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o, this isn’t a post about skinny girls so strung out on horse that they’re just not able to take one more photo shoot.  It’s about climate change and computer models.  Oh, and sell your shares in that Lake Meade houseboat rental business.

If the West continues to heat up and dry out, odds increase that the mighty Colorado River won’t be able to deliver all the water that’s been promised to millions who rely on it for their homes, farms and businesses, according to a new study.

Less runoff the snow and rain that fortify the 1,400-mile river caused by human-induced climate change could mean that by 2050 the Colorado won’t be able to provide all of its allocated water 60 percent to 90 percent of the time, according to two climate researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.

The more parched the landscape, the more difficult the choices will be for those with dibs on the Colorado’s water and those in charge of divvying it up, said Tim Barnett, lead author of the study.

”The dry year scenarios in the future are going to be absolutely brutal,” he said.

Barnett and fellow Scripps scientist David Pierce made waves last year with a study saying there’s a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam, could run dry by 2021. (source)

The results were mistakenly published in a scientific journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The Colorado is a major water source for Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, so we obviously need to plan based on something.  We also need to realize that the computer models favored by the Warmies did not predict the current cooling spell.

So let’s open up the science to all possibilities, run all sorts of models, admit errors in the models that fail, and see what we come up with.  And here’s an idea:  Let’s trying running the models backwards and see what sort of actual and prolonged weather events they miss.  But, please, let’s not do this, from the same article:

Meanwhile, researchers will continue gathering information on climate change and looking for ways to keep the Colorado functioning albeit with a new set of climate-driven rules.

There are no climate-driven rules.  There is just climate-driven speculation.  Oh, wait.  I do have one climate-driven rule:  Build more water conveyance and water storage infrastructure.  Whether it gets hotter or colder, we’re going to need it because our population is growing.

Of course, most Warmies, being Greenies, are earnestly seeking rules to make that impossible.

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“There’s never been anything like this,” a former Pentagon official told the WSJ about spy attacks on computers holding top secret weapons development information, along with national infrastructure control systems. “[They've attacking] everything that keeps this country going.”

The most recent revelation reveals spy hackers going after F-35 fighter secrets, says the WSJ:

Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.

The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together.

Someone is after us, big time.  So what are the Dems doing?   Attacking Bushl  Natch.

Obama stepped up the campaign against foreign spies the Bush admin this week by releasing memos detailing torture harsh but fitting interrogation techniques, which is sure to offend the Spanish, who, BTW, have never gotten around to ratifying the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN Committee Against Torture.  It certainly has incensed the Dems:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months. (NYT)

Meanwhile, Obama did one of his classic “go talk to the people you just screwed” stints, reminiscent of his chat with USS Cole families, to the CIA, telling them to ignore the folks from his admin who are intent on knocking the agency down, and reassuring them that they’re all his good friends in Obama Happy Land. All the while, the president’s staff was refusing to rule out legal sanctions against the lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the interrogation methods.

And to ice this particularly untasty cake, we learned from Dick Cheney last night that memos exist detailing in explicit detail the intelligence gained from the interrogations – memos that so far the Obama admin has refused to release, despite the president’s CIA-directed hyperbole:

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.” (NYT)

The NYT buried the Cheney demands deep in its story, after detailing all the yahoos that want to get their  hands on the Bushies.

If the president didn’t want them to be discouraged, if he’s really interested in learning from the past, if he wants to acknowledge history, he will give us history, not just one side of it.

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ere’s a tidbit you just might find helpful some day:  You apparently can buy rainbow-colored clown wigs in Geneva.  This video of Ahmadinejad’s speech shows two clown-wigged protestors shouting down Mah – I’m in the -moud – for hate speech Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “Clowns always make me sad”) as he addressed the UN Human Rights Hatred conference today in Geneva.

Shortly after the clowns, who yelled “Racist! Racist!”, were escorted out, a slew of Western diplomats followed, as the Iranian leader called Israel a “racist state.”  One of those leaving was the French ambassador, who later told BBC:

“The defence of human rights and the fight against all types of racism are too important for the United Nations not to unite against all forms of hate speech, against all perversion of this message.

“Faced with attitudes like that which the Iranian president has just adopted, no compromise is possible.”

The US, Israel, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and New Zealand didn’t need to walk out.  They had all done the right thing by boycotting the conference.  A kudo to Obama for continuing this important tradition.

All in all, it was another typically bad day for the UN, which once again has proved its inability to apply any moral compass in a world that is being threatened by exactly the UN’s sort of acquiesent moral relativism in the face of Islamist and despotic evil.

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The President can’t get enough of blaming Bush for the country’s economic woes.  In Europe, in Central America, in Turkey, here at home, it’s all about Bush; never mind the Dem policies that got us in this trouble, with cheerleading from Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and other Dems.

But news today tells us the Obama recession, one that cannot be blamed on Bush because it is here because of Obama’s actions, is about to hit.  The first sign is from B of A, which reported higher quarterly earnings today, as money from Merrill Lynch and $1.9 billion it made from using our bailout money to buy shares in China Construction Bank.

But the bank’s credit costs are surging, so BofA took a $13.4 billion provision for future credit losses, causing shares to fall 7.5 percent in premarket trading … not a good sign when you beat your quarterly income projections.  Update: The market closed down $289 for the day.

Meanwhile, WSJ reports:

Lending at the biggest U.S. banks has fallen more sharply than realized, despite government efforts to pump billions of dollars into the financial sector.

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury Department data, the biggest recipients of taxpayer aid made or refinanced 23% less in new loans in February, the latest available data, than in October, the month the Treasury kicked off the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

So, all the money Bush, then Obama, pushed into the private sector has not helped in any discernable way. The argument could be made that without the injection, lending would have fallen by more than 23 percent, but to this ailing economy, that’s pretty much like saying the financial segment is only partly dead.

More forclosures and bankruptcies loom, the banks remain frozen … and the high cost of Obama’s energetic first 100 days hasn’t even hit yet.

The “blame it on Bush” approach of the supposedly adept Obama messaging machine is already sounding reed-thin to the duped electorate who thought he really would change things, and it’s not going to work much longer.  Who will he blame next?  It can’t be Congress; they’re Dems.  It can’t be Europe, which didn’t go along with his bailout plan, because he is too committed to having Europe like us him.  And it definitely can’t be Obama because, while he’s good at saying “I take responsibility,” he never actually takes it; he just lets the phrase settle in, then blames Bush.

So that leaves … the Tea Parties.  Brace yourself.

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avid Axelrod and James Carville – the bitter cream that has risen to the top of Dem-think – have chosen the safe haven of CBS to say what they think of one million Americans taking to the streets to complain about Obama’s expensive expansion of government.

Axelrod led off the discussion on “Face the Nation” by sounding like he was channeling the recent DHS report on rightwing terrorism:

I think any time you have severe economic conditions there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy.

Protest taxes and government expansion today, blow up innocent children tomorrow, eh David? No, not exactly.  In true liberal fashion, when confronted with the outrageousness of his beliefs, he didn’t stand up for them, but backtracked:

Well, this is a country where we value our liberties and our ability to express ourselves, and so far these are expressions.

So far?

Carville, when asked by John King if it’s unhealthy – Axelrod’s word – for “an American to go out and hold a sign and say ‘I think my taxes are too high,’” answered correctly, with a “No.” But he wasn’t content to stay there and went on to call the tea party movement “damaging to Republicans.”

Really?  One million people go out and exercise their rights of protest, don’t break any windows, don’t yell obscenities at the police, and pick up their trash afterwards and somehow it’s damaging to Republicans?  I’d like someone to explain that to me … but not someone dumb enough to say that Obama is cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans.

Obama lied. Taxpayers cried.

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ale, proprietor of Okie on the Lam and blog designer extraordinaire, came up with this nice interpretation of a recent famous news photo.  He asked, “Silly, juvenile . . . too true?”

Too true indeed.  But right on plan.  Obama came into office convinced that his charisma and likability would sway loons like Chavez and demons like Ahmadinejad and Li’l Kim.  He’s sticking to that campaign promise like a cheap attorney to a whiplash victim, intent on proving that substance has nothing to do with foreign relations.

While the left happily fabricates human rights abuses by Bush and overlooks the very real record of Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad; we conservatives have become the true spokespersons for human rights in the world, and worry that Obama will overlook these regimes’ ills in the interest of “better relations.”  I say let him play it out.  It’s not like we have any control in the first place, and I’m curious to see where it all leads.

I believe where it will lead is exactly where the Cubans would have “better relations” go:  payoffs and intransegence.  The Cubans have ruined their credit with Russia, Europe and the Americas, so their price tag for “better relations” will be money.  If Obama acquiesces and extends loans to Cuba, they will take the money, never pay back a dime and never do a thing to free political prisoners or loosen their grip on the island.

And then Obama will have us look at what his charisma accomplished, and the left will love it, and we conservatives will look for substance and find it:  deep, stinking, foul substance.  So let him run.  The hook’s in his mouth, his energy is too strong for us to reel in right now, so sit back, let the reel spin, and wait for sharp-pointed reality to set in. 

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ungry for a bit more Susan Boyle, she of “I Dreamed A Dream” fame, who’s “It’s never too late to realize your dreams – even without Botox” meme has really caught on?  Well, the Boyle sleuths have found a recording of Boyle singing “Cry Me A River” at a charity concert in 1999 that was recoreded on a CD by the town council.  1,000 copies were sold.  Here it is:

I’ve always liked this song, ever since I was in eighth grade and worked as a bus boy at the Yokosuka US Naval Base officers club for 40 cents an hour (up from35 cents at the poolside restaurant).  There was a Japanese nightclub singer there, always dressed in a long, slinky cocktail dress, crooning jazz favorites, including her signature song, “Cly Me a Liver.” 

Boyle’s rendition is considerably improved.

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ven though I’ve taken a leave of absence from the Watcher’s Council so I can have more time to work on my geopolitical thriller, I still make it over to Watch of Weasels for the Weekend Weasel post.  Bookmark it if you haven’t already, because the Watcher always does an outstanding job with it.

This week’s post, Weekend Weasel: Sharia Apologists, is a great read, setting up a conversation with Mrs. Weasels and a relative with the quaint name of Muttonhead as a tutorial on the differences between Sharia and Jewish law and the Christian and Catholic provisions that followed.

Having been through many of these conversations with Muttonhead I already knew where the argument was going before she got there. The myth that there is some sort of equivalence between Jewish law or even Catholic ecclesiastical doctrine is a common myth perpetuated by the left; a seed planted by pro-Sharia advocates as a part of the psychological war on all things not Islamic.

The term “useful idiot” was commonly used to refer to soviet sympathizers during the cold war (even though it originated much earlier). Today’s Sharia apologists are an extension of that sentiment although more dangerous in my estimation because the spread of Sharia is a worldwide phenomenon as is liberalism through ignorance.

The post has some terrific quotes on the subject, and when you see the differences laid out, it gives you a chill.  The conflict between Sharia and Judeo-Christian based law is stark, cold and frightening, and the Sharia apologists are a subtext in what reads like a cosmological thriller of good vs. evil on a grand scale. Particularly salient are the quotes by David Yerushalmi, General Counsel to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, who concludes:

Because Jihad necessarily advocates violence and the destruction of our representative, constitution-based government, the advocacy of Jihad by a Shariah authority presents a real and present danger. This is sedition when advocated from within our borders; an act of war when directed at us from foreign soil.

Extremist? Not necessarily – and definitely the safer, more rational position for Americans to take.

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osua (which is pronounced like a prostitute dancing, “JO-sway”) Luna was arrested Friday afternoon when attempting to cross the US border into Mexico, bring a rather quick end to the on-the-lam life of one of America’s most scummy criminals.

(Allegedly), Luna was the front seat passenger in a 2000 Infiniti (allegedly) driven by his (probably drunk) wife, Claudia Cabrera, when they hit two pedestrians near USC on March 29.  Adrianna Bachan, 18, right, died at the scene, and Marcus Garfinkle, 19, was severely injured, with two broken legs and lung contusions.  Garfinkle  remains hospitalized.

Luna’s infamy immediately followed.  After driving 300 to 400 feet with Garfinkle stuck in the windshield of the car, Cabrera stopped and Luna got out and unceremoniously dumped Garfinkle’s body inthe street. The couple drove off, with their 7-month baby in the backseat.  Lovely family.  Allegedly.

Cabrera was arrested five days later, based on tips that flooded into the police department.  Luna took off, and managed to hide until today.

Now, ready for some more outrage.  Luna, who tried to jump the border to evade justice, posted $50,000 bond Saturday morning and walked out of jail.  Want to venture a guess as to the political affiliation of the judge who presided over that hearing?

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Hat-tip: DaveH

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