Sunday Morning News and Notes

In beautiful Hershey, PA for a baseball tourney.

Here's what's news:

-Gitmo detainees to get computer training including how to use the Internet. What could go wrong?

-Becoming fat, dumb and happy at taxpayers expense. It's a good gig if you can get it.

-While the average American is cutting unnecessary expenses, the Obama's take an unnecessary vacation. The man has a tin ear when it comes to listening to the common man. The GOP will rightly bash the hell out of them for it.

-P.J. O'Rourke on why Americans fell out of love with the American car.

-A charter school in Southern California recruits prospective teachers using words such as this:

"We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multicultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply."

The school is scoring unbelievably high on tests and sending poor kids to college. In other words they are hugely successful. The Obama administration and NEA will therefore try to shut them down.

-The country where the Kyoto Protocols were launched is realizing what a scam it actually was.

Europeans Learning That Whole EU Thing Not So Great

As with any major agreement between many nations, the European Union has fine print that's written by ideologues who may not have all nations best interests at heart:

The peoples of Europe have finally discovered what they signed up to. I do mean "peoples" (plural) because however much political elites may deceive themselves, the populations of the member states of the EU are culturally, historically and economically separate and distinct. And a significant proportion of them are getting very, very angry.

What the strikers at the Lindsey oil refinery (and their brother supporters in Nottinghamshire and Kent) have discovered is the real meaning of the fine print in those treaties, and the significance of those European court judgments whose interpretation they left to EU obsessives: it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first. It would, for example, be against European law to do what Frank Field has sensibly suggested and reintroduce a system of "work permits" for EU nationals who wished to apply for jobs here.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Paris and the recalcitrant electorate in Germany are waking up to the consequences of what two generations of European ideologues have thrust upon them: the burden not just of their own economic problems but also the obligation to accept the consequences of their neighbours' debts and failures. Each country is true to its own history in the way it expresses its rage: in France, they take to the streets and throw things at the police, in Germany they threaten the stability of the coalition government, and here, we revive the tradition of wildcat strikes.

Europeans and American liberals are all for open borders throughout the world--for instance US leftists would love to see the border between the US and Mexico erased. The problem as described above is that people are at heart nationalistic. They may join together in happy harmony while things are good but when it comes to feeding ones family, all bets are off. We're seeing that in Europe as we speak.

Just as all the nations who signed on to the Kyoto Protocols learned: an idea may sound great in theory but once people actually get involved, the happiness wanes and reality sets in, usually at great cost.

I see some coalitions splintering and some European leaders getting voted out in the near future.

Does the AP Have Any Credibility Left on Global Warming?

Short answer, no...on any topic

Today they published the single most alarmist global warming piece I've read. Read this if you can stomach it:

"We need to start in January making significant changes," Gore said in a recent telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This year coming up is the most important opportunity the world has ever had to make progress in really solving the climate crisis."

Scientists are increasingly anxious, talking more often and more urgently about exceeding "tipping points."

"We're out of time," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. "Things are going extinct."

U.S. emissions have increased by 20 percent since 1992. China has more than doubled its carbon dioxide pollution in that time. World carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than scientists' worst-case scenarios. Methane, the next most potent greenhouse gas, suddenly is on the rise again and scientists fear that vast amounts of the trapped gas will escape from thawing Arctic permafrost.

The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.

And on and on and on...

The piece could have been written by Al Gore himself and gives zero credence to sceptics. Plus, we have this little trick: temps are dropping but it's because of global warming. Check out the pretzel logic:

Mother Nature, of course, is oblivious to the federal government's machinations. Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

The average global temperature in 2008 is likely to wind up slightly under 57.9 degrees Fahrenheit, about a tenth of a degree cooler than last year. When Clinton was inaugurated, 57.9 easily would have been the warmest year on record. Now, that temperature would qualify as the ninth warmest year.

The inconvenient truth--to borrow a phrase I heard somewhere--is that the planet has been cooling for much of the decade and that sunspot activity was responsible for the increases seen before. Once the activity ceased, temperatures decreased.

What global warming hysterics fail to recognize is that most people believe that yes, the planet was warming, but no, it was not man-made.

It's well past time to take a pin to the warminists balloon of rhetoric and hot air and take a common sense approach to the environment. Emissions of soot, illegal dumping of hazardous waste and discharging harmful effluent into streams is the greater danger and one that will have immediate impact to developing nations. But alarmists like Gore and the AP won't report on that because they can't blame the US. We have our emissions and disposal issues in check and have strict laws regulating them. Besides, stories of hazardous waste are so 1980 and don't lead to unearned Nobels and Pulitzers anymore. Global warming makes it easy to blame the US and you don't need a shred of proof, plus you can say cool shit like "cooling is actually another example of the danger of warming" and uneducated morons believe it. It doesn't even have to make sense to get the idiots who believe this bullshit to eat it up.

Unfortunately, one of those people appears to be the President-elect. If he thinks the bailout costs alot, wait'll he sees how much joining a Kyoto-like pact would cost. China will make billions and we'll lose trillions.

More on the Great Global Warming Swindle here.

Global Warming Denial is "a Crime" says NASA Scientist

As an addendum to the previous post, global warming believers aren't taking too well to the prospect that people are actually seeing through their scam. The chief snake oil salesman has gone over the edge against people who question his absolute moral authority on the issue:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

...In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

Speaking ones mind is ever a crime, sir and the fact that you propose putting anyone on trial for their thoughts and views is downright Orwellian. What the hell is a "high crime against...nature" anyway? You also have to admire the chutzpah for using the phrase "actively spreading doubt" as if their can be no disbelief about the issue...ever. Kind of religious, isn't it?

But no, this yahoo isn't done yet:

He wants to see a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, coupled with the creation of a huge grid of low-loss electric power lines buried under ground and spread across America, in order to give wind and solar power a chance of competing. "The new US president would have to take the initiative analogous to Kennedy's decision to go to the moon."

His sharpest words are reserved for the special interests he blames for public confusion about the nature of the global warming threat. "The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."

Are not global warming theory (yes, it's still a theory) pushers not adding to the "public confusion?" Perhaps Hansen needs a refresher on democracy. In his world, a democracy is when everyone votes the way he prefers. By the way Mr. Hansen, this is a Republic, Google it.

Even better, why don't we put it on the ballot in all fifty states in November--a question that asks the American public whether or not we should raise taxes on fuel and everything else so that we can reduce a gas that may or may not be contributing to global warming. We can further ask the public whether or not they would be willing to foot the trillion dollar bill for burying all those power lines. I'm game and that's about as democratic as you can get. Are you up for it Mr Hansen?