Category Archives: Political Commentary

Who Are The Environment Correspondents?

Apparently, the people who have been reporting on climate change are as incestuous (and even more incompetent) as the people studying it. Color me unshocked. They’re likely economic ignorami as well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Well, here’s one reporter who’s strayed from the reservation. A “saturated greenhouse” theory? If true, this would be huge. There are good reasons to wean ourselves from fossile fuels (if done in an economically sane manner), but climate change wouldn’t be one of them.

[Late morning update]

“AGW? I refute it thus.”

If there’s anyone left you know who STILL believes in Anthropogenic Global Warming, you might want to show them this chart.

It’s pretty striking.

“We Cheated”

“…and he still beat us.”

I’m reasonably confident that they’re cheating now, too. Let’s hope he beats them again.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The rats are abandoning the Coakley ship. And they still don’t understand what’s happening:

…some Democrats, eager to distance Obama from any electoral failure, are beginning to compare Coakley to Creigh Deeds, the losing Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor’s race last year. Deeds ran such a lackluster campaign, Democrats say, that his defeat could be solely attributed to his own shortcomings, and should not be seen as a referendum on President Obama’s policies or those of the national Democratic party.

The same sort of thinking is emerging in Massachusetts. “This is a Creigh Deeds situation,” the Democrat says. “I don’t think it says that the Obama agenda is a problem. I think it says, 1) that she’s a terrible candidate, 2) that she ran a terrible campaign, 3) that the climate is difficult but she should have been able to overcome it, and 4) that Democrats beware — you better run good campaigns, or you’re going to lose.”

Of course, they’re confusing nebulous support for the president among the general population with the views of likely and passionate voters. I’ll bet that exit polls on Tuesday won’t show anything close to sixty percent for the president.

Jen Rubin explains:

In September, Coakley was ahead in the polls by 30 points.

Since then, however, something has fundamentally changed. Since September, the country has witnessed the visible battle over ObamaCare — late-night votes, Cash for Cloture deals, and a bill that offends a wide array of groups. Democrats have never looked up or paused to consider the public’s views on the matter. They tell us they will “sell it” to us later. That arrogant defiance of public opinion and the unseemly legislative process that produced a grossly unpopular bill have fueled a resurgence of anger and determination among conservatives and even usually apathetic independents. They now are anxious to send a message to Washington: stop ignoring the voters. We saw it in New Jersey and Virginia. Now we learn that even Massachusetts may not be immune.

The Democrats’ agenda, specifically a hugely unpopular health-care bill, has unified and energized not the proponents of big government but the opposition, which now is itching for the chance to exact revenge. We’ll see on Tuesday if that wave of resentment is so powerful as to extend even to a state so Blue that a little over a year ago, Obama carried it by more than 25 points.

I hope that the Dems continue to delude themselves, even after what now looks like a loss in the Bay State. It will make the tsunami in November all the more powerful.

[Update a while later]

Some amusing thoughts on “climate change”:

The Democratic party is panicking like brothel patrons with the cops at the door. They’re dropping shock troops of muckety-mucks, hacks, spinners, and door-knockers into Boston like Rangers into Normandy.

Meanwhile, the liberal press establishment is in near-total denial. Yes, the race is getting a lot of attention, but Coakley’s problems are being chalked up to the fact that she is a bad campaigner and this is a bad “climate” for the Democrats.

They use “climate” to suggest that things are bad for Democrats for reasons beyond their control (ironically, they don’t talk about the climate that way when it comes to global warming). Orange growers in Florida can’t be blamed for a bad crop if the climate won’t cooperate, and Democrats can’t be held accountable for their crop failure now. It’s the economy! It’s the obstructionism of the Republicans and that satanic whatchamacallit, the filibuster. Jupiter is aligned with Mars, NutraSweet has poisoned the water supply, Lost has been on hiatus too long, Mongo likes candy: It’s the climate, you see, the horrible, horrible climate! Democrats didn’t do anything wrong!

Except they did.

The Democrats’ “bad climate” is a direct result of how they’ve governed. The populist backlash is fueled by a sense that Democrats are acting on their preferred agenda and by their own rules. From the shenanigans of the people who write our tax code and collect our taxes to special deals and secret arrangements for big businesses and legislators who play ball, the Democrats have abandoned transparency in favor of transparent arrogance.

Coakley is a creature of this climate. She hasn’t been running for “Ted Kennedy’s seat,” she’s been strolling to it like someone who knows it’s been reserved for her and all she needs to do is swing by the will-call window to pick it up.

I think that the climate is going to get a lot worse for them before it gets better. Especially if they ram this crap sandwich down the nation’s throat.

And So It Begins

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is suing the EPA over Climaquiddick:

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA’s recent greenhouse gas “endangerment” ruling.

The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer groups fear the ruling could lead to lawsuits and new restrictions on the nation’s livestock industries.

…The cattle group points to Climategate, in which critics allege that e-mails stolen from Great Britain’s University of East Anglia show bias and manipulation of data by scientists on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The fact that the EPA relied on some of the IPCC’s data to make its finding makes the ruling questionable, Thies said.

Discovery should be quite enlightening. I expect this will go all the way to SCOTUS.

Helping Haiti

The Anchoress has some useful links.

The devastation in that benighted country (our own little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere) demonstrates how deadly it can be to be poor, and why attempts to hold back economic growth in the third world with things like Kyoto and cap’n’tax are almost genocidal.

[Update a while later]

“You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble.”

Horrible.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Why is Haiti so poor? Some hypotheses from Tyler Cowen.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

History’s most deadly quakes. I expect Haiti will be added to this list, though it’s unlikely to set a new record.

[Update late morning]

Remembering the “good times” in Haiti:

On an official visit to the island in the 1980s, as head of the Latin America/Caribbean Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I witnessed a grown man, my 28-year-old executive assistant, a lawyer who had not traveled extensively outside the U.S., cry inconsolably after touring an orphanage and hospital run by Belgian nuns and supported by USAID food and medical aid. The rest of my team consisted of experienced (read: hardened) professionals who had seen famine and desolation in other countries many times. The assistant had been shocked at the sight of the “triage” set up by the nuns, whereby they calmly and tenderly separated emaciated Haitian newborns into those who would not survive the night and those who might. Both groups received the same loving care from the nuns, but the ones born with no chance of survival did not receive precious resources that could be used to save the lives of other, slightly stronger infants with a chance of living another day and perhaps even surviving.

That hospital, run by angelic Belgians and their Haitian collaborators, was a metaphor for the entire country. The U.S. chose to deliver its significant assistance (more than that of any other nation) only through private organizations, because the government of Haiti was deemed either too incompetent or corrupt to deliver it safely.

It hasn’t improved in the interim, and this disaster is unlikely to improve it.

Living in Boca Raton, almost all of the blacks that I encountered were Haitian (many of them checkout and stocking personnel at the local supermarket). They were good people, and obviously very happy to be here.

Unspeakable Truths

Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.

In short, the world does not work on a nine-month schedule. It does not recognize concepts like tenure. It does not care for words without action. And brilliance is not measured by vocabulary or SAT scores. Wowing a dean, or repartee into a seminar, or clever put-downs of rivals in the faculty lounge don’t translate into running a railroad—or running the country. One Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower is worth three Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas. If that sounds reductionist, simplistic, or anti-intellectual, it is not meant to—but so be it nonetheless.

I’ve never been less impressed with Ivy League degrees than I am now.