New Beginning

It has been just over a year since I last posted on this blog. As faithful readers know, I lost my job in July ’09 in a corporate downsizing. Since then I’ve had a temp job working out of my home. The pay was meager, the work was not satisfying, and the lack of paid holidays/vacations was a drag, but it allowed us to hang on — barely. Giving up on this blog was a symptom of a lot that was going wrong during that time.

But all of that has changed now. Today I started a new job at a local high tech firm, a role that will really challenge me. After a year and a half of struggling to see through the deep fog of my future, I finally have a career to be excited about again.

I’ve learned a lot over the last eighteen months, especially about myself. I’m an humbler, wiser man now, with a deeper appreciation for the simple things of life — primarily because that’s all I had. I hope to keep that perspective as I head into this new endeavor.

And I hope to be more active in maintaining this blog, although I suspect the focus might shift somewhat. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the direction our country is heading, and the factors contributing to that course. Politics can be entertaining, but there are other issues that deserve more attention. Stay tuned.

The Death of Global Warming

Walter Russell Mead pronounces the demise of the global warming movement.

The global warming meltdown confirms all the populist suspicions out there about an arrogantly clueless establishment invoking faked ’science’ to impose cockamamie social mandates on the long-suffering American people, backed by a mainstream media that is totally in the tank. Don’t think this won’t have consequences.

The current iteration of the movement may be in its death throes, but the corpse will keep trying to crawl out of its casket over the next few years.

Collapse of the AGW Theory

Andrew Bolt provide s a good summary of recent revelations that have sent the anthropomorphic global warming scare industry into a tailspin from which it will likely never recover.

In just the past few months has come a cascade of evidence that the global warming scare is based on often dodgy science and even outright fraud.

For several years our local newspaper had a editorial columnist who drank global warming kool-aid by the gallon, and frequently wrote about it. If anyone objected, he waved the IPCC and peer-reviewed journals in their faces. He has since moved elsewhere (no longer in the newspaper business), but I’ve wondered lately how these latest disclosures have affected his cocksure position on the subject.

Clueless Barry

In an interview today with George Stephanopoulos, Obama proved that he still doesn’t get it.

Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.  People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

Get it? It’s all Bush’s fault. The guy’s been gone for a year, and the rabble is still mad at him, and took it out on Coakley. Yeah, that makes sense.

Personally, I hope Obama keeps living in his little fantasy world, thinking that all the country’s problems belong to his predecessor, and he’s just the clean-up guy struggling against an overwhelming mess. The more he talks like this, the greater the Dems will suffer come Nov. 2.

UPDATE: Also from the interview:

We lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.

Uh, B. O., that’s the problem. The American people don’t need or want someone to tell them “what their core values are.” They already know that. They want somebody to listen to them explain those values. The sneering, dismissive treatment of the tea parties over the last year is precisely what has gotten the Dems in so much hot water.

Election Aftermath: Obama’s in Trouble

There’s a lot finger-pointing going on following Scott Brown’s stunning defeat of the Democrat in Massachusetts, but the bulk of the blame is being laid at the feet of one man: Barak Obama.

Michael Goodwin, New York Post:

Obama went to Harvard Law School, but apparently never learned the lessons of the first Boston Tea Party. And so his arrogance and the heavy hand of big government sparked the second. A year to the day after he made history by taking the oath, he stands on the wrong side of a new American revolution.

Mortimer Zuckerman, The Daily Beast:

Obama’s ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he’s been in office. . . . He’s lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things. I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster.

John Judis, The New Republic:

Obama now clearly faces not just a recession and two wars, but a political crisis. He needs to adopt policies that will boost employment, but he may not have the political clout to do so. He needs to restore the public’s faith in his own leadership, but it’s not clear to me how he can accomplish that.

And This Is Just the Beginning

It must have really frosted the editors at the Boston Globe to post this map of the results of today’s senatorial election. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) — wow, that looks awesome.

Follow this link to the actual web page to see the county-by-county mouse-over results.

America Rising

This video has made the rounds on the internet. Awesome. Expect more of this sort of thing between now and November 2.

Hillary, MIA

Hillary Clinton has been strangely silent for the last several days. Given the State Department’s possible role in failing to prevent the Christmas Day terror incident, that might be understandable. 

My prediction for 2010: Hillary will resign her position as Secretary of State, and rebuild her own promotional machine, a la Sarah Palin, to restore her political fortune. It must really chafe her to watch Palin waltz about the country, free as a bird, appearing before large, adoring crowds, while she is stuck on a diplomatic mission to Lower Slobovia. She will position herself as the anti-Obama, the progressive who has all the right credentials, but also the experience and competence to do the job right.

Why Climategate Matters

Environmental scientist Kenneth Green counters the claim that the Climategate scandal is much ado about nothing.

Climategate reveals skulduggery the general public can understand: that a tightly-linked clique of scientists were behaving as crusaders. Their letters reveal they were working in what they repeatedly labelled a “cause” to promote a political agenda.

That’s not science, that’s a crusade. When you cherry-pick, discard, nip, tuck, and tape disparate bits of data into the most alarming portrayal you can in the name of a “cause,” you’re not engaged in science, but in the production of propaganda. And this clique tried to subvert the peer-review process as well. They attempted to prevent others from getting into peer reviewed journals — thus letting them claim skeptic research wasn’t peer-reviewed — a convenient circular (and dishonest) way to discredit skeptics.

The dishonesty exposed by the Climategate data is not an isolated aberration. Rather, it is symptomatic of a wider disease that has infected all of Western culture. “Truth” is no longer an objective standard that should be sought and honored. Instead, it has become whatever the individual wants it to be. In this case, the “whatever” is a one-world utopia governed by technocrats who know what’s best for the rest of us.

2010: Year of the Islamist Threat?

Patrick Poole catalogues the incidents of Islamist terrorism in 2009, and concludes with a disturbing prediction about the year ahead.  

What 2009 has taught us is how rapidly the nature of the threat from Islamic jihadists is evolving and how utterly unable our government is to recognize and respond to that threat. Sadly, I predict that the coming year will show us how bold, aggressive, and inventive our enemies have become and how little we have learned from the events of the past year.

Yeah, I’m Breathing . . . So Sue Me!

A Wall Street Journal editorial describes a new legal tactic being used by greenies to bypass the legislative roadblocks to moving their environmental agenda forward: sue the CO2 polluters for contributing to global warming.

Of course, this strategy opens up a whole new can of worms, since every human on the planet produces CO2 simply by breathing.

In other words, the courts would become a venue for a carbon war of all against all. Not only might businesses sue to shackle their competitors—could we sue the New York Times for deforestation?—but judges would decide the remedies against specific defendants. In practice this would mean ad hoc command-and-control regulation against any industries that happen to catch the green lobby’s eye.

Protocol Matters

J. R. Dunn explains the linkage between China’s snub of Obama at the Copenhagen conference, and Barry’s earlier bow to the Japanese emperor. The sobering lesson: diplomatic protocol matters.

This only goes to underline the reason why diplomatic protocol exists in the first place — to exclude through ritual actions all possibilities that error, misunderstanding, or personal pique might interfere with matters of state. Obama has yet to learn this. His insistence on winging it, on reinventing established practice on his own terms, is potentially far more than simply embarrassing. It could be actively dangerous. His refusal to go by the rules may well have cost him the opportunity to pose as Savior of Gaia in Copenhagen. It may cost him — and the country — far more at some future time.

UPDATE: From Victor Davis Hanson, a prediction for 2010:

I think the overseas bowing, apologizing, and kowtowing will stop in 2010—it brought no tangible results. Indeed, Obama is one bow away from global caricature and humiliation.

The Left and Islamic Radicalism

Jamie Glazov explains why the Left in this country cannot bring themselves to admit the obvious regarding the Ft. Hood shooter:

To recognize the evil of Nidal Hasan and his ideology, to admit the existence of pernicious enemies, is to concede that there are societies, cultures, and systems that are much more unjust than ours. This is an untenable step for leftists to take, because it means acknowledging that there is something superior about our civilization that’s worth saving and defending.

The Left’s infatuation with multiculturalism has led it to a point where reality has been turned on its head: Our own society is evil and deserves to be knocked down a few notches, while Islamic fanatics are merely victims who must be understood in light of the oppressive imperialism forced upon their societies.

My Favorite Maureen Dowd Column

As you may (or may not) know, Maureen Dowd is a typical New York Times lefty whose columns make great bird cage liner. However, she has an older brother, Kevin, whose conservative views must make for some interesting family reunions. Once a year, Maureen turns over her column to Kevin, who takes full advantage of the opportunity to undo all the damage inflicted by his sister during the previous year. This year’s column is no exception. A must read.

From the comments:

There are all kinds of theories to explain you and Kevin, including birth order (eldest child generally conservative in order to maintain the status quo), Remember that Nature shuffles about 30,000 cards upon the fertilization of an egg during the process of known as genetic recombination which can make siblings seem almost unrelated at the end. Of course, dropping a baby on the head doesn’t help (ask mom or dad this New Years to finally fess up which one of you they dropped). While you’re asking, you may pull mom off to a corner and ask her if she now regrets that thing she had for the milkman. Does Kevin have red hair? Let’s just say that you both keep the Nature versus Nurture debate alive and well. To both you and Kevin, I bid you peace on earth and goodwill to all men (and women).

It’s reassuring to know that, at least in some families, the bonds of love are stronger than politics.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Rand Simberg bemoans the fact that, in view of yesterday’s failed bombing of NW Flight 253, our politically correct government obviously hasn’t learned anything from 9/11.

This all has a feeling of deja vu to it. We are going to spend the next days and weeks discussing all the things that we discussed eight years ago. The same stupid arguments will be made that are refuted by politically incorrect reality, but at the end, airline travel will be even more onerous, fewer will choose to fly for short trips, the airlines will take it in the shorts again (and probably need another bailout), and the incompetents at the TSA will be rewarded. We will be less free and, in that hoary old phrase, the terrorists will have won, without blowing up a single plane.

This Is a Real Motivator

Click to enlarge.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

From Russ Vaughn, a new version of the classic Christmas tune, dedicated to Al Gore, climate maven extraordinaire: 

Oh the weather in Denmark’s frightful,
But the irony’s so delightful,
That everywhere Al Gore goes,
It just snows and it snows and it snows.

When will Al ever see the light?
Will he ever go out in the storm?
Or does his tin hat still fit too tight?
And he still thinks the world’s gettin’ warm.

The conference is slowly dying,
And the moonbats are all good-bying,
Global warming has no place to go,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Al Gore Catches the ClimateGate Spirit

As if ClimateGate has not already done enough damage to the AGW movement, Al Gore adds his own made-up numbers to the mix.

Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years. . . .

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Gore just can’t help himself. He’s been throwing out wild numbers like this for so long — and getting by with it — that it’s the only thing he knows to do. Unfortunately for him, the rubes are finally beginning to catch on to how the game is played, and his extreme assertions are now met with raised eyebrows rather than gasps of horror.

Tiger: The Metaphor

Lisa Schiffren sees the shocking implosion of Tiger Woods’ persona as a metaphor for what’s also happening to Barak Obama. Both men were carefully groomed by outside interests who had a lot to gain by having them succeed. But eventually the mortal failings of both men came to light, in entirely different ways, and the carefully constructed images fell apart. And the betrayed public will exact a terrible revenge.

If I were watching the public disgust with the newly revealed Tiger Woods from an office in the West Wing, I’d be concerned. Because Barack Obama is about as completely manufactured a political character as this nation has seen. His meteoric rise, without the inconvenience of a public record, or accomplishments, and the public’s willing suspension of critical evaluation of his resume allowed his handlers and the media to project what they wanted to on his unfurrowed brow. . . .

Voters who believed in the Obama magic — both from the center and from the far left, are increasingly dismayed watching the human god fall to earth. This is a major problem because . . . the impulse of the betrayed is to tear their fallen deities to shreds.

I would offer one caveat to this outcome. A contrite confession, followed by genuine repentance (change), can go a long way toward rebuilding a tarnished reputation. Maybe Tiger can do it; I have serious doubts about Obama.

Climategate and the Media

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel, doubts that we will ever hear anyone in the MSM utter the three most important words in character-building: “I was wrong.”

He predicts the media will stubbornly stay quiet on the Climategate story until it fades away. But there is one possible development that will make this story so huge that it will overwhelm them.

Read the article to learn more . . . .

The Gore Effect Strikes Again

There was a lecture on global warming scheduled for today at the University of Texas in Austin. Unfortunately, it had to be postponed — due to snow. Blame the Gore Effect!

How about “Why it’s snowing in South Texas and making us look retarded” as a topic of discussion?

“The Emperor Has No Clothes!”

Rosslyn Smith sees a profound irony in the location of next week’s climate summit: Copenhagen, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen’s story, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

It begins, after all, with two con men who promise they can weave cloth of unsurpassed beauty to the enlightened but which would be invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid. They would then tailor that fabric into a fabulous suit of clothes for the emperor. The emperor invested in the venture because such traits would be useful to someone like himself as emperors tend attract both sycophants and self serving manipulators.

Smith notes that the real lesson of the story is not the arrogance of the emperor, but the willingness of his courtiers to suspend reason in support of an obvious lie. The parallels to the current global warming crusade are remarkable.

I can almost excuse the politicians and the speculators who promoted AGW.  Like Anderson’s emperor, they invested in a tool that would advance their self-interest. Representative democracies are supposed to have checks and balances to help keep such self-interest within reasonable bounds. In addition to the way the researchers themselves violated scientific standards, the actions of our journalists and educators who jumped on the AGW bandwagon made matters worse.  People in these positions are supposed to promote healthy skepticism. Journalists see themselves as the guardians of transparency in government and educators in the pursuit of enlightenment.  In fact, our legal system grants special rights to journalists because of their role as the watchdogs and whistle blowers.

But like the emperor’s court, our media and academia have chosen to play along with the scam. Now, finally, someone has had the courage to lay bare for all the world to see that, indeed, the whole enterprise was fabricated out of thin air.

ClimateGate: The Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

Regular readers of this blog know that many of my posts on the global warming controversy end with this prediction: “The current approach to the global warming issue will someday be taught in universities as a good example of how not to do science.”

Perhaps we have reached that point much sooner than I expected. Andrew Revkin (NYT) links to a published essay by Dr. Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, that directly addresses young climate scientists, encouraging them to learn a lesson from the Climategate scandal that is still unfolding.

If climate science is to uphold core research values and be credible to public, we need to respond to any critique of data or methodology that emerges from analysis by other scientists. Ignoring skeptics coming from outside the field is inappropriate; Einstein did not start his research career at Princeton, but rather at a post office. I’m not implying that climate researchers need to keep defending against the same arguments over and over again. Scientists claim that they would never get any research done if they had to continuously respond to skeptics. The counter to that argument is to make all of your data, metadata, and code openly available. Doing this will minimize the time spent responding to skeptics; try it! If anyone identifies an actual error in your data or methodology, acknowledge it and fix the problem. Doing this would keep molehills from growing into mountains that involve congressional hearings, lawyers, etc.

From the comments to Revkin’s post:

The sad thing is that scientists are supposed to be skeptics. The minute someone becomes convinced that they know it all is the minute they make the transition from scientist to ideologue. To question, to doubt, to double-check, to scrutinize: this is what it is to be a scientist. A scientist should accept someone else’s statement as the unvarnished truth simply out of respect for them or their position. And a scientist should never ridicule someone for expressing doubts about the accuracy of the data, the methodology for collecting them, the methodology for interpreting them, and the conclusions drawn.

True science has never been the issue in this controversy. Practiced with integrity and openness, science is humanity’s friend. It is when science becomes tainted with political ideology that it becomes corrupted and harmful.

Ft. Hood: Ignoring the Obvious

Dorothy Rabinowitz dissects the loony political correctness that has scrambled to exonerate Islam following the Ft. Hood massacre. The unwillingness of so many in power to state the obvious bodes ill for the security of our nation.

It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.

If our intelligentsia, both in government and in the media, cannot bring themselves to admit the ongoing threat to our civilization from radical Islam as a coherent movement, then we will not succeed in defending ourselves against it.

Obama’s Staff Problem

Dan Gerstein takes a hard look at Obama’s inner circle in the West Wing and sees a campaign organization, not a governance council. The stifling political mindset is setting up the Chief for failure.

The president’s top advisers are not just overly political, they are almost totally political. Indeed, this West Wing is stacked with “hacks”–campaign professionals who are acculturated to think, act and win in the hothouse environments of elections, not to govern a bitterly divided country in extremely difficult times.

Of course, this is precisely the opposite of what we were promised last year.

Stossel on Journalistic Bias

John Stossel documents his transition from a typical left-wing government-knows-best journalist hack to a thoughtful free-market libertarian — and the price he paid to make that journey. The experience has given him a unique perspective on the issue of bias in journalism.

Reporters who think coercive government control is generally good and I, who thinks voluntary market forces are generally better, both have a point of view. So why am I the one called biased?

Rush, the NFL, the MSM . . . and Integrity

Only one of the three has it.

The double-standard shown by the NFL and the media in the recent flap over Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy ownership in the St. Louis Rams is over-the-top shameless. John Hawkins draws five important lessons from the episode. The last one is directed at conservatives:

Maybe conservatives should actually start raising a lot more hell about issues like this one. When Hollywood, the NFL, and the mainstream media conclude that conservatives aren’t suckers who will still hand them money even as they’re insulted, maybe the insults will stop. . . . If conservatives do nothing else in the next few years — well, besides taking back Congress and defeating Barack Obama — we should insist on an end to that double standard.

Global Warming Tipping Point?

No, not the tipping point Al Gore has warned us about. Rather, the tipping point in the media’s move away from AGW alarmism toward skepticism. Marc Morano documents the media’s gradual shift toward a more balanced coverage of the science behind the issue. The result is a growing number of skeptics.

The science is so overwhelmingly obvious, that sooner or later the questions could no longer be avoided.

Energy Crisis Called Off

Recent advances in technology for extracting natural gas from shale and methane beds have dramatically changed the global outlook on energy supplies.

The claims of BP and Statoil are so extraordinary that we may need to rewrite the geo-strategy textbooks for the next half century.

Please note: The free market is making these advances, without a trillion-dollar government program dictating outcomes.

Obama Wins Nobel: Tough Break

Nancy Gibbs worries that the Nobel Peace Prize just awarded our Dear Leader might hang like an albatross around his neck.

The Nobel committee cited “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” . . .  But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have.

Gibbs points to Greg Mortenson, who has devoted his life to building schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a far more worthy candidate for a peace prize — someone whose actions are more eloquent than any of Obama’s speeches.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has collected some great zingers relating to this “accomplishment.”

UPDATE: How did Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize? He was the tenth caller.