What? There Might Be Opportunities from Global Warming? IPCC drums Out Scientist That Believes That.

It seems that dissenters like Richard Tol from Sussex University in England need to be removed from the Global Warming Orthodoxy.

Tol said the IPCC emphasized the risks of climate change far more than the opportunities to adapt. A Reuters count shows the final draft has 139 mentions of "risk" and 8 of "opportunity".

Tol said farmers, for instance, could grow new crops if the climate in their region became hotter, wetter or drier. "They will adapt. Farmers are not stupid," he said.

He said the report played down possible economic benefits of low levels of warming. Less cold winters may mean fewer deaths among the elderly, and crops may grow better in some regions.

"It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them," he said. But he said temperatures were set to rise to levels this century that would be damaging overall.

That sounds like something an economist would say. People will adapt and figure things out and that might be a benefit of global warming. However, his fellow scientists seem to disagree:

Another expert criticized Tol, saying his IPCC chapter exaggerated possible benefits.

"Of the 19 studies he surveyed only one shows net positive benefits from warming. And it's the one he wrote," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Unit on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

Um, shouldn't there be more science behind trying to figure out the benefits from warming? I mean only one guy did any research on it? Or maybe that doesn't factor into the scare tactics that the Global Warming crowd wants to put on everyone.

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Obamacare Deadline Pushed Back a Few More Weeks

I swear they are just running this thing by fiat out of the White House.

The decision, scheduled for announcement Wednesday, will give people until mid-April to sign up for insurance. All they need do is check off a box on HealthCare.gov indicating that they tried to enroll by March 31. The government will not check to see if people are telling the truth. The decision to allow more sign-up time was driven by an anticipated last-minute surge in enrollments, which could leave people unable to finish the process, The Washington Post reports.

I have a feeling there won't be a "last minute surge of enrollments" because many uninsured are either unaware of the deadline or can't afford health insurance in the first place.

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Working for Michelle Obama Sounds Like Hell on Earth

She seems so easy going but this article really makes her seem like the woman from Devil Wears Prada.

For one thing, the imperative to guarantee results could be paralyzing. �That was the pressure on us,� one ex-aide told me. ��Don�t do it if it�s not going to be perfect.�� Staff knew that every event should produce positive coverage, and that all the angles had to be exhaustively researched and gamed out (not easy with a team of less than 30). But it was never completely clear what the standard of perfection should be. �There�s no barometer: The first lady having the wrong pencil skirt on Monday is just as big of a fuck-up as someone speaking on the record when they didn�t mean to or a policy initiative that completely failed,� says another former aide. �It just made you super anxious.� Another past employee described a common feeling of �how can we be the caliber that we�re expected to be with no attention and no resources and being an afterthought? And all that can make for sparks. Friction.�

This passage sounds like it was lifted from the Court of the Sun King Louis XIV:

All of this led to a culture of harsh internal judgment. Invitations to meetings with the first lady, in her office above the Jackie Kennedy Garden, became a vital status symbol, a way for staffers to measure their worth. �Every meeting was like an identity crisis, whether you got invited or not,� one former East Winger told me. Casual face-time with Mrs. Obama was coveted as a badge of insiderdom. �Everyone sort of stands at attention in a different way, or they try to make the joke, or they try to be the one noticed, or they try to get the smile,� says a former employee. �And that�s in part a yearning for acknowledgment that you�re part of this, something bigger, and that she knows who you are.� Another former employee put it more bluntly: �They don�t want to work for her; they want to be friends with her.�

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Russia Turns East? Now That is an Ominous Sign

Hmm, now this could be the new moves in the Great Game played by Putin in the next several years.

While Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the "Holy Grail" energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis.

Ties looking eastward might be exactly what China and Russia needs to fend off America and Europe. I mean if Europe imposes sanctions that bite and Obama actually grows a spine then Russia could sell its product to the east instead of the west.

I mean a China/Russia axis would be perfect for both countries. The Chinese get the clean natural gas imported from their neighbor to the west and the Russians have a partner that will back it if they try to do further buffer-state satellite building.

It will also keep money in Russian pockets as America slowly moves toward energy independence. The Chinese can keep producing and growing their middle class without having to rely on America so much. In fact the Chinese could debt bomb us without ruining their own economy by relying on Russian imports to tide them over.

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Tea Party Scrambles to Stay Relevant: Finally Understands The GOP Needs to Win the Senate

I am glad that the GOP establishment and business leaders are trying to smash these idiots.

More troubling to movement leaders, GOP moneyed interests are taking aim at Tea Party lawmakers deemed disruptive and bad for the brand. Rep. Justin Amash�s hard line on the debt ceiling, for instance, outraged key business interests, including the Chamber of Commerce, which have lined up behind his primary challenger, Brian Ellis. Tea Party Express is keeping a close eye on the race, and FreedomWorks has vowed to defend Amash �punch-for-punch.�  �Five years ago, I never would have imagined the Republican Party would be coming after people the Tea Party had gotten elected,� says Keli Carender, the national grassroots coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. �It still shocks me.�  

At the same time, Tea Partyers are fending off Republican attempts to �kneecap� the movement as a whole, says Carender. �What they�re trying to do right now is build the meme that groups like ours and the Senate Conservatives Fund are in it �for profit.� � It�s a play to discredit TPP with the conservative base and peel away the small-dollar donors it relies on, charges Carender: �Not only are we fighting liberals in the Democrat Party and liberals in the Republican Party, now we�re having to fight to maintain credibility with the base.�

Their stupidity on the debt ceiling fight needs to doom them to the dustbin of history but I think someone somewhere took them aside and told them who the real enemy is.

Goal Three, says Brandon, is identifying the best opportunities to turn blue seats red�and here is where movement leaders can sound so pragmatic you wonder if you�ve dialed Karl Rove�s house by mistake. Budowich explains, �As the movement has matured, now it�s not just about making that stand but about creating a mathematical possibility to make policy differences.� He repeatedly stresses, �Our prime objective in 2014 is to take back the Senate. The only way we can do that is by defeating Democrats.� RINO hunting is all well and good, says Budowich, but targeting �squishy Republicans� won�t pry control of the Senate away from Harry Reid.

Um, yeah John McCain is not the enemy Harry Reid is. I'm glad there are some grown-ups in the Tea Party. They should know that every time they get rid of a strong GOP candidate and replace him with some idiot the Dems will hold that seat. Now they need to have a big meeting and tell everyone "do not talk about women's issues for any reason." They need to only talk about three things Obamacare, obamacare, obamacare and they will take the Senate.

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Symantec Axes Top Guy: Is that a Good Idea after the Hack of the Decade?

With the most massive hack in US history just a few months ago I'm not sure if it is a good time to fire your CEO.

"It's a jaw-dropping move, especially because Bennett was key to the company's turnaround. I view this as a major step back ...," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said.

Forrester Research analyst Rick Holland said Symantec had been losing market share to nimbler network security software makers such as FireEye Inc, Palo Alto Networks Inc and Checkpoint Systems Inc.

Symantec said it was committed to its target of more than 5 percent organic growth and higher than 30 percent adjusted operating margin by fiscal 2017.

However, BMO Capital analyst Joel Fishbein said it would be difficult for Symantec to achieve 5 percent revenue growth without mergers and acquisitions or divestiture due to a continuing fall in its main PC security and storage businesses.

Part of the problem is that Norton Anti-Virus is a primarily a consumer PC based program and that platform is slowly dying. You don't hear much about tablets or smart phones being hacked as much as PCs are so there really isn't a need for their main product. 

Most corporations would use a different kind of anti-virus product or just go to FireEye for an end-to-end product. I think Symantec really needs to buy out a new era network security firm like FireEye in order for them to stay relevant. 

Also with a look at their site it seems that there are like a 100 different products jumbled together in a mess. Let's say I'm a small business looking to beef up my security after hearing about Target getting hacked. I have no idea where to start or what product I should be looking for. Do I need Risk Automation Suite or NetBackup Appliance 5000 series or what. They seriously need to break these into different groups to make it easier to look at. 

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Putin Levels Sactions against Lawmakers: Yeah I guess they Weren't Going to Siberia on their Recess Afterall

The real tragedy is these lawmakers have to switch to Ciroc from Stolichnaya when they get drunk before major votes.

Most of the six lawmakers who ended up on Putin's list, which include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Dan Coats, R-Ind., fired off statements ribbing Putin for restricting their non-existent vacation travel in Russia and imaginary bank accounts.

"I guess this means my spring break in Siberia is off, my Gazprom stock is lost, and my secret bank account in Moscow is frozen," McCain wrote in a statement today. "Nonetheless, I will never cease my efforts on behalf of the freedom, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including Crimea."

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Why do the GOP Not Believe in Climate Change? Yeah it is The Big Government Angle

I have to agree with this assertion of why the GOP does not believe in climate change in such big numbers.

A third interpretation is that political preferences have leaked into the perception of fact. Republicans may conflate the existence of climate change with the need for more government -- more federal research, more federal programs, more intervention in the economy, and more taxes to pay for all of it. Rather than relax their objection to government, maybe it's easier to look for reasons to think that climate change isn't happening, or isn't serious.

Yeah climate change might be happening but all the lies told about it have already clouded the perception of the whole debate. We were told that all of the arctic sea ice would be gone by 2014 and it's still there. We were told about mega-storms and earth-wide calamity if things aren't done right now. Then you have scientists hiding the decline and cooking the books on their own research and the whole thing has been tainted.

You add this to people who are already skeptical of the government doing anything of substance other than shoveling your tax money down a hole. It is any wonder why many Republicans are skeptical about climate change and see it as yet another government hole to pour money down. I mean the Post Office is bankrupt, they can't get a healthcare website to work so why do you think the government can change the climate of the entire earth to make it not be so warm in a 100 years?

It also sounds like another way for the government to control you even more than they already do. It just seems like an inflated issue to try to squeeze more money out of you so Al Gore and his ilk can become rich. If the climate scientists used practical arguments at the beginning instead of scare tactics and calling everyone that disagrees with them anti-science maybe they would have had a chance to convince people. Instead you are dubbed a denier that wants to destroy the earth.

They could have made the argument that renewables and nuclear energy helps ween ourselves off of foreign oil and helps save  middle class Americans money. Now with fracking even that argument seems pointless.

Also the recession did not help matters when we have poor countries begging for billions that the rich countries would have to go deeper into debt to pay. People have just washed their hands of the whole thing and figured paying more tax money to stop what might be bad in the future just doesn't fit into their budget anymore.

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New York Attorney General Goes After High Frequency Traders

I guess the era of millisecond trading might be severely curtailed if the New York Attorney General gets his way.


"Rather than curbing the worst threats posed by high-frequency traders, our markets, as structured today, are increasingly too focused on catering to them," he said on Tuesday in a speech at New York Law School.

Schneiderman has begun meetings with the exchanges and alternative trading venues to discuss reforms, according to a person familiar with the situation.

He also looks like he will be going after so-called "dark pools" where big investors have to go in order to buy large amounts of stock to avoid tipping off high frequency traders that inflate prices on them. It would be interesting to see if he can get this done in order to avoid another "flash crash" or other nonsense caused by these traders.

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The NSA Listens to Every Phone Call in an Unnamed Foregin Country (cough, Iran, cough, cough)

I wonder if this counts as violating this countries sovereignty or not?

This NSA program dates to 2009 and is called MYSTIC, according to documents obtained by the Post. It is used to intercept conversations in one specific country, but documents show the NSA intends to use it in other countries, the Post said.

It records all conversations across the unidentified foreign country and stores billions of them for 30 days. The program wasn't fully operational until 2011. One of the program's senior managers told the Post that MYSTIC is comparable to a time machine, meaning voices from any call can be replayed without requiring the NSA to identify a person before the conversations are collected.

Hmm, it might be Afghanistan but I have a hard time thinking they make billions of calls every 30 days. In any case people wonder why the US is so hated in the rest of the world. I mean Ahmed's call to his grandmother about buying onions has been intercepted by NSA snoops and pored over for hidden meanings.

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Movie Review: Need for Speed: Get it On Redbox

Well I saw this little gem last week and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it. It was kind of a throwback to a fun 80s style movie that made fun of itself. It was actually one of the better video game franchise movies that I have seen in a long time. It wasn't as good as the Resident Evil movies but it was far better then the usual video game movie drek out there.

The movie is pretty much about Jesse from Breaking Bad (Aaron Paul) and a British gal with a weird name (Imogen Poots) going cross country being chased by cops and other fun shenanigans. Poots was super good looking throughout the movie and I hope she becomes something in the US. I mean Imogen Poots can go head to head with Benedict Cumberbatch as the strangest named British imports.

The movie boils down to a small town guy that wants to become big time is visited by an evil guy that ends up killing off his friend and sending him to jail. Then Jesse needs to get revenge and proves his innocence by racing in some big race organized by Monarch played by Michael Keaton. Keaton chews scenery and acts like a madman so well I kind of wanted to see more of him. He mostly does his part as a podcaster that runs the race and doesn't come face to face with any of the characters.

I kind of wanted Jesse to be more animated and fun but he mostly has a blank look in much of the movie and barely speaks. I guess his character is the strong silent type but Aaron Paul is a great actor and I would have loved to see him do more actual emoting. They did give him a little red meat to chew when his friend was killed by the evil bad guy but I would have liked to see more.

However, he did have decent chemistry with Poots and they made a very good road trip couple. However there was a scene where Paul was weaving backwards through traffic that would have been interesting if Poots was checking her phone and not at all freaked out by Paul's driving. It would have showed that ice water was in the veins of the female lead and been pretty funny as well. Instead she freaked out in typical Hollywood fashion. Although there was a nice scene where she was super excited by a Dukes of Hazard style jump over an expressway.

Also one of the main characters of a movie like this was the cars. Lots of $250K Koenigseggs and Lamborghini Hurac�ns flying around at top speeds. You also get to see them crash and get totaled as well. That should make any car nut cringe in horror. Also much of the film the main characters drive in a stock-looking Mustang that was supposed to be specially made and cost $2 million. I am not a car guy but it just looked kind of generic to me. I wanted them to tool around in a Corvette or a muscle car from the 60s. Instead it was a generic looking Mustang that looked like it needed an alignment adjustment that was the star of the show. It was like watching a Call of Duty: Ghosts movie and seeing the main character using an M1 Garand to fight the bad guys.

In any case if you want to see a fun movie that moves at top speed and don't need all that much acting chops then this is one to Redbox when it comes out. There really isn't much reason to watch it at the theater but it is a fun movie to watch with your buddies with a case of beer.

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Is it Time to Switch to T-Mobile? If Softbank Buys Them Out a "Price War" Will Be Launched

I like the idea of a billionaire with a huge Japanese company buying a US company and then fighting for my business.

SoftBank Corp. President Masayoshi Son will start a "massive price war" if U.S. regulators allow his company to purchase T-Mobile US Inc., he said in an interview with PBS's Charlie Rose. 

The billionaire, who bought control of Sprint Corp. last year, said combining the third- and fourth-largest U.S. mobile-phone carriers would give him enough scale to compete against larger operators AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Communications Inc. 

Sounds like the kind of changes that will benefit consumers in the short term. They are already buying out contracts so switching to them will hopefully be pain-free.

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Um, Yeah I think There is Another Tech Bubble

This article makes quite a bit of sense.

In reality, Facebook can afford to spend 11% of its already sky-high $180 billion market cap in the hope of capturing nearly a billion eyeballs, so the valuation doesn�t have to make sense to the social network. Zuckerberg is just playing with funny money.

The comparison of Verizon�s nearly 100 million subscribers that spend about $70 a month to unmonetized users of a messaging app makes little sense. And Verizon is an established market leader with essentially two competitors while WhatsApp competes with dozens of other messaging apps. The competitive barriers are in now way comparable. 

Yes Facebook paid $19 billion for a messaging app when there are perhaps 5 that I have heard of people using. All of them are very similar and are really not worth $19 billion to tell the truth. I mean I cannot tell much of a difference between Snapchat, Whatsapp, Kik or any of the others. They do different things and have different amounts of installed base but $19 billion worth?

I'm not even sure how Facebook will make that money back because I have serious problems with the advertising model when it comes to free apps. The only time I have ever clicked through a mobile ad was in error. The top of the ad would sometimes stick up onto the regular part of an app that I was using. I ended up uninstalling the app and getting something that was similar.

In any case I think the bubble is in place and something will come along and pop it in the next few years. I thought it would be something like Facebook and Twitter new users finally slowing down but it seems to be inflating right along. But I think sooner rather than later we will have our Pets.com at the Super Bowl moment. Could $19 billion for Whatsapp be it?

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Paul Ryan: Please Lay off the Free School Lunches; Almost no one is Against a Free Meal for a Child

From the "own-goal department" of the GOP we have Paul Ryan trying to take food out of the mouth of babes. (The easy liberal counterattack if I have ever seen one)

�The left is making a big mistake here. What they�re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that. This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy, Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn�t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand.�

So taking away that government program will suddenly get this poor kid a sack lunch? There might be a decent chance he will not get to eat and be hungry throughout the day. It just seems heartless to try to deny this kid some sustenance that the parents obviously cannot afford. Plus hungry kids test poorly and don't learn well so that puts this kid even further behind.

Instead of offering someone a full soul but an empty stomach why don't you offer his parents a job instead. This is exactly why I don't understand why the GOP is dead-set against a minimum wage hike. If you pay people $3 more per hour we might have more sack lunches and less free school lunches. McDonalds and Walmart might lose money but I'm sure they have smart managers that can make up the difference.

This rush to cut food stamps and free school lunches just makes the GOP look mean-spirited. The least thing this mighty and rich country can do is to make sure that there are no hungry people within its borders. It is very Christian to feed the hungry and clothe the destitute. But when the government takes on this task all the GOP wants to do is cut these programs. The "full soul, empty stomach" principal is just not something most people will get behind.

Finally, what is the savings that can come from these cuts? How could that money be better spent? I would be willing to bet it just a few billion that can be cut out of some other program. Or it can just be gleaned from reducing fraud, waste, and abuse. Shouldn't feeding people be a good use of ones tax money?

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Dems Pull Stunt to Combat Climate Change: Is Hot Air a Greenhouse Gas?

It seems that the Dems are trying to pull a publicity stunt for Climate Change awareness.

"Despite overwhelming scientific evidence and overwhelming public opinion, climate change deniers still exist," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. "They exist in this country and in this Congress."

The Nevada Democrat made the comments in kicking off the marathon gabfest at 6:27 p.m. on Monday. The final address is expected to end about 15 hours later, at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

Thirty of the Senate's 53 Democrats, plus the two independents who caucus with them, have signed up to participate. The White House said it would post live tweets during the overnight session under the hashtag #up4climate.

I don't deny that climate change might exist. I mean if the scientists didn't cook the books I would be more apt to believe them. Also it seems their models can't explain why the earth is no longer warming for the past decade. It still might be happening but everything has been obscured.

I just don't want us to give $30 billion in graft money to "combat climate change" so that 3rd world dictators can buy attack helicopters. Any UN "climate change fund" will be riddled with corruption and be like a huge gift to diplomats with their hands out. Also I want the Red Chinese to give more because they are polluting far faster than we are.

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