executive producer, creative partner, mentor, and coach on Got to Dance, a performance series based on the hit UK talent show of the same name, The Hollywood Reporter said Monday.

CBS suits are expected to announced the move this week.

The show — picked up by CBS in March — is billed as broadcast’s first all-ages, all-genres dance series — “from ballroom to break dance, bhangra to ballet, and tap to tango.” Dance acts will compete for a panel of judges, with viewers getting to vote for their favorites during the semi-finals and finals.

The gig is the singer’s first major role since leaving the panel of American Idol in the middle of a salary dispute with FOX. She was replaced by Ellen DeGeneres last fall, but is expected to appear on the show’s Season 9 finale this week to pay tribute to exiting judge Simon Cowell.

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Youtube
Monday, May 24th, 2010

The pudgy-faced opportunist reveals his true self. Taken from Armando Iannucci’s Time Trumpet (2006).

There appears to be some confusion amongst commenters on youtube concerning what this video represents.

It is a piece of British satire putting out the message that both of these politicians are puppets. Furthermore, in reality everyone knows they are the same, you don’t need to be shown the “evidence” – hence the ridiculousness of the evidence presented here. The problem is that the voting public still engage in cognitive dissonance by playing along with the phony left/right political divide.