Green$ Aren't Always Good For You

Gosh, it's been such a busy week that I've hardly had time to contemplate the fact that we're in the midst of a climate crisis. Such are the perils of living in this little corner of the universe we like to call Reality. 

But it's important for those of us in the business of climate panic reversal to be vigilant and keep getting the message out to those who still think all the hoopla is about recycling and better air. 

OK, it's about recycling, all right. Recycling communism, that is. Your green friends like Prince Albert the Nonsensical want a centralized power to take over the U.S. economy. If that fails, they'll settle for hyper-regulatory measures that choke the economy quickly too. 

Arclightzero kicked the week off with this post about just how much money Gore stands to get his fat fingers on if  politicians finally capitulate to his wailing. Sorry, Greenpeaceniks, Saint Albert isn't in it for sake of the planet. 

More news about what really lies in store for us if Washington sells us out to any Kyoto-like deal showed up this week. 

China is about to surpass the U.S. as the world's largest carbon emitter. Despite the fact that everything but Angelina Jolie's kids were made there it's still considered a developing country. Sure, there's lots of manufacturing and a big army but the farmers still use oxen. Another shining example of communism working for the common man. Should China remain communist, it will probably be "developing" well past Al Gore's projected planetary doomsday. Don't expect a run on HDTVs in rural China any time soon. 

What's the main difference between the two "carbon superpowers"? Simple, climate treaties make U.S. standards mandatory while that poor little developing whelp China gets to have voluntary goals. It's only fair to give the poor guys some time to catch up, right? 

Would that it were all so feel-good but, as with everything Green, it's not.

Reuters reports today that a "senior climate official" in China doesn't think that his exploding economy can foot the bill to become more carbon efficient. China can't even begin exploring options without "funding assurances," according to the official. 

Welcome to the nitty-gritty. If the world is going to take care of this carbon bogeyman, somebody has to pay for it. 

Any volunteers? Iceland? Mozambique? Portugal? Didn't think so. 

Another Reuters article earlier in the week reported that "Brazil wants rich nations at the Bali conference to pay for poor countries to adapt to climate change." 

The Chinese official wrapped things up by saying "Developed countries should abide by the demands of the (U.N.) treaty and offer favorable terms, or give for free, the environmentally friendly technology that developing countries desperately need." (italics mine)

Hint: "rich nations" and "developed countries" are code for "mostly the United States". 

This is what all the Gorecrap is about: centralizing power at the UN and a redistribution of wealth on a global scale. Al Gore is trying to accomplish what generations of Cold War Soviet premiers couldn't: the spread of communism to all nations. 

And people think I call the greenies Climate Commies just to be snarky. If Karl Marx had an afterlife to go to he'd be beaming with pride at the accomplishments of his little green disciples. 

It bears repeating that the last successful financial venture the UN engaged in was an illegal and immoral one with Saddam Hussein. 

You might want to think twice about letting them spend the United States economy into the ground. 

At least we'll be able to import oxen for our farm work after we help China become developed. 

Cross posted at Real Clear Politics (Vote for it!)

Pelosi's Not-So-T.G.I.F.

Hot on the heels of a Gallup poll that says Republicans enjoy better mental health than Democrats comes the news that Rep. John Murtha (D-Occasionally Seditious) has said something remarkably sensible. Add in the rain here in southern California (more proof of global warming, no doubt) and we've got quite a wacky start to the weekend.  

I don't know whether Speaker Pelosi (D-Low Approval) is still in Washington or home for the holidays already. I do know, however, that there's a good chance she began drinking heavily as soon as her screams subsided upon hearing Murtha say "I think the surge is working." 

Face it, the one thing that Democrats don't want under their "Holiday Trees" this year is news from Iraq that victory and peace are possible. Look for various nutroot groups to start pressuring Nancy Pants to censure Murtha for his remarks. 

Within hours, Murtha moved to offset his honesty and candor with a statement of carefully prepared backtracking so loaded with b.s. head cold sufferers across America could smell it. 

Murtha contorts himself so much through various quotes that you almost forget he's fat. 

"...the surge is working for a couple of different reasons. And one reason is the increase in troops." 

So...sending more troops in is working because we sent more troops in, right?

"One of the reasons Alex Rodriguez's home run totals are so high is that he hits a lot of home runs."

Yes, these are the people that you're letting spend your money. If your neighbor said something that stupid you wouldn't let him borrow your weed whacker.

Murtha goes on to say that the war "can't be won militarily." So, John, it works better when there's more military there but we can't win it with the military? The alternative to winning a war militarily is..."Rock, Paper, Scissors"? "Tag"? "Gin Rummy"? Help me, Congressman.

Full disclosure: I am not one of the Republicans who enjoys greater mental health than the average Democrat (ask my mom) and I still wouldn't vote for a blithering basket case like Murtha.  

Those of you who keep doing so should probably read up on the harmful side effects of sniffing glue.

Cirque du CNN

So, CNN hooked up with YouTube to blindside the Republican candidates with a truckload of biased, juvenile drivel. Gosh, who would have seen that coming?

By now we all know about the gay general who trotted out a question from the 1992 primaries and was "outed" as a Clinton staffer. CNN apparently employed "don't ask, don't tell" when vetting the questioners. Michelle Malkin unearths more suspicious questioners today because, unlike the MSM, she smelled a rat as soon as Brig. Gen. Undecided was revealed. The MSM, for the most part, ignored the story altogether or were satisfied with believing the retired general to be an aberration. Gee golly, if you can't trust CNN who can you...

Anyway...

The Republicans walked right into this one. Why? Because they collectively possess some male anatomy associated with risk taking that the Democrats don't. A CNN/YouTube pairing had far more potential ticking bombs for the GOP candidates than did the Fox News debate that the Democrats gathered up their skirts and ran away from.

Madame Clinton spent the days leading up to the Democrat debate on CNN teaching Wolf Blitzer how to fetch and heel. Only when she was sure that he was under control and wouldn't embarrass her did she relax and proceed. CNN's biggest error of omission that night was having James Carville doing post debate analysis for them. The nutroots over at The Daily Kos were on suicide watch for the next few days because Carville didn't state up front that he was a Clinton staffer (Ms. Clinton is a bit conservative for the Kosmonauts). Is there anyone in America with an IQ over fourteen who doesn't know Carville works for the Clintons? As secrets go, this ranks right up there with OJ being a murderer. Face it, every CNN employee is a de facto Clinton staffer.

I am only surprised because others are surprised by this. It's sort of like going to a Jackie Chan movie and being disappointed by the acting. The powers that be at CNN wouldn't pass an objectivity test even if we graded them on a public school curve. The only reason it even calls itself CNN any more is because "American Al-Jazeera" takes up too much space on the graphics at the bottom of the screen.

The Republicans aren't going to get a fair shake from CNN, The New York Times or Hollywood. It's that simple. I was actually shocked at the relative softball nature of the biased questions. I fully expected this one to start with a video of some of the children weeping and asking how many puppies each candidate planned to kill with his big carbon footprint if elected. Instead, they attempted to highlight the difficulties that gays in the military face using a gay man who made it all the way to Brigadier General. That just made the policy seem like "Don't ask, don't tell, give me a helluva pension!"

The bias will continue unabated. A debate recap in the New York Times bemoaned "the lack of diversity on the stage..." and whined that "Most of the videos were from white men..." See how it works kids? The Democrats are suddenly representative of America because they have one African-American and four boobs (Hillary's two plus Kucinich and Dodd) running.

The fault lies more with us rolling over and allowing these sham debates that have more audience plants than a TV evangelist trying to raise money for a new Learjet. Each format revision seems to suck more than the last. Serious followers of politics on both sides should get angry and protest (we could call ourselves "youths") until some candidates agree to air it out for real.

Cross posted at Real Clear Politics (Vote for it!)

"Don't you people have homes?"

Connoisseurs of American cinema will recognize the title of this post from what is perhaps the greatest movie of all time, Caddyshack. That has nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm going to write now, I just wanted to demonstrate that I have some class.

A little story that got buried over at FoxNews.com and was almost impossible to find on the other major news sites caught my eye today. It seems the Soviet Socialist City of Berkeley has decided to crack down on all sorts of embarrassing sidewalk behavior by its citizens. The ruling politburo there has developed a plan that "cracks down on yelling, littering, camping, drunkenness, smoking, urinating and sex on sidewalks and in parks." (italics mine)

Granted, there are few things more annoying than tripping over a gaggle of humping couples while walking to Starbucks in the morning.

 

"How did you sprain your ankle?"

"I saw a friend of mine down the street, got distracted and accidentally stepped on a threesome. Between that and the peeing campers, honestly..."

What's that, you say? You don't have a problem with people screwing, camping and using your sidewalks as lavatories? That's because you probably live in a sane, rational city that is not only geographically located within the United States but governs itself as such. Berkeley, of course, fancies itself a sort of 50's-era Moscow. 

There are a few enlightened liberal cities like Berkeley sprinkled throughout America that want to be benevolent socialist nannies to homeless people. For example, Berkeley has about 7 per cent of its county's total population but is "home" to around 40 per cent of the county's homeless. Government funded programs provide some food, a little shelter and maybe some basic medical care. What most of them are short on are the two things that homeless people need the most: jobs and homes.

Berkeley is basically saying "We'll open our arms to you but you're too icky to hug." It's practically given a personal invitation to each homeless person in America to move in and now it's annoyed that they're hanging around all the time.

 

"We weren't aware that they would be here all day and all night. We thought they might just grab some soup then go off to the homeless place and do homeless stuff. It's so difficult being compassionate when your sidewalk smells like wee-wee."

What's Berkeley's plan then? More feel-good socialism, naturally. The sidewalk shenanigans law will go into effect but the city will build more toilets and have an army of social workers roaming the streets. At least the toilets will give the homeless some place to hide from the social workers.

 

At the end of the day, the homeless of Berkeley will still be homeless, with very dim prospects. They will, however, be just a bit harder to see which will enable the other residents of the city get back to the business of feeling good about all they're doing to help the homeless.

Cross posted at Grizzly Groundswell and Real Clear Politics (Vote for it!) 

The "Youth" Movement

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what might be the price of one of those words? To an apologist for the more violent aspects of Islam, "youth" is worth millions in whatever currency has the best exchange rate at the time.

Michelle Malkin helped kick off the busy blogging on the "youth" subject today in this post. The subject was also discussed at length by Mark Steyn in his brilliant book America Alone. Why am I discussing it then? Mostly because I'm an egomaniac and really enjoy reading my take on things. It's honesty like that which keeps me out of politics.

Urban riots most often break along racial and ethnic lines while others are driven by political ideology. A small percentage are confined to soccer games. Believe me, alcohol and low scoring sporting events are more volatile than a Molotov cocktail. When you've just finished your twelfth pint and it's nil-nil with 45 seconds left in the game punching the guy next to you seems very reasonable.

The point is, one can usually define a group of rioters by something that binds them deeply together like race, ethnicity or a lack of exposure to the NFL.

Then, in 2005, some rioting broke out in France and the only demographic anybody seemed to have available to describe the rioters was age. Not even specific ages like "teenagers" or "twenty-somethings". All we were offered was the extraordinarily vague "youths". The word was so milquetoast that at first one couldn't be sure if these "youths" wanted to harm someone or simply slow the MySpace servers down. Whatever could be making these "youths" band together and go apeshit?

Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the "youths" in France had something in common other than being kinda sorta the same age. They were primarily Muslim "youths" and, as such, adherents of Islam.

There's rioting anew in France this week and once again it seems it's those impish "youths" who are to blame.

So why can't we just refer to people who are angry, young and Muslim as "angry young Muslims"? Because that would make us insensitive, boorish right-wing boobs.

Remember the "Chechen rebels" who killed hundreds of school children in Beslan, Russia in 2004? We weren't supposed to mention that they were Muslim either. Hmm...

It's kind of like calling the pope a "a cassock-draped elderly resident of Italy" instead of Catholic if he does something controversial.

People on the left desperately want to believe that Al Gore is right about fearing climate change but George Bush is just making all this terrorist stuff up to scare us. So a couple of computer projections become a "climate crisis" and a "planet in peril" but the angry young Muslims flinging the aforementioned Molotov cocktails around are merely "youths". Angry "youths" in one place are difficult to associate with Chechen "rebels" in another. The lefties are probably kicking themselves for letting al Qaeda's Muslim connection be known in the first place. "Occasionally bearded sometime aviation students" just wasn't catchy enough in the dark days after Sept. 11th, I guess. If we begin noticing a Muslim theme in a variety of violent episodes we might have to conclude that it's not all a figment of the administration's imagination.

I say "toh-may-toh" and you say "toh-mah-toh", right?

These "youths" are going to have to do something real awful like not recycling before the American liberals worry about them.