From a clearly annoyed New York Times:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Says Pika Not Imperiled by Climate Change

By TODD WOODY
February 8, 2010

The Obama administration has determined that the American pika, a small rabbit-like mammal, is not threatened by climate change.

The decision underscores how the Endangered Species Act has become the latest battlefield in the fight over global warming.

Environmentalists consider the pika to be the animal most vulnerable to climate change in the continental United States due to its inability to survive even small increases in temperature.

The pika lives on alpine mountain ranges throughout the West and as average temperatures have increased in recent decades, some populations have disappeared at lower elevations while others have moved to higher peaks, according to scientific studies.

In an initial finding issued last April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that protecting the pika under the Endangered Species Act “may be warranted because of the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range as a result of effects related to global climate change.”

But after a full review, government scientists have now concluded the pika could survive temperatures projected to increase 3 degrees Celsius in its mountain habitat as well as the loss of snowpack, which the animals depend on for shelter. “The American pika has demonstrated flexibility in its behavior and physiology that can allow it to adapt to increasing temperature,” the scientists wrote in the finding released Friday.

Greg Loarie, an attorney who represents the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that petitioned to list the pike as endangered, said studies do not support’s the government’s position.

“The science is very clear that pika populations are collapsing at least in the Great Basin of the Western United States, and even in strongholds like the Sierra Nevada in California lower level populations are beginning to move upslope,” said Mr. Loarie, an attorney with EarthJustice, an environmental law firm.

“The conclusion that pikas are not even threatened by climate change is not warranted,” he said.

The thick-coated pika, which in the southern portion of its range lives at elevations of 8,200 feet, does not hibernate and thus maintains a high internal temperature to survive frigid winters. Since it can’t turn off its heater, the pika can perish in the summer if its body temperature increases by as little 3 degrees Celsius.

Even if the Obama administration had listed the pika as threatened or endangered by climate change, it’s unclear whether the government would have been compelled to curtail greenhouse gas emissions to help protect the species…

Mr. Loarie said his client has not decided whether to pursue a lawsuit to reverse the pika ruling.

In California, meanwhile, the Center for Biological Diversity, has sued to force regulators to consider protecting the pika under the state endangered species act.

“A listing of the pika would drive home that climate change is not just having an impact on arctic regions but in our own backyard,” said Mr. Loarie.

What a relief.

Still, that it even got this close is outrageous.

Just imagine, we are seriously talking about the government compelling us to curb our ‘gas emissions’ to protect a species.

Surely, this is not what the Framers had in mind.

From a grief stricken Associated Press:

Rep. John Murtha, Iraq war critic, dies at 77

By Peter Jackson, Associated Press Writer

February 8, 2010

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Rep. John Murtha, the tall, gruff-mannered former Marine who became the de facto voice of veterans on Capitol Hill and later an outspoken and influential critic of the Iraq War, died Monday. He was 77.

The Pennsylvania Democrat had been suffering from complications from gallbladder surgery. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., with his family at his bedside, the hospital said…

This is too bad.

It looks like the Haditha Marines will never get their long overdue apology.

From The Federal Times:

Bob Dylan to perform at White House Wednesday

If you’re looking for something to do Wednesday evening after our next expected round of snow, you might want to check out www.whitehouse.gov beginning at 5:15 p.m. Bob Dylan will be one of at least a dozen musical acts performing that night in the East Room to honor the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and the White House will stream the whole thing live on their Web site.

Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, Joan Baez, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Smokey Robinson and John Mellencamp are among the other musicians to be featured at “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.” President Obama will deliver the opening remarks, and guest speakers will include actors Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro and Queen Latifah. If you miss it online, it will be aired on Washington’s PBS station WETA Thursday at 8 p.m…

We have been trying to think of some song suggestions.

Ballad Of A Thin Man (Something is happening here and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.)

A Hard Rain Is Going To Fall

The Times They Are A-Changing

Only A Pawn In Their game

Tangled Up In Blue

Blowing In The Wind…

From a joyous Associated Press:

New Federal Climate Change Agency Forming

Obama administration to set up new agency to study, monitor climate change

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AP Science Writer
February 8, 2010

The Obama administration on Monday proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

"Whether we like it or not, climate change represents a real threat," Locke said Monday at a news conference.

Lubchenco added, "Climate change is real, it’s happening now." She said climate information is vital to the wind power industry, coastal community planning, fishermen and fishery managers, farmers and public health officials…

"More and more people are asking for more and more information about climate and how it’s going to affect them," Lubchenco explained. So officials decided to combine climate operations into a single unit.

Portions of the Weather Service that have been studying climate, as well as offices from some other NOAA agencies, will be transferred to the new NOAA Climate Service.

The new agency will initially be led by Thomas Karl, director of the current National Climatic Data Center. The Climate Service will be headquartered in Washington and will have six regional directors across the country.

Lubchenco also announced a new NOAA climate portal on the Internet to collect a vast array of climatic data from NOAA and other sources. It will be "one-stop shopping into a world of climate information," she said.

Creation of the Climate Service requires a series of steps, including congressional committee approval. But if all goes well, it should be finished by the end of the year, officials said…

At long last here are some jobs that no one can deny Mr. Obama is saving or creating.

But of course they are government jobs.

And jobs that will in fact only further restrict the part of the economy that actually does create wealth for the nation.

We nearly missed this strange bit of puffery from CNN:

How Obama’s favorite theologian shaped his first year in office

By John Blake, CNN

February 5, 2010

(CNN) — In the summer of 1943, when Adolf Hitler’s armies marched unchecked across Europe, a pastor in a remote New England village decided to write a prayer.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," he began, "the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

It is now known as the Serenity Prayer. It’s been adopted by 12-step recovery programs and cited in numerous self-help books. Yet few people know who wrote it. His name is Reinhold Niebuhr, and he was a Protestant pastor in the mid-20th century whose words tended to unsettle people, not offer comfort.

Just like an agitator. Just like a community organizer.

Niebuhr is getting attention again because he has a fan in the Oval Office.

In a widely cited New York Times column, President Obama called Niebuhr his "favorite philosopher." But how precisely has Niebuhr’s philosophy influenced Obama and his handling of everything from health care reform to fighting terrorists?

CNN is bringing up an little noted interview with Obama from back in 2007.

The answer may be seen by looking at Obama’s first year in office, several scholars, and a relative of Niebuhr’s, suggest…

At first, there seems to be little resemblance between the cool, cerebral Obama and the pugnacious Niebuhr.

Niebuhr was a blunt critic of morally complacent Christians. He thought the church was full of idealists who believed that progress was inevitable and that love alone would ultimately conquer injustice, some Niebuhr scholars say.

"He said there was a difference between being a ‘fool for Christ’ and a plain damn fool," says Richard Crouter, author of the upcoming book "Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics, Religion and Christian Faith."

Niebuhr lived during an age of global calamities. He was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a German-born minister. He preached and taught theology during the Great Depression and World War II. He saw the suffering of workers at Henry Ford’s auto plant — lack of pensions, dismissals for sickness — when he became a pastor in Detroit, Michigan, Crouter says.

Perhaps this inspired his acolyte Mr. Obama to save the autoworkers’ pensions at whatever the cost, though of course not at the fascist-loving Ford Motors.

"The greed of capitalism and the business class was huge in his mind," Crouter says. "It had to be combated." …

"He criticized Christian idealists who thought force was never justified and who believed that the law of love was a simple solution to social and political problems," Copeland said. "At times, power must be challenged by power."

Niebuhr distilled his view of human nature in his monumental book, "Moral Man and Immoral Society." The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. cited the book in his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail." Former President Carter is also an admirer of Niebuhr’s.

People are capable of doing good, but groups are driven by "predatory self-interest," Niebuhr wrote.

"As individuals, men believe that they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other," Niebuhr wrote. "As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command." …

In a 2007 interview, Obama explained to David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, what he learns from Niebuhr.

He called Niebuhr his "favorite philosopher," Brooks wrote.

"I take away," Brooks quoted Obama as saying, "the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief that we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away … the sense that we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naive idealism to bitter realism." …

Obama, a student of the civil rights movement, declared that he was a "living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence." Yet force is necessary at times, he said.

"A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies," Obama said. "Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms." …

It is odd that Mr. Obama only mentions his favorite philosopher once in his two autobiographies. And then only in passing when talking who (his real “spiritual mentor”) the Reverend Jeremiah Wright had studied.

From p. 153 of ‘Dreams From My Father’:

[E]ventually [Wright had] entered Howard, then the University of Chicago, where he spent six years studying for a Ph.D. in the history of religion. He learned Hebrew and Greek, read the literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the black liberation theologians. The anger and humor of the streets, the book learning and occasional twenty-five-cent word, all this he had brought with him to Trinity almost two decades ago.

And, indeed, Reinhold Niebuhr does loom large in the works of Reverend Wright’s “spiritual mentor,” the man who invented Black Liberation Theology, James Cone.

In Mr. Cone’s seminal work, ‘A Black Theology Of Liberation,’ Mr. Niebuhr is mentioned no less than twelve times.

Here is one example from page 98:

If economic and social oppression fail to bring the rebels into line, the structures of power begin to devise political means of silencing them. Rebels expect this because they know that libera­tion always involves fighting against the powers that be. To go against the "keepers of peace" is to take a political risk, the risk of being shot, imprisoned, or exiled. That is why Silone’s Spina says, "Freedom is not something you get as a present. . . . You can^‘t beg your freedom from someone. You have to seize it—everyone as much as he can."

Reinhold Niebuhr makes this point convincingly in Moral Man and Immoral Society, observing that those in power will never admit that society rewards them far out of proportion to the services they render; and this attitude inevitably makes them enslave all who question their interests. Appeals to reason and reli­gion do not change the balance of power, because both are used to defend the interests of oppressors. Change will take place, accord­ing to Niebuhr, when the enslaved recognize that power must be met with power. The black community is aware of this; and the black revolution is nothing but a will to spread the decision among blacks to seize their freedom—any way they can. No black person will ever be good enough in the eyes of whites to merit equality. Therefore, if blacks are to have freedom, they must take it, by any means necessary…

Pastor Niebuhr preached the ‘social justice’ of the redistribution of wealth. And he also preached that social justice will only come about through power.

For the record, Mr. Obama’s other spiritual mentor, Saul Alinsky, cites Pastor Niebuhr on page 40 of ‘Rules For Radical,’ in critiquing the pacificism of Mahatma Gandhi.

Naturally, Mr. Alinsky also came down on the side of meeting oppression with force rather than non-violence, in contra-distinction to Mahatma Gandhi.

So it’s no surprise Mr. Obama should admire Reinhold Niebuhr.  Just as it is no surprise that his admiration for the man was kept quiet, at least up until now.

But you do have to wonder why CNN is now bringing up something Obama mentioned in passing way back in 2007.

Perhaps they are trying to placate Mr. Obama’s base, who are getting more and more appalled that he hasn’t managed to surrender completely in the war on terror. At least, not yet.

But by reminding us of Mr. Obama’s favorite philosopher, CNN might have ended up revealing more about our President than they had intended.

From (a surely outraged) Associated Press:

Costa Rica elects 1st woman president in landslide

By Marianela Jimenez, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 8

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Costa Ricans have elected their first woman president as the ruling party candidate won in a landslide after campaigning to continue free market policies in Central America’s most stable nation.

With most of the votes from Sunday’s election counted, Laura Chinchilla held a 22-point lead over her closest rival. Her 47 percent share of the vote was well beyond the 40 percent needed to avoid a run-off.

The 50-year-old protege of the current president, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias, promised to pursue the same economic policies that recently brought the country into a trade pact with the U.S. and opened commerce with China.

"Today we are making history," said Chinchilla, who will be the fifth Latin American woman to serve as president when she takes office in May. "The Costa Rican people have given me their confidence, and I will not betray it." ..

Arias’ economic policies helped insulate Costa Rica from the world economic crisis as he kept a high profile on the world stage as a negotiator in Honduras’ political crisis after a coup deposed President Manuel Zelaya in June.

Critics of the Arias government, in which Chinchilla served as vice president, contended its policies catered to big developers to boost the economy at the cost of the nation’s fragile ecosystems.

But most Costa Ricans were reluctant to shake up the status quo in a country with relatively high salaries, the longest life expectancy in Latin America, a thriving ecotourism industry and near-universal literacy.

Chinchilla, the mother of a teenage son, is a social conservative who opposes abortion and gay marriage. She appealed both to Costa Ricans seeking a fresh face and those reluctant to risk the unknown…

This is wrong in so many ways. At least according to our establishment media.

A pro-capitalist candidate wins in South America — in a landslide. And she’s ‘anti-Green’? And she’s a woman?

(We thought all right-wingers were all chauvinist pigs.)

You can bet we will hear as little about this as possible from our media masters.

After all, she’s no Hillary Clinton.

We almost missed this telling tidbit, from the UK’s Financial Times:

Interview transcript: Rajendra Pachauri

February 3, 2010

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave an interview to Amy Kazmin in New Delhi on February 3. Here is an edited transcript of the interview

FT: In recent weeks, many articles in the British media have questioned aspects of the IPCC reports and criticised your conduct personally as the chairman. Do you think there is an organised effort to demolish your reputation and the reputation of the IPCC?

RP: It doesn’t take a genius to arrive at the conclusion that apparently this is carefully orchestrated. These things are certainly not happening at random. The one unfortunate thing that has happened is the mistake that the IPCC made on the glaciers. We have acknowledged that; we have put that on our web site.

But there is absolutely nothing [else] but I would say [there are] nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods [alleging] that I have business interests. I have clarified that in very precise terms. Once I did that, they shifted their focus on [to] my institute, which, may I say – with all humility but some degree of pride – is an institution that the world now looks up to and admires. We function under the laws of this country. We are looked up to by everybody in every section of society, including the highest levels of government not only over here, but in other parts of the world.

What they are indulging in is skulduggery of the worst kind. I’m reasonably sure that very soon people will realise the truth and they would also question the credentials of some of the people who are behind them.

I don’t want to get down to a personal level, but all you need to do is look at their backgrounds. They are people who deny the link between smoking and cancer; they are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – I hope that they apply it to their faces every day – and people who say that the only way to deal with HIV/Aids is to screen the population on a regular basis and isolate those who are infected.

There is clearly a very obvious intent behind this whole thing. I’m certainly not going to be affected by it. I’m totally in the clear. I have absolutely nothing but indifference to what these people are doing.

FT: Who exactly is the “they” that you are pointing to, and what do you think is the purpose of this campaign?

RP: They are people who deny the existence of the human influence on the earth’s climate. You can look at the names of the authors of these articles that have appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. These are the persons I’m referring to…

The interview goes on and on. And Mr. Pachauri just gets more and more paranoid and hate-filled.

But he’s a cool calm well-reasoned objective scientist, just like the rest of the Warmers.

From Iran’s Press TV:

Two women at an internet cafe in Tehran. Iran said on Sunday its Internet connections will remain slow this week due to technical problems, ahead of anticipated protests by opposition supporters.

Iran says CIA agents arrested ahead of Feb. 11 rally

Sun, 07 Feb 2010

Iran said Saturday it arrested seven people, including two Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives, who planned to stoke unrest and violence on a march scheduled for February 11.

The rally on Thursday will commemorate the 31st victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Intelligence forces, according to Borna News Agency, arrested the men who had plans to leave the country for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and then head to the United States.

According to the report, some of those arrested work for the US-backed Radio Farda, a Persian language station based in Prague and Washington.

Here we go again.

By the way, ever notice how many news agencies Iran has?

When in reality they only have one – the government.

From Iran’s Press TV:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wears eye protection goggles as he visits an exhibition of Iran’s laser science, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010.

Ahmadinejad orders 20% uranium enrichment

Sun, 07 Feb 2010

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tasked the country’s atomic chief with enriching uranium to 20 percent, in order to meet the demands of the country’s cancer patients.

Speaking at the exhibition of Laser Science and Technology Achievements in Tehran, the president called on Ali Akbar Salehi, to start the process.

"Mr. Salehi you start enriching up to 20 percent and we are still open to negotiations on the issue," he told the head of the country’s atomic energy organization who was sitting in the audience.

Thousands of Iranian patients, in need of post-surgery drug treatment with nuclear medicine, will suffer if domestic production dries up when a research reactor in Tehran runs out of fuel.

The Tehran research reactor, which produces 20 different kinds of radio-medicine for cancer patients, runs on uranium that is some 20 percent U-235 — an enrichment level higher than what is currently produced at Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility.

Iran has requested the International Atomic Energy Agency to arrange for supplying of the fuel to the country. The West has been pressuring Iran to accept a UN-backed draft deal which requires Iran to send most of its domestically-produced low enriched uranium (LEU) abroad for conversion into the more refined fuel that the Tehran reactor requires to produce medical isotopes.

Iran says its concerns over the proposal, which was first floated by the US, should be heeded.

The development comes as Tehran has been trying to find a middle ground with the West over the nuclear swap.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki expressed hope on Saturday that an agreement on the nuclear fuel proposal will soon be reached with the Western side, but with the changes that Tehran seeks.

His remarks were largely ignored by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates who has instead insisted on the imposition of fresh sanctions on the country.

How soon before we get articles from the New York Times bemoaning the suffering of Iran’s cancer patients because of US sanctions.

Assuming Mr. Ahmadinejad didn’t get the idea from them in the first place.

But look at how the world trembles at the power of sanctions.

From the UK’s Telegraph:

New errors in IPCC climate change report

The United Nations panel on climate change is facing fresh criticism today as The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual errors and poor sources of evidence in its influential report to government leaders.

By Richard Gray and Ben Leach
06 Feb 2010

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report is supposed to be the world’s most authoritative scientific account of the scale of global warming.

But this paper [the Telegraph] has discovered a series of new flaws in it including:

    * The publication of inaccurate data on the potential of wave power to produce electricity around the world, which was wrongly attributed to the website of a commercial wave-energy company.

    * Claims based on information in press releases and newsletters.

    * New examples of statements based on student dissertations, two of which were unpublished.

    * More claims which were based on reports produced by environmental pressure groups.

They are the latest in a series of damaging revelations about the IPCC’s most recent report, published in 2007…

[O]n Friday, it emerged that the IPCC’s panel had wrongly reported that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level because it had failed to check information supplied by a Dutch government agency…

The IPCC attempted to counter growing criticism by releasing a statement insisting that authors who contribute to its 3,000-page report are required to “critically assess and review the quality and validity of each source” when they use material from unpublished or non-peer-reviewed sources. Drafts of the reports are checked by scientific reviewers before they are subjected to line-by-line approval by the 130 member countries of the IPCC.

Despite these checks, a diagram used to demonstrate the potential for generating electricity from wave power has been found to contain numerous errors.

The source of information for the diagram was cited as the website of UK-based wave-energy company Wavegen. Yet the diagram on Wavegen’s website contains dramatically different figures for energy potential off Britain and Alaska and in the Bering Sea.

When contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, Wavegen insisted that the diagram on its website had not been changed. It added that it was not the original source of the data and had simply reproduced it on its website.

The diagram is widely cited in other literature as having come from a paper on wave energy produced by the Institute of Mechanical Engineering in 1991 along with data from the European Directory of Renewable Energy.

Experts claim that, had the IPCC checked the citation properly, it would have spotted the discrepancies.

It can also be revealed that claims made by the IPCC about the effects of global warming, and suggestions about ways it could be avoided, were partly based on information from ten dissertations by Masters students.

One unpublished dissertation was used to support the claim that sea-level rise could impact on people living in the Nile delta and other African coastal areas, although the main focus of the thesis, by a student at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, appears to have been the impact of computer software on environmental development.

The IPCC also made use of a report by US conservation group Defenders of Wildlife to state that salmon in US streams have been affected by rising temperatures…

Estimates of carbon-dioxide emissions from nuclear power stations and claims that suggested they were cheaper than coal or gas power stations were also taken from the website of the World Nuclear Association, rather than using independent scientific calculations…

Another row over the IPCC report emerged last night after Professor Roger Pielke Jnr, from Colorado University’s Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research, claimed its authors deliberately ignored a paper he wrote that contradicted the panel’s claims about the cost of climate-related natural disasters.

A document included a statement from an anonymous IPCC author saying that they believed Dr Pielke had changed his mind on the matter, when he had not.

Why has it taken three years for all of these errors to be noticed?

And, once again, we can’t help but ask why is it that we have to turn to the British press to get these kind of reports? Aren’t there any investigative journalists left in the United States?

Meanwhile, we will once again note that British newspapers are not going out of business like so many are in the US.

Could there be any correlation?

From C-SPAN via YouTube:

Sarah Palin Keynote Speech at National Tea Party Convention

A very good, fun speech.

Today would have been Mr. Reagan’s 99th birthday.

What better way to celebrate it than to remember just how wise he was about so many things, especially taxes:

Bush-Reagan Debate 1980 on Taxes

It is too easy to forget just how truly radical the great man was.

And how right he was proved to be.

From The Hill:

Cao will be sole GOPer to attend White House Super Bowl party

By Ian Swanson – 02/05/10

Rep. Joseph Cao (La.), the only House Republican who voted for healthcare reform, is also the only GOPer going to the Super Bowl party at the White House.

The White House released a list of lawmakers expected to attend that included seven Democrats and Cao, the Republican who won the New Orleans seat held by Rep. Willliam [sic] Jefferson (D-La.)…

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) attended last year’s Super Bowl party at Obama’s new house. He rooted for the Pittsburgh Steelers, who won their sixth Super Bowl that year. A few months later, the Republican switched parties and became a Democrat…

Cao is the only Louisiana lawmaker attending the White House party…

Here’s the full list of attendees, according to a White House release:

Members of Congress:

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA)

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA)

Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA)

Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN)

Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)

Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN)

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT)

Cabinet Members:

Secretary Shaun Donovan

Secretary Arne Duncan

Attorney General Eric Holder

Administrator Lisa Jackson

Secretary Janet Napolitano

Ambassador Susan Rice

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

Secretary Eric Shinseki

Secretary Tom Vilsack

Further evidence of Mr. Obama’s ‘new tone’ of reaching across the aisle.

For the record, the only person on the list who seems like a natural football fan is Janet Napolitano. (We suspect she may have even played.)

In any case, we hope the chips and dip, and of course the Kobe beef, make losing your House seat worthwhile, Mr. Cao.

We almost missed this telling clip put together by the House Republicans after Mr. Obama’s historic lecture visit to them this week:

Obama v. Obama on Republicans’ Better Solutions

Once again, we agree that the Republican Party shouldn’t be ‘the party of no.’

They should be the party of HELL NO!

From LiveScience:

Bees See Your Face as a Strange Flower

04 February 2010

Bees can learn to recognize human faces, or at least face-like patterns, a new study suggests.

Rather than specifically recognizing people, these nectar-feeding creatures view us as "strange flowers," the researchers say. And while they might not be able to identify individual humans, they can learn to distinguish features that are arranged to look like faces.

The results suggest that, even with their tiny brains, insects can handle image analysis. The researchers say that if humans want to design automatic facial recognition systems, we could learn a lot by using the bees’ approach to face recognition.

The study was spurred by work conducted in 2005 by biologist Adrian Dyer from Monash University in Victoria, Australia, which showed that the insects could be trained to associate pictures of human faces with tasty sugar snacks.

This sure sounds like ‘profiling’ to us.

Martin Giurfa from the Université de Toulouse, France, was intrigued by the research and wondered what strategy the bees used to discriminate between faces. The pair of scientists teamed up to tackle the puzzling question.

The team first tested whether the bees could learn to distinguish between simple face-like images — stick drawings like a toddler might make, which consisted of two dots for eyes, a short vertical dash for a nose and a longer horizontal line for a mouth…

Next, the researchers tested whether or not the bees could tell the difference between "face-like" and "non-face-like" images, even if they had never seen the pictures before.

Indeed, they could…

Science!

This thread is for the busy bees of S&L to post news we might have missed, especially articles that demonstrate the distortions and biases of our media watchdogs.

Posting Guidelines

To make the articles as readable as possible, please use the format described here. 

And:

• Only post ‘hard news’ from establishment media outlets.
• Avoid editorials and ‘thought pieces’ unless they are truly newsworthy.
• Eschew major news items that most people will likely have seen elsewhere.
• Articles that fit under the topic of a recent thread should be posted as a comment there.
• Always spell out the name of the source and post a link to it.
• Never post more than one third of the original article.

Posts of articles that do not follow these guidelines may be edited or deleted.

Thanks!

From a seemingly misled Associated Press:

January unemployment rate drops to 9.7 percent

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER

February 5, 2010

The unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in January to 9.7 percent, while employers shed 20,000 jobs, according to a report that offered hope the economy will add jobs soon.

The unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent because a survey of households found the number of employed Americans rose by 541,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The job losses are calculated from a separate survey of employers.

Excluding the beleagured [sic] construction industry, which shed 75,000 jobs, the private sector added 63,000 positions…

The department also revised its past employment estimates to show that job losses from the Great Recession have been much worse than previously stated. The economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the downturn began in December 2007, up from a previous figure of 7.2 million.

That’s the most jobs lost in any recession, as a percent of total employment, since World War II…

Much of January’s report offers hope that employers are starting to reverse course and may start adding jobs soon. Aside from November’s gain, January’s job losses were the smallest since the recession began and are down from the huge loss of 779,000 jobs in January 2009.

The manufacturing sector added jobs for the first time since January 2007. Its gain of 11,000 jobs was the most since April 2006.

Retailers added 42,100 jobs, the most since November 2007, before the recession began…

For once, this would seem to be truly unexpected news to the AP, since this is the original headline and lead paragraphs for this same article from Mr. Rugaber:

Job losses from Great Recession about to get worse

Job losses during the Great Recession have been huge and they’re about to get bigger.

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER

February 5, 2010

When the Labor Department releases the January unemployment report Friday, it will also update its estimate of jobs lost in the year that ended in March 2009. The number is expected to rise by roughly 800,000, raising the number of jobs shed during the recession to around 8 million.

The new data will help illustrate the scope of the jobs crisis. Analysts think the economy might generate 1 million to 2 million jobs this year. And they say it will take at least three to four years for the job market to return to anything like normal…

Wall Street economists expect the January report will show a tiny increase of 5,000 jobs. That would be only the second monthly gain since the recession began. But it probably wouldn’t be enough to hold down the unemployment rate, which is forecast to rise to 10.1 percent. That would match October’s 26-year high. And it would be the fourth-straight month of double-digit joblessness…

Indeed, as we noted, in yesterday’s AP article about ‘unexpected jobless’ claims the very same Mr. Rugaber was predicting:

The figures come a day before the Labor Department is scheduled to report the January employment figures, which are expected to show a tiny gain in jobs. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 10.1 percent…

Could it be that the Labor Department was leading reporters to think that the unemployment numbers would be much worse so that when they turned out to be just a little better it seems like tremendously good news?

Or have we gotten too cynical?

In any case, we will wait for the revised figures before we get too excited.

Weirdly, an obvious editorial seems to have slipped into the news section of the Associated Press:

Brown’s independence could face Senate test

By Andrew Miga, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 5

WASHINGTON – Scott Brown says he’s a different kind of Republican, a centrist willing to work with Senate Democrats to fix health care and the ailing economy.

But his independent bent is likely to be sorely tested in a bitterly divided Senate where party loyalty is often at a premium.

As it is, Brown was sworn in Thursday a week earlier than he had planned. He spent his earliest minutes as a senator facing questions on whether he will stick with the GOP in the partisan fight over President Barack Obama’s choice of a union attorney, Craig Becker, for a top labor job.

Brown tried to maintain a middle-of-the-road posture. "I’m going to look at everybody’s qualifications and make my own decision," he said.

Brown can expect more tough balancing acts like that as he seeks to put his own stamp on a Senate seat held for nearly a half-century by the late liberal lion Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. For New England Republicans in Congress, whose ranks have thinned in recent years, it is the only way to survive.

Just ask Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Their independent ways and support for measures such as Obama’s economic stimulus have stoked sharp criticism from some conservatives.

"He’s clearly independent-minded and I cannot wait to get him here," Collins said. "I think this is going to be a terrific development for our party." …

"The problem for (Brown) is the Republican Party that will welcome him in Washington is the Republican Party that will prevent him from getting re-elected in Massachusetts in a couple of years," said Wendy Schiller, a Brown University political science professor. "If he goes into that party and he toes the line with that party, he can’t get re-elected."

On the way to his win, Brown was careful not to refer to himself as a Republican too often in Massachusetts, where more than half the voters are not connected to a party. Since winning his seat, Brown has struck a more conciliatory tone on Obama’s health care overhaul, too.

Snowe and Collins have turned their moderate brand of politics into popularity in Maine, where pragmatism often takes a back seat to partisanship with voters…

Funny how taking the Democrat party line is always described as pragmatism rather than partisanship.

"If he wants to have a future in Massachusetts politics, Brown has to live up to being a New England Republican — fiscally conservative, socially moderate, independent-minded," said Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political science professor.

"Is Obama going to try to craft some room for himself in the center?" Scala said. "If so, Brown might be something of an ally."

You see? The only way for Mr. Brown to get re-elected is to become an ally of President Obama. What could be more clear from the elections of only last week?

Getting Mr. Brown to move to the left seems to be one of the new missions of our watchdog media. It is reminiscent of their relentless effort to ‘make George do it,’ after the first President Bush gave his famous ‘read my lips’ pledge not to raise taxes.

And, we predict, that if Mr. Brown gets browbeaten into following the media’s bidding, he will face a similar outcome.

From the race obsessed Associated Press:

Senate likely to be less diverse after elections

By Deanna Bellandi, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 5

CHICAGO – That historically all-white club known as the U.S. Senate is likely to lose what little diversity it has after November’s elections.

Two white men will be competing for President Barack Obama’s former seat in Illinois, now held by Roland Burris, the chamber’s lone African-American. Appointed by the scandal-tainted former governor, Burris won’t be seeking a full term.

In contests in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, black candidates face daunting challenges to joining the august body, from difficulty raising cash to lack of name recognition to formidable rivals.

Blacks comprise 12.2 percent of the nation’s population, but you wouldn’t know it in the 100-member Senate. Come next year, the total number could add up to zero.

"It certainly is not a desirable state of affairs," said David Bositis, a senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Bositis noted that blacks don’t make up the majority population in any state and in states where there are large numbers of blacks, as in the South, there are racial divisions that make getting elected difficult.

Florida is more likely to produce the next Hispanic senator than it is the next black senator…

Notice that this article is only talking about the ‘diversity’ of skin color, not the ‘diversity’ of political thought.

In truth, if the Republicans take away more seats from the Democrat super-majority, the Congress will be certainly be more diverse.

But of course in the minds of the Associated Press, the color of one’s skin is far more important than the content of their character.

Indeed, the AP seems to be suggesting that with Senate seats, ‘once you go black you can never go back.’ They also seem to be demanding that we have racial quotas for our elected officials.

And we thought the election of Mr. Obama was going to put all of this nonsense behind us?

(Actually, we never did.)