This amount of arrogance, the sheer impardonable pretension, is bound to be popular.
On November 11, 2008, I said:
Since the Big Three lose money making smaller, more efficient cars, making more of them in itself won't help profitability. Since a big problem with the automakers has been poor management, limits on executive compensation will only cause the best managers to leave for more pastures which are perhaps less green, but more golden.
Doug Ross points out this howler.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), a global warming alarmist bureau, predicted in May of 2008 that the North Pole would be free of ice last summer.
But it seems they underestimated the extent of Arctic ice by 500,000 km². That's about 190,000 square miles, an area the size of the States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland combined — with room left over for West Virginia, South Carolina, and Indiana, to boot.
They weren't using the most accurate methods to measure, but were using older, inaccurate methods because they were in line with their earlier data.
In other words, even though they knew that the methods used to gather their earlier data were inaccurate, they continued to use them for prediction.
Now comes Barack Obama, with his vast experience as a mortgage broker, corporate CEO, Chairman of the Board, and Wall Street investment analyst, to
Chris Edwards has a piece on FutureGen in the Cato@Liberty blog. FutureGen is a project to take CO2 from burning coal and pump it into layers of rock beneath Illinois farmland. I live and work near Mattoon, and would probably personally benefit from the boondogglet. Edwards:
FutureGen was launched in 2003 by President Bush as a public-private partnership to build a low-emission coal-fueled power plant and demonstrate technologies to capture carbon dioxide. The government was to share the cost of the project with 12 private energy companies. The project was originally estimated to cost $1 billion, but by 2008 the estimate had ballooned to $1.8 billion. By mid-2008, $176 million had been spent.A lot of the money spent for FutureGen in the Mattoon area went to building an interstate exchange. The exchange also serves other light industry in the area. It was needed already.
President Obama declared that the days of denying the facts (of Global Warming) are over.
Has he not gone outside for the last ten years?
Because it's been getting colder, not warmer.
Unserious, incurious, and power mad.
of dollars, use it to build a train no one will ride, justify it with a problem that doesn't exist and that it won't address, and wait for an earthquake.
Is Christmas about Christ, or is it about reindeer?
Yes.
Christmas is a celebration of the virgin birth of Jesus the Christ, Yishua the Messiah, in a manger in Bethlehem. It's a tale of wise men (who weren't there) and shepherds (who were).
It's also a celebration of the dead of Winter, a memory of the cold days of the Little Ice Age in Europe and of even colder days past in a real Ice Age. The last warmth of Summer is gone by the time of the solstice, and we have time to gather together in our little hovels and share the fruits of our year's labor with those we love.
And to those who find a dichotomy in the dualism, who see a conflict between magical reindeer and frankincense, I say: quit being humbugs. Sing about Rudolph, enjoy your stocking stuffers, blow your wad at Wal-Mart, and give shelter to needy travelers.
Because Christmas is Christmas, and there's no need to pin it down more than that.
Lunactivism, my faithful readers know, is some protest, statement, or direct action in support of a cause that does the cause more harm than good. Terrorism is an extreme example. The fear-mongering Prop 8 commercial portraying Mormons as home invaders is another.
In a commercial venture, companies have over the last several years begun touting their environmental friendliness. It's thought that appearing green enhances corporate image, which is especially important to retailers and consumer-facing businesses.
Now, hardly anybody or anything has more good will than Santa Claus, and most people have a fixed image of Santa Claus involving, on some level, a red suit.
So F.A.O. Schwarz, struggling retailer, decided that turning Santa's suit green to push a children's book was the right way to go. Lunactivism? I report, you decide.
w/t Debbie Schlussel
As Indur Goklany points out, deaths from extreme cold are much more common than deaths from extreme heat. In fact, extreme cold causes more deaths than all other weather-related causes combined.
I started out to write about Pilgrims and Indians, Mayflowers and Compacts, and how we really ought to be thankful for their courage, their cooperation, and above all, for their faith. But I realized that's been done, and overdone, and deconstructed, and reconstructed already. I mean, we've had Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, and this very year, it seems every blogger and pundit has some kind of message today.
For instance, Ken Taylor does a fine work writing at The Minority Report.
And it occurs to me why there is so much blogging about this holiday: despite its origins as a government-approved religious observance, everybody likes Thanksgiving.
Even angry vegetarian Pagans can grit their strident, protesting teeth and get behind the idea of a feast at the end of a harvest. Usually in North America the summer grain crops are all but totally harvested by now, though this year cool, wet weather has delayed that in some areas.
But it would be very difficult to plan the start of the Christmas marketing season if we had to wait until the crops were actually brought in before we were to give thanks. Cynicism aside, Thanksgiving itself remains remarkably uncommercialized. Only the NFL, Macy's, and Ocean Spray have had any real success with it, though the people who make turkey friers are giving it a push.
The politically incorrect holiday is Christmas, with its parallel traditions of Christian Virgin Birth on the one hand and elvin, reindeerish images evoking the diversity-challenged Northern Europe of the Little Ice Age on the other.
On Thanksgiving, everyone seems to take a step back, reflect, and exhale a bit. We see siblings, or not, gorge on big, slow birds, or not, and watch the Detroit Lions lose a football game, or not. The Lions will lose, that is, but not everyone will force themselves to watch them do it.
Via StopEPA:
EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act is unneeded. The Earth is not warming, and if it were warming, THAT WOULD BE A GOOD THING.
Climate scientists have predicted continued warming with an increase in atmospheric CO2, methane, and water vapor, but this has not happened. There is something wrong, therefore, with the reasoning that led to the conclusion that it would happen.
What is wrong with the reasoning is one of two things, and possibly both: 1) that the Earth's climate is an intensely complicated mechanism, with built-in mechanisms that keep it stable and 2) the greenhouse gas effect is a lot smaller than previously thought.
More study is needed to determine what is in fact happening to the Earth's climate. Even if it turns out that the Earth is warming but that carbon dioxide is not at fault, having jumped on CO2 as the culprit we will not be able to respond to the true cause when it is discovered.
Throughout human history, we have struggled in cold climates and thrived in warm ones. Today there are vast areas of the world shut off from agriculture by the cold.
Climate activists have used scare tactics about sudden harm such as floods and violent weather to arouse the public in furtherance of their agenda. EPA may choose to ally with these activists to safeguard and expand its institutional power base, but this course would be costly and destructive to the rest of American society.
AoSHQ comments on Politico's breathless exclusive story that Scott McClellan, the worst Press Secretary in the history of press secretaries, got canned and wrote a book. [Stifles yawn] Scott, you're not going to be on McCain's staff. You might be on Obama's, but then he won't be President. Americans can see through a fraud. But hey, you got it published.
Wonkette is prepared to underwhelmed at the protest this Saturday at the Democratic National Convention's Rules and Bylaws committee meeting. They're going to decide the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations.
After all of the rancor and high dudgeon over the 2000 election, culminating most recently in HBO's Recount, one would think the Party of Kennedy and Gore would be a touch more sensitive to the appearance of counting people's votes. Not that the votes of individuals in Florida and Michigan matter in the slightest, since it's the Democratic Party superdelegates who will decide the nominee.
But seating the Florida and Michigan superdelegates could alter the balance, allowing Hillary to continue to press her case forward. After all, it's not even June. Anything can happen.
Josh Marshal at Talking Points Memo is simply beside himself with righteous indignation: According to MSNBC, McCain economic advisor Phil Gramm was a registered lobbyist for UBS, a big Swiss bank. He was also a vice president of the bank. Oh, the scandal of getting someone as your economic advisor who actually worked in the economy.
Rachel Lucas (w/t Classical Values) can't count how many
... conservatives are so tired of getting “poked in the eye” and “stabbed in the back” that they’re gonna take their “principles” all the way to nowhere on Election Day...
I spent this morning doing Spring cleaning. Not around the house, but at the little cemetery wherein are interred the last several generations of my wife's ancestors. Global Warming delayed the start of Spring until today.
I've always been fascinated with cemeteries. From the one in Alvin, Wisconsin where I hope to spend my underground years to the Old Granary Burying Ground in Boston, I especially like looking at the headstones, noting the vital statistics and especially the epitaphs of earlier generations.
At the cemetery today were a number of veterans of the Civil War, and even a Revolutionary War veteran or two. Many of the stones were illegible now, if they'd ever carried an inscription. Note to self: brass plaque.
After looking at all the markers for my wife's kin folk, we raked leaves, picked up litter, and gathered tree limbs that had fallen over the winter, all of which we put into piles to be burned.
While raking the leaves I noted a headstone with the curious caption:
Lunactivism meets geek: Blackle, as the name suggests, is an effort to SaveThePlanet™ by having a search page that uses a black background. Clue in, fellas: one of the reasons Google was successful is that their screen was visually appealing. Yours is just plain ugly. Eye-averting, skin-crawlin', get-me-away-from-here ugly.
Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean today will propose a system of "delegate credits" similar to the carbon trading system that has been so successful in combating Global Warming. The effort is designed to prevent the breakup of the Democratic Party and to ensure defeat in the November general election.
"I haven't spent the last 7 years fabricating this Party structure just to have it come back to haunt me like my other fabrications," Dean said.
Citing academic studies noting that college students, completely indoctrinated in Democratic ideology, are the least likely to vote, Dean wants to get that level of involvement from more groups in the Party. The system he proposes will allow candidates with too many delegates to campaign a little extra in a given primary election. "We notice that when voters finally hear the message of Democratic candidates, they tend not to vote for them," said Dean to a group of reporters. "This system will make the process more fair."
But Dean insists that it's not a cap n' trade system. "This is not a phony cap n' trade system," Dean insisted. "We are talking about real candidates and real donations. We have a couple of primaries in reserve -- major primaries -- that we have been planning to use in this cap and trade system all along."
"That's been our strategy with both both Hillary Clinton, when she was leading in the polls, and Barack Obama now. Get their message out, and they will fall back to the pack." It's all part of the overall effort to make elections fair and equitable, Dean said.
John McCain gave a foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, and now that I've read it, I still don't know whether to be elated or dismayed. I don't know whether Senator McCain believes everything he says, or merely couches things in language he knows will please his opponents. But I do know that people govern how they campaign, generally if not in the specifics.
The biggest problem I have with Senator McCain is that in using his opponent's language, he implicitly accepts their positions. What to do about captured terrorist suspects:
America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.We can't turn lead into gold, grind up children to feed to cats, or yell fire in a crowded theater, either.
Lacking legality is among the many reasons we don't do those things.
By saying that it's wrong, McCain implies that we do it. He gives cover to our foes, and encourages the conspiracy-loving, coverup-seeking, America-hating moonbats at home.
I was very pleased to read this, however:
For decades in the greater Middle East, we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability. We relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists’ dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.
We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it. We must not act rashly or demand change overnight. But neither can we pretend the status quo is sustainable, stable, or in our interests. Change is occurring whether we want it or not. The only question for us is whether we shape this change in ways that benefit humanity or let our enemies seize it for their hateful purposes. We must help expand the power and reach of freedom, using all our many strengths as a free people. This is not just idealism. It is the truest kind of realism. It is the democracies of the world that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace.
What are the effects of Global Warming?
I consider Global Warming is an unmitigated good, because I like hot weather. Anything over 80°F and I'm happy, so a rise of 5 degrees will be just fine, thank you. Yes, I understand that the climate is complex, and no, it doesn't alarm me. But some people, especially those who live in urban heat traps or equatorial deserts, might not want the extra warmth.
I fail to see why I should alter my lifestyle in the slightest to accommodate their choice of habitat, when they can't even show that all of the changes that I and the rest of the developed world could make would even influence the climate, much less fix it. And given that some of us like it warm, they still need to show that the current global climate is the best one.
But beside being implicitly seen as the cause for famine in Ethiopia, Sudan, and the whole of East Africa, Global Warming has several other alleged effects:
If you've not heard about the misfortunes of Senator Larry Craig, consider yourself both blessed for having missed the circus and cursed for having to read about it from me. On the plus side, I'm going to skip the sordid details and go straight for what's really important about the event: it highlights a difference between Left and Right on the subject of morality.
Specifically, the main charge against Craig is not what he did, but hypocrisy. Craig, as a Republican, is held to the familiar standards of traditional decency. (Yes, "traditional decency" is a loaded phrase, but it's the best one I can come up with that hasn't been co opted, redefined, and bumper stuck into obsolescence). Democrats are not held to those standards, or any other save the most clear and outlandish violations of law. Why is this so?
It is because on the Left, traditional standards of decency are not part of their morality. Morality, I've shown, is the set of rules for behavior that we believe everyone ought to obey. People differ wildly on what those rules are, but we all have them and a sense that ours are correct. On the left, even those who cling to traditional decency do not hold others to that standard, but prefer tolerance of wickedness over its disdain. Traditional decency is to liberals a matter of preference and lifestyle.
To liberals, then, traditional decency is an ethical choice. Since Senator Craig self-selected into a group adhering to traditional decency, liberals react to him as someone who has committed an ethical violation.
But don't fall for the "we just hate hypocrisy" line: consider the Global Warming alarmists who are palleted around in limousines and private jets while telling the little people to walk. Hypocrisy doesn't matter, only opportunity matters: the opportunity gain power by making public the peccadilloes of their political foes.
By the way: a United States Senator accused of public lewdness would not plead guilty unless he were guilty. If not guilty, he would come before the public and explain the misunderstanding, if any, or simply deny the charges. To plead guilty in secret and then exclaim innocence in public strains credulity, and where politicians are concerned, it already doesn't take much to make my lie detector peg the needle.
