Al Gore Parts Ways With.......Ethanol

Another Embrace

From FoxNews.com - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore reportedly has had a change of heart on ethanol, telling a conference on green energy in Europe that he only supported tax breaks for the alternative fuel to pander to farmers in his home state of Tennessee and the first-in-the-nation caucuses state of Iowa. Speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank, Gore said the lobbyists have wrongly kept alive the program he once touted. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Reuters quoted Gore saying of the U.S. policy that is about to come up for congressional review. "First-generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. Read full story here:

Al Gore Parts Ways With.......Ethanol

Ground Zero Mosque Applies for $5 Million Grant

From hotair.com - Read this in full here or you’ll miss the enjoyable tone of befuddlement and dismay from professional centrist John Avlon, who clearly wants to defend Park51 from those darned wingnuts who object to the location and yet can’t understand why the developers would do something this tone-deaf. The smart move would have been to take advantage of the calm after the media storm to quietly fundraise among private donors and to reach out to wavering pols to reassure them about the project’s intentions. Instead, not only are they after public money, they’re trying to tap a fund that’s explicitly tied to 9/11. You wanted to know where the funding’s coming from. Well, good news: Potentially, it’s coming from you. Full story here

Ground Zero Mosque Applies for $5 Million Grant

Obama's UN Officials Silent on Nine Anti-Israel Resolutions

From israelnationalnews.com - The United Nations Human Rights Council this month adopted nine resolutions against Israel. The United States opposed nothing. The Council, engaged in a “universal periodic review” of human rights protection in Lebanon, was examining a report by that country which expressed its objections to "the establishment of the Zionist entity on Palestinian territory.” Every United Nations member state was asked to submit a report to the Council on its national human rights record, which was then reviewed by U.N. members who engage in a short dialogue with the state representatives. Full story and video here

Obama's UN Officials Silent on Nine Anti-Israel Resolutions

FBI Report: 8% of Religious Hate Crimes Against Muslims, 75% Towards Jews

From yahoo.com - WASHINGTON (AFP) – Blacks and Jews were the most likely victims of hate crimes driven by racial or religious intolerance in the United States last year, the FBI said Monday in an annual report. Out of 6,604 hate crimes committed in the United States in 2009, some 4,000 were racially motivated and nearly 1,600 were driven by hatred for a particular religion, the FBI said. Blacks made up around three-quarters of victims of the racially motivated hate crimes and Jews made up the same percentage of victims of anti-religious hate crimes, the report said. Anti-Muslim crimes were a distant second to crimes against Jews, making up just eight percent of the hate crimes driven by religious intolerance. Full FBI report here

FBI Report: 8% of Religious Hate Crimes Against Muslims, 75% Towards Jews

Barbara Bush Hitting Palin to Help Jeb?

Barbara Bush

From hotair.com - That’s what Jonathan Alter argued during our panel on MSNBC’s ‘Dylan Ratigan Show’ today. Personally, I think Barbara Bush’s Palin-bashing (assuming saying she hopes Palin stays in Alaska qualifies as “bashing”) has more to do with her moderate political philosophy than it does with any strategy for helping elect her son. Having said that, I am starting to hear rumors that Jeb is telling potential prominent supporters to “keep their powder dry,” meaning not to endorse or support any 2012 candidates until they check back with him. There is no doubt that Jeb Bush is highly qualified, and if his name were “Jeb Smith,” he would be the 2012 front-runner today. In any event, this is good, fun speculation. Video here

Barbara Bush Hitting Palin to Help Jeb?

Progressive's Obsession with Palin Unabated

Matthew Rothschild

From Progressive.org - Sunday was the day the New York Times woke up to the reality that Sarah Palin could become President. Frank Rich devoted his entire column to that possibility, and the Sunday Times Magazine gave its cover over to Palin and her coterie. I can’t tell if this is panic on the part of the Times, or an effort to warn people about what might be coming, or a signal to the Republican establishment to get out their long knives and go after her. But the prospect of Palin in 2012 is not one to be sneered at—much less hoped for, and I know a lot of Democrats are doing both. Be careful what you wish for. I can remember Democrats sneering at the prospect of Ronald Reagan winning the Republican nomination in 1980, and look what happened then. Read here:

Progressive's Obsession with Palin Unabated

Fears Well Founded - Velma Hart Loses Her Job

Velma Hart

From the WashingtonPost.com - Nobody is safe. Velma Hart, who burst onto the media scene after telling President Obama she was scared about her financial future, has been laid off. Hart was let go as the chief financial officer for Am Vets, a nonprofit Maryland-based veteran services organization. Like most of us, Velma Hart just wanted a little reassurance at Obama's town hall. Hart has become another casualty of the tough economy in which so many people have lost their jobs. "It's not anything she did," said Jim King, the national executive director of Am Vets. "She got bit by the same snake that has bit a lot of people. It was a move to cut our bottom line. Most not-for-profits are seeing their money pinched." King would not say whether the organization had had other layoffs. "Velma was a good employee," he said. "It was just a matter of looking at the bottom line and where could we make the best cuts and survive." Read full story here:

Fears Well Founded - Velma Hart Loses Her Job

Irish Eyes Are NOT Smiling

From the Economist - AT THE height of the banking crisis two years ago, Ireland’s government thought it was calling the market’s bluff when it rashly promised to back all of the debts accumulated by its overheated banking sector. Stand firm, and the speculators will fold, was the wisdom of the day. As it turns out, it was the government itself that had the weaker hand, and now its bluff has been called. Having tried valiantly to restore stability to the public finances through impressively harsh austerity measures, the Irish government has been dragged down by the sheer weight of the bad loans on the balance-sheets of its banks. On November 21st, having abandoned its earlier insistence that it was not in need of a bail-out, the Irish government agreed to ask for help from its European neighbours. Its request came after a tumultuous two weeks in which the trade in Irish government bonds and those of some other European states almost dried up, and the cost of borrowing surged to unsustainable levels. Read here:

Irish Eyes Are NOT Smiling

Roswell police chief condemns million dollar lawsuit pay out

From KOB-TV.com - By: Joe Bartels, KOB Eyewitness News 4; Taryn Bianchin, KOB.com - The interim Roswell police chief is calling a wrongful death settlement against his department a big mistake. State Representative and Roswell Police Chief Dennis Kintigh spoke out for the first time publicly on Monday since the city settled earlier this month. The chief stands by his officers involved in a 2008 incident during which a man died while in police custody. He condemns the city for settling the lawsuit brought on by the man’s family. City leaders decided earlier this month to settle a $1.25 million lawsuit that alleged Roswell officers Tased, pepper-sprayed, and then hand cuffed Javier Aguilar. The office of the medical examiner found Aguilar died of positional asphyxia, a condition where a person cannot breath based on their body’s position. Javier Aguilar had a history of mental illness and weighed in excess of 300 pounds. The police chief says Aguilar fought with officers when they tried to commit him to a mental institution.He says Aguilar had one the officers in a headlock and that officers responded with appropriate force because their lives were in danger. “The officers of the Roswell police department have been vilified, the public treasury has been looted as a result of this settlement,” said Chief Dennis Kintigh, who continued “We are often told ‘You can’t comment because there is pending litigation,’ and it makes us look like we’ve got something to hide, and that’s what frustrates me.” Read more

Roswell police chief condemns million dollar lawsuit pay out

UN IPCC Official Admits 'We Redistribute World's Wealth By Climate Policy'

From NewsBusters.com - By Noel Sheppard - If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of manmade global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, "[W]e redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy." Such was originally published by Germany's NZZ Online Sunday, and reprinted in English by the Global Warming Policy Foundation:
(NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.
(OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.
(NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.
(EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.
(NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.
(EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole. Read more

UN IPCC Official Admits 'We Redistribute World's Wealth By Climate Policy'