Monthly Archives: December 2009

The first question is what to call it. Circa Jan. 1, 2005, halfway through the first decade of the 21^st century, Slate’s Timothy Noah implored us to decide what to call the decade we were living in. Neither “aughts,” “naughts,” “ohs,” nor “double ohs” seemed to be catching. Either Mr. Noah lacks influence or the decade is simply unnamable, because as we stand on the precipice of 2010, we are no closer to an agreed upon moniker.

A proper name may be important because of our recent tendency to segment history by its third digit. In the past, I have acknowledged the usefulness of this shorthand, while adjusting the dates for the start and end times of each “decade.” For example, through my prism, the Roaring Twenties went from the end of WWI in 1918 to the crash of the stock market in 1929. The Forties (in America) went from 1941 to 1945 (1945-49 was its own era: “during the war”). The Fifties stretched from 1949 to 1963; the Sixties from 1964-1974; the Seventies mercifully short from 1975-1980; the Eighties thankfully a bit longer, ending in 1992; and the Nineties, the “end of history,” and the overness of the era of big government, all fell to earth with the Twin Towers in 2001.
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Motivational Posters: Winston Churchill Edition (Part II) | The Art of Manliness.

2010 is just around the corner.   Use this motivation to determine what you can do to make next year a great year.

The Grandiose Decay of Abandoned Detroit.

Nearly a third of Detroit’s homes are vacant, and along with the residences, the city’s stately hotels and cultural centers have been abandoned as well, falling into dramatic disrepair, their grand ruins still showing the promises of a once-booming city.

Some Amazing Detroit pictures here.  Reminds me of Conclub at the moment.

Luke 2: 1-40

 1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

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Received in the Sage’s email inbox:

PLEASE ACCEPT , from me (the “Wisher”), to you (the “Wishee”), by way of this holiday greeting (this “Greeting”), with no obligation, express or implied, my best wishes for an emotionally-fulfilling, environmentally-conscious, socially-responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choosing, exercised with due respect for the religious/secular traditions of others, or their non-practice of the same (collectively, the “Wishes”)!

 By transmission of this Greeting, I also wish you a personally joyous, financially successful, and medically favorable recognition of the onset of the generally-accepted calendar year 2010 during its entire term (or such other annual commencement date(s) adopted by you, or applicable to you by reason of your faith, practice, or culture), to be celebrated by you in an appropriate manner in the presence of, or with the cooperation of, other persons with whom you are related or acquainted, without limitation by race, creed, color, age, national origin, religious faith, or sexual preference.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these further terms: This Greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal in the sole discretion of the Wisher at any time for any reason, including, but not limited to, inappropriateness or unsuitability. The Wishes contained in this Greeting are warranted to perform as customary or common law exclamations of “good tidings” for a period of one (1) year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first. THIS GREETING DOES NOT IMPLY ANY OBLIGATION BY THE WISHER TO ENFORCE THE WISHES DURING THE EFFECTIVE PERIOD FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WISHEE, WHO REMAINS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION THEREOF, IF ACCEPTED. The remedies of the Wishee are limited solely to the replacement of an identical Greeting, or to the issuance of new, substantially similar Wishes. This Greeting is freely transferable; provided, however, that no commercial use may be made of this Greeting or the original Wishes. This Greeting is void where prohibited by law.

According to Voltaire, “If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.”.  This is probably his best known quote and the most often parodied. Substitute any name or situation for “God” and you have instant perspicacity. For the purposes of this argument, let’s replace “God’ with “The Capitalist Apocalypse”.

Because, according to many, Capitalism has been trying to kill us for a long time.  It was going to eat us alive in dark, satanic mills, then it was going to fry us in nuclear fire and, most recently, it was going to hard boil our planet like a ten-minute egg.  One thing you can say about the end of the world is – even if it never gets here, it never stops coming.

And, oddly enough, the remedy always seems to be the same: Communism. Save the workers from their mills – seize the factories from the owners. Save the world from the Nukes – pitch them away and throw ourselves on Russia and China’s mercy. Stop the globe from warming – hand over complete control of all industries and pretty much everything else to an international environmental clique who will reapportion it to see all gets their share equally. Of course, as Orwell observed, some are more equal than others.  Our soon-to-be climate overlords illustrated this nicely when they jetted to Copenhagen in 120 private planes to be ferried about town in 1,200 limousines.

Communism is and has always been about what’s going to happen. Commies always lay claim to the future. Marx claimed Communism was inevitable,  the state would inexorably evolve to group ownership of the means of production and then wither away under the pressure of history.  The anti nuke peace movement of the sixties, seventies and 80′s were certain the bomb was on the verge of being dropped, which is why the Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists set the arms of their “Doomsday Clock” to five to twenty minutes from Midnight for about 60 years (it’s at five minutes right now, actually). That’s a long five minutes by anybody’s count. The Climate Alarmists are equally certain that the atmosphere will eventually turn the earth into the equivalent of that hot dog cooker you avoid (but occasionally succumb to) at the gas station.

You might have noted by now another common element, apart from Communism, at work here: none of these predictions have every actually come true. Communism did not triumph, we were not eaten by the mills, the nuke was never dropped and the earth is unaccountably (to some) cooling. The inexorable press of history may produce any number of apocalypses in imaginary venues such as  the Star Trek Universe, but in the real world it keeps stubbornly refusing to materialize. These variegated doomsdays fizzle, one by one.  They never really die, they just drop down to a low smolder, until the next one flares up. Global Warming was always a dicey choice, one has to wonder what the Alarmists were thinking when they chose something as legendarily uncertain as the weather to hang their hopes on. At least with nuclear war you knew the threat actually, demonstrably existed. A-Bombs were real, they really did (and were often observed to) go boom.

And make no mistake, the new and improved, 10%scarier (NOW WITH VITAMIN D!) Doomsday is on its way. The Beast has no idea what it’ll be, but it’ll show sooner or later.  Global Warming won’t go away. It’ll just drop back into the cacophony of general lefty babble, along with everything else they hate and oppose. A generation from now it’ll be a quaint cultural quirk, a manifestation of post millennium fever.  Y2K died on January second, 2000.  AGW will take a while longer.

What’s next? Here’s a hint: “Moon Men”.

Found this on SOL. Looks like Copenhagen is becoming more farcial by the minute – and the 175 world leaders jetting in for the big climax aren’t even there yet.

This abortion was doomed from the start. And while we’re on the subject, whose brilliant idea was it to hold a Global Warming conference in December and in a frigid Scandanavian Country?

I made the snow stop. Maybe a few of the Conclub bloggers will emerge from hibernation.

A nice email making the rounds…

When doing your Christmas cards this year, take one card and send it to this address. If everyone sends one card, think of how many cards these wonderful special people who have sacrificed so much would get. When you are making out your Christmas card list this year, please include the following:

A Recovering American Soldier

c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center

6900 Georgia Avenue,NW

Washington,D.C. 20307-5001

Isn’t it odd that whenever you get a bunch of Greenpeace types together in a group, violence ensues?  But nobody ever makes the connection.  If violence on this scale had occurred at a Conservative rally, don’t you think the left would be making political hay out of it? “Now we see the violence inherent in the movement! Census Takers will dangle from every tree. Rush will be proclaimed Chancellor of the Republic and Glen Beck will roam the streets with his mob bashing in the windows at every Health Food store.”

But when the streets swarm green and the gutters run red it doesn’t reflect badly on the movement at all. Strange how that works…

These Ain't Your Father's Hippies.

In case you’re still wondering what Green Fascism might look like, watch this video released by Greenpeace a few years ago. What amazes me is that they actually thought it wasn’t creepy and horrid. Think about it…

Obama was at an all time low in the Rasmussen Index yesterday with an approval rating of -17. Today he plumbs new depths and jumps two points to -19. He’s getting pasted among Independents. The graph is pretty amusing:

"X" Marks The Spot

How low will he go? Where will this slide bottom out? Predictions?

The 100 Best Sports Photographs of 2009 – Part 1 – Big Shots – Boston.com.

New Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image Will Inspire You Today – Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image – Gizmodo.

Continuing a theme.  Is there anybody out there?

Every single one of these dots are galaxies. It’s the deepest look into the Universe yet, showing the oldest galaxies ever seen, 600 million years after the Big Bang. When I zoom into this ultra-high definition image, I feel overwhelmed.

Funny riff on the ClimateGate scandal by Doug Giles at townhall.com. Here’s a taste:

This just in! NewsBusters reports that Al Gore has just cancelled his $1,200 per person December 16th Climate Change blah blah blah speech in Copenhagen. Come on, Al, don’t quit now. It’s just about to get good. And there will always be plenty of Euro-tools who’ll continue to buy your trumped-up, utterly specious green hash gobbledygook. Cowboy up, sister.

You and I both know that Judas Priest Albert Gore, facts be damned, will never recant but will instead retreat in a recalcitrant manner deeper into Hollywood weirdness where the global warming Kool Aid runs like Tiger Woods did from his angry wife with a 3 iron. Trust me.

I say a little rebellion is in order seeing how these clowns have sought to control our lives and milk our wallets in one of the greatest scientific scams in the last few centuries. Here’s what I’m gonna do:

1. I am going to go outside by my pool and spray two full 32oz cans of Aqua Net right at the ozone.

2. I am going to use a gas powered scooter to go from room to room in my house, which will have all the outside doors open wide while the A/C is blowing full blast.

3. I am going to buy a ‘69 GTO with no exhaust system and let it idle for 4 hours a day in my driveway every day until Jesus returns.

4. I am going to fart as much as possible.

5. Speaking of farting, I am going to feed my cows bean dip and only bean dip.

6. I am going to set my thermostat on 85 in the winter and 55 in the summer.

7. I am going to use all my curly cue fluorescent light bulbs for clay pigeons—and not clean up the mess.

8. I am going to air up my tires on my ‘69 Goat so much that it looks like a frickin’ Macy’s Parade float.

9. When I go grizzly bear hunting in Alaska this spring I am going to add a polar bear to my license and take one of those as well.

10. While in Alaska I will take a blowtorch to a glacier to get my drinking water.

11. In addition, I am going to throw snowballs at seals. It won’t hurt them, but they will understand that the game is back on.

12. And finally, I am going to make certain my girls have Horner’s book Red Hot Lies and Milloy’s book Green Hell so that when their profs and goofy friends open their mouths on behalf global warming they can go Stone Cold Steve Austin on them with the cold, hard facts.

Read the rest here.

What are you going to do now that you know Global Warming’s fake?

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt says today that Climategate is “…a story, not a three-alarm story.” Hoyt’s conclusion is based on conversations the Times has had with the climate science community, who conclude that the Emails look bad, but don’t cast material doubt on the overall volume of evidence that carbon based Global Warming is real, still happening, and caused by human beings. This is actually kind of funny; polling global warming scientists on whether a scandal casts doubt on global warming science is like polling the foxes on whether the henhouse is secure enough. What do you think they’re going to say?

We have been told over and over that we must trust the Scientific process; peer review ensures that junk science will not prevail and cheaters and con-men will be caught.  And yet the current scandal at East Anglia’s CRU only happened because information was leaked to the public, not because the this much-vaunted peer review process nipped it in the bud. In fact, we know now that peer review had failed utterly and in was, fact,  thoroughly corrupted by the same researches whose dangly data bits are now caught in the public ringer. ClimateGate deniers seek to isolate this event to the actions of a few, claiming the rest are blameless. But the “rest” allowed this few to continue on, didn’t they? The “rest” did not intervene. If it had been left to them and their “process”, we would have never known about the data cooking, the bad code, the active efforts of the CRU gang and frends to close peer review to all but their own pals.

Which is what pushes this scandal to the “Three  Alarm” level the New York Times wishes to avoid. After all, the CRU gang were only the ones who got caught, weren’t they? How do we know there isn’t more data chicanery going on at other academies? We know the safeguards that are supposed to prevent this do not work, so even if fraud was happening we would not know. This is  not just the failure (as we have been told) of one set of graphs and one group of geeks at a cow college in the land of “Le Ros Boeufs”, this is a failure of the entire system, and it needs to be treated as such.

To its credit, the New York Times has provided coverage of the scandal, and its environmental reporter Andrew Revkin (mentioned quite chummily in some of the leaked emails) has done a fairly good job of not understating the importance of this story (unlike some of his peers). Revkin is even in a bit of hot water with his former AGw pals because of it. But the general sense coming out of the MSM and the AGW world is more damage containment than revelation. And one senses that the harder they labor to shoo the story back into the coop the more they will come to realize how hard it is to herd chickens.

Christ Turns Down 3-Year, Multimillion Dollar Deal To Coach Notre Dame | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

SOUTH BEND, IN—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Savior of All Mankind, and current defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State, said Monday that He would not accept Notre Dame’s 3-year, $5.6 million offer to coach the Fighting Irish. “I love Notre Dame and respect their football legacy, but no matter what you’ve accomplished before coaching there, once you’re a Golden Domer, the expectations, frankly, are unrealistic,” said Christ, whose family has been involved with the university since its founding

Either Bob Stoops or Brian Kelly will be named coach of the Irish. Will they be happy knowing they were number 2 and number 3 on the list?

Euro techno-pop meets Alien 1, 2 & 4 (thank God they skipped 3), with a side trip to the 5th Element and a futuristic slave market, all fueled by fancy vodka.

Moral of the story: don’t smoke in bed.

The Climate hoax story began two weeks ago with the release of purloined data and emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, England, suggesting pervasive and systemic fraud in their Climate Change research. It has raged across the internet, been covered by all cable networks (to one degree or another), appeared in most major newspapers (to one degree or another), prompted debate in every public venue short of smoke signals and log drums in the jungle, yet the big three news networks continue to studiously ignore it. Not one mention in either the evening or morning newscasts.

Perhaps the Beast is being old fashioned, but he once thought news organizations existed to report – well, NEWS. You can argue how damaging this story may or may not be to the Climate Change cause, but you cannot argue it isn’t news. Senators are commenting on it, scientists are commenting on it, major political repercussions are already happening (5 Australian MP’s resigned their portfolios rather than support their own party’s promotion of a cap and trade deal that a week earlier was a certainty, but collapsed this week), CRU Director Phil Jones has resigned temporarily pending an investigation, Penn State has announced an investigation into “Hockeystick” scientist Michael Mann’s role, the scandal threatens to derail the Copenhagen Climate Summit – Al Gore has canceled his appearance. Fresh scandals are popping up all over the globe. Even Comedy Central’s John Stewart has weighed in.

But in the nightly newscasts the crickets chirp on.

Why the relentless incuriosity?

True, the big three don’t have much reputation left to lose, especially in the aftermath of several other major stories  they appeared to only discover after they’d become too big to ignore.  Yet, while the big three avert their eyes from this global scandal, ABC, CBS and NBC news has found time to report on Tiger Wood’s car crash some 37 times.  According to the Examiner.com, they have also covered such breaking news topics as an orphaned moose, a baby panda and the color of tablecloths at President Obama’s recent state dinner.

If you were the sort of person who only got his news from one or more of the Big Three (like the Beast’s 73 year old mom), you’d have no idea what was going on. And that’s really pathetic, isn’t it?  An average person in the year two thousand and nine cannot be well-informed about current events if he trusts the three major networks to deliver him his news! Is it any wonder that the MSM is collapsing? They have chosen to make themselves irrelevant – entered into an ideologically driven mutual suicide pact. They are in the business of ignoring news they don’t like. And that leaves the field wide open to other venues who choose to report on what the Big Three will not. So the viewers move on and bit by bit Big Three’s revenue and credibility sublimates away.

On the plus side, network news viewers will remain ignorant of a raging global debate on a major scientific scandal, but they’ll be much better informed about White House tableware than the rest of us.

So they got that going for them, which is nice.

The Ross Sisters. Weirdness begins at 1:10.