In this video Allan Savory argues that desertification through mismanagement of land is a much larger issue for global climate change.

His basic premise is that the “experts” have been wrong about the effect of livestock on land. He says livestock actually prevents desertification.

I have no idea if he’s right, but if he is right, the “experts” have been wrong for a very long time.

I remain skeptical about AGW because I think the world is a far more complicated place than the models assume, and because the world operates on very long-term trends, but we only have short-term data.

Meanwhile, drip by drip, backpedal after backpedal, more and more damning evidence comes out.

Now they’re admitting that the White House chief of staff knew about the IRS story a month ago.

Monday’s revelation amounts to the fifth iteration of the Obama administration’s account of events.

But, of course, president Obama didn’t hear about it until it came on the evening news. At least that’s the story for now.

These people need to be put under oath and investigated by a federal prosecutor.

The first two are not new and should have been covered and investigated more aggressively before the 2012 election. It’s transparently obvious to me that the mainstream media did not report these stories because they didn’t want to hurt Obama’s chances at re-election.

Now imagine — just for giggles — that one of those two scandals takes off and gets the White House in serious trouble.

Doesn’t that have the potential to create a fourth scandal — the scandal of the media? Isn’t it at least possible that the public will get very upset with the lapdog media and their tendency to cover for Obama?

I very sincerely hope so.

However, the left is already engaged in the standard “there’s no story here, move along” tripe.

… there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science. These uncertainties undermine our ability to accurately determine how carbon dioxide has affected the climate in the past. They also limit our understanding of how anthropogenic emissions will affect future warming trends.

Exactly. Which is what some of us have been saying for decades.

I’m wondering if this is the beginning of the left starting to walk back their outlandish rhetoric about climate change.

Further confusing the policy debate, the models that scientists have come to rely on to make climate predictions have greatly overestimated warming. Contrary to model predictions, data released in October from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit show that global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Wait a minute. I thought it was only anti-science, right-wing lunatics who say that sort of thing.

But … but … but …. Aren’t we having more super storms and tornadoes and derechos and bad hair days because of climate change? Don’t we all need to drive electric cars and recycle and eat organic food so we can save the planet?

[There is an] IPCC report stating that there is “high agreement” among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change.

Far be it from me to say that agreement among “leading experts” is Gospel, but … hey. Live by the expert, die by the expert.

I really, really hope that somebody is memorializing all the hyped, inflammatory, “only crazy people say that” talk coming out of the “scientific left” so they can shove it back down their throats in a year or two. Of course I already know how the left will respond. “Oh, we didn’t really say that. No competent scientist would ever have said such a thing.” etc. etc. etc.

Outrageous, right? He’ll probably be driven out of office by the scandal.

Uh … . Wait. Sorry. Hold on a second. I got that wrong. It wasn’t a Tea Party guy.

Joe Barton said no such thing.

It was actually Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, Democratic Vice Chair of the bipartisan Women’s Caucus, who said “Our survival as a species is dependent on women taking charge.”

Now this.

Polling Experts Question Pentagon Sexual Assault Survey

The first to present his case seems just, until another comes along and examines him. (Proverb something or other.)

The thing is, 84% of surveys aren’t used to get information, but to promote an agenda.

The Benghazi story was absurd, as anyone could tell from the beginning.

Now they’re trying to blame the IRS scandal on lower-level officials in Cleveland, but 10 of 12 of the offices are in Washington.

The mendacity of this White House is beyond belief, and I hope it’s finally catching up with them.

Five days before the IRS story broke, Obama, sermonizing 109 miles northeast of Cincinnati, warned Ohio State graduates about “creeping cynicism” and “voices” that “warn that tyranny is .?.?. around the corner.” Well.

Here’s part of what Obama said.

They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

The president is delusional. Tyranny is always just around the corner. Power corrupts. More power = more corruption.

Tyranny is a constant danger, but it’s not the only danger. The size and reach of the government is itself a danger, because it enables tinkering and empowers the tinkerers. The danger is not only that some Hitler type will come along — although that is a danger. The more likely scenario is that some lunatic bureaucrat with a silly idea will cause all kinds of trouble, simply because he has the power of a bloated government behind him.

Like this. Immigrants? We sent out search parties to get them to come… and made it hard for Britons to get work, says Mandelson

They figured they needed to change the demographic profile of Briton, so they intentionally brought in immigrants to change it.

Who gave them that right? Nobody. But they had the power, so they did it.

It’s not a question of whether you have a good big government or a bad big government. Big government is dangerous, in and of itself.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered about Benghazi, including …

• On the 9/11 immediately after the death of OBL, why weren’t they better prepared for an attack?
• When it was obvious there was an attack, who failed to order an appropriate response?
• Who ordered the Marines who were ready to respond to stand down?
• What time did Obama go to sleep that night — while our Ambassador was fighting for his life?
• Why was a fundraiser in Las Vegas the next morning more important than dealing with the crisis?
• Who came up with the silly story about the Youtube video and why?
• Why did they continue to push that story for a week after the attack when it was transparently false?
• Why did the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State lie to Pat Smith (mother of one of the Americans killed in Benghazi) about the Youtube video?
• The president promised an investigation into the attack and he promised that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. What has happened?

If we had a watchdog press, rather than a lapdog press, this story could have received the attention it deserved before the election. Now we’re shackled with this lying, power-grabbing Chicago politician for a second term — which is already shaping up to be a scandal-ridden disaster.

We measure politicians by how much they promise to give us — by which we mean what they promise to rob from everyone else and redistribute to us. The consequence is a political class that is always finding new ways to mandate this and promise that … and pay for it later, if at all.

The mandates, fees, taxes and so on in Obamacare are predicted to result in a 100%-400% Obamacare rate explosion.

See The IQ Test

He allegedly shows that Hispanic immigrants, even after several generations, had lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites. Note: I’m not saying he’s right.

It doesn’t matter if he’s right. There are some things you aren’t allowed to say in contemporary society. We have to keep repeating our “useful fictions” no matter what the evidence says.

Duck Dynasty will continue to include references to God and guns.

IRS Apologizes for Targeting Conservative Groups

Every abuses authority. Everybody. That’s why we can’t trust authority, and that’s why we need effective checks and balances.

The media is supposed to be one of those checks, but they are so transparently biased they regularly fail in that role.

If this had happened under a Republican administration, the media would question and badger and investigate and whine and moan for months.

The liberal media will “cover” it. They’ll mention it. They’ll say it was a bad thing. Then they’ll move on.

The difference is often not in whether or not they cover a story, but in how they cover it, and how dogged they are in pursuing it.

John Milbank: Gay Marriage a “Strategic Move” That Has Nothing to Do with Gay Rights

Kinship — defined by blood relations — is a social order that predates the state. There are lots of relations that depend on kinship. The state recognizes it, relies on it, and in some ways promotes it, but the state doesn’t create it.

Same-sex “marriage,” on the other hand, is an invention of the state, and as you start to delve into the details of it, different rules will inevitably apply to it. For example, there is no “consummation” of a same-sex marriage in the same way there is a heterosexual marriage. There are no natural children of a same-sex marriage. And, as I’ve said before, we might find ourselves in the weird situation where a man can marry his brother but not his sister.

As the law tries to wade through all this stuff and work out the details, it may demand that all marriages — same sex or opposite sex — be treated equally. This could result in opposite-sex marriage being stripped of some things related to kinship. For example, the natural children of an opposite-sex union might not be considered the children of the marriage without a state-approved “adoption.”

Heterosexual exchange and reproduction has always been the very “grammar” of social relating as such. The abandonment of this grammar would thus imply a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction.

I find the original article (which is hard to read) a little too paranoid for my tastes, but he raises some interesting legal issues that may come out of same-sex marriage.

One thing is very clear, in my opinion. The idea that recognizing same-sex marriage is not going to change all other marriages is naive nonsense.

… we have sleep-walked into the legalisation of practices whose logic and implications have never been seriously debated

To quote Mr. Spock, “That much is certain.”