GENERAL SAYS TERRORISTS IN 'DAILY' REFUGEE FLOW TO EUROPE. The rewards of insane compassion

GENERAL SAYS TERRORISTS IN 'DAILY' REFUGEE FLOW TO EUROPE BY RICHARD LARDNER ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Terrorists, criminals and foreign fighters are part of the daily refugee flow into Europe, the top NATO commander in Europe told lawmakers, "masking the movement" of these dangerous elements and heightening the potential for an attack. In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove said the Islamic State extremist group is "spreading like a cancer" within this mix, "taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations - and our own." Breedlove said Russia's actions in Syria have "wildly exacerbated the problem." Despite its public pronouncements, Russia has done little to counter the Islamic State but has bolstered Syrian President Bashar Assad. Russia and Assad, Breedlove said, are using migration as a weapon to overwhelm European support structures and break European resolve. He cited the use of barrel bombs, which are unguided weapons and have no military value, against civilians in Syria. The only purpose of these indiscriminate attacks is to terrorize Syrian citizens and "get them on the road," Breedlove said. In addition to the dangers posed by terrorists in the refugee mix, Breedlove warned that opposition from local nationalists in Europe to the large influx of refugees could lead to violence.

FORMER UN CLIMATE OFFICIAL CHARGED WITH STALKING, HARASSMENT...the creepy elites

FORMER UN CLIMATE OFFICIAL CHARGED WITH STALKING, HARASSMENT BY NIRMALA GEORGE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP Photo/Gurinder Osan NEW DELHI (AP) -- The U.N. climate panel's former chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, was charged Tuesday with stalking and sexually harassing a woman who worked at the New Delhi environmental think tank he's headed for more than three decades. Police filed the case in a Delhi court after investigating a complaint by one of Pachauri's colleagues at The Energy Research Institute, Press Trust of India said. Pachauri has denied the allegations, but resigned last year from both the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and from TERI after the researcher's allegations were published in Indian newspapers. The allegations caused a public uproar in a country where women face a stigma against discussing issues such as sexual harassment in the workplace. His appointment last month to another top post at TERI renewed outrage, and a second woman, who had worked there for a year, came forward with additional allegations. The court scheduled an initial hearing on April 23. Separate from the police investigation, TERI's internal complaints committee examined the evidence presented by the researcher, and questioned nearly 50 other employees, and concluded that the allegations of sexual harassment leveled by the researcher were valid. Police have charged Pachauri, 75, with sexual harassment, stalking and criminal intimidation of the 29-year old woman. Pachauri had headed the four-decade-old think-tank for the last 34 years, when it emerged as a global center for research in efficient utilization of energy and sustainable use of natural resources. It has affiliate institutes in London and Washington. Pachauri chaired the climate panel - considered the world's authority on climate science - since 2002, and had accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on its behalf. The panel shared the award with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. © 2016 The Ass

Food Stamp Users Near Record High Despite Low Unemployment Rate

Despite the unemployment rate being at an eight-year low (4.9 percent as of January 2016), the number of people on food stamps remains near an all-time high which was 47,636,000 in 2013.

Why the disparity in the numbers? Well, the unemployment rate does not take into account people who are not in, or have dropped out of, the workforce altogether.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January of this year that approximately 94 million Americans are not participating in the workforce.

But the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been hovering around 46 million participants since 2011. The current figure, as of February 2016, stands at 45.8 million Americans receiving food stamps.

Bloomberg Business reported that the last time the unemployment rate was at five percent in April 2008, only 28 million Americans were on food stamps.

Several reasons explain the high numbers. Governments have made it easier to sign up for the program. More than 85 percent of eligible food-stamp recipients took assistance in 2013, the most recent year of available data, compared to 70 percent in 2008. The higher sign-up rate among those qualified accounts for 8.6 million more people on food stamps -- about half of the program’s total increase.

Well, at least President Obama put forth one program that has been easy to sign up for.

We now have a country based on government dependence. Heritage Foundation research fellow Robert Rector said, “Clearly there’s a group of people who are not in the labor force, and 10 years ago they would have been. Now they’re relying on food stamps.”

When we have a government full of enablers telling people that they don’t have to work to provide for themselves and their families, they create an atmosphere of dependence and reliance.

Top border chief to agents who object to Obama amnesty: ‘Look for another job’

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Updated: 11:49 a.m. on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Customs and Border Protection Commission R. Gil Kerlikowske told Border Patrol agents who object to President Obama’s amnesty policies that it’s time to “look for another job,” saying Tuesday that agents have to follow the orders of their superiors.

Mr. Kerlikowske was objecting to testimony last month from the Border Patrol labor union chief, who said under Mr. Obama agents have been told to restore the discredited “catch-and-release” policy from a decade ago.

The commissioner disputed that, saying every illegal immigrant over the age of 14 who is encountered by agents is supposed to be fingerprinted, interviewed and put through the usual process, including being turned over to Immigration and Customs enforcement for decisions on deportation.

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“We don’t need and don’t want — and I would not stand by if the Border Patrol was — releasing people without going through all of the formalities,” Mr. Kerlikowske testified to the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Kerlikowske also questioned the veracity of the labor union, the National Border Patrol Council, and its president Brandon Judd, saying the NBPC was “probably not the most knowledgeable organization about what’s actually going on.”

Last month Mr. Judd testified that his agents have been told not to bother arresting illegal immigrants, meaning the migrants never get into the criminal justice system, and the administration’s numbers don’t look so bad.

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Mr. Judd said the releases are part of President Obama’s “priorities” program, which orders agents to worry chiefly about criminals, national security risks and illegal immigrants who came into the U.S. after Jan. 1, 2014. Mr. Judd said illegal immigrants without serious criminal convictions have learned that by claiming they came before 2014 — without even needing to show proof — they can be released immediately rather than being arrested.

Mr. Kerlikowske, though, said Mr. Judd and fellow agents who object to Mr. Obama’s policies should be ushered out.

“Well if you really don’t want to follow the directions of your superiors, including the president of the United States and the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, then you really do need to look for another job,” he said.

Just minutes before he told agents to quit, he had told the committee that he’s having trouble filling the number of slots Congress has funded.

“We are not able to hire as fast as attrition,” he said, calling it “very concerning.”

Requiem for a Constitutional Republic

From Angelo Codevilla:

The Obama years have brought America to the brink of transformation from constitutional republic into an empire ruled by secret deals promulgated by edicts. Civics classes used to teach: “Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and we citizens may be penalized only by a jury of our peers.”

Nobody believes that anymore, because no part of it has been true for a long time. Barack Obama stopped pretending that it is. During the twentieth century’s second half, both parties and all branches of government made a mockery of the Constitution of 1789. Today’s effective constitution is: “The president can do whatever he wants so long as one-third of the Senate will sustain his vetoes and prevent his conviction upon impeachment.”

Obama has been our first emperor. A Donald Trump presidency, far from reversing the ruling class’s unaccountable hold over American life, would seal it. Because Trump would act as our second emperor, he would render well-nigh impossible our return to republicanism.

Today, nearly all the rules under which we live are made, executed, and adjudicated by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and countless boards and commissions. Congress no longer passes real laws. Instead, it passes broad grants of authority, the substance of the president’s bureaucracy decides in cooperation with interest groups.

Trump’s career and fortune have been as beneficiary in the process by which government grants privileges to some and inflicts burdens on others.

Nancy Pelosi’s remark that we would know Obamacare’s contents only after it passed was true, and applicable to nearly all modern legislation. The courts allow this, pretending that bureaucrats sitting with their chosen friends merely fill in details. Some details! Americans have learned that, as they say in DC, if you are not sitting at one of these tables of power, “you’re on the menu.”

Trump’s claim to be an enemy of rule-by-inside-deal is counterintuitive. His career and fortune have been as participant and beneficiary in the process by which government grants privileges to some and inflicts burdens on others. Crony capitalism is the air he breathes, the only sea in which he swims, his second nature. His recipe for “fixing” America, he tells us, is to appoint “the best people”—he names some of his fellow crony capitalists—to exercise even more unaccountable power and to do so with “unbelievable speed.” He assures us that, this time, it will be to “make America great again.” Peanuts’ Lucy might reply: “This time, for sure!”

In recent years, Obama and the Democratic Party (with the Republican leadership’s constant collusion) have prevented Congress from voting to appropriate funds for individual programs and agencies. They have lumped all government functions into “continuing resolutions” or “omnibus bills.” This has moved the government’s decision-making into back rooms, shielding elected officials from popular scrutiny, relieving them of the responsibility for supporting or opposing what the government does. This has enabled Obama to make whatever deals have pleased him and his Republican cronies.

This has moved the government’s decision-making into back rooms, relieving elected officials of responsibility.

Trump touts his own capacity to make good deals. But good for whom? And who is to say what is good? Who or what causes would benefit from continuing government by secret deals? Who or what would lose? Trump’s stated objective is to wield whatever power might be necessary to accomplish whatever objectives upon which he—in consultation with whomever—might choose from time to time. But the difference between Trump and Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies.

By contrast, the U.S. Constitution of 1789, as explained by James Madison, envisages a continuous mutual effort at persuasion among the American people’s many parts, to “refine and enlarge the public views” and to result in ”decisions based on the “cool and deliberate sense of the community.” For two centuries, the government’s main decisions have happened through open congressional proceedings and recorded votes. That’s the republic we used to have.

Like Obama, Trump is not about persuading anybody. Both are about firing up their supporters to impose their will on their opponents while insulting them. Throughout history, this style of politics has been the indispensable ingredient for wrecking republics, the “final cause” that transforms free citizens into the subjects of emperors.

Both are about firing up their supporters to impose their will on their opponents while insulting them.

As I have shown at length elsewhere, America is now ruled by a uniformly educated class of persons that occupies the commanding heights of bureaucracy, of the judiciary, education, the media, and of large corporations, and that wields political power through the Democratic Party. Its control of access to prestige, power, privilege, and wealth exerts a gravitational pull that has made the Republican Party’s elites into its satellites.

This class’s fatal feature is its belief that ordinary Americans are a lesser intellectual and social breed. Its increasing self-absorption, its growing contempt for whoever won’t bow to it, its dependence for votes on sectors of society whose grievances it stokes, have led it to break the most basic rule of republican life: deeming its opposition illegitimate. The ruling class insists on driving down the throats of its opponents the agendas of each its constituencies and on injuring persons who stand in the way. This has spawned a Newtonian reaction, a hunger, among what may be called the “country class” for returning the favor with interest.


Read the rest here.

Scientists Finally Admit Climate Models Are Failing To Predict Global Warming When science is driven by politics you get junk science

Scientists Finally Admit Climate Models Are Failing To Predict Global Warming

Posted By Michael Bastasch On 10:19 AM 02/26/2016 

A group of scientists recently put out a new study confirming the 15-year “hiatus” in global warming. That study made headlines, but what went largely unnoticed was a major admission made by the paper’s authors: the climate models were wrong.

“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” John Fyfe, Canadian climate modeler and lead author of the new paper, told Nature. “We can’t ignore it.”

“Reality has deviated from our expectations – it is perfectly normal to try and understand this difference,” Ed Hawkins, co-author of the study and United Kingdom climate scientist, echoed in a blog post.

This is a huge admission by climate scientists and a big victory for skeptics of man-made global warming who have for years been pointing to a mismatch between climate model predictions and actual temperature observations.

“Overall, the paper is an admission by prominent members of the ‘mainstream’ scientific community that the earth’s surface temperature over the past two decades or so has not evolved in a way that was well-anticipated by either the scientific community and/or the climate models they rely on,” Chip Kappenberger, climate scientist at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Caller News foundation.

“Something that the skeptic have been pointing out for years,” Knappenberger said.

Knappenberger and fellow Cato climate scientist Patrick Michaels have been prominent critics of climate models relied upon by “mainstream” scientists because they say the models have not accurately predicted global temperature rises for the past six decades.

In a recent paper, Michaels and Knappenberger compared observed global surface temperature warming rates since 1950 to predictions made by 108 climate models used by government climate scientists. What they found was the models projected much higher warming rates than actually occurred.

Michaels and Knappenberger aren’t alone. Satellite-derived temperature readings have shown a “hiatus” in global warming for at least the last 18 years, despite rising carbon dioxide emissions.

While some scientists have tried to discredit satellite readings, they have been unable to explain the lack of significant warming in recent years.

“When a theory contradicts the facts” you need to change the theory, climate scientist John Christy told Congress in January hearing. “The real world is not going along with rapid warming. The models need to go back to the drawing board.”

Christy and his colleague Roy Spencer compile satellite-derived temperature readings at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Their satellite data has shown no warming for about two decades, and has been cited by researchers skeptical of claims of catastrophic global warming.

“The bulk atmospheric temperature is where the signal is the largest,” Christy said in the hearing, referring to the greenhouse gas effect. “We have measurements for that — it doesn’t match up with the models.”

“Because this result challenges the current theory of greenhouse warming in relatively straightforward fashion, there have been several well-funded attacks on those of us who build and use such datasets and on the datasets themselves,” Christy said.

Now, skepticism seems to have won the day — at least in terms of convincing other scientists there’s a big problem with climate models.

Fyfe’s study — which was co-authored by Michael Mann of “hockey stick” curve fame — contradicts a study by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists claiming there was no global warming hiatus.

“Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming,” Hawkins wrote in a blog post about the study, noting “the most recent observed 15-year trends are all positive, but lower than most previous similar trends in the past few decades” which is a  “clear demonstration that the rate of change has slowed since its peak.”

But even with the admission, some skeptics are still critical because the study’s authors employed research methods they have been critical of in the past.

“All of this said, the authors used techniques to demonstrate a slowdown, that when employed by the skeptics, are harshly criticized,” Knappenberger said. “This seems to me to indicate that the mainstream community gives a free pass to some researchers more so than others.”

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URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/26/scientists-finally-admit-climate-models-are-failing-to-predict-global-warming/

The Islamists of Pakistan protest.

Salman Taseer murder: Protests after Pakistan hangs Mumtaz Qadri

• 44 minutes ago
 
• From the section Asia

Image copyrightAFP/Getty

Image captionProtests such as this one in Lahore took place in several major cities

Thousands of people have protested across Pakistan following the execution of the former police bodyguard who shot dead Punjab's governor. 

Mumtaz Qadri was hailed as a hero by Islamists after killing Salman Taseer over his opposition to blasphemy laws in Islamabad in 2011. 

His supporters took to the streets in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and also blocked highways into Islamabad.

However, most rallies dispersed peacefully, AFP news agency reported.

Security forces were on high alert and riot police were in place in the area around Qadri's home in Islamabad.

Demonstrators burned tyres and chanted slogans, while schools and markets in Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi closed early over fears of violence.

Image copyrightReuters

Image captionMumtaz Qadri was hailed as a hero by some Islamist groups

What are Pakistan's blasphemy laws?

'Religious duty'

Qadri's funeral will be held on Tuesday at Liaquat Bagh park in nearby Rawalpindi, where large numbers of mourners are expected.

Prison officials said he was executed at 04:30 local time (23:30 GMT) at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, near the capital, Islamabad. 

Qadri, who had trained as an elite police commando and was assigned to Taseer as his bodyguard, shot the politician at an Islamabad market in January 2011. He was sentenced to death later that year.

He claimed it was his religious duty to kill the minister, who was an outspoken critic of Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws and supported liberal reforms. 

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Analysis: M Ilyas Khan, BBC News, Islamabad

Image copyrightAP

Image captionQadri's supporters blocked a highway in protest following his execution

Mumtaz Qadri's hanging has come as a surprise to many who thought such a move could spark a severe backlash from the religious lobby. 

The hanging comes amid two recent developments that have already incensed religious groups. 

In January, the Punjab government banned preaching in educational institutions by Tablighi Jamaat, a proselytising and revivalist movement. And earlier this month it enacted a law that provides for a helpline for women to report abuses by their husbands and others.

Amid this atmosphere, the move to hang Qadri indicates a growing confidence of the government in taming the street power of religious groups, which the military has long been accused of using to control politicians at home and fight its proxy wars abroad.

One reason may be the fact that most hard-line groups adhere to the Deobandi school and would be loath to lionise Qadri, an adherent of the rival Barelvi sect. But a more important reason seems to be the military's new-found willingness to curb militant groups that have a domestic agenda. 

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Pakistan has seen Islamist groups grow in influence in recent years and several high profile blasphemy cases. 

When it came to Qadri's court case, many lawyers argued that Qadri's actions were religiously justified and refused to take part in the prosecution, chief prosecutor Saif ul Malook told the BBC.

"There was a time when nobody was ready to prosecute this accused person and it was really a challenge and I did it only to protect the rule of law," he said.

At his first court hearing Qadri was showered with rose petals by supporters. He never expressed any regret for the killing. His brother appeared to reassert that when he told the AFP news agency about his final meeting with Qadri.

"I have no regrets," Malik Abid told AFP. "We started crying, but he hugged us and chanted 'God is great,'" he added. 

Image copyrightAFP/Getty

Image captionThere were also protests in smaller cities such as Peshawar

Image copyrightAFP/Getty

Image captionSupporters gathered at Qadri's home after his body was taken there

Image copyrightAFP/Getty Images

Image captionIn 2011 supporters threw rose petals on the armoured vehicle carrying Qadri away from court

In May, just months after Taseer was gunned down, Pakistan's Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, the cabinet's only Christian, was shot dead by gunmen who ambushed his car. 

That August, Salman Taseer's son, Shahbaz Taseer, was abducted in Lahore. His whereabouts are still unclear. 

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan and critics argue that blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal scores and unfairly target minorities.

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Who was Salman Taseer?

Image copyrightAFP/Getty Images

• The 2011 murder of Taseer, who was the governor of Punjab, was one of Pakistan's most high-profile assassinations.
• He was one of the most prominent liberal politicians in the country and a close associate of Asif Ali Zardari, who was then the president.
• Known to be an outspoken critic of the country's harsh blasphemy laws, arguing that they discriminated against religious minorities, and sought liberal reforms.
• He had called for a pardon for Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death in 2010 for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. 

Read more: Death of a liberal

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