Recently in Lunatic Fringe Category

Here it is. The invaluable David Horowitz finds out how bad it is. Any guess that the smaller zoo in Durham is following in goose-step with the Trotskyite party line?

Don't forget we pay for this.

The political ideology shares with feminism a devotion to Marxist thought, analysis, and terms. Check this Boston Globe story on the fact the Emerson College has been found to be "too white."

This is offensive:

The Emerson report concluded that the college has done a poor job of nurturing and promoting black faculty, and said it should focus in the next five years on hiring black academics who are tenured elsewhere.

"There are to be found at Emerson unexamined and powerful assumptions and biases about the superiority, preferability, and normativeness of European-American culture, intellectual pursuits, academic discourse, leadership, and so on,'' the report said.

Left unexamined, the biases result in the "disproportionate undervaluing of African-Americans and the disproportionate overvaluing of European-Americans,'' it said.

If people only knew how many Trotskyites there are on American campuses, they'd be truly shocked.

I have to say the opening statements of the President's State of the Union address were on target, talking about the problems that we, as a nation and as individuals, are facing. But once he started addressing the main issue we face - the economy - he lost me.

He talked about tax cuts, but only the temporary tax cuts. The somewhat more long term cuts, the Bush tax cuts, expire next year, meaning everyone will see a tax increase once they're gone.

On the stimulus bill - blah blah blah blah blah blah. (At least that's what I heard.)

As much as I agree that jobs are an issue, I have to disagree with the president that somehow it's up to the government to stimulate them with our money. Better that government get the heck out of the way. We don't need it to take $30 billion of the repaid TARP funds and spend it again.

I agree with Obama that we need to upgrade our infrastructure to help American businesses compete in the global marketplace. But what do high-speed trains have to do with that? Better that electrical systems and broadband communications networks be built, which will do far more to support American businesses than trains.

And while the president says he "won't accept second place for America", he's been doing what he can to make sure that's where we'll end up, if not third or fourth place.

After that I started nodding off as he started mouthing the same old platitudes but in different wrappers. (Make energy less expensive by taxing the hell out of it. Punish all the banks for the actions of a few. Spend billions more on education even though study after study after study shows more money doesn't equate to better education. Destroy our health care system in order to save it. And so on and so on.)

I. GOT. BORED.

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz........

UPDATE 1/28/10: Going back and watching the address again, I saw that as time passed he shifted more and more blame for all our troubles on to others. He laid all the blame for the failure of health care reform and cap-and-tax squarely on the Republicans, saying they now owned the blame. Senator John Kyl rebutted that allegation today on NPR, stating the Senate Republicans were following the will of their constituents, blocking bad legislation that would do little more than cost the American people untold hundreds of billions of dollars with nothing to show for it.

It appears that if the AGW faithful can't get their way via treaties and legislation, they'll do an end around and use the courts to force the issue even though AGW theory appears to either seriously flawed or outright fraudulent. I have no doubt at some point they'll sue you for breathing and exhaling CO₂. (Oh, okay. Laugh now. But just wait until it happens. Then we'll see who's laughing.)

Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort.

Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups--if that's not redundant--are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws.

A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.

Never mind that there's not one bit of verifiable proof carbon emissions have any relation to any of these things. They'll still take up the battle cry of "I'll Sue Ya!" But then, that's the way the folks like this have always worked, forcing their minority view on the rest of us by bypassing the legislative route and going right to the courts. And they'll justify it by telling us they're doing it "for our own good." What's worse is that they actually believe it!!

The faithful figure they have non-denominational, gender-neutral, non-judgmental G*d/G*ddess on their side, which gives them leave to employ any means to achieve their ends. (Hmm. That sounds familiar. Where have we heard that before? Somewhere in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken...)

I do have to admit to surprise when I found that an actual, non-name-calling unemotional debate actually took place in the comments, somewhat lost in the noise of the faithful constantly linking to or copy/pasting discredited "proof", as if that's all that's needed to 'win' the debate. But all it is is repetition of talking points and nothing else.

One of the debates I mentioned started with this comment by Paul Drallos (edited to remove a few references to previous comments that were not germane to the topic, though the full unedited comment can be seen at the link):

As a physicist with more than 20 years experience of modeling hydrodynamic systems, I can tell you that there are many, many things wrong with the computer-climate models.

Where to begin? Even the AGW people don't contend that CO2 is the dominant climate forcing agent. It is well known that water vapor is much, much stronger. However, in their models, the IPCC has hard-wired into their codes that water vapor responds with a positive feedback to small temperature changes due to CO2. But this is wrong. Actual measurements show that water vapor acts with negative feedback to small temperature changes and does not amplify CO2's effects.

It is insane to say, as Buzz claims, that the pre-human record is irrelevant. By studying the pre-human or early civilization record provides a mechanism for identifying natural behaviors. This is essential for distinguishing natural from alleged non-natural behaviors.

The widespread agreement on how our temperature compares with the last few millennia is that there have been periods of much warmer and much cooler temperatures - Unless one fudges the data as the CRU has unquestionably done. (See the CRU computer codes instead of the emails for incontrovertible documentation of this.)

And Buzz, you are completely wrong about "hide the decline". It has *everything* to do about historical temperature fluctuations. The tree-ring data was used as a temperature proxy (for determining the historical temperature before thermometer data was available.) The problem with the proxy data was that it diverged from thermometer data when thermometer data was available. That means that the proxy data was *not* reliable. The act of "hiding the decline" was an unethical ruse to cover-up the obvious failure of the tree-ring data as a reliable temperature proxy.

I believe Paul has hit the highlights in regards to the theory of AGW and where it fails.

The followups between Paul and another commenter, Buzz Belleville, give a reasonable back and forth, though Buzz does tend to focus on a single dimension (carbon dioxide) as the only driver of climate change. It is in this area where I believe he falls short in his understanding of the semi-chaotic mechanism that is our global climate system.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.

Here's the story. Fast-thinking and -acting 32-year-old European entrepreneur forcibly intervenes like in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, extinguishing the flames of the Nigerian Muslim who had his hopes on taking out kaffirs and gaining all those dark-eyed virgins.

Jasper Schuringa is a hero. Curiously, a lot of the news accounts have been very sparing with details.

Over recent years the coverage of the persecution of Christians by Muslims in Bethlehem has been one of the stories given short-shift or glossed over. Execrable coverage of Islamofascism in the Holy Land that makes my blood boil.

Now that the ethnic cleansing is almost complete, the truth is dribbling out even in one of the worst practitioners of the Pravada-like coverage. I heard a BBC report recently--unfortunately I've been having a lot of problems linking to interesting stories I hear to the same stories on the website--but here is an example of coverage by Heather Sharp that's semi-decent, breaking out of its execrable shell, finally revealing undeniable, outright religious persecution. But now of course it's too late. In 1995 when the Oslo accords gave the PLO control of Bethlehem,  forty percent of Bethlehemites were Christian. Now it's down to less than three percent.

In one of the most important journalistic pieces of the year, Daniel Schwammenthal in the WSJ writes:

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Mr. Khoury's Christian friends have also left Gaza.

On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier.

The same story is underway with the ancient Jewish community in Yemen. But does the world care? It's not their land, anyway. They've only been there since the sixth century.

It seems as if it's 1939 in 2010.

Unbelievable video. I guess these marxists didn't get the memo to dress themselves in the green of environmentalism. They are straight up commies. I actually respect that more than the watermelons: green on the outside, red inside.

HT: Matt Drudge

I find it interesting (but not surprising) the AlGoristas are not willing to discuss or debate the ClimateGate scandal, turning instead to invective, ad hominum attacks, and the old stand by - repeating the same old tired mantra "But the scientific consensus is..." over and over again as if that's all that's needed to make AGW come true.

A perfect example of all three can be found in the comments to this op-ed piece by MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen.

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

No argument there. But then Lindzen does the unforgivable, at least in the eyes of the AlGoristas: He questions the validity of the claims that GW is real and that we, human beings, are the sole cause.

At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

He goes on to make his case, showing the science is, at best, very weak and that the models are useless because they give too much weight to some factors and not enough (or none) to others. It is this that drove the comments of the faithful to go over the edge and cease being a debate. One comment in particular sticks out, trying to discredit Professor Lindzen despite his impeccable credentials and expertise in the science of climate.

At age 70, Professor Lindzen just isn't current on the research, it's that simple. He's done distinguished work in the past, but his current opinions [are] at best outliers. He's not involved in the current research.

His view is that the computer models are unreliable. Considering the capabilities of computer modeling at the time he received his Ph.D, which was 1964, that view is understandable. His expertise in the state of computer modeling is just outdated.

So the argument put forward is that he's too old, which means he is incapable of understanding the science (and the math) behind climate research? The commenter, one Arthur Kreitman, believes that just because Professor Lindzen is 'old' that he is out of touch, implying perhaps that he is senile. He also assumes that the professor's knowledge ossified and that he's learned nothing new since 1964! He is assuming based upon facts not in evidence. Kreitman's comments are a perfect example of an ad hominum attack. Don't argue the facts, argue instead the qualifications of the one you disagree with and make the allegation that he is incapable of understanding the science behind the fraud that is AGW.

But on the other hand, I liked this one because, if nothing else, it explains a few things I've noticed, too.

I too have a theory and a model. Through careful observation of the night sky, I have determined, within a few percentage points of perfection, the winning numbers for every lottery drawing over the last 20 years. But something always goes wrong, and the numbers drawn are not quite right. I've decided that this is clearly the work of extraterrestrials, who are screwing with the night sky to fudge my numbers and deny me my rightful winnings. I had all the data to prove this, but I threw it away when my computer's hard drive got overloaded. Nevertheless, my theory is a fact, because I say it is. And since no one has ever published data proving me wrong in a peer-reviewed journal, no one can say I'm wrong.

The exact same thing happened to me, too!

After the hacked and leaked e-mails and data files from the University of East Anglia's CRU became public, the hew and cry from both sides of the AGW debate rose to a level I've not witnessed before. The leaked information illuminated the fraudulent, dishonest, and in some cases, illegal activities of some of the 'premier' global warming researchers, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Cover ups, destruction and willful denial of publicly financed research data to those requesting it under both the UK and US Freedom of Information laws, and collusion to 'jigger' data to eliminate evidence that show climate models are wrong and to bolster preconceived ideas about human-caused climate change.

The AGW skeptics, including yours truly, can point to the files to show that scientific integrity has been lost, that all AGW alarmist doom-and-gloom predictions are based upon fraudulent, cherry-picked data and algorithms designed to produce a predetermined outcome regardless of the data fed into them.

That in itself might be a major news story, but the deafening silence from the MSM implies the fix is still in. Other than Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and a few other news outlets, there has been little, if anything from the major media. About the only exception has been the New York Times, and that surprised me (though it appears they tried to downplay the significance of the leaked data). The rest of the media are acting like nothing's changed, still publishing iffy reports laying out "We're all gonna DIE if we don't impoverish ourselves NOW!!" scenarios. But readers/listeners/watchers aren't buying it, making comment after comment about Climategate and lambasting the media for acting like it doesn't exist.

But what disturbs me more than lack of attention by the MSM and the governments of the UK and the US are the comments posted by the faithful AlGoristas, bending over backwards to explain away the leaked e-mails, data, and jiggered computer code. Reading the comments to the WSJ article linked above, it is quite apparent that quite a few of those trying to debunk the leaked information have an ax to grind, their reasoning having absolutely nothing to do with the AGW fraud exposed. They blame the WSJ (as if reporting about the hacked and leaked data was somehow 'just not done'). They blame George Bush (I haven't quite figured that one out). They blame a nameless conspiracy bent on the destruction of the human race (I haven't figured out the logic of that one, either). Others seem to be lamenting the fact they won't receive the financial gains they expected due to AGW carbon credits/alternative energy schemes/complete control over the energy production portion of the economy. And yet others claim the multi-megabytes of e-mails, data, and computer code is all a hoax, created to discredit the researchers and their sainted AlGore. Never mind that the folks at the University of East Anglia say it appears the files posted onto the 'net are genuine. That will not deter the true believers.

As the old saying goes, don't confuse the issue with facts. The Warmists will not be denied despite evidence saying their beliefs are based upon falsified data and computer climate models that are little more than means of manipulating other data to 'prove' AGW regardless of what the data really says.

After reading a review of Sarah Palin's book - Going Rogue - I knew I'd have to read it.

It wasn't the review itself that made me want to do so. It was the comments made of the review by those still suffering from PDS (Palin Derangement Syndrome) that moved me in that direction.

Not one of those commenting that posted negative reviews of the review itself had actually read Palin's tome. Not one of them posted anything that was any different from the same tired and long discredited tripe they wrote before the 2008 elections. Not one of them posted anything original. Just about every negative comment was a retread. No original thought was required. Only hatred, envy, and disdain made it into the comments.

So much for polite discourse or agreement to disagree.

The pathological hatred of Palin displayed by the Left is disturbing. It goes beyond all reason. (Yes, I know. I'm trying to ascribe reason to those showing absolutely none whatsoever.) It shows the old saying is true - We Hate That Which We Fear. The Left must be truly scared of Sarah Palin.

Experience the inexhaustible hatred of the preacher who became a dear friend, a role model, to our current President. Why this didn't prevent Obama's election is a mystery to me, except for the fact that white people are even stupider than I think.

There's a lot of hatred in this video against the white race. Notice some in the audience standing there in a Nazi-like salute of approbation? You can't make this stuff up. Is it any wonder guns sales are through the roof since Obama was the winner of the presidential race? No one wants to meet an individual late at night in an alleyway who happens to think that the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright is a man of profundity, peace, and principle.

If LA is correct, then it his explanation--on the surface hysterical and unreasonable--may help explain this bit of idiocy and failure by the President to sound coherent when responding to the Japanese questioner about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A responder at Lucianne's writes:

If Barack Obama can't stick up for the country he represents when he goes overseas, he should resign.

While I'm at it, I might as well add insult to injury in regards to the the recently passed Pelosi Health Care Destruction bill.

While she has crowed her success into forcing the passage of an onerous and deceptive bill the American people don't want, at least one liberal has the courage to state exactly what Pelosi's health care reform legislation is really all about: making the American people more dependent on the US Government against their will...and not for their own good.

[John] Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

"Making the United States a more equitable country?" Who decides what is 'equitable'? And is equality as Obama and his minions define it really a good thing?

The answer to this last question is 'no', for Obama's equality has nothing to do with equality of opportunity and everything to do with outcome. We've seen such equality many times, both in the past and present, and it's nothing anyone should aspire to because all it really means is equality of misery.

Everyone will be equal...except of course the ruling elite. Nothing will be denied to them because, after all, they are more equal than the rest of us.

In making health care reform a misplaced priority, he and Pelosi and Reid have shown us what it is they really want to do is to make sure we are all good little proles on the hook to the 'benevolent' dictatorship that is The State. They have come to believe they know what's good for the masses better than we do, therefore they must control every aspect of our lives. Such is their arrogance. But like all statists their beliefs have one major flaw: they are no better at running our lives than they are their own. In fact, they are totally incapable of making our lives better by the means they have been pushing for all these decades. [/rant]

As more than one commenter to the Cassidy piece noted, the last thing we want to do is to be like everyone else.

We are the EXCEPTION. Who cares if the rest of the world has universal health care? The United States of America has been the exception since it was first created. What is sad is that we have idiots in our government who do not believe in American exceptionalism and think that we need to be just like the rest of the world. Did the founding fathers believe that we needed to be like Europe when we declared independence? NOOOOOOO!!! Why should we become like them now?

Look, we don't want a government run system that will give us mediocre care and only give the best care to the rich, famous, and the Washington elites. We want to be able to have choice. The healthcare legislation that the Democrats are trying to pass will not give us choice. It is designed to make private insurance obsolete and eventually put everyone on a government run system.

We already know how well such a system will run. Examples abound, both here and in other countries, showing us that they work well...if you aren't sick or hurt. Otherwise all bets are off. Do we really want a system like that?

As time has passed since Obama's inauguration it has become increasingly clear he is disconnected from a majority of the American people. He talks about lofty goals, yet never really gets around to explaining how to actually achieve them other than by spending a lot of money we don't have. His ideals are not those of the majority of Americans, but those of the liberal elite. He constantly makes apologies to our enemies, and snubs or insults our allies.

Obama plainly embodies that mindset of liberal elites. America is flawed. America has no distinct message or values, and its interests are entitled to no more weight than Belgium's or Cuba's. It's wrongheaded to assert our national interests. We should be seeking consensus and righting the great wrongs that America has done to other nations--both its stinginess in redistributing wealth and its failure to cater to other nations' geopolitical and psychological concerns. Russia needs reassuring. The Arabs need validation. And it's the president's job to lower America's profile so as to not incur the wrath of hostile powers.

Average Americans don't buy into any of this. They have the notion--ridiculed by Obama and his supporters--that America is unique, both in its attributes and in its role in the world. They might grow weary of the burdens and prefer shorter and less costly wars (what democratic people do not?), but the notion that we should simply go along with the crowd, avoid hurting Russian sensibilities, or accede to false historical narratives of Arab nations in contravention to our own interests and those of our allies are alien and off-putting to them. If Iran is a threat to the world, ordinary Americans expect their president to do something about it, not merely call another meeting to talk with thugs spouting genocidal nonsense.

Obama really doesn't appreciate that America is truly unique, that its society is far different from so many others because, like few others, we are a nation of diverse immigrants. We (hopefully) took the best from the cultures of all those who immigrated here and made it our own. This view doesn't fit in with his, and therefore he ignores it. He does so at his own political peril, for as it becomes evident to more Americans, more voters, that he really doesn't have our best interests at heart, support will fade and he will find he's speaking to no one but his fellow elitists. That's no way to stay in office.

How is it he can believe we would stand for his denigrating one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen? How is it he believes we will stand for his shabby treatment of our allies, the coddling of our enemies, and his contempt for our way of life, our nation's achievements, and our nation's great sacrifices over the past 233 years? How is it he believes we will put up with his wholly negative view of what America is and what he believes it should be - a weak nation kowtowing to those who are our enemies?

He believes these things because he has no real connection with a majority if Americans. He will become truly aware of them starting in 2010 and will realize his error when his 'inferiors' decide to fire him in 2012.

One thing far too many people have overlooked in regards to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is the actual theory (or theories) about it, the data gathered, computer models, and how ongoing observations agree or disagree with the theory.

As a theory, AGW is starting to look pretty ragged, with more holes being poked into its fabric as time goes on. It is not standing up to scrutiny by third parties and predictions made by the theorists have not even come close to matching reality. But do these things stop the so-called alarmists from claiming AGW has been proven beyond all doubt? No, not in the least.

Far too many of the AGW faithful refuse to see the theory is seriously flawed. Instead they try to explain away the failure of the climate models, or point to the data that agrees with the theory while ignoring or trying to discredit all the data that disagrees with it by claiming it's faulty, tampered with, anecdotal, or trivial. Others try to put a spin on the 'anomalies'. One example: claiming the present cooling trend is proof of global warming. They also try to explain away any contradictory evidence by claiming that any weather trend that deviates from the theory can only be explained by AGW. It's the climatological version of "Heads I win, tails you lose."

The argument that the science of global warming is settled is wishful thinking at best. No 'theory' is ever settled. A perfect example is Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. The original version was found to have serious flaws, but not until decades after Einstein presented it. Experimentation since then has proven major parts of the theory as valid and disproved others. The disproven portions of General Relativity have been revised until they matched with the observed phenomenon. That is how science is supposed to work. But AGW supporters have chosen to ignore the failure of the theory to match with observations made since the theory was first postulated. They keep claiming there is a concensus among all scientists that AGW is a fact. But others disagree.

To quote my favorite passage from Michael Crichton: "The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics... In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus." Or as my co-author Allen Simmons puts it "you don't get a bunch of scientists together and take a vote on the speed of light." Science is not about opinions, not about polls, and certainly not about what is currently considered politically correct. In short, consensus science is bunk.

Recapping, five out of five predictions made by global warming alarmists, based on the theory of anthropogenic global warming, have been shown to be inaccurate or out right false.

Under normal circumstances a failure of the predictions to match observed conditions would mean the theory is incorrect and needs revision. Unfortunately the theory is unlikely to be modified to match observations. Instead observations or data will be 'corrected' or vaguely defined proxies will be substituted in to make the theory appear valid. Then the AGW faithful will continue on their crusade to force us into taking actions that aren't necessary, horribly expensive, and ineffective.

You know someone's in deep doo-doo when even Glenn Reynolds is piling on.

In this case Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH1) is on the receiving end of tactics she used against her predecessor, former Congressman Jeb Bradley. Her reactions show she can dish it out but obviously can't take it, having a constituent arrested at one of two town hall meetings she held recently.

This is a curious re-election strategy, especially for a Representative who made her name by bird-dogging her former Congressman at his town-hall forums. Consistency isn't Carol Shea-Porter's strong suit, apparently, as she demonstrates in [a] clip from the meeting she finally held with constituents after dodging them for most of the month. When one of her constituents challenges the presence of union enforcers in the crowd, Shea-Porter asks for police intervention.

[-snip-]

I've watched this video a couple of times, and I still can't figure out why the police took this man out of the room. He was actually less disruptive than the woman behind him. He challenged Shea-Porter on the appearance of SEIU protesters in the room, one of whom got up and disrupted his question. When the first man then challenged the residency of the SEIU rep, police swooped in and removed him.

Now Hampshire also reports that the man they removed is Carl Tomanelli -- a retired policeman.

Shea-Porter has also shown her true stripes, disparaging protesters outside her town hall meeting venues as "tea-baggers", a sexually explicit term no member of Congress should use to describe constituents. She has also made known she didn't consider military families that support the war in Iraq as her constituents, nor those of us that didn't vote for her. So much for representing the people in her congressional district. (She's made the mistake of pissing off the Blue Star and Gold Star Mothers here in New Hampshire. That won't go over well come the 2010 elections.)

I'm sad to say this condescending effete snob is my representative. On more than one occasion I have written to her (using both snail-mail and e-mail) with my viewpoints on certain issues going before Congress and not once has her office responded. I guess I'm just one of "those people", one she figures she can ignore because I'm not really one of her constituents. I didn't vote for her and I support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which means she figures she can safely ignore me and those like me.

She's wrong.

In a follow up to yesterday's post about a clueless greenie, one commenter may have hit the nail on the head as to 'why' of the urgency so many of them have been pushing Cap-and-Trade and a host of other environmental legislation: the Precautionary Principle.

Basically, the Precautionary Principle says that it something might conceivably cause harm, you must assume it does cause harm until someone proves it doesn't cause harm. This is true even if there is little or no objective evidence that it causes harm in the first place.

Unfortunately, the Precautionary Principle now forms the basis for a large portion of environmental laws and regulation, as well as being what undergirds the Global Warming Hoax and various other environmental disaster scenarios.

Thus, for "Global Warming," although the observed evidence increasingly does not support the theory, the disaster predictive models (much of it based on faulty computer models such as the infamous "hockey stick," or incomplete or selective data sets) say it could be true and therefore must be assumed to be true until proven not to be true.

In logic, the precautionary principle is known as the "fallacy of arguing from ignorance."

Indeed. I have come across a rather large number of people that have bought the Global-Warming-Is-All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans propaganda hook, line and sinker. They are truly ignorant of the science, the actual theories, the preponderance of data that go against the theories, the inability to distinguish between local phenomena and global trends. They also tend to look at climate history over a shorty period of time, meaning their lifetimes, without looking at the long cycles of climate variation over hundreds or thousands of years. The have no true perspective. It is that which can be called "arguing from ignorance." Of course that's never stopped anyone before.

I loved this from Maggie's Farm.

I posed this question to a very nice, well-intentioned but scientifically-illiterate Greenie lady I sat next to at dinner on Saturday night:

"What if there really is dangerous global warming, but it turns out it isn't caused by man, but instead by natural variation from other factors that are too complex to be understood? Then what?"

There was no reply. Her brain appeared to short-circuit.

I am a fun dinner companion.

I wish I'd been there to see that.

I've ceased to be amazed at how vicious the Left can be when it comes to Sarah Palin. In this piece by John Fund he explains why he believes she stepped down as governor of Alaska.

Contrary to most reports, her decision had been in the works for months, accelerating recently as it became clear that controversies and endless ethics investigations were threatening to overshadow her legislative agenda. "Attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration," someone close to the governor told me. "She was fully aware she would be branded a 'quitter.' She did not want to disappoint her constituents, but she was no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself."

Many of the more negative comments to the piece did little more than label her a weakling, a hack, stupid, corrupt, and so on. It was merely a continuation of the hatchet job perpetrated by lefty blogger/reporter Shannon Moore. Others called her a lightweight because she didn't "tough it out." But almost all of them missed the point. The endless and frivolous ethics complaints made it impossible for her to govern, which was exactly the reason why the flood of complaints were filed. They couldn't get her at the ballot box (she's still quite popular in Alaska) so they used innuendo and a blizzard of paperwork instead.

One commenter, Kent Lyon, gives us an even more ominous view about who he thinks is behind it all.

One can only speculate how much of the vicious and frivolous attacks on Palin via the Alaska ethics laws were orchestrated out of the White House and the national Democratic party. This bears the finger-prints of a Chicago mob political hit job, just as much as the St. Valentine's Day massacre did those of the Chicago gangsters. This is gangster politics at its worst, and reflects a completely rotten political system. This smells of the kind of tactics Obama used in his Illinois State Senate campaign and his US senate campaign, e.g., destroy your opponent. Palin resonates with the heartland of America. The problem is that the attacks on her are perceived personally by a vast swath of the American Heartland. We see the message from the political elites, of both parties, that ordinary, decent, hard-working, honest, altruistic, talented, and dedicated Americans are not wanted in politics--leave it to the corrupt, crooked, prevaricating insiders who will govern us, against our wishes. The hostility of the political class toward ordinary Americans today, and their disdain for them, is far worse than the attitude of the French Aristocracy toward the peasants in 1789. The political class pursues these attack strategies at their peril. I don't believe the American people will tolerate their exclusion from governance, and the suppression of their interests to the political elite, who are extreme, incompetent, and in it for themselves and their cronies, forever.

If there are any investigations to be launched, perhaps they should be directed at those behind such an unethical and, in the end, an anti-democratic attack on an elected official.

I expect the attacks to continue on Sarah Plain over the next three years just to make sure the threat she apparently represents to the present occupant of the White House is minimized or eliminated. That is the kind of tactics I would expect, knowing the President is a firm believer (and beneficiary) of 'The Chicago Way' of politics.

Heaven help us all.

A bit busy tonight to post anything lengthy, but I haven't been able to get the thought that so many of the Left become unhinged at the thought of Sarah Palin, so I had to post something. We thought BDS was bad, but PDS is an order of magnitude worse. At least one staunch feminist has noticed it, particularly among the ranks of other feminists, and she wonders why so many of them hate Sarah with a passion.

Of course, the first answer you'll get if you ask feminists why they hate Sarah Palin is that "it's because she ____" -- and then fill in the blank with the lie of choice: made rape victims pay for their own kits, is against contraception or sex ed, believes in abstinence-only, thinks the dinosaurs were here 4000 years ago, doesn't believe in global warming, doesn't believe in evolution, is stupid and can't read, etc., etc., etc., etc.

But none of those things is true. None of them.

Even after her announced resignation, the hatred and vile rumor mongering of the Left continue unabated. If anything it's increased.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)