Shocker! even the New York Times is waking up to Global Warming hooey!

This is pretty brutal...is the "consensus" falling apart?

this NYT piece came just a day after Investor's Business Daily predicted
that the consensus will fade in 2008:

If 2007 was the Year of Al Gore, with his movie, Academy Award and Nobel Prize, 2008 just might be the year the so-called scientific consensus that man is causing the Earth to warm begins to crack.

The fissures started to show in 2007: Prominent French physicist Claude Allegre called Gore a crook and equates Gore's French followers with religious zealots. Weather Channel founder and meteorologist John Coleman said global warming is "the greatest scam in history." Gore continued to duck open invitations to debate his theory. More than 400 scientists disputed the global warming claims.

Though they were shut out of the meeting, dissenting scientists were able to get a bit of media attention at the December climate conference in Bali.

Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told us that it will take several years for the climate change scare to finally die. But the death spiral will begin at some point, and it looks like the spinning will start in '08.

they forgot the scene from the Republican debate in Iowa:



the moderator's attempt to reduce the "debate" on climate change to a "show of hands" was telling.

more global warming hypocrisy...the case of Molten Metal Technologies and their ties to Algore

just ran across this at The American Thinker...it's a blog post which goes back and digs up an old CNN story from 1997 which shows pretty strong evidence of a quid pro quo between Molten Metal Technologies receiving government subsidies (huge contracts from the DOE which were funded year after year over the objections of gov't scientists), and contributions from entrepreneur Bill Haney and the rest of the company's executives to Clinton-Gore and the Democratic Party. it's a finger-lickin' good account of good old-school Washington corruption...money, lobbyists, fancy dinners, buying influence, taking care of your cronies...you know, all the stuff that Democrats like Algore accuse their opponents of! from the CNN article:

The Haney-Gore Connection:

The Massachusetts businessman gave often to the Veep and his party and snagged a string of federal contracts from the Energy Department. Examples:

What he gave
$15,000 from his firm to the Democratic Party on March 24, 1994

What he got
A $9 million extension of his federal contract on March 24, 1994

What he gave
$10,000 from his executives to the Clinton-Gore team on June 14, 1995

What he got
A $10 million extension of his contract on June 14, 1995

What he gave
$10,000 from his firm to the Democratic Party on May 7, 1996

What he got
An $8 million extension of his contract on May 10, 1996

What he gave
Nothing directly, but partner Lockheed Martin donated $100,000 to the Democratic Party on June 27, 1996

What he got
A $27 million contract on Sept. 25, 1996, to the partnership he formed with Lockheed Martin to develop a cleanup plan for a site in Richland, Wash.

what does this have to do with global warming?

specifically speaking, the issues aren't related. or are they? it turns out Haney's chief lobbyist was a guy named Peter Knight, who, conveniently, had been in Algore's inner political circle from his days of being in the House and the Senate...which means he was there from the beginning of the insufferable windbag Algore's obsession with this global menace, and since politics and money tend to go hand-in-hand, isn't it possible that they could've dreamed up ways to make a quick buck over it?

fast forward to a few weeks back...a report was issued from the US Senate which provided a list of over 400 scientists who had spoken out in the year 2007 criticizing the "conventional wisdom" in regards to the so-called "scientific consensus" related to man-made global warming (which i blogged about here). the Gore gang responded...according to an article in the washington times:

After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said 25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil Corp.

"quick review"..."may have received funding"...this is so typical of the global-warming crowd--they won't debate...discrediting their critics is always good enough. not that it matters, but there was a response:

Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay scientists to bash global-warming theories.

i'm not sure that's completely true, but i will trust a corporation's word at least equally to a politician or a government employee's word anyday. to me this is so obviously a power struggle between the government hacks of the world who tax their citizens in order to prop up their money-making machine, i.e. "government", and corporate interests who have to fight off these parasites.

it's hard to take the global-warming crowd seriously when they don't lead by example, for instance flying hundreds of private jets to the conference in Bali...couldn't they at least have attempted to do this via satellite or something?...show us how technology can be used to make us smarter guardians of our environment? i guess that misses the point. then there's the issue of Gore's huge Tennessee mansion whose energy usage is estimated at 20 times the national average...like they say, "do as i say, not as i do"...and then there's the ridiculous carbon credit scam, where heavy polluters can buy absolution by preventing others from polluting...and which Algore himself has a financial stake in, as he is the founder and chairman of the Generation Investment Management LLP, who he purchases his own carbon offset credits from!! genius!!

"Global Warming" ain't all THAT bad...

because, according to writer Dave Lindorff, it "...will save America from the right....eventually"

apparently this stuff passes for intelligence at the Baltimore Chronicle. Lindorff's argument is that if you look at the map of the US, you'll see that the vast amount of the area which is low-lying (and, thus, will end up underwater) tends to be in the southern states, which tend to be the most conservative. anticipating anyone wondering about "liberal" areas that would be lost to the rising ocean, Lindorff simply waves off that silly question:

Sure, Boston, New York and Philadelphia will be threatened, but these are geographically confined areas that could lend themselves to protection by Dutch-style dikes.

whew! THAT problem solved. i guess the people in the south will be too stupid or blinded by their own conservatism to figure out how to build sea walls, canals, or any other way that humans will come up with to adapt to changing environments. they'll just drown like the pharaoh's army, while smug liberals will assume the gene hackman posture from "the Posiedon Adventure" and topple the christmas tree which was the only way out, according to "the believers", leaving the doubters to die, albeit with party favors...

the conservative midwest will also face the wrath of the angry global warming gods. the farmland will be worthless, the reservoirs will dry up. they, too, will apparently be too stupid to see this coming and will just die instead of moving. then, Lindorff theorizes that the stifling heat will spell doom for conservative-leaning retirement communities in the American Southwest! NO conservative will be spared! all will be smitten! "so let it be written, so let it be done"...

There is a poetic justice to this of course. It is conservatives who are giving us the candidates who steadfastly refuse to have the nation take steps that could slow the pace of climate change, so it is appropriate that they should bear the brunt of its impact.

The important thing is that we, on the higher ground both actually and figuratively, need to remember that, when they begin their historic migration from their doomed regions, we not give them the keys to the city. They certainly should be offered assistance in their time of need, but we need to keep a firm grip on our political systems, making sure that these guilty throngs who allowed the world to go to hell are gerrymandered into political impotence in their new homes.

hey, Lindorff, does your pea-brain ever consider the possibility that all of these transplants will no doubt just move into your "turf", and possibly change it's political character? without the farm belt, aren't millions going to starve, anyway? what if the conservatives, who, unlike the liberal "blue-staters" don't sit around and wait for the nanny state to come bail them out of any crisis, prove to be more hardy in this tougher world? how exactly do you plan to feed your new liberal majority? food for thought...

in 2007, over 400 Global Warming critics in the scientific community spoke out...new Senate report names names

one interesting thing i found from reading this report is that several of them were co-recipients of the Nobel prize which Algore recently recieved.

and, they all seemed to be affiliated with governments and universities around the world, and not BP, ExxonMobil, etc...

from early on in the report:

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

“Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media,” Paldor wrote.

this is because of the "consensus" which has built up behind the politically correct Algore/UN IPCC view on the issue. scientists not toeing this "ideological" find themselves in danger of losing grant money, or in other words, being able to make a living, unless they sound the alarms.

most of them would not disagree with the notion that the planet is "warming" to whatever tiny degree, but they disagree in various degrees with the zeal in which the CO2-emissions theory is thrown out there, expected to be accepted by all without question (remember...there's a consensus). many point to other factors like variations in the sun's temperature, distribution of water, natural earth cycles, and many others. their consensus seems to be, let's not thrown the baby out with the bathwater, just yet...

"green" building at Emory University is bird slaughterhouse

back in the 1970's my family had some good friends in Birmingham, AL, who we would usually get together with once or twice a year. they had a beautiful house on a forested mountainside, with a towering A-frame front entrance with 2 panes of triangular glass which stretched to the ceiling, and this A-frame extended to the back of the house, which was a complete glass wall. you could see all the way through this house, and the view was lovely...trees, rocks, leaves...

from time to time while visiting we would hear a massive "WHOOOOMP!", and we would walk out the front door to see what kind of bird had flown into the windows this time and killed itself. i would estimate that between 1972-1976 i must've witnessed this between 10-15 times (which includes one case where two popped the glass at the same time).

flash forward to today...

Emory University's Math & Science Center is a "green-friendly" building, with soaring glass panels which aid in lighting and whatever else the environmentalists get out of it. it's a hallmark of the Atlanta school's effort to "go green"...it's also the "wall of death", as Emory Professor of Environmental Studies John Wegner charmingly put it in an atlanta journal-constitution story. he estimates that the building, whose windows reflect the forest in front of them, killed at least 60 birds in it's first year (2002) alone. he made a stink about it from the beginning, but, according to the story, it wasn't until he rammed some dead birds into his pockets and whipped them out in a meeting with his boss that he finally got some attention.

it's interesting that "green buildings" all share this glassy template. this bird deal is not isolated to Emory. in addition to my anecdote above (from 30 years ago, mind you...), just a casual coupling of "birds + buildings" in Google found this letter to the editor in a University of Saskatchewan campus newspaper, admonishing the school administration to take care of the same problem.

in the AJC story, they interviewed ornithologist David Klem, a professor who has "studied the problem for decades", and says that between 100 million and 1 billion birds die every year in the US by flying into glass windows. he seems to blame ARCHITECTS for the problem, because of the glass which has become such an integral part of "green" construction. by the way, according to the story, "buildings that earn LEED certification, the brass ring of environmentally sustainable construction, are often largely made of glass". the "brass ring", huh? i was thinking that the LEED certification was mainly an industry thing, but apparently environmental organizations such as the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) have endorsed this certification.

this whole thing begs so many questions for me...this all has to do with universities and public buildings efforts at environmental "sustainability", which i just blogged about. universities are filled with professors and scientists, right? my roommate, who works in a chemistry lab at the University of Florida, constantly lectures me about the sanctity of research which comes out of universities (as opposed to business-sponsored, which is defiled by $money$) because it is subject to "peer review".

somewhere, when it comes to this "sustainability" movement, this "peer review" seems to overlook the most obvious things--birds run into glass...you might want to mention this to architects--that even a stupid kid from alabama that i was could see as plain as day...

algore celebrates a touchdown! UF/FSU game to go "green"...

this is surreal.

they want to highlight the "fact" that football games produce a ton of greenhouse gasses. to help combat this problem,

...UF and its partners, the Florida Forestry Association and Environmental Defense, are arranging for approximately 18 acres of rural North Florida land to be set aside and managed as a pine plantation forest for 10 years. UF calculates that this is an acreage and period of time sufficient to absorb all the carbon emissions from the game.

according to Deedee Delongpre', director of UF's "Office of Sustainability",

At 18 acres for one game, some quick calculations reveal that we would need 126 acres to be managed for 10 years just to offset our football program for one year,” she said.

in a statement released from his office, Governor Crist approves, and will attend the game.

this is being hyped as the "first" carbon-neutral game ever. with 3 losses, i guess it's nice to be "first" in something...

go gators.


3 A.M. update--i can't sleep, this stuff is really bugging me. the more i read of this "office of sustainability" at UF, the more i want to puke. what a commie front. i'm going to this game tomorrow, and these whiners want to make me feel bad about it? i think a good old-fashioned protest could be in order...

now you see them, now you don't--tits disappearing...

...because of climate change.

"Most may well be able to bounce back next year"--Mark Grantham

did stone-age feminists cause the extinction of neanderthals?

Catherine Price at Salon doesn't think so...

but, recent studies cited in this Boston Globe story say otherwise...

The Neanderthal extinction some 30,000 years ago remains one of the great riddles of evolution, with rival theories blaming everything from genocide committed by "real" humans to prehistoric climate change.

But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers.

back in the kitchen, woman!

Air America host Randi Rhodes thinks Blackwater is behind SoCal fires...

it's been a tough week for Randi (shown here with her teeth intact, btw...)--first, she was "attacked" by right-wingers who knocked her teeth out, then we later find out that no, she wasn't attacked...was it possible that she was just shit-faced coming out of an irish pub? it's all speculation, of course, but the story is typical of the crap that comes out of Air America.

like this latest gem from Rhodes:

I started just doing Google searches to try and figure out. You know, arson, arson, it was like crazy trying to figure out why is that being downplayed? Why is that, you know, just a small part of the story? And you know, every time I look for it what comes up, believe it or not, is that Blackwater wants to move to San Diego and build this giant complex in San Diego right where most of the evacuations are taking place and you know. You just know wherever there is fire, this administration will be out there doing what it does best and that is fanning the flames, you know. It just spooks me, I can’t explain to you how creepy this whole thing is that you know, you’ve got these fires. Some of them are thought to be the work of arsonists and in the same breath you’ve got a community that’s on fire that just recently protested Blackwater West. Just recently said no to Blackwater and apparently you don’t do that. I mean, I don’t even know what to think. You know, nobody is saying Blackwater set the fires, that is nobody that doesn’t want their house burned down. Nobody is saying that, but it is all so bizarre that this is America and you have to sort of sit there and wonder … arson, same place Blackwater West wants to be, people protesting. And then you find out that some of the guys that used to work for Blackwater are now in Schwarzenegger’s administration. It’s all so creepy.

the actual audio is at this link, if you missed it above.

Blackwater. Blackwater?

well, i guess she had to refocus, since others have been pointing at a possible al-queada/jihadist link...

Rhodes' speculation IS a lot more imaginative than other leftist voices which have been blaming it on traditional bogeymen such as global warming...like Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said in response to a question on an energy bill:

"As you know, one reason that we have the fires burning in Southern California is global warming. One reason the Colorado Basin is going dry is because of global warming."

and then, six questions later, Reid's previous statement had dropped down the memory hole:

Question: Senator, on the California fires, you said that the reason the fires are burning in California is global warming?

Reid: No. Here's what I - I didn't say the reason the fires were burning in Southern California was global warming...

except, i heard the audio and Reid completely garbled the end of the sentence to where it sounded more like "...southerncalfornglobewarming...", like he was trying to speak with something large in his mouth...like his foot...

oh yes, and the war in Iraq has diverted all of the National Guard so they can't help fight the fires. i almost forgot.

far-lefties at The Nation question Nobel Prize going to Algore

This isn't the first time i've read Alexander Cockburn criticize the theory as Algore sees it. these are fighting words:

Already the hysteria about anthropogenic global warming stoked by Al Gore and the Big Lie gang writing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's press releases has done enormous damage to vital environmental cleanup, sidetracking attention and money from work on sewers, toxic waste sites, filthy smokestacks--not to mention the vast disaster of agricultural pollution. Two other consequences of the hysteria will be deadly. Biofuels will steal the meals of the Third World poor and put them in First World gas tanks. Nuclear power is the hysteria's prime beneficiary. As Peter Montague describes it in our current CounterPunch newsletter, "The long-awaited and much-advertised 'nuclear renaissance' actually got under way this fall." NRG Energy, a New Jersey company, applied for a license to build two nuclear power plants in Bay City, Texas--the first formal application for such a license in thirty years.

Cockburn demonstrably sees Gore's global warming/climate change histrionics as a "trojan horse" strategy on behalf of the nuclear power industry:

...As nuclear plants start to sprout like toadstools across the landscape, it is certainly appropriate to lay a large measure of the blame on Al Gore, who has been a shill for the nuclear industry ever since he came of age as a political harlot for the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory in his home state of Tennessee.

Cockburn is pretty brutal on Gore the rest of the article, especially on his hawkish past, specifically on the iraq issue, which i've previously blogged about here on NGNG...

just to change the subject for a second, i read this article early this morning when it was called "Gore and the Big Lie Gang"...they've changed the title...i wonder who got to 'em?...hmmmmm...


here's a link to a previous article for The Nation by Cockburn on climate change fearmongering: "Who are the Merchants of Fear?"

also, from today's WSJ Opinion Journal, a measured piece of skepticism providing historical context from a guy who's been studying the phenomena since 1968.

Global Warming Update: Gore wins Prize, Dr. William Gray calls this "ridiculous"

Dr. Gray's comments came in a speech he was giving at the University of North Carolina. it wasn't merely an ad hominem attack...Dr. Gray also gave his explanation for global warming--he says it's related to the temperatures of ocean waters which is affected by the amount of salt in the water. he says this is a natural fluctuation which will probably reverse itself and lead to an overall cooling in the next 10-15 years.

Dr. Gray thinks the global warming theory put forward by Gore is the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

instead of continuing to propagandize a bogus theory, Gray says:

"We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."

"EXACTLY what we're facing"...if i were a betting man, on the subject of "climate change" i would put my money on an actual climatologist over a member of the American political aristocracy any day...

more reaction here, and here (Bjorn Lomborg).

Global Warming Update: Gore shies from debate

the latest: a challenge from Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who was addressing the UN General Assembly this past week on climate change.

In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.

there are several other instances cited of Gore ignoring offers to debate cited in the article...

more from President Klaus:

...Klaus reserved his unkindest cut of all for the movement that has joined forces with Gore is spreading fear about global warming:

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."

strong words...but he's seen it...LIVED it..

why won't Algore debate the critics? the author of this article postulates that one reason might be the...

...unfortunate outcome of a global warming debate in New York last March. In the debate, a team of global warming skeptics composed of MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London emeritus professor of biogeology Philip Stott, and physician-turned novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton handily defeated a team of climate alarmists headed by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt. Before the start of the nearly two-hour debate, the audience of several thousand polled 57.3 percent to 29.9 percent in favor of the proposition that global warming is a "crisis." At the end of the debate, the numbers had changed dramatically, with 46.2 percent favoring the skeptical point of view and 42.2 percent siding with the alarmists.

remember, that result comes after the audience members have been inundated with a steady drumbeat of "global warming crisis" propaganda for YEARS, rarely challenged in the "mainstream media".

plus, a smelly debate would get in the way of Gore's prime political tactic of silencing criticism by labeling his side of the debate a "consensus"...kind of like how some at The Weather Channel attempted to have the "Seal of Approval" from the AMS removed from meteorologists who question the theory...or maybe Gore doesn't want anyone pointing out his own hypocrisy when it comes to energy use and carbon footprints...or maybe even that the "carbon offsets" he purchases to compensate for the waste at his own home are bought from Generation Investment Management...a company the "Hon. Al Gore" chairs and helped to found.

global warming update: taxes raised, Soros funding research, etc...

my roomie (who is some sort of researcher...a lot of chemistry and biology) and i got into a big fight the other night about whose opinion you should trust regarding the science behind global warming. his argument, as expected, was that scientists funded by corporate interests could not be trusted, because the lack of peer review made their findings suspect at best, and completely made up at worst.

they have a "political agenda", you see...

could it be that perhaps they're not the only ones with an agenda? from the Investor's Business Daily:

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?

That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by (George) Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

that's a NASA employee being paid almost 3/4 of a million dollars to propagandize one side of the issue. i'd pay good money to the "peer review" on his research...well, i'd maybe spend an hour or so googling it...whatever. my whole point was that scientists on the government dole have exactly the same motivation for biased research as those employed by private industry...they have to produce results which make their work seem worthwhile. plus, in my opinion, they have extra incentive to slant their findings...as long as they can keep this "crisis" going, they'll have job security and an ever-expanding budget. they're just like any other government employee i know, and i know PLENTY. they all talk about how at the end of the quarter they've got to start using everything up, or outright stealing stuff so they can justify the requests for increases in the grants. then they just sit around, playing on the internet, coming and going as they please...with that kind of cushy work, who the hell can blame them for not going against the party line?

this whole global warming just smells more and more like an attempt at a political power grab. from an interview with Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich) in the washington post:

"This is going to cause pain," he said, adding that he wants to make certain "the pain is shared in a way that is fair, proper, acceptable and accomplishes the basic purpose" of reducing greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

according to Dingell, who is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, it has to "cause pain" to be taken seriously. some of his proposals:

_A 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and jet fuel, phased in over five years, on top of existing taxes.

_A tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.

_Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.

He estimates that would affect 10 percent of homeowners. He says "it's only fair" to tax those who buy large suburban houses and create urban sprawl. Historic and farm houses would be exempted.

Some of the revenue would be used to reduce payroll taxes, but most would go elsewhere including for highway construction, mass transit, paying for Social Security and health programs and to help the poor pay energy bills.

amazing solutions...all of them. it's so amazing what raising taxes can do to solve problems. and, as a bonus, it's a "soak the rich" solution! what a genius!

i'm still waiting for my global warming buddies to tell me what the IDEAL temperature is. is it cooler than it is RIGHT NOW? WHAT IS IT???



more on the history of James Hansen...

climate research scientist Roy Spencer (works for NASA, too) on his theory that climate change could have much more to do w/precipitation than human behavior...

hurricane expert Bill Gray in the Washington Post:

"I am of the opinion that this is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people"

Charlie Crist is a cool guy

i was just minding my business, having a burger & some beers with my roommate at The Red Onion in Gainesville. it's a neighborhood bar & grill, kind of off the beaten path for the "cool" downtown crowd. we were just chillin' and listening to our pal mama trish entertain the crowd with her mixture of classic rock covers and bluesy originals.

all of a sudden, these guys in suits burst through the door, looking around purposefully and speaking into their shoulders. and then, my eyes were blinded by the silver mane of none other than Florida Governor Charlie Crist! my god, what a TAN. his entourage took seats at some tables right behind us ("behind", as it related to the stage), while Gov. Crist and a couple of his goons bellied up to the bar, directly to my left.

it was obvious that the crowd was content to let the Governor enjoy himself in peace. one lady did come up and offer to buy him a beer, which i believe he accepted. i'm not sure what this bribe was all about...or that she actually went through with getting him the beer. all i know is that a few minutes later he's got a glass of darker beer which was about half-gone.

all the while, Mama Trish keeps the hits a-coming..."Squeeze Box", some Beatles stuff, some Joni Mitchell...at one point she even caved in to my yelled request and played Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla"--a crowd favorite if i've EVER heard one. after each song there would be the obligatory applause from the audience, and, since i could turn around and spy at the Governor without being too conspicuous, judging from his enthusiastic clapping and the look in his eye he seems to be quite fond of classic rock.

at one point one of his guys who had a habit of talking into his shoulder got up and marched to the back of his restaurant to the men's room, and either he takes care of business faster than anyone i've ever seen or he was just checking the stalls for wayward senators with "wide stances", but that guy burst out of the men's room door in about two seconds, then hurried back over to, i suppose, give Charlie the skinny on the bathroom. it must not have passed the security test, because, to the best of my knowledge, he never got up to relieve himself the whole time he was there. i was curious...i went to check it out for myself. hmmmm...looked clean to me. so, while i was there i went ahead and did my business and then did what i was shocked to hear this past week was a lot less common practice than i ever would've figured...i washed my hands. with soap. i was thinking ahead...
i might shake the governor's hand..

i stroll back to my table and proceed to toss back yet another beer. all of a sudden, a shot out of the blue, during a break between applause and another song:

"hey, do ya know any Neil Young?"

it was Governor Crist. requesting Neil Young at some goofy bar & grill here in Gainesville. i was impressed, to say the least...


he then proceeded to put on a charade by introducing himself to the female staff. i would guess that, this being Berkley of the South & all, that i was probably the only person there who voted for him. (on a related note, i asked my roommate, who didn't vote for Crist, who HE voted for...he couldn't remember the Democratic candidate's name...) seizing what i perceived to be an opportunity which was on the verge of dissapearing, my roomate & i strolled over and introduced ourselves to the governor. he shook my roomie's hand quickly, and then it was my turn. for some reason i blurted out "i voted for you, governor". he said something like "keep doing it", and i said something back like, "well, just keep on doing what you're doing". which, coming from me is pretty much a lie, since Crist's politics are geared toward whatever will eventually earn him 100% approval ratings, and he's getting disturbingly chummy with the global-warming gang...but i was kind of starstruck.

like i said, he's a cool guy.

UPDATE: Mama Trish weighs in on the same story...

another take on the recent bin Laden video

from Slate.com, courteousy of Anne Appelbaum...

her take is a slight variation on the one that i took a few days earlier here that bin Laden/al Queada is trying to appeal to the anti-american/left-leaning/nutroots democrat-base crowd.

she points out that:

Real or fake, the message might still hint at the direction in which al-Qaida propaganda, or at least al-Qaida propaganda designed for the Western market, is now heading. In a recent Slate piece, Reza Aslan eloquently described how the organization's list of alleged "grievances"—which now include global warming, corporate capitalism, and African poverty, as well as the American bases in Saudi Arabia—weave "local and global resentments into a single anti-American narrative, the overarching aim of which is to form a collective identity across borders and nationalities."

what Appelbaum sees as the goal:

Clearly, al-Qaida's long-term goal is to convert Americans and other Westerners to its extreme version of Islam.

it's not funny, she says...as she explains:

It would only take a very few such converts to do a lot of damage. The results of the Soviet Union's massive propaganda campaign on behalf of world Marxist revolution were also numerically small, but at the time, they were considered very effective: the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Italian Red Brigades, the Weather Underground. There are always disaffected young people—(American al-queada propagandist Adam) Gadahn is a former fan of "death metal" rock bands—and they're always looking for a cause. Conversion in general is increasingly common across Europe. Some 4,000 Germans were found to convert annually in a recent study, and if only 0.1 percent of them choose the jihadist version of Islam, that's enough to cause trouble.

the way i see it, the jihadists are just furthur exploiting advantages they already possess. even though they claim 9/11 as a victory against the US and the west, there are significant numbers of people here in the US and abroad (for example, a recent study of Germans under the age of 30 found that 31%) see 9/11 as an inside job by the Bush administration or similar explanations....and, of course, tons of others blame US policy for the attacks. a recent poll found that 63% of the French, 57% of Brits, 59% of the Dutch, 54% of Poles, 52% of Germans, and 51% of Italians blame US foreign policy for the attacks.

add to that the zillions of people who are ready to blame the US for destroying the world with our carbon emissions, our McDonald's, and our lack of leadership in dealing with the Darfur crisis....that's a lot of potential bodies for people that subscribe to "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" theory...

bin Laden's video pitch to the left..

the mainstream media are calling this a "rambling" message, but if you've ever read any of the transcripts released by al-queada, it's pretty much par for the course. actually, it's less rambling than usual, because the usual sermon to us infidels contains huge helpings of Koranic wisdom, and not so much "political science".

bin Laden makes his appeal to the american left in many ways:

1. Bush's attack mode on the "religion of peace" has eroded our standing in the world:

"Since the 11th, many of America's policies have come under the influence of the Mujahideen, and that is by the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation worsened, it's prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with the interests of the major corporations and also those of the neoconservatives, despite the differing intentions."

..a little dig at "Big Oil", perhaps?

2. The Mainstream Media carries the water for Corporate America:

"And for your information media, during the first years of the war, lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires."

(they must ONLY get FOXnews in Tora Bora or wherever the hell he is...)

3. Iraq is a "civil war":

"And thus, what is called the civil war..."

notice that not even bin Laden acknowledges that the situation is indeed a civil war..

4. The sins of the white man's past will always dog us in the present.

reacting to a statement by Richard Perle to the effect that if we leave Iraq, we'll face a holocaust:

"I say, refuting this unjust statement, that the morality and culture of the holocaust is your culture, not our culture....The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe...The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons."

5. The Democrats' seizure of Congress was a mandate to end the war in Iraq.

"...the vast majority of you (americans) want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning..."

bin Laden's explanation for this is that the corporations/big money supports the entire political process in a democratic system of government, so the politicians have to do what they are told by their corporate masters. this, by the way, explains Vietnam, and also the JFK assassination (the corporations were fearful that Kennedy would try to abort the Vietnam effort, so they had him killed).

i highlighted "Democratic" above because bin Laden is savvy enough to know that's what the Democrats like to be called when used in conjunction with "Party".

6. Noam Chomsky knows what he's talking about.

"This war was totally unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. and among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice."

Which is why, he goes on further to explain, mass anti-war demonstrations are futile...because Bush won't listen.

7. Global Warming is a bigger threat than terrorism (and it's caused by corporations).

"...It has become clear that they (corporations) are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations..."

he also feels our pain in the current "mortgage crisis"...


So, bin Laden was doing pretty good up until that point. i can picture my liberal friends saying "y'know, he's making a lot of sense here". Then, in my opinion, he overreaches and makes his pitch for ditching democracy and replacing it with Islamic rule, and then COMPOUNDS this overreach with the argument that, under Islam, you PAY NO TAXES. Hey, Osama...you blew it.

Now, about that beard...


UPDATE 9/9/07: since i made this post i see that this same theme is making the rounds all over the internet. this is an alarming development to the Soros/Clinton funded "ThinkProgress" media-watchdog site. their especially enraged about NYT columnist David Brooks' comments on PBS (video at thinkprogress).

Hurricane Katrina 2 year anniversary tribute

Katrina had barely made landfall when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. assigned the blame for the very existence of Katrina on Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, in this post from the Huffington Post, because he had opposed supporting the Kyoto Protocol. in a true Kennedyesque rhetorical flourish, the last line of the blog post states:

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast.

aaaah...the era of the politicalization of weather had begun...


according to this satellite image, it's looking pretty threatening...NEW ORLEANS.


who could forget the school busses which were available to evacuate people?

"COOL! FREE STUFF!!"


"brownie" doin' a "heckuva job"...


sean penn joins rescue effort...OOPS! ...springs a leak.

one of my all-time favorites: civil rights leader randall robinson claims that the black folks in new orleans have been reduced to cannibalism...

"It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive."

. later retracted, but not until this comment had gone nuts on the blogosphere, exposing racist white amerikkka....

Even though Robinson intended to show the callousness of the Bush administration, for many whites the claim seemed entirely plausible and has spread throughout the Internet with heated debates on how likely cannibalism might be. That the claim was originally publicized by a black leader meant that spreading it could not be criticized as a racist act.

Pres. Bush promises that New Orleans will be rebuilt, promises massive aid...aid sent, immediately goes into somebody's pocket who it wasn't intended for.

Brad Pitt, recently surveying the "progress", or lack of, in New Orleans, called Katrina a "man-made" disaster. he's right. you've got hundreds of thousands of people living off of government assistance living in a city which is below sea level. you've got a government warning system which for AT LEAST 3-4 days gave warning to the gulf coast, which the people all over ignored. you've got a CATEGORY FIVE hurricane on the way, and a city and state government which is completely aware of the implications, and doesn't act. you've got a federal government caught with it's pants down entirely. you've got a president who can't seem to connect, or act, or do anything constructive at all. you've got residents who figure as long as they can't feed themselves or have anyplace to live anymore, need to steal big-screen TVs. then, you have a media and a political party who refuse to offer constructive criticism...and are only too happy to pour gas on the fire to enhance their political power.

global warming data compromised by a Y2K bug

Little Green Footballs has the link to the story...

apparently, the "silent changes" NASA made to it's earlier findings show that 1934, NOT 1998, was the HOTTEST year on record. (no mention of how many SUVs were around then or how much toilet paper was used...)

the MSM, to my knowledge, is still silent on these findings.

OMIGOD!!! more global warming fears!!!

according to this article, we're looking at a future with MORE volcanoes, MORE tsunamis, MORE earthquakes, MORE landslides.

unfortunately for "Mr. Carbon Footprint" himself, Robert Murray, chairman of the Murray Energy Group...anyone who mines coal can't use "earthquake" as an excuse for mining disasters, because "earthquake" from now on will be a protected term to only be applied where it is most politically "advantageous".

maybe the list above should include MORE bridge collapses. hold on, i thought rosie taught us all that there is NO WAY that FIRE can melt STEEL, and NOW we're supposed to believe that a few days of 90+ degree weather will cause it to buckle and collapse?

New Study: Walking worse than Driving to Earth's Climate!

i give up.

i bike to work, bike to the supermarket...pretty much bike everywhere i want to go, and now this:

“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

this guy is a GREEN party candidate for parliament.