…says a 5000 word article. Ok then, that settles that. We’ve heard from this author previously. No problem at all. (And a picture is still worth a thousand words.)

As we were just saying. HT: GP

Back on January 7, it merely looked bizarre when George Stephanopoulos questioned Mitt Romney for almost 4 minutes on the subject of contraception in a GOP debate, as we’ve previously observed. The question seemed to come from outer space, as the audience reaction showed. Now, two months later, it turns out that this theme is part of the administration’s re-election strategy, and not, as it were, a Fluke. The administration needed a wedge issue to shore up support among women voters, and to demonize the opposition. We suppose that’s fair enough as far as the politics go.

It’s not fair enough as far as the media establishment goes. The Stephanopoulos harangue of Romney now seems to have been intended to elicit a blunder from the GOP frontrunner before the issue became a big deal and the governor’s advisers would have briefed him about it in detail. Asking the question was okay; spending four minutes on it seems to us evidence of active collusion between ABC News and the White House. It’s hardly the the worst complicity by the media in spreading vile lies about the administration’s opposition, but it’s particularly egregious since it illustrated just how carefully a Media-Administration narrative is created and rolled out over time. It’s as though we’re all living in a work of fiction like The Matrix. We’re being fed planned fictional narratives meticulously story-boarded in advance by the administration and given a helpful narrative arc by the media. It’s frightening that the media are this corrupt and compliant.

And speaking of fiction — if this past week were a novel, its most dramatic plot twist to date took place when the media’s number one tormentor, Andrew Breitbart, 43, suddenly and shockingly dropped dead while walking alone in Brentwood after midnight. Quite a few people were pretty happy about it, including, we presume, some who are smart enough to avoid using twitter. You’ve got to admit that it’s just the sort of thing you’d see in a thriller about the corrupt American media establishment.

There are only a few important issues in the campaign of 2012. However, the media no doubt will be paying less attention to these and more to creating and sustaining a helpful narrative arc to the stories that the administration and its advisers have selected as useful electorally. Very depressing.

From the introduction to a 47 page report compiled by hundreds of people for the UN:

None of this reduces the importance of addressing familiar issues like managing food systems, creating more effective systems governing the uses of freshwater, stimulating environmentally friendly energy sources or regulating the development and use of novel but potentially dangerous technologies. In fact many of the 21 issues we identify in this report have a thematic nature, but others broaden our view of emerging issues to encompass more than the sectors we are used to looking at. Our comprehensive role in changing the earth system calls for a new, more comprehensive and cross-cutting perspective. We must reinvent policies and governance systems to foster stewardship of our future, as humans incollaboration with the biosphere

More expensive nonsense and mind-numbing bureaucratese. Fire everyone associated with this. HT: GP

The head of HHS:

“Who pays for it? There’s no such thing as a free service,” Murphy asked. Sebelius responded that that is not the case with insurance. “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for cost of contraception,” Sebelius answered.

This is frightening. It goes well beyond the issue that there’s nothing so expensive as when it’s free. In Greece 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren, and we all know how well that’s working out. HT: BOTW

William Tucker in the Spectator:

Prompted by various federal and state government tax incentives plus market-obliterating “renewable mandates,” hundreds of square miles of mountain and prairie have been covered with 45-story windmills that look like the archaeological remnants of a previous race of 80-foot giants. These “wind farms” generally produce electricity that is essentially useless. When the wind blows, windmills can force other forms of generation out of the market because they are free of fuel costs.

But those other forms of generation have to be kept running just in case the wind dies down. Last year when temperatures rose to 110 degrees in Texas, that state’s 7 percent “wind capacity” proved absolutely useless in the heat-induced doldrums. And wind “farms,” it should be noted, always talk in terms of “capacity” rather than output. That’s because they only operate about 30 percent of the time.

Nobody has yet invented a way to store commercial quantities of electricity and it may be impossible without building facilities of equally gargantuan dimensions — say an entire city block of rechargeable batteries. Without any means of storage, wind power is essentially a nuisance.

Then there is solar electricity, which, in order to access, California is now planning to cover dozens of square miles of pristine desert (yes, there is already environmental opposition) in order to prove the world can run on sunshine. Solar energy is a bit more concentrated than wind so that it only takes about five square miles of highly polished collectors to produce 100 megawatts — when the sun shines. In the desert environment, these solar panels will require constant cleaning and polishing to keep them from getting covered with dust and therefore becoming dysfunctional. It’s a labor-intensive task that will require lots of water coming from who-knows-where.

And how about the electric car? Caught in the headlock of a government bailout, GM was forced to push its Volt out the door — where it has sat on dealer lots ever since. Sales are miserable, except for the occasional government agency that drops by to place an order. Government patronage of the electric car industry has also produced the $104,000 Fisker Karma, made in Denmark but shipped to our shores so that Leonardo DiCaprio and a few others could buy first editions. Then there was the Bright, which went bankrupt last month, and the Asperta, which failed before that.

The Age of Foolishness was obvious three years ago, and it has only gotten worse and worse. Help!

Newspaper revenue is at its lowest since 1951. An industry is disappearing. Kodak, virtually a monopoly 50 years ago, went bankrupt recently. How could a corporate culture with that degree of success and power in an industry change when the industry shrunk by over 90% within just a few years? Other bright stars came and went. Polaroid, which once seemed futuristic, is gone, Lehman Brothers, etc, quite a long list. GE is out of its original business, though it no doubt would argue that that was a wise choice.

We first looked at this issue with regard to legacy media outlets almost a decade ago. Since then, the legacy media seem to have gotten even more rigorously biased towards their ideological allies, or are at least more brazen and less circumspect about it. The environment certainly seems nastier, not to mention crazier among new media types ideologically aligned with the newspapers of yesteryear. There seems to be a sense of desperation, maybe business-driven, maybe ideological. Which worldview will win, Texas or NY/LA/DC? Hard to say, but it isn’t going to be pretty.

Not pretty at all.

BBC:

Ms Clinton made her remarks at the Friends of Syria conference in Tunisia, a meeting of diplomats boycotted by China and Russia that sought an end to the crisis. The US Secretary of State said it was “quite distressing” to see two Security Council members using their vetoes “while people are being murdered”. “It is just despicable and I ask whose side are they on? They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, when asked for Beijing’s response, said China “cannot accept that at all”, AFP news agency reported. Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily was more outspoken. “The United States’ motive in parading as a ‘protector’ of the Arab peoples is not difficult to imagine,” it said in a commentary. “The problem is, what moral basis does it have for this patronising and egotistical super-arrogance and self-confidence?” “Even now, violence continues unabated in Iraq and ordinary people enjoy no security. This alone is enough for us to draw a huge question mark over the sincerity and efficacy of US policy,” it added.

“Despicable”? “Egotistical super-arrogance”? We have no use for the Syrian regime, but we fail to understand why the US picked this particular very pubic fight. Why introduce a security council resolution that logic suggests was clearly going to be vetoed by Russia and China for reasons of self-interest? Can someone please explain this.

Reuters:

A public promise from Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, to pump oil at its full capacity would calm oil markets as well as gasoline prices, Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the letter, which was obtained by Reuters, Schumer asked Clinton to urge the Saudi government to increase production to full capacity of 12.5 million barrels per day – an increase of 2.5 million barrels. That would compensate for a reduction in Iran’s total exports of 2.2 million barrels per day. Oil sales from Iran, the third-largest oil exporter, face tough new sanctions as a result of the standoff over its nuclear development.

Gasoline prices in the United States are the highest on record for February. The American Automobile Association (AAA) said the national average price hit $3.65 per gallon on Friday, and analysts say average prices could rise well over $4 per gallon during the peak driving season in coming months. “These skyrocketing fuel prices are directly linked to the global energy market, particularly Iran’s recent efforts to manipulate oil prices and the worry of impacts on supply from an escalation of regional hostilities,” Schumer said

What a good idea. Let’s remain utterly dependent on navigability of the Straits of Hormuz and send $4 trillion a decade overseas rather than fixing the problem ourselves. The New American Way. Brilliant!

A guy tried to open a lemonade stand:

try to jump through the legal hoops required to open a simple lemonade stand in New York City. Here’s some of what one has to do:

1) Register as sole proprietor with the County Clerk’s Office (must be done in person). 2) Apply to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number. 3) Complete 15-hr Food Protection Course! 4) After the course, register for an exam that takes 1 hr. You must score 70 percent to pass. (Sample question: “What toxins are associated with the puffer fish?”) If you pass, allow 3-5 weeks for delivery of Food Protection Certificate. 5) Register for sales tax Certificate of Authority. 6) Apply for a Temporary Food Service Establishment Permit. Must bring copies of the previous documents and completed forms to the Consumer Affairs Licensing Center.

Then, at least 21 days before opening your establishment, you must: Arrange for an inspection with the Health Department’s Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. It takes about 3 weeks to get your appointment. If you pass, you can set up a business once you: Buy a portable fire extinguisher from a company certified by the FDNY and set up a contract for waste disposal. We couldn’t finish the process. Had we been able to schedule our health inspection and open my stand legally, it would have taken us 65 days.

Big deal. In LA you can’t throw a frisbee. Fortunately, there’s not a single shred of evidence that over-regulation kills jobs. (We frankly do not know how you’d go about getting rid of all these crazy regulations, but the first step is forced attrition at every regulating agency.)

Richard Lindzen of MIT via the Telegraph:

I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest…

Where do we go from here? Given that this has become a quasi-religious issue, it is hard to tell. However, my personal hope is that we will return to normative science, and try to understand how the climate actually behaves. Our present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2 levels, for example, clearly limits real understanding; so does the replacement of theory by model simulation.

In point of fact, there has been progress along these lines and none of it demonstrates a prominent role for CO2. It has been possible to account for the cycle of ice ages simply with orbital variations (as was thought to be the case before global warming mania); tests of sensitivity independent of the assumption that warming is due to CO2 (a circular assumption) show sensitivities lower than models show; the resolution of the early faint sun paradox which could not be resolved by greenhouse gases, is readily resolved by clouds acting as negative feedbacks.

And, for bonus fun, what the media did to itself with Rathergate now has happened with the climate crowd.

NYT:

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies…the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead — a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb…

some intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for Iran’s enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call “strategic ambiguity.” Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions.

Which would you prefer, a bomb or “strategic ambiguity”? There’s a lot you can do with the former that you can’t do with the latter. What planet are these people from?

You remember that line from Animal House. We were reminded about that line as we read the about the derision heaped upon the Miracle of the Algae. Of course the Miracle was nonsense, but it was never meant to be anything other than nonsense. The administration knows that the corrupt and unprofessional media won’t care. But the administration isn’t brain damaged. These are clever people. Every week there are new shiny things to look at; meanwhile much of the real action with this group takes place offsceen and very quietly, while the conservative worthies harumph about nonsense.

When the young people come of age and figure out what the boomers did to them, there is going to be hell to pay. And far worse than the present is the future — as shown in an alarming government chart actually that understates debt by $3 trillion! HT: PL

A politician spoke thusly: “The U.S. consumes more than a fifth of the world’s oil. But we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves.” The assertion is manifestly ludicrous. The US has centuries of petroleum reserves — at least 300-400 billion or maybe as many as 1.4 trillion barrels of oil. Gross misstatements of this sort will be judged harshly by history, at least if we’re still in a position to write our own history.

Here’s a chart from four years ago, a little before oil spiked to $147 a barrel. Now we see oil prices over $100 again, and the talk is the sky’s the limit. You might be surprised to know that a mere six months after its peak in the summer of 2008, oil prices had fallen to $38 a barrel, a 75% decline.

There’s an amusing story about what was supposed to be anti-Climategate. The fellow at the center of it now has hired a crisis manager and a criminal defense attorney. Oops!

Here are videos featuring two members of the Council on Foreign Relations. One is in the military and one is a politician. It’s a decade after 9-11. We still haven’t gotten the buildings rebuilt, and the videos demonstrate the state of discourse in this country. We’re not in a good situation.

BBC:

Greece will get loans of more than 130bn euros (£110bn; $170bn) and have about 107bn of its debt written off. In return, it must slash its debt from 160% to 120.5% of GDP within eight years and accept a permanent EU economic monitoring mission…

Greece will undertake to reduce its debt to 120.5% of GDP by 2020. Private holders of Greek debt will take losses of 53.5% on the value of their bonds, with the real loss as much as 70%. Greece’s economic management will be subjected to permanent monitoring by eurozone experts on the ground. Greece will amend its constitution to give priority to debt repayments over the funding of government services. Greece will set up a special account, managed separately from its main budget, that must always contain enough money to service its debts for the coming three months…

The BBC’s Stephen Evans in Brussels says the agreement will mean deeper cuts in public spending than Greece has planned….Anastasis Chrisopoulos, a 31-year-old Athens taxi driver, saw no reason to cheer the bailout. “So what?” he told Reuters. “Things will only get worse. We have reached a point where we’re trying to figure out how to survive just the next day, let alone the next 10 days, the next month, the next year”…

Successive rounds of austerity measures, demanded by Greece’s international creditors, have failed to restore growth and have provoked clashes between protesters and police. The Greek government fell last year after ex-Prime Minister George Papandreou called for a referendum on the eurozone rescue package. He was replaced by Mr Papademos, an unelected technocrat

Bloomberg: “In return for the new cash, Greece signed up to cuts in pensions, the minimum wage, health-care and defense spending, as well as layoffs of state employees and asset sales. It must implement that austerity with unemployment already topping 20 percent…The biggest near-term risk may be elections which could be held as soon as April. In a poll released today, nearly every Greek questioned by GPO for Mega TV said the budget measures promised by the current government were too harsh.”

In addition to its unpopularity, the plan assumes that virtually all private bondholders will go along, and that the politicians will do what they’ve promised. Question: when will the latest bailout begin to unravel?

NYT, Melbourne Weekly and Business Insider:

A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were overwhelmed when 12,000 people signed up. Greek bankers told me that people had taken about one-third of their money out of their accounts…

standard of living down, by as much as 30 per cent; bank deposits that have not been spirited out of the country are dwindling; almost 70,000 businesses folded in 2010 and bankruptcy is stalking more than 53,000 of the remaining 300,000; unemployment, 25 per cent — but youth joblessness is 47 per cent and rising; a quarter of the population living in poverty; homelessness, up 25 per cent, with well-educated youngsters accounting for much of the rise. Petty crime, doubled…

even if Greece implemented all the austerity measures expected of it, and if it achieves highly optimistic economic growth targets, it will still fall short of what is needed, with debt likely to total 129 per cent of GDP in 2020.

It appears that the euro is doomed, and maybe even the EU itself in its current form. But we wouldn’t be surprised if there were another round or two of “amend and pretend” bailouts attempted. Even foolish religions die hard.