From On High

Enjoy The Day

2009-12-01T07:34:00.004-05:00

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

2009-12-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

Gun rights ensure public safety

Gun rights shouldn't trump public safety

Gun rights ensure public safety

Do They Even Read The Papers?

2009-12-01T07:24:00.001-05:00

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 Climate 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

2009-12-01T07:17:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Global Warming Science ...

... Fiction.

Good news

2009-12-01T06:56:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-01T06:44:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-01T06:21:00.001-05:00

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

2009-12-01T06:15:00.002-05:00

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

2009-12-01T05:57:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-01T05:18:00.001-05:00

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

2009-12-01T04:33:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-01T04:02:00.000-05:00

OK, This Christmas decoration is borderline weird:

Kinda creative, though.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

To Think ...

2009-11-30T05:50:00.000-05:00

... they still consider themselves to be holier than thou. And still above reproach:

Objective Journalism: Michael Gerson Defends a Profession That No Longer Exists
By John Nolte

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

How absurd.

A non-partisan, unbiased news media simply doesn’t exist anymore. All that remains of this once somewhat respectable profession are two kinds of media: those who lie about their agenda and those who don’t – and Mr. Gerson’s employer is one of the liars. Whether it’s Glenn Beck, Arianna Huffington, National Review or MSNBC, tell me your biases upfront and we can at least start a dialogue from an honest foundation. On the other hand, the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and the like, have spent years making jerks out of us – lying to our faces. We knew this, there just wasn’t any alternative. But now that there is, their time is just about up.

Gerson doesn’t seem to want to face this truth – I don’t mean the truth that Big Media’s dying, that’s undeniable — but the truth that the death of this profession was a suicide. [link]

The "Gerson" to whom Nolte refers is Michael Gerson of the Washington Post. His whine can be found here.

The Seeds Of Their Own Destruction

2009-11-30T05:33:00.000-05:00

Why leftists and the press will fight mightily to ignore the news - the facts - about Climategate,

The Anchoress:

In a nutshell, Climategate is a destroyer of world-views. As someone who has always maintained that the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] hype was a matter of politicians and grifters seizing an opportunity to use unsettled science as a means of getting filthy rich while imposing harsh measures against human freedom, I am very familiar with the world-view of the alarmists.

That’s basically it. The AGW/Climate Change question became a rigorous boondoggle that got out of control not because the scientist who first suggested a connection between human carbon emission and a change in climate were bad people, or that the question was not worth asking, but because bad people then took the uncertain hypothesis, put it on media-fueled steroids, demonized anyone who disagreed with them, made it political -so much so that even the scientists got caught up in the good/bad, smart/stupid, Gore/Bush, Left/Right identifiers- and found real power there; they allowed the AGW movement to become the dubious centering pole upholding the giant circus tent of their worldviews.

As such, it is not permitted to be shaken. Shake the centering pole, and everything could come tumbling down: Oh. My. Gawd! If the Gore-doubters were right about this, what else might they be right about? And if they’re all stupid, and I’m smart, but they’re right and I’m wrong . . .

Implosion. [link]

I remember being called neanderthal for doubting the global warming business. They were smart, I was stupid, they were right, I was wrong ...

A Shot Across The Bow

2009-11-30T05:10:00.001-05:00

Words have meaning. And with the words "Commander in Chief" come a great deal of weighty responsibilities. Obama's now finding that out.

But is he up to the task?

Will He Prove Them Wrong?
By Jennifer Rubin, Commentary magazine

The Washington Post’s editors are nervous about the president’s upcoming speech on Afghanistan ...

Here Obama has made his own job worse. By empowering the likes of Joe Biden and his domestic policy advisers to second-guess the recommendation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and to warn openly of the domestic consequences of embracing the only viable plan for victory, the president has signaled that he’s looking over his shoulder. The sole target of his concern has not been the enemy and the horrendous potential consequences of a halfhearted effort. Instead he’s been fixated on his left-wing base. He’s obsessed over an exit strategy, forgetting that his predecessor won a war without one and that George W. Bush’s wartime troubles stemmed not from failing to promise an end date but from letting a losing strategy persist too long. Obama’s also muddied the waters on the identity of the enemy and whether we can achieve “victory,” a word never uttered but essential to leading a war effort.

Now, as the editors note, “Both Americans and Afghans wonder whether the president believes in the war and has the will to win it.” [link]

His enemies know full well that he has no interest in winning this war. Even his friends will acknowledge that it's little more than a tedious campaign pledge that requires his occasional attention and propels his actions. In either case, lives are going to be lost in Afghanistan for the worst of reasons. We're there and we'll continue to be there. Oh, well.

Our brave men and women who volunteered to go into harm's way deserved better.

It's Amazing ...

2009-11-30T05:04:00.000-05:00

... how earth-shaking something seemingly as innocuous as a HARRY_READ_ME.txt file can be.

Earth-shaking in that the liberal movement to push the planet into one-world governance is in the process of crumbling to rubble.

I wonder if the man or woman who released that file to the world will be handed Al Gore's Nobel Prize some day.

Stop Them Before They Act

2009-11-30T04:52:00.000-05:00

World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen next month to hammer out a plan to stop CO2 emissions from further warming the globe. But it has become obvious to anyone who isn't eager to tax and regulate humans like never before that the reason for their meeting has been proven to be a complete fraud. Yet they'll meet anyway. And tax / regulate if they can get away with it.

What's wrong with this picture:

Global warming consensus: garbage in, garbage out
By Michael Barone, Washington Examiner

The Copenhagen climate summit was convened to get the leaders of nations to commit to sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions -- and thus sharp reductions in almost all energy usage, at huge economic cost -- in order to prevent disasters that supposedly were predicted with absolute certainty by a scientific consensus.

But that consensus was based in large part on CRU data that was, to take the charitable explanation, "complete rubbish" or, to take the more dire view, the product of deliberate fraud.

Australian geologist Ian Plimer, a global warming skeptic, is ... blunt. The e-mails "show that data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded date for independent examination."

For those of us who have long suspected that constructing scientific models of climate and weather is an enormously complex undertaking quite possibly beyond the capacity of current computer technology, the CRU e-mails are not so surprising.

Do we really suppose that anyone can construct a database of weather observations for the entire planet and its atmosphere adequate to make confident predictions of weather and climate 60 years from now? Predictions in which we have enough confidence to impose enormous costs on the American and world economies? [link]

Al Gore will tell you yes. But Al Gore has demonstrated over the years that he's not very bright and is prone to delusion.

So we're going to alter our way of life for this?

I don't think so.

Tragedy In Lakewood, WA

2009-11-30T04:28:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin has some valuable background information on that asshole who murdered four police officers out in Lakewood, Washington. As is often the case, it's a matter of an extremely violent animal being given leniency over and over and over again by a disinterested government. And now four of America's finest are dead.

My God.

Gov't In Action

2009-11-29T07:27:00.000-05:00

I wonder if the kids over at the Roanoke Times - the ones who are really big on the government takeover (and assured destruction) of what most Americans consider to be the finest health care delivery system the world has ever devised - think about their position when they read the column penned by one of their own - Luanne Traud - that has to do with her attempting, on three different occasions, to go down to the government-run DMV and obtain a simple driver's license.

Yeah, I wonder.

Uh, never mind. Actually I don't.

Tom Perriello a One-Termer?

2009-11-29T07:06:00.001-05:00

If the reaction of the people of Virginia's 5th District continues to grow ever more negative towards ObamaCare, it certainly is a possibility. For the anger toward Obama's abominable government takeover of the health care system continues to rise. And heads (including Tom's) will surely roll:

Growing public backlash over Obamacare
Washington Examiner editorial

Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning to feel a growing public backlash.

They're not the only ones. Twenty-nine other House Democrats who voted for the bill come from districts that John McCain carried, making them particularly vulnerable to an angry electorate that never bought into the "hope and change" hype in the first place.

As support erodes for Obamacare's massive tax increases and deep Medicare cuts, they must also consider the personal political cost. Only 38 percent of the public supports their health care plan, the lowest level of public support in more than two years. As more details of the 2,074-page behemoth -- which most members of Congress concede they have not read -- continue to trickle out, the more the poll numbers drop.

It's not hard to figure out why. Obamacare was supposed to lower costs, extend coverage and improve Americans' health care options. It does none of those things.

Despite accounting gimmicks, Obamacare will cost $4.9 trillion over the next 20 years. This enormous sum will suck the wind out of an already struggling economy. The plan includes higher premiums for younger workers, fines for those who refuse to purchase coverage, lower Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, and job-killing taxes on employers.

Obamacare will also force an estimated five million workers to lose their employer-provided coverage.

Federal taxpayers will be forced to pay for elective abortions even though only 13 percent favor such coverage.

As far as improving health care options is concerned, the administration wants to cut down on mammograms and slash Medicare Advantage for seniors to save money. After all this spending and upheaval, 24 million Americans will remain uninsured in 2019. Every Democrat who ignores the public will and votes for this higher-cost, lower-care monstrosity will be held accountable. Voters back home won't let them forget it. [link]

Remember, not long ago, how "fixing the health care system" involved reducing the average family's cost (Obama pledged to reduce annual premiums by $2500 to get elected)? That was then. It ain't no mo'. Now it's all about extending benefits to the uninsured. In other words, it's become nothing more than another entitlement. Another welfare program.

And a very costly welfare program at that.

One that will cost the American people dearly to implement. As much as $6,250,000,000,000. Tens of thousands per household.

We went, somehow, from being promised a cost savings to having delivered to us a back-breaking cost increase.

The American people are rightly outraged. And that outrage builds.

Tom.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2009-11-29T06:14:00.001-05:00

We all hate the rich. Right? We want them punished. We want them to bleed. To squeal like pigs. That's why, when we hear talk of capping their salaries and taxing the living hell out of them, we all smile. They deserve it.

If only it worked out that way:

Leaving Corporate America
By John Dietrich, American Thinker

David Farr, the CEO of Emerson Electric Co., asserted, "I'm not going to hire anybody in the U.S. I'm moving. They (Washington) are doing everything possible to destroy jobs."

Farr is not alone in his determination to abandon the anti-business climate of the United States. Eleven major companies have relocated or are in the process of relocating overseas: Tyco International Ltd., Foster Wheeler AG, Weatherford International Ltd., Nabors Industries Ltd., Noble Corp., TransOcean International Group, United America Indemnity Ltd., Cooper Industries, Covidien, Ingersoll-Rand PLC, and Accenture Ltd. The U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate after Japan, but we have been promised that free health insurance will make American companies competitive.

In addition to increased taxes, there are other incentives to relocate outside of the United States. The federal government now sees the need to regulate executive compensation. This is a very popular idea, and politicians like popular ideas. Paying executives tens of millions of dollars a year does not seem reasonable. And the majority of Americans agree: high salaries for American CEOs must be regulated.

The market proves otherwise. If the market offers executives significantly larger incomes to relocate, many will relocate. Josef Ackerman of Deutsche Bank reportedly stated, "We can't wait to get our hands on all that top talent." A reasonable person might say, "The market be damned." The market can at times be very unreasonable. As an illustration, suppose the owner of an NBA team were to conclude that bouncing a ball was worth only $100,000 a year. Where would his team be in the standings? What would the team's attendance figures be? As a result of this change, how many hot dog vendors would be laid off?

As corporations relocate overseas, we will become a progressive utopia of teachers teaching social workers and social workers ministering to the needs of teachers. Somehow I do not think this will work. [link]

None of this makes any difference. We hate the rich and that's that. If they leave this country, well, good riddance. The consequences will deal with themselves.

I've mentioned before an odd - yet telling - circumstance that occurred a few years ago. Of all the opinion pieces I wrote for my weekly column in the Roanoke Times the one about which I received the most negative responses was entitled, "Eat the Rich" (the Times changed it to "Rising Tide"; a copy editor obviously hated me). (You'd think it would have been the one about homosexuals, but no). Responses that could be uniformly encapsulated in the phrase, "The rich have what we don't; we hate them; we don't care if the government singles them out for retribution."

Is it any wonder that the job creators are starting to pack their bags and leave?

But with them goes their dollars. Dollars that would have been spent here in our stores. Dollars that would have gone to the government in the way of (punitively progressive) taxes. A government that is seeing its revenue plummet and its debt skyrocket.

But we don't care. We hate them.

I have little doubt that we'll still be saying that when they're all gone and half of us are unemployed.

I sometimes think we deserve that which we are about to get.

For The Love Of God

2009-11-29T06:13:00.003-05:00

Finally!

Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data - dubbed Climategate - have agreed to publish their figures in full.

Excellent.

There is a growing chorus of calls from within the scientific community for the researchers at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia to "open-source" its data so that others can test the methodologies and calculations that the global warming zealots at the CRU used to complete their many reports showing that the planet is warming. So this is excellent news.

But wait.

Unfortunately that cannot now happen. Ever. Not because the "scientists" there continue to stonewall. But because they threw away the data:

Climate change data dumped
By Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor, Times of London

Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building. [link]

A law enforcement investigation will ultimately reveal whether the trashing of data was as innocent as reported here or, as is likely, the global warmists trashed it so as to avoid complete embarrassment (and possible prison time).

But the important point is: The information critical to now determining if, in fact, the planet has warmed at all over the last hundred years is lost forever.

Accident, blunder, short-sightedness, or criminal conspiracy, the loss is immeasurable.

There's some kind of punishment due. We don't yet know what it should be. But punishment for certain.

Another Reason The Global Warmists Lost

2009-11-29T05:40:00.000-05:00

They are hilariously ridiculous in their efforts to make their case.

From the "You can't make this stuff up" page (sometimes referred to as the op/ed page) of the New York Times:

Before the Climate Conference, a Weather Report

President Obama and other world leaders will gather in Copenhagen next week to discuss climate change. Though this is a global issue, it’s also a profoundly local one. For this reason, the Op-Ed editors asked writers from four different continents to report on the climate changes they’ve experienced close to home. Here are their dispatches.

Denmark in the Wind
By HANNE-VIBEKE HOLST
In Copenhagen, the once moderate-to-fresh winds are now more often storms.

South Africa’s Fire Kingdom
By ZAKES MDA
In Cape Town, a rise in unpredictable and more ferocious fires are destroying the ecosystem.

The Penquins of Brazil
By EDGARD TELLES RIBEIRO
In Rio de Janeiro, shifiting ocean currents and water temperatures have changed bird migration patterns.

In Japan, Concerns Blossom
By YOKO TAWADA
In Tokyo, it no longer snows in winter.

Keep in mind the fact that, if the experts' measurements are to be believed (a highly dubious assumption these days), the earth's temperature has risen 0.2° C. in recent decades.

0.2 degrees.

Despite the fact that that increase is nearly undetectable, winds have become storms, fires have begun to rage, bird migration patterns have been altered, and it no longer snows in parts of Japan.

0.2 degrees.

Can these people be any more goofy?

I think maybe someone's been staying up late and watching too many comedies on TV:

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

"Weather!" Too funny.

Oh, No. Not Again.

2009-11-28T07:12:00.000-05:00

When Christians think small:

Mass. woman sees image of Jesus on her iron
Associated Press

Metheun, Mass. -- A Massachusetts woman who recently separated from her husband and had her hours cut at work says an image of Jesus Christ she sees on her iron has reassured her that "life is going to be good."

Mary Jo Coady first noticed the image Sunday when she walked into her daughter's room.

The brownish residue on the bottom of the iron looks like the face of a man with long hair.

The 44-year-old Coady was raised Catholic. She and her two college-age daughters agree that the image looks like Jesus and is proof that "he's listening." [link]

First of all, the image is of Janis Joplin, not Jesus.

Second, when the Lord God Almighty reveals himself once again to us the unworthy here on earth, it ain't going to be on the underside of an iron. It will be like this:

So clean the iron and put it away. You embarrass us.