The EPA wasted thousands on low-emissions cars in Copenhagen when they were offered zero-emissions transportation for free. Yup, I sure want these people policing my carbon output.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
An ACORN By Any Other Name
…will still smell as foul. You’ll be as shocked as I am to learn that reports of the organization’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Is ObamaCare Constitutional?
Dave Kopel weighs in. And discusses an important issue — if the mandate is struck down, how much of the rest of the monstrosity can survive? Unfortunately, the calorie labeling requirement is probably severable. But most isn’t.
I also agree with Jonathan Turley — to let the mandate stand is to put a complete end to federalism. Which of course has been the left’s goal for decades.
When You’ve Lost Ed Koch
…you’ve lost a lot of American Jews, I’d wager:
“I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don’t think it’s true anymore,” Koch told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.
Another guy who’s figured out who the rubes were. I’m guessing he’ll spend less time stumping in Florida in 2012. Or maybe he’ll be doing it for the Republican. Of course, that assumes that Obama is the candidate…
A Superstorm
…in climate “science.” An extensive and even-handed report at Der Spiegel.
McIntyre’s findings did not make him very popular. In the hacked Climategate emails, he is referred to as a “bozo,” a “moron” and a “playground bully.” But with their self-aggrandizement, the climatologists made him into a legend on the Internet. A million people a month visit his blog, climateaudit.org. They include climate skeptics and the usual conspiracy theorists, but also, more recently, many academics who are able to do the math themselves.
McIntyre asserts that he does believe in climate change. “I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” he says, “but when I find mistakes, I want them to be corrected.”
He repeatedly bombarded Jones with emails in which he drew his attention to freedom of information laws. This tenacity would prove to be disastrous for Jones.
McIntyre doggedly asked for access to the raw data. Jones was just as dogged in denying his requests, constantly coming up with new, specious reasons for his rejections. Unfortunately for Jones, however, McIntyre’s supporters eventually included people who know how to secretly hack into computers and steal data.
Their target was well selected. Jones was like a spider in its web. Almost every internal debate among the climate popes passed through his computer, leaving behind a digital trail.
But the US media continues to ignore the fraud and loss of credibility.
Atlas Picked It Back Up
I’m not sure that this story is a hundred percent accurate.
A Whitewash
…of Climaquiddick.
I’m struggling to say something polite about this. By way of an illustration, can you imagine the reaction if a scientist reported in the safety literature that there was a critical flaw in the design of a nuclear power station, but told policymakers that everything was fine? Do the committee really think it’s fine to hide important information from policymakers so long as you report it in the literature?
Astonishing.
Or it should be astonishing. Unfortunately, it’s become increasingly difficult to be astonished at these power mongers.
Federal Mandates
The pressure of this law will eventually force restaurants like Davanni’s to reduce consumer choice as a way of managing the overwhelming burden of maintaining their disclosures. Smaller chains that succeed in satisfying their customers and managing their business used to be rewarded with growth, but this law will put an artificial cap on expansion at 19 locations. That means that fewer people will find jobs, and even in existing stores, money that may have funded more jobs will instead go to reprinting the same menu boards over and over again. And all of this comes because political elites think that people are too stupid to know that a pizza is fattening or how to access information that already exists in much more efficient formats than menu boards.
When will we wake up from this Atlas Shrugged nightmare?
[Early afternoon update]
One nation, under arrest. With liberty and justice for none.
I think we should just throw out the entire federal code and start over.
My Epiphany
All right, many months into his presidency, I have come to realize that I was completely wrong about the president.
He is not an empty suit, as I once claimed. Through his brilliant leadership, and unsurpassed powers of persuasion, he has shepherded legislation through the Congress that will make all of our lives and health better, and for which we will all be grateful as a nation for decades to come.
I was once skeptical, but I was a fool. This legacy, just the first of many — beginning the healing of the planet through long-overdue constraints on carbon emissions; finally allowing the working man to be a union man as God and Jimmy Hoffa intended; creating a lasting peace in the Middle East with a Palestinian state from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean, and a Pax Iraniana under the sober nuclear leadership of the mullahs in Teheran, a stable nuclear stalemate in the Korean peninsula, the returning of Taiwan to its rightful owners in mainland China –will go down in history as only the minor accomplishments of the greatest American president ever.
How foolish was I to think that he would lose the Congress in the coming election, when so many stood bravely by his bold initiatives? What insanity possessed me to imagine that the America people would punish, rather than reward him and his party for their paternal and sacrificial deeds for all of us? How could I have criticized them for only doing what was right, and just, and fair, in the face of such disgusting criticism and hatred from the evil right wingers? How could I have been so wrong? Is there any hope for me?
From this day forward, I pledge my troth to the Democrats, the saviors of our nation, the party of selflessness and compassion. No longer will I selfishly demand that I keep any of the fruit of my own labor, because I now understand that it was never mine, but only that of the people. Henceforth, I will work not for myself, or my family, but only for the greater good.
I can only ask, how did it take so long for me to see the light? What foolish ideology blinded me to righteousness, and my duty to my fellow citizens and humans on the planet? How did I live for so many years without feeling the pain of my obvious disgusting selfishness? How can I ever be forgiven?
Even if I finally, after decades, do the right thing, and pull the Donkey lever this fall, is there any hope for my redemption?
But lest I be viewed as someone completely uncritical of The One, let me provide one bit of criticism.
His space policy is a disaster. We no longer have a goal.
Under the Evil Bush, we had a plan. A plan to send a few astronauts a couple times a year, at a cost of several billion dollars per trip, to the moon. It was a noble plan, an ambitious plan, and one that would have had the nation enthralled to watch, as a few noble ciivil servants cavorted on the lunar surface, displayed on our low-energy-consumption foot-powered televisions.
But with the cancellation of Constellation, the dreams of watching government employees kicking up selenian dust, for tens of millions per kick, have been shattered. The nation will no longer have the opportunity to be inspired. Instead, we will have to content ourselves with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in low earth orbit, doing what they want to do instead of following NASA’s flight plans. They might even go beyond earth orbit without official permission, upsetting the natural order of the heavens. I am dismayed to the highest degree by such a laissez faire approach to opening up the universe to humanity, and can’t imagine how such a visionary president could allow such a thing.
But I cavil about trivia. Such a minor policy error shouldn’t prevent him from his rightful place. A Nobel Peace Prize in anticipation of his achievements, while well deserved, is an insignificant award. No, he must be honored in a manner more befitting his accomplishments, present and future. He is not worthy of Mount Rushmore, or rather, his reputation would be sullied by an appearance next to such pedestrian predecessors as Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, though the progressive Teddy Roosevelt might be a fitting accompaniment, even if shadowed by the great Obama. No, we need to add to the mountain, and build a new level for The One, above those previous poseurs. And we should rename the mountain, from Rushmore, to a more appropriate Rushless, to honor him for his vanquishing of that talk-show blowhard, who has so unpatriotically hoped for his failure. For the greatest man in American, no — in world history. we can do no less.
[Thursday morning update]
Sigh…none so blind as those who will not see. Half of the country doesn’t think our national savior should be reelected.
• Obama’s standing on four key personal qualities, including being a strong and decisive leader and understanding the problems Americans face in their lives, has dipped. For the first time since the 2008 campaign, he fails to win a majority of people saying he shares their values and can manage the government effectively.
• Twenty-six percent say he deserves “a great deal” of the blame for the nation’s economic problems, nearly double the number who felt that way last summer. In all, half say he deserves at least a moderate amount of blame.
The blame directed at his predecessor, former president George W. Bush, hasn’t eased, however: 42% now give Bush “a great deal” of blame, basically unchanged from 43% last July.
• By 50%-46%, those surveyed say Obama doesn’t deserve re-election.
Ingrates.
The Kristallnacht
…that isn’t happening:
The Daily Beast’s John Avlon insists that Vanderboegh’s rallying cry, combined with some threats and broken windows, make “the parallels, intentional or not, to the Nazis’ heinous 1938 Kristallnacht . . . hard to ignore.”
Actually, it’s really, really easy to ignore the parallels. During Kristallnacht, Nazi goons destroyed not just 7,000 store windows but hundreds of synagogues and thousands of homes. Tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazis, who had been in total power for half a decade.
This combination of state power and murderous, genocidal intent is nowhere on display in America today, not in the Obama administration (contrary to what some overheated right-wingers claim) and certainly not among out-of-power conservatives and “tea partiers.” It’s amazing anyone needs to point this out, but a few fringe libertarians’ throwing bricks to beat back an expansion of government is not the same thing as the tightening fist of the National Socialist Third Reich. Indeed, it’s an anti-American slander to suggest anything like it is going on here, and it cheapens the moral horror of the Holocaust.
Don’t tell that to the Democrats and their media transmission belt, who largely turned a blind eye to partisan vandalism and extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years but now express horror at what they claim to hear from the right.
Their libelous audacity and hypocrisy is breathtaking.