Enjoy The Day

A liberal Roanoke Times columnist is celebrating this morning the heavy hand of government coming down on the least powerful and most abused segment of American society - the smoker:

Smoke pollution at restaurants ends today
By Dan Casey

Beginning today, the foul, choking and potentially deadly fumes from burning tobacco will be absent from the vast majority of Virginia bars and restaurants.

For the many diehards who light up over their morning cups of coffee at Waffle House over on Franklin Road or in Troutville or Northwest Roanoke, that may cause some early-day jitters.

Tough. [link]

Tough.  Yeah.  Real tough.  Casey doesn't like the smell you give off.  So don't enter ever again any coffee shop that he chooses to waddle into.  Or any that he'll never patronize at any point in his remaining lifetime.  Or he'll have the law down on you.  Hard.

And that's tough.

Someday we can only hope that a law is passed that keeps liberal assholes like Dan Casey out of close proximity to people who are not so hate-filled and who are not so monstrously hostile to their fellow Americans.  Americans who do him no harm by wanting a cigarette with their morning coffee.  And who simply wish to be left alone to themselves.

People like Dan Casey give off a smell too.  One that I find particularly putrid.  We should have a law.

Some day, Dan.  Some day.

- - -

It should be noted, I guess, that I don't smoke.

Really

Gun rights ensure public safety

Gun rights shouldn't trump public safety

Gun rights ensure public safety

Do They Even Read The Papers?

HARRY_READ_ME.txt to ignorant Washington Post columnist: Pick up a newspaper before you make a fool of yourself.

Eugene Robinson:

Climate-change skeptics are barking up the wrong smokestack. The shell game being played isn't with the science, it's with the solutions -- specifically, the carbon emissions targets that enlightened world leaders are pledging to meet. That's where the numbers don't add up.

Really?

Let's let the computer programmer who was in charge of creating a sequence of instructions to enable the Climatic Research Unit's computer to bring order to its data and make sense of the algorithms the "scientists" there cooked up decide whether the science behind global warming theory is a "shell game":

"I am very sorry to report that the rest of the databases seem to be in nearly as poor a state as Australia was. There are hundreds if not thousands of pairs of dummy stations, one with no WMO and one with, usually overlapping and with the same station name and very similar coordinates. I know it could be old and new stations, but why such large overlaps if that's the case? Aarrggghhh! There truly is no end in sight."

"What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have :-)"

Would someone buy newspaper columnist Eugene Robinson a newspaper so that he can catch up on the news?

The Impetus Behind the Global Warming Movement

Like every other marketing ploy - M.O.N.E.Y.

Meet Al Gore at Copenhagen, for $1,209
By Jennifer Harper, Washington Times

A fleeting few moments with a former vice president now goes for $1,209.

"Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen."

"Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference," notes the Danish tourism commission, which is helping Mr. Gore promote "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," his newest book about global warming in all its alarming modalities.

"Tickets are available in different price ranges for the event. If you want it all, you can purchase a VIP ticket, where you get a chance to shake hands with Al Gore, get a copy of Our Choice and have your picture taken with him. The VIP event costs DKK 5,999 and includes drinks and a light snack."

How much is that in American dollars? The currency conversion says all too: 5,999 Danish kroners is equivalent to $1,209.

"If you do not want to spend that much money, but still want to hear Al Gore speak about his latest book about climate challenges, you can purchase general tickets, ranging in price from DKK 199 - 1,499 depending on where in the room you want to sit," the practical Danes advise for the Dec. 16 event. [link]

Personally?  I wouldn't walk across the street to get some of those internets that he invented if he was giving them away for free.  I wouldn't let my cats near him if he were the only scratching post in the room. I wouldn't let my children be in the same room with him if he was dressed up like Santa Claus and was handing out Christmas cheer.  I wouldn't go into a tavern if he was in a mud wrestling contest with Roseanne Barr.  I wouldn't visit him in prison if ... well, let me think about that one.

Mr. Environmentalist is selling breathing space.  Books will be written.

- - -

Actually the price of being in the presence of greatness has gone up since this article was written.  Based on ever-fluctuating currency exchange rates (and on a sinking dollar), it will cost you $1,214.32 to be in the same room with the god of the environment.

Better get your tickets soon.  The price will only go up from there.

He is, after all, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, for Gaia's sake.

Cartoon of the Day

Global Warming Science ...

... Fiction.

Good news

The asshole who killed those four police officers out in Lakewood, Washington is reported by Fox News this a.m. to have been hunted down and killed.

It's a good day.

Amusing

Everyone's favorite punching bag, Andrew Sullivan (because he tends to write before he thinks and contradicts himself from one column or blog post to the next), picked on the wrong guy.  The retaliation is painful to watch.

Charles Krauthammer:

The quintessential Andrew Sullivan

Blogger Andrew Sullivan charged Sunday that, whereas in December of last year I advocated a gasoline tax, in my “latest column” on climate change, “the gas tax idea is missing.”

“Why?” asks Sullivan. Because: “In the end, the conservative intelligentsia is much more invested in obstructing and thereby neutering Obama and the Democrats than in solving any actual problems in front of us. It’s a game for them, and they play it with impunity.”

He calls this “The Positioning Of Charles Krauthammer,” a demonstration of rank partisanship and bad faith.

However, there’s a slight problem with Sullivan’s analysis.

Note the date: May 30, 2008. A year and a half ago. At the time, George Bush was president. Barack Obama hadn’t even won the Democratic nomination, let alone become president of the United States. The column has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama.

Sullivan's entire ad hominem conclusion -- that my views are animated by nothing but the basest, most corrupt partisan motives -- turned out to be a complete invention based on his inability to read dates. And, characteristically, on total ignorance of the subject he is writing about -- in this case, my views on a gasoline tax.

Sullivan’s post merits reading as the quintessential Sullivan, leaping from nonexistent fact to blanket ad hominem without even a pause for a reality check. Enjoy it here.

The quintessential Andrew Sullivan.  Excellent.

Another Reason The Global Warmists Lost II

They ignore the realities that are smacking them upside the head.

From one of the leading climate scientists on the planet:

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't."

Yet the AP's resident environmentalist sees things otherwise.

Seth Borenstein:

Global Warming Has Sped Up Since Kyoto
Writing in Time magazine

Washington — Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen:

• The world's oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.

• Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.

• Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests. [link]

Oh, and presumably with a straight face, Borenstein adds a fourth bullet:

• Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.

0.4°.  (Most estimates put the number at 0.2°, but neither is anything more than a rounding error or calculations that easily fall within what is called the margin of error).

0.4°.  The temperature outside has risen more than that since I started writing this post and yet no wildfires have ensued and no butterflies have expired.

But beyond that bit of idiocy, there is what we call reality:

The planet has not warmed at all this century.

How much longer are these snakes going to get away with this?

Time To Laugh

Unfortunately for the members therein, it's the world's scientific community that is now the butt of jokes.  Not that they don't deserve it:

Warming will 'wipe out billions'
By Jenny Fyall, The Scotsman

Most of the world's population will be wiped out if political leaders fail to agree [on] a method of stopping current rates of global warming, one of the UK's most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only around 10 per cent of the planet's population – around half a billion people – will survive if global temperatures rise by 4C.

Anderson's warning comes just eight days before global leaders meet in Copenhagen for the most crucial talks on climate change reversal since the Rio summit in 1992. Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were "terrifying". [link]

To think: Bullshit like this actually played well not long ago.  (It reminds me of that movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," in which global warming brings freezing temperatures to North America the likes of which had never been recorded before.  Huh?  Warming brings about freezing ...?  OK.  Don't think too hard on it.  Just accept the premise and cower.)

But this doomsday silliness no longer works.  The world now knows the kind of "scientists" who are trying to foster such skulduggery.  The deceitful kind.  The political kind.  The Nobel Prize winning Professor Al Gore kind.

The global warming kind.

Sorry, fellas.  To quote Melvin Udall: "Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."

- - -

Paul Tortland:

Over the years, science and the rigors of scientific inquiry have been held up as shining examples of the pursuit of truth unsullied by the vagaries of political discourse or influence. People learned to trust scientists for this very reason. What was deemed to be supported by science was held aloft as truth — after all, the science "proved" it!

However, once the scientists are revealed to be nothing more than the "wizards" behind the curtain, mere charlatans passing off parlor tricks as "science," the veil of impartiality is torn asunder, along with the trust that we had learned to place in them.

Science.  "Saturday Night Live."  There once was a difference.

Oh, Stop

I'm being too distrusting.  Much like that cowboy of a former president.

U.S. to stop counting new missiles in Russia

No worries. Obama will charm them and all will be well.

Obama Was Going To Change The World

After what's taken place in the first months of his administration one begins to wonder if it's a major struggle for the guy to decide to change his underwear:

Decisions, Decisions
By James Taranto, Best of the Web

If it seems as though the world is moving faster than ever before, maybe that's just because the White House is moving so slowly. To take an example at random, on Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush gave an address to a joint session of Congress about the war on terror. On Nov. 13, 54 days later, allied troops liberated Kabul. On Sept. 9, 2009, President Obama gave an address to a joint session of Congress in which he pointedly mentioned Afghanistan only as part of an illogical argument for massively higher domestic spending. [Today], 83 days later, Obama will give another speech, this one on Afghanistan.

And what's going to be the thrust of his address?  Here's how: We're going to go into the fight with relentless determination until victory is achieved with a working understanding of how we are going to extricate ourselves from the fight.  [link]

Huh?

Taranto:

This is going to be stirring, isn't it? With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down! Let every nation know that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, to ratchet back our presence after the buildup! Either you are with us or you are with those who would fail to make clear that a significant American presence will remain, not just for a while but for a long while!

It sounds as though, after months of indecision, the president has finally resolved to be irresolute. It seems that his central strategic goal is to displease no one. Unless the speech turns out to be markedly different from what the Times leads us to expect--and let us hope it does--it will only reinforce the impression that he is a ditherer.

It's a tough job.  No doubt about it.  Where's Jeremiah Wright when he needs him?

This Was Predicted

You were told he was inexperienced and unqualified.  You didn't listen.  You instead went with that silly "hope" and "change" nonsense.  So here's what it gets you:

The Unmasking of Barack Obama
By Peter Wehner, Commentary Magazine

On almost every front, progress is nonexistent. In many instances, things are getting worse rather than better. The enormous goodwill that Obama’s election was met with hasn’t been leveraged into anything useful and tangible. Rather, our allies are now questioning America’s will, while our adversaries are becoming increasingly emboldened. The United States looks weak and uncertain. It’s “amateur hour at the White House,” according to Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former official in the Carter administration. “Not only are things not getting fixed, they may be getting more broken,” according to Michael Hirsh at Newsweek. When even such strong Obama supporters as Gelb and Hirsh reach these conclusions, you know things must be unraveling.

It’s no mystery as to why. President Obama’s approach to international relations is simplistic and misguided. It is premised on the belief that American concessions to our adversaries will beget goodwill and concessions in return; that American self-abasement is justified; that the American decline is inevitable (and in some respects welcome); and that diplomacy and multilateralism are ends rather than means to an end.

With every passing month, Barack Obama looks more and more like his Democratic predecessor Jimmy Carter: irresolute, unsteady, and overmatched. The president and members of his own party will find out soon enough, though, that Obama the Impotent isn’t what they had in mind when they elected him. We are witnessing the unmasking, and perhaps the unmaking, of Barack Obama. [link]

Good grief.

And there are at least three more years to go.

Thanks a lot.

Uh

OK, This Christmas decoration is borderline weird:

Kinda creative, though.

Click on the image to enlarge it.