Some good reads:
John Fund in WSJ : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574475292426931168.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
Karl Rove in WSJ : (ok, so he's a little biased) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473372635087870.html
Bad News for Obama [Peter Wehner]
The most recent Fox News poll contains several interesting data points:*Only “43 percent of voters say that they would vote to re-elect President Obama if the 2012 election were held today, down from 52 percent six months ago, from April 22-23, 2009.”*“
Looking ahead to the 2010 Congressional election, for the first time this year the Republicans have the advantage: 42 percent of voters say they are more likely to back the Republicans to provide a check on President Obama’s power, while 38 percent say they would vote for the Democrat to help the president pass his policies.”*“
Majorities of Democrats, 53 percent, Republicans, 78 percent, and Independents, 61 percent, agree the country is more divided these days. All in all, 64 percent of Americans think the country is more politically divided today — that’s more than twice the number who say it is not more divided, 31 percent.”
All in all, this is bad news for the president. It doesn’t mean things can’t change; in fact, they will — for better or worse. But it does mean that right now the tide is running fairly strongly against Obama and the Democrats. Obama has not been quite the transformative president his supporters thought he would be — at least not in the way they imagined. He is, however, reviving the hopes and spirits of the GOP in a way that almost no one anticipated.
'Could This “Smart” President Be Really, Really Stupid?' [Veronique de Rugy]
The title alone made me want to read this piece in Harper's Magazine.
But it got even better:
Are you tired of hearing how “smart” Barack Obama is? I reached my limit over the summer, when The New York Times Magazine quoted Valerie Jarrett, the president’s liaison to Chicago City Hall, declaring, “I mean, he’s really by far smarter than anybody I know.”
The article is here.
Scared of the VAT ? [Veronique de Rugy]
Well you should be. The Value-Added-Tax seems to be on many people's minds these days. For instance, John Podesta, the co-chairman of his transition team, and Nancy Pelosi, of course, think it's a great idea. And it's not as if these guys want to replace the income tax with a VAT, they want to adopt a European-style VAT that's added on top of the income tax.
Here is Podesta making his pitch:
"There’s going to have to be revenue in this budget,” said Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.
A so-called consumption tax would “create a balance” with European and Japanese economies and “could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness,” said Podesta. Value- added taxes in Europe and Japan encourage savings by taxing consumption.
Hmm? Increasing taxes would make us more competitive. He lost me.
Keep reading this post . . .
Krauthammer: On Joe Biden’s role in the debate over Afghanistan:
I think it's hard to believe this sudden media inflation of the wisdom of Joe Biden is accidental.
It's clear that there is a debate inside the White House.You got McChrystal, a man of incredible authority and stature, who says you’ve got to go this way with a heavy troop involvement, and you've got Petraeus, the man who saved Iraq, saying the same, saying otherwise we're going to lose.
And the administration obviously is resisting, and it has to have a champion of the other side, and it's the hapless vice president. So some way you have to inflate his status and to make it at least somebody that will be [seen as] a credible alternative.
I'm not sure that the Biden plan is a plan. It's an idea, and the administration obviously, in its leaks, is tending towards the Biden idea. But it needs to have some stature on that side, and that's why I'm little bit skeptical about the [sudden] discovery of the vast storage of military wisdom in a guy [who], if you remember, opposed the Gulf War and opposed the surge and supported the Iraq war, which he now says was one of the great mistakes of American history — 0 for 3.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Whither Global Warming ?
You knew the global warming hysteria was just that ... politically motivated hysteria ... didn't you ?
When the Lack of Sh*t Hits the Fan [Mark Steyn]
Jonah, re your item on Mark Hertsgaard, the "climate correspondent" of The Nation, and the sad tale of his recurring "Oh, sh*t" moments: In a sense, his job depends on an endless procession of OSMs. The "climate correspondent" is by definition the OSM correspondent: that's the basis on which newspapers and magazines created the position. A "climate correspondent" without OSMs is like a ballet critic in a town with no ballet company.
That's why the piece by Paul Hudson, the BBC's Climate Correspondent, is so striking:
What Happened To Global Warming?
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
This rang a vague bell with me. Back in July, responding to Thomas Friedman's call for a million eco-youths to stage a carbon march on Washington, I wrote:
If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None.
Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.
Obviously, it sounds better coming from a bigshot BBC climate wallah than from a wackjob denialist like me — although, reading between the lines of this follow-up, evidently poor Mr. Hudson is getting barraged from ecopalyptic types denouncing his apostasy. Yet, as he says, none of the models saw it coming. Including presumably all those German experts Mark Hertsgaard is hot for.
The choice for the "climate change" industry is either to do like the BBC man, step back and take a cool look at things; or, like The Nation's excitable chap, dash ever more frantically from one "Oh, sh*t" moment to the next. Mr. Hertsgaard already seems only one or two Belgian Government advisory-panel briefing papers away from running through the streets pounding on your hood and demanding you rip out your internal combustion engine right now. But, putting him to one side, judging from these latest exercises in "environmentally responsible" child abuse and parental abuse, the OSMers have decided to turn up the heat.
I don't think that, as they would say, it's sustainable. In fact, in the real battle of our times — against ever more regulation, taxation, and big government — the obvious hysteria of the climate crowd may prove one of our best friends.
Good Luck with That [Jonah Goldberg]
From Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation's climate correspondent:
They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, sh*t" moment—an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. Listening to the speeches, groundbreaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered September 22 at the UN Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent "Oh, sh*t" moment.It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions are correct—and Schellnhuber ranks among the world's half-dozen most eminent climate scientists—it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.
Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.
I think the whole thing's pretty funny (Oh, I know, I know, climate change is no laughing matter!). This Hertsgaard guy writes that "they" say "everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an 'Oh, sh*t' moment" (O.S.M.). "They" really do say some fascinating things, don't they? But, wait, Hertsgaard has apparently had several of these moments. The one he's describing here is just his "most recent." So the O.S.M. isn't, in fact, an epiphany as he makes it sound. If it were an epiphany, there'd be only the one, because he'd "finally" get it. Instead, he keeps having these moments as if he forgets how Super Serious climate change is. My experience is that people who keep having the same epiphany over and over again are quite excitable. Indeed, you might even say they're prone to panic and overstatement. Well, you might not say that, but I have it on excellent authority that They do.
And that would make sense given the rest of Hertsgaard's jeremiad. The notion that some German study "proves" America must abolish all carbon emissions by 2020 is just ludicrous on its face, almost as ludicrous as the possibility that might happen. And just because it gave Hertsgaard another one of his apparently too-numerous-to-count Oh Sh*t Moments doesn't have all that much persuasive power, I'm afraid to say.
That's too bad because, warns Hertsgaard, only a "wartime mobilization" against the carbon enemy "might" save us from merely "the worst impacts of climate change." "The alternative is more and more 'Oh, sh*t' moments for all of us."
Oookay Francis.
When the Lack of Sh*t Hits the Fan [Mark Steyn]
Jonah, re your item on Mark Hertsgaard, the "climate correspondent" of The Nation, and the sad tale of his recurring "Oh, sh*t" moments: In a sense, his job depends on an endless procession of OSMs. The "climate correspondent" is by definition the OSM correspondent: that's the basis on which newspapers and magazines created the position. A "climate correspondent" without OSMs is like a ballet critic in a town with no ballet company.
That's why the piece by Paul Hudson, the BBC's Climate Correspondent, is so striking:
What Happened To Global Warming?
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
This rang a vague bell with me. Back in July, responding to Thomas Friedman's call for a million eco-youths to stage a carbon march on Washington, I wrote:
If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None.
Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.
Obviously, it sounds better coming from a bigshot BBC climate wallah than from a wackjob denialist like me — although, reading between the lines of this follow-up, evidently poor Mr. Hudson is getting barraged from ecopalyptic types denouncing his apostasy. Yet, as he says, none of the models saw it coming. Including presumably all those German experts Mark Hertsgaard is hot for.
The choice for the "climate change" industry is either to do like the BBC man, step back and take a cool look at things; or, like The Nation's excitable chap, dash ever more frantically from one "Oh, sh*t" moment to the next. Mr. Hertsgaard already seems only one or two Belgian Government advisory-panel briefing papers away from running through the streets pounding on your hood and demanding you rip out your internal combustion engine right now. But, putting him to one side, judging from these latest exercises in "environmentally responsible" child abuse and parental abuse, the OSMers have decided to turn up the heat.
I don't think that, as they would say, it's sustainable. In fact, in the real battle of our times — against ever more regulation, taxation, and big government — the obvious hysteria of the climate crowd may prove one of our best friends.
Good Luck with That [Jonah Goldberg]
From Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation's climate correspondent:
They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, sh*t" moment—an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. Listening to the speeches, groundbreaking in their way, that President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered September 22 at the UN Summit on Climate Change, I was reminded of my most recent "Oh, sh*t" moment.It came in July, courtesy of the chief climate adviser to the German government. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chair of an advisory council known by its German acronym, WBGU, is a physicist whose specialty, fittingly, is chaos theory. Speaking to an invitation-only conference at New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute, Schellnhuber divulged the findings of a study so new he had not yet briefed Chancellor Angela Merkel about it. The study has now been published. If its conclusions are correct—and Schellnhuber ranks among the world's half-dozen most eminent climate scientists—it has monumental implications for the pivotal meeting in December in Copenhagen, where world leaders will try to agree on reversing global warming.
Schellnhuber and his WBGU colleagues go a giant step beyond the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body whose scientific reports are constrained because the world's governments must approve their contents. The IPCC says that rich industrial countries must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent by 2020 (from 1990 levels) if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. By contrast, the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—i.e., quit carbon entirely within ten years. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035, and the world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. The study adds that big polluters can delay their day of reckoning by "buying" emissions rights from developing countries, a step the study estimates would extend some countries' deadlines by a decade or so.
I think the whole thing's pretty funny (Oh, I know, I know, climate change is no laughing matter!). This Hertsgaard guy writes that "they" say "everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an 'Oh, sh*t' moment" (O.S.M.). "They" really do say some fascinating things, don't they? But, wait, Hertsgaard has apparently had several of these moments. The one he's describing here is just his "most recent." So the O.S.M. isn't, in fact, an epiphany as he makes it sound. If it were an epiphany, there'd be only the one, because he'd "finally" get it. Instead, he keeps having these moments as if he forgets how Super Serious climate change is. My experience is that people who keep having the same epiphany over and over again are quite excitable. Indeed, you might even say they're prone to panic and overstatement. Well, you might not say that, but I have it on excellent authority that They do.
And that would make sense given the rest of Hertsgaard's jeremiad. The notion that some German study "proves" America must abolish all carbon emissions by 2020 is just ludicrous on its face, almost as ludicrous as the possibility that might happen. And just because it gave Hertsgaard another one of his apparently too-numerous-to-count Oh Sh*t Moments doesn't have all that much persuasive power, I'm afraid to say.
That's too bad because, warns Hertsgaard, only a "wartime mobilization" against the carbon enemy "might" save us from merely "the worst impacts of climate change." "The alternative is more and more 'Oh, sh*t' moments for all of us."
Oookay Francis.
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