The RoanokeSlant

Roanoke Times, 2/24/09, Pg Bus 9: Bigger stakes in shaky banks (40% in Citigroup)
2/25/09, Pg 1: Obama address to congress -- there will be a brighter day "tomorrow" after we spend $2 Trillion dollars we don't have.

Has Obama read the Pelosi-Reid “bailout” and “stimulus” bills yet?
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Some Highlights of the “plan” that he should read:
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We’re in trouble because people were spending money they didn’t have, so, the government is going to spend lots more of your money that you don’t have and never will have.
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People aren’t buying cars, so, we’ve been to paying the UAW union workers $7,000 per month to not make cars and we intend to keep doing it!
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We’re going to have a Whitehouse bureaucracy-team define what new cars are going to be made by which car companies. Toyota and Nissan have “opted-out” of the plan.
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We’re going to insert Billions into banks that are “too big to go into Chap 11”. Unlike the Pennsylvania Railroad System in 1970:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad
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We’re extending the “too big to fail” policy into the “too big to jail” with our friend Bernie Madof.
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We’re going to take money from folks that are paying their mortgages to “supplement” those who aren’t paying their mortgages.
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We’re going to help folks who are getting some termination money from their employer by calling that money “earned income” so that both the federal and states can tax it and take at least 40% away in “income” taxes.
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We’re going to include in the “economic recovery” packages all the “pork” that we’ve been saving up for the last 10 years. That’s a nice thing about pork, you can smoke it, salt it, or cure it and then keep it ready for that special opportunity.
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We’re going to inject as many Billions into Citi-bank as Bob Rubin wants:
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http://www.roanokeslant.org/ObamaEconomicAdvisorRubin.jpg
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/11/picking-quality-economic-advisors.html
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After all, he was Clinton’s Treasury Sec. and he knows all about economics:
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http://www.roanokeslant.org/ClintonRecession.jpg
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Our left-wing friends have been lamenting the debt our next generation has been committed to. The silence now is deafening isn’t it! Apparently the liberals have determined that our children and grandchildren can pay for the Pelosi-Reid bill.
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Watching Hillary on her knees before the Chinese leaders begging them to buy our paper IOUs was reminiscent of the old Clinton Whitehouse.
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It’s interesting that not one member of the new administration or congress have pointed to a single positive thing that our billions of already spent stimulus dollars have accomplished.
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Suggestion: to immediately improve our unemployment situation by 5 million jobs --- deport 10 million illegal immigrants!
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Some prior items:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/audacity-of-extravagance.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/duck-and-cover-to-minimize-fallout.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/01/volvo-layoffs-and-strikes.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/bailout-bridge-to-nowhere.html
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It is very disappointing that Eric Holder, the new black US Attorney General (AG), has chosen to engage in Al Sharpton style race-baiting public statements.
It is particularly intimidating and disturbing because he is the chief cop of the US.
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/18/holder-calls-nation-cowards-race-matters/
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/19/holders-remarks-ignites-debate-race-relations/
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Apparently he is labeling white Americans as cowards because we don’t openly and actively address and discuss race issues and racial situations in a manner he desires.
It’s not clear if the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racial sermons meet with his approval.
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Could it be that this cowardly behavior has been imposed by the politically-correct PC-police who attack those who are not in PC-compliance on race, homosexuality, God, abortion, feminism, Gore-hypothesis and many other liberal social issues?
Perhaps that’s why we just cower-down and cling to our guns and Bibles?
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Today anyone who openly and frankly discusses race issues is subject to being labeled a bad person and whose livelihood may well be at stake.
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The vicious racial attacks upon Bill Cosby stand as a primary example:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/05/bill-cosby-not-pc.html
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Someone I personally know was investigated and her government job placed in jeopardy because she said at work that “a joke she had hear was ‘black humor’”. One can only imagine the person who brought forward the formal complaint and investigation.
Please click if you are one who doesn’t understand the term:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_comedy
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She now is a confirmed coward, one of multitudes of people who are totally intimidated by the PC-Police.
Actually, I would not even think about writing this blog if I still worked for my old employer.
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If this is the “Change we can believe in” – it certainly proves that all Change is not Progress!
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Some prior blog examples of our PC-police environment supported and assisted by our liberal media:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/quayle-vs-brown-revisited.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/08/roanoke-times-ap-playing-race-card.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/12/100-year-anniversary-eviction.html
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The Feb 16, 2009 Google-Earth view of the Artic around Greenland shows no sea-ice, just open blue water.
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Apparently not only has Google-Earth embraced the Gore-hypothesis but it appears that they've turned up the heat and melted 5.4 MILLION SQUARE MILES of sea-ice just in time for Mr. Gore's show in Washington!
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Talk about your global warming! And these folks are just programmers!
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Click to see the graphics and the disappearing ice:
Double-click the image for full size
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http://www.roanokeslant.org/Google-Gore.jpg
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View a site that presents current data:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
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Prior Items:
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/global-warming-theory-lte.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/mr-gores-problem-with-data.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-inconvenient-untruths.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/12/09, Pg 17, BIG opinion article with BIG Graphic:
“Mandate renewable energy” by Al Weed, former Democrat candidate for Congress in 2004 & 2006. Al is the Public Policy Virginia organization with intellectual assistance by Bobbie Joe Gardner.
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“Virginians want immediate government action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Survey by UVA found that 55% of (Virginians who see man-made CO2 as a problem) strongly support mandated renewable power.
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That’s 55% of what number? Oh, it’s the 30% who believe the Gore-hypothesis that current warming is caused by people! So that’s really like 16%! And that’s without asking them if they are willing to double their electric bill!
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“Back in 2007, it became clear that deregulation was not going to bring down the cost of energy in Virginia”.
Perhaps that’s because Virginia has some of the lowest electric rates in the East based on hydro-power and coal-power and good companies like AEP!
Rates in the northeast are well above 15 cents while here in Franklin Co they’re about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. It is very clear that stopping the use of coal and introducing renewable sources will be much more expensive than today’s costs.
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“If Virginia is going to respond to the challenge of climate change, the rules must be changed to MANDATE development of renewable energy.”
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If so, let there be green on earth and let it begin with Mr Weed and his Public Policy Organization and his wine business interests. Also let’s start with the Roanoke Times a major manufacturing facility with a very big carbon-footprint.
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Here’s how to start Mr. Weed:
1. AEP allows and supports net-metering. That means if you generate power at your site you can not only displace AEP electricity, you can utilize your excess electricity to run your electric meters backwards, thereby getting utility credit. What a deal!
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2. AEP also supports a “green pricing” program. You, Mr. Weed, and your friends at the Roanoke Times and associates in The Virginia Vineyards Association can all purchase “green energy” from AEP! The program is targeted at environmentally conscious customers who want to put their money behind the renewable energy movement.”
Basically they means: put-up or shut-up!
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After you have implemented these programs, you clearly should be able to make the case to the residents of Virginia that this is the way to go without resorting to USSR MANDATES!
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In the meantime perhaps you can talk to your buddy Tim Kaine and have him address the gross hypocrisy of the regulatory roadblocks he is supporting that prevents building the green and renewable Virginia Highland Wind Farm.
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-kaine-green-hypocrisy.html
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An Open Letter to: Mr Dave Woolley, Huddleston, VA
Re: Your Open LTE, Roanoke Times, 2/13/09, Global Warming is no theory.

I certainly agree with you that we are 250 years into a global warming cycle. The issue at hand for most people is not that we have warmed-up since 1750, but, what has caused it and what to do about it. I have been very interested in the global warming discussion for a number of years. During a trip to Alaska, the subject came into sharp focus while visiting Mendenhall Glacier at Juneau.
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The Mendenhall data is very clear that we have been in a warming cycle since 1750, the end of the little ice age. I have also visited Nisqually Glacier in Wa and two more glaciers in southern Norway. These glaciers, in addition to hundreds more, have all been studied and documented by Cambridge in London and by numerous other scientific groups and universities and all share a very similar footprint.
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The 150 years of massive melting and retreat between 1750 and 1900 clearly indicates that our current global warming cycle was not the result of man-made CO2 as alleged by the Gore-hypothesis. Also, the global temperatures since then have not tracked against the published atmospheric CO2 as alleged.
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For the first half of my life, from 1940 through 1975 there was a major cooling period that resulted in a scientific consensus that we were reentering another little ice age.
The articles in Newsweek Apr 28, 1975 and Time Jun 24, 1974 describe the coming climate and food crisis with the primary recommendation that the US government use planes to dust-cover the polar ice with dark powder to increase heat absorption. Apparently it’s a good thing we didn’t do that!
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The published NASA global temperature data graphs also clearly show that we have experienced only one (1) degree warming in the past 100 years and no net temperature change in the last 10 years. This data is in stark contrast with the intense and hysterical media-hype about the imminent global warming disaster.
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There is a large body of professional and learned scientists who strongly disagree with the Gore-hypothesis and have well documented that our current global warming cycle is not the result of man-made CO2. These studies and data are indeed not visible in the Roanoke Times.
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March 8 to 10 will be the 2009 international conference on climate change in Times Square in NYC. http://www.heartland.org/events/NewYork09/newyork09.html
Some of the most distinguished scientists in the world will be presenting the most current data and studies that contradict the Gore-hypothesis. I’m sure that this also will not receive any coverage in the Roanoke Times or the media community they are partnered with.
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Clearly we have an energy crisis. It is the crisis of energy independence. We need to free ourselves from our dependence upon our enemies and to stop the major flow of wealth out of our country and economy. Green and renewable energy will play an increasing role, however, for at least the next 20 years we need significant additional domestic energy supplies to be brought online to satisfy our current total demand and support the two-plus million new people we add each year to our population (we have added 2+ million people every year since 1945).
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Not only are we paralyzed relative to conventional power development, but here in Virginia we can’t even support the Va Highlands Wind Farm, the primary “ready to go” green energy project in Virginia that has been in a regulatory swamp for 5 years.
Click for a summary of the Va Wind Farm Regulatory Debacle:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-kaine-green-hypocrisy.html
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Click for a summary of some non-Gore Global Warming and Climate Change data:
http://www.roanokeslant.org/GlobalWarmingThoughts/
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Click for a view from a moon-walker:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,493624,00.html
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Roanoke Times, 10/24/08, Pg Bus 8 & 7: Wind power sees gust of development. Wind turbines are no longer a “marginal player” in the country’s energy grid. Industry expects faster growth. Picture of 210 ft windmill tower in Pa.
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Roanoke Times, 1/13/09, Pg Va 1: Kaine pushes “green jobs,” renewable energy sources. The governor said creating renewable energy sources would help ease the economic crisis.
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Roanoke Times, 1/14/09, Pg Va 10: Same content as 1/13 but with Highlights of “green jobs” plan with offers of taxpayer give-away money.
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How can the Roanoke Times and their associates continue to wrap Kaine in a shroud of green hypocrisy when they know that both Kaine and Gov Warner before him have buried the major real-green Virginia project in a regulatory swamp?
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Click through the following blog items to view what Kaine does verses what he says and then draw your own conclusions. Real journalists would be asking Kaine to either put-up or shut-up on his support for clean green energy.
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Click for the dismal story of Virginia’s green energy initiative:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/wind-power-regulatory-swamp.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/kaine-steers-va-into-green-something.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-green-virginia-jobs.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/09/virginia-wind-farm-someday.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/06/halt-wind-farm.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/03/birds-bats-blades.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/07/wind-turbines-and-bats.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/06/wind-power.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/06/clouding-wind-energy-debate.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2005/05/wind-turbines-on-highlands-of-va.html
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Tucker Mills, West Virginia, Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6nkXgGI4M
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Roanoke Times, 2/15/09, Small print back on Page 15: Burris confirms request for donation to Blagojevich. The disclosure is at odds with Burris’ under-oath testimony.
Burris is the Illinois senatorial replacement for Obama.
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Once again the Editors at the Roanoke Times are working overtime slanting the news to cover-up for their political friends and associates.
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“The disclosure is at odds” -- Can you say FELONY PERJURY?
Isn’t that what the law calls someone who does not tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when testifying under oath, especially for something as important as an appointment to US Senator?
And by the way – the amount the RT editors couldn’t remember is $10,000!
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One can only imagine the large print front page story IF Burris was a Republican!
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Why are the RT editors wondering why their business is in a funk?
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Prior Items:
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/audacity-of-transparency-not.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/throw-emanuel-under-bus.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/11/09, Pg 20: Large cartoon, drunken elephants,
Title Message: 8 years of GOP Rule
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Eight years of GOP rule?
Did the Democrats not win the House and Senate in Nov 2006?
Does the House and Senate not establish and control the budget?
Does the House and Senate not establish the laws controlling how funds are spent?
Have Reid and Pelosi not been in-charge of the US finances for last two years?
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Are the editors of the Roanoke Times trying to insult their reader’s intelligence, or, is it just working out that way?
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Click to review the time-line leading up to the current financial train-wreck:
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http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
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Prior Items:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/democrats-crash-burn-again.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/07/housing-adjustment.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/05/yet-another-free-political-dnc-ad-by.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/02/journalist-dishonesty-continues.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-reforms.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/11/congratulations.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/8/09, Pg Horiz 2: Editorial: Protect food safety. A long and accusatory knee-jerk reaction to the current peanut butter salmonella recall based on almost no factual data. The editor’s message is that the manufacturer is criminal.
“Astoundingly, the inspectors’ report states that in each case, after the firm retested the product and received a negative status, the product was shipped “
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Some rational and nonjudgmental points to consider:
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Consider any test in which a positive outcome indicates the product in not okay (red light comes on) and a negative outcome (red light does not come on) indicates the product is okay.
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1. Every testing regimen is subject to false-positives and false-negatives. False negatives (red light didn't come on but should have) result in bad material being shipped with the belief that it’s good.
2. False positives (red light came on but shouldn't have) are identified by retesting those failures and achieving negative outcomes on the follow-up tests.
3. A good process requires that testing be done by a second testing facility to minimize testing error (apparently that was done in this case).
4. The current US commercial food products are the safest in the world. We are feeding 300 million, 3 meals a day with very few serious issues. Where there are issues there is prompt and comprehensive analysis for the cause-and-effect relationships. Most times when there are food poisoning issues, it is the end preparer that has caused the problem.
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As the RT editors eat food products sold at the downtown farmers market and at produce stands along the highway and eat dinners prepared by social and religious organizations perhaps they should question what testing processes these food items have been subjected to.
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Perhaps the RT editors should just take a deep breath and cover the facts of these stories without the emotional tripe and unsubstantiated criminal accusations. In other words: just report the news -- don't help make it!
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Let’s just view this as one more RT false-positive (slant) that needs lots more testing.
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/12/its-poop-stupid.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2006/09/some-poop-on-ecoli-and-organic-foods.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/6/09, Pg 7: Obama finally able to break in AF-1, Takes House Democrats to Williamsburg for dinner.
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Fine print, page 7! What a departure to the big RT 12/10/08 article with big political cartoon roasting the Va Republicans for holding a function at "The Homestead".
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And taking AF-1 for the trip – what a gross act – talk about the auto execs coming thousands of miles to DC in small corporate jets!
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AF-1 is the biggest passenger plane in the world! And MapQuest says the trip is:
Estimated Drive Time: 2 hours 37 minutes Estimated Distance: 152.35 miles!
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And this at a time when Obama is telling us our entire economic system is collapsing and that burning fuel is causing CO2 that is destroying the world!
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Has anyone seen a better example of hypocrisy?
And the coverage/response by the Roanoke Times is yet again more gross-SLANT!
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YET MORE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
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Prior Item:
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/obama-and-real-fat-cats.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/4/09, Pg Va 9: Commentary by Rick Webb of UVa: Wind power needs regulation.
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Yes Rick, and regulation they have. The highland wind-farm project has been in the regulatory swamp for 5 years. After all the heifer-dust settled the two issues the so called “environmentalists” were hung-on was the number of bats and birds that would fly into the blades.
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You know – like the flock of geese that flew into the compressor-blades of the US Airways jet in the Hudson River.
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What is Rick and associates doing about the tens of millions of birds that are killed each year by outside-house cats? What is Rick doing about the bats that die each year from rabies and now the tens of millions that are dying from “white nose syndrome”?
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Why are the Virginia wind turbines a monumental risk while less that 50 miles away in Tucker Mills, West Virginia their wind farms are producing megawatts of clean-green energy?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6nkXgGI4M
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Rick glosses over as trivial the restrictions that Virginia bureaucratic regulators have placed on the Highlands turbines. Suppose Rick applied for a home building permit, and the building inspector told him he could build the house, but, every week there would be an inspection and if more than two birds per week were killed by flying into his windows and glass doors, he would have to tear down the house.
Does anyone think Rick would build, and does anyone think that the banks would provide a mortgage on such a house?
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Rick is apparently typical of the green-power folks who are all talk about how they’re going to replace fossil fuel in 10 years but then refuse to recognize that all power generation has adverse consequences and so they obstruct making the changes that are required.
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When you blow away the smoke, the bottom line is obstructionism as an end in itself!
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Prior Like Items:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2007/09/virginia-wind-farm-someday.html
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The Bush Administration and Israel had the data that Iran was concluding work on both nuclear weapons and long-range rockets to deliver them
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The Democrats and Left-wingers told Bush they would impeach him if he or Israel launched preemptive strikes to cripple Iran’s nuclear or rocket development.
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Today – 2-3-09 - Iran put a satellite into earth orbit!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487126,00.html
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For the folks who don’t yet have their GED – that means that very soon Iran can place a nuclear weapon into such a satellite, launch it into orbit, and on command cause it to plunge to earth and detonate above any city that ImAnutJob decides to annihilate.
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When ImAnutJob calls Washington and makes his non-negotiable demands, what will Obama and his “Smart Secretary of State” Hillary Clinton have to say then?
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Obama has already committed to stop development of our anti-missile system development and deployment - the only systems that have any chance of protecting the American people --- click for his youtube words in-person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE&eurl
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YET MORE CHANGE THAT WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
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Prior Items:
http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-commander-of-unilateral.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/02/star-wars-from-sputnik-to-sm3.html
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Latest web news:
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Obama's selection, Nancy Killefer, has withdrawn herself to be the first chief performance officer for the federal government, because of issues with her tax-paying history, the White House announced Tuesday.
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No wonder Obama and the Democrats are for ever-higher taxes.
Apparently they don’t pay them!
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Chief Performance Office indeed, apparently Obama is the one having performance issues!
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YET MORE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/03/white-house-performance-czar-nancy-killefer-withdraws-candidacy/
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Prior Items:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/02/duck-and-cover-to-minimize-fallout.html
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Roanoke Times, 2/3/09, Pg 6A –Heading – Mortages: Senator to separate from troubled lender ---- (small print; back-end of Pg 6; mortages? Separate?)
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Another outstanding SLANT job by the editors of the Roanoke Times. Let’s republish as if “the Senator” was a Republican.
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Page 1: Large Heading:
Democrat Senator Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, after 6 months of stone-walling, will try to minimize his major ethical conflict-of-interest by refinancing through a newly nationalized TARP-bank.
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Democrat Senator Dodd, who oversees the Home Loan Industry, received a secret personal sweetheart mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial, the company that was at the epicenter of the current housing and financial crash that has thrown the US economy into recession.
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Rumors have it that he will form a Democrats for Ethics in Government Group with friends: Rangel, Geitner, Daschle, and Richardson
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Prior Like Items:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/can-you-say-democrat.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/bailout-bridge-to-nowhere.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/11/picking-quality-economic-advisors.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/financial-domino-effect.html
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YET MORE CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!
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More Inconvenient UnTruths

There we had Mr. Gore, yet again, lecturing the less learned members of congress on the Gore-hypothesis of man-made global disaster. The following article addresses Mr Gore’s latest bait-and-switch insult to all those who have a GED in earth science. Isn’t it interesting that no one in the major media ever calls Mr Gore to account for his false and misleading hyperbole!
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Perhaps the major media people are afraid of confronting Mr Gore because of the old axiom: don’t ever argue with a fool because bystanders may become confused!
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Click for some prior items in this blog:
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2008/12/mr-gores-problem-with-data.html
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http://roanokeslant.blogspot.com/2009/01/positive-steps-at-roanoke-times.html
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485064,00.html
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Al Gore and Venus Envy
Thursday, January 29, 2009 By Steven Milloy
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Al Gore has a new argument for why carbon dioxide is the global warming boogeyman -- and it’s simply out of this world.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday with yet another one of his infamous slide shows, Gore observed that the carbon dioxide (CO2) in Venus’ atmosphere supercharges the second-planet-from-the-sun’s greenhouse effect, resulting in surface temperatures of about 870 degrees Fahrenheit. Gore added that it’s not Venus’ proximity to the Sun that makes the planet much warmer than the Earth, because Mercury, which is even closer to the Sun, is cooler than Venus. Based on this rationale, then, Gore warned that we need to stop emitting CO2 into our own atmosphere.

Incredibly, not a Senator on the Committee questioned -- much less burst into outright laughter at -- Gore’s absurd point. In fact, each Senator who spoke at the hearing, including Republicans, offered little but fawning praise for Gore. It’s hard to know whether the hearing’s lovefest was simply an example of the Senate’s exaggerated sense of collegiality, appalling ignorance and gullibility about environmental science, or fear of appearing to be less green than Gore.

It is true that atmospheric CO2 warms both Venus and the Earth, but that’s about where the CO2 commonality between the two planets ends. While the Venusian atmosphere is 97 percent CO2 (970,000 parts per million), the Earth’s atmosphere is only 0.038 percent CO2 (380 parts per million). So the Venusian atmosphere’s CO2 level is more than 2,557 times greater than the Earth’s. And since the CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing by only about 2 parts per million annually, our planet is hardly being Venus-ized.

Gore’s incorporation of Mercury in his argument is equally specious because Mercury doesn’t really have any greenhouse gases in its atmosphere that would capture the radiation it gets from the Sun. As a result, the daily temperature on Mercury varies from about 840 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to about -275 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Mercury’s daily temperature swing actually belies Gore’s unqualified demonization of greenhouse gases, whose heat trapping characteristics tend to stabilize climate and prevent wild temperature fluctuations.
The significance of Gore’s testimony is that the Venus scenario seems to be his new basis for claiming that CO2 drives the Earth’s climate and, hence, his call that we must stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. At no time did he refer to his two An Inconvenient Truth-era arguments concerning the relationship between CO2 and global temperature -- that is, the Antarctic ice core record that goes back 650,000 years and the 20th century temperature/CO2 record. There’s good reason for his apparent abandonment of these arguments -- presented fairly, both actually debunk global warming alarmism. (Note: This YouTube video that I produced explains this point.)

Gore seemed to “wow” the Senate Committee with images and projections of environmental and even political upheaval allegedly already caused and to be caused in the future by climate change, such as melting glaciers and the 2007 fires in Greece that, Gore says, almost brought down the government. Gore repeatedly said that global warming threatens the “future of human civilization” and could bring it to a “screeching halt” in this century. Gore said that we are on a fossil fuel “rollercoaster” that is headed for a “crash.” We are near a “tipping point,” he said, beyond which human civilization isn’t possible on this planet.
Such melodrama, of course, is necessary to conceal and distract from the fact that there is no scientific evidence indicating that manmade emissions of CO2 are having any detectable impact, much less any harm, on the Earth’s climate or its population.

During his testimony, Gore invoked the specter of James Hansen, NASA’s global warming alarmist-in-chief, to bolster his climate claims. But like the ice core and 20th century temperature records, Hansen may soon have to be dropped from Gore’s presentations.
Hansen’s former NASA supervisor -- atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, who recently announced that he is skeptical of global warming alarmism -- recently wrote to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staffer Marc Morano that, “Hansen…violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it) … [and] thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.”
Commenting on another key deficiency in the manmade catastrophic global warming hypothesis, Theon also observed that “[climate] models do not realistically simulate the climate system … some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results … This is clearly contrary to how science should be done … Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.”
The same could be said for Gore and his slide shows.
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Venus envy? Yeah, why not? There’s no Al Gore there.
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