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John Tierney starts us off with the expected doom and gloom climate predictions for 2008.
I’d like to wish you a happy New Year, but I’m afraid I have a different sort of prediction.
You’re in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet.
Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific. I don’t know if disaster will come by flood or drought, hurricane or blizzard, fire or ice. Nor do I have any idea how much the planet will warm this year or what that means for your local forecast. Long-term climate models cannot explain short-term weather.
But there’s bound to be some weird weather somewhere, and we will react like the sailors in the Book of Jonah. When a storm hit their ship, they didn’t ascribe it to a seasonal weather pattern. They quickly identified the cause (Jonah’s sinfulness) and agreed to an appropriate policy response (throw Jonah overboard).
Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. …
Peace in the Mid-East after three generations? Max Boot says ask the Scots and the English.
… The accession of a Scottish monarch to the throne of England in 1603 as King James I might have been expected to end the strife. Yet the two realms clashed again during the English Civil War in the 1640s. The conflict did not truly end until 1745, when a revolt by mainly Scottish supporters of the Stuarts (descendants of James I), was put down–449 years after the start of Anglo-Scottish hostilities. …
A few great blog posts on the BS we get from the mainstream media. NewsBusters catches the NY Times with their phony GOP letter writer.
The quickest way to get the liberal media to pay attention to you is to claim to be a Republican who hates Republicans. It’s an almost infallible public relations strategy that of late has worked well for “Republican” Monica Green.
It’s also done wonders for “lifelong Republican” Henry A. Lowenstein, who has managed to get 20 different letters published in the New York Times since 2003, a remarkable feat when you consider that the Times (by its own admission) receives around 1,000 letters a day and prints only 15 on its letters page. …
A blog named NewsMeat.com tracks down Henry Lowenstein’s contributions – all to Dems.
Bizzy Blog with the last of the MSM BS. Remember just before the 2006 elections when the Lancet published a study that showed deaths in Iraq were 10 times the previous totals. National Journal found out it was all lies. Lies funded by George Soros.
….. Over the past several months, National Journal has examined the 2006 Lancet article, and another [PDF] that some of the same authors published in 2004; probed the problems of estimating wartime mortality rates; and interviewed the authors and their critics. NJ has identified potential problems with the research that fall under three broad headings: 1) possible flaws in the design and execution of the study; 2) a lack of transparency in the data, which has raised suspicions of fraud; and 3) political preferences held by the authors and the funders, which include George Soros’s Open Society Institute. …..
Mark Steyn comments on Iowa.
… Way back a gazillion years ago, when Mrs. Clinton was first exploring the exploration of exploring the possibility of an exploratory committee, some wily Gompers were suggesting the Republicans trump her history-making first-woman-president card by drafting Condi Rice. It turns out we dead white males on the right wing were worrying unnecessarily: The Democrats trumped themselves. Liberal voters want desperately to cast a history-making vote and, if that’s your priority, Barack Obama is a much more appealing way to cast it than Hillary. Don’t worry about this “Change You Can Believe In” shtick. Obama doesn’t believe in it, and neither should you. He’s a fresh face on the same-old-same-old – which is the only change Democrats are looking for.
As for Huckabee, the thinking on the right is that the mainstream media are boosting him up because he’s the Republican who’ll be easiest to beat. It’s undoubtedly true that they see him as the designated pushover, but in that they’re wrong. If Iowa’s choice becomes the nation’s, and it’s Huckabee vs. Obama this November, I’d bet on Huck. …
… Where I part company with Huck’s supporters is in believing he’s any kind of solution. He’s friendlier to the teachers’ unions than any other so-called “cultural conservative” – which is why in New Hampshire he’s the first Republican to be endorsed by the NEA. His health care pitch is Attack Of The Fifty Foot Nanny, beginning with his nationwide smoking ban. This is, as Jonah Goldberg put it, compassionate conservatism on steroids – big paternalistic government that can only enervate even further “our culture.”
So, Iowa chose to reward, on the Democrat side, a proponent of the conventional secular left, and, on the Republican side, a proponent of a new Christian left. If that’s the choice, this is going to be a long election year.
The Narcissist says Hillary had to go negative because the media weren’t doing their job. The Captain knows better.
Bill Clinton wants people to know that Hillary doesn’t do divisiveness — it’s thrust upon her. In a truly bizarre statement coming from the Clintons, they claim that the media forces Hillary to go negative against her opponents. She had to attack Barack Obama’s kindergarten essays, the former president informs us, because the media wouldn’t do it (via Memeorandum): …
Charles Hurt, NY Post DC bureau chief with Clinton analysis.
Awaiting her coronation here last night, Hillary Rodham Clinton instead faced a seething revolt within her own party. More than 70 percent of Iowa Democrats rejected her bid to get back into the White House. And so, after 15 years of domination, the Clinton dynasty has finally lost its grip on the Democratic Party.
More than anything else, Clinton’s campaign was built upon the aura of inevitability. That’s now shattered and left in Iowa’s frozen cornfields. What’s devastating to her is that she lost so badly to such a political novice. …
Andrew Ferguson says the banning of incandescent bulbs was not a bright idea, and no shining moment in the history of our struggle against the state.
On December 19, President Bush signed an energy bill that will, among many, many other things, force you to buy a new kind of light bulb. He did this because environmental enthusiasts don’t like the light bulbs you’re using now. He and they reason, therefore, that you shouldn’t be allowed to have them. So now you can’t. …
… The mind reels at the joke-like possibilities: How many Bush administration officials does it take to screw in a CFL (compact fluorescent)? As many as it takes to screw American consumers! But the Bushies aren’t the half of it. In creating the ban, Bush and his environmentalist allies were joined by Philips Lighting, which is–you should probably sit down–the world’s foremost manufacturer of CFLs. The phased-in ban will position Philips to crowd from the market any troublesome competitors. It’s a perfect confluence of interests: the Big Environmental Lobby, Big Business, and Big Government Conservatives.
But back to the screwees–those American consumers, also known, not so long ago, as the citizens of the United States, a free people, rulers of the world’s proudest self-governing nation. Will there be protests of some kind, expressions of disgust at least? And what if there aren’t? What if, as the ban slowly tightens, we hear nothing, not a howl, not a peep, just a long mellow moo? Then maybe it really will be time to turn out the lights.
Tim Carney in the Examiner says in Missouri ethanol comes from corn, corruption, and capitalism. Tim needs an econ course so he can understand when government picks winners and losers it’s called mercantilism, not capitalism. Big government conservatism has nothing to do with free markets.
Missouri drivers, starting this week, no longer have any choice in the matter — they must put ethanol in their gas tanks. Republican Gov. Matt Blunt says the state’s ethanol mandate that went into effect New Year’s Day will be good “for our farmers, consumers, [and] the environment.â€
Time will tell if Blunt’s claims are correct for everybody else, but for his family, the benefit is clear: His brother’s significant investments in ethanol will appreciate.
The story of Matt and Andy Blunt and Missouri’s ethanol subsidies is not a case of criminal corruption, but it is certainly an illustrative case. It highlights the conflicts of interest, ulterior motives and opportunities for corruption inherent whenever government picks winners and losers in the marketplace.
London Times with news of significant flu vaccine developments.
A vaccine that could help to control a flu pandemic has shown encouraging results in its first human trials.
The vaccine, made by Acambis, based in Cambridge, should protect against all strains of influenza A, the type responsible for pandemics. Unlike existing vaccines it does not have to be reformulated each year to match the prevalent strains of flu, so it could be stockpiled and used as soon as a pandemic strain emerges. Nor does it need to be grown on fertilised chicken eggs, as the existing vaccines do, but can be produced by cell culture. …