Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

Smart Diplomacy

9 Comments

Isn’t it great that we no longer have an arrogant cowboy in the White House?

UK diplomatic sources confirmed there had been a major setback after China took huge offence at remarks by President Obama over the need to independently monitor every country carbon emissions.

In his speech President Obama said: “Without any accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page” – remarks the Chinese interpreted as an attempt to humiliate them, prompting Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to return to his hotel.

President Obama will now hold a second round of talks with Mr Wen in an attempt to patch up the disagreement.

Maybe he can give him some DVDs.

[Via Iain Murray]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Showing Their True Colors

The watermelons of Kyopenhagen:

The big name in the anti-capitalism club was, of course, Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan national-socialist strongman. In a typical stem-winder, he belched: “Capitalism is a destructive model that is eradicating life, that threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.”

I don’t know how to say “chutzpah” in Spanish, but you’ve got to hand it to the leader of the world’s No. 5 supplier of oil for bemoaning the system that keeps his regime afloat by buying his product.

Now, I know that nice, moderate progressive types are rolling their eyes at my cynical effort to associate their noble activism with support for socialism and thugs. Fair enough. Let us concede that many, perhaps even most, proponents of draconian restrictions on carbon emissions have no sympathy for socialist dictators and do not want to chuck capitalism in the dustbin of history. But surely it should trouble these responsible greens that they’re in bed with a Star Wars cantina of villains and monsters.

Also, if environmentalists want to avoid the “watermelon” charge (“green on the outside, red on the inside”), maybe the delegates and activists in the audience shouldn’t have given Chávez such a loud and boisterous round of applause? Perhaps the folks who gave him a standing ovation didn’t help either?

They couldn’t help themselves. It’s what they are.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Socialists’ Victory

2 Comments

…in Kyopenhagen:

Let’s ignore McKibben’s barmy notion that man has it in his power to control global climate by tinkering with CO2 output, and concentrate on that part of his tearful outburst that does make sense. Copenhagen never really had anything to do with “Climate Change”. Rather it was a trough-fest at which all the world’s greediest pigs gathered to gobble up as much of your money and my money as they possibly could, under the righteous-sounding pretence that they were saving the planet.

This nauseating piggery took two forms. First were the Third World kleptocracies – led by the likes of Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe – using “Global Warming” as an excuse to extort guilt-money from the Western nations.

Second, and much more dangerous, were the First World Corporatists who stand to make trillions of dollars using the Enron economics of carbon trading. Never mind all the talk of President Obama’s trifling $100 billion pledge. This is very small beer compared with the truly eye-watering sums that will be ransacked from our economies and our wallets over the next decades in the name of “carbon emissions reduction.”

Richard North has spotted this, even if virtually nobody else has. The key point, he notes, is the Copenhagen negotiators’ little-publicised decision to save the Kyoto Protocol. This matters because it was at Kyoto that the mechanisms for establishing a global carbon market were established. Carbon trading could not possibly exist without some form of agreement between all the world’s governments on emissions: the market would simply collapse. By keeping Kyoto alive, the sinister troughers of global corporatism have also kept their cash cow alive.

Fortunately, cap’n’tax remains DOA in the Senate.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Is The Dam Breaking?

21 Comments

Via a commenter, I see that James Randi, who has sort of a history of spotting scientific fraud, has apparently lost his mind and become a “denier”:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a group of thousands of scientists in 194 countries around the world, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize — has issued several comprehensive reports in which they indicate that they have become convinced that “global warming” is and will be seriously destructive to life as we know it, and that Man is the chief cause of it. They say that there is a consensus of scientists who believe we are headed for disaster if we do not stop burning fossil fuels, but a growing number of prominent scientists disagree. Meanwhile, some 32,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhDs, have signed The Petition Project statement proclaiming that Man is not necessarily the chief cause of warming, that the phenomenon may not exist at all, and that, in any case, warming would not be disastrous.

Happily, science does not depend on consensus. Conclusions are either reached or not, but only after an analysis of evidence as found in nature. It’s often been said that once a conclusion is reached, proper scientists set about trying to prove themselves wrong. Failing in that, they arrive at a statement that appears — based on all available data — to describe a limited aspect about how the world appears to work. And not all scientists are willing to follow this path. My most excellent friend Martin Gardner once asked a parapsychologist just what sort of evidence would convince him he had erred in coming to a certain conclusion. The parascientist replied that he could not imagine any such situation, thus — in my opinion — removing him from the ranks of the scientific discipline rather decidedly.

History supplies us with many examples where scientists were just plain wrong about certain matters, but ultimately discovered the truth through continued research. Science recovers from such situations quite well, though sometimes with minor wounds.

I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid.

Emphasis mine. I think that claiming that there is a “consensus” and that “the science is settled” are semantically equivalent to “I can’t imagine any such situation.” Such people are many things, but they are not people who truly respect, or even understand, science. They are politicians, encouraging political acts.

[Update a while later]

I’ve deleted my reference to Little Green Footballs, pending the outcome of an ongoing civil email conversation with Charles.

Political Commentary

Stock Up On The Popcorn

9 Comments

Fresh from the hoosegow, Jim Traficant wants to run for Congress again.

I sat on the subway with him under the Capitol once, years ago. He treated me like he’d known me forever, even though we’d never met. I guess that kind of personality is a key ingredient to being a politician.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I should add that his hairpiece really did look like a dead animal. It’s kind of funny what kind of hairballs representative democracy will cough up and send to Washington.

Education, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Maybe It’s Because You Are A Loser

32 Comments

What kind of idiot puts themselves $125,000 in debt to get a theater degree?

Alfred said he owes more than $125,000 for his degrees in theater when he’s not even working in that field.

“I work at a call center, and I make $10 an hour,” he said. “It’s surreal. I feel like a loser.”

I continue to think that academia is the next big bubble waiting to pop.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Another reason to think that college degrees are a bubble waiting to pop: a goodly amount of the email spam I get is hawking them, with subjects like “Get the degree you need,” and “Nominate for the degree” (what in the world does that even mean? I’ve never heard of “nominating” for a degree). The latest one is “Get any degree you want.” If that doesn’t devalue the notion of a degree, I don’t know what does.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

No Honor Among Thieves

4 Comments

Good news from Kyopenhagen — things are falling apart:

Government ministers can’t agree on the best way to take money from their own citizens, give it to an opaque, above-the-law organization, and yet still control it; because, of course, with all that money comes power. Negotiators are skittish about how they can ensure that the money pledged will actually be paid into the pot, and if it does, who gets to dole out the funds. Everybody wants a piece of it, but nobody trusts anybody.

Well, they shouldn’t.

Unfortunately, as he notes, this is only a temporary setback. The leftists will regroup, and make other attempts in the future.