Serious Obama Derangement Syndrome

So the fellow caught by US Secret Service agents who jumped the White House fence on Friday?  Turns out that he had a pretty substantial pile of ammo and weapons in his car, and that he's had a couple of recent arrests.

On Friday, Omar Gonzalez hopped the north fence and sprinted just past the north portico White House doors when he was stopped, Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said.

Gonzalez carried a Spyderco VG-10 folding knife with a 3½-inch serrated blade in his pants pocket, according to an affidavit.

He allowed authorities to search his car, where police say they found more than 800 rounds of ammunition in boxes and magazines. They also found two hatchets and a machete in his car.

A Secret Service officer said he yelled at the intruder to stop. Gonzalez told a Secret Service agent "that he was concerned that the atmosphere was collapsing and needed to get the information to the President of the United States so that he could get the word out to the people," according to the affidavit.

President Barack Obama and his family were not at home at the time.

Friday was not Gonzalez's first run in with police. In July, he was arrested in Wythe County, Virginia, and charged with possession of a shotgun and a sniper rifle. He was also charged with eluding and evading arrest. In addition, police say they found a map with the White House circled.

In late August, Gonzalez was stopped while walking along the White House fence. He carried a hatchet and allowed police to search his car, where they found camping gear and two dogs. He was not arrested then.

OK, so this guy?  He needs some help, clearly.  He's a three-tour Iraq veteran, and he's obviously having some serious problems adjusting to being home.  His marriage broke up two years ago, and his family has said his mental state wasn't the best.

Needless to say, the judge at the arraignment Monday agreed that he was both a flight risk and a threat to President Obama.  Here's hoping that he can get the mental help he so clearly needs.

Our wars in the Middle East had, and still have, a cost.

The More Things Don't Change...

The corporate types on the right are convinced more than ever that this weekend's 300,000+ NYC climate change march represents the death throes of environmentalism.

The United Nations Climate Summit will begin in New York this Tuesday, but environmental activists didn’t wait. All day Sunday, they filled the streets of Manhattan for a march that featured Al Gore, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and various Hollywood actors. 

But they certainly didn’t act like a movement that was winning. There was a tone of fatalism in the comments of many with whom I spoke; they despair that the kind of radical change they advocate probably won’t result from the normal democratic process. It’s no surprise then that the rhetoric of climate-change activists has become increasingly hysterical. Naomi Klein, author of a new book on the “crisis,” This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, said, “I have seen the future, and it looks like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.” In her new book she demands that North America and Europe pay reparations to poorer countries to compensate for the climate change they cause. She calls her plan a “Marshall Plan for the Earth” and acknowledges that it would cost “hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars.” But she has an easy solution on how to pay for it: “Need more money? Print some!” What’s a little hyperinflation compared to “saving the planet”?

Again, why do anything when you can always find a scientist who disagrees with the 97% of climate scientists who do believe we're in real trouble?

One reason the rhetoric has become so overheated is that the climate-change activists increasingly lack a scientific basis for their most exaggerated claims. As physicist Gordon Fulks of the Cascade Policy Institute puts it: “CO2 is said to be responsible for global warming that is not occurring, for accelerated sea-level rise that is not occurring, for net glacial and sea-ice melt that is not occurring . . . and for increasing extreme weather that is not occurring.” He points out that there has been no net new global-warming increase since 1997 even though the human contribution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 25 percent since then. This throws into doubt all the climate models that have been predicting massive climate dislocation.

The Cascade Policy Institute, oh man. Oregon's own state-sized version of CATO, one of those "free-market" glibertarian outfits that will never run out of corporate money to shill nonsense like this. Didn't you hear?  Global warming ended in 1997, stupid libtards!

Only it didn't, but that's okay, they found a guy who said it did.

So there's no problem.

To recap, conservatives believe the science can never be settled.

Bogged Down For Good

The NY Times is reporting that President Obama's "controversial" (to say the least) nomination of Michael Boggs to a federal judge position in Georgia is deader than dirt.

The quest by President Obama to put Michael P. Boggs – who supported the Confederate flag and opposed abortion – on the federal bench in Georgia is over. 

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, who leads the Judiciary Committee, told us it had become clear after talking to his colleagues that Mr. Boggs, under fire from Democrats for his conservative positions, could not win committee support. 

Mr. Leahy signaled that Mr. Boggs should withdraw: “He doesn’t have the votes.” 

Mr. Boggs earns the unusual distinction as the first Obama judicial nominee this term to fail because of Democratic opposition. 

The deal to put Boggs on the bench was actually a Republican requirement in order to win support to break the near-permanent hold Republicans were putting on judicial nominees.  That deal has broken down, so now Boggs is getting blocked by Democrats, and it's a good thing because Boggs was basically a conservative.

Considering Congress is now out of session until after the election, there doesn't seem to be any way to rescue Boggs at this point.  Roll Call has more on the Boggs saga here, but it's all but a moot point now.

StupidiNews!

• The US Secret Service is boosting security around President Obama after two separate incidents involving intruders on the White House grounds in the last several days.
• NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has entered orbit around Mars this weekend, with the mission to study the atmosphere and explore theories on how the Red Planet lost its liquid surface water.
• US-Iranian talks in New York are centered on Tehran's nuclear program, but also involve how Iran can help to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria in exchange for concessions.
• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has admitted that tensions in the eastern part of the country are better, but there remain several violations of the cease fire with Russia.
• Researchers say new technology behind splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen could play a role in making hydrogen fuel cell vehicles more common.