Quote of the Day – Global Warming Edition

Quote of the Day – Global Warming Edition

(T)he movement to stop climate change through a Really Big and Comprehensive Grand Global Treaty is dead because there is no political consensus in the US to go forward. It’s dead because the UN process is toppling over from its own excessive ambition and complexity. It’s dead because China and India are having second thoughts about even the smallish steps they put on the table back in Copenhagen.

Doorknob dead.

As the Post story shows, the mainstream media is now coming to terms with the death. Environmentalists are still trying to avoid pulling the plug, but the corpse is already cool to the touch and soon it will begin to smell. As the global greens move from the denial stage of the grief process, brace yourself for some eloquent, petulant and arrogant rage. Tears will be shed and hands will be wrung. The world is stupid, uncaring, unworthy to be saved. Horrible Republicans, evil Chinese, demented know-nothing climate skeptics have ruined the world and condemned our grandchildren to lives of sorrow and pain. Messengers will be shot; skeptics will be blamed for asking questions and the media (and the internet) will be blamed for reporting the answers.

— Walter Russell Mead, How Al Gore Wrecked Planet Earth

Should be fun!

Quote of the Day – American-Occupied America Edition

Quote of the Day – American-Occupied America Edition

I mean, you’ve got to be a decadent Westerner to wake up; note “Dammit, my computer’s dead”; unplug the mouse and keyboard from it and plug them into the spare computer sitting on the desk right next to it because you couldn’t be bothered to go find your netbook and power it up and then whine wirelessly to all your friends on the intertubes about how much your life sucks.Tam

Quote of the Day – American Dream Edition

Quote of the Day – American Dream Edition

Their (Tea Party supporter) values are pretty much mine. I live in a town in North Alabama where there are plenty of blacks driving Mercedes and living in big houses. Only in America can someone come from a little island and live the dream. I’ve liked it, and that’s what I want for my children. [But] I saw the window closing for my own kids.

Les Phillip, candidate for Alabama’s fifth congressional district challenging Republican incumbent Parker Griffith, as reported in Glenn Reynolds’ WSJ piece, What I Saw at the Tea Party Convention

Now that I’m working again, I may have to send Mr. Phillip a campaign contribution.

Quote of the Day – Tea Party Edition

Quote of the Day – Tea Party Edition

(T)hat grass-roots, “never-done-this-before” sense of excitement and empowerment is the first thing that really hits you.

These are the most regular, decent people you’ll meet, and with very few exceptions not one of them has been involved in politics in any way. It’s just that – like so many of us — They’ve just had enough!

Of course, the media coverage has tried very hard to portray the normal, average, every-day Americans of the Tea party rallies as dangerous and angry racists and Wal-Mart knuckle-draggers, while identifying the mass-produced signs, the mass-produced T-shirts, the mass-produced members of bused-in wiccan nihilist anarcho-Maoist lesbian eco-weenie anti-war protestors as somehow the genuine voice of the American people. – Bill Whittle, Eject! Eject! Eject!PARTY TIME!

With apologies to lesbian wiccan capitalists everywhere (this means you, Deb). No offense intended.

Quote of the Day – Out of the Mouths of (Relative) Babes Edition

Quote of the Day – Out of the Mouths of (Relative) Babes Edition

Usually, the State of the Union address is a laundry list of proposals spiced with sycophantic applause and dipped in an admixture of boredom and bravado. It is rarely a statement of basic philosophy.

Not for President Obama.

President Obama’s State of the Union address was the greatest American rhetorical embrace of fascist trope since the days of Woodrow Wilson. I am not suggesting Obama is a Nazi; he isn’t. I am not suggesting that he is a jackbooted thug; he isn’t (even if we could be forgiven for mistaking Rahm Emanuel for one).

President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms — not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually.

Ben Shapiro, Human EventsObama’s Philosophically Fascist State of the Union Address

(h/t to Neo-neocon for the link.)

THIS Should Get Interesting

THIS Should Get Interesting

This year’s $uperBowl®©™ ads will apparently (unless someone successfully sues to get it yanked, or CBS caves under pressure) include a message not seen before among the scantily-clad, beer-swilling, job-seeking multitudes we’re used to seeing on Game Day:

Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based Christian group led by James Dobson, is paying big bucks — perhaps $3.2 million — for a 30-second spot featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tebow and his mother, Pam.

In 1987, pregnant Pam Tebow and her husband, Bob, were in the Philippines as missionaries when she contracted dysentery. Doctors believed that the disease would result in the death of her baby and that a fruitless childbirth might kill her too.

But mother and son survived. After years of home schooling, Tim Tebow went on to become 240 pounds of All-Southeastern Conference, football-slinging whoopass with Bible verses written on his cheeks.

The point of the ad isn’t to pass a bill or defeat a candidate who believes women have a right to elective abortions, but to encourage women to “choose life” when faced with desperate options.

The reaction has already begun:

News of the ad had a predictably Pavlovian effect on the Left. Since the spot combines many of the elements that the “educated class” most detests about America — frank expressions of Christianity, pro-life advocacy, home-schoolers, football hero worship and the South — they were incensed that cash-strapped CBS would take Focus on the Family’s money.

Jehmu Greene, head of the Women’s Media Center, is leading a drive to punish CBS for airing the ad, which she claims is “sexist.”

Here’s your QotD:

A little decoding is necessary here.

In terms of Super Bowl ads, “sexist” is code for “anti-abortion.” But “sexist” does not apply to parading women around in their underpants to sell beer.

Got it?

You know, Alinski’s Rules for Radicals works no matter what side of the aisle you’re on! RTWT. Especially note this, about the recent Supreme Court Citizen’s United v. FEC decision:

The Supreme Court decision means that anyone who can get the dough together can try to influence the outcome of elections.

That’s exactly right.

And, Of Course, It’s All the Republican’s Fault

And, Of Course, It’s All the Republican’s Fault

The Real State of the Union: Fear.

This fear is extremely broad-based. It is not limited to social class nor to domestic or foreign policies. Banks are not lending, companies are not hiring, because they are afraid of what Obama will do next. Both are afraid of onerous taxes, including new health care burdens, and the banks fear new regulations and the consequences of the recently declared war on evil bankers by the president. Seniors are afraid they will be deprived of medical treatment. Juniors are afraid they are going to be forced to buy health insurance they don’t think they need. Across the board, Americans are afraid they’re not going to find work, and won’t be able to afford a house. And, as the Massachusetts vote showed, Americans are worried about threats from abroad, worried about Iran, afraid of terrorist attacks, and afraid the Obama Administration doesn’t take all this seriously enough.

If we proles would just shut up, sit down, and let our betters lead us, we’d be in Utopia in no time!

We Live in the Presence of Greatness

We Live in the Presence of Greatness

Quote of the Day:

It’s 1974. No legal academic is thinking seriously of the Second Amendment; there is just a vague belief that it has something to do with the National Guard.

The NRA has about 600,000 members, and has no ILA. One person, as I recall, handles all political and legal affairs. The Cincinnati revolt that would create the modern NRA lies in the future (it came in 1977, arising out of problems revealed in 1976). Harlon Carter is enjoying retirement in Green Valley AZ, where he can shoot rifles out his back window. Neal Knox is a magazine editor in Prescott. I’m a law student.

That was how it stood, 36 years ago. Glad that I lived to see Heller, and now McDonald.

— David Hardy, Of Arms and the LawTrip back in the time machine

Thank you David. I’m glad you helped get us here. On to McDonald v. Chicago!