October 17, 2007

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Mark Steyn was in The Australian commenting on the ubiquitousness of Gore and his horror flick.

… A school kid in Ontario was complaining the other day that, whatever subject you do, you have to sit through Gore’s movie: It turns up in biology class, in geography, in physics, in history, in English.

Whatever you’re studying, it’s all you need to know. It fulfils the same role in the schoolhouses of the guilt-ridden developed world that the Koran does in Pakistani madrassas. Gore’s rise is as remorseless as those sea levels. I assumed Gore’s clammy embrace would do for the environmental movement what his belated endorsement had done for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential candidacy: kill it stone dead. But governor Dean was constrained by actual humdrum prosaic vote tallies in Iowa and New Hampshire. The ecochondriacs, by contrast, seem happiest when they’re most unmoored from reality.

That’s where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes (“It might take another 30 Kyotos”, says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. “We are,” warns Gore, “altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe”.

Wow. It’s not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. …

 

 

Power Line posts.

 

 

Corner post says Belgium might break up.

 

 

Thomas Sowell on crime and politics.

 

 

Student speaks common sense and the school wants a psychological evaluation. Sounds like the Soviet Union to me.

ST. PAUL, Minn., October 10, 2007—Hamline University has suspended a student after he sent an e-mail suggesting that the Virginia Tech massacre might have been stopped if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Student Troy Scheffler is now required to undergo a mandatory “mental health evaluation” before being allowed to return to school. Scheffler, who was suspended without due process just two days after sending the e-mail, has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

 

 

Yahoo News says folks in England have resorted to pulling their own teeth. Does Michael Moore know?

Falling numbers of state dentists in England has led to some people taking extreme measures, including extracting their own teeth, according to a new study released Monday.

Others have used superglue to stick crowns back on, rather than stumping up for private treatment, said the study. One person spoke of carrying out 14 separate extractions on himself with pliers.

More typically, a lack of publicly-funded dentists means that growing numbers go private: 78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment. …

 

IBD editorial on socialized medicine.