Carbon emissions are more dangerous than I thought!

Thanks to James Taranto for the pointer to this beautiful piece from the Guardian:

Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report


It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.
[...]
"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

It's science! Little green men are green in more ways than one.

Quick hits 4/28

Some notables from my recent reading:

Mark Steyn on the fatuousness of our current nuclear weapons policy:

By the way, that’s another example of the self-indulgent irrelevance of Obama. The mound of corpses being piled up around the world today is not from high-tech nuclear states but from low-tech psycho states. It’s not that Britain has nukes and poor old Sudan has to make do with machetes. It’s that the machete crowd is willing to kill on an industrial scale and the high-tech guys can’t figure out a way to stop them. Perhaps for his next pointless yakfest the president might consider a machete nonproliferation initiative.

Nuclear technology cannot be un-invented. All you can do, as President Reagan understood when few others did, is invent something that will render it, if not yet obsolete, at least less lethal. Until that moment, what makes the difference is not the technology but the regime.

Indeed it is. You would think, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the knee jerk anti-nuke movement would have faded away, but now they’ve moved into positions of actual policy influence…scary.

A little more:

[T]here’s no correlation between peace and the number of weapons — except insofar as states with only a few nukes are more likely to use them than states with gazillions: If you’ve only got a dozen, you’re under more pressure to let ’em fly before they’re taken out by incoming. So the principle underpinning Obama’s Seventies-retro nuke summit — that the size of a civilized state’s stockpile adds to the global threat — is not just false but dangerously delusional. Likewise, the urge to forswear nuclear innovation. It would be greatly to the advantage of civilization if responsible powers were to develop new forms of limited, highly targeted, bunker-busting nukes.

Spot on.

******

Jeff Jacoby on the outcry over Spirit Airlines lowering ticket prices while making excess carry-on luggage an a la carte charge:

[I]f Schumer grieves so deeply about travelers being "nickeled and dimed" when they fly, why has he never gone after the US ticket tax, which adds 7.5 percent to the price of every domestic flight? Or the $16.50 the federal government charges for each international departure and arrival? Or the $17 in customs and inspection fees paid by passengers flying into US airports from abroad? Or the "passenger facilities charges" (up to $18 per round-trip)? Or the "US Security Service Fee" ($2.50 per departure)? Or the "domestic segment fee" ($3.70 per flight segment)? The government's unremitting "nickeling and diming"of airline passengers doesn't trouble the sleep of New York's senior senator. Only when a private firm acts does he toss and turn in anguish.

******

Jack Kelly on President Bush (43)’s missed opportunity to clean up the CIA:

[I]n the gravest mistake of his presidency, George W. Bush didn't clean house. He just threw money at the existing structure, which made a bad situation worse.

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Congress gave the CIA more than $3 billion to increase its deep cover capabilities overseas," Ishmael said. "The CIA was not able to field a single additional effective deep cover case officer overseas. The money was swallowed up into higher pay packages, expensive boondoggles, the enrichment of contracting companies run by former CIA employees, and the expansion of CIA offices within the United States."

As usually happens with government spending…

******

It’s sad when the people who show up to protest a Nazi rally end up being worse people than the actual Nazis:

A bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.

Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester's sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.

Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.

The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.

His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.

"Gosh, I think he just didn't have a clear message. I don't even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.

It turns out that some protests are violent (see also the anti-Arizona immigration law protests), it’s just that Tea Parties are not among them.

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James Taranto notes a delicious story of a government assault on freedom gone awry:

Southern California has suffered a "sudden increase of water main breaks that damaged numerous homes, businesses and streets." KCBS-TV reports that the problem was caused by the "conservation"--i.e., rationing--efforts of Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power:

DWP customers were restricted to watering their lawns on Mondays and Thursdays only, which caused everybody to water their lawns basically at the same time. As a result, water pressure dropped, and the pipes were submitted to more cycles of water pressure.

In other words, the maximum water pressure did not change, but the minimum did, and this cyclic pressure created fatigue on corroded pipes.

We got a kick out of the headlines on the KCBS Web site, though. The main headline reads, "DWP's Water Rationing Blamed for Water Main Breaks." But here's the subheadline: "Report: Water Main Breaks Were Mainly Fault of Public."

Stupid public. They should have known better than to follow the DWP's idiotic rules.

******

More Taranto, catching a global warmist being honest:

[From an article in Der Spiegel]:

German climatologist Hans von Storch now wants to see an independent institution recalculate the temperature curve, and he even suggests that the skeptics be involved in the project. He points out, however, that processing the data will take several years.

"There is no other way to regain the trust that has been lost," he says, "even if I'm certain that the new curve will not look significantly different from the old one."

And if it does? "That would definitely be the worst-case scenario for climatology. We would have to start all over again."

That's a revealing quote, isn't it? These climate guys have been insisting we're all doomed, and if it turns out they're wrong, that's the worst-case scenario for them.

Tuesday notes

A couple of things that caught my eye in yesterday's reading:

James Taranto makes a great point about the prolific smear campaign against Tea Parties: if the journalists, bloggers and politicians were really worried about political violence and incendiary rhetoric, they would tone down their own rhetoric out of fear. The very fact that they have ramped it up is de facto evidence, as well as an admission, that they know that there is nothing to fear from Tea Parties.

Another story in Monday's BOTWT noted yet another in the endless line of global warming frauds. Taranto's comment nails it:

Those of us outside "the scientific community," meanwhile, wonder how it can get away with continuing calling itself "scientific" when its conclusions are impervious to empirical testing.

Mainstreaming totalitarianism

A comment (fifth one down) from Reason's quick note on the despicable eco police state ad run by Audi nails it:

Imagine a Holocaust movie. Jews are in concentration camps. Regularly sent to gas chambers. Suddenly one man receives documents proving he is not a jew. He's set free. He walks away. Happy End.

This is what the ad is.

Why they think driving an Audi to save yourself from a fascist future will make people want to buy them is left as an exercise for mental health professionals.

Why warming is more chic than cooling was

Mark Steyn nails it, as usual, with his MacLeans column about why global warmism is so appealing:

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

Oh, wait. That was the last “scientific consensus” on “climate change,” early seventies version, as reflected in a CIA report from August 1974

Indeed. A lot of the loudest voices sounding the alarm over The Crisis Formerly Known as Global Warming are too young to even be aware that there was an equally urgent looming ice age crisis not much more than 3 decades ago.

The rest are old enough to know about it, but too dishonest to mention it, because that would be an admission that climactic scare mongering has a very poor track record.

Yet, when I reprised the line [that 30 year olds have seen no warming in their adult lives] in this space a couple of weeks back, thinking it was now safe for polite society, I was besieged by the usual “YOU LIE!!!!!!!” emails angrily denouncing me for failing to explain that the cooling trend of the oughts is in fact merely a blip in the long-term warming trend of the nineties.

Well, maybe. Then again, perhaps the warming trend of the nineties is merely a blip in the long-term ice age trend of the early seventies.

Why did apocalyptic warm-mongering take, where apocalyptic ice-mongering did not?

There were no fortunes to be made from government grants for bogus “renewable energy” projects. Unlike Al Gore, carbon billionaire, nobody got rich peddling ice offsets.

Precisely right: nobody was clever enough to figure out how to collect massive profits on the imminent ice age; today's scientists, pseudo-scientists, former VP's and assorted other hucksters have become rather more, ummm, entrepreneurial.

But profiteering only explains it for Al Gore and the few thousands of other guys who are in the pump and dump racket purely for the dough.

For the rest, the millions of true believers, it boils down to that most basic of human needs: religion.

Why did “climate change” remain the boutique scare-story of a few specialists last time round, and gain global traction this time round? In the Spectator, Maurizio Morabito puts it this way:
“Is the problem with the general public, who cannot talk about climate except in doom-laden terms, and for whom the sky is the last animist god?”

That last part explains a lot. Forty years ago conventional religious belief was certainly in decline in what we once knew as Christendom, but the hole was not yet ozone-layer sized. Once the sea of faith had receded far from shore, the post-Christian West looked at what remained and found “Gaia.” [...] [W]e’ve had climate change for four billion years. But now apparently there is an ideal state that Ma Mère has to be maintained in. A belief in a garden of Eden which man through sin has despoiled sounds familiar. But this time we get to pick. Not the Medieval Warm Period that causes the “scientific consensus” such problems, and not presumably the bucolic state the planet was in when Canada was 150 feet under, but some pristine condition somewhere in between.

When man was made in the image of God, he was fallen but redeemable. Gaia’s psychologically unhealthy progeny are merely irredeemable. Anti-humanism is everywhere [...]

Very few sciences could survive being embraced as a religion. Imagine the kind of engineering or math you’d get if it also had to function as a “faith tradition.” What’s also changed since the seventies is the nature of the UN and the transnational bureaucracies. Once it became obvious that “climate change” represents an almost boundless shakedown of functioning jurisdictions by dysfunctional basket cases, the die was cast. “Aid” is a discredited word these days and comes with too many strings attached. But eco-credits sluiced through an oil-for-food program on steroids offers splendid new opportunities for bulking up an ambitious dictator’s Swiss bank accounts.

And, because of this malign combination—corrupted science, ersatz religion, Third World opportunism—global warming took off in a way the old ice age never did. It would perhaps be too much to expect a generation of brainwashed schoolkids to shake off their brain-dead conformism. And so, between the anti-human left and an alliance of rapacious dictatorships, it now falls to a handful of economically expansive emerging nations—India, China, Brazil, a couple of others—to save the developed world from itself.

He notes the pandering to dictators without noting the very totalitarian mindset that underlies the entire movement, but that would be straying away from the point of the column: that packaging racketeering as religion, coupled with a cradle to grave propaganda campaign unmatched in modern human history, is the reason that "climate change" was able to sway the impressionable much more than the more modest campaign of the previous generation.

Quick hits 12/19

More links and tweets that have caught my eye, with a bit of commentary:

Telling sentence: “The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”

Some encouraging medical news.

The green mind at work: Prince Charles used up seven months’ worth of the average British person’s “carbon footprint” yesterday flying to Copenhagen on an executive jet to make a speech on climate change.

Oklahoma City’s Wednesday night shoes

John Stossel: “Someone will ration health care. In America, insurance companies usually do it. In most of the rest of the world, governments do. Costs skyrocket under both systems. Its time we tried the third option: let individuals use their own money to buy health care.”

John Hinderaker: “Don't fall for the pretense that the international ‘green’ movement is about anything other than anti-free enterprise and anti-American ideology.”

Robert Heinlein: “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.”

How many people remember that Obama, during his campaign, promised a net spending cut?

There are still 14 days left, but I’m declaring this the photo caption of the year.

And this the bookstore display of the year.

When the directions say “Roll it on over the head” this is NOT what it means.

Climate change: nature’s way.

Tiger and PC in domestic violence

Why does an attempt to transfer the right to make medical decisions from the people to government surprise anybody? Did you expect a Chicago machine politician to show an enthusiasm for civil liberties?

Foreign Object Damage asks: “Does it concern anyone else that anger is the only emotion that President Obama has displayed in public over the last month?” What, did you think he wasn’t really part of the Angry Left?

Thogocracy update: Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla) wants to imprison a local critic. This idiot exemplifies the police-state mindset.

John Stossel on the matter: “Bullies like Congressman Grayson illustrate the danger of government power; government is the only entity that can legally use force. That makes government a fearsome master. It can use force to take our money, and homes, and our freedom.”

From @Jeff_Jacoby: Ex-soldier finds a gun, turns it into the police, & is promptly arrested for possessing a firearm. Beyond Orwellian.

Happiest state ranking, Texas a disappointing 16th (Austin must be dragging us down).

Ridiculous photo caption editorializing.

Tweets from the wild Mavs-Rockets game I attended:
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Brace yourself: Mavs found pieces from two Landry teeth embedded in gash in Dirk's right elbow
From STEIN_LINE_HQ: Landry taken straight to hospital. Mavs needed 30 minutes to clean up Dirk's elbow just to get ready for X-rays.
From @kpelton: This Houston-Dallas game will not go down as a monument to quality NBA officiating.
From @MFollowill: Hearing stories the process of picking the teeth of dirk's elbow was quite gruesome. Didn't know if it was his bone or Landry's teeth. Wow!

Quick hits 12/14

John Stossel on Harry Reid: “Accusing someone of being a racist is typically a last desperate measure when someone has lost an argument.” Undeniably true.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier demonstrates that Reid had it exactly backward: “Those who fight the health care legislation fear being owned. They fear that every personal decision from cradle to grave will be manipulated by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. They fear easily accessible files, not unlike the IRS, where a government employee can know every private piece of information about the citizen’s life. They fear health care decisions made for financial expedience. In short, those who fight against this health care bill, don’t want to be owned by the government...Harry Reid is all about ownership… the government owns and the taxpayer is enslaved.”

I have used the taxation as slavery comparison before myself, and will again.

Why do people fall under the spell of hyped-up scare mongering like global warmism? Don Surber hits the nail on the head: “a lot of it is a need for religion among irreligious people. The idea of man's sins causing punishment by nature is nearly universal in history...From the ancient Greeks - not exactly a primitive people - to the modern Australian aborigines, the tribes of men share in common a desire to connect their behavior to natural phenomenon.”

Epic win indeed!

Jonathan Abrams on the challenge that is the triangle.

Lest you think that it was only Washington driving the (largely government created) housing crisis.

John Hinderaker busts Obama pretending that “the world recognized” driving Saddam out of Kuwait was a just cause. In fact, the American and international left were bitterly opposed to Bush the Elder on this and Senate Democrats voted 45-10 (including the current VP) to block it.

That said, he may not be lying here, as he has proven to be ignorant of (even recent) history on so many occasions. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and call it ignorance.

Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say that they've seen a ghost and more than twice as likely to believe in astrology. Democrats are also more than twice as likely to have consulted a fortune teller.

Kim Strassel points out that the EPA’s attempt to blackmail Congress into passing some form of Cap and Tax is a boon for the legislators; they can call the bluff and avoid the wrath of the voters and leave the administration to own it.

The AP assigns 11 “fact checkers” to Palin’s book, 5 to Climategate. Remember when it was a straight news organization?

Is the 3D TV screen at the Death Star the dumbest idea ever? Because, you know, you’re there, if you want a 3D image WATCH THE GAME.

The Senate health care bill amendment to limit attorney contingency fees on medical malpractice failed by a 66-32 vote. That is conclusive proof that the pro “reform” side has no interest whatsoever in controlling medical costs. A primary goal of these various bills is to transfer wealth from doctors and patients to trial lawyers, as a political favor.

Classic dumb criminal story

Ed Morrissey: “Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did Hillary Clinton.”

Least surprising news ever: “New research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.”

East Anglia CRU is stepping up their hiding of climate data. These people are as crooked as an old catcher’s fingers.

This is what astroturf looks like

Quick hits 12/10

John Stossel on global warmism: “With millions dying from malnutrition, poor hygiene, and malaria, the world’s poobah’s want to spend trillions on a theoretical problem.”

From @gordonkeith: I can't believe Tiger was betrayed by a reality TV chick. They usually are very private and discreet.

Copenhagen hypocrisy: "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand…We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

The Wall Street Journal on what government can do to help create jobs: “If Congress won't reduce taxes, the best stimulus now would be for Congress to stop scaring private job creators by promising to help them. Just do nothing at all.”

Some may find the Obama/Democrat attempt to reduce charitable giving via taxation to be counterintuitive, they being the supposed party that cares about the downtrodden. But in fact it is perfectly consistent with their vision, which is to advance government as the distributor of goodies. Private charity, seen as good thing to most of us, is seen as a competitor to be crushed by those of the statist mindset.

More from @gordonkeith: I would say that I am the Tiger Woods of sexting, but I guess he is now.

Thomas Sowell: “What does ‘economic justice’ mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?”

Along the same line: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for?”

More Sowell: “Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it ‘brings down the cost of medical care.’ You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?”

And one more: “Government pressures on mortgage lenders to accept less than the full amount they are owed may win votes for politicians, since there are far more borrowers than lenders. But how much future lending can be expected when the lenders know that politicians are ready to intervene at any time to prevent them from getting their money back?”

James Taranto:
Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There's a consensus that it's going to change, so they've decided to keep us in the dark.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB10001424052748703499404574557583017194444.html

The (British) NHS Cancer Plan has a cut-off age of 70, meaning half of those diagnosed with cancer are ineligible for treatment. See how government health care works?

Stuff Hipsters Hate

Quick hits 12/9

Some notable links, quotes and tweets:

I’m loving this idea.

Why Switzerland Has The Lowest Crime Rate In The World

Deceiver.com: “Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking.”

Wow! From @djturtleface: The Grizzlies drafted a player older then their average team age this year. Bet that's a record.

Bailout, Stimulus II, Government Spending: Still Totally Unpopular

Fascism update from @Jeff_Jacoby: Global warming alarmists want the U of Wisconsin to revoke the PhD of Pat Michaels, a notable climate skeptic. http://bit.ly/5N38s9

From @BrianFDonahue via @mkhammer: Who would have ever predicted this? Obama administration predicts $30B loss on auto bailout http://bit.ly/7GUHQn

This kind of shows the triviality of the gay “marriage” debate, doesn’t it? THE issue for gays is defeating radical Islam, the rest pales.

Occupational Licensing Abuse in Texas

Dems considering a lower Medicare age requirement? Great plan for a program that is already $37 trillion underfunded with the age as it is.

John Stossel: “Hidden taxes are more pernicious because they disguise what we pay for government. We blame merchants, not our legislators, for the high price of gasoline, liquor, cigarettes and phone calls, but the money goes to the political thieves.”

Walter Willaims: "Politicians are worse than thieves. At least when thieves take your money, they don't expect you to thank them for it."

Interesting (and obvious) observation from an Indian UN delegate: “It is morally wrong for us to agree to reduce (emissions) when 40% of Indians do not have access to electricity.”

Nice illustration of the global warming mindset, a Der Spiegel piece by Christian Schwagerl: “If the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably begin to boil.”

So much of the global warmist movement is about pure envy, jealousy over the success of the US and its people and a desire for us to commit economic suicide so that our people would be forced to live as Europeans do, instead of the lifestyles that we have earned.

The effort to sell health care reform as the solution to our problems is meant for politically uninformed and unsophisticated voters. One thing the last few months has shown us is that the more people learn about the issues, the more likely they are to reject an increased government role.

Vaclav Klaus, a man who knows a little bit about tyranny: "The biggest source of dangers for freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century ceased to be socialism, but it is now an ambitious, very arrogant, and almost unscrupulous ideology of a political movement . . . of environmentalism."

Quick hits 12/8

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

I do have to give Obama credit for his sense of humor, in making light of the stimulus job fudging fiasco by following his ceremonial Thanksgiving turkey pardon with “All told, I believe it’s fair to say that we have saved or created four turkeys.”

AARP *opposes* the McCain amendment to block any Medicare benefit reductions, with the explanation "The legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits." They don’t even pretend to care more about seniors than they do about Democrats anymore, do they?

Not that that should be construed as me disagreeing with Medicare cuts, but I would like to see them as standalone policy, not as part of increasing government’s role in medical care. The growth of government’s role is one of the primary forces that has distorted the market and gotten us into this inflationary spiral.

From @forumbluegold: RE: Artest and Hennessy. I'm very glad all the stupid s&$#% I did at 19 doesn't end up in magazines. (Amen to that!)

Charles Johnson completes his transformation from right wing extremist to raving moonbat. I’m guessing he went from being a Phillies fan to being a Yankees fan this year as well.

Health care bill gives states incentives to drop out of Medicaid.

A roundup of Tiger Woods jokes.

Don’t know the source of this quote, but it’s money: “You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Stimulus math.

Another thing government should not be doing.

House of cards tumbling: Australia ditches cap and trade in Climategate's aftermath

Culture of Corruption update.

Your stimulus dollars at work.

Quick hits 12/1

Some quick tweets and links that have caught my eye:

From @mkhammer: Obama rhetoric flashback, March '09: "So, let me be clear...that cause could not be more just."

From @MoRocca via @freeloosedirt: Obama to send 30,002 troops to Afghanistan (congrats, Tareq and Michaele Salahi! This time you're invited.)

Interesting, as it moves the timeline back: @senatus: Harkin: We will deliver a health care bill to Obama before the State of the Union (on MSNBC). (via @wonkroom)

Bacon: the gateway meat

The Next Right: “please explain why the Downing Street memo was definitive proof of a rush to judgment and Climategate isn't.”

Why Tiger’s not talking

Why the need to rig climate “science”? Money, of course.

Government in action.

Hypocrisy's poster child

VDH on charlatan Al Gore:

“To distill Gorism is to live in a 1,000 sq. ft. solar house, bike to work, and take the train on long distances; but to promote Gorism, one lives in a mansion, jets on private planes, and is chauffeured from airport to conference center—a rather heavy carbon footprint indeed."

Bingo. That he's only been doing it to line his pockets should be clear to everybody by now.

How to save energy

The brilliant wit of James Tarnato:

"A world-first experiment to try and reduce energy use for the day on the Isles of Scilly was foiled after a turn in the weather caused participants to use more electricity," London's Daily Telegraph reports.

In the day-long experiment, Scilly people were asked to follow "a series of guidelines including switching off unnecessary lights and TVs when not in use and only filling kettles with the exact amount of water required." Result: Energy use dropped, but by only 1%.

The reason: "Organiser Dr Matt Prescott said the experiment was undermined by bad weather--which saw people using more power than usual." The experiment might well have been a success had it been conducted a day earlier, when it was sunny and warm.

Which leads us to a thought. What if there were a way of changing the climate so that the weather was warmer all over the world? We realize this is probably unrealistic, but if it could be done, it would be a great way to save energy.

Pow!

The gift that keeps on giving

I'm talking, of course, about John Kerry, who has the hat.

His latest gem: "Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6% reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14%."

So the consort/Senator doesn't really have a problem with the recession, indeed, he would like to see it deepen into a permanent depression. No wonder he has been a staunch supporter of the "Stimulus", a massive new energy tax and a government takeover of the health care industry, measures which are steps in that direction.

Global warming update

Parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin under a frost warning...in August. "[R]esidents there should consider protecting their sensitive plants."

Hey, I've got an idea: let's drive hundreds of millions worldwide into poverty with draconian, economy-crushing carbon emission mandates!

Lying green exposed

Gerd Leipold, retiring leader of Greenpeace, admits that he organization fabricated claims that Arctic ice will melt by 2030.

But he "defended the organization’s practice of 'emotionalizing issues' in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion." Put another way, he defended the organization's practice of lying to try to mislead the public into backing their initiatives.

Not only that, he dropped his guard long enough to admit that the true goal of the green movement has nothing to do with the planet or the environment: "Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world."

Environmentalism is not a pro-planet ideology, it is an anti-human ideology. Environmental concerns, some real but most imagined, are just an excuse for government to exert complete control over people's lives, to crush freedom and individualism. With all due respect to Islamic fascism, it is the great totalitarian threat of the 21st century.

Quick hits

Some short notes, probably mostly dated due to my week plus on the shelf with the flu.

Mickey Kaus: “If you don’t want people to think that subsidized, voluntary end-of-of-life counseling sessions are the camel’s nose of an attempt to cut costs by limiting end-of-life care, then don’t put them in a bill the overarching, stated purpose of which is to cut health care costs!

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Flashback: Wal-Mart vs FEMA, private sector vs government…guess who prepared for and responded to Katrina better?

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It was nice of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to give the Iranian regime a PR boost by referring to Aquavelvajad (love that Dennis Miller nickname) as the “elected” president of Iran, a quote that was hyped endlessly in the Iranian state TV and press. Every regime needs their useful idiots.

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Things you would see if the left ran the world: government tracking your movement via GPS in order to tax you.

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Certainly a grain of truth in this from Moe Lane, which is actually imitating the style of anti-Bush attacks: “[T]he antiwar movement is run by racists who only like brown people when they can be used as clubs with which to beat anybody to the antiwar movement’s Right. Well, anyone to their Right, and Jews.”

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Little Green Footballs: “This [Israel pounding Hamas in Operation Cast Lead] is one of those ludicrous media memes that refuses to die: fighting against evil only makes evil stronger. You’ll see it in articles about every conflict; it’s a kind of nihilistic philosophical tic that is nearly universal, a counterintuitive observation that’s supposed to impress you with its depth.”

Appeasers are not the most creative sorts, I’ll agree.

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Your congress in action: “Just last week Washington announced it would cut $100 million from the federal administrative budgets and acted like that was some big achievement. Now this week we learn that about the same time those cuts were made public, the House OK’d the purchase of the private jets. The taxpayer money the House plans to spend is to be used to buy three Gulfstream G550s at roughly $65 million each. These are long-range business jets with large, palatial interiors and three temperature zones.”

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Government in action: The guidelines in the House-passed bill state that large SUVs and trucks, typically considered gas guzzlers in everyday conversation, qualify for the $3,500 credit, and in some cases the $4,500 credit, depending on the trade-ins that come through the door for them. New Category 2 trucks -- like the Hummer H-3, Ford Explorer, Chevy Silverado, and Toyota Tundra -- qualify if they get at least 15 MPG combined, and get at least one mile per gallon more than the car or truck being traded in.

And now for some frivolity

Who isn’t touched by a nice love story? Like…the sacred bond between the guy who likes children and the girl who likes beagles. Okay, not exactly Lifetime movie fare.

Proof there is a God, and He is a just God: Explorers On Global Warming Expedition Stranded in North Pole by Cold Weather

Don’t you wish that Harry Carey was alive and doing SWAC basketball?

Does this Baylor tennis player have a sister named Miso?

Dept. of Unfortunate Appellations:

World’s worst video game, the Helen Keller Simulator

Worst…death…ever.

Greatest story ever?: The world of Mexican midget wrestling was rocked to its tiny foundations this week, when a pair of pint-sized, twin performers were murdered -- apparently by poison-wielding hookers they met in a sleazy bar.

I can’t imagine why this street name fell out of favor.

Not getting the whole cap concept.

We didn’t start the flame war.

She should have SEALed it up.

Gifts for your baby mama, even if your baby’s white and she’s Latina.

Unfortunate patio furniture.

Finally, I’ve found some help.

For the woman who’s too lazy to actually wear a thong.

Why I don’t trust card players.

Quick hits

Some things I've run across, with limited commentary, combined to avoid a bunch of really short posts:

Thomas Donlan: “Once a government gets the idea that it can control the economy, or at least smooth off the rough edges of the business cycle, there's trouble ahead."

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Bizarre statement by Obama in a speech in Africa: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top".

He’s correct, but what on earth is he talking about? In this country the government skims off about double that, and the president is trying to GROW the government.

What a hypocrite.

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What a difference a few years makes. Under Bush, we famously had jobless recovery for a while. Under Obama, we have job-loss recovery.

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Dick Morris: “Obama’s health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it. The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.”

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John Roberts echoes my own beliefs on “empathy” and the role of a judge in this quote from his confirmation hearing in 2005: “If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.”

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Indiana governor Mitch Daniels refers to Obama’s domestic programs as “shock and awe statism.” Perfect.

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President Bush (43) gets too much abuse from some quarters and too much of a pass from others, but one thing that we should not forget: the man did more for the people of Africa than anybody who has ever lived.

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Dems unintentionally let us in on how they really feel about Cap and Tax with the unemployment provision that provides 70% of your salary (in addition to any other standard unemployment benefits) is you lose your job because of the bill. That’s a clear admission that they realize it will destroy a lot of jobs.

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Mark Steyn: "Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential."

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More Steyn, on what our future may look like with a government health care takeover: "Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.' Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his 'lifestyle choices' get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical."

The national energy tax bill

As you may know, Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote today on what a "cap and trade" bill, more accurately known as "cap and tax" and what really boils down to a massive national tax increase on everybody who uses any form of energy, either directly or indirectly (for example, if you have electricity in your home or if you eat).

Since you may not have taken time to read this bill, the Powerline guys have stepped up to help you out with this handy chart...looks like a great idea to me!

Global Warmism is the great totalitarian threat of the 21st Century. Like the totalitarian ideologies of the last century, proponents pretend that it's only for your own good that they want government to take control of your life.

Truly free citizens are much too threatening to their Utopian fantasies, thus the continuing struggle between between the people and those who seek to control them. Global warming and socialized medicine are but the latest fronts in this ongoing battle.