I’m busier than Ted Kennedy trying to avoid a Kopechne family reunion, so here are some quick topics of discussion:

• The junk science panel and co-winner of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize for their work of science fiction, the IPCC, is on the “hot seat”, so to speak.  It seems that their studies were fundamentally and fatally flawed, and they had ties to the since discredited “hockey stick” model inventor.  Would it be too early to say “I told you so”?
• Members of the Cuban Olympic soccer team have defected to the U.S.  I’m still waiting for some pinko Castro apologist to show me where there is an exodus of people going from America into Cuba, since all I ever see is the opposite.
• When she’s not falsely claiming credit for bringing peace to Ireland, she’s bragging about her role in creating the S-CHIP health program for kids.  Question: how exactly do you brag about the nothing you did?
• That Senate earmark ban that got shot down yesterday?  McCain, Hilldawg, and Osamabama all voted for the ban on earmarks.  Kudos to them…well, except for Obama.  Sure, he voted for the earmark ban, but all that means is that he supported pork, before he didn’t.  Turns out that Barry O requested a $1 million earmark for the University of Chicago hospital…where his wife works!

This is certain to make leftist heads explode!  From al-Reuters via Hot Air:

One of Cuba’s most popular television personalities, humorist Carlos Otero, defected to the United States with his family, Miami’s Nuevo Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Otero, 49, asked for political asylum on Monday at the U.S. border with Canada, where he was producing a television show in Toronto. He was traveling with his wife and two children.

His interview show on Sunday evenings was one of the most viewed in Communist Cuba.

“I hope to earn a living in exile and see my children grow up with the opportunity to study what they want, without having to agree with the system,” Otero told the Nuevo Herald.

Otero said Cuba was “frozen in time” and Cubans lived in great uncertainty over their country’s future since Cuban leader Fidel Castro fell ill and dropped from public view 16 months ago. 

Why, this ingrate never had it so good, what with the “free” health care and whatnot!  Now he’ll have to actually pay to go see a quality health care professional!  Sure, he’ll also get earning (and learning) opportunity far beyond his wildest dreams.  And sure, he’ll get all kinds of rights that all humans should have.  (Sidebar: for those of you on the left, said “rights” can be found in that document we affectionately call a “Constitution”, m’kay?  Google it.)  But what good are rights, freedoms, property, money, etc., if you don’t have “free” health care, right?  For those of you on the left, the prior sentence was both rhetorical and sarcasm.

Club Gitmo is so much of a torturous hellhole that…a jihadist is suing to stay there! From FNC:

An inmate of Guantanamo Bay who spends 22 hours each day in an isolation cell is fighting for the right to stay in the notorious internment camp.

Ahmed Belbacha fears that he will be tortured or killed if the United States goes ahead with plans to return him to his native Algeria.

The London Times reported that Belbacha, who lived in Britain for three years, has filed an emergency motion at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., asking for his transfer out of Guantanamo to be halted. He was cleared for release from Camp Delta in February and his lawyers believe that his return to Algerian custody is imminent.

Belbacha says that if he returns to Algeria, he faces the threat of torture by security services and murder by Islamist terrorists.

“Ahmed is being held in camp six, the harshest part of Guantanamo,” he said. “His cell is all steel, there are no windows, he is not allowed to communicate with other prisoners and he gets just two hours exercise each day in a metal cage.

“He says his cell in Guantanamo is like a grave and that, although it sounds crazy, he would rather stay in those conditions than go back to Algeria. The fact is that he is really, really scared about what might happen to him in Algeria.”

I imagine that the lemon-pepper orange roughy with dates and honey that he gets at Club Gitmo aren’t everyday fare on the mean streets of Algiers, though.

From the admittedly biased Beeb:

Cuban athletes have made a hurried departure from the Pan-American games in Brazil, apparently amid fears of possible mass defections.

The delegation was rushed at short notice to Rio de Janeiro’s airport, leaving the men’s volleyball team no time to collect their bronze medals.

The athletes were said to have been ordered to leave the games before the finishing ceremony on Sunday.

It follows the defection of four Cuban athletes earlier in the tournament.
…
Cuba’s President, Fidel Castro, has already made clear his irritation over earlier defections, accusing athletes of betraying their country for money.

“Betrayal for money is one of the favourite weapons of the United States to destroy Cuba’s resistance,” he said.

Here’s guessing that these ungrateful hombres didn’t go see Moore’s new mockumentary Sicko. Don’t these ingrates know how good they have it down in that socialist worker’s “paradise”?

(Sidebar: Notice that there are always tons of Cubans risking life and limb to get out of Cuba…but you never see any kind of migration into Cuba? I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything, though.)

See the video and judge for yourself. Notes Breitbart TV:

Filmmaker Michael Moore went off on CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer during an interview Monday to promote his latest documentary ‘Sicko’. Moore blasted the anchor and the network for not doing enough to stop the Iraq war and for doing a ‘crap’ report on his new film. Moore also mocked the pronunciation of chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. (Not the type of thing that the eagle-eyed filmmaker would miss if it came out of the mouth of one his political enemies.)

I’m looking forward to seeing how the moonbatosphere spins this.

“Hypocrisy” doesn’t even do the word justice. From Boston’s online fishwrap:

Cuba characterized American filmmaker Michael Moore as a victim of censorship and the U.S. trade embargo as it reported Friday on a U.S. Treasury Department probe of his March visit here for his upcoming health-care documentary, “Sicko.”

Moore took the trip, for a segment in the film, with about 10 ailing workers involved in the rescue effort at the World Trade Center ruins.

The Communist Party daily Granma called the 45-year-old U.S. travel and trade sanctions “a criminal action that has cost lives and grave consequences for the inhabitants of the island,” as well as Americans.

“Any resemblance to McCarthyism is no coincidence,” the newspaper opined, referring to the political witch hunt that U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy carried out against suspected American communists in the 1950s.

The U.S. government’s targeting of Moore “confirms the imperial philosophy of censorship” by American officials, it added.

Cuba. Decrying censorship and McCarthyism. Man, does that Castro dude have a wicked sense of humor or what? I may have just officially seen it all.

Recall how award-winning fiction director Mikie Moore brought some 9/11 responders to Cuba for health care for his new mockumentary “Sicko”? The feds seem to have taken issue with that violation of federal law. From Breitbart/AP:

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is under investigation by the U.S. Treasury Department for taking ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in his upcoming health-care documentary “Sicko,” The Associated Press has learned.

The investigation provides another contentious lead-in for a provocative film by Moore, a fierce critic of President Bush. In the past, Moore’s adversaries have fanned publicity that helped the filmmaker create a new brand of opinionated blockbuster documentary.

“Sicko” promises to take the health-care industry to task the way Moore confronted America’s passion for guns in “Bowling for Columbine” and skewered Bush over his handling of Sept. 11 in “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control notified Moore in a letter dated May 2 that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the U.S. trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba. A copy of the letter was obtained Wednesday by the AP.

“This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorizing you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba,” Dale Thompson, OFAC chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in the letter to Moore.

Granted, this kind of pub will likely drum up more interest in the socialist mockumentary. However, he’s not above the law, and if there’s any justice (I know, I know…dream on, right?), he’ll be fined for his infraction.

Ah, the joys of forced economic equality! From the AP:

Laura Garcia doesn’t have a car, and the change in her pocket won’t cover the 15-cent bus fare. But standing by a crumbling overpass, sweating in her shorts, sunglasses and skimpy top, the 18-year-old says a free ride is only an outstretched thumb away.

“People will take you. You can always find drivers to help,” said Garcia, who studies law in Havana and was going to see her parents in Pinar del Rio, a 90-minute ride west.

Hitchhiking is a way of life in communist Cuba, where cars are scarce, a gallon of gas costs a third of a civil servant’s monthly salary, and public transportation is unreliable and overcrowded. Lately things have worsened, with even acting President Raul Castro admitting in December that public transport was “practically on the point of collapse.”

As Winston Churchill properly noted: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” In Cuba, life may suck, but at least it sucks equally for everyone, right? Indeed, misery does love company.