Genocide Enablers

In the run up to World War II there was a cottage industry of people who simply would not believe in the evil intentions of the Nazis regardless of the plain as day facts of the matter, including the very words of the Nazis themselves which were discounted as being unimportant. "Oh sure," the America First crowd intoned, "the Nazis say they want to annihilate the Jews, but they don't really mean it."

Of course, the Nazis did mean it.

Flash forward to a short piece penned by historian Niall Ferguson: Israel and Iran on the Eve of Destruction in a New Six-Day War

It probably felt a bit like this in the months before the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel launched its hugely successful preemptive strike against Egypt and its allies. Forty-five years later, the little country that is the most easterly outpost of Western civilization has Iran in its sights.

There are five reasons (I am told) why Israel should not attack Iran....

5. A nuclear-armed Iran is nothing to worry about. States actually become more risk-averse once they acquire nuclear weapons.

....

The responsible nuclear Iran. Wait. We’re supposed to believe that a revolutionary Shiite theocracy is overnight going to become a sober, calculating disciple of the realist school of diplomacy ... because it has finally acquired weapons of mass destruction? Presumably this would be in the same way that, if German scientists had developed an atomic bomb as quickly as the Manhattan Project, the Second World War would have ended with a negotiated settlement brokered by the League of Nations.

I'm not sold on all of the points Ferguson makes in his piece, but on this I am absolutely convinced. You have to take the stated goals of the Iranian regime seriously. Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine...

Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.

In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.

These are the people many in this country want to have atomic weapons - or at least do not wish to stop them acquiring them. To wit (though it is a crime against the English language to use the word in connection with the moronic site linked here):

What is the evidence, exactly, that Iran’s political elites are irrational or indifferent to the survival of the regime? Apart from the not-very-thinly-veiled racist implications (scary Muslims! Probably suicide bombers!), there’s nothing here.

This denial of the theocratic impulses to suicide attacks has to be denialism on the scale of those that deny the Holocaust happened. No one could get this accidentally wrong. There is no room for intellectual integrity in the making of such a claim. None. So ignorance cannot be an excuse.

As for the absolute faith this fool places in the idea that the religious leadership in Iran does not believe in their own millennial faith... well the word "blithering" comes to mind.

I hate to break it to people, but the German leadership class in 1938 absolutely believed in the idea of a German "master race"; the Russian leadersip class in 1920 absolutely believed in the idea of a "vanguard party leading the oppressed classes"; and the leadership elite of theocratic Iran absolutely believe "Armageddon" requires the destruction of Israel. The first two example led to the deliberate killing of over ten million human beings.

And that's not even counting the war dead.

In the face of extremist ideology you cannot assume they don't mean what they say. Well, you can, but it marks you as a scumbag of the fist order.

You Heard It Here First (Or Thereabouts)

Back in July I wrote:

In the aftermath of the Oslo atrocities the usual braying from conservative bashers was to be expected. After all, the chance to score political points in this country usually trumps everything else, up to and including common human decency. Still if one bothered to look at the "manifesto" published online by Anders Breivik (or even a selection of "highlights") one could get a feel for the perpetrator of these heinous acts of barbarism.

My take, for the outset, was that this man was completely delusional....

For myself, it was hard to read [Breivik's manifesto] and not think we are dealing with a situation such as was depicted in the film A Beautiful Mind about the real life struggles of mathematician John Nash. As depicted in the film Dr. Nash in the grips of a terrible mental disorder begins to believe he is part of a secret code breaking operation bent upon unmasking dangerous agents communicating by code in newspapers and magazines. In order to flesh out his "world" Nash's diseased mind invents enemies and friends to populate it.

It seemed pretty obvious reading Breivik's ravings about "Knight Templars" and the like, that we were dealing with something similar here. Breivik seems to actually believe he went to London to be part of a meeting of a new Templar order hellbent on reviving anti-muslim crusades throughout Europe. It also is becoming increasingly clear it was all in his fevered imagination.

Today comes word that my suspicion was correct:

Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

They believe he was in a psychotic state both during and after the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151.

Their report must still be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.

Breivik will still be tried in April but it seems likely he will be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison.

Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges, arguing that that the attacks were atrocious but necessary for his campaign to defend Europe against a Muslim invasion.

The two psychiatrists who interviewed him on 13 occasions concluded that he lived in his "own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions", prosecutors told reporters.

Seemingly in only people to actually believe in Breivik's delusions were Breivik himself and the lefty side of the blogosphere.

That fact is its own editorial comment.

A Not So Beautiful Mind

In the aftermath of the Oslo atrocities the usual braying from conservative bashers was to be expected. After all, the chance to score political points in this country usually trumps everything else, up to and including common human decency. Still if one bothered to look at the "manifesto" published online by Anders Breivik (or even a selection of "highlights") one could get a feel for the perpetrator of these heinous acts of barbarism.

My take, for the outset, was that this man was completely delusional.

Here is a snippet:

Q: Why haven’t we heard anything about PCCTS, Knights Templar before, considering the fact that the organization was formed in 2002?

A: That’s a good question. I am surprised why EU countries haven’t labeled our organization yet. Perhaps it is politically motivated psychological warfare, who knows? First of all, I only met 4 out of the 9 original founding members due to security precautions and I only know the identity of 5 of them (4 of them know my identity). There might be tens, even hundreds of Justiciar Knights now spread all across Western Europe as far as I know. I haven’t heard anything from the media about PCCTS, Knights Templar operations before either which indicates the following; either some of the original cells have not activated yet, which is not very likely considering the fact that the military order was formed more than 8 years ago. Or a couple of the cells may have perished or have been arrested in the planning phase before they even activated. Or perhaps they did activate and went through with their operation but did not manage to penetrate media censorship. A successful operation might have been labeled as an “accident” or otherwise censored by the media/regime. Perhaps a couple of them simply didn’t want to proceed alone or in a party with 1-2 other individuals but needed or wanted the support from a larger traditional hierarchy and joined another organisation instead. A few might have gotten cold feet and went about their usual business and abandoned our struggle and campaign altogether. It is really hard to tell.

For myself, it was hard to read this and not think we are dealing with a situation such as was depicted in the film A Beautiful Mind about the real life struggles of mathematician John Nash. As depicted in the film Dr. Nash in the grips of a terrible mental disorder begins to believe he is part of a secret code breaking operation bent upon unmasking dangerous agents communicating by code in newspapers and magazines. In order to flesh out his "world" Nash's diseased mind invents enemies and friends to populate it.

It seemed pretty obvious reading Breivik's ravings about "Knight Templars" and the like, that we were dealing with something similar here. Breivik seems to actually believe he went to London to be part of a meeting of a new Templar order hellbent on reviving anti-muslim crusades throughout Europe. It also is becoming increasingly clear it was all in his fevered imagination:

OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 76 people in a bombing and youth camp massacre appears to be a lone-wolf sociopath who kept his plans to himself for more than a decade, a top security official said Thursday.

"It's a unique case. It's unique person. He is total evil," Janne Kristiansen, the director of the Norwegian Police Security Service told The Associated Press.

Anders Behring Breivik claims he carried out the July 22 attacks as part of a network of modern-day crusaders plotting a revolution against a multicultural Europe, and that there are other cells ready to strike.

But investigators have found no signs — before or after the attacks — of a larger conspiracy, though it's too early to rule it out completely, Kristiansen said.

"On the information we have so far, and I emphasize so far, we have no indication that he was part of a network or had any accomplices, or that there are other cells," Kristiansen told AP.

She said Breivik doesn't appear to have shared his plot with anyone, and lived a lawful and moderate life before carrying out the attacks with "total precision."

Breivik has admitted that he set off a car bomb in the government district of Oslo, killing at least eight people, then drove several miles (kilometers) northwest of the Norwegian capital to an island where the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party was holding its annual summer camp. He arrived at Utoya island posing as a police officer, then opened fire on scores of unsuspecting youth, executing them one after the other as they tried to flee into the water. Sixty-eight people died, many of them teenagers.

Kristiansen said that Breivik's case presents a new challenge for security services, different from a "solo terrorist" who receives training and instructions from a terror network and is then left to pick out a target and attack it on his own. Breivik appears to be a true lone wolf, who conceived and executed his plot without help or coordination from anyone.

"This is a totally different challenge," Kristiansen said. "This is all in his mind."

Judging by a manifesto he released just before the attacks, he started "preparing himself to do something big, shocking and spectacular" some 10-12 years ago, she said.

Breivik's lunacy, then, could predate even the 9/11 attacks.

Yet, still the moral degenerates among us will want to use Breivik's madness to their own advantage, which in itself is a form of evil difficult to fathom.

Higher Education Has Just Jumped The Shark

Really. Northwestern University defends after-class live sex demonstration

More than 100 Northwestern University students watched as a naked 25-year-old woman was penetrated by a sex toy wielded by her fiancee during an after-class session of the school’s popular “Human Sexuality” class.

The woman said she showed up at the Feb. 21 lecture in the Ryan Family Auditorium in Evanston expecting just to answer questions, but was game to demonstrate. The course’s professor on Wednesday acknowledged some initial hesitation, but said student feedback was “uniformly positive.”

And Northwestern defended the class and its professor.

“Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines,” said Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for University Relations. “The University supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge.”

The optional, non-credit demo followed psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey’s sexuality class. Nearly 600 students are in Bailey’s class this quarter, and most didn’t stick around for the after-class show, which featured four members of Chicago’s fetish community describing “BDSM,” or bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism.

Oh, come on. (Poor word choice?) Even the stated reasons for this bout of exhibitionism is prurient in nature. Pretending there is actual educational value in the porn show is laughable.

And university types wonder why conservatives hold them in such ill repute. It is because of garbage like this. There are no intellectual standards any more. Yes, it is true that deviant sexual practices are a fact of human existence. It is also true that, from an intellectual point of view, they are boring as shit. Literally. Human feces is also a fact of human existence. Maybe Northwestern should sponsor a class where students can do a number two on stage and take turns pawing through it. It would be as "educationally valid" as turning a Northwestern classroom into a Tijuana sex show.

Oh, Grow Up

It's eye rolling time: Photo Evidence: Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books In The White House Library.

So what? Good Lord, I can glance over my shoulder and see copies of Marx, Marcuse, Sartre, and various other sundry socialists and communists. Hell, I got some Hitler over there as well. It doesn't mean crap.

I'm sorry, I not afraid of people reading any of these books. What are we going to do? Ban certain books from the White House? Have a book burning? What nonsense. What stupid nonsense.

If you want to complain about Obama's socialism, then stick to his actions. Leave books out of it. You just wind up looking like a thought police thug.

Wow.

I mean, wow.

In March, 2002, Bishop walked into an International House of Pancakes in Peabody with her family, asked for a booster seat for one of her children, and learned the last seat had gone to another mother.

Bishop, according to a police report, strode over to the other woman, demanded the seat and launched into a profanity-laced rant.

When the woman would not give the seat up, Bishop punched her in the head, all the while yelling "I am Dr. Amy Bishop."

Bishop received probation and prosecutors recommended that she be sent to anger management classes, though it is unclear from court documents whether a judge ever sent her there.

The woman, identified in court documents as Michelle Gjika, declined to comment, saying only "It's not something I want to relive."

In other words, everyone on earth had to know this woman was a time bomb and, yet, those in academia missed it all together.

Wow.

This Is Wrong On So Many Levels

Another for the "What the f**k are they thinking" file: Brewers to erect 7-foot high statue of Bud Selig outside Miller Park

The Brewers are erecting a statue of baseball commissioner Bud Selig outside Miller Park and will unveil it on Aug. 24.

Selig headed a group that bought the Seattle Pilots in bankruptcy court in 1970, moved the franchise to Milwaukee and renamed it the Brewers.

Oh, wow. Someone call a sculptor, stat!

Really, this is the sort of stupid idea that usually only results in the aftermath of a head of state departing to the hereafter. And, yes, I'm thinking here of the McKinley monument in the Antietam National Battlefield Park, dedicated to the memory of the day the future President served coffee to troops while under fire.

I'm not joking. That really is what it commemorates. Compared to what they are planning to do in Milwaukee the McKinley monument seems downright sane.

UPDATE:

A reader has chided me for minimizing the "accomplishment" of President McKinley upon that fateful September day when, as the monument makes clear:

Sergeant McKinley Co. E. 23rd Ohio Vol. Infantry, while in charge of the Commissary Department, on the afternoon of the day of the battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, personally and without orders served "hot coffee" and "warm food" to every man in the Regiment, on this spot and in doing so had to pass under fire.

I stand corrected. Sgt. McKinley was a damn fine waiter.

Really, We Guys Are Just Scumbags

This saddens me: Woman seeks "Jessica Alba" makeover to win back lover

A Chinese woman is seeking extensive plastic surgery to look like U.S. actress Jessica Alba, mainly because she hopes to win back her boyfriend who she said always wished she looked more like the Hollywood star.

The 21-year-old, who would only give her name as Xiaoqing, said she was devastated after she broke up with her lover, an ardent fan of the actress who has starred in hit movies such as "Fantastic Four" and "Into the Blue."

Xiaoqing, who works at an Internet firm in Shanghai, said that during their 18-month-long relationship, her 28-year-old boyfriend had been obsessed with Alba, adorning their apartment with her photographs and talking about her constantly.

She said that while her boyfriend had not forced her to look like Alba, he always hinted that the wanted her to resemble his favorite star and even bought her a blonde wig to wear.

A month ago, Xiaoqing left her boyfriend, whom she did not name, because his Alba obsession became too much for her. But now she says she can't get over the break-up and wants him back.

"When I broke up with my boyfriend, I was very sad," she told Reuters at the Shanghai Time Plastic Surgery Hospital which has agreed to help her fulfill her wish.

This is all sad enough, but when you see a picture of the young woman it becomes truly pathetic and heartbreaking.



She is absolutely lovely the way she is, yet she is going to obliterate a part of who she has been since her birth in order to do what exactly? To satisfy some guys masturbatory fantasies about a Hollywood starlet?

*sigh*

I've lamented such things before, noting studies that link plastic surgery to increased suicide rates in young women. What I said then still holds today:

I've never warmed to the idea of such artificial body sculpting at all. For starters, women seem to have a terrible idea of what men actually find attractive. Being incredibly thin AND having large breasts is not the recipe for attractiveness, and I'd say 90% of the guys I know feel exactly the same way. So it doesn't surprise me that the women who choose to have such surgery often don't like themselves very much. I don't know that breast augmentation surgery is a cause as much as it is a symptom for a lot of these women, but it is still a sad story to hear.

There are so many different ways to be beautiful. Here is to the day when every little girl knows that already.

Unfortunately, there is always someone ready to make a buck off the pain women like Xiaoqing experience.

I really wished these doctors would use their skills for something socially useful, like giving Xiaoqing's ex-boyfriend a lobotomy.

Environmental Determinism Makes A Comeback

Really, what passes for "science" these days is hysterical. From the BBC:
Climate 'is a major cause' of conflict in Africa

Climate has been a major driver of armed conflict in Africa, research shows - and future warming is likely to increase the number of deaths from war.

US researchers found that across the continent, conflict was about 50% more likely in unusually warm years.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they suggest strife arises when the food supply is scarce in warm conditions.

Climatic factors have been cited as a reason for several recent conflicts.

Problem is this paper does nothing of the sort. The "Supporting Information" material of the report makes this abundantly clear:

We denote civil war in country i in year t as warit. All
country-year observations with a civil war in progress are coded
as 1s, and other observations are coded as 0s. The PRIO data
extend from 1946 to 2006, but because of the limited temporal
availability of some climate data products (discussed below), and
because the political processes underlying conflict were likely
changing rapidly before 1980 as increasing numbers of African
countries gained independence, we focus our analysis on the
1981–2002 period.

Got that? Only 20 years are looked at in this study. Total. Given that no link between (warning: nonsense term) "climate change" could possibly be established over a mere 20 years worth of data, why was this "study" even written? How could it possibly be published? It would be as if I wrote a paper claiming to be based upon Boyle's Law without ever discussing gas under pressure. It's nonsense pure and simple.

This objection doesn't even take into account the confounding variables rife in any such attempt to subject human behavior to environmental determinism, an idea real scientists tossed in the trash generations ago. Think of all the racist nonsense about the industriousness of cool climate "Nordic races" used to perpetuate the myth of white superiority in previous centuries. Now, compare those beliefs with this study focusing on the propensity of Africans to violence based upon their warm climate.

Really, we are comfortable going there nowadays?

But, hey, I've got a competeing theory. My theory says a warming climate will lessen the potential for conflict. Using North America as my test subject, and a more climatically friendly time period of 200 years, I will divide history into two segments; 1801-1900 & 1901-2000.

Using the "Wars of the World" timeline here are the North American conflicts:

1801-1900 (Cool Period)

1. Mexian War of Independence 1810-23
2. US Occupation of West Florida 1810
3. Tecumseh's War 1811
4. War of 1812
5. Creek War 1813-14
6. Fort Mims Massacre 1813
7. Seven Oaks Massacre 1816
8. First Seminole War 1817-18
9. Vesy's Rebellion 1822
10. Yaqui Uprising: Mexico 1825-27
11. UPCA Civil War 1826-29
12. Mexican Conservative Revolt 1827
13. Mexican-Spanish War 1829
14. Turner's Rebellion 1831
15. Black Hawk's War 1832
16. Indian Stream "War" 1835
17. Murrel's Rebellion 1835
18. Second Seminole War 1835-43
19. Texan Independence War 1835-36
20. Papineau's Rebellion 1837
21. Mackenzie's Rebellion 1837
22. Aroostook War 1838-39
23. Buckshot War 1838
24. Pastry War 1838
25. Comanche-Texan Border War 1840
26. Dorr's Rebellion in Rhode Island 1842
27. Texan "Archive War" 1842
28. Bear Flag Revolt in California 1846
29. Mexican-American War 1846-48
30. Yucatan Caste War 1847-55
31. Whitman Massacre 1847
32. Cayuse War 1848-55
33. Walker's Invasion: Mexico 1853-54
34. Third Seminole War 1855-58
35. Rogue River Wars 1855-6
36. Wakarusa War 1855
37. Yakima War 1855-8
38. Pottawatomie Massacre 1856
39. Spirit Lake Massacre 1857
40. Mountain Meadows Massacre 1857
41. Utah War 1857-8
42. Mexican Reformation War 1858-67
43. Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry 1859
44. Apache and Navaho War 1860-5
45. American Civil War 1861-65
46. Franco-Mexican War 1862-67
47. Sioux War 1862-64
48. Sand Creek Massacre 1864
49. Saint Albans Raid 1864
50. Sioux War 1865-68
51. Fetterman Massacre 1866
52. Fenian Raiders 1866-70
53. Wagon Box Fight 1867
54. Red River Rebellion 1869-70
55. Blood River Massacre in Montana 1870
56. Camp Grant Massacre 1871
57. Apache War 1871-73
58. Red River Indian War 1874-75
59. Kiowa War 1874
60. Yaqui & Mayan Uprising in Mexico 1875-98
61. Apache War 1876-83
62. Mexican Coup 1876
63. Sioux War 1876-77
64. Cheyenne War 1878
65. Victorio's Apache Raiding 1879
66. Apache War 1885-6
67. Northwest Rebellion in Canada 1885
68. Sioux War 1890-91

1901-2000 (Warm Period)

1. Assassination of McKinley 1901
2. Black Patch War 1904-9
3. Mexican Civil War 1911-1914
4. Mexican Revolt 1914-15
5. Poncho Villa's Raids 1916-17
6. Preparedness Day Bombing in America 1916
7. Mexican Civil War 1920
8. Mexican Catholic Revolt 1927-29
9. "Bonus Marchers" Intervention 1932
10. Mexican Conservative Revolt 1936
11. Internment of Japanese-Americans 1942-45
12. Attack on Blair House 1950
13. Black Panthers in America 1966-73
14. Chiapas Rebellion: Mexico 1994
15. EPR Revolt Mexico 1996

Thus, I'll argue that a warming climate has resulted in a 78% reduction in armed conflicts compared to cooler eras.

See how idiotic it is?

Health Rationing, Part I

So it begins: Mammogram Recommendations Could Reverse Years of Progress

I'm upset about the controversial decision by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—an agency appointed by HHS, the federal department at the center of healthcare reform—to recommend that women not begin regular mammograms until age 50, and even then, only every two years.

The breast cancer awareness lobby in the United States has spent years convincing women that we must get checked early and often for breast cancer. It's just what you do: Every year I get my teeth cleaned (twice), I get a Pap smear and a mammogram, and get my cholesterol checked. It's part of being a grownup. It's as if they came out and said that seat belts in cars really aren't necessary anymore, or that it's okay for pregnant women to drink tequila again.

According to the New York Times: "The task force concluded that one cancer death is prevented for every 1,904 women age 40 to 49 who are screened for 10 years, compared with one death for every 1,339 women age 50 to 59, and one death for every 377 women age 60 to 69."

No one wants to be the one woman—the one mom, sister, daughter, or friend—whose death was preventable. Who wants to take that chance?

Well, the Obama administration wants women to take that chance, particularly poor women. After all, Obama and Co. will need all the money they can get to prop up GM (and other losers) for the indefinite future. What are a few thousand poor women worth in the grand scheme of things?

This hits, in a way, pretty close to home. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 43 years old, seven years earlier then the Obama administration wants women screened for the disease. Now, to be fair, my mother discovered her tumor through her self breast exam. However, my mother is also a registered nurse, who can be expected to be much more proficient than the average woman in giving self examinations. For many women, having a mammogram is the best, and maybe only, chance they will have to catch the disease early. When you consider that younger women have less chance of surviving breast cancer since the forms they tend to get are more aggressive to begin with, this policy is fraught with negative consequences.

And it is exactly the sort of policy we can expect when government bean counters come between us and our doctors.

Climate Change Jumps The Shark (Or The Cockroach)

Get your tiny violins ready folks, because we are being asked to throw a pity party for insects: Bugs: The Forgotten Victims of Climate Change

Research conducted by Hellmann and Shannon Pelini, one of Hellmann's doctoral students, indicates that global warming may affect a single insect species differently throughout its various life stages, and that global warming affects different insect species in different ways.

Most importantly, as climate change progresses, some insects may become trapped--like fish out of water--in habitats that can no longer support them. The insects may therefore go extinct or lose genetically important segments of their populations. But other species, and no one knows which ones yet, may be able to reach cooler climates by moving north on their own.

Oh, give me a break. There are an estimated 8 million species of insect on this planet. Why so many? Well, in part it is because bugs are so adaptive. They have been around and survived dramatic changes in climate before, many of the catastrophic variety like the event(s) that killed off the dinosaurs. In the course of this evolutionary process hundreds of thousands if not millions of insect species have gone extinct, and yet, last time I checked, bugs remain. Yet, now we are going to be asked to airlift bugs because climate will change, which is simply what climate does whether we like it or not????????

What nonsense.

Lookout! Here Come The Global Warming Fascists

Really, reading Brad DeLong is a little like reading Mein Kampf, you wonder how so much heat could be generated by so little intellectual ability.

This is all about some chapter on climate in some pop economics book (which I will never read as I have a life), that has the wannabe fascists calling for a virtual book burning. Why is that? Are these guys rabid "deniers," and so the moral equivalent of Charles Manson? No, they are firm believers that "...rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon." They just do not care for the case as it has been presented by the propaganda arm of the new Reich, and for that they are being trashed (and most likely libelled.)

I'm not even going to throw out more than my two cents on this replay of the "Night of the Long Knives," but it is simply too good (and stupid) to pass by entirely.

Really, these people have no shame, and, as I said earlier, not a lot of smarts (as Roger Pielke discovered.)

I Want The Federal Government Out Of My House

Didn't we kill a whole lot of British once upon a time for something analogous to this?

Cap and trade is back in the news. By the end of this month, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is expected to unveil new legislation along the lines of the Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House on June 26.

That bill contains 397 new regulations. One of them would affect almost everyone who buys or sells a home. If Waxman-Markey becomes law, homes for sale that qualify as “federally related transactions” — which is almost all of them — would be required to undergo an environmental inspection.

Many politicians are upset about depressed housing prices. And true, environmental inspections are one way to raise them. But this is not the way to do it. Sen. Boxer should see to it that the Senate version of cap and trade leaves the environmental inspection provision out.

Inspections are not free. Nor is fixing the inevitable violations. Compliance with new energy-efficiency standards would make homes, especially older ones, more expensive. Selling one’s home would become even harder than it already is in this down market if Waxman-Markey-style cap and trade becomes law.

QandO sees it this way:

Suppose you wanted to sell your house “as is” and let the person who buys it fix it up, for a suitable discount of course.

That is no longer a choice you’ll have. The buyer and seller wouldn’t be allowed to make that decision anymore. The party that continuously claims that “choice” is important to them apparently believe that particular choice is one neither the buyer or seller should have. The transaction is subject to the regulations of Mr. Waxman and Mr. Markey’s bill and you’ll not sell anything government inspectors haven’t deemed “green” enough to sell and certified as such.

Nothing, of course, could go wrong with that, could it? And of course, the article deals with just one of the unintended consequences. Let me again point out that it includes 397 new regulations – that means there’s at least one unintended consequence for each of them (and possibly more) and it will most likely be a nasty surprise.

This is yet another example of governmental over-reach into the lives of ordinary citizens. I use such language deliberately. We are living in an age of a new elected (and unelected) nobility, which sees itself as the intellectual and moral superior of the general citizenry. The vast number of Americans are deemed by the Democrats (and many Republicans for that matter) to be nothing but sheep that need to be led by shepherds - benevolent of course - who will control ever increasing amounts of their lives for their own good.

To be fair, Obama never really hid his desire to control the minutia of our lives up to and including what temperature we set our thermostats to in our own homes. Now, we will be legally unable to sell our own property unless the Democrats deem it politically correct to do so.

Oh, and remember, we're not allowed to call them socialists. That's name calling.

What Do Democrats Have Against Rhode Island Anyway?

Aren't Rhode Islanders loyal enough Democrats? I guess not. Remember back to the 1990's when Democrats railed against fat cats and their "luxury" yachts, and the resulting tax meant to "soak the rich" instead wound up putting thousands of Rhode Island workers making boats for, by and large, middle class buyers out of work?

well, now the Demcorats have a new target, fat cats with their "luxury" private jets. And who will this hurt? Hmmm....it's a mystery:

Orders for business jets nose-dived after lawmakers pilloried leaders of Detroit's Big Three auto makers for flying corporate planes to Washington to seek a government bailout. Now, one jet maker is striking back....

Across the industry, new orders for private jets have almost evaporated, and hundreds of existing customers have sought to defer or cancel orders that were placed in higher-flying days. In addition to layoffs, some jet makers have cut production by as much as 56%. Cessna, a unit of Textron Inc.[based in Rhode Island], is laying off more than 4,600 people, or roughly a third of its work force, to cope with the sudden drop in demand for private airplanes of all sizes.

Though much of the industry's reversal of fortune is due to the dismal economy, jet makers attribute part of it to the unexpected public backlash that erupted after the chief executives of Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp. traveled in private jets last year to ask Congress for billions of dollars in aid.

I'm sorry, but if you wanted to find the real culprits behind the current state of the U.S. economy, one would do better looking at the "fat cats" sitting in the Congressional Demcoratic caucus than those folks flying in American built Cessna jets.

But, hey, promoting economic ignorance is what Democrats do best these days, the actual consequences be damned:

The jet makers were unprepared for the backlash from Middle America. The irony, they say, is that many of the blue-collar layoffs at Cessna, Gulfstream and Hawker Beechcraft Corp. have been in places like Wichita, Kan., and Dallas.

In its ad, scheduled to run in national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Cessna says "Timidity didn't get you this far. Why put it in your business plan now?" Instead of retreating, the company argues, companies should adjust and make sure they are flying the right type of aircraft.

So far, Cessna is the sole jet maker to take on the negative publicity with a high-profile ad campaign. A spokesman for Cessna declined to say how much it was spending, but he said "we have redirected more than half of our promotional budget to this campaign." The ads were developed by Dickerson-Grace in Denver, he said.

"We're all trying to battle misperception," said Ed Bolen, president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association, which represents corporate-jet owners. "The vast majority of the time, these jets are flying offices, where people can conduct business and have confidential discussions that could never occur on a commercial jetliner," Mr. Bolen said.

Yeah, this mindless Democratic ignornace mongering is really pushing the country forward.

This Has To Be A Hoax, Right?

Apparently, an academic publisher has decided to burn...uh I mean "pull" an encyclopedia of Christian civilization because it doesn't praise Islam enough and doesn't sufficiently "denigrate" the Christian faith.

Nice.

Fascists

Now we have the tale of a police officer who has been punished by the government for making a political statement (heretofore something protected by this thing called the First Amendment). Not only that, it was a statement made off-duty in the comfort of his own home.

Ah, but see, it was disparaging about the Fuhrer.

An Iowa State trooper who was investigated after it was shown that he forwarded an e-mail showing mug shots of people wearing Obama t-shirts has been suspended for 30 days.

Sgt. Rodney Hicok was at home and off-duty when he forwarded the e-mails, said an official with the Iowa Department of Public Safety Bureau and Professional Standards.

The e-mail made disparaging remarks about 15 people in the photos and referred to Obama as having "quite a fan base."

Hicok was not making a racial statement, the official said, but, rather, a political statement.

I'm sorry, but a state agency cannot have a "policy" prohibiting protected expression in direct violation with the U.S. Constitution. But, hey, if Iowa is now operating sans the Constitution these days what exactly makes them not fascists?

"Stimulus" Passes Senate...

...Dow Jones drops 400 points.

Hallelujah we're saved.

What The Hell Is Wrong With People?

This kind of thing is simply retarded:

A hearing has been set for next week to decide whether Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis also will be known as "Barack Obama Boulevard."

Alderman Kacie Starr Triplett, an early Obama supporter whose ward includes a portion of Delmar, is leading a push to dedicate the street in honor of the president-elect.

I don't mind ceremonial dedications for Presidents who, you know, actually accomplish something. Getting elected to the freakin' office isn't enough.

If it is, I'd like to re-name part of Olive the "Via Richard Nixon."

Boneheaded Nonsense

Sometimes you read an aside that just infuriates you. Take this from First Things:

While we’re contemplating life in the doghouse, treat yourself to Hank William’s classic, “Move It On Over” or try the blues-rock cover by the indefatigable George Thorogood and the Destroyers, justifiably called “the greatest bar band in the world.”

No disrespect inten...scratch that....with heaps of disrespect intended...that is the kind of stupid, insipid, East Coast elitist garbage those of us in "flyover country" have to deal with all the time.

Anyone with a finger on the actual musical pulse of the country knows The Bottle Rockets are the best bar band in the world. Easy.

Hell, for my money, I'd say Webb Wilder runs a respectable second in that contest.

Sometimes people forget the country doesn't end at the Delaware river.

{/tongue in cheek}

Some Centrist

Why is it that everyone Obama seems intent to hire for his new administration is the equivalent of a middle finger salute to the other side of the aisle?

Post-partisan my ass.

If you need it spelled out for you, Jaime Gorelick is unacceptable based upon gross incompetence alone.