What happened to Weather Underground?

For a number of years now, I've relied on Weather Underground for all things weather-related, and have found them to be a reliable source for forecasting, up-to-date weather warnings, and reliable weather radar. I've used them both on my computer and my cell phone, and have happily paid for a subscription to their service.

I noticed last night that I couldn't access their service, and it seemed like the domain was pointed at another site.

This morning I couldn't get there either.

DNS attack?

***UPDATE****

Stan has the answer:

Something in the route tables has been poisoned. I have the same problem (the 'site' is blank ATM, but it had had a NETWORK SOLUTIONS beginner's page earlier this eve)

Until the route tables reset to the correct routes, you can still get there through a proxy. Going direct I get a blank page, but try putting wunderground.com into this proxy page and you're in:

http://www.youranonymousproxy.com/Defaul...

Some people can get in, some can't... just depends on the path between you and wunderground. If you hit the buggered section of the routes, you'll be somewhere else (wherever the route is taking it).

WARNING: DO NOT LOG IN FOR A COUPLE OF DAYS in case the server that's being pointed to starts phishing. Within two or three days from today (15 July 2008) the routes should be back to normal.

Oh give me a friggin' break already...

Got kidney stones? Blame "global warming."

Global warming is likely to increase the proportion of the population affected by kidney stones by expanding the higher-risk region known as the "kidney-stone belt" into neighboring states, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center and UT Dallas have found.

Got wildfire, pestilence and other biblical maladies? Blame global warming and humans:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government scientists detailed a rising death toll from heat waves, wildfires, disease and smog caused by global warming in an analysis the White House buried so it could avoid regulating greenhouse gases.

In a 149-page document released Monday, the experts laid out for the first time the scientific case for the grave risks that global warming poses to people, and to the food, energy and water on which society depends.

"Risk (to human health, society and the environment) increases with increases in both the rate and magnitude of climate change," scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency said. Global warming, they wrote, is "unequivocal" and humans are to blame.

The document suggests that extreme weather events and diseases carried by ticks and other organisms could kill more people as temperatures rise.

When are these schitt-for-brains bozos gonna get it in their rotten, self-centered, arrogant, egotistical sorry excuses for their brains-that-only-a-proctologist-can-appreciate that we don't buy their spewed vomit anymore?

You'd think they'd have a clue by now.

Hey, McFly--anybody home?!?

And the people said....

AMEN!!!

U.S. President George Bush is stepping up pressure on Congress to open up off shore oil exploration. VOA White House Correspondent Paula Wolfson reports Mr. Bush has lifted an executive order banning offshore drilling and is urging lawmakers to complete the process by dropping a legislative prohibition.

Tasteless, Offensive (and true?)

This week's New Yorker Cover:

It is said that all good humor/satire has a grain of truth to it. If not true in a literal sense, perhaps there are yet a few grains of truth to be had.

Obama, Inc?

It appears that Obama's alleged birth certificate has been deemed a forgery, calling to question whether Obama was born in the United States, which would be a Constitutional prerequisite for his ability to legally run for President.

A petition for the Obama campaign to release a paper copy of his birth certificate was allegedly met with a veiled/not so veiled threat against the petition originator's family from an "Obama supporter," which forced the originator of the petition to shut down the site.

This suggests that the Obama campaign, which has taken Clinton, Inc., head on, is not afraid to utilize Clintonian tactics in dealing with detractors.

Just where is that birth certificate, Barack "Hussein" Obama?

The Problem.

In a follow-up to a previous post, I submit for your approval a primer of how to ensure that we remain enslaved to whackos like Ahmadinejad and Chavez:

First, take a means of harvesting our own oil:

U.S. District Judge David Lawson of Detroit ruled Thursday the agency had acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in 2005 by giving Savoy Energy LP of Traverse City a permit to drill an exploratory well near the Au Sable River's south branch.

The proposed wellhead would be located in the Huron-Manistee National Forest about three-tenths of a mile from the Mason Tract, a 4,679-acre wilderness area prized by anglers and other outdoor recreationists.

Forest supervisor Leanne Marten said when approving Savoy's application that the project wouldn't significantly harm the environment and the company would be required to keep noise to a minimum.

Next, take two enviro-whacko groups whose true aim is to ensure that the United States ends up a third-rate power and a third-world conglomeration of collectives, reduced to living in squalor in thatched roofs, and for good measure bring along a willing accomplice whom they've shamed into acquiescing:

Two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and Anglers of the Au Sable, sued the government to halt the drilling. Joining the suit was Tim Mason, whose grandfather, auto executive George Mason, donated the original 1,200 acres to the state upon his death in 1954 and asked that it be maintained as wilderness.

Then, get an activist leftist puke of a judge who sees things the way they do:

But the judge ruled the Forest Service didn't consider how degrading the area could harm tourism,

Next, find a spotted owl or a caribou. If there are no spotted owls or caribou in the area, find another obscure species of flora or fauna to prop up as a defenseless cute critter who will suffer a woeful existence and/or disappear from the face of the earth if development takes place. Never mind that it won't be the case. In trying to accomplish such a noble cause as destroying the United States, one must never let the truth get in the way of crippling the U.S. economy. The end, after all, justifies the means

"[The judge]...said the agency did a "woefully inadequate" job of evaluating how the drilling might affect the Kirtland's warbler, an endangered songbird that nests in the area."

And that, my friends, is how to ensure that we become a third world, third-rate nation, courtesy of your local friendly environmentalist/socialist whacko.

Shakespeare's Henry VI was incomplete in his assessment that what was needed in the world was first to "kill all the lawyers." He would have been more prescient if he included the radical environmentalists in his calculations.

Smoke and Mirrors... Ahmawhackjob style.

Crude oil prices went through the roof the other day upon news that Iran test fired a "new generation" of missiles capable of striking distant targets, including Israel.

Everything seemed to make sense, until one takes into account that the whole Iranian operation, entitled, "The Great Prophet III war games," was nothing but an exercise in smoke and mirrors.

As the fourth largest oil exporting nation in the world, and with an expensive nuclear munitions habit to feed, Ahmadinejad realizes that all he has to do is to sneeze and the size of his coffers will increase exponentially. Nice work if you can get it.

Yet the democrats continue to say that harvesting our own oil has nothing to do with solving the problem.

And Ahmanislamistfreakjob laughs all the way to the bank.

****UPDATE 4:09p CDT*****

My son drew my attention to this article that exposed the Iranian images of missile firing as a photoshopped image: Since the Iranians did such a piss-poor job of photoshopping the non-event event, my son Leo III thought he'd give the Iranians a hand and do his own version:

Good job, son.

The nation loses a true "happy warrior."

Intelligence, wit and a sense of humor, paired with an indefatigable optimism grounded in reality.

The world will long note, and will truly mourn the passing of Tony Snow.

My condolences to the Snow family, their friends, and to all whom he touched with his prodigious life.

Like a monkey with its hand in the cookie jar...

They refuse to allow exploration and drilling. They refuse to allow refineries. They refuse to allow nuclear energy plants. They block every fffin' serious effort to move toward energy independence.

The economy is going to hell in a handcart. The tourism trade is in shambles, and right out of the Marie Antoinette handbook, the Democrats refuse to cut gas taxes.

Why. Am. I. Not. Surprised?

Announcing, our first grandchild...

Born today at 7:57am, weighing in at 8-pounds 6-ounces, and 23-inches long :)

Welcome to the world, Maggie Ann!

Common Sense Takes a Holiday...

We're awaiting the birth of our first grandchild. Sometime today or tomorrow.

I'm sitting at an establishment on Big Lake Detroit right now, with an order of chips and salsa and a diet coke, my motorcycle helmet and backpack and laptop in tow...and pondering a few things.

Along with many other Americans who can afford the luxury of a tank of gas, Common Sense has taken a holiday.

I went and got the propane tank filled this morning, and stopped at the little butcher shop next to the propane store... After picking out a package of beef sticks, I struck up a conversation with the proprietor of the butcher shop, who, incidentally, keeps a close eye on the commodities markets, especially corn. According to the guy, due to the flooding in key corn growing areas of Iowa and elsewhere in the midwest, the price of corn per is supposed to skyrocket to nearly $18 dollars a bushel in the fall. This, he said, will necessarily send the price of beef skyrocketing, as well. This will also hurt many local farmers, who are already contracted to sell their corn at only $6 per bushel. Look for the price of beef, pork, milk and other staple food items to climb through the stratosphere as well as a result.

The big winner in this? Archer Daniels Midland, who still has contracts for the remaining scarce amounts of corn and soybeans to produce ethanol and biodiesel, which will of course decrease the supply and drive up prices even more.

And do you know what the big kicker in all this is? We, the consumers/taxpayers are taking it up the keester in spades. For example, do you know that there's a plant in southern Minnesota run by ADM? And do you know what they manufacture? Biodiesel. That's right. One of the supposed saviors of our futures and the supposed end-all and be-all hedge against our dependence on foreign oil. And for every gallon of biodiesel that ADM produces in southern Minnesota, we, the taxpayers, kick in a dollar.

Now, one might say, what's the big deal? After all, that biodiesel just goes to pumps in Minnesota, and helps ease the price of diesel at the pumps, right?

Wrong again, grasshopper. The biodiesel produced by ADM in plants in southern Minnesota takes a detour at Mankato and heads off to--EUROPE. Yep, we, the taxpayers, are paying Archer Daniels Midland one dollar for every gallon of biodiesel they produce, and we then watch that gallon make a beeline out of Minnesota to the cozy confines of Western Europe. That same biodiesel that is in part serving to dwindle our food supplies, and driving up the price of food that Americans must buy.

Fellow Minnesotans, fellow Americans, we are being raped and robbed at the behest of the politicians, who are beholden to corporate farms, as they and their beneficiaries of their largesse in the State and Federal legislatures wink like pirates.

And the ruse continues...as do the ruses that involve supposed man-made global warming, supposed climate catastrophes, and other manufactured crises leading the politicians and their robber-baron accomplices running around like Chicken Little, while real economic crises that have their origins in these very scams they perpetrate fester under their slimy feet.

And all I can do is look at the prospect of my grandchild coming into the world... and shudder.

Common Sense has taken a vacation, and its return is nowhere on the horizon.

I weep for our nation.

And the Truth will set you free!

Score one for Life, and one against Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood:

(CNSNews.com) - South Dakota may enforce a law that requires doctors to provide pregnant women with a written statement saying, "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," a federal appeals court ruled last Friday.

In Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit voted 7-4 to strike down a 2005 preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for South Dakota.

The injunction had prevented a statute - requiring abortion providers to tell women, in writing, that an abortion would terminate the life of a "living human being" - from taking effect. The decision by the appeals court reversed the injunction and remanded it to the district court for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

The lawsuit, filed by Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, required the court to consider whether the definition of human being should include "the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation."

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds and Attorney General Larry Long, representing the state, argued against Planned Parenthood in the suit, providing evidence that the embryo or fetus is "whole, separate, unique and living."

The court's ruling said, "Planned Parenthood submitted no evidence to oppose that conclusion."

The court cited a bioethicist's affidavit, submitted by Planned Parenthood, which stated that "to describe an embryo or fetus scientifically and factually, one would say that a living embryo or fetus in utero is a developing organism of the species Homo Sapiens which may become a self-sustaining member of the species if no organic or environmental evidence interrupts its gestation."

My dear readers, when faced with the Truth of what an abortion is, the pro-abortion, pro-death lobby has no moral leg to stand on. Unlike a pile of wood, which can become a chair, a table, or part of a home, a developing embryo can become only more and more of what it already is--a human being.

Congratulations to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals for having the cajones to face up to that truth.

Wednesday Hero Blogburst, 7-2-08

Click Image For Full SizeLance Cpl. Julie Martinez


Lance Cpl. Julie Martinez, a radio operator with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, checks the communication capabilities during a backload of Marines from Combat Logistics Regiment 3 to the USS Essex June 9.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams. Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Maybe the Twins can use her...

Obama defines "Patriotism?" **(UPDATED & BUMPED)

“As Mark Twain, that greatest of American satirists and proud son of Missouri, once wrote, Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” We may hope that our leaders and our government stand up for our ideals, and there are many times in our history when that’s occurred. But when our laws, our leaders or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expression of patriotism."

-Barack Hussein Obama, in a speech delivered on 30 June, 2008-

So that explains Barack Hussein Obama's close relationship with one William Ayers, whose patriotic duty (by Obama's definition) included setting bombs and killing innocent people. Heck, according to Obama's definition, and by Ayers' own admission, he just wasn't patriotic enough.

That also explains Obama's close relationship with one Rev. "God Damn America!" Wright.

For in Barack Hussein Obama's world, these men, and others, have demonstrated, in Obama's own definition, the "...truest expression of patriotism," in spades.

An axiom that I have long held is that liberals have no chance of winning a debate in the arena of ideas, unless they are given rein to re-define the terms of that debate.

The heinous practice of killing a baby in what should be the safety of a mother's womb, heretofore known as abortion, is now known as, "reproductive health."

The process whereby the government confiscates wealth from productive Americans for redistribution, formerly known as "taxes," are now known as "contributions" or "investments."

Today, "the messiah" stated,

surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism. And surely we can arrive at a definition of patriotism that, however rough and imperfect, captures the best of America’s common spirit.

If Obama's sense of 'patriotism' embodies his established pattern of associations with "patriotic" individuals, such as Ayers, Wright, Pfleger, and others, whom he must consider "...the best of America's common spirit," then color me unpatriotic.

I ain't buying it.

***UPDATE**** 7-1-08 10:32pm

There are a lot of people who say that the photo at the top of this post is taken out of context; that Obama momentarily had his hands down by his crotch.

Well, you be the judge: