Good Question
Reason’s Tim Cavannaugh presents a poignant interrogative:
The Death of the Man-Made Global Warming Hoax
Pay no attention to the emails. Global warming is real, I say.
Just a few considerations in addition to previous remarks about the explosion of the East Anglia Climategate e-mails in America. The reaction is growing exponentially there. Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.
Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.
At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.
The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.
At this rate, Copenhagen is going to turn into a comedy convention with the real world laughing at these liars. Now is the time to mount massive resistance to the petty tyrants and hit them where it hurts – in the wallet. Further down the line there may be, in many countries, a question of criminal prosecution of anybody who has falsified data to secure funds and impose potentially disastrous fiscal restraints on the world in deference to a massive hoax. It’s a new world out there, Al, and, as you may have noticed, the climate is very cold indeed.
Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020
Computerworld – By the year 2020, you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.
Scientists at Intel’s research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains.
What could possibly go wrong?
My Piece on Judge Dread is in D’s December Issue
There’s always that guy who stays long after the party has ended. Drop all the hints you want. But he’s going through your music collection and checking to see if your couch folds out. Tell him you have an early meeting, and he’ll ask if you have anything to make a sandwich with.
Which brings us to Judge Charles Sandoval, arguably the most ineffective judge working in Dallas County today.
The party that Sandoval won’t let end gracefully started in 1996, when he took over the 380th District Court in Collin County
Read the rest online or in the print product.
UPDATE: Link fixed. Thanks to Joker’s Wild, Max Girth and Dear Amanda for alerting me. I’m leaving the comments — I’ll always edit other people’s comment mistakes on request, but my screw ups stay. Keeps me humble. Which is another of my great qualities. Hell, if there were a Humble Olympics, I’d take the gold.
Hide the Decline
You knew it, I knew it, and they knew it.
Man-made climate change is a hoax and a sham.
My Speech Will Be Fabulous. My Shoes, Not So Much
I’m speaking to the Log Cabin Republicans this Monday, Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. It’s open invite, but please RSVP here so they can have the right size room reserved.
What will I talk about? I may just recite Stan Smith’s speech. And work on my musical number:
Palin Derangement Brings Out Beta Males and Handwringers
Sarah Palin isn’t near as interesting as the reaction people have to Sarah Palin.
I'll be in my bunk.
Before I even start, some disclosure: I have far more I disagree with Sarah Palin on than I agree with her about. She’s a politician, and like all of them she talks more than she walks. Politicians, even the best of them, are at heart people who seek power and influence that they couldn’t earn rightfully in the private sector. Some rare few actually rise above popularity contestant status to becoming actual leaders and statesmen, but they’re as rare as white power forwards in the NBA.
So what I do like about Palin? For starters, she’s hot, and “real beauty is on the inside” is something ugly people say. Like it or not, people pay more attention to attractive people — this is why you’re reading my blog, after all — and in the great, horrible game of democracy getting people’s attention is a big part of it. I won’t lie — I like looking at her. (Don’t act like I’m the only one this shallow — the media has been telling us constantly and with a straight face that Barack and Michelle are attractive despite evidence to the contrary, so don’t go damning my hormones.)
More importantly, I like the glimmers of true federalism Palin’s shown on some issues. When asked about marijuana legalization, she says, well, here’s what I think, and here’s the argument against legalization…but this is what the Constitution says so let’s go with that. By which she means let states legalize if they want. Amazing concept, I know. She’s applied this thinking to gay unions and, despite her overbearing religious beliefs, it’s put her in a position where she’s more gay friendly than the current Democrat inhabiting the White House.
Even more, I just love how she brings out the worst in the people who keep telling us they’re the best — the opinion elite who work for cable networks with fewer viewers than Palin has Facebook friends, and old-line newspapers that no one reads except as a joke. These are the beta males, the unoriginal hacks and the professional hand-wringers who repeat the talking points of the day as if they’re original and drone on about “teaching moments” even though they’ve only ever taught people like me not to bother reading the New York Times for any reason: Frank Rich, Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, et al.
Tina Fey skit line mistaken for actual quote reference? Check. Beauty queen reference? Check. Quitting governorship after two years? Check. (Hey, didn’t Obama quit his Senate seat after less time? Shh.) Counterfactual reference to warddrobe bill? Check. Hack list complete.
Palin’s derided for being uninformed and not so intellectual by people who keep telling us that Barack Obama is intelligent and informed. Obama, you see, demonstrated his vast intellect on the campaign trail in all 58 states.
His intellect is so awesome his college transcripts and written thesis are sealed from public view. Obama’s shown it in his strong grasp of strategy in Afghanistan (he voted “present”), and his cool lack of bias in pointing out when cops act stupidly, while cautioning us not to rush to judgment over a militant Islamist who shouted “Allahu ackbar!” while on a killing spree at Fort Hood. Obama’s savvy in doing happy shout-outs to conference attendees when he went on the air to address the shootings? That’s how smart he is. And don’t get me started on his grasp of history and protocol.
Why, the man is so intelligent he creates (or saves!) millions of jobs in congressional districts that don’t even exist.
Seriously — it takes a unique mind to create government spending that even gives the Chinese government pause. But that’s our boy.
But back to Sarah. Really? The AP assigns 11 reporters to fact check her book (they found six “errors” that weren’t errors) but not one to Obama’s or, for that matter, Al Gore’s various global warming books and movie. How about Joe Biden’s?
Forget books — why weren’t these reporters covering issues like, I don’t know, the massive health care takeover that’s going to cost hundreds of billions more than the AP reported and which, it turns out, will make health insurance costs rise more than doing nothing, and which will cover illegal immigrants? (Obama did, in fact, “You lie!” it seems) Or to cover whether AG Holder is telling the truth when he said he alone made the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a New York criminal court with no input from Obama?
But no, mainstream media fact checking is reserved for Palin’s book. And Saturday Night Live skits that are critical of Obama.
Like the meaningless Nobel on Obama’s mantle, Sarah Palin’s very existence seems to undermine their chosen leader, since she accomplished more by the time she ran for Vice President than Obama has to this day.
She angers the media because she has more pull as a private citizen — she derailed the health care takeover momentum with two words on her Facebook page: death panels — than sitting in exile in the governor’s mansion in Alaskastan. (Loved watching the Obama people scramble to deny it, saying, “There are no death panels. And we’ll take them out.”) She reaches people without needing the media, something every last century journalist grinds his teeth over. How crappy do you feel as a professional gatekeeper when no one needs to use your gate?
Why do I think the opinion elite really hate her? Even they know how classless they look falling over themselves to try to destroy her. I mean — this is just pathetic. The ladies of the press and their female counterparts do protest way too much here:
As a libertarian who doesn’t like anyone in power and who isn’t that fond of democracy anyhow, what happens with Sarah Palin is pure spectator sport for me. I don’t think she’s uninformed at all — here’s the real story behind the lousy hack job interview Katie Couric did:
Palin mixes too much religion in her politics, too much populism in her appeal, and — at heart — she’s a politician like any other, with plenty of BS in her backstory.
But if.
If she were to make a hard left turn the left-wingers would embrace her in a heartbeat. She has a high Q score, so if she’s the face of your cause, you’re going to make headway.
So for me, if she were to grow on issues like federalism and take up the Goldwater standard — that government needs to stay out of the boardrooms and the bedrooms; that government needs to keep out of churches and who they wed and churches need to keep out of schools; and that 90 percent of what mainstream Republicans and Democrats want government to do the government has no business doing because of what the Constitution says — then we may be able to do some business.
(No, I don’t care if she’s like Dr. Zauis on evolution if she keeps her promise to not to push it on schools. She said in 2006: “I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”)
I’ll be watching. And so will everyone else, in spite of the girl fight slaps from the opinion geldings in New York and Washington.
Even if Sarah doesn’t go my way — fingers crossed but not holding my breath — watching the media embarrass themselves attacking her is worth the price of admission.
And Now We Have This…
I’m sure this was photoshopped. Surely even the clod knows better, right?
You’re Out of Your Element, Donnie
The fall of the Berlin Wall?
Best comment:
It is telling that Obama manages it involve himself in all sorts of issues unbecoming a President like having a beer with the cop and victim of a local law enforcement screw-up, giving speeches to captive-audience school children, and begging for the Olympics for his home town (not that his cronies would have profited from that, of course!). Then when there is an event of truly global and historic significance deserving of the stature and symbolism of an appearance by the President of the United States, he can’t be bothered to do more than essentially phone it in?
Obama, his own actions reveal, is just a lousy, thick-headed clod. No wonder he keeps his college transcripts sealed.
Make Mine Freedom: A Lesson from 1948
(hat tip/my mom)