Liberal "Tolerance"

Boy, what a mean-spirited treatise this Dave Lindorff piece is:

The area that will by completely inundated by the rising ocean - and not in a century but in the lifetime of my two cats - are the American southeast, including the most populated area of Texas, almost all of Florida, most of Louisiana, and half of Alabama and Mississippi, as well as goodly portions of eastern Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. While the northeast will also see some coastal flooding, its geography is such that that aside from a few projecting sandbars like Long Island and Cape Cod, the land rises fairly quickly to well above sea level. Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes. The West Coast too tends to rise rapidly to well above sea level in most places. Only down in Southern California towards the San Diego area is the ground closer to sea level.

First of all, accepting the premise that a rising ocean will inundate anything (which I don't), it amazes me that Lindorff is content to see large swaths of America wiped out, while simultaneously protecting liberal enclaves in the northeast with dykes. He goes on to posit that the conservatives middle of the country will be wiped out by drought, and "right-wing retirement communities" in the southwest will be done in by rising energy costs.

The result of all this, according to Lindorff, will be a mass-migration of conservatives into liberal strong-holds. And he wants to make sure they stay in their place when they arrive:

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.

Okay! The Lindorff plan is to assemble conservatives into some sort of ghetto, so they can't have any political representation. No fascism in that plan. And in the end, he can't help but throw a little personal invective in for good measure:

There will be much work to be done to help the earth and its residents - human and non-human - survive this man-made catastrophe, and we can’t have these future refugee troglodytes, should their personal disasters still fail to make them recognize reality, mucking things up again.

The arrogance is breathtaking. If you don't subscribe to Lindorff's political theories, you are a troglodyte. Moreover, Lindorff feels capable of actually saving the world with his politics. If he gets to dismantle democracy and capitalism in the process, so much the better. Unbelievable.

And if nothing much happens in the next few years, can we all say to Lindorff, "Shut up"? Undoubtedly, the left-wingers will have another trumped up crisis to bash conservatives with by then.

I was at a stoplight yesterday behind a car plastered with bumper stickers. You know the type. An old beat-up Hyundai, with the stickers all askew, elbowing for space on the tiny bumper and trunk, proclaiming support for various socialist causes. Amongst the myriad political statements, however, two grabbed my attention:

I See Stupid People

If You Took an IQ Test, The Results Would Be Negative

All I could think was, if you feel the need to continuously proclaim your intellectual superiority over everybody else on the back of your Hyundai, you probably aren't so superior after all.

Stolen shamelessly from a bulletin board I frequent:

Dear Dogs,

The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming yours.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object.

I can not buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about this. Dogs can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible.

There is not a secret exit from the bathroom. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, try to turn the knob or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I entered. Also, I have used the bathroom for years, canine and feline attendance is not required.

The proper order is to greet me, and then go and smell the other dog's rear end. I can not stress this enough!

I love you, my dear pets, and so posted the following message on our front door:

To All Who Complain About Certain Members Of My Family

1. They live here. You don't.
2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, please stay off the furniture.
3. I like my pets better than I like some people. To insult them is to make you one of those people.
4. To you, it's an animal. To me, they are my brothers and sisters (for some they are their sons and daughters) who are short statured and furry and do not speak English.

REMEMBER, IN MANY WAYS, DOGS AND ARE BETTER THAN CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY:

Eat less.

Do not ask for money.

Are easier to train.

Never ask to drive the car.

Do not hang out with drug using friends.

Do not smoke or drink.

Do not have to buy the latest fashion.

Do not want to wear your clothes.

Do not need a gazillion dollars for college.

Do not come home pregnant or tell you they got a girl pregnant, since you can castrate them when they're still infants.

Yet if you neglected to castrate them and they get pregnant, you can sell their children.

Dispatch from the Religion of Peace

I need a support group, because I can't stop posting about the RoP. This time from our friends in the Great White North:

The 16-year-old Mississauga girl who was allegedly strangled by her father in a dispute over her refusal to wear the hijab has died. Aqsa Parvez, a Grade 11 student at Applewood Heights, succumbed to her injuries late last night, Peel Regional Police said today.

Well, there's my vote for the Father of the Year! This story comes with a double RoP angle, though. The poor girl's brother is protecting his father, and has been charged with obstruction of justice.

Follow the link to see a picture of a beautiful girl, dead by her father's hand, in the name of his religion. In the year 2007, in Canada.

Hold on there, AlGore

It seems the "settled science" isn't so settled:

According to a new study on global warming, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate change models based on human influence do not match observed warming. [...]


The report was written by David Douglass at the University of Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia.

As expected, the liberals will have nothing of it. There's economies to be ruined, after all:

But Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, told Cybercast News Service, that the study is "radically out of step with the complete scientific consensus."

If there's a "complete scientific concensus," where did these three scientists come from? It really doesn't matter to the left. This issue is not about science or debate. It's about politics. So any doubting Thomases need to either shut up or be ignored:

"It's dangerous to get into a game of dueling science," he added. "We don't want to be gambling with the fate of the planet."

No dueling science is permitted? What if the science changes? It's not science to say that dueling isn't permitted. It's demagogy.

Update: Here's what some other scientists are saying:

“Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing."
Lord Christopher Monckton, UK climate researcher

“We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don’t cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years."
Dr. David Evans, Australian scientist.

“There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any affect whatsoever on the climate. All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails.”
Dr. Vincent Gray, UN IPCC expert reviewer.

“I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else."
Bryan Leland, International Climate Science Coalition

What a terrific blog post. I am the same age as the author, and he is so spot on I can only wish I had written it myself:

My real problem is simply that in my 48 years I’ve lived through so many pack-panic attacks over nothing that I won’t fall so easily for the next.
Your parents or grandparents may know what I mean. Go ask if they remember all those plagues we were told would surely smite us if we didn’t sign some cheque, praise some god, or vote for some politician.
Ask if they remember scares like the nuclear winter, DDT, mega-famines, global cooling, acid rain, Repetitive Strain Injury, bird flu, the millennium bug, SARS, toxic PVC, poisonous breast implants, the end of oil, death by fluoride, the Chernobyl doom, the BSE beef that would eat your brains, and other oldies and mouldies.

And here's how the game is played, over and over:

You want to know how they’re tricked up? First, you get a possible problem - preferably with some skerrick of truth.
You then get some expert, or maybe an Al Gore, to make wild assumptions or faulty extrapolations. You know the kind: that if a dodgy levee breaks in New Orleans, the whole world is gonna drown.
And then you whistle for the carpetbaggers—journalists keen to sell a sensation, business keen to sell a cure, and politicians keen to sell themselves as the solution.
And bang, you have a mass panic, with more people gaining from the scare than are game to expose it.

The author goes on to describe all the scares of the last half century: Overpopulation and the inevitable mass starvation, natural resource depletion, DDT, global cooling, acid rain, Chernobyl, Y2K, mad cow disease, bird flu, repetitive stress injury. The only thing left to add is Ebola, which was going to wipe out entire cities as soon as somebody got on a plane in Kinshasha and flew to the west. Ten years later, and we're still waiting.

Not a funny joke

I wrote the following on the blog I kept while my late wife lay dying in the hospital:

While I was home for dinner, Suzy's sister Ellen arrived from New Jersey, and the two of us returned for the final visiting hour. Suzy continued with the sorbet, so we are encouraged by that.

The best part of the day occurred around 8:30, with me sitting at Suzy's side feeding her and Ellen offering encouragement from across the room ("across the room" is a relative term, since the room is about six feet wide by ten feet long - add a hospital bed, and quarters are pretty tight).

Anyway, Suzy, who is still incapable of any sound above a hoarse whisper, said, as loudly as she could manage, "Ellen!"

Ellen, who could barely hear her from the chair, answered, "What?"

Suzy, gravely: "I have something to tell you."

Ellen: "Okay." She quickly gets up, walks to Suzy's bedside, and anxiously leans her ear very close to Suzy's mouth. Ellen drove 8 hours today to hear her little sister's little whisper of a voice, and now Suzy has something to tell her. The anticipation in the tiny room is palpable. It hangs in the air. Finally, she whispers, almost below the threshold of hearing.

Suzy: "Get the fuck away from me."

I think the three of us together laughed harder than any of us have in the last month.

And today, I received this "joke" in an email:

A woman's husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she had stayed by his bed side every single day.

One day, he motioned for her to come nearer. She sat by him, he whispered, eyes full of tears, "You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you
were by my side. When we lost the house, you stayed right here. When my health started failing, you were still by my side...You know what?"

"What dear?" she gently asked, smiling as her heart began to fill with warmth.

"I think you're bad luck, get the fuck away from me."

Needless to say, I didn't find the joke particularly amusing.

More Climate Change

Via Boortz comes two new contributers to climate change:

Divorce and Kudzu.

The “brilliant” students at Harvard have published an editorial in their student paper so ignorant, it is breathtaking. Here’s is my take on their ideas.

(T)he Second Amendment is neither relevant nor useful. Rather, it has become an impediment to vital public policy, and it should be repealed and replaced with nuanced federal legislation.

First of all, the Constitution cannot be “repealed and replaced.” It must be amended. And that requires a lot of heavy lifting. I suspect the Harvard types know this, and have figured we need a new system in which they tell us what the Constitution should say and we accept it. Secondly, I love the idea of “nuanced federal legislation.” What a meaningless turn of a phrase that is. Please elaborate, oh great oracles of Cambridge.

They go on.

The high level of violence in the United States as compared to other developed countries, if not directly related to the culture of gun ownership and distribution, is at least a strong argument that the Second Amendment is preventing aggressive federal gun regulation.

Honestly, now. Read that long and hard. It appears that The Crimson is arguing that gun violence (as it relates to other countries?) proves that the Constitution is preventing aggressive gun regulation, which would consequently prevent the gun violence allowed by the Constitution.

First, try to construct a study to prove that convoluted theory. And secondly, explain how states with aggressive gun regulation regularly experience higher levels of violence than those with more permissive gun laws. It’s completely nonsensical.

The Crimsons have apparently developed a particular aversion to handguns as well.

Unlike rifles and shotguns, a handgun has little use in hunting: It is a military and police weapon, built expressly to kill another human being. Yet little is done to prevent its distribution

I, for one, don’t want to be limited to a rifle or shotgun if a nutcase at the liquor store pulls out a gun and starts threatening the patrons, as happened here in my town. Thankfully, another patron had legal handgun and put an end to that nonsense. Guns are not all about hunting. They are about protecting the innocent from the vile.

But the Crimson stumbles blindly on:

in the wake of the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapon Ban in 2004, gun control remains relatively lax in many states, especially when it comes to handguns, which are responsible for many, if not most, gun-related murders. Gun advocates claim the need for handguns in self-defense, but such considerations are moot when weighed against the number of lives that might be saved by making the weapons illegal.

Ya gotta admire the persistence of these ignoramuses. They say the expiration of the “Assault Weapon” ban, which regulated mostly small caliber, high velocity rifles of a certain appearance has somehow increased handgun violence. How the availability of one weapon increases violence with another is beyond me. They then dismiss well documented (see John Lott) claims of lives saved by guns by blithely claiming the argument moot in the face or their wholly unsupported speculation of lives that “might be saved” under their draconian rules.

To the gun control crowd, I say this: Amend the Constitution if you can, and be prepared for what that entails. I suspect the Harvard types are not up to the fight, intellectually or otherwise.