Barrel Strength

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?

The authors of the Bell Curve , Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, were right. Intelligence corelates most effectively with  a wide range of apparently unrelated behaviours and outcomes, and more effectively than all other supposed explanations.

From Reuters:

The MRC study, which analysed data from 1,145 men and women aged around 55 and followed up for 20 years, rated the top five heart disease risk factors as cigarette smoking, IQ, low income, high blood pressure, and low physical activity.

If you have not yet read Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment, you must.  It is that simple. You should not be allowed to talk about human accomplishments without having done so.

It shows what you would expect it to show, that of the world’s great accomplishments, most of them, in fact, by far the largest proportion of them, the ones that change not merely their own culture but the world’s possibilities, were accomplished by white men. Repeat: white….men. It will drive any politically correct person to writhing agony.

This is the trial of the century. The increasingly popular Dutch politician, Geert Wilders is on trial for saying offensive things about Islam, and truth, apparently, is not going to be a defence.

The Dutch Prosecution Office replied to Wilders’ attempts to call witnesses thus:

“In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.””

And what does our National Post do? Show Wilders snubbing his own nose with a pencil. The letter about Wilders which the Post printed was favourable, but the picture makes him look repellent, and thse things do not happen by accident.

Where are our conservative and libertarian bloggers? Asleep? And what’s up with the National Post? You came to the defence of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn with our own thought control commissions. Why is Wilders the exception?

And while we are on the topic of Mr Wilders, the following are important:

• Atlas Shrugs shows trial has been postponed, to resume at an unknown time at the whim of the Dutch government.
• National Review Online started to cover the trial.

Wake up, people! This is your issue!

When the climategate emails started to come out last fall, I wrote to a warmist colleague of mine for whom I have a high regard.  He deals in such matters as user-owned networks and other net-headed concerns. We have been on the same side in several carrier versus net-head issues. He is also obsessed with AGW and what the information technology  industry can do to help. Okay, so no one is perfect. But making energy use more efficient is the goal of all rational people, and if you can just leave aside the AGW thing, there is much that can and should be done.

I suggested that in the light of the HadleyCRU leaked emails that he might wish to back off a bit. I received in turn a tongue lashing for my impertinence and the crude imputation of stupidity and unworthiness for my position. I replied that this was no fair, and that one of the most odious  attrtributes of the AGW true believer was that no rational discussion would be tolerated. People might not be persuaded of AGW but they were convinced that believers in it were fanatics, and of the two phenomena, political fanaticism was more to be feared.

So now it is payback time. Actually it is just beginning to be payback time. Matt Ridley, who is a highly-successful and serious science writer, has just come out with this in the Spectator.

He makes several points:

• the complete failure and connivance of the mainstream media in this fraud
• the power of the Internet, and the amateur, to foil this plot.

The amateur has been the hero of this story: Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre, Andrew Montford,

“Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made. Prejudice and ignorance abound too, but the good blogs get rewarded with scoops and guest essays so they tap into rich seams of knowledge.”

And the response of the MSM has been late, but they are starting to get there.

“When Climategate broke, the mainstream media, like knights facing archers at Crécy, mostly ran dismissive pieces reflecting the official position of the Consensus. For example, they dutifully repeated the line that the University of East Anglia’s global temperature record was vindicated by two other ‘entirely independent’ records (from Nasa and NOAA), which was bunk: all three records draw from the same network of weather stations. Editors then found — by reading and counting the responses on their blog pages — that there was huge and educated interest in Climategate among their readers. One by one they took notice and unleashed their sniffing newshounds at last: the Daily Express went first, then the Mail and the Sunday Times, last week the Times and this week even the Guardian.”

And now perhaps even the Globe and Mail.

I am waiting for Geoffrey Simpson, master of the Glebe Consensus on Everything Important, and ridiculous shill for AGW, to confess to error. Also for hell to freeze over.

Pat Condell’s matchless outrage has to be seen. Bravo!

I have just learned from Lawrence Auster’s site that Wilders’ trial has been postponed for many months.

The second stage booster rocket on the climate change story has just ignited, and everybody here at the Cape is holding our breath.  IPCC’s Pachauri accused of falsifying applications for money … Greenpeace wants him to resign … Phil Jones has been suspended for weeks and may not be able to avoid criminal charges … Michael Mann investigation enters second phase at Penn State … the British media, all of it, including the Guardian and the Times, smelled blood in the water and is now ripping away pieces of its thrashing victim.  The North American media, with some few exceptions, has literally been suicidal on this story.  Not only have they failed to provide the service they promise, they have sided with fraud artists who seek to confiscate my money to enrich themselves and their clans.  Delingpole of the Telegraph has it right: “I’m in no mood for being magnanimous in victory. I want the lying, cheating, fraudulent scientists prosecuted and fined or imprisoned.”

Roger Scruton nails it.

 I interrupt him in the middle of a portrait of conservative and liberal attitudes:

“Those two portraits are familiar to everyone, and I have no doubt on which side the readers of this magazine will stand. What all conservatives know, however, is that it is they who are motivated by compassion, and that their cold-heartedness is only apparent. They are the ones who have taken up the cause of society, and who are prepared to pay the cost of upholding the principles on which we all — liberals included — depend. To be known as a social conservative is to lose all hope of an academic career; it is to be denied any chance of those prestigious prizes, from the MacArthur to the Nobel Peace Prize, which liberals confer only on each other. For an intellectual it is to throw away the prospect of a favorable review — or any review at all — in the New York Times or the New York Review of Books. Only someone with a conscience could possibly wish to expose himself to the inevitable vilification that attends such an “enemy of the people.” And this proves that the conservative conscience is governed not by self-interest but by a concern for the public good. Why else would anyone express it?”

Read more.

Watch Robert Gibbs as he skates through a non-answer to a real question.  Maybe it’s just me, but his expression and body language seem to say that he knows he is speaking nonsense.  But then it is interesting to see some other White House correspondents start to gang up on him a little. While I wouldn’t read a lot into that, it might indicate that climate change is less of a religious issue.  Except at the Globe, where the author of a heretical despatch is despatched.

It starts with an Australian farmer, Peter Spencer, who is starving himself to death because the greenie government stole his land.  This could go global. So simple and so real.  The Tea Party movement in the US has made great strides, but its Amnerican branding localizes and restricts it. But everybody hates red tape because it means big government everywhere.

“James in Tasmania has had a great idea to support Peter Spencer. He took something known as “flagging tape”, added a scarecrow, and a slow moving sheep and created this message for the world to see.”
The Red Tape Protest has started « JoNova (7 January 2010)

http://snipurl.com/tzr9i

The EUReferendum blog is steadily dismantling the head of the UN climate change panel, Rajendra Pachauri. Revkin of the New York Times and Black of the BBC, as well as hundreds of other ‘environment’ journalists either knew, knew of, or failed to investigate the facts that Richard North at EUReferendum and other ‘citizen journalists’ are reporting.  I urge you to bookmark the site and follow developments. I do despise to refer to my own musings, but must. Carbongate is better than the oil for food crime syndicate – no messy oil, no verifiable food deliveries, no evil and unpredictable dictator – just pure profits.

Saturday’s Toronto Star story about the three-day Islamic gathering there ends like this:

For Janan Arafa, a 17-year-old high school student from Ottawa, the prospect of learning more about her religion brought her back to the convention for a second year. “Your faith increases by one thousand notches – no, one million notches,” she said. “You learn so much and you meet so many people. Islam means finding peace within yourself. We, with this conference, learn how to spread the word about what our religion is really about.”
Also see:
Lineups ease slightly at Pearson
Cold weather alert for GTA tonight
Security fears jam Pearson airport

Time to recap.  Massive extortion attempt just barely slowed by revelations of purchased science. As Christopher Booker points out, this is no victory – this Copenhagen farce, which we might construe as a win, does nothing to roll back the criminal economics set loose by Kyoto – in fact, it validates it.  There can be no rest until this elaborate criminal enterprise of ‘carbon credits’ and ‘emissions trading’ is abolished.  These people have invented a currency based on guilt. Think about that – the worse a fourteen year old girl feels about her lack of popularity, the closer the ruler of a third world shithole comes to his next helicopter gunship. ‘Traders’ acquire more money to acquire more vacation homes at which they can entertain more politicians who can rip you off some more. We did not win at Copenhagen, we just lost a little slower.

The comments on Michael Mann’s Washington Post self-exculpation and Unterautobuswerfen (under-bussing) of his erstwhile friends and colleagues are all entertaining and instructive.  Post after post digs the toe of the boot into this man.  Hundreds of them.  Scientists, lawyers and decent men and women like you and me.  Mainstream newspaper, overwhelming response from the forces of good and right.  We must not stop here.  I look forward to the first criminal prosecutions and repeal of legislation.  Elsewhere today I read something like, ‘China saved world at Copenhagen’.  Whatever you think about that statement, I am not sure it would have been possible a month ago.

Anthony Watts has just confirmed that the US Department of Energy has sent out a ‘hold your documents’ notice to employees and contractors, with reference to the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit.  I feel a cheery glow, as if I had just tossed another snail darter on the fire.

What the hell’s wrong with you? Two major stories have not only been ignored by the mainstream media, they have been missed by the previously boisterous blogosphere. First off, the egregious selection of one single weather station in the Antarctic to represent all the data from all of them. Guess what? It shows a warming trend. Second, Christopher Booker’s story of how a British steel mill got moved to India – and you are paying for it with carbon credits – your money, you idiot! I don’t mind honest competition, who would be so mean spirited as to deny a person an honest job, but these were stolen!  Look them up yourselves. These are the bite marks of the rapist, but the victim isn’t important. Are you?