McCain Gets It Right

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com

It's pretty standard stuff until the 3:00 mark, then you need to watch for sure.

I have a long list of grievances with McCain. But he definitely did good here.

COTD: Not A Peep

clipped from pajamasmedia.com All of this money, and one of the primary causes of the debacle is still in place and thriving. And not a peep out of the American people. Insanity. The media should be put in jail. Yeehaaww!! let the good times roll. We are going to end up busting the dollar over this nonsense (and stuff like it). Straight out of Chavez’s playbook.

COTD: Political Considerations

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Obama learned from FDR that a President can, with the help of the state run media, cynically run the economy into the ground for purposes of political power. It keeps those who have jobs afraid, and makes the beggars dependent on the gummint. Punish your enemies and reward your campaign contributors, and call it economic recovery (aka TARP). We’re getting fascism folks, which is a variant of socialism. There will still be (nominal) capitalism, but the government will get to make all the important decisions, based on political considerations.

The Return

clipped from www.youtube.com

Peter Schiff is back on CNBC. About time.

COTD: How To Get Your Climate Bill Passed

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Here’s how to get your climate bill passed. Buy a congressman: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/01/sweetener-helped-sway-vote-on-house-climate-bill/ “They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted – a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states. ” This is all about taxes, power and money. Climate seems to be only a cover story, and because of this, I doubt that any appeal to politicians about lack of global warming will make a difference. Ethics =/= politics

AGW Under Fire From Giant Proton Synchrotron

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com You’ve probably all heard of Svensmark and the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) to cloud cover modulation theory by now. Lot’s of warmists say it is “discredited”. However, CERN in Switzerland isn’t following that thinking, and after getting some encouraging results in the CLOUD06 experiment, they have funded a much larger and more comprehensive CLOUD09 experiment. I figure if it is “discredited”, a bunch of smart guys and gals like CERN wouldn’t be ramping up the investigation. There’s also word now of a new correlation: Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response) Download Kirkby’s Slide show (Large 7.8 MB PDF, be patient) http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576 Backup Copy on WUWT server: Kirkby_CERN_slideshow09

Heh. Follow the links and download Jasper Kirkby's full slide set. It's absolutely devastating and only includes the 2006 trial data so far. This and the next few years should prove VERY interesting at CERN's PS complex.

Antarctic Sea Ice: The Video

clipped from noconsensus.wordpress.com Its difficult to imagine after watching this video that this ice shelf hasn’t collapsed (or whatever it’s called) and re-formed in the last several hundred years, more than once. Remember the ice from the shelf forms on land and flows out to sea. Either way, considering the natural variation of Antarctic sea ice, can we really say the current Antarctic ice trend or the change of an ice shelf in such a tiny area has a powerful meaning for the future of Earth?

The Economy Killing Farce

clipped from www.qando.net However for the traitorous “deniers”, aka skeptics, who believe the whole climate change hysteria to be an economy killing farce, things are looking better. For instance India has announced it will not participate in the Western world’s attempts to kill their own economies: India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security. Cutting back on climate-warming gases is a measure that instead must be taken by industrialized countries, and India is mobilizing developing nations to push that case, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told the media today in New Delhi. “India will not accept any emission-reduction target — period,” Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.” Heh … fairly blunt and straight foward wouldn’t you say? Of course, China took the same stand a couple of weeks ago.

Only China Can Save Capitalism

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com There is a joke that has quietly circulated its way around--In 1949 it was only socialism that could save China, in 1989 only China could save socialism and in 2009 only China can save capitalism. the U.S. wants to transform the Federal Reserve into what would be a "super regulator," comprehensively strengthening regulation towards the financial institutions. It is also planning to establish a new financial consumer safeguard endowed with authority that far supersedes that of the current regulatory system. This way of doing things is in conformity with the Marxist doctrine of the Communist Manifesto in which Marx foretold a capitalist financial crisis. The American Foreign Policy magazine offered a very Marxist "prescription" suggesting that the "whole financial sector be turned into a public utility" -- perhaps one could say, "centralization of credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." (Communist Manifesto)...

Subjugation

clipped from www.nydailynews.com Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his support for legislation to ban the burka, the dark, heavy and not-too-comfortable garment worn by many Muslim women. The question arises: Is this forcible French secularism run amok, or a prohibition that Americans, who often believe we have struck a better balance between church and state, might entertain? I would say the latter. But that observation - if you will excuse the expression - brings us to another and even more powerful objection to this mode of dress. It is quite plainly designed by men for the subjugation of women. One cannot be absolutely sure that no woman has ever donned it voluntarily, but one can certainly say that, in countries where women can choose not to wear it, then not wearing it is the choice they generally make.

Chavez's Way

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com The deep truth is a lot more dramatic: Zelaya, obstinate and rash, intent on being reelected at any cost, heedless of all the warnings of the judiciary and the legislature, intended to drag the nation in the direction of Chávez, something that in Honduras would have been the beginning of a huge economic and social Via Crucis. We are witnessing a conflict between two ways of understanding the function of the state and the role of the political leaders. Chávez's way -- an incipient ruling concept that Zelaya irresponsibly assumed in Honduras -- is a variant of state-run collectivism, a political stream that does away with the separation of powers that is part and parcel of republics. It exalts the personalist style, eliminates replacement of the leader, and adopts anti-Western positions that are expressed in dangerous alliances with countries like Iran and North Korea.

OHonduras

clipped from www.qando.net Just so you know what happened in one line: Our Ex President was trying to repeat what Hugo Chavez has achieved in four other countries by controlling the national media, bribing top officials and threatening citizens. He wanted to illegally change our constitution so that he could create a one and only Party, do away with national media, change the way referendums are carried and be reelected indefinitely by these false referendums. If you ask why we voted for him as President in the first place? Well, he presented himself as a normal candidate in opposition to corruption. We basically voted (me included) for him, because we were against the other guy. Little did we know that he would start insulting the USA (country where most of us have family and friends) and befriending all its enemies. He took a hard, hard left. With Hugo Chavez’s money, he bought three TV channels and a News Paper His own Party ousted him a few months after being elected President.

The Real Question

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The real question is, how are we doing in the broad war (the one that stretches from Afghanistan into Europe, with active battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine and Lebanon)? The answer, then is:  we are doing very badly.  Indeed, we’re not doing at all.  Au contraire, we and our feckless Western allies are, for the most part, actively appeasing those whom we should be confronting.  We famously dithered as Iran crushed the incipient revolution (a revolution that would have enormously mitigated the threat Iran represents).  It’s obvious that Obama et. al. were annoyed and embarrassed by the outpouring of passion for freedom all over Iran, because it interrupted their efforts at lovemaking with the regime’s leaders.  Meanwhile, Obama announced he is sending an ambassador to Damascus, where Bashar Assad is Iran’s most faithful friend in the region.  And nothing at all is being done to restrain the Saudis’

Katrina's Invitation

clipped from pajamasmedia.com

Woo Hoo! Go Katrina!

COTD #2: Misunderstood Individualism

clipped from esr.ibiblio.org collectivism is based on a misunderstood idea of individualism: of the individual conceived as standing alone, without any relations, like obligations, or other sorts of relations to other individuals. Collectivisms always visualize the individual as standing alone, with relations to no other but the state. Prediction 1: totalitarianisms always tried to strip people of such relations or personal obligations to other people, f.e. glorifying a student who betrayed his father to the state. Prediction 2: less-total (liberal) collectivisms tend to provide services to outcompete such personal obligations (such as caring for elderly parents, such as helping the poor in the local community, such as actively incentiving divorces via welfare schemes etc.), and are often even explicit about doing so: we take care people so that you can afford not to care and you can spend all your time on pursuing your own personal desires, without being hindered by obligations to other people.

Shenpen obviously wins commenter of the day.

COTD: Nothing Could Be More Un-Conservative

clipped from esr.ibiblio.org Where the problem is how to construct Mussolini right, because he have promised pretty much everything for everybody and the opposite of everything too. His history is a long Machiavellian maneouvering for power without sticking to any principles. “Everything I have said and done is these last years is relativism, by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories, and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism.” That’s probably as close to the real ideas of Mussolini as it gets. (And I need to add one thing: Fascism is often misconstructed as “radical Conservatism”. However, _nothing_ could be more un-Conservative, than the above quote.

Not One Dime

clipped from www.qando.net ‘Cap and Tax’ simply provides more opportunities for political favoritism — creating arbitrary credits to be awarded to pet projects while getting others to pay for the favors. Meanwhile the energy expense baseline of the entire economy goes up. Waxman-Markey are gushing about how historic this bill is. That it is — it puts Smoot-Hawley in second place as potentially the most misguided economic legislation of the last 100 years. Take the time to read Kling’s post as well. If you’re wondering who will be paying “for the favors”, Conor Clarke at the Atlantic has been kind enough to put that in chart form using the CBO’s data on tax distribution: But remember you 95% out there – your taxes won’t go up by a single dime – not one dime. Your fuel, electric, transportation, food and just about anything else you can imagine? Dimes won’t even begin to describe the increases you’ll see.

They Can't Protest If They're Dead

clipped from www.iranpressnews.com

OChavez In Honduras

clipped from hotair.com Read Fausta’s amazing round-up of what happened here. In a nutshell, Zelaya wanted another term as president so he decided to hold a popular referendum on whether he should be eligible. Minor problem: The Honduran constitution can’t be amended by popular referendum so the country’s supreme court ordered the vote canceled. Zelaya tried to go ahead with it anyway. Literally every other arm of the Honduran government — judiciary, legislature, military — was against him, to the point where the troops who arrested him this morning were evidently acting on a court order. Why such strong, unified opposition? According to one retired Honduran general cited by Fausta, it’s because Zelaya’s a Chavez stooge and him staying on would mean “Chavez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy.” Two questions, then. One: In their rush to drool all over themselves about “the rule of law,” do Obama and Hillary realize that it’s Zelaya who was flouting the rule of law here?

No Sh*t Warren

clipped from ace.mu.nu "it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. So it -- and it's a fairly regressive tax." Well no shit Warren. In same, David Axelrod explains lies about how this increase does not affect the poor. Because they'll pay less for energy or some nonsense, dissembling and ignoring the fact that we all pay x for a kilowatt and y for a gallon, promising they'll get help with their energy bill.

Our Fools

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Today's column is not about Iran, but I mention the country because we watch from a distance. That is what makes smugness possible. Nothing as horrible as what happens there has yet happened here. We feel secretly superior to people who've had to face circumstances we cannot imagine. I remember the outrage of a Czech exile, a generation ago (before the Communists had fallen), receiving an uptight, self-righteous lecture from a shallow Canadian acquaintance. The latter said the enslaved Czechs should be blamed for co-operating with their Communist masters. Why didn't they just refuse to obey orders? He was speaking to a man who had spent 12 years in labour camps for disobeying orders. Yet that was beside the point. The Canadian was speaking about things beyond his comprehension. My Czech friend, who had turned almost purple from his effort to contain himself, said only: "You are a fool." His Canadian interlocutor walked off, looking even more pleased with himself than usual.