Cultural Gadfly

Ed Morrissey on HotAir posted a video in which MSNBC decides that Snowpocalypse supports AGW.

When Contessa Brewer attempts to refute Senator Jim DeMint’s humorous Twitter entry that the snow would continue “until Al Gore cries uncle,” [the meteorologist] gives both sides of the argument. Brewer insists that the heavy snowstorm that has frozen the mid-Atlantic region and shut down Washington DC in a deep freeze just shows that “more severe weather” proves AGW theory.

There’s a point in the video when Brewer suddenly stops calling it ‘Global Warming’ and starts calling it ‘Climate Change.’ A most delicious moment. You can see the realization dawn on her that she’s actually saying “Global Warming means the earth gets colder.” From then on, she’s too flustered to say anything coherent.

Ed also linked to this article from Time Magazine. Essentially, the article says that, because AGW makes it warmer, there’s more moisture in the air, which means more snow. The idea is that, eventually, this will mean rain instead of snow, but in the meantime it’s not warm enough yet to stop the excess moisture from freezing.

A little gem you might not catch: at the end of the article, the author actually refutes everything he’s arguing for:

Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate. (Emphasis mine)

I had to read this a few times. Did they seriously just say that they can’t accurately predict the global climate? As in, for all they know, we’re headed for an ice age in a decade?

So here’s the deal: Enviro-nazis will NEVER be happy. If summer is hot, the earth is heating and we’re all going to die. If the winter is cold, the earth is cooling and we’re all going to die. Sometimes it’s also heating and we’re all going to die. Sometime it will all stay exactly the same and we’re all going to die.

Probably from boring, poorly researched documentaries; or maybe from brain aneurysms — following enviro-logic is like trying to divide by zero.

Regardless, enviro-nazis should move to California where they 1) fit in, 2) won’t have to deal with ‘extreme’ (normal?) weather fluctuation, and 3) will die first should they actually turn out to be correct.

Categories: Global Warming, Main Stream Media, Politics, Science \\ Tags: AGW, Al Gore, Climate Change, Contessa Brewer, Ed Morrissey, Global Climate, Global Warming, Goracle, Hotair, MSNBC, Snomg, snow, Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, The Gore Effect, Time Magazine

Via HotAir, enjoy this video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

As Ed Morrissey points out,

One can make the same argument about health care, or more closely, the student-loan market, although the latter exists mainly in response to government intervention in the first place. Some services require a government monopoly, such as the military or the use of force in law enforcement. Almost all other issues are better left to the private sector, where competition forces innovation and efficiency — and creates positive employment through voluntary associations, rather than bureaucracies funded through tax receipts.

Besides, any government monopoly that 44% of the Senate and 36% of the House avoid is one that should be either ended or forced to compete on a more even basis with private-sector suppliers.

I think further qualifications need to be made, building upon the point that governments should have a monopoly on some services. It seems obvious (to me) that one must make a distinction between federally imposed monopolies and state-imposed monopolies. For example, as monopolies go, the Virginia monopoly on the sale of liquor is not much compared to education, or the post office. I can’t really think of any monopolies that would be acceptable at a state level (but not a federal level). Any thoughts?

Categories: Economy, Education, Politics \\ Tags: CATO Institute, Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Competition, Ed Morrissey, Education, Free Market, Government Monopoly, Hotair, Monopolies

Most of the gadflies will appreciate the significance of this post.

Via Hot Air:

This is one time where the Internet really fails to capture the true excitement of a movie about a large squirrel predicting the weather.

I agree completely!

As it turns out, this already cold winter is going to be a long one too. Umbram videbat.

Go get ‘em, hoggies!

Categories: Comedy, Culture, Miscellany \\ Tags: Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil, Winter

Via Michelle Malkin, Virginia’s Democratic controlled Senate has passed a bill making it illegal to mandate the purchase of health insurance. From the Washington Post:

RICHMOND — Virginia’s Democratic-controlled state Senate passed measures Monday that would make it illegal to require individuals to purchase health insurance, a direct challenge to the party’s efforts in Washington to reform health care.

The bills, a top priority of Virginia’s “tea party” movement, were approved 23 to 17 as five Democrats who represent swing areas of the state joined all 18 Republicans in the chamber in backing the legislation.

This is pretty huge, people. Things look equally promising in the House of Delegates and with Gov. McDonnell: Continue reading »

Categories: Health Care, Local Politics, Politics, Supreme Court \\ Tags: 10th Amendment, Catholic Vote Action, Federal Mandates, Health Care DMV Style, Health Care Reform, Insurance Mandate, McDonnell, Michelle Malkin, Red Virginia, State Senate, Virginia

Michelle Malkin says Scott Brown.

Respectfully, I have to disagree (I tend to agree more with Ed Morrissey on this one). It would be to nobody’s benefit to have Scott Brown deliver the response. It wouldn’t be good for Conservatives, since he’s got a long way to come on social issues. It wouldn’t be good for the GOP because it would serve to encourage the Frum-ian element wanting to jettison the social conservatives.

But most importantly, it wouldn’t be good for Scott Brown. He built his campaign on being an independent Republican. He was famously quoted as saying “I’m a Scott Brown Republican.” Hell, he only said Republican once in his acceptance speech, and that was to say he’d work with Republicans and Democrats. Brown needs to keep his distance from anything that looks like establishment GOP for at least a little while. In the post linked above, Ed Morrissey makes the point that he’d be ruining any chance of being re-elected in ‘12. However, there’s a much more important reason he shouldn’t give the speech.

If Brown gave the speech, he would be reneging on his promise to be his own Republican within the first week! Worse than what that would do to Brown is what it would do to other candidates. People in Massachusetts would get severely disillusioned with even the idea of GOP representation, thus ruining any chances to score some seats in the House this November.

So, lest I be accused of a “Party-of-no” (personally I’m more of a “party-of-hell-no” kinda guy), “always-tearing-down-never-building-up” Republican, I think that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (I love that I can say that without the ‘elect’ part…) should deliver the GOP’s response. Think about it. GOP and independents love him, knowing full well that he is a VERY conservative Republican; tea partiers love him; VA is a reddish state anyway; and he never has to worry about a re-election bid to his current job.

Categories: Congress, Politics, RNC \\ Tags: Bob McDonnell, GOP, Massachusetts, Republican Response, RNC, Scott Brown, State of the Union

The AP just called it. Brown wins.

Apparently, Coakley conceded about 20 minutes ago. Not publicly, of course.

Next stop: the final teabagging of HCR.

Categories: Congress, Politics \\ Tags: Death of HCR, GOP, Massachusetts, Scott Brown, Tea Party, Ted Kennedy's Legacy

I thought you’d find this amusing: Moby Dick, the novelization.

For more of an explanation of what they’re doing, read the blog post here. Since I couldn’t find a permanent link, I’ve also pasted the relevant parts below the fold.

His argument for the ‘novelization’ of the Inferno from the coming video game is amusing and I laughed out loud at his description of reading Paradise Lost. I hope you guys enjoy. Continue reading »

Categories: Art, Comedy, Culture, Literature \\ Tags: Classics, Dante, Funny, Penny Arcade, The Inferno, video games

Via HotAir and Michelle Malkin, Coburn is doing something few Senators do:

Keeping a promise:

Sen. Tom Coburn has just demanded that the Senate clerk read the single-payer amendment offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders — and it’s 767 pages.

Typically, Senators offering amendments will ask for unanimous consent to avoid reading the entire measure, but all it takes is one Senator to object to demand its reading, and Coburn objected to Sanders attempt to dispense with the reading of the amendment.

To give you a sense of how this could delay things, it took the Senate clerk 18 minutes to get through the first 6 pages of the amendment, which were the table of contents… The body of the bill seems to be going faster than the table of contents, but it still looks likely to take at least 12 hours at this pace.

This is delicious. The amendment itself would have turned Medicare into socialized universal health care. Ed Morrissey notes that “no one expected this to go anywhere” anyway:

most people shrugged at its introduction as simply a sop, especially since the public option and Medicare buy-in couldn’t get 60 votes, let alone an explicit single-payer system.

But Coburn (and now Jim DeMint) have taken this opportunity “to alert taxpayers to this latest Washington scheme to take away [their] health care decisions.”

This reminds me of the episode of King of the Hill in which, to reverse a low-flow-toilet-only policy, Hank reads two years of Peggy’s musings to filibuster the vote until committee members have used (to no avail!) the low-flows.

Except the material on the Senate floor is much more fitting, in a Hamlet-esque hoisted-on-their-own-petard way.

UPDATE:

Via Drudge, Politico has the scoop:

No Health Care Bill in 2009!

Or, that’s what Pelosi says. Sort of. We shouldn’t celebrate just yet, but there’s certainly cause for a lot of optimism.

In the case of health care reform, Pelosi credited House Democrats with having saved Obama’s initiative after the onslaught of attacks during the August recess. And if the Senate can complete its bill this month, she will work to try to send a House-Senate compromise to the White House before the State of the Union.

Gotta love how constituents voicing anger and concern over Lady Pelosi’s totalitarian regime is an ‘onslaught of attacks’ to them.

Let me guess: Dem Senators were only doing their duty and vetting Clarence Thomas properly in his confirmation hearings.

Riiiiiiight…

Categories: Congress, Health Care, Politics \\ Tags: Coburn, Coburn Omnibus, DeMint, Ed Morrissey, Filibuster, Health Care, King of the Hill, Medicare, Michelle Malkin, Senate

I know. I know. Why do I pick the easy targets?

If you don’t live in DC (or rather, if you’re unfamiliar with the city’s public transportation), there are two free newspapers for commuters: the Examiner and the Express (actually, there’s a third, but its journalistic integrity is too pure to be besmirched by a comparison to the Express). The Examiner is its own paper and has a Republican (and usually conservative) bias. The Express is the free edition of the Washington Post (literally. They take stories from that day’s edition and make a small free edition called the express).

Yesterday, the two papers’ cover stories stood in stark juxtaposition.

Here you can see the cover story of the Examiner,

And here you can see a PDF of the Express’ cover.

Seriously, Express? There was nothing more newsworthy?

Categories: Comedy, Main Stream Media \\ Tags: DC, Examiner, Express, Fenty, Journalism, Journalistic Integrity, MSM, News, tiger

Bismarck commented on Roland’s Jihadology and Sovietology post, saying

Though I am in no way disregarding the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalism, doesn’t it seem that there are now two fundamentals or ideas waging a war over the Muslim people? The classic fundamental of the Qur’an: to kill the infidel and all he represents. Then it seems that a new idea has emerged: a peaceful passive aggressive Islam, that Islam is not just a killing religion (which it is technically) but a religion that can exist trying to “spread their word,” so to speak, without violence. Obviously you have examples of both, terrorists and the Muslim population throughout the world that doesn’t help or participate in terrorist activities.

One argument is that Islam is starting to become modernized and is losing some of it’s fundamental commandments, if this is the case the danger is much less.

Will Wilson on Postmodern Conservative had a very interesting post titled Americans Don’t Get Religion. In it, he argues that the American perception of religion is skewed because the government is so tolerant of religion as long as it has no teeth (and religion in America has, for the most part, defanged itself to obtain state tolerance).

Many observers neglect the fact that the United States government is unusually tolerant of religious sentiment by the standards of secular governments that lack established churches. Our “wall of separation” is nothing compared to that in France, in Germany or, until a couple of years ago and possibly even now, in Turkey. There are few places in the world, and there were even fewer prior to the current wave of Americanization, where religion is viewed so comfortably as a private affair…

Unlike the vast majority of nations, America has had no significant history of religious violence or fanaticism since its founding.

It seems to me that the birth of an Islam-religion-of-peace movement practiced in the Middle East can, in part, be tied to America’s efforts in the area, but even more so, to our relevance as a global superpower. Turkey has had an extremely strong secular government that (sort of) tolerates religion for quite some time now. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been trying to Western-ize themselves too. It doesn’t really surprise me that this same process would similarly start to tame the local religions.

Categories: Culture, Religion \\ Tags: America, First Things, Islam, Jihadology, Postmodern Conservative