Barrel Strength

James Delingpole of the Telegraph has a charmingly sly proposal for the retention of Rajendra Pachauri, in order to complete the destruction of the IPCC.

“Joshua, when fighting the battles of the Lord, prayed fervently that the Almighty would continue the light of day, that he might complete the overthrow of his enemies.”

Delingpole writes:

“But let’s not underestimate the scale of the struggle we climate rationalists have ahead of us. AGW is the biggest and most far-reaching scientific scandal in history, whose tentacles spread into almost every aspect of our lives, from how we dispose of our trash and how we light up our homes, to how we travel and how we are taxed and regulated. Big business stands to make a fortune out of the scam; for governments it’s a way of extending their control and increasing power; for eco-fascists it’s a way of destroying industrial civilisation.

“This conspiracy is much, MUCH bigger than one unfortunate bearded troll-impersonator.”

Unfortunately, none of the heavy hitters in the global warming establishment appear to have come to his defence.

One of the things that was unusual about SOTU address yesterday was that Obama, when mentioning a person, did not use names.  This is unusual for presidents who like to weave a personal narrative.  An example is as follows.

Talk to the small business in Phoenix that will triple its workforce because of the Recovery Act.

Talk to the window manufacturer in Philadelphia who said he used to be skeptical about the Recovery Act, until he had to add two more work shifts just because of the business it created.

Talk to the single teacher raising two kids who was told by her principal in the last week of school that because of the Recovery Act, she wouldn’t be laid off after all.

Are these real people or figment of Axelrod’s imagination?  Perhaps there is another reason why they are not named, along the lines of what was first enforced by Obama’s fellow African Mobutu Sese-Seko.

At one point, in early 1975, the media was even forbidden from mentioning by name anyone but Mobutu; others were referred to only by the positions they held.

Konrad Yakabuski drops this among many prize clangers in his defence of Obama’s petulant State of the Union speech:

In theory, Mr. Obama did not need to sound as contrite as Bill Clinton did in his 1995 State of the Union speech…

[...]

[T]he new President’s electoral reversals to date – in two governors’ races and the special vote to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat – have been surface wounds compared to the near decapitation Democrats experienced in 1994.

Yup, just a flesh wound:

And it gets better:

Unlike Mr. Clinton, who declared in his 1996 State of the Union speech that “the era of big government is over,” Mr. Obama seems resigned to presiding over the biggest American government ever.

Resigned to it? When was there ever a sign that this was not in fact Obama’s cherished dream?!

No doubt Mr. Yakabuski is feeling that Matthews-like tingling in his leg as Obama takes manly grasp of the helm to set the controls for the heart of the sun.