Maggie's Farm

Powerline has Global Warming Propaganda Worse Than Expected.

Readers know that, as a general rule, we post climate links and essays in our "Political" category rather than in our "Natural History and Conservation" category.

Information every month, accumulating year after year, confirms our impression that the "Global Warming Crisis" is politically-driven, regardless of the merits of the science.

The Left loves Global Warming, because it has the potential to scare people into giving further power and control to state apparatuses. If it doesn't pan out, they will need to find another strategy. But they have invested a lot of time and energy into this one, and will be naturally reluctant to let it go.  

Regular readers also know that it's my opinion that some warming would be to the benefit of humanity, as it has been in history. England thrived with its vineyards during the medieval warming, and Greenland was green and agricultural. I am skeptical about whether that is happening now, though. More likely, the opposite. I trust tropospheric measures more than land measures, which are corrupted by all sorts of local variables.

In the event of the worst case which the fearmongers promote (and even they admit exaggerating for effect), not a darn thing can or will be done to make a difference. Humans have adjusted to, and survived, far worse in their brief time on this earth.

I also happen to believe that there are too many people. I am open to being wrong about that, but I do feel that it would be a shame for the entire planet to be paved. From what I know about the world, prosperity and opportunity seem to be the best routes to population rationality and land conservation.

From Bruce Kesler:

That isn’t my headline.  It’s the headline on a report in the Huffington Post from Iraq by a reporter opposed to the war in Iraq writing about another who is opposed, Dahr Jamail.

Shane Liddick is a freelancer out of San Diego, with newspaper and magazine reporting experience, currently in Anbar Province, Iraq.  Dahr Jamail is also a freelancer, who has been the darling of the left.

Dahr Jamail’s shoddy anti-Iraq propaganda, indeed invention of false horror stories, has been exposed before.  I wrote about him in March 2008, as “an accomplished propagandist and fabulist on Iraq,” with links to Jules Crittenden, Instapundit, and most tellingly to a series of exposes by Denis Keohane.  The Keohane exposes can be seen here.

Liddick’s words are direct:

… I saw many of the same things you did. But I've come to very different conclusions. That, I believe, is because you had a pre-existing agenda you were determined to conform evidence to (i.e., war is bad, the U.S. is waging a war, so whatever it's doing in Anbar is bad); and because you're a coward….

He goes on to say -

I still don't think we should be here. But that debate became passé six years ago. Now it's a question of how soon the U.S. gets out and what happens before and after it does. I've met too many good and decent people here to write this place off, smart and hard working Iraqis that want and deserve a first-world existence….

As a journalist, criticizing military policy without talking to the military is completely incompetent. But with you, it goes deeper. You hide behind political artifice to lob your mines of pre-conclusion, like a craven wretch. And really, I think that goes to the solid core of the dregs of the problem. You're not a coward merely because you're afraid to seek the truth when it might not conform to your views ... rather your chickenshit views are shaped by the fact you're a coward….

Nearly every American soldier on the ground--no matter how misguided vis-à-vis the underlying motivations that brought the U.S. to Iraq--is here because of a sincere and genuine desire to help; none of them, I wager, have come to further an empire. Whether it be to fight against terrorism so people back home feel a little safer in skyscrapers, or to relieve a weary Iraqi population of a dictator, they're here for honorable reasons; just as is the case with the majority of those Iraqi soldiers (who still have targets on their foreheads). Which makes your fink agenda a slap in the face to about a million people who have fought and died and lost legs, brothers, and lots of blood in the hope of making something as simple as a secure place to live.

The military has been surprisingly forthcoming with me and all I had to do was ask. Marine Corps Colonel Patrick Malay sat with me on three different occasions, for long discussions about security in his area of operation in Anbar. One thing I learned quickly is that the military's officer corps is filled with the best of America's minds--kids that aced their college entrance exams, were the captains of their ball teams, and had to be nominated by senators to go to the schools they did. These are the guys (along with their much more experienced superiors) that are deciding strategy--and they're fucking smart. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of their high level briefings--again, all I had to do was show some kind of aptitude for objectivity--and I can tell you their comprehension of the situation on the ground is apt, their thinking clever, and their intentions centrally wrapped up with the Iraqi people….

The military's policy is designed from the bottom-up on security. The plan is simple--so simple (in theory), it can't fail. Security will bring outside investment, which will thereby enhance existing security, which will bring more investment, further enhancing security, and so on. It's uncomplicated and it's already working. The lynchpin is security. The people of Anbar want it desperately (I lived with these people for most of the past month, and I can't tell you how desperately they want it) and they need it to be able to rebuild….

The heart of the problem in all of this isn't only with the people of Iraq, it's also with Americans in this age of rapid and uncensored hydra-headed media--and the fact anybody can print anything. The threat there lies in the fact that 80-percent of people in society are grazers (and you can check Chomsky on this, Colonel Malay, or anybody who's served time); non-thinkers that only want to be herded and told what to do. It's those people who read your half-truths online and don't realize you're "independent" for a reason.

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals. There's plenty of ugliness to report in Iraq (as there are thousands of stories of hope and headway)--and the U.S. military certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nobody's telling you to report on one side or the other. But manipulating the truth because of your own personal biases is wretched and works in the face of progress. The other end of the political spectrum disregards you, Dahr, and now I know why. I thought it was because you're a liar--but you aren't. You don't have enough backbone to be a liar. You're a craven obfuscationist, intent on promoting your agenda at the cost of a menagerie of much braver men and women. ... s.d. liddick

Thus commented a reader who heard this at Theo. This is a fast Flight of the Bumblebee.

Every blade of grass is a study;
And to produce two,
Where there was but one,
Is both a profit and a pleasure.
And not grass alone;
But soils, seeds, and seasons
Hedges, ditches, and fences,
Draining, droughts, and irrigation—
Plowing, hoeing, and harrowing—
Reaping, mowing, and threshing—
Saving crops, pests of crops, diseases of crops,
And what will prevent or cure them—
Implements, utensils, and machines,
Their relative merits,
And [how] to improve them—
Hogs, horses, and cattle—
Sheep, goats, and poultry—
Trees, shrubs, fruits, plants, and flowers—
The thousand things
Of which these are specimens—
Each a world of study within itself.

That is from a Lincoln speech to the Wisconsin Agricultural Society, rearranged as free verse. It works. It sounds like Walt Whitman.

Howlin' Wolf, 1960

Let's say you get your hands on a fascinating 100+ year-old Caucasian rug (like the 3x5 Kuba/Shirvan in the photo), and do not want to destroy it and its history by having it walked on, cat-scratched or dog-chewed or dog-peed. (They were made for bare feet, and all Caucasian rugs were rather small.)

Well, you can hang it like a tapestry - like the work of art which it is, and focus on the details and patterns that you would cease to notice if you put it on the floor.

Rug Rat likes these wall hangers.

One month into a failed Presidency. I did think it was odd that the Admin. had no economic plan, and ceded it all to the Dem House sandbox. Why was there no realistic plan, and just a mix of every Dem Congressman's junk pile?

Big stimulus money for warmists only. The warming biz is hot. No doubt there is plenty of pressure and incentive to come up with the wanted results. Even absent-minded professors know on what side their bread is buttered. They like to eat too, and the grant money they can bring in is their bread and butter. The grants pay their salaries.

Sullivan declares that the GOP has declared war on Obama. I think it is the other way around. When you say "F-you, we won," you aren't being collegial. When you grab the Census, you aren't even being civilized: it's a Chavez-like, Chicago-style power grab. I think the WH is planning to crush the GOP for the next 10 years. Who is using projection here? Me or Sullivan? We viewed the Dem handling of the pork and federal power-grab of the so-called stimulus as a declaration of war.

Read Ray Dalio's 4-page piece in Barron's, if you haven't (we linked a couple of days ago). His macro view, while depressing, makes a lot of sense: It's a D-process. He likes gold right now.

Re the national debt chart we posted this morning: If China is buying all of our federal paper, does that mean that they will own us?

General reminder: When you have the time, it's always worthwhile to see what TimesWatch has to say.

Reagan said "The closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this earth is a government program." The gummint racket ratchet has no reverse setting. Why the cost estimates of the stimulus are way off. Does anybody imagine that any of these hundreds of new "programs" will ever be cut or dropped when things settle down? I think we taxpayers are being rolled and scammed within an inch of our lives - if not more.

Bob with the Dean Martin classic. Not sure when this was done. Good photos:

Newsweek: We are all Socialists now

Powerline: A fourth wave of Liberalism

Remember the lady during the campaign who said Obama will give me free gas for my car and a free house? Well, here's Ms. "I love you Barack." Good grief. It's government-as-parent, or as spouse. Her Grandma should slap her for this self-administered humiliation:

By Bruce Kesler -

A friend whose relatives valiantly served in US forces in World War II, and lost relatives in combat and concentration camps, credits me with similar heroism for volunteering to serve in the Marine Corps in Vietnam.  She said to me recently that she thought of me when she saw the movie Defiance, which I had not yet seen, that I would have been one of those partisans fighting back against the Nazis and locals exterminating the Jews in the Byelorussia where my family came from and the film takes place.

I replied that she gives me too much credit.  There is a big difference between my experience and theirs.  I was trained by and part of an elite armed service of the most powerful nation on earth.  They found themselves running into the forest alone or in a small group, most untrained and devoid of experience in the harsh decisions of survival or war, and fought back against the overwhelmingly powerful occupying Nazis and their local collaborators.

I told my friend that I have asked myself often over the years whether I would or could have had the sense and guts to do what they did, still with no firm answer.

I’ve now seen Defiance, and still am little closer to that personal answer, but a few other questions are answered.

None of us really know what we’ll do under stress or threat until we do, despite whatever our self-image or the guesses we may make.  However, experience tells us that being prepared in attitude and training is essential to rising to any challenge, and qualified, decisive, courageous leadership acting with integrity is essential to cohering in an effective organization. Otherwise, we are subject to the whims and follies of others, sometimes fortunately well but often not.  When our very lives are at stake, or even our or our children’s financial security, standing around awaiting someone else’s choice of our fate is less likely to be practical.

Relatively few American Jews of my generation chose to serve in our armed forces, and most have adopted near-pacifist attitudes.  Many are even conflicted about our brethren in Israel taking the measures necessary in the jaws of survival threats.

Hopefully, as if hope were enough, American Jews will not have to make those decisions for themselves, as did those in Defiance.  But, to believe in or counsel being ill-prepared or weak-kneed or effete for those Jews who do have to make those life-saving decisions is dangerously suicidal.  To engage in wishful thinking or to evade training or service here in the US is just as dangerous in being unschooled and unprepared for those training to or attacking us as Americans or Jews.

For a discussion of the existential decisions and consequences in the film Defiance, I recommend this review. Then don’t miss seeing the movie.  

At AVI. He begins:

For women of the 1930s, emotional stability, dependable character and ambition ranked as the top three characteristics they wanted in a man. Attraction and love didn't come in until No. 5. Today, women, like men, put love at the top of the list, with dependability and emotional stability rounding out the top three characteristics in Mr. Right.

Read the whole thing. It would appear that people have become more romantic in their hopes and dreams.

I keep one of these little log cabins around the place, with pine incense. It's a cheery winter olfactory treat, but not just for winter.

The air goes in the door, and the smoke goes up the chimney. Few things for $12. can give so much enduring pleasure.

Does pine incense count as second-hand smoke? Naw.

Excellent piece. An interview with Ray Dalio at Barron's. One quote:

The D-process is a disease of sorts that is going to run its course.

When I first started seeing the D-process and describing it, it was before it actually started to play out this way. But now you can ask yourself, OK, when was the last time bank stocks went down so much? When was the last time the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, exploded like it has? When was the last time interest rates went to zero, essentially, making monetary policy as we know it ineffective? When was the last time we had deflation?

The answers to those questions all point to times other than the U.S. post-World War II experience. This was the dynamic that occurred in Japan in the '90s, that occurred in Latin America in the '80s, and that occurred in the Great Depression in the '30s.

 

Sea levels rising fast due to Arctic ice melt. Yet Arctic ice increasing at record rates.

We linked the Bloomberg piece this morning describing what the "stimulus" will do to ration care under Medicare. Also in the stimulus will be a federal monitoring of your medical history and treatment - this from our Canadian friend at Small Dead Ducklings:

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

[...]

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties.

If Obama screws up the American health care system, where the Hell are Canadians supposed to go?

If they want docs to give up their autonomy, they had better find a new, lesser breed of docs in this country. And I'd rather fight with an insurance company about my medical choices than fight with a federal bureaucrat. If the insurance company doesn't want to pay, I can at least pay for it myself.

Photo: Captain Sully gets key to the city

This time, they beheaded a Pole. To make a point.

Black university in trouble. Why does America even have black universities anymore? I'm not necessarily against it, but it just seems strange. I assume they will accept white applicants.

How health care nationalization is buried in the stimulus package. The stimulus is one giant Trojan Horse.

A Newsweek metamorphosis

Scientific trickery re Antarctic climate

Cato on the stimulus (video): Wilkinson

Liberals: Obama's bill is a triumph for Liberalism

The new battlefield: Robots at war

Misunderstanding Limbaugh. Patterico

It's a recession not a "catastrophe." Right.

Politicizing the economy caused the crash. Deeply true, and the economy is fully-politicized now. It's as if people wanted to imagine that the gummint can control the economy. Who believes that the bozos in politics are smarter than markets? History shows the gummint can only damage it.

A cost-conscious college.

Britain: Health and safety above education. What if a kid slips on the snow and bumps his knee? More Britain: Banning C of E from a political party? Sheesh. That's sick.

Unions 1, America 0

Remember what they did to Gerry Ford when he bumped his head? They basically called him a retarded doofus.

Those salary caps are for "execs," not for the quants and the traders and the deal-makers, etc.

Obama getting the respect he deserves. Dr. Clouthier

Flopping remembers Tony Snow's pep talk, one year ago.

More gun hysteria at the NYT

How to easily save yourself $12,000/year.

I like beer room-temperature, so this beer temperature test does me little good.

Dem tax cheats. Everybody forgets to mention Al Franken.

How the internet damages our culture. Hawkins at Pajamas. Well, Maggie's doesn't damage our culture.

h/t, Marginal Rev.

Yesterday was our neighborhood First Annual Deep-Fry Your Turkey Day. We did 9 smallish turkeys, 2 ducks, three chickens. We cranked it up right after church. It was cold enough that we had trouble getting the peanut oil above 320, so it took longer than we planned. All the neighbors got well-fed last night, and all dogs enjoyed the venison butchering scraps. It was reminiscent of a barn-raising.

Why go to the trouble of setting up a fryer just for oneself? We served tons of beer, and venison-black bean soup and cornbread. And cupcakes. And ceegars. Red-neck Yankees know how to have fun. Next time, we'll do two pots of oil, not one, to halve the time - but we did not expect such a response for a last-minute plan. All dogs were invited, too, of course.

One bucket of birds in brine:

Our fryer set-up. The basket insert works best for the turkeys, but chickens and ducks don't need it and can just go on the stick.

Our Louisiana-style rub and bird-injection table. The green stuff is sauteed, pureed, then strained garlic, shallot, onion, carrot, and celery for injecting.

We cranked up one of these in the driveway to keep warm. Worked well, as long as it didn't set you afire.

 We set it all up like this. Readers have seen that old fire engine before.

We also had the last doe of the season to butcher as the birds were frying. She'd been hanging for a couple of weeks, but probably frozen through most of the time. Note Golden chewing on the hide. That always happens. A pal is just beginning the skinning. I brought home a foreleg with the hair for my pup to play with. Yes, that is an old fireplace in the 1890 garage, so the gentry would not have to get into a cold car. For the comfort of the chauffeur no doubt, too.

That's how one of my LI ducks came out of the fryer:

How is the turkey after all of this effort - overnight brining, injecting, Cajun rubs, etc.? Tastes like turkey, but pretty good turkey. The skin is especially good. In future, I think I'll do ducks and chickens, but not turkey - things with a higher skin/meat ratio.

I brought a venison shoulder home, too, from that doe in the garage. I think I'll braise it with root vegetables when the turkey is eaten.

What a fine country we Americans live in. We are not convinced that the Obamanites know how to appreciate it. A good life is a simple matter.

David Warren begins:

One of the key functions of modern government is to reduce, by law, the options people have, especially when they are facing challenges to survival.

A classic example of this is socialized medicine. Like all socialist systems, government health care creates big shortages and surpluses, beyond the reach of market correction: in this case, serious shortages of doctors, nurses and essential equipment, balanced by huge surpluses of administration and unspecialized support staff.

By contrast, one need never go far to find a dentist or a veterinarian in Canada, because these fields have not been fully "socialized."

So if you have a toothache, or your cat is ill, you know where to go.

Vets, dentists, and lawyers - still outside the State. I believe that there is no case to be made for socializing medicine which cannot also be made for socializing legal services. Whole thing here.

Many sites have linked Mark Boone's TCS essay titled How Republics Die. He begins:

Insofar as an economic downturn has traceable causes, the present recession seems to have origins in the behavior of at least three groups of people: reckless lenders, who encouraged people to spend their money irresponsibly; reckless borrowers, who took their advice and spent well outside the limits of need and the ability to repay; and a government which at times encouraged such behavior through organizations such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This is old news to the astute observer and the regular reader of TCS. What they may not know is how vividly, and how long ago, great philosophers warned us just how dangerously our society was using money. The great philosophers understood that economics operates on a moral plane, indeed a spiritual plane; that economic problems are often moral problems; and that financial markets are corrupted as much by bad behavior as by bad economic theory. The antiquity of their advice only serves to belie its strikingly acute contemporary relevance.

The whole essay here.