Odds he fails it, 100 to 1.

(Daily Mail) — A wildlife scientist, whose report on dead polar bears in Arctic waters became a rallying call for climate change campaigners, will face a lie detector test as part of an investigation by federal agents.

Jeffrey Gleason, who co-wrote a 2006 report highlighting the danger posed to the animals by melting ice, will take a polygraph over alleged scientific misconduct connected to the study, the Independent reported.

It is the latest twist to what some have dubbed ‘Polarbeargate’ in which Mr Gleason and his co-author Charles Monnett, whose research was cited by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth and made polar bears a symbol of global warming, have been repeatedly questioned by authorities.

Their supporters claim the investigation is nothing more than a witch-hunt geared towards intimidating researchers whose studies might affect the politics of climate change.

The pair’s 2006 report told of dead bears floating in the Arctic Ocean in 2004, apparently drowned having been forced to swim further for food.

But earlier this year, allegations were made within the U.S. Department of the Interior over ‘integrity issues’ in relation to the report, and the Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) began an inquiry.

One less potential suicide bomber in America.

(LWJ) — Shabaab claimed that an American citizen was one of two suicide bomber who were part of an assault team that attacked an African Union base in Mogadishu yesterday.

Two suicide bombers “disguised as Somali Army troops,” according to an African Union press release, and an estimated 10 heavily armed fighters attacked the base Uganda and Somali troops based at the German Steel Factory in northern Mogadishu on Oct. 29.

The result of the Shabaab attack is unclear. The African Union claimed the attack “failed” and “the suicide bombers blew themselves” up before reaching their targets. “The extremists were unable to take control of the AMISOM position,” the press release stated.

But witnesses in Mogadishu claimed that several African Union and Somali troops were killed during the fighting. Shabaab claimed it killed 80 Ugandan troops, including the base commander, while overrunning the base.

“The Mujahideen have today stormed an AMISOM compound, killing 80 Ugandan soldiers,” Shabaab said in a statement released in English on the pro-Shabaab website Somali Memo. “In a fierce battle that lasted over two hours, the Mujahideen have yet again dealt another fatal blow to the African Crusaders. Two martyrdom seekers infiltrated the AMISOM compound — the former metal factory — situated along the Industrial Road, near Mogadishu Stadium, and where divisions of the Ugandan soldiers and TFG militia were based, successfully killing the commander as he addressed the Ugandan forces along with several other soldiers.”

Keep reading…

If someone starts smoking because of a political ad they have bigger issues to worry about. I wonder if Schieffer plans to attack Barack Obama over his smoking habit?

Via Beltway Confidential:

CBS’s Bob Schieffer stepped out of objective interviewer mode this morning to scold Herman Cain for releasing a web ad featuring chief of staff Mark Block blowing smoke into the camera. Schieffer said as a cancer survivor, he was put off by an ad he thought sent the message that smoking was “cool,” then he prompted Cain to state that he didn’t think people should smoke.

Cain gave a simple explanation for why Block was smoking in the ad.

“One of the themes in this campaign is, let Herman be Herman,” Cain said. “Mark Block is a smoker, and we say, let Mark be Mark.”

He went on to explain that the ad wasn’t intended to send any subliminal messages.

“Yes, it does,” Schieffer said. “It sends the signal that it’s cool to smoke.”

Cain said that all the ad does is show that Block himself is a smoker, and said that the reaction to the ad is mixed — some didn’t care that he was smoking, and some thought it was funny.

“Let me just tell you, it’s not funny to me,” Schieffer shot back. “I am a cancer survivor like you. I had cancer that’s smoking related. I don’t think it serves the country well — and this is an editorial opinion here — to show somebody smoking a cigarette. You are the frontrunner now. And it seems to me you have a responsibility not to take that kind of tone.”

Keep reading…

HT: Ann

This is the best ad yet, for those who want to know where Romeny stands.

(The Hill) — President Obama’s senior campaign strategist David Axelrod on Sunday defended the suite of initiatives Obama rolled out last week against allegation that they’re too modest to help the ailing economy.

Obama, hitting Capitol Hill Republicans for inaction on his broad jobs legislation, announced executive actions to help debt-ridden students, homeowners with underwater mortgages, veterans struggling to find work and small businesses.

The programs don’t need Capitol Hill approval.

He also defended the executive actions more broadly. “It is easy to sit in Washington and make these judgments but if you are out there in the economy these things do make a difference,” Axelrod said.

“Are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president, or are they going to cooperate?,” Axelrod said of Republicans.

Thanks to John for the top pic.

Reality begs to differ.

(The Hill) — President Obama on Saturday said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was a great House Speaker and that she will get that job back after the 2012 elections.

“I am biased, but I think Nancy was one of the best Speakers of the House this country ever had,” Obama said after Pelosi had introduced him at the National Italian American Foundation gala.

“She was no doubt the best Italian American Speaker of the House we ever had. And I believe that she will be the best Speaker of the House again in 2013.”

Pelosi, the veteran lawmaker from San Francisco, was the House’s 60th Speaker and the first woman to hold that position.

(NYP) — Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park battened down the hatches yesterday as the early October snow turned their tents into igloos, but the close quarters also made easy pickings for one predator.

A sex fiend barged into a woman’s tent and sexually assaulted her at around 6 a.m., said protesters, who chased him from the park.

“Pervert! Pervert! Get the f—k out!” said vigilante Occupiers, who never bothered to call the cops.

“They were shining flashlights in his face and yelling at him to leave,” said a woman who called herself Leslie, but refused to give her real name.

She said that weeks earlier another woman was raped.

“We don’t tell anyone,” she said. “We handle it internally. I said too much already.”

Feel good story of the day.

(LWJ) — US Predators struck in Pakistan’s tribal areas for the fourth time in five days, killing six “militants” in the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan.

The unmanned CIA operated Predators, or the more deadly Reapers fired a six missiles at a vehicle and a compound in the Datta Khel area in North Waziristan, according to Xinhua. AFP reported that the vehicle was the primary target and the compound was damaged in the attack.

The identity of the six militants killed was not disclosed. “Armed Taliban arrived at the scene and removed the bodies,” Xinhua reported.

Today’s strike is the fourth this week. The US launched two other attacks in South Waziristan and another in North Waziristan.

Via Weekly Standard

He’s then promptly tackled and hogtied.

Note: Occupier tries to push over the cop at the 1:23 mark.

HT: friday

Backing these lunatics is going to come back and bite him in the ass.

(TheDC) — President Barack Obama and Occupy Wall Street are speaking the same language.

In his weekly address to the nation, Obama cited an economic report showing that the middle class has lost ground to “the top one percent.”

“The average income for the top one percent of Americans has risen almost seven times faster than the income of the average middle class family,” he said. “And this has happened during a period where the cost of everything from health care to college has skyrocketed.”

Obama explained that Americans should not spite the wealthy, but that prosperity should be available to all classes.

“Now, in this country, we don’t begrudge anyone wealth or success — we encourage it. We celebrate it,” he said. “But America is better off when everyone has had the chance to get ahead — not just those at the top of the income scale. The more Americans who prosper, the more America prospers.”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at his Friday briefing, tried to tie the “Occupy” movement’s frustration to the administration’s counterparts in Congress.

Keep reading…

I feel for the commuters who are being forced to endure the hippie stink on their way to work (Occupy Boston is next to major subway station), I used to work two blocks from where they’re camped out.

(Boston Herald) — Commuters and merchants in South Station say they are fed up with Occupy Boston squatters who are hogging electrical outlets and taking sponge baths in bathroom sinks, turning the bustling terminal into a unsanitary locker room.

Transportation officials said they have sealed up some outlets after fearful commuters worried Occupy members powering up electronic gadgets close to ATM machines could see PIN numbers being punched in. Yet, there’s no quick solution to sharing the bathroom.

“The bathrooms seem more crowded and grimier,” said Roy Woodton, 36, a banker from Attleboro as he rushed to catch a train yesterday.

“They are always asking for food, for handouts,” said Eva Yuen, a manager at Serenade Chocolatier inside the station. “They smell intoxicated. It’s a mess.”

Station officials said they are fielding more complaints every day.

“There have been reports anecdotally about an increasing level of frustration by customers at South Station,” said Scott Farmelant, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad company.

Keep reading…

She’s clearly delusional.

(The Hill) — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is seeking a surge of Democratic campaign donations before the next Federal Election Commission fundraising deadline, claiming that Democrats can reach a “turning point” in their bid to reclaim the majority.

“If we continue to stand together, I believe this moment will mark the turning point on the road to a Democratic victory in 2012,” Pelosi writes in a new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraising email.

Democrats will face an uphill battle reclaiming the majority after their 2010 election night drubbing that swept Republicans into control of the House.

But in the email pitch, Pelosi argues that Republicans have provided an opening, alleging that “the American people are rejecting the Tea Party Republican agenda that puts tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country ahead of creating jobs.”

“Now, it is up to us to seize this moment,” she writes. “That’s why the looming October 31st FEC fundraising deadline is so critical. This is the last fundraising deadline before the one year out to Election Day marker and House Democrats must have a strong showing.”

(click image for video)

The worn out race card makes its millionth appearance.

Via RCP:

“It’s absolutely racist, without question It suggests that he is other. It indexes white as truly American. And he is not one of us. And it just takes coded language for everybody to get the message that he is not one of us. The whole Muslim flirtation that other people engaged in is the same thing. He is not one of us. He is not a normative American. Why are we saying this about him? We didn’t have these questions about Clinton, Bush, Bush, Reagan, etc. We just wonder suddenly about Obama. “Is he really an American? Mmm, I don’t know.” It’s because he’s black. “It’s a coded way of saying he’s black, don’t vote for him.”

From today in Denver. Police forced to raise their weapons as protesters from Occupy Denver go on a rampage.

Police raise weapons while making an arrest during the Occupy Denver protest in Denver, CO, Saturday, October 29, 2011. Occupy Denver protesters and law enforcement officers faced off on the steps of the state Capitol and Civic Center this afternoon after protesters marched through downtown Denver for the fourth week in a row. (The Denver Post)

Your average Tea Party rally.

Supporters wave their flags during a Tea Party Express rally in Upper Arlington, Ohio, USA 30 October 2010. Members of the Tea Party, showing their support for conservative candidates and causes, are delivering their message to voters across the country during a 16-day, 34-stop bus tour of 15 states from California to Washington, DC

Payback’s a bitch.

GAZA — Israeli airstrikes killed seven Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing in southern Gaza on Saturday, according to the militant group, and Gaza militants fired salvos of rockets at cities in southern Israel, killing one Israeli man and wounding at least two others in a sudden escalation of cross-border violence.

The Israeli military said that it had first hit a terrorist squad that was preparing to fire long-range rockets into Israel early Saturday, and that the same squad had been responsible for firing a rocket that struck late Wednesday near the Israeli port city of Ashdod.

Witnesses to the first raid said that an Israeli drone fired two missiles at a training site situated on sandy dunes in a former Jewish settlement near the city of Rafah, killing five. Islamic Jihad pledged that it would respond forcefully to the Israeli drone strike. Hours later, several rockets fired from Gaza slammed into the southern Israeli cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon, damaging buildings and setting fire to parked cars.

The Israeli death was in Ashkelon, about 10 miles north of Gaza on the coast, according to the Israeli police and hospital officials.

Israel’s military said it subsequently hit another squad preparing to fire rockets from Gaza and other sites. Two more Islamic Jihad militants were killed in those strikes, according to the group and Gaza medical officials.

(more…)

Can you imagine the outcry from the media if Tea Parties acted like this?

DENVER — At least seven people were arrested in downtown Denver during a confrontation between Denver Police and Occupy Denver protesters Saturday afternoon.

Witnesses say some in the crowd were throwing objects at police, and that a few officers patrolling the protest on motorcycles were pushed off their bikes. No injuries were reported.

Sources say a few officers have resorted to pepper spray and other non-lethal devices in an effort to control the crowd.

More details here.

DENVER — Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered in Denver clashed with police in a tense afternoon scuffle.

About 2,000 protesters marched through downtown Denver Saturday for the fourth consecutive week. Police in riot gear lined up in a row outside the state Capitol when some protesters marched up the steps.

According to The Denver Post about eight police officers scuffled with a group of protesters. By 3 p.m. most of the protesters had moved across the street to a park where they’ve been staying.

Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter of suburban Denver traveled to the protest Saturday afternoon and attempted to calm the protesters.

In essence this was an attack by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who arm and fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

(JPost) — One man was killed and four people were wounded when southern Israel was bombarded with long-range Grad rockets by Islamic Jihad in Gaza on Saturday.

The man was badly injured by shrapnel from a rocket fired at a residential neighborhood in Ashkelon. He was rushed to the Barzilai Medical Center in the city for emergency care, but doctors were unable to save his life. A second rocket fired at Ashkelon directly struck a home, setting gas containers on fire. Fire crews doused the flames.

Security chiefs searched for a way to contain the situation on Saturday, as the Air Force went into action to strike terror cells preparing rockets for launch in northern and southern Gaza. At least two rocket cells were bombed, killing two terrorists, and a number of launch sites were hit as well.

Schools is Ashdod, Be’ersheva and Kiryat Malachi were cancelled by local officials, and the IDF Home Front Command has asked members of the public who live in any area up to 40 kilometers from Gaza to stay within close range of protected areas.

On Saturday, least 20 projectiles, including Grads and mortars were fired at southern cities, hitting built-up areas in Ashdod, Ashkelon and regional councils across the region. A number of the rockets caused extensive damages to buildings.

Ashdod bore the brunt of the attack, and was targeted by at least three Grad rockets. One slammed into an empty school, and a second fell in the nearby Gan Yavne Regional Council, moderately injuring a man who was searching for his son outside.

New tone.

(Orlando Sentinel) — Vice President Joe Biden turned a dinner speech to Florida Democrats at Walt Disney World into a pep rally Friday night, blasting Republicans as obstructionists with whom he said the administration can no longer work.

Biden knocked Republicans for blocking President Obama’s American Jobs Act, for “playing roulette” with the federal deficit ceiling and standing in the way of other Obama initiatives, from Wall Street reform to health-care reform to the end of the Iraq occupation.

Biden said he and Obama tried for 2½ years to sit down with Republicans and now he concludes, “This is not your father’s Republican Party.”

“It’s time to stand up. It’s time to fight back,” Biden bellowed to a cheering crowd of more than 1,000 people at the Florida Democratic Party annual convention at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. “We are looking for this fight.”

Paraphrasing President Franklin Roosevelt’s attacks on his Republican critics in the 1930s, Biden belittled House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate President Mitch McConnell as “a beautiful rhythm of obstructionists, Boehner, Cantor and Mitch.”

Biden accused Republicans of creating the very budget deficits that they campaign against, and of not understanding that their tax-cuts proposals and vow to kill health-care reform would make the budget situation worse.