Barrel Strength

With Congress in school and Presidency in an on-the-job-training program US is in great hands indeed.

Update: Reason magazine notes that Waters has been a member of the House Committee on Financial Services since 1990!  Twenty years and she is still clueless.

The former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, holder of the prestigious title of Master of Bubble Administration (MBA), who was widely lauded as an Oracle in the 1990s and was honoured with a fawning cover story in the perpetually naive Time magazine, has finally met his legacy.  Hillary Rodham Clinton highlighted the US deficit as a security issue and shared the following comments regarding Greenspan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said “outrageous” advice from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped create record U.S. budget deficits that put national security at risk…

“I served on the budget committee in the Senate, and I remember as vividly as if it were yesterday when we had a hearing in which Alan Greenspan came and justified increasing spending and cutting taxes, saying that we didn’t really need to pay down the debt — outrageous in my view,” she said…

Clinton’s swipe at Greenspan symbolized the way the former central bank chief’s reputation has fallen since he left the job in 2006.

First named to the office by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Greenspan served throughout the presidency of Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. He was regarded as economic oracle whose cryptic pronouncements were searched for inner meaning and regularly moved financial markets.

Now, he has become a handy whipping boy blamed for helping inflate a housing bubble that eventually burst, setting off a grave financial crisis and plunging the economy into the worst recession in decades.

Very conveniently Hillary, she of the ever shifting last name, did not include the Internet bubble in the list of Greenspan’s “accomplishments”, but then she wouldn’t want to further tarnish the legacy of her husband on whose watch this bubble was inflated and eventually deflated with tech stocks peaking in March 2000.  This was seven months before Bush Jr. was elected and by the time he was sworn in the tech stocks, as measured by NASDAQ index, had already fallen by more than 50%.

The health dog-and-pony show has been widely declared a draw and given that it required skills other than campaigning skills, the outcome is not a surprise.  On the election campaign front, Obama continues to rack up wins and those who cross his path continue to suffer.

In September 2009 NY Gov. Paterson rejected WH entreaties not to run for reelection.  Eventually he learned the hard way not to mess with Chicago political crowd.  Earlier this week NYT dug up dirt and revealed that Paterson and state police officials contacted the woman who had accused David Johnson, an aide to the governor, of attacking her last year.  It finally forced Paterson to announce today that he will not seek reelection.

Obama is still a winner – when he is in his element.

It appears that a prominent Tory politician, Maxime Bernier,  has made the mistake of telling truth in a public place:  caution should be exercised in relation to the global warming scare because the science is faulty. Whenever a politician tells the plain truth in public, and that truth has become subject to a politically correct untruth, which in this environment always trumps it, the act is called a “gaffe”. Hence the discomfiture with M. Bernier. Everyone knows he is right except the Liberals and the Canadian media.

A Liberal activist treats this as the wonderful wedge issue that will separate Tories from the Canadian mainstream. Robert Silver is an energy consultant seeking to develop clean energy for Ontario.

“As a Liberal I obviously think this is a wonderful idea. I have a funny feeling Stephen Harper will think otherwise. He may have a real internal problem on his hands and I would expect this wedge to be exploited mercilessly in the months to come.”

I think this is one of those situations where, once again, it is the Tories who are reading it better than the Liberals. With whom will this issue resonate?

A more substantial and worthwhile discussion ensues at Watt’s Up With That. A debate is taking place between Judith Curry and Willis Eschenbach on the question of trust in science, which is really what is at stake here. Eschenbach insists the issue is not one of communication: the issue is, as he reports tongue in cheek, 73.1% of peer reviewed papers are junk science. Communicating junk better is not the solution.

One thing that your correspondent derives a great deal a pleasure from is reading leftist European newspapers, like the British Guardian.  They are very well written, thoughtful, well argued, albeit dead wrong.  The same cannot be said about the US leftist paper, such as NYT, which rely on deception and lies of omission to make their point.  The reason is obvious.  The US is a centre-right nation and Europe is centre-left.

One area where this has become painfully obvious is the coverage of Climategate.  The European leftist newspapers have been much more “forceful” in their coverage and US leftist newspapers have hardly noticed the kerfuffle.  This article provides a good overview of this disparity.  The European leftist realise that AGW is dead, while the naive US leftist, exemplified by NYT, dream on.

First, Geoffrey Sachs. Then me, in five carefully worded megatons.

Geoffrey Sachs in the Guardian:

We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.

Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to “read” the Earth’s history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth’s systems) in order to advance our understanding.

And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth’s climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.

 On the motives of those who oppose the global warming agenda:

“the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.”.

Finally, it is our duty to obey:

“The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.”

So let us review his argument:

• Those who oppose us are against the scientific method itself, it is not a mere disagreement about some facts.
• Our side is filled with wonderfully intelligent minds.
• Their side is corrupt and evil.
• Obey or be damned.

And now I am going to  give some of it back.

[After the passage of a few days since first reading the Sachs article, I realize what drove me and Antony Watts up the wall about it. It was not intended to rationally persuade anyone who differs in the least from its views. It was the equivalent of an officer slapping a dazed private, saying "get back in line, soldier. Nothing has happened". The entire eastern front has collapsed. The shattered wreck of armies is drifting past the position, and the officer is merely trying to cow the soldier back into line. It was an assertion of authority over weak minds, and the insult lies in the author's belief that we are weak minded. But he was not talking to us. He was talking to the wavering fanatics.]

First, this line of attack is entirely typical of all global warming alarmists whom I have encountered personally and in print, without exception. I have not met any global warmist who has failed to use his adherence to the dcctrine as a signal of his moral superiority, rather than as a position in a rational discussion. The most disturbing thing about warmists is their religious enthusiasm and intolerance.

Second,  I have observed this form of argument many times before.  I have argued with Jews, of whom Geoffrey Sachs is one, for over forty years on all matters political, theological, factual or legal. Many Jews, if not most, exhibit a strong tendency to overstate the argument in the terms used by Sachs. We shall discuss what those features are below.

Third, the global warming movement shows many of the features associated with ideological movements of the twentieth century: Feudianism, Boasian sociology, and subsequent intellectual movements making  left-wing critiques of society (the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer, Marcuse et al). These were mostly Jewish in origin, composition, and working styles. These groups exhibited or exhibit:

• high degrees of authoritarianism: intellectual subordination of the group to a charismatic leader or his ideas;
• sharp in-group out-group distinctions, between the elect/the saved/the initated and the rest, who are divided into the possibly useful and the damned (those who knowingly disagree).
• a conspiratorial style: worldly success in ensuring members of the in-group are placed in the right spots to manage the propagation of the group’s ideas and the upward mobility of its members;
• Condescension towards and failure to respect the ideas of others. Indeed, failure to agree is a sign of psychopathoogy.

To summarize:

1. The pattern of thought and behaviour of the global warming alarmists exhibits many resemblances to the intellectual fads of the 20th century.
2. The style of argument of Geoffrey Sachs is particularly Jewish.
3. People should not be cowed by Sachs’  style of discourse, particularly they should not be afraid of being called anti-semitic for saying that this style of argument is obnoxious, authoritarian, and anti-liberal.

Freud, Boas , Marcuse and their doctrines  have turned into the equivalent of a pet rocks.  Global warming via CO2 emissions is rapidly joining these intellectual poseurs on the rubbish dump of failed ideas.

The style of argument, the conspiratorial methods, the inability to withstand criticism from members of an out-group: all this will persist. It will simply find a new authoritarian ideology to latch onto.

So Geoffrey Sachs can go fuck himself.

Whingeing Seventies rock star Sir Elton John announces to the world that Jesus Christ was a “super-intelligent gay man“.

And the increasingly awful Church of England does little to refute this fabulous theologian:

A spokesman for the Church of England said: “Sir Elton’s reflection that Jesus calls us all to love and forgive is one shared by all Christians.”

“But insights into aspects of the historic person of Jesus are perhaps best left to the academics,” he added.

Fittingly, at one point in the interview with that bastion of religious reflection, Parade Magazine, Sir Elton claims that “fame attracts lunatics”.

No argument here.

The financial difficulties are forcing the hand of the Greek government and one of the steps being taken is to reduce the number of cash transactions.  The amazing thing about this effort is the low threshold.

From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards

Tiger Woods to ‘apologize’ publicly on Friday – CTV News (17 February 2010)

First of all, I want to say to my 7 iron, I know, I hurt you. I hurt you through neglect, and when I came back to you, I hurt you because my grip was wrong. We know why, we talked about it and I hope we’re all right.

Next, I want to apologize to professional golf. Listen, my income just took a hit, but you guys! Seriously, I get it. A fifty percent drop in revenue is drastic, and I hope to make it up to you. If they wanted to see the Tiger magic before, they will tune in now to see the repentent, new, post-rehab Tiger, putting more into each stroke! Oops, can I have a Mulligan on that remark? Just kidding.

Now, amateur golfers.  You take off every weekend for six, seven hours at a stretch, come back happy, sweaty, tired, a better man.  Now, she’s asking herself, where has that goofy prick been? If I blew the whistle on your part-time thing, I am truly sorry.  And I am a guy who needed that thing. Maybe together, we can work it out.

I had some other people I wanted to give a nod to – the bar-tenders, hoteliers, chauffeurs and sportswriters who protected me – enabled me, I guess – hell, cheered me on – so, guys, thanks. But it’s a new cat now.  I only purr for one kitten at a time. Seriously.

Finally, to the guys at Kwame, Feinstein and Lockyer – long days, guys, I know. But we got a deal! Don’t spend it all in one place.

Thanks, everybody, and see you on the tee. Am I forgetting anybody? No? Awright, we’re gone.

Conducted by Bruce Bawer, author of “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within“:

http://www.rights.no/publisher/publisher.asp?id=59&tekstid=3259

Settled science indeed. Phil Jones qualifies, recants, and suddenly has reason to mention the medieval warm period.

Oh, and he may simply have lost the papers containing the data underlying claims of anthropogenic global warming. Messy professor’s office, you know. Remember, trillions of income transfer were riding on this.

To quote Glendronach, “the global warmists are retreating so fast they are red-shifting.”

No actually I don’t. I hate his doctrines. David Warren is a tower of intellectual strength and and integrity. On many issues, he represents a voice of long-term sanity, though as a Holy Fool he aggravates many.

My problem with David Warren is that he is not of our species, and does not know it. Consequently on the subject of sex he preaches to some other class of being not commonly found among humans – those who feel no lust. He may share human DNA; but I can scarcely believe it from the way he talks.

In this week’s sermon, he writes:

“A woman, who is not the victim of a rape, has always had that right; and even my Catholic Church recognizes a method of contraception that is quite infallible. Gentle reader may guess what that is. And while it is only a rule of thumb, “no sex without babies, and no babies without sex” does in fact provide adequate guidance for any conceivable life issue.”

How else can you account for his advice in a major newspaper, that the best course was “no babies without sex, no sex without babies”. Wilful perversity? Possibly, but not on this issue.

This is not Roman Catholicism, David. It is just the voice of a man in whose veins no testosterone runs. I am not saying that you lack courage, for clearly you have profound moral convictions and have suffered greatly for them. I am saying that you have critical absence of the vital juices that make humans the most sexual of all species.

A man who explained his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism on the basis that the Anglican Church was getting too gay-friendly has some serious thinking to do about the nature of the priesthood of the Roman Church, the largest gay-owned and -operated institution in the world.

Warren continues:

“This moral injunction (no babies without sex, no sex without babies) is dismissed as “too simple.” Yet merely by trying to draw some alternative line, say between contraception and abortion, we have already found the means to become irretrievably lost. All moral injunctions are simple, and the sinful heart has always cried out for a little complexity.”

Warren continues in the long line of Catholics from Saint Paul and Saint Augustine forward, to find something inherently sinful about the human desire for sex, whether with oneself, or others, whether with the opposite sex, or one’s own.  One of the 39 articles of the Anglican religion, written in the 1540s,  expresses it thus.

 IX:…..”the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, phronea sarkos, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

If lust be something not subject to the law of God, one asks how it is different from the production of bile or hemoglobin, or the production of neurotransmitters or snot, or any other bodily function. And if lust is subject to the will of God in the same way as other bodily functions and processes, one asks how or why it has the nature of sin.

Sex is how we got here. I mean more by sex than by how we were given birth. I mean sexual selection, how you chose your mate and how you were chosen, is the only means of evolution directed enough, intelligent enough, discriminating enough, to take us from furry-faced bipeds under the plains of Africa to listening to Mozart under northern stars, dining on food with cutlery and table cloths, in the space of 30,000 years. Read Geoffrey Miller’s The Mating Mind for a more complete exposition of this argument. To place in sexual selection the burden of sin is a portion of traditional Christian doctrine that we have all walked away from, for many profound reasons.

All but David Warren and his lonely band of traditional Catholics. May God bless them and preserve them, for they have been made crazy. Our revenge shall be to outbreed them.

The sad news of the death of 12-term Democrat congressman, Charlie Wilson, reached me yesterday. He organized the American funding of the Afghan resistance during the First Afghan War, the Soviet one, in the 1970s and 80s. The near incredible tale is related in Charlie Wilson’s War, a book I recommend highly. Ony in America.

Wilson got himself into more trouble, and out of it, in fashion reminiscent of a 19th century riverboat gambler.

I wish that, when the United States occasionally purges itself of Republican rule, as it must, that more Democrats of Charlie Wilson’s ilk could be found fighting America’s enemies effectively, in between shagging the beauties and snorting cocaine while drunk at the wheel. My kind of Democrat. What  P.J. O’Rourke would be if he had not  turned into an author and  conservative satirist.

The kind of guy who organizes National Handgun Week, where officers of the police have to certify you drunk be fore you are allowed on the firing line.

My kind of Democrat. Now where the hell is that Kalashnikov?

Sadly this is not from an article at The Onion:

The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty,” the group said in a Feb. 10 statement posted at Islam Online.

And the solution proposed  by these sultans of security?

FCNA is asking for changes in scanner software so the machines will produce only body outlines.

Because then, of course, you could really detect the explosive underwear, shoes or other shahid-friendly accoutrements of passengers.

H/T Five Feet of Fury

I ought to have seen Joanne Nova’s Climate Money before now. If you haven’t, you too can cite it in the unlikely  event of being invited to Geoffrey Simpson’s for dinner. In short, government billions for AGW; millions somewhere for skeptics.

James Delingpole, that right-wing vicious attack dog – God I love him – has come out with something similar.