Dick Cheney, Salmon Murderer

The Seattle Times has a story about how Dick Cheney is being blamed for dead salmon. No, seriously.

Dems: Investigate Cheney for role in salmon die-off

WASHINGTON — West Coast Democrats called for a hearing Wednesday into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.

EPA Keeps Us Safe From Vietnamese Nail Salons

And I use the word safe to me spends a lot of taxpayer money for no good reason. I am not even going to attempt to comment on this... I am just glad we are not running a deficit or anything.

Here is the office press release.

EPA $100K grant to help make nail salons safer for patrons and workers in King County

Release date: 06/27/2007

Contact Information: Running Grass, EPA/Seattle 206-553-2899, grass.running@epa.gov ot Tony Brown, EPA/Seattle 206-553-1203, brown.anthony@epa.gov


(Seattle, Wash - June 27, 2007) – Both patrons and staff of nail salons in King County, Washington, will soon breathe a little easier, thanks to a $100,000 EPA Collaborative Problem-Solving Grant. The grant was awarded to the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), as part of EPA’s Environmental Justice Program. The grant awarded to ECOSS is one of 10 awarded to community-based, non-profit organizations across the country. Each received $100,000 EPA Environmental Justice Grants by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The grant was awarded with a local nail salon, Northbend Nails, as a backdrop in Seattle’s Rainier Valley. The grant was given under EPA's Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving program that supports environment and public health improvements in low-income communities around the nation.

"These grants provide resources for communities to take an active role in solving local environmental problems," said Elin Miller EPA’s NW Regional Administrator in Seattle. “This project is about protecting people where they live. It will help South Seattle salon owners, technicians and neighbors make changes to reduce their exposure to nail salon toxics.”

The “Toxic Beauty” Project will improve human health and the environment in nail salons located in low-income communities and communities of color in the Seattle and South Seattle areas. This project’s intent is to work with over 70 Vietnamese owned and operated nail salons in these areas. Expected beneficial outcomes will include:


Reduced exposure to toxic chemicals in women of color who work in and patronize nail salons in EJ communities
Increased awareness of safer alternatives for salon owners
Healthier air inside the salons through behavior changes of workers and owner/operators

According to ECOSS Executive Director, Charlie Cunniff, “We are grateful that the EPA has funded this project, which will address a key environmental justice issue in our community. ECOSS and our partner, the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice (CCEJ), will use multi-lingual outreach to educate nail salon owners, technicians, and clients. We hope that through this collaboration, we can help businesses make changes that will result in a healthier environment for all.”

In 2007, EPA awarded $1 million in grants across the country for improving the environment in low income communities. Financial assistance under the Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving program is available to all non-profit organizations designated by the IRS or recognized by the state, territory, commonwealth or tribe in which it is located.

The purpose of the funding is to assist affected communities so they can develop new approaches to environmental justice issues and to achieve community health and sustainability. Since 1994, EPA's Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving program has provided more than $31 million in funding to more than 1,100 community-based organizations.

Newsweeks Global Warming Bias

You know something is seriously wrong with a magazine article when I can poke holes in the arguments.

In the current Newsweek, gift subscription, not my idea, the article, Which Of These Is Not Causing Global Warming Today", they want to claim the sun is not causing global warming. Maybe, maybe not, but if you are going to make the claim, you should try to use facts and logic or at least try to be intellectually honest.

Two things caught my attention. First the analogy that the sun, or more accurately, the increased solar output of the sun is not enough to cause the increase in earth temperature. Fine, whatever, but do not use the following analogy

The extra solar output can no more account for that than holding a candle under a pot can account for boiling a gallon of water.

First of all global warming has not turned earth into a boiling pot of water, 1 degree increase since the 70's. The sun has a mass 330,000 times that of the earth and its volume is 1,304,000 times that of the earth. So even if the output of the sun, whose core temperature is a mere 28,800,000 degrees Fahrenheit, has increased less than .1%, it is still just a tad more than holding a candle under a pot. Maybe holding a teacup next to a nuclear reactor would be more appropriate. But even the "less than .1%" claim is dubious as it sure seems to be more than .1%, maybe a lot more.

In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.

The increase would only be significant to Earth's climate if it has been going on for a century or more, said study leader Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher also affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The Sun's increasing output has only been monitored with precision since satellite technology allowed necessary observations. Willson is not sure if the trend extends further back in time, but other studies suggest it does.

"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," Willson said.

The 2nd problem is this part:

When natural cycles such as El Niño cause unusual warming, they also cause unusual cooling. One place heats up and another gets a chill, as if Peter were robbed of heat to warm Paul. The result is no net global change. To warm both Peter and Paul in a closed system violates the laws of thermodynamics.

OK... so what... the earth is not a closed system, never has been, never will be. Why even bring this up?

They do not even look at the fact that other planets in the solar system are know to be warming as mentioned here, Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists and here, Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest and here, New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change . What is the common variable? How about that large ball of fire in the sky that makes up 99% of all mass in the entire solar system.

Here is what we as humans do not seem to understand. We are really, really insignificant. Sorry to break the news to you. The mass of the earth is about 4,786,243,776,082,440,000,000,000,000,000 times more than the mass of all humans, assuming the average human weighs 150 pounds(just a guess). So if the sun is 330,000 times that of the earth... well you get the point. Well at least some of you do.

Welcome Our New Spanish Speaking Overlords

Feel free to pass on your feelings on the immigration bill to the RNC, 202 863-8500 and NRSC, 202 675-6000. If you were foolish enough to send any money, ask for it back, with interest. I hear they are more than happy to do as the base requests.

Here is my problem. I have no Republican representation until you get to the White House and now it appears I do not even have that. In 18 of the 22 races in the November 2006 election on my ballot, the Democrat ran unopposed. None of the other 4 races were within 12 points. Who can I complain to? Someone needs my boot up their a$$.

Coast Guard Studys Global Warming

Coast Guard's Healy finishes global-warming research mission, returns to Seattle

The Healy, which can accommodate up to 50 scientists, conducted two separate scientific missions during this last trip. The first, called the Bering Sea Ecological Study, or BEST, was examining ice and the formation of algae blooms on the bottom of the ice, Lindstrom said.
...
...
The first scientific team was on board for 30 days before the Healy returned to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians to drop them off and pick up another team of scientists, Lindstrom said. With the second team on board for 34 days, the Healy headed further north in the Bering Sea to study how algae and plankton dropped through water channels to the sea floor, where it was consumed by "bottom feeders" — clams and crabs that become food for seals, walruses, and gray and humpback whales, the captain said.

Important work there, studying algae and plankton.

In unrelated news, the USCGC Healy is 420 feet long, can accomidate 138 people on board, has Diesel electric propulsion and can hold 1,220,915 gallons of fuel.

No word on the cost to taxpayers and no word on if they were able to make the trip on one tank of fuel.

Direct From The Basement Of The Science Building


H/T Hot Air

King County Gets Tough on Illegal Voters.

And by "illegal voters", I mean people who don't actually cast an illegal vote but just wanted to point out how flawed the system is.

From today's Seattle Times:

Woman registers her dog to vote; prosecutors growl

Jane Balogh had a pretty good idea who was calling when the phone rang and the caller asked for Duncan M. MacDonald.
Duncan is the dog Balogh registered as a voter seven months before the November 2006 election.

After making her point — how easy it is for a voter to register illegally — Balogh will be arraigned in King County Superior Court on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official.
.....
.....
If she accepts the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they won't ask for jail time but will recommend she be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine and commit no other crimes for a year.


Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says his office "can't simply look the other way. They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can't let voting dogs vote."

Memo to Dan, the dog did not vote and never intended to vote.... unlike say the thousands of illegal votes documented by Stefan Sharkansky @ Sound Politics that nobody seems interested in looking at.

So I called the Prosecuting Attorney's office to ask if they had finished prosecuting all of those people who DID illegally vote and could not reach a human so I sent an email and got this reply:

Out of Office AutoReply: Question
Prosecuting, Attorney [Prosecuting.Attorney@METROKC.GOV]
This mailbox is not monitored on a daily basis. If you require immediate assistance please contact:

Criminal: (206) 296-9000
Family Support: (206) 296-9020
Civil: (206) 296-9015
Fraud: (206) 296-9010

Otherwise, we will resturn your message as soon as we can. Thank you.

I will anxiously away the "resturn" message.

Update:
I got an email reply from the "Acting King County Prosecuting Attorney". Mostly background on the law, what she did was a felony, voter role integrity, etc. Here is the money quote:

Following the 2004 election we prosecuted 10 people for voting more than once in the general election.

10... WOW... that is 1 more than 9. That has got to be, what, close to half of 1 percent of those who appear to have actually voted illegally in the 2004 election.

King County Elections... keeping the voter rolls dog free.

The Democrats Support... Someone's Military

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's website has a flash demo outlining her positions on Rising Gas Prices, Progress For America, Appropriations Bills, which includes increase veterans funding... apparently for the Canadian military. After all that is a picture of a doctor speaking to a person wearing a Canadian military uniform.

I could not make this stuff up. I wish I had to but sadly I do not.

When, not if, the page gets taken down, go here for a screenshot.
H/T Hot Air

Seattle Recycles A Bad Idea

Seattle announces ambitious recycling plan

Read the councils plan... and notice, nowhere do they show that this actually make any economic sense.

Does recycling:
Saves Energy... nope
Saves Money... nope
Saves Trees... nope
Improves environment... nope
Saves landfill space... nope
Creates productive high paying jobs... nope
Creates unionized jobs that vote Democrat... YES!!!

Don't believe me... watch these Penn & Teller videos, Part 1,
Part 2 and Part 3. Just remember that it is Penn & Teller so strong language content warning.

Unfair And Unbalanced

The following 144 journalists made campaign contributions from 2004 through the first quarter of 2007, according to Federal Election Commission records studied by MSNBC.com.

A sample:

Television:

(D) ABC News, Mary Fulginiti, "Primetime" correspondent. Click for details.

(D) ABC affiliate in Boston, WCVB, Sangita Chandra, producer. Click for details.

(D) ABC affiliate in Wichita, KAKE, Susan Peters, anchor. Click for details.

(D) CBS News, Serena Altschul, correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning." Click for details.

(D) CBS News, Edward H. Forgotson Jr., producer, "CBS Sunday Morning." Click for details.

(D) CBS affiliate in Boston, WBZ, Liz Walker, newsmagazine host. Click for details.

(D) CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, KCBS, Claudia Bill, news writer. Click for details.

(D) CBS affiliate in Memphis, WREG, Markova Reed, anchors the morning and noon news. Click for details.

(D) CNN, Guy Raz, Jerusalem correspondent, now defense correspondent for National Public Radio. Click for details.

(R) CW affiliate in Chicago, WGN, Jay Congdon, news producer. Click for details.

(R) CW affiliate in Los Angeles, KTLA, Diana Chi, news writer. Click for details.

(R) Fox News Channel, Ann Stewart Banker, producer for Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor." Click for details.

(D) Fox News Channel, Codie Brooks, researcher for Brit Hume's "Special Report." Click for details.

(D) Fox affiliate in Omaha, KPTM, Calvert Collins, reporter. Click for details.

(D) Fox affiliate in Minneapolis, KMSP, Alix Kendall, morning anchor. Click for details.

(D) Fox affiliate in Washington, D.C., WTTG, Laura Evans, anchor. Click for details.


Magazines:

(D) The Atlantic Monthly, Martha Spaulding, assistant managing editor. Click for details.

(D) Business Week, Prudence Crowther, chief copy editor. Click for details.

(D) The Economist, Andreas Kluth, technology correspondent. Click for details.

(D) The Economist, Joanne Ramos, financial writer. Click for details.

(R) Forbes, Jean A. Briggs, assistant managing editor. Click for details.

(R) Forbes, Robert Lenzner, national editor. Click for details.

(D) Forbes, Tatiana Serafin, senior reporter. Click for details.

(D) Inc., Jane Berentson, editor. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, David Denby, film critic. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Henry Finder, editorial director and books editor. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Tad Friend, Hollywood reporter. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Ann Goldstein, head of copy department. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, John Lahr, theater critic. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm, writer. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, George Packer, war correspondent. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Mark Singer, profile writer. Click for details.

(D) The New Yorker, Judith Thurman, writer. Click for details.

(D) Newsweek, Temma Ehrenfeld, associate editor. Click for details.

(D & R) Newsweek, Jane Bryant Quinn, personal finance columnist. Click for details.

(D) Newsweek, Anne Underwood, correspondent on health and medical stories. Click for details.

(D) Rolling Stone, Jason Fine, deputy managing editor. Click for details.

(D) Rolling Stone, David Swanson, assistant editor. Click for details.

(D) Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, editor and publisher. Click for details.

(D) Time, Jim Frederick, senior editor. Click for details.

(D) U.S. News & World Report, Michael Freeman, researcher. Click for details.

(D) U.S. News & World Report, Amanda Spake, senior writer. Click for details.

(D) Vanity Fair, Elise O'Shaughnessy, contributing editor. Click for details.

(D) Vanity Fair, Michael Shnayerson, contributing editor. Click for details.


Radio:

(D) Air America and CBS Radio, Betsy Rosenberg-Zimmerman, environment talk show host and environment reporter. Click for details.

(D) National Public Radio, Corey Flintoff, newscaster. Click for details.

(D) National Public Radio, Michelle Trudeau, correspondent. Click for details.

(D) NPR affiliate in Washington, WAMU, Susan Goodman, reporter. Click for details.

(D) WWJ News Radio, Detroit, Vickie B. Thomas, reporter. Click for details.


Wire services:

(D) Bloomberg News, Katherine Burton, reporter. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Robert Dieterich, energy editor. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Joshua Fellman, reporter in Asia. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Robert Houck, multimedia news editor. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Milanee Kapadia, reporter. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, James Polson, reporter on energy and utilities. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Carlos Torres, reporter in Washington. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, Robert Urban, real estate reporter. Click for details.

(D) Bloomberg News, John Wydra, radio newscaster. Click for details.

(D) Dow Jones Newswires, Samuel J. Favate Jr., editor. Click for details.

(D) Dow Jones Newswires, Billy Mallard, credit markets editor. Click for details.

(D) Reuters, Lisa von Ahn, news desk editor. Click for details.

(D) Reuters, Michael Erman, reporter. Click for details.

But here is the "funny" part. And I use the word funny to mean blatantly dishonest. If you look at the entire list, those few entries that have an (R) at the beginning, notice how many of those people do not actually have anything to do with... NEWS. Food critic, film critic, graphic designer, maybe someone that deals with finance. They list Joe Scarborough who was a Republican member of Congress at one point.

You know things are bad when they have to be dishonest when reveling how unbalance they are.

H/T Hot Air

The Dishonesty Of The Global Warming Crowd

Watch this video:

Interesting Argument About Global Warming - Watch more free videos

Then ask this question.... did he really try to argue that if we spend a lot of money to fight global warming but global warming does not happen then that is bad, global depression and all, but if we spend a lot of money to fight global warming and global warming does happen, that is smiley face good? What color is the sky in this guys world? How is a world that is in economic depression that is warmer good but one that is in economic depression but not warm bad?

Other issues with the video...
He implies that all 4 options are equally likely which is clearly not the case. It is almost pick a number between 1 and 4 and hope for the best.

He implies that if there is human caused global warming, we can do something that will prevent it. Now here comes the math... as has been previously stated, humans account for 0.28% of all greenhouse gases. So let's assume we do spends bazillions to stop global warming and reduce human caused greenhouse gases to 0, nothing, nada for our Spanish speaking friends. It is not possible for us to reduce our greenhouse gases to anything less than that, that is all we can do. Reducing greenhouse gases by .28% is the same as getting 14 cents off of a $50 restaurant bill. Is that going to make a difference? He seems to think it will make things smiley face good.

Of course someone still needs to explain to me why we think the current global temperature is optimal. How do we know a couple of degrees warmer or colder would not be better?

United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Just Wants To "Bring 12 Million Undocumented Americans Out Of The Shadows"

From the Bryan Suits Show...

Do not take my word for it... watch and listen to Senator Reid yourself.

And yes I know technically we are all "Americans" so I guess those "Death To America" signs are aimed equally at Canada and Mexico.

Constitutional Rights According To John Edwards

From Hot Air... According to John Edwards, "which of these should be a right and which should be a privilege"? Not like you need a hint but he thinks all but one should be a right.

A college education
Health care
A livable wage
Owning a handgun
American citizen for someone who was not born here but have worked here for 5 years
Access to the internet

I guess when your area of emphasis is personal injury / medical malpractice at UNC law school, there is no reason to study, you know, the Constitution. Forward the video to 1:10 left.

You May Be Able To Opt Out Of Becoming A Medical Guinea Pig Without Knowing It

The Seattle Times has an article about the "Resuscitation Outcome Consortium". This is an experimental treatment being conducted on trauma and cardiac arrest patients to test stronger saline solutions to help stabilize blood pressure.

The UW studies are part of a $50 million, five-year project called the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, now under way in 11 communities in the U.S. and Canada. In all, researchers plan to involve nearly 21,000 people as part of the first large-scale effort to improve pre-hospital trauma and cardiac-arrest care. That's the care given by emergency responders while patients are in an ambulance or even before they are loaded aboard.
....
A system is set up to choose randomly which patients get experimental treatments instead of the standard procedures. Once patients arrive at a hospital — most likely Harborview Medical Center — the experimental treatments will stop.

Who is taking part of this study? Potentially you.

That means that now anyone who suffers cardiac arrest, head injuries or goes into shock in King County will be automatically enrolled in the studies — unless they specifically opt out ahead of time.
...
To opt out, people have to contact the study administrators and ask for a free stainless-steel bracelet etched with the words "No Research Study." And they would have to be wearing it when it matters.

What is the contact info... they do not tell you in the article. Here is the ROC contact info from their website:

Phone: 206-685-1302
Fax: 206-543-0131
Office Hours: M-F 7:30am to 5:00pm (PST)

Mailing address:
ROC CTC
1107 NE 45th St.
Suite 505
Seattle, WA 98105-4689