Carbon Footprint Steps In Something Smelly

I thought I should follow up my post from last week about the trip Sen. Barbara Boxer (Nutjob-CA) took to Greenland with some of her climate commie colleagues. The ABC News website reported today on the trip under the headline: "Senators Go To Global Warming's Front Lines." Notice the clever battleground wording there. It's not that the Democrats don't believe in war, it's just that they think we should wage one on the weather. They want to fight the battle by crippling what they believe to be the enemy's biggest ally: the U.S. Economy.

It's very difficult to have a rational discussion on this subject with the fans of Al Gore because their position is rooted in hysteria. Read any mainstream articles about global warming and you're bombarded with extreme words like, catastrophic, devastating and penguin. They truly believe that this is the most pressing issue of our time. And Al Gore, with reams of logically tortured facts and the most extreme computer models he can find, continues to whip them into a frenzy. They're so out of whack that they think that the weather is a more imminent threat to our lives than terrorism. The threat posed by suicide bombers isn't all the blowing up of stuff, it's the fact that you can't recycle C-4.

In reality, the biggest impact global warming has had thus far has been on the First Amendment. Vigorous debate, usually a hallmark of the scientific process, is treated like leprosy by the climate commies. Al Gore has said on numerous occasions that "The debate is over." Then he runs around shouting "consensus" like a nine year-old who has just learned a big word. The real scientific world is one of endless questioning and an almost allergic reaction to "consensus."

The most inconvenient of all truths out there for Gore is that a lot of credible scientists keep studying the problem just like they're supposed to. They keep finding things that don't fit well with what Big Al & The Consensus Mongers are saying. Despite the fact that Gore has told them to shut up, the scientists keep acting, well, scientific.

What caught my eye about the ABC News article was the second half of it. An opposing viewpoint was explored and I haven't seen a lot of that until recently. They even provided a link to a blog that countered some of what the Senators on the trip are treating as fact. (The links to both articles are at the end of this post.) True, the article started off with quotes from the members of the delegation who presented hysteria as fact. Several quotes were balanced by only one more measured, reasonable quote. Still, this was more than you would have seen in the past.

Sen. Boxer said, "After this trip ... I know I have a responsibility to move now to lessen the impacts of severe global warming." That was actually the least hysterical of the quotes from that camp. Still, she believes that the water she stared at gives her a mandate to legislatively mess with your lives to fight the weather.

In contrast, look what Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said: "Climate change and reducing carbon dioxide emissions will likely be a major subject of debate this fall in the Senate, so as we've done with other key issues, we're digging in to understand this issue in great detail so that we can play a meaningful role as it is debated," said Corker. "We don't want to react impulsively and enact something that we can't reverse in the future if there are unintended negative consequences or our understanding of this issue evolves."

In other words, let's be informed, let's debate and let's not do anything rash.

That approach terrifies the climate commies. Why? Because the only thing they fear more than suntanned penguins and polar bears in bikinis is losing control of their propaganda machine.

Because it's really all they've got at the moment.

Links:
ABC News article: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3429160

Alternative viewpoint: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=175b568a-802a-23ad-4c69-9bdd978fb3cd

Since I'm always mocking computer projections I decided to do one of my own. Here's Lindsay Lohan now:


And here's a computer projection of what she'll look like when she's 30:

The Chuckhouse Gas Effect

The week is winding down and the weirdness of it is just beginning to settle in. Elizabeth Edwards said that she's willing to give up tangerines to fight global warming, no doubt inspiring millions of children to offer the same kind of "help" by avoiding broccoli. My greatest fear of the week was that I'd be left with the lingering uneasiness brought on by her husband John saying "The biggest problem right now is that my butt hurts," after a bike ride with Lance Armstrong. Soon after that Edwards shouted to a group of supporters "They want to shut me up!" Well, yeah, if you're going to keep talking about your butt.

By the time Friday came I was worn out by the endless election cycle and thought that I might just lay off of national politics for the day.

Then Chuck Schumer opened his mouth. OK, I'm not sure that his mouth is ever closed but sometimes it makes more noise than at others. In fact, I think the climate commies might want to start looking at a correlation between rising temperatures and Schumer press conferences. They like to point to 1998 as being one of the hottest years in the last 1000. Guess who was running around campaigning for his first Senate term all that year? As Al Gore would say, "The debate is over."

This week's petulant offering from the perpetually aggrieved Schumer had to do with judicial nominees. Whining like a spurned sorority girl, Schumer said that he and his colleagues were "duped" by the charm of John Roberts and the erudition of Samuel Alito during the confirmation process. "Why, those sweet talkin' smarty pants boys just had me all atwitter and I simply couldn't think straight!" Terrified of falling prey to personality and intelligence again, Chucky has threatened to block any future nominees President Bush might put forth. (Quick aside: when Bill Clinton was in office Schumer couldn't shut up about Republicans allegedly stonewalling judicial nominees. Chucky is so two-faced on this that one could stand on either side of him and look him directly in the eyes.)

You might ask yourself, "What prompted the good Senator to address this now? Did I miss some news about a retiring Supreme Court justice while suffering from tangerine withdrawal?" No. What happened was that Senator Windbag realized he hadn't gotten any quality face time for a while. The U.S. Senate is the largest collection of egos outside of Hollywood and Charles Schumer's arrival there brought the Mother of all Egos to the dance. He had upset an incumbent and, full of himself, began to revel in all the camera-humping opportunities offered to a senator.

Tragedy befell Sen. Schumer two short years later when a fetching little lass by the name of Hillary Clinton was elected to his playpen. The effects of this were twofold: Schumer was now technically the senior senator from New York but, to the rest of the world, he was the other senator from New York.

And he's been acting out ever since.

Those of us who don't agree with Schumer's politics can help ensure that he continues to wander through this political purgatory by keeping Hillary Clinton in the Senate. Those of you who do agree with, and care about, him should help the poor guy by not returning him to office.

Whoa, I need to rest. I ate about a pound of tangerines awhile ago and I'm crashing off the sugar rush.

Obamaworld

OK, I know Barack Obama smokes. I don't know what he smokes and I don't know if he's getting it from Howard Dean but the guy is growing loopier by the day. As the anointed darling of the Hollywood Socialist Republic, Sen. Obama can almost be forgiven for confusing celebrity with substance. No doubt that he has tons of the former. As for the latter, he's going to need Oprah to take some of that $260 million she made last year and buy him some in a hurry.

Obama's appeal has always been that he is camera-ready. He's a charmer. If he weren't running against Bill Clinton's cyborg half, the senator would be compared to him all the time. Instead, Democrats keep invoking JFK (and they complain about the Republicans bringing up Reagan all the time). His campaign has brought in more money than a partnership between Bill Gates and God.

But he hasn't budged in the polls.

So, Sen. Obama has decided to start saying stuff. Until now, most of his rhetoric has been the sort of broad-themed, feel good cotton candy that Democrats love. Better education. Better health care for-as always-EVERYONE. Better ways to tell an enemy exactly when and how you plan to give up on a war. Oops, he actually has put in some thought on that last one. Like the Democratic party of the last twenty years, Obama's ideas have been heavy on the tugging of heart strings and light on the details.

This week the early debate season took its toll and Obama started with the aforementioned stuff. He said a President Obama would be willing to meet with the leaders of North Korea, Cuba and Iran in his first year in office. Time permitting, he might squeeze in a little badminton with Hugo Chavez. My mind is still reeling that the words came out of his mouth and he thought they formed a good idea. There are all kinds of things I want the next President of the United States to do with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lunch isn't one of them.

Feeling that he was on roll after proposing the Summit From Hell, Obama went on to beef up his foreign policy street cred. He told a group of media and entertainment types that he thought his judgment in that area was superior to that of any other candidate in the field. Why? Because he has lived in other places. Seen the U.S. "...through the eyes of people outside our borders," and things like that. Hey-John McCain lived in Hanoi for five and a half years. That's gotta count for something, right Barack? What about all that time Dennis Kucinich has spent on Neptune?

I don't know about you but I'm going to look for a president who sees the United States through the eyes of an American no matter where he his.

Barbara Boxer Shorts

Oh my, I read today that Sen. Barbara Boxer (Lunatic-CA) is going to lead a delegation to Greenland to look at melting glaciers. This is what passes for leadership in America now: a bunch of senators use our money to fly to the top of the world so they can stand around and say. "Yup, that's water all right." I'll admit, the thought of them engaged in this kind of legislative nose-picking comforts me a bit. After all, they can't do much to screw things up here at home while staring at a glacier in Greenland.

Occasionally, however, one yearns for one's leaders to act as if they're, well, leading. I'm a Californian, so I long ago modified my expectations of Sen. Boxer. She's not good for much other than running around in circles and hysterically proclaiming "Retreating glaciers: BAD, retreating army: GOOD!" I've grown even more weary of the climate commies ever since Al Gore told congress that "The planet has a fever," a few months ago. The rhetoric is so hysterically inane now that I fully expect Sen. Boxer to see a melting glacier (she's not visiting any of the ones that are advancing), emotionally embrace a camera and say, "Look, it's crying."

American leadership seems to have broken into two camps: those who worry about terrorists and those who worry about weather. Unfortunately, the poll-tested, sound byte world we live in has left us with a dysfunctional group of politicians who worry more about the next TV appearance than the fate of the free world. Both sides have been dropping the ball when dealing with weighty issues. Can't really engage our intellects to battle the problems of the world when Chris Matthews' make-up people are waiting, can we?

As for deciding which issues are weighty, I think I like my risk assessment capabilities. I see a globally active group of zealots who have stated that they would like to kill us all and I see a dripping glacier. It doesn't take me long to figure out which one scares me more.

I'll be all for the Kyoto Treaty when it includes a drastic reduction in al Qaeda emissions.

Brain Droppings

Weird week in politics. Elizabeth Edwards finally noticed that Hillary Clinton is acting like a man. Clinton staffers kept warning her that she should sit down when she goes to the Ladies' Room or she'd eventually get caught.

Al Gore's melting planet hysteria is reaching a level of lunacy that, quite frankly, makes me worry for the guy's health. Gore is now claiming that we're losing the fight and we have ten years before a polar bear floats by your house and eats the chihuahua. He really needs to calm down. Maybe his kid can give him some Vicodin to help take the edge off. The Republicans need not worry about Al running for president as he's much too busy running from reality.

What the Republicans do need to worry about is the fact that they don't have a viable candidate yet. Polling revealed that "None Of The Above" seems to still be leading the G.O.P. pack. Sure, N.O.T.A. has an unblemished past but his platform is emptier than the Democrats' "We Hate George W. Bush" stance on every issue. Then again, "None Of The Above" may just be super secret Republican code for "Fred Thompson."

Barack Obama told labor unions that he would walk the picket lines with them if he was elected. Obama has been promising a new approach to politics since he declared his candidacy. The first time the unions snap their fingers and wave their checkbooks he starts jumping through hoops that aren't even there yet. You think the Republicans are bad with Big Business? When Big Labor starts flexing around the Democrats it looks like the Westminster Kennel Club show.

Still waiting for John Edwards to spread some of that "economic diversity" to my bank account.

John Edwards' Hair Brain

While observing the 2004 presidential campaign I believed that John Edwards was the Democrats' best hope. All good Republicans wanted Howard Dean nominated that year because we knew he was a spastic chimp on crack and headed for a meltdown. He melted down early and I began holding my breath, hoping that the Dems wouldn’t notice that Edwards was the only lucid candidate left. Luckily, a stunning case of mass hypnosis occurred and they convinced themselves that John Kerry was a leader, a good candidate and a human who could speak without inducing a coma in those within a mile. Not only were they wrong but, as the luck continued, Edwards hitched his star to the nasty end of this flatulent political horse.

Here we are four years later and Johnny boy has to make a name for himself again. Americans aren’t as forgiving of members of losing tickets as they used to be. While Edwards has been trying to escape Kerry’s long-faced, boring shadow, a lot of Hillary and Obama action has been happening on the left. He’s desperate to get a new message out to show that he’s a better candidate than the two real stars. So, what’s his angle? He emerged from his multi-million dollar fortress with a $400 haircut to tell us that he’s worried about the poor people. That’s cool, because most of us are poor when compared to John Edwards.

He’s blathering on about things like “economic diversity.” For the uninitiated, “diversity” is liberal for “stuff I think you common folk should do while I continue to hang out with my rich, white friends and pretend to be one of you.” (Yes, the Democratic party is absolutely polluted with rich white people-have you met the Kennedys?) “Economic diversity” is the new tricky way of saying “redistribution of wealth” which, face it, sounds SO 20^th Century retro-commie.

I had such high hopes for this next election bringing all kinds of new things we could argue about. War, terrorism, immigration, Posh and Becks moving to the states: there seemed to be a whole new world to be ideologically divided between the Republicans and Democrats. I was more than dismayed when the only Democrat to actually propose something thus far went old school on me. He’s telling me that the Democrats have better ideas about what to do with my money than I do.

They never have. They never will. That’s while I’ll never listen.

I’ve got a $15 haircut waiting for me across the street.

Who would you trust with your money?