A very depressing post at Instapundit.
No Rest For The Bringers Of It
In which Ace, and many others, including yours truly, righteously pile on @PiersMorgan on Twitter.
Climate Change
What are the real questions?
Basically, there’s one real problem — the real climate refuses to behave correctly. I went into this at length then, so I won’t repeat the whole argument, but the basic point is this: the actual observed temperatures have been flat for almost 20 years, and are now at the edge of the confidence interval — that is, the modelers would have taken a 20-1 bet against the temperatures staying this low.
Damn you, Gaia!
The IRS Targeting Of Conservative Groups
Well, at least they’re consistent:
“In plain English, the IRS is still targeting Tea Party cases.”
…Camp, the Michigan Republican, told Secrets, “It is outrageous that IRS management continues to target Tea Party cases without any justification. The harassment, abuse and delays these Americans have faced over the last few years has been unwarranted, unprovoked and, at times, possibly illegal. The fact that the IRS still continues to treat the Tea Party differently and subject them to additional targeting is outrageous and it must stop immediately.”
Hey, give them a break. I mean, it’s not like there isn’t another election coming up in fifteen months.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes, the IRS caressed liberal groups and harassed conservative ones, despite the ongoing lies from some commenters:
The dogs that have not barked are the liberal groups that may have waited endlessly for IRS rulings or been asked about their contributors, reading material or prayer habits. If, say, Occupy Palm Beach, Americans for Higher Taxes, or Spend It All – NOW! had shared their IRS horror stories, this would be no scandal.
So, where are the IRS’ liberal victims? Are they staying mum while this controversy poaches Team Obama in increasingly hot water? Or — could it be? — maybe the IRS has no leftist victims, since it barely targeted and never persecuted such groups.
Couple this information with revelations that confidential IRS records illegally got leaked to the Federal Election Commission and apparently to opponents of the National Organization for Marriage and 2010 senatorial nominee Christine O’Donnell, R-Del. A frightful portrait emerges of a thoroughly politicized federal agency that repeatedly abuses its police powers to the benefit of Barack Obama and his comrades on the left and the detriment of their rivals on the right.
And here’s the best news. The public isn’t buying the BS that these are “phony scandals”:
78 percent of voters think the questions over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi should be taken seriously. Just 17 percent call it a phony scandal.
The attack, on the anniversary of September 11, killed four Americans — including the U.S. ambassador.
Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters say the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of everyday Americans is serious, while 26 percent call that a fake scandal.
By a margin of 59-31 percent, voters are also more likely to view the seizure of reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department as serious rather than phony.
And while the White House sees a Congressional investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups as a “distraction,” 59 percent of voters take it seriously. Some 33 percent agree with the administration that it’s fake.
And those are just “voters,” not likely voters. I suspect the numbers are worse for the administration among the latter. And as long as the stonewalling continues, it will just get worse for them, but ultimately better for the country.
Just Like They Did With Sarah Palin
The AP points out the president’s geographic ignorance.
Wait, what?
I wish I could be shocked by this.
Anti-Gun Demagoguery
Now these lying ghouls are comparing George Zimmerman to mass shooters.
[Update a while later]
How to incite a moral panic:
“The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak,” it advises. Antigun advocates are urged to seize opportunistically on horrific crimes: “The debate over gun violence in America is periodically punctuated by high-profile gun violence incidents including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, the Trayvon Martin killing, Aurora, and Oak Creek. When an incident such as these attracts sustained media attention, it creates a unique climate for our communications efforts.”
The booklet explicitly urges foes of the Second Amendment to abjure rationality in favor of the argumentum ad passiones, or appeal to emotion.
Fortunately, the justice system ultimately worked, and the insane and irrelevant war on “stand your ground” laws has failed.
Benghazi Witness Intimidation
Gee, why won’t Baghdad Tim answer any questions?
Darrel Issa
…is winning the Internets. Too bad more Republicans don’t get it.
Speaking of Issa, he apparently has proof of collusion between the FEC and the IRS in investigating Tea-Party groups. Wouldn’t be surprising at all, given Lerner’s history.
Jeff Bezos
…and the Great Beyondists. Thoughts on Bezos’ new toy and the political predilections of MSMers, from Matt Welch.
Linux Twitter Clients
I’ve been having pretty bad luck finding one that works for multiple accounts. I installed Choqok a few days ago, and was pretty happy with it until it broke today. When I launch it, it immediately sucks up about half the CPU, but doesn’t actually start, and leaves a pretty picture in the middle of the screen, independent of what application I’m using. I have to kill it to shut it down. Googling around, I’ve found this to be an issue if you have a lot of unread tweets, but since I can’t functionally start it, there’s no way to read them and fix it.
So then I tried Qwit, which installed fine, and went to Twitter to authenticate my three accounts, and said they’d been approved. The only problem with it is that it doesn’t either display or send tweets for any of them. Other than that, it’s awesome.
I’ve also tried Gwibber, which runs fine, except when I go to the Edit/Accounts menu, it does nothing.
So I’m back to using two different browsers (Firefox and Midori) for two of my accounts, and not doing anything with the third one (which is my book account). I’d like to solve this before the book is available, though, which is likely to be next week.
[Thursday-morning update]
OK, the solution I’ve found that seems to be working pretty well is the Tweetdeck app for Google Chrome. There may be one for Firefox, too, but I’ll stick with Chrome as long as it doesn’t act up.
[Bumped]