Reason Morning Links: Sex! Crime! Bin Laden! Obama! The OMB! Sex Again!

• One way to become a U.S. attorney: sleep with Max Baucus.

• The Supreme Court examines a vague corruption statute.

• Defense secretary declares: We haven't had good intelligence on Osama bin Laden's location in years.

• The Obama administration holds a closed-door meeting on open government.

• The Office of Management and Budget paves the way for amped-up Pentagon spending.

• Prostitutes offer free sex at the climate summit.

Comments

[Johnny Longtorso]

Investors Business Daily: How Congress Ignored Warnings And Stiff-Armed Reform Of GSEs
By THOMAS SOWELL

This is the fourth of five parts of a Monday series excerpting Thomas Sowell's latest book, "The Housing Boom and Bust."

[jesse]

Well, i wasn't going to go to copenhagen but you can count me in now.

[C-Dog]

I thought the theory that Osama Bin Laden being dead since 2005 was pretty credible? In which case, it makes since that we have zero information on where the hell he has been for years.

[MNG]

"At issue is the law's language that it is illegal for public or private employees to "deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."

OK, so I don't do HTML, but if I did the word private above would be bolded. WTF? Even in the context of a public official I'm not sure wtf this could mean, but it's even more way out there for a private actor...

[P Brooks]

Defense secretary declares: We haven't had good intelligence on Osama bin Laden's location in years.

I blame BOOOOOOOOOOSH.

[Johnny Longtorso]

Climategate reveals 'the most influential tree in the world'
...This was startling enough, as McIntyre demonstrated in an explosive series of posts on his Climate Audit blog, because it showed that the CRU studies were based on cherry-picking hundreds of Siberian samples only to leave those that showed the picture that was wanted. Other studies based on similar data had clearly shown the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than today. Indeed only the evidence from one tree, YADO61, seemed to show a "hockey stick" pattern, and it was this, in light of the extraordinary reverence given to the CRU's studies, which led McIntyre to dub it "the most influential tree in the world".

But more dramatic still has been the new evidence from the CRU's leaked documents, showing just how the evidence was finally rigged. The most quoted remark in those emails has been one from Prof Jones in 1999, reporting that he had used "Mike [Mann]'s Nature trick of adding in the real temps" to "Keith's" graph, in order to "hide the decline". Invariably this has been quoted out of context. Its true significance, we can now see, is that what they intended to hide was the awkward fact that, apart from that one tree, the Yamal data showed temperatures not having risen in the late 20th century but declining. ...

...A further devastating blow has now been dealt to the CRU graphs by an expert contributor to McIntyre's Climate Audit, known only as "Lucy Skywalker". She has cross-checked with the actual temperature records for that part of Siberia, showing that in the past 50 years temperatures have not risen at all....

[MNG]

Johnny: Are studies by the CRU team or using the dumped data the only studies that claim to find AGW?

[MNG]

Johnny? Johnny are you there?

[John]

But no serious scientists are bothered by this right?

A small group, including several prominent physicists, are asking the American Physical Society to rescind its political statement on climate change (tip to Bishop Hill):

Dear fellow member of the American Physical Society:

This is a matter of great importance to the integrity of the Society. It is being sent to a random fraction of the membership, so we hope you will pass it on.

By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen in our cumulative 223 years of APS membership. For those who have missed the news we recommend the excellent summary article by Richard Lindzen in the November 30 edition of the Wall Street journal, entitled "The Climate Science isn't Settled," for a balanced account of the situation. It was written by a scientist of unquestioned authority and integrity. A copy can be found among the items at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u, and a visit to http://www.ClimateDepot.com can fill in the details of the scandal, while adding spice.

What has this to do with APS? In 2007 the APS Council adopted a Statement on global warming (also reproduced at the tinyurl site mentioned above) that was based largely on the scientific work that is now revealed to have been corrupted. (The principals in this escapade have not denied what they did, but have sought to dismiss it by saying that it is normal practice among scientists. You know and we know that that is simply untrue. Physicists are not expected to cheat.)

We have asked the APS management to put the 2007 Statement on ice until the extent to which it is tainted can be determined, but that has not been done. We have also asked that the membership be consulted on this point, but that too has not been done.

None of us would use corrupted science in our own work, nor would we sign off on a thesis by a student who did so. This is not only a matter of science, it is a matter of integrity, and the integrity of the APS is now at stake. That is why we are taking the unusual step of communicating directly with at least a fraction of the membership.

If you believe that the APS should withdraw a Policy Statement that is based on admittedly corrupted science, and should then undertake to clarify the real state of the art in the best tradition of a learned society, please send a note to the incoming President of the APS [e-mail], with the single word YES in the subject line. That will make it easier for him to count.

Bob Austin, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Hal Lewis, emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Will Happer, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics, Hartford
Roger Cohen, former Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil

The whole thing is just being blown out of proportion by evil Republicans who want to club seals and drive HUMMERS.

[MNG]

John
That's a pretty long post to not answer my question. Luckily you have another chance.

[MNG]

Just so you know the question, it is not "are some people bothered by the CRU's antics" but "Are studies by the CRU team or using the dumped data the only studies that claim to find AGW?"

[The Gobbler]

Why don't you find out and get back to us?

[John]

I wasn't anwering you. I don't bother to read your longer posts because you have ceased to be a serious person about this. Most things to your credit you are serious about. But once you started trolling in lieu of serious argument, I stopped reading your longer posts. I was just tweaking you.

As far as what you have to say in response to Longtorso, what difference does it make? It doesn't matter how damaging the e-mails are or how badly wounded climate science is, you are never going to give up the idea that it is an emergency and it doesn't matter that the main scientists who produced the most compelling evidence have been revealed as cheats.

[MNG]

My post was one sentence. Here it is again: Are studies by the CRU team or using the dumped data the only studies that claim to find AGW?

Man up pussy and answer the question.

[MNG]

The Hoabuster was fun, but there was a critical point behind it. One can no more damn all research finding AGW based on the CRU Crew's actions than you can damn all research finding evolution because of the Pilt-down hoax or Haeckel's embryo frauds. That's simple logic bro.

So, since you seem to think the CRU's antics damn all AGW research I ask again, Are studies by the CRU team or using the dumped data the only studies that claim to find AGW?

[Johnny Longtorso]

Isn't the burden of proof on you to find studies that don't site CRU or use any CRU data?

[MNG]

Of course not. The burden on those claiming that CRU's failures damn all AGW research is to show that CRU's research is the sole basis for AGW. Since we all agree that the failure of CRU research allows us to conclude exactly nothing about non-CRU related research, right? Because that would be crazy, like damning all evolutionary reseearch because of Pilt-down man.

And nice of you to admit you don't know.

[Johnny Longtorso]

Sooooo..... The CRU says we're all going to die if we don't slash CO2 Right Now. Their research is shown to be BS. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the rest of us to prove CRU's conclusions wrong.

Sorry.

The burden of proof is on you, MNG, to show w/o any papers using CRU data or citing CRU research or refereed by CRU 'scientists' that mankind is causing catastrophic warming by CO2.

Granted, as the Progressive result of thousand of years of human moral and intellectual Progress, a Progressive like MNG is obviously right until proven wrong, to MNG's personal, Progressive satisfaction.

At least in his Progressive mind.

[BakedPenguin]

That's how I felt about Chad and his reply to my comments on Mann's 1998 paper (on a previous thread). If you're reading this Chad, I can find Mann's Nature paper. What I'm not doing is wading through the 30+ citations in it to see if you're (or the person you're quoting is) lying or not.

If you've heard that the data were cited in another paper, you heard that somewhere, and they should have given the cite of the paper in question. At this point, the burden of proof is on those who continue to make claims about the veracity of the CRU liars to prove they're not talking bullshit.

[PapayaSF]

See my reply here.

[The Gobbler]

Again, go find out and get back to us. We don't do assignments here. You want to know something, go fucking look it up yourself.

[The Gobbler]

Oh shut the fuck up.

[MNG]

If I was defending the validity of the CRU's research then indeed the burden would be on me. But since you are suggesting that this shows AGW is not true, and we all know that research other than the CRU's says otherwise, then its on you to demonstrate why that research is not right.

[hmm]

? One way to become a U.S. attorney: sleep with Max Baucus.

I guess the question is pitching or catching?

[hmm]

I must say I'm a little disappointed in the lack of use of Gropenhagen.

[M o n k e e]

haha

[Benjamin]

A closed door meeting about government openness. I guess Obama is just getting into the spirit of the season. It's like that big beautifully wrapped present that you can only look at but never open.

Merry Christmas!!...Now stay the hell away from the presents, citizen!

[Warty]

For some reason, I'm reminded of the time as a kid when I wrapped up some catnip and put it under the tree as a present for the cats. They did not respect the wrapping paper.

[Rich]

The director of the new Office of Government Information Services, Miriam Nisbet, said ... "everything that is discussed there is absolutely available for the public to know about."

If today's meeting is not being webcast, the lack of transparency is transparent.

[Rich]

"Be sustainable -- don't buy sex."

Would someone kindly explain this slogan?

[John]

Does that mean Bachus is not an environmentalist? A US attorney nomination is a pretty steep price for sex.

[CoyoteBlue]

One way to become a U.S. attorney: sleep with Max Baucus.

I guess that is the measure of lawyer's ambition. What would you do to become U.S.A.?

[John]

My nominee for the mainstream media douschbag of the week. Robert Frank writing in the NYT.

Anti-tax zealots denounce all taxation as theft, as depriving citizens of their right to spend their hard-earned incomes as they see fit. Yet nowhere does the Constitution grant us the right not to be taxed. Nor does it grant us the right to harm others with impunity. No one is permitted to steal our cars or vandalize our homes. Why should opponents of taxation be allowed to harm us in less direct ways?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12......html?_r=1

[JW]

Have the Democrats become the party of Orwell, or just plain fucking stupid?

I'll keep it short and use small words for Frank's benefit: If the Constitution doesn't say that you, being the Federal guvmint, can do it, you can't. It doesn't work the other way around. (I'll leave the incorporation argument to someone else.)

Oh, and it isn't your money to be "harmed" with, or not be harmed, in the first place, douchebag.

See how easy that is?

[John]

They really are that stupid. We live in the age of stupid.

[MNG]

That last part by Frank is pretty incomprehensible, but he's right that no right not to be taxed exists in the Constitution. Whatever else they may have been the Founders were not libertarians (though they certainly wanted a smaller gov than we have now).

[John]

There is no right not to be taxed, but there is no requirement that your taxes be high either. How high taxes are is a policy decision.

There is lots of other crap in that article. The whole idea that "taxing bad behaviors" is a way to eliminate them is wildly over sold. Take congestion taxes for instance. If everyone were driving around between 7 and 9 am every morning just to be annoying, then they would work. But people are driving that way because they have to get to work. The value of getting to work at that time is almost always going to be higher than the congestion tax. Few people are going to be able to quit working or readjust their schedule to avoid the tax. So, the tax just becomes a way to extract money and doesn't really reduce congestion. London, for example, has huge congestion taxes and is just as congested as it ever was, but its people are poorer thanks to the tax. The same is true of polltution taxes. Sure, tax coal and energy production. People are still going to use energy, it will just cost more and they will be poorer. You can say, 'but they will be more efficient' but people already have a motivation to be efficient. It is not like anyone enjoys paying heating bills. The marginal value of efficiency increases is never going to equal the harm of the tax. So, no one but the government is better off.

[Warty]

There's also no right not to be raped by hideous primordial ape-men who are refugees from a past best forgotten. Whatever else the founders were, you can be pretty sure at least one of them was Steve Smith.

[SugarFree]

Not wanting to be stolen from is a form of theft? Frank has gone through the looking glass at this point. The other side of the looking glass is apparently complete stupidity.

[Ska]

Although it's still arguably better than SyFy's Alice last night.

I say this confidently even without seeing more than the 20 minutes of out of context viewing I did, and without reading the whole Times article.

[MNG]

I agree that most taxes suck and are to be avoided. My point is the Constitution certainly doesn't indicate any rights not to be taxed or even not to be highly taxed.

[A Different Bill]

And the Constitution does not indicate any rights not to be raped in the ass, either. It also does not indicate any rights not to have to endure the endless, self-serving pontification and bloviating of Chuck Schumer. There also is no constitutional right to drive a car, smoke cigarettes or own a swimming pool.

Which means what-all to anything?

[The Gobbler]

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE SUMMIT: 1,200 LIMOS, 140 PRIVATE PLANES...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear.....edges.html

Spews More CO2 than 60 Countries do in Entire Year -- COMBINED...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/i.....9b0ZTHaGwO

[Ska]

You don't get it Gobbler - they're solving the problem, not contributing to it.

[Mad Max]

From the article about Baucus' mistress:*

'Hanes, who is divorced and now lives with Baucus in the Eastern Market neighborhood of Washington, D.C., ultimately withdrew her name from consideration for the U.S. attorney position in order to move to Washington, and she now works in the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as a counselor to the administrator.'

Maybe she could look into the disproportionate of delinquency among boys who spend a significant part of their formative years without their father living at home - whether he has an unmarried single mom or because his parents divorced. That would be a fruitful area to work on prevention.

*'Girlfriend' is the term the article uses, but since Baucus, at least, was married to someone else at the time, 'mistress' is more accurate. 'Girlfriend' makes it sound like some kind of innocent high-school crush.

[John]

"she now works in the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as a counselor to the administrator"

"Conselor to" are positions generally reserved for political hacks. I love it that they live in Eastern Market. Bachus doesn't even try to maintain the pretense that he lives with the proles he is supposed to represent. What an amazing fat gooey piece of shit.

[Mad Max]

disproportionate *amount*

[John]

Another nominee for mainstream media douschbag of the week. Mike Tidwell in the Washington Post

Instead, most people want carbon reductions to be mandated by laws that will allow us to share both the responsibilities and the benefits of change. Ours is a nation of laws; if we want to alter our practices in a deep and lasting way, this is where we must start. After years of delay and denial and green half-measures, we must legislate a stop to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....9120402605

Does this moron honestly think that electricity comes from the light socket? Is we stopped burning coal oil and gas, we would literally go back to the pre-industrial age. We really do live in an age of stupid. There has always been stupid people with lunatic ideas. But they used to be confined to laundrymats and dumpsters and seedy downtown bars. Now they write for the Washington Post.

[Nick]

You first, Tidwell, you statist fuck.

[PapayaSF]

Here's a funny quote from Tidwell:

But the reality is China and India will NEVER stop building new coal-fired power plants until America stops. We're building a new coal plant right now in Virginia in Wise County. Why should China stop.

So the Chinese are building coal plants simply because we are, sort of like a junior high school fashion trend.

[R C Dean]

Instead, most people want carbon reductions to be mandated by laws that will allow us to share both the responsibilities and the benefits of change.

Citation needed.

Ours is a nation of laws; if we want to alter our other people to alter their practices in a deep and lasting way, this is where we must start.

FTFY. You don't need a law to change your own practices. Douchebag.

[Johnny Longtorso]

RCD, 'we' are an organism. Liberals are the brain, and you are merely the body that does the work the brain says to do.

[P Brooks]

"We are a nation of laws."

Bad laws. Stupid laws.

Laws which were written to make politicians feel better about themselves, and which were designed to benefit the few, at the expense of the many.

Yay, Law!

[P Brooks]

That Tidwell dipshit probably believes gasoline prices at the pump should be fifty cents a gallon, but all cars should be mandated by law to get seventy-five miles per gallon.

[Anomalous]

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus' office confirmed late Friday night that the Montana Democrat was carrying on an affair with his state office director, Melodee Hanes, when he nominated her to be U.S. attorney in Montana.

Does this make Baucus a Hanes-grazer?

[dbcooper]

Where are the Morning Sugarfree Links? I require some absurdity to start the week.

[HoaxBuster]

Sorry. At the doctor until just now. Let me go look for lulz.

[prolefeed]

Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk.

I'm going to guess, without RTFA, that this offer of free sex might cover the basic services, with additional money being requested for "upgrades".

And that not all providers will be participating in this special offer.