Monthly Archives: January 2011

Monday Night Quick Hits: The Frozen Global Warming Crystals Edition

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Large sections of the nation are preparing for a massive dose of global warming:

A multi-day, multi-region potentially historic and destructive winter storm will unleash its fury beginning Monday and will last through Wednesday.

When everything is said and done, the storm may very well impact a third of the population of the United States; approximately 100 million people.

Its reach will be felt from the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Ohio Valley to the coast of New England.

Accompanied with the winter storm will be a severe thunderstorm threat across the South capable of producing damaging winds, hail and a few tornadoes.

Our Midwest storm coverage will be categorized into the four factors: heavy snow, destructive ice, tornadoes and bitter cold.

Remember all this snow and cold is due to the ENTIRE PLANET getting hotter.

Matt @ CH2.0 has pulled together another great resource post. This time, covering the events in Egypt.

Snowflakes up close. Very close.

Robot: Freedom is the Answer

6 Secret Monopolies You Didn’t Know Run the World

Cynical Synapse:

Since when does government have the authority to limit free enterprise? If private companies can meet (or exceed) the government standard of service, why are they being denied the opportunity to do so? And why is capitalism being stiffled in deference to the interests of a monopolistic government agency? If the Screening Partnership Program is no longer part of TSA policy, why is it still on their website?

Ace: Federal Judge Throws Out ObamaCare

The Eye: Julian Assange on 60 Minutes

Egypt, Mubarak, and the Muslim Brotherhood

WyBlog: Obamacare: Unconstitutional, and void

Of course the Obama Administration will appeal this ruling faster than Nancy Pelosi can say, “more Botox, Stat!” If there’s one thing Barry and his liberal band of socialists hate it’s Freedom. Freedom is messy. Freedom means they can’t guarantee equality of outcome. Freedom is incompatible with their grand design for wealth redistribution. Freedom gives people the idea that they’re in charge of their own destiny, and then who needs a benevolent bureaucracy staffed by elite intellectuals?

Fleece: Chocolate strawberries among extravagant demands by Nancy Pelosi as she travelled world courtesy of US Airforce

WWTFT Book Review: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

Zipporah: 10 Christian names you don’t really hear

State Dept was holding meetings with Egyptian dissidents

Leave it to the British and their humor (humour)…

Egypt In Turmoil – Is Mubarak Regime Near The End?

Unrest in Egypt: What’s going on?

The Intolerant Hollywood Left

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Here is an interesting look at the intolerant left in Hollywood. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

It ain’t easy being a Republican in Hollywood, even if your brother is an A-list director and producer. That’s what actor Clint Howard told attendees at a California GOP convention over the weekend.

Howard, an actor since 1961 and the younger brother of filmmaker Ron Howard, said that while he is comfortable speaking publicly about his conservatism, his advice to Republicans looking to break into the industry is to keep their political opinions to themselves, even though Hollywood liberals seldom do.

About five years ago “I came out of the closet. In Hollywood. I certainly understand that’s dangerous,” he said.

“If the entertainment industry should turn on me, I’d say, ‘well fine.’ But for young conservatives, you may hear me speak out but let me tell you: Be careful,” he said.

Sounds really tolerant.

And Clint Howard is not alone. Morgan Brittany, from the 80′s prime time soap opera Dallas has had her run in’s with the intolerant Hollywood left:

Howard was joined by Morgan Brittany, one of the stars of the 1980s nighttime soap opera Dallas. The pair have more than 100 years of acting experience between them (Brittany’s first job was as a child in the late 1950s), and they’ve noted a leftward slide in the industry and an intolerance for political dissent over the decades.

“I’d go out on location with the Dallas crew,” she told members of the California Congress of Republicans in Valencia on Saturday. “Everybody in the van was bashing (President Reagan). I never said anything because I thought I’d lose my job. And I probably would have lost my job. I got to a point later on, after Dallas was over and I had my two children, that I said, ‘enough is enough. I’m not going to be silent any longer’,” she said.

“If I’m silent then I’m enabling these people and I’m letting them win. They need to know that we’re out there. That we’re strong and that we have ideas and solutions.

The reaction to her newfound political courage back then wasn’t pretty.

“Oh man, the flack I took from the people, the agencies — ‘oh, you can’t say that. You can’t do that. Casting people might see you. And directors!’”

“What is this, the blacklist?” she said. “They’re not going to hire me because I have an opinion? That’s the way Hollywood is and, unfortunately, I got that. But I still wasn’t going to back down.”

The message is the political left is only tolerant or civil when you agree with them.

This is important. The left dominates popular culture and their ‘values’ and ‘ideas’ are constantly broadcast in mass media.

CBS New York has a list of entertainers that tend to lean right:

Hollywood stars and celebrities are generally considered to be a liberal and Democratic-leaning community, but these celebrities are all declared Republicans according to the FEC, or known conservatives.

“[D]eclared Republicans according to the FEC, or known conservatives.” Their words, not mine.

Rock Icon Jimmy Page Makes Pilgrimage To Castro’s Cuba

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I hate it when one of my all time favorite musicians does something dumb like this.

Via Big Peace:

Following in the footsteps of (among many other flower-children) Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffet, and Carole King (who in 2002 serenaded Fidel Castro with a personal “You’ve Got a Friend”) guitar legend Jimmy Page made the pilgrimage to Fidel Castro’s fiefdom this week.

To Led Zeppelin’s former guitarist the visit probably seemed, not only fitting, but long overdue. Cuba was, after all, the first nation ruled by bearded long-hairs. Jean Paul Sartre, after all, hailed Cuba’s Stalinist rulers as “les Enfants au Pouvoir” (the children in power). Fidel Castro, after all, spoke at Harvard in 1959 on the same bill as pioneer beatnik Allen Ginsberg.

Castro’s captive (literally!) media, reports that Jimmy Page’s visit: “included tours of historic sites, and purchases of souvenirs such as the famous photograph of Che Guevara.”

In an interview with the BBC last year, Oscar and Cannes-winner Benicio del Toro explained the painstaking intellectual exertion that inspired his Che-mania: “I hear of this guy, and he’s got a cool name, Che Guevara! Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics! So I came across a picture of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, ‘Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!’”

In all likelihood, similar intellectual toil inspired Jimmy Page’s recent souvenir shopping spree in Havana.

It turns out that many Cuban youth were imprisoned during the Cuban Communist Revolution for nothing more than listening to Rock and Roll, including smuggled Led Zeppelin records.

In fact, Jimmy Page should know that many Cuban youths “tuned-in and turned-on” to (smuggled) Led Zeppelin music in the 60’s and 70’s. But rather than meet with his Cuban fans, Jimmy was hosted by apparatchiks of the Stalinist regime that jailed and brutalized them en masse.

In a famous speech in 1961 Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates” commanded the KGB –mentored Guevara. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

Cuban “roquero” of the time Charlie Bravo recalls the process: “When Castro’s goons caught me with a Led Zeppelin record, they led me to a Stairway alright—but at bayonet-point and this stairway hardly led to Heaven, instead it led down into a dark jail cell.”

On the orders of Jimmy Page’s smiling hosts, Charlie was joined by tens of thousands of Cuban youths. A few years earlier the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 60’s, found an extremely eager acolyte in Che Guevara. By the mid 60’s the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle—long hair, blue jeans, etc.–or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers.

It’s almost enough to make a guy start listening to country music. Almost.

The Events Unfolding In Egypt

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I think the best take (so far) on the events unfolding in Egypt is this article from STRATFOR:

There is more to these demonstrations than meets the eye. The media will focus on the concept of reformers staging a revolution in the name of democracy and human rights. These may well have brought numerous demonstrators into the streets, but revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than the liberal voices on Facebook and Twitter.

After three decades of Mubarak rule, a window of opportunity has opened for various political forces — from the moderate to the extreme — that preferred to keep the spotlight on the liberal face of the demonstrations while they maneuver from behind. As the Iranian Revolution of 1979 taught, the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the political forces that end up in power. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) understands well the concerns the United States, Israel and others share over a political vacuum in Cairo being filled by Islamists. The MB so far is proceeding cautiously, taking care to help sustain the demonstrations by relying on the MB’s well-established social services to provide food and aid to the protesters. It simultaneously is calling for elections that would politically enable the MB. With Egypt in a state of crisis and the armed forces stepping in to manage that crisis, however, elections are nowhere near assured. What is now in question is what groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and others are considering should they fear that their historic opportunity could be slipping.

Not only are the MB angling to fill the vacuum in the event that the current regime collapses in Egypt, the Military is positioning itself to take over as well.

The important thing to remember is that the Egyptian military, since the founding of the modern republic in 1952, has been the guarantor of regime stability. Over the past several decades, the military has allowed former military commanders to form civilian institutions to take the lead in matters of political governance but never has relinquished its rights to the state.

Now that the political structure of the state is crumbling, the army must directly shoulder the responsibility of security and contain the unrest on the streets. This will not be easy, especially given the historical animosity between the military and the police in Egypt. For now, the demonstrators view the military as an ally, and therefore (whether consciously or not) are facilitating a de facto military takeover of the state. But one misfire in the demonstrations, and a bloodbath in the streets could quickly foil the military’s plans and give way to a scenario that groups like the MB quickly could exploit. Here again, we question the military’s tolerance for Mubarak as long as he is the source fueling the demonstrations.

And a third possible scenario is even if the chain of command holds in Egypt there is a possibility of a colonel’s coup.

But there remains a deep-seated fear among the military elite that the historic opening could well include a cabal of colonels looking to address a long-subdued grievance against the state, particularly its foreign policy vis-à-vis the United States and Israel. The midranking officers have the benefit of having the most direct interaction — and thus the strongest links — with their military subordinates, unlike the generals who command and observe from a politically dangerous distance. With enough support behind them, midranking officers could see their superiors as one and the same as Mubarak and his regime, and could use the current state of turmoil to steer Egypt’s future.

Signs of such a coup scenario have not yet surfaced. The army is still a disciplined institution with chain of command, and many likely fear the utter chaos that would ensue should the military establishment rupture. Still, those trying to manage the crisis from the top cannot forget that they are presiding over a country with a strong precedent of junior officers leading successful coups. That precedent becomes all the more worrying when the regime itself is in a state of collapse following three decades of iron-fisted rule.

Obama always has reminded me of Jimmy Carter. Now, with the way the events are unfolding in Egypt, Obama might very well get his very own version of the Iranian Revolution.

Saturday Morning Quick Hits: The Little Planet Edition

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This is really incredible.

click for a larger version

The photos in today’s quick hits are the work of Chris Kotsiopoulos. Also, here is a writeup of how he creates these incredible photos via Gizmodo.

The left keeps bringing it up and I’ll keep pointing out how stupid it is- Skinning the Cap-and-Trade Cat with Clean Energy Standards

Under Mr. Obama’s new proposal, the government skips the tax part and outright requires the use of costly renewables. The result is the same: dramatically higher energy prices, from carbon-free sources.

The left is seriously addicted to Palin and trying to ignore her now is like a hardcore crackhead trying to go cold turkey.

The pale blue dot

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An Obligation to Serve the State

“A society which looks upon the citizen as a unit of human energy, a cog in the wheel of the state, may well applaud this program, which sacrifices a great deal of liberty … but that is not yet our society.”

Today’s World News: What is going on in Egypt?

Exploring the Intent of ObamaCare: Donald Berwick and Ezekiel Emanuel

Remembering the Challenger Tragedy: Touch the face of God

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The Eye: You hear a lot about how management of record labels either looked the other way or even provided drugs for moneymaking rockers and have a tough time believing no one cares to intervene as long as the cash is flowing, but here is a tragic example flowing right before your eyes.

10 Fascinating Facts About E-mail

Cold truths about electric cars’ cold-weather shortcomings

NASA Photo: Earth from mars

I’m Sure The Spanish Are Happy With All The Green Energy Jobs

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I’m sure the Spanish are really happy they have all those green energy jobs:

Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialized world, as the economy struggled for air.

It was more bad news for an economy fighting to regain the trust of financial markets and avoid being trapped in a debt quagmire that has engulfed Greece and Ireland and now menaces Portugal.

Another 121,900 people joined Spain’s unemployment queues in the final quarter of the year, pushing the total to 4.697 million people, said the national statistics institute INE.

The resulting unemployment rate was 20.33 percent for the end of the year — easily exceeding Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s target of 19.4 percent.

Spain appears to be stuck in a rut of staggeringly high levels of unemployment.

You could see this coming a mile away (via Treehugger.com circa 2007):

In its recent Spain survey, The Financial Times (subscription needed) elaborates at length on the spectacular growth and development of the country’s renewable energy industry, a rapid rise that has allowed it to become the world’s second largest producer of wind energy after Germany and a front-runner in solar and biofuel technologies (peep some of our earlier posts listed at the end for some examples of its sustainable prowess). Indeed, March 20 marked the first time that thousands of whirring wind turbines provided a whopping 27% of the country’s total electricity supply, a historic high reached by pumping energy from 72% of its total installed wind capacity (which we reported on earlier here).

This is in great part due to the big investments made by Spanish energy companies and the government’s early adoption of favorable tariff incentives that provide a guarantee to producers that all their energy will be purchased. “Spain has created a cluster of knowledge in clean energy that sets it apart from most other countries,” said Miguel Salis, a private equity manager. “This has enabled Spanish groups to invest successfully in other markets where there is huge potential for growth.”

Remember Spain’s study that for every 1 heavily subsidized green energy job, 2.2 productive private sector jobs were lost?

Treehuggers Say Cap And Trade Is Not Complicated. Then They Say It’s Not So Simple Either

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Treehuggers keep making up facts as they go along. They claim the ENTIRE planet is experiencing catastrophic warming and the polar ice caps will melt and so-forth. When you point out the obvious, that the planet has been in a cooling trend since 1998 and that we have had a lot of snow lately treehuggers roll their eyes and smugly reply it’s because we are experiencing ‘climate change.’

Regardless of the facts on the ground, we must save the ENTIRE planet even though it doesn’t need saving.

Much like the environmentalists flexible problem definition (global warming when its hot and climate change when the weather is cold) Environmentalists insist a cap-and-trade scheme is really straightforward. Or maybe it is just a little complicated.

Cap and trade really isn’t the most complicated concept on the planet. But let’s be honest — it’s not the simplest, either. There are plenty of folks who don’t understand exactly how it works; at one point, that was true of the vast majority of Americans (and probably still is). And this is exactly why cap and trade’s political opponents were able to convince many that it was really an ‘energy tax’ though it was really nothing of the sort.

Our treehugger can’t give a straight answer in a single paragraph. They say cap-and-trade is simple then they say it’s not.

To understand the complexity involved in implementing such a scheme, all we need to do is look at Europe for an example. In Europe they are actually in the throes of implementing cap-and-trade. And they are finding that they have created a bureaucratic monster.

The problem lies in the system. The closer we come to the next stage, a few fundamental questions are being posed more seriously: Is emissions trading, the way it is being structured today, even feasible? Can it truly be an instrument that achieves its goal in an efficient way, namely to effectively reduce CO2 emissions and slow down climate change? Or is a bureaucratic monster being created here?

It looks so easy in the treehuggers cartoon… I mean infographic.

One last point. Cap-and-trade is a tax that consumers will ultimately pay in the form of higher prices for virtually everything.