…but Irene may not be as catastrophic as it appeared yesterday. It looks to me like the most likely major consequence, beyond flooding, will be a lot of power outage. Regardless, you should always be prepared. As Frank J says, it’s a hurricane, not a procrastinate-cane.
[Update a while later]
If you want to support relief efforts, both in the Bahamas and (next week) on the east coast, this is probably a good organization.
The greens lobbying President Obama to block the pipeline are asking him to forgo thousands of jobs (in an election year in which jobs will could well be the major issue!) and billions of dollars in economic advantages — not to save the planet or reduce the carbon in the atmosphere, but to confer an economic and political advantage on China. If President Obama takes the green advice, the US will get almost all of the disadvantages that come from using the oil ourselves, and lose out many of the benefits.
There’s another factor that has to be weighed. Getting secure oil sources for the United States isn’t just a matter of convenience; reducing US exposure to foreign blackmail, and reducing our need to consider military interventions and other actions to protect our energy supply helps make war less likely — and allows us, all things being equal, to get along with somewhat smaller armed forces than would otherwise be required.
More, forcing China to look to less stable places than Canada for its oil transfers some of the costs of global energy security to the Chinese, and also helps tie them into the development of a rule driven global system. If the US oil supply comes largely from friendly neighbors, while China (and other US competitors) must rely on unstable, far flung sources, we are going to have more flexibility in our foreign policy and China will have so many fish to fry and cats to herd that it will be less likely to think about mounting a global challenge to the US.
Don’t expect the enviroloons to think rationally about this. We should prefer ethical oil over conflict oil. Of course, in their unrealistic fantasies, we would use no oil at all, and just power everything with windmills (ignoring the bird kill) and unicorn flatulence.
[Update a while later]
Speaking of green madness (and now anger) it looks like climate models will have to be revised. Damn those extraterrestrial causes! Can’t you just leave us green Ptolemaians alone?
The contradictions of environmentalists:
…the fact that the morality of having children is subject to debate in respectable liberal circles speaks volumes about just how unhinged modern progressives have become from the ordinary aspirations of ordinary people.
There’s nothing liberal about these misanthropes.
Irene could be worse than Katrina, in terms of total property damage, and even in terms of loss of life, if people don’t prepare and evacuate. I don’t live in hurricane country, any more, though we still have a house there, but as I always noted when I went through this, the most annoying thing about hurricanes is that you have warning of them, and have to prepare, even if in the end it turns out to be a false alarm. I sort of dread the day they start to think they can predict earthquakes, because unless it’s better than they do with hurricane location and intensity, it’s going to result in a lot of lost productivity in earthquake country. Nonetheless, be prepared, and be careful out there.
Kinky Friedman endorses Rick Perry:
These days, of course, I would support Charlie Sheen over Obama. Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay. Obama has been perpetually behind the curve. If the issue of the day is jobs and the economy, Rick Perry is certainly the nuts-and-bolts kind of guy you want in there. Even though my pal and fellow Texan Paul Begala has pointed out that no self-respecting Mexican would sneak across the border for one of Rick Perry’s low-level jobs, the stats don’t entirely lie. Compared with the rest of the country, Texas is kicking major ass in terms of jobs and the economy, and Rick should get credit for that, just as Obama should get credit for saying “No comment” to the young people of the Iranian revolution.
…So would I support Rick Perry for president? Hell, yes! As the last nail that hasn’t been hammered down in this country, I agree with Rick that there are already too damn many laws, taxes, regulations, panels, committees, and bureaucrats. While Obama is busy putting the hyphen between “anal” and “retentive” Rick will be rolling up his sleeves and getting to work.
I’m still ambivalent. I’m sure that there will be things he’ll do that infuriate me, but at least he’ll end the ongoing wreckage of the economy. Oh, and on the subject of science and politicians? Given a choice between a politician who understands how the economy works and one who believes in evolution, I’ll take a young earther. I need to write a longer essay about this.
[Update a few minutes later]
The rubes continue to come out of the closet:
It is no surprise that many have begun to doubt the president’s leadership qualities. J.P. Morgan calls it the “competency crisis.” The president is not seen fighting for his own concrete goals, nor finding the right allies, especially leaders of business big or small. Instead, his latent hostility to the business community has provoked a mutual response of disrespect. This is lamentable given the unique role that small business especially plays in creating jobs.
The president appears to consider himself immune from error and asserts the fault always lies elsewhere—be it in the opposition in Congress or the Japanese tsunami or in the failure of his audience to fully understand the wisdom and benefits of his proposals. But in politics, the failure of communication is invariably the fault of the communicator.
Many voters who supported him are no longer elated by the historic novelty of his candidacy and presidency. They hoped for a president who would be effective. Remember “Yes We Can”? Now many of his sharpest critics are his former supporters. Witness Bill Broyles, a one-time admirer who recently wrote in Newsweek that “Americans aren’t inspired by well-meaning weakness.” The president who first inspired with great speeches on red and blue America now seems to lack the ability to communicate any sense of resolve for a program, or any realization of the urgency of what might befall us. The teleprompter he almost always uses symbolizes and compounds his emotional distance from his audience.
We lack a coherent and muscular economic strategy, as Mr. Obama and his staff seem almost completely focused on his re-election. He should be spending most of his time on the nitty-gritty of the job instead of on fund raisers, bus tours and visits to diners, which essentially are in service of his political interests. Increasingly his solutions seem to boil down to Vote for Me.
That’s all they ever were.
Is it immature to say “I told you so”? OK, call me immature. You were fools to vote for him the first time and I said so at the time.
[Update a couple minutes later]
“Obama is no Steve Jobs.” You can say that again:
It’s dawning on many Americans that they made a bad hire. Obama was slick and seductive in the interview that stretched from early 2007 to November 2008; the competition was unexciting and, to be blunt, old. But it turned out he had no real job skills, didn’t get along with others, failed to translate rhetoric into action and became blinded by his own ego.
The lesson here is an existential one: Leaders are what they do. They become revered because they perform, understand their market, show creativity, deliver unexpected gains and beat the competition. The star quality follows accomplishments and performance.
Of course, it dawned on many long ago, and some of us (as noted above) predicted it.
[Update later morning]
Fox, meet chickens:
Shapiro goes on to list the things about Perry that most drive liberals nuts, including “anti-intellectualism,” the “God card,” the “living Constitution” (“Perry stands out for his creative cut-and-paste approach to the Constitution”), the “pistol-packing president,” and “daring to call it treason.”
His point, of course, is not only to whack Perry for his (by liberal standards) “extreme” positions, but to gore the Left as well for, among other things, its education fetish, its mortal fear of genuine religious belief, and its abject terror in the face of the inanimate objects we like to call firearms.
Of course, what most liberals don’t realize is, to us these things aren’t bugs — they’re features of a possible Perry presidency. Any prez who would pack heat while jogging with his dog and blow away a varmint or two is okay in our book. Sure beats cowering before a killer rabbit, Carter-style.
Walter obliquely makes an even more important point: that the coming election is likely to be a stark choice between Ivy League credentialism and a form of prairie populism. And that, of course, is precisely what the next election must be about.
Many of my lefty buddies simply cannot conceive of a world in which an Aggie can whup up on a Harvard lad, and merrily call global warming a crock (but . . . it’s settled science!). People like Perry and Palin and Bachmann — hillbillies from flyover country or Outer Slobbovia — send them into towering rages of wounded and unappreciated virtue; never mind that their “virtues” are generally invisible to those of us in the reality-based community. After nearly three years of their pet policy prescriptions, we’ve had a belly full.
I know I have.
…are bunk.
With regard to stinkum in general, I don’t have a very good sense of smell, so if I can smell a woman’s perfume when I’m not in close proximity, she’s definitely wearing too much.
I don’t wish Bill Clinton ill health, but I won’t be surprised if he has more heart problems. Dean Ornish is a quack, IMO.
Scaring us with bad science fiction isn’t going to work, either:
Science fiction writers used to focus on the horrors of nuclear war and frightened the willies out of readers for many decades. Public worry much more intense than anything the greens can gin up never got the nuclear disarmament movement over the hump — not because nuclear war isn’t bad, or because people weren’t scared, but because the nuclear disarmament movement’s policy ideas emanated from the same cloud-cuckoo-land that the green fantasies do.
Panic doesn’t turn an unworkable policy agenda into something that people can actually do. It can waste a lot of energy and time and cause otherwise capable people to sink months or years of their lives into leprechaun chases, and it can cause pandering politicians to gesture in the direction of your agenda without ever actually doing anything significant — but that is all. And it is not much.
It is, after all, fiction. Sort of like Al Gore’s book, but more entertaining.
Al Gore is ranting in frustration that no one buys his climate BS any more.
[Mid-morning update]
Climate skepticism isn’t a fringe phenomenon:
CC. To what extent did you feel like you were standing alone in resisting the man-made climate change theory back in the 1990s?
“It was difficult. I knew that many of my colleagues at the Association of State Climatologists agreed with me. But many of them wouldn’t say anything because they were worried about losing their jobs or just plain having their professional lives made difficult. Frankly there’s a lot more money supporting the other side. Things would be easier if you just go along with them.”
CC. “You’d say that now there’s a lot more money supporting the man-made climate change side of the issue than there is on the side of the skeptics?
“Oh yes, it’s been that way for a long time.”
Yes, though you’d never hear it above the din of the screams about oil money.
[Update late morning]
Climate Depot responds to Gore’s rant.
[Bumped]