Friday, September 26, 2008

Green hypocrisy, etc.

Gee, here’s a shocker:

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.
According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim. ... Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.

Inconvenient truths just keep bubbling to the surface.

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The Rams have been outgained by 763 yards over their first three games. That has them on a pace to be outgained by 2.31 miles this season.

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Mark Cuban has a pointed question for Obama:

“How is it Senator Obama, that with Wall Street burning, you thought it was a better use of your time to campaign ?. You make it clear that one of your greatest skillsets is promoting consensus. Has there ever been a time when promoting consensus was more important to the financial health of the American people than today ?”

I think the answer is obvious: getting himself elected is the most important thing to him right now. The needs of the people can wait until a possible Obama presidency, and even then probably until after the needs of all of the special interests to which he is beholden have been met. Priorities, you know. And also that Obama's claims to be a consensus-builder, a guy who reaches across the aisle, are a steaming pile of bull doo-doo.

McCain has said in the past that he would rather lose than sell out the people. It sounded like trite campaign rhetoric at the time, but you have to give him credit, he has put his proverbial money where his mouth is.

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There have been two fundamental aspects of every leftist ideology in the last century. The first, of course, is a desire for government to have a much control over people’s lives as is possible, for government to make as many of people’s decisions for them as it can. The second is a desire to silence dissenting political voices.

The campaign to elect the leftmost presidential candidate since McGovern is already practicing the latter. They are threatening to pull the broadcast licenses of television stations that run NRA ads. They are threatening libel prosecutions against Obama critics in the Missouri. They are encouraging callers to jam phone lines to any radio show that interviews an Obama critic.

This is basic thuggery. I fear that this kind of thing would only increase in an Obama presidency. There will clearly be an attempt to shut down political talk radio by reinstituting the ironically named Fairness Doctrine. One can certainly imagine an attempt to harass or even shut down blogs critical of the new president, an effort which would surely find an ally in the agenda-driven folks at Google.

The sad irony is that this is a campaign which encouraged the spreading of fake book banning charges against the opposing VP candidate. Even as they try to suppress free speech themselves. Truly chilling.

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Thomas Jefferson once wrote, in a fit of pessimism, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

He would be horrified at the government of the 21st century.

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A spot-on definition of patriotism, from Jonah Goldberg: “[P]atriotism must involve not only devotion to American texts (something that distinguishes our patriotism from European nationalism) but also an abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation. We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is."

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Biofuels have driven up the worldwide food prices 75%, according to a World Bank report. To be a supporter of this nonsense, you really have to have contempt for the poor.

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Fascism in action: a woman was arrested for DWI with a 0.0 blood alcohol content.

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It’s hard to find a Democrat these days who will admit that he was not an anti-communist (or much less, was an anti-anti-communist) during the Cold War. Which raises the question: a decade or two from now, will there be anybody left who admits that they were against the (2003) Iraq war?

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